Ariane Andres

[00:10:00] Male: David goes to the dentist. Female: Yes. Male: Is this going to be forever? [crosstalk] Female: Is this real? Is this going to be forever? [crosstalk] Male: That's-- [laughs] Emily: Oh, God. Wait, [laughs] [crosstalk] What that about someone going their wisdom teeth taken out? Male: It wasn't his wisdom teeth. Female: No, no, it's a little boy. Male: But it was some kind of a dental surgery, I think. Emily: Oh god. Female: First yes, he was recovering, he was coming out of the anesthesia. Male: The anesthesia, yes. Female: Also, Emily what rock have you been living under that you don't know that constitute of the dentist? Emily: No, I did, I watched a bunch of videos like that one I was about to get my wisdom tooth taken out. Female: What's she say, you just like loaded up on day [crosstalk] after dentist videos. Emily: Yes. Well, those ones were funny and they made the thought of it not so scary. Female: Oh, that's nice. Male: That's good, that's good. Emily: Yes, for sure. Female: So, anyway-- Emily: It's about to pass. Female: Having in a word of something permanence but this won't be forever, as David's dentist says, but also that people come and go, relationships come and go, plans come and go. You may have really good plans laid out and they don't come through and maybe something better happens, maybe something worst happens. I think it's an awareness that just that that's part of the nature of life, that things are impermanent, that's wrapped up into being conscious for me as well. Male: Great. Okay. So, if we take that as sort of our working idea of what consciousness is-- Female: Which is probably good to have in many arenas of your life. Male: Right. Female: Not just your relationships. Male: Not just for relationships. Emily: Absolutely. Male: But so now, let's start with the opposite. What does a lack of consciousness look like when it comes to relationships, specifically monogamous relationships? Emily: Yes. Female: So, what is unconscious monogamy look like? Male: Yes. Emily: Exactly. It's this idea that if you come together and commit to being sexually exclusive it's because is how we were conditioned or motivated by the desire for security and does, you know, worry, or fear of aloneless or just blind infatuation. Any of the above that's kind of the idea of unconscious monogamy. Female: Yes. Emily: Just so it occurs because like, this is the way that things are, so we're being unconscious about it not being mindful of it. Male: Or fear like you are saying. Female: Yes. Emily: Exactly. Male: So afraid of being alone so I'm going to do this thing. Both Female: Yes. [crosstalk] Emily: Yes. Don't be with this person. Female: So, it's kind of comes down to the motivation for monogamy. And so in my head, I broke it down to a couple different iterations of unconscious monogamy, a couple different categories that I feel that I see often. Either modeled in our media, or modeled among our groups of friends, or among clients that I kind of broke it down to this rough four categories of unconscious monogamy that I see and often people have it all mix together, sometimes it's not for fun. Male: Sure. Emily: Yes. Male: [unintelligible 00:02:44] just want to be one of these. Female: Yes. Male: So, start us off with number-- part one, section one, category one. Female: Section one, paragraph a Male: Yes. Female: So, I called this jealous/possessive monogamy. This is when you're choosing monogamy for the purpose of protecting you from feelings of jealousy. I think we confront this a lot in the non-traditional relationship space because they get to the core of people who have a hard time adjusting the polyamory, anything non-monogamous is like, but monogamy I don't have to feel jealous. Which is not necessarily true. People definitely feel jealous even in monogamous relationships but this idea of like if I'm monogamous, if my partner's monogamous with me that I won't have to feel threatened, I won't have to have my insecurities triggered by them being with somebody else and so it's choosing monogamy for the purpose of protecting yourself from feelings of jealousy. This is closely related to the nuance of more possessive monogamy which is I want to be monogamous because I want to tie down or I want to take ownership of this person that I'm infatuated with, this person that I'm falling in love with, or this person that I think is a good catch-- Male: Right. Female: And as Queen B says, "You need to put a ring on it" [laughs] You know-- Male: Well, I do want to-- I did want to bring that up actually the, "If you like then you should put a ring on it" idea is like the implication behind all of that is if you didn't claim me, if you didn't take ownership over me by getting engaged or getting married, that, then you're liable to lose me because I don't have any commitment to you, right, I don't have any commitment to this relationship unless this external thing has happened that has nothing to do with our relationship necessarily but we've given it this meaning, right? Emily: Well, that's kind of the relationship escalator idea as well. Female: Yes. A lot of this is tied up into the relationship escalator stuff. Emily: And one of people in monogamy do, kind of, believe like, "Oh, if I'm in this monogamous relationship with someone for x amount of time then is just, you know, it's only the next possible stuff of being in a marriage with that person. Female: Right. Emily: You know, we're writing the relationship escalator to it eventual death declining. Male: [laughs] Well, in that, this actually kind of goes into the next category of unconscious monogamy which we've called coercive monogamy and that sounds really harsh, but basically what this is and I'll tie it back it in a second, is that coercive monogamy means you're monogamous because of pressure from somebody else. For example, if you're not monogamous with me I will leave you, or as a parent we will disown you if you're not monogamous with someone, or I'm not going to give as much inheritance if you don't have a family, like if you're not getting married and having a family, withdrawing my support for you emotionally also to things like that. This is tied to both that relationship escalator idea where I can't tell you how many times I've heard from people in a relationship will say things like, "Well, my partner and I have been together for x number of years, say 10 years, but he hasn't proposed to me yet but we're not moving toward getting married yet and I'm thinking I should get out of this relationship even though I'm happy and there's nothing wrong". But is this idea of this coercion, in this case, it's almost more societal. Female: Yes. Emily: Yes. Exactly. Male: But that could also end up being coercion from your partner. So, they'll go to their partner and say, "Hey, you know what, I need this next step in my life" because they are thinking that the relationship escalator is what makes the relationship worthwhile and saying, "I'm going to leave unless we get married". Right? "Not cause I hate you and not cause I'm doing this maliciously, I'm doing it cause I think that this is what I need to do to be socially acceptable, to be a worthwhile person to achieve my goals in life.- Female: Right. Male: I think I have to do this." And so, they end up coercing their partner, either into doing it or they're breaking up the relationship because of these external factors that can kind of trickle down as well. Female: And I think, I feel like we could do a whole episode on this because coercion rides along the same line as maintaining one's boundaries. I think we've talked about this before that there's a difference- [crosstalk] Emily: That's an interesting idea. Female: -between, like if you know I want to get married someday, I know that's very important to me and you realized my partner told me, she doesn't want o get married. Your boundary is, okay, then I need to leave this relationship in order to protect myself and protect what I value, I need to leave and find what is that I actually want. That is the ideal but often it manifest as coercion as in I'm going to use my boundary to threatened my partner or coerce my partner, I'm going to go with my partner and say, "Well, if you don't want to get married then I'm going to leave. So, if you want me to stick around then you better marry me" Male: Right. You better change your beliefs. Female: Yes. Emily: Exactly. If you come into a relationship thinking that you can change a person regardless of what their boundary or their belief system is then yes, that should be thought of as coercion. Male: Sure. Emily: They came with this, you know, pre-conceive notion of, "Hey, I'm not going to change my way for you. I don't want to get married and then, you go and say like, no I believe I can get this person to marry me, I'm different." Female: Right. Male: Right. And the thing that's tricky about this is often you can get people to change, at least for a while. Emily: Sure. Female: So, that kind of coercion. Male: At least for a while. Or it'll work but that's not actually going to make you happier. Female: Yes. Male: Right. That getting the goal of marriage or of monogamy or whatever isn't by itself going to make you happy. What's going to make you happy is just having a relationship that's happy. Emily: Absolutely. Female: Yes. [crosstalk] And what's our next one? Emily: So, default monogamy which we touched on before, but again this idea that it's just the way that it's done. Its tradition misses the only way that works like anything else's not going to be a real relationship or it doesn't mean as much. People kind of view monogamy as the way that it's been done for thousands of years and the way that it should be done and so that's what I have to do. Female: Yes. This one feels like the-- I feel like this is the perfect definition of unconscious monogamy because it's monogamy that is not practically or consciously chosen, it's just this is the way everybody does it and this is what's been expected of me from the moment that I was born and this is what I'm going to do. And, I think for all three of us that's very much the way that we were raised, was in this context of like monogamy's the default like- Male:m: That's just what you do. Female: -that's just what you do. Emily: Yes. Female: And I-- [crosstalk] Emily: Well, and-- Yes, no, sorry, just that it did a lot of people come into polyamory or a non-traditional relationship and say like, "I had no idea that this was- Female: Right. Emily: -even a thing because- Male: For sure. Emily: -yes, they literally