You're listening to the Loving BDSM podcast. Kayla
Lords here with the one, the only,
give me a minute, lasted about ten minutes,
jump around. So Yeah.
Moving slow. I think we're all moving slow
today. Yeah. Florida heat done now.
The lack of sleep certainly doesn't. Nope.
The state of the world never did. So
Yep. Yep. But that's not what we're here
to talk about.
That debauch quick? Yeah. It usually does. This
week, we're answering a question from my kinkster
who previously tried nonmonogamy in their current relationship,
did not have a good result. And now
they they're thinking they might wanna try again.
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Okay. So question is Mhmm. My daddy and
I have been together for almost two years
now. We're twenty four seven and engaged. We
have both wanted to practice polyamory since the
beginning and tried to branch out early on.
It did not go well because I started
to feel insecure. Insecure. We have grown in
our relationship since then, and there has been
talk about possibly joining field.
It is something I'm excited for and want.
I'm just afraid that it will go like
last time. How do we know when we're
ready?
When you know, you know.
Also, you might never know for sure Right.
Positive, a %
guaranteed that you're ready. True. True.
You know,
it it's different for everybody
to say when, you know, you're ready.
And,
you know, you all tried it before
and didn't work so well.
It doesn't always.
I I know we
had some,
bumpy
times in the beginning Mhmm. Of ours and,
you know, what it really meant for us
that we had to do, we had to,
kinda step back,
reassess our our boundaries and and different things,
and and renegotiate.
Mhmm.
It's a sort of a constant
renegotiation
until you kind of find and settle into
what works, assuming that it legitimately works for
you Yeah. Because you go into it thinking
it will be this, and then you do
this, and something about it, you know, is
not working, whether it's feelings of insecurity or
something else.
And so then you just adjust. You renegotiate.
You go, what can you
live with that makes both,
you know, people
happy ish with what's happening? Right?
One of the things I would say though
is you talk about feelings of insecurity being
what hampered you the last time.
There's a very good chance, unless the past
bit of time has been specific to working
on your insecurities and even then, even if
that you have, there's a very good chance
all of that's gonna crop back up again.
Because
if you never
sort of faced or thought through or or
worked through those underlying feelings, they
might not just have gone away.
That was probably our
and I say our, it was my
biggest issue,
when we've
done non monogamy in ways that it was
not the two of us with somebody else.
It's when JB has a separate partner and
separate experiences,
you know, the thing I deal with and
what it bring
less so now, but what it always brought
up for me in some way was
insecurity.
The thing about my personal insecurity, and that
might not relate to you,
in the same way, but it's what I
know to be true for myself, was it
was never about what JB was doing or
who he was with.
The insecurity I felt brought up things that
I believed to be true about myself that
I had never
worked through, faced, dealt with, figured out, and
found a way to kinda get through and
overcome.
And
that was difficult, but I decided once I
figured out that is what was happening, he
was not doing something, that other person was
not doing something to make me feel the
way I felt. I felt that way and
would feel that way
in almost any similar situation. Right?
That's when I decided that had to be
my problem to handle. Not that I couldn't
talk to him about it. Not that I
couldn't come to him with, you know, how
I felt or ask for comfort or let
him know I was struggling,
but it needed to be my problem. So
what that meant
in real practice was if he was out,
you know, at a kink party with somebody
or at a dungeon or on a date
or whatever whatever and I started feeling away,
I had to sit with those feelings. What
I was not gonna do was interrupt his
time with his other partner. What I was
not gonna do was beg for his attention
and
sort of guilt force or otherwise
make him
as, you know, the person who loves me,
take his attention off of the person he's
with
to focus on me because I was struggling
with how I felt.
That was not easy to do.
The first couple of times
that I had decided that's that's what felt
right for me and I I needed to
just
get on with it, those were sleepless nights.
I cried myself
to sleep at night. Why? One, because it
hurt and those feeling those insecure feelings sucked.
Right?
Two, because JB is my my comfort person.
He is my safe person. When I don't
feel happy,
he unfortunately
gets to be the first person after myself
to know. You know?
But
it did not feel right to me
to interrupt his time
when this was not an emergency.
I was not in harm's way. There was
nothing he could do short of interrupting his
time and coming home to make me feel
better for those feelings to go away. I
needed to sit with them, work through them,
figure out where they came from, think about
how I felt. What ended up happening over
time I still deal with some feelings of
insecurity.
You know, I think some of that is
a bit of internalized misogyny.
What, you know, growing up,
and being socialized as a woman in in
The US has done to me, like there's
all kinds of places that comes from, but
none of it is about JB's actions or
the actions of a partner he might have.
Right? So that's my problem to deal with.
So what we figured out over time
was there were things he could do to
mitigate some of that for me,
and
I figured out that, yes, I can actually
make it through a night,
you know,
feeling sad and sorry for myself, and I
will survive that.
Some of the things that that we did,
that helped, you know, I did
not I did not know I would imagine
you did not want,
me to command a lot of attention while
you were with another partner. That time was
meant for that other partner because I get
him all the time. He lives with me.
That person might get him for
a weekend out of every two months or
a day out of a month. Like they
don't get a lot of time. That needs
to be their time. Right?
So we figured out that I needed to
get a text
when he arrived wherever he was going,
when he was on his way home. Mhmm.
And in the couple of instances where there
was, like, travel involved, just let me know
you made it to the travel place and
you're leaving from the travel place. My in
my mind, I and not everybody will feel
this way, but this is what worked for
me. I kinda needed to to be able
to place JB
geographically
somewhere in the universe.
And if I knew where he was and
kind of
what the semi plan might be,
I just I felt a little bit more
grounded. Now you might not need that. That
might not touch on your insecurities
at all or the the hard feelings of
getting through this. They're going out doing this
thing and I'm not.
The thing to do is to try to
figure out what you do need
in order not for your partner to make
you feel more secure.
If your insecurities
are coming from within you and your past
and things that have nothing to do
with your partner, right, if that's where the
insecurity comes from, then you just find little
little things that are touch points
that can give you a sense of that's
still my person and I kind of know
where they are and and I can I
can live through the discomfort
because
if for me it was like I know
where he exists in space and time right
now? Okay. I don't know what it was
about that information
that did it for me.
The other thing, some people would say the
opposite, but for me,
the thing that helped was
not getting too many details.
I might wanna know where you were going,
and I'm a I'm a nosy bitch. So
it's like, got any plans
that you feel like you you feel free
to share?
But I didn't ask a lot of details
because I knew me. I would start comparing
our experiences
to the experiences JB was having with somebody
else. And the one time I caught myself
doing it, I hurt my own feelings.
And it had nothing to do with the
actions
of the other people. This was about my
insecurities and my feelings of self worth and
my low self esteem. And I hurt my
own damn feelings. So I went, okay. That
is also a thing I won't do anymore.
So you did not ask how to deal
with the insecurity, but I share all of
that because there was no single point in
time I could point to and go, I'm
a % ready to try this. It was
that I was willing
because it was important to JB. I was
open to it. I had never experienced non
monogamy
prior to, you know, JB going, oh, this
is who I am. I would like to
do something about that. Right?
And
so to me, the answer is you may
never be a %
ready in the sense that you won't have
hard feelings, it won't be difficult, you know,
there won't be challenges.
The the reason I share all of that
and everything that I've kind of found that
works for me is because that's kind of
what you've got to do. You've got to
go, hey, I'm ready enough to give this
a try, but I'm also realistic enough this
could bring up
stuff
that that I haven't dealt with in my
own, you know, inner psyche
now. If the insecurity
is because there has been a lack of
trust,
less than
pristine honesty,
consent issues. If there are problems within the
relationship
and the person you're with, you do not
feel secure in your place as their partner,
then I would say, you gotta work on
that before you can try this. Right? Because
that's the thing. The thing was I never
didn't trust JB. I never thought for one
second he didn't love me. My insecurity did
come from, oh, he he's gonna like what
he does with that person better than he
he does with me, but I'm the one
he fucking married. So what
I'm the one he was willing to be
twenty four seven with. So that really was
my own inner fears talking. That was not
based on reality. So if you're,
one, expect to feel
some semblance of whatever you felt before,
and two, you're ready when you also
you won't know until you're in the middle
of it, but when you just also understand
that, oh, this is probably gonna bring up
some stuff for me, and I'm gonna have
to work through it, deal
deal with it, and figure out how to
navigate this. And it is entirely possible that
you will feel ready and the feelings it
brings up for you are not things you
can navigate easily or that you are willing
to
navigate while,
you know, being non monogamous,
that's that's valid. That's fine.
But there is no % ready.
Yeah.
For somebody who already knows that they have
had they've gone through hard feelings and it's
been uncomfortable before. Maybe for somebody who just
knows that's exactly
who they are and this is how they're
wired and, you know, this is not their
first time at this rodeo. Sure. That person
might be able to, like, go, yeah. In
this relationship, I'm a % ready. But when
you're sort of new to it, you've never
really done it,
you haven't yet had the experience of confronting
your own
inner mean voices
about certain things,
then, yeah, I don't know that there is
a %.
No. You there's just a % willingness
to go, I'm gonna be sitting with some
tough feelings sometimes. Okay.
Yeah. I mean, you know, you you sometimes
you gotta when when you have feelings like
that, whether it's insecurity, whether it's jealousy, sometimes
you need you just need to to sit
and look at where is this coming from?
Mhmm. What what is fueling this feeling? Mhmm.
And it is uncomfortable while you were sitting
with it. Mhmm. Because, you know, the vast
majority of people, we will do what we
can to make an uncomfortable feeling go away.
Yeah. And that's not necessarily
a bad thing.
But if you're gonna try to do the
same thing in your relationship, like non monogamy,
and you're gonna have the same feelings come
up again every time, if you do not
figure out how to sit with them, think
through them, and try to, like, figure out
Right. What kind of help you need or
what might help you, whether that's therapy or
it's something else,
you're never gonna move forward and you're kind
of either always gonna be miserable or always
be stuck and not able to go to
the second step of whatever it is you're
trying to do. Mhmm.
So yeah. Yeah. Because truly, you know, hopefully,
you know, with with the time in between
from when you first tried it to to
now,
you know, hopefully there were some learning lessons
Mhmm. In between there.
You know, if not, you know, you you
want to be careful, because
history could repeat itself, so to speak. So,
you know, you you you kinda wanna go
into it, you know, like I said, where
are these feelings coming from? Finding where they're
coming from, you know,
looking at them, you know, introspectively on yourself,
and even talking with them about you to
your partner. Absolutely. It was never that I
didn't talk to JB about how I was
feeling. It was that I did not interrupt
his time with another partner. Short of there
being an emergency
Right. I was not interrupting his time.
And I
one especially once I recognized that those feelings
were coming
from within me and they were not caused
by, you know, stuff happening to me, I
then I was a little bit careful about
how I brought it up up to JB.
I made sure I did not place blame.
Will you going out for this weekend made
me feel that no. No. No. No.
No. No. When you were out, I had
these feelings. These are some things that I
kind of went through.
The first time, and it's been years now
so I can't quite remember the first time,
the first time it was more
like, this was really hard and I'm still
happy for you and I'm willing to try.
I didn't have much to go on other
than I I survived this. Right? By the
second and third time, by the time he
would get home and and I could talk
to him about it,
I could say things like, here's how I
ended up feeling, but here are some things
that I thought about, and here's some discoveries
I made. And, you know, and if there
was something I could pinpoint that I thought
might make me feel better that JB
could do that would not take away from
his time with another partner, I would I
would ask for it, negotiate it, you know.
Yeah. Right. Because, you know, with with all
that, we also kinda needed to to renegotiate,
you know, from from boundaries to, you know,
how we are approaching non monogamy. So, you
know, there there was truly a lot involved.
And, you know, I I I thought about
this at the beginning,
you know, when it when it comes to
to non monogamy, it's almost like consent,
because it's ongoing. There, you know, there's Yes.
I think there's things, you know, with it
with with the involvement of it that, you
know, it it's an ongoing thing.
You know, you
you negotiate it the best you can.
Okay?
You know? And and then you move forward
and with
the reminder that no plan survives contact For
the enemy.
Yeah. Okay.
So, you know, we thought in the beginning,
you know, when we first talked about doing
this, you know, we thought we sat down
and and we talked about things and, you
know, we thought, man, we got this. We
we we wrapped it up.
No. No. No. You'll have to be I
think the the terms that come into my
mind are are being fluid and flexible. Mhmm.
You will start with a plan. This is
how you you imagine it will go, best
case scenario.
You will
try it, and you will find some things
that don't work or that you didn't
think were possibilities to try to have to
negotiate through. Or you'll discover, hey. I thought
I wanted to do it this way, and
I hate everything about this.
And you'll just you'll shift and change and
adjust as long as it's something you both
still want to do.
But, you know, for for anybody who knows
themself well enough to know that they're probably
gonna have to, like,
come
feel
hard things as they
learn more about themselves in non monogamy, I
don't think there's a % ready. Like, that
doesn't exist. Yeah. There's ready enough to give
it a try Mhmm. And to
under and what I want you to be
a % sure of is that I'm probably
gonna feel something that's very uncomfortable.
Yeah. And what am I gonna do with
that feeling?
So,
you know, I think the the any initial
hard feelings that you go through, I think
they they knock you for a loop because
you think, well I want to be non
monogamous so surely this will be easy. Well
no,
because you are
you encompass everything you've ever been through in
your whole life, the good and the bad
and even the neutral. Right? And some of
that bad, we tell ourselves as adults, oh,
I've worked through that. I'm not a kid
anymore. I'm not a this anymore. That I
don't even think about that anymore.
Mhmm. And then you do something that goes
against everything you've already experienced for and what
you believe to be true Mhmm. About who
you are and your relationship and your place
in this world, and then you get to
confront some stuff that you might not have
even thought was within you. I I learn
late in life that things I thought I
had,
put
to the side and and moved on from
hadn't as much as I thought so. Mhmm.
So you're, ultimately, you're ready when
the thing I like to do is I
go, you're ready when you can't stop thinking
about it and you really wanna try it.
Mhmm. If you need, like, a backup, you're
ready when you can admit to yourself and
each other that either there's gonna be some
it's not gonna be easy, and there might
be some tough things you gotta work through.
And you're willing to do that work. Yes.
Yeah. That's when you're ready. Yep. Mhmm. Mhmm.
Thanks for listening to this week's q and
a episode. If you want us to answer
one of your questions, just use the contact
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