216. Crying Through Non-Monogamy and Choosing It Anyway with Lea Dawn

Nicole: [00:00:00] Welcome to Modern Anarchy, the podcast, exploring sex, relationships, and liberation. I'm your host Nicole.

On today's episode, we have Leah join us for a conversation about the liberation of desire and the future of relationships. Together we talk about how the Disney Dream dies, the intensity of paradigm shock. And cheating on the narrative. Hello, dear listener, and welcome back to Modern Anarchy. I am so delighted to have all of you pleasure activists from around the world tuning in for another episode each Wednesday.

My name is Nicole. I am a sex and relationship psychotherapist with training in psychedelic integration [00:01:00] therapy, and I am also the founder of the Pleasure Practice supporting individuals in crafting expansive sex lives and intimate relationships. Dear listener. Uh, this episode is so, so good. It honestly changed my life.

Uh, Leah had recommended reading the book, untrue by Wednesday, Martin, which I did do. So thank you, Leah. And wow, that's one of those books you read and you, uh, open your eyes and say, wow, I. Can't go back to that previous consciousness I had before. And so it's definitely a book I recommend to my clients of the Pleasure Practice because there's just so much in there, uh, so much to unlearn about women's desire and sexuality.

Before reading this, I had already known that women's desire drops off earlier in long-term monogamous relationships than men. And that's even when you control for variables like relationship [00:02:00] satisfaction. So like perfectly happy relationships. But, uh. The desire does drop off faster than men, right? And so this book had a lot of content on that, that really changed my perspective.

And so, dear listener, highly recommend and thank you, Leah, for the recommendation because wow. And yeah, a lot of what we talk about today is the paradigm shock of stepping into non-monogamy. Leah talks about their journey and all the bumpy and messy, complicated and beautiful aspects of that journey. And I share about mine too, from purity culture to polyamory.

That's a pretty big parrot. I'm shocked. And, uh, yes, as the title of this episode said, I cried a lot. And you know what? I will say it's gotten a hell of a lot better, a hell of a lot easier. Thanks to extremely secure Partners and Exposure Therapy. And so, you know, I get into all this in my, uh, book, the Psychedelic Jealousy Guide, [00:03:00] which is available on Modern Anarchy podcast.com for free.

You can download it, you can read it or write there, because I believe in free resources. As a psychotherapist, I know how important it is to get out of systemic, uh, oppression with poverty and money. And so free resources, it's there for you to read your listener. And there's so much to unpack with our set and setting with cultural beliefs around any relational practice.

And the biggest thing that I come back to in my work, in this conversation, in the books that I'm reading, is the importance of community. Remembering that the self is formed in relation. And so if you wanna change your paradigm, change your community, and then your community will be there to hold you through the shock, right?

Your community will be there as you go through that exposure, and your community will then be there to hold you as you laugh and you giggle, and you [00:04:00] step into all of the pleasure that is possible in that paradigm. Ah. Alright, dear listener, if you are ready to liberate your pleasure, you can explore my offerings and resources@modernanarchypodcast.com, linked in the show notes below.

And I wanna say the biggest thank you to all of my Patreon supporters, you are supporting the long-term sustainability of the podcast, keeping this content free and accessible to all people. So thank you. If you wanna join the Patreon community, get exclusive access into my research and personal exploration, then you can add it over to patreon.com/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 [00:05:00] let's tune in to today's episode. So the first question I like to ask each guest is, how would you introduce yourself to the listeners?

Lea: I am a lifelong ravenous learner and life scientist and have found that the paradigms, many of the paradigms we were born into don't fit with our human nature.

And they also don't support a life of relative enough, happiness enough. I call it not like pure bliss, but happy enoughness and. Ending a, a number of paradigms or transitioning out of them. I've also found myself up against the wall with many limitations and regrets. Sure. Um, and I'll, I'll never stop wanting to learn, but basically what I do now is I am an introspection and [00:06:00] parts work relationship coach where I focus on attachment and healing parts of us so that we can reclaim a sense of power and live happier lives no matter what's going on around us.

Mm-hmm. So there's a new, a few themes, but I basically would distill my purpose down to, I just want people to feel better. Yeah. Better than they do, right?

Nicole: Absolutely. Yeah. I'm already thinking about the cultural paradigms of what's possible, right. And how that can impact what we dream of and what we accept even, right?

Mm-hmm. If we take it even into the like more extreme cases of abuse and that being normalized, if that's where you've grown up and that's just what you expect, and then the full spectrum all the way to the other side of pleasure and, and where do we cap that off being so linked within our cultural context of what's even possible.

Right? Right. So, I'm excited to hear about how sex and relationships is related to this for [00:07:00] you.

Lea: Mm. Well, sex and relationships. So sex and relationships are sort of the foundation of our species and survival and society. And society doesn't wanna admit that society loves admitting that relationships. One core relationship should form the basis of our entire life.

But once that relationship in is in place, which was often founded through the act of sex, it's often that distinguishing characteristic that makes that relationship more important than any other relationship in our lives, except, you know, our children that we end up having with that person. Once that happens, we forget about our sexuality or society wants us to forget that we all have deviant sides, that we [00:08:00] have six core human needs per the Tony Robbins framework, one of those being variety and novelty, and that this should just remove or dissipate from the realm of sexuality once we're in relationships and in the forgetting and dusting that under the rug.

We are inhibiting the single most important thing in the human species that is more important. They've scientifically proven, especially to babies. It's more important than food. And water is connection. Human connection, cat, he agrees. Yes. And animal connections. And animal, yeah. So human, you're right. So entity connection.

Sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's gonna be different with the sea jelly, but you know, mammalian, whatever. Right, right, right. Whatever you're into. [00:09:00] So, you know, so the, would it make sense to actually explain a little bit of how this piece of my journey began in terms of Sure. Sex and relationships, because that might help contextualize kind of totally.

This abstractness when I'm talking about, let's go for it. Katie says more so I. I grew up in a traditional Eastern Orthodox monogamous environment, child of immigrants, very small family in this country, and an only child. And my only siblings were cousins that I adored, but I only saw them on holidays. So the smallness of my tribe, for lack of a better word, was always something that I wondered about.

And because of the smallness of our tribe, our family fell into what I consider a number of [00:10:00] pitfalls that tend to plague the nuclear family, which is one member of the family is incredibly dominant and oppressive. And patriarchal and the rest are tiptoeing around that person and learning patterns of submission and suppression and internalized rage.

So that's what I came out with. Mm-hmm. And I had practiced monogamy for over two decades. There were certainly questions because I, I am a scientist at heart. There were always questions like, gosh, we live a long time. That seems like a long time to just have sex with one person. Mm-hmm. Or only be romantic with one person forever.

But the thought of having them overlap Sure. In any way never crossed my mind. Yeah. And even in my marriage, I would say that we stretched into the realm of what's called monogamish, which your listeners might be [00:11:00] familiar with. Yeah. And I was actually, even though part of the reason we did that is. There were issues with the relationship where ultimately we, uh, separated that element of openness felt like the sweet spot.

Hmm. For me. So ultimately when we separated, I was kind of, and I had a young son, I was faced with this question of like, how did the Disney dream die? And where do I go now? Yeah. Like what, what does this mean about me? What does this mean about like my prospects? Mm-hmm. Will I die alone? Like, I'm sure a lot of listeners and you know, a lot of people grapple with that at the end of something big and the next sequence of events, I can only explain as divinely ordained, and I'm not a terribly religious person.

Three weeks after our separation, after years of trying [00:12:00] to figure out what we were doing. I ended up sort of accidentally doing ayahuasca. Mm, interesting. That's possible. Yeah. Uh, and not having any of the guidance or integration. Wow. Or like none of it just got pulled in, had like my consciousness, I'm sure blown apart.

Yeah. Was not ready Uhhuh. Um, but I came back with this sense of questioning everything, like Right. I felt like the hologram nature of this house I'm in and these problems I'm facing. Yeah. What is, what is going on? Like the real neo moment. Yes. And in that moment, that's when someone reached out to me on online dating, which I just was like barely dabbling in.

And he was the first person I responded to. 'cause he actually had. A beautifully written profile and attractive photos. And I was like, okay, if I'm gonna go for something, [00:13:00] let's just give this a try. And then right away, uh, we messaged, definitely had a chemistry, and he disclosed right away that he was polyamorous.

Mm. And not a little poly am mean. It's not a little non-monogamous. Like sure. He lives with his girlfriend and his ex-wife and wasn't in a relationship with his ex-wife anymore, but was accustomed to having two equal primary partners at the same time. Now, at this time, my brain did not know how to compute what that actually meant.

Sure. Psychedelic number two. Psychedelic number two. It was like, Hey, why not? Um, and I just went through this process in that moment where the word polyamory. Conjured a lot of uncomfortable images for me. I'm a feminist, and all I could picture was like a Charles [00:14:00] Manson compound with naked women, pregnant braiding each other's hair in trees, and like one dude Sure.

Clumping around like the sheriff around these parts and stuff. Um, you know, and I, I, I was, I had a deep aversion to that. Yeah. And that would end up following me into this. Uh, I also was like, okay, Leah, you are like the most jealous and possessive person we know. I'm a Scorpio only child. You suck at sharing.

Mm. Um, I don't know. I don't know. But then there was this moment that I think was the medicine that punched through that was like, eh, but remember all the men you met? Throughout different relationships and you just felt this warmth and vibration and you were always like, why, why can't I like be a little closer?

Yeah, yeah. You know, it, it always felt like forbidden fruit and I never did anything. I, I've never cheated [00:15:00] once in my life. I did help someone cheat, so that's the closest I got and I felt awful about it. So these, these three things were speaking to me, but the chemistry we were having and the sort of question of like, I don't wanna go back to the way I did things before.

I don't wanna get trapped again. Yeah. Propelled me forward. And we crashed into love. Uh, moved in together very quickly, far too quickly for being sensible. Mm-hmm. Um, started raising our three different children together. And it was like total bliss. We were experimenting with more monogamous stuff, and I was like, blissfully happy, but I knew what was coming.

Mm. I knew his intention was to find another equal primary partner. Yeah. Because his mission was to break the model of the nuclear family and [00:16:00] just build a bigger family. Mm-hmm. So, lots of benefits, but I was terrified because now my attachment had set in and my son was also attached, was attached to this family, this new home.

And I, I was like, I, I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna stick it out. I'm just gonna see. And there she was. One day he met her and they very, very quickly went into a primary relationship and I. Everything changed. Of course. It's like another child. It's a whole nother human relationship. Relationship. But it Yep.

It changed our relationship. Yeah. It changed the nature of our family. It changed totally. The rhythm we were in. Of course, nothing, nothing was the same. Right. And what I describe it, I don't know if you're listeners are familiar with the book Polly Wise. Yeah. Which is Jessica Fern's second one. Um,

Nicole: she's been on the show before.

We've talked about it. Yeah. The thing that really stuck out for me [00:17:00] from that book was how much we can't underestimate changing such a powerful paradigm. And this is why I study paradigms a lot. Yeah. Cool. In my work and what I would describe it, I don't know if she called it this, but what I would describe it is paradigm shock.

Lea: It's a, a trauma that inverted every belief and program and rule of engagement I had ever known. Yeah. And just it was all gone. Yeah. And it was the most disorienting and it was debilitating for me. And there are aspects where I don't think I'm wire, I don't think I'm naturally wired. Like I wasn't one of those people that read more than two or ethical slut and was like, oh, I feel like I found myself.

I was more like a curiosity, like Yeah, I see. It's a, these are fair points. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But totally, I could entertain those points when I was in sort of a balanced, [00:18:00] nont triggered state. But when my deepest traumas of abandonment and anxious attachment and rejection, mainly rejection, were triggered, there was no logical or rational place I could hold those.

Good points. Yeah, it's hard. So yeah. So through the years, uh, we ended up living with his other primary, she became my best friend. Mm. Um, and I went into a really weird period of duality where I adored her. I loved aspects of the three of us together. I adored him and I struggled so much with the importance of their relationship and how much it impacted ours.

Um, did you have any other partners at this time too? Just trying to get a layout delay, because that impacts a lot.

Let me tell you. I, I do. I tried. Okay. I would say there are, there are different variables that make that more successful. I actually [00:19:00] have like a series of questions I ask my clients like, sure.

Do you at the core, believe in the freedom to love more than one person? That's not a clear cut belief. For me, it's, that's conditional for me. Um, are you good at finding partners? Do you have a broad enough palette where you're not just trying to find someone better as good or better than your partner, but you're rather looking for contrast and difference?

That's not how I'm wired either. And what I would say is the person I am now would probably be better at finding other partner partners because I've recognized, like I've, I don't pedestal my partner anymore. Mm. Mm-hmm. Like, I'm aware of his immense strengths and uniqueness and specialness as a person, but I also know there's things I'm desiring to experience with other people.

Yeah. A lot of it is opportunity. We lived in a very [00:20:00] conservative area of Pennsylvania. Yeah. There weren't like attractive conscious. Growth oriented men like walking up off our line. I'm like, sure. Sure. Yeah. And once your standards are raised to a certain point of a certain level of communication Yeah.

And skills for attunement and skills for intimacy, um, it's hard, it's hard to kind of be like, okay, I, I'll lower my window, my threshold of tolerance and go that, so that's tough. Totally. But perhaps the biggest limitation, and I wanna make sure it's known that this is very unique to me, in case anyone's resonating a lot and feeling like, oh, that's me.

It'll never work to be totally vulnerable. I have certain kinds of limitations in the realm of sexuality that are unusual, like medical issues that make polyamory [00:21:00] where you have multiple, you're exposed to multiple people, varying degrees of risk. A lack of control or insight into everyone there with is profoundly risky for me.

So that feels like a, oh, because I'm a very sexual person and I love intimacy, and I deep down, would love, would love to have had multiple partners that I experienced different sides of my sexuality with, but there were just a lot of, there was a deck stacked against us. Mm-hmm. Unfortunately, and this is why today, I really don't know what it is I'm moving forward or what I'll call towards.

But what I do know is when I've been happiest was when there's a person with. More than half. Predictability. Reliability, sure. Availability to me. Totally. To, to build a life that feels Yeah. Consistent and stable for my [00:22:00] children.

Nicole: Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. In terms of attachment and security and joy and just like even the depth of relationships that you can get.

Um, first I do wanna say

Lea: it's a function of time a little bit.

Nicole: Totally. Yeah. Thank you for sharing all of your, your story and the vulnerability of it, of where you're at today and all of it. Um, yeah. I mean, time and energy is so limited, right? I think as a relationship anarchist, like first stepping into that world of non-hierarchical and trying to do it in that lens, it's like, what's the math on this?

Like, do we give 20% here? 20 20, 20 20? Like, you, you, right, right. And, and, and when you think about that, then I'm like, well, shit, then I can't get this, this depth of world building and life sharing that I crave so deeply out of various connections. And so that can be so hard and. You know, for me, I try to see it as, um, the friendship model becomes really important in this.

Yes. Where it's like, okay, so, so again, and this [00:23:00] is where it's like, God, we gotta talk about the sex thing in our society. It's crazy, crazy. But like, so let's take sex out of the equation for a moment here. Mm-hmm. And we think about our friendships. Right. Right. Um, do I believe in a world of loving multiple people?

Yes. Look at all these friendships, all these beautiful people that I have in my world. Yes. Mm-hmm. Look at the ways that I'm able to trust in these connections that we're gonna show up for each other without controlling and saying, you can't do this with this other person. You can't, doesn't mean we don't have special things.

Maybe we do together mm-hmm. Amount of times that we commit to one another, but it's not this control model of you can't do this Right. With other people. Fat cat, he's saying, I control you. Exactly. Yes, she does. Um, and then, yeah, in those models though, when we have friends, we still create a hierarchy.

Again, this is [00:24:00] where I really appreciated the conversation I had with one Carlos who wrote the book Relationship Anarchy of, it's not about no hierarchy at all, it's about no hierarchy of authority. Right. So, oh, okay. I love that paradigm, right? Mm-hmm. Just thinking about that. Mm-hmm. So, like, my, one of my friends doesn't look at the other friend and say, you can't hang out with her.

Right. You're not gonna be friends with her anymore. Yeah. However, of course I have close friends that I see at a deeper frequency. That I don't see the others. And so there is a hierarchy of the limitation of time and energy, which I think then becomes the political piece too, right? When you think about like the politics of all of this is like time and energy is limited when you have kids, when you have these other factors, you have to be very conscious of where you're investing your energy and the politics of that and the ripples of that.

And so like for me, I do have these, like I talk about it in orbits. Like I have a partner that over orbits me in the most close right now. We talk every day. I see them pretty frequently. And then one that's like once a week, one that's twice a week, [00:25:00] one that's like every month, right? And I have all these different lovers and it feels like it's been this liberation though 'cause now when we add the whole like sex thing and then it gets complicated, everyone's like, wow. You know? But it's, it's wild to me to think about culturally like factually, there are other cultures that have practiced nom non-monogamy. Absolutely. You know, and so like we know that factually, but have mm-hmm.

However, particularly in American culture, that is not what we've been taught. You know, if we think back even to a hundred years ago as a woman, I would be, I'd be trying to maintain my purity, hoping that a man would marry me so that I could fucking live my life. You know what I mean? Like, and then women were murdered if you had had sex with some, oh my god.

You know, so like, oh. So when you think about the ripples of that to get to where we're at now, where we have these choices, there's so much to deconstruct and in some cultures it literally is [00:26:00] forbidden to hug someone of the, of a different gender, right? Yeah. So I think like. In our American context, we'd be like, that's really interesting.

I'm, people would probably judge that actually, but that's very, oh, that's so strict. Right. And then if you, if you just take a moment to Right. Be neo, unfold the matrix. Yeah. Take the psychedelic you said, have dinner with a member of the opposite sex and, you know, spend two hours with someone. Woo. That's totally, and in my work, in the psychedelic, um, space of therapy, there is a strong, I mean, we haven't actually done research with this, but there's a strong correlation you would see between the types of clients that come in for that work, even if they haven't done a psychedelic still coming to our space and like wanting to explore non monogamy, all these other things.

Hmm. Because I, I do think it is related. You take the drug and you're like, Hmm, this doesn't, this doesn't add up. Interesting. You know, obviously living into the complexities of that era. Uh, or a climb in and of itself, [00:27:00] but there's something about it that starts to shake this, the system just enough to start asking these deeper questions.

Lea: I love what you're sharing and I wanna loop in a top one of my favorite topics into exactly what you're talking about with psychedelics, because the most poly I've ever felt, even though I didn't have partners Yeah. Was during certain medicine journeys. Mm-hmm. Cool. And I'd be like, why is that? Why am I poly when I am high?

Yeah. Um, so I, uh, I'd love to talk a little bit about the work I'm doing with internal family systems. Sure, sure. Yeah. Let's go there. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm an IFS coach and I am working to blend and integrate kind of four key frameworks that we love. People are gring out on right now, and we can't get enough and.

I've only engaged with these frameworks as mainly separate. So the four frameworks [00:28:00] are polyvagal theory. Mm-hmm. If FS or parts work. Mm-hmm. Attachment theory. Yeah. And the drama triangle, which is my current favorite thing to be like going so deep in right now. So all of these felt like separate. And then there's other things, love languages and the emotional spectrum.

Sure. And, uh, boundaries. And you know, and one night I'm a very visual person and I was learning polyvagal theory through a program I wanna give a big credit to. 'cause their visual representation of our nervous system was, is the basis for this thing I'm working on. And they're called neuro fit and they put our different nervous system sat on a circle in a way that like we have different temperature zones, like a thermostat.

And our thermostat is always adjusting all day, all day. Heating up if we're getting upset, cooling off, if we're trying to calm down and like, uh, things like that. So [00:29:00] that's the kind of ba, the backbone of that. But what I'm using internal family systems for is helping understand why, why do we feel ourselves shift?

Like why do we engage with these paradigms differently when we're in different states of consciousness? And what I've come to realize is what I experienced in ia, what a lot of people experience, and especially heart opening medicines like MDMA or San Pedro, uh, sassafras, things like that is it's sedating or quieting one coalition of parts of us.

And reconnecting us from a core energy that, uh, if anyone's familiar with IFS, there is this core energy that we describe that's called self-energy. And in IFS self-energy has eight [00:30:00] Cs, so eight core characteristics. And those characteristics become a sort of compass for us to understand when our unwounded unprogrammed pure core essence is at the wheel instead of parts that are protective or wounded.

So these characteristics are feeling calm, clear, curious, compassionate, connected, creative, courageous, and confident. Who doesn't want that. Right? Right. Um, but a lot of us don't feel those things a lot of the day. Sure. So when we engage with paradigms like non-monogamy, after being in a paradigm of monogamy, we tend to get disconnected from that energy because there's other parts that are really strongly attached to the paradigm, or they have been wounded in a way that this new paradigm triggers.

So what I've [00:31:00] realized in retrospect is when in medicine, it gives you a direct access to that self energy. But what happens is that because people don't have a parts model happening, they think, oh, I'm changed now. Now I'm that. Now I am the person that was in that and in that medicine state, we write checks, our self energy writes checks.

Our rest of our parts aren't gonna cash. Like, no, you're not moving to Bali in a poly commune and quitting your job. And, uh, no. Don't you remember that We're gonna die and we're gonna starve and we're gonna be broke and we're going to lose every, lose our partner. And we like, so when we come out of medicine, all of those protective wounded parts awaken back because we haven't really addressed their [00:32:00] concerns, which is what parts work does.

So it's a little bit tricky. That's why I think they have that two weak guideline of not making any major life decisions after a journey. Because your self energy is still kind of running the show and it has not taken a proper leadership position with the rest of you. That's like, yeah, yeah, no, we're not down with that.

Nicole: Sure. Yeah. Yeah. I'd love to like, work with you on this philosophy and like kind of, um, explore it together. I've definitely done a lot of, uh, training from IFS as well, but I, I have a lot of critiques of it as well, I think. Oh, cool. Um, because I guess it's like I've also seen in my psychedelic work, people who have explored psychedelics and not had that experience of the expanded state of Sure.

Love. I think about that being part of, um, when we take psychedelics, there is that increased neuroplasticity, right? Mm-hmm. So we're making [00:33:00] novel connections that maybe we haven't made before, and that default mode network is a little bit turned down, right. But I've also seen people who are trying to explore even the concept of queerness, right?

Hmm. Who then actually feel deeper into their homophobia and judgment. And I think this is an interesting question for IFS in terms of like parts, right? Okay. So I have this internalized homophobia part. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And like to claim that as your own part feels a little complicated, right? Because that's a societal influence.

Right. I think we can still do it in an IFS framework and say like, this is a part that I have internalized. And when we take it back to a concept of like, compassion and care, right? Right. Why is this part here? Oh, it's because it's been unsafe and so this is why this part is here. So I do, it's just like complicated though.

Like, do I wanna claim I have internalized racism parts, like all these other messy parts of the system that aren't the, like, calm, collected, um, all of that. But so I, I, I think that like the psychedelic experience does [00:34:00] not always produce us into the state of the more expanded love because Oh, agreed. Yeah.

The set and setting, like I've had my own experiences with. Non-monogamy and stimulant, psychedelic psychedelics that have, um, made it even more difficult, I would say, because watching my partner, it was, it was so wild. It was literally the sex part, a joy watching him hold her hand, I lost, oh, I know my shit.

I lost my shit. And that's what I find to be so funny, because like that's an act that in theory, like he could do with his mom and like hold his mom's hand, but god forbid he holds another w you know, like, and, and, and to experience that on a stimulant, which I was hoping would help me be more open and loving and in that space, it was intense.

I'm like feeling it in my body now as I was there. I mean, we've, we've done a lot of work, you know, like you, you recall memories. You feel it in the body, right? Of course. Yeah. So I've done a lot of work now to not be in that space of like, trying to do it in my [00:35:00] ordinary states of consciousness and not use psychedelics to do that.

'cause I was really hoping that it would help. Hmm. And it, it just made it more intense to process. Um, there have definitely been states of some psychedelic experiences where it has helped, but it feels so set and, and, uh, set and setting dependent. Yes. Absolutely. That I, I can't trust these medicines to like fully take us there and, and if it was, we'd be having so many more people that are doing, doing this, but I, I think it's so.

I think about the work of Foucault I think about the, like the societal context and how deeply that influences what we even dream as being possible. I, I was not even thinking about non-monogamy before I knew the word on my psychedelics, right? Like, oh, interesting. Never. No, I, I was, I grew up very conservative Christian.

Oh. In terms of my jealousy journey, it was fucking a mess, man. Like I was told in Christian culture that I couldn't go and sit down with an another male, you know? It was all very like, straight. Um, I couldn't go and sit with another male and be alone with [00:36:00] another male because that would be too tempting.

So the second that my partner said, oh, um, my boyfriend at the time, oh, I'm gonna go get coffee with someone. I lost my shit. I lost my shit. There's no way you're doing that. No way. So, so just to be where I'm at now where I'm like, yeah, go have sex, have fun. Like go on the date, take the camping trip, go have fun.

Like, it's been quite the journey. And, and, and I would, I we have to look at the societal context that have shaped that, you know? Mm-hmm. Well, you're giving me hope. 'cause I'm definitely not in the Yeah. Go have fun camp at all, all man. It's, it's hard. I, I think that's where that concepts of relationship anarchy have been really helpful.

Like, why, why do I, so, so my partner, let's think, okay, they're gonna go have a board game night with their friends. Or they're gonna go have an orgy, why do I get more upset about one versus the other? Right. I think for me it feels like classical conditioning, the amount of years that I've seen content, the Disney, [00:37:00] all the romcoms.

Yeah. It says they're gonna leave you. That's bad. And so it's taken years of training with my partners to have them go to the orgy. Mm-hmm. And still be in connection. And me be like, wow, amazing. Okay, we're still fine. Like, holy shit. But was I scared? Was I crying? Did I need to be held afterwards? Yeah.

Mm-hmm. But it's because I've never had this like, like sort of experience where they actually stay.

Lea: Right. It was never contextualized as safe. And I'll tell you like I'm a huge movie buff and I am still, I think there's also an aspect of retraining a nervous system with. Rewards. So I had a lot of lovely open group experiences, but mainly with my partner there, I could count on three fingers how many experiences I had by myself.

Yeah. If that had been not the case, if I'd had a greater capacity and ability to and [00:38:00] availability of people to do that, I probably would've been able to not only take the fact that he came back 'cause he did. Yeah. But also retrain that it's not just a story of me waiting around for my partner No. To choose me.

And that's kind of the, that's the model we fell into oof it. The zero sum game that we were looking to escape came into our relationship and like doubled down. So. Now in how I organize my life, we're still in connection, but we don't share like who we're with. We're like really giving total separation around our romantic lives.

And that's giving me more like breathing room to not be processing his stuff, but to focus that energy on my own explorations. Yeah. And such. And I, I wanna honor you. Like that's a really tough jump that I've not been able to make yet, but I think it's very possible that if I did meet another partner, which Yeah, always [00:39:00] waiting open, everything could change.

Nicole: That changed so much for me. 'cause I was in grad school for a handful of years and could, did not have time. I can't even imagine having children, right. Because alone, like I live by myself. Like I have this studio apartment, I live by myself. I, I've never shared with the kitty my space. Well yeah, that's true.

I do live with a kitty, but like to live with a partner in another partner, I don't even know if I ever want that. Like, I don't, I, I like my home bait. It's a lot

of energy.

Yeah, that's what I'm saying. So like, there's, so I think that's what a lot of people get lost onto of this, of like, oh, I wanna practice non-monogamy.

I'm like, well, welcome to a very big drawing board of multiple ways to do this, my friend. Because yes, couple to throuple is one of the most hard, like the hardest way I think where like when I live alone and then I have all these different relationships around me, right. Where I'm centered in my experience and I'm not waiting for that part.

This is a whole different

Lea: game changer.

Nicole: Yes.

Lea: Yeah. So that's why I always recommend like. People don't move in [00:40:00] yet. No. Don't move in together yet. If you are not sure you are on the same page about how you wanna live. If you're moving in with a poly person, there's a high chance they're going to want to consolidate at some point.

And there's many benefits to doing so. I do wanna name, I was, we had a number of different like friends and loves come through. Sure. And we benefited our children. My favorite. Gift from that is really how our children saw, like, met different people. Yeah. And like I remember my son hugging me and my meta and he was just, I guess I don't, I don't bring any of the wounded inner child victim consciousness that I have around my parentified relationships.

Sure. I don't bring that around him, so I, I felt compersion for him. Like, I was like, oh, that's what that feels like. Yeah. Because it was like completely inaccessible for me. But that was the window where I, I understood. [00:41:00] And I may not be that person that can release that and, and feel that way about an adult bonded male partner.

Save for if I moved to an intentional village or community, I. There, like the, um, have you read the book? Untrue? Mm-hmm. Oh, you should definitely see. Okay. Dr. Wednesday Martin, for your show. Sure.

Nicole: Oh yeah, I'll check it out.

Lea: Her book was incredible. It's all about the non-monogamous nature of women, which has not really been focused on Oof.

Okay. Sorry guys. Sorry. Wow. Sorry. In the seventies, man. Um, and she focuses a lot of research, anthropological research on the Himba Tribe in Africa. And that blew my mind. Sure. And it didn't make me a poly person, like, oh yeah. Poly and I, I do call myself bisexual, but what was most [00:42:00] important was that way of life where the women are non-monogamous.

They're not like openly KTP, poly, like they're not always going like, you are my meta now. And now we are sisters. Like it's under radar. A bit, but it's like not a thing, it's just, it's just a thread in their tapestry and they don't make a big deal out of it. Right. Which I think is interesting. But they have these certain variables at the core of their society, which is their sisterhood.

They grow up with the same people that they know, like, and trust. Mm-hmm. They, they rely on each other for survival and there's not just two of them with a third coming in and upsetting the entire apple cart and, you know, like with a small, shaky foundation. And I think that that matters. Like, I can't let go of, the question is if I lived in an environment like that [00:43:00] and there were plenty of available people, I may not feel the absence of this one person I'm attached to.

Right. You know? So to move into this. Poly paradigm. It is fucking painful to break apart this original paradigm and we're not like resourced enough for it.

Nicole: Yeah, that's what I've talked about. The metaphors of water, like, like we started this conversation out with connection is absolutely necessary for survival from birth all the way to the end.

We even see people who are like connected, um, you know, in monogamous couples when they age as one dies. Often the other fo there's like connection right? Within ear. Yeah. Mm-hmm. So connection is what keeps us alive. It is a resource. You need food, water, connection. Right? And if we think about like water and connection, if you do not have these deep connections and you [00:44:00] have one and you're asking, can I share this one with someone else?

Fuck no. Fuck no. That's my one source of water, you know? Mm-hmm. Which is what really changed it for me was to have multiple sources of flowing water. I was like, uh oh, this is interesting. And how? Right. And I think that's where you have to talk about the structural implications for this, right? Because we're not living on the commune.

Some of us are, and that's a very different structure because when you, I don't even know if how, how a commune life works, but, uh, the family dinner, everyone's there. You know, we're in our nuclear setups here in these living situations, right? Where we are often lacking a community space where everyone comes together,

Lea: right?

Right. Mm-hmm.

Nicole: Then, yeah, what is the math on all of this? To get enough of these needs met? Oof. Messy, right? So, right. I think it's like this. This question of like, our struggles with it are, are so based on like Yeah. Cultural context. Like that example you're talking about of the other culture where they practice it.

It's like us, [00:45:00] we hug, uh, in my culture, I hug multiple people. I don't even think about it.

Lea: Yep. Yeah. Not giving that up.

Nicole: Right. And in some cultures you don't. And so like, let's spectrum out here. And we're like, okay. Okay. And so in that though, it's still the question of all of the deep classical conditioning.

Mm-hmm. And I think that an important piece too is that like. You know, like my body is able to birth a child. Okay, I'm able to do this. I can, I have this capacity, but maybe I don't want to. Even if we are able to do NoMy right, maybe you just don't want to want to, that's okay. Right? Yeah. Yeah. 'cause maybe you don't want to, I think that's a part of the equation too, is like, yes, I hope we get to a world where people understand there are multiple ways to do this.

And right now until we are at a space where like non-monogamy doesn't bring up so much of this deep pain point that I think is cultural. Mm-hmm. And societally inflicted, it's not a fair choice. Right. Because right now we're like [00:46:00] uncovering so much stuff with it that it's not even a fair option of do I wanna have kids or not?

You know, in the same way with li like the women's liberation too, right? And all able bodies who can have birth right. Is for so long and it still is here that like if you don't have a child, you're not meaningful. Right? Right.

Lea: What does it mean about you?

Nicole: Totally. And so until we deconstructed that we have the liberation now choose, do I want this or not?

And I feel like this is another piece where it's like, not everyone's gonna want non-monogamy, but we're not even in a space where we're able to actively choose it if we wanted to without all of this baggage to implement it. Yeah. It's fucking wild.

Lea: Yeah. I, I wanna speak to that. And this is again, why I think a large portion of people rapidly moving into CNM of some kind is experiencing paradigm shock is.

The nuclear families that most of us were raised in, I think actually inverted the exact conditions that we [00:47:00] would need to make like communal, flexible relating happen. Yeah. So we were in these tiny microcosms with very few people and they had no boundaries with us. We had no private space, and they had, did not have proper relating skills and like they were the ones we should have gotten away from, but we could, they were, we couldn't get away.

Like it, it's, it inverted like the exact opposite of what we needed. And we got wounded and shut down and it deepened this eye consciousness, like this individualistic consciousness that this world has made possible by money. So making money allows us to cut our human directive to rely on each other for survival.

That's like our biological directive. But money has allowed us, you and me, to live on our own. Right. And be like, Nope, not taking your shit. Yeah. [00:48:00] But we might feel lonely at times 'cause we're not like, I don't think it's actually natural for us to be so isolated. So we come to CNM or Polly especially, and we're like, oh my God, the benefits.

Benefits. But we're bringing to it eye consciousness and victim consciousness, much as a product of classical conditioning, as you said. So we're bringing these two ways that we relate, that are highly incompatible with learning how to exist to coexist in harmony with other humans. So I wish, this is a bold statement, but for certain people, I wish I could erase the word poly or CNM temporarily.

But keep their desire to now understand they have to heal, implement healing [00:49:00] consciousness. So a sense that I'm a product of my experiences. I am bringing wounds, I'm reacting from those wounds. I, it's possible for me to heal and shift my behavior.

Nicole: Yeah.

Lea: That's number one. Then number two, instituting community consciousness.

Nicole: Yeah.

Lea: Can you live in the same house with someone and get along and attune to their needs and it's not always about you. Like that's a difficult shift. That, that was the toughest thing for me as an only child is going into a house of eight people. Like dealing with noise and Yeah. Who gets the kitchen and like, I felt a lot of my iness come up like, Ugh, it's annoying.

Instead of, and it's mainly because I didn't really rely on them for survival. If I had like, that forces us to become a lot [00:50:00] more collaborative mm-hmm. When we truly need each other. Yeah. So we put those things in place. And make that work a bit. And then we start instituting CNM, especially polyamory. Then I think that can start to take hold.

Sure. At scale.

Nicole: That's relationship anarchy, right? Like right there, right. It's like how do we challenge the systems and get back into more community? And then in that challenging of the system, some people challenge the system of the sex stuff, right? So it's like mm-hmm. That what you were speaking to just so deeply like hits what I think of as relationship anarchy is getting back into community and

Lea: I see

Nicole: working together.

'cause you can be monogamous in a relationship anarchist. And so being about community and mutual aid and working together and that and, and that being how we flip these system, I mean yeah. But I will say I love living alone and I don't get lonely actually. Oh. Um, because I have enough people. [00:51:00] 

Lea: Right.

Rights. True.

Nicole: Like I haven't like. I literally am like oversaturated, I would say. Like I am like, either like last night I was at one of my partners or the other partner comes over and like mm-hmm. So I, I barely do have any alone type. So you don't even feel it.

Lea: Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, that's great.

Nicole: Which is wild, right?

Like, to think about and, and, and that felt like of, and again, you know, individualistic western culture for me to say I want my own living space, but man, I don't know. I read the work of Virginia Wolf from years ago saying a room of one's own. And I said, what about an apartment? What about that next level of like, what it would look like?

But again, I've also chosen to not have kids. I've had abortion, right? I, I did not go down that path and had the privilege to not have children. And so then I am living alone in a very different circumstance than, you know, what that means in terms of my ability to have multiple partners and have them come over and it be so flexible.

I mean, I think that it, it's just like. There's no right way to do relationships. [00:52:00] Every single person is gonna go down their own journey of their own individual context, their own relationships, let alone the cultural narrative of meaning making. I think about my sister who is Mormon, and in their culture, when you get married, it is for all of eternity, the one person I I know.

And beyond. And beyond. Exactly. And you are not allowed to have any solo sex, right. You're not allowed to have it with anybody else. And that paradigm of meaning making of what sex means for someone from that perspective to think about having sex with somebody else is. Is not happening. That is a mm-hmm.

Act against God. That is an act against all of eternity, you know? So for me, this is, we are just in who like, you know, like really

Lea: we're gonna agree to disagree on there.

Nicole: And so like the, the need for all of us to slow down and really sit with our own like nar, like, I would just love for people to get more curious about like, what [00:53:00] was I told about sex?

What was I told about exclusivity? Yeah. What was I told about love and romance and these things. Mm-hmm. And is that something I believe in? Is that something I want?

Lea: Right, right. How does that sit with me? And you know, one thing I wanna clarify is I absolutely believe in our own functional spaces. Yeah.

And that's also what we were missing when we grew up because these houses, you know, if you were lucky enough to have your own room, you still, I didn't have a sense of privacy Really? Yeah. In my home. And my vision is like. I picture this compound that is like designed like the flower of life and each node, it's its own tiny domicile.

Mm. Where a person can meet all their needs. Mm-hmm. But then they're close in proximity enough where they can come out and Yeah. Visit other domiciles. And there's a centralized, communal area where for when you choose that, but you [00:54:00] are also welcome to decompress and insource on your own. Yeah. So that, that was challenging even in the communal way that I lived.

As I shared a room, I shared a kitchen and it hallways like you could hear everything and I mean everything. And that was confronting for me, but it was almost like it was, it was just too much. So I'm, I'm looking for that goldilock. So, yeah. And I. I have a dream of like owning a duplex where my partner, or plus I, I don't know.

Ha we have our own spaces. We knock on one, have the privilege of doing that, but we have our own spaces, but then we are able to commune enough together where we don't feel isolated. Yeah. And absolutely in a group, in a group of 20 people, that would be great. Totally. Yeah.

Nicole: I hear that dream again and again from people in my community.

I think people are dreaming more about what it [00:55:00] means to have that sort of space. And sometimes I like to think about my apartment like that, even though the Chicago is so large. I like to think, oh, this is just my little room. Yeah. In the big commune of Chicago where I at the

Lea: Oasis.

Nicole: Yeah. I meet some of my friends at our beach or the gym, you know, and like, we come together out of the rooms, but I, I don't know if I could really like live in that.

Level of continual community. That's a, that's a whole different ballgame. Yeah. I, I love the alone time. I love my very quiet solo bath with no one else around. And yeah. I feel like I wanna like pinpoint back to some of the concepts of like jealousy and fear. Mm-hmm. Because I think it was really radical for me to start connecting with other people and then to use that level of framework when I get scared.

Lea: Mm. Yes.

Nicole: Yeah. 'cause I was like

Lea: useful.

Nicole: Yeah. When I only had one partner and he was exploring it with other people. 'cause I was in grad school and two, too busy to comprehend another romantic, sexual, however we would define that relationship, [00:56:00] it was not gonna happen. Sure. So it was really hard for me to like.

Process, you know, and on all of the fears and all of that was coming up. Where now where I have multiple people, it is much easier in the moments when I think about, you know, and I think the context of this is that, you know how I talked about orbits of closeness? Mm-hmm. The closer an orbit you get to me, the scarier my jealousy is.

Right.

Lea: Oh. 'cause it the deeper attachment and intimacy and vulnerability. Right,

Nicole: right. And potential of loss. Right. Like the partner Oh yeah. I see. Once a month. It's not that I don't love them and I care for them. Yeah. But like, whoa, my orbit would be drastically shifted. Right. If my close one shifts and could you imagine if the sun stopped showing?

You know, we'd be like, we'd be, I can.

Lea: It did feel like that, if I'm honest.

Nicole: Exactly. And that's fair. And so it was interesting for me to kind of like watch my jealousy across orbits and say, interesting. Okay, so this one doesn't freak me out. This one [00:57:00] kind of freaks me. This one really freaks me out. So then it was that process of, okay, what about that?

I'm afraid that I'm not gonna have time for me. I'm afraid that I'm not gonna have enough space to connect with them. They're not gonna show up in the same way they're gonna leave me. Mm-hmm. And then that kind of allowed me to like simmer in that and then try to think about my own orbiting system of say, okay.

No, like I have all these beautiful relationships. I'm not just abandoning these people. And one of my favorite parts is when I've had sex with other people and loved the sex that I had, and then it also made me miss the other partner even more. Mm-hmm. It was like having a delicious bowl of ice cream and then saying, God, I love the brownie though.

Like I love the brownie and sometimes I love them together. But you know, like when you taste these different flavors to be able to have that joy and appreciate Of course. Yeah.

Lea: Mm-hmm. Yeah. And I, and I can, I can relate to that a tiny bit and part of the sadness I experience when I think about like, you know, how things ended up for [00:58:00] us, there is something to say about the rewiring of pathways.

Yeah. Where I've never really gotten past. One to two intimate experiences with another connection. And I've seen a lot of people, my partner on the other hand has had multiple other primaries and you know, he's liberated himself in that way. But I noticed that even when I was experiencing intimacy, I was experiencing all of those pleasure chemicals of novelty and the Yeah, the, the contrast and the, uh, the newness.

But the force of sexual fidelity program in me is very strong. Sure. So I could not shake the feeling of cheating. Yes. That I was cheating. Yes. I, yes. It's, it's incredible. And it's still there, like, yeah. So, you know, when I asked my partner, was that weird for you at all? Like, is it weird for you ever at all?

And he's like, [00:59:00] honestly, it's not weird now. And I was like, oh. But he was like, it was. In the beginning it took a number of times. Yep. Settle and be like, oh actually nothing is wrong. And like he unpacked his, what cheating meant. And I feel like I've not broken that veil. It's so hard. If that makes sense.

It does. So if I had a person I had sex with three times, maybe that would be like the, oh, I see. This is actually okay.

Nicole: It's hard. I'm resonating with that. Yeah.

Lea: Really?

Nicole: Yes. Yes, of course. 'cause there's something to, like, for me, there was something to like playing with people. Mm. And then something to building.

Deep love, and then to be having sex with two people that I deeply love, and I felt like, yeah, I was cheating on the o. Like even though I had full interesting, my brain was like, no, there can only be one. [01:00:00] There. Can only like, oh, tell me the secret, then. What did, what happened? Dude, I, I just, I, I, you know what actually happened?

I think the answer is I cried a lot, right? Like, that's the real answer is I cried a lot. Mm-hmm. I think about the set and setting of the psychedelic. Mm-hmm. You know, that set and setting is gonna change the experience radically, so. Mm-hmm. With the partner who had done 10 years of non-monogamy, I never felt like I was cheating with him.

Oh, that's a fascinating one because he was so grounded, so supportive. We were so kitchen table, so open, so everything that it truly felt like another friend I had connected with and how beautiful. Now the person that was newer, more sensitive, more unpacking a lot of this, I felt like I was hurting him.

And that was a really interesting thing for me to realize because [01:01:00] the second partner wasn't the only person I had connected with in the last couple years of dating. And in partnership, I connected with others who were equally like in depth to polyamory, rebuilding. Never felt like I was cheating on them.

Hmm. So that I found very interesting was like, okay, whose consciousness am I holding in my head? Is it my one partner who's like, yes, go run, do this. I'm so supportive. Tell me about it after. If you feel comfortable and there's consent on all parties, like Yes. Or the partner who's like, I support you. This is hard.

But I support you. And when I hold that consciousness in my head, I do feel like I'm cheating. And then also like the narratives in my head of like the romance myth and right where they fall into it, then it does feel like I'm cheating that narrative. And that's, you know what I mean? Interesting. Because

Lea: the narrative,

Nicole: the one, the, the newer one that was newer to Paul and all of this, like he meets all of my like dream boxes of the type of like, if there's a romance myth, it's him.

Lea: So [01:02:00] that's what I call the game changer relationship. Where you're like, it was, oh shit. There's some old things that come up and contains some of things.

Nicole: Totally. He's a lot like my dad. Ooh, that's a dammit. Freud Damnit Freud had some insight there. Shit. Um, so yeah, that was a, it was a game changer to bring that into the orbit.

Lemme tell you, but um. That narrative then I felt like I was doing something wrong out of the narrative of the meaning making of what I was constructing with that person, plus his tenderness around that. So these are all the things I'm like considering weighing. And then I do think about the fact that I came from purity culture.

I had a purity ring, I was deep in it. So the first time, yes. Never even heard of that. Oh, are you kidding? I still, I still wear it out of empowerment these days. I have a long story about that. We cleaned it. Yes.

Lea: Nice.

Nicole: Um. Yeah, after having my first like multi-group play experience, I had like what I would call an if FS parts work rebound where my body was like, you're such [01:03:00] a whore.

Oh my God, how dare you. Yeah. So I jokingly said, I'm gonna put back my purity ring on to reclaim some, like some fierceness. And now I, here I go. Here I go. Okay. Yeah, totally. So it's, it's on now every day, which I find funny.

Lea: Like during the experiences you're like, here we go.

Nicole: Here we go. I'm clean, I fucking crazy.

But um, that gives me some level of paradigm thinking because then I think about when I first was in purity culture. The first time I had sex outside of that, I cried. I felt like I was doing something wrong. Okay. The first time I had sex with two different people in my lifetime, I felt like I was a whore.

No one was ever going to want me because I had sex with two different people. And I cried about that.

Lea: What a journey.

Nicole: Let alone two people at the same time,

Lea: right?

Nicole: Let alone two people in the same room, hence the rebound. So like I've just held some level of like, I don't even know at this point, mindness and distrust of my [01:04:00] own experience enough to step back and say, okay, I'm having a reaction and I'm gonna go through it.

Mm-hmm. Like I'm going to go through it like I've done with these other ones. And so it literally is like me with the partner who I didn't feel like I was cheating on, crying about the fact that I felt like I was cheating on the other one, and him holding me and saying, it's okay. You're gonna get through it.

You're gonna get through me, you're gonna get through me, you're gonna get through it, it's gonna be fine. And him like literally holding me, I was like, I feel like I'm cheating on the other guy. Oh no. And he's like, it's okay. And I was like, okay. And then just like literally living into that over the last couple of years, months.

Right. And then just wow. It, it doesn't feel like that now. Just like when I first had sex with someone outside of marriage. It doesn't, I don't even fathom that thought now. Yeah. But like I think this is how I, and again, I hear this out of so many of my clients who, and in my community of how we can have value systems of who we want to be.

And the ways that this deep conditioning, [01:05:00] it makes it hard. It makes it so hard. And there's so much to unpack around that.

Lea: Well. I am finding similarities and differences, and this is where it's so fascinating how we're all just, my favorite line that I want to tattoo on my face is we're just different people having a different experience.

Mm of the same thing. Sure. This is like, this is what helps me return to the minute. I'm like, they should feel this way. They shouldn't feel that way. Like I'm like, sh, sh, shh. So what you said was interesting because I definitely have felt more cheaty if my partner was struggling. Right. Even though he was full on poly and not worrying about that for me.

So I felt that way, but like, you know, we reached a place where, hi. His feelings are not in the equation in terms of like what I'm free to do. But what you just said really helped. Crystallize something you've been trying to figure put words to. Mm-hmm. Is [01:06:00] that I'm cheating on the narrative. It's like it's, it feels like I'm cheating on Walt Disney.

Right. I'm cheating on those little moments where I was watching the princess movies, which are, were a big deal to me 'cause I'm a singer and like I grew up Sure. Learning those songs and just like this idea of this night coming to rescue you and building a castle for you. Right. And you are special.

Right. And, you know, having an only child, the special role, I don't know that I'll unwind that program. It's, it's all I've ever known, you know, so having a sibling that was equal, like it fried my motherboard, so. I am always curious, like if, if it were a couple of times in everyone's cool, would I be able to release the idea that I am not cheating on a narrative or the specialness model?

So it's so fascinating to hear the [01:07:00] different factors that have been at play and just how far, you know, how far across the spectrum you've traversed. It's amazing.

Nicole: Thank you. I've cried. I've cried a lot. You know, I've cried a lot. I've had lots of deep sematic responses. I'm, I'm even thinking about your, um, being a solo child, though, a so, you know, like

Lea: mm-hmm.

Nicole: You've shared your parents.

Lea: Right. But each of them, oops, sorry. Each of them had one specific gender role and I've noticed that. My non-monogamy spans wider with women. Sure. But I don't desire as much romantic relationship. Like Sure. I dream of like, like my favorite time of my life was living in a dorm of 20 people and I had like these flirty, we would like mess with each other things with the girls.

Sure. But I wanted like my [01:08:00] big male relationship, so there were very distinct gender roles. Like I had one mom, one dad, I have one child. He's. Biologically and only child. Mm-hmm. So there's a long lineage of that.

Nicole: Sure.

Lea: So even though I shared them, their roles were like not remotely similar.

Nicole: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Totally. That makes sense. But I'm thinking about the fact that like, so your parents though, had relationships to other people, other humans, other connections in a way that still made you a priority. And I'm curious, oh, okay. What a world of like non-monogamy could look like for you of being prioritized to the level of your literal dreams, whatever that is.

Lea: Yeah. Oh yeah, that's that. Yeah. I, I am clear, like, for me it's also about timing because I do know that NRE and the chemicals, you know, I'm familiar with the neuro neurobiological cocktail of chemicals, NRE, [01:09:00] like. Poll during NRE, kind of like, they don't make sense to me. And part of it is the extent, the intensity that I experience NRE, which is almost why I'm afraid to fall in love with someone new.

Mm-hmm. Because I'm like, I don't wanna lose my shit again. Totally. And in some ways I think it was ordained but also unfortunate that my first engagement truly with non-monogamy, that was more than just dabbling with monogamish happened to be with a human. That I've felt a deeper emotional, intellectual, sexual Sure.

A spiritual connection with than I've, than anyone I've encountered since. And like. I, I know now having done enough parts work that my very monogamous little girl princessy parts, he became that night. Yeah. He came along when I was like completely starved for love. [01:10:00] He brought me to the castle. He whisked me away to Yeah.

The, the paradise. And we brought, we both brought a lot of enmeshment dynamics. You know, there was definitely stuff on both sides. So now like, I don't know that I can involve his polyamorous life into mine because my mono parts have been so heartbroken. Yeah. By that. But with someone else, maybe if I wanna invite all of that in again.

Nicole: Totally.

Lea: It would, it would be a different experience for sure.

Nicole: Totally. Yeah. Again, I think about psychedelics you have, I. A difficult experience your first time on mushrooms, and you say never again. I know. Yeah. You know, and it's like, what was the set and setting? What were the dynamics? I, I'd be curious about like if there's the part of the, um, mono princess.

I'd be curious what the part of the feminist [01:11:00] pioneer.

Lea: Yeah. Oh, she's strong too. Yeah. What does she, what does she say? She says, yeah, I should be able to do what I want. And keep in mind there's a very strong queen bee. Pardon me too. I've, at different points in my life, had little groups of men that I was the only woman and I just loved it.

I wasn't sleeping like we were all friends, but energetically I. I love the plurality and, and it, I think it goes back to that friendship like you were talking about. Mm-hmm. Like I am living in a time in my life and situation where I have very few, practically no close friends, my partner's, one of the only people I see physically in person.

Wow. I live in the suburb, uh, I don't know anyone in my neighborhood. Everyone's doing their own thing. My friends are scattered all across the world, all focused on their own lives. Wow. This is a weird Yes. This was a weird time [01:12:00] to encounter this model where if I were in college and I had 20 close friends and I had energy with lots of people at the same time, or, or at work, I always had several work husbands and you know what I mean?

Mm-hmm. So now it's just a very strange time where there's like, I have to build like even a baseline and. When I have friends, I had neighbors in my last apartment complex that I randomly met and they happened to be poly and they, I was the only other person they met like Wow. My entire life, which was wild.

And we bonded together of course. And then I wasn't feeling, I felt like I had an extended family and I wasn't feeling the sadness around what my partner was doing. So those friendships I think are like the starting point. Yep. Add sex at your own peril. But [01:13:00] this is like, I wanna find a way where we find a coworking space where it's not working.

Yeah. We just, single people can go at night. Yeah. And just hang out. Yeah. That's not a bar. These are needs. These are needs. These are needs. Agreed. Agreed.

Nicole: Whether you're a monogamous or non-monogamous, we need community spaces and connection. It is heartbreaking to think about the silos of these small little pockets and what that can do That is not natural.

It hurts. Yeah, it's isolation. It's, you can sell a lot of stuff to a nuclear family 'cause you need your own, this, that, this, that, and this to prove that you're doing it. But oh my God, our, our needs are not being met there. And yeah, for me, like even in my world, when I am connecting with people, it is.

Friends, however we define that first, because I really don't want to just play with someone who can't oscillate back and forth between some sort of space where maybe we don't have [01:14:00] sex for like three months. Three years. Mm-hmm. I don't know. You know, the pressure. Yeah. Yeah. I need someone who can be flexible to just watch TV one night, maybe have sex in three weeks and like, if so, so, so what that means is I, not that you can't have sex on the first date, but I don't, because I want to establish like, are we emotionally compatible to navigate the complexities of what we're about to take on together?

And if we are, hell yeah, let's run and dance and be free. But otherwise, like, I'm not even interested in kissing you. Like that doesn't even cross my mind personally.

Lea: Like no. Yeah. Who, who are you if we're not getting drunk and, you know, opening up. Uh, I, I see it as sacred again because I've had to internalize sexuality differently, this sacred, delicate, vulnerable place.

And I don't know anything about you. You know, and I'm not, I'm not against casual sex in any [01:15:00] shape or form, like people should do what they're gonna do. But knowing what is, knowing what feels right, it's like I know how cords can get tied for me, and I know what I'm not willing to sign up for. You know, you said something interesting about you can sell a lot of things to nuclear families.

They need one of everything. I'm so glad you said this, because as this is exactly what I meant by money allowing us to break our financial need for each other, like our survival need, but not our sole survival need. So I was watching. My own TV by myself. Mm-hmm. And there was a commercial for some cable network, so you can always get the game like a football game.

Nicole: Mm-hmm.

Lea: And they show a neighbor walking to his neighbor's house, I guess they know each other. And I was like, oh, that's nice.

Nicole: Yeah.

Lea: Yeah. Um, need more of that. Why we need [01:16:00] more of that. That'd be so nice. Uh, he knocks and his neighbor is all decked out in like the, the makeup, the colors, the Sure. For his team.

'cause the game is on. And the one who came over is like, Hey, do you have the game? I can't get it on my, on my tv. And he is like, oh yeah, I have it on Dish or whatever was the network. He's like, yeah, come on in. He's like, but there's only one requirement. And then, then the neighbor is now covered in the makeup and the Yeah.

And they're sitting together. They're shouting together and they're high fiving. And the punchline of this commercial is the neighbor who came over saying, I gotta get this channel, and my heart broke. Yeah. I was like, this was supposed to be a win for community. Right. And this is what consumerist [01:17:00] capitalist capitalism has done.

It has empowered us and our entitlement to having one of everything of our own. And now we're not having that experience where they had a blast together. They got so many good flushes of chemicals of that oxytocin and bonding and serotonin and excitement. And their nervous system was in that play mode.

Nicole: Yeah.

Lea: And the whole point of it was like, that wouldn't happen again if the commercial was successful.

Nicole: Right. Yeah. You'd probably love the relationship anarchy book it, it ties a I'll pick it up. Oh, yeah. It ties a lot of this together. I mean, even if you just think about the concepts of property being like the beginning of the institution of marriage and the ownership and control in that way, like then you start to see that with our partners, and again, a marriage ceremony.

Beautiful. I love ceremonies of love. We also have to talk about where it came from, [01:18:00] right. And like,

Lea: right. Right. Mm-hmm. And yeah,

Nicole: that possession of this is my property, right? This is my person. Mm-hmm. This is, you know, and then you see that stretched out then through Yeah. Through all of capitalism supporting that.

And I don't know, I mean, it's, it's so complicated because I want to end rape culture.

Lea: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Nicole: And I do think part of that is through the liberation of our pleasure.

Lea: Yeah.

Nicole: And it really makes me extremely uncomfortable when I hear of. Again, nothing wrong with monogamy. The complexities though of it when one person, there's mismatched libidos, one person wants it more than the other, and the other person is saying, well, yeah, I'm willing to give you this.

Not a, I want to have sex with you. I want to, it's a well, if you're my husband and I'm obligated and I wanna make you feel loved, I guess I'll give my body Like that makes me nauseous. Yeah, that makes me [01:19:00] sick to hear that people are feeling like they're compelled, obligated to give their body. I want people to say, I want to do this for my husband and make him feel loved, and so I'm going to do this.

Not that I feel obligated. These are very different paths and one is really close to rape culture and when I look at the absolutely history of. Marital rape being legal in all 50 states until 1998. Oh, wow. It has not been 30 years that America is healing from the ripples of that bullshit. Wow. And so when I think about, yeah, someone in a long-term partnership feeling that I say that is a part of.

That. Mm-hmm. And then when you hold the complexities of, again, like you were saying, we're all different people having different experiences, what turns me on is not always going to align with my one monogamous partner, right? Mm-hmm. Now we can make choices. We have to make choices in our lives of, again, whether you wanna have the kids or [01:20:00] the non-monogamy or not, again, and you're gonna have different complications with that.

So maybe that means not ever getting to engage in that fantasy and that feels okay. But what makes me feel very uncomfortable is when I hear some of my monogamous friends say, oh, my partner, um, doesn't wanna do anal, but I'm gonna get 'em there. And I say, what the. Fuck. Oh, like, like this is somehow normalized because it's your one person that you're going to push them to get to a state where you get what you want because this is the only person you can do it with.

I am really uncomfortable with that.

Lea: Yeah, it's a sense, it's that going back to our eye consciousness and sense of entitlement, that the marriage was originally designed to give the man access to a source of sex and guarantee, obviously like guarantee, you know, his inheritance and parentage. But that was what it's designed And look that part in [01:21:00] me, you asked before like how do we accept that there are certain parts of us in us.

It's actually what I love about IFS so much is like I. That part is in me where I'd love to control the sexuality of someone that has blown me open so deeply, and it feels absolutely soul crushing if he shares that experience with someone else. And I don't know what that's like, you know? Um, but I can also deeply resonate with the sense of the entitlement between spouses.

And I am a proponent of dismantling sexual starvation in long term monogamous relationships. I'm actually planning a post for Instagram. That's like, if you actually want to have the chance of your partner being monogamous with you long-term, you're gonna have to understand a few things that when you get married, it does not end your partner's sexuality.

And if your [01:22:00] libido declines, that doesn't make their libido decline. You are not the same person. So how do we find creative solutions? To disentitle ourselves and just begin to differentiate our needs. And that is a painful process Yeah. For people in long term. Totally.

Nicole: And then I get real upset when I hear women say, what's wrong with me?

That I don't wanna have sex with him. And I'm like, oh,

Lea: I know.

Nicole: Sure. We can slow down to talk about the orgasm gap. Mm-hmm. We can slow down to talk about the division of labor that is disproportionately often placed on females. Mm-hmm. We can talk about all of that. And we can also talk about the want for diversity.

The research that I see has shown that like when women's long-term desire crashes Yes. In long-term partnerships, it actually crashes much faster than men. So again, we can like get curious about the different [01:23:00] variables that cause that, like I named, I think non-monogamy is a piece of this though, because when we, the research shows that when women go back out into dating, it spikes up.

Yeah. What do we think that means? So I get real upset when women say, what's wrong with me? Right? That I don't want to have sex with my long-term, you know, partner or husband. And I say, nothing

Lea: right

Nicole: is wrong.

Lea: You're gonna love untrue. I'm already feeling it. That's where I learned, that's where actually learned that women's, uh, attraction to their husband's declines at two years instead of seven, which is like for the men, and that they actually cheat earlier at the same rate and earlier.

And I was like, damn. But you know, I, and I do think there's another piece too. I think there's an element of non-monogamy, but there's also I think, a stepping stone there to examine where I can resonate with, you know, having been called asexual in a prior relationship when I just like couldn't [01:24:00] get my desire online.

And I'm like, I wasn't always like that though. Right. And. The deeper question ended up being, was I into him anymore? Did he turn me on? And like sometimes I wonder like, were these women who are struggling this way, making it about themselves? If your husband turned into Henry Cavel, like was still his soul, his personality, but turned into he Henry Caval and studied tantra and slowed down, got off the sex escalator and gave you four orgasms and attuned to your feelings, do you think you would not wanna have sex?

Yeah, no, you'd probably want to. So there's there non-monogamy. I think it is a factor, but I also just see broken intimacy. Totally. So, totally.

Nicole: Yeah. Yeah. 'cause I did see one study that [01:25:00] like, it was interesting. It had, um, relationship, uh, sexual satisfaction and it had swingers at the top. Yeah.

It went swingers, poly monogamous.

Lea: Oh, how interesting. Right.

Nicole: Yeah. So even the concept of like multiple people for a long term hits the same complexities of what does building long-term eroticism mean? Mm-hmm. When you hit that two year mark, when you hit that seven year mark, you hit the same things, whether it's one people or two, you know?

So. Exactly.

Lea: Yeah.

Nicole: So, so, right. What does it mean to maintain intimacy in those spaces?

Lea: Yeah,

Nicole: it,

Lea: I wrote in my post like, if this is what you want, you're going to have to consider certain things, your partner's sexuality. Is not going to die. If yours does, you may wanna take certain things off the table as cheating, like looking at other attractive people.

God, that has to be a bare minimum. Folks, an online or in person like Jesus, [01:26:00] find a little bit of security and acceptance. Like, okay, thank God. There's, there's a, there's a pulse. Okay. Yeah. Like, that's what I feel when they check someone out. I'm like, oh, thank God. They're, they're alive in there. Good job. Um, taking things off, like watching filmed intimacy that's nonviolent.

Um, that's more tantric. You know, there's sources out there. Maybe that's not cheating. Having a, a friendship allow, like allowing for more intimate friendships or people to actually emotionally support each other. Like, we can cordon off until the cows come home, but it's not ending anyone's sexuality.

It's not actually deactivating it, it's just making the pressure build until someone cheats. And now they have a character flaw that spans an entire species. And you're like, but how did that happen? Yeah.

Nicole: Esther Perel and Dan, Dan [01:27:00] Savage had quoted it in the 70% infidelity. Yes. And when I talked to Jessica Fern, she said 40.

And I'm like, okay, even if we meet someone in the middle really enough. Yeah. Well yeah. 'cause no one wants to report that, you know, like 50% of of relationships.

Lea: It's not 5%. It's not 5%.

Nicole: No. So either

Lea: this is a species wide flaw. That's an interesting frame to look at it, or a need or some way we're going about this isn't working right.

And I'm And it, and I'm by far not saying everyone be polyamorous, but I will say that when we accidentally fell into monogamous land, it felt more natural. It felt more freeing, and it felt more enlivening.

Nicole: Yeah.

Lea: It just wasn't nothing. It wasn't nothing.

Nicole: Yeah. And I think, you know, yeah, absolutely. And I.

Even just to pause and just think about the political power of the two of us women having this [01:28:00] conversation. Right. Again, I think about, you know, Margaret Sanger a hundred years ago, being thrown into jail for talking about contraception and the journey that that is for. You know, queer sex has always existed.

God, look back at the Greeks and what they were doing. Holy shit. They were having orgies. Yep. And massive. And of course, important piece of that is it was the aristocrats, the people had enough money Mm. To have that kind of pleasure and freedom. Mm-hmm. And hedonistic time. So let's talk about systems, right?

Mm-hmm. A hundred years ago you were arrested for talking about contraception. If I wanna have sex with a penis, we have to talk about contraception. And so now we're in a space where I can talk about contraception. I can say I'm gonna have sex for pleasure. Okay, and I'm gonna have sex for pleasure with multiple people.

For me personally, that is my agenda of how I personally have moved through the boredom and lack of libido and long-term relationship is having diversity in the [01:29:00] types of delicious desserts that I eat in my life, and that helps me cherish every single one. That is a radical narrative that women have not been able to say in.

Till today. And so when you and I are going through these narratives of feeling like we're cheating, it's because I don't have a TV show of this. It's because I don't have a movie. It's because I don't have an example. And so for us to sit here and even think about the complexities of all this one, it's, it's literally giving language to parts of these experience.

Like when you felt like you were cheating, I felt like I was cheating. That was like such a weird combo of strange feelings and emotions that I didn't even have words or language to when it was happening. And you're just like, whoa.

Lea: Danger. Wrong. Yeah, wrong, but why?

Nicole: But why? You know? Right,

Lea: right.

Nicole: And so for us to even like get this out there for people to like hear that, be able to consciously move through that when that happens for this is how.

The beginnings of people having, again, not everybody [01:30:00] being here, because that's absurd, right? Everybody is gonna follow down different cultural pathways, but to liberate the option of possibility, it's gonna be uncomfortable for us. These people that are trying to pioneer this new way. And when other people are talking about it and leading examples of what it means to go down this climb, that's how we create space to do it for other people.

That's how my future, you know, lineage will be passed down through, like right now, my niece, I don't have any kids, but like she, I hope up Will, will grow to be a badass feminist that will look back at me and be like, Nicole, you weren't doing anything. Let me tell you what I do Now

Lea: you think of That's crazy.

Nicole: Yeah, exactly. I'll be like, hell yeah girl. You take the torch, lead the feminist revolution. I'm gonna, I'm gonna go to bed though.

Lea: I I love that. And you know, I think if we do want [01:31:00] an internal emancipation, yes. Because I'm still working on internally emancipating myself. Again, back to untrue, she talks about the very real inheritance of all of the calculations a woman makes when she's offered sex by a man.

And it's very different than how what a man calculates. And um, you know, if we had a starting point for inner emancipation, it would be like, how do we begin to take things that people are just doing? You telling them not to do it, and you telling them not to cheat, and you telling them not to check out other people, they're doing it.

Can we just agree? So telling people not to cheat doesn't, hasn't seemed to slow their rate of non-monogamy. Relationships. I don't know that it has maybe for women it's discouraged it a bit, but it's pretty high, we're saying, right? Mm-hmm. It's still pretty high. So how do we take off [01:32:00] the character assassination of our partner and ourselves for certain non-physical, even non-interactive engagements with people outside of the marriage.

Like, okay, my husband just looked at another attractive woman. I can see that she's attractive. Originally I would say he's a bad partner and that's the character assassination. He's a bad partner, he's a bad person, and we take that out to start. Mm-hmm. Wow. My partner looks at someone else. 'cause they're attractive and they're not a bad person.

They're just wired to do that. Okay. Um, my partner. Has a person at work who he's friends with and they see each other every day. Okay. He's not a bad partner. [01:33:00] Do you see what I mean? It's about totally the divorce I want in relationship is divorcing character assassinations from the things that we do. And instead being like, oh, are we just wired this way?

Right. Oh, why did they do that? Yeah.

Nicole: Again, it reminds me of purity culture, like the hops and skips I had to get out of, and again, that is literally where I was at. I told you a jealousy when he went to like, go get any coffee. I was like, uh, who, what? And like, I was just almost like being overwhelmed, like to tears a little bit over here, thinking about my, my partners were like.

I, I, I wanna like stand here as to say that like I want my male partners to bring other females if they're straight to multiple rounds of orgasm, because they're a loving, good person. They are a loving, good person. And when they connect with other people, I want them to be able to play and express that [01:34:00] love and be able to give that sort of beautiful experience to somebody else.

Mm-hmm. And I know that that doesn't take away from the specialness of who I am and what we create. 'cause it's not comparable. There is no world. And so when I think about my male partners, I fucking hope that they're making other women come through multiple levels of cosmic joy because they're a good man.

Lea: Mm. Yes. That's beautiful. Yes.

Nicole: You know, that's why I was like, it was making me emotional. Just to think about that journey for me has been intense. Yes. But like that is love. That is love. Like I want my partners to love other people.

Lea: Uh, that's amazing. And I honor that so beautifully. And I also honor that is beyond the line that I've been able to reach.

And I also want people to feel like, you know, like, that is love for you and it's so beautiful. Yeah. And I always think of love in parts [01:35:00] where our self energy will express love in certain ways, and our parts will express love in certain ways. And I don't share that, especially when it comes to like the one person I've been attached to mm-hmm.

In eight years. But there are a million different factors. Why? But what I do know is that my self energy loves his self energy. At the end of the day, I want for his happiness. And I also just know that sometimes that can interact for people where like they can be like, if I don't feel that way, does that mean I don't love them?

Nicole: Mm.

Lea: And I want people, like, for my perspective, love is love, which is generally you just want someone to be in your life, meeting your needs a certain way and meet their needs a certain way. Like you want closeness, you want, um, to create happiness with them in some way. And it's a very complex and tangled and nuanced thing.

Mm-hmm. And it is [01:36:00] ex it is extraordinary that you've made that leap. I've met very few people that have gone traverse such a wide part of that spectrum. So I, I love knowing that's possible. Mm.

Nicole: Yeah. It reminds me of the Bell Hooks, who she had taken it from someone else too, like the concept of love being the s I'm gonna butcher this, but the, you know, this, this is the live conversation.

I don't get to research this on the spot. Um, the support of the spiritual development of another person.

Lea: Mm-hmm.

Nicole: Yeah. Yeah. I love that. Me too.

Lea: That's similar to what Alanda Baton who created the School of Life channel on YouTube and writes for, he has, he has some amazing talks on YouTube. There's one everyone should watch called Why You Will Marry the Wrong Person.

Yeah. Is hilarious. Um, I love his definition of relationship. He's like, definition of relationship is a container in which both of you are inspired to [01:37:00] become the best version of yourself. Mm. And I was like, yep. That, there it is. And I recognize. A container where I would be expected or hoped that I'm happy for a partner making multiple other women orgasm many times yeah.

May not create the conditions for me, my best self to emerge and be inspired. Mm-hmm. Totally. You know, so the container you choose. Does matter which container elicits your self energy. Right. Your potential, you know? Right.

Nicole: Again, I think about my sisters, the Mormon, like that is not, that is not the growth of spiritual development for her culture and Yeah, and, and so like honoring the different, like truly multicultural humility.

Honoring the different ways that people have narratives and not to say that one is better than the other. Right, right. And like, and how do we hold that diversity in, in what these different things mean to us? I think that's an important piece because we're not more [01:38:00] enlightened because we do the psychedelic.

You're not more enlightened because you've done the monogamy. You've might have learned a lot about yourself in that process. Right. But we don't look at other people and say, that's not the way of being. That's absurd. And so

Lea: Exactly.

Nicole: Holding that level of space, I think holding the level of change that can happen over a lifetime with work.

That's the thing is if I heard one client who was like, I'm waiting to do nom monogamy when it will be easy. And I was like, ha, that's like waiting to run the marathon when you're gonna feel in shape. I'm like, good. Yeah, exactly. Looking at the clock, do you have your, your cemetery plot chosen? Yeah. Yeah.

Totally. So, and again, I just kidding. If we look at the, um, the trajectory of it too, kind of like queerness, where you look, um, they look at generational. Data and, you know, younger generations are identifying as queer and rates that are astronomical compared to the past. Mm-hmm. And there's similar data with non-monogamy where it's like 40% of, um, the youngest generation is saying their ideal relationship is non-monogamous.

Right. So like 40% is pretty [01:39:00] hefty. So I I, I do think like even let's, let's go out to like, when I die, ideally a long life and like looking at what they're gonna be processing, it's gonna be a radically different culture again, even just the a hundred years of Margaret Sanger, I mean like,

Lea: yeah. Yes,

Nicole: it's true.

Oh, so I just, I hope people like don't get discouraged when things are hard. We don't get discouraged when we are dismantling other forms of oppression that are hard. And also, you don't have to have kids, you don't have to do non-monogamy. They are different climbs and not, you're not more enlightened.

You know, kid people, kids do the same thing. They're like, it's the best thing I've ever done. I can't imagine. You know? And it's like, I totally forget what it was like,

Lea: you know, wanna throw myself at a window at 3:00 AM after no sleep for three months.

Nicole: Yeah, right. It was the best thing when I was crying on my face about them having sex with other people, and I

Lea: put it back in.

Nicole: Totally,

Lea: totally.

Nicole: So easy to forget. [01:40:00] 

Lea: Well, one of the things you said just now that jumped out is, you know, these, this younger generation of where 40% are interested in some form of consensual non-monogamy. How interesting that, that lines up, at least with Jessica's projection of the 40% of cheating. Right.

Right. So it's like, what's the name that we're giving the behavior? You know? So maybe it's not a species wide flaw. Yeah. Maybe not.

Nicole: Yeah. I, I call it love. I call it love. So I'll be, I'll be here for that frame. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I wanna hold a little bit of space as we come towards the end of our time. I always take a deep breath.

Hmm.

And then just check in to see if there is anything else that you wanted to share with the listeners. Otherwise I can guide us towards our closing question.

Lea: Great. Uh, what I just wanna share is. Whichever way you are feeling, you're not alone. Yeah. [01:41:00] And the moment we want to project perfection on others and turn that around to mean something about us, I want you to know that there's one person right here that has face planted so spectacularly so many times.

Yep. That when you know there's one person out there, you're not alone.

Nicole: Yeah. Yeah. You can make that too.

Lea: Yep.

Nicole: Yeah. Well, if you feel good, I'll guide us towards our closing questions. Yeah, let's do it. Okay. So the one question that I ask everybody is, what is one thing that you wish other people knew was more normal?

Lea: Hmm. I wish people, I. I knew that feeling like you have a identity crisis or multiple personality disorder is actually quite normal [01:42:00] and it's just parts. And to move away from a paradigm of mono centrism that you are one thing and you should be one thing and you should feel one way and you should do it this way and everything else is wrong.

Rather see a split or a conflict inside, not as another character flaw, but simply an inquiry to begin an exploration. Mm-hmm. That's what I wish people knew were normal.

Nicole: Curiosity. Yeah, curiosity. That's the signal of self. Right. I'm curious 'cause I feel torn in two opposite directions. Yeah. Let's get curious before I panic.

Yes.

Lea: Yes. In in the cell, in the parts work that I do, you know, there's multiple qualities of self, but the one standout. Where I know that my client is in self prepared to engage [01:43:00] with their part as if they are curious to know more.

Nicole: Yeah. Yeah. You're not in the fight flight, freeze Vaughn. You are in the prefrontal cortex of curiosity and I'm unpacking.

Yeah, and I think the one thing I wanted to hit on too is the impact of community. We've talked about that in a lot of different ways with whether it's like how your partner's responding, the examples that we see in the narratives and lived experience of other lives. But man, your community impacts your parts.

I think we even think of, we know that, but I don't know if we. Fully comprehend how much so, because we'll easily look back and be like, yeah, my parents, this is how and this, but I'm like, your whole concept of self is impacted by all of the people that you are surrounding yourself with, right? And, and so holding that sort of context when we're thinking about our parts of, maybe I need more community that is supportive of this vision and these value systems.

Maybe I need to get away from some of these [01:44:00] others. And like really holding the influence of that I think is, is pretty life changing and, and, and immediately pulls us out of the individual, which. I'm so sick of, you know, like literally the field of psychology trying to recreate the concepts of hard science and Newtonian physics to like, man, we gotta rewrite this.

Now that we know quantum mechanics and how the systems impact us, it is wild for us to think about the individual psyche. I'm like, your, your, your individual psyche is a reflection of your situation, my friend.

Lea: No, I'm just a node in a network.

Nicole: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And we have the power to, to change to some degree.

I can't get off this planet, but I can kind of change who, you know what I mean though? Like, true. You know, like, like, like this is my consciousness based on here, you know, like

Lea: Yeah. But I can, there's a particle dimension to a degree that we have. We, we do live in some construct of physics

Nicole: and how that impacts me.

Like, like feeling the need to wear clothes everywhere. 'cause that's what, you know, lots of human nudist camps, you know, different world. Exactly. Right. Example, [01:45:00] different community. Um, so just thinking about how that shapes all of us. I think that will help people to get more critical about both what they feel is innate and also just their concept of self when God, when clients are so self-deprecating and all these things.

My immediate question is, who told you this, right? Mm-hmm. Who, who taught you society? A friend, a lover, a partner or a parent who told you that,

Lea: right?

Nicole: Ugh.

Lea: Exactly. Yeah. And you know what I'll leave with is a little tidbit.

Nicole: Yeah.

Lea: I discovered the four agreements. Mm. So good. Um, I'm forgetting my brain is offline, so I'm forgetting his name.

Yeah. Um, but when I really worked to try to examine and integrate, I don't implement them from a way of bypassing the very real trauma that is going to put me out of line with the four agreements. And those are agreements. Like watch what you say, um, you know. Don't take things personally that that's my favorite one.

[01:46:00] Yeah. And don't make assumptions. So, you know, like these, these often show up in our interpersonal communications. So what I'm working to do and it's not the easiest and the kind of environment I live in and who I'm there you go.

Nicole: And always do your best. Always do your best. That was the last one I was, I think, think have a Post-it note of them.

Yep.

Lea: And do your best to accept yourself when you don't do your best. Yes. I love that. And then be skeptical of everything you hear, but listen with an open heart. And for me that is actually the core of parts work is you are not believing the story that you're hearing, but you are engaging with love and an open heart of the story it originated in, which was real and the very real feelings.

And what I'm working to do is how much community can I cultivate that's close enough to these agreements. Hmm. Yeah. Beautiful. That will keep you on course

Nicole: Yes. Without bypassing your emotions. [01:47:00] Right. You can't feel the pleasure if you can't cry. That's right. In the mourning and the loss of it all. That's right.

Lea: Yeah. Kitty agrees

Nicole: it has been such a joy to connect with you and to just co-create this very radical conversation that I think is so expansive about pleasure and the liberation of our desires and, and really the future of relationships.

Lea: Yes. It is an uncertain but interesting future ahead for sure. But there's so many people breaking the chains of so many centuries now we're doing that.

It is an exciting time Absolutely. To be on that curve. Absolutely. Yeah. Mm-hmm. It's, it's truly a joy. And thank you. The work that you do is so powerful, especially for women. I love to see when women especially lead as voices in the world of non-monogamy, especially where I've certainly wavered on my role in all of that, [01:48:00] but I absolutely love to see women setting that stage and showing a path of safety and care and nourishment along with expansion and freedom.

Mm.

Nicole: Yeah, I deeply appreciate that we're all pulling different parts of the threads, right? And so my journey right now without kids is very different than yours. Mm-hmm. And so we speak to very different perspectives and both are, are so, so needed. So I'm really thankful to have been in this space with you.

Yeah,

Lea: same.

Nicole: Thank you so much for the opportunity. Of course. I'm thinking too about all of the people who have been listening and really wanna connect with you and more of your teachings. Where can they find you?

Lea: Sure. So my main website is leah dawn love.com, so L-E-A-D-A-W-N. LOVE. And on that website, that's the main place to learn more about me as an attachment and parts work coach.

Uh, I deal with empowerment issues, victimization, um, polarity [01:49:00] and infidelity, you know, really anything that affects like trust, empowerment, attachment. Um, so you're welcome to check me out there. I have a blog with some resources. I'm also. Ramping up my efforts on Instagram. So leah.dawn.love on Instagram and for now, yeah, that's where we can connect.

Nicole: Great. I'll have all of that in the show notes below so that listeners can just find your stuff and connect with you right away. So great. Thank you for coming on the show today. Thank you. Been such a pleasure. If you enjoy today's episode, then leave us a five star review wherever you listen to your podcast, and head on over to modern anarchy podcast.com to get resources and learn more about all the things we talked about on today's episode.

I wanna thank you for tuning in and I will see you all next [01:50:00] week.