306 - Bonding Styles with Dr. Eli Sheff
Bonding styles 101
Dr. Elisabeth “Eli” Sheff has been on the show multiple times in the past regarding her longitudinal study of polyamorous families with children. She is a researcher, expert witness, coach, speaker, and educational consultant. She has a PhD in sociology and a certification from the AASECT (the American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors, and Therapists) as a Sexuality Educator. Dr. Sheff specializes in gender and sexual minority families, consensual non-monogamy, and kink/BDSM.
Dr. Sheff covers “The Bonding Project” in this episode, including:
What the Bonding Project is.
What the test for it is like.
Who might want to take it.
How she went about developing it.
The different bonding styles identified (One to one, many to many, one to many, solo).
Plans for the future of the test.
Any surprises in her findings to date.
Dr. Sheff also discusses her recently published book Children in Polyamorous Families, a nice, short resource for those who are wondering about the impact of polyamory on children but may be daunted by the longer texts.
What did you think of Dr. Sheff’s third episode with us? Follow her on Twitter and Facebook and let us know how you liked hearing about bonding styles!
Transcript
This document may contain small transcription errors. If you find one please let us know at info@multiamory.com and we will fix it ASAP.
Jase: On this episode of the Multiamory Podcast, we're excited to have Dr. Eli Sheff back on the show to talk about her research on polyamorous families and how to determine if polyamory or some variation of it might be a good fit for you. We're going to be talking about some exciting new research-based treats for all of you out there including a new research fact online quiz to help determine your comfort level with non-monogamy or monogamy, as well as a new super-short fact-filled book, Children in Polyamorous Families that just was released recently.
When I was putting this info together, I did not even include a bio because I'm just like, "Yes, everyone knows who Dr. Eli Sheff is." For those of you who don't, Dr. Elizabeth aka Eli Sheff is a researcher, expert witness, coach, speaker, and educational consultant. With a PhD in sociology and certification as a sexuality educator from the American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors, and Therapists, Dr. Sheff specializes in gender and sexual minority families, consensual, non-monogamy, and kink BDSM.
She is the foremost academic expert on polyamorous families with children and her 25-year polyamorous family study is the only longitudinal study of polyamorous families with children to date. Eli, thank you so much for joining us today.
Eli: Thank you so much for having me. I'm thrilled to be back chatting with you delightful folks.
Jase: Thank you.
Dedeker: I will be surprised you still hold this title of having the only longitudinal study, is there anyone else vying for the title? Are you having to be king of the mountain and protect that? Are there any up-comers who are also entering the field ?
Emily: You're pushing them off the mountain. "Get out of here."
Eli: Not that I know of. Longitudinal research is really hard and I started doing it on accident really. It just happened to me. Although, I have to say there's this really interesting poly-base research in Canada about people-- they studied people who were pregnant and having children in a polyamorous family.
Dedeker: Like poly babies. I was like POLYBABES.
Eli: Not by babies but babes like B-A-B-E-S but meaning babies born into polyamorous families.
Dedeker: It's an acronym. It's Bearing and Birth Experiences Study.
Jase: That's so cute.
Dedeker: Wow.
Jase: I love that.
Emily: Dedeker is very good at doing this in the middle of an episode. She's like, "Let me look that up." I go check the things.
Eli: I don't think it's longitudinal. Dedeker, does it say there?
Dedeker: They say qualitative.
Eli: Qualitative can be longitudinal. My qualitative research is longitudinal but most people are like, "This is a one strike thing."
Jase: I think this is just a one thing.
Eli: It is just so much easier to plan.
Dedeker: It seems like if it was longitudinal, they would want to brag about that.
Emily: Probably, it'll be accidentally longitudinal as well.
Eli: I sure hope so. Follow those kids and see how they're doing. I think it's a great idea.
Dedeker: How fascinating.
Jase: We, now, for a couple of years, have been planning our own research study as well that we plan to be longitudinal but the whole thing got thrown off by COVID. That's been delayed another year but we're excited to do that. Not specifically studying polyamorous families although that will be included in it. Hopefully, we can join you.
Eli: What are you going to research? I'm interested.
Jase: It's probably like spoilers or something, I probably can't tell too much. Basically, looking at things like resilience factors and looking longitudinally at how certain traits or relationship styles or types of relationships contribute to their longevity over time, as well as looking at things like not just how long do they last but how healthy are they, how are the feelings about them as they ended, that whole thing, as well as just trying to get a sense of who out there is polyamorous. The never-ending question we all want answered.
Dedeker: The label usage. We are not the academic geniuses behind the study. We are joining forces with Dr. Ryan Witherspoon to--
Eli: Wonderful. He's fantastic.
Dedeker: Someone who actually knows what they're doing.
Emily: Thank goodness.
Dedeker: Again, that's been put on the back burner because of COVID.
Eli: We're doing a similar thing. The principal investigator is Dr. Justin Mogilski and we've just finished our phase one and are ready to release an online survey that we've just finished up. I think definitely these two things should cross-pollinate.
Jase: Absolutely.
Dedeker: They should.
Eli: We should put Justin and Ryan together.
Emily: We'll set him up on a blind brain date, Justin and Ryan.
Dedeker: They can develop a brain man.
Emily: That's good. This is your third time, I was going to say this is your first time, it definitely isn't. This is your third time on the show. The first time was episode 45 from November 2015 which is incredible because that was in our first year or a little bit after our first year.
Dedeker: The day we're recording this is the day that our 300th episode releases.
Eli: That's exciting. Congratulations, you three, on all of your success and your hard work.
Dedeker: Thank you for being there at the beginning.
Eli: My pleasure.
Emily: Then we had you on, let's see, in 2018 for episode 171. Did we record that when we were all in Tucson together? I'm trying to remember. We just talked about we're going to be doing this.
Dedeker: No, we just kicked back and had cocktails together.
Emily: I do remember that.
Eli: That was fun.
Emily: We have you on basically every two and a half years or so, you're a mainstay.
Eli: Then I'll be back in two and a half years, so '22.
Emily: Maybe then we can talk about our cross-pollinated study that has happened.
Eli: I love that idea.
Dedeker: We'll set that intention for the future, it would be lovely.
Eli: Absolutely.
Dedeker: For both of those episodes, we had you on to talk about the subject matter that's in your wheelhouse which is your findings on polyamorous families and kids raised in polyamorous families and stuff like that. We probably will talk about that a little bit more today but you have this new project called the Bonding Project.
Emily: What is it?
Dedeker: Which is super exciting.
Emily: Can you tell us about that, please?
Eli: Oh, yes. I'm really excited about it. It's this collaboration with some other colleagues, we've developed this app for phones. A test you can take. It takes-- I'm going to estimate about 10 minutes. I know y'all took it, did it take you about 10-ish minutes?
Dedeker: 10-ish minutes maybe, maybe 15 to deliberate.
Eli: 10 to 15 if you think hard. It is a thoughtful test. It asks you some questions you might not have necessarily thought of before. At this stage of the test, we're sorting people into four primary categories. People who prefer to bond one-to-one, one-to-many, many-to-many, or solo. These initial categories obviously as time goes on and we develop more tests, we're going to become more fine tooth in that, like one-to-many, for instance. There's a whole bunch of different ways one person can have relationships with many people.
Developing tests within that larger category is coming up for us next but, for now, I think people in consensually non-monogamous relationships already could certainly find this useful to think about it, especially if you haven't thought about solo before but I think the people who might really have their mind blown by it are people in monogamous relationships who've never really thought about anything else and are like, "Oh, wow, you could do that and that sounds good to me actually and holy cow, look at how I tested on this, who knew?"
Yes, we're really excited about the test that's been released and we just got all sorts of interesting results from our first-- I think we hit a benchmark of like, I don't know, I don't do the numbers. I do the questions and the background. In order to develop the tests, I read tons of literature on relationship satisfaction, mostly in consensually non-monogamous relationships actually because research on consensual non-monogamy often compares to monogamous relationships. I got some of that there already and it tends to look around at the different types of consensual non-monogamy within that.
I pulled out all these factors that contribute to satisfaction in these relationships, and then we wrote questions around them. That's one of the big differences in this test between like this and another really well-known test the Myers-Briggs. That's actually a useful and interesting test. There's no science behind it. Somebody just made it up. Yes, isn't that interesting?
Dedeker: Oh my God, it's been a lie this whole time. I feel so cheap.
Eli: I don't know that it's a lie.
Emily: It never says that it's based on scientific anything.
Eli: That's true.
Emily: Have fun. Take this test.
Dedeker: I just projected. I was like, "These people sound like they know what they're talking about. I'll take a test."
Eli: I think it wouldn't have stuck around this long is if it were completely useless. It must resonate with people on some level but this test, we felt like grounding it in research and pairing with other academicians. For instance, Justin Mogilski is an academic partner with us. He looked through this and would use some of the data we generate to understand his sample.
We're hoping not only to help people figure out what kind of relationship style and bonding style works best for them, but also on the backend to have lots of research data from a wide diversity of people to help us better understand what are people choosing and what's generating that, how many people would prefer one-to-many or many-to-many. That'd be interesting and how many people really want one-to-one. That's their primary thing and they really want to stick with that.
Jase: I think that's worth mentioning to our listeners who are hearing this and wondering about the test is that not like a Cosmo quiz that's like, which one of these animals are you and that's your relationship style, but it's more of those four categories you mentioned. It gives you a rating of you seem to be strong, like have a strong affinity for one-to-one, and maybe you also have a strong affinity for many-to-many or for solo or whatever that it's not like you end up in one of the four.
It's kind of you seem like you might be strong in this one or maybe curious about this one or probably not so much this one. I think that's worth pointing out to people that I think also in a way makes it more like the Myers-Briggs where there's four categories on a scale in each one but--
Emily: Yes, agreed or disagreed type of scale.
Eli: Thank you so much for saying that, Jase. Actually, we rate in each of those different four relationship categories. We rate people as either comfortable, curious, cautious, or challenged.
Jase: Okay, that's interesting because I didn't get the cautious or challenge on any of my results .
Eli: You didn't get of any that, did you? That is really interesting.
Jase: Oh no, maybe I did.
Dedeker: I think we're going to end the bonus episode. We're going to talk more about our specific results and stuff like that. I wanted to point out I think that it's clear for anyone who's been engaged or in touch with a non-monogamous community for some time, there's always people who are just like, I don't know if this is right for me, it seems like part of this could be appealing, but I also could see myself being okay with monogamy, I don't know, how do I determine that? There are some people have put out some resources, some questions to ask yourself some scenarios to think about.
I think that Kathy Labriola in one of her workbooks, she also did a little quiz that was just seeing where on the scale between non-monogamy and monogamy, maybe you fit or are you more of a relationship, a chameleon or things like that. What I do appreciate is that with the results of the Bonding Project, it's less of this, "Here's where you fall on a scale," and it is almost a little bit more like a grid. I'm curious, I think a lot of people would think that it is the spectrum between non-monogamy and monogamy.
I'm curious to hear a little bit more explanation of these kinds of four different of the one-to-one, one-to-many, many-to-many and solo because even when I first took the quiz, I can guess what these might mean, but I can't make any assumptions. Can you lay that out for our listeners a little bit?
Eli: Absolutely, and I think one of the reasons we used this somewhat vague, but also specialized language is so people would think more about what they wanted and so we're not using these established labels of monogamy, polyamory relationship anarchy, things like that. If those are floating around in your head, which of course, the idea of monogamy is floating around in everybody's head, if they grew up in this culture at all, then one-to-one bonding will clearly trigger that.
It's okay if you have those associations, but we're not trying to say monogamy and one-to-one bonding are the same thing, because there's all these cultural, there's all this baggage around what does monogamy means. You might be strongly emotionally bonded to someone and be emotionally monogamous in that way, but be sexually open to other people. You might be a one-to-one bonder, but a one-to-many sexer.
Dedeker: You don't have the sexer project yet.
Eli: Yes. That person would probably fall at the intersection of one-to-one and one-to-many and probably want to talk to their partner or partners about, "Hey, look, I'm straddling these two categories here. How does this work for you? What bonder are you?" One-to-one is wanting one other person and really being like this is your home base, you really want to spend most of your time with that person. You can spend time with other people, but you prefer for that person to be with you there, even when you're hanging out with other people.
Sometimes you don't want to hang out with other people, you just want to be with that person in your loving nest is one-to-one. Without the judgment of, "Oh--" That's some kind judgment sometimes comes from polyamorous communities of monogamy is about ownership or something. That's a lot of cultural, maybe it is for some people, but for some other people, it's really, they bond to one other person. That's their primary-- that's where their heart is. One-to-many, one can bond with multiple people and sometimes those bonds are different. Sometimes they're those people are connected to, sometimes not.
One-to-many is probably the broadest category. It basically covers if one person has the ability and/or desire to be emotionally and/or romantically or sexually or whatever involved with more than one person at the same time, they can bond to more than one. Many-to-many, if you're familiar with the idea of polyfidelity, where there's a group that it's not the individuals within the group or the dyadic relationships in the group, but it's the group itself that you want to be part of that polycule or that collective.
That's some of our early research or our early findings are showing that a lot of people are either cautious or curious about that but hardly anyone is like, "Yes, I'm mostly many-to-many." Many-to-many, I think it's a concept a lot of people don't have and it's perhaps hard to maintain. It's more complicated than one-to-many. One-to-many is you're doing your own thing and you have multiple partners. Many-to-many is you value the group. Some people love that and that's really important and other people are like, "Oh no, get that off of me. That's the claustrophobic, that's way too much."
Some of those solo people, either don't want a primary relationship, don't want to have sex, don't want to have a romantic relationship, have multiple partners, and they don't really want to elevate them on different wavelengths or they sometimes have their most significant relationship is with someone who's not a romantic partner. A single parent who prioritizes their children or someone taking care of an elder parent or someone who's ill, or just a best friend is your most stable person and relation-- like romance comes second to that.
We're finding a lot of interest in solo bonding and especially among young people, the 18 to 28, I think range, had almost half of them identifying as solo bonders. These are early days still. We're just getting numbers in.
Jase: That'll be interesting to see how that grows over time as the reach of the study gets larger as well and to see some different demographic information. That's really interesting.
Emily: I'm just curious about the research that you did and how you developed all of this. Can you go into that a little bit and was there preemptive research and now also research that's happening on the backend or how did that all occur?
Eli: First, I read other people's research. People whose published research, like for instance, Dr. Terri Conley, C-O-N-L-E-Y. Her research was key in this. She's done a lot of work on relationship satisfaction in polyamorous and consensually non-monogamous relationships. She, Dr. Amy Moors, Dr. Heath Schechinger, and Ryan Witherspoon, who mentioned already. All sorts of people have looked at this, what makes these relationships if people are satisfied in them, what kinds of characteristics include that? For instance, one of them, one of these characteristics is novelty seeking.
That is people not only can tolerate but even actively celebrate new things. They tend to be more comfortable in a polyamorous relationship whereas some people's novelty feels threatening. They much prefer to have familiarity and comfort in routine is what works in their life and surprises are not fun, whereas if you're a novelty-seeking person, you're like, "Yes, surprise me. I love surprises." Things like that, identifying those elements. First, we wrote-- oh my goodness. I think the first test, I wrote had a hundred questions or something in .
It was huge and so the four of us on the team, we would take it and we would be like, "Okay, this question, we can't even understand what it means now after we written it. I don't know what that means. Let's just get rid of that one." These three questions basically all asked the same thing so we'll choose the best one of those. For months and months, we added and subtracted and changed until we had this kind of prototype that we tried on-- all sorts of people, we tried on my elder child and their polycule and got some great feedback from them.
We tried on our friends, we tried on just people in our immediate social circle, got feedback on that, and then we really took that feedback to heart and revamped the whole thing and cut it way down.
Emily: Is it a 50-question? No, it's even that one.
Dedeker: Not even. It's like 20, right?
Eli: It's freakishly brief for what it does.
Dedeker: I was going to say from a researcher perspective, I imagine that would be the most challenging part is getting to actually be brief.
Emily: Oh, and then slice in, yeah.
Eli: For every question to really mean something, we got rid of all the fluff questions that were interesting to ask, but didn't really directly contribute to deciding which of these like what's your comfort level and thank goodness for our quantitative brainiacs on the team, because on the back end, they've built all of this stuff I don't understand. It takes those answers and does something magic to them. They come out in understandable formats that actually-- from the feedback we've gotten so far are pretty accurate. I'd be interested to hear what you all think of your feedback when the time comes.
Jase: We have also not shared our results with each other very much yet. If not, that'll be fun for us to also talk to each other about our results as well as talking to you about it. Yes, that'll be fun.
Dedeker: Can you give our listeners a little sampling of what kind of questions are there going to be facing? Are you going to sit me down and make me detail my entire relationship history and my failed attempts at monogamy and stuff like that? Once you distilled to all your golden, golden essential questions, what was leftover?
Eli: There's a range of ways to answer each question from oh yes, totally comfortable with that to kind of comfortable, but have some reservations to don't really have a lot, either way to not super comfortable, but not horribly uncomfortable to really uncomfortable with that. Because we realized when we were pilot testing it, that just having an agree or disagree like, "Are you comfortable sharing your partner with other partners?" is one of the questions we ask. I think for a lot of people, the answer is that depends.
What's my relationship with my partner? Who am I sharing this person with? Am I there? Do I know about it? Have we talked about it beforehand? Do I like this person? Am I actively involved? Do I not want to be involved? It depends on so much. If you think about overall, are you comfortable sharing your partner with other partners? For some people who are deeply, deeply polyamorous and that's an orientation for them, they're probably going to say yes, full-on yes, and no hesitation about that.
For someone who is deeply, deeply monogamous, they're probably going to say no, it doesn't depend. There's no question in my mind, absolutely not, but for the other people, when they think about overarchingly, I lean towards being accepting with some reservations or I lean towards probably not with some exceptions.
Dedeker: It helps to have that more nuance, more so than just the classic, totally disagree, kind of disagree, neutral, agree, that it helps to have it written out in that way because if there's definitely anything that I've learned in meeting so many different non-monogamous people is there's a lot of flavors and colors or nuance that the rainbow of how people go about this and what people are actually comfortable with.
Eli: Absolutely. At first, actually, in the development of the test, we had it depends thing that people could click on and it would be a dropdown menu. That dropdown menu got so crazy long and it still didn't cover everything. We were like, "We can't cover everything that it depends." We've got to come up with like yes, no, it depends. We were like, so you're scrolling and scrolling and
scrolling, still it's, "Oh, we depend on that. I see." We're like, "We just can't figure every--" It depends out.
Emily: Jase and Dedeker, I'm not sure how you two took the test but I took it very much in the context of the relationship that I'm currently in, with that in mind as opposed to just if I was 100% single or whatever and so that I think colored my results for sure whereas I'm not sure how that might be different for someone who was practicing solo polyamory, for instance, or relationship anarchist or hierarchical polyamory or totally monogamous, stuff like that. That's interesting.
Eli: Or someone who's single and is like--
Emily: Exactly.
Eli: I don't know. Do I want a relationship? If I do, what kind might I want?
Emily: Yes.
Jase: Yes.
Dedeker: Yes.
Emily: Yes, that's interesting especially once there--
Eli: Emily, I'll be really interested if you would take it again and think not of your current relationship, but relationships in general and compare those too and see if they're different at all would be super interesting.
Emily: Yes, I do wonder how that would be and we will absolutely talk about it more in the bonus episode.
Dedeker: Maybe we need to make some time for you to really quickly rethink it, Emily, just to--
Emily: Oh gosh. Well, yes.
Dedeker: Because that's super fascinating, it's science. Emily, it's science.
Emily: No, I know.
Dedeker: How the results change depending on what your mindset is.
Emily: That's true. I took it in bed yesterday. I was like, "I think I'm not quite sure what I should be doing here," so I'm trying to figure that out.
Dedeker: I appreciated you pointed out that. On the back end as you're seeing people responding this kind of interesting phenomenon of like a lot of people who are maybe curious or cautious about many-to-many and not a lot of people who are super, super gung ho. I think that makes sense when I think about Americans specifically. I think we're pretty well socialized to be suspicious of anything relatively collectivist. I think that makes sense that that's how that would come out in the wash.
Emily: Individuals damn it.
Dedeker: We are individuals. I'm wondering, other than that, any other surprising things that you found so far?
Eli: Well, I just got these graphics that I-- Can I share my screen? Can we look at them and talk about them?
Dedeker: Okay. Eli is sharing her screen with us and we're looking at these results. There's some really amazing colorful pie charts. We have one pie chart that's Bonders By Orientation and it's broken down into asexual, bisexual, bisexual and queer, gay, heterosexual, and queer. Then the other one was what? Bonders By Relationship Orientation as well?
Eli: Yes, let's scoot over. Oh, I went there a little. There we go.
Emily: Wow. Bonders By Age.
Dedeker: Wow.
Eli: Bonders By Orientation.
Jase: This is just of everyone who's--
Eli: Looks like we're heavy on the heterosexuals.
Jase: Yes.
Eli: Ironically, only 43% are heterosexual whereas, in average society, it's at least 90% heterosexual so even though we've got almost half heterosexual.
Jase: That's almost half.
Dedeker: Yes, that is what they tell us.
Emily: Yes, that's what they say but maybe people are being more honest on this.
Dedeker: 43% are heterosexual then everyone else falls under like lesbian, pansexual, queer, panromantic asexual, bisexual, gay, all those things. Wow, fascinating.
Eli: Let's see. Okay, Bonders By Age. It looks like we have the majority--
Emily: No one above 60.
Eli: No one above 60 yet.
Emily: Okay, yes.
Eli: That might have been a function of who we knew and who we asked to pile the test.
Jase: Ask any initial around. That makes sense.
Eli: Yes. Also because people over 60 are less likely I think to want to use an app specifically for relationships. This is more for the millennials and the zoomers, I would say than the boomers.
Jase: Sure, yes.
Dedeker: Right.
Jase: Right. I would say.
Emily: Are we all zoomers now?
Eli: I'm Gen X, actually. The last generation of we're just a nothing.
Jase: I know.
Dedeker: Well, but now, we're all honorary zoomers. We're all honorary zoomers.
Jase: Everyone's honorary zoomer these days.
Eli: It's true, it's a good point.
Jase: Well, that's fascinating.
Dedeker: Do you have any data breakdown by bonding style so far?
Eli: Let's see. This is by heterosexuality-
Dedeker: Oh there it is, yes.
Eli: -by age.
Dedeker: Oh wow.
Eli: Still age.
Emily: I see.
Dedeker: Oh, I see.
Eli: Let's go back.
Jase: This breaks down very granular here where it's not only showing the amount of people who are cautious, challenged, curious, or whatever about-
Emily: Many may.
Jase: -the different styles but also broken down by their orientation and things like that. That's fascinating.
Emily: That's really cool.
Dedeker: Yes. I feel super lucky that we're getting access to these secret behind-the-scenes charts and data. Are you intending to at some point release any of this data for public consumption for all of us curious cats out there?
Eli: Definitely.
Dedeker: Great.
Eli: That's one of the reasons that we're already partnering with other academicians because I do not do statistics at all, I can't deal with statistics and so having other people take these and really seriously analyze them and say what does this mean. I'm great on the incoming end of how do we construct this and making sure that it's accurately measuring what we're trying to measure, but then deciding what those statistical results mean. We're pairing up with other people who can do that for us.
Dedeker: Right. What's your vision for the future of where this test may I go or what it may develop into?
Eli: Well, for one thing, we're going to move into, not only being able to compare, right now, I think we can compare two people's results, but our next phase would be being able to compare the results of the polycule. Taking five people's results and saying, "This is where you're going to be strong, this is where you have differing bonding styles that you might have some issues here." For that, we would want to develop a range of other tests that can differentiate.
For instance, among solo bonding, there are so many different ways to do that and figuring out people who are curious, or comfortable with solo bonding, what exactly the different ways they can do that. Then if they're part of a polycule, how does that interact if somebody else is more emphasizing like many too many bonding. That polycule you might say, "Okay, we're going to have some issues around the collective versus the group." It's not that the solo bond--
Jase: Right, how do we balance it?
Emily: Yes.
Eli: Yes.
Dedeker: Yes. That makes so much sense and I could see that being so helpful because you were mentioning that I think a lot of the real-world instances that we see of people doing this many-to-many bonding where the emphasis is on the collective, it's on the cule, and how it functions as a group that often in real life, it does become difficult for people to maintain sometimes. Sometimes they can be not very stable.
The way that I've always thought about it is that it's like if you have like a polycule of, let's say six, and we're all trying to make this collective, co-habit, and make a little commune, there's always going to be someone in that group who's the least excited about the collective than anybody else. That's how I always thought about it. I think this makes sense that if you could identify obviously not from a place of judgment or condemnation or someone being bad or someone being good but just this like, "Oh, this person just really thrives better with solo bonding rather than many too many or this person is--"
Emily: Then you shun them and get them out of the polycule.
Dedeker: We kick them out.
Jase: No.
Dedeker: We identify?
Jase: No.
Dedeker: No, but maybe we identify, "Okay, on the big piece of property that we're buying to create a commune, we'll make sure that you get your own little house." Maybe it's that, maybe that's a silly example or maybe that's an on the nose example, I don't know. It depends on people's situations but I think that really makes sense as far as practical applications instead of it being this assumption of like, "Okay, everyone's in the collective and everyone has to be equally excited about it or else this is not going to work."
That way, we can really identify these individual variations, and then hopefully build something out of that's more flexible and more speaks to everybody's strengths and in areas of most comfort.
Eli: Especially if you do it early in the relationship to help figure out before you've made these hard and fast agreements and then it's like, "Oh, you're in trouble. You're breaking the agreement." Sometimes people don't know what they want or they haven't even thought it through really to even think, "What are my options?" Hopefully, that's one of the things that this test can help is people start to consider, "Oh, I didn't even know. You could do it that way, and now that you asked me that question, wow, I am surprised to think that I might really consider that."
At least help people start conversations about what kind of boundaries and what kind of bonding do they want without just stumbling blindly forward in a way and assuming everybody either has the same bonding style or one is better and really we should make sure everybody jumps onto that one. One of the big motivations for this actually was also developing a tool that counselors and therapists could use to help their clients. We're not calling it a diagnostic tool specifically because that's a whole different threshold of research. We're not trying to diagnose anything.
The way that therapists recommend people take the Myers-Briggs to figure themselves out. The same thing that people could decide what kind of bonding style they want and help talk to their partner. If you can compare results, see where, again, no one being at fault, but just differing personality styles or expectations or bonding styles could expose, "Here's a difference here, how do we handle that?"
Dedeker: I'm so excited to just see what results come out of this, what all of you on the back end see after this has been out there for months, years, even longer. It's going to be super fascinating.
Dedeker: Those pie charts become more definitive. All those many pie charts.
Jase: I think that'd be very exciting too that as those results come in if you're able to share some of those things on The Bonding Project website so that people can see that as it comes in because that's definitely a lot of really interesting, very cool data that I know a lot of our listeners will be excited to feel like, "I want to know. I want to see it."
Eli: Yes. You can just sit where they sit in the bigger picture and everything. That's cool.
Dedeker: All y'all listening out there are probably like, "I want to take this too, I want to find out." If you just go to bondingproject.com, there's not only the test itself but also ways to signup up for their newsletter and FAQ, all kinds of other information so that you can keep up to date with what is happening with The Bonding Project. Again, just go to bondingproject.com. It'll work in your regular browser, on your mobile browser, wherever. We'll definitely be really curious to hear from all y'all what kind of results you got.
Jase: Next, we want to talk about the new book, Children in Polyamorous Families. Before we get to that, we're going to take a quick break to talk about how you can support this show, help keep these coming to everyone out there for free. We will see you after that. We're going to start talking about this new book, Children in Polyamorous Families. I want to start by saying that I think the last time we had you on this show, we may-- Actually, it might have been after that. We talked about your book, When Someone You Love Is Polyamorous.
That is a similar kind of short summary of key pieces of information, answers to a lot of those common questions from people who are either brand new to the concept of polyamory, or when someone you love is polyamorous, like your son or daughter, or your uncle, or whoever comes out to you as being polyamorous. The book is a resource that instead of having to ask them all those questions, or maybe your uncle is like, "Here, actually just read this book before you ask me other questions, at least to have a foundation."
That book talks a little bit about children, but this one is the version of that's specifically about families and children. Just a brief overview of what the research shows, what the facts are, what the myths are, things like that. I love that we have another book like this. I think that's incredibly helpful. What led to this getting created? What's that been like?
Eli: I really appreciate you characterizing it that way Jase, that's exactly what I meant it to be.
Jase: Great.
Eli: I would say that when I'm speaking on polyamory, I get a lot of the same questions about kids. I took note of those and answered them all in short book format if people are trying to explain to their mother-in-law or the school counselor or their lawyer, or something. I've been working on the longer book, the much more academic version for a long time now. I'm still working on it.
Dedeker: Wait, hold on though. You published The Polyamorists Next Door a few years ago. You're working on another academic longer book version as well. With what, like updated bindings?
Eli: Yes, the follow-up to that. The Polyamorists Next Door was on both the adults and the kids. I'm breaking up the follow-up into the academic book. Growing Up in Polyamorous Families will be on the kids. That's still coming. It's a longer book, it's much more academic, and I'm trying hard to diversify my sample. I'm going back into another round of interviews trying to find people of color who've grown up in non-monogamous households, any kind of BIPOC folks who want to talk to me about it.
While they wouldn't have been in the original sample, at least having a more diverse idea of different families, that's stalled that book out a little bit, trying to diversify that. Then the book after that would be The Persistent Polyamorists: Aging in Long-Term Polyamorist Relationships.
Jase: I like that, the persistent--
Dedeker: The persistent polyamorist. I'm just like, "Yes, we are stubborn, aren't we?"
Jase: Keep doing it.
Eli: Yes, they keep doing it. Maybe they, for some of these folks, started in their teens or 20s. We're talking early in the '70s, in the '60s, some of these folks, and they're still polyamorous. They're dealing with aging issues. How is that in the long-term polyamorist setting? First of all, how do you maintain a long-term relationship? Second of all, how does it deal with aging, disability, and grandchildren, stuff like that?
Dedeker: There's definitely a gap, I think. There's a gap in the, I don't want to say necessarily in the market, but it's like there's almost this gap in the publicly available information and resources regarding that, especially from a research background as well.
Jase: I'm excited to read those books. Right now, we're talking about this book, which is children in--
Eli: The kids' book, that's right.
Jase: I was actually surprised at first by how short it was. Then when I realized, it's like that's actually perfect because it's that book for, like you said, the school counselor or your mother-in-law, or someone who has some concerns, and that it can add a little bit of credence to it, I think, having it come from a book, and not just, "Let me tell you what I think about these things." I think that's a huge benefit, and I think will be really useful to people in those specific used cases, especially of just, I want to get some information to someone.
I don't want to ask them to read The Polyamorists Next Door and commit to reading several hundred pages of a book, but I do want them to get that information. I think this is super cool. Of the stuff that's in it, they cover some major categories. One that jumped out to me because we saw you speak about this in Arizona a couple of years ago, which is the age-dependent experiences of children. I was just curious if you could give our listeners the brief rundown of that. I think that's just such an interesting part of the research that I hadn't really heard other people talk about.
Eli: Absolutely. Small children are not that aware of the broader world. They don't understand sex and they take their family for granted. Little kids under five often don't understand what polyamory means, they don't know that they're in a polyamorous family, they just take their family for granted, that's the way family is. Once they start going to elementary school, they start realizing. "Other families are different." It's so funny that multiple polyamorous families have had the experience of their child coming home from a play date with another family.
With this big news of, "They only have one parent," or, "They only have two parents. Can you believe that? That looks so hard. How do they even do that?" That poor kid. For the children, it doesn't translate as a deficit of, "Oh my God, we're so weird. We have all these extra people." Not a deficit on their part, but more a deficit on the peer's part that they don't get as much attention. The kind of oh we're weird feeling doesn't start to leak in until the kid is a tween. The tween is like 9 to 11 or so in there.
Then they're becoming more aware of differences in other people's families. They're not fully pubescent yet, but they're coming on towards puberty, so they're starting to be not such a little kid anymore. They're just connecting things. They're understanding things in a different way, so that by the time they hit their teens and they're in puberty, they're like, "Oh, you mean that kind of friend." They're totally zoning in on their family is different from other people's families. This relationship that they had seen like, "Who cares? Mom kisses this person, whatever.
They hit 13 and they're like you're kissing, "Oh, my God. Gross. Sex is gross. Parent sex is the worst." Then by the time they're older teens, they're not as concerned about their family. They're moving away. They're much more concerned about what they're doing and who their friends are and what's happening in their life, and much less obsessing about what their parents are doing. They don't care. By the time they're young adults, it makes them a rock star to have come from a non-monogamous family. If it's relevant to the conversation and then they bring it up, "Oh yes, I grew up in a polyamorous family."
Their friends are like, "Wow, that's so cool. Detail. What's that like?" It's just because developmentally humans are incredibly different at those early stages. There's a huge difference between a four-year-old and a nine-year-old, an enormous difference. Their understanding of family life in general. It makes just a lot of sense that they would understand polyamory differently as well.
Dedeker: I finally had it an in-person experience of this with my niece and nephew for the first time who in the past couple of years, both have entered that tween stage. Of course, when they were much younger, I would bring multiple partners around them, basically, ever since I was out to my sister's family, I would bring multiple partners around to the kids. This last summer, when Jase and I were hanging out with them, it was the first time that they connected the dots, ever.
I was so surprised, hearing this now, I'm like, "Okay, that makes sense from a developmental perspective that they just didn't have the interest or motivation to connect the dots," but it was literally the first time that they were both were suddenly like, "Wait, do you have two boyfriends? You have two boyfriends? Why do you have two boyfriends?"
Emily: This is not the first time this has happened.
Dedeker: Yes. This has been going on for years, but it was like the first time that they were suddenly like, "Oh, oh, you, oh, oh, our auntie is different in this way, and we're curious about it." It wasn't a bad experience necessarily, but it was just funny that it was like, "Wow, it took you this many years, I guess, to get to that point."
Eli: Well, small children, they're much more concerned like, "Is Jase fun to play with? Will he bring us ice cream?" They don't care. "Is Jase having sex with Auntie Dedeker?" They don't even know what sex is. "Is Jase a source of Legos?" That's more important for little kids.
Dedeker: Yes, they've mostly been obsessed with Jase being a source of playing video games together.
Eli: There you go.
Dedeker: That's been the most important part. I'm definitely curious to see how that conversation is going to evolve with them as they get older because I've been leaving it up to their mom of like, "I'll be honest with you, but I'm mostly going to leave it up to your mom to handle like the hard questions if she wants." I don't know, I'll be curious to see as they get older and go through these different developmental stages, how that's going to go.
Emily: Just throw the podcast at them.
Dedeker: I'm not ready for that yet. That's too much information about auntie to tell at him quite yet.
Emily: The rest of the world get to hear it. This is a much later chapter, but I think that probably it's a good one especially if people out there are really worried about what polyamory may do to a kid if that's like what they have in their head. You have a chapter on fear of damage to children. Can you talk about that a little bit?
Eli: I think a lot of people just off the cuff assume that something's weird with polyamory, something's wrong with it. It must be damaging to the children without really any basis, in fact, but just a knee-jerk reaction of others can't be good for kids. That doesn't appear to be the case in these families. Even in some of the families where there was emotional pain, there were painful divorces, even in those families, the kids overall feel like they learned a lot about communication and emotional resilience and the ability to fledge themselves, leave home and reestablish networks of emotional intimacy, wherever they go.
That's a really important life skill that they learned from polyamorous relationships. I would say that polyamorous families don't have any disadvantages that other families don't experience. Polyamorous families do have disadvantages, absolutely, but divorced families have partners that leave. Families that widowed families have partners that leave. Gay and lesbian families face stigma. Large families face household crowding. Anything you can think of that goes wrong in a polyamorous family also goes wrong and other families, they're family problems.
It turns out that when you have multiple adults with more resources to deal with these problems, that actually goes a long way towards ameliorating the negative effects of these common family problems. Like the blow is a lot lighter because it's distributed among more parents so they can get more sleep. The kids get better care, things like that. When there is a death in the family, for instance, there's more people to provide the support. I'm not saying it's not a blow to lose someone, an important family member.
You still feel it, but especially if it was one spouse and you have three other spice left, you're not as lonely or one parent and you have multiple parents other left, you're not as destitute emotionally.
Dedeker: Yes. Well, just to give our listeners a little bit of a rundown this really great condensed book covers not only the stuff we've been talking about here but also talking about the advantages, the disadvantages, strategies, you really clearly layout, here's some of the common coping strategies that polyamorous families take to be able to just live as a non-monogamous family in a very monogamous world. We get a lot of people who reach out to us occasionally parents specifically asking for specific resources because it's not a topic we cover a lot on the show because none of us are parents.
We all feel like we're often out of our depth. If you're listening to this, I highly recommend starting with Eli Sheff's, this short version of the book. If you just have questions, if you're thinking about opening up your relationship and you're a parent, or if you already in a non-monogamous relationship and have questions, this seems like a great place to start. If you want more information you can always go on to reading The Polyamorous Next Door, things like that.
As well as it being a great resource to give to someone in your life who does have a lot of questions and you don't have the time to answer all those questions because you're trying to raise a kid. Eli, we would love to hear from you, where is it specifically that people can go to find more of you and more of your work?
Eli: You can check out my website is a good place for that, elisabethsheff.com, E-L-I-S-A-B-E-T-H-S-H-E-F-F.com. You can also find me on Psychology Today. My blogs there are free. I blog under The Polyamorous Next Door there.
Emily: We've used a couple-- I know that I personally have used a couple in our episodes. A couple of your blogs.
Jase: Yes, definitely.
Emily: They've been very helpful, so thank you.
Eli: Awesome. Glad to hear that.
Jase: Also to remind our listeners, if you want to check out the Bonding Project quiz, you can just go to bondingproject.com, no the, just bondingproject.com. You can take the quiz there and you can share your results with other people. In our bonus episode, which we're going to go do right now, we are going to talk about our own results that we got on that quiz and discuss those with Dr. Sheff a little bit. We would also love to hear from you on our Instagram story. We want to know your bonding style you came up with on this quiz.