Discussion topic: Most agree we'd like to avoid any drama in a lifestyle experience. But is this a realistic expectation? Is drama such a bad thing? Do we know what drama really is and is not? How should we handled drama if we encounter it in ourselves or another couple? Catherine (from episode 41), a licensed professional counselor joins us again and provides answers, insights and tools to help answer these and other questions around drama in the lifestyle! You can reach Catherine via email at: [email protected] Catherine's website is www.expansiveconnection.com Michelle Chalfant: The Child Chair The Adolescent Chair The Adult Chair Join our Members Only Community here!
Transcript
This podcast contains explicit language and content and is for mature audiences only. Hey you teenagers out there, if you're under 18, this show is more for your parents. So now that you have that mental picture stuck in your head, put some music on and get back to doing your homework. We are a long-time married couple who's decided to chronicle our personal adventures and share our sex-pos positive discussions as we navigate our way through the swinging lifestyle. Care to join us?
hello everyone i'm mr jones and i'm mrs jones and we want to welcome you to episode 54 of the we gotta think podcast drama in the lifestyle i know it's about drama we've been avoiding this for 53 episodes and here we are well but we're in good company we are okay here's a little bit of a preview we're not alone tonight no well we're alone tonight but we weren't alone two nights ago right um katherine is back yeah so all of you katherine fans from episode 41 when we talked about jealousy. Yes. Um year ago, we've collaborated again tonight. Yeah. We're going to talk about drama.
So this is the second annual. No, no, we're going to do it more frequently. I hope so. Yeah. Yeah. So it was about a year ago that we did episode 41 with Catherine, who is a licensed counselor.
And she really helped us kind of unpack the whole idea of jealousy and how it can rear its ugly head in the lifestyle and how to to kind of deal with it and then she came up with this idea of talking about drama in the lifestyle because drama is highly overrated yes yes so this kind of struck a nerve with her and she came up with an outline and coerced us and twisted our arms to get us to invite her back on. Oh, she had to twist it so hard, right? But before we talk about that, a couple of announcements. Yes.
We wanted to thank you, especially those of you in our members-only group who gave us a lot of comments about the idea of drama. Yes. A lot of feedback. We have a smart group of people because they didn't fall for the bait. I threw it out there like drama, like people are going to overreact to it, and they pretty much kept it in perspective. Yeah, they did, and they gave a little bit of structure to Catherine's outline. They did. Yeah, they did a good job.
Yeah, and I also want to, I thanked the group, and I'm also going to blame the group because it's Friday night, and we sent our newsletter out tonight. And the reason that it was late, I'm blaming it all on the sexy ladies in our private members group because they started posting pictures this afternoon. Oh my god I was trying to shop like I was at the grocery store and okay I might have been at the liquor store but yeah I'm trying to shop and like my phone is like ding and I start looking at it and it's like thong Thursday a day late.
I know I'm trying to write my blog and get the newsletter out and all these these sexy pictures are coming in. So, of course, me being the guy, I have my priorities. Yeah. And I stopped and looked at all the sexy lady pictures. And I was feeling like overdressed, but I was like at the grocery store. I know. So I had to wait till I got home to do something about it. Yeah. So you're missing out. Yeah. Please join our group if you'd like to join us in our parade of sexy ladies. And there's some smart conversation as well. Yes, there is. An important announcement next month. Yes.
So we have been negotiating with Desire for our 2019 travel dates, and we finally are making some progress. So this is September of 2018, right? So in October, it is. Tonight, yes. So next, in episode 55 in October, we are going to be providing you details of our Desire 2019 trip. However, if you want to know the details before then, we are going to announce them in our private group.
And if you booked with with us this year we're going to be sending you an email in the next few days to tell you about what the dates are so you can start booking for 2019 yes and then if you subscribe to our newsletter we are going to send an email out to everyone else and let them put it in our newsletter before in the next two weeks. And then we'll announce it on our podcast in October. Yes. So we just want to make sure all of our listeners have the opportunity to book first. Yes. What's happened in the past? Well, we've done this three times now.
Well, it'll be three times in November when we go. But, you know, people want to come with us and the resort books up yes and then we end up with a waiting list so we just want to make sure our listeners do get like you know the first jump at making the reservation yes so we're going to provide you information and we're going to tell you how to book that way you can book through us and you can get on our list and you can get all of our goodies and be included in everything that we do. Yes. So stay tuned for that. Okay, so with that, why don't we get into Keeping Up with the Joneses?
We have been freaking busy. But we did take a trip to Florida. Yes. We went to the Tampa, Florida area. We have friends down there. We have business down there. We kind of managed to blend it all together. Yes. We went to Eyes Wide Shut. We drug a really good friend of ours there. Like we owe our friends so much. Yeah. We were given some advanced warning about what type of club this is. And we went anyway. Yeah. But we went with, so we went with friends and then we also met a couple from our members only community. Yes.
Yeah, so we knew that since we were taking our own party that it would be okay. But let's just describe this place for you. So normally when you go to a lifestyle club you have to take your own booze, and, like, they put your number on the bottle, and they take it behind the bar. Right. Because you can't mix sex with alcohol. Sex with alcohol, right. This club wasn't like that. No, they had, it was in a, it was in a building, but they had two side-by-side units. So, it was a strip mall.
so the the two like adjacent like stores yeah were basically one yeah so you would go in the main one and we went in this is eyes wide shut and we went in and we checked in we paid our dues and they have a bar in there but you didn't have to bring your own alcohol because that side of it is just a bar and a nightclub right and in that part of it there was like no public nudity correct you could they made it clear to us that we could not show our nipples or our genitals in the bar side and we behaved we did yes we did i think most people did thank goodness and actually the bar side was pretty cool i mean it was um it was pretty uh um it was come on you're just trying to be polite go ahead mrs jones it was kind of rustic no i'm i don't want to make fun of it it was um it was how can you not make fun of it mr jones please it was fine like the bar side was fine what do you mean fine the drinks were good Thank you.
It was, um, it was, how can you not make fun of it? Mr. Jones, please. It was fine. Like the bar side was fine. What do you mean fine? The drinks were good. Yeah. The drinks were good. Every drink was a double. I watched her. I watched her pour the drinks. That's because we asked for doubles. We needed. Oh, you did? Yeah. There was, there was two couples next to us too. The lady, the bartender said, do you want singles or doubles? She said, honey, I want doubles and I want some jello shots too. That's right. Thank you. There was two couples next to us, too.
The bartender said, do you want singles or doubles? She said, honey, I want doubles, and I want some Jell-O shots, too. That's right. Because I've never been here before, and I need some extra alcohol. They were so funny. That was so much fun. Oh, thank God they were there together. Regardless of what we think about the club, we had a good time. We did. Because we took the party with us. Yes, we did.
We had our friends with us, and then then our new friends so about the time we finished our first drink um they said we're gonna give it to her so we went in the back where the i'm not making this up where the sex museum there is a sex museum and actually that was kind of interesting that was a toy store whatever it was it was a little interesting they had some really interesting unique stuff down back there that I'd never seen before. Yeah. So he introduced us to his wife who runs the sex museum. Yes.
And he proceeded to tell us, you need to dump out your drinks because we're going to go over to the hotel side or the lodging side of the club. It was motel, not hotel. Okay, motel. So the way that they got around not to be able to serve alcohol on one side is on the other side, it was officially permitted as a hotel. Right. So we went out the front door of the club. Of the strip mall. And then went in the next door to the motel. That was truly adjacent. I mean, the doors opened into each other. Right.
And we went in in there and the first thing that we noticed was what it was stinky and it smelled like what must it was musty moldy yeah and so what does that do for your um sex drive my libido yeah it it just dries it right up yeah so we went in the back and then, when we walked into the big room and they had the play area, what did you notice about the play area? Did it look like maybe the dentist's office? There was a dental chair in there. The OBGYN. And like, I'm, I'm not making that up. It was a dental chair. Yeah. That he had brought in. It looked like it. Yeah.
That he had gotten in China. That's what he said. Or Taiwan. No, Thailand. Thailand, sorry. No, it was truly a dental jam. Yeah, and then it got a little awkward. Why? Because there was this poor girl that was just this stunningly beautiful girl from Russia. Yes.
And he decided that she was his victim that night yes and that poor girl could not cut a break the russians by yeah 008 he kept yeah he called her he tried to get her to come up front and to test all these chairs like hell no yeah it was she was a smart girl let me tell you it was it was awkward everyone in there was cringing and he kept thinking he could like break her down but she was as smart as she was beautiful so in this club where there were um what do you call it the uh power strips the surge protectors hanging from the ceiling where all the electricity was plugged into You know, a lot of of times I try to sugarcoat what Mr.
Jones says, but I really can't tonight. I'm sorry. Yeah. Yeah. Everything was vinyl. It was not what we would consider a safe, secure, and healthy enough environment for us to play in that area. Right right so when we went on the tour it was pretty much at that point in time we're not gonna we're not gonna play here we're not gonna have sex here because i mean i gave mr jones one look and he was just like don't talk to me yeah you're wasting your yeah i'm on the same page right yeah. And our poor friends. So the friends that we drug there with us are like... Monogamish.
Yeah, they're quasi-lifestyle. They're monogamish. And when we said we wanted to go there, they were like, are you sure? And we're like, yeah, we really want to go. And they were like, well, okay.
And I, and i i yeah yeah we owe them an apology so we went back to the main side and we got another double and we and we hung around for a while before we left and we had a good time we did because we met our friends there so the six of us had the first that's the first reason we had time yeah fun what's the second reason well so our friends that we took with us who are monogamish are are that the wife is very flamboyant and she's exuberant she talks with her hands so we were kind of standing we were kind of sort of at a table but we were near the bar and the bar was like was always a line to get up to the bar to order a drink.
Because if you're going to stay at this club at any extended period of time, you need a drink or two. There is that. Yeah. Okay. So we're all standing around and this couple had come up to the bar to order drinks and they were kind of waiting on their drinks to be made for them.
And my girlfriend is talking with her hands and she reaches back like she's going to like her husband is next to her he's supposed to be next to her and he's supposed to be next to her but he was actually ordering a cocktail so he wasn't next to her but this really tall handsome gentleman happened to be next to her and she reaches back like she's going to stroke her husband's leg but she ends up kind of like putting her hand up a little higher and strokes strokes the cock of this really handsome guy that she had never met before he had clothes on he did have clothes on we were in the bar area there was no nipples or genitals allowed so she reached back and she grabbed a handful and she could not have aimed better.
And she was doing it behind her. No, you're skipping apart. She couldn't figure out why he kept moving away. But she never turned around. She kept like reaching back and then he moved further and further away and didn't know it wasn't her husband. And his wife was standing next to her kind of smirking and laughing while all this was going on. And of course, we all start to like realize what she was doing and we were dying. Did we say anything to her? Oh, no. We were just howling. So she turned around and then was, you know, purely in shock and embarrassed that she was grabbing some guy's car.
And then she made her new friend. Yeah. That was worth the price of admission right there. Yeah, it was. And they were a great couple. And then we ended up all talking to them for a while. Yeah. They were very gracious about her mistake. Yeah. So it was, there's a third reason why we were glad that we went okay why because it's good podcast material oh i know i know it was so entertaining so having said all of that we're gonna end our segment of keeping up with the joneses and we are going to now uh transition over to segment two and we're gonna bring in katherine We'll see you next time.
going to now uh transition over to segment two and we're going to bring in katherine welcome to segment two of our podcast and today we are talking about drama in the lifestyle that doesn't happen no it never happens but but luckily um this is legit because we have our good friend Catherine here with us and we're just we're thrilled to be with her again and we know that you guys are excited to hear what she has to say yeah and she probably won't take credit for it so we'll give her credit for this idea and this topic so we'll let you introduce yourself and then we'll get going okay well thank you again for having me back it was so much fun about this time last year and was excited to come back so I will take credit for this only because you all were so kind to let me have a microphone for my soapbox I I think the text I sent you was great episode and now I'm getting on my soapbox ready and then I let my thumbs fly about my frustration with this word and as usual our thoughts were very in line so we thought we should get our voices out on this so thank you for letting me do that.
So my name is Catherine and I'm a licensed professional counselor in the state of North Carolina. But I do most of my work under the title of coach because most of my clients are outside of North Carolina. So I have a business called Expansive Connection and I work with people that mostly people under the umbrella of non-monogamy, swingers, polyamorous, all sorts of, or just questioning how to deal with jealousy in a monogamous relationship. So in my practice, I see, like I say, I see couples, I see individuals, and my business has grown thanks to our work together.
I really appreciate last time having the opportunity to do that. And as I said in episode 41, I won't get into all of my lifestyle story, but my husband and I have been non-monogamous for about three and a half years now and it's been such a wonderful journey. I think we started it to add some fun and excitement to our lives. And I think now we kind of realized that this is the place where we grow and we stay sharp. We stay on our edge. We keep learning about ourselves. We keep learning about each other. And then we also get to have fun.
And so the priority it's interesting has shifted for us where I don't want to get stale and old and feel like I know everything about anything including myself or my relationship and so we really appreciate the lifestyle and being non-monogamous for the ways that it pushes us to grow and of course it adds a lot of fun too so maybe that's one of the reasons why this topic is so, such a strong, why I have such a strong reaction to the word drama because I get frustrated at the judgment around it. So I guess with that we can jump right in. Yeah, let's do it. Yeah. All right.
So why my thumb started flying, my soapbox, the frustration I have around this word is it just seems to be, number one, overly used, overly generalized. I feel like it's thrown around carelessly. I feel like it can be very shaming to a large portion of people in the lifestyle and the greater umbrella of non-monogamy because it shames people for the way they choose to navigate it. So there are plenty of people that only want this to be a physical addition to their lives. And that's great. But I find that there are a lot of people that want more than just the physical connection.
And so in doing so, there are going to be feelings that come up. There are going to be situations. I loved your awkward moments situation. Actually, I think that's the one that got me going about this. And the conversations that we need to have within ourselves, in our primary partnerships, and then with our non-monogamous friends about the feelings and situations and awkwardness that can come up. And sometimes I feel like that gets thrown into the column of drama, and that really frustrates me. Of course, there are ways of behaving and reacting.
I will say reacting instead of responding that are not appropriate. And I think we're going to talk about those. But I think when we just throw that word around for anything, it just it doesn't acknowledge the work that people are doing to navigate the complexities that are inherent in, in this lifestyle. Yeah. And I think, you know, the, the point of, we, we just talked about, what did we just talk about? Um, discretion, you know, and when you read a profile, discretion and, and drama are normally those words that people throw in all caps and they put in three or four times. And drama...
Yeah, we don't want drama. Has anybody ever put in their profile, we love drama, bring it. I mean, that's so ridiculous. Yeah. So they're really saying something different and maybe it's something fearful, and I think that's probably what we we're gonna get into. Absolutely. Well, it always cracks me up when people, like they say, no drama in all capitals, and it's like, isn't that pretty dramatic? Writing it in all capitals. Yeah, or, you know, that idea that no drama, and maybe again what they're saying is we only want this to be a physical. Okay, that's fine. But as you pointed out, Mr.
Jones, when we were discussing ideas for this, that sometimes that can sound like, okay, I just want you to lay there. Yeah, I just want you to lay there and be quiet and not emotionally react to anything. And I mean, I think orgasms are pretty dramatic myself.
I wouldn't want to cut that part absolutely absolutely um so you know i guess when i hear the word drama what i always get what always comes up in my head is what do they mean by that are they talking about emotions they're talking about expression of emotions are they talking about inappropriate expression of emotion and what does that mean so again i get frustrated at-generized and thrown around.
So one of the main reasons that I wanted to come on this podcast and talk about it, and after we had lots of discussion, I will also, right now I'm going to go ahead and give a shout out to a lot of my clients. Once I told them I was coming back on your podcast, first of all, let me tell you how many groupies you have that never reach out. They're like, oh, really? You get to see them again? Tell me everything. And there was lots of excitement about that. But so many people have thoughts about this that they were so excited to have an opportunity to talk about.
So there is quite a bit peppered in here from my clients, either stories or some of their words directly. Of course, I can't give them credit because that would break confidentiality, although some said, are you going to give me a shout out? I'm like, no, I can't say your name, but I hope they'll hear that and I do thank them for those thoughts. So from getting all those thoughts, my hope is to clarify this word. I hope we can delve into this in a way that will give people more pause before they throw the word around.
I hope, though, as we talk about this, it will help people feel more empowered to manage their own feelings and actions in whatever way feels appropriate to them.
To not take others' feelings and actions on, because it's not our job to fix their feelings for them to not take other people's feelings or actions personally because as we know it is not about us it is rarely about us it's about the other person and what they're going through and to especially to not i especially hope that people will not vilify other people for having their own feelings and actions so the way i hope we're going to do that is to better define drama i want to question what people mean when they use the word um i think when we're going to do that by explaining and talking about some what some situations i think we could all agree feel dramatic in this way that people probably mean introduce and discuss what drama isn't um discuss the problem with calling that what isn't drama, calling it drama.
And then for my list lovers, like my husband, engineering types out there, we have a bullet list. All right. I have a handout. Yes. Okay, so jumping right in, as you said, Mr. Jones, fear. What is that fear response around drama? Are they scared of just our typical conflict avoidance in our society? Are they scared of honesty, directness?
You know, if you're asking me or if you're just being rhetorical, I think it's just people who are uncomfortable dealing with real emotion um and you know when we choose to be social swingers and when we choose to build relationships with people with any relationship that's worth having you know there's going to be some feelings that are exchanged and i think maybe people are just a little bit afraid of, hey, that's not what I bought into, or I'm not here to be all about that. You all need to work that out, and then let's go to bed.
So I think it's just a general fear, in my opinion, of having to deal with other people's emotions, which in turn, causes us to have to deal with you know some some of our emotions as well absolutely um yeah that i think that fear of the vulnerability that that comes up as we get into this again people are like oh i signed up to just have some great sex and i just think that that's a misnomer some people can stay with that and and probably work hard to stay at just have to work harder maybe in some ways to just stay on that level. But I know it surprised us.
And I think we've all heard in your journey how it surprised you that it makes you more vulnerable, makes you notice more about yourself and your relationship and then the feelings that come up with others. I had a client that said this in such a great way. She said, yep, nothing like the lifestyle to grow you up fast. I thought that was great. I guess my other rhetorical question is this idea that if we're wanting or choosing to have open and honest and genuine conversations with the goal of understanding ourselves and others more, is that really drama?
I don't think so, as you can probably tell. So, of course, being a nerd, I pulled out the dictionary. Actually, I didn't pull out a paper dictionary. I Googled this. I'm sure you have one, though, right? I do have one. I can't quite let it go. I've got to teach my daughter to use it. So I looked up the definition of drama. Now, also with my clinical training, you know, I've had to learn how to do a lot of diagnosis.
And the word that comes to my mind when I think of what I think most people are talking about with drama is actually the word histrionic, which is probably, I don't know if you all ever heard of that word. I have not. You have? Mrs. Jones says she's the brains of this operation. So I looked up those two words to compare. So the actual definition of drama is an exciting, emotional, or unexpected series of events or set of circumstances. That didn't sound so bad, I think. Exciting?
Unexpected, unexpected I think is the word right that's what my husband said he said oh yeah the unexpected the blind sighting that's tough but then let's look at histrionics so those of you that well actually let's jump where have you heard of it do you know the context you know I to me histrionics is is much more emotional and like it's like a reaction to something right right yeah exactly so most people would have heard it um maybe as a personality disorder because it is a diagnosable personality disorder histrionic personality disorder the deck the definition of it is melodramatic um a histrionic outburst um exaggerated, showy, artificial, overreacted, and exaggerated, dramatic behavior, here's the key to me, designed to attract attention.
And so that's one of the things that I felt like as I dug into this, kept coming up, is this desire for attention and trying to get it in maybe less than appropriate way so let's kind of think about that and roll into some of these situations that we would probably all agree would be more on that histrionic drama side of things you know what comes to mind uh this has happened we went to a house party once and there was a lady in the room and she was moaning and screaming all night long like she was having a 60 minute orgasm yeah and it seemed like pretty theatrical like i know that's not real it can't be real so so that is i think more hey look at me you know bring bring the attention towards me and be in the center of everything that's going on.
Right. And, I mean, let's be honest. The external validation that we get in the lifestyle is pretty great. Yeah. Right? Because once we pair off, it's inappropriate to say that your wife is hot or come up to your wife and say she's hot or vice versa and I I know I've heard you talk about this um on the podcast Mrs. Jones how fun it is to be able to get that attention oh for sure yeah and the guys to get that I mean I know my husband that's one of his things he's like if she is not overtly interested in me it's not going to happen and he really likes that too.
So I don't want to say that that wanting some of that attention is all bad but it's it's like almost wanting and wanting to be overly served with attention um and looking for that attention in especially showy ways you need to be like the center of attention well but even that sometimes it's lovely to be the center and have lots of hands on us right like on a massage game right that wouldn't be terrible um i think um well i guess it's sort of using this these histrionic um approaches to get that attention where it's like getting external validation in the lifestyle fun. It's great.
I don't want us to vilify that. I certainly don't want to give it up. But when we need it so much that we'll do anything to get it, then it seems like the antics get a little dramatic. Okay, right. And some of those, some of that anything could be to the detriment of other people in the room. Exactly. You know, so if I'm new to this and I hear all this moaning and groaning and this traumatic orgasm, it might intimidate me. Absolutely. You know, or it may distract me from what I'm doing. You know, I think natural sounds are attractive and actually help connect us.
And it's hard to hard to really explain what it is but when you hear it you know it yes and then it's a distraction and when and you all well maybe you all don't know as ladies but as a guy the last thing that we need are distractions focused on the task at hand so to speak we appreciate So maybe that's a little selfish to want that attention. Sure, sure. Yeah, so creating that scene, that's one of the first bullet points I had, was creating a scene that makes anyone or everyone else uncomfortable. And so this brought in some stories.
Again, I'm not going to go into details, but some of the things that some of my clients shared was a situation where a husband or the wife kind of flipped her lid, was having a bit of a scene, and made, and what I mean by scene, is like kind of threw something and said, oh, I just can't deal with this, and ran to the bathroom.
And sort of with this, we would think, hope that someone would chase her oh doesn't that sound like a romantic comedy right oh chase me right so some of that and then the husband continued to play with anyone would anyone that would play with him didn't go check on his wife yeah that's right awkward right and so then imagine the person that he's playing with watches his wife run by hoping hoping he'll chase her and the husband looks up and is like man and it goes back to playing yeah yeah right seems like they've got a few things to work out yes and i don't want that worked out in front of me.
No, absolutely, absolutely. Actually, this is one that happened to us. We were in a situation where this woman literally threw my husband down on the bed and jumped on top of him. He was clothed. She was not, and started her thing on top of him, and he was not interested in playing with her. She did not ask consent.
There's another soapbox i'd love to get on but we won't right now and so she jumped on top of him and he very kindly whispered in her ear to not make a scene thank you so much for the compliment i appreciate the attention but it's i'm just not really interested in you in this way which i thought was a very kind response yeah very direct very kind direct and kind and didn't make a scene whispered in her ear she then jumps up and makes a scene and tries to shame him for it and meanwhile she'd been the one that threw him down the bed the soapbox part of that is if a man had naked thrown me down not clothed i mean clothed on a bed the whole party would have stopped and the might have been called, but somehow she thought she could do it to him.
So again, kind of wanting this attention from him in this inappropriate way, in our opinion. Yeah, I think we've shared a couple of stories like that.
I know that maybe it was the awkward one where we were in the playroom with a bunch of other people and you and I were on different pages different pages yes and then we ended up just extracting ourself from the situation but we did so quietly right actually i think i mentioned that that might be that's one that i mentioned later on because i thought you all managed that beautifully um another thing that a few clients said and i agree with a lot is talking poorly about your spouse poorly about your spouse in front of the couple or the person you're playing with.
That's just bad form, in my opinion. Or talking poorly about other couples. Yeah. That gossipy. And that goes in the vanilla world, too. It does. But in the lifestyle world, first of all, I don't even want to know the other couples that you've played with, so don't, don't kiss and tell. Right. And then, secondly, if you are going to kiss and tell, and then I'd really rather not know who it was, you know, or, or that something negative happened. Exactly. You know, kind of let me figure that out for myself, unless it's something, like, dangerous that happened. Sure, sure.
But otherwise, I let me figure that out for myself unless it's something like dangerous that happened sure um but otherwise i need to figure that out for myself because i need the opportunity to at least attempt to create my own connection with that couple absolutely yeah and you never know really who was at fault in that anyway i mean it takes two and the other thing is if you're telling all about your stories with them, then you're going to go tell everyone else your stories about us. Sure.
So back to what we were talking about with discretion, you know, we don't really need that information, nor do we want that shared. Absolutely. And I agree with you, Mrs. Jones, that it can be, especially with closer lifestyle friends, to be able to share a story or an awkward moment or something that does involve play, be able to leave the names out. It can be a funny story, especially, I mean, I love self-deprecating ones myself, telling some goofy thing that I've done.
the list is long, where it would involve telling the story about another couple, but I don't need to give them names and faces and that sort of thing. And the other thing that you mentioned, like you say, wanting to be able to make your own connection with them, somebody else might have a bad experience with them because of the issues that they're bringing to the table. Right.
And then I have an experience with them and don't have any issue with them because i don't have that same flavor of issue that the other person has and you know someone mentioned to us recently some good friends of ours that um the first point is that you don't know how much somebody's grown since that incident or since you've seen them and in the lifestyle if it's everyday life it's if it's your job or as a parent you get practice at this every day such a good point yes but in the lifestyle if you're doing this once a month or once every other month there's not a lot of repetition here and so it may take a few experiences before you get enough under your belt to really have a good sample size to learn from.
Because your first experience or your first two experiences is pretty much guaranteed that the lifestyle is not just like that all the time. You need to get a breadth of experience, but it takes us a while to do that sometimes. Absolutely. Well, and even, I loved your newbies or veterans, is that what you call it? Yes. Yes. You know, even after we've been in this for three and a half years, there will be, there are new situations that we encounter and sometimes we navigate them really gracefully and sometimes some of the stuff that we bring to the table might get flipped up.
It's so hard to predict. But being able, and so this kind of goes into my next one, is I feel like we could all agree that that kind of histrionic type of drama is when someone else's unresolved issues or issues that they're currently working on burden someone else's good time.
That's a good point yeah right and people are working on it i mean i it's so a lot some of my clients are just they work so hard in between our sessions they have journaled they have listened to podcasts they have worked things talked about things with their with their spouses they've delved back into some memories i mean the work that they do between our sessions and the work we do in session, and then they'll report to me.
Like you say, it might be a month before they have an opportunity to go back into a situation where they have the potential to be triggered, and they're so excited to come back and say, oh my gosh, Catherine, I felt my lid.
I could kind of hear it creaking up, and I said this, this, and this, and remembered this, this, and this, and I used that tool, and I i was able to get it together i gave my husband this one look i gave my wife this signal we went we had two second conversation we were back in the game that's so awesome yeah right they didn't burden anybody else they didn't mess up their good time they were managing their own emotions in that way well i think that not only are they learning how to manage their own emotions, but they're learning how to communicate them with each other.
And then learning how to do that with each other is going to give you the tool that you need to learn how to be direct, like your husband was, you know, to be respectful yet direct. Because if people are dancing around a topic or not being very specific, then I wonder about their own communication and how does that, are they really on the same page or what am I, I'm having to see red flags pop up here, really what's going on? Absolutely. Absolutely. And then the other one that's a little bit, I would love to hear your thoughts on this.
One of the ones that I wrote pretty quickly in my list of what I think feels dramatic is when people ghost you or crickets. To me, that feels dramatic because it feels like a very immature response to what we have all entered into, which is a very adult situation.
You can't even write and say, sorry, things have changed're excuse me we're going through our own thing right now or you know we thought that the sexual chemistry was there but it's not what are your thoughts about the ghosting crickets thing well the first word that popped into my mind as soon as you said that was you know they're they're chicken, you know, which I mean I can be a chicken too yes we've probably handled some situations not as well as we could have in the past but yeah it's it's just the easy way out is to you know pretend that it never happened or or you know especially because many of us don't live near each other so the opportunity for us to run into each other at an event or you know or even the grocery store or the gym is is minimal so it's easy to just kind of like cut it off without saying you know thanks for the experience but you know some of the reasons that you just gave yeah and not just ghosting but even canceling at the last minute you know, some of the reasons that you just gave.
Yeah, and not just ghosting, but even canceling at the last minute. You know, that's one step beyond ghosting, but you're still left high and dry. But realistically, I wonder, you know, how realistic is it for us to expect somebody that you've never met is going to say, look, I know you don't know us, but, you know, we thought we were on the same page, but we're really not, you know, one of us is struggling. You're not going to really want to go into that, but you are going to want to say, Hey, this is not about you guys, you know, but we're going to have to cancel tonight.
And really that's all it takes. You don't, you don't owe anybody any more of an explanation, but just to say it it's we have to let you know that our intent was to but it's not going to happen absolutely that's such a it's it is it's such a kind way to do it and like you said we you don't have to go into lots of detail but just be respectful in that way um so speaking of the immature way to deal with an adult situation um last time I shared that framework of flipping your lid. This is wildly popular, by the way. Yes, it is. It's flipping the lid and AFOL. We use that all the time. It's funny.
Most all of my clients have listened to my podcast with you at least within the first session. If they come to me for some other reason, I usually send them to that just to kind of catch them up. And so it is funny. They come to me already using Amy language. I mean, you know, like she's a common friend that we have. That's right.
So I did want to give another framework piece that I guess you could think of it kind of as a freebie, something I use with my clients all the time that might be you could think of as a freebie, something I use with my clients all the time that might be helpful to some of your listeners, and all of my clients are going to be nodding their head and maybe rolling their eyes because I use it a lot with them. And it's from another podcast called The Adult Chair, and I'll give you the link to put in the show notes.
This wonderful therapist in Nashville, Tennessee, Michelle Chalfant, has a podcast called The Adult Chair. And I use this framework a lot. So let me give you just a quick explanation of the framework and then bring it back to how I use it with drama. So her idea is that, and actually in her office, she has three chairs. She has a child chair, an adolescent chair, and an adult chair.
So she she explains this theory to her clients and when they walk in the door they know that her expectation is that they're going to sit in the chair they think they're in they're going to express whatever issue they want to talk about from the chair they think they're in and then the goal is that you actually sit in all three chairs so you learn what's going on with this issue from different parts of yourself.
It actually goes back to an older theory that I've always loved since grad school called Gestalt theory, which is very experiential and you literally move your body into different chairs so it gives you that kinesthetic notion that you've moved. Obviously when I'm working with people on the Skype version that I have, I'm not asking to change chairs, but we are, I do explain this framework. So the child chair is where we feel, where we really feel the feels. So we feel, and they're usually simple, hurt, sad, left out, betrayed, that we have to hustle. For anybody to us. We have to be perfect.
One of my clients calls it, I love this, he calls it his BS file, his belief system file, those old beliefs, which conveniently is also the acronym for bullshit file. Yes. Right? That I'm unloved, I'm unworthy, that people will only love me if I buy them things, or they will only love me if I do everything they say and I never speak up for myself. These old... Yeah, or sex is bad. Sex is bad. It's dirty. Exactly. It's dirty or if I want it, then there's something wrong with me. All of these very, you can think of them as sort of simplistic little kid type of feelings.
And the adult chair model, these are, this is sort of if you have an image of child this is like up to six or seven years old so the experiences we may have had or these um these belief systems that we may have created then because those don't feel good like who wants to feel that we create an adolescent. So the interesting thing about the brain is that when we have a hurt, our brain doesn't, the part of our brain that acknowledges that hurt doesn't have the specificity to know the difference between a physical hurt and an emotional hurt.
Well, obviously, evolutionarily, if we have a physical hurt, we want to get the heck away from that hurt as quickly as we can, fight or flight. But think about that.
If our brain doesn't have the specificity to know a bear is attacking me versus my heart is hurting because my husband's looking at another woman, the same response happens with the same level of what we might call drama of how we're feeling right and that's that hurts and our our body wants to get away from hurt at all as quickly as we can no matter what so the adolescent comes in and the adolescent says hey little child you're hurting i'll take care of you i'll protect you from these hurts and i don't know about you but the way that i thought to do things as an adolescent i felt very strongly about them but they may not have always been the um smartest ways so usually i describe our adolescent protective energy as lovely protector protector but usually they're they're gonna try to protect us in kind of half-cocked, dumb shit, very time is of the essence, we have to do it right now, sort of self-sabotaging, cut off your nose to spite your face ways.
So something like, well, you know what, if they don't like us, then we're not going to like them either, that kind of thing. Or, I am so scared of being hurt, so I'm never going to put myself out there. When really the scared of being hurt is because we want to connect so much, so then we don't put ourselves out there, we never have the opportunity to connect. And so what I work with with my clients is helping them to get to know this adolescent and notice when they start to act like it. I had this one client.
He said, oh, Catherine, I could tell that I had slipped down into my adolescent because I felt my eyes roll. He's like, I don't roll my eyes as an adult. When I feel my eyes roll up in my head, I know that I'm in my adolescent chair. And I am going to be doing things that are not in the best interest of my adult self. Yeah, that eye rolling one hits close to home. I might have to edit that out. How are you looking to be? Oh, but see, Mrs. Jones has already heard it, so you just admitted it to her.
Okay, so what I work to do in my class is I help them to understand kind of the flavor, if you will, of their adolescent chair. Personally, mine gets very cynical, cool, whatever. My husband would call it snobby. What else does he say? I'm blowing him off. Like, arm's length. This is the way you cannot hurt me is if I just keep you at arm's length and act like I don't care. So when I start to make ideas in my head or say things in that, and I can even hear it in my tone now, I know. Like sarcastic. Sarcastic, but also very cynical, like whatever. I don't really care about them anyway.
They're just jerks. Right. This noise. Say that as an adult. Okay, and then our adult chair is where we are adults, where we live in truth and fact, where we can give ourselves and others compassion, where we can give ourselves and others the benefit of the doubt, a generous interpretation of their meaning. So if somebody does something to me, to me, that was air quotes, when I'm in my adult chair, I can pretty easily see that it could be one of maybe five reasons that motivates their behavior. I might have to do with half of one of those five.
But boy, when I'm in my adolescent, they did it to me, to personally hurt me me they're so mean and awful what jerks yeah right so i wanted to explain all of that to say that for me one of the definitions that hit home um one of a couple that i work with really has grasped onto this and we use we see we look at almost all situations through this framework and we came up with this working definition of drama is when adolescent energy walks in to an adult situation and demands attention. You know what you're explaining to me? It's interesting to reflect back on the whole child-adolescent thing.
Because when you're a child, first of all, you don't have a partner.
yourself it's a very selfish world as a child and your parents are your uh everything your anger you know you're all of your adolescent behavior it's targeted at well unless you're like me and you have siblings but it was mostly of my parents then we get to this point in life where we're we're out of the house and now we're in this adult world but who teaches me how to behave like an adult and back to what you said early when you were introducing how you all use a lifestyle it's a perfect classroom yeah yeah for understanding that i am adolescent in a lot of my ways especially when you talk about having sex with other people yes and i have no experience doing that um and now all of a sudden i have to be adult about it and i don't know how to be an adult about it so it's really uh unusual that there's not more drama yeah you know out there absolutely absolutely um i had we had an experience um it was one of our first experiences with a hall pass and so i had had we were a temptation and i had one earlier in the day um and for us they just come up they have to come up really naturally kind of thing and it just happened really naturally and had a great time and then the next day we found this wonderful this lovely couple we were gonna play with and then on the way to the room for me to for us to change and stuff I was doubled over with stomach so I said just go go meet him at the hot tub and just hang out and just, you know, maybe I'll feel better.
And then, and I said, ask him if they'd be interested in just you, like you can use your whole pass with them. And so he came back and he said, you know, it was kind of weird. They were really disappointed you weren't there. And so he sat there with me through when I was, when I was really sick. And then I started feeling better, but not well enough. So I was about to go sleep, and he said, I said, why don't you go out to the party at least? My goodness, we've paid so much money to be here, right? Go. So he got all spiffied up, and he did.
And he came back an hour later, and he woke me up, and he said, you're not going to believe this. They asked me if I would be their, we call it rhino, like the male you need to go. I don't know, that's just what we call it. And I said, go. And he was like, but you're sick. And I listed five reasons in my adult why he should go. I'm like, you were so gracious. I had a great time earlier in our trip here. We've paid all this money to be here.
I know you're coming to me I have like I'm not worried about this at all I had to convince him to do it so I had to say these five and I can't remember off the top of my head but I said these five things out loud to him probably five times to convince him he's walking towards the door he turns around he's like are you sure oh there's some sort of a test I know you I said listen I I said, go! Is it some sort of a test? Right, right. I know you. You're a counselor. Am I about to walk him to my desk? No, so I said, listen. I said, keep your watch on because it tells him if there's a text.
And I said, if something happens, I'll text you. It'll take you 10 minutes to get here. It's okay. And I fully, 100% felt those things. It was not a trap at all. And he walked out the door, and as soon as the door closed boom there was no adult Catherine left in that room it was adolescent Catherine I can't believe you are such a sucker your husband is going off to screw somebody else while you're sick in the bed well you are such a sucker I can't even believe this so I spent the next two hours hours, because I had this framework, fighting kind of with my adolescent.
Because I knew, I had said my adult piece five times. I knew that that was not the truth. But boy, this other part of me wanted to fight about it. And I tried to fight and tried to fight. and finally I said to this part of me okay what I'm saying is not working what do you need me to do here and it was this like this sounds so schizophrenic keep in mind I was sick in Mexico maybe I had some sort of hallucination here but it was like I heard this little kid part of me say just tell us it's going to be okay and I did just like a mom of my daughter, and I could exhale.
So then, you know, here comes back in the room, and he looks at me, and I kind of went, everything's fine. I hope you had a great time. I spent the last two hours trying to get my head right. I'm already sick and exhausted, and I probably don't have much adult left, so you probably don't want to talk to me right now. And he's like, okay, what should I do? And I'm like, maybe hold me. I'm not sure. He's like, okay. So he holds me and I get all stiff and I'm like mad. Right. And then I just exhaled and I just felt like, then I was like, the adult was there. Everybody was calm.
We were all fine again. But I gave myself that time to work this out. Like you say, this was a new experience. It was one of the first times he was away like that. And it was just this working through of this adolescent saying, this is something to be scared of. This hurts. Make it stop. And my adult being able to say, this is okay. I know this doesn't seem like it would be, but it's okay. So this is not like jealousy where it takes 30 times for that to happen before you grow through it. I don't know. I mean, it's certainly it's, we're talking three years into our tenure.
So I don't know that I could have done that in the very beginning. So there's definitely some repetition of him coming back of me knowing that this isn't a threat yeah right so yeah so i think that being able to um just you said it so well to be able to realize that we're doing things that a younger part of us doesn't understand i know you might get to this later but i think this story is so interesting. You've got, you let him do that. And I'm assuming he had a good time and he came back and you worked through all that, but the benefit of that.
Now talk about not only the next time you have to go through that, you've done it, but what does that do for your relationship? Oh my gosh. I mean, it was such a growth spurt is the best way I know to describe it where I just both of us just felt so much more trust in each other. He felt the way he described it was, he just felt so honored by that trust. I knew that I could text him at any point and he would come back.
And I thought about it, but I thought, I don't want that that isn't going to make this better I want to feel through this not just stop the pain temporarily and so being able to feel through that and him come back and hold me and we exhale I've always described him as the exhale at the end of my day and that's what it was it was like I've done this work and it was yeah it was so much closer and it's also made it's just taken so much of the fear out of all of this and i think that what he was able to do is not because i'm like him a lot i'm a fixer you know so i would want to come back and if i saw you in distress or if i saw mrs jones in distress i'm immediately like okay i'm sorry or what do i need to do or um you know instead of saying you know what she she allowed this she chose it and now i need to let her kind of work through that and keep my distance isn't that the same as what you were referring to earlier when you say when another couple does something it, it's not about you, it's about them.
Exactly. So let them work through it. Exactly. And don't, like, take that on as your burden that you did anything. Yes, exactly.
And like you said earlier, so much of this belief system file, this BS file that we have, and some of these old hurts happened way before we met our partner so this this you're a sucker flavor that i had that isn't that my husband didn't create that that's something old in my childhood or adolescence and i needed to work through that so it wasn't something he could fix it's something i needed to sit with and sit through and then because i know he's a fixer he walked in the door and i said here's the scene i want you to play this part you can help me by doing this and basically what i was saying is don't take anything i say too seriously because i'm kind of exhausted and i don't know that i can stay very adult so if i say something snarky right please let it roll off your back you know monogamy is uh following the monogamous model doesn't present not only does it not present as many opportunities for you to go to a place like that and learn about yourself but it also almost encourages you to stay in your comfort zone and just glide out yes the rest of your life so you know being able to work through things like when we went through the jealousy and i said um now there's something i need to work through and and you wanted, you know, we need...
I just wanted to retreat, yes. Yeah, you wanted to retreat, and I said, no, there's something there that I need to work through. So this whole idea of, you just wrote a blog about the difference between love and sex. Right. You know, in my mind, you know, her husband went, Catherine's husband went and had sex with somebody else, but their love for each other, even when he was gone, that did that and came back and they were able to work through that, which strengthens their relationship, which really is ass backwards. Yeah, it really is.
I mean, your spouse is having sex sex with somebody else yet here's an example of your relationship you know getting stronger only because back to the drama thing you're not afraid to understand what it is and and share your tools and and actually use your own tools that's a little bit of cheating but you know what but we cheat we cheat when you were saying about what chair you sit in one thing that we've always said is you know people listen to us and they say i mean you guys got your stuff together you you talk like adults on your podcast and i said that's because we're in the adult chair because all of you people are listening i can't put i can't be in the adolescent chair right now it almost forces us to be exactly you know adults with each other exactly well and that brings me to coming back to the drama thing is in you know in typical vanilla life we talked about this a little bit the last time i was with with you guys that in our in our vanilla life our professional life you know if we're part of a religious community or most anything except going home to see family we get really good at being adults at staying adult now we might come home and be nasty snarky adolescents to our partner or children isn't that funny how we save it for the people we love but that's because we feel the most comfortable with them so we put on we get good at being adults around adults then we enter non-monogamy and it is a very adult arena there are adults naked we only want adults to be in this arena but because it's tapping into this other stuff air quotes our adolescents our adolescence somehow come to the party.
Right. And that's where it gets histrionic dramatic to me. Well, doesn't it? I mean, this kind of takes you back to when you were maybe a young adult. But, you know, when we first discovered our sexuality, you know, we were young and naive and an experience. And that's how I feel in lifestyle situations. It's new, it's unknown. I don't know how the other person is going to react. Is the other person going to like me? I mean, I feel 16 years old again or, you know, all those feelings. Ooh, does he like me? Does he like me? Pass me a note and tell me. Exactly. Exactly.
So come back to this definition that started this long rabbit hole of the adult chair. Drama is when adolescent energy walks into an adult situation and demands attention.
So one of the images that I often give my clients that seems to work a little bit like that baseball and puppies image that you men use sometimes to keep things going is when you feel your eyes roll or or whatever you start to notice is your adolescent expression imagine if one of your adolescent children walked into the room right then look around do you want them to see that ass in the air do you want them to see what's happening in this very adult situation? No. Adolescents and children are not invited to these parties for very good reason.
So if you notice that your inner one is coming up, get away for a little while. Figure out a way to get back into your adult chair. We're going to talk. That's part to do my list of how to do that um so anyway that's to me what things i guess we could all agree feel like drama definitely yeah okay so what drama isn't um you know uh mr mrs jones you you as you wrote your thoughts about this some of the things that you mentioned that were so true is that all humans are emotional. Some show it more than others. Very true.
Some people have done this longer and have come up face-to-face with their issues and learned how to learn tools to manage them. Other people have not had to feel feelings much in their adult, vanilla, professional kind of lives and have learned how to numb those out, right? But here we, that starts to happen. I think that sometimes, as you all pointed out, drama is a word that's substituted for uncomfortable situations. Those are going to happen.
But that doesn't necessarily mean that it's drama um i can take the next one okay you know when the doors to the bedroom or the playroom close and the clothes come off then shit starts to get real and you never know how people are going to respond all of a sudden they've been in the adult chair until you get into the playroom yeah and then all of a sudden they're going to be in the adolescent chair and the point is to understand that that's a possibility yes and you know look and it's a tendency i mean i don't don't you think that that's kind of a natural response to uncomfortable situations absolutely um and as my other client said um that uh it will grow you up fast right but it's also one of the benefits of the lifestyle is is is what happens when we really get into this stuff um one time we were accused of drama because we took a moment away to it was a pretty heated discussion but we took a moment away because we didn't want to do it in front of this other couple.
I knew that it was about us. I mean, did some of the pieces and parts we were talking about involve them? Sure. But I knew it wasn't about them. I knew it was us. So we had been out, we came back to their house and we said, I said, we just need a minute. We'll be out at the bonfire later in just a few minutes.
So we sat the living room and i don't know we were we might have been in there 20 minutes it's a heated discussion and the gentleman came back in and got so upset and accused us of bringing drama into his house and you're hurting my wife's feelings because she just knows that you're talking about her and i was like whoa would you rather us yeah would you rather us have this um this issue in front of you i thought that was kind of strange myself yeah well i mean that you learn quickly the type of people that you want to be around and the ones that you don't and sometimes in in our case and we've talked about when we talked about newbies and veterans we talked about liking enjoying both and we enjoy bringing people along and along with that comes some of that you know but because of that though we've had to learn how to have direct communication with good friends and say this is what we're seeing here you know and this is what you all need to really consider um because we don't want to risk we don't want to ruin the friendship you know we don't want to hurt anybody's relationship and if you don't really come out and say that people will not necessarily back off themselves they may engage in something that they really have no business doing because the other side of it i don't know if we talked about this or if you're going to talk about this but where does the silent treatment fall into this because sometimes if i want to be an adolescent i might just shut up and go along and do everything and keep it all in just because i don't want somebody to think it's dramatic but i'm i really don't want to be doing what I'm doing, but I choose to do it anyway because I'm just quiet about it.
And then you may think, oh, there was no drama, so everything was okay. Oh, no, it was just bottled up, and you didn't let it out until maybe later. Well, as usual, yes, of course, where you're going is somewhere I'm going because we tend to do that. And ironically, it's a point that my husband wanted me to make sure that I made. So, yes, we will come back to that burden, that pressure of feeling like you can't say anything. So, absolutely. So, I did want to share these. These are some examples from some of my clients that I would say, I think, challenge what some people would call drama.
And so, and I'm just going to read it as they said it. One said, we had such respect for them, this other couple, for being self-aware enough to know themselves. It made us actually want to meet them and connect with them more. So when they said they were more upfront about something, it didn't turn them off. They're like, oh, these people know themselves. We like this.
Another one, it was totally okay um that he took that she took time for herself and then that she asked for her husband back because she needed to reconnect with him we appreciated that she asked for what she needed then you then they said we felt like we could really trust that they would take care of themselves we didn't have to be overly responsible and watching for their cues that's how they put it another one was um i'm thankful that we were thankful that he shared a little about the issues he was facing and working on within himself then we knew it didn't have anything to do with us we felt honored and more connected because he shared with us so yeah yeah that's good information i mean because otherwise you read into things and then you create the own, your own drama inside your own head.
Exactly. Yeah. Our brains love story and our brains will create story in the absence of information. If it has information, it'll use that to create a story, hopefully a more correct story. But when someone does the silent treatment or ghosts or isn't clear, our brains need to find some understanding of what we're processing. And it will create a story no matter what. Now, we can stop it and say, whoa, whoa, we don't have all the information. It's one of the things I use with my clients is let's at least train you to create reasonable doubt so you can't get locked down on this story.
If we can create just enough reasonable doubt, then you can step back and either ask for more information if it's available or have just enough reasonable doubt to at least not put yourself in the blame, in Blame's way, that this is my fault or I did something. But it can be, it's a hard one to stop because our brains want a story and they want an end to the story and resolution. So this brings me to from your awkward moment episode. At that one, I just kept thinking about the situation. You all will probably be able to bring it up a little more detailed.
The one where you all were supposed to, you thought you were meeting up with one other couple and then another couple who you had not you didn't even know their names ended up in the playroom or in a in a hotel room with you right yeah right and you all feeling like awkward because you didn't even know these other people and they seemed pretty willing to jump in even though they didn't know you but that's not how you roll is that right yeah it was a playroom situation yeah at a party yeah and there was um not to go back into it but that but there were there was not there was no direct conversation between anyone in the group it was late everybody had been drinking everybody wanted you know we wanted to be with you this person wanted to be with that person but nobody really verbalized that and i kind of felt like we were walking into uh you know a trap and that i wasn't going to be able to do anything yeah so then as we said earlier we we just ended up after a while you know just getting up and and walking out the two of us right so somebody might have accused you guys of being drama for that oh they left the drama You know, just getting up and walking out, the two of us.
Right. So somebody might have accused you guys of being drama for that. Oh, they left. The drama. They just couldn't hang. That drives me crazy. No, I don't think you were drama at all because you were taking care of yourselves.
For me, it was more like, and the other thing that came up with that is did the couple that you liked, that you you were planning to to play with did they not say something directly because they were scared of being drama what if they had come and said this might be a little awkward but there's other couple that we've wanted to play with and they wanted to play with us and they're kind of interested in all six of us but we don't want to ruin our chances with you sure that can be an awkward conversation sure that can be a little uncomfortable maybe they were scared to have that conversation because they were scared you would think they were drama yeah yeah that could be yeah and then as you mentioned earlier katherine the lifestyle presents you so many different scenarios and at different times of the day in the evening or the week because at that point in time when you've got a bunch of people in a room and people are taking their clothes off and they're engaging it's not the time to say um excuse me can we all sit down for a minute we've missed that opportunity so now we don't have the ability to be adult with everyone else we have to just say well you know we're gonna we're gonna excuse ourselves so yeah we probably should have you know taken care of a lot of that before we went in there but we're not you know you don't know i mean you're you're gonna find yourself in these situations no i mean i think the two of you handled it beautifully i just i think about because all like what you were getting at before this burden of being scared to be seen as drama, because people throw this word around all the time, I bet that the couple you were interested in was scared to be direct with you because they were scared you would think they were drama, right?
No, could be. You see what I'm saying?
And so then, instead, they created this awkward situation for everyone, and if you two hadn't been so gracious and clear within yourselves and your couple your partner you know the two of you about what you needed to do to take care of yourselves that could have easily devolved into a much more histrionic kind of explosion of unresolved issues you know if you you know oh well i got chosen over and you know if one of you had big issues about that that could have come out yeah um you know luckily you two know each other we know each other know yourselves well enough that you could bow out gracefully but the other couple being scared to say something directly could have actually caused a bigger dramatic histrionic dramatic scene right yeah so that leads into That's the problem with calling this battle call that I have for directness.
When we call that drama, there's a lot of problem. It creates a lot of problem.
You know, a lot, I do think that, like I say, some people are here for more of the physical one night stands scenarios that's great but for the people that aren't they're actually interested in navigating these intimate connections with new people that's difficult there are going to be times where there are lots of differences because we're all different in our experiences our perspectives beliefs expectations hopes fantasies boundaries communication styles level of confidence belief system file blah all these differences of course we're going to come up with things we need to talk about Thank you.
Boundaries, communication styles, level of confidence, belief system file, blah. All these differences. Of course, we're going to come up with things we need to talk about. And so for some people talking through these differences and these situations, they want to do that. They need to do that to be able to navigate this in an authentic way. But then they're scared to because are they going to be called drama?
So I think that for those of us that want to be able to have those kinds of conversations, I know for myself, I'm going to need to be able to have those kinds of authentic and direct conversations to establish those healthy boundaries for there to be the possibility of deeper connection. I need to know that I can be heard and not shamed for having feelings or my own situations. I don't want to burden you with them, but I want to be able to talk about them so that I can set boundaries that work for me.
And so I also think when we can do that, those of us that want to do this style of navigating non-monogamy, it can lead to a lot more satisfying experiences in and outside of the bedroom. So we don't have that awkward brunch where everybody's like, are we going to talk about last night or not? Yeah.
Which could ruin a really fun day of brunch and winery and afternoon play because nobody wants to talk about it because they're scared there'll be drama and then of course if we feel connected and heard and understood in some way by these people we're about to share our bodies with that's going to lead to more satisfying experiences inside the bedroom in my experience right so the other thing i wanted to i thought was interesting is that you know for people that really want to have that deeper connection, I mean, I always laugh about, we got a thing. That's kind of my thing.
I mean, I don't want another primary relationship. I don't want a boyfriend. I don't want any of that. But I do want friends that are, we can connect on deeper levels. That's my thing.
yes it's really um one thing that we're we're at in our lives right now that is is really um i can underscore i think what you're talking about here and that is we've been outed and so we have friends that we've had for years now talking to us about lifestyle stuff and the first reaction that we have is we need to protect that friendship we need to protect the relationship so we're going to take this slow and we're going to communicate that with you directly because we already have the friendship all the way on the other side of the scale as you go to a club and you meet somebody and you've known them for 30 minutes and now you're talking about having sex but you're also wanting to have a social like a friendship so as those two things start to move together you know how you know you your drama you you're balancing i really want to have sex with this person but i care i want to care about them too and so the more you know somebody the i think the easier it is to have a direct conversation with them because you've both got a relationship at stake here where early on you're more susceptible for the drama because nobody knows anybody.
You'd like to, but are you going to toss that out and just go have sex for an evening? And like you said, there's nothing wrong with that.
But you just have to expect that there could be the greater opportunity for drama absolutely absolutely and i think i don't know that this what you know we don't necessarily have to get into detail about this but i know for us we're finding that we we're a little bit of both in general we want to have friendships and connections with people that's our ideal scenario people we could meet in the city for a night or go on a trip with or something like that that's our ideal but then when we're on vacation yeah if we if there's great mental chemistry and sexual chemistry and we all agree and realize it's only going to be a night we're up for that too if it's all if it all feels right um but like you say i think if we go into that second, we also are expecting that there's no telling who whose adolescent might pop out and what it might look like.
And so we're just preparing ourselves. I feel like we're able to prepare ourselves for that mentally. so again so the problem with calling um calling that what we're talking about here this deepening this these conversations drama is i feel like it shames those of us who want deeper connections as our thing.
And the irony to that for me is that part of what, at least why we're doing this, is we really love that we're escaping from these narrow definitions that society has given us about what our relationship should look like or our sexuality and then now we're going to shame people into boxes about how they should navigate this right yeah crazy yeah okay so coming back to what my husband pointed out that's so in line with with you again mr jones is he said these were his words he said i hate the pressure that we should be okay with everything and not speak up for our own preferences because we're scared of being labeled as drama.
That pressure often burdens me. I feel less comfortable, so maybe I'm more likely to act in ways that are legitimately considered drama. So if he's trying so hard to be in this narrow definition of, it's good, all good, I'm fine, you're fine, you're good, then if he isn't all fine, if he isn't all good, if he doesn't think you're good, then what does he do with that? He asks her to get off the top of him. Well, he was able to do that calmly, right?
But there was another time where he was really struggling with the fact that three of us were having a great time and he was not and he's like i want to be that i'm good with all i'm all good i'm the all good guy i don't want to be i don't want to have an issue but then he knew that if he kept pushing down this feeling he was having that it was more likely to explode in something that seemed more histrionic. And instead he caught himself and said, guys, I hate to be the wet blanket, but this isn't working for me.
But that pressure, he said he held the pressure and it probably ruined the time for him because he was struggling with this. Do I say something? Do I not right well that that's that's so me i have to confess i mean i am a people pleaser right and i've I've been in past work situations where part of my job is to take the drama and minimize it.
So I am really good at taking it all in and compartmentalizing and putting that away for the moment because it's not appropriate at the moment and just dealing with the situation and then supposedly processing that later and what that ends up doing to me is is like you said it takes the experience and makes it negative in hindsight and then when that happens to me too many times in a row yeah then all of a sudden the lifestyle has a little bit of tarnish on it absolutely and so I'm only hurting Thank you.
and then when that happens to me too many times in a row yeah then all of a sudden the lifestyle has a little bit of tarnish on it absolutely and so I'm only hurting myself in the long run absolutely and and I I can do that I'm a champ yeah because I don't like drama mm-hmm so I'll just roll with it right right and so but then because of that then it it can create drama because it's hard for you to then right it creates drama for mr jones and i later because we'll be eating dinner and i'll say honey i don't think i want to be in the lifestyle anymore and he'll be like you know and then i have to do the heimlich because now he's choking on his dinner he's like what where did this come from and you know and then it just like it all just like comes out yes yeah that's a really tough place to to put yourself and that that people pleasing actually leads me to something there was a couple I was working working with and she is like queen of people pleasing self-diagnosed um therapist um agreed she is that and so what she kept coming with to me is like okay it's this she had this binary thinking where she's like okay I need you to help me come up with an exit strategy because if I'm not all good then I need to get out and I was like do you hear how black and white that is do you hear how binary that?
So you either have to be all good, 100% fine and good with everything and all these new experiences, or you've got to figure out how to get the heck out of Dodge. There are a lot of things that you could do in a play situation between all good and exit strategy. But because she's so scared to, I feel like, again, throwing around this word drama and making people kind of scared to be seen as drama, scared that she wouldn't please someone puts her in this binary situation. All good or exit strategy.
And so I'm like, how can we allow, how can we help you allow for more feeling and to say, like, come here, honey, I want to reconnect with you for a second. I'm like, if a couple thinks that's drama, again, you don't want to hang out with them. Right. Exactly. And so we ended up spending time working on her navigating that gray area to be able to reconnect or sit with what was going on. What exactly isn't working for me here? Why am I not all good? Instead of, if she's not all good, it goes to exit strategy. She spends all of her energy on exit strategy.
She can spend some energy on how could I make this feel better for myself? I think one thing, since Mrs. Jones and I are working through our therapy, it's good for me to know that my wife always wants me.
And she should know I always want her her so if there's any of it that is I don't want to do I don't want to stop doing this because he or she's having fun that really shouldn't be relevant what should be relevant is the person that's with me how am I going to communicate with them because if that happens it just like if you were to excuse yourself and go into another room with your husband, it gives us a chance to reconnect too. Exactly. And I'm not disappointed by that. No. I mean, it may, if my brain tells me that that person got up because of something that I did, then that's on me. Yep.
It's not necessarily what's going on. Right, which would be your unresolved issue, which could create drama, right? Right. But say this is clearly about them and look i have this beautiful mrs jones on this bed beside me exactly life is good right you just keep thinking that honey it's very obvious how much he thinks that um okay so we are as usual went longer than i thought we would we would, but we all have such energy the way we speak together. So let's get into our what to do, our action list or bullet list for my engineer types.
So as I mentioned earlier, I guess that part of this soapbox for me is a battle call for directness, that we can stop vilifying directness. if you only want those sexual, physical interactions, one night stand, hookups, all, that is absolutely fine. Just, that can be your thing. You can have a thing, and that can be it. But say that up front, and stop shaming others for wanting something different.
And let that be their thing, if they want want something different the other please please if you hear others shaming couples for being direct for taking a moment to themselves for harnessing for for lassoing down their their adolescent and coming back to the party as adult don't shame them don't gossip about them don't call them drama when they walk away and if you hear other couples doing that shaming call them out and say you're the one that's gossiping you're the one that's causing drama by by pointing this out and making it sound like there's something wrong right yeah um if you do want to put the effort into having these deeper, connective friendships in the lifestyle, then be ready.
Be ready and willing to put your energy towards these healthy ways to do that so that you don't slip into the more legitimately histrionic, dramatic ways and attempt to get your wants and your needs met. Spend the time to figure out what you want and need ahead of time. So how do we do that? We learn to be okay with not being all good all the time to figure out what you want and need ahead of time. So how do we do that? We learn to be okay with not being all good all the time. There can be times it's just not working for us for whatever reason.
Learn how to communicate and respond during those uncomfortable moments. Communicate with yourself. Acknowledge the feeling. Communicate with your partner. Communicate with others involved in a direct direct way as possible um ask yourself what gets in your own way from asking for more for what you want or need or for having the courage to ask for it once you know what you want or need what is that belief system file saying that the only way you'll be loved is if you do what everybody says you should do or pleasing everyone, right?
Like, that's a very common belief system file is I have to please everyone or they won't love me kind of thing. I'm not saying that that's what yours is about. But, like, what is it that gets in the way of us being direct and asking for that? Get clear about what you want and need and then ask for it in ways that are kind and firm. So what is firm? My husband's like, what do you mean by firm? And I said, to be very clear about what you're saying and to give the message that this isn't up for debate. Right. I mean, I think I might kind of not want to kiss anybody else. That is not clear.
And that sounds like you were asking me to convince you to kiss me. That's what I hear because I want to kiss. So that's probably what I'm hearing. But be firm. This is our thing, and it has nothing to do with you. It's firm. This isn't changing. Let's move on. Right. So that's the other thing, not apologizing for what we want and need. I think, is big. So this next one, actually, I have changed some of my language since our last time together to include something that you so, so wisely pointed out. So you remember HALT, hungry, angry, lonely, or tired? Yes.
And you said, and if you've got to pee. Yes. That one's in there. And also, I had to put in DRUN put in drunk because this halt thing was actually for people in recovery. And then I realized with lifestylers, oftentimes we get a little over-served. So don't wait to express your wants or needs when you're halt DP. That doesn't mean what the other thing means in the lifestyle. That means drunk or have to pee.
So, halt lonely tired drunk or need to pee that's right because if you wait until you're any one of those you are not likely to express yourself in a very kind firm and adult way right fair enough it's not as fun as AFOL, but it's noted. Yeah, right. And at least the DP's got a little cheat for us. Yeah. That's definitely catching, especially in the lifestyle. That's right. Know what it feels like for you personally when you slip into that adolescent energy. It's different for everybody.
Your partner could probably point it out to you if you ask when you're an adult in your adult chair they've probably seen it quite a bit but start to notice that for yourself again that was the client that said I can tell when my eyes roll that I'm on my adolescent energy because he doesn't normally do that address that adolescent energy and don't come back into the lifestyle situation until you're firmly in your adult energy. Teenagers aren't invited to lifestyle parties, right?
Know yourself and your relationship well enough to know when you need to step away because you are halt, hungry, angry, lonely, tired, DP, shrunk or need to pee, or adolescent. This might be for a minute, for a conversation.
It might mean to sleep and hit the party the next day it might be because you need to eat it might be just for the night it might be for the weekend or it might be for a more focused or intentional reassessment break as you pointed out it doesn't mean get out of lifestyle right now yeah yeah well or retreat yeah don't retreat i mean the lifestyle um you what you're really running from is just not understanding how to handle what you're in and it's just more comfortable to pull back or retreat don't retreat permanently you could retreat to have that like intentional focus reassessment um when i was at naughty in new orleans um one of the speakers asked the question of the room how many of you have the rule that if either one of you wants to get out of the lifestyle no questions asked you're out everybody raises their hand and i was in the front row like shaking my head and she kind of looked at me and looked at my husband and i said no i was like no we may stop we may a break.
But our deal is it can never be a stagnant break. Because if something has happened or triggered us enough to make us feel like we want out, there's something we need to work on. So we're working. We may retreat a bit. But it's not a stagnant retreat. It is a working. What is going on with me?
And it might be that as I do this work, I realize that I don't want to go back in the lifestyle that's a very different thing than ah this is uncomfortable run yeah yeah very different just pull the plug exactly all right so like my adolescent was at the dinner table that you know just spews out i don't want to be the lifestyle anymore and honestly i did not mean that it was just my now you tell me it was just my my 15 year old bratty self trying to get your attention. And clearly I got your attention, but then we had an adult conversation, which I was prepared to have the whole time. Sure.
But, but I just want to, I want to say, I really respect you for having the, the, I don't think bravery might be too big a word, but the bravery to admit, that's about yourself, that you were being a bratty 15-year-old that was looking for attention. That's hard to say about ourselves. The adolescent is like a mirror that's like, oh, gosh, I need to get my roots done or whatever, right? That's right, because that's not right.
But you just said that and acknowledged it, and that's actually another tool that my husband and I have been saying, is I'll say like, I'm an adolescent right now, and I'm going to finger snap and tell you what I need. And then he can be, like, kind of with a laugh, hear it, and then as he lets me say it, I get to my adult. So to be able to be brave enough to notice, like, I just need your attention.
If you'd said, like, I need some some attention from you mr jones uh we both knew this guy would have done that and like i again a lot of the times when i do that i don't even need it fixed i just need to like get it out yes and and then just actually process it myself absolutely well he just sits and kind of nods and maybe or holds his ear or holds his ears so he can just listen and hold his ears we've said this before guys are blockheads I just need to know what chair you're in and you're getting much better at that I'm not as good as you are you'll say I don't want to say anything right because i it would be bitchy and i'm like oh okay cool i know where you are yes and i don't have to okay i said that like five hours ago yeah yeah i did you did and then i stopped worrying about it because i'm like oh okay well then yes cool well and that's basically what i was doing when my husband came back at temptation i said.
I said, anything I say right now is probably going to be snarky, rude, and I don't mean. So what I'm asking, will you please put on this Teflon suit so anything that pops in my mouth can just roll off. Please don't engage me about it. Don't take me seriously. Don't try to fight me on it. Just let me have my adolescent snark. Like you say, bitchy. I get snarky. Okay, so being able to pull yourself back until you can get back to being an adult. The other thing is just remembering that having those strong feelings or reactions isn't good or bad.
It just means that it's something that needs to be acknowledged, understand, deal with it more. And then the other thing I want to ask just to wrap up is to be kind and understanding when others are taking care of themselves, when they are doing a bit of step back, either for a minute in the bathroom, or you know what, we need to just have dinner by ourselves. Can we have drinks right after and go to this party? Or we really need, we were going to all do the booze cruise at Desire, but we really just need a day to connect with ourselves.
When people take care of themselves, please don't call them drama. Please don't shame them for it. Let them have their space if they ask for it. Their feelings aren't your job. Don't take it personally. Again, it's not all about you. I love, it's so ironic, here I am in DC.C., and I just saw the FDR memorial with Eleanor Roosevelt. One of my favorite quotes of all time is hers. You wouldn't worry so much about what others think of you if you realized how seldom they do. Oh, that's perfect. Isn't that lovely? She's a great woman.
Let them know, especially if you've already got a good relationship with these people, let them know that you're ready or you're there to talk later if they want to. But I would also say only do that if you're really willing and interested in deepening that relationship and if you aren't flipped yourself or in an adolescent energy yourself. And then finally, let's say that the evening didn't go well and then everybody's going their separate ways the next morning. Reach out later and just let them know that we've all been there.
I promise that they are as frustrated or more at the inconvenience of their shit hitting the fan and coming up in front of you or at a party. They are way more frustrated about that than you are. And wouldn't that be lovely to hear a little of that? Yeah. Just some kindness and compassion, and we've been there.
Please be easy on yourself because we certainly aren't sitting over here judging right well again um we've said this before and i know you have it's it really all comes down to communication and you've talked about the feelings that are involved with trauma you know you've talked about what that feels like You've talked about how to recognize it and then how to deal with it within yourself and not focusing on the other person because really the issue is within our between our own ears absolutely is what we're talking about so this is really going to set us up for a future topic because the direct communication is something that keeps coming back up and people ask us for example well I don't want to go out with that couple how do you tell them that well you tell them directly just like we were talking about here and if you're able to do this and talk to each other about things like this then it makes it easier for you to communicate with other people in the lifestyle as well.
So this has been, gosh, we could go on. I know. No, thank you, because we finally get to go out in the city and have drinks and dinner with Mr. and Mrs. Jones. Yes. So you people are going to have to tune in later because they're ours now. Yeah. Well, thank you again for taking the time out, and we're going to have to make this. I think now this is you're a regular. That's right. You've been on once as an anomaly, but twice now you're a regular. I love it. I always love sitting down with the two of you. Yeah.
So thanks, and we'll have Catherine's information in the show notes, and we'll put the links to a few of the things that she talked about as well and gosh we thank you it's just been a lot of fun as always yes thank you so much all right let's go have dinner yay Well, welcome back to our snapshot segment today. which would normally be our snapshot segment right but um as you guys just heard we had an amazing conversation with katherine that went on a bit long and normally when we go on a bit long i can cut five or ten or 15 minutes out but she had so much to cover. We can't cut her stuff out.
We felt like if we cut anything out, it would disrupt the flow. So we're going to forego our snapshots tonight. But Mr. Jones promised me that next month we each get to have two. You can have two. I can have two? I bet you'll come up with a second one too. Probably. Yes. Because we've had some fun this month and we would love to share those stories with you. But at the same time, we need to be reasonable. Right. So we're going to go ahead and close that 54. And again, we just, we just want to thank Catherine. What an amazing conversation. Yes.
And, and I'm telling you, we could talk to her for hours and actually we did yeah so after we finished recording um her husband came back to the room and and they got cleaned up real quick and the four of us went out and had a super fun dinner and we actually like shut down the restaurant they asked us to leave we did we last time that we podcasted with them we didn't have an opportunity to socialize but this time we did and just what a great couple um you know what a fantastic relationship that they have and we are just excited to get to know them better and i can promise you that she's going to be back on oh yes and i'll also let you know that when you check the show notes, there's going to be a link to her professional site and a lot of the resources that she mentioned in our conversation today.
Yes. And she is still accepting new clients. So if you're in the lifestyle or curious about the lifestyle and you want to talk to her, please visit her site and contact her. She is an amazing resource. She's a genuine person. She has lifestyle experiences. And as you can tell by what you just heard, she's not afraid to be vulnerable. She's not afraid to say, hey, we screwed up and this is what we learned from that. And that's really what I love about the way that she delivers her message. Absolutely.
She doesn across as being a know-it-all she's one of us she screws up just like we do right right and she just knows how to talk things through you know it's not telling you what to do it's just talking about it and then we can all arrive to our own conclusion yes exactly just a reminder as we mentioned month, that our first We Got a Thing regional meet and greet at Choice Social Club in Providence, Rhode Island on Saturday, October 20th.
So if you go to our website and you can see a link there to Choice Social Club when you register, be sure to show WGT2018 when you register and you'll be included in our group. Yes, we're super excited about that. I think we're going to have a fun group of people Thank you. show WGT 2018 when you register and you'll be included in our group. Yes, we're super excited about that. I think we're going to have a fun group of people there. We definitely are. Yes. A lot of people are coming to that. So thanks for joining us tonight.
Please don't forget as we said at the outset, we'd love to have you in our We Got a Thing membership and you'll see a link to that in the show notes. And if you don't subscribe to our newsletter, please go to our website and do that. Our website is wegotathing.com, W-E-G-O-T-T-A-T-H-I-N-G.com. Please continue to email us. We have a lot of people who say, hey, do you still want emails? And even Catherine mentioned tonight that she has a lot of people. She said, you don't realize how I'm going to go to the next one. We have a lot of people who say, hey, you know, do you still want emails?
And even Catherine mentioned tonight that she has a lot of people. She said, you don't realize how many people are in the closet and listen to you and don't reach out. And we are still asking for you to do that because we love to get your emails. So you can email me at MrJones, M-R-J-O-N-E-S, at WeGotAThing.com. Or at at me at MrsJones, M-R-S-J-O-N-E-S, at WeGotAThing.com. And you can follow us on Twitter at WeGotAThing. And you can join our Cassidy community, which is pretty close to 5,000 people almost. We're pretty excited about that. So if you're on Cassidy, look for us.
If you're looking for a lifestyle website, consider Cassidy, and you can join Cassidy from our website and get 90 days for free to try it out. Yes. Anything else, Mrs. Jones? You know, just keep your eyes and ears open for some travel dates for Mr. Jones and I going back to Desire. We have a couple other trips that we're kind of like noodling through. Oh, I forgot to mention. We went to Caliente. You did forget that. Yeah, so the reason that we went to Caliente the day after we went to Eyes Wide Shut is because we're trying to negotiate a group trip to Caliente. So that would be a USA trip.
That's about half an hour north of Tampa, Florida. So hopefully it would be a little bit easier for some of you to get to than desire. And we're still talking with them about a possibility of doing that. But Mr. Jones visited the facility and you said it was absolutely stunning. You know what? It honestly was better than I had thought that it might be.
of course the night before i was at eyes wide shot i have to consider that no but we have we have several um couples that are that we're good friends with that we trust a lot yeah that have pointed us in that direction yes and now you've seen it for yourself so yeah so so stay tuned we want to give you opportunities we don't really know what's going to come with that but we are looking at different ways to create opportunities for people to connect hopefully it's our members only group or a regional meet and greet or desire or maybe caliente but we're we're hoping to get out and about more in 2019 and meet you all.
Yeah, we're looking forward to that. So thanks for listening. We are Mr. and Mrs. Jones, and we got a thing. What's your thing? We'll see you next time.
