#58: Exploring Polyamory, with Leanna Wolfe

Love Is Us: Exploring Relationships and How We Connect

Are you curious about polyamory? If you want to see if it's right for you, or if you simply want to understand why others would want to explore a different relationship structure, this episode is for you.

Dr. Leanna Wolfe’s sex research was spirited by coming of age in the thick of the 1970s sexual revolution and feminist movement in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her curiosities and academic appetites led her engage in field research in Mexico, Africa, India and Papua New Guinea, earning an MA in Anthropology from the New School for Social Research and a PhD in Sexology from the Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality. From 1980 to 2018 she worked as a university professor teaching and researching topics ranging from orgasm, multiple partner sexualities and sexual assault. In 2016 she launched Wise Woman Sex and Relationship Consulting, providing counseling through her unique lens of Sexual Anthropology.

Learn more about Leanna:

Book: 177 Lovers and Counting: My Life as a Sex Researcher

25% Discount Code: RLFANDF25

Website: http://wisewomansexandrelationshipconsulting.com/

Learn more about Karin:

Website: https://drcalde.com

Instagram: @theloveandconnectioncoach

TRANSCRIPT

Intro:

Karin: This is Love Is Us, Exploring Relationships and How We Connect. I'm your host, Karin Calde. I'll talk with people about how we can strengthen our relationships, explore who we are in those relationships, and experience a greater sense of love and connection with those around us, including ourselves. I have a PhD in clinical Psychology, practiced as a psychologist resident, and after diving into my own healing work, I went back to school and became a coach, helping individuals and couples with their relationships and personal growth. If you want to experience more love in your life and contribute to healing the disconnect so prevalent in our world today, you're in the right place. Welcome to Love Is Us.

Episode:

Karin: Hello, everybody. I am really excited about this episode. Today we are going to be talking about polyamory, and I've been wanting to find a guest to come on and talk about this subject for many reasons, but mostly because I've had quite a few clients bring this up to me or approach me as wanting to some coaching around this topic, and I've learned quite a bit about it over the years, starting when I was a therapist in private practice and a man saw me for a few sessions and he had an open relationship. And at the time I didn't know a lot about it, but I was fortunate that I had a supervisor during that time who did, and so I started learning about it, and yet I still wouldn't necessarily call myself an expert, and I wanted to have someone on to talk about this subject who really had some deep knowledge, and I was glad I waited for the right person. So my guest today is Dr. Leanna Wolf, and she is a sex and relationship specialist. And she started out as an anthropologist studying different kinds of relationship structures. And so she has a really good understanding of social, cultural, and family structures, and she understands sexuality, gender, marriage, partnering patterns, all of that kind of stuff. And she comes to it from a really non judgmental place. So she's got a lot to offer us on this episode. She also has a book, if you want to check it out, called the 177 Lovers and counting my life as a sex researcher, and I'm super excited to check it out. She also is offering listeners of this podcast a 25% discount. So if you want to get that discount code, you can go to the show notes and get that. Also, I just want to say that this episode is really great for people who are curious and might want to explore polyamory. It's also great for people who just want to understand it a little bit better and maybe think that it sounds a little scary or weird or whatever it is, we really cover a lot of terrain in this episode, so I hope you like it, I hope you'll share it, and thanks for being here.

Karin: Welcome, Leanna.

[03:10] Leanna: Thank you.

[03:11] Karin: It's great to have you here. So tell us where you are in the world.

[03:14] Leanna: I'm in Van Nuys, which is part of Los Angeles, and I'm in a private home that I've had for a number of years, and underfoot are a couple of dogs and a number of cats. Nice. I love it. Great.

[03:34] Karin: Well, what brought you to that area?

[03:36] Leanna: Well, I been teaching anthropology at one of the local community colleges, and I needed to find my own home, and this house was for sale, and it was close to the school, and I thought, hey, that'll work. And I continued to teach and have students come by here for events for quite a few years, and then eventually I'd had enough of teaching, and I kept the house because it was a great place to have my animals. And I've been involved with studying and looking at and experiencing polyamory for a long time. But I must say, somebody once pointed this out to me, and it's quite true, is that I'm probably more poly with animals than with people.

[04:35] Karin: I love it.

[04:37] Leanna: I have my dog, and then I have a tenant who brought in a dog, and so we have senior dog care here, daycare for senior dogs. And then I adopted two cats a couple of years ago, and I tried to keep them outside, but they would have nothing of it. And after about a year, I just opened up all the doors, and then two of the semi feral cats who had been living in my yard started coming inside regularly, so now they sleep inside, along with my slightly more domesticated cats. And I have two additional tenants. So it's three humans and four cats and two dogs.

[05:27] Karin: So there's never a dull moment, it sounds.

[05:30] Leanna: Oh, no, there's always animals to analyze and people's projects to discuss. Everybody here is involved in some kind of arts and creativity, and so it's been a good place.

[05:46] Karin: Nice. Well, tell us what you do for work.

[05:50] Leanna: At present, I'm super busy promoting my new book, which came out quite recently. It's called 177 Lovers and Counting. My life as a sex researcher. And this came out of teaching anthropology, where I was teaching a course called gender, sex, and culture. And one of the class assignments was to do one sex history. And I realized in teaching it and in looking over my students histories, that I really should do my history too. And as I started doing it, I faced that so much of my life had been that of a sex researcher, where I wanted to find out everything. Whether I was going to incorporate it into my own personal life or practices was irrelevant to finding out about it. So that's what I ended up with in my history, was a huge amount of observation, a huge amount of research, and some of the observation was participant observation, where I personally had to experience it in my body or interact with folks that were part of a particular lifestyle that interested me. Yeah, the book has taken up a lot of time, both in thinking through it, writing it, designing it, getting it published by Roman and Littlefield, and now promoting it. And one of my methods of promotion, which has been so fun, has been doing a solo show. So I took some of the funniest and most poignant parts of the book and made it into an hour long show. And I've been performing it at theater festivals and at professional conferences and anywhere where they'll have me perform. So that's been just great. As for making money, we hear that the book is selling pretty well, and I certainly sell a bit of copies of the book after performances. And then I have a practice. It's basically a sex and relationship consulting and counseling practice where I work with individuals who are trying to make sense of such things as identity, sexuality, and partnering patterns, especially things like polyamory. And so, as it is, I did a doctoral dissertation on polyamory and jealousy back in 2003, and I have taken all that research and made a living off of it in helping other people make sense of the very invented and intriguing and ethically honest culture of polyamory.

[09:19] Karin: So many people don't know a lot about polyamory, but I think there's also a fascination with it. How did you decide to learn about polyamory? I mean, was that the goal, or did you start out in anthropology and then you ended up getting more interested in learning?

[09:36] Leanna: It's a complicated story, and I'd love to tell you all about it. Back in my early mid twenty s, I was living in New York, and I ran into a woman in my neighborhood who told me that she was living with two guys, and this must have been like the late seventy s. And I just thought that was so weird that I had to find out more, out more about it. And at some point after that, I was in a relationship that was open because we just did not want to control each other. And moreover, I'd had a previous lover who I wanted to keep seeing, though I was never going to be living with him. And so I was part of an ad hoc polyamory lifestyle before it really had that name. And then as for how I got involved in what's called polyamory today is, I guess, in the early ninety s, was when polyamory got a name. And I got involved with some of the folks who were part of the early movement to educate and generate theory and practice around polyamory, including Deborah Annapole and Ryan Nearing. And I published some articles in their magazines and spoke at their conferences. They had a conference called loving more, and I would offer research there and then. It was in the late ninety s. My partner, unbeknownst to me, got involved with someone else, and he believed that I was involved with somebody, even though I wasn't. But he really wanted to have this woman in his life, and thus in my life, because he didn't want to end our partnership and at a loss for how to share him with another woman, I went to Africa, where there was a long standing tradition of polygamy, or largely their polygony, one husband and multiple wives. And so everybody I met in Africa, whether they were taking me on a safari drive or letting me stay in their house or whatever it was, I asked them, how am I supposed to share my partner with this other woman? And so I came with such a need for help that they felt that kind of like we were on equal grounds. I was needing their help, and they tried to offer it to me. But they would also say, you know, you have divorce in your country. You don't have to put up with this. You have an education. You could earn a living. You don't need your husband's money. You're not in the same situation that we're in.

[13:08] Karin: So their reasons for it are different.

[13:11] Leanna: Yeah. And then around that same time, President Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky was getting major attention worldwide. And these folks were giving me their opinions and they were saying things. Know, the president only has one daughter, and maybe his wife Hillary doesn't have the capacity to get pregnant. Know, this girl Monica looks young and fertile. She should be able to have a son for the president. This man has no sons. All he has is one daughter who's going to carry on his legacy. So these were very practical and fascinating observations that they shared with me. That to me, really exposed the weirdness of my culture, because for them, if a man added another wife, he continued to be with his wives that he already had. He wasn't leaving behind those women. He continued to support them. The children that he had with them continued to live with him. And it made divorce here in the western world seem so horribly messy and dark for children as well as for wives that continued to need assistance. And so that layer too was just utterly useful and of course, fascinating for me as product of western culture. So I took all that research and wrote an essay called adding a co wife, and I compared what was going on in Africa to what was going on in my life. And that essay got published in many anthropology and polyamory journals. And I presented the findings at quite a few conferences. And some of that set of thinking and writing and such is part of one of my chapters in my book, because that was certainly part of my sex research.

[15:32] Karin: And then, of course, polyamory in north american culture and european culture is different than.

[15:40] Leanna: What did you say? Polygamy? Is that what you call one husband and many wives, or polyandry with one wife and multiple husbands? Yeah. So here in the western world, it's very different because it's not resource based the way it is in Africa and New guinea, where also did some research and contexts like that, where the wealthier men are considered more desirable husbands because they can fund the education of their children and give them more opportunities. So women are happy to marry into a substantial man's household rather than to partner with a young man who doesn't own anything and have anything financially to offer. In the western world, it's very emotion based, and people get involved with somebody because they experience usually something that's referred to as NRE or new relationship energy, or what relationship psychologists might think of as the attraction phase of romantic love, where someone is so compelled about a new person that they must spend time with them. And so what polyamorouss often struggle with is how to sustain their home or ongoing relationships that are not so full of passion as they once were while enjoying the intense passion of someone new.

[17:27] Karin: So how would you define polyamory?

[17:30] Leanna: Well, this is really a fun question, because when I did research on polyamory, and I did quite a bit, as I may have mentioned, my doctoral dissertation was on polyamory and jealousy. And when we did surveys, everyone had a different definition because these were very self styled people who were each doing it in their unique way, and these ways were certainly co creations based on who their partners were. But generally, polyamory is consensual, non monogamy, meaning that folks are not trying to be emotionally or erotically monogamous with one person. They're open to having that be with more than one. And it can involve in terms of, let's say, one couple where they could be monopoly, where one person does not want to have outside lovers, but accepts that their partner does. More often, it's a situation where both partners, let's say, if they're couple based, are being poly and entertaining additional lovers. And so this is one style which involves a couple being the kind of what is often referred to as hierarchical polyamory. Because they're living together, they may be married, and they think of polyamory as an add on to what they have with each other. Now, there are other folks who are much more drawn to a more communal form of polyamory, often referred to as a polycule or practicing something called kitchen table polyamory, where a group of folks are all committed to each other and don't necessarily think of one person as being more important to them than any other person. And so their commitment is to the whole group or the whole polycule. There's also folks who are aligned with something that's called solo polyamory, where they don't have the goal of sharing a home or a home life with another person. So at that level, their primary relationship is with each other, with themselves, rather. And nonetheless, they're different than being single and dating, in that people who are single and dating typically have the goal of finding one other person to be their partner and then become monogamous with them. But if you're solo, Polly, you have no such goal like that. You simply are in integrity with all the folks you're dating or partnered with.

[20:43] Karin: And so that seems like a really important word that you just used. There is integrity, and I see that is such an important part of this kind of relationship structure. Can you talk a little bit about that?

[20:57] Leanna: Yeah. Well, basically, what goes on with folks who are committed to integrity is being truthful as much as each other wants to be truthful. They may have a don't ask, don't tell an understanding, but nonetheless, they are not keeping secrets from each other about their dreams, activities, et cetera. They are living in honesty and transparency as best as each of them or all of them want to do.

[21:37] Karin: Yeah. And so that brings up for me something that you also mentioned that you looked at for your dissertation, and that is jealousy. And I'm sure there are a lot of people who are listening now going, oh, my gosh, I could never do that. I would just feel so jealous. So what can you tell us about that?

[21:54] Leanna: Right. Well, basically, what I came to see is that polyamory is an invented culture. All cultures, to some extent, of course, are invented, but polyamory is very specifically invented at the level of engaging a concept called conversion, where one has the goal of feeling positive about their partner getting love, attention, and sexual ecstasy from others. And that it's like akin to like, you're really happy if your kids graduate from high school and become valedictorians or get into exciting colleges, or you're happy if your friend gets cast as a leading role in a play or whatever it may be. So here you're happy that your partner has other partners that are bringing them pleasure. And so it sounds like this is a really hard thing for most people to swallow. When I've done research with people who are not signed on to polyamory, this thing is just untenable. It's nothing that they would ever want to do or hear about. But for people who embrace the integrity notion of polyamory, they get themselves to embrace conversion and to find value in this. Now, there's certainly folks who just love the thought of their partner being sexually exciting to other people. And this can take the form of swinging, where they could go to play parties together and watch their partner be engaged by others, or engage their partner along with someone else or several someone else's. And this could elevate their partner's desirability, since other people want them.

[23:59] Karin: So what it really sounds like is that polyamory isn't necessarily for everybody, and that that's okay.

[24:05] Leanna: Oh, absolutely. And at different times in people's lives, it may be more valuable than at other times. And it's really interesting how this value of it can change. Some of it is simply situational, where at sometimes one has more than one person that they want to be in partnership with, and sometimes it may have to do with whatever else they're focusing on. Let's say they're focusing on building a family. Maybe they just want to do that in a monogamous context and don't really want to have other people involved in raising their kids. Or maybe they do, and they think that a village would be useful in helping to raise their children. It could be also a time of life situation where many older folks are finding that there aren't very many men left who behave in ways that they find appropriate. So they're happy to share the remaining men with all the women who would like access to some amount of male companionship. One thing that's really unique about poly is the issue of disclosure, because what's a much more common practice amongst humans is cheating. And cheating has been around forever, and humans are not a monogamous species but with cheating, one doesn't hear about it, one doesn't see it, or not supposed to. And it's not supposed to disrupt the primary relationship or the family life of the couple. And it's just seen as something, typically for women, where they're getting some level of attention that they're often not getting from their home partners anymore. Or for men, more often than not, it's to engage in erotic activities that their home partner may not be interested in.

[26:20] Karin: And how would you differentiate polyamory from swinging?

[26:25] Leanna: Swinging is largely about recreational staff, and so folks retain a primary social economic partnership with their spouse, and that is never seen as up for grabs. They're not like hoping to find a third or fourth person to share their emotional, social, or financial lives. They simply engage in swinging for the pleasure of recreational sex. And the thing that can happen is swingers can become really good friends with each other and see each other on a regular basis, and ultimately become kind of, from the outside, appear polyamorous because they're with the same group for so many years, but nonetheless, their goal isn't to share finances or to live altogether.

[27:33] Karin: And so for those who are practicing polyamory, there's also a bit of a structural difference in how they, there could.

[27:40] Leanna: Be just depending on, because a number, at different times, polyamory has had different popular goals. One popular goal had been finding a unicorn, which was basically a bisexual woman who would join a couple and become a member of their family and live with them and do everything socially and sexually together.

[28:10] Karin: That's interesting. I'd never heard that term.

[28:12] Leanna: Oh, that's so funny.

[28:13] Karin: Okay. I mean, I'd heard unicorn in other contexts, but never in this one.

[28:17] Leanna: So that's interesting.

[28:19] Karin: So who typically initiates this? So let's say there's a heterosexual couple, and they decide to pursue polyamory. Is it often the woman or the man who says, brings this up?

[28:36] Leanna: This is an interesting thing, because a lot of what happens with people who are drawn to polyamory is they do a whole lot of processing, a whole lot of reading, whole lot of thinking about it, which is extremely different than people who cheat, who basically meet someone who is attractive to them, who maybe they meet them when they're at a professional conference, or on a vacation, or at a bar or wherever one meets someone who they want to kick it up with. And polyamory is not so playful or intention or spontaneous. In the research I did on people practicing polyamory, they did not have very many partners in a given year. Like when I asked how many partners did you have this year? And it was like two. Their home partner and someone else that they were trying to have a poly relationship with, where someone who's single and dating and meeting different people and trying them out might have quite a few more partners in a given year, and someone who is up for cheating might have quite a few more partners. And certainly swingers who enjoy play parties and whatever orgy ish activities happen, there may have quite a few more partners. So the poly folks are really much more into processing and trying to make it right and to be ethical and all the rest of it. So where do they meet each other? There's some poly dating sites. There's poly meetups. There's poly conferences, though. So often these places, like the conferences and the meetups, they're often told, this is a safe place and don't try to take hit on people here, because they're just here to learn and share. So the thing is that that's kind of traditionally how polyamory in the last 2030 years has been practiced. But one thing that's happening right now is polyamory has actually hit the mainstream media in a big know. We've seen cover stories in New York magazine. We've had the Atlantic write big feature articles on it. The Wall Street Journal and the New York Times have discussed it extensively to the point where many folks just think it's a relationship option and they could just go out and start doing it. And that's why I have such a big counseling practice, because quite a few people will just think they can just go out and do it, and they don't really have the community that folks have had with their meetups and their conferences and all the rest of it. So this is something that's been a pretty unique thing.

[32:21] Karin: Yeah, I remember hearing people say, oh, well, polyamory is something that guys usually want to do because they want to have more sex, but that's not it at all.

[32:33] Leanna: No, that would be cheating.

[32:38] Karin: But it's not even necessarily guy the man who initiates it. Oftentimes it's the woman who initiates it.

[32:46] Leanna: Right? Well, sure, that could be true, or it could be a conversation. And oftentimes what initiates it is someone through business or pleasure, meeting an attractive other person and wanting to get to know that person and wanting to do it in an ethical way, because that option exists through polyamory. Traditionally, polyamory was not a known or practiced activity. So people who wanted to engage someone that they met would basically cheat or perhaps engage in swinging if their partner was up for recreational sex as well. So suddenly we have all these folks who are trying to be ethical about what other times would have simply been managed through cheating. And it's taken forms like calling their relationship a don't ask, don't tell agreement, or claiming that they're monogamish, where they're basically committed to, I guess what we would call hierarchical polyamory, where they're maintaining their primary relationship, but allowing incidental, erotic and friendship, and potentially emotionally valuable relationships as well.

[34:22] Karin: Okay, so if someone decides that they really want to look into this, they've done some research, and they want to have a conversation with their partner about initiating polyamory or inviting that into their relationship, what are some recommendations that you would have for them?

[34:40] Leanna: Well, basically to realize that whatever they think they want in terms of rules, is likely to change along the way. And people will come up with all kinds of rules that I at some point, started calling poly armory because basically their desire was to keep things safe and to make sure that they maintained health and the integrity of their home relationship, and they didn't just sacrifice things that they had spent all this time building up. So the kinds of things that people might negotiate around or agree to in terms of rules and boundaries and such, are certainly to let each other know where they are. So if they're not going to be coming home, to let them know that they're not coming home. And some people have all kinds of additional things where they would let the person know exactly where they are in terms of gps apps and such. There could be an agreement around that they must use condoms with people that are not their primary partner or not part of their primary partnership, if it's several people, in that it could involve no sleepovers, it could involve not going out in public in their shared community. There could be all kinds of things having to do with safety, security, reputation. And then eventually 1 may decide that some of these rules are not necessary because they feel that there's enough trust and the relationship isn't endured, and they may loosen up about these things.

[36:55] Karin: So it sounds like, at least in the beginning, it's good to have a bunch of rules and some structure to it to make sure that there are no misunderstandings or like that they're approaching.

[37:09] Leanna: It from being a committed couple who's opening up to polyamory.

[37:14] Karin: Yes.

[37:15] Leanna: And I someone who presents as solo Polly, then that's completely different, because they don't have anybody to report to. It's just up to them how they present themselves to others, they still may certainly want to have agreements around or practices regarding safe sex, clear emotional communication, everything else to assure that everybody is comfortable and as much as possible on the same page about it.

[38:00] Karin: And are there situations or reasons that some people have for wanting to pursue polyamory where you would say, nah, might not be a good idea, or it's not likely to really work very well?

[38:16] Leanna: It really depends on the folks and the level of communication that they think is the right amount. So some people just don't like to process very much. They want to be impulsive. And so their style of polyamory would be quite different from folks who really need to clear things with everyone. There's just a huge amount of variance. And as for when it's a good idea and when it's not a good idea, that, again, is very situational. Like, let's say a couple is trying to get pregnant. They should not be having sex with other people if they want to make sure that they're the ones who are creating the new baby, because that would be like opening it up to the possibility that the new baby might not be from the guy unless they're okay with that. But certainly that's one thing. It also just depends on how busy they are. Like, if people who are really busy with maybe multiple employment and running a household and raising kids may not have a lot of time to pursue extracurricular interests, where people who are much less busy in this regard, this may be a good activity for them to fill up their time and gift and have various people to enjoy in as deep a way as they might. Another factor is money, because depending on what people agree to, dating isn't necessarily cheap. So, like, if a guy is wanting to date multiple women, and he has a home relationship and a family.

[40:25] Karin: How.

[40:26] Leanna: Much can he afford to spend on additional women? And is it okay with his wife, let's say that he spends some of her money on these additional women. Yeah.

[40:41] Karin: I'm also thinking about the situation where one member of a couple says they want to try this out, and the other one is reluctant, but agrees because they're afraid of losing that of their partner.

[40:55] Leanna: Yeah, that's definitely a thing. There's so many uncertainties in this because the person who's agreeing to it isn't necessarily interested in it. They just don't want to lose the primary relationship. And I've had clients come in with these kinds of dilemmas, and to some extent, sometimes they just believe in the idea or the concept of freedom, and they don't even have anyone to act it out with, but they just don't like the idea that they would be limited. And I've seen folks break up over different ideologies, not even actually having sex with anybody new, but just that they have the idea that they might want to, because it's really different if you decide that you want to be sexually and emotionally and financially exclusive, and you value that as part of a lifestyle, and that's very different than someone who doesn't, even if that person never acts on it, nonetheless, that's what they believe.

[42:23] Karin: Yeah. And I can imagine that the person who doesn't believe might be imagining them getting really jealous.

[42:31] Leanna: Yeah. They would just get jealous at the possibility that their partner is open to meeting someone else. And I think the bottom line is we don't own anybody. And the idea that if someone says, I am a free spirited being and I don't want anyone shackling me emotionally or sexually, so don't think that you can.

[43:03] Karin: Yeah. And yet there are those. I think this is just really scary.

[43:09] Leanna: Oh, it is. It's hugely scary. Because what can happen is that one's partner could get involved with somebody who feels very compelling because they're new, they're different. Maybe they have a chemistry with them that's quite potent, and they feel left out in the cold. And no matter how much their partner may profess that they still love them, they don't feel it. They don't feel that they're really at the same status as they used to be.

[43:47] Karin: Yeah. And we could go down that road. But I want to make sure to ask, what are some pitfalls to avoid for those who are considering this? I'm specifically thinking about couples who are already in a long term relationship who decide to give this a try.

[44:04] Leanna: Well, one of the things to really think about is to make sure if you have kids at home, that someone is always home with the kids and that you both don't have date nights on the same night.

[44:16] Karin: Take some coordination.

[44:17] Leanna: Yeah. And the same time is, ideally for people without kids. They might want to have their date nights on the same night so that nobody has felt abandoned because each of them has someone to be with. There's certainly safety issues in terms of who else everybody else is sleeping with. And both if someone's new partner has a jealous husband or wife, that could be very unsafe. And then certainly STD issues and Covid issues are all important to consider. So obviously, if you want to do polyamory, you have to really want to do it because there's a lot on the line in terms of just health, communication, physical safety, in integrity of the home life, all of that. The same time, there's a big dream of not living so isolated. Because traditionally humans lived in bands and tribes where we lived in company with many others. And the idea of this isolated nuclear family, where each person has this whole professional life or work life outside of the house, and it's a very lonely living context. And the idea of living with others whom one is emotionally and sexually invested in could be very pleasurable.

[46:14] Karin: And it seems like those who do this well are really good communicators. Really need to be very clear and open the whole way through.

[46:25] Leanna: Yeah, and humans aren't necessarily trained to be really good at this or necessarily trained to be very good at sex. It's really interesting because there's these traditional cultures that we anthropologists study, where slightly older folks initiate the adolescence into showing them how their bodies work erotically, at least in terms of the discoveries of that culture. And there's cultures where a young man is chastised for not being able to bring his girlfriend to orgasm because he's been trained how to do this. And the girlfriend will report to the community that he didn't do it right. Pressure so private about all of this. And we don't have any particular mode, at least in mainstream culture, of training people about what their erotic potential might be. And as for processing difficult feelings, again, we may go to psychotherapists to try to do this, but many folks aren't necessarily skilled in talking through difficult things. It may be easier for them to talk behind someone's back than to their face.

[47:52] Karin: Well, if there is one thing you'd really like people to walk away with after listening to this conversation, what would it be?

[47:59] Leanna: That life's an adventure and one shouldn't limit themselves to one lifestyle or sexuality. And that our lives have the potential of being very rich in terms of who we're open to meeting, that adventures, we're open to engaging. And just because something looks scary or sounds uncertain, or you've heard from other people that it's a bunch of trouble, it doesn't mean you shouldn't give it a try.

[48:43] Karin: And what role does love play in the work that you do?

[48:47] Leanna: Love is hugely important, both to me and to humans. When you're in the thick of at least the attraction phase of romantic love, when your brain is producing high levels of dopamine and noraepinephrine, you are just ecstatic. And it becomes like what life is for is to access these states and I know sometimes we access these states through religion or through other intense physical activity. But ecstatic states are hugely important to punctuating our lives with pleasure. And certainly that releases the feeling of love, and that's one kind of love. But truly, there's so many kinds of love. There's love of friends, there's deep love of a partner, there's love for one's children, there's love for parents. We are a bonding species, and in our bonding, we generate love.

[50:03] Karin: Wonderful. And how can people learn more about you and your book?

[50:10] Leanna: Oh, well, you could go to my website. I have a website called wisewomansexandrelationshipconsulting.com, because at some point along the way, I was no longer a young woman, so I had to be a wise woman. So that has all kinds of information about things I've written and about how to get in touch with me if one wants to book sessions. And there's a link to my book on the front of the website as well. And if you just want to chase down the book, the book is all over the Internet. It's called, again, 177 lovers and counting. My life as a sex researcher, and I'm sure you want to know how I got to 177. And actually, it was kind of a funny situation, because I had stopped teaching, and I had joined a daytime writing group, and the folks in the group were a bit older than I was and had not grown up the way I'd grown up. I grew up or came of age in the thick of the sexual revolution in Berkeley. And my first relationship was immediately in an open relationship. And so it went. And the folks in the group had lived very different lives. They maybe had married their high school sweetheart, or they were in an arranged marriage. And so I could tell they really wanted a number. And so I just made up that number for them because I like the sound of it. And it was probably fairly accurate, because the truth is, if you've been single and trying out different folks, if you've done a bit of swinging, if you've had open relationships eventually and you've been around for a while, you're going to rack up some numbers if you're playful and fun and reasonably engaging. And so that's what happened to me. And unfortunately, the group leader thought I was being provocative and basically not being a good member of the group. And she, soon after that, asked me to leave. So I had to find other community. But I loved that title, and so I stuck with it, and my publisher loved it, too. Yeah. So you just probably could google 177 lovers and my first name and track down the book. It's on Amazon. My publisher is Roman and Littlefield, but there's many, many vendors for the book.

[53:04] Karin: Well, leanna, thank you so much for.

[53:06] Leanna: Taking the time to talk with us today.

[53:08] Karin: This was a really fun conversation.

[53:10] Leanna: It was. Thank you so much.

OUTRO

[53:13] Karin: Thanks for joining us today on Love is us. If you liked the show, I would so appreciate it if you left me a review. If you have questions and would like to follow me on social media, you can find me on Instagram where I'm the love and connection coach. Special thanks to Tim Gorman for my music, Ali Shaw for my artwork, and Ross Burdick for tech and editing assistance. Again, I'm so glad you joined us today because the best way to bring more love into your life and into the world is to be love. The best way to be love is to love yourself and those around you. Let's learn and be inspired together.