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about open relationships, sex, and hate. {official Thing} (Patreon)

Published:
2020-12-15 21:46:51
Imported:
2023-04

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{public post}

hallo loves.

it's new podcast time! in general, "the art of asking everything" podcast has been going really wonderfully....gaining listenership every week, spreading by word of mouth, and getting outstanding reviews in the press and on social media. i have you all to thank for a lot of that, because i know it's been you who's been carrying it out into the world. so thank you. and definitely carry this episode out to the world, it's one of the more powerful ones. (i know i always say that, but really, this one's good).

*drum roll*

this week: sex expert (and personal hero) dan savage, in "SEX RULES US".

an ask, as i put this podcast out...which is to please use this comments section - and the forum - to offload questions, feelings, thoughts, reflections and meandering words about sex, especially sex-in-a-pandemic. 

i mean, it's weird. it's gotta be weird.

and i think there's probably a lot to share, especially in the open relationships dept...i'm always here for questions. i made a special thread for patrons to discuss stuff privately here on the shadowbox forum. 

......

on a more personal note:

greetings from aoteraoa new zealand.....it's been a strange week or two. i've mostly just been taking care of ash, and knowing that i'm lucky to be able to do so, especially in the venues that we get to inhabit: theaters, playgrounds, public pools, grocery stores where i stop and chat to the neighbors while ash and the other child manhandle one another next to the plums.

(if you want a barrage of ash photos, i suggest heading over to my instagram, where you don't need to have an account and i've been putting that sorta stuff constantly, including yesterday's adorable first lost tooth. i've been trying not to overburden you all with constant ash posts.)

everything feels very strange.

very strange.

for everybody i know.

........

i'm shutting things down....and i don't mean that in a bad way. opening up and shutting down - with more mature discernment - seems to be there theme of 2020 for me, personally...as reflected in the giant bleeding soul of society as a whole. 

when to open up? 

when to shut down?

well, ha. on theme. what does open and closed even mean?

people have been asking me about my tendency towards "open" relationships for as long as i've been doing it.

i've been in six or seven "big" relationships in my life, starting from when i was a teen, and every one of them explored the question of monogamy. many were open relationships at one point or another. it's something i've thought about deeply, explored in my songwriting, and chatted about with people infinitely as i've traveled the globe. 

the question i get asked most is: "but i don't get it. i just don't GET it. don't you get jealous? how does it work?"

and i say in the intro to this podcast, open relationships are really hard for many people to understand, espeically when monogamy is the template they can't help but default to, since it was the way they were raised.

i’ve now been in and out of open relationships for almost thirty years, and it still is a really hard thing for other people to wrap their heads around. 

if i had a dollar for every time someone just stared at me with spinning eyes over the last thirty years and said BUT THAT DOES NOT COMPUTE HOW CAN YOU BE AND DO THAT, or my other favorite, WAIT, WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOUR PARTNER CHEATED ON YOU I THOUGH YOU WERE IN AN OPEN RELATIONSHIP, i would be very rich.

enter one of my heroes, columnist, writer and advice-giver dan savage.

i've been a fan of dan's work for a long, long time; since college.

he has spent his LIFE explaining this sorta stuff to people....open relationships, queerness, sex, love, hardcore kink, you name it.

and he's gotten in a lot of kerfuffles, a lot of times. there are many times he's been called out, cancelled, un-cancelled, and on and on. we talk about that, too.

i wrote this for the podcast page on the website:

The Queen of Openness talks to King of Sex Advice, and we make a Truth-Sex baby! 

No, really, this one's good. When I made my first wishlist, Dan Savage was one of my fantasy podcast interviews. He's an author, LGBT community activist, and long-long-time writer of Savage Love, an internationally syndicated relationship and sex advice column. For decades, both Dan and I have been trying to navigate truth, love, hate, and how to navigate (and explain) open relationships - especially when you have children. Also: master-level compartmentalization, how to weed out toxic critics, ACTUAL weed....and the power of the mute button.

photos by ben kersten

photo by amelia zirin-brown

........

Here we go:

LISTEN TO THE PODCAST and SHARE it, please!...

audio for all of the podcast episodes are embedded on my website, including today's episode:

http://amandapalmer.net/podcast

OR....

go here, select the podcast venue of your choice (i.e. apple podcasts), and click on the most recent episode.

https://linktr.ee/AskingEverything

FREE! BECAUSE PATRONAGE!

VOILA!

.............

WAIT - HOW DO I LISTEN?

this handy linktree has a round-up of how to tune into the podcast on some of the most popular players. we will have the audio embedded on each episode post on my website: http://amandapalmer.net/podcast

........

the discussion continues on the shadowbox!

the book club /slash/ disucssion group around topics of this podcast continues over on a thread i made on the shadowbox that is patron-only, and this is a good time to take advantage of a conversation space that isn't public, isn't facebook, isn't instragram, and is mostly )(probably) away from the eyes of most of your social circle and family.

i really encourage you guys to head over there and find each other, share your stories, learn from one other. i know the forum technology is weird and unfamiliar to a lot of you...but get over it and leave facebook and talk about stuff on a nicer corner of the internet even it it means you have to learn a few new buttons and things.

here's what i posted:

"i’d especially love to hear from the other people in queer, open, polyamorous, or otherwise non-“standard” relationships…we can always learn from each other.

i have learned a lot but feel i still have much to learn, as always, and i learn a lot of it from you."

.......

more about my guest, DAN SAVAGE.....

Dan Savage is a writer, TV personality, and activist best known for his political and social commentary, as well as his sex advice column, Savage Love, syndicated in newspapers and on websites throughout the world. Since 2006, he has also hosted the “Savage Lovecast,” a weekly podcast version of the column. Savage is editorial director of The Stranger, Seattle’s weekly alternative newspaper, and author of several books, including Savage Love, The Kid, Skipping Towards Gomorrah, The Commitment, and American Savage. In 2010, he created the It Gets Better Project, which as of today has inspired more than 50,000 videos viewed over 50 million times to help combat LGBTQ+ teen suicides.

SHOW NOTES: The Art of Asking Everything, Season 1, Episode 12

Dan Savage: Sex Rules Us

Twitter:
@fakedansavage 

Instagram:
@dansavage 

Savage Love Podcast:
https://www.savagelovecast.com

Web:
https://www.thestranger.com/authors/259/dan-savage
https://humpfilmfest.com
....  

PODCAST CREDITS:

Thanks to guest Dan Savage, listen to the Savage Lovecast and check out all his writing at TheStranger.com

Our engineer was Ben Kersten at Clatter and Din Studios in Seattle.

For all the music you heard in this podcast go to the new and improved AmandaPalmer.net/podcast

Millions of thanks go to my incredible team:

Hayley Rosenblum who makes all things possible -- she is the ghost in the machine in our Patreon and also makes sure everything else gets done -- words, pics, live chats, and general internet love. I could not do this without her.

My assistant Michael McComiskey who makes sure all the trains run on time and that I am able to do all the things, all the time…

#MerchQueen Alex Knight who is helping us transcribe so these conversations are accessible to ALL!

Kelly Welles my social media guru. And mastermind.

And of course my manager Jordan Verzar who brings it all together.

And last but not least, this whole podcast would not be possible without my patrons. At current count, about 15,000 of them. They make it possible for this podcast to have no ads, no sponsors, no censorship, no bullshit, we are just the media, doing what we do. So special thanks are due to my high level patrons, Simon Oliver, Saint Alexander, Birdie Black, Ruth Ann Harnisch, Leela Cosgrove, and Robert W. Perkins, thank you guys so much for helping me make this.


.....

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:

we've attached a pdf of the transcript of the podcast the patreon post. to view it, you can download it by visiting this patreon post on the web

(it's a hyperlink at the very bottom of the post with a little paper clip attachment symbol next to it)

....

THANK YOU TO ALL YOU PATRONS, FOR SUPPORTING THIS PODCAST.

because of you, as usual:

No ads.

No sponsors.

No censorship.

We.

Are.

The.

Media.

x

a

------THE NEVER-ENDING AS ALWAYS---------

1. if you’re a patron, please click through to comment on this post. at the very least, if you’ve read it, indicate that by using the heart symbol. that's always nice for me to see, so i know who's reading.

2. see All the Things (over 100 of them) i've made so far on patreon:

http://amandapalmer.net/things

3. JOIN THE SHADOWBOX COMMUNITY FORUM, find your people, and discuss everything: https://forum.theshadowbox.net/

4. new to my music and TOTALLY OVERWHELMED? TAKE A WALK THROUGH AMANDALANDA….we made a basic list of my greatest hits n stuff (at least up until a few years ago, this desperately needs updating) on this lovely page: http://amandalanda.amandapalmer.net/

5. general AFP/patreon-related questions? ask away, someone will answer: patronhelp@amandapalmer.net

Files

Comments

Kathryn Drew

This was such a great conversation. Xx

Zoltanina

Wow, thank you so much! I loved this episode, I'm going to find the transcript to copy a bunch of quotes into my diary ;) I'm in an open relationship. One of the things we navigate right now is doing this long distance. For us both, the idea of the other finding a regular sex partner in their city is scary as fuck. Who's the primary partner, the one with the label you're seeing twice a month or the one you're spending your several evenings a week with? (But that hasn't happened yet, so we'll see when we get there.) Now comes my actual question and I hate how klichee it is: I am convinced that the one central thing about open relationships is communication and talking A LOT and often more than once and not only when shit hit the fan but continuously. Right now we reached a point where my partner is going "do we really need to pick apart EVERYTHING?" I notice him growing tense, evasive or irritated when I want to Talk About Things. If something specific happened that needs processing (or as bitter me would say, if it's him having feelings) he's fine with it. But he doesn't want to do the random "Where are we with each other"-talks anymore, that I find so important. So how do you keep the conversation alive? What do you do if you've overloaded someone? I'm pretty analytical and usually have a clear concept of my feelings and can voice them. He doesn't and I guess it's hard work for him to unravel things for me. Maybe the real question is: If a thing, whatever it is, threatens to become a read flag for someone, how do you relieve the tension and get back into conversation about it? My solution for everything is talking about it, but what if talking is the issue? Wow, sorry that was long. And as I look at it, it wasn’t really open relationship specific. I hope it’s of any use for you and/or interest to others, too.

Anonymous

Reading a facebook post you shared years ago was the first time I seriously got in touch with nonmonogamy. I think it makes sense. Only I pushed to open my relationship at the time for the wrong reasons. Later, we really horribly hurt each other because we took an abuser's advice very literally (More Than Two, Franklin Vaux). There was a lot of cheating and very little compassion, we both behaved toxically even though we are good people at heart. I got into another relationship which was abusive to begin with and pushed me into a monogamy I never wanted, but I became so scared of the consequences, I stopped standing up for what I wanted. And finally, when I got out of that one and wanted to be by myself for a few years and wasn't looking, I met this wonderful person... (cue the eyeroll) Now I feel like I'm no longer interested in other people. Maybe that's not athentic either, but nonmonogamy, even though I like the concept, has caused me so much pain and suffering of the soulcrushing kind, that it's no longer worth it to me. But always I'm grappleing with what is put in my head by society, by my urge to rebell against those things, and what I *really* want. It's complex (surprise).

Anonymous
>>49623738

I was in your exact situation (concerning the talking) and even though I felt like you do now, with hindsight I will say, there is such a thing as talking too much. It's very frsutrating when you're so able to voice your own emotions and you feel like your trying to teach reading to an unwilling analphabet. But I also found that I was so busy picking apart and laying out my feelings that I forgot to feel them. I became so good at telling myself and my partner what was happening for what reason that there was no room for listening, neither to him nor to myself. And whenever he would voice something I didn't agree with, I used my rhethorical advantage to twist his words until they suited me. I didn't mean to, mind you, but it happened and as a consequence, he didn't want to talk anymore. So, I don't know if this is helping at all, but some quiet introspection might be good. In this case it's even good to not live together and you literally have some space. Try not to think about him and what bothers you about his behaviour, try to listen to your feelings (excuse the hippy talk, and no, I don't really know how to do that either! :-D). Then see if you can find it in you to get his perspective (doesn't mean you have to agree with it). Phew, this was also very long. Big hug!

Zoltanina
>>49623738

Interesting perspective, thank you! I'm going to explore that and see how it fits me. Big hug back <3

Anonymous

Hi Amanda! I haven’t listened to your podcast yet, this was my first episode and I love it. I really like how you’ve integrated your music through it. I love the conversation, I’m nonmonogamous (for ~20 years!) and I felt so understood and represented here! It was really nice to hear familiar thoughts and feelings shared so openly. I have shared this episode with friends!! Thank you and have a great day ❤️

Jozias

Show us the whole shirt please...

Jozias

I liked the conversation. I was more on the tip of my seat than ever. So curious what came. But in fact my sex life is sort of over. Don't know about my love life. I missed some lines b/c it went so fast by times. Will read the transcript soon. A podcast, a book, an online meeting and a Sandbox discussion. Have to skip one soon. Might be next one. I'm on Tim's own podcasts still. Thank you, Amanda, for these awesome people you're sharing with us.

Anonymous

Just want to say that though I have not yet listened to this podcast, I am learning much just from all who commented here. This is something I have great interest in learning more about, even if it is only so I *know* about it. I am so grateful to be able to see/hear so much great stuff here, always: intelligent conversation, lovely music, supportive community...really has been helping me get through this end-of-one-hella-year so THANKS TO EVERYBODY!!! (Yes, that means all fellow Patrons who help make all of this possible; all the crew that helps to do so many wonderful things in the AFP universe so all this *is*; Ash~because he makes awesome photos that have brought me so much joy, of course; and Amanda, most of all, for taking this wonderful stuff that began as a kernel of an idea deep in your brain & turning it into a very valuable thing for me and so many others.)

Anonymous

Joined the Shadowbox for this discussion so my reply is cross-posted there. I’ve arguably been polyamorous my entire life, as I’ve always had complex feelings for multiple people at any given time. However, I tried to lived monogamously for 25 years carrying around a fuck ton of shame about how I was “emotionally infidelitous” as so many of the Psychology Today articles would call it. Thankfully the APA has a non-monogamy taskforce now, so the industry is changing for the better. Amanda, you’d hinted at your open relationship(s) years ago and so the very first comment I made on Patreon was actually asking you about it. I also wrote a snail mail letter about it that I sent to your PO Box, but I was only at that address for six months, so if you replied, I never got it. Either way, it helped me to type/write my feelings out to you at the time. That was about 6-7ish years ago? 5 years ago was when I finally had the talk with my husband (boyfriend at the time). I knew I was bisexual and I knew that after 8 years with him I was still uncomfortable with the idea of marriage, and I told him I needed couple’s therapy with an LGBTQ therapist, so we could work out what was going on. I’ll never forget during an individual session with her when I finally said the words, “I just can’t picture being monogamous with someone for the rest of my life.” I hated saying those words. I felt broken and like I’d somehow tricked myself into a committed long-term relationship. Thankfully the therapist was amazing, and non-judgmentally steered us toward the heart of the matter. That it might be time to say goodbye if we didn’t want the same kind of life together long term. My boyfriend said he’d rather try an alternative relationship style first to see what would happen. I won’t reiterate the shit ton of resources that are already out there to deconstruct how pervasive mononormativity is in our culture. Couple’s privilege, unicorn hunting, the media’s obsession with “throuples” (a word I’ve never known a polyamorous triad to ever self-identify with). It’s a fuckin’ rabbit hole that keeps going down down down down down. I never gravitated toward Dan Savage’s work because it was very sex-focused, and I didn’t need to have sex with a bunch of people. I just needed permission to feel what I felt without shame, and I needed permission to learn about how to explore that in the safest way possible. It was never about swinging and orgies for me, it was, there are complexities of emotion and attraction that I’ve never been allowed to speak out loud before, much less advocate for the exploration of. I wanted to deconstruct the concept of what’s “enough” in someone’s life, what it means to live my most fulfilled life. The first few years learning about EVERYTHING through books and relationship-focused podcasts like Multiamory felt like finally TALKING about all the things nobody talks about in relationships. Why wasn’t I allowed to talk about attraction, desire, and jealousy before? Why had it never occurred to me that my partner and I could improve our communication style in countless documented, researched ways? Why had we never said out loud before our deepest, darkest fears? Monogamy for me had felt limiting, because it provided me with a false sense of security that actually lessened opportunities for the kinds of emotional intimacy that opening up required of us. It’s been 5 years of polyamory now, and it is a success story. I consider polyamorous to be my romantic orientation, whereas my husband considers the relationship style more so a choice for him. We’ve both had relationships come and go. Constant growth and discovery. Yes, breakups suck, and abusive people exist in non-monogamous circles just like they exist in monogamous circles. If you stick around the lifestyle long enough though, you eventually learn to recognize all red flags and only surround yourself with the best people. It’s the kind of life I needed to be living, and was the only reason I’d been scared of marriage before. After we opened up I realized I am not a commitment phobe, I actually thrive in open commitments, so we got married on our 10 year anniversary. I currently have a boyfriend of 2 years and a girlfriend of a year and a half. My boyfriend, husband, and I have been discussing a lifelong familial commitment with each other including having kids, but we are taking it slow; it took me 10 years to marry my husband after all, so I’m happy to take my time. My girlfriend and I have discussed that we probably won’t be “officially” together forever; she very well may decide to be monogamous again at another point in life. That doesn’t invalidate how much we’ve learned and experienced in our relationship together. The fact that we can be that honest about the big bad possibility of a breakup actually makes it seem not so big and bad. It’s a part of life, and like most things - you choose what kind of attitude you look at it with. There’s so much more I could say but I’ll finish on one final note. For anyone thinking of opening up an existing relationship, my main advice is that if you go into it with the desire to protect your existing relationship at all costs, you are setting yourself up for failure. If you go into it wanting to explore your relationship values, you may discover they are out of line from your partner’s relationship values. If you both fully accept breaking up is a possibility and are willing to face that together, then go for it. If all that sounds terrifying to you and your person is your number one and you could never stand to lose them absolutely ever, then it’s going to be much harder for you. Not impossible, though. I’ve even seen incredibly successful mono/poly dynamics in the wild. Not all open relationships look the same, so let go of all assumptions and start learning about real people and how they do it, not the fake stuff on TV. You may discover you want something as simple as a sex worker for a threesome - or you may discover you want a radically different life, as I did. Keep your mind open, be willing to learn, be willing to apologize, be willing to grow, be willing to be honest, be willing to get help, be willing to be ridiculed and not accepted by most people you talk to about it. My girlfriend’s family accepts that she is attracted to women, but they do not accept that she chose a married woman to love, and they do not accept that we are all free to date other people. I am still working hard on myself to not take other people’s value expressions personally, and I am still working hard on patience. My family still doesn’t “get it” either, but they accept it much more after 5 years than they did when I first came out to them. Time is the only antidote, sometimes.

Anonymous
>>49623738

People process things differently - the chewing vs spewing phenomenon is just one of them. If it's stressing him out for you to process with him, maybe you have a friend, therapist, or even a journal you can process in first before you bring it to him? Obviously, if there's something that needs to be brought to him, do it. You deserve your partner to make emotional space for you, but your partner also deserves to not be overwhelmed. There's a balance. If the situation becomes a problem - ie: he never wants to process - then you might be better off as friends recognizing you have different communication needs. Best of luck to you.

Anonymous
>>49627345

There's no shame in choosing monogamy again if it's what's authentic for you right now. Multiamory's Conscious Monogamy episode might benefit you. Hearts and hugs.

Zoltanina

I've got another question and it's shorter but probably not easier: When is the right moment to tell a new person about a partner and about the open relationship thing?

Anonymous

Enjoyed listening to this yesterday while in the metro and about the Gorky Park in Moscow. Thank you for being so real and honest and authentic 💛

Gaba Kulka

What a joy this episode is! Thank you.

Anonymous
>>49772144

As soon as possible, the longer you don't disclose it the more trust you might lose from a partner.