March Podcast 063- Conscious Monogamy and Polyamory

Passion And Soul Podcast
Written By

i-love-you-novelty-toaster

The relationships we choose are each unique, but how do we navigate what we are looking for? Exploring social, sexual and emotional monogamy, join Lee as he taps into how we each communicate our needs. We work from the exponential mathematics of multiple relationships to the definitions of what sex is, different lenses on intimacy to fixing the toasters of our connections. Let’s explore the choices each of us make not only to have fairness in relationships of choice, but how to have everyone win and get their needs met.

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    BDSM and Non-Standard Relationships, Power Exchange and Polyamory, Sacred Sexuality and Fetishes, as well as Simply Fun Kink.


    You're listening to The Erotic Awakening Podcast Network.


    Welcome to The Passion And Soul Podcast, an exploration of personal and interpersonal desire, faith, and connection.


    Your host, international sexuality and spirituality author and educator, Lee Harrington of passionandsoul.com, will take you on a sultry and intellectual journey through the soul of intimate experience.


    Take a moment and breathe deep and get ready for an adventure.


    This podcast is a chance to glimpse into the ever-increasing diverse world of alternative life.


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    Lee:

    Hello fellow adventurers of sexuality and spirit, and welcome to the Passion And Soul Podcast with Lee Harrington of passionandsoul.com.


    It has been a whirlwind crazy adventure the past couple of weeks.


    It was my honor to get to go out and teach at Dark Odyssey Winter Fire, head out to London to do a three-day Sacred Kink intensive, and then find myself in New York doing book signings for more Shibari you can use and doing a one-day intensive on Rope Bondage for Intimacy and Connection.


    At Dark Odyssey, I got to do classes and run rituals for an amazing group of 1,200 people at a giant hotel conference.


    For Sacred Kink, we took 20-some-odd adventures on a journey through the different paths of Sacred Kink.


    From flesh to ordeals, sacred plants to working with breath, horsing and role-playing, and so many other journeys as well.


    And it was so inspiring to see these people do their work along with doing their play.


    But when I was in New York, and doing that intensive for rope bondage, I was really struck by the notion of what is intimacy, what is connection, what is relationship.


    My partner, Butterfly, joined me for the entire trip, but at that intensive especially, I asked her to step up and share some of her stuff because she has such an amazing perspective on the world.


    And in doing so, it really had me reflecting, what do we encourage our partners to share?


    How do we examine these things?


    And how do we each think about relationships and intimacy?


    For folks who don't know, about a year and a half ago, I asked my partner if she would be interested in being monogamous with me for right now.


    She was absolutely startled because she was convinced that the only way that she was going to be in a relationship with me was going to be in a polyamorous and or open dynamic of some sort.


    And there were a lot of different reasons I asked her to do so.


    I wanted to see what it would be like for her and I to explore what monogamy would look like.


    I wanted to see how I would work in it.


    And I had a partner recently at that time period who had said to me in a moment of whatever emotion it was for them, had said, You're more monogamous than you think you are.


    I'm not sure if you've ever had this experience, but having somebody you care about, whether it's a family or a friend or someone you're in relationship with, say something potentially hurtful or potentially joyous, can plant a seed in the back of the mind that has us wondering, Well, am I?


    What does that mean?


    What does that look like?


    And so I wanted to explore it.


    Monogamy and polyamory mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people.


    In monogamy, that idea of what is monogamy could be looking at it as social monogamy, right?


    Social monogamy is the notion of what does the world at large know?


    And who gets to know about it?


    That I know people who are swingers, who occasionally go to swinger clubs and with their partner, and have fun, do whatever is there doing, but show up together, leave together, and consider themselves monogamous because their pastor doesn't know, their kids don't know.


    They are monogamous because it's about who knows what.


    For other people, it's about emotional monogamy.


    Who do you share your emotional journey with?


    This could be that it could be considered infidelitous if you have a really close best friend you share all of your secrets with rather than sharing them with your partner or sharing them with that other person when not sharing it with your partner at all.


    There are folks in this category that consider some forms of therapy to be infidelitous because you're not sharing those details with your primary or your partner of whatever sort that you have.


    For some people, it's based around gender, especially in a heteronormative culture, that if you're a guy and you have other dude friends that you hang out with and you bitch about stuff and you share your life with, that's one thing.


    But to have another woman you do it with can be scary and hard for that person who is a female partner in your life.


    This becomes a fuzzy line for folks who are omni-sexual, pansexual, queer, bisexual, or anywhere in that spectrum because the idea of gender being the breakdown point for that emotional monogamy isn't necessarily how things are thought of by those people.


    This becomes, of course, an even further fuzzy line if you have somebody who is coming from a heteronormative framework and somebody who is not, who are in relationship with one another.


    Neither for good nor bad, but something that is fuzzy at times.


    There are people that I know who are monogamous, but don't consider themselves mono-amorous.


    Amory being love.


    Gemi being how we connect or marriage or relationship.


    So with that in mind, there's also a third category of monogamy, which is sexual monogamy.


    Who do you have sex with?


    I know people who are absolutely fine with sexual non-monogamy, as I mentioned with that Swinger couple before.


    But sex, again, is a tricky one.


    What do you consider sex?


    For myself, I lived through the ages of Bill Clinton with that question of, or that comment of, I never had sex with that woman.


    Well, if you never had sex with that woman, what does the word sex mean?


    In this case, the case of Clinton, it was argued that it was penetrative below the waist connections and that anything involving fingers or mouths didn't count.


    It wasn't part of the equation.


    If one person considers sex to be penis into a lower body hole, then the other person considers sex to be anything involving sensuality, right?


    That kissing is part of the sex category.


    That spanking is part of the sex category.


    This can be a confusing or potentially harmful thing within a relationship with one person thinking that they are being monogamous and the other person actively disagreeing.


    It's worthwhile in any relationship to talk about what these words mean to you.


    What does monogamy look like in your definitions?


    What does it look like in your world?


    This applies especially or as well, depending on how we look at it, within polyamorous relationships.


    For some people, polyamory means open relationship sexually.


    For some people, it means you can love as many people as you want, but only your primary relationship has certain sexual activities they do with you.


    Perhaps there is a primary relationship, and then there are secondary, tertiary, or side flings.


    For some people, polyamory means that we are in some sort of triangle, or a square, where everybody is in relationship with one another, and we're all connected to one another.


    For other people, polyamory means being married to one another in a closed circuit, and that we are all raising children with one another.


    I've met people who say, oh, I'm polyamorous, and they are then looking for someone else.


    If that other person thinks you mean, I want to raise children with you, and what you mean is we're looking for someone on the side for both my lover and I, my boyfriend or girlfriend or lover and I, to be able to play with, feelings can get hurt, confusions can happen, anger can arise.


    When I was actively polyamorous, I was what I referred to as a Google fetishist, and I still am.


    I love online calendars because I can look on my computer or my phone and have all the information sync up because I live a busy life at times.


    But when I was managing multiple relationships, I was having to look at multiple people's calendars, and we all synced up with one another, and I can see the green one and the yellow one and see what everyone was doing, so I can manage different time schedules.


    Because even if it was a V, right, where person A is dating B and C, I'm technically seeing two people and partner A is technically seeing one person, but there is a relationship between those other two people, even if it's not necessarily conscious.


    The term that I've been introduced to over the years is called paramour, the lover of my lover, the partner of my partner, my paramour.


    In a dyad, in monogamous relationships or a relationship between two people, there's actually three relationships.


    There's person A's relationship with themself.


    There's person B's relationship with themselves.


    And then there's the relationship between persons A and B.


    But those are three different relationships.


    If I'm in a relationship with two people and there's three of us, there's A, B, and C.


    A, B, B, C, and C, A.


    And then there's A, B, and C together.


    It becomes exponential mathematics.


    That if there is two of us, there's three relationships.


    If there's three of us, there's seven relationships.


    And it gets bigger and bigger.


    Now this is looking at just the romantic systems, right?


    Or sexual systems or whatever systems you're using, to define the notion of relationships.


    There's of course more relationships out there.


    Because if we look at adding in somebody's family members or their children, this adds D, E, F, G, Q, R!


    into those equations.


    Because of course, my relationship with my mother is different than my partner's relationship to my mother.


    They're all interacted with each other, even if my partner were never to meet my mother.


    Because one of the fascinating things about poly is that there's both positives and negatives to it.


    At least there was in my journey, and has been in my journey.


    I mention that because everybody's journey is different.


    For me, there was a positive and a negative.


    The positive is what I refer to as polyguacamole.


    I was in San Francisco visiting a lover of mine, and we built this beautiful dinner together.


    We went out shopping, we got all the supplies, and I made this, you know, Mexican-inspired feast of sorts.


    And one of the things that I did is a handmade guacamole.


    Got out the avocados, chopped up the tomatoes, lavished it with lime juice.


    And we had a great time that night.


    Two days later, I was in a coffee shop, the delightful Wicked Grounds, which I love.


    If you're ever in San Francisco, please go support them.


    I love that coffee shop.


    And I was at Wicked Grounds, and my lover's lover walked up to me and said, I love your guacamole.


    And I was like, what are you talking about?


    And they're like, well, I love being Polly, because the day after you saw my partner, I came and had dinner with them, and we had your leftover guacamole.


    And if I wasn't Polly, I wouldn't have had great guacamole, because we would have had no excuse together to eat guacamole.


    I'll try to include in the show notes my recipe for that, for my Polly guacamole.


    And it really struck me that, you know what?


    There are those moments that if I hadn't had a lover's lover or a dear person's dear person, I wouldn't be able to have those connections and those opportunities.


    When would those moments have come up for me?


    They wouldn't necessarily have.


    And so it really had me thinking about those positive things that open relationships or complex relationships have.


    Now, on the flip side, there's what I refer to as contagious polydrama.


    Those are the moments for me within my own lexicon where my partner had a really bad day with their other partner, and now I get to hear about it.


    Sometimes I'm not supposed to know that X, Y, and Z happened, but I do, which leads to this weird block between me and the other person, because I'm not supposed to know, but I do know about it, and so what do you do?


    This happens with friendships, too, where we get told by a friend that this other friend did something horrible, but don't tell them that you know.


    Well, I can't unknow that, and now I know it, and they don't know why I'm being distant from them because of X, Y, and Z that they did.


    So I distance myself, and it becomes awkward, and I can't share.


    And in not being able to share, it creates this line of authenticity.


    Am I being authentic in sharing the knowledge that I know?


    In not sharing the knowledge that I know, how do I navigate those moments?


    And we all as individuals find our own way to navigate those moments.


    Within polyamorous relationships, I have found that there are also different ways that people relate within that A, B, and C.


    For some paramours, it's the awkwardness, right?


    I don't know how to be around this other person.


    For some people, it's different city, different person.


    You can go out and do this, and as long as you're not lying to me, we're fine, but I don't want to hang out with that person.


    Not that they're good or bad, but I don't, it just doesn't call to me.


    For some people, it's I need to be a friend of that other person, and they have to be able to have a good conversation with me and to have us get along, or else this is not going to work.


    And for some people, it's we have to all be in an active relationship together, whatever that looks like for them.


    Again, everyone's going to operate with this from a slightly different way.


    It's been interesting for me, exploring monogamy, because I've been able to, instead of putting my attention on four different people, I've been able to focus on one person and learn their ins and outs, know their schedule, that instead of looking at Google Calendar, I can check in every morning for five minutes and go over what the day's going to look like and what else is happening, and I can put into my own schedule what I need to note for what's coming up.


    That I'm able to learn their quirks and what's going on with their family and absorb what's going on for them rather than track the lives of four different people.


    It's a different positive and negative.


    It's a different journey.


    And I love it.


    I'm finding it so fascinating.


    It's the first time in my life that I have been consensually monogamous.


    I was informed by a master of mine many years ago that I would be monogamous, but that he would not be within our frameworks of what monogamous meant.


    Because within our dynamic, within our power exchange, it was appropriate for the dominant partner to inform the submissive partner how they would live their life, even if it was not, you know, comparative rules, as it were.


    It was a fascinating experience for me.


    It left a little bit of a sour taste in my mouth.


    But getting to enter into it consensually and exploring what that means to me in that moment and between us in any given moments has been pretty cool.


    That feeling of safety, that idea that I get to explore with one person for right now and see what that means to me in this journey.


    I, as part of this, have been thinking about the idea of consumerist culture.


    And I've been thinking about it for a long time, but I think this really drove it home for me recently.


    That in consumerist culture, if we buy a toaster, if we buy a toaster and the toaster breaks, we throw it away and get a new one at Walmart because it's cheaper and easier.


    And that I think the relationships in our society have turned into the same thing.


    That instead of working on fixing it, instead of trying really hard and paying extra to take it to a toaster repair shop, what we end up doing is throwing it away and getting a new one.


    My grandmother once said to me, though, there is no away, and it struck me really hard.


    I was a teen at the time.


    And she said to me, there is no away.


    When you throw something away, it doesn't magically vanish.


    It just turns into trash, and trash doesn't go away.


    Trash goes into a garbage heap.


    Perhaps it goes out into the.


    Ocean, and you end up with things like the Pacific Ocean garbage patches, where you have huge volumes of plastic and other forms of trash in little tiny pieces floating all over the place or settling down to the bottom of the ocean, killing marine life, radically changing the shape of our planet.


    So there is no away.


    If we break up with someone, we can't expect those emotions to go away immediately because we have a life that we've spent with them.


    We have time that we've spent with them.


    And to think so or act so is unfair to them and unfair to us.


    There are people that after a divorce still feel that those vows ply, that they made.


    My father is one such person that when he said death do us part, he meant it.


    My parents have been divorced for 23 years now, I believe.


    And my father still refers to my mother as his wife.


    He will never date again, he will never court again, and he will never marry again, because those things are what he meant, even if for them it was an unhealthy place to be, and she needed to leave.


    There is a difference between taking your toaster to get repaired and repairing your toaster 50 times and still having it burn your toast, having it scar everything that you do.


    There is a difference between, you know, well, I'm willing and able to go fix my toaster, and the toaster caught on fire and is burning down my house.


    I am not advocating to stay with abusive relationships at all.


    I think it's important for us to see what's happening with our toaster, to see that no, really, the cord has completely frayed, and this toaster is from a different time period that isn't going to be very repairable in the modern age.


    This isn't working.


    And for some of us, we realize that, you know what?


    I'm sure a toaster was really good for me back when I ate toast, but the last time I ate toast was 12 years ago, and it's time for me to gift this toaster forward to somewhere it can be a toaster.


    I see time and time again people who only have one partner go and fix the toaster.


    But if I keep fixing the toaster and my partner keeps shoving things down into it that have it be broken again, this is not necessarily what's going to be healthy for us either.


    I think it's worthwhile though to look at how soon is appropriate or how often should we fix our toaster, and every person is going to have a different line.


    Whether we choose monogamy or polyamory, these things fit.


    And hell, if we choose to only be in relationship with ourselves and have a thriving person between person A and person A, then we need to look at this as well.


    Am I breaking my own toaster?


    Am I shoving things down into my toaster that make my toaster light on fire?


    Am I being self-abusive physically, emotionally, sexually?


    How am I treating me?


    Because if I can't show up and be fully engaged with myself, it's going to be a little hard to make whatever relationships I'm in thrive.


    Because there's a relationship there that even if it's two people, there's actually three relationships.


    Person A, person B, and then how they come together.


    When we come together with another person or persons, we also work on developing a language together.


    I mentioned before that notion that sex means different things to different people, but so do a lot of different things.


    At the Sacred Kink intensive, I had a couple of people ask about magic and how to use kink for magic.


    I said, you know what?


    I don't plan on covering up this weekend.


    I might, because the basics that I look at with magic is either doing spells using kink as the battery, or I look at that as the idea of using kink and the tools of it to be able to cast the spell and look into what it is that you're doing.


    Are you doing magic for invocation, etc.


    And when I said this to the three different people, I said, well, there's two other people that are interested.


    Do you mind if I share your information with those folks?


    Two of them came back and said, yeah, absolutely, introduce us.


    The third person said, wow, that is not what I meant by magic, at all.


    And I went, wow, okay, tell me more.


    Tell me more about what you meant by magic.


    Because I made assumptions based on my life journey.


    So it is with relationships.


    If I grew up in a public school with people, you know, trying out different things and changing up boyfriends and, you know, flirting and giggling, it's going to be different than if I grew up in a single gendered Christian school because I'm going to have different frameworks of experience as well as value on what a relationship will look like.


    If I've been trading out purple every week, the likelihood of me being in a I'll get a new one mental framework is perhaps higher.


    But it also means that I have more awareness of things like most likely have more awareness of things like STDs, things like how different people navigate sex, navigate relationships because I got exposed to more different ones.


    My exposure to poly started very early because I had a crush on this boy who had a crush on this girl who had a crush on a different girl, but she was involved with this other guy, etc., etc.


    And so my brain just kind of assumed that's how stuff works.


    We all have a norm, a norm that we expect, a norm of what our baseline is, but we can also shift and make conscious decisions about what we do.


    Whether we choose to be polyamorous, whether we choose to be monogamous, whether we are choosing to be in a consciously non-monogamous relationship or as monogamous in only one of those ways stated previously, as long as we are conscious about it, we can look at how we construct it.


    I think a lot of the hiccups come when we're unconscious about what we do, when we don't think about it, because we don't take others into consideration, and we don't take our own desires and needs into consideration, because we're just kind of stumbling through it.


    Maybe we're following the pattern of our parents.


    Maybe we're following the pattern of what we saw on television.


    Why are you in the type of relationship you're in?


    Are you in it because it makes you happy?


    Because it's how you and your partner or partners connect really well?


    Are you doing it because it's safe?


    Which as a note is a fine and wonderful reason to do it.


    Are you doing it because it feels good for your entire family?


    Are you doing it because of your religion?


    Are you choosing to do that relationship structure because you find it emotionally satisfying?


    Because it's simpler?


    Because you like the rush of it?


    Why are you doing it?


    Are you doing it because you get different needs met?


    I know some people who choose to have multiple emotional or sexual relationships to get different needs met, and I know other people who choose one sexual slash life partner relationship, and then to get those other needs met, they go out and fill it in with hobbies and other types of friends.


    Perhaps your partner doesn't have any interest in museums or art history.


    That doesn't mean they don't love you.


    It just means they have no interest in museums or art history.


    For some people, that's about finding a partner that you can curl up with in bed and talk about art history until the cows come home.


    And for other people, it means once a month going to your local museum and having an active discussion about Man Ray and their place within Surrealist movement.


    Cool.


    Everybody approaches these things differently.


    And consider how you do these things and how the people you want to do things with do these things.


    Neither good nor bad, but to see if all partners can consciously, conscientiously, consensually enter into these dynamics together.


    How do you dance in success?


    How do you have everyone win?


    Because these things also don't necessarily have to be about being fair and balanced.


    If I like chocolate chip cookies, and you love peanut butter cookies, and I'm on them, if our friend gives us three chocolate chip cookies and one peanut butter cookie, we do not win by each of us getting one and a half chocolate chip cookies and a half peanut butter cookie.


    We don't.


    If you don't like chocolate chip cookies, that's actually kind of rude.


    So what the win looks like is me getting three chocolate chip cookies and you getting one peanut butter cookie, even if from the outside it looks like I got more cookies than you.


    But you got the cookies you like, and I got the cookies that I like.


    This is especially important in open relationships or polyamorous or swinger relationships, where one of the people involved is an introvert who needs time alone or wants time alone.


    If partner B has other lovers that they want to spend three nights a week with and partner A only has one night a week they want to spend with other people, here is an opportunity on those two other nights for partner A to be able to stay home with the dogs and pet them.


    Here is an opportunity for person A to be able to go out to a movie by themselves and have a thriving self-relationship where everybody gets fueled.


    Fairness does not always help.


    Looking at how everyone can win is key.


    Even in monogamous relationships, how does everyone win?


    If I need time curling up with you, but you really need time watching the evening news, why don't I curl up with you while you watch the evening news?


    Nothing wrong with it.


    If what we need is undivided attention, this is a chance for us to look at what these things mean to us and what each of our needs are.


    Can you get that need for watching television met while I go and do an extra half hour of work?


    Could we do it because, et cetera, et cetera?


    We each will find our own way.


    And it's doing it through communication, with the awareness being of what I talked about earlier, is that communication is a problem because we think it's happening.


    What you mean by sex and what I mean by sex is different.


    What you mean by love and what I mean by love is different.


    What you mean by magic and what I mean by magic is different.


    But whether it's between friends or siblings, whether it's between people in the same community, whether it's between beloved partners who are going to spend the rest of their lives together or the next five years together, we get to build a language between us.


    What does magic mean to you?


    What does magic mean to me?


    And what does magic mean to us?


    My hope is as you listen to this, you'll take an opportunity to go look at what do these things mean to you and in turn, what do they mean to the people who are near and dear to you.


    If you're looking for relationships in the future, what are you looking for?


    And the person you run into might not be the perfect match you're expecting, but they might be exactly what you need.


    Because when you find that conversation with each other, you'll find a space where your tongues can meet and that that magic can unfold, as long as you're aware of keeping your toaster healthy and happy.


    And with that, my name is Lee Harrington, and this has been The Passion And Soul Podcast.


    You can find my RSS feed as well as information as all of the other links that I mentioned and subscribing to this podcast if you go over to my website, passionandsoul.com.


    You can also go on iTunes if you're an iTunes subscriber and type in Lee Harrington, H-A-R-R, Harrington, and you'll be able to pull up all of our past episodes.


    I want to thank all of you for joining me, and until next time, stay cool, have fun, be authentically you, love yourself and your toaster, and have a beautiful day.


    [music outro]

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March Podcast 064- Bootblacking and Leather Spirit with Ruin
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March Podcast 062- Leather, Poly and Aboriginal Sexuality with Dylan Richards