Relationship Anarchy with Nicole Thompson

Relationship Anarchy rejects rules and expectations in how we relate to each other. It’s mentioned more and more in the media, but what is it exactly? In this lively conversation, therapist Nicole Thompson explains that while RA can turn our relationships on their heads, it can also bring freedom. 

In this episode:

• Therapist and podcaster Nicole Thompson 
• Host, sex educator, and energy worker Karen Yates 
• Relationship Anarchy Manifesto
• Relationship Smorgasbord 

Get Say It Better in Bed, Karen’s free guide to upping your intimacy pleasure. Download here!

The Afterglow, our Patreon membership group, brings you regular bonus content, early alerts, and goodies! Our newest $10/mo member benefit: 10% off all W&S merch! Or show your love for Wild & Sublime any time: Leave a tip!

Be Wild & Sublime out in the world!  Check out our new tees and accessories for maximum visibility. Peep our Limited Collection and let your inner relationship anarchist run free… 

Prefer to read the convo? Full episode transcripts are available on our website.

Transcript

Nicole Thompson  0:03  
Relationship anarchists say, Okay, what label do we want to use? What does that label mean to you? Right? If we are friends, do we do these things? Do we have sex? Do we invite each other to our family gatherings? Right? Do we share time with our children? It's rather than saying, okay, Friend means I'm not important, like, I'm not an important person. There is some level of a stratification of who is closer to me and who is not. So I do like using words that indicate that. So I might say personally as a relationship banner, because I will say I have a partner, right? But at that partner might be someone I never have sex with might be someone I have a lot of sex with, and so it's really on me and that other person to create that and define that. If you say, This is my friend versus this is my partner, there is a whole list of automatic assumptions that come with that.

Karen Yates  0:56  
Welcome to Wild & Sublime, a sexy spin on infotainment, no matter your preferences, orientation or relationship style, based on the popular live Chicago show, I chat about sex and relationships with citizens from the world of sex positivity and comedy, you'll hear meaningful conversations, dialogs that go deeper, and information that can help you become more free in your sexual expression. I'm sex educator Karen Yates, our monthly patreon supporters pay for a large part of our operating expenses. Their contributions from $5 on up, help us big time. Plus members get discounts on show tickets and merch and receive wild and sublime news before anyone else and more interested in helping us spread the message of sex positivity. Go to patreon.com, forward slash wild and sublime. 

Karen Yates  1:54  
Hey folks, today we'll be diving into relationship anarchy. Does this mean blowing up your relationships with a Molotov cocktail? Not exactly. As our guest therapist Nicole Thompson explains, it means beginning to look at your relationships with others, partners, friends, relatives, in order to redefine roles, to basically become more conscious of how you relate to others, rather than resting on easy labels that have a lot of expectations built into them. You'll also hear in our conversation how people practice it in real life, including our very own guest.

Karen Yates  2:33  
Nicole Thompson, is a sex and relationship psychotherapist with training In psychedelic integration therapy, whose recent dissertation on relationship, anarchy and non monogamy, we will be discussing today. She is also the host of modern anarchy podcast, which I have been a guest on, where she explores sex, relationships and Liberation with pleasure activists from around the world. Nicole Nicole is also the founder of the pleasure practice, where she supports individuals in crafting expansive sex lives and intimate relationships. We both recorded this interview on the lands of the Council of three fires, the Ojibwe, the Odawa and the Potawatomi nations, colonially known as Chicago, enjoy

Karen Yates  4:14  
Nicole Thompson, welcome.

Nicole Thompson  4:17  
Hi! I'm excited to be here. 

Karen Yates  4:19  
Oh, I am excited, too, oh my gosh, to actually have someone who has done a dissertation on relationship anarchy. and Nicole. How do you define relationship anarchy? 

Nicole Thompson  4:31  
It's going to be defined by each person, right? But to try and answer it, I would say that relationship anarchy is deconstructing internalized power structures to design your own relationships.

Karen Yates  4:48  
Mm, hmm, sounds easy. [laughs]

Nicole Thompson  4:52  
Well, I mean, you know, the personal is the political, and then we can go into how deeply internalized all those. Work structures are so that actual act of trying to deconstruct internalized power, both in our active, conscious and the unconscious, is, I think, a lifelong journey that I'll get to my deathbed still going, Oh, wow, there was more. There was always more, right?

Karen Yates  5:17  
One of the things I want to do later is talk with you about is the myths and the beliefs of monogamy, which can spread out beyond the relationship of a couple. These are very large, very large ideas that infuse much of western culture. But first one of my personal questions when I talk about relationship anarchy, and we might call this RA for shorthand. People freak out about the word anarchist or anarchy. What? What's up with that? No, seriously, I'm like, what?

Nicole Thompson  5:54  
Yeah, well, I know I went to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and they were talking about rock and roll and anarchy and destruction, destroying the family values. I think it comes back to a misconception about the practice of relationship anarchy, thinking of it as chaos and deconstruction, rather than thinking about anarchy as deconstructing power to invest back into the community, right? That's a very different vision than fire and chaos. When I hear anarchy, I think love, I think community. How do we take away these hierarchical forces and put back power to be distributed in the community with love and care and self governance that is in the aid of the community. That's a very different vision. But of course, as humans, you know, if you're a relationship anarchist, I think you're moving with the values of freedom and care, and often, we can encounter a lot of scenarios that rub those two values up against each other, as my freedom and my care for others, right? And so I think we see, you know, our humanness as we try to move through that. And you might see a relationship anarchist do things and go, Wow, what were they thinking, right? And I think it's that very difficult, nuanced dance of, how do you care for others while also maintaining your freedom and your self governance?

Karen Yates  7:18  
Some folks say that Andie Nordgren from Sweden--they were from Sweden, correct? Or they still are from Sweden. Swedish coined this term relationship anarchy in 2006 and subsequently wrote a manifesto, which we will talk about in a moment. Would you agree that they were the progenitor of this idea?

Nicole Thompson  7:41  
Oh, what a deep question. I think about Kim Tall Bear. I think about indigenous wisdom. I think about the queer movement of investing in chosen family, right? So if you want to talk about community and love and deconstructing power, those are ideas that existed way before 2006 right? But sure to name it to have this two word structure for a philosophy and idea that created a movement. Yes, it started with Andy, but the concepts of love and community, that is way, you know, 1000s of years before this. So yes and no,

Karen Yates  8:20  
So relationship anarchists and like, let's start really like getting into how the term or what the general beliefs are, they challenge the assumption that there is a clear distinction between the categories of friend and lover. I'm taking some of this from your dissertation. They'll often avoid labeling their relationships at all. They reject dominant relationship models that compartmentalize emotional bonds and their meaning into simple categories of couple, lover or just friends. Okay, so this is all challenging to wade through, but obviously the minute you start is, this is what I'm thinking. The minute you start looking at things that are generally accepted in society, like this is the way it's always been done, this is the way it's always going to be done. And you start questioning these ideas. Of course, polyamory questions that idea is, can, can folks have more than one love? But this challenges it even more. And so, yeah, let's talk about this. No distinction between friend and lover. Okay, what's up with that?

Nicole Thompson  9:38  
Yeah, I think that it's about defining that for yourself in each relationship. So can I have a friend that I have sex with? Can I have a lover that I don't have sex with? Right? Who is to define those boundaries? Who is to define what? Each one of those things are, I think, you know, if I can just speak to my own personal lived experience I used to before practicing relationship, anarchy and expansive relating, have very clear senses of this is what you do with a friend. It is not someone that I ever step into an erotic space which what is erotic space? Even, you know what I mean, but Right? Like it was this clear box of friends I don't snuggle with, or I don't give flowers to, or I don't write a love letter, or just these very clear boxes. But if I love someone, it means that I do have sex with them, or I live with them, right? These are where things like Amy Graham's relationship escalators start to come in, right, these very clear boxes of what lover is and what friend is. And, you know, a lot of people in the relationship anarchy community will talk about calling everybody a friend. And, gosh, I Karen, I can't even tell you the amount of hours I've spent thinking about this one, because at first I really fought it, where I was like, Yeah, but there is a clear distinction. Like, these are people that I love more, and like, I've got more going on with these other people. And can I break in and say,

Karen Yates  11:13  
I remember one of my first polyamorous relationships, and so it's all it was all new, it was all painful shit, and--

Nicole Thompson  11:21  
Isn't it? 

Karen Yates  11:24  
And I remember the person I was with was introducing me to people and called me a friend. I was like, enraged, yeah, I was enraged because I wanted a label that conferred status right on our relationship. And, I mean, I just, you know, nitzed that idea to death in my head late at night, staring at the ceiling.

Nicole Thompson  11:50  
Totally, right? 

Karen Yates  11:52  
Am I? I'm a friend. I'm just a friend??

Nicole Thompson  11:58  
Totally, the pain of that is very real, yes. 

Karen Yates  12:04  
You know, I don't think I now years later, talking, you know, we were talking earlier, like, I'm different. I'm like, Yeah, we were friends and, okay, like, it's great, right? It took me years to get to this place,

Nicole Thompson  12:21  
Yeah, and I think this is where I think about even my training and existential psychotherapy, right? We are all locked up in our own consciousness, so no matter what we do, Karen, you and I are friends, right? You and I could spend a whole lifetime trying to understand what you understand of the word friend, and I understand of the word friend, and what sort of expectations are tied to that, how often we talk, when we see each other, if we're invited to each other's birthday, etc, we could spend a whole lifetime, but we're always going to be looking at, you know, here's my understanding, here's your understanding, and even the words are going to fail us as we try to get that right. Relationship anarchist say, Okay, what label do we want to use? What does that label mean to you? Right? If we are friends, do we do these things? Do we have sex? Do we invite each other to our family gatherings? Right? Do we share time with our children? All these things? Right? It's rather than saying, okay, Friend means I'm not important, right? Like, I'm not an important person. Some of the pain that was made coming up for you, right? There is some level of a stratification of who is closer to me and who is not. So I do like using words that indicate that. So I might say personally as a relationship banner, because I will say I have a partner, right? But I might also that partner might be someone I never have sex with, might be someone I have a lot of sex with. And so it's really on me and that other person to create that and define that. And I also like to think about the political nature of it, because if I come to someone who has never heard of any of this and I say, Oh, I'm gonna go hang out with my friend, later, they assume a lot of what that means versus Oh, I'm gonna go hang out with one of my partners. Oh, one of your partners. Oh, what do you mean? What do you have multiple right? So now I've opened up a political conversation. 

Nicole Thompson  14:11  
So for me, it's kind of questioning how often I want to go into that or not. I've just done a lot of like, whoa man, like messy work to realize that when you are writing a narrative internally, if you say this is my friend versus this is my partner, there is a whole list of automatic assumptions that come with that, and I've found it's been helpful for me more recently to try and say this is my friend, and then it helps me to not have a whole slew of expectations that I was having on the word partner, but I still do call them a partner politically and to indicate that significance and all of that, but internally, I'm trying to do more and more cognitive work to say, okay, these are all friends I have of varying significance that do varying different things. But I also really thought. For a couple of years.

Karen Yates  15:01  
Yes, because, I mean, I know words are powerful, and for you to go through this exercise of saying, these people in my life that I have a bond with are my friends, that is, that is real. I'm gonna, I'm actually going to take that and use it for myself, because there are immense expectations that get placed yes on words like partner or lover or, I don't know, you know, husband, wife,

Nicole Thompson  15:35  
Yeah, yeah, so many that I continue to find out, you know, and that's the pain of it all is when you have those expectations and you realize that person that you were calling partner did not have those expectations, and then now you're in a very complicated landscape of, oh, shit, we were not on the same page. Someone's upset that there was an unstated expectation here, right?

Karen Yates  15:56  
So this brings us right into the beliefs, or myths, as you call it, of monogamy, which also apply to friendships. As you said, we can get into that in a moment, but talk to me about these myths of monogamy. I mean,

Nicole Thompson  16:17  
I think one of the biggest ones is that one person is going to meet all of my sexual needs for all of eternity. Because if we're actually talking about monogamy, which is one sexual partner or life, not serial monogamy, which is multiple exclusive sexual partners, right, in a lifetime, monogamy is truly the practice of one sexual partner for your entire life.

Karen Yates  16:43  
I did not know that. I thought serial monogamous count?

Nicole Thompson  16:48  
Yeah. I mean, I think what's happening is culturally, we're shifting the language as we shift as a culture. Previously, monogamy meant you marry and then, you know, because literally, if you didn't, you were stoned to death. And, you know, like, how far back we go, You know what I mean? Like, so, so culturally now, we are definitely in a, you know, since the 1970s and the liberation of birth control and free love, right? We are definitely in a different culture now with sexual practices. So I think in common place, when we say monogamy, we we mean one person at a time. But that's not historically what it always meant, yeah. So very few people practice monogamy.

Karen Yates  17:29  
So what? What are some other beliefs or myths of monogamy?

Nicole Thompson  17:35  
That, yeah, this one person is going to meet all of my romantic and spiritual needs as well, and that if they need anybody else other than me, it means that I'm failing them and have a deficit. I think this is one of the biggest pain points for folks you know. So much of Esther Perel work has talked about the ways in which society has really decreased its participation in religion, but activated the religious power of the one, right? Like this is the person who's going to understand me, who's going to get me, who's going to fulfill all of my needs, and I can look to them, right? And so that is a really, really powerful story and narrative, similar to a religious structure, and has so much power and force. And so when your partner needs anybody else, or seemingly puts anybody before you, right, you shall not have no other gods before me. Monolithic religious structures not have no other gods before me, right? Then it feels like the relationship is doomed or I'm failing. I'm not doing enough for this person. Something is wrong, and that is so much of what the deconstruction process is, right? And I think again, coming back to that concept of friendship, it's so easy to understand how for our own well being, we need multiple relationships, right? I always try to do this to everybody. I'm like, you know the people who look at me like, I could never do non monogamy. I could never do it out. I was like, I hate to break it to you, but currently I'm almost gonna bet on the fact that you already have multiple relationships. You just don't have sex with all of them. Okay? That usually blows people's mind. What I'm like, Yeah, and that's already the beginning of like ra thinking right as, Wow, I have multiple relationships already,

Karen Yates  19:28  
Absolutely. And once I was introduced to the concept queer platonic relationship, I was like, Oh, my God, I have had queer platonic relationships in my life. We don't have sex, but there is a intensity in the relationship that lends itself to this idea of something deeper. I hate to use the word than just friends. This becomes. It's very intense. We just were talking about this, how to negotiate language. But, yeah, it starts dissolving. It starts dissolving ways of, you know, entrenched ways of looking at relationships, right?

Nicole Thompson  20:15  
Absolutely and hopefully, for the better, like one of the things that came out of my dissertation research, and on the podcast modern anarchy, I've been doing every fourth episode is a continuation of my dissertation, where I interview relationship anarchists from around the world and ask the same questions in my dissertation, and something that continues to come again and again and all these different conversations is the fullness of life. Oh, gosh, right, like when, when you are thinking that this one person is going to fulfill all of my needs and just be that source, and then, sure, polyamory, these two people, these three people, however far you can stretch that right relationship, anarchy, all of these relationships bring something beautiful and unique into my life. There's a level of intentionality when you start to see that world of deconstructing sex as the highest form of love and connection. So to see those queer platonic relationships as meaningful and deep, you start to feel almost the power of that romance in multiple different relationships, and you start to feel almost more vibrancy and colors and saturation to life. Rather than just looking to one, two or three, you start to see it everywhere, absolutely,

Karen Yates  21:34  
Absolutely. And to get back to Andie Nordgren, who, if you don't know, listener, wrote this Relationship Anarchy Manifesto. And it's very brief. It's not some, you know, 500 page tone, but it's, it's good that it has like I'm counting, because I'm reading them right now. It's got like, nine points to which they write like I would say a paragraph per thought, but I'm, I'm looking at some of them right now and like, there's one one point which is "build for the lovely, unexpected." And I take that to mean, you know, it's something that you talk about in the dissertation, about how things, identity changes, relationships change. You know, you can be in one type of relationship for a while, and then it will suddenly, unexpectedly change into another type of relationship. And do you have thoughts about that? 

Nicole Thompson  22:39  
Yeah so many thoughts, accepting change is one of the most difficult lessons. I feel like I will know just as a human, like, again and again and again, like, just when I think there's some stability, it's like, nope, here we go. You're like, okay, you know it's the Budd saying Right? Like, change is the only inevitable, right? Change is the only constant, and that is also true in your relationships. I think, I mean, our world just isn't even set up for this. But gosh, how many it's hard to find this research actually, actually, how many relationships have stopped having sex and because of a commitment to one person, are now in sexless relationships. So even that change, a lot of people move through that, and that is a big one. But gosh, what would it mean to still see that as deep and meaningful and not a failure? What would it mean to be able to have those needs met with other people and to flow through that, and for it not to be the end of the entire connection and your entire structure, oh my gosh. It is so, so secure to be in connection with someone and say, hey, if we never have sex again, I am still in love with you and want to be in your world. Sex is not the definer of our connection. Our relationship is right and so to like ground in the relationship and not the specific things that are on the table, is actually one of the ways I feel secure, and one of the most moving dynamics I've ever done in my entire life. And nothing in life is static. Literal, thermodynamics is constantly moving towards chaos and disorder, right? That is a law of physics, okay? And so even the stones that are out here that seem you know solid over years will be worn away into sand or stones will be worn away into something as magnificent as the Grand Canyon. Okay, so I am hoping, with my relationships, that I can form something as magnificent as the Grand Canyon, knowing that change is inevitable. There is constantly going to be water flowing through, and you can't step in the same river twice, right? So that water is coming through, and, gosh, I just hope that I formed something as deep, like a tree that can withstand wind, lose a couple branches, but has the roots to take all the. Seasons of life when the leaves drop and they come back to really adjust and be dynamic in that I think relationship anarchy is a deep embrace of perpetual change.

Karen Yates  25:11  
Absolutely. [BREAK] Did you know Wild & Sublime's twice monthly newsletter has sex news, views views and tips you can use delivered to your inbox, plus info on the latest pod episodes and upcoming live shows. Sign up at Wildandsublime.com

Karen Yates  25:30  
[To Nicole] One of the points you make in your dissertation is that relationship anarchists want to step out of this dichotomy of of and I think you've been saying that beautifully, the dichotomy of monogamy or non monogamy, because that is seen as still even within the binary of patriarchal thinking. Now, I gotta be honest, I'm not sure. Why is it patriarchal thinking? Why is the dichotomy seen as patriarchal?

Nicole Thompson  26:15  
Because there are cultures that don't have the word monogamy in their language. Okay, right? So even that practice of which was, you know, very white western colonizer, which came to a lot of different places, and said, stop having sex with multiple people. You should only do one. And this is how you are ordained by God, right? So even that word monogamy comes from a certain source, and some language, like cultures don't even have that. So they wouldn't even think to put their relationships into a structure. If I asked them, were you non monogamous, they'd be like, what does that word mean? What? Right? So it's a certain box, yeah.

Karen Yates  26:50  
Okay, now I understand, because if you're saying you're either monogamous or or if you're not, that you're non monogamous, okay, now I understand, right? So there's a term, new Gama, newgame, Newgominy, no. Newgame, sure, yes, which is beyond the binary. But what I thought was more fascinating was this idea of mestizia theory, which is about identity, that is, and this is not necessarily related to RA, but it's it's about identity being ever unfolding, multi placed and shifting. And you write that relationship anarchy could be said to occupy a similar third space that fluidly encompasses aspects of monogamous structures and polyamorous dynamics, which is awesome. And this idea of third space, I don't know what do you have to say about that? 

Nicole Thompson  27:54  
It just makes me want to cry, like I just love this world so much. I see so much in this Yeah, the dichotomy to look at your life and ask yourself, Am I monogamous or non monogamous is a question of, Do I have sex with more than one person or not, right? So now I'm coming up to this identity or choice, right, and saying, Do I have sex with one person or not, and that is how I'm gonna structure my relational world. Is that I am this non monogamous person? Why am I structuring my relational world through this question in the first place? Why is that? The question is that not putting sex over platonic in the first Okay, oh, okay. So if we I will say, politically, I tell people I'm non monogamous, because this conversation we're having is deep, right? And so when I am meeting someone, they're like, What do you do? I'm like, Oh, I'm a non monogamous psychotherapist, right? Like, you know, because that says something, and I want them to know that something. But in reality, if I really could, I'd say, Oh, I'm a relationship anarchist, and leave it there, but I want to be able to also speak to people. And so that says something, that I do have sex with multiple people, but that is not how I structure my life. As the orientation of whether I have sex with multiple people or not, right? Where is the category for all the other loving relationships that are in multitudes. What is that word? Right? It's like, oh, it's relationship and, like, that's how it ends up being a third space. Yeah,

Karen Yates  29:31  
I, I'm going to be interviewing Jessica Fern, who just put out a new book called poly wise. And yes, near the end, she talks about, like, transcending, which is the same thing. It's basically another way to say, you know, ra, but it's like you can transcend this idea of polyamory, non monogamy, monogamy, like it's a shifting landscape totally and just because you say, Today, I am not. monogamous and I'm polyamorous, doesn't mean that 10 years from now, it might change reading that was like, oh, right, right. My identity is my identity is fluid.

Nicole Thompson  30:12  
Right, always changing, right? And so we hope that in that evolution, we get closer and closer to an authentic self, right? And, yeah, when I talk to Jessica on modern anarchy, she was talking about the paradigm shifts that we go through to do that radical right. Every single time I'm I'm humbled, like beyond humbled by relationship anarchy. And I use very intentional language of saying the practice of relationship anarchy. This is a practice I am gonna get to the end of my life still going. There is more to deconstruct. Oh gosh, I didn't even see that. Whoa, right? And so I'm humbled by that, let alone the additional piece here, which is what I've been trying to talk about in the podcast is, for the folks who have sex with one person, maybe we let go of the word monogamy. Maybe you say, I practice sexual fidelity, right? And that can also be sexual fidelity to one person, to a closed polycule dynamic. Maybe, rather than using the word that has so much, you know, laden context to it, we could also use sexual fidelity as an alternative, right, an indicator, because we have to use labels, right? We have to use labels to communicate with folks. That's how we I'm communicating, right now, these words are labels to kind of thoughts, blah, right? So maybe sexual fidelity would be a word that we could use, rather than monogamy, to get us closer to this space. And there are folks who practice sexual fidelity and relationship anarchy. They are not exclusive camps. You can practice having sex with one person and to the relationship anarchist who says, No, you have to be having sex with multiple people. You are reinforcing the prioritization of sex by defining that, let alone asexual folks, but you are reprioritizing that sex is the definer to be in this camp, we are actively trying to deconstruct the priority of sex as the most significant relationship. So if someone chooses to have sex with one person who cares, as long as they are deconstructing power systems and choosing to share their love in the community. They're here,

Karen Yates  32:26  
Right? So I'm just, I'm totally grooving on what you're saying here. What can I say? I would just, yeah, deconstructing beliefs is sort of my, my thing.

Nicole Thompson  32:36  
I love it. My kink! 

Karen Yates  32:38  
Yeah, right! So one of the things I want, you know, because so it's great, you know, maybe the folks who are listening are like, okay, that's lovely, but what happens when the rubber hits the road? And there was a very cool chart that was in your dissertation that i this will be, this will be linked in the show notes. Is it's called the relationship anarchy smorgasbord, created by two Vancouver RA practitioners. I'm going to pull it up right now. 

Karen Yates  33:12  
It's akin to the, if folks are are aware of the "yes no maybe" list for sex and kink practices. It's very similar to that. And it's, I'm looking at, like 21 bubbles, and it says in the center, "to form your relationships, you and another can pick any number of items from any number of platters, because it's a smorgasbord. Take a huge helping or just a scoop. The dish the two of you hold is your relationship. No sneaking in items vis a vis expectations without the other knowing or there will likely be conflict or disappointment later."

Karen Yates  33:52  
There's 21 of these things that have listings like financial sharing, resources, businesses, money, payment? You know, people can go through these to say, where do we stand on sharing these things or collaborative? Are we going to be working together? Are we teaching? Are we doing projects together? Emotional into me? Will we have difficult conversations? Is that important to our relationship? What are our love languages, physical intimacy, dance, Cuddles, hugs, massage, hand holding, nudity, co sleeping, body contact and so people get to because this isn't just about sexual relationships, right? Exactly, partnership, what is our routines? Do we embrace change? What's consistency, what's commitment, what's you know, is there reliability? Oh, my God, I looked at this thing and I was like, holy shit. So one of the things in this season, you know, sort of deep dive, polyamory. What? It be, besides working with your jealousy or working on opening the relationship, what is beyond that? And of course, time and time again, it comes up that it's about communication. And this is for me looking at this. This is like, next level stuff. This is like, oh my gosh, to be able to talk about this smorgasbord platter where it's like it dissects everything. Have you done this with someone? Yes, oh, my God, what? How many people have you done it with and what happened?

Nicole Thompson  35:34  
I think I've [laughing] Yeah. It's a good question. I think I've done it informally with about four people in my life right now, relationships with Yeah, and I love all them in different ways. Formally sat down with the paper at least one, and what I felt was just the finitude of it, of Gosh, this doesn't even begin to scratch the surface, because, sure, there's 20 dishes. But do you know how expansive the human experience is? Yes, we got to start somewhere. This is great. This is so good. 

Karen Yates  36:05  
But I'm just like, I don't know if there was a vacation bubble,

Nicole Thompson  36:10  
Totally right? Is there a vacation bubble? I think it's just, it's, I'm again, I just want to say I'm humbled. I am humbled by the study of the erotic I am humbled by the study of relationships. Because, you know, it says, like, don't have those expectations in there. But do you know how complicated that is? I have an expectation that you're gonna text me on my birthday. Okay, that wasn't a box in there. And I have to ask for that, oh God, you know, like, oh gosh, okay, right. But you're right. These are where it can get messy where, you know, just because we said we're partners, I did not say that I would see you once a week. Maybe partnership, to me, means once every couple of months, right? So, yeah, that act of actually deconstructing is literally, I would say, a lifetime journey. And what I find in most of my relationship anarchist clients, is that some of us, myself included, can end up spending most of our time processing the relationship rather than being in the relationship.

Karen Yates  37:10  
Well, yeah, exactly, exactly, because I think sometimes people are like "really??" 

Nicole Thompson  37:15  
But the joy of it, gosh, like Karen, when you do communicate like that, and for a moment, you can look into that person's eyes and take the deepest breath and feel like, wow, we are on the same page as much as anyone could be, because we can't. But the closest damn thing to it, yes, please, please, come closer. I want you so badly, right? So that act of trying to get as close as possible to the same thing, but Right? I think the important piece is that this is a starting point. This is a starting point for conversations, and because we're humans, and because there's so much more to life, you are naturally going to run into moments of expectations that maybe you didn't even know you had until they weren't met, and now you're feeling literally the reaction about it, right? And so to meet your partner in that, remember, we're talking about change, change, right? Right? To say, Okay, well, I didn't realize I had this. Are you interested in meeting it? No, okay, I'm going to now reorient myself and look at our relationship differently. The amount of cognitive work to reorient. Because I don't talk about de escalation, right? Because that says there's an escalator of going up, I reorient to my relationship. Oh, that's great. That's even break up. I reorient to this human maybe with more space, surely, if they're causing harm, right? But it's a reorientation, and so every moment, I'm trying to practice a couple of different values, right, presence, freedom and care. We talked about those, presence being a big one. I also like play, right? I like play because you can't always be processing. But presence, right? What does it mean to loosely, without attachment, have a joy, a vision for the future, but without attachment to it? Okay? Sure, because in the present moment, it's constantly changing, and you're learning things about that person. They're having other experiences. Maybe in the past, I wanted to talk to you every day and now, based on where we're at and the other relationships and what I have going on once a week, sounds good. I think it's that embrace again, of change. So you can do the relationship anarchy smorgasbord, but just invite the fact that you will need to re check in with that, right? 

Karen Yates  39:37  
Of course, of course. Yeah, it's nice starting point. But then a check in, of course, will keep the relationship alive, right, instead of calcifying. But I like, I do, like that you talked about not attaching to a future vision, which, especially in, I say, American culture, and you're dealing with the escalator going up that now, you know, we're dating, and now we're going to put. Have rings, and now we're going to get married, and then we're going to have children, then we're going to have invest in capitalism and get a house and blah, blah, blah, not to any sort of attachment to the future. But right, it's very it's tricky. It's tricky not to attach. But there can be a lot of serenity not attaching to the future 

Nicole Thompson  40:24  
For sure, totally, totally. Because I want people to relationally attach in our psychological understand of attachment. I want you to feel secure in your attachment, but yes, to be non attached to what that looks like. You're right, yes, deeply painful, and you want to, you know, part of being able to vision out about a relationship and be creative, right, that creative life force that's a sign of the relationship and the life that you can create with that person. So you don't want to stop envisioning hopes and dreams. But every time that you do that, you need to be loosely attached to it, right? I mean, even if we go all the way back to like, monogamy and the divorce rates of 50% what would it mean for me to tell people be loosely attached to your dream with a 50% outcome, right? I don't think anyone wants to do that. It's hard. It's really hard, but realistic. I think it's just important to remember that you can have dreams. You can ride the relationship escalator if it feels good, and that's what you and that person actually want. That's an important thing I talked to about with a lot of relationship anarchists. Just because you're a relationship anarchist doesn't mean you can't get married and have a ceremony and live with that person if that's what you both are consciously choosing. It's just that continual practice that you know nothing stays the same, right? Those stones wear away. So just be loosely attached to what that ends up looking like, or embrace that it might change, and you'll accept that when it is it is such a dance to both envision but be loosely attached to what that might look like as things flow. 

Karen Yates  42:01  
So let's talk a little bit about your study and the folks that you talked to, like actual practicing relationship anarchists, like this idea of going into the jungle with binoculars, the RAs in the wild. Yeah. Okay, what did you discover?

Nicole Thompson  42:21  
That relationship anarchy.... It feels silly. I'm gonna say it, but, you know, but it just hit me when I was doing the research, is it also applies to your family, to your kids.

Karen Yates  42:32  
Absolutely, absolutely. That's the first thing you know, when I read the RA Manifesto by Nordgren, that is the first thing I thought of is that means you're not putting your mother necessarily ahead of your friends. That means like you're you're re-looking at all of these structures that are like almost inviolate in terms of society, the creation and structure of society. Oh, my God, what a head trip. 

Nicole Thompson  43:02  
Yeah, I think it's just funny, because I think, you know, part of the dissertation is I name that my research is biased, because I am a human being, and so that means my lens is biased no matter what I do. And so I try to name that bias up front and say, This is the lens that I'm working on. And so for me personally, my own discovery relationship anarchy was tied to non monogamy and expansive relating and polyamory and then non hierarchical. So you can see that in my, you know, literature review that I'm talking about monogamy and non monogamy, right? And all you la, la, la. So, you know, I talked about how we deconstruct sexuality as the most important piece, but my brain never even thought about how someone would come in and say, Yeah, I practice relationship anarchy with my family and my children. And I was like, Well, yeah, that does make sense. But because of my own lens, I was so like, yeah, deconstruct romance. Rah, rah, rah, you know, I didn't even think about the deeper implications that it can have for folks in other areas, because it is all relationships.

Karen Yates  44:09  
So were people doing that? Sort of, were people like diving into that area, like of looking at parental relationships and child parent relationships using the RA ideas. 

Nicole Thompson  44:25  
Yeah, so thinking about deconstructing power structures, I remember one of my participants saying, "I don't listen to the cultural value that says that blood relationships are everything. If this person is not showing up for me in healthy ways, yes, I am not going to stick to the internalized belief that I need to maintain this relationship." I was like, yep, that's definitely relationship anarchy, right there, right? Or another person who was talking about living with a non sexual co parenting dynamic, right? And creating that relationship and that being a significant. Form of one of the most meaningful connections, right? There's a lot of different ways where we would say, like, oh, that's just, like, you said, just a roommate. Okay, actually, this is one of the most significant people. Sure, I don't have sex, but we're co raising my child together. Wow, right? So the creativity, and I think that's when you asked me at the beginning right? Relationship anarchy is deconstructing internalized power structures to design your own relationships, and so we're deconstructing that internalized narrative that says just a roommate to design a narrative of this being one of the most significant co parenting relationships I've ever had, right? Like, whoa.

Karen Yates  45:44  
Yeah. 

Nicole Thompson  45:45  
Yeah.

Karen Yates  45:47  
Where are you now? And this is your dissertation. And, yeah, what was like you went through this? How many years did this take? And where were you at the beginning for? Okay, so where were you at the beginning? And how has it changed your brain?

Nicole Thompson  46:03  
Karen, oh, my god. Can you imagine just, I just want you to imagine me for four years digesting this literature and trying to practice it in my own life. Do you understand every day that I went to write this out, I was like, How do I do this. How is this in my own life? Like it was not *not* personal, like it was so deeply personal every single day and and how beautiful I love that my life is so connected to what I believe in and in my life. So I will just say I'm not the same person that I started at the very beginning. And, like I said, my lens was very deeply into non hierarchical polyamory, and that was my lens. I've just gotten deeper into, yeah, what it means to be community based, you know, I do. I train in psychedelic integration therapy at sauna healing collective, and they're saying was, community is medicine. And I trained under a supervisor who was an anarchist, a monogamous anarchist, right? And so we had so many different conversations about what anarchy means. What does anarchy mean inside a therapeutic relationship? What does anarchy mean on a grand scale? And so my vision has definitely expanded from the world of non monogamy to a much wider vision of liberation and really allowing just more people to feel the expansiveness of love. And I know you might know this, Karen, that like I am so deeply passionate about the liberation of the erotic, so deeply passionate about it, and I think that there needs to be more discussion about the anarchy of sex, right? How do we deconstruct internalized power structures of sex? Oh, I am erotically turned on by exploring that for the rest of my life, because it is deep. It is deep within our unconscious is and so I am just so, so committed to studying that and trying to explore it in my own life, and again, ending this out on just profoundly humbled, profoundly humbled by relationships. They are my biggest teacher, and so I'm ready for the ride, but that will be for a lifetime.

Karen Yates  48:17  
Oh, wonderful, wonderful. Nicole, you have a podcast, Modern Anarchy podcast. So folks out there, you can listen to it. Yeah. Nicole is also a practicing therapist. And are you writing a book, another book about...? 

Nicole Thompson  48:34  
So I published a book on my website on jealousy. 

Karen Yates  48:37  
Okay, yes. 

Nicole Thompson  48:38  
And so I again, anarchist values. It's free. All the content is there. You can read it. You can print it out for yourself, right? I You don't have to buy it. And so it's all right there. And my intention is, the beauty of having it on the website means that I can continually add to it as I go through life and make it longer and longer and longer. So it's a live document and also a book. 

Karen Yates  49:01  
And what is the, what is your the address of your website?

Nicole Thompson  49:04  
It is modernanarchypodcast.com. That is where my book, The Psychedelic Jealousy Guide, which is combining all the training that I did in psychedelic integration therapy to the rather psychedelic experience that is non monogamy and expansive relationships. It is a is a trip and a half. I've been high off of amory and jealousy for many a time. Let me tell you,

Karen Yates  49:31  
Excellent, and we will have all of those links in the show notes, as well as the the smorgasbord chart. Oh my gosh, what a great conversation. Nicole Thompson, thank you so so much. It's been a pleasure. 

Nicole Thompson  49:45  
Thank you. Thank you. 

Karen Yates  49:47  
For more information on Nicole and the link to her podcast. Go to the notes where you will also find more info on RA, including the RA smorgasbord that we were talking about. 

Karen Yates  49:59  
Well, that's it. folks. Have a very pleasurable week. Thank you for listening. Wild & sublime is supported in part by our sublime supporter, Full Color Life Therapy, therapy for all of you at fullcolorlifetherapy.com. Know someone who'd like this episode, send it to them, and we'd love a review or a rating on your podcast app. You can follow us on Facebook and Instagram. At wild and sublime, got feedback or an inquiry. Contact us at Info(at)Wildandsublime.com. I'd like to thank our design guru Jean François Gervais and editor Christine Ferrera. Our music is by David Ben Porat. This episode is part of the Lincoln lodge Podcast Network.