Ep. 88 Jealousy and the Illusion Of Safety In Relationships with Dr. Joli Hamilton, Ph.D.

Show Notes Jealousy and the Illusion Of Safety In Relationships with Dr. Joli Hamilton [00:00:00] Charna Cassell: Welcome back to late open podcast. I'm your host Charna Cassell. And today's guest is Dr. Joli Hamilton, who's a relationship coach for couples who color outside the lines and the founder of the year of opening If you're interested in anything related to non monogamy, creating your own relationship dynamics that suit you outside of what conventional and dominant culture provides you with and prescribes for you, then Joli Hamilton is somebody to check out. I've listened to her on a variety of podcasts and I'm really excited for this conversation. [00:00:38] Charna Cassell: She's also an expert in researching jealousy. And the primal value of jealousy, as well as how you can even eroticize it. There's so much to what she shares and she has her own podcast and works individually with couples. Welcome, Joli. [00:00:58] Learn how to live embodied If it's about to unwind Uncover new tools and start healing Leave trauma and tension behind Isn't it great laid open Let all your desires come true How can you live laid open Imagine yourself brand new. Imagine yourself brand new. [00:01:45] Joli Hamilton: I'm so happy to have you here. [00:01:47] Joli Hamilton: Well, thank you so much for having me. [00:01:48] Joli Hamilton: It's a total delight. [00:01:50] Charna Cassell: And I have I've listened to your podcast. I've listened to you as a guest on other people's podcasts. Your podcast is Playing with Fire, which I highly recommend listeners dig into. [00:02:02] Joli Hamilton: It's a fun name, right? Like who doesn't wanna play with fire a little bit, right? The good kind. [00:02:07] Charna Cassell: Yeah, it's a [00:02:08] Joli Hamilton: fireworks. Campfires. Bonfires. We like those fires. Inner fires. [00:02:12] Charna Cassell: We like the smells of fires. It also like taps into that, the kid in us, the, if anybody was fixated with lighting matches as a child. [00:02:21] Joli Hamilton: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I'm basically made of fire. I, my nickname is Phoenix and I'm a double Leo born in the year of the dragon. [00:02:28] Joli Hamilton: I'm Aries moon. I'm just all fire. So it just made sense for me. [00:02:32] Charna Cassell: So you found your right path. You're calling. I did. I did. Super clear. [00:02:36] Joli Hamilton: Very clear. Yeah. [00:02:37] Charna Cassell: Yeah. And so you're really helping people and supporting people from moving from you know, a default of monogamy. A prescription, if you will, to of like what dominant culture says relationships are supposed to look like into consciously creating their relationships. [00:02:56] Joli Hamilton: Exactly. Exactly. And that is a, it's an ongoing process. It doesn't happen, we don't wake up one day and say, I'm going to leave behind all the mono norms and do my own thing. Instead, we have to, there's a lot to unpack. There's a discernment process of what is it exactly that I want to custom create? [00:03:16] Joli Hamilton: And then there is the ongoing discovery of how am I changing? And how do my relationships and my beliefs about my relationships need to change as I change and grow myself? [00:03:27] Charna Cassell: Right. Well, and it's, you know, one of the things I think a lot about is, so I work with couples, I work with individuals and people they need to have safety before they can connect more deeply. [00:03:38] Charna Cassell: And often what is acceptable, what is familiar creates safety. Even if it's even if it's not actually safe. [00:03:48] Joli Hamilton: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you're you're onto it, right? Like we Freud didn't do a lot, right? Like there's plenty of Freud we could toss. I'm a depth psychologist. So I like to talk about the old guys sometimes. [00:04:00] Joli Hamilton: But familiar. We seek familiar more than we seek what is authentically Excellent in relationships and, and familiarity feels, it can feel like love, even if it's outright abusive, like flat out, we could, you know, cut to the chase. And so, yeah, trying to do something new and something that may violate cultural expectations may violate my internalized sense of what is okay yeah, we have to deal with a lot of our safety stuff. [00:04:36] Joli Hamilton: So many times I, I I have people show up and they'll imagine that I could just, somehow, I can just decide I'm gonna decide to change, and I'm a decider. I like to be able to just like make a change instantaneously that I could just make that change and then it will magically feel safe for me. [00:04:53] Joli Hamilton: I'll make rules that'll create safety or I'll make agreements that'll create safety. But it is so much more nuanced and layered than that. [00:05:01] Charna Cassell: Well, and what you're pointing to is there's value, you know, there's value in creating rules or agreements that both people consent to, but then that can get so rigid and micromanaging. [00:05:13] Charna Cassell: Right. And so finding the right balance of fluidity and you know, ironically, I think people may seek out relationships outside of monogamy to have more freedom and to have more, more expansiveness. And then. There, there can, you know, but it but agreements are important. [00:05:34] Joli Hamilton: Agreements are important. And you know, I was actually just talking about this on Instagram earlier today about how we so frequently over promise in our agreements because we are trying to create a, a nest of safety for ourselves often with one other person. [00:05:50] Joli Hamilton: But even just within ourselves, we create these rules to try to create a sense of safety. But often we're over promising. We're not getting in touch with who, what we actually want, what we actually want to agree to. And so we're having to really come to grips with the fact that the rules themselves aren't what keep me feeling safe. [00:06:09] Joli Hamilton: I have to do deep embodied work to feel safe. I have to come to reckon with the fact that I will not. always feel safe. I am going to feel discomfort in my experience of relationships. There is no relationship that will provide me with a sense of total safety and never ruffled, like I'm going to experience that ruffling. [00:06:30] Joli Hamilton: And so my agreements can help me create that sense of safety, but yeah, if they become overly rigid or if I rely on them to be static, like that is a huge undermining of the reality that I am a growing, changing person and I don't know what I don't know yet. When I'm making my agreements, I don't know how I'm gonna feel when I'm presented with an opportunity. [00:06:56] Joli Hamilton: So I recommend experimental agreements because of that. [00:07:00] Charna Cassell: It's if you're hiring an assistant of some kind and you have a trial period and you're like, let's see how we work together. What works? What are our different styles? Yeah. You can't promise that you're going to employ this person for the next two years or that you're going to marry this person or that you're going to, you know, you just don't know. [00:07:19] Charna Cassell: Right. [00:07:20] Joli Hamilton: I think that whole concept comes into play with all of our relationship development. One of my most treasured relationship agreements personally is that every three years with my anchor partner I re evaluate whether we are staying in this relationship. We come together, And we have a full reckoning of the relationship with a full off ramp for both of us. [00:07:43] Joli Hamilton: A lot of people find that whole idea. They're like, no, I want no part of that. That feels terrifying. For me, I actually find it incredibly soothing to know that the calendar holds this time, this month, every three years, we do a whole month of conversations where we say, how is this working? Does it still fit? [00:08:02] Joli Hamilton: Because. The idea of marriage being forever for us feels like a constriction, but we do like being married to each other. So how do we have both of those things? [00:08:14] Joli Hamilton: I actually create safety by having this condition of we are going to revisit this. We're going to revisit this and we're going to allow for the fact that either of us might say, you know what, this doesn't work. [00:08:26] Joli Hamilton: Anymore, and that might be a full renegotiation and reimagination. It might mean an ending, but there's this built in expectation that creates for me a sense of, Oh, I get to know that change is normal. And I get to know that we can talk about anything, even the most terrifying stuff. The stuff that it's scary to talk about endings when we find our safety and our security in a particular other person. [00:08:54] Joli Hamilton: That's scary. So I find it soothing. Other people find it a little alarming. [00:08:58] Charna Cassell: Yeah. No, I think it's, I mean, it's a really beautiful thing because what that means is you're in an active practice. Thank you. And you're not a lot of the times the way we try to control or create safety is an illusion of safety, right? [00:09:15] Joli Hamilton: That's what I experienced. Yeah. [00:09:17] Charna Cassell: I think it's, I think that's if we're really [00:09:19] Charna Cassell: honest with ourselves. But then what you're bumping up against, which is so interesting is all this stuff around attachment. And I actually listened to an episode that you did. Is that is your podcast. Partner, you're also your life partner? [00:09:33] Charna Cassell: Yep. Yeah. [00:09:33] Charna Cassell: As your senior anchor. [00:09:35] Joli Hamilton: Ken is my anchor partner. We are also married. We've known each other our whole lives, but we are each other's second spouse. And also we're non monogamous. So we have other partners. And we're even open to having other anchor partners. We don't currently, either of us have somebody else that we're, we feel fully anchored to like a, in that same sense. [00:09:55] Joli Hamilton: It's hard to meet people that are aligned that way. Um, But yeah, we did an attachment episode recently on Playing With Fire. [00:10:03] Charna Cassell: And one of the things I thought was really valuable in that episode, right? You're talking about, and of course, you know, that our attachment is not, it's not static, right? Our attachment style is not static. [00:10:17] Charna Cassell: And of course, different, depending on who you're partnered with, different things might come to the surface. And even one of the things I appreciated that your partner shared was taking a quiz. Right, like doing a quiz now and doing it three years ago and how attachment style based on life experience, things that had occurred, it might change. [00:10:39] Charna Cassell: It'll look different, right? Yeah. Different [00:10:41] Charna Cassell: phases of life, it changes. [00:10:43] Joli Hamilton: Absolutely. And depending on which attachment quiz you're taking. So some of them are psychologically validated instruments, right? Like they are validated by studies. And they've been designed in particular ways. And some of them are pretty casual and they've been designed to reveal certain things. [00:10:57] Joli Hamilton: No judgment. Take whichever one you want, but remember that each of them is designed to reveal different things. So sometimes when I, when we go to take them, we actually take them pretty regularly. And I watched Ken, my partner, take One, about a month apart, he took it and I watched not like his whole style, like his personality did not change drastically, but his level of security, the measure that they used to measure his security with me specifically changed. [00:11:26] Joli Hamilton: We went, we were in a rupture state during one of them. We were doing a bunch of repair. He was having feelings. Yeah, it changed. And so it reminds me a little bit of trying to measure um, you know, hormones in women going through menopause. Like. Dude, this is just gonna change minute to minute. We're really going to have to take a broader perspective. [00:11:47] Joli Hamilton: We have to back out a little bit to see not just what does this quiz, that quiz can reveal something in a moment. How can I start to look at my attachment patterns and how I react to things and what meaning, this is my favorite question, what meaning do I make out of this? Attachment style label, how do I perceive myself and what do I start doing in my relationships if I label myself as an avoidant or an anxious person? [00:12:14] Joli Hamilton: Right there. I can start down a road. I've had people come to me and say like, Oh, I could, I could never do non monogamy. I'm anxiously attached. Actually studies show us. More people who are, who would turn up with a quiz result of anxiously attached practice non monogamy. Surprise, [00:12:31] Joli Hamilton: Surprise. [00:12:32] Charna Cassell: Which to me, I think that's also really interesting. [00:12:34] Charna Cassell: It's like, well, you know, people who are more anxious might want to process more. And so it lends itself. It's like over communicating and really talking about your feelings. [00:12:44] Joli Hamilton: Right. Especially for say like kitchen table polyamory or um, polycules that are pretty tightly connected, right? People who want all that communication that, yeah, that makes tons of sense. [00:12:55] Joli Hamilton: I have been partnered with people who identified very strongly with a, an avoidant personality and yeah, they're like, Oh my God, it's just so much talking. No, I just don't wanna. I just don't wanna. And in fact, one of my recent partners identified that and came to the conclusion that he's like, yeah, I'm polysexual. [00:13:16] Joli Hamilton: I want to have more sexual connections, but I'm just not available for the relating that you're wanting out of a person to be in your polycule. I loved that revelation. That was really helpful. I was able to retool my relationship with him to say, Great, so we can have one kind of connection, but I'm not going to try to seek out the particularity of the way I seek safety with this person. [00:13:40] Joli Hamilton: And usually what we do with our attachment styles is we use them as a bit of a hammer. We're like, Now I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna try to get everybody else to fit, right? It doesn't work. I had to accept his reality and his offer. That's what he had to offer. And then figure out, okay, maybe this means he's not a partner for me. [00:13:58] Joli Hamilton: Maybe I need to reimagine it. Maybe we're not meant to be together right now. Maybe we Allow each other to gracefully depart and say, Hey, maybe I'll see you in a few years. Who knows? There's so many potential ways to increase my sense of safety and security if I take ownership of the amount of choice I have over creating my relationships. [00:14:21] Charna Cassell: Well, and the beautiful thing about that example is that this guy was able to be honest about that, right? I mean, a lot of the times I think there's a disconnect between what someone goes into something saying they're available for either to you or to themselves and what they're actually, what their actual capacity is and the disconnect there. [00:14:43] Joli Hamilton: Yeah. I see that all the time. And, and, And in fact, I think having this broader cultural conversation happening around what people are calling lots of things, ethical non monogamy, consensual non monogamy, just non monogamy, polyamory, that like, use all the words. But every person I have ever dated uses those words differently. [00:15:05] Joli Hamilton: So the number one thing I have to do is ask the person, and then I usually actually have to kind of ask and then do some, some real teasing to say, tell me how it works for you. Not just what it means to you intellectually. Give me examples. How does that play out for you? How do you handle it when your spouse is feeling stressed or is feeling some some attachment panic or how do you handle it if you have two partners that are both needing your attention right now or who both really want to live with you, but they don't really get along? [00:15:34] Joli Hamilton: How do you, how have you handled it? How do you imagine you would handle it? And you know, the newer we are at this, The less evidence we have, we don't, we may not know. So this person was relatively new to non monogamy um, you know, in his first year, say, and he was a person who said, I've always identified as polyamorous, like I felt polyamorous. [00:15:58] Joli Hamilton: So he had this long felt sense, and I'm betting there are listeners who have this, this, like I have felt this way maybe since my teen years, maybe my childhood. So that's relevant, that's real, but you may not have the lived experience to know, yep, and how are you going to enact that? How is that going to match up with the monogamous life that you may have already created for yourself and the monogamous world that you find yourself in? [00:16:24] Joli Hamilton: How are you going to work with that? And that takes actual experience. There's too much. Just got to have the experiences to find out [00:16:32] Charna Cassell: right trial and error and you know and you have to you know in any relationship you get doses of what doesn't work for you and it's super clarifying for as you move forward the next relationship you're like oh okay now I have a better sense of but what's also interesting then is like what doesn't work with somebody else might really work with the next person so it's so about chemistry you [00:16:55] Joli Hamilton: Absolutely, and we're used to this. [00:16:57] Joli Hamilton: Every single person on the planet has experience with this already. Because we know that different friendships work for us in different ways. We can be besties with someone who everybody else, everybody around us, big air quotes there, seems to hate. Right? Like, they turn everybody else off. They're annoying. [00:17:15] Joli Hamilton: They're too much. And we're like, are you kidding me? They're the best human ever. I just get them. On these days. See me. We know that friendships can be highly multivariate, that, that we don't have and that they can change over time. I can move into and out of, but we take romantic relationships and we apply an entirely different paradigm to them and we decide that they have to fit into this particular structure. [00:17:41] Joli Hamilton: They have to follow a particular trajectory in order to be valid and valuable and successful. And really if we, if we unpack all of that. We're left with, oh, what if I treated my romantic relationships with the same care and generosity of spirit as I treated my friendships? That right there is a game changer for a lot of people that I work with in my programs. [00:18:03] Joli Hamilton: They're often like, I don't know how to do this. I'm like, yes, you do. Yeah. How do you treat your friends? And often [00:18:08] Joli Hamilton: that right there is the game the, the, the move. [00:18:11] Charna Cassell: It's, and then it becomes even more complex when you add culture, cultural difference between two people, religion trauma, sexual trauma, right? [00:18:22] Charna Cassell: So all these layers of there's shame that often accompanies the beliefs of all these things that I just listed. And then sexuality, you know. It's like how do you navigate what arises in you because they're either your, your actual voices or internalized voices and commentary. [00:18:42] Joli Hamilton: Right. I talk, I, in fact, I was just giving a lecture on the concept of internalized polyphobia, which is something that's not talked about enough. [00:18:50] Joli Hamilton: Amy Morris calls it in her research, calls it Consensual [00:18:54] Joli Hamilton: non monogamy negativity. Internalized consensual non monogamy negativity. I just think that's kind of a mouthful, but the same basic idea. It's this idea that the call can be coming from inside the house. I may have this polyphobia that yeah, I'm already dealing with mononormativity out in the world, but now. [00:19:11] Joli Hamilton: Also, inside me are all these conflicting messages about, is this okay? Is it not okay? The essential okayness of it. And for a lot of people, they're like, no, I'm totally okay. But there can still be these little gremlins in there because we are soaked in this from the, we are soaked in monogamy. And, there's nothing wrong with monogamy. [00:19:36] Joli Hamilton: Monogamy itself is fine. It's just that if we try to measure polyamory by monogamous standards, that doesn't work. And the reverse is true. We can't hold these two paradigms to each other's standards. It's a constant unpacking. [00:19:53] Charna Cassell: This piece is something I think a lot about um, and not just related to monogamy or non monogamy, but just how do you dismantle something like white supremacy? [00:20:01] Charna Cassell: Okay. Right. How do you create cultural change? But if you're looking at a problem from the mind frame, using the language and the thinking of the system itself, like you have to get outside of it, right? And um, yeah. [00:20:16] Joli Hamilton: So yeah, and we have to listen. It's it. This is really tricky because we have to listen to the marginalized voice. [00:20:23] Joli Hamilton: So in the case of the non monogamous person, we need to listen to the non monogamous voices and many people who are non monogamous will fluidly pass in and out of monogamous. Experience over their life too. So it's a very mutable experience. And this is a really complicated conversation to have because some people identify with their polyamorous nature. [00:20:46] Joli Hamilton: They're like, it is an orientation for me. Other people are like, no, it's a choice. It's a decision you make. It's a relationship structure you choose. They're both right. And like, I can't tell you how you're experiencing this, but I can say that if you want to create. A sense of safety for everyone to be who they want to be in relationships. [00:21:05] Joli Hamilton: We need to be able to talk about this. We need to be able to talk about how sometimes we're not compatible with people we love deeply because we actually, we're just not compatible in this way at this phase of time. That's hard. That's really hard. [00:21:21] Charna Cassell: Yeah. Yeah. There was a comment you made in one of your episodes near, I think it was the attachment episode. [00:21:28] Charna Cassell: And you were talking about a partner. And I really resonated with this having experienced that where someone is insisting they love you and you're explicitly shared. This is how, this is what love, how you could show me, you love me. This is how love gets demonstrated and they don't have the capacity for that. [00:21:48] Joli Hamilton: Yeah. [00:21:48] Charna Cassell: And, And so then for you, you're like, okay I, I need to not, well, not, not necessarily you, but for what I was feeling in a particular relationship was, I need you, I, okay, we're we need to end. And I also don't want to hear that from you. Like, I need a boundary there around that. And then he was just like, emphatically like, I love you. [00:22:06] Charna Cassell: I love you. And I'm like, Yeah. Your actions are not congruent with your words and, and that, but it means something very different for him. [00:22:14] Charna Cassell: Right? [00:22:15] Joli Hamilton: That, yeah, this is so important to conversation to have because when, when we're talking about loving someone, yeah, what's the direction that love flows? [00:22:25] Joli Hamilton: And I think the example that I was giving in that particular episode was actually of um, my father who was unable to love me in ways that were appropriate for me. He was unloved. And I would go past unwilling into over the 70 years of his life. I was alive for 45 of them. He was unable to, I think he tried to rally and tried to listen and he wasn't able to get his body mind to do that. [00:22:55] Joli Hamilton: And In that particular container of the parent child relationship, especially as an adult child, we can talk about how damaging that is to the child growing up. Then as an adult child, I have to be able to set my boundaries. And we take that same experience and we then put it on top of romantic relationships. [00:23:16] Joli Hamilton: It's hard enough to say, wow, I need to draw a boundary with my father who I want to relate to and I want to have a healthy relationship with, but I need to draw a boundary around how he talks to me and what I would like. My heart of hearts wanted to be able to be heard and understood. I wanted him to be able to say, I hear that you need me to validate your feelings about your childhood. [00:23:42] Joli Hamilton: And I can't do that. Even if he'd just been able to get to that point of understanding. I hear that's what you want. I understand it. Maybe I can or can't do it. We often want this from our mature relational partners as adults. And most of the time, we mistake our, , their ability to actually show up and do that. [00:24:05] Joli Hamilton: Can they show up and actually admit, Wow, I might be up against a limit that I have. I might have. When did the end of my capacity [00:24:14] Charna Cassell: well [00:24:14] Charna Cassell: and so often you don't realize until you hit that and you can't necessarily see it for yourself, and it's, it's often another person's reflection or, or, or, or, you know, some kind of rupture that has you become conscious. [00:24:32] Charna Cassell: And so again, you know, we can't, we can't see something until we're conscious of it. So, [00:24:36] Charna Cassell: yeah. [00:24:37] Joli Hamilton: Right. [00:24:37] Joli Hamilton: And then once we become conscious of it, I mean, the whole premise of the shadow, the idea that we have all this unconscious material, yeah, stuff comes into conscious awareness and then slips right back into our unconscious, I Recently had a partner who was expressing to me how they got our situation. And they were like, we had a consent violation happen. They, They. They heard me, they understood, they were able to do all the steps, and then we, and we had repair, and then they went away for a week and had their life, and then they had basically no idea what I was talking about. [00:25:15] Joli Hamilton: It was like it had just gone away, it was as if that had almost never happened. They knew about the incident, but they really didn't. They had not internalized it. And so it just slipped. So as a depth psychologist I was able to hold that as like, Oh, that slipped right back into the unconscious and that sucks for both of us. [00:25:33] Joli Hamilton: And it's really normal. It happens all the time. And then I have to decide whether, okay, do I want to stay in this process with someone who's not able to hold this really deep work? In their conscious awareness, it is hard to hold our stuff our worst traits, the things we wish we'd never done, the mistakes we make. [00:25:52] Joli Hamilton: It's hard to hold that in our, in front of our face. It's also the work of loving each other. [00:25:59] Charna Cassell: Yeah. [00:26:01] Charna Cassell: Yeah. And that, you know, that's the overarching thing that I'm really, I feel that we share a commitment to loving. And I, you know, I'm not in a non monogamous relationships and I'm, I see my path as helping people love in whatever way that looks for them and helping people, you know, similarly create relationships that resonate with what feels good to their heart, their mind, and their body. [00:26:29] Charna Cassell: no matter what that looks like, right? And figuring out it's like there's different pitfalls. Would love for you to talk about one of the things that I see so frequently. So I work a lot with sexuality, with sexual trauma. And so then having let's say for this situation a heterosexual couple comes in and The man, so I'm going to use this kind of a more stereotypical dynamic, but the man, it has a more interest in exploratory sex and uh, more sexual freedom and their partner has a history of sexual trauma. [00:27:05] Charna Cassell: And so they need very different things to feel safe and connected and they need to go at different paces and they may have different drives. [00:27:14] Joli Hamilton: Yeah, [00:27:16] Joli Hamilton: and [00:27:16] Joli Hamilton: they're, they have different, they may have also a different um, purpose. Like, their, their understanding of what the purpose of this relationship may have shifted over time, especially, so I tend to see that particular scenario around what we generally call midlife, right? [00:27:34] Joli Hamilton: It, frequently I will see that scenario play out with people who are between the ages of 38 and 55, like they're, they're right there. They've gotten enough ego strength to be able to stand there and finally say, this is what I want. And their partner's like, what is not what I signed up for? Are you kidding me? [00:27:55] Joli Hamilton: And so now we're, we have to address so many different layers because often what is revealed in that, that experience is they want different things going forward. And there's often an imagination that what I signed up for is in like unchangeable, immutable, and that doesn't work for dynamic living human beings in a society that allows us to, you know, end relationships, which I'm grateful that we live in very, very grateful. [00:28:23] Joli Hamilton: So. It's tricky because in that scenario, so frequently it, I want to side way, like I want, I feel my own wounded self want to side with the person who's like, no, no, no, I want safety. I want security. I want to go at a slow pace. Also, why am I not enough? What the hell is this all about? Why would you want that? [00:28:42] Joli Hamilton: What are you doing? You're just a horn dog. Like, like I start making this list. I want, part of me wants to identify with that. And another part of me says, yeah, what had this partner who wants some more sexual autonomy or freedom, what part of him was hiding this from himself likely for decades? [00:29:03] Joli Hamilton: What part of him felt like there was no place for this? There's no conversation to be had. There's just the path. There's just that one escalator that we get on. Um, And. Net did not know and in a genuine childlike cell sense of innocence had no idea That they could even want this. So I can feel both sides of this and say, what if we hold both of those equally tenderly and say, we have to come to a collective decision about how we're going to work with this. [00:29:34] Joli Hamilton: How long can we be in the experimental process, say, like I don't work with people for less than a year. A year is a minimum because I don't think this is the kind of thing we should ever rush ourselves through. I rushed myself. Don't do it. I don't recommend it. It's not good. There isn't a right way to open up, but there are a lot of ways to do it painfully. [00:29:59] Joli Hamilton: So what I would recommend in that scenario is taking seriously that even though it looks like in that scenario, one person needs to go slower than the other, it's not true. Both of them need to slow down and understand the tools that will need to be put in place, the differences, the way that they'll have to shift how they think about their relationship My favorite part, this is my, actually my absolute favorite part. [00:30:23] Joli Hamilton: They have to grapple with the fact that most of the time I see people experience what I call the flip. The person who had the idea to start this was interested. Yeah. Six months down the road, a year down the road, they may find. This is hard. I didn't know that it would bring up feelings. I didn't know I would have trouble dating. [00:30:45] Joli Hamilton: I didn't know I was going to have to do all this stuff. I didn't know about safer sex. I didn't. Meanwhile, your partner who didn't want to do this has found some joy, some pleasure, some success of their own measure. And they're like, yeah, well, you brought it up. So we're in it now. All, like, these are just everyday scenarios and so holding the tenderness around like, wow, what if we have to be in the transition process for a course of years and allow that to take place? [00:31:17] Joli Hamilton: That opens up space for us to get more, more clear on what each person needs. [00:31:21] Charna Cassell: And also to, to be clear, you know, like the same scenario, when I said the word, you know, exploratory freedom, that could exist within just a monogamous relationship versus like opening it up and the same challenges, the same and the pace piece around one person doesn't want to have any penetrative sex. [00:31:46] Charna Cassell: One person needs more attunement and slow uh, tenderness um, versus escalating even with kissing. Like there, there's these very small moves versus like jumping out into other relationships that that people need. [00:32:06] Joli Hamilton: that's an excellent point, right? Like, let's not forget that. [00:32:10] Joli Hamilton: I mean, my first step in opening up, whatever I recommend to anyone is, have you, have you opened up imaginatively first? Have you started to have sexual conversations? Have you started to actually contemplate what this even is? But what I hear you saying is, Yeah, what do we do when two people have what might be clinically described as a desire discrepancy or a desire mismatch? [00:32:36] Joli Hamilton: That is the number one reason why I see people in my office And they're they're looking to solve that through non monogamy, right? Like that's how they found me But the desire mismatch itself still needs to be addressed We still have to address the fact that we like Seeking that solution elsewhere still doesn't address how I internalize my own, like, is this desire okay? [00:33:01] Joli Hamilton: Can my partner still meet me? Can I allow my, the sexual connection between us to change, potentially even end, and then nurture some other type of intimacy? Because that's one of the things that I see people doing in non monogamy that's, it's quite beautiful. Sometimes people will allow their sexual connection to end. [00:33:22] Joli Hamilton: So that they can continue to relate and non monogamy gives them a path. It's not an easy path, but it is a path. And by and large, we just don't hear these conversations. Most of us don't get a chance to hear what's going on in other people's bedrooms and what's going on in their hearts. So we, when we go through this ourselves, when I, if I need to go at a much different pace than my partner, we may think that what we want is like, The norm or drastically different from the norm, but really we have no idea because we're not listening to hundreds of people talk about this. [00:33:58] Charna Cassell: yeah, yeah, Yeah, that's, yeah. And then the other area of expertise that you have that I find really interesting, is jealousy. Jealousy is such a remarkable topic to have done so much research in and, you know, you have basically people, a lot of the times people are not interested in trying out non monogamy because it feels very threatening and jealousy arises. [00:34:27] Joli Hamilton: Or they're afraid even, I, the number one way people walk into this is, I could never do non monogamy because I'm jealous. That sentence right there. And I mean, I can use myself as an example here. I am a professional jealousy researcher. I am non monogamous and I have maniacal jealousy. Like my jealousy is very big. [00:34:49] Joli Hamilton: It is loud. It is a part of my life. It is not gone. It's not easy for me. It's painful. In fact, I study it because it's not easy for me. It's why I just kept knocking on my door saying, you're gonna write a whole darn dissertation on this, baby. Jealousy itself, though, unfortunately monogamy doesn't protect us from it either. [00:35:12] Joli Hamilton: Jealousy is an emotion, just like any emotion. We have to grapple with it when we have to grapple with it. And for some of us, it comes up frequently, and In whatever relationship structure we're in, for others, it comes up very infrequently or very mildly. I have worked with people who are in committed, dedicated, beautiful, monogamous relationships who are jealous every single day, monitoring their partner's phones, can barely be in public with their partners because they're so out of their mind anytime their partner gets attention. [00:35:43] Joli Hamilton: Jealousy is an emotion that happens within me. It's rooted in our survival instincts from when we were infants. You know, we can spot jealousy in babies five, six months old. There are studies showing we can see it. So we're not going to get rid of jealousy and you don't have to have no jealousy to do any particular relationship structure. [00:36:02] Joli Hamilton: But what I love about jealousy is that it's also valuable and I don't want to get rid of it. And one of the ways that we can shift the cultural conversation around jealousy is to say. It's normal. Jealousy itself is normal. We will all experience it differently, but we should never demonize it in another partner, like don't turn it into a thing to say like, Oh, you're just bad at this or you're just a jealous person with that like acid voice. [00:36:31] Joli Hamilton: And we can also withdraw our self judgment about Yep, I'm jealous. I'm experiencing jealousy. When somebody's angry, they're experiencing anger. I have a lot of curiosity about that, like, what's going on? What's causing that anger, right? Anger is an energy, it lets me change things. Jealousy is also an energy. [00:36:51] Joli Hamilton: Jealousy is telling me, it's really straight, quite straightforward, it's telling me that I perceive a threat to a valued relationship by a third party. That threat doesn't have to be real. I'm our imaginations are so capable of inventing it, but now I can also start to take jealousy apart. It's made of so many other things. [00:37:09] Joli Hamilton: What kind of jealousy, what flavors my jealousy is angry? Is it sad? Is it shameful? Do I feel shame about my jealousy? Do I feel jealousy deserves my attention? Am I willing to look right at it? Or do I actually just want to make my partner do something different? So I don't feel it. It's such a big topic and we often just dismiss it with this quiet, like, eh, just jealousy. [00:37:35] Joli Hamilton: It's just jealousy. It's just insecurity. Oh, I wish. It's not just anything. It's very complex. [00:37:42] Charna Cassell: It deserves its own episode, definitely. And you make an important distinction that I appreciate between, you know, envy and jealousy. [00:37:51] Joli Hamilton: Yeah, and envy and jealousy can show up at the same time, and envy is longing to be what someone is or have what they have. [00:37:57] Joli Hamilton: So it's just between me and one other person. Jealousy always has a triangle. So if I can spot the jealousy, it'll be me, my beloved, and the perceived interrupter. They might be imaginal. They might be a collection of Instagram likes, right? I can imagine this interrupter out of nowhere. Or the jealousy can be very real. [00:38:20] Joli Hamilton: I can see evidence. There are lots of kinds of jealousy and some of it is quite rational. I see evidence of this potential interruption. Envy though, well, envy can show up at the same time because if I compare myself to that perceived interrupter and I'm like, Damn, they are smarter than me. They are funnier than me. [00:38:37] Joli Hamilton: They are prettier than me. Whatever. If they are more, if I compare myself negatively to them in any way, I can easily get in an envy trap where now I've demoted myself. Now I'm the one down person and I've also got jealousy. So now I have fear and loathing present. Just to throw a little extra spice into the mix. [00:38:56] Joli Hamilton: I can also be jealous and simultaneously feel envious for my beloved. I could be feeling jealous and be envious that my partner is getting attention from someone else. And that might even be agreed upon attention. I may be very enthusiastically consenting to them getting this attention and still be feeling envy about that. [00:39:15] Joli Hamilton: Because feelings don't care about what we made agreements about. They're just gonna happen. So we have to learn how to manage them and be with them so that we can work with the Our actions, the actions we take based on our envy and jealousy will have a far bigger impact on our relationship than the feelings themselves. [00:39:33] Charna Cassell: And many of us know that what all those feelings that are showing up there, they're somewhat about the present moment, your partner and the attention they're getting from this other person. But often there's a deeper, longer, older route, right? And so how, what are some ways that people can work with their jealousy? [00:39:54] Joli Hamilton: Yeah, [00:39:54] Charna Cassell: well that shows up. [00:39:56] Joli Hamilton: When jealousy shows up, yeah, jealousy shows up, I want everyone to, Jung, I, I study a lot of Jungian psychology that's what I rooted in he has very little to say about jealousy, which is really ironic given the fact that there's a lot of triangular situations in his biography but the, this one sentence he has is jealousy is a very suspicious emotion, which sounds like he's talking about how when you're jealous you're suspicious, but what he actually is intending to, to point to is, Let's get suspicious of jealousy. [00:40:26] Joli Hamilton: What is it trying to convey to me? It's complicated. So if my go to response when jealousy comes up is to point at my partner and say, fix it, you made me feel this way, fix it, I'm actually going to miss The wisdom of the jealousy, I'm going to miss the opportunity. It showed up for a reason. It is my emotion, even if it is totally rational. [00:40:48] Joli Hamilton: We might also need to have a conversation about expectations, agreements, violations, boundaries, all those things. But first I want to take responsibility for the fact that, yep, this is my emotion. What do I want to do with it? And most of us, if we. If we look toward our attachment history, if we look toward our childhood, we will uncover where we have a core wound of unwantedness, unlovability, a sense of, or sense of entitlement, which is just an, a covered up, a prettied up version of unlovability and unwantedness, right? [00:41:22] Joli Hamilton: And so I can use my jealousy as a way to point to very Clearly, oh, I don't feel lovable right now. I don't feel acceptable right now at some core level, and I feel this threat. But that, like, that's so many layers down. You see how, like, you have to, like, walk way down to get there. Way easier to point to my partner. [00:41:44] Joli Hamilton: There's, when I was doing my research it's qualitative research and I researched in both monogamous and non monogamous people and the non monogamous people who were dealing with jealousy well, all had something in common. They were following a pretty set path and they hadn't talked to each other, but there was a pretty clear path of noticing their jealousy early in their body. [00:42:06] Joli Hamilton: Naming it, being very clear, this is jealousy, here's the flavor it's showing up in, here's how it feels in my body. Then, unpacking their narrative, what does this jealousy mean? So they're noticing, they're naming, they're unpacking that narrative, and then, they get to navigating their needs. And they go to their partner and they say, okay, we gotta have conversations about how this relationship works. [00:42:28] Joli Hamilton: But they come in with all this intelligence, all this wisdom about what's going on for me. And that, I call that the Jealousy Roadmap. And if people are interested in that, you can go to JealousyRoadmap. com and grab that. It comes directly out of my research, but I've made it very digestible in a little e book format for people to grab onto and walk yourself right through it. [00:42:47] Charna Cassell: That's brilliant. I love that. and, And you also, do you have a, is it a program or an ongoing group that you're working with? [00:42:56] Joli Hamilton: I do a cohort oriented program. It's called the year of opening. And so we stay together for a whole year. I run it four times a year. A group of 20 people get together. We stay together for the whole year and we figure out what does it mean to custom build a relationship that is somewhere outside of the compulsory version of monogamy. [00:43:19] Joli Hamilton: Not everybody is doing like full blown, like, yeah, we want to have sex with everyone and relationships with everyone. It's about crafting the custom design relationship that we actually want. So we stay together in a small group and I teach my curriculum throughout that year and the groups bond together. [00:43:36] Joli Hamilton: There's something so remarkable about like having these conversations. I said earlier, we don't get to hear the inside. Of people's stuff and that's what most of us need is we need to hear like, Oh, you know what? I already heard that guy made that mistake, you know, maybe I could catch myself before I go down that same path. [00:43:55] Joli Hamilton: Maybe I have this example now. That's why I love the group work. I do private work too, but. The group's where it's at. It's where the learning happens faster and cheaper. [00:44:04] Charna Cassell: Absolutely. Well, and there's also so much of our, of people's challenges around shame and that's where it's like, I have to appear a certain way around my peers rather than if you're working through and you're hearing other people share really vulnerably and authentically, then you're getting that shame part, you know, brought into the light work through and you, yeah, you have to work half as hard. [00:44:28] Joli Hamilton: Right. And we, it is remarkable to me how much, there is a, there's a level of shame about even needing to have other people. So just having someone to witness us as we change and grow, to do the celebrating with, to be present to, Oh, I can be accountable. So maybe I did just screw up my my, agreement. But now I can come in and say, it was me. [00:44:54] Joli Hamilton: I did it. And I trust you all. Will you hold this for me? I'm just going to, I'm going to tell you I did. I violated my agreement and we're going to hold that together. And now you're going to do the repair and get back up and try again and try in a container that actually resolves to love you through the mistakes that you're inevitably going to make while you transition paradigms. [00:45:17] Joli Hamilton: It's not easy to transition paradigms. You need support for it. [00:45:22] Charna Cassell: Such, it sounds like, trial by fire and great practice for someone who's a perfectionist, right? It's like you just, you have to surrender to practice. [00:45:32] Joli Hamilton: Exactly. Exactly. And, you know, I just had a group a cohort just graduated last night, so I'm very freshly off of this. [00:45:39] Joli Hamilton: And listening to how so many of them came in imagining that they couldn't do this, right? They were like, I, like, I'm here because my partner was like into this, but I, they're the reluctant partner. And listening to how each of them was able to step in and set their boundaries, decide what was for them and what wasn't, and learn to love their partner by showing up and really hearing, really listening what it is for their partner to have these different wants and needs, and not fall into the trap of Of demonizing any need that's beyond the monogamous paradigm, but also not just jumping into this, like, yep, everybody should just do whatever they want all the time. [00:46:20] Joli Hamilton: And your feelings don't matter. Right. Staying really in the muck of it and being like, wow, we have to be responsible to each other's feelings for each other and also exploratory and. Yeah. It's very tender space. I really I love that work. [00:46:36] Charna Cassell: Oh, it's so gratifying. I love that. Yeah. I would love to continue a conversation with you about that. [00:46:42] Charna Cassell: And I'm aware of time. And I am. It's a real thing. Yeah. Unfortunately, I love timeless space, but how can people find you and is there anything else that you want to share before we. Sign out for today. [00:46:56] Joli Hamilton: Well, you know, if this resonates, I would recommend people hop on over, grab the Jealousy Roadmap at jealousyroadmap. [00:47:02] Joli Hamilton: com, follow me on socials, Dr. Joli underscore Hamilton, J O L I underscore Hamilton, like the musical. And I'll Honestly, listening to Playing With Fire, if you're not sure about all this, the thing that, the comment I get most frequently about Playing With Fire is, it's not really about non monogamy. And I'm like, I know. [00:47:22] Joli Hamilton: It's really about having a conscious relationship. But we treat non monogamy as a completely valid option amongst many. And that in itself, right? Like, so anyone, monogamous or non monogamous can listen to those conversations and Ken and I get very vulnerable about our own process. So it is one of those windows into like, what happens when you're really vulnerable and you get to like, put the glass up to the wall and listen into us processing our stuff. [00:47:49] Joli Hamilton: That's where I would recommend people go. [00:47:52] Charna Cassell: Beautiful. [00:47:53] Charna Cassell: Thank you so much. I love it. [00:47:57] Joli Hamilton: Thank you so much for having me. It was a delight to talk to you. An absolute delight. You ask great questions. [00:48:03] Charna Cassell: I look, there's so much there. It's like with every, everything you said, there's like 17 little threads that we could follow and it's clear. [00:48:11] Charna Cassell: We could talk for a long time. Yeah, I love it. Well, thank you again. And I look forward to future conversations. [00:48:18] Charna Cassell: Thank you so much for joining us. If you found the information in this episode helpful, please rate, review, and share it with anyone that you think would appreciate it. [00:48:28] Charna Cassell: And if you want to stay connected to me, you can follow me on Laid Open Podcast on Facebook or Instagram. That's L A I D O P E N P O D C A S T. [00:48:44] Charna Cassell: You can also go to my website, charnacassell. com. And when you're there, you can sign up for my newsletter, you can get a free gift, and you can also stay informed about upcoming courses blogs, writing that I'm doing, and potential retreats. You can also go to info at passionatelife. org if you want to read more about my private practice and the work that I do there. [00:49:11] Charna Cassell: Until next time, this has been Laid Open Podcast with your host Charna Cassell. And may this podcast connect you to new resources that empower you to heal. Thank you so much for listening.