Gamechanger
What happens when a new relationship completely upends everything you thought you knew about yourself? What if that person is a catalyst for more love, sexiness, and aliveness than you ever thought was possible? What does that mean for your existing relationship(s)?
Also! Libby has created a workbook based on the most popular episodes of the podcast — with simple practices and reflection questions so that you can apply this stuff to your life.
Go to https://libbysinback.com/workbook to get your copy.
Transcript
So meeting someone like this, someone who just sets off a cascade of change and excitement and self discovery inside you can have a dramatic effect on so much. It can change how you feel about sex and romance and what you want out of those things. It can change how you feel about your other existing partners. It can even change how you feel about yourself and your identity. As I say all this, I am sure that some of you listening are feeling like this is the absolute worst thing that could happen when you open your relationship. Some people put all kinds of rules in place to prevent exactly something like this happening. And this can be unwelcome. Even if you are in that first category of folks who are actually opening up because they want to to improve their sex lives, sometimes they're okay with like quote unquote, just sex.
But it better not like rock your world too much, right? And yet I really have to say this, and I will say this more than once, this is exactly the kind of thing you are opening the door to when you have an open relationship. And I'm not so sure there's much you can do to prevent it.
Welcome to making polyamory work. Hi, I'm Libby and I want to thank you for being with me today. I created this show because I'm committed to helping people who live in love outside the status quo have extraordinary relationships. Because relationships are at the core of our well being as humans. I think love is why we're here and how we heal. Today's episode, gird your loins. Yeah, I just said gird your loins.
This episode kind of a hot topic, I think, but I really, really feel called to talk about it because I think people don't talk about this and I think it's so, so, so, so important. It's also near and dear to my heart because some of this is my personal story. And next episode there'll be more of my personal story through the voice of my spouse who will be sharing his personal story. So let's just get into today's episode.
So it's 2017 and something happened to me that year that completely changed my life. I met someone, fell madly in love and was suddenly having an off the charts romance and the best sex of my entire life. Also, I was married to someone else who I was raising two kids with. When I think about it now, it was actually something that I hoped would happen. Not that there was anything wrong per se with my sex life up until that point. If you asked me, I probably would have said it was fine. And yeah, I Realize fine is a pretty bland descriptor. But at the time, I actually thought about sex really differently than I do now.
I also had two young kids, and so I was just kind of, like, tired a lot. So I don't think my expectations for having a rocking sex life were very high. And then I met Tom, and everything changed. Now, you might be wondering, did my spouse know that I was having an off the charts romance and the best sex of my entire life? And if he did know, did he have a problem with it? And I'll tell you, absolutely yes. To both. Drew and I had been polyamorous for some time at that point, and we'd both had other partners. We were always transparent with each other, too, and this experience was no different. And I don't want to get more into Drew's story today because we will be talking together about it on the next episode of this show.
My hope today is to talk to people whose story resembles mine, because if you're going through something like what I went through, you probably have nobody you can talk to about this. Having an experience in polyamory where a new partner just completely eclipses any romantic or sexual connection you've had before can really throw you for a loop, can also ignite a personal awakening and lead you to question yourself and everything you know. But it doesn't have to be the end of the world. It doesn't have to be the end of your other relationships. It doesn't have to mean you're doing anything wrong, even though you might feel all kinds of ways about it. Sometimes when this kind of thing happens where you experience a big awakening with a new partner, it's what everyone is hoping for. Like, we obviously are doing polyamory so that we can have lots of new experiences. And also, while the polyamory community doesn't like to talk about this very much, there are also a fair number of folks in our space who have long term established relationships where the sexual and sometimes also the romantic side of the relationship has faded or completely disappeared.
And this can happen for all kinds of reasons that have nothing to do with whether these people still love each other. Sometimes there's just stress in the relationship that kills things. Sometimes there's just a real difference in libido. Sometimes there's some deep sexual incompatibilities, and sometimes those were always there. And sometimes the people in the relationship change, and those changes leave the couple unable to find their way back to each other in that way. I've also met with more than one couple where a partner has realized they are asexual or they're no longer attracted to the gender that their established partner is. These folks often turn to polyamory as a solution so that they can hold on to their established relationship without that needing to be the end of their sexual lives. But sometimes you're in an established relationship and you're pretty happy.
Maybe you're new to polyamory, but maybe you're not. Maybe you've already had a lot of other partners, but then one or both of you makes a connection that catalyzes something new. You discover things about your sexual self that you never knew before. The experience changes everything. Like a total game changer. By the way, aside, I'm sorry, I do have to say this part. When this was happening to me, I was looking for some kind of support and it was really hard to find. And so, in a desperate fit, I read this book called the Game Changer by Franklin Veaux, who also was one of the original authors of More Than Two.
And I can say confidently, you shouldn't read that book. It was profoundly not helpful to me. And also, there's a lot of bashing that he does of past partners and friends that is just kind of cringey. Okay, a side over. Anyway, so meeting someone like this, someone who just sets off a cascade of change and excitement and self discovery inside you can have a dramatic effect on so much. It can change how you feel about sex and romance and what you want out of those things. It can change how you feel about your other existing partners. It can even change how you feel about yourself and your identity.
As I say all this, I am sure that some of you listening are feeling like this is the absolute worst thing that could happen when you open your relationship. Some people put all kinds of rules in place to prevent exactly something like this happening. And this can be unwelcome. Even if you are in that first category of folks who are actually opening up because they want to improve their sex lives, sometimes they're okay with like quote unquote, just sex. But it better not, like rock your world too much, right? And yet I really have to say this, and I will say this more than once, this is exactly the kind of thing you are opening the door to when you have an open relationship.
And I'm not so sure there's much you can do to prevent it. Now, of course, it can be intense and tricky and complicated. And here are some things that might come up for you if this does happen for you. I feel like I'm on cloud nine and nothing can go wrong. I've never felt so alive before. I feel like I'm betraying my other partner or partners, but I don't think that I am. I want to make things equal between my partners so that my established partners can feel okay with this new person. I want to make sure my established partner is happy and satisfied in our relationship so that they don't feel threatened and so I can keep seeing my new partner.
It's wild to be changing gears all the time. Between feeling really high and crazy in love to sort of being back on the ground and doing normal stuff. I truly love my existing partner and what I want from them is changing. I'm not sure I can tell them why or what's happening because it would hurt them. Being with this new person is helping me see things about myself. And I am realizing some things I want or need that I didn't know about before. I wonder if I can ask my partner for some of those things. I feel so vulnerable in this new relationship.
What if this goes away? What if this is too much? What if I'm too much? I've never felt more okay with myself in my life. Does this maybe mean that I don't truly love my current partner and maybe we should split up and that I'm actually meant to be with this other person? Aren't I meant to be with the person with whom I have the most chemistry and compatibility sexually? Does the sexual compatibility that I have with my new partner mean that we're going to be compatible in other ways that I haven't guessed at yet? What about the ways in which I'm very compatible with my established partner? Oh, it's so confusing. I don't want to compare, but sometimes I can't help comparing. Man, I thought my sex life was fine before I opened up my relationship. But now I've changed so much. I don't feel that way anymore and I don't know what to do about it. This is too hard. Maybe I can't date multiple people and should be monogamous.
Sometimes I don't want to have sex with my established partners, but I always want to have sex with my new partner, and I feel guilty about that. Maybe if I downplay this new relationship, I can help my partner feel more okay about it. I'm sad that I don't feel this way about my other established partners. I wish I could be as excited about sex with them as I am with my new partner. Holding all this love inside me is crazy. I feel like I'm going to burst.
I'm sure there are some things I missed, but these are the things that I've heard from other folks in this situation and also things I've felt myself. You can end up feeling so much and so many contradictory feelings that change constantly. It can be intense. And I'll say it again, it's something you're opening the door to when you practice non monogamy. And I'm not sure that there's anything you can do to prevent it if you choose to have multiple sexual partners. But did you notice when I was going through those possible thoughts and feelings that you might be having when you're facing a situation like this, how many of them were actually monogamy thinking? How many of them were scarcity mindset? How many of them were all or nothing and ranking and comparing to see who's the winner? And of course those thoughts and feelings are going to crop up, because we have been trained to think that way since we were born. Because we grow up in a mono normative culture, we've been trained to think, who's the best and that's my person. But, like, it really doesn't have to be that way.
I mean, in a way, why wouldn't you want this to happen? It's where the rubber meets the road. If you're practicing polyamory, it's where you really get to put your money, where your mouth is, so to speak. But I get why some people might be afraid of this happening. It might feel too hard. It might feel like something that would put at risk your existing relationship or relationships. And I'm not gonna lie, it can be, but it absolutely doesn't have to be. It depends on so many factors. One thing that can help you wrap your mind around a situation like this might be to understand two, how this kind of thing can happen without it being a reflection on the quality of your relationship and how you could meet the moment as an opportunity rather than a catastrophe.
So let's start with the first. How could this happen without anybody being wrong? Well, one thing to note is that the reason I created this episode is that this is actually really common. It's so common. And it's particularly likely to happen if one or more of these factors is in the mix. One is got together with your established partner when you were young and sexually inexperienced. Maybe you grew up in a conservative culture where sex for pleasure or outside of the context of marriage was considered shameful. Maybe you have a few colors in the LGBTQI rainbow that you didn't know about. At the time you got together with your established partner, you either thought you were straight or allosexual or maybe just the L or the G colors in the rainbow.
Another factor is your idea of good sex was rooted exclusively in whether orgasms happen or not. You approach sex exclusively as like a need to get off or to get your partner off to alleviate horniness, the same way you approach eating like you need to alleviate hunger. Your reasons to have sex are more centered around pleasing others or doing a good job or checking a box than your own pleasure. Maybe you don't even know what consistently works for you sexually. You and your partner have different ways that you each get to sex and they don't line up easily. One or both of you has a hard time saying what you would like or what's not working for you for fear of spoiling the mood. One or both of you is sensitive to feedback about how sex is going, or you just don't talk about it because you don't have the language or because it feels scary. You're somewhere in your mid-30s to mid-50s, meaning you're potentially approaching a midlife awakening.
That means all kinds of shit is getting stirred up. You're married and you've been together more than five years, live together and or have kids, which means there's a lot of hard work you do together in addition to the joy of just loving each other. When you chose a long term partner, you chose someone who was really different from you, but who you felt complemented you well. And now the ways in which you're different are creating more friction than they are joy. And you've never explored kink or learned about consent beyond being a simple yes to sex or no to sex. What many of these factors have in common is that you may be stepping into non monogamy, not really knowing big parts of how you work sexually. And maybe you even know that, which is why you want to explore, so you can learn more about what's out there and try stuff. And since you don't know what you don't know, you could discover things about yourself that change everything.
That changes how sex works for you, which can shake up a whole lot of other things in your sense of self and how you want to relate. Having other sexual partners can be like that. It can open up this Pandora's box of what's possible. You might realize you're queer when you thought you weren't. You might even realize you're not interested in the gender of your partner anymore. You might discover you're kinky and into power exchange or pain or degradation or age play. And maybe your established partner isn't into any of that. Or as is the case with me, you might just discover what good sex is for you.
And it might not even be something you can articulate, it's just something that you found that feels good and feels different and feels right. And y', all, I am not in any way saying that my spouse was a bad lover. Like that wasn't it. Again, nobody was doing anything wrong. When I reflect on it, it was really about where I was and what I knew about myself and about sex when we met. And the funny thing is, I even grew up relatively sex positive and without a lot of the shame stories that a lot of folks grow up with around sex. But still, there was so much I didn't know. And then my partner, he didn't have more experience than I did, so I'm not sure he could have corrected anything for me.
Around the things I thought I knew. We were both showing up with some really broken heterosexual scripts. There were also some incompatibilities that we were able to discover eventually. Like we both have a responsive type desire, which means we both want the other one to get things going so that we can get excited. I also have way more sexual breaks than my spouse does, and a lot of those breaks can show up more in the context of sharing domestic duties and childcare and life responsibilities. I also had spent most of my sexually active adulthood focused on doing a good job, doing things right, and being pleasing, including being pleased for the sake of my partner's pleasure. And at the same time, I didn't really understand how my own pleasure worked. And when I didn't find pleasure effortless, I would often blame myself because my partners were generally always willing to please.
And I also didn't have a deep understanding of consent. What I had gleaned from growing up was to not be a tease. And so I felt like if I started something physical with someone that that created a sexual expectation and I better follow through on it, which put me in this state of being constantly vigilant for whether or not I wanted sex so that I could figure out where to stop when I was giving or receiving any kind of physical affection. I was also afraid to ruin the mood by interrupting my partner if I needed something like lube, or if something just wasn't feeling good or if I wanted to do something else. I had not learned to be easeful in communicating my needs during sex, so even when I tried, they were awkward and sometimes Emotionally loaded in ways that definitely weren't great. I also really thought or hoped that my partner would kind of just know what to do or be so attuned to my nonverbal cues that they'd be able to read me better than I could read myself. And actually, my spouse is very, very attuned to me. But while he could always sense what was going on, could sense a shift in me or something like that, he also struggled with knowing what that meant and what to do about saying something about that and whether you should pause things and ask for what's up? Like, that wasn't part of what was normal for him either.
And in fact, he was kind of raised like, don't rock the boat. Don't make anything difficult. Don't impose on anybody. And so, as a result, I wasn't always enjoying the sex I was having, even though I had a loving and caring and considerate and eager and talented partner. And again, I don't even think I knew it. And because I didn't know it and I didn't know how to fix it, there was no real clear pathway to change that. And when we did try to talk about it, I often just blamed myself for being difficult. I often felt like I was the problem.
Now, I know that particular experience isn't everyone's, but I do hear that a lot. And I do think this kind of thing is especially common in heterosexual pairings because we get so many harmful and contradictory messages about sex and how it's supposed to work. I've seen some of this in queer pairings as well, but it's way less common. At some point, I should really do an episode about how everyone should learn more about queer sex, even if they're not queer, because the queers are just generally better at sex because they don't have to deprogram as much from all of the crap that straight people are fed for most of their lives. But that's not this episode.
Hey, real quick, before we get back to the episode, if you've been listening to this show for a while and you've been nodding along but been feeling stuck and making these ideas part of your reality, well, I made something for you. It's a workbook based on the most popular episodes of the show, with simple practices and reflection questions so that you can apply this stuff to your life, just head to .com workbook and grab your copy.
So things actually started to change for me when I got exposed to kink culture, which in turn exposed me to consent culture, and Then I started exploring my queerness, which I'd always known was there, but I previously didn't really give space for because I felt like I had to choose a side. I remember I attended my first facilitated play party and then another, and then another. And I was just having all these mind blowing experiences and I was developing a better vocabulary which not only helped me express myself to my partners, but also just helped me understand my own experience better. I also developed a broader picture of what sex could look like, which was a departure from the script I thought sex always had to follow. And then along came Tom. When we got together, it was like everything just clicked into place. For one thing, it was new, so we could both show up curious and excited without any assumptions. And I was better at expressing myself.
And I think it was easier for him to listen because we were new and all those NRE hormones and everything just focused us on each other and we became so attuned. It was like there was a Bluetooth connection between our brains. I also think we just happened to enjoy a lot of compatible things and had similar interests. I also think we just had similar instincts around things. There were just things we were compatible on that I wouldn't have even known to want to be compatible on. I think what I discovered with Tom was that sexual compatibility is a real thing. I mean, while you can theoretically teach someone how to make love to you, and I think you should, if you don't even know what works for you yourself, then it's pretty helpful when someone else just seems to know. You take all that, you combine it with some unmet needs that we both had in our other relationships that we were able to meet for each other.
Alongside that, when we were together, we were free of our kids, free of our domestic responsibilities, free of any life stuff that could create friction or stress. And, well, you can imagine we took a rocket ship to the moon together. And I really don't want to gloss over the unmet needs and responsibilities parts because that can obviously impact your sex drive. When you're with someone for a long time, you can develop all kinds of unmet expectations or misunderstandings that can accumulate over time. And if you live together, have kids, navigate extended family, or share finances, all of these things can be sources of stress and sometimes conflict. And if you don't have good tools for moving through that stress and conflict, then hurts can build up. It's easy to stop being curious. It's easy to stop being excited.
Emily Nagoski calls this gunk in the pipes. It can also be really hard to find time to connect in a way that's free from all that gunk. Especially if you have kids. Especially if you have young, neurodivergent kids. For Drew and I, there was honestly a mountain of things between us and the kind of sex that just blossomed effortlessly with Tom. And that wasn't anybody's fault. It was just how things happened to unfold, and it wasn't easy to fix. As if there was something that you needed to fix.
As I told Drew, when it was going on, I couldn't pull my relationship with him out of the context in which we had it. He couldn't both be my husband and be my boyfriend. They're completely different relationships with different shapes, and I love having him as my husband. There were just some ways in which that made sex harder to access together. I hope what I'm painting for you is a clear picture of how many people could land in a place where they're having a more exciting sexual, and sometimes even romantic connection with a newer partner. And that doesn't have to involve things abandoning or betraying your existing partner, failing to love or care about your existing relationship, choosing to prioritize your new partner over everything else, or intentionally hurting your existing partner. But, oh, boy, did it sometimes feel that way to Drew. He could see how lit up I was inside.
He noticed me excitedly staying up late to text Tom. He also felt the comparison, how it looked like to him, Tom could do no wrong while we still had the challenges we had. And it felt really unfair to him. For the first time in our seven years of being non monogamous, he really struggled. Like, really struggled. It was probably one of the hardest times in our marriage. I think we'd both agree on that. And again, we'll talk more about that next episode.
I. I actually worried at a certain point it would all be too hard and that he'd leave me for putting him through this torture. I'm sharing this because, again, these two things can be true at the same time. I wasn't doing anything wrong. I was having a sexual awakening. I felt like I was coming home to parts of myself in ways I had been longing for. I was also working really hard not to let NRE pull me off my values and my commitments to my spouse and my kids and our home and my mom and my friends, because I felt really, really clear that I didn't want to blow up my life. And the whole point of polyamory is that you don't have to choose.
At the same time, Drew said he felt like he was being tortured. It felt to him sometimes like I wasn't prioritizing him. He felt like I was choosing to see him in a certain way. That made me not excited or curious about him or us. And it's understandable that he felt that way, that he was kind of blaming me for this pain that he was in. The reality of the situation was just painful. And when reality feels out of alignment with what we feel it should be, we have two choices. We fight reality or we grieve.
And nobody really wants to grieve. So we might choose fight reality, which can look like avoiding reality or finding someone or something to blame. If there's someone or something that's wrong that's bad, well then we can just point that out and fix it. Except here there was nothing to fix and nobody doing anything wrong. I have sat with more than one person facing a similar situation. A new partner being a catalyst for a tremendous awakening Sexual relational kink related or around things like gender or identity. Please know that you too are not to blame for doing something wrong. You get to be on the journey you're on and discover and explore and expand and grow.
And it can be very, very hard on your existing ecosystem, even if you're still showing up and striving to be loving and kind in those relationships. But it doesn't have to destroy your life. Like I said before, it can actually be an opportunity if you keep bringing your feet back to the ground. What's the opportunity? You might ask. Well, okay. No matter what happens, you have experienced something that has changed you forever. Even if the people in your life change, the things you've discovered about yourself will always be with you. And with all that self discovery, it's an opportunity too, to invite the people that love you to also discover who you are.
Now that can be hard for those folks, especially if the change isn't welcome. But if everyone is able to say yes to the new reality, there are often new opportunities for everyone to get more of what they want from each other. Here are some suggestions that I have. Again, if you're the one experiencing the awakening for how to move through the experience with love and compassion for everyone involved, including you. Number one Honor. What's happening for you so often we zip right to oh no, I don't want to blow up my life and forget the hey, I found something transcendent in this short little bit of time that I get to exist on this speck of dust in the universe that is special and important for me. It was sacred don't let that go. Number two.
Instead of letting what's happening for you tear you off your center, let that aliveness fuel you and ground you fully into the present of all of your relationships. When I say meeting Tom changed my life, I mean it. The love that I felt and the love that I gave was fucking magic. But something that can happen when you're being so lit up like that is that you can get caught in this cycle of chasing that feeling out of a fear of losing it. Instead, I want to invite you to imagine all that love and aliveness that eros as this infinite power source at the core of your being. This person ignited it in you. They helped you create it, but it's in you. Draw that energy into the center of your body and then let it radiate outward into every extremity, into every cell of your body.
That magic is yours. Yes, it's precious, but I'd like you to consider that maybe it's not fragile. 3. For the person you're sharing it with, it's so important to honor them, too. I have a bunch more to say about this in my NRE episode, but if you're feeling this intensely and they're also feeling this intensely, that can be so tender and vulnerable. Their heart is just as open as yours, and they might need some protection and care and support. And sometimes they might also feel guilty if they're aware that somehow they're creating ripples in your other relationships. Help them not take that on.
4. Don't let new relationship energy cause you to abandon your other relationships or your friendships or your personal interests or your family connections, etc. Continue putting in the effort that's necessary to tend to the other aspects of your life, especially if this situation is uncovering some cracks that need attention. Number five. Be honest and transparent with your existing partners. This one might feel obvious, but when the reality of what's happening for you is likely going to be painful for your other partner to hear, you may feel like you want to downplay or just keep it to yourself. The problem with that is that more than likely your partner's going to be able to tell that something big is happening for you. And if you tell them that they're making things up or blowing things out of proportion so that they don't have to feel any pain, it not only won't work, it will make them question their own intuition and observations.
It will cause them to doubt their own feelings. It could cause them to develop anxiety or hypervigilance, and it will create distrust between the two of you because they'll be able to tell the difference between what you're saying and what they are seeing. And eventually when the truth becomes more apparent, they will feel even more distressed and possibly betrayed. Now that also doesn't mean you have to be blunt. There's a difference between being honest and being cruel. Yes, you can say how you feel, but I really wouldn't recommend making open comparisons between your partners.
Welcome and be compassionate with the feelings of your existing partner if they're struggling, even if you don't agree with their story or how they're seeing things. If you think the way to help them with their feelings is to just explain what you know is true and hope that they'll just accept your reality and feel better, that's not actually how it works. They need to feel seen and understood and met with kindness for the ways that they might be struggling. You have to be able to do that whole holding two things at the same time thing. You aren't doing anything wrong and your partner may be feeling what they're feeling and that's allowed too.
Don't try to fix their feelings. This is a tough one because oftentimes our partner may want us to do that. They may even openly or secretly want you to break up with your new partner. Even if you're not willing to do that. Here are some other ways you might try to fix their feelings. You might make sure that you have sex with them with the same frequency as you're having sex with your other partner to keep it fair, whether or not that's what you actually want. You may agree not to do certain things with your other partner to keep them comfortable, and that actually won't work. You may tell them things that they want to hear that aren't true just to soothe them.
You might actively choose them over your other partner when they ask for that or seem to want it. And this can set up an unintentional and painful hierarchy for your other partner and make them feel jerked around or disposable. Number eight Accept that even if you're showing up in every way you can, it may not work to soothe your established partner. That doesn't mean that you should give up on showing up. Just you can't take their feelings as proof of of whether you're doing a good job or not.
Do offer comfort. Ask for what you can do to be supportive. They may need reassurance or extra communication about what's going on. They may need understanding and patience. Here's something real when you're the partner who's struggling with jealousy or fear and feeling like you're not the preferred partner for something. You can also end up feeling like really pathetic and unattractive, like it's so vulnerable. And it may feel like a fine line to walk between being caring and kind and reassuring to your partner and the previous thing I said, which is don't fix their feelings. The difference is you showing up with your kind heart and offering them what you can.
You're doing that without needing to change them. Number 10, get support. Get support from other friends, from community, from trusted family and possibly a professional. You need a safe place to talk about this, to say the messy stuff and be affirmed and supported without being judged or getting a big reaction.
Notice when that mononormative thinking is showing up in you and also just track it when you're noticing it in others. And don't beat yourself up about it. It's gonna show up. Just call it out to yourself and acknowledge it inside yourself when it comes up with others. Number 12, make some rules about limiting processing about what's happening in your relationships so that you're not talking about it all the time. And please use halt. Don't talk about things when you're hungry, angry, lonely, tired or drunk or triggered or generally in a more activated state. And finally, number 13, go slow, go slow, go slow.
Especially with making big moves around your new discoveries. Don't make any significant life changes in the first two years of an awakening like this. Things have been massively shaken up and it can be really useful to let things settle, which may take some time. Now this last one is important for everyone involved. When this happened to me, Tom was also married with kids. The whole ecosystem between the two of us was about like 13 people totally. And what was happening between us affected everyone. If we had been too reactive to what was happening, it could have been catastrophic.
As it was, when I reflect now, I still think we went too fast or pushed on too many things that maybe needed space to breathe. And I guess part of the reason I wanted to record this episode is so you can learn from some of my regrets. And when you're in a game changing type relationship, neither of you are going to want to slow down. In fact, you might even resent having to slow down to support an existing ecosystem. And there's actually a pretty fine line between adjusting how your relationship is going to support the existing ecosystem and letting more established partners try to control things to feel better. And I just want to say sometimes the former might feel like the latter, but it's not. And I think it's okay to want to keep your established relationships in your established ecosystem. And at the same time, if I'm being honest, I kind of want this game changing experience for everyone.
I mean, ideally at a time when everyone has the mental and emotional bandwidth to handle it. Like I said, it changed my whole life in ways that I continue to cherish. It not only allowed me to come home to my body, to my sexuality, to seeing myself in a whole new way, and to deeply accept myself as I am, it not only brought a beautiful and amazing human into my life who I cherish so much and who is not only only part of my heart, but part of my family now, but it also did ultimately transform my existing relationship with my spouse. Rather than run from it or let it tear us apart, we both met the moment by turning not just toward each other, but toward ourselves. I'm looking forward to telling you more about that in the next episode, but when I say this is an opportunity, I mean it. It's been eight and a half years since that experience, and while so much has changed, my marriage has only been getting better. So to recap, in polyamory, it's normal, even common, to find yourself in a new relationship that turns you inside out and upside down in ways that your existing partner never has. That can be challenging, but it can also be no one's fault.
What it can be is an opportunity. An opportunity for you to come home to yourself in many ways and for your established partners to get to know and create anew with this awakened version of you. It's an opportunity to really live into some of the more tricky polyamorous ideals and be kind to each other. On the other side of this hard could be something amazing and healing. Something that reminds us of why we are here and alive on this earth. So go slow, but go.
Thank you for joining me today. If you have any thoughts about what I've said or a question for the show, I'd love to hear from you. You can find me on Instagram hatpolyamm or you can reach me on the podcast show website at makingpolyamorywork.com. I'll also say that if you're loving my podcasts but you're looking for more support, I do this support for a living. I help individuals, couples and groups have amazing relationships and you can find out more about my offerings on my personal website, libbysinback.com. If you love this podcast, please share it with your friends, your networks, your Instagram stories etc, and make sure you subscribe so you don't miss an episode. Also, if you listen on iTunes or Spotify, it's really wonderful to leave a review or a comment because it will help more people find the show. Making Polyamory Work is created by me, . It is edited by Finn of the Normalizing Non Monogamy Podcast and hosted on the Spotify podcast platform.
