572 - Building Commitment Off the Relationship Escalator
Stability and traditional milestones in relationships
Culturally, the Relationship Escalator dictates that the seriousness and health of a relationship is dependent on linear progression; that is, dating exclusively, then cohabitation, then marriage. Milestones, such as shared leases, joint bank accounts, and marriage serve to create high logistical barriers to exit a partnership, which in turn provides an illusion of safety and security.
So that begs the question, how do you establish a deeper connection and signs of trust and commitment within a non-monogamous relationship, particularly if you’re actively trying to avoid the relationship escalator? How can important events and milestones with one partner affect your other partners?
Non-escalator milestones to celebrate
Jealousy and envy both tend to show up when it comes to non-monogamy and relationship milestones. As a reminder, for our purposes, jealousy is characterized as the terror that a new development will subtract from or entirely erase an existing relationship. Envy, on the other hand, doesn’t necessarily imply a fear the partner will leave, but rather highlights an internal deficit or unmet need within the envious individual.
We suggest working to shift focus away from traditional relationship escalator milestones, and consider identifying and celebrating some of the following milestones instead:
Domestic and logistical trust:
Examples: Leaving toothbrushes and overnight things, having a spare key, doing chores together, sharing bathroom space, knowing and making the other’s favorite meal, pet approval.
Significance: This establishes environmental integration and behavioral consistency. Milestones like this symbolize an implied commitment to return and demonstrate reliability without requiring formal cohabitation or financial entanglement.
Emotional vulnerability and crisis support:
Examples: Supporting a partner through a breakup, looking after each other when sick, feeling safe to talk about vulnerable things, being able to apologize for doing wrong.
Significance: Fosters secure attachment through demonstrated emotional presence during dysregulation. Conflict resolution and crisis support are profound indicators of relational resilience and safety.
Social & polycule integration:
Examples: Meeting family/children, forming independent friendships with other partners and people within your polycules, being each other’s plus one, spending time with significant friends.
Significance: These milestones provide external validation. Integrating a non-escalator partner into a broader social ecosystem disrupts the narrative that non-escalator dynamics are merely hidden, casual, “situationships,” or somehow less important than escalator ones.
Shared experiential resonance:
Examples: Going away for a weekend, attending a kink party together, showering together, visiting a significant place together, co-creating something together, attending a shared meaningful experience.
Significance: These milestones build relational history and unique traditions. Shared experiences create a dedicated “relationship sandbox” that anchors the partnership in a joyful, intentional connection rather than assumed momentum.
Symbolic & idiosyncratic markers:
Examples: Wearing each other’s clothes, having nicknames, keeping photos of each other, supporting one another in significant life goals.
Significance: These acts create an internalized relationship structure and architecture. In the absence of societal validation (like a wedding ring, etc.), these micro-commitments serve as constant, personalized reminders of the relationship’s significance.
To wrap up
For fostering more relationship satisfaction and security in partnerships, there are some practices that can help strengthen relationships, according to an as-yet unpublished study that is currently being reviewed, Multiple Relationships Maintenance Scale (MRMS) (Mogilski et al., 2025):
Regulating jealousy for both non-monogamous and monogamous folks is a significant predictor of relationship quality. Being able to proactively discuss jealousy and manage it healthily is a vital skill.
Thoughtful resource distribution in non-monogamous partnerships is another critical practice. Being highly intentional about how you divide time, energy, and money can increase relationship stability. When a relationship doesn’t default to the escalator, fairly and equitably distributing these resources is critical.
Being willing to help care for a partner’s children is another strong predictor of relationship commitment and investment.
Discussing sexual experiences outside of the dyad has been linked to higher sexual quality within the relationship as well.
Additionally, in this study, researchers measured a factor called “Reputation Management,” or actively hiding your relationship from friends, family, or the public to avoid stigma. Statistics showed a strong negative correlation. In other words, the more you hide a partner, the worse your relationship quality, trust, and commitment become.
Transcript
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Jase: I wanted to hit you with a metaphor that I think is better than mine. This comes from a Reddit user named LikeASinkingStar from a couple of years ago in the thread that was talking about relationship escalator stuff, where the whole thread was about, what does your relationship look like when it's not on the escalator? And it basically is saying that a non-escalator relationship is like wandering through a museum together. So quote, you don't have to go in any particular order. You don't have to see the same things. Even if you do, it might not look the same when you're there with different partners. Sometimes there's an exhibit that you want to share with all your partners because it's that important to you. And sometimes there's an exhibit that you usually skip, but you find that you like it when you're viewing it with that one partner who's super into it. I just thought this was a very cool metaphor for this sense of how you can find these milestones and areas of connection, and they don't all have to be the same.
Jase: Welcome to the Multiamory Podcast. I'm Jase.
Emily: I'm Emily.
Dedeker: And I'm Dedeker.
Dedeker: We believe in looking to the future of relationships, not maintaining the status quo of the past.
Emily: Whether you're monogamous, polyamorous, swinging, casually dating, or if you just do relationships differently, we see you, and we're here for you.
Jase: On this episode of the Multiamory Podcast, we're going to look at answering the question, is this relationship going anywhere? Or where are we headed in this relationship when we don't have things like the relationship escalator or traditional monogamous markers of commitment to rely on? This could be whether you're monogamous, polyamorous or some other flavor of non-monogamy, but you want to move away from those traditional labels that society has told you make your relationship more or less secure or more or less important. And then we're also going to get into some of the challenges and jealousies and envies and insecurities that can come up around those. And of course, look at some research because we love to do that to help back up what we're talking about. 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 commonly used and essential tools for all types of relationships. You can find links to buy it at multiamory.com/book or just search for it. Multiamory, Essential Tools for Modern Relationships. And you can find it at most major booksellers and a lot of minor ones too. All right, with that, welcome Emily and Dedeker to this fantastic episode.
Emily: Oh, heck yes. Wow, such promises right out the gate.
Jase: So I really had wanted to be so clever with my title for this and call it I Would Walk 500 Milestones. And then a week or two after writing that episode idea, I was talking to Emily, I was like, what the hell is this episode supposed to be about? And so that's why we don't title our episodes with really clever titles. We try to be a little more on the nose about what we're actually
Dedeker: going to talk about.
Jase: So to start off, when you think about relationship milestones, I'm curious if either of you have ever had this struggle of, how do I know if this relationship's going anywhere or maybe having a partner who feels like, where do I get my security from if I'm lacking these typical things of exclusivity or opening a joint bank account or planning to get married or whatever it is that they looked at before. Have you ever run into that?
Dedeker: What first comes to mind for me is the strange no man's land when you're developing a new relationship with somebody where you like them enough where there's stakes now, where you want to keep seeing them, you don't want to not keep seeing them. You're investing in it.
Jase: It's a combination of things.
Dedeker: Yes, you want the relationship to keep going, but it's still too new to start having those really heavy handed conversations around, so do you see us moving in together someday? Or do you see us owning property together someday? Or do you see this or that? I call it the no Man's Land because I think this is a place where a lot of people feel this weird wibbly, I like this person a lot and I want to keep them around, but I also don't feel like I can try to grasp them and squeeze them and pin them down quite yet. Or if people are practicing non-monogamy, maybe they're trying to be a little more skeptical of that maybe more monogamy culture urge to have to pin somebody down as soon as possible. But that does mean that sometimes we can be at a loss of, yeah, but can I feel secure? Do they like me? Do they want the same things? Is this heading somewhere?
Emily: I felt this weird relationship milestone that happened maybe about eight or nine months into my partnership. My partner and I had been calling each other partner. But then we were somewhere out together, and all of a sudden he called me his girlfriend. And I was like, what? That felt a little surprising. And I remember that he had told me that his longest term relationship of three years, he didn't call her his girlfriend until about a year and a half into that relationship. So I just figured we had an established- no, I didn't expect it. I also wasn't really looking for it or needing it. But then all of a sudden it happened, and that in and of itself felt like a milestone. And we've been not exclusive the entire time that we've been dating, and yet that specifically felt like something had shifted, perhaps, that I didn't know about before he had said it.
Jase: Yeah, I think that brings up a great point about a lot of this, which is when we're following the normal cultural script, we just have certain things that we expect. And if they're not happening, it's like, oh, maybe they're not that into me. The stereotypical old timey story of when are you going to pop the question? Like, oh, if he's not that serious, then he's not going to ask you or that kind of thing, right? If we're thinking really old timey with that, we just get to take for granted that there's these certain landmarks or milestones that you're going to hit and those show investment and commitment and things like that. And so it's funny. When you're first moving into a place of not dealing with those same milestones, I think that's where it can be really hard. But then, like you're saying, Emily, once you get to that point of not expecting them, they can hit you by surprise.
Emily: Totally.
Jase: Oh, wow. That's a big one. For me, I was having a conversation last weekend with a partner of mine, and I mentioned just in passing something like, oh, well, when you come to Japan, I want to show you this thing. That'll be cool. And that later they said to me, they're like, It really meant a lot to me when you said, when you come to Japan instead of if you ever come to Japan or something, like, assuming that that is something that you want and that you think about me in the future that way.
Dedeker: So I got in trouble for dropping an if you come to Japan on somebody.
Jase: Okay, so I guess the opposite can happen too.
Emily: Yeah.
Dedeker: Good job passing that test, Jase.
Emily: Wait, in trouble as in like, if that doesn't happen, then are they going to be like, when is this gonna happen? Or what's the timeline?
Dedeker: I think the opposite of what Jase's partner pointed out that it was a little bit of a marker of maybe, oh, maybe you're not as invested or this isn't important to you, or...
Jase: The fact that you said if, kind of was what it was about.
Dedeker: Which wasn't what I was intending at all, right? It wasn't what I was communicating, but I just didn't think about it.
Emily: That's how it landed.
Dedeker: That's how it landed, yeah.
Jase: Well, and that's some of what we're gonna get into in this episode is that negotiation of it, right? Because on the other hand, saying, if you come to Japan, is also not trying to put too much pressure on them.
Dedeker: Yeah.
Jase: To be like, oh, you have to make these big expensive decisions. To be able to be with me or see me or I expect you to do that and I'll be disappointed.
Dedeker: Can we just quickly clarify if anybody's new that Jason and I spend a good portion of the year in Japan. This is not completely arbitrary.
Emily: Like we're not confused right now.
Dedeker: That's why. We have a long history of partners coming to visit us in Japan and yada, yada, yada. Because it's another home base in France.
Jase: Like basically half the year is in France.
Emily: In France, yes.
Dedeker: Yeah.
Jase: So, with that context set, I think that where I wanted to start with this is looking at why are these milestones worthwhile. Why do we value them at all? And one is that they're this cultural proxy for relationship health, right? So the Relationship Escalator, for those of you not aware, this was a term coined by Amy Gueran that basically means that linear path from, you know, we're dating, we become exclusive, we move in together, we get married, we have kids, that it only goes in this one direction and that if you try to go backwards, it's like, nope, it's all over. We just break up. Or if we're not gonna keep progressing, we're just gonna break up. And that's the normal cultural narrative. Now, what's nice about it is it does give you this shortcut. It gives you this little proxy to be like, are they committed to me? Do they care? And maybe it also gives you a way to evaluate for yourself of, do I wanna do those things with them? If not, okay, maybe this isn't a relationship I wanna be in. Now, of course, at the same time, we often are anti-relationship escalator because it also limits you into thinking, oh, well, if I don't want this exact type of relationship with this one person only, then I can't have one at all. And that's narrow-minded too, right? And then I think the other piece of it that is not inherently tied to the relationship escalator, but that the milestones on it are related, is that things like getting on a lease together, or opening a joint bank account, or a joint cell phone plan, or legally getting married, those sorts of things is that they create these higher logistical barriers to exit. And I think many of us have experienced the negative side of that too, when you really want to leave this relationship but feel like financially you can't because you've become so bound or we're gonna have to fight over the dog or the cat or whatever it is, right? It's true. There are more logistical barriers to exit. And so there's this interesting thing of like, it creates an illusion of absolute safety while maybe legitimately providing some, I'm gonna put this in air quotes, safety against a breakup because it's just harder to separate. I'm just curious if I leave that there, what comes to mind for the two of you when we talk about it that way.
Emily: Like almost a decade worth of spending your life with someone because it was so difficult to leave. For me at least, yeah, absolutely.
Jase: Sure. And I guess in a way you could say, yeah, that provided security to that relationship by making it harder for you to leave.
Emily: It provided a feeling of there was no legitimate way out. There was no way out that felt like I could really take that step without incurring some deep financial loss or just loss of self almost. Because also, regardless of all of the stuff that you're talking about, Jase, the logistical factors, it's also the internal factors of who am I without this partnership? What do I represent? What does my life represent? And all of the things that you have to potentially rebuild once that goes away.
Jase: Yeah, absolutely.
Dedeker: Well, I don't know. I feel very satisfied having trapped Jase in a web. Like a spider.
Emily: Great.
Jase: Right.
Dedeker: Just knowing you can't leave without a lot of complication. No, I never really think about that, which is weird. Maybe I should think about that more often.
Emily: Well, I think that's great that you don't have to, but I am very wary of it now. And even in what I consider to be the most secure partnership of my life, I am not about to enter into any financial entanglement in any way, shape, or form until I'm absolutely ready to.
Dedeker: Yeah, well, I know from my own personal experience, yeah, I'm also very wary of the degree of financial dependence I'm willing to enter into with another partner because I definitely have had those experiences of staying in a bad situation longer than I should have and a big part of it was because of being destitute, and not feeling like I had a lot of other options. But Jase, you bringing that up though, where it makes me think is going to the opposite. Sure, I think we can acknowledge, maybe that's a false sense of security to feel like you've both invested enough that it's just difficult to pull your investment out, essentially. But then I also don't think it's healthy to approach relationships feeling like I'm going to so divest myself and make sure-
Jase: I always need to escape at any moment.
Dedeker: Yeah, making sure it's having an escape route at any freaking moment that's very easy for me to take. That doesn't seem like a good foundation either.
Jase: Absolutely. And that's really the heart of what I wanted to get at. It's like, there is by entangling with someone in some way. And I think Emily makes a good point of there's also just socially by associating yourself socially as a couple or as some kind of relationship with this person, there's now some social disentangling and risk of your identity and stuff like that that has to get disentangled if you're going to leave. And I think that that's part of it is it's like, yes, the dark side of that is you can end up feeling trapped in something that you want to leave, but on the other hand, by doing those things, you're saying, yes, I trust you and I'm committed to this relationship enough that I'm willing to put myself in a situation where I am a little bit beholden to you, or at least that it's going to be harder to leave you. And I do think that's meaningful. And I think it's just interesting when we remove it from just this cultural script of, you do it because you should, and we think about it of, no, actually it does mean something. It does take a risk. And I like to think of the really everyday thing that we forget about is that a lot of our traditions, like shaking hands or bowing, are based in this. I'm going to make myself vulnerable to you. Like, shaking hands is like, I'm shaking your hand, so I can't also be holding a weapon at the same time. Or it's I'm bowing to you. So if you wanted to cut my head off, you could just do it right now. I'm making myself vulnerable to you. Or knighting somebody, putting the sword next to their neck is like, I'm letting this king or royalty or whatever put their sword in a vulnerable place for me, right? All these things actually go back to this, yeah, I'm showing respect for you or showing commitment to you in a certain way by being vulnerable. And so I do think that's the positive side of some of these traditional markers of becoming entwined with each other. So in the second part of this episode, I want to get into more of what do those look like when we remove some of those typical markers, and we've previewed some of them. But something else that I wanted to get into first is jealousy and envy in these, because if we're non monogamous, and even if we're monogamous, I could make an argument here, but especially if we're non monogamous, there's also this weird issue of someone having milestones with somebody else can trigger all sorts of jealousy or envy feelings. And what I think is really interesting about this is that it's an area where both jealousy and envy show up I would say maybe an equal measure, at least just from my own anecdotal experience. So to clarify what I mean here, jealousy is this fear of loss, right? So when a partner achieves a milestone with someone else, jealousy is that terror that that new development means they're going to move away from you or that they're going to entirely prioritize that other relationship over you, that you're going to lose something because of this. On the other hand, envy is my partner achieves a milestone with somebody else that I wish I had with them? Or maybe that I wish I had with a different partner or something like that, right? So I feel like jealousy and envy both show up here quite a bit. I see you nodding furiously, Dedeker.
Dedeker: Yeah, not only have I dealt with that in my own personal life in the past, but yeah, this comes up a lot for my clients too. I can think of a lot of situations. A really common one is when a partner is moving in with another partner. That comes up a lot.
Jase: That's a big one, yeah.
Dedeker: Yeah, so the jealousy aspect of it can be, okay, so you're moving in with this other person and you're moving into a one bedroom apartment together, so when I come to visit you, where are we gonna go to cuddle and hang out on the TV or have sex or whatever, right? Or this fear that, okay, by you moving in with this person, you might be taking away our ability to be with each other, to be with each other in a private space. That's just a very particular example. But then, yeah, the envy can come in if you feel like I would have wanted to move in with you, right? Or maybe you don't want to move in with this person, but once it happens, there's that envy of this person always has access to you. Or it's easier for your other partner to have those Netflix and chill nights at the spur of the moment or to cook together and when we want to do those things, it requires more coordination.
Jase: Yeah, I think that's such a good point there of that. It's not that I want exactly what they have, but I still feel envy, and I think that it can be, I'm envious of what this represents. Or like you said, maybe some other kind of related things that I want that I feel like this might be giving them more of than me, or maybe jealousy of like, I worry it'll take those from me.
Emily: Yeah, 100%. I feel this even sometimes in our business, the fact that the two of you live together, and have some sort of inherent alliance that I do not get to partake in just simply because you are in such close proximity at all times. And so I often have to be the third party to things that you have already spoken about in a business sense. And that especially earlier on after I had been in relationship with both of you, it was a big transition period away from me being like, But I was a part of that for a while, and then realizing I'm no longer a part of that, can I still hold the same sort of importance within the business that the three of us have, or the friendship that the three of us have, as we once did? It changes. It's tough. And I think with all of these milestones, especially when we watch partners do that with other people, we have to realize it's an ever-evolving situation. Probably not always going to be the same.
Dedeker: Yeah. Even with that one that you brought up, Emily, that's complicated because Jason and I, we do very proactively try to avoid discussing multi amory related stuff as much as possible without you there. But also, I can imagine that it's hard not to.
Emily: It's inevitable.
Jase: It just comes up.
Dedeker: Yeah. I just had this idea and I'm going to bring it up in our meeting, but this is what I'm thinking or whatever.
Emily: Yeah.
Jase: But often there has been that, we'll start a conversation and be like, nope, never mind. I'm going to write it in Slack. Yeah. Just wait. You read it with.
Emily: Sure.
Dedeker: Yeah.
Emily: I appreciate that.
Dedeker: Also some of that. That is just better for our mental health because we also try to just not be in a multi amory meeting 24/7.
Jase: Yeah.
Emily: So concept. Yeah.
Jase: So, yeah, I do think that that's worth acknowledging. And then something else that, when I was looking into this, something else that came up was this idea of Pace Discrepancy. And this is where-
Dedeker: I did an episode about Pace Discrepancy.
Jase: Yeah, yeah. This was quite a while ago, I think, when we talked about this a little bit. But I think it's worth bringing up here because, one, it applies in monogamous or non-monogamous relationships. And then two, it's another dynamic that can show up where maybe there's a pace discrepancy with you and your partner, but then it seems like they go faster with somebody else in a certain way or something like that, right? So there's extra ground for this to get complicated.
Dedeker: Yeah, just a sidebar. If people want to listen to that episode that's more specifically about pace discrepancy, that's episode 493. Titled, but what if I want the relationship escalator?
Jase: Yes, yes, related themes for sure.
Dedeker: Yeah.
Jase: But so basically the gist of this is pace discrepancy is this distress at wanting a milestone that your partner's not ready for or you not wanting a milestone that your partner really wants of just we move at different paces. We have different rates that we want this to move at is the simplest way to put this. And what I thought was interesting to find and talk about for this episode is this study called Closeness Discrepancies in Romantic Relationships by Frost and Forrester from 2013. And what they did is a longitudinal study over two years where they would interview people, the same people multiple times over the course of two years so they could see what changes over time. And the key part that I think is related to milestones is they found that the absolute amount of closeness. So you could think of this of how high up the escalator you are in terms of how entwined their lives are legally, financially, time, proximity, all that. That how high up you are on the relationship escalator does not predict relationship stability, like your experience of relationship stability. But what predicts relationship failure and mental distress is the discrepancy between the amount of closeness you want and what you actually have. So it's not so much about absolutely where you are, it's just about where is that relative to what I want. So to put this another way would be to say, even if you're relatively low on the escalator or not super entwined with each other, as long as that lines up with what you want in that particular relationship, the amount of stability you're going to experience and the amount of closeness and confidence in that relationship is going to be higher. And one interesting little tidbit they have that they didn't have quite enough data to be able to say this with statistical significance. But from what they saw is they had a number of breakups during the study.
Emily: Right?
Jase: So it was two years long. So some of the people reported, yep, I've ended that relationship or that relationship's ended since the last time we did this questionnaire. And what they found is that the number of breakups were twice as high. So 200% as many breakups amongst the people who said, that they wanted more closeness than they actually felt like they had in that relationship in the previous questionnaire, or that they wanted less closeness than what they had, that both cases resulted in a 200% amount of breakups, like twice as likely to have broken up in the intervening time, like within the next year or so. But they said, like overall out of the study, only a small ish, like only 100 and something people had breakup. So they're like, well, we don't want to say this is statistically significant. We weren't really looking for this. But to me it tracks with this.
Emily: Interesting.
Jase: How you feel about your relationship.
Emily: If there's a discrepancy.
Jase: If there's a discrepancy on either direction.
Emily: Yeah.
Jase: If either this is way closer than I want it to be, or this is not as close as I want.
Dedeker: So to extrapolate that to milestones, either it's, yeah, that sense of there is a particular milestone of intimacy and closeness that I want to reach, but my partner's not interested in going there and that causes the distress and dissatisfaction, or maybe I feel pushed towards a particular milestone that I am not ready for yet. Or maybe I've been pushed through it and now that I'm on the other side of it, I'm not really happy with this and I want to get out.
Jase: Yeah, like now we've got a shared bank account and I never really wanted that and I feel yucky about it.
Dedeker: Sure.
Jase: Yeah. So anyway, I thought this was interesting. I don't think it's so much about specific milestones, but more about the general amount of collective relationship points that our collection of milestones gives us.
Dedeker: Okay, we're doing it on a point system.
Jase: This is terrible. We're not, this is terrible. I should never have said points. Now Dedeker's going to be like, we're gonna make a spreadsheet and we're gonna total it up and decide how many milestones we want to reach.
Emily: That's a spreadsheet that you two are going to wield at each other.
Jase: Threaten.
Emily: Yes.
Jase: So with that, let's get into the point system. And by that, I mean, let's talk about what some of these milestones are and how they can affect our relationships. But first, we're gonna take a quick break to talk about some sponsors for this show. Thank you to our sponsors for helping to let us do this show every week and put it out there in the world for free. On YouTube and Spotify players and AirPods, iTunes, the places where podcasts are, your podcast machine. We appreciate them for supporting us. And of course, if you'd like to participate directly in our community and support us directly, go to multiamory.com/join and join our community there.
Jase: Welcome back, and I want to talk about escalator-free milestones.
Dedeker: This is like sugar-free milestones.
Jase: Oh, yeah. Yeah.
Dedeker: Trans fat-free milestones.
Jase: But instead of having artificial sweeteners or Olestra or whatever it was called, the fake fat, this is more like the no sugar added dried mango slices that are so much better than the sugar added ones, you know?
Dedeker: Yeah. Yes.
Emily: I love the mango slices that have chili on them. You know what I'm talking about?
Dedeker: She likes the chili added, but no sugar added mango slice.
Emily: Definitely has sugar on there too, but it's great. Okay.
Jase: Okay, fine. Just ruin my metaphor.
Dedeker: What do they put on mango slice packages? Like no sulfur? Or maybe they're like, oh yes, we use tons of sulfur for this one. I forget what's good. I'm always confused by like, why is sulfur at any point a part of this process?
Emily: Right.
Jase: Yeah, Dedeker was telling me that she recently learned that we need a certain amount of aluminum in our diet. And I was like, I never would have expected that.
Dedeker: So it's copper. It's copper.
Jase: Oh, it's copper. Okay.
Dedeker: Maybe we do need aluminum. I don't know.
Jase: I don't know.
Dedeker: Okay, copper before you start chewing on some aluminum. Yeah, okay. It's unsulfured. They always claim unsulfured. Unsulfured.
Emily: Unsulfured.
Dedeker: And yeah, I'm always confused. Why? Why was this ever Why was that ever near my mangos?
Jase: Right. Okay, so speaking of metaphors, I wanted to hit you with a metaphor that I think is better than mine. And this comes from a Reddit user named LikeASinkingStar from a couple of years ago in a thread that was talking about relationship escalator stuff where the whole thread was about what does your relationship look like when it's not on the escalator? How do you deal with that? And I'm just going to read this little quote from them that I thought was really nice. And it basically is saying that a non-escalator relationship is like wandering through a museum together. So, quote, you don't have to go in any particular order. You don't have to see the same things. Even if you do, it might not look the same when you're there with different partners. Sometimes there's an exhibit that you want to share with all your partners because it's that important to you. And sometimes there's an exhibit that you usually skip but you find that you like it when you're viewing it with that one partner who's super into it. I just thought this was a very cool metaphor for this sense of how you can find these milestones and areas of connection, and they don't all have to be the same, and they don't all have to go in the same order. And so I put together a list where I've categorized some milestone ideas that we can talk about. And I'm curious if you have any other ideas that come up along the way. Let's just start going through this and I'm curious to see what comes up. So these are sorted into some domains. One is domestic and logistical trust. So that's a lot of what we've talked about so far of being entwined. Then there's also emotional vulnerability and crisis support, relying on each other emotionally and physically. Then there's social and polycule integration, your identity being tied to this person. There's shared experiential resonance, which we'll get to when we get to. And then there's symbolic and idiosyncratic markers. So these are other symbolic things that you can do. So starting at the beginning, we'll go with domestic and logistical because that's what we teased a little bit already. Besides the ones of moving in together or those big ones, some little ones that I wrote down are things like leaving a toothbrush or overnight things at a partner's place.
Dedeker: I appreciate having a drawer, being given a drawer. Just a place to put things. Just a drawer, that's all I ask.
Jase: Yep, a drawer. Having a spare key for their place. Sharing bathroom space. Knowing the recipes for the other person's favorite meals and being able to cook it is an interesting one.
Dedeker: Yeah, that's nice.
Jase: This one I thought of Emily or many of my friends who have pets, which is the person's cat or dog approving of you. Yeah, developing your own relationship with their animal.
Dedeker: Very important.
Emily: I mean this very affectionately, but Henry is a little slut. He loves just jumping up all over Alex and, yeah, sleeping with him. I have so many pictures of the two of them sleeping together. It's very cute. And Alex is allergic to Henry. But he still sleeps on him and around him.
Jase: There you go. And maybe actually a way to put this less about, this is just what the animal gets to decide, but more about for you, would you be willing to let this person pet sit your animal while you're out of town? Do you trust them enough to take care of your pet while you're gone? I think that's something. All right, next category is emotional vulnerability and crisis support. This can look a lot of different ways, and a lot of these take time to get to. I guess that's true of all the milestones, but one is like looking after the other person when they're sick, being the one to bring them supplies when they're sick, something like that, or take them to urgent care, whatever it is. Another one would be supporting your partner through a breakup with somebody else. That's a uniquely non-monogamous experience that we could have. Now, this one, I'm curious what you think, is getting to the other side of a big fight with each other.
Dedeker: Sure. Yeah.
Emily: Yeah.
Jase: It's like people don't often think of having had a fight as a positive milestone. But there is something there about being like, yeah, we got through that and we're still together and we repaired from it. That is meaningful, I think.
Emily: Yeah, for sure. Dedeker, I always think of you saying you're not going to be in love with someone until Something along those lines happens, just not in the way that you think.
Dedeker: It's not that I'm not gonna be in love with someone. I will be in love with someone. I just won't tell them that. Until... I see.
Emily: God, I see.
Dedeker: After we've gotten through some kind of conflict, or we've hit a certain amount of vulnerability, yeah.
Jase: Yeah.
Dedeker: Well, that makes me think of someone I dated many years ago who, our first big falling out when we repaired, he was much more shook up about it than I was. And it was because, well, first of all, he didn't have a ton of adult relationship experience, or at least relationships that had lasted very long. And I learned over time that when he first came to our relationship, he was coming from this assumption that, once you have your first big conflict, the relationship is over, basically, or that chances are very high that it's going to.
Emily: So you're never gonna be in conflict.
Dedeker: Well, I've chewed on that a lot since then. And, yeah, I think at first I thought, that's a little silly or maybe emotionally immature belief to have about relationships that you're never going to be in conflict, but. The more that I've thought about it, I think maybe it more comes from if this person's lived experience was just some of the when you bump up against incompatibilities with someone you're newly dating, that sometimes your first big fight with somebody is an indicator to you of, ooh, actually I don't really want to be with you, right? Maybe the way they show up in conflict, or maybe the subject of your conflict really is a deal breaker. And so that's the way that I've spun it in my head is like maybe that was just his relationship experience up to this point. Not that a relationship can't have any conflict, but more that that was part of the dating process, right? That you bump up into that at some point and maybe you just- Yeah, maybe that's the end, right? People evaluate, I'm not invested enough to want to try to repair this. This is just an indicator that I don't want to be with this person.
Jase: Yeah, absolutely. It's funny, it's making me think about my partner in college, the one that I got engaged to. Her thing was having moved together with someone. It's like once you've gone through a move together, that that's a big-- if we survived that and we didn't hate each other at the end of it, that's a good sign of our compatibility.
Dedeker: See, I don't know about that milestone, because if you didn't survive that, it's like you've put in a lot of money and now you've just signed a lease. That's true.
Emily: I mean, yeah. But I will say I've seen some very bad behaviors come out of a move, at least personally. That made me be like, I wish in hindsight that I had decided to leave because of some of the behaviors that happened due to moving.
Jase: Yeah.
Emily: Because it's a stressful situation.
Jase: Yeah, absolutely. Moving is very stressful. And I think really it's a shortcut for that. It's just like, we've been through something stressful together. Whether that's a loss of a job or a death of a family member or a loved one or, you know, recovering from a serious illness or something like that. I do think there's something important about that we've been through something really stressful together, and that the result of that was feeling closer rather than farther apart.
Emily: Yeah.
Jase: So the next one, this is the social one, which is social and polycule integration. So this is things like meeting the family, meeting a partner's children, forming your own relationships with other people in your partner's life. So like metamores or with their friends or things becoming connected to their social circle in some way. And then there's things like being their plus one for an event where they get a plus one work social things. For some people it's like, you're never going to meet my family because I'm estranged from them, but I have these very close friends that function as the proxy for that. So this can look a lot of different ways, but it's, I think the thing that's missing from here is posting pictures together on social media is a big one. But basically, they all boil down to this, I'm willing for other people to know that I'm with you. And it's a tricky one, and I think especially tricky when you're not out.
Dedeker: Sure.
Jase: For a long time, this has been an issue with people who are not out about their sexuality, but then within non-monogamy, there's also the, how out are you about the fact that you're non-monogamous? Right? If everyone at work knows your spouse is posting with somebody else going to cause issues, and you're not out, how's that gonna feel for them? I think that's worth thinking about, but realizing there's other things in that category. So if you could think about that, would either of you ever date someone who was not out enough that they would post about you publicly or something like that?
Dedeker: That's a tricky one because, well, as I've gotten older, being posted about and posting on social media has gotten less important to me and less of a habit for me. Although it depends, if I was also dating someone where that's not very important, then it would be less of an issue if that person,
Jase: But if they posted all the time, right?
Dedeker: If they were posting all the time, right? Or, you know, even posting about dates we went on, but not having me in the picture, that kind of behavior, of course, I'd be bothered by, I don't want any kind of behavior that's intentionally editing me out. I don't know. As far as someone who's not out to their family or whatever, that one's more tricky because I'm like, I get it. It can be difficult to be out to a family and different family situations can make the stakes of that higher or lower. Same thing with a workplace. Though I do feel like if someone's dating me, I'm probably going to be the force that's going to nudge them a few points in the direction of outness because of having to be professionally so out myself. Right.
Jase: Yeah.
Emily: 100%. I don't know. I also, even in the last, since I got home from Hong Kong have done less posting myself, even of my relationship. But I do think exactly what you were saying, Dedeker, that if it is something that they're intentionally putting away or putting off to the side of, oh, I'm not going to post this person because of the potential implications that it might have on my life or on my other relationships, I think that that might be a challenging reality for me.
Dedeker: It'd be much more upset if I never got to meet their friends.
Emily: Yeah, that would suck.
Dedeker: In particular, really hard.
Jase: And so that's the piece I wanted to hit on here, is that if we think about what's the purpose of this, it's validating the relationship externally. It's showing that you're proud to be with this person. It's showing that you're willing to socially entangle with them. And so even if it is like, I'm very not out professionally, I'm not gonna post about this on any social media, But you are going to meet my friends. You're going to be part of my local poly group. You're going to meet my partners. I want you to know that I'm proud of you and circumstances mean this one thing, but I can share you with my social circle this way is a way to realize the point of it isn't the social media itself. It's what does it mean?
Dedeker: Sure.
Jase: Right. It's that there's now some social entwinement that does make it harder to leave. And like we talked about, there's a good and a bad to that. There's a cost to it. Okay, next one is Shared Experiential Resonance. So really, this is, I probably should have come up with a simpler term for this, but this is basically just a fancy way of saying, having a shared experience, having memories to look back on. And so this is things like going to Ikea together.
Dedeker: Sure.
Jase: Or, attending your first play party together, if that's a thing you do, or visiting each other's hometown, or having a meaningful workshop together, or if you're a burner, going to Burning Man together, of sharing in some sort of significant personal cultural experience that isn't so much about what other people see. It's not so much about making it harder to leave, but making something that's a shared important memory for both of you.
Dedeker: Okay, yeah, so memory making.
Emily: Yeah.
Jase: Yeah. Experiential resonance is what I called it.
Dedeker: My apologies. Is that a research term or is that a term you came up with?
Jase: That's just nonsense. Apparently I was being fancy when I tried to write this.
Dedeker: Okay. Gotcha. No, that makes sense. Yeah. So like memory making, something that feels a little bit special. So yeah, I can get how if someone's only connecting with you for a booty call that you're maybe not making some memories, but not maybe the type of memories that you might be wanting. Does this fall into this category? I had a relationship a long time ago where it feels like two milestones happened in one day. And it was, first of all, it was the day we went to Disneyland together. So sort of that memory making. And I think it was also in that first kind of big outing together, you know, spending the whole day, right? Doing something very couple-y, like going to Disneyland. And then the other one he pointed out at the end of the day was that, we had spent all day together and we'd gone through several stretches of time being quiet with each other and not feeling the need to converse or make small talk the whole time. And that he really enjoyed that. And I was like, oh, huh, yeah, you're right. And then a few weeks later, he was kind of upset that I wouldn't be monogamous with him because he paid for our Disneyland tickets, so.
Jase: Right, I remember that story now.
Dedeker: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Jase: Yeah, really. And then the last category here is symbolic and idiosyncratic.
Emily: Markers.
Jase: So this is things that are symbolic. So like having photos of one another at your houses or being involved in each other's important life goals. But it's also idiosyncratic, sillier things like wearing each other's clothes or having pet names for each other, stuff that is less visible to anyone else, but is meaningful to you, but less about just we had the experience, but it's more like this is an ongoing thing. I think maybe part of this is building up a repertoire of inside jokes with a particular partner can help build that sense of, yeah, of we have something special that's not easy to just get rid of, right? These inside jokes live in your brain all the time, whether you're with that person or not.
Emily: I have one that's not listed here. So I don't know what I would call it, but it's like potential time occurrences at a later date. It's more like, okay, hold on.
Dedeker: Let's pause right there. This is just like experiential residence. Okay. Potential time occurrences that may happen at a later date. Is that a future building?
Jase: Yeah, something from lower building. From like the time initiative.
Emily: Can I give you an example? Can I give you an example that kind of knocked me on my ass? It was when I was in Hong Kong, my partner was like, Oh, so I have a save the date for a wedding that we're going to go to. And I said, okay, when is it? And he said, well, it's February 2027. And this was in November of 2025. And so that's the kind of thing that makes me be like, whoa, my partner, there's a milestone that my partner thinks that this relationship is going to last long enough for him to talk to me about a thing in the future that we're gonna do that it is over a year from now, you know?
Jase: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Dedeker: That's nice.
Jase: That's kind of like the when you come to Japan thing.
Emily: Totally.
Jase: It's like, I'm thinking about you in terms of events that happen in the future.
Emily: Well, Steven was like, he and I just went to Japan to see you guys, and he was like, oh, so when we go back to Japan, I'm like, okay, all right. I don't know if it'd be in relation to seeing y'all again or just like, when we go back to Japan. But even those things, I don't know. I think it's interesting, right? Because my partner is younger than I am, and maybe hasn't experienced some of these milestones that I have experienced in the past as well. And I do think that there's a little bit of a discrepancy there. There's a little bit of a difference between he and I in terms of the caution that I have surrounding some of these milestones.
Jase: Sure, sure.
Emily: Yeah.
Dedeker: Because he's young and pure. And open-hearted.
Emily: Much more than maybe I am, yes. But it is that fact that I have some fear around even voicing some of those things. Even if, when he says it, my heart gets all excited about, oh, he wants that with me. But I wouldn't say it because I just don't even want to go there. I don't even want to go there with the possibility. Not that I don't think that it could happen, but that I have all of the experience that shows all of the ways in which it might not.
Dedeker: Totally, yeah. That's fair. Honestly, I think both of those approaches are not terrible approaches to have in love. I think they can be bad if they go to the extremes. If you're in a new relationship with somebody and you're already inviting them to a save the date 10 years down the road, maybe not great. But it sounds like you're also letting your wisdom let you know, I don't know, it's very stoic. Right. The Japanese have a saying that when you talk about next year, the demons start laughing, you know, so again, that same.
Emily: A little bit of that, like God laughs.
Jase: Yes, exactly.
Dedeker: Yeah. And again, you can take that to the extreme right of never making plans or always assuming that it's going to fall apart at any moment. That could not be very healthy. But yeah, I don't know, I could see, honestly, both of those, hoping for the best, but also protecting yourself with planning for the worst. Yeah, maybe it's planning for the worst. I don't know.
Jase: And I do think this is a good thing to bring up that your life experience and where you are in life and what's happened and also just what's the personality that you have and the values you have can really change how you approach these different milestones. And so having honest discussions about them more often, doing something like our relationship radar, where you're able to have regular check-ins about this, you don't have to just, I have to make all the decisions and tell you all the facts about what I believe right now that you're able to continuously check in on those things can be really helpful because maybe it is like you've got a lot of fear about that now and then a year from now something clicks and you're like, okay, now I need to be making those future plans or I'm not going to feel like this is real.
Dedeker: No, it's the potential time occurrences that may happen at a later date. A P-T-O-T-M-H-A-A-L-D. Yeah, a Patom Hall, as we call it.
Emily: You know what I mean though.
Jase: Oh, yes.
Dedeker: We got there.
Emily: We've never had that before.
Dedeker: Love a Patama Halt.
Jase: I've had so many Patama Haults. Yeah. Patama Haults.
Emily: Yeah. I find it.
Dedeker: I've been to cough medicine.
Emily: Yes. I find it funny that maybe out of the three of us, I've been the one who's been like, if we're looking at sex in the city terms, maybe I've been the most Charlotte of the group. And yet, I don't know, sweet and earnest in love. And yet, I don't feel like I'm that way anymore. And so anytime that there's an earnestness that comes from my current relationship or just maybe a naivete, and I don't want to-- that sounds shitty. That sounds mean. But an aspirational-- you are dating a younger man. I know that. And sometimes I am reminded of that because there are these aspirational things that come up that don't exist in living in the moment. And sometimes I'm like, is it wrong of me to expect or want these milestones when I have had them and they've gone so horribly awry?
Dedeker: Sure.
Jase: Yeah, our wounds are all part of it.
Dedeker: Sounds like that's your personal work.
Jase: Yeah, absolutely.
Emily: Sure.
Jase: Well, we're going to take a quick break to do some personal work while we talk about some sponsors for this show. We would love it if you would give them a listen. If any seem interesting, use our promo codes, use the links in our show description. That does really help us. And then of course, if you would rather support the show directly, you can go to multiamory.com/join and contribute to this show and get things like ad-free episodes and access to our monthly video processing groups and things like that. We would love to have you there.
Jase: So coming into the home stretch here, I want to see how can we integrate all of this? How can we find what matters in our relationships? So I think the core here is that when we're shifting away from the relationship escalator, we're also shifting away from this mentality of what comes next, what's the next box to tick? And instead to the how is this functioning right now? How am I feeling right now? What level of closeness do I have right now? And is that in line with what I want? And if not, how so? Do I feel like it's moving in the right direction or not? And can we have more honest and clear conversations about that? We don't have the typical script to follow. And I would say even if you are someone who wants a monogamous relationship, if you don't follow that typical script, you're going to be better off and build a relationship that's more custom made for you anyway. But with that said, I wanted to preview for the two of you something that nobody has seen. That's not true. Few people have seen.
Dedeker: Okay.
Jase: This is a study not just hot off the presses. This is hot in the presses. This is still in peer review. This has not even been released yet.
Dedeker: Like a preprint?
Jase: There's a preprint, a review print of this. And I think maybe—
Dedeker: With a grain of salt, is what you're saying.
Jase: A little grain of salt. And we may talk about this in the future in a more dedicated episode to it, because I do think there's some interesting stuff there, but I'm curious to see how the paper evolves over time. But, I did want to talk about a couple points from it. So this is called the Multiple Relationship Maintenance Scale, where they devised this nine factor system called the MRMS or the Multiple Relationship Maintenance Scale that has to do with different practices that people have that have been tied to greater relationship satisfaction or stability and whether you do these things, do you see a connection to greater stability, greater Sexual satisfaction, relationship satisfaction, those sorts of things. So the way they did this is they first had a group of, I think it was 400 something people to do a qualitative study where they asked them, your experienced people in non monogamy, what is it that you do? What do you think are the most important practices that contribute to success in your relationship? And then from that they put together a list of, they boiled it down to nine categories. And they actually tried a few different other numbers, and nine was the one that they landed on. And then they tested it against 4,290 people, which is quite a large study. Not as large as our study, which was 5,885 people.
Dedeker: But who is counting?
Jase: Not that anyone's comparing, but if they were. So I'm not going to go into all nine of those. You're going to have to stay tuned or go look up the study yourself for that. But the couple findings I thought were interesting. One is that they found that when they looked at the correlation between doing these things and greater relationship satisfaction, they found that the same things applied to greater satisfaction in monogamous relationships, even though that wasn't what they sampled to initially put together this list of these nine categories of practices. And so specifically one that was the number one top correlation with relationship satisfaction for both monogamous and non-monogamous relationships was jealousy regulation, which means for both. Yeah, sure. Which means the ability to proactively discuss jealousy and manage it in a healthy way. That in both monogamous and non-monogamous, that was by far the strongest correlation with relationship satisfaction. So I just thought that was, that was interesting. That's a little aside. But then when it comes to non-monogamy especially, there were a few that All of these contributed to both, but there were some that were especially strong in non-monogamy. So the first of those is Thoughtful Resource Distribution is what they called it. And this means being intentional about how you divide your time, energy, and money.
Dedeker: Sure, makes sense.
Jase: We've talked about that many times on this show, calling it different things, but for them, because these relationships don't default to the escalator, this is something that has to be a more conscious decision. There's not this just default that, oh, well, once I hit this point with this person, all my resources go to them. But so being more intentional about that is one of the biggest correlations with relationship satisfaction. And then another one that surprised me was willingness to provide childcare.
Dedeker: Oh, interesting.
Jase: And now this is not actually providing childcare. It's just a willingness that if my partner had children, I would be willing to. Help care for them. And this one was interesting to me because it was a much stronger predictor of deep investment in non monogamous relationships. And they pointed out in the paper that this is different in monogamy where there's an assumption that one, if your partner has kids, they're probably your kids. And even if they're not, there's still this assumption that if we hit a certain point in our relationship, I'm going to care for your kids, that's just a default. Whereas in non-monogamy, that's not always assumed, right? And there are many people who are not willing to do that. That's not something they're interested in. Or people who don't want to share that with their partners. They're like, no, my kids are mine. You're not going to be involved in that. But it was interesting to see that that willingness did mark this deeper amount of investment, which then was correlated with greater satisfaction and feeling of stability in that relationship. And then the third one, which was interesting, was shared extra pair sexuality. And so this means everything from having sexual experiences with other people together or just talking about those experiences. Contributed specifically, that one was linked to higher sexual quality within the relationship. So not relationship satisfaction generally, but sexual quality was higher when people were able to share that, when they indicated that that was something they did share. And then the last one I wanted to share here that's relevant to what we're talking about is that they did find one factor called Reputation Management, which is just academics speak for being in the closet, which is managing how much people know about your relationships and that this is one that had a negative correlation, meaning the more people felt the need to hide their relationships, to manage their reputation with either work or family or friends or whatever, the lower their quality of relationship, the level of trust and their level of commitment in their relationships is.
Dedeker: Fascinating.
Jase: And so with this, it kind of made me think that some of the milestones that we talked about that are less tied to specifically it's harder to leave you because your friends know I exist, but that maybe there actually is a lot more value to that than we might think. Or at least the consequence to not doing it might be greater than we would think. The importance of being, I guess, proud of that person or proud of your relationship with that person is actually really significant. So with all this, are there any of the things we've gone over that you're like, yeah, this is a good one that we don't always emphasize as much. And I think for me it might be this of even if you're not out, is finding outness within some part of your life, some part of your social world.
Dedeker: Like feeling like you're shareable.
Jase: Right. Like you're shareable. Like at least in some part of your life that's meaningful to be able to let that person be seen, let people know that they exist, and let them know that they know that they exist, right? Incorporate them into that might have a lot more impact than we would think at first glance.
Emily: I think that goes hand in hand with the social and polycule integration. Even if somebody isn't fully out, that if there are ways in which they can be out to friends or to people that they really trust and be able to exactly say, I'm really proud to be with this person. I think they're awesome and I want you to meet them. And I want the opportunity to get to show them off in a way or whatever that might mean to you in your relationship. I think those are very important things to get to do. With an individual that you are seeing and that you care about.
Jase: An interesting personal example of that one is I have a partner who is having a baby soon with their other partner. They're not the one carrying the baby, but that I was invited to the baby shower was something that I didn't ask about. I very intentionally was like, I don't want to try to butt into that because I don't know how inner circle that is. I don't know how I fit into that picture, right? Not being directly involved with that baby at this point. And so I was cautious about that, but I was really happy when I got invited to it and that when I was there, I met one of their close friends that they'd known for a long time that that close friend was like, Wait, you're Jase. I've heard of you. Oh, yeah, this person talked about you a lot and it's so great to meet you finally that that was like, oh, I actually do exist. Outside of just our little bubble that we have. And so I do think that those little things are meaningful and important.
Emily: Hell, yeah.
Jase: Well, thank you all for joining us on this journey of walking 500 milestones.
Dedeker: That was a fantastic episode. You called it, you called youd Shot correctly, right at the very top.
Jase: Great, great. Thank you, just pointed to the center field. I was like, this one's going out there. Yeah.
Dedeker: Yeah. Great.
Jase: So we would love to hear from all of you. We're gonna be posting our Question of the Week on our Instagram Stories the day that this episode comes out. And that is what non-escalator milestones make you feel secure in your relationships. I know we've all shared a lot of those stories. We'd love to hear from you about what are the things that happened that just made you feel special? Maybe ones you didn't expect, maybe ones you really wanted. And when you finally got it, it was meaningful. We're looking forward to hearing from you there. And then of course, if you want to discuss this further, the best place to share your thoughts with other listeners is in the episode discussion channel in our Discord server. Or you can post in our private Facebook group. You can get access to those groups, join our exclusive community, get ad free episodes and more by going to multiamory.com/join. And of course you can share publicly on Instagram@multiamorypodcast.
Jase: Multiamory is created and produced by Dedeker Winston, Emily Matlack, and me, Jase Lindgren. Our production assistant is Carson Collins, and our editor is Emily Matlack. Our theme song is Forms I Know I Did by Josh and Anand from the Fractal Cave EP. The full transcript is available on this episode's page on multiamory.com