541 - Make Agreements with Yourself, Not With Your Partner
Let’s talk about agreements
We’re big fans of agreements, but we haven’t talked much on the show about self agreements. Relationship agreements are mostly a product of non-monogamy subculture, so not everyone has experience with them. Partner agreements can be excellent and a great idea, but there can be problems with them, especially when you might benefit from a self agreement (or you don’t have a partner to make an agreement with).
Some of the common problems that might arise from relationship agreements with a partner could include:
Unclear starting point for most people, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it does set people up for problems.
Many people fail to set up a regular ritual for revisiting and renegotiating.
Trial and error process of constant renegotiation.
The process of writing down agreements can be stabilizing for some relationships but for others could be more de-stabilizing.
Self agreements
Self agreements focus on the commitments you can make with yourself, not with another person. Once upon a time, Dedeker wrote a whole constitution focusing on the commitments she could keep with herself. Starting with what she expected of herself, how she would show up in partnerships, and what she thought was reasonable for other people to expect from her, it outlined her desires around communication, disclosure, respecting boundaries and privacy, treatment during conflict, and quality time. You can read Dedeker’s personal constitution yourself (but don’t make fun of her!).
A good place to start if you’re thinking about creating self agreements is figuring out what your values are. You can go back to episode 319 to help brainstorm what your own values might be.
Self agreements might seem a lot like boundaries, but there are a few differences. Both boundaries and self agreements are about your own behavior and actions, not someone else’s, but we create boundaries with safety and self-preservation in mind, whereas self agreements are focused on joy, values, fulfillment, and what it means to be who you are in a relationship.
Self agreement prompts
Here are some prompts that can help facilitate your own self agreement:
The kind of person I aspire to be is . . . (List at least three qualities you display when you are at your best. A good prompt is to ask yourself, “How would I want the people I love to describe me at my funeral?”).
In my most important relationships, I show those qualities by . . . (It can help to imagine you’re watching your life as if it’s a movie. How would the movie show, through your character’s actions, that you have the qualities you listed? List the actions). Describe how you want your partners (current and future) to feel about you.
If you are non-monogamous, how do you want your partners (current and future) to feel about your shared non-monogamous relationship?
When you have been the most proud of how you showed up during conflict, what specifically did you do?
What parts of your life do you want to maintain as solely yours, even while you’re in close relationships?
What cues or signs will tell you it’s time to update or shift your agreements with yourself?
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 talking about making agreements with yourself instead of just making agreements with a partner. You might be feeling trapped or suffocated by agreements that you made with a partner, or you might be feeling frustrated by agreements that aren't working, or are constantly being renegotiated, or maybe you're just exhausted from conflict around broken agreements.
Lots of non-monogamy advice centers around making agreements with partners, including this show, sometimes, but today we're going to look at how shifting your perspective to focus on self-agreements can transform your relationship dynamics, reduce conflict and blame, and increase your sense of personal agency.
Also, if you're interested in learning about our fundamental communication tools that we reference on this show, you can check out our book, Multiamory: Essential Tools for Modern Relationships. It covers our most used communication tools for all types of relationships, and you can find links to buy it at multiamory.com/book, or wherever fine books or audiobooks are sold.
Dedeker: Okay, kids, have the two of you ever actually sat down and written down agreements with a partner before? Bonus points if these were directly related to non-monogamy in some form or fashion.
Emily: I don't think specifically written agreements, but verbal agreements, absolutely. Yes, they did specifically relate to non-monogamy, stuff like, "Okay, if you're going to sleep with someone, let me know about it, and if you're going to sleep with someone, we should always be wearing condoms, everyone should be wearing condoms at all times," kind of thing. "Even when you're not having sex." No, I'm kidding.
That was in my mind for a second, "At all the times." At all times.
Dedeker: As soon as you get up in the morning.
Emily: All the time. Throw it on.
Jase: Put one on, yes.
Dedeker: Strap it on, yes. It's just good for your health.
Emily: Besides that, and not really any additional agreements that I can think of, but the transparency one is a big one, I think.
Jase: Yes, I actually don't think I've ever written them down, had a meeting where we're going to write down all these agreements. I can't say that I have. Have you?
Dedeker: I don't think I have either. With you, Jase, and then with other partners, I might have a long-running radar notes document. Sometimes the result of a radar is you come up with an agreement around something, or maybe you decide, "Oh, we're going to experiment with these things." Jase, you and I will write down things like, "Dedeker will be nicer to Jase around this particular topic." That's not a very good agreement. It's not a very good example of a good agreement.
Jase: Sure.
Dedeker: Let me think of one that's actually a better example. Something like, "Jase is going to wrap up work by five o'clock every single day, and Dedeker is going to start her mornings going for a walk," or whatever. Stuff that's related to our own personal goals that we might share with each other. That's maybe the closest that I've gotten. I've never sat down in a formal process, which is something that's, to me, seems to be at least quite popular in the non-monogamy community.
Jase: I think I see a lot of people doing this. I think we've even encouraged people to do that sometimes.
Emily: Yes, I think it's a good idea. There's a sense of formality to writing something down that almost makes it feel a little bit more scary if that agreement is breached in some way.
Dedeker: There's a paper trail now.
Emily: Sure, yes, exactly. It's not just a verbal, like, "Oh, I trust you, you trust me," but rather this sense that one needs to write something down and post it somewhere so that you can see it. I don't know, that feels a little bit more intense.
Jase: On the other hand, I have definitely found times, even with not specifically relationship agreements, but the three of us will have a call and we'll agree of how we're going to handle something, or something we're going to do. Then when we come back to say, "Did we follow that agreement?" we're all like, "Oh, I thought it was this. Oh, I thought it was that," but slightly different, that we all don't quite remember it exactly the same. I think that there is something to be said for being able to just remember and check. Sometimes I'm like, "I'd like to know what it was, and I just don't quite remember exactly where we landed on this."
Dedeker: I'm sorry, I just had a million-dollar idea. Do you want to hear it?
Jase: I love it.
Emily: Please.
Dedeker: Okay, because the solution for us has now been to have an AI note-taker hanging out in our Zoom room when we're having meetings-
Jase: When the three of us talk, yes.
Dedeker: -to keep track and take notes so that we can reference something when we get into the situation where we don't remember the details of what we actually agreed on.
Jase: Your idea is that we should all start dating AIs instead.
Dedeker: Close. It's very close.
Emily: We'll do an episode on that someday, but-
Dedeker: That's very close.
Emily: -not today.
Dedeker: No, I'm thinking of, can we launch the AI notetaker that hangs out either at your radars or at every single conversation you ever have with a partner so that you can turn to them in the heat of conflict and be like, "Hey, AI notetaker, what was it that he said six weeks ago when we had a conversation about this?" I'm telling you, relationships are going to thrive, everyone's going to be happy.
Emily: This technology already exists, though, by the way. On an episode of Hard Fork, there's a thing that you can wear that will basically remember all of your discussion with a person or with multiple people. Ideally, I think in some states, you have to ask if you can record a person, but that technology absolutely already exists. Yes, trust me, I wish that I had that sometimes when my partner's like, "You said that thing yesterday." I'm like, "I did? Oh, God, really?"
Emily: Something along those lines.
Jase: I'm pretty sure there's a Black Mirror episode about this, though. It was a contact that could record all of your interactions and you could play them back. It caused some horrible problems in those people's relationships.
Dedeker: Well, on that note, I wanted to get to the bottom of this whole relationship agreements phenomenon, since it seems so part and parcel of this particular non-monogamy subculture. From what I can tell, it's mostly a non-monogamy subculture thing. I can't really find a lot of instances online of people talking about relationship agreements or sitting down and having this formal process with your partner of sitting down and talking about your agreements.
There's not a lot of coverage outside of the non-monogamy community. I did find, in 2021, the concept of relationship contracts had this brief moment in the sun, in, I would say, more normal, monogamous, heterosexual land. It had a brief moment in the sun. It doesn't seem like it took off. Out of curiosity, I started Googling, "Are monogamy agreements a thing?" Not really.
Emily: They should be.
Jase: No results.
Dedeker: They should be. I found one lady's blog post where she talked about it. To be fair, it was about something that I actually think a lot of monogamous people should discuss, which is, "What are the terms of our monogamy?" What does that actually-
Jase: What does monogamy mean?
Dedeker: Yes. What does that actually mean? I don't think I see a lot of people rushing out to create their monogamy agreements anytime soon here. Now, as Jase said, that on our show, we've often encouraged people to make agreements with your partner. I will still stand by that. The first thing out the gate that I want to say is that sitting down and making agreements with your partner, whether that's highly formalized and written down, or whether it's very informal and verbal and organic, partner agreements are not a problem in and of themselves.
I do think there can be problems with them, and they can be created and utilized in ways that can sometimes ultimately create more problems than they actually solve. Of course, ultimately, please, communicate with your partners, collaborate with them, compromise, negotiate, and through all that communicating, compromising and negotiating that may involve making agreements with your partners.
However, I wanted us to dive into some of the common problems that can arise from, maybe, an overemphasis on creating agreements with your partners. I feel like we touched on some of these before. I think, Jase, that's a huge one. The one that happens between the three of us all the time is that sometimes people can agree on something and then walk away having a completely different understanding of what that agreement actually was.
Jase: Yes, and which parts in the discussions were more hypothetical, "Maybe it could be this," and then it didn't end up in the final agreement, versus what things that were briefly touched on are like, "Yes, that's part of it." Definitely, we've seen that challenge come up a lot with people in agreements in general, and I think this one does show up in monogamy, like we were talking about, where someone does something that to them is okay under the terms of being monogamous, and to the other person, it's not.
That one, maybe they didn't even really discuss it, but then they end up having these different impressions of it. That that same sort of thing can happen when you have talked about something, and then one person gets upset saying, "Oh, you would've told me if you did this," and it's like, "Oh, well, yes, that we would talk about it later at some point," not that I would have to check in with you beforehand. It's those little pieces of the detail that might have gotten misunderstood by the two different people.
Emily: Totally.
Dedeker: Let's take an example of an agreement that I've seen people make before, which is, "Let's agree that if either of us starts dating somebody new, we'll take it slow. We're both going to agree to take it slow with people that we're dating."
Emily: That's very vague.
Dedeker: Both people could be like, "Yes, that sounds like a great idea. We should totally take it slow. That's just responsible." They could be 100% on the same page and then in reality, it can all fall apart. One of the reasons could be language, the lacking of clarity in language, that sometimes what one person considers to be taking it slow isn't the same as what the other person considers to be taking it slow.
Sometimes I think that we can be prone to what I would call wishful agreeing, like maybe overextending our capacity or not having an accurate sense of what we're actually capable of. Where I am right now, where I'm not dating anybody, it feels very easy be like, "Yes, totally, I'll totally take it slow. That just makes sense." Then once I date someone I'm really excited, then suddenly it's really, really hard.
Emily: Of course.
Jase: It's very different to take it slow in that case where you're excited.
Dedeker: Also, as human beings, we each have our own biases, in the sense that maybe if I start dating someone, in my brain, I'm like, "This feels like it's going slow to me," but to my partner, it doesn't feel that way at all. Even though maybe we might-- This is weird to set up two people dating somebody else in parallel, whatever, but if we try to keep everything the same, still my own human biases are going to maybe make me trend towards thinking that my partner's moving fast and maybe I'm moving slow, even if we're moving at "a similar rate" with a relationship. All that to say is just there's a lot that can get in the mix that can make an agreement like that not really function very well at the end of the day.
Emily: Throughout the course of dating someone, people change, and it's really difficult to know that what you meant at the beginning of a relationship or what you meant at the beginning of creating an agreement is going to be what it means three years down the line, or even six months down the line. It's difficult sometimes for people to set up a regular ritual for revisiting and renegotiating an agreement that they had made at an earlier time in their relationship.
That means that maybe last-minute, ad hoc renegotiation might happen in a situation where, perhaps, like you said, "Well, I know that initially we talked about taking it slow, but I kind of feel right now like I want to just let things happen as they do. That means that perhaps if I get in a situation with someone where I really feel strongly for them, then I just want to see where that goes." That quick renegotiation on the part of one person or both people might happen just out of the blue, for example.
Dedeker: I feel like the classic one that happens all the time is getting a text five minutes before your partner's about to penetrate somebody else of them asking-
Emily: Oh God.
Dedeker: -if we can renegotiate the condom thing. I think that's happened six billion times to so many people.
Emily: Yikes.
Jase: I was thinking more the example is, "We agreed no sleepovers, but I'm out with this person. It would feel weird for me to leave. It feels more appropriate that I would spend the night here." That one comes up a lot, too.
Emily: One that I've personally done, actually, and it wasn't really a renegotiation per se, again, it was kind of wishy-washy from the beginning, but where I had said to a partner, "I think of you more as my primary person, and then this other person that I'm dating, I'm thinking more in a secondary way." Then I got to a point where I was like, "Actually, I really, really like this other person a lot," and so I renegotiated. It was like, "Well, actually I think I just want to be a little bit more egalitarian in the way that I see both of your relationships with me," which I think in reality meant that I was losing interest a little bit in the first person and realizing that the second person was more who I wanted to be with ultimately.
Jase: There's several layers to that one there, but I think what all of this is making me think of is something that I see quite frequently with agreements, is people trying to make too many agreements too early in a relationship, and that's where you get that situation of like, oh, yes. At this point, early in this relationship, when I'm full of NRE and I don't actually know this person very well, and I think these are the things I want, we're going to come up with all these agreements, or you've been in this relationship a long time and you're just opening it up, it's like, oh, we're going to make all these agreements.
Then, if you're not revisiting those regularly with this understanding that these are going to evolve and change, you can end up in those situations where, "Yes, we agreed to this thing at this one time, but I feel differently now," or "Our situation is different," or "We made those agreements before we realized we would have significant emotional relationships with other people." Any number of things can happen, I think, because we think, "Oh, yes, relationship agreements are good, let's do them as soon as possible," but they also need to be able to change.
Dedeker: I do think that for some people, making an agreement, whether we sit down and we write them down together or we just verbally agree, for some relationships, that can feel more stabilizing. I think especially if you're a previously monogamous relationship that is now opening up and you're headed into what feels like maybe scary, overwhelming territory, it can feel, "This is a rock, this is an anchor for us to come back to. We have these set of agreements." That can be good, or in other relationships, "This is a rock that I can now use to sledgehammer you with when we stumble out of the gate or when we get into arenas that we didn't expect that we were going to be getting into."
Which leads me into how, for some people, they find that they end up in this trial-and-error process with agreements and with renegotiating them. Again, some relationships can handle a trial-and-error process like this. Actually, a lot of the people that I know who have been functionally, healthily, happily non-monogamous for a long time, including myself, can refer to the early days of, "Oh, man, I made this agreement and I wanted my partner to do this and I tried to control my partner in this way," and wow, I was like, "What a piece of work." We had to work through that and move through that.
Some relationships can handle essentially a functional rupture and repair cycle of like, "Oh, we made this agreement. Uh oh, turns out that doesn't work for both of us, or it doesn't work for one of us. We got to renegotiate this or find a different way of going about this." A lot of classic poly hell can come from a relationship where the rupture and repair cycle isn't functioning, which means that then the trial-and-error method of finding out what agreements actually work for you can create a lot more stress than it eases stress. Does that make sense?
Emily: Definitely.
Jase: Yes. It's such a tricky thing, because I do think having a sense of what you both are doing, especially as you're opening up a relationship or just maybe starting a new relationship where one person is new to non-monogamy, that it can help to have some guideposts of, "Yes, this is roughly what to expect. This is certain things that are really important that we're going to stick to." It does also set you up to fail, where it's like now you have things that you can fail to live up to. It is this tricky thing during that period when you're still trying to figure out what that is.
I guess I would say, to a certain extent, that period of trying to figure out what you want lasts your whole life because it's constantly changing, I think especially during those times where a lot of things are changing about your worldview or how you see relationships or what your life situation is like, finding that way to allow you to explore without too strict of agreements blocking that process of figuring out what you want, figuring out what you're comfortable with.
Maybe I learned that I actually would be comfortable with my partner spending the night with someone else, but because we set up that agreement, now if they want to do it, I feel like, "Oh, I'm conceding so much by letting them do this thing that we'd originally said we wouldn't do," when maybe I actually would've been fine with that, but we hadn't gotten there yet, we hadn't reevaluated that yet. Just some things to watch out for in that trial-and-error process.
Emily: I'm hearing here is that we just need to be a little bit more flexible when it comes to these types of agreements, that if you are going to be making agreements with your partner, there probably should be a sense of flexibility or just an understanding that things probably are going to change over the course of your relationship together. I'm interested to talk about the self-agreement side of things and see if perhaps those are not necessarily as movable or what we think about that. I don't know, I think that there are fundamental core values that maybe you don't want to compromise on. Then there are certain things within a relationship standpoint that you're like, "Yes, I could see myself compromising on that over time."
Dedeker: The reason why this episode was born was actually several months ago, I had a conversation with a friend of the pod, Marie Thouin, the compersion researcher. She texted me because she was working with a couple of clients of hers, where, if I recall correctly, this couple had been through the ringer of what we're referring to of trying to create agreements together, and it's acting more like a sledgehammer, it's creating more stress than it's creating ease. She was in the process of actually trying to coach them more towards making agreements with themselves individually as opposed to making this a process that they worked on with the two of each other.
The concept of self-agreements fundamentally comes back to focusing on the commitments that you know that you can make with yourself. Now, I talked about texting with Marie before the break, and the way that conversation started actually was that Marie reached out to me wanting to know if I would share my constitution with her. Now, my constitution, which, if you've been listening to the show for a very long time, you'll probably know.
Jase: Since the very beginning.
Dedeker: Yes, the very, very beginning. You probably know what I'm talking about. I haven't talked about it in a while, so I figured that if it's okay with the two of you, I'd do a little bit of story time. This is going back in the time machine, all the way back to, what, 2015? Gosh, over 10 years ago at this point, where I know myself, and by extension, the two of you, and I feel like everyone we knew in love was embroiled in our own very unique poly hell of our quad.
Emily: It was drama time.
Dedeker: Yes. Our quad imploding so much drama time, so high stakes. It was a very formative time for me, for sure, in not only figuring out what kind of our relationships do I want, but what kind of non-monogamy do I want? It was the first time in my life I actually had to grapple with the whole hierarchy thing, and grappling with metamours who really did not get along with each other. It was a really, really stressful time, and a lot of hinge partners, I was running around feeling like my hair is on fire. I'm just trying to keep everybody happy, and nobody's happy, and it doesn't really matter what I want, I'm really just trying to keep everybody else happy. I pulled probably a pretty classic Dedeker Winston move, which is like, "Fine, I'm going to take my toys-
Emily: Got out of there.
Dedeker: -and I'm going to leave." At that time, it was, "I'm going to leave for the weekend by myself, and I'm not going to talk to anybody. I really just need some time to think and to clear my head and to really just sit with myself and actually figure out what is it that I want because I'm getting lost in the weeds of getting distracted by what this partner wants, what that partner wants, what my friend's opinion is about what this person should want or what I should want," or whatever.
I just booked a couch surfing stay in a city that was not too far away and spent a lot of time with myself. The results of that was I went through this brief mania where I just started writing like a mad woman this document that eventually I came to title as my personal constitution, as the constitution of Dedeker Winston. Yes, I did model it after the US Constitution. Yes, I've included a link to this Google doc in the show notes, but by clicking on that link, you consent to not make fun of me. You are free to dislike my writing. You're free to hate the format. You can choose a totally different approach for yourself. That's totally fine. Just don't tease me for being a nerd. Okay, got it? Got it. Great.
Welcome back. Now that you've gone and seen how nerdy I was, you've looked through my constitution document. Great. Welcome back. For myself, the important parts of this exercise, and I just did it on my own, I didn't consult any other guide or list of questions or whatever, I just started dumping onto the page essentially. The important parts for me was that I started with what I expected of myself and how I wanted to show up in partnership and what I think is reasonable for other people to expect from me.
As in, I really explicitly laid out, "This is how I expect myself to communicate. This is what I expect of myself in regards to disclosure of information and to whom. This is what I expect of myself as far as respecting other people's boundaries and respecting other people's privacy. This is what I expect of myself as far as how I want to treat my partners during conflict. This is what I expect as far as the effort that I want to put in towards creating one-on-one time with each of my partners."
I started with this is what I want to put on the table, and then I wrote about what I expect from my partners and what I expect in relationships. Things like the freedom to communicate with multiple partners, the freedom to show affection, both people in a relationship having the autonomy to influence the course of the relationship that they're in, having my own boundaries honored, things like that.
It was really important for me at the time to write it down. Even with writing it down, I don't think in the last 10 years I've ever had an instance where I've felt compelled to use it as a sledgehammer on anybody except for myself. I don't think I've ever been able to shove it in somebody's face to be like, "Hey, look, this is my constitution," because, really, it's just about myself for the most part, and as a reminder to myself of like, "This is how I want to show up and this is how I want somebody else to show up."
Jase: I know this was a long time ago, but I feel like I remember at that time feeling like, after you wrote that and you told us all about it, that you had more of a sense of confidence in your own decisions and how you wanted to conduct things. What was interesting about it is that, the sense that I got, and I'm curious if this was your impression, too, but that because I know a lot of it was focused on what you expected from yourself, and that part of that was that it made you have more clear boundaries with some of your other partners when they were doing something or wanted something from you that got in the way of you being able to do your part of your constitution.
I don't ever remember you saying like, "Oh, well, I said people would let me do this, and that's the issue," but more like, "Communicating clearly and honestly and prioritizing one on one time with all of my partners is an important value for me. If someone wants something that gets in the way of that, it's a problem because it's in the way of the thing that I've said I should do and how I want to behave in my relationship."
That, I think, is a really different flip on how people sometimes think about boundaries and agreements, where it is coming from this like, "No, I can't have that restriction on me because it won't let me do the thing that I value," rather than just what I want to do in other cases, or, "Oh, I have this other competing agreement," or something like that.
Emily: It just feels like a really natural extension of the yourself exercise and discussing how boundaries are all about you, and just also-
Jase: That's in our book, by the way-
Emily: Yes, it is.
Jase: -if you are curious what Emily's talking about.
Emily: Absolutely, and just feeling as though I am the only person who needs to uphold this. It's not up to my partners to do that, but again, these are values that are so intrinsic to who I am as a person, that the type of non-monogamy or the type of relationship that I want to be in, ideally, it needs to align with the other person's version of non-monogamy so that the two of us can be in a harmonious relationship together. I think that that is, at its core, probably the most challenging part of this whole thing, is finding people who really do align with us in the way that we want to be in relationship with one another.
Dedeker: Yes, and we'll get to that in a second. It's funny, because when Marie reached out and asked for it-- because I've had people over the years ask me to send it to them or whatever. I always reluctantly agree, mostly because if anything that I've written is more than 30 seconds old, I automatically hate it and don't want anyone to see it. What's interesting is, as I've gone back and looked at it multiple times over the years-- so I did not set in any formal process for myself to go back and revisit it. Of course, I wrote it into the document that it's changeable and can be ratified by me. Any changes can be ratified.
Jase: Can be amended, ratified.
Emily: Amended, yes.
Dedeker: That's a living document, but what's interesting is I have gone back to it over the years, either when people are interested and they want to see it, or sometimes in times when I have been really confused in relationships, or really in a quandary, and I will go back to it. I've actually been amazed that I haven't had to majorly change it or update it or amend it too much in the last 10 years. Whenever I revisit it, I'm kind of like, "Yes, this is all pretty accurate to how I want to show up in a relationship and how I want people to treat me as well," which is pretty cool.
Now, I share this not to say, "I'm a genius. I figured it out, everybody, you need to follow my template for doing this." I think, really, this connects more to the importance of being able to figure out your values that are yours, not what your partner says that they should be, not what your parents say that they should be, not even necessarily what the non-monogamy subculture says that they should be. This is very intrinsic and personal to you.
I wanted to give a call back to our episode 319 titled, What Are My Values? I actually pulled a study that we covered in that episode. Basically, there was this Stanford University study where students were sent home for winter break and they were told to keep a journal over their break. The controlled group was asked to describe positive events that happened during their day. Another group of students were asked to write about their most important personal values, then describe the events of their day, and then describe how the events of their day connected with their personal values.
I dropped in this quote from a Stanford professor, Kelly McGonigal, "It turns out that writing about your values is one of the most effective psychological interventions ever studied. In the short term, writing about personal values makes people feel more powerful, in control, proud, and strong. It also makes them feel more loving, connected, and empathetic toward others. It increases pain tolerance, enhances self-control, and reduces unhelpful rumination after a stressful experience. It helps people persevere in the face of discrimination. In many cases, these benefits are a result of a one-time mindset intervention. People who write about their values once for 10 minutes show benefits months or even years later." That's huge, right?
Jase: Yes, that's quite a statement.
Emily: Yeah, well.
Dedeker: These are findings that have been replicated in several other studies as well. Researchers theorize that the reason for these benefits is that connecting your life events, both positive life events and negative life events, to your personal values helps you to add meaning behind stressful situations. If you're undergoing something stressful, maybe you're caring for somebody who's ill, or you're going through the stress of having to be honest and vulnerable with a partner, even if it's hard, you can make a connection regarding why these actions are truly important to you, and you're much better able to handle the stress.
I think that's what you're talking about, Jase, when you shared about how I wrote this and then I seemed much more confident afterwards. I can't remember if I actually felt confident or not, but I do recall just having more clarity. Maybe that resulted in more confidence to be able to have more confrontations, or to be more vulnerable, or to be more honest, I don't know. I do think it really, really helped a lot.
Jase: I think that tying it to values makes a lot of sense for how those things would impact you. Actually, it's interesting because I just did an exercise recently in a completely different context than setting up agreements for yourself, but more understanding how you spend your time day to day. That started with this sense of writing down what you value. What are the things that actually matter to you versus what are the things that you just do because you just do those or you think you should do those.
It is really interesting that it had that through line of tying it to your values to then help make those decisions more meaningful or feel more personal, or that you could have more motivation to make what you do line up better with your values.
Emily: All of this talk does seem it is similar to boundaries, like I said before. Can you talk about some of the ways in which maybe it's different?
Dedeker: I think there's a lot of overlap. I don't think it's an accident that our non-monogamy subculture has also really glommed onto the idea of boundaries. Everyone being really clear on what their boundaries are. Similarly, this idea of self agreements or self commitments and boundaries, they're both about your own behavior and actions, rather than starting from a place of putting the emphasis on somebody else's behavior and actions. The way that I think about the distinction is I really like to think about creating a garden. I like to think about creating a garden a lot. I don't have any garden space. All I got is a balcony. I have just to fantasize about gardens.
Emily: Your plants.
Dedeker: These plants.
Jase: We've got lots of plants here in the house.
Dedeker: It's different. Imagine you're creating a little plot of a garden, and your boundaries they're the fences that keep that garden safe and protected. While something like your self-agreements, it might be more like choosing which flowers you're going to plant, or how often you're going to show up to weed the garden, or how often you're going to commit to watering the garden, or what your fertilization schedule is going to be. When I think about boundaries, I'm thinking about safety, self-preservation, or maybe it's a response to how I've been hurt in the past.
When I think about self-agreements, I am thinking about my values of what it means to have a fulfilling life, what it means to have a joyful life, and what it means to be a good person in relationship. What it means to have a good relationship, I suppose, is maybe the start of that, right?
Jase: Yes. I like the idea that the agreements are the thing that you'd focus on most of the time, meaning your self-agreements, or your values, I guess we could say. I think we talk about this a fair amount in our chapter on boundaries in our book, but this idea that your values are about what's important to you and how you want to live your life, and that, ideally, in good partnerships and good friendships and family relationships, that's where the focus stays most of the time, is on, "This is how I want to live my values, and how I want to conduct my life, and how we want to share certain values together."
Hitting a boundary would be very rare. It's like, those are that last line of defense rather than the bumper car method of driving, where you're just banging into everything on the road to figure out where to go instead of having a path where you're going. The bumpers are just there for those emergencies, to help protect you.
Emily: It feels like maybe boundaries are a little bit more about what you're protecting yourself against as opposed to moving from a place of abundance, and, "These are the things that I'm hoping to get out of my life, and these are the ways in which I'm hoping to show up for the people in my life." That does tend to come from a little bit more of a value standpoint as opposed to, "I've been burned this way in the past and I want to make sure it doesn't happen again."
I think both are really important because we are a human and we go through traumas and we go through challenging times, but I like, really, that when you did this the first time, Dedeker, even though it did come out of a really difficult time in all of our lives, but especially yours, that you were still able to look inward and decide, "I'm going to talk about all of the ways in which I can make my life better and my relationships better." Come at it from that place as opposed to, "I want to make sure nobody does X, Y, and Z to me again."
Dedeker: Totally. There's definitely a version of that story because it was like so painful. There's, for sure, a version where I think I could have just written a shit list, basically-
Emily: Sure, exactly.
Dedeker: -of like-
Jase: No one's allowed to do these things." Yes.
Dedeker: -"You're not going to say this to me, you are not allowed to do any of this, and dah dah dah dah dah." That probably would've been easy. Maybe still could have been helpful. Not like that would've been a totally useless exercise, but I think this one has had more staying power as far as benefit to my life. I want to share an example of a little plant that I'm trying to plant in my garden right now, my garden of good relationships in a good life. This is a challenging plant for me, but in my intimate and close relationships, I want to try to be someone who reveals more of myself than I conceal. That's really difficult.
I'm mature, I'm a private person, but to tie it to a value, I really do think that our intimate relationships are some of the best parts of life. To be more seen and more fully known by people is part of a really good life. For me, my self-agreement is that if I have a choice between the two, I'm going to try to reveal myself to someone rather than conceal myself.
Now where boundaries come in to protect that is it doesn't mean I'm just spilling my guts every which way to whoever. I think if somebody's asked what I think is inappropriate question, or too personal of a question, or if I'm not ready to talk about something yet, I'll be honest about, "Hey, I'm not ready to talk about that now or ever or whatever." Even within that boundary I've put up to try to keep this little plant safe from being trampled, I still want to cultivate this sense of emotional availability and vulnerability. It's hard. The plant is not thriving yet, in case anyone is wondering, working on it.
Emily: You're working on it.
Dedeker: Working on it.
Jase: That is a nice idea, though, to think that it's not about I'm throwing out my boundaries or I'm going to be totally unsafe, but that in those in-between situations, in those tiebreakers, I'm going to try to have this agreement tip the scale the other way than it has in the past, but still within the confines of safety, hopefully.
Dedeker: The two of you have anything like that that you think falls into this purview of self-agreements or self-commitment? Any secret living documents that you haven't shared yet?
Emily: When I did my episode on control, I did write down a big, I don't know if I would call it a manifesto necessarily, but things that are really important to me that I want to make sure I have systems in place to not be in a situation like I was ever again. That did come from a place initially of like, "I don't want this thing to happen to me again. I want to make sure I'm never taken advantage of in that way again."
They were things like, I don't want anyone to come in between my relationship with Jase and Dedeker, for instance, and that people have to be okay with my relationship with the two of you because it's going to be there, and it's going to be intimate, and it's going to be intense, and it's also going to be very meaningful to me. Anyone who doesn't get that, they don't get to be a part of my life. Me being able to do things like go to Hong Kong or whatever it may be, things that unable me to practice my own autonomy as a human being. Then also just being able to continue to work on my own healing and on my own, I guess, progress as a human being. All of those things I do feel like I did and that came out of that episode.
Dedeker: It sounds like there was chipping it away, not just the reaction to not repeating pain from the past, but chipping away at what are the things that bring you joy and make you happy, and a part of fulfilling life for you, and so making sure you can prioritize that.
Emily: Yes, it's similar. Definitely. I think it's similar to what this is, and I'd be interested to go back now after the next part of this episode where we talk about how we actually do this and maybe revise it a little bit so that it is even coming more from that place of, "Let's talk about what really is at the core here and what are my values."
Jase: The example that comes up for me is not something that I've written down or was part of any particular exercise that I can remember, but this, honestly, probably came about through one of the many self-journaling exercises or things that I've tried over the years about identifying my values, but one of them is about the close friendships that I have.
There's best friend type friendships, which I have several of, as well as some family relationships, like my relationships with my siblings, of having this sense that these are important to me. I've found that having that value there helps, because I'm someone who by nature falls pray to inertia.
If I am at home I have got a lot of inertia just keeping me at home and I don't really want to go out and do something. I don't really want to break up what I'm doing to like get on a phone call or something like that. For me having that value of, "But I do value these things," helps in that tight breaker instance of like, "Okay, I'm going to go get myself ready and drag myself out of the house to go spend time with these friends when they're available," or if it's like I'm going to go out of my way during this trip to spend another couple of days with my brother or something like that, I'll go do that."
It helps me to do those things that I could just let my nature of just wanting to stick to what I'm doing and stay in my room by myself take over and let those relationships die, and that's not something that I want. As I'm thinking about this recent exercise I did about how I spend my time and then thinking about these values, I do think I'd be interesting to revisit this in a little more of a thorough complete way and do that, which is exactly what we're going to get into in the final part of this episode.
Dedeker: All right folks, so we've pulled together some prompts to help you come up with your own-self agreements. This is non-exclusive list of prompts, this isn't our parented 10-step exercise to get your very own constitution, although maybe someday, along with launching that horrible AI assistant that's going to ruin your relationship, this will do that, but-
Jase: If the kit included a scroll and a quill pen, that would be pretty sweet.
Emily: That would be cool.
Dedeker: Okay. That's a good episode. I will consider that, but before diving into these prompts, if you're interested in getting a PDF version of this to make it a little bit easier to follow along or to print out and then write on, that's going to be available to our Supercast subscribers. If you go to multiamory.com/join, you can get access to that, or there's a direct link to this PDF in the episode description as well, where if you're already a Supercast subscriber, it'll send you right there.
I want to give a shot out to Martha Kauppi, who also a friend of the show. Martha Kauppi's book, Polyamory: A Clinical Toolkit for Therapists (and Their Clients) has this. Wonderful exercise and it called how I plan to handle NRE, which I recommend this exercise to, frankly, everybody.
Kauppi's list of prompts, again, is about NRE. Specifically, I've taken a couple of the prompts from that list because I feel like that they do still work more generally, and then I've also added some prompts of my own. Without further ado, here are some prompts that might help you with creating your own-self agreements. Prompt number one. The kind of person I aspire to be is, blank. I recommend listing at least three qualities that you display when you're at your best. If you're having a hard time thinking about this, you might ask yourself, "How would I want the people I love to describe me at my funeral?"
Jase: Heavy.
Dedeker: Number two. In my most important relationships, I show those qualities by, blank. It can help to imagine that you're watching your life like it's a movie, and so, how will the movie show through your characters actions, that you have the qualities that you listed? If it's a well-written movie, they will show instead of tell. I also like to imagine maybe people are leaving five-star reviews on your Google Maps listings, what are they going to say about you, about your behaviors, specifically, about how you show your most important or your best qualities?
Prompt number three. Describe how you want your partners, both current and future, to feel about you? Related, prompt number four, if you're non-monogamous how do you want your partners, current and future, to feel about your shared non-monogamous relationship? Prompt number five. When you have been the most proud of how you showed up during conflict, what specifically did you do? Pop quiz, Emily and Jase, I want to hear your answer to this question.
Jase: Oh. gosh.
Emily: That's tough. I was thinking about that immediately. I think hearing the person, trying to reflect back to them what it is that you heard, and offering some validation, some understanding. Then if it was something that perhaps you did that you could have done better, just saying, "How can we work together to make sure that this doesn't happen again?" or there was a behavioral adjustment or something or stuff a long those lines. Basically, just coming into something really rationally without a huge amount of defensiveness, but simply just being able to take it a face value and reflect back and try to be kind and understanding.
Jase: I think the times that I can think of being most proud of how I showed up during conflict would be times when I've been able to-- even if I am feeling upset too or having this conflict to move past the just immediate what's going on right now, trying to argue to more of the, "What's really going on here? What is it that you're wanting?" Being able to come to the other person and ask that. "What is it that you really want? Because I want to give it to you." To clarify, it's not because I want to argue against it, but I feel like there's something underneath this, and when that's worked successfully, I feel like those have been some of the most product disagreements.
Dedeker: I think the times when I have been the most proud of how I showed up during conflict have been the times when I have held my tongue. Step number one. Then step number two, recognized and accepted every time the other person has been making an attempt of repairing.
Jase: That's a good one.
Dedeker: Yes. All right. Prompt number six. What parts of your life do you want to maintain as solely yours, even while you're in close relationships? Finally, prompt number seven, what cues or signs will tell you it's time to update or shift your agreements with yourself? That's the collection of prompts that we have for creating your owns-self agreements. Again if you want a PDF version of this, you can go to multiamory.com/join to join our Supercast, or if you're already a Supercast subscriber, you can click the link that's in the episode description.
Emily: Dedeker, I'm curious, have you ever updated your self-agreement or your constitution with these prompts, or were these the prompts that guided you in the direction of creating that constitution in the first place?
Dedeker: No, these prompts came later, for sure, but I haven't done that. Actually, I should sit down cross-reference answers to these prompts with my existing document, and then I'll go through a process of voting on the ratification of the amendment and I'll let you know if it passes.
Emily: Thank you. I appreciate that. Some of these are a little challenging, they really require you to dig deep and then I think of also look at the person that you really want to be, and sometimes maybe even evaluate like, "Am I acting in that way? Am I acting in the way that I aspire to act and to be at all times?" Then perhaps figure out a way in which to do that.
Jase: It reminds me of-- there was this thing-- When would this have been? I guess in the earlier 2000s probably. There was this hot trend of making this list of all of the qualities of your dream person to try to attract that to yourself or whatever. I remember going to this talk once, where the person was basically making the argument of, "Yes, we go about making these lists of what we want our partner to be like, but we don't stop and think, 'Who is the me that I want to be that that person would want to be with?"
I think that even not thinking about it quite so transactionally, I love the idea of just focusing on, "Who do I want to be?" Because if I'm living that more clearly, or at least closer to what I want, then there's less pressure on having those other relationships be a certain way or feel a certain part, and I would argue, you would end up attracting more of what you want because you're able to more clearly live your values instead of just reacting to things coming in externally.