259 - What NOT to do in Non-Monogamy with Dr. Liz Powell
Building Open Relationships
Dr. Liz Powell is an author, sex educator, and licensed psychologist who specializes in queer, kinky, and non-monogamous relationships. Dr. Liz’s book, Building Open Relationships, is a fantastic resource for those in the non-monogamous community, and for this week’s episode, they let us pick their brain about their book and views on polyamory.
Polyamory no-nos
We’re specifically going over the section in Dr. Liz’s book about some behaviors that are frowned upon within ethical non-monogamy:
Cowboying/Cowgirling/Cowpersoning: This stems from the idea that non-monogamous relationships are unstable by default, and the cowboy/cowgirl/cowperson dates non-monogamous people with the intent of lassoing them into a monogamous relationship in the long run.
Harem Collecting: Similar to one penis policies, harem collecting often presents itself as one person (generally a cisgender heterosexual man, though not always) who dates multiple people (usually cisgender women) who are expected to be monogamous and/or faithful.
Unicorn Hunting: A couple who searches specifically for a third partner, in most cases a bisexual woman, qualifies as unicorn hunters.
Slut-shaming: Fairly self explanatory, slut-shaming is judgmental behavior regarding how much sexual activity someone engages in.
One Twue Way: The harmful idea that one is an expert on non-monogamy and their way is the best way to engage in polyamory. Dr. Liz calls this an “intermediate problem.”
Dr. Liz expands on each of these points during the episode, so tune in and listen to their poignant perspective on what not to do when in non-monogamous relationships!
Transcript
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Jase: On this episode of the Multiamory podcast, we're discussing what not to do in a non-monogamous relationship and joining us for this is Dr. Liz Powell, the author of building open relationships also a sex educator and a licensed psychologist working in queer, kinky and non-monogamous relationships. Dr. Liz is going to be hosting a six week webinar with our friend Kevin Patterson in April called, Unfuck your Polyamory which we'll get into a little bit during this and then Liz can tell us more about that at the end. Welcome, Dr. Liz.
Liz Powell: Hi, I'm so happy to be here
Dedeker: Your book came out a little while ago. When was it, was it earlier last year?
Liz: Yes, it was July of last year.
Emily: Congrats.
Liz: Maybe even before, I can’t remember. It was right at the start of July--
Emily: Either 2018 or ’19. Cool.
Liz: I think it was ’18 now that I think about and it's wild to think that my book has been out for a year and a half. It’s still not all the way real.
Dedeker: Definitely I'm still at the point where like I can't even remember the full title of my book still and it's been in my life for five years.
Emily: What is the full title?
Dedeker: I don’t know I really embarrassed myself in an interview the other day when I tried to say the full title of my book and it just petered out halfway through the subtitle it was like, oh dear.
Emily: Polyamory for people.
Dedeker: Speaking of which to give you the full title, Dr. Liz’s book is called, Building Open Relationships, Your Hands on Guide to Swinging Polyamory and Beyond. How long has this book been in the making for you?
Liz: It was a very fast book honestly, I actually really started working on it in November of 2017 and had it out at the start of July in 2018. In part because I did a national novel writing month in November of that year so I knocked out like 50,000 words in one month which is great. I have ADHD so I only do things in fits and spurts. Regular sustained progress is not the way my brain works. Bulk of the book was written in November of 2017 and then the rest of it was written in a state of panic the month before I had to have it out to people who had pre-purchased through .
Dedeker: That’s very motivating to get you to finish a project.
Liz: It's a big part of why I did the Indiegogo campaign is I knew that if people were expecting something from me by a particular date, it would motivate me enough to actually finish it because otherwise, if I'm the only one holding me to a deadline, I'm never going to do it. There's just so many other things that I can be doing and I'm so bad at getting myself to do the things.
Emily: That's why we have three of us on this podcast.
Jase: Yes, force each other to do things.
Dedeker: Today, for this episode specifically, we're looking at a very particular section in Dr. Liz’s book simply titled, don't do these things. Dr. Liz, you lay out a number of behaviors. Let me just pose it to you what inspired this particular section for you?
Liz: Overall, my book was intended to be something that people can utilize in really practical ways. It's not a book that needs to be read cover to cover. It's not a book where if you don't read an earlier section you're going to be lost later on. I wanted it to be something very specifically where folks can pick and choose and grab the parts that are going to be most helpful for them.
With any project, there's always a number of things that don't quite fit other places and I found that a lot of those for this book fell into that category of, how can you not be a dick about this? How can you not be a jerk when you're in these relationships with other people? It started as a joking section title in my writing program and then was fabulous so I kept it..
Dedeker: Here we are. We're just going to go section by section and talk about each of these things and we would want to give a reminder to our listeners this is far from a comprehensive list of the ways that one can be a jerk in a relationship.
Jase: There are many more ways to be a jerk.
Liz: There's so many ways to be a jerk.
Dedeker: If there's a particular behavior that we've missed, you don't have to angry tweeted it at us unless-
Jase: You can.
Emily: By all means go for it.
Dedeker: We're going to start out the very first section that you put in there is titled, don't be a douchebag. Can you just really quickly sum up for us and our listeners what you mean by that?
Liz: I think that unfortunately, most of us don't learn how to be good citizens in terms of the ways that we interact with others. That's not learning good emotional intelligence skills, that's not learning what to do and what we want doesn't align with what someone wants to give us. It's not learning how to set our boundaries, it's not learning how to ask for what we actually want and need. It's a lot of the ways that we fall into problematic passive-aggressive, negative patterns with other people.
I think there's also a lot of ways that people end up acting out in relationships either because of their own stuff or because of their fears or other things that happen for them. It can be really tempting for folks who have that tendency to end up going into the multiple relationships because they may feel like then there are going to be less people actually paying attention. They can just spread their jerkiness thinly enough no one will notice the thin layer of jerkiness rather than in one relationship, one person holding all of the jerkiness.
Emily: It's like that you spread a very wide piece of toast that you spread your jerkiness across like some really crappy butter.
Liz: Right, the worst most terrible butter spread that has real butter flavor in but like with the pastry flavor in. That’s kind of what it is.
Emily: Flavoring, I love that.
Jase: This section, it reminded me of something that we end up talking about a fair amount on this show. Someone actually asked me about this recently they're like, why do you always mention this but basically we'll do an episode where we'll talk about some topic and maybe we'll give some techniques or some tools that people can use. At the end we feel this need to be, don't weaponize this.
Emily: I feel like this is Dedeker’s favorite thing. Don’t weaponize this shit.
Jase: It’s a thing of like, there isn't this full-proof if you do this thing you're never a jerk, kind of a thing or if you don't do this thing you're never a jerk. It's like you could take something really constructive like nonviolent communication and use it to be manipulative and abusive and a jerk. This section reminded me a bit of that. It's hard to pin it down for people but it's just that like, it almost makes it worse when you're, I'm doing the right thing and here I am being a jerk by doing it.
Liz: I think that a lot of where I see this happening of people taking these things that could otherwise be healthy and weaponizing them, it’s this people almost get into this rules lawyering of, I use I statements to tell you that I feel like you're an asshole. That there's this like, I followed the rules therefore what I did can't be wrong. I think that on a larger scale a lot of our communities are still reckoning with, how do we understand which behaviors are acceptable? How do we understand how to help people correct behaviors that are problematic?
The more that we try to be explicit about every single thing that someone can do, the more loopholes people find. I feel like most of this section just boils down to worry less about details and more about the spirit of a thing and are you actually acting from a place of kindness and compassion or are you looking for ways to be okay being a jerk?
Dedeker: You specifically zero in on and I know I've seen this come up in conversation a lot recently in communities because you zero in specifically on the behavior of taking responsibility for your own feelings. That's a great concept and it's something that we all should do but then you really zero in on then weaponizing it to then essentially telling other people to be responsible for their own feelings so that you don't have to be responsible for anything.
It's so tricky it's the same- I think on the show so many people have reached out to us talking about specifically we did an episode about owning your own shit and taking responsibility for your feelings. People were so blown away by it and loved it and really moved by it and then at the same time, we can also see how many ways it's so easy to abuse that and make it so they you can just absolve yourself of any responsibility for anybody's feelings around you.
Liz: Yes, so I saw a lot of this when I was first moving into non-monogamy communities in a more significant way. A lot of folks who in the early days were drawn to the label of relationship anarchy. That a lot of those folks, and everybody's nodding because we all know. A lot of those folks especially the early days were what I call relationship libertarians. Your stuff is your problem, don't bother me with it. You be over there, your feelings are your responsibility.
I think that American culture especially like strongly American capitalistic culture has this idea of individuality, and that there's such a thing as an independently made person or someone who is independent of reliance on others or who did something entirely on their own, and that's a myth. It's a fabrication. There are none of us who are not interconnected. The world that we live is intimately interconnected.
To imagine that anyone of us could do anything or say a thing to someone we care about, and have it not have an impact for which we are at all responsible, that is such a dismissive-- and it's such a problematic way to think about disposable other people are to you. That if anyone has a negative reaction to you, it must necessarily be about them. It can't possibly be about you.
I think too that there is an element to this of a lot of us don't know how to sit with having hurt someone. Most of us because we live in a country that has a carceral approach to justice and harm, think that bad people do bad things. If I'm admitting that I did something that hurt you, that makes me a bad person, and therefore I might get excluded forever. It's this very binaristic extremes approach to recognize again dealing with harm.
Where instead, if we could just acknowledge the harm that we enact on others at all different levels, which we all do all of the time, we would be able to address it in more effective, and upfront ways rather than it be a game of like, how do I defend myself and keep away from responsibility for as long as possible? If you're familiar with Hinduism, and the way that karma is actually meant to be a thing in Hinduism.
Karma is the fruition of action. It's the principle that everything that you do has a consequence of some sort. That might be good, that might be bad, it might be neutral or otherwise. There is no action without fruition, and that's what I think of here. What you're doing might not have been wrong, and your partner might still be hurt. Those two things are not in conflict with each other. If I care about someone and I want them in my life, from my position, it's worthwhile to invest some caring in letting them see that I still care about them even when what we want is at odds.
Emily: Something that Marissa Alexa McCool said to us a couple of weeks ago when we had her on the show was that if you feel defensive, if you feel yourself getting defensive. The first thing you should do is stop, and listen, and think as oppose to just automatically going and saying something, which is kind of what I'm hearing you say as well. Yes, that's good advice. I thought from her.
Liz: You can always take a breath. You can always take a pause or a timeout. So many of these conversations we feel a pressure to resolve it immediately, and that's not real. If you're noticing that you're feeling really defensive, and you need some space to process what's happening before you can come back to it, take that space. That is so much better than plowing through a conversation that's not going well.
I'm a therapist and a coach. A lot of couples come to me, and they have that firm belief that you should never go to bed angry, so you have to stay up and solve it, and that is the hugest cause of ridiculous fights that never end well. If you can just agree to take a pause, let your bodies calm down, let your nervous system reset, you're going to have a much better time of getting through that conversation.
Dedeker: I've had a lot of sleepless nights because of that belief of not going to bed angry.
Emily: Staying up until like four in the morning and just continuing to .
Liz: For me, it was collapsing those years. I would get so tired and exhausted. I would just cry.
Emily: You talk about the state of the union addresses with your partners which is kind of fun just because we talk about radar on this show, which is again also a sort of a regularly scheduled meeting. I was wondering what your state of the union, your idea of a state of the union looks like. Is it with multiple partners at once? Is it one-on-one? What does that look like to you in this context?
Liz: For me, it really depends on what my relationships look like at that time. Most of how I do relationships these days is independent relationships. They might be dating each other, but I don't do a lot of interconnected triads or quads or anything like that. My state of the unions, usually it's at a dyadic level, so it's me and the person I'm dating. I try do some kind of check in every month.
Even if it's just a fairly casual like, "Hey, any stuff that you haven't brought up that might be helpful for us to talk about? Any stuff I haven't brought up." On a quarterly basis, I find it helpful to set up a system quarterly or every six months where you are explicitly encourage to bring up at least three things that you're having an issue with. In the army we would call this system a three up, three down, so what are three things we did really well? What are three things we need to work on?
Part of why I move toward that system is I had a relationship where we had monthly check-ins, and still would neither bring out the things that were actually causing problems for us because one person be like, "Oh, it's great." "Yes, it's great for me too. Things are fantastic. Cool, let's move on."
Emily: Instead of actually finding something being like, "No, we need to have those three things."
Liz: Yes, and I think that that also helps you identify problems earlier rather than waiting until they're huge potential relationship ending problems. If you know that every few months you have to bring up some things that are bugging you, it's going to help you attune to what those things might be, so that you're not-- I know I have a habit of like convincing myself that I'm not upset by things that are upsetting me, because I shouldn't be, because I should be perfect Polly because I'm a leader in the community and I'm doctor Liz, and I should be fine with everything, and it should be okay.
Dedeker: Wait. You mean you're not fine with everything? I am. Everything's perfect. you're talking about. So, clearly--
Emily: I say I'm fine like every other word, it's awful.
Liz: It upsets me deeply on a regular basis that I have wants and needs like a regular person, but here were are, right? For me, knowing that I have to come up with things to talk about makes it easier. Especially, for folks who were socialized in families or given especially socialization as women in this culture, bringing up problems is a thing that is strongly discouraged. Making a space where it is explicit and expected makes it way simpler for everybody.
Jase: I'm just curious for your system of the three up, three down. Is that each person has a three up, three down or like together we come up with three up, three down?
Liz: Yes.
Jase: We each do?
Liz: No. You have to come up with it separately. What I found is that when folks try to collaborate on what they think the problem is, it is very rarely actually the problem. There's this thing those of us who work with couples see all the time where the couple comes in and says, this is our problem, and it isn't actually the problem. The Iranian yogurt is not the problem 90% of the time. You just have to have that separate space because what I'm identifying as a problem might be something that you think is going really well. If we're trying to collaboratively come up with these things, it's unlikely that we're going to actually be real and honest about it.
Jase: I love this. I think this is a good foundation for all of these, right? With all of these, it's just like don't be a jerk is a good
Dedeker: don't be a douchebag.
Jase: Accept the fact that it's possible to hurt people, and it doesn't mean you're a bad person. That accepting that is actually what makes us a good person.
Liz: Not that it's possible. You are guaranteed to hurt people. The more deeply you are in relationship with someone, the more you are guaranteed to hurt them at some point, because there is no way for two humans to like rub their lives up against each other without there being some kind of problems. We're all just too different from each other. We all have our own stuff, and it's going to happen. You're going to hurt each other.
Jase: All right, so the next one from this section of your book is about cowboying/cowgirling/cowpersoning. This is something we've talked about on this show, but it's been awhile, so could you give us a quick definition of what cowpersoning is?
Liz: Sure, so a cowperson is someone who is monogamous, but they want to find someone to date. They think probably the hot sexy people are doing the non-monogamy, so they're just going to go into the non-monogamy community, and date one of them, and steal them away back to monogamy light. They're going to rope themselves a cow.
Jase: Yes, the cowboy analogy comes right from this like, "The non-monogamous people are like these wild horses out here." But you're going to go lasso.
Liz: Yes, I’m gonna break me a filly.
Emily: Like that song by the Rolling Stones.
Liz: Yes.
Jase: I love the idea of like being a wild horse as a polyamorous person.
Dedeker: Yes, this is kind of kinky if we lean into it.
Liz: Yes. I'm thinking of the Warsan Shire poem for women who are difficult to love. Where the first line is like you are a horse running alone, I like absolutely love the image of being a wild horse but I do not fucking want to be broken.
Jase: Right.
Liz: Thank you very much.
Jase: Something that with this one, I feel like when you describe it like that on the surface, it's like, "That's shitty." I think where this one gets really complicated is in the subtleties of it. It's one thing to be a very intentional cowboy, which is I know I'm monogamous, I know I want to go in and break me a polyamorous Philly and make them be monogamous. In my experience though, most people don't go into it quite so clearly like that. It's more like I'm interested in this person or maybe I've met some people who are non monogamous, maybe I'll give that a try but never quite committing all the way to like, "No, I'm really going to do this." Still within the back of your mind, this hope of like, "Well, but if it's real--"
Liz: Don't want to be monogamous.
Jase: Then it becomes I think actually much more harmful in a way because then it's so tied up in if you're not being monogamous with me then that's because you don't really love me or that's because something's wrong with you or all the things that we've heard before.
Liz: Absolutely. I do think that that is more commonly how it happens that it's with folks who they're fine with dating multiple people but of course, if it was serious, they would want monogamy. If it was polyamory, sure but are we going to be polyamorous and married or have kids. That seems silly. If you want those things then clearly you're going to want to be monogamous with me. I think there's probably also some folks for whom an element of this is that they really do want to be polyamory people and they aren't. I think that some folks are naturally really well suited to non-monogamy.
Some folks are really well suited naturally to monogamy and a whole bunch of folks are somewhere in the middle and could kind of maybe go either way depending on circumstances but the reality is we live in a monogamous culture. We live in a world that is a mononormative and monocentric and moving against that river is hard and you have to be committed to do it because otherwise, it's just much easier to go with the flow. I think that the same underlying belief set is similar to underlying strict hierarchy is it similar to what's underlying people who want to have this very exclusive romantic connection.
You can do other things with your body, but that's not meaningful. What's meaningful is what we have and we're willing to protect that at all costs which comes from the scarcity that we're all taught. We're taught that you get one love. You get one person who is your one, who is the one forever and you need to protect them at all costs and everyone else is trying to steal them. I think that that is really hard to unprogram. Even if you've been acting in non-monogamous ways for a long time, it's a lot of societal training that goes into that and I think that it's hard to know sometimes when it's still there and still acting in you.
Dedeker: Definitely. I want to approach this topic a little bit on the other side of things because there's many people that I know who read about cowpersoning or experience it, have a bad experience with it and then they feel compelled to swing the other way and be like, "I'm only going to seek partners who already identify as non-monogamous or polyamorous or who are already partnered or whatever." Sometimes that works out really well for people and sometimes I see it lead to a lot of frustration with a smaller dating pool or dating pool where there's just so much crossover because everyone knows each other or things like that.
All the time, especially when I have clients, if they've just been burned by some kind of cowpersoning situation, so many times they ask like, "Should I just refuse to date anyone who doesn't already identify as polyamorous?" I'm wondering your take on that. What advice do you want to give to people who are maybe considering maybe it's okay to date outside of the non-monogamous community or maybe I should avoid that at all costs. What's your take on that?
Liz: That is such a personal risk and effort equation. Right? For me, because it is literally my job to teach people how to do non-monogamy well, I don't tend to date people who are new to non-monogamy because it starts to feel like work really quickly.
Emily: Yes. That makes sense.
Liz: I don't want to work with the people I'm fucking. First of all, it's not particularly ethical. Secondly, maybe I'd rather have the money, I don't know. For me, it's hard to date people who are new to non-monogamy because while dating someone who is working really hard at it, it makes it easier for them in some ways, it also means my expectation set is much higher, because it is literally my job to hold people's emotions and do emotional labor, the kinds of things that I am willing to walk partners through are more limited in some ways than other people might be because it can start to feel like I'm on the job.
I think some folks who have been non-monogamous for a long time are really great at dating new to non-monogamy people. I think that if you are someone who knows you want to be non-monogamous and you're going to date people who are uncertain about non-monogamy or newer to it, it's important for you to be really good at your boundaries and to know where your boundaries are, how you're going to set them and how you're going to enforce them. I think it's also important to do a lot of very upfront communication and if you start to feel like something is off to just call it out.
I think a lot of folks when they're getting mixed signals from someone where the person is saying like, "No, of course, I want you to date other people. I just have had emotional meltdowns before your last five dates because my life has been really hard lately." They want to hear their intent to change. They want to appreciate that a person could change, they want to hold space for someone becoming who they want them to be but they aren't listening to the actual behaviors that are happening.
I think you have to consider what are the risks of doing this? Where are my boundaries? How do I know when it's time to pull out of this? How do I know when it's worth continuing to invest effort? That's going to be a different answer for every person and even for each person at different points in their life, depending upon how well resourced they are.
Dedeker: I feel like to add to that list it seems very important to also have a self-awareness of like how you personally respond to NRE because I know I can sit and think back of especially situations that I've been in where I feel like someone was trying to cowperson me or whatever and thinking about like, "I know because I was in this hot state of all these chemical cocktails flying around in my brain. I was way worse at having boundaries or way worse at sticking up for my values and things like that." I feel like that's definitely a factor of just having that experience and that awareness.
Liz: Definitely. When you're in NRE you are by definition high. Your brain is flooded with all sorts of chemicals that are not there during regular waking state consciousness so you want to be very careful in how you do decisions. For me, I have a therapist and I see her every week and if I am starting to be in NRE with someone, I talk with her about it basically every week that I see her just to get an external check on what's happening because I know as someone who has ADHD and is therefore somewhat impulsive and has a lot of excitement and energy when things are new, that it's helpful for me to have external checks.
I also have friends who I can talk to who will give me checks and point out if I'm doing stupid stuff. I know that for me, when I'm in NRE, I want to get married and have babies and move in together. As soon as the six-month mark hits, I probably don't want any of those things so I just don't talk about them. I let myself experience that beautiful fantasy life and then let it move on because I'm not going to be happy with that.
I think most of us are relatively inexperienced in setting good boundaries because very few people are raised by parents who encourage them to set good boundaries. Most of how we learned to interact with people is what we learned from our families. Practicing for yourself, with your friends, with your coworkers, with the people around you, setting good boundaries, paying attention to in your body what feels like a yes, what feels like a no. How do you know when someone is already over your boundary? That kind of work pays off even in NRE because I know when I look back that even during NRE, I saw the things that were not working for me, I just decided not to listen.
Jase: Yes. Definitely.
Dedeker: I'm into that.
Emily: All right, so let's move on to the next one. Harem collecting. Can you explain what this is? We had some questions about those ones so, please.
Liz: I think most of us who have been in non-monogamy for a while have seen that there are usually in every community, a couple of generally straight, cisgender men who have a variety of very attractive, usually much younger women partners who are not allowed to date anyone else. This person gets to date multiple people. A lot of times it's also in kink context that he is the Sir and they are all his slaves and they must do his bidding, right. Where there's this imbalance in the relationship where one person gets to be non-monogamous and do whatever they want with whoever they want, and the other people are expected to be faithful.
Again, the most common way I see this is with that very particular cis-hetero gender imbalanced thing that is clearly reflective of patriarchy and the way that patriarchy teaches us who gets to have sexual agency, and whose sexual desires and needs matter, but I’ve seen a variety of different ways as well where there are, in some communities, again especially in kink context, fem doms who have multiple male slaves who are not allowed to do anything with anyone else, and who send them lots of money, and where the ethical-- like how ethical that situation actually is for those involved is uncertain.
In general, if what you’re trying to do is collect as many pretty people as possible in your life, that is not necessarily a problem, but it is more likely to become a problem because all of us have necessarily limited time and energy, and if what you’re trying to do is collect people, it is questionable how much of their humanity you can engage with. I think that objectification can be really hot when it’s mutually negotiated and agreed upon, but otherwise, is not a great idea.
I see a lot of folks, especially folks newer to non-monogamy who are like, “Oh, my God. All these hot people, I want all of them. I want to date 12 people and they’re all the hottest people in the community,” and we’ve been there, that way lies madness. You just can’t.
Emily: Yes, that totally makes sense. I feel like I see this more in one-penis-policy-type situations.
Liz: Yes, totally.
Emily: I mean, maybe one-vagina-policy but not as often. But would you still kind of classify that as harem-collecting in a way, and why do you think that, especially newly non-monogamous people tend to go this route, especially the one-penis-policy route? Is it just insecurity and--
Liz: Well, I mean I think one-penis-policy can be harem-collecting but might not. It depends on how okay they are with the not-penis-have or having actual relationships other than the penis-haver, right? Harem-collecting, as I’m talking about it, is like a very clear one person is non-monogamous, other people are. Perhaps in name, non-monogamous, but not actually given the freedom and autonomy to be non-monogamous. One-penis-policies are like really strictly about patriarchy, right?
Emily: Yes.
Liz: There’s a story that patriarchy teaches us that men are sexual subjects, and women are sexual objects, and non-binary folks like me don’t exist. People who are having sex with a penis-- because again, only cisgender people exist, that sex is more real because they are subjects, they are actual actors, they are making decisions, they are the people creating a thing.
Whereas people who are cisgender women are receivers, they are objects, they are recipients, they are passive in this form. Sex between two women doesn’t count because like, yes, it’s fun times that they were doing, but that’s not like really like, “How can they have sex? There’s no penis. The penis is what makes the sex,” which is related to the way that all the way we talk about sex tends to be very penetration-focused.
When people say, “I had sex with someone,” 90% of the time they’re meaning a penis went inside a vagina even though sex can include so many other kinds of things, but penile penetration is how we define sex and so when we have things like one-penis policies, when we have things like harem-collecting, it’s a lot about preventing the people with vaginas from having sex with other people because penises are dirty like they’ll have someone come in them when they come home and that’s the bad kind of dirty for some reason or it will spread disease or whatever.]
I think this also relates to the way that a lot of our culture teaches men that their primary value in sexuality is their penis, right, that it’s their penis that makes the sex good, it’s their penis that makes the sex bad, it’s their penis that defines who they are as a sexual being which is so harmful, so harmful to people with penises.
Emily: Yes, and completely incorrect.
Liz: Completely incorrect, right, like, “Hand-fucking is the jam”.
Dedeker: But also if you think about it--
Liz: “Why don’t more people handfuck more?”
Dedeker: -like in most mainstream pornography which is what most cisgender heterosexual men are consuming for pornography-- the man in the pornographic scene usually is just a penis. He’s usually cut off at the shoulders.
Liz: Yes.
Emily: Yes. You don’t see his head or anything.
Liz: You don’t see the head. You see a little of the leg. They just--
Dedeker: Yes, and so it’s like you are-- yes. It’s so reinforced like that is your job in this situation.
Jase: Yes. I worry we’re getting too far off on this tangent, but this stuff is so interesting because I’ve also found in men that I’ve worked with that this kind of over-reliance on your penis, like that’s the only thing that makes you good as a sexual partner or maybe not the only thing, but it’s the most important thing, I have found quite often leads men then to make less responsible decisions about their sexual health and even be coercive-- end up being coercive toward their female partners about not using condoms, for example, because it goes from this, “Well, I know that I perform better without it and that’s the only thing that makes me valuable as a sexual partner, so that’s worth doing.”
It’s kind of this weird like you end up doing more harm than good because, as a man, you’ve been so internalized with this idea that like that’s the only way that you’re a viable partner sexually, so yes.
Liz: There’s so many things that kind of lead to issues with erections. If you go to a sex party, most people with penises at their first dozen parties have a lot of trouble with erections, sometimes even longer or folks with various different health conditions, it can affect erections. A lot of people, if there’s something going on with their brain or if they’re feeling uncomfortable, erections don’t happen for them. People who've had prostate issues-- there’s so many things that can change whether a physical erection can happen, and reliance on the penis as the sex thing guarantees trouble.
What we find actually with erectile dysfunction, is one of the main things that lead to problems with erections, is fear you’re going to have a problem with your erection because it becomes this self-reinforcing cycle like, “Uh, shit. Am I going to be able to get erection? Oh, God. It’s not working. Oh, God. Come on, please. Oh, Jesus,” right, where it’s just everything gets in the way of that being able to happen.
Jase: Yes, absolutely. Okay. We have more that we want to get to, but before we do that, we’re going to take a quick break to talk about some ways you can support this show. If you like what you’re hearing and if you like what’s going on here, please help us keep this going and to keep this show growing by taking a moment to listen to our ads and check out our sponsors.
All right. Let’s continue on here with this list. The next one that we have here is Unicorn Hunting. This is something that we’ve-- it comes up a lot on the show. I almost feel like it doesn’t need explanation, but we’re going to give a quick one anyway. Dr. Liz, you want to give us a quick explanation of that means?
Liz: Sure. Unicorn Hunting is when an established couple that was previously monogamous wants to find a third to complete their relationship. Almost always it is a hetero-couple who is looking for a hot-by babe who will fulfill all of their dreams, love them both equally and want to have sex with both of them equally, wants to make them first in their entire life and date no one else, but understand that the other couple’s relationship always comes first.
Jase: And disappear if family comes to visit.
Liz: Of course. You’re just a roommate or a nanny, right? You also have to be available for child care usually. Usually, that’s also one of the conditions.
Jase: Boy, oh, boy. Okay, so yes.
Emily: Wow, yes. A lot to impact there.
Jase: This one’s so interesting because I feel like Unicorn Hunting, at least within established polyamorous communities, it’s like a bi-word. It’s like a joke. It’s this like, “Oh, yeah, Unicorn Hunting,” am I right? Like, “Yeah, that’s rough, that’s awful;” but then there also tends to be this argument that then comes up about what counts as Unicorn Hunting is any couple with a third-- is Unicorn Hunting a term for that in general, or is it only a pejorative term for people doing it badly? I feel like there ends up actually a lot of debate even if we all want to agree, “Oh, yeah, Unicorn Hunting’s bad.”
Dedeker: I also start to see a lot of debate of like, well, that over there is Unicorn Hunting. What I’m doing is not Unicorn Hunting, you know, yes, there's quite a bit of that.
Liz: The thing that I would say is, for me, it’s Unicorn Hunting if there is a power imbalance inherent in how the relationship is structured and intended to continue, right? If it is, a couple has come up with a spot in their relationship that a person must feel and that person just has to slot themselves in, it’s Unicorn Hunting, right? If it is, there are two people who are in a relationship who would like to both have relationships with the same person, and they’re open to building independent and interesting relationships between all three of them, that I would say is not necessarily Unicorn Hunting.
For me, it’s about power imbalance and objectification, right? Are you looking for a sex toy who happens to be breathing and can take care of your children or are you acknowledging that this independent person is going to have their own wants and needs, their own desires, their own way of doing things, and you have space for that in the way that you’re creating this new relationship?
Jase: I’m going to play the part of the Unicorn Hunting couple now.
Dedeker: Apologist.
Liz: Sure.
Jase: The apologist, yes, and I’m going to say like, “But we’re going to treat them really well,” like, “That’s not going to be a problem,” like, “We’re going to take care of them. They’re going to be taken care of,” so they don’t have to worry about it.
Emily: Taken care of in what way?
Liz: I don't think anyone goes into unicorn hunting saying to themselves, what we want to do is find someone to take advantage of and who are not going to treat right? That is not how it's internally framed. However, intent is not magic, just because you don't intend to create a power imbalance, just because you don't intend to harm someone in the way you do things does not mean that that won't be the impact that is happening.
I think that the reason unicorn hunting happens is it is the closest thing to monogamy, so it is the safest choice. If you are really, really worried about something messing up your existing relationship, it seems much safer to just do everything together and find someone who is going to refuse to rock your boat. But that safety is an illusion, it doesn't exist. There is no guarantee that anything you do that changes your relationship as significantly as moving from monogamy to any version of non-monogamy, you can't keep it the same, it's not going to work.
You are not just editing your relationship slightly, you are changing the entire foundation upon which your relationship is built and constructed. I think people who are unicorn hunters, they worry what will happen if they do that work for good reason, right? A lot of us worry what would happen if we had to sit down with our partner and really evaluate everything about how we do things, what our assumptions are, what we want from each other, and what we want life to look like going forward.
It's much easier to live in a place of, "We're fine. We're just going to plus another person in, they'll just slot right into this space we created. No more hard conversations necessary." It's important to remember that even if your intention is to be really good to someone, that's not the same as giving them the same amount of power and autonomy and agency in the relationship as you have. That has to be your goal.
Jase: Yes, something that, I remember, Dedeker came up with years ago for a litmus test that I really liked was to ask yourself the question if we started dating this third person, and they didn't want to be with me anymore, but wanted to stay with my partner, would I be able to be okay with that? If the answer is no, then you might not be ready to have this type of relationship.
Liz: Yes, because the likelihood that any one person is going to equally like two other humans for a long period of time is really low, like attraction is fickle, attraction is tough, people have their own interpersonal conflicts. Just because you and your spouse get along really well, doesn't mean that a person who gets along well with you is also going to get along well with your spouse. My best friend, I love her so much. We've been besties for almost a decade now. Her husband is her husband. I love him because he's her husband.
Liz: makes her very happy, and I'm happy to support like would he and I take a lot of time chilling by ourselves? Probably not. Would we be super close friends if they broke up? Probably not, right? But he's a part of that family, and so I'm there with him. If a condition of my friendship with my bestie was that I had to also be besties with her husband, we couldn't be besties. That's my test for a lot of these situations is the thing that you're asking, something would be reasonable to ask of a roommate or a best friend.
Jase: Yes, I love that kind of test for things.
Emily: Yes, for a lot of things in general.
Jase: Yes.
Liz: Yes.
Emily: All right, let's move on to a big bombshell one, which is slut-shaming. We'll discuss this one.
Liz: All right. I'm super slutty. I am so slutty. I have sex with a lot of people. Rima Halco, who's a friend of mine, he says this thing as a half-joke, but not a joke where, like imagine how many people you think is a lot of people for someone to have sex with, add a zero. That's probably how many people I've had sex with. For me, it's maybe not add a zero, but it's at least multiplied by five.
I'm also someone who identifies as megasexual. A megasexual is someone who has trouble forming romantic attachment or experiencing romantic desire for a person until there is a sexual connection. For me, the experience of that internally is that I feel like I don't know you unless we've had sex. There's so much that I know about a person from the way that we touch and move together, that if I don't know that about you, how do I know if I want to date you?
I think that there is this way in non-monogamy communities where maybe it's because of respectability politics, some folks want to say things like, "It's about love, not about sex." We're not like those dirty swingers, which bugs the shit out of me because it doesn't matter how many people you fuck, it matters how you treat the people you fuck.
Emily: Totally.
Liz: When we get into this whole calculus of who's better because of how many people they do or don't have sex with. None of that is helpful because the number of people, that is the right number of people for me to have sex with is necessarily different than the right number of people for anyone else to have sex with.
When we come to this space of, "Oh, you're fucking that person or you fucked that many people, I'm not going to come anywhere near you." What we're doing is setting up a system that is bound to do us all because to straight monogamy culture, we're all sluts. You're not going to shine your version of slutty enough that they're going to feel like they can fully include you. They'll use you to help take down people who are sluttier than you, but you're never going to actually be one of them.
Jase: Wow. That's a way to put that that I haven't heard before, but that makes a lot of sense. I feel like you started to touch on it there, but I feel like one way that I've seen this show up the most within non-monogamous communities is with sexual health and safety as the excuse or the reason.
Liz: I think there's still a lot of like judgment and shaming around the ways that different people make decisions about their sexual health and safety. Antoinette Izzo talked about a really fantastic model called risk-aware sex rather than safe or safer sex. For me, when I was growing up, it was the AIDS panic. It was all about like, "If you're a good person, you use condoms every time.
Only dangerous, dirty people don't use condoms. If you get an STI, it's because you're dirty and wrong and did bad things." There's all this judgment and shaming. I think that non-monogamy communities to some extent have unpacked some of that shaming, but I have friends who just really hate condoms for any number of reasons.
They either choose to only engage in sex stuff with people who they would be okay not using condoms with or they have sex without barriers with more people than other people might choose to. They get a lot of judgment and shame for that decision. Statistically speaking, if you are someone who is in a non-monogamous community, you are getting tested regularly, you have sex with people who are getting tested regularly, you have conversations about testing, you are far less likely to catch an STI than a random monogamous person out in the normal dating world.
When we talk about these risk decisions, it is almost always framed as there is a right decision which is more barriers, and there is a wrong decision which is less barriers no matter what the situation. I think it comes from a well-intentioned place of wanting to keep each other safe, of wanting to avoid having blooms of stuff through communities. But I think it is also an ill-informed place.
When we focus on whose decisions are right based on our standards, we're bound to end up in situations where we are shaming people because they're different than we are. We don't know what factors someone considered when they made a decision about how to engage sexually with someone. The risks that we're considering when we're hooking up with people or dating people are more complex than just barrier use and testing. There are social implications. There are implications about physical bodies that happen. There are emotional implications.
I think that we have to work as a community on unpacking our ideas about how we interact with people who make risk decisions differently than we do and move to a space of being open to understanding different methods of assessing and making risk decisions than just the ones that we personally believe in.
Dedeker: I think where I start to see that getting really messy in the community is I do feel that to a certain extent because we're still dealing with this undercurrent of shame about our sexual choices, whether that's about who we have sex with, the kind of sex we have, or what kind of risk we want to take during having sex.
I think because there's this undercurrent of shame, it becomes hard to have boundaries around your own choices, so that can lead to situations where if I'm someone where it's like, "Well, I only want to have sex with someone if we can use a condom," and I'm engaging with someone who only wants to have sex with me if they cannot use a condom, one of us at least has to be willing to say, like, "Well, then I guess we can't have sex."
I think where it starts to get-- Or we need to figure out something else, some other kind of sexual activity or some other way to engage that works for both of us. But where that falls apart is that I feel like what happens on the personal level is like one person feels the need to convince the other. We're not comfortable just being like, "Okay, then I guess that means we can't have sex because we can't come to an agreement about how we can do it safely with each other."
Then it turns into the, "Either I'm going to shame you for being dirty and irresponsible for not wanting to wear a condom or I'm going to shame you for being stuck up and paranoid and wanting to take my sexual pleasure away from me by making me wear a condom or whatever." That's where I think I start to see it crumble.
Liz: Yes and I think that what you touched on that I see happening there a lot is people don't want to not have sex.
Dedeker: I know, at the end of the day--
Emily: They want to figure out a way to do it.
Liz: They're like, "We're real close. How do you think it will happen?" Rather than coming to a place of like, "Hey, here's the buffet of options for what we could engage in. I love hand stuff, and I've got gloves. I love oral stuff. I've got dams, and I've got condoms. If you want to do penetrative stuff, I've got toys and I've got condoms and this stuff. What kind of stuff feels good for you?" Thinking about it as a buffet that we're selecting dishes from, rather than converging on a single-point negotiation.
When I hook up with folks, if it was someone new to me who I didn't know very well and we were especially in a play party situation, like, "Oh, I really don't like using condoms." We're like, "All right, cool. Do you want to use a toy instead? I love hand-sex, we could do hand-sex stuff. Do you want to do oral stuff? What feels good for you?" I try as much as possible to come from a space of, "Okay, what else is possible," rather than a space of, "How do I make this one specific act happen?" Because if they don't want to use condoms, that is up to them. That is their body, they get to make that choice. I don't want to make that choice with my body. What else is available?
Dedeker: I was going to say, but then again, it's like we still need to step into that realm of being able to say that without shame, for you to be able to say like, "Okay, great. Yes, I love hand stuff. I love toy stuff." I think so many people feel like, "Well, I'm risking being shamed by having to say like, "Okay, then I'm okay passing on penis and vagina sex if there's no barriers."
Liz: Yes and I think this is a thing that can be helpful to practice with friends, where you could sit down and role play stuff out, just to get used to actually saying it. Most of us are so rarely in a situation where we need to pull the plug on something like that that we're not used to it. I'm really used to giving my safer sex elevator speech and talking about what barriers I want and what kind of activities I like.
I'm really used to that part of it, I don't have as much real-life experience with we get to that conflict and don't know what to do about it. I think with those kinds of things that are emotionally loaded and can be very challenging, finding folks to play that out with is the best thing you can possibly do, because the more you say it, the easier it's going to be when you say it in the moment. When I was in the army, we would say, "Train like you fight, fight like you train." If you haven't trained this, it's going to be harder.
Jase: Yes, we were just talking about this a few episodes ago, on an episode about decision-making, and specifically talking about the importance of rehearsing things so that when you're in that hot state, like they do in the military, you've already done this so many times that you can fall back on that. Whereas, we tend to not do that in our normal lives where we think like, "Oh, yes, I'll have that safe sex talk once I'm there." Then when we're in that aroused state, we forget how to speak or think or do anything.
Liz: I've been tested, I was tested four months ago, five.
Emily: All the things.
Liz: It was months ago. I was tested.
Dedeker: We're going to move on to the next segment which is called the one twue way. Now, I'm going to preface this by saying that you explain the phenomenon of the one twue way as being what you call an intermediate problem. I really love the way that you clarify that. It totally makes 100% sense. Can you explain this phenomenon and the intermediate problem for our listeners?
Jase: Also, is this a reference that I'm missing, the one twue way?
Liz: It's similar to Princess Bride, like Twue Wuv.
Jase: Got it. Princess Bride, but I was like, "I don't remember that line from--" Okay, got it.
Liz: And in the kink community, they use one twue way a lot as well. One twue way is whenever anyone sits you down and says, "Well, if you're really X, you do it exactly this way." In polyamory, it might be, well, everyone who's actually polyamorous of course has a strict hierarchy with veto policy, because that's the only way to have good polyamorous relationships. Or it might be, well, if you're really an informed and enlightened person who believes in feminism, you have to be non-monogamous. You can't be monogamous because it reinforces patriarchy.
Anyone who basically is positioning themselves as the expert of your life, even though they are not in your life or an expert on it in whatsoever way and who are telling you that they know the only way to do a thing, and it has to be the way that they so happen to do it. I call this an intermediate problem. I used to do or I still do it to some extent a lot of partner dancing. I taught blues and swing dancing and what you see when you're teaching blues and swing dancing is people who are beginners know that they know nothing. They're super receptive to feedback. They are really open to hearing what they're doing. They are there to learn.
However, once people become intermediates, they know everything. They are going to correct you, the instructor, on the things that you're doing. They are such experts, they've been doing this forever. They're so good at it. They are just phenomenal at this thing, but once they become advanced, they realize that, "Oh, I actually don't know anything." They're back to this beginner mind space of being open to learning and understanding.
I think that there is this way that once you become a certain amount of experienced and knowledgeable about a thing, you begin to assume that you know everything about it because you know a lot and a lot more than most people. It can be tempting to move at that point into a space of expertise and trying to instruct others and tell others how to do things because you want to help them avoid the mistakes that you made and because you feel like you have all of this knowledge that you can give to people.
What we see though is that folks who've been in this community for a long time will talk about shit that we see that doesn't tend to work out well. Usually, we have so many caveats. If you listen back to this episode from the start, you'll notice everything we talked about has a series of caveats because we know that this thing that I am saying as a generality is limited necessarily, because it's limited by my frame of experience.
I'm a white person, the way that I understand a lot of things about how relationship dynamics unfold is necessarily limited by the cultural conditioning that I have, by being in the dominant culture, by not having to have moved through those kinds of code-switching related to things like race and ethnicity. We're all limited in our understanding and our perspectives and our frames of reference. Anyone who thinks that they know what's best for everybody has to be lying. They are not recognizing their own lack of knowledge and their own lack of understanding.
Emily: You alluded to this before, but how do you not fall into the trap of, because you are an expert in the community, and because you do do this for a living in a lot of ways, how do you fall into the trap of not asserting to your partners like, "Well, I do probably know the best way of doing this thing?"
Dedeker: douchebag
Emily: Exactly, but--
Liz: For me, what I try to focus on is talking about myself. I know for me, in relationships, what tends to work best as X, Y, and Z. I know that for me in relationships when these things happen, I tend to not feel great about it. Just taking ownership of it as my experience and my preferences. I know me better than anybody else. That's my job, is to know me best. I'm happy to share that knowledge and information with people that I date. If they are different than me, that is also totally cool, and we can talk about how those differences interact and intersect.
I can let them know if there's stuff that just doesn't work for me without saying to them that it is wrong or bad or they're a terrible person for doing it. It's important to me to take ownership of who I am and how I do things without putting that as the way that other people have to do it. If you want to be in a relationship with me, there are some things that are non-negotiable and that's okay. That's called healthy boundaries. I don't date people who are going to be upset that I have sex with a lot of people, because I'm going to have sex with a lot of people. I'm like, "Let's just not have that fight" instead.
Jase: You mentioned earlier about that, people have a hard time with not having sex, basically. It's like people have a hard time making the decision to not have sex. I feel like that same thing applies to everything you were just talking about. I feel like something that holds people back a lot is they hear about boundaries and they're like, "Oh, that sounds good in concept" or maybe they'll come up with some for themselves.
But then in practice, I'm ending up having to say no to relationships and people have it in their head that it's like, "If this really worked, if this was the right way, I wouldn't ever have to do that." Right? "If I found the right way, I'd never have to say no to sex, and I'd never have to say no to a relationship."
Liz: Yes. If you could just cut yourself into the perfect shape for every person you encounter, then, yes, absolutely. Look, I've done that. I had a really rough breakup in March of last year from someone who I spent a year and a half trying to cut myself into an acceptable shape to be in relationship with them.
This isn't even like a significantly past-Liz problem. It is hard to come to the space of, "I care very deeply about you, I really want this to continue and it's just not working" and be able to just sit in that space. I think part of what helps me more with that as I continue growing in this area is looking at relationships not as an on and off switch, but as what are the different elements of this relationship that we can keep and what are the ones we can't?
Like if someone is going to have an issue being a sexual partner of mine because I fuck a lot of people, can we have a really rad friendship instead? Maybe we both love food and we can go to restaurants together or cook for each other or whatever. If someone is going to have an issue with dating me because I don't tend to have a ton of availability, there are exceptions, but most people I date are going to see me once a week at most.
If that's going to be an issue for someone, then what if we don't call it dating, is there another kind of structure or label that changes these expectations, that makes it easier for us to find a way that we can engage with each other that isn't reliant on these particular things? It is this buffet concept? I like to think of relationships as buffets. One, because buffets are delicious. Two, because everyone knows that you don't pick up every item on a buffet, right?
There's going to be something on a buffet that you don't want. Each of us, when we come to a relationship, are essentially showing our partners the buffet of what we have available and letting them pick up a plate and take what they want. They're showing us their buffet, and we're picking up a plate and taking what we want. Then we can compare those two plates and see where does this work, where do we actually overlap, and can we be okay with that?
Jase: Yes.
Emily: Well, this has been amazing. We do have one more way in which to not do things poorly in polyamory and your polyamorous relationship. I'm like, "I don't want to double negative myself here." But yes, that will be on our bonus episode. Finally, can you tell us about Unfuck Your Polyamory that's coming up?
Liz: Yes. Kevin Patterson and I have decided that we wanted to do something to help folks who are figuring out non-monogamy for themselves. We're going to do a live six-week webinar called Unfuck Your Polyamory. Each week is going to have a slightly different focus in terms of what we're talking about, so you can buy them individually or as a whole package.
The idea was to just give people a really strong foundation for what non-monogamy could look like for them, helping them explore what kind of relationship structures, what are boundaries going to look like, how can we be aware of power dynamics in our relationships and handle those with care, how can we make sure that we're setting ourselves up when it comes to jealousy and compersion. Just really creating a solid toolset so that as you move through non-monogamy, you're not fucking things up all the time.
Kevin is amazing. If you haven't read any of his books, you need to. The For Hire series is so good, so good, such a good fiction, and Love's Not Color Blind is one of the best works I think in the field of non-monogamy. I was just super honored when he came to me with this idea and thought that this would be a good thing for us to do together.
Dedeker: Excellent.
Jase: That's great.
Dedeker: Tell us also where our listeners can find more of you and your work.
Liz: Yes. My website is drlizpowell.com, so D-R lizpowell.com. I'm on Twitter @sexpospsych. I have a YouTube channel, Sex-Positive Psych. All of my classes, including Unfuck Your Polyamory, are available at sexpositivepsych.teachable.com, and I also have a Patreon, which I'll send you all a link for.
Jase: Cool, yes. If you want to find those links, we will also have those in the show notes or at least some of those, but then you can find all the others in our show notes for this which you can find at multiamory.com/podcast. You can check for this episode 259 or you can just search for Dr. Liz on our website, and you'll find this episode there. Yes, we're going to join Dr. Liz in a moment here in our bonus episode to talk about things like punishing people for who they date with your partners, also some things about what's ethical and not ethical to disclose within your polyamorous communities, things like that.
We've got a lot more cool stuff that we just didn't have time for in this episode, but if you're one of our Patrons, you'll get access to that bonus episode and you can check that out when it comes out in a couple of days. We would love to hear from all of you, what did you think of this? What were the ones you want to angry tweet that we left out, that we should have talked about?
Dedeker: Bring us your anger.
Liz: We will take your anger.