“Entwined”—expansive polyamory with author Alex Alberto

Author Alex Alberto talks with Karen about “Entwined,” their memoir that explores polyamory, including community living, triads, pansexuality, and how the French and English language rate in describing being nonbinary.

In this episode:

• Author Alex Alberto. Also on Instagram
• Host and sex educator Karen Yates 
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Prefer to read the convo? Full episode transcripts are available on our website.

Transcript

[Music intro]
Alex Alberto  0:02  
Okay, we want to be romantic partners. What does that mean for us? Does that mean that we sleep in the same bed together? Does that mean that we want to live on the same roof? Does that mean that we want to have sex? How often does that mean we might, I don't know, the business partners and creative part of it's almost like all the components of a relationship and just trying, which is difficult, trying to not take any scripts that we've inherited, and then build this way and it ends up for me being a lot of CO designing relationships because I can't really design a new relationship that comes into my life in a vacuum, when I already have a bit of a family structure going on and other people.

Karen Yates  0:45  
Welcome to Wild & Sublime a sexy spin on infotainment, no matter your preferences, orientation, or relationship style. Based on the popular live Chicago show a chat about sex and relationships with citizens from the world of sex positivity and comedy. You'll hear meaningful conversations, dialogues that go deeper, and information that can help you become more free in your sexual expression. I'm sex educator Karen Yates. 

Karen Yates  1:13  
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[Music out] 

Karen Yates  1:41  
Hi, folks, I'm super excited that today we will be discussing a more expansive view of polyamory, one that encompasses intentional community, gender identity queerness, and more with author Alex Alberto. They wrote "Entwined-- essays on polyamory and creating home" which came out last month, published by Quilted Press. Welcome, Alex Alberto!

Alex Alberto  2:07  
Thank you. I'm excited to be here in studio

Karen Yates  2:09  
I know, it is very exciting. And before we begin, I want to say that we are on the unceded lands of the Council of Three Fires: the Ojibwe, the Adawa, and the Potawatomi nations. So let's talk about the book Entwined. While definitely covers your progression through the early years of polyamory and all its churning emotions, it also maps you grappling with being genderqueer, searching for intentional community, and being French Canadian in a US culture. In the foreword of Entwined you say that we will be watching you "do the work of deprogramming my own hierarchical notions of love." So Alex, why did you decide to write this book?

Alex Alberto  2:55  
So when I realized that Monogamy was not a good fit for me, which was 12 years ago, but more than that, maybe now, I was reading the How-To books. But those didn't feel like they gave me a vision of what I could hope to build towards in my future. They were helpful. And sometimes they had anecdotes about, you know, just little snippets from people's lives. But I guess it was hard for me to translate that. And I was aware that all of the love stories that I had been exposed to had all been from a monogamous point of view, with often love triangles as a main plot point. And I just wanted to see more stories. So I decided to start writing my own. I didn't want anything that kind of tried to convince anybody of anything, I just wanted to share my own experience and let people kind of react to it and maybe immerse themselves emotionally in it.

Karen Yates  3:59  
Yeah, you know, I had an experience that was I was, it was a little unexpected that I started crying about a third of the way through your book, because, like you, most of the books on polyamory are pretty heteronormative. And they're just sort of locked into a capitalist framework. There's just, yeah, they're just very, I'm not gonna say limited, but it's one track. It's one track of polyamory. Even if, say, you're not married, it's still kind of couples centric in its own way. And while I ...even though I don't identify as genderqueer, what I was really, you know, keying in on was this expansiveness. And I really appreciate that it was there is a vision really woven into your book, and I really, really appreciated that.

Speaker 1  4:54  
Thank you. Yeah, it's interesting. That's even though I started my journey when I was unpartnered, and I had just moved to New York City from Quebec, and I, I didn't necessarily want to fall into a primary partnership of any sort, but because that's what most people were doing around me. And because the programming is so deep, I did for a time ended up in such a relationship. And it's just it takes real work to kind of truly get out of that system. So I'm glad that you were kind of able to connect with the expensiveness of the journey. 

Karen Yates  5:32  
Well, it's funny because you ended up marrying your, your first partner Don. And what was so fascinating is I kept forgetting "Wait, are they married? I think--, Wait." Because because in passing, you sort of mentioned it in passing, like, well, "we got married because I wanted my green card." And I was like, "Wait, are they?" and like, then I watched myself be concerned with are you married in like, wait, they can't possibly be married? Because this is too expansive for-- You know, I just watched the little head games I was playing. So that was very funny to me. And are you still together? 

Alex Alberto  6:07  
Yes, we are. And it's really interesting, because I don't like the word, you know, "husband."  I don't like-- Neither of us wanted to get married. No, I don't like it at all. Because it comes with all these assumptions that even within, people have seen more open relationships, people have seen more versions of polyamory where some people are married. And for them, it does mean that their relationship and their sort of primaryness looks a very specific kind of way. And, you know, yeah, we got married for the green card, not because we didn't love each other, it wasn't at all kind of a fraud of any sort. We love each other. It's just that neither of us believed in the institution of marriage, and we wanted to build something different, but we, you know, at some point needed the paperwork, so I could stay in the country. So it is I forget sometimes too, I think. 

Karen Yates  7:01  
That's great. So one thing that I found interesting is you use a sort of a multi genre format, a series of entwined essays that that take different forms like one one chapter is a short play a one chapter is an advice column. Many are just straight-on essays when you revise every modern popular movie or TV show into a poli like way to deprogram. Right? So, so this this choice to do multi genre pieces was this, did you have this idea at the beginning, or it just sort of evolved over time?

Speaker 1  7:38  
It did evolve. At the very beginning, I always knew I wanted an essay collection and not a straight up memoir. I think I basically had a list of topics and or events that I wanted to talk about. And I guess it was easier to wrap my head around. Okay, let me talk about this relationship. Or let me talk about the aspect of getting closer with a metaphor. I'm sure your listeners know men are more by now, a partner's other partner. But over time, I realized that I it was hard for me to sometimes I wasn't happy with the pieces I was writing. And I realized, oh, wait a minute, I think I'm doing with my writing. What I used to do with monogamy, where I'm thinking an essay is this form. An essay is kind of a straight up narrative. And it has a beginning, a middle and an end. And I found it limiting. And then once I realized that parallel, I got very excited about being able to explore with different forms the same way that I explore with relationships. So then I started to look at the story I wanted to write almost as a new relationship and be okay, if I start with a blank slate, how do I really want to tell the story, what kind of form might be best for that story to reach the reader. And it got really fun and a lot of the things that I was trying to put down on paper and couldn't before all of a sudden started pouring out once I found the right form, which didn't you know, for some essays, I had to play with different ones before landing in the right place.

Karen Yates  9:15  
It's funny because when I first started reading the book, I just have to keep saying I loved this book so much. When I first started reading though, and you started then dropping into different types of relating the different genre then I started getting uncomfortable like Okay, does this work? What do I think of this? And then I had the same I dropped down like, Oh, they're like, it's this is a deprogramming. I'm being deprogrammed from a straight narrative and it was fun then I could like accept I'm like, Okay, now Now I understand now I understand. So let's talk about one of the, one of the chapters or one of the pieces where you you write about in play format, your Writing about how you and your partner Don meet with Ally, yeah, Ally, your your, your, your triad, you know, your your third person and then Dan's parents from the South. And it's extremely tense, because you begin to realize that that they you thought they accepted you. You thought they accepted the polyamory and they may have, but then it comes out that there's this there's a queer component, right that you're with. I mean, so can you can you set it up a little bit more?

Speaker 1  10:36  
Sure. So we sent them a letter before they were scheduled to come to New York to visit us. And we wanted, it was time we hadn't really come out to them. But things were getting very serious with Ali. And it's, we I think we reached a point where we, we thought, if we're to host anybody in our world, we are we're done. Like, we want everybody to just know our life and know everybody and for them to know this person that we love. 

Alex Alberto  11:06  
So we send them a letter in advance so that they could kind of digest it and like, take their time with it. And we said that we were happy to talk about it. But we wanted them to know this before they came. And they wouldn't talk about the letter, but they still wanted to come and meet Ali. So I think I mean, I knew it wasn't going to be just with without any tensions, but I guess I went into it with a lot of hope. And in that letter, I should mention we also because I we only had Ally in our life back then. But we mentioned that I had broken up with somebody else six months before who was a woman. And then we mentioned my, we use the word bisexual for them. I prefer pansexual. But we thought that it'd be easier. And we didn't talk about my gender queerness either, because it was kind of still tender. And early in my journey then and I, I thought one or two things at a time, I guess. And the reason I wrote this in a play format is I really wanted the reader to sit around the table with us and kind of feel this tension in between the lines of dialogue, really focusing on one scene with everyone's movements. And yeah, the tension just built up over the course of the dinner and something that kind of came out the next morning. And I think that polyamory was a problem. But we had mentioned in the letter, that it was not my idea. But I think as someone who was socialized as a woman, I always had this impression, which is really untrue in my experience of the polyamorous community, but a lot of people outside of it will think, Oh, the man must be wanting this. And so it was important to me to say that when I had gone on my very first date with Don, I was already looking for nonmonogamy. And I was very clear about that. And he didn't really know but he had said, You know what, I went through a journey of kind of deprogramming everything I grew up with, including the religion that he grew up with in the south. And I never asked myself about monogamy, but it kind of makes sense. So sure, why not. But I think it was easier for his parents to kind of see me as the cause of this. So then it kind of boiled up where the next morning while I was out on the walk. They had a big fight, some queer phobic terms were used describing me and Dawn, you know, right. So that's kind of what happened in that scene.

Karen Yates  13:41  
What I-- especially because it was a very tense scene to read-- And what I really appreciate it is that in a certain way, it kind of boiled down all of the poly hatred and all the queer hatred, like in that one single scene, you don't really have to write much more about it, because it's like, it's right there. Everyone's seeming okayness and then under the surface, like not okayness which is I think, a lot of the way it is in in regular life, you know, people they they're like, oh, polyamory, but then you realize there is it sort of like, "Oh, so you can just fuck around." Like, there's a lot of assumptions about what it is. So I felt that there was something really cool about that structure. 

Alex Alberto  14:23  
Yeah, in a way, it's almost easier for people to imagine, okay, do everything the same and like you fuck every once in a while other people it's kind of more palatable, palatable to them in a way. I think bringing in another partner for Thanksgiving dinner was kind of just a very different, very different sort of statement, I guess. 

Karen Yates  14:43  
Right, right. I wanted to move to talk about the fact that you're French Canadian. You come from Quebec, and there is I there's one piece there might be more than one pieces in the book about language and queerness, which I thought was really interesting, and I I'd like to talk a bit about the French word, depays. And then and then how you find your queerness within the link English language, even though it is by some French Canadians thought of as the langue d'enemi, language of the enemy. 

Alex Alberto  15:16  
Yeah. So a very sort of gross oversimplification for people who might not know but French in Canada, we sort of have, there's a history of oppression when the English took over, and the French people in Canada kind of had to fight to preserve the culture preserve the language. So there's kind of this culture of being oppressed that we grew up with, which is really a strange place to be in, because a lot of us forget that first, we oppressed another nation of people who are already there! But as far as being someone who moved to the United States, and then sort of I became a fully formed adult in English, and I explored my queerness and I became myself in English. And there's kind of a long, there's a discomfort that I struggled with for a really long time, having almost abandoned French. And it took me a while to realize that one of the reasons English allowed me to become myself more is that the French language is very, very gendered. So in English, some people will say it's hard to use they/them pronouns, I will argue that it's not, but all you have to do is switch the pronoun and pretty much everything else, the nouns the adjectives are not gendered. Whereas in French, even when I speak in the first person, if I say, "I am happy," happy will need to be either feminine or masculine. Or if I say, I'm a writer, it'll have to be feminine or masculine. And it's not just like an easy ending that you can switch. There's so many different endings. So it's kind of a, it's just impossible to remove gender from language. And I found it very freeing to be able to do that in English. 

Alex Alberto  17:09  
But yeah, my, what I wrote in the book long to lend me the language of enemy, it was just an anecdote that my friend's father when we were growing up would often refer to English as that. So it's definitely something that I grappled with. And I still don't quite I haven't changed my pronouns, and anything in French, my my family knows that I'm genderqueer. And when they speak English with me, they use they them pronouns. But then something I get out in the book that I'm trying to embody now is that in English, you have to wait for somebody else to speak about you and a third person to kind of affirm your gender like, hopefully, they use the right pronouns, hopefully, they don't use gendered terms. But in French, I actually get to do that when I speak in the first person, and being gender queer for me. Sometimes I really feel outside of gender at all. Sometimes I feel more masculine, sometimes I feel more feminine. So there is creativity that can be possible, moving from both feminine and masculine adjectives, or using the feminine pronoun, but the masculine adjective. So yeah, I spent a lot of time thinking about language and how that shapes people's identity.

Karen Yates  18:25  
And so and now, I think in the book you talked about, there's "iel"?

Speaker 1  18:29  
Yeah, yes, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. It's, it's a new, newly created gender neutral pronouns. So l would be masculine, l feminine, and then "iel" neutral. But then you still have to handle what you do with all the nouns and adjectives.

Karen Yates  18:52  
One thing you talk about, in Entwined is the changing nature of your sexuality as the book progresses. And, and this was, I love I kind of love the way you did it, because it points it was subtle. And then at points, it was more overt. And so can you read an excerpt from your book? And this is a this is a it's within a chapter called Am I correct?

Alex Alberto  19:21  
 "I Ask." 

Karen Yates  19:21  
I Ask. Sorry. And it's called "Will I ever want to have sex regularly again?"

Speaker 1  19:26  
Yeah, it's the it's the last essay of the book, actually. And it's kind of a list of questions that I asked myself, which I thought was an interesting way to kind of end a book. [reading] So will I ever want to have sex regularly again, I don't keep a sex diary. But by my estimation, I haven't had sex more than five times in the past two years. Some people might feel sad for me and think that it's something I should fix. But really, I've been quite happy. I simply seem to have lost the interest the need the urge, maybe my entire depressed Since contributed, maybe it's because I've been on this rocky gender journey. Maybe I've just been in a season of my life in which sex isn't how I want to connect with people. I've wondered if I was on the asexual spectrum because of how often I felt intense platonic love for my friends, and how satisfied I've been not having sex. But sexual explorations and intimacy. Were a core part of my life and identity until my early 30s. Could I be asexual? Despite having been hypersexual for so long? Can one become a sexual can one fluidly move between sexual and asexual? In her book, "Heaven is a Place on Earth," Adrian Shirk recounts telling a friend while high that her sexuality felt deeply communal. She wasn't sure what she even meant by that statement. And I wasn't either when I read it, but I instantly knew I felt similarly, Adrian unpacks what she means, "the erotic can show up in so many forms other than sex." She writes, "And when I thought about my modern fantasy of pre modern society, bear with me, anywhere in the world, I imagined that the erotic was often found in the goings on of daily life, growing food, harvesting, hunting, living so close to one another, eating together, seeing each other through ceremony and season." Here's what I what I have found erotic. editing this book, my legs propped on the coffee table while my creative partner laid on her stomach on the gray rug, and highlighted sections of the printed draft of her own book in yellow, reshaping rocky garden beds with a rake in the 80 degree sun with a new friend, while talking about how the nuclear family has fucked everyone over crying in front of Hannah in the middle of the coffee shop, and not right wiping my tears and embarrassment. Don returning from the local thrift store with an orange tie that he thought I'd look handsome wearing; Hannah and Joe coming over Thursday nights for dinner, because we want to nurture our deep bond. When I meet someone who has the potential to become a good friend, that person floods my brain the same way any crush would. I feel a rush of dopamine in the same realm that once accompanied sexual attraction. I have crushes on most of my friends. I fantasize about joint projects, backpacking trips in the mountains, drawing the trail maps of my wood, committing to watching a whole season of half bad together, I do experience the occasional jolt of sexual attraction. And I'm open to letting myself fall into a more traditionally sexual place with an existing partner, a new partner or just with myself. But I've stopped feeling like my lack of sexual activity is something I need to fix. Shame is pervasive like that. I used to feel a shame for having too much sex, then I felt ashamed for not having any enough already." [they laugh.]

Karen Yates  23:06  
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Karen Yates  23:27  
[to Alex] So you talk very essentially, about your body and and I was sort of tracking your, your body noticings as the book went on, as you grew more expansive, with your sense of what sex is, or what's what lack of sex but like it felt like things were sort of like moving around. And as you became more expansive in your life around sexuality, did you find yourself noticing more sensual aspects of yourself? Or was it always there?

Speaker 1  24:03  
No, I think I definitely. Or rather, I found new things central that it maybe would not have found sensual before. Or assuming that any kind of sensual feelings need to lead towards a very specific kind of sexual interaction. I think I also used to see sex as a shortcut to intimacy. I think people are taught that. I don't know if you have sex with someone then your it sort of makes that relationship closer, which is true in many cases, but it's almost like I've discovered new ways to create deep bonds that didn't necessarily require sex. And I think part of that is because, you know, we're taught you should have sex with one person that person should be your one and only and your life partner and that this romantic relationship should be the highest priority. Above everything else in your life, there's kind of you know, that one may be your bio family, and then your friends, and then, you know, if life gets difficult or busy, then you kind of sacrifice the other relationships. And so I think that shift in my mindset has contributed to making me realize, Oh, am I wanting to have sex right now is, am I wanting to have sex emotionally and physically? Or is it just because I'm used to this as being the only and ultimate expression of intimacy? 

Karen Yates  25:34  
And that's a great noticing. And it's one I don't think people ask themselves enough. And yeah, I mean, I think there's certainly for myself, it used to be yes, sex equals intimacy, for sure. And, and it took time for me to be like, Okay, stop. The pandemic really helped. Because, you know, everyone's taking these walking dates. At least for me, it wasn't like, okay, we're just gonna jump in the sack. 

Alex Alberto  25:56  
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Karen Yates  25:56  
A lotta walking dates. And so I was like, "Yeah, I don't think actually... This walk is enough. [they laugh] Thank you very much." But, you know, you talked at the end about shame, and what I liked to watch-- what I liked to have what I like watching in the book, was you grappling with things, you know, just like, concepts and ideas. And did you find yourself grappling with this idea of too much sex or too little sex? 

Speaker 1  26:27  
Oh, yeah, absolutely. I mean, I had a strong facial reaction to this. Yeah, I think even within the context of one relationship, you know, Don is my longest partner. And at some point, that's kind of what I alluded to, like, Oh, my God, if we're not having sex, it means our relationship is not in a good place. Even though all the other markers of relationships showed the contrary. But it's almost like we're taught, it's so strange. It's like, oh, you cannot have too much sex, but you have to have the right kind of sex and the right frequent frequency. And there's this narrative that if you don't have sex with a romantic, and or life partner, that that relationship is sort of on the way it's on the way out, you know. So that was really hard to grapple with. But it was really great. Because once I was able to kind of say, you know, what, our relationship is great. And we had all these other ways of even like, sometimes we would just say, Okay, let's, let's do naked time, you know, like, we go in bed, we hang out naked, and there's not going to be any sex, and it was still very sensual, very intimate, and having a renewed sense of connection. And I've also experienced that with Ali, who's a big part of the book. And now, with this approach of looking at each new relationship as a blank slate, sex might be a part of it, sex might not sex might be a part of it, sometimes, not all the time. It's like no longer a thing that has to come with this sort of out of the box, configuration of relationships. But it's, it was hard to get there.

Karen Yates  28:08  
Of course, of course, there's so much social programming against it. Right. So let's talk a little bit about Ally and triads in general. You had a number of triads in the book with Don, and near near the end, your relationship with Ally, who was your third? You were talking about moving up to upstate New York together? I mean, there was a lot of talking about architecture, like how are we going to build this room? Or where we're, where are we going to all, you know, live in this house. That was a big part of it. But then it ended, and which really got at you, and you didn't necessarily, at that point, want to look for a third, perhaps a genderqueer person fearing it would look like a typical unicorn hunt, you know, but you, you recognize that this urge to have a triad completed you more holistically than sexually. So can you talk about your experiences with triads in general?

Alex Alberto  29:11  
Sure. So the very first try, and I have first of all, before I forget, I want to note that part of why it's difficult. So even in the question, and I still catch myself doing that we refer like, oh, a third. You know?

Karen Yates  29:24  
I know I know! and it came out of my mouth and I'm like "hmmmm..."

Alex Alberto  29:26  
No, but it's, I'm glad it did, because it's true. And there's so much even within when we were with Ally, which was our most serious one. And we were really trying to kind of merge everything we even, were talking about getting an attorney involved so we could kind of you know, have everything in place in a way that is more equal. When two of the partners have been together for a really long time and have legal things in place like co-ownership. We own our house actually with two other people but two friends, but the two of us were owners of the house and legally married and there's kind of this power dynamic And we, and I think that's where it's difficult for me, I don't think it's impossible to do it in a in a good way that welcomes a new person into a relationship. But it is because there's so much deprogramming in society is made for pairs, it is very difficult, I think, for me not to feel a little achy thinking, okay, like we would like a woman or a genderqueer person to join us. But the very first tried we had was actually with a very close friend of mine. And she and I had been, we went to school together. So we'd been friends, since we were 12, or 13. And we had been sexual together, we were sort of in this gray zone, where it was maybe a little romantic, but also we were long distance for most of the time, it never really happened. And then when she met, Don, they really, really clicked and all of a sudden, I found myself in just a whirlwind. It was so intense, and so much more intense than when I had dated separately and Don had dated separately because all of a sudden, there was sort of this exponential nature of the connection. And I think that that just made it--yeah, so much-- But even though a lot of it was exciting, it was almost like sometimes I felt high, and I almost like needed a break from it. And it was just strange, because I had this very long relationship with this friend, and there was a part of me that thought, Okay, do I want to share her? Do I want to share him, you know, and then, so I back then I don't think I was quite ready. Because part of it, it also exploded this notion of like, Oh, we're just a couple who have secondary relationships. And then all of a sudden, I realized, Oh, my God, now it's, now I'm thinking 20 years down the road, what this might look like. But then every time it happened, I noticed just how drawn I was to it. So I think it was maybe one of the early signs that I really did not want any kind of primary nests, like I didn't want just a spin on the traditional model, I really wanted family and community. And through these experiences, I felt it. And with Kate in particular, the first one, because she was from home, it also brought French into my life, which definitely made me feel more whole. 

Alex Alberto  32:21  
But I think over time, what I've realized is that it's not necessarily like I think people see triads as Okay, these three people are definitely having sex together. And they are romantic in a very specific kind of way. But I also have another question in the book at the end, where I asked myself, what do you what even is a partner. Because if you start looking at each aspect of a relationship as kind of custom, you know, like, you take it or you leave it almost like Lego blocks, I like to describe it as, then for me, a partner is just someone that I'm making a commitment with, and some sort of long term plan, it doesn't necessarily have to mean we will leave to get live together and share finances and all that. But there's a level I guess, of life partnership that does look like that. And even if my partner has a partner, and we want to welcome them in our life, this way, that person kind of becomes my partner to whether we're having sex or not. Because if we're building this family in this community together, that person is a life partner. So I'm kind of in a place now where it's almost Well, what is a triad? If you if sex is not necessarily included in it, I think there's definitely a level of intimacy and sort of like joint intimacy. But it's not everything is just as black and white as we think. 

Karen Yates  33:38  
Yeah. And I appreciate you really deeply considering this throughout the whole book. It wasn't it didn't feel to me like something you just sort of came to like a light bulb in the middle of the book. Like from the beginning, you're like, What is this meaning? Like? I remember you when you and Don got together, you didn't have a place together, you insisted both of you insisted on like separate abodes and like that this is the way it's going to be. And I was like, Oh, wow, that's cool. That's amazing. And, and well, let me move on to this next piece, which is kind of, for me, it dovetails from the triad, which is, you know, later you talk in depth about creating intentional community, which for me is like one of the heartbeats of the book. And I wanted to ask you, is there a link between triad structure and intentional community? Like, I think your book makes a pretty serious case for that.

Alex Alberto  34:32  
Sure. Yeah. I think for the reason that we just talked about, right, because I think, or I guess, any egalitarian triad, at least I think some people see triads as very much a third, right? The way that I've come to experience it, especially with Ally and as you pointed out in the book, I am gutted when this relationship didn't work out and you know, there's a lot of reasons why you can you can go read the book. But yeah, and it a lot of people I, I almost felt also like my pain wasn't legible to a lot of the world. Because people would look at it and say, Oh, well, you, you still have a partner, like you're not, you know, you have this great life and you love your partner. But it's, I guess, I've never felt the urge to have children and to bear children has always been very foreign to me, part of that might be my gender queerness. But when people describe having this kind of longing, I sometimes I imagine that it may be it's similar to the longing I have four relationships and a family that's not a nuclear model, and not like a two person family. And that might include kids for me. And I think part of it is just I never wanted kids in this model that I've seen people do it around me. But Don has another partner who has kids, and I'm, I'm very excited for this kind of polical and family that we're creating together and for those ties to become closer and closer. So there's just this deep longing, and I think that, yeah, maybe it did come from having triads and trying to make all those ties as equal as possible in terms of the building of a life together. 

Karen Yates  36:20  
And I'd like you to read...There's an excerpt I'd like you to read called, "Could polyamory be a broader life philosophy that extends beyond romance?" 

Alex Alberto  36:30  
Yes, so it's in the same essay, where I ask myself questions, so it's very reflexive. [reading] "When I began my journey into non monogamy, I was focused on the freedom of developing sexual and romantic intimacy with multiple people. But in my relationship with Bridget, Don's first serious partner, I discovered metamorphose could become anchors for me, and a core part of my family. I've worked to gradually let go of hierarchy in my relationships. And as sex took a backseat in my life, and I grew closer to ally, I discovered the power of platonic relationships and that the lines between friendship and romance could be blurred. I now view my whole life through a polyamorous lens. For me, that means approaching all my relationships in the same open, flexible, unscripted way, friendships, romantic relationships, creative partners, fellow farmers, mentors, mentees, etc. It means decentering romance in my life, and putting other relationships including the one with myself on equal footing. But it has also made me more collectivist in every area of my life. polyamory taught me how to share romantic love and sex, which culturally are the most dangerous things to share. Once I learned how to do that, I started seeing the potential for creating abundance everywhere."

Karen Yates  37:55  
That's great. That's great. Yeah, so I wanted to ask you, there is an interview recent interview with Reina Cohen on the Ezra Klein Show on talking about her book, a new book, "The other significant others, reimagining life with friendship as the center," where she encourages people to prioritize friends since the dyad model of marriage and romantic partnerships can be shorter than lifetime friends. So you talk extensively in the book about as you just read, ideas that very closely mirror relationship anarchy, which I'm a big fan of, which, you know, is really about decentralizing relationships that have labels that typically give have weight, like, you know, husband, wife, you know, boyfriend, girlfriend, all of these old labels. It's... mother, even Mother Father, it's like things that that like most people put a lot of weight on. It's like, no, let's decentralize all this and look at what are what are the important relationships-- period-- in my life? Were you thinking a lot about Relationship Anarchy? As you wrote this book? Are you aware of like, are you Is it part of your philosophy?

Alex Alberto  39:02  
Yeah, I definitely did. It is definitely. Basically, what I described in this little snippet snippet that I read is basically in Relationship Anarchy. It's funny, I think I didn't name it. Because in this, even then, like, some people have preconceptions, and depending on the reader, I just didn't want that word to be something that kind of distracted from what I was trying to say. But yes. And I listened to that interview about the Other Significant Others. And I'm so excited to read that book. Because in a way, it gets back to what I was saying, like what even is a partner right? In that book, she has a lot of anecdotes of friends who have decided to raise children together or live in a house together, be each other as next of kin when it comes to health matters. 

Alex Alberto  39:52  
And basically, when you look at this, those are all things that people typically do with their romantic partner or their spouse or anything like that. And what is the big difference sex, you know. And so I think for me relationship anarchy is also it's all the things that you said about decentering these relationships that typically come with a weight to them, and also deconstructing each label further meaning, okay, we want to be romantic partners. What does that mean for us? Does that mean that we sleep in the same bed together? Does that mean that we want to live on the same roof? Does that mean that we want to have sex? How often does that mean, we might, I don't know, be business partners and creative partners. It's almost like all the components of a relationship. And just trying, which is difficult, trying to not take any scripts that we've inherited, and then build this way. And it ends up for me being a lot of co-designing relationships, because I can't really design a new relationship that comes into my life in a vacuum, when I already have a bit of a family structure going on and other people. So I like the aspect of also co designing with other people.

Karen Yates  41:05  
Which reminds me is that it does involve the byword of polyamory "communication". 

Alex Alberto  41:10  
oh, yes. [laughing]

Karen Yates  41:11  
A lot, a lot of communication and awareness. And so again, these these models, these liberation models, let's call them, really rests on the fact that people are able to know themselves even before the communication, there has to be I know myself enough to open my mouth and communicate that to you. So it's exciting. And would you say it's daunting?

Alex Alberto  41:37  
It's no longer daunting for me, I think maybe 10 years ago, it was. And I think that's why I even though I had like I keep repeating that I was on partnered when I began this journey, because I feel like a lot of the stories we see, it's often couples who are monogamous, and then open up. And despite that, despite all my best intentions, I still ended up having to kind of go through a bit of a deprogramming of hierarchy. Through that. It just kind of shows how difficult it is, I guess. But so maybe back then, part of why it felt more comfortable to land in that was that thinking of something more, just more unknown, I guess. And it felt more daunting. 

Alex Alberto  42:22  
And again, part of the issue is that we don't see enough of those stories. And when I say stories, I mean really rich stories that go into detail. And because you might see, you might read an article somewhere, okay, these people, you know, this person lives with her husband and her ex husband and like they're happy in a house. But it doesn't really immerse you in that life and doesn't really allow you to experience it. And not just the challenges, people are so focused on challenges. And those are the questions I get all the time. What about jealousy? What about, you know, all these things? But the joys? Like, what are the joys that I could have access to? If I do decide to approach my relationships and my family in a more expansive way? And I think that once I had experienced enough of those, everything else doesn't feel as daunting. It's like, yeah, there are challenges, but I'd rather have those challenges than the challenges of monogamy or like no family or no relationship is without challenges, in my opinion. And every relationship would be better if we communicated a lot.

Karen Yates  43:28  
I love it. Alex Alberto, thank you so much for being on the show.

Alex Alberto  43:32  
Thank you for having me. It was a pleasure. 

Karen Yates  43:34  
Alex's book is "Entwined--essays on polyamory and creating home." I'm putting it up to the camera. You can find Alex Alberto on Instagram @thatAlex Alberto and at their website, Alexalberto.com. You can purchase Entwined at Bookshop our affiliate site that supports independent booksellers and Wild & Sublime. The links to all of the above are in the show notes. Well, that's it folks have a very pleasurable week. 

Karen Yates  44:07  
Wild & Sublime is supported in part by our sublime supporter, full color life therapy for all of you at full color life. therapy.com Thank you for listening. Know someone who'd liked this episode, sent it to them. You can follow us on Facebook, tik tok and Instagram at Wild & Sublime and sign up for newsletters at Wildandsublime.com. Got feedback or an inquiry? Contact us at info at Wild & sublime.com And we'd love a review or a rating on your podcast player. I'd like to thank our design Guru Jean-François Gervais; music by David Ben-Porat This episode was produced and edited at the Lincoln lodge podcast studio as part of the Lincoln Lodge Podcast Network.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai