111. The Expanding Polyamory Episode: Expanding Our Conception of What A Romantic Relationship Is
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In this solo episode, Isabel and Deondre' talk through our relationship shit. Both of us have been going through some pretty serious transitions, that have pushed us to expand our understandings of what a romantic relationship can and should encompass. We already both identify as polyamorous, which is a form of ethical non-monogamy in which you allow yourself to love and date multiple people romantically. But it gets tricky when you start getting into the actual nuts and bolts of designing a life in a way that runs so counter to the societal norm. For example, there is the notion of a "primary" partner (your main romantic partner) vs. a "secondary" or "tertiary" partner within polyamory. How do you navigate what primacy really means within your relationship?
It can definitely suck to relegate a romantic interest to the realm of "secondary" or "tertiary" so how can you also find non-hierarchical ways of categorizing your other partners while also recognizing that there are elements of life-building that are pretty zero-sum? For example, it's great when all of your partners live in the same city, but what if your primary partner wants to move, and wants you to move with them? We talk about the use of terms like "nesting partner" and "anchor" partner in place of hierarchical terms like primary or secondary and what they mean in context.
And even once you have decided to leave the conventional romantic assumptions behind, perhaps you still experience a desire to have the negative feelings that can arise from the difficulties of testing your limits validated, and you wonder whether that you are feeling is "normal" or "justified." And maybe it doesn't even make sense to ask those kinds of questions because at the end of the day, what is most comfortable to you is what matters, even if nobody else in the world would share those feelings with you.
Music is The Beauty of Maths by Meydän.
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