Getting interviewed can be fun

My notes from the Polyamorous Communication Summit

Welcome new readers! I’m really glad to see you.

The summit that happened Wednesday online was a good time! I don’t know when the videos will become available, but I’ll let you know as soon as I do. The whole thing seems to have been brought together pretty rapidly, and as such, I wasn’t sure what to expect. I’ve done some workshops and such in the past, but it’s never been hugely my forte. I really like working with individuals and small groups of people, or performing in front of audiences with an agreed-upon script or score. Talking to larger groups about the work that’s close to my heart and feeling the pressure to get them to engage with it (read: please like me!) is a lot harder for me.

I like rewriting my bio every time I need one. I think this is pretty good!

Still, Elizabeth Cunningham was a delight, and quite a wonderful interviewer; she made me feel comfortable (and yes, liked!), kept me coming back to the topic, and drew out pearls of wisdom (I hope) from what she heard. I think that as unscripted appearances before an audience go, I definitely prefer the interview format to the stand-there-and-perform-while-maybe-pointing-at-some-slides format.

That being said, I did have some notes before I went in. The funny part was, I don’t think I referred to them at all. The point, really, was to write them, and having written them, I basically had the main points I wanted to make in my head.

Here are those notes. I think the interview came out better than this, and I didn’t have the questions beforehand, so it had a flow and a spontaneous energy to it. Still, it was good for me to look at how my particular training and skills relate to the summit topic.

Since these are notes, they’re a little slapdash and chaotic, but I thought they might be fun for you to see. Plus, they get into some principles of Somatic Therapy that I might not have talked about here yet much—though I’ve taken a little time to go through the notes and link to pieces that relate, for the new folks. :)

---

Using Somatic Therapy and Embodiment to Improve Polyamorous Communication

In my work we have a principle: the body always tells the truth.

But so much of the time, we ignore our bodies’ messages. Why? 

• Because they’re inconvenient, or against what we’re told we’re supposed to do, how we’re supposed to be.

• We have responsibilities! We might wake up and the body’s truth may be “I need more sleep,” but we force ourselves to get up - there’s work to do, kids to feed, and so on

• We’re afraid of the alternative to the familiar. Let’s say you feel a little twinge of fear or doubt whenever someone you’re dating texts you. What is that? Oh never mind, I’m just being crazy. It’s rare that we take the time to follow these messages to their source

In polyamory, clear communication is so crucial. But a lot of things can get in the way of it, and many of them are emotional and therefore stem from the body.

EXERCISE [Ed. note: haha, no, we did no exercises]

Imagine you meet someone new, say at an event or the coffee shop or party - doesn’t matter. There’s a spark, but nothing has happened yet. You might like to ask them out, though. You have a nesting partner, and you have an agreement to talk to one another whenever there’s potential for a new partner.

What comes up for you?

Often people go to the mind first. 

• I’m going to tell my partner when I get home, because that’s our agreement

• I bet they’ll be excited for me, or, I hope they’re not jealous

• As long as I’m honest and clear, everything should be fine

• I am good at polyamory 😬

But what happens if you go deeper, to hear the voice of your emotions?

• I’m full of butterflies about this new person

• I’m scared my partner is going to be upset

• Actually I kind of get upset too when they meet new people

• I wish they would meet someone so I could meet people without worrying about my partner feeling left out

• I feel left out

• I wonder if they’ll leave me if I date too many other people

• Maybe they’re pretending to be okay for my sake

It can feel easier, safer, to ignore the little doubts and fears, or even the big ones - especially because in polyamory, we’re doing something really challenging, and liberating, and still very much outside the mainstream. 

Stuffing down the more primordial feelings we may have out of a desire to “be good at polyamory,” or to please our partner, or to not make waves, is very common. 

So is the other side: repressing fears of abandonment, dependency, vulnerability by insisting on “total freedom” within open relationships. 

But if you’re willing to open to the messages of your body, however messy, inconvenient, or even regressive they may seem, is the start of a path toward truly radical open communication.

Important:

The body always tells the truth does not mean:

• You should always behave based on what it says

• It is always *accurate* about what’s going on

It does mean:

• The body is telling you about its experience

• There is something you should attend to with compassion

• There might be something that merits further attention

This goes double or triple for people with trauma histories, because we have often learned to ignore what our bodies are telling us, or to dissociate from them because the experiences they’re having are unbearable, and they’ve developed ways of trying to protect us from things that happened a long time ago, and those defenses are often no longer accurate, even if they’re still true. 

The most popular example in polyamory circles:

If you feel jealousy come up, it’s important to pay attention to it. Not to use it to shut down further discussion, but to deepen communication between you and a partner. 

Sometimes in polyamory, the opposite happens to what happens in monogamy. In monogamy, jealousy comes up and that emotion is all the evidence needed that a partner is in the wrong, or doing something they “shouldn’t” do. In polyamory, sometimes jealousy comes up but we push it down, because it’s not “appropriate” in polyamory, or it’s inconvenient, or makes us feel insecure in ourselves, like “oh, why can’t I handle this?” Or “if I bring it up, they’re going to think I’m being manipulative or trying to control them.” 

But by paying attention and letting our bodily responses have their say, we have a starting point to go deeper. 

• I feel jealous.

• Okay, what am I afraid of?

• I don’t know. Maybe they’re prettier than me.

• Okay, what if they are?

• Then maybe my partner will love them more.

• What happens if that happens?

• Then they’ll leave me.

Notice how this becomes a lot like talking to a child, or a younger self. That’s okay. We hurt ourselves by neglecting the child self, which resides in the body. We don’t need to be ruled by that part of ourselves. But when we ignore it in favor of higher purposes, intellectual understandings, and practical considerations, we ignore the deepest source of wisdom we have.