Nicole: Welcome to Modern Anarchy, the podcast exploring sex, relationships, and liberation. I'm your host, Nicole. On today's episode, we are celebrating episode two hundred.
I am going to share with you the results from my dissertation, the first ever research study on relationship anarchy, and deep dive into all of my research with you today, dear listener. Hello and welcome back to Modern Anarchy. My name is Nicole. I am a sex and relationship psychotherapist with training in psychedelic integration therapy.
And I am also the founder of The Pleasure Practice, supporting individuals in crafting expansive sex lives and intimate relationships. Dear listener, episode 200. Wow, wow, wow. Yeah, that is really meaningful. I decided to make a podcast many years ago and committed to a once a week episode and here I am, 200 episodes later, committed to that dream and committed to the vision of creating the space for you, dear listener, and I am so, so, so honored that you are here, that you are passionate about sex and relationships and liberation and that we get to grow and learn and expand with each other each week and yeah, I really hope that you enjoy this episode, it is everything that I have built for the last four years of my academic career.
in clinical psychology, and I'm just so, so excited to celebrate episode 200 with you by sharing my dissertation. And dear listener, if you're interested in reading the dissertation, it is available on my website for free for you to download and nerd out on all almost 200 pages of relationship anarchy content.
And we're just getting started, dear listener. I can promise you that. There'll be, uh, much, much, much more to come. Whew. Alright. Dear listener, if you are ready to liberate your pleasure, you can explore my offerings and resources at modernanarchypodcast. com, linked in the show notes below. And I want to say the biggest thank you to all of my Patreon members.
We have a new Patreon member, Jeff. Hi, hello. Thank you for supporting the podcast. I am honored to have your support. Jeff, you and all the patrons are supporting the long term sustainability of the podcast, keeping this content free and accessible for all people. So thank you for supporting the show.
Thank you for making this happen. And yeah, dear listener, if you want to join the Patreon community, get exclusive access into my research and personal exploration, then you can head on over to patreon. com slash modern anarchy podcast, also linked in the show notes below. And with that, dear listener, please know that I am sending you all my love and let's tune into today's episode.
Oh, dear listener, before I start this recording with you, I just want to name that this research is so special to me. It is something that I have dedicated Four years of my life to building and I feel a lot of nerves as I go into sharing and creating this episode for you. I have done it professionally to defend my dissertation, and I want this to be a bit less, uh, academic, a bit more of a natural conversation, a bit more of my authentic voice than I have to do to get my doctorate.
Um, I did already pass my defense and my Dissertation is published, it is available for free on my website, or if you do a Google Scholar search, it comes up there for you. And so, yeah, I've already made it out of that part of it. Uh, I am not a doctor until This, uh, upcoming summer, I will graduate and finish up my clinical training.
So, I am not Dr. Nicole yet. That is coming, coming, coming. And, alright, so let's dive into my research. So, my research study is titled, Rewriting the Hierarchy. The Constellation of Community and Practice of Relationship Anarchy. Rewriting the Hierarchy vs. Removing the Hierarchy was definitely a title choice I went back and forth on for many months and ultimately landed with Rewriting the Hierarchy.
Wow, I feel like that's a Patreon post. I gotta get into that, more of the difference in a different platform. But just know that there was a lot of thought put into that title and why it is called Rewriting rather than Removing. I'll go into, first, for an introduction, a little overview of the dissertation.
So, This is a qualitative, phenomenological exploration of relationship anarchy. Now, I used to work at Northwestern University, and I did a lot of research there that was more quantitative. And after doing that for a couple years, I said, I never want to do quantitative. Data research again, actually. And so when I went into my doctorate for clinical psychology, I knew that I was always going to do a qualitative study.
That is, if quantitative is numbers and trying to put the human existence on a scale of one to five, qualitative is exploring more of the narrative and the lived experience of that person. And so I felt like the human experience, of course, we need. Quantitative data, but for what I was trying to capture here with relationship anarchy qualitative data was definitely the move I wanted you to feel and hear the lived experience of other relationship anarchist and so the central question of the dissertation is What is relationship anarchy?
And how is it practiced? I had to start there, at this base level, because when you go into the published literature, there is nothing on relationship anarchy. And so, when you are a researcher and you come in and there's nothing published, there was one study that I will talk about in the literature review in a second.
Um, But, yeah, when there is no content on the thing that you are hoping to explore, you start with the essence of the phenomena, right? So what is it and how is it practiced? Hence the focus of this dissertation. And in terms of the significance of the dissertation, There has been a continual increase in non traditional relationship structures, more and more we are seeing folks identify as practicing non monogamy, uh, polyamory, a wide variety of different relational structures than monogamy, and so there is a need for this type of research on relationship anarchy.
And also, relationship anarchy is a philosophy of relating that comes with a quite significant paradigm shift that is questioning the majority of conventional hierarchies in our world completely. Um, and so, with that being said, We need more content on this phenomena for future therapists, for future healers who are trying to understand how to work with multicultural humility, right?
And so if someone is trying to offer treatment, they're trying to do their best to be a part of healing in our society. There is additional work that you often have to do as a healer to try and educate yourself on different cultures and to do so with humility. And so I am hoping that this research study can help a future healer, therapist, coach, um, peer mentor who is working with relationship anarchists but might not be as familiar with the practice.
And so hopefully this can be a helpful resource for all folks who are working with relationship anarchists. And also, this research is really laying the groundwork for future treatment. And so, as you identify what is relationship anarchy and how is it practiced, then we can have future research that builds off of this foundation that I have built here.
And so I am so excited to see the future generation of researchers who go on to build off of this groundwork here and identify, you know, Treatments! Wow, what a day where we could have treatment models for relationship anarchists. Wow, so exciting. Okay, so let's get into the literature review now. So, Literature review.
Real hard when there's no published literature to your listener, right? So that's a little tricky, right? What do you do? Well, you look at everything that's published and you know, you also dive into concepts that are similar to relationship anarchy. And so some of the literature review revealed that, yeah, relationship anarchy is deeply connected to the philosophy of Anarchy.
And some of those values in anarchist thought are freedom from hierarchical structures, the concept of self governance, the autonomy, and also community care. And so that self governance is always balanced with community, right? It is not just autonomy and libertarianism, this is more of a community based value system when it comes to anarchy.
And relationship anarchy also has roots to 20th century, uh, feminist and queer movements, right, which were challenging traditional gender norms around relationships. You could also say that the relationship anarchy movement is tied back to the movement with non monogamy, the movement of asexuality, and Dr.
Kim TallBear talks about some of the ways that relationship anarchy is also tied back to indigenous wisdom. And so, the term relationship anarchy was first published in 2006 by Andy Nordgren. Dear listener, if you have not read the short instructional manifesto for relationship anarchy, I highly, highly recommend that you go do that.
That is something that I have come back to again and again and again in my practice of relationship anarchy, and I learn so much from it. I'll read you some of the key points that are highlighted in the manifesto. So first, we have the quote, Love is abundant and every relationship is unique. Love and respect instead of entitlement.
Find your core set of relationship values. Heterosexism is rampant out there, but don't let fear lead you. Build for the lovely unexpected. Fake it till you make it. Trust is better. Change through communication. And customize your commitments. Dear listener, if you have not read this manifesto, go. It is short, it is beautiful, it is great.
I say no more words on it. On to the next thing. So, the literature review talked about the ways in which relationship anarchists, right, this is all, again, since there's not published literature, I am deep diving into Reddit threads, I am deep diving into zines, I am all over the internet finding lots of fun content.
And something that was very clear is that there is not this hierarchy between sexual, romantic, and platonic connections. Why? Why? Why, why, why do we say that sexual and romantic connections are more important than our platonic connections? Where does this come from? How did we get here? All of that is a part of relationship anarchy.
And so, Hence, we are trying to see more beauty and value in our relationships by honoring the importance of platonic connections. There is also this really big point on mutual consent and individual desires rather than societal expectations. So if you are familiar with the relationship. later, this is exactly where that idea starts to come in, right?
We grow up in our societies, particularly white western colonized societies, where you say, okay, I am human, I am going to date another human, often a cis heterosexual relationship and monogamous. And then from there we are going to date, um, yeah, exclusively, we're gonna get married, we're gonna have kids, we're gonna die alone together.
And so you see the escalator start to happen, right? So it's this thing that you hop on and just unconsciously start to move up towards, right? So relationship anarchists are really big on deconstructing that now. There's nothing wrong with riding the relationship escalator, if you so choose. It's more about a question of deconstructing the obligation that we all feel to ride that escalator.
And I will add here as a psychotherapist, that stuff is so deep in our unconscious, okay? Okay? You know what your parents want you to do, your grandparents, everyone in your society? That impacts us on an unconscious level. All right. So just This is why relationship anarchy is a practice. We will be practicing this for the rest of our lives.
Unpacking the ways that systems are impacting the ways we show up for love in our community. Okay. So we want to create relationships. on mutual consent and so that means that we're going to be designing our relationships. We are going to have conversations about what is on the table and what is off the table and we get to design that.
We have this whole white blank canvas of relating which is often the scary part of it. Right? That can often be really challenging. Where is my paint by numbers? Where am I going? What am I doing with my life? You're right, dear listener. You are the creator of your life, okay? That is overwhelming. All of the existential possibilities.
Endless, endless, endless. Woof! Um, yeah, and so this is where concepts like the Relationship Anarchy Smorgasbord come into play, right? If you are familiar with that, I also have an episode titled, uh, The Relationship Anarchy Smorgasbord with Max Hill earlier on, and so you can check that out as well if you want to hear me talk about it with one of the designers for the smorgasbord.
I will cover right now just a couple of some of the areas as I look at this Morse board in front of me, right? You could talk about power exchange and kink. Is that something we have in our relationship? Is sexual connection something we have in our relationship? What about financial, uh, religious, uh, labels, uh, Co caregivers, professional work, exclusivity, right?
And so there is a lot you can design with a smorgasbord. Oof, so fun. Um, yeah, so if you haven't heard my episode with Max Hill, highly recommend that. I also have the smorgasbord linked in that episode as well if you want to check it out. And so in terms of the published literature, there is one paper by a author of Delas Herreras Gomez who published a political science review on relationship anarchy and the ways that it is deconstructing power structures.
But that is the only published academic source of knowledge. In my dissertation, I go into a couple of different books that cover the concept of relationship anarchy, short little paragraphs, um, definitions, um, again, my dissertation is available online on my website if you would like to see all of that.
I would also highly recommend Relationship Anarchy, the book, that is a recent release that has been translated into English, and I recorded with the author that is coming for you, dear listener, patiently, I have so many good episodes for you that I'm sitting on, and so, one a week, baby, one a week, um, yeah.
And the academic literature did show that, you know, there has been a significant rise in non traditional relationships. And there are other papers that talk about the ways that relationship anarchy is, you know, getting beyond this concept of monogamy and non monogamy to exist outside of that binary, right?
Because if you look at your relational life as a question of monogamy or non monogamy, you are asking yourself, do you have sex with more than one person or not? And that's how you're defining your worldview and your relationship. So if we're deconstructing sex as the most primary thing in our life, we're not gonna, like, look through our lenses the sex or not question, right?
Hence where relationship anarchists start to be beyond the binary. There are monogamous folks who practice relationship anarchy, there are non monogamous folks who practice relationship anarchy, and so it is beyond the binary of that type of looking at relationships. So in terms of the theoretical framework that I used for my dissertation, I did a hermeneutical phenomenological research study.
So phenomenology is all about distilling the essence of a phenomenon based on participants lived experiences. And so, that is a type of research where you interview individuals and really get a narrative of their lived experience with the phenomenon. So that's what I did. I interviewed a bunch of relationship anarchists and asked them about their experience.
And part of the hermeneutical aspect of this research is understanding that this type of research is inherently subjective, especially given relationship anarchy's nature, right? It's about defining your own relationships, creating your own relationships. So this type of phenomenon is so subjective that I think qualitative phenomenological research that understands the hermeneutics of the individual lived experience was really the best bet for capturing this kind of data.
And with that, of course, I am a biased researcher. And so I am a relationship anarchist. I have a lens. I really think that that was critical to be able to do this research because as I was going through the interviews with participants, there were so many times where they used like, lingo, my like, QPR, right?
Queer platonic relationship, right? The speed at which this, um, almost like insider communication and language would happen. I think it'd be really hard for someone who doesn't practice relationship anarchy to have the full depth of conversations that I could have with participants. And so that is something to acknowledge, right?
That my complete detachment from the research is not possible. And so instead, um, I took a lot of note about the fact that, um, I am biased and then had my Two professors really look over my process with me to make sure that that was not impacting the research in a way where my voice was louder than the participants.
So I was continually reflecting on making sure that it was the voice of the participants that I had found in the data. So, again, the main question of the research was, what is relationship anarchy and how is it practiced? I also had five additional sub questions that I asked every participant, and those are, What language do you use to describe your individual relationships and your relational community as a whole?
What was your journey to identifying as a relationship anarchist? How do you allocate resources, time, energy, financial, emotional, amongst your relationships? What difficulties have you experienced navigating relationship anarchy? What joys have you experienced? And what do you wish other people knew about relationship anarchy?
So, some of those might sound familiar from the series that I've had on the show. I adapted a couple of them, uh, after getting the results from the study and wanting to kind of go in a little bit of a different direction with the questions I have on the show, but some of them are the same. Now, in terms of the participants, when you are doing a phenomenal logical study, again, you're getting into the lived experience of a human.
So you're collecting these long interviews and these scripts. And so you often limit your sample size. You could do like three to six. three to ten, that's a lot of data because you're supposed to be really getting into how they describe the phenomenon and then comparing that amongst all the different people that you collect.
So it's a much smaller sample size than that. And so I found six individuals who identified as practicing relationship anarchy. My inclusion criteria was that participants had to be 18 and older. Actively identify as practicing relationship anarchy and be English speaking. And then I recruited members through Facebook and Reddit online relationship anarchy forums.
So for my data collection, I had semi structured interviews with each one of my participants for about 60 to 90 minutes where I asked a bunch of open ended questions and explored the participants experiences of relationship anarchy. Of course, I obtained consent orally and covered confidentiality and the voluntary nature of participation in this research as well.
To analyze the data for hermeneutical phenomenological studies, you do a thematic analysis. So all the interviews were audio recorded and then transcribed verbatim. First, I read through the transcripts multiple times. I noted some initial impressions, potential themes, and then you begin to code significant statements, put that into manageable segments that are kind of hitting a broad theme, right?
And you start to group that together, and then you identify each theme and kind of show how, yeah, the essence of the phenomena is displayed across the themes that are coming out of the participants lived experience. In terms of the rigor and the methodology of the study, I did acknowledge my position as a researcher, right?
I emphasized the importance of reflexivity in my research process, so reflecting on the ways that my lens and my position impacts my research, and I also had consultation with individuals. outside of the relationship anarchy community to identify any potential biases that could have been in my research.
And then I also documented my research decisions and personal reflections to maintain transparency and accountability as I went through the process of collecting this data. In terms of ethical considerations, the IRB from my institution approved my study and all confidentiality was protected by obtaining informed consent, giving unique participant IDs, secure storage of all my data, and then removing all identifiable information.
And the APA has us retain this data for five years in accordance with ethical research guidelines. In terms of the demographics of the study, I have this chart that I'm looking at now. Again, it's in my dissertation, if you want to download it for free on my website. And some things that stick out to me about the demographics is that there is this correlation between relationship anarchy and privilege.
Most of the folks had bachelor's or master's degrees, and so there seems to be a Connection between higher levels of privilege in terms of education and also identifying as a relationship anarchist. And as a researcher, I think that makes sense. We think about, in our world, right? You have to first survive, find the basics.
This is Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, right? You have to first be able to secure housing and food and etc, etc. And the higher you get up on to securing those basic needs for your life, the more time that you have to reflect on. complex ideas like relationship anarchy and deconstructing systems of oppression.
And other privileges include that all participants were white, right? And so I think that this connection between racial privilege and educational privilege is definitely a part of relationship anarchy. And everyone was also gender expansive, trans masculine, gender queer, trans non binary, non binary, gender queer woman, non binary.
And everyone was also very expansive in terms of sexuality. We have pansexual, pansexual, pansexual, pansexual, queer, queer, right? There's also a big connection between the sexually expansive community and relationship anarchy. Many participants also noted, uh, potential diagnoses like ADHD and autism, which is a great exploration for future research, exploring the neurodivergent status of relationship anarchy.
That could be definitely connected. And, you know, the potential connection between disability in general, as folks have to navigate systems of the world that are Certainly not. Oh, yeah, not enough done for the communities of these people. When you already have to work with a system that is not working for you, you're going to naturally start to question more systems, right?
And hence this deconstructing of monogamy and this relationship and escalator. And so the ways that if you are already considered to be non normative from the traditional Ways of society you are naturally then going to question more because you've already existed outside the box of the norm, right? So you could think about that in terms of lgbtq disability and neurodivergence any other pieces of Minority cultures that someone might exist in those folks often tend to also question the rest of the systems too And so hence relationship anarchist leanings here Now we are going to go into the key findings.
So the first theme that I identified is this philosophy of deconstructing systems of power. Within that theme, I broke it down into three smaller themes. So first, we'll talk about examining larger systems of power. Yes, so some of those larger systems, what are those? Monogamy, Sexual entitlement, marriage, patriarchy, capitalism, white supremacy, right?
Not all cultures in the world practice monogamy. I will say that again. Not all cultures in the world practice monogamy. There are cultures that do not have that word in their language, okay? Monogamy, when you look at the culture of it, is a part of the white Western colonizer narrative, okay? And that is something, if you want to learn more, again, my dissertation has so many resources.
Please go read How Love Conquered Marriage. It's a great book. Go read. Lots of content there. Uh, Relationship Anarchists also talked about sexual entitlement. That was a really big thing that came out of the Dissertation, right, the sense that in the traditional paradigms of monogamy, there is this sense that you are responsible for your partner's sexual fulfillment because of the fact that it is just between a dyad, which, you know, when we think about different systems, that's a lot of Pressure on two individuals to fulfill something as expansive as sexual fulfillment.
Wow, you know, we, we, we, we understand with emotionality and other sorts of types of our life that that can be really tricky and, uh, to only find all of your needs met by one person. Right, right, right. And so, yeah. Relationship Anarchists continually mentioned that relationship anarchy, again, while you can practice monogamy, I should also name all my participants were not monogamous.
So that will impact what the data you're hearing right now. So yeah, a lot of the participants really saw relationship anarchy as a way to get out of monogamy, which often left them feeling restricted because of the sense of sexual entitlement that once they got out of it, we're like, Wow, uh, what a paradigm shift to realize that I'm not responsible for fulfilling my partner's sexual needs and the relief that that really gave them.
That, that was huge. And, uh, participants also talked about the ways that our culture is, you know, so marriage focused and wanting to get out of the legal system of that, as well as the ways that patriarchy really controlled monogamy for the ability to, um, yeah. control women, because again, historically, men were not presumed to have the same levels of fidelity that women were, and women would be killed, um, if they were found to have not been virgins, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, blood on the sheets, right, right, stonings, all that stuff.
Um, while men did not have the same expectations in a lot of societies, and so participants talked about the ways that That relationship structure can also be deeply patriarchal, and they talked about the ways that capitalism is really inherent in this, right? Think about marriage. Think about the, like, multibillion dollar, all of the money that is spent into weddings and the system and the selling of diamonds and the whole thing, right?
So that was another big piece, that relationship anarchy is about examining all of these larger systems of power, because the system is working. It is not broken. The system is working, and it is working for the people at the top. Yes. Oof. Another big piece about this is the ways that relationship anarchists wanted to deconstruct the hyper individualistic culture, right?
Again, capitalism, nuclear family, even Maslow's hierarchy of needs goes to a peak of individual You know, individual knowledge versus collective knowledge. Uh, yeah, and so relationship anarchists talked about wanting to examine that system of hyper individuality and versus collective care and moving the focus towards collective care and community.
The research also highlighted the ways that these systems are often on an unconscious level. Yes, dear listener. Yes, you only know what you know, you know what I mean? And we just keep going deeper and deeper into a spiral of knowledge and learning as we go. And there's a lot of unconscious stuff. All of the isms are impacting the way that you are trying to love the people in your community.
Okay. Because we all want social and structural approval. We are all relational beings, and so we need to be accepted on a deep evolutionary survival level by the people around us. And so when the people around you judge you for expansiveness, that is scary. Okay? And that impacts us all on an unconscious level.
All of the rom coms, every single show, the way people snicker about sexuality, the way people laugh about expansive relating and non monogamy, that is all impacting us on an unconscious level. Okay? Humbling. Humbling, humbling, humbling. Now, the values of anarchy. What are some of the values I found in the research?
Well, relationship anarchists talk about being free from hierarchy. And again, I could write Books on the word hierarchy, and just what it means, what it is, what it isn't, wow, wow, wow, but for the time being here, hierarchy, when we think about hierarchy, we think about things like veto powers, we think about primaries, saying that you are the primary person in this person's life, you know, Things can have priority.
Naturally, we're gonna have a stratification. Here I go with the book. We are naturally gonna have a stratification of people that are close to us. Dear listener, there are what, 8 billion people on this planet? I am not close to every single one of those. There is naturally a stratification of how close I am to people in my life.
That does not mean that I have a primary partner, right? And so I think there is space to get beyond the language of a primary and secondary. Because again, relationship anarchy, I see your whole community of relationships. Where are you putting your mom on this, okay? Because anarchy, again, it's not about having sex with people.
So the research participants talk about doing this with their family and their children. Right, so where does your mom fall on the list? Is she 47th? You know what I mean? We don't do primary, secondary, tertiary. I don't even know. You know what I mean? I think you're getting it. Okay. Um, free from the hierarchy that sexual and romantic Partners are more important than the platonic.
Again, this is something people talk about practicing with their kids. How do I acknowledge the power structures that are inherent in parenting? Right? Oof. And becoming free from the societal forces, all of which I kind of mentioned in the last point. Some other values of relationship anarchy are self governance, And the autonomy to design your relationships, right?
And so we're wanting to remove the power structures from control, right? The ways that they are controlling us and how we have to show up. So that we can design the worlds and the communities that we want to live in. And particularly here, design the individual and group relationships. And of course, that self governance is always paired with community.
Is a delicate dance between the individual and the ways that you are Always in a collective, right? And so, hi Fat Cat. Hi. Fat Cat would like you to know that she is a part of your community. Um, right. And so, yes, the individual freedom is always in balance with community care. Another value of relationship anarchy is mutual aid, right?
This sharing of resources. Now, if you haven't read Mutual Aid by Dean Spade, highly podcast if you want to go check that out as well. And there's this value of hope for the future, right? Another world is possible. Anarchists have always dreamed of a alternative world, and even though we can't see that world right now, we have to be visionaries, we have to feel into that, and yeah, begin that process of creating that future.
And so, another world is possible. The next sub theme of Theme 1 is political movement. Participants talked about the way that relationship anarchy is a political force, right? The personal is the political, that is, feminism 101. And Your relationships that you construct in your life are absolutely political.
And so thinking about relationship anarchy as a political force, you're actively resisting and deconstructing the oppressive systems. It is something that people talked about seeing it as a micro and macro, right? The ways that the small acts that you do in your community create ripples that change the larger macro system.
And that really is this deeper reflection of the ways that Our interpersonal relationships and societal structures are all interconnected, right? We have seen how when people come together, we can make large change. These small ways that you show up in your community do add up to make large cultural movements.
That's how society has changed throughout all the thousands of years, you know, to get to where we're at right now. And so remembering that. Your personal relationships are absolutely a political act. When you slow down to be embodied, to bring the kindest, most open hearted version of yourself into that connection, you are making a difference in the world, I can promise you.
The second major theme that I identified is examining hierarchy. Getting into the four different sub themes. Here we have first, getting off the escalator. And so, relationship anarchists are constantly asking the question, Do I want to do this for societal approval, or is this something I actually want to do for myself?
Rather than assuming that this is the only way to create an important relationship, how can I see the beauty of all of my different types of connections and really deconstruct the ways that this type of escalator thinking is so deeply internalized? So there's a lot of reflection that relationship anarchists do about the societal expectations.
And, you know, again, it's not wrong to ride the escalator. There are relationship, uh, there are folks who ride the relationship escalator and are happy about that. And it's more so about. this question of consciousness around it. You know, do you reflect on the fact that there are other ways to create meaningful relationships other than living with someone other than having kids with them other than becoming exclusive, right?
And this is something that is fluid over time. So relationship anarchists spoke to the ways that you might go up the escalator and then reconfigure, right? Some people talk about de escalating. And again, if If we're talking about getting off the escalator, we wouldn't use the word de escalate, right?
Because we're not on the escalator. So why don't we use a word like reconfigure, right? Maybe you used to be seeing someone three times a week that you were deeply in love with and now you have reconfigured to seeing each other once a month and being lovely and enjoying time and community together, right?
That is not a breakup, that is not a de escalation, we are reconfiguring the ways our relationships work for us, right? Relationship Anarchists also talked about deconstructing the prioritization of sexual relationships. So many traditional narratives say that romantic and sexual relationships are more important than are platonic, right?
And so relationship anarchists spoke to broadening their understanding of love, right? You see much more intimacy when you start to realize that your platonic relationships are just as meaningful, if not sometimes more meaningful, uh, but really deconstructing that assumption. And Sex and Romance is going to be at the top.
Participants talked about deconstructing the relational expectations that are often seen in relationships. So, they spoke about the expectation of monogamy, the specific roles that people play in relationships, like gender roles, or yeah, other sort of family roles, right? One participant talked about the ways that there is this cultural assumption that your bloodline is the most important, but they said, if my family is not showing up for me, why would I prioritize them over my chosen community, right?
And so participants talked about deconstructing even that sense of family from chosen to biological or created family, right? And Part of deconstructing these relational expectations means that participants spoke about real clear communication in their relationships. This is high level stuff. When you take away the scripts, you're taking away the expectations.
You have to communicate really well, okay? Because again, so many of us are working on unconscious scripts, and so high levels of communication are needed to create your unique relationship agreements. And there's also ongoing consent, right? So we know that consent, once you say yes to something, that doesn't mean that you will say yes again in the future.
And so just because you first started out seeing that person three times a week again, right? Consent is ongoing means that. You will check in with one another about if that dynamic is still working for you. And if it stops working for one of you, you can renegotiate to find a mutual desire again. That is hard.
Reorienting is hard. Particularly, both sides. When you're the person wanting the change, tough. Tough to communicate yourself and walk through all those people pleasing tendencies. Wow. And then to be with the other person and watch them be absorbing that information, the pain, the hurt that you can see on them.
Wow. And then on the other side, when you're receiving that, it is terrifying and painful and scary and hard and wow. Ego. Wow. Um, so someone has been on both sides of that dynamic. Wow. Um, humbling. So, ongoing consent and high levels of clear communication as you support each other in these changes, right?
And so you continually attend to the relationship as it is. Again, Is this working now for us? Not what we've done for 17 years in our marriage. Right now, is this working for us? And continually ongoing with that conversation. Another aspect of the theme examining hierarchy is the sub theme that relationship anarchy is outside of the binary of non monogamy and monogamy.
The relationship anarchists would say that we All have multiple relationships. Again, relationship anarchy isn't about how many people you're having sex with. It's actually about putting sex into equal running with platonic and romantic relationships, right? And so it is not about whether you have sex with multiple people or not.
It is about the awareness that you, dear listener, and everyone we know, already has multiple relationships. Most people just don't have sex with more than one. It's Western, white, colonizer space, right? Again, because there are cultures that don't do that. And so relationship anarchy is existing outside of that binary to see the wide spectrum of relationships that we all have.
So the third theme in my dissertation is rewriting narratives of meaning making, the praxis. So in this part I'm really looking at what does this look like when it's done, and I identified a couple of key things that stood out to me. So first, freedom. So relationship anarchists know that love is abundant.
Time and energy is not, this is true dear listener, but love is abundant. I want you to just feel that in your heart for just a split moment. To feel how much love is possible in this world when we really tap into that, okay?
Yes, and so trusting in the freedom to express that love abundantly. Relationship anarchists also talk about designing their relationships free from the structures and creating their own significance, right? So if you are with a beloved human of yours and you are trying to think about labels to describe your relationship, maybe you both want to use the word partner.
So you ask that person, what does partner mean to you? Maybe you both take some time to write it out and create your own significance to that label. Or maybe you want to use the word friend. This is my friend, right? Check in with one another about what these words mean to each one of you. And Participants also spoke about the ways that tapping into this freedom resulted in this feeling of just a joy, a deep, deep, deep saturation of joy, and I think that that is participants talking about the ways that once you start practicing this, you notice how much is available to you.
There's so much freedom at your fingertips, the freedom to create the life of your wildest dreams with the people that you love around you. There's no more scripts, there's no more lanes. You have that full, blank, white canvas to create the life of your choosing. And so participants spoke again and again about just the joy, that freedom that they felt in their chest from practicing relationship anarchy.
The second sub theme I found was language. So participants talked about the ways that language can be really limiting, and instead creating their own language. I was just kind of getting into this, right, the difference between friend and a partner. Often the word partner has a lot of, uh, Wow, a lot of unconscious assumptions about what that means.
I, again, humbled when I tried to reflect on, instead of calling this person my partner, if I call them my friend, would I have the same expectations? Would I respond with the same levels of entitlement to a certain type of care? And if, if not, then how can I actually communicate what I want rather than assuming that they show up at that level?
That's a great question. Would I respond the same way if this was a friend? And the relationship anarchists also spoke about deconstructing this, oh, they're just a friend. They're just a friend. That word, just, right? Again, because we are not putting sex and romance at the top of the types of connections we can have.
And so, the relationship anarchist would feel into the beauty of friendship and not necessarily use that language of. Just a friend. And participants spoke about their web of relationships, their constellation of relationships, their community, their polycule, their network, right? So there's a couple of different words like that, like constellation and web community that stood out to define the connections that folks have.
There is also this rewriting of commitments, right? Rather than exclusivity or these specific roles that people play, there was this opportunity to create mutually desired commitments, rather than obligations. Maybe a wedding ring doesn't have that level of commitment. Maybe it does, but let's choose that together.
What does this mean, right? There's often this assumption that relationship anarchists won't make commitments and it's far from that. It's more about deciding what commitments you want to co create and decide upon mutually rather than obligation and so there's a lot of significant communication skills that relationship anarchists have to be able to communicate those commitments along with the ongoing dynamics of consent, right?
So fluidity, right? And so again, high levels of communication skills as relationship anarchists express and create commitments with others. The next sub theme that I found is love. Yeah, participants really talked about this broad understanding of love. Again, participants mentioned practicing relationship anarchy with their biological family, with their kids, right?
So when you start to see all of your relationships as being important, you're gonna feel this broad saturation of love, the Cultural narrative is often the one, the one, the one, the one, the one. Please pour all of your time, energy, and commitment into the one. And in doing that, people neglect, everyone knows that friend who falls in love and disappears.
Um, they neglect the other relationships around them. And so relationship anarchy is about seeing that broad understanding of love way beyond just one person. And A lot of the participants talked about finding much deeper security in their community, right? Finding security in expansive relating is all about having multiple sources of love that you feel secure in and, you know, when you are in a dry desert of affection and you have one source of water, you're going to defend that source of water and not want to share it with anybody.
It's time and energy is limited, right? But if you had a deep flowing of multiple wells of water, then it's so much easier to share. And so participants talked about finding a lot of security in their community and in their multiple relationships. Participants also talked about a huge paradigm shift.
This reminds me of my episode with Jessica Fern, the polysecure paradigm shift. We hit on a lot of this. Uh, wow. Once you open Pandora's box, you can no longer go back. So, participants talked about a permanent shift in their perspective. Once you come into seeing this level of looking at relationships, there is no going back to writing the Relationship escalator unconsciously, right?
You're aware of that concept, you're aware of this, you're aware of deeper cultural influences and systemic forces that are here, and that is a permanent shift in your perspective. And participants also spoke about gaining deeper self reflection skills, more self awareness, uh, better communication skills, and a better understanding of consent.
Again, relationship anarchy is a practice, so you will continually develop and deepen your practice as you go further and further and further into this level of reflection and community building. And finally, the last sub theme here is self in relation. Now, this comes from all of my relational cultural theory studies as a feminist psychotherapist.
The writers would talk about the self in relation, and how the self is formed by all the different relationships that we have, right? You are always in relationship with others, and they are literally forming who you are. Hence, self in relation, not just self. And so, participants in my research really spoke to the way that Each of the different connections and relationships that they have highlighted different aspects of themselves.
They brought alive different parts of themselves. And so they saw their sense of self as being in creation with multiple relationships in their life. And participants also really spoke to the benefits of community when you are a minority culture. There's a lot of benefit in finding connection with other people that can see you so you don't have to go through so much double think and navigation of the world and so there was this deep building of community that relationship anarchists spoke to and how important it is to connect with others in their relationships.
And specifically, finding that balance again between autonomy and community care as they move through their life. It's really about understanding that the self is always in relationship. And so, you know, you can't, no one is an island, you cannot do it by yourself. And so there's this deep sense of identity in community.
So the fourth theme of my research is the significant relational skills. Now, I have talked about this already throughout this episode, but we're gonna hit on it more specifically. Communication. Relationship anarchists have enhanced communication skills. You have to. You have to. Right? You have to. If you are designing your own relationships, if you are practicing ongoing consent, if you are checking in, if you are doing that with multiple people, if you are articulating your feelings and expectations as you go along, wow.
That's a lot of practice in deep relational skills. And so there's a lot that is built through the practice of relationship anarchy. Participants also spoke about how each relationship can teach you something new, right? That is a ongoing learning process, right, of deep humility and really opening yourself up to see the lessons that are in each relationship as you learn in community.
There was also this deepened sense of self awareness. Participants spoke of becoming aware of internalized system, as well as an intersectional understanding of the ways that different identities are intersecting under these systems and experiencing different forms of oppression. Participants spoke about recognizing their needs, identifying desires, and then being able to balance their own freedom and self governance with community care.
What a humbling journey, okay? This is a practice and a journey rather than a destination and so Participants spoke about this being a really deep self reflective practice of even spiritual development at times and self development and so heightened levels of self awareness. And the last skill, oof, the one that hits me every single day of my life, embracing change because Change is the only inevitable.
No matter what relationship structure you're practicing, change is the only inevitable. I'm changing, you're changing, you're changed by this comment, this moment, right here, it's all done, it's all different. Uh, yeah. Every day I get closer, right? To embracing that one. But, um, yes. Change is the only inevitable, and so Embracing that means a deep, ongoing discussion of consent and finding security in that fluidity, right?
Uh, the lifestyle of assuming that you can just go off of a script without reflecting on it is deeply terrifying. There is so much security to be found in a deep acknowledgement of Hi fellow human. What we both know is that we don't know what's going to happen in our relationship. Instead, what we can promise each other is that we will continually check in and make sure we both are meeting each other out of mutuality.
Wow, that's really secure to me. Someone who's really recognizing that the future is unknowable and we are gonna keep co creating it together and checking in. Hot. I love this. I love this. And they also talked about finding a deep embrace of security through their community. This is what I was talking about with the water metaphor, right?
If you have multiple sources of water in a dry desert, you're gonna feel secure. You're not gonna be worried, right? Because one of those sources could dry up and go away. But you have multiple, and so participants talked about really finding that security in having this broad, expansive community. And finally, the last theme that we're gonna look at is Theme 5, Navigating a Mononormative World.
So the first thing that participants talked about is judgments. There are a lot of judgments on Relationship Anarchist. Some of those are that they're irresponsible, morally questionable, there's a lack of commitment, trauma, Selfish never works, right? And so participants really spoke about how difficult it is to live in a mononormative world that doesn't hold space or see the beauties of the vision that they have for another world, another vision of relating.
And so there's a lot of microaggressions and judgments that relationship anarchists receive. The second sub theme is provider reactions. So I also had a handful of participants talk about the ways that therapists have been particularly problematic, I would say, uh, by, you know, one participant coming in and saying, oh, I told my therapist that I practice relationship anarchy and they came back and told me that I had a avoidant attachment and that my relationship anarchy practice was based on trauma.
Oof, oof, kay, kay, kay. We see someone with a power structure, like credentials, in therapy to proclaim that someone's way of relating is based on trauma. That's not based on research. That's not based on research at all, okay? And so, That is not okay. There are so many providers that lack a understanding of relationship anarchy.
And so hopefully research like this, other sorts of future studies, will really help to educate therapists so that they can practice multicultural humility and more awareness. And so participants talked about like this really difficult process of, do I tell my therapist how I practice my relationships or not?
That is not what you should be having to do with a provider. Um, that level of doublethink, of like, is it safe to disclose this? How do I protect myself? And so, yeah, it was really heartbreaking to hear all the painful provider reactions. And so, dear listener, if you are a relationship anarchist who has had that sort of experience, I'm really, really, really sorry.
I work with so many relationship anarchists who come to me who have told me stories like this, and it always breaks my heart. And Yes, we are deconstructing that one conversation at a time. And participants also talked about this sense of ideological isolation. Yeah, so minority culture, who can you talk to?
And what do you do when it's a small community, you know, five relationship anarchists in your community, and you've dated all of them? Now, who do you go to? You know, like, what is dating under this? Great question. Great question, dear listener. Um, but, yeah, it gets interesting. It definitely gets interesting because when you have a smaller culture, there's only so many people that understand you that you can go to for support and processing and holding.
And so, there's a lot of pain that relationship anarchists spoke to of having to, yeah, just be misunderstood, go through different moments of not knowing whether it was safe. But on the plus side, this also resulted in really deep bonds within relationship anarchy communities. Again, because it is such a smaller community, when you find someone who really understands your culture, you really deeply connect and build a deep bond there because of the, um, the seen ness that is often not found in other sorts of spaces.
And so, going into the discussion of the findings, it is so clear that relationship anarchy is a political choice of resistance against societal norms. And this is something that all alternative relationship structures are really pushing, right? Another world is possible. There is another way of of relating, and so we can deconstruct the relationship escalator, we can deconstruct this assumption that romantic and sexual relationships should be at the top, and we're gonna build communities, right?
We also see from this research that there is resilience in community, right? Often minority communities will come together and find resilience in their relationships, in the shared community. And so, So, non normative identities often form very strong senses of self and community as they challenge these traditional social norms.
And this research also really highlighted the importance for moral language. Gosh, dear listener, if you tune into my episodes on relationship anarchy, that is something that comes up again and again and again, right? It's just I'm like scratching at the surface for language to describe this, and it's again because we don't live in a society that yet has this level of perspective to relating, and so there are a lot of participants who spoke to trying to like grasp for language to describe what is happening, and so, you know, research shows that Language deeply shapes our relational identities and practices.
This is why I always say expansive relating and not non monogamy because Who wants to define their identity as a non normative? I'm a non monogamous. I'm the non normative. Could you imagine as a queer person if my identity was not straight? Hi, I'm Nicole. I'm a queer. Sorry. I'm a not straight woman. I'm a not straight non man.
Let's go for all the norms, right? Okay, yeah. So we need more language, hence why I say expansive relating, um, because it ends up shaping our relational identity and the ways that we move. Compersion. Beautiful, right? Shapes are way that we live our life when we have that word. And it also reflects how deeply political this all is, right?
Remember, the average reading level of America is sixth grade. And so, when I talked about the beginning about the demographics, right, and saying how everyone had a bachelor's or higher education, When the reading level in America is 6th grade, so much of the anarchist content is not accessible to the public, right?
And so, the forces of oppression are here, right? Because, anarchy is hard to read, those concepts. Hence, my demographics data, we're getting people that have higher levels of education. So and the ways that we're all grasping is because we don't spend the majority of our life learning about relationships.
We learn about how to make money under these systems, right? And so. Language is so, so, so deeply political, and the fact that we are grasping for it, the ways that language and access to ideas, I think you're getting it here, um, is not accessible, hence why I have demographics of folks with higher education levels.
And also, yeah, big takeaway from the research, there is a huge mono narrative bias, particularly in healthcare workers, right? Wow. These systems are deeply ingrained in old ways of thinking, and so the field of psychology as someone who has gone through this has a lot to learn, a lot to learn. A lot to unlearn, um, because monogamy is not the only way to form a healthy relationship, okay?
So, there are a lot of providers who have not been educated, uh, on that. And so, dear listener, I just hope you find someone who can see you. I hope you understand that it is deeply important. Please ask your therapist, your healers, your coaches, your providers, if they are aware of relationship anarchy and what their level of education is on that topic.
And so, providers really need to develop a not knowing stance, and to really educate themselves to avoid perpetuating harmful biases. That is very important. And another big takeaway is ideological isolation. The experiences, that relationship, and I guess for speaking to my research, correlated with similar findings in non monogamy and other alternative relationship practices, and just how hard it is to navigate social stigma, and just a lack of acceptance, and then also through that, really finding a lot of strength and support in their community because of that ideological isolation.
And so, in summary, hello, we are at the end, wow, and so the summary goes through the main questions and then the sub five questions to really hit on those. And so, what is relationship anarchy? I would say relationship anarchy is the deconstruction of internalized power structures to design your own relationships, right?
It is the application of. Anarchist values to relationships. How is it practiced? Great question. There is an infinite variety, right? If it's all about deconstructing the scripts to write your own, that means there's gonna be an infinite amount of answers to how to practice relationship anarchy. Some of the key themes out of that, of course, are this examination of hierarchy.
The creation of unique relationship agreements, community care, and understanding relationship anarchy as absolutely political. What was the journey of identifying as a relationship anarchist? Participants spoke about a couple of different pathways, whether it be learning about anarchist philosophy and coming in from that way.
Some folks talked about practicing first hierarchical poly, and then getting to a non hierarchical space. Others talked about joining anarchist communities, and really all of the participants spoke to this joy of feeling really restricted in their past relationships, and feeling this heart opening, chest opening freedom with relationship anarchy.
How do participants distribute their resources? Again, this is an infinite diversity blank canvas. There are so many different ways that people can distribute their resources, but one of the big things is that it's often through this lens first of deconstructing societal scripts and expectations. So, That your romantic partner might not be someone that you live with, or have kids with, and that's beautiful, right?
And so, these resources are really designed on a as case by case basis with each one of your relationships. Some of the challenges that relationship anarchists faced include Societal stigma, isolation, learning to identify needs and desires, tough one, wow, developing communication skills, yes, and experiencing biases from providers.
Some of the joys that they spoke to were this freedom to love, the ability to design unique relationships, and feeling this saturation of connection. And what did participants wish people knew about relationship anarchy? Just what it is, you know? That was like the most common, that was the most common answer.
Please just know what it is. Just, just start there. That'd be great. That'd be great. Uh, also participants talked about that it is possible. It is absolutely possible. It is. Yeah, tapping into that anarchist vision that another world is possible. And that relationship anarchy is not a sign of trauma or avoidance, right?
Of course, we're all humans, right? You might see that with any population of different relational structures, but the practice of relationship anarchy is not inherently a sign of trauma or avoidance. or an avoidant attachment. And so there you have it, dear listener. Those are the results from the first ever research study on relationship anarchy, and this is laying the foundations for future research.
In terms of the clinical practice implications from this research, wow, it definitely demonstrates that there needs to be more resources on relationship anarchy and educational tools. And for providers to have multicultural humility when working with clients from an identity like relationship anarchy that they're not familiar with.
It also indicates that there is support needed for identity formation for folks who begin to practice relationship anarchy. Remember the paradigm shift? That is a lot to go through, and so there is support, and I hope that future research builds off of that. What is Support for identity formation for relationship anarchists like how do clinicians help them?
there will be future development of unique treatment models and also ways to Get beyond the paradigms of couples therapy right now Which is really when you go into couples therapy content as a psychotherapist. It's Often through this monogamous lens, we have even less content on a polyamorous lens.
And so curious about the development of future relationship anarchist thought in terms of couples and relational therapy. There were also a bunch of limitations in the research that should be noted, right? All of my participants were LGBTQIA folks, which means we need heterosexual and cisgendered folks in this research to, uh, balance it out.
Isn't that funny? For once we need more heterosexuals in our research here, you know? So, that's a limitation, right? We only had queer LGBTQIA folks in our study, and so we could benefit from tapping into some heterosexual and cisgender participants. There was also a lack of racial diversity, right? This is tied into my conversation on demographics and privilege.
There was a lack of diversity in education level with most folks being bachelors or masters or higher, right? Again, privilege. Um, there was also a lack of diversity in rural settings. I think that we could also reflect on that, right? There's more conservative thinking within rural settings. And, and so we can think about the ways that that is also impacting the communities in those areas and access to this type of thinking.
There was also a lack of diversity with lower economic status, again, mentioning the privilege. And specifically, in my six participants, I didn't have any monogamous relationship anarchists. I know I have recorded with monogamous relationship anarchists. I'm thinking about Kat in one of my episodes, if you want to scroll back to that.
And so there are definitely people who practice monogamy and relationship anarchy, but I did not get any of those for my random sampling study here. And so that could also benefit future research. And then, of course, I recruited people through online social media platforms, and so there are definitely tons of relationship anarchists that don't access social media platforms like that, and so it would be great to be able to tap into some in person recruitment methods for anarchists who don't use social media, especially given the anarchist values that there's So many people who probably are very anti social media that could be tapped into.
And so hopefully future research will have more diverse sample and recruitment methods. And of course, finally, The other limitations are that this research is inherently subjective, you know, it was me doing it, it was me coding it, it was me writing it, and so it is all subjective through my two eyes, my voice, my heart, my soul, uh, for better or worse, and so future research could definitely benefit from doing like a mixed method approach, combining some qualitative and quantitative data, or employing multiple researchers in the data analysis.
That would definitely help to remove some of the subjective lens that I had. And with that, I want to say a couple of acknowledgements, uh, first to my dissertation chair, Dr. Neselhouske, she has been my feminist mentor, uh, I've taken so many beautiful courses with her, and I truly wouldn't be the clinician, the researcher that I am without her Ah, mentorship and guidance, and I'm so, so, so grateful to have studied under her and to, yeah, be sharing this with you, dear listener, and I also want to say a big shout out to my dissertation reader as well, Dr.
Berkey, he is deeply committed to sexual expansion with the queer community, with the kink community, he was a part of creating some of the first APA guidelines for working with kink clients, and and so, yeah, so much. Getting to go to classes with him and have him be my dissertation reader was so, so beneficial to feel supported in my identity.
I remember that the first time I ever came out as queer publicly, this was before the podcast was even created. I was in his class. I was in his diversity class and like named it to the group that I was a queer individual and I was so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so scared. Uh, if you know me, dear listener, in my journey from Christianity, you'll understand why.
And yeah, he created the space where I could feel really safe to do that. And so I wouldn't be the podcaster that I am without that space. And I wouldn't be, yeah, the clinician that I am without other of these people, um, getting emotional because. It's just the beginning of the journey, right? So I wouldn't be as, like, proud and out here as a feminist.
I wouldn't be as confident in who I am and my identities without these two mentors that were really important to me. And so, yes, very grateful to them. And also to you, dear listener, if you're still here right now, wow, hi! You are really passionate about relationships, and I am so happy that you are here.
I'm so happy that your heart is here. I'm so happy that you are Tuning in and that you are growing with me and expanding with me and that you too are building beautiful communities of political resistance because this world is wild and we really Yeah, just being able to build this here with you has been so so meaningful, and so episode 200.
Wow, wow, wow, wow. I'm trusting the ripples of everything that you do. I am trusting in the hearts that you have, and yeah, I love you so so so much. Keep shining, keep changing the world and being the badass relationship anarchist that you are. My love, my love, my love. So. With all of that, I am signing out for episode 200 and I'm gonna go celebrate and uh, I will see you all real, real soon.
If you enjoyed today's episode, then leave us a 5 star review wherever you listen to your podcasts. And head on over to ModernAnarchyPodcast. com to get resources and learn more about all the things we talked about on today's episode. I want to thank you for tuning in and I will see you all next week.
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