574 - How to Make Calendaring Not Suck
Why does scheduling suck?
There are reasons why scheduling often feels impossible; it’s been proven that doing it perfectly isn’t possible, and there are emotional and cognitive reasons why it’s difficult. Feeling frustrated about this topic is normal, and it often causes friction in relationships of all kinds.
So why do we dread it?
Shifting from passive time to active time
When you’re in a relationship where you nest together or spend time together by default, there’s a lot of passive time together, like doing chores, watching TV, simply existing in the same space together.
In relationships where there isn’t any default togetherness, every interaction has to be deliberately scheduled as active time.
But here’s the catch: passive time is not a substitute for active time! Even if you live with a partner, relying on passive coexistence to do relationship maintenance work isn’t feasible. You still need to schedule intentional, focused, quality time together.
We all deal with some version of this problem, but the question you should ask yourself is: are you doing it consciously or letting it happen by accident?
It’s not logistics, it’s emotion
A lot of scheduling and calendaring advice focuses on tools and systems, such as shared calendars, apps, and planned meetings. But those tools address a different problem; for many of us, the hang up isn’t how to schedule, it’s dealing with the anxiety that comes before you start to schedule.
The scenario: You know you have to make plans. But once you start thinking of all the variables (your schedule, their schedule, things you may be forgetting, accidentally double-booking, etc.), it starts to feel more and more overwhelming. And then you procrastinate it more and more, which causes everything to become last minute and ends up in turn causing the friction in the relationship that you were trying to avoid in the first place.
Why does this happen?
Hint: It’s about uncertainty, not disorganization. There is a well-researched concept in anxiety research called the Intolerance of Uncertainty (IU), which is a tendency to find uncertainty itself distressing and even unacceptable, even in situations where the stakes are relatively low.
In a calendaring context: You’re anxious because you don’t have enough information to feel confident in the plan, and your brain treats that information gap as a threat. It’s not because you’re bad at planning.
Relational uncertainty can also add another layer of anxiety. A 1999 study about it identified three distinct types of uncertainty that all show up in scheduling:
Self uncertainty. This is not knowing what you want. When you’re unsure of your own needs/desires, initiating plans feels risky because you might commit to something you’ll regret.
Partner uncertainty. This is not knowing what your partner wants. This ties most directly into scheduling anxiety, because you’re trying to plan around preferences you can only guess at.
Relationship uncertainty. This is not knowing where the relationship stands. It’s especially prevalent for newer relationships or relationships in transition.
Each type of uncertainty creates a different kind of scheduling paralysis. Self uncertainty makes you avoid initiating, partner uncertainty makes you overthink everything, and relationship uncertainty makes you second-guess the process itself. All three of these can be disabling and make scheduling even more difficult, and leads to avoidance, not action.
Additionally, when scheduling does happen, it often falls disproportionately onto one person, which is a huge burden of mental and emotional labor on them. This pattern isn’t gender-specific in all relationships, but the pattern shows up everywhere, with one person becoming the “cruise director” and the other person just showing up.
Common advice and how it falls short
“Just share your calendar with everyone!”
“Just communicate more!”
“Just be more flexible!”
If you’ve asked for advice about scheduling, you’ve probably received one of these phrases and thought them wildly unhelpful. Research has shown that sharing calendars without agreed-upon norms creates new problems, like surveillance, imposition, information overload, etc.
When it comes to communication, communication about scheduling is itself a form of labor, and if one person is always initiating the scheduling conversation, that IS the invisible labor problem.
Regarding flexibility, flexibility without structure simply creates chaos. Many people need some predictability to feel secure.
In 2024, Gąsieniec, Smith & Wild published a peer-reviewed paper called “Polyamorous Scheduling” that proved scheduling creates a class of problems so complex that no computer algorithm can efficiently calculate a perfect solution. So we have the mathematic proof that no perfect solution exists.
It’s time to embrace the approximately-good solutions. You can get close to optimal, but you can’t get a perfect solution. Perfectionism in this scenario is provably futile, so try remembering that “good enough” is the best anyone can do.
Actionable tools to help calendaring
The “Good Enough” Reframe:
Aim for “minimum viable scheduling.”
Instead of agonizing over the perfect week, ask yourself: “Which relationship has the most built-up ‘heat’ right now?” Prioritize that one.
This approach is the one mathematicians recommend, and it works for friendships, family, romantic partners, anyone. Which friend haven’t you seen in months? Which family member are you overdue to call? That’s the first priority.
For anxiety-driven avoiders, this method is particularly helpful because it reduces the problem from “plan everything perfectly” to “address the biggest gap,” which cuts down the decisions from twenty to one.
Anchor Rituals:
Establish one or two recurring, protected time slots for specific relationships as opposed to negotiating from scratch every week. Rituals of connection have been proven to be one of the strongest predictors of long-term relationship satisfaction.
Anchor rituals take variables off the table. You don’t have to decide whether or not to see this person this week, you just have to plan around the anchors, which is much simpler. For example: weekly date night, Sunday morning coffee, standing video call, regular walk together.
Capacity Forecasting:
Don’t wait until you’re overwhelmed and cancelling plans (which triggers friction in relationships), give people a low-stakes heads up about your availability and energy levels.
Think of it as a weather forecast for your week: "Hey, work is crushing me — texting will be slow and I might need Thursday to recharge. But I'm really looking forward to Saturday."
This addresses the information asymmetry problem and provides concrete information as opposed to ambiguity. It makes the cognitive load visible and shared instead of one-sided.
Use Your RADAR
If you already do RADAR (our relationship check-in tool — R.A.D.A.R. stands for Review, Agree, Discuss, Action Points, Reconnect), scheduling is a natural fit for the process. If you don't do RADAR yet, this is a great reason to start. (See Episode 147 or our Fundamentals Episode 003)
During the Review step: Look at your calendars together. This is a structured moment to surface the information gaps that cause scheduling anxiety. What's coming up? What's changed? What did we say we'd do last time?
During the Agree step: "Quality Time" is already one of the standard RADAR topics. Use it. Even if nothing is wrong, checking in on how scheduling is going keeps it from becoming a crisis.
Action Points: This is where capacity forecasting and anchor rituals get formalized. "I'll send a capacity text at the start of each week." Written down, reviewed next time.
RADAR helps with scheduling anxiety specifically because:
It creates a predictable container for the scheduling conversation — you don't have to wonder when to bring it up.
It reduces the day-to-day processing load because you know there's a dedicated time for it.
It addresses the invisible labor problem by making scheduling a shared, structured responsibility rather than one person's mental burden.
It directly counters avoidance by building scheduling into a recurring ritual — you don't have to overcome the anxiety every time because the structure carries you through it.
Transcript
If you find any transcription errors, please let us know at info@multiamory.com and we will fix it ASAP.
Jase: I think there's a lot of dynamics there to be aware of, which leads us to a study called I Love You, Let's Share Calendars. They looked at people who were Google Calendar users, so they were looking at how just dyads manage calendaring together and how they deal with sharing calendars. And what they found is that what we've been talking about, it's not just a logistical problem, it's an emotional issue. When you share a calendar with people and you put an event on your calendar that they can see that says Dinner with Mom, 6 p.m., this isn't just logistics. It's also communicating to them your priorities, your obligations, what you value, what's important to you of the things that get written down versus the things that don't get written down.
Jase: Welcome to the Multiamory Podcast. I'm Jase.
Emily: I'm Emily.
Dedeker: And I'm Dedeker.
Emily: We believe in looking to the future of relationships, not maintaining the status quo of the past.
Dedeker: 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 tackling something that causes more relationship friction than almost anyone wants to admit: scheduling. If coordinating time with people you love feels impossibly hard, whether that's with partners, friends, or family, it turns out that mathematicians have literally proven that it is impossible to do perfectly. So today, we're going to dig into why calendaring can feel so terrible, spoiler, it's not a logistics problem, it's actually an emotional one. And we'll look at a fascinating study called I Love You, Let's Share Calendars, that reveals what actually happens when couples share their schedules. And then we'll get into that really nerdy math paper about polyamorous scheduling that shows the mathematical impossibility of it. I'm very excited to take you on this journey today, so buckle in and stay tuned. If you're listening and interested in learning about our fundamental communication tools that we reference on this show, check out our book, Multiamory: Essential Tools for Modern Relationships, which covers our most used communication tools for all types of relationships. You can find links to buy it at multiamory.com/book. And we don't go into any complicated math in that. It's very approachable. So please, please enjoy. All right, so Emily and Dedeker, how do you feel about calendaring and scheduling?
Emily: I think it's kind of necessary.
Jase: Okay, necessary.
Emily: In this very chaotic world in which we live, especially, if you are juggling multiple jobs, if you have multiple partners, and if you generally live a life that is not like a nine to five where you know, okay, I'm gonna be doing roughly the same thing every single day. If there's a lot of variability at all, even if there's some variability, I think it's nice to be able to, depending on the person, show that to someone else so that they have an idea roughly of where they stand, where they can get in some time.
Jase: Okay. Okay. There's a lot you just said there that we're gonna get into a little bit more here. But Dedeker, how about you? What's your experience of scheduling? It doesn't have to be specifically calendaring, but like scheduling with people in your life in general.
Dedeker: Well, for better or for worse, I live and die by my calendar, and I have for several years, with the exception of a few, brief, blissful periods where I didn't have to be so hooked on my calendar, but mostly I think of times when, I don't know, someone has looked over my shoulder at my phone when I'm looking at my calendar and been like, oh my God, I get that reaction. And I mean, to be fair, it's because on one calendar I have my work, my personal stuff, I see Jace's stuff, there's the multiamory calendar, there's a lot of stuff crammed into one calendar, which could be helpful, could be a problem, I don't know. But the types that I have met people or even dated people who, maybe they just, they always have consistent work hours and so, they don't need to stay on top of a calendar super intensely. And then any plans they make, they just kind of keep in their head because they're not juggling that many. To me, that experience is akin to meeting someone who has just told me that they've never lived a life outside of a cave in the woods. And I want to know more and I'm fascinated and just don't understand, don't know how to relate to this person.
Jase: Yeah, for sure. I can agree with that. And what's interesting is that I feel like growing up, that was sort of how my mom did all of her scheduling was, I think it was all just in her head.
Dedeker: Boy, oh boy.
Jase: We had a paper calendar on the wall in the kitchen and it had big events on it, certain things coming up like at school or whatever. But I think just the day-to-day stuff, she just kept all in her head. I don't remember her having a planner or anything like that. But yeah, I feel like I've met a surprising number of people who still operate in that way. They don't have to write it all down. They just kind of keep it in their head. And I think some of them, are comfortable with that, but a lot I see experiencing stress because of it, kind of holding onto the mental load of needing to keep track of all those things.
Dedeker: I remember really getting into planner life, like actual physical planner life, once I got into college, sometimes those days.
Jase: Same. I was very much paper planner in college.
Emily: I was gonna ask about that, because is that not something that the two of you do? I've been getting a lot of Instagram-related ads for planners and even looked at a few this year. Because there is something really nice about writing it down and seeing it in a tangible space that's in front of you as opposed to just on a phone. But I think it's definitely less practical in various ways than just being able to whip out your phone if something comes up right then and be able to say, okay, I need to find a place and a time and a space for this.
Dedeker: Yeah, I think that nowadays having a paper planner would drive me a little too crazy, especially with the three of us having to switch around multi-amour and stuff all the time, like just impossible.
Jase: Yeah, paper planner is also hard if you're managing time zones and stuff like that. I've found that I kind of do both where most of my planning is digital, but I have a whiteboard that's on the wall right here, right over here. I have a whiteboard where I have a little column for each day of the week and then I'll move, you know, write things on each day. So I kind of have a sense of the near future there, even though the real source of truth is my digital calendars, because those are the ones that go with me wherever I am and I can add stuff if I'm out or whatever. But yeah, it's like a constant struggle. And so that's actually something that kind of leads into the first part of this is why is this hard? What's the deal with scheduling being hard? And this is a relationship problem in general. This isn't specific to polyamory, monogamous couples, friend groups, trying to get dinner together, families, especially extended families, if they see them a lot, there's a lot of different ways that your life can end up overwhelming schedule-wise. And so there's a few ways we'll kind of tackle this. So first, there's the whole passive versus active time thing, which we've talked about before on this show, but it's kind of this idea that in a lot of monogamous relationships, people, they just default to spending time together at the end of the day, watching a movie or watching TV, or just that they have meals together or something like that. And on the one hand, it's nice because you just get all this time together. But on the other hand, it's not really intentional time. It's like you might actually spend a lot of time together, but then if you do open up your relationship and start dating and you see your partner spending intentional time with someone else and then just passive time with you, even if objectively you get more time than them, it can feel like, oh, I'm not getting enough or there's something that I'm missing, right? So there's kind of that push pull between what's our active and what's our passive time. And then part of the struggle with this is that a lot of the tools that try to address this, like everything in just like Google Calendar, that's the classic joke that Google Calendar is the prerequisite skill for polyamory more than emotional management or anything else. It's actually just calendaring. That's the joke. But the problem is a lot of those are built to try to solve logistical problems and not the emotional parts that come up with scheduling. And then also, like Emily, you were talking about sharing calendars with people. Do you feel like you just willingly share your calendar with anyone? Do you do anything to keep certain events private? Do you have multiple calendars? How do you manage that?
Emily: Honestly, I only really share the multiamory calendar with the two of you. That is my shared calendar at this point. I've thought about it. I was trying to think back to if you and I ever did that once upon a time, Jase, because I know that the two of you do it, the two of you share calendars.
Jase: Well, I still have your calendar shared with me, Emily.
Dedeker: Awkward.
Emily: What? That's crazy. Wow. Generally, I don't put things in as meticulously and methodically as I think the two of you do. I have tended to enjoy writing stuff out, but then the big things that involve multiple people, like the two of you, for instance, that's more what goes in my digital calendar space. But in terms of, yeah, sharing it, I think that that might not be a bad idea eventually, even though I agree with you that there are certain things that potentially, if you are really crafting a day or crafting a week, and that might involve multiple people, metamours, for instance, where you're the hinge, maybe you wouldn't want everyone to see what's going to be going on within a person's week, for instance. And so that's not something that you necessarily want to allow every single person to be able to view at all times. That's hard though, because that feels a little like picking and choosing who's special enough to be able to see my full calendar, for instance.
Dedeker: Well, also, okay, well, it's been several years since I've broached that with somebody new of the sharing calendar conversation. But I do think at a certain point in relationship escalation, I know in my experience, I just get sick of always constantly having to do the when are you free this week? This is when I am free. When are you free next week? This is when I am free. What is it? You know, like always that conversation. And so sometimes sharing calendars is like a can be a way to shortcut that, to just be able to see. But I do agree with Emily. I think it does require some discernment and some trust of the other person around sharing your schedule in such a detailed way.
Jase: Yeah. And then it's also confusing too, as you share a calendar with more people, that then it's even more nuanced, right? Like, if I share my calendar with, say, a partner that I live with, like Dediker, and then I also share it with another partner. Is that gonna create a weird dynamic of like that other partner might see all the just sort of logistical household things that Dedeker and I put on our calendars and feel like, oh gosh, you do so much together, I feel left out, even though our experience might be, yeah, these are all like work tasks, right? Like household work or whatever and not fun tasks. Or you could end up in that situation where it's like you're saying, oh gosh, I'm like kind of busy right now. I don't know if I can hang out. And they're like, I can see your calendar and like there's nothing on it.
Emily: that you Yeah, right.
Jase: Like, that's a weird dynamic too.
Dedeker: Right, you need that trust that somebody's just not gonna abuse being all up in your business.
Emily: Right, because I think I know people who schedule everything down to kind of like the minute where they will schedule in, this is my writing time or my critical thinking time for the day. This is my workout time. And then this is the time where I'm gonna read a book, for instance. And then this is my designated work time. But if you don't have all of that in there, that's sort of what I think is very important time to just be by oneself and have unstructured time, for instance. I think that that's extremely important within a person's day. But then if you have a partner who specifically looks at that as, oh, well, that's time that you could be spending with me and you're choosing not to, then I think that's where things get tricky.
Dedeker: Yeah.
Jase: And then also if someone's an introvert versus an extrovert, or just kind of how stressful the rest of their day is and how much they they need to decompress. There's all these variables and it does, yeah, requires a lot of trust. And sometimes that extra visibility actually makes it more complicated. And that's kind of where we're getting at kind of the heart of why I wanted to do this episode. And this came about because I've had several conversations with Thedecker as well as my other partner about this. When it comes to scheduling things, like scheduling social things, I find myself experiencing a lot of anxiety about that. And I will tend to then put it off. And this is everything from like a phone call with my sister to a date to, you know, even sometimes errands or things like that, if I'm gonna do it with somebody or just hanging out with a friend. I'll tend to put these off 'cause I've experienced a lot of anxiety. And in looking into this and finding some of the research, there's this natural reaction when you're feeling anxiety to try to do something to soothe that and like comfort that. And in that case, it's to not do the scheduling. Not do it. Since thinking about doing the scheduling is what brings up that anxiety. And what's interesting is that what I've learned from looking into this is there's this thing called Intolerance of Uncertainty, or IU for short. And it has to do with these situations where there's a lot of variables that you're missing. And so I find for me, that type of scheduling induces a lot of anxiety because Even if those people have shared their schedules, which that's not how I operate my life with anyone else, I guess, besides Dedeker and Emily right now in terms of actually having shared calendars. But so there's a lot of things I don't know, right? Like, I don't know when the other person's available. But then I also have this fear that what if I schedule that thing and Dedeker had something that she wanted to put on the calendar, but just hadn't yet, or she's booked something at the same time that I did this and now there's a conflict. And Dedeker and I also in Seattle share a car. So there's like that extra dynamic there of like, oh, shoot, she needs the car for this thing and I've made this plan, now what do we do? That there's like enough things that I perceive could go wrong that it makes me feel anxious about the whole thing. And so I'll put it off. And then interestingly, an opposite experience is when it comes to scheduling multiamory, like our recording schedule, I feel like whenever we talk about having to do multiamory scheduling for like the next three months of when we're going to record and have meetings and things like that, tell me if I'm wrong, Dedeker, but I perceive that that stresses you out. Like that prospect feels really overwhelming and stressful to you.
Dedeker: Yes.
Jase: And I'm often the one who ends up doing that because I'm like, no, this is an interesting puzzle. I'm like, oh, yeah, okay, I've got the variables here. I'm going to figure it out. And I don't have a problem with that kind of scheduling. And so there's this weird disconnect of what's going on in these two situations. And that's what prompted this episode.
Dedeker: That is such an interesting observation because, yes, that happens in my personal life also that once scheduling has tipped into, this is a puzzle I need to figure out and I don't know how I'm going to figure it out, I'm extremely stressed. Once it tips into, I have 16 things to fit into this particular week and maybe only 10 slots and how am I going to move things? It doesn't feel like a fun puzzle. It feels like I'm failing at my life.
Jase: And for me, it feels like there's a lot of variables, but they're knowable.
Dedeker: Like, you know the conditions.
Jase: I know the conditions, right? And I know that we have to do it. It's not like this optional, we want to hang out. It's like, okay, we have to record these episodes. I know that even if you two are like grumpy about some of the times I've scheduled them, or I'm grumpy about some of the times, if it's early or late or whatever, that we all, there's a certain sense of, yeah, but that's what we gotta do, right? That's our job doing this podcast. We've gotta figure that out. And so somehow that clicks into, like, this is a puzzle I can solve. And I find a similar thing with scheduling in more of like a work context versus a personal context, where it's all these like unknown emotions and like how people feel about things and if this will be enough time that this person will be happy with it or all these other variables that cause me to feel stressed out about it. And that there is, there is research on this.
Dedeker: Yeah. What does the research say?
Jase: Okay. So this comes from a study about Relational Uncertainty by Knobloch and Solomon. This is from 1999. And this identifies three distinct flavors of relational uncertainty that show up in scheduling. Their study was not specifically about scheduling, but relevant uncertainty. So the first is self uncertainty. So that's knowing what you want. It's like, do I even want to go out? Or maybe the harder one, will I want to go out on Friday after a full week?
Emily: I think so, but I might not. Yeah, something might change later on at that particular moment in time.
Dedeker: Right.
Jase: Right. Or the opposite of like, I feel so overwhelmed right now, so I won't make a plan for next weekend, but by next weekend, I'll actually wish that I had made a plan, right? So there's that. And then the second one is partner uncertainty. So this is not knowing what the other person wants. Like, would they rather have a quiet night in or would they rather go out? Are they hoping I'll suggest something really special, or are they wanting just kind of chill hangout time? And so there's that kind of anxiety that shows up. And then the third one is relationship uncertainty, which is more about, I don't know where this relationship stands. Of like, are we at a stage where I can just assume we're spending all of our Saturdays together? And it would be weird to plan something two weeks out? Or is this more like, no, every date's gonna be planned. We're not doing that yet. And especially as you're transitioning between different ways of doing that, and different people have different personality factors there. And so each of these different types can create a different flavor of scheduling paralysis. Like if your self uncertainty makes you avoid initiating, but your partner uncertainty makes you overthink the choices, or your relationship uncertainty makes you second guess even like, how should I go about scheduling with this person? Those things can come up. I know that one's come up for me even scheduling things. With myself, Dedeker, and someone else. Like we were going to have a phone call with my sister. And I have kept putting off scheduling that because I'm having to manage two different people's schedules and like, how much in advance does this need to be? And if I just book it, will that be okay? Or do I need to like propose and then check with the other person? And then if they say yes, then propose it to the other kind of, I don't even know how to go about the process, kind of.
Dedeker: Gotcha.
Jase: So I'm just curious from that spew that I just did there. Does any of that resonate for you, maybe in a different way, where you're like, Ooh, actually, I think for me, it's this other uncertainty that shows up.
Dedeker: I mean, I definitely have a big one with the self-uncertainty of, Am I going to have energy for this thing by the time I get there? Am I going to regret not going? That does make it hard sometimes to commit to things ahead of time. And I do tend to go one of two extremes, right? Either just completely overcommitting and just assuming whatever I'll power through because I commit and I don't cancel on things to the best of my ability, and I'll just freaking deal with it, or undercommitting, especially if I'm in a place of fear. Feeling really depleted and then being like, I can't commit to anything. I can't say yes to anything. Keep my calendar clear.
Jase: Yeah. Yeah, for sure.
Emily: I do feel like I tend to overcommit. Basically, if my partner, for instance, is like, oh, these things are happening this week. Do you want to come? I'll pretty much just say yes to everything. And that is sometimes totally fine. But sometimes I do realize, well, I still need to work, for instance, or I still have an episode that's due, and I've, you know, I'm on a deadline and I'm not quite ready. On a thing that I have to get out, whatever it is. So, yeah, I think like sometimes anxieties happen that way. But generally, I do feel like I tend to be a little bit more like go with the flow. When people create potential things for me to do, I tend to be like, yeah, let's let's do it. But I do think that also I am a little bit more extroverted than the two of you. And so having the bandwidth from that standpoint, I tend to just pretty much have it available in some way.
Jase: Yeah. Yeah.
Dedeker: Yeah.
Jase: And I think all of this leads to an interesting observation. This comes from Tim Pychyl and Fuschia Sirois from Carleton University and Durham University, where they proposed this framework arguing that procrastination is an emotion regulation problem, not a time management problem, which kind of goes against the way a lot of people talk about procrastination. It's more like, well, just do it. Just don't put it off. But it's actually an emotional regulation issue. So when a task triggers negative emotions like anxiety or dread or fear, we prioritize our short-term mood repair through avoidance, which provides immediate relief, but then creates, you know, problems for our future self. And separate, like, brain imaging research from 2018 found that people who procrastinate more tend to actually have structural differences in their amygdala. Oh, wow. Lending neurological support to this idea that they're also processing emotions about those things differently.
Dedeker: Huh, interesting. I know something I identified about myself. I'm not a big procrastinator, but like there will be certain tasks that I
Jase: will just endlessly put off.
Dedeker: And the through line that I identified a few years ago was, yeah, for me, there's always something related to shame. Going on, whether it's the shame of, I don't know if I'm going to be able to do this right, or I don't know if I can give this person the answer that they want, or I don't know if I'm going to be able to pick the right time for this, or I don't know that that's the thing for me where I will procrastinate. Big, small, whatever.
Jase: Yeah. No, I think that's a really good observation, because I also don't identify as a procrastinator generally, but I do see myself procrastinating a lot about certain things, like scheduling, like I was talking about, that there are certain things that it's just, yeah, like the emotional dread of doing it is worse than the actual experience of doing it, but it's like the anticipation of it is bad enough that I'll just kind of put it off.
Jase: All right, so I've got some exciting studies to get into with the two of you, but first we're going to take a quick break to talk about some sponsors for this show. Thank you to all of our sponsors on this show. Please take a moment, check them out, give them a listen. If they seem interesting, use our promo codes. They're in our description there. That really does help support our show. And of course, if you'd rather support directly, get access to our amazing community, our monthly video processing groups, and have ad-free episodes in your own personal feed. You can go to multiamory.com/join and join our amazing community there.
Jase: And we're back. So now, with all of this talk about anxiety and things like this, it also led me down this rabbit hole of looking at research on how couples can deal with this. And often the way this goes is that one person ends up being the default scheduler for the family.
Emily: That makes sense.
Jase: Either because they perceive the others aren't capable enough of scheduling or because it causes the other people, and I'm saying people because this could be like a parent with children and a spouse kind of a situation. It could be a group of friends or a group relationship or just within a couple, right? Lots of different ways this could play out. But basically, the TL;DR here is that when that falls disproportionately on one person, they pay a cost. They pay a large cost there. There was a 2019 study published in Sex Roles, which was not a publication I was aware of, but there it is.
Dedeker: Is it a sexy D&D journal? Oh, that's
Jase: good. I got a natural 20 on my cunnilingus score. Whoa. Right. So in Sex Roles, this study by Cicciola and Luthar, surveyed 393 U.S. mothers in partnerships and mothers who felt disproportionately responsible for household scheduling and coordination reported greater role overload. No surprise there. But basically they felt stretched too thin. They felt they were disproportionately responsible for monitoring and managing their children's well-being reported lower life satisfaction and
Emily: lower relationship satisfaction. So that's pretty gnarly.
Jase: Yeah. So of the people they studied, not everyone reported that, but of the ones that did, they had that lower life satisfaction, lower relationship satisfaction. And 88% of the mothers in that survey said it was mostly them that did the scheduling. Again, I don't think any of us are surprised by this, but it is still worth acknowledging. Now then, the part that got me really interested though is I also read about some research in couples where one person takes on the default scheduling because the other partner has anxiety about it. And it seems like that makes sense, right? It's like, Hey, this causes you more suffering, so I'll take that on. But some of this research, and I'm not citing a specific one, 'cause this is more kind of mentioned in a few different places, and this is just sort of my combining all of it together, so do with that what you will. But basically that the person who is the more anxious one is also being hurt by this experience, because by taking that away from them, they're actually losing out on essentially the ability to find their own coping mechanisms and to manage this. So it actually can make the problem worse. So not only are you ending up with one person suffering because they're taking on more of the scheduling, but you're also ending up not really benefiting the person who has the anxiety about it. So just want to throw that out there. And I know this comes up sometimes, Dedeker, with you and I. Well, yes. So
Dedeker: how do I fix it? How do we fix it? How do we deal with it? Well, because there are some of us who, I think, are good at juggling schedules, are good at calendaring, have a brain that's more oriented to always thinking like 10 steps ahead and two weeks ahead. And so, how do you create balance when, to speak from my own personal experience, my urge is just like, I'm good at this, I can do this, and so I'm just going to step up and do
Jase: this. Yeah. Right. Yeah. So we'll get into this a little bit in the end when we talk about actionable tools and things, but something that I was thinking about with this is that oftentimes this problem can perpetuate itself. And this shows up in other areas too, but where one partner maybe finds something more stressful or they have less experience with it than the other. The other person knows that they're better at it, right? And so they're more likely to do it. But then the way it self perpetuates is if the partner who doesn't feel like they're as good at it, does it, And then the one who does think they're good at it then criticizes how they did it. It shuts them all down and increases that perception of risk with that. And so, like, I know this is a weird one, but this has come up with Dedeker and I with grocery shopping, where... Oh, see, I was
Dedeker: gonna say, there's just elaborations. Well, okay, I think you've, I think, how do I not make this a you statement? How do I do a therapy I statement? I have perceived... Hmm. That perhaps since long before the start of our relationship, but maybe you struggle with grocery store anxiety specifically. Am I correct in my perception? Well, so
Jase: what's interesting is you're partly right, but I've never felt stressed at a grocery store when I've lived by myself. I don't recall
Emily: grocery store stress with us ever, either.
Jase: Yeah, yeah. I feel like I've gotten
Dedeker: some reports from you, Jace, of, Also having grocery
Jase: shopping stress when you're with Emily. Really? So it's been so long now, it's hard to remember. It's been a while since we've gone to a grocery
Emily: store together. So I just, I love grocery shopping, but I have the opposite problem. I just buy everything and it's just, well, right. And maybe I
Dedeker: hate setting foot in a grocery, in an American grocery store these days. Really? It's just like the lighting and it's so huge and overwhelming and I just enter left feet. Trader Joe's is so
Emily: fun. Fun. Trader Joe's do tend to
Dedeker: be a little more...
Emily: So many goodies. So many goodies. Yes. Okay. Right. But
Jase: so Dedeker and I had a lot of conversations about this. And the thing that ended up helping for me, and I still will say this to you sometimes, Dedeker, but it's, I'm going to go to the grocery store. I'm going to take care of this. If there's stuff on the list, I'll get those. And sometimes it's a little stressful if you've put something on there that I don't know exactly where it is, even if you can picture it, but like whatever, that's, that's, a learning problem, I think. That's like an experience problem. But often I'd be like, okay, I'm going to the grocery store. You're not allowed to complain about anything I come home with. I'm kind of putting
Dedeker: this like, right, I have to be like, okay, great.
Jase: Yeah, yeah, exactly. And this kind of like, I'm going to take ownership of I'm going to choose the things. And if I come home with a big thing of Double Stuffed Oreos, you can't complain, right? Or whatever it is, right? And I think that that helped of kind of like acknowledging that that was part of the issue for me is feeling like I might get criticized for the choices that I make. And so, that's going to be a problem. And I think with scheduling, this can show up too. So if the person who schedules things less often does say, oh, hey, I thought we could do this or, you know, put something on the calendar and the other one who's more the scheduler, maybe they've got several things in their mind. They're like, oh, I was keeping that free because I thought we would do this or that they'll then criticize that that can then shut down that other person. So I think there's kind of this two-sided thing where one is to not just take over the thing that stresses the other one out and instead, you know, encourage them and empower them. But then part of that is also empowering them and being aware of that those criticisms might land a lot harder with that person than for someone who feels more confident in their scheduling. And maybe also one person's more likely to just go, oh, okay, when something gets on the calendar, the other person's more likely to say, oh, gosh, okay. Oh, geez. I kind of wanted that evening to just chill. I didn't. Okay. So I think there's a lot of dynamics there to be aware of. Right. Which leads us to a study called I Love You, Let's Share Calendars. When was this done? This was 2012. So this is a little bit older, but it was specifically about Google Calendar users. So not so old that we're using paper calendars here, right? So what was fun about this is that they looked at people who are Google Calendar users, and they also specifically did this with adults who did not have kids. So they were kind of looking at like, how do just dyads manage calendaring together and how do they deal with sharing calendars? And what they found is that what we've been talking about, it's not just a logistical problem, it's an emotional issue. So when you share a calendar with people and you put an event on your calendar that they can see that says dinner with mom, 6:00 PM, this isn't just logistics, it's also communicating to them your priorities, your obligations, what you value, what's important to you of the things that get written down versus the things that don't get written down. And so they found that scheduling through a shared calendar can cause conflicts over that too. Because here's another situation. Say one person puts an event on our shared calendar. Do I interpret that as, Hey, I thought we could do this at this time, or like, this is decided, you're stuck. Right? Like, this is really important to me that we do this. Or is it kind of like, Hey, I thought this might be a time for this. That really varies. And so people started coming up with strategies for this. Again, this is a study of people that have already been actively using Google Calendars
Emily: together. And can I ask, is this also this shared calendar system, is it just for things that the two people do together? Or is it also separate things that like, here is my work schedule for the week, and then you put in your work schedule as well, and then we kind of do things around what is, you know, necessary for us to be able to function in
Jase: the week. Right. Okay. Good question. And that's going to come up in just a second here. So, so first is that one of the things people realized is that they needed to have multiple calendars. That they couldn't just share one calendar because they needed a way to manage privacy. And the only real way to do that was by having multiple calendars. So kind of like you just said, Emily, right? You've got the Multiamory calendar shared with us, but then, you know, you have your own calendar, you don't use as much. Like, I have my work calendar, like my day job work calendar, I've got my personal calendar, I've got my Multiamory calendar, right? I've got a lot of different ones that different people have certain shared, views into those, right? Yeah. So one was managing multiple calendars, but they found that managing multiple calendars is cognitively expensive. It's more mental load that you have to think about, right?
Emily: Yeah. What if you put something on the wrong calendar accidentally? Yeah, for real. That's a real
Jase: problem, especially if you've got a work calendar mixed with personal calendars, right? That can be a real risk. Or like, I've got a shared calendar with my mom. Right? That Dedeker and my mom and my stepdad are all on one shared calendar. I don't use it very often, but it's like, I don't wanna accidentally put something on there that I don't want them to see, right? There's a lot of extra cognitive mental load there. And one of the things is that what people wanted to do with that was to set up their visibility. So it'd be like, My personal calendar just shows as busy or available to the people I share it with, but then our shared calendar you get to see all the details and we can both edit it. But they found a lot of people would mess that up or like didn't know how to set the settings right or thought it was private, but it wasn't. And then a conflict would come up because of something the other person saw in their calendar. I think we can all probably think of certain relationships we've had where that might have been more likely than others. If you've already got kind of a maybe more jealous or more tenuous relationship that every little thing can get scrutinized. Yeah. Yeah. But then on the other hand, by sharing your whole calendar, it's like this indicator of trust and intimacy, kind of like you were saying, Emily, of like, I don't know if I'm close enough with this person that I'll share that. So it's, I think the short thing here is that it's complicated. Yeah. It's definitely complicated. And so, and then a big issue of it is that a lot of the couples don't explicitly discuss their sharing boundaries. And kind of why they're setting up their calendars in a certain way. And so that's something we'll get into with kind of the takeaways. But a big important piece of this is actually communicating about it, not just sharing them or sharing parts of them, but also talking about why you do it in a certain way and how that fits with your values to then establish things like trust. Like the fact that you can't see details on my personal calendar is almost like just to simplify so you don't have to worry about that, but we need to have a certain level of trust there.
Emily: Do you feel like sharing your calendars in the way that you do with one another has helped your relationship, or has it created more challenge at times? It sounds like the issues that come up surrounding, like, the anxiety that you feel around calendaring that is sort of your own separate thing that doesn't necessarily have to do with the calendar itself or the act of putting, like, things on the calendar, but rather, like, Should I leave this open or not? And is my partner going to get mad at me if I do something wrong surrounding this calendar? Right. Because of that, I have
Jase: not found the shared calendar to help with that problem, because it's more about wondering about, oh, maybe she was just keeping that evening free for something. It's more of the stuff that's not on the calendar still causes the anxiety for me. But I will say that the shared calendar for us sharing a car, is super important. Because then when I'm scheduling an appointment, I can pull up her calendar. And I'll say, I have her calendar turned off most of the time. So when I'm looking at my own calendar, it's just my own calendar, but then I'll turn hers on so it becomes visible if I'm scheduling something where I realize, oh, shoot, I need to check if I'll be able to have the car at that time.
Emily: Why can't you just say, like, if we were to do something on this day, would that be okay? How does that feel to you? Well, that's just trust that her yes or no is real.
Jase: Well, right, yeah. That's the question I have too, Emily. That works when we do it. It works when we do it, but the problem is that adds an extra step to the process. So that's an extra step, and it also means that if it
Emily: helps with your anxiety, then what does it matter? Well, sure, but it's like,
Jase: is she always available? It's like, no, she's on a work trip. She's doing a coaching call. She's out doing her tea ceremony. And then also, also the other problem is- Blame it
Emily: on the tea ceremony.
Jase: Yes. If Dedeker complains about all the scheduling falls on her, when I then have to come to her about scheduling everything, it's not solving that problem either. What do you say to that, Dedeker? Sometimes I'm like, Hey, let's sit down and schedule this. And Dedeker is like annoyed that I couldn't just schedule that myself. Or like, no, why don't you just handle that?
Dedeker: Yeah, what do I say about all that? I don't know. I do think over the course of the past few years, like, you've gotten better at, like, let's say if you're coordinating with another partner, right? I think that you've gotten a lot better at, like, coordinating, making a decision with that partner, putting something in the calendar, and then either just be like, all right, that's my plan. It's great. Or sometimes coming to me and be like, hey, I scheduled this thing for Friday night. You know, that's my plan. Is that cool? I just want to double check with you, you know? Right? And I think that's been good. That's been. That's been fine, right? Yeah. And I've had
Jase: to very intentionally try to, like, build up that skill and kind of brace myself for the fact that you might have some complaint about it. And-
Dedeker: Jacy, make me sound like I'm so scary and awful. I know, right? It's
Jase: not that at all. It's not, it's not that
Dedeker: you're- Of course, we've run into, like, scheduling conflicts. I mean, and, I mean, you run into that in other relationships. I run into that in other relationships. It feels like it's pretty par for the course for being non-monogamous that, yeah, sometimes you run into scheduling conflicts and, oh no, we got to deal with it. I feel like with you and I, though, our history there, I don't think we have a really long history of scheduling conflicts becoming supercharged necessarily. Sure, of course sometimes, but I feel like most of the time it's more of like, oh, that's annoying. I gotta move this. Or, oh no, I thought this was, you know, I just want the people to know. I'm not biting Jase's head off every single
Jase: time there's a scheduling conflict with Jase problem. This is a me problem entirely of just not wanting my scheduling decisions to negatively impact anyone. Like, I only want people to be happy
Emily: with them, right? I'm just trying to ask probing questions. Sure, sure. Emily's just
Dedeker: trying to get up in there. Yeah, she's trying
Jase: to get up in there. No, I still have to, like, kind of go, okay, I'm gonna just put this, I'm just gonna make a decision. Like, it is hard. Like, it is something, but I do think that, like I mentioned before, that trying to just, like, take away that responsibility from me wouldn't be helping either of us either. Yeah, that's true. So
Dedeker: anyway, you know, the irony is, my CT ceremony classes are the only place where I keep a paper planner. Oh, wow. Again, welcome to the sidebar of Dedekers' multi-Japanese culture corner. Yeah, because there's specific planners that are specific to tea ceremony. Well, that's just cool. That's just cool. List all the important dates and important seasonal things you need to know. And so that's the only place in my life now where I use a paper planner. You see? Now you know. Yeah.
Emily: Let's continue. The more you know. So
Jase: basically to kind of sum up the findings from this particular study, it's just that the problem's complicated and that a lot of things don't get communicated about when they should. And so there's actually a 2025 study on digital privacy in relationships, like between couples, and they found that they typically rely on a quote, Privacy silence, which are these unspoken assumptions about what should be shared and what shouldn't, or what is shared and what isn't. And this works fine until it doesn't.
Dedeker: And I think, like, what I say is... Yeah, I think I've come across that term before in the research about privacy silence, about that we just, yeah, we have
Jase: these unspoken assumptions. Yeah. And I think that it's, I think there's sort of a monogamy silence that we've talked about before, too. Sure. Where monogamous people assume everyone else has the same definition of monogamy that they do, and it works fine until it doesn't, and sometimes it spectacularly doesn't, right? Where people have different standards of what counts as being monogamous. And I think with privacy, it's that too, right? So basically the takeaway is have explicit conversations about that, about how you're setting up your calendars and, you know, kind of looking at what's happened for you in the past, how can we address those? I like this helpful conversation that Emily's been facilitating with me and
Emily: Dedeker here. Such a good mediator. Yes.
Jase: Okay, now I just really quickly want to tell you about this math
Dedeker: paper. Okay, so math, okay, so mathematicians have proven that polyamory is impossible. That's
Jase: what you're telling me? Okay, so let me back up a little bit. So this is brand new. This is in 2024. There's three computer scientists at the University of Liverpool published a peer-reviewed paper. Called, quote, polyamorous scheduling. That's the name of it. And it was presented at the Fun with Algorithms conference, which I didn't know existed, but now I really want to go to that. Yes, it has your
Emily: name written all over it. Exactly, like something you'd love. Yeah. So the important thing
Jase: to kind of think about first year is that in this, they're using polyamory as an example, but this paper isn't really about polyamory. It's just inspired by. So this- It's based on the true story. Based on a true story of polyamory, yes. So this is actually very similar to things like if you've ever heard of the Traveling Salesman Problem, are you familiar with that one? No. Oh, really? Oh, gosh. I thought everyone knew that one. Basically, the Traveling Salesman Problem, the short version of it is you're her old-school door-to-door traveling salesman, and you've got to go to all of these cities. And the idea is you've got different roads between the different cities. Can you plot a route that minimizes your distance and doesn't take the same road twice and allows you to hit every city in the most efficient way? Right? So it's kind of this, it's based on a real-ish thing, but it's more about the mathematics of graph theory behind it. Right? There's another one that's called the Stable Marriage Problem, which is a little bit related. So the way this one works is you've got this is assuming all heterosexual couples for this mathematical issue. And also all of the people are just dots. Anyway, so you've got a bunch of people and each of the people has varying levels of interest in the other people. The question is, can you pair up these people into marriages such that no two unmarried people would rather be with each other than the people that they're with?
Dedeker: Wait, okay. Yeah. Okay, hold on. Gotta
Jase: wrap your head around that. Okay, so
Dedeker: it's all these dots, these dot people, who have various interests and compatibilities.
Jase: And there's male and female dots here, right? And they only go male to
Dedeker: female. Heterosexually. Can we connect them in such a way that they're with their ideal
Emily: partner? How do we know what their
Jase: ideal partner is? Oh, so we know who they like. Like we know which of the other people everyone likes. Okay. It's not about being with their ideal partner. It's just making sure that someone else in a different relationship, that you wouldn't rather be with them, and that they wouldn't also rather be with you. So it's sort of this weird, complicated problem. So maybe you're with, so maybe- I don't understand though,
Dedeker: because if you know who everybody likes, wouldn't you just pair them up with who everybody likes? Or do they like multiple
Jase: people? And they like multiple people. Oh,
Dedeker: I see. Okay. So it's not like an evenly distributed one person always likes one other person. No, no, no. Okay. Right, right. So like real life, sometimes.
Jase: Much like real life. Multiple people. Okay. They like multiple people, but in this, they like them specific amounts, right? Because it's like, okay. So the idea is like, maybe you're married to your second choice, but your first choice, you're not also their first choice. They like somebody else. Awkward. Rest. Painful. Basically, it's like, can you set
Dedeker: up a schedule? Much like real life.
Emily: Much like real life are some people not liked by anyone. You know, that I don't
Jase: know. I don't know the specifics of
Dedeker: this, but... Who's the sad little dot that's the least liked by everyone in
Emily: the group? It's really awkward. Yeah. As long as
Jase: they get matched up with someone else who at least doesn't like someone else who likes them back more. Oh, God, okay. Anyway, again, this is not actually helpful for marriages, but the research that went into solving that problem is used in medical residency matching today. Oh, yeah. So the idea is that when residency students are matched, it's that you don't, you use the algorithm that was figured out to solve this problem to not have it so a hospital that wished they had had that person and that person ended up at a different hospital, and they wished they'd been at that hospital. So it's to kind of maximize the satisfaction of everybody in their matching of which hospitals want them and which hospitals they want to work at. And kind of minimizing the disappointment or likelihood that they'll get together later and be like, I wanted to work there. And like, we wanted you too. Gotcha. Like, that doesn't work. Okay. Big, big preface there that this is really falls into the category of just abstract math problems, but it is called the polyamorous scheduling problem. So they modeled the group as a bunch of dots, right? So the people are all dots. This time there's no heterosexual nonsense here. They're at all, any dot can be with any other dot. And the lines between each of the dots are the different relationships. Some people have relationships, some don't, and that each person has a desired amount of time that they would like to spend in a relationship. And so the puzzle goes, years
Emily: or time like in a week, for instance.
Jase: Yeah, like once every three days, once every two days, once every week. Like however often, however frequently you want to see that person. So the puzzle goes like this. In a given day, each person can go on one date or can be with one person. Can you make a schedule that minimizes the amount that people wish they could be seeing a partner more and they're
Dedeker: not? I see. So closest to satisfaction
Jase: for everybody involved. Yes. And the way they described that is they used the word heat. So when you see a person, your heat goes down to zero. And then the heat increases as you don't see them after you wish that you could. Okay, so can you figure out a way to minimize that? Also, like real life, I've
Dedeker: lived through many moments of feeling like I'm on freaking fire going crazy because I can't see this person. Yes.
Jase: And so the conclusion here is basically that through this paper, they proved that this scheduling falls into the category of NP-hard problems. And don't worry too much about what that means, the math people out there. I see you, you know what I'm talking about. But there's this big, long-standing thing in computer science about P versus NP problems, and basically P problems, the short version is as the number of variables grows, the amount of time that it would take a, you know, computer or a system algorithm to solve that goes up. By a reasonable amount. We'll just simplify it to say, so it does get more complicated and it'll take longer, but within a reasonable time they could get solved versus NP problems are problems that grow so exponentially fast that you hit this point fairly early on that it's just there's not enough atoms in the universe to solve this problem, right? That the whole universe would die before you
Dedeker: could solve it. There's not enough atoms in the universe to solve the problem of polyamorous scheduling is That's
Jase: what you're saying. That's kind of what I'm saying, yeah. But basically, as you add variables, as you add people, okay, sure. To more people, more
Dedeker: preferences, more schedules, yes. Right. More people, more problems. It
Jase: very quickly goes out of control. And so an example of like why this is relevant in real life with NP problems is that an NP problem is really hard to solve, but easy to check if you got it right. So like Sudoku is an NP problem where it's hard to solve a Sudoku puzzle, but if you say, Hey, I've solved this, you can pretty easily just check all of the rows and columns and boxes and go, Yep, you did. Or no, you didn't. This is like the backbone of all computer cryptography online. What keeps us all safe is the fact that our encryption is an NP problem where you can, if you know the answer, you can check if the answer is right. If you don't know the answer, you can't figure out the answer in any reasonable human scale amount of time. So then I learned about this. I was like, okay, that's interesting, but it's probably like once you get to really big numbers of people. But here's the crazy thing. If you have three people that are in a relationship, each with each other. And- A triad. A triad. But in this world where you can't hang out with two people at the same time, right? Each day you can only hang out with one person. And each of those three people wishes they could hang out with each of their partners once every two days. If you think from the point of view of one person, yeah, every other day, I see this person, then the next day I see the other person. But when you look at the three, since each person can only be on one date, per day, it's impossible to solve that for just those three people if their desire is to see each of their other partners once every other day. You could think about this like spending the night, right? Say we have a triad and it's like, I want to spend the night with each of you every other night, and you both want the same thing, that there's mathematically that is impossible to solve for all three
Dedeker: people. As in, it creates a situation where someone is having to take a hit of not seeing their partner as frequently as they would like to. If you
Jase: think about this in just three people here, or again, because only one, a person can only be with one other person on one day. So if two people are together, by definition, that third person is not with either of them, because they're both spoken for. So it's someone has to be alone. So the most that you could see your two other partners is once every three days. Okay, I see. And so again, it's just sort of mathematically interesting to look at that. But I think where it becomes relevant is to show that within rigid constraints, you can very easily find situations like that that are literally impossible to solve. But we have the advantage of being humans who can communicate and emotionally regulate and these sorts of things. And so in that, it's like, yeah, if you want to see your partner every other day, not possible in this rigid setup. But if you're willing to say, once every three days, suddenly, great, we can solve it within that
Dedeker: small group. Like, once every three days, but then I text with you the other two days. Sure. Right. Like, so I still
Jase: feel connected to you. Yeah, yeah, right. So I still feel connected to you. And then I get one day to myself each week, or each three days, I get one day to myself. I bring this up mostly for fun. I just think this is fun that someone actually made a math problem. And so, like, super famous problems that everybody knows, like the traveling salesman problem, but now there's a polyamorous scheduling problem. So I think it's cool that we're also in sort of of the annals
Dedeker: of math, of math jokes, really. Of
Jase: known NP problems, and specifically that it's an NP hard problem, which is a designation of problems within NP that are really hard to solve, that do this kind of exponential growth thing as they get more complicated. So anyway, the takeaway is be flexible and don't try to make too rigid of rules. And I know that sounds trite, but we do see that a lot where people will go into non-monogamous relationships saying, okay, here's my deal though, cuz I'm primary. I need X number of nights of your week per week to be with me. And like, just acknowledge that the more rigid those are, the more unsolvable this can become as you add more variables.
Dedeker: What a
Jase: lesson.
Emily: What a lesson, right? Math solved it. Yes.
Jase: Okay, now we're gonna give everyone a break to sort of calm down. Whether you're calming down 'cause you were so excited to talk about math like me, or calm down because you totally spaced out or, you know, had to binge drink to get through that, whatever it is. We're gonna take a little ad break, and then we're gonna come back with some actionable tools. So thank you to our sponsors. Please check 'em out. Use our promo codes, use the links in the show description. That really does help support our show, or you can support us directly by going to multiamory.com/join.
Jase: And we're back. So I've got four quick tools I've come up with here to help with this based on the research. And the first one is the one we just talked about, which is when you're thinking about scheduling, don't try to make it perfect. If you can just settle for good enough, like realizing that minimizing heat that they did in that math paper, that's the best that you can hope for. You most likely can't find a perfect solution, but to communicate about that. And to maybe even ask yourself that question when you're approaching a new week, what relationship has the most heat of which is the one that feels like it needs the most maintenance right now or that I need to spend some time with. And then also just have conversations with your partners about this. Like, hey, here's realistically what's going on. I also need my time to recharge. And just sort of acknowledging like, this is hard. You're not alone. Like, math proved it. It's hard. It's impossible. So give yourself a break, right? Good enough is good enough. All right, number two. This is something that actually comes from the Gottmans, which they call rituals of connection, which I'm calling anchor rituals. Which is basically to simplify your scheduling by having routines, right? Having like a regular Saturday brunch or something like that, right? This could be with a group of people, could be with one. And what's interesting about the Gottman research here is that they found that having these sorts of rituals, what mattered about them is that both people were actively invested in them, that one person wasn't just like going through the motions. But what they found is that what the activity was actually didn't matter at all in terms of the relationship satisfaction and happiness. So whether that was just, you know, we watch Law and Order Thursday nights together and like have a glass of wine and that's our fun connection time, or it's we go out on a date or do something a little more elaborate, that didn't matter as long as both people looked forward to it and were invested and actively engaged in it. Have you ever had anything like that? Do we have anything
Dedeker: like that? What you and I...
Jase: the three of us?
Dedeker: the three of us? Well, I don't know. I mean, Jason, you and I, we've gone back and forth over the years of like having a regular date night or sometimes splitting it up into like a regular date night that's like outside of the house versus like quality time, like intentional date night time inside of the house. I think that's been the main thing.
Emily: Yeah. Yeah. Very specified rituals. I'm trying to think for all of us. This is something that we just tend to do, but before our meetings, we kind of shoot the shit for, I don't know, 10-15 minutes. Just to sort of warm up.
Jase: oh, that's longer than 10-15 minutes.
Emily: Sometimes it's much longer. That was aspirational, but 20 to 30 minutes sometimes. But that's kind of nice. I mean, it's nice to sort of reset and check in on how everyone's doing, especially if it's been like a week or two that we've
Jase: talked. Do you have rituals in your
Dedeker: relationship right now, Emily? I'm trying to
Emily: think about that. Yeah, I mean, we have things that, like, we really enjoy doing together. And when we worked together, we tended to, you know, sometimes on certain days, like, go out to certain places that had bartenders, for instance, that we knew, and it would be nice to, like, see them. But it's harder now that both of us don't work together anymore, and we have, like, a little bit more unspecified schedules. So I think what we do try to do is make sure that, like, every weekend we see each other. That we spend a couple nights a week together, at least two to three generally, and then it's kind of specific to the night or to the day what it is that we do. But
Jase: that's kind of a ritual where it's like weekend is the time, so you kind of know to expect like, oh, weekends when we're gonna get together. Exactly. That's nice. So this is one that's particularly helpful also for monogamous folks as well as polyamorous folks. That whole, like, all we have together is default time. We don't have any intentional time. So just setting aside even, like, a walk every week or a morning coffee of, like, on Sundays, we don't get out our phones for the first hour of the day and just have coffee together or something like that. And then the one where I think I would actually love to do this more is with friends. And I think finding the right cadence is the challenge, but something like a monthly dinner. Where it's like, you know, you invite all your friends over to your house once a month or once a quarter or however often you can manage. Yeah. I think that that'd be something nice with, yeah, with some of my friends. I'm like, yeah, like we'll have times where we're regular, but it'll be like weekly. We'll play games together or something, and then we'll have several months of not anything at all. So maybe it's finding a schedule that's easier to maintain. Yeah, I do think the
Dedeker: more that you can create, like I said it and forget it, situation with scheduling, it does help with that. Like, yeah, I do have a friend who I just pitched to her, Hey, like, let's meet quarterly, right? Like, again, something like, I got a busy life, you got a busy life, right? And let's just set it up as a recurring calendar event. And like, if we have to move it, we can move it. If we have to reschedule it, we can. And like, and we do have to, but like, it's in the calendar at this, like, cadence that's, again, not too intense. And that's been really nice and it's made it really, really easy. To maintain. Yeah,
Jase: that's a great point. And so I
Dedeker: think that would be my advice to people also, if this is something you're struggling with, of just like, just put something repeating in your calendar and then just see what happens, right? It's okay if it doesn't happen perfectly, right? But I do think that this is a situation where if you want to sit down with your friend or your partner or whatever, we have to hash out what's it going to look like for the next six months. Like, which day is it going to be that's going to work for the next six months? It's like, that's not going to go very well and it's probably going to produce a lot of that anxiety. But if you just like put it in there and then It's like create the structure, but then create flexibility around the structure. I found that
Jase: that tends to help. Yeah, I find in calendars too, setting something to be on a certain day of the week. So it's like make this every second Sunday or something like that rather than on a numbered day. So then you can just put it in, boop, it shows up. And then when it's coming up, you go, oh, actually, I'm going to be out of town this weekend. So going along with this is another thing that actually Jedidah and I do with this is we set it up scheduled in advance is doing our radars. And, you know, that's our check-in. If you're not familiar with what I'm talking about, go check out multiamory.com/radar or go listen to, I think it's like episode six or something like that. It's one of the early episodes where we talk about radar is sort of a regular check-in, but we have our set up that way. So then as it gets closer, we can scooch it, move it back a week, change it if we have to, but we know it's there. So it's kind of like, we'll deal with that when we get closer to it. But it's also a great time to do tool number three here, which is capacity forecasting. Now that's, it's like a terrible name. I probably shouldn't have called it capacity forecasting. That sounds so like corporate. But it's basically having some kind of regular check-in that's just about kind of how overwhelmed you're feeling. And the idea here is to avoid canceling last minute, which can trigger a lot of negative feelings and can make that heat grow even faster if something was planned and then gets canceled. And then also just gives people a heads up about your energy. So it could just be something regularly at the beginning of the week or maybe midweek as you're coming up toward the weekend to be like, okay, this week has been really intense for me. We've got our regular time that we see each other is Saturday. Just heads up, I'm probably gonna wanna do something really low-key and not go out and party. That's just gonna be too much. But it's sort of having a check-in about your overall bandwidth. And at a radar, this could be maybe on a macro scale for the next month. This is kind of what I anticipate. Like, I think I'm going to be really busy because I'm traveling for work or like my mom's sick and I'm taking care of her, so I know I'm going to be extra busy this month. But then even just a more frequent weekly check-in could be a really helpful thing. And it could just be a text, right? It doesn't have to be like a meeting. Right. So not capacity forecasting in that way. What's interesting is, so a study for this one was from Stanton and Campbell, 2015, from the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, found that when anxiously attached people are prompted to think about relationship threats, like rejection or a partner pulling away, it creates measurable cognitive load that then impairs their performance on everything in their life. Not just tasks related to that, but just kind of everything, because that that base level anxiety is increased and that this didn't happen for securely attached people or when anxious people thought about non-relationship stressors, that that didn't have as big an impact because our relationships are so important to us and how we function. And so that's an argument for why having these capacity check-ins can help short circuit this by replacing this threatening ambiguity of why have they not scheduled something with me now? Why did they cancel that? Why don't we have more things on the calendar with more concrete information of, okay, this is about not me, right? This is about Dan, this is about that going on. To again, do things to eliminate sort of the unknowns and the uncertainty, which is where we started
Emily: this. Yeah, I think that unknown from my partner, from other people in my life, that is the thing that does tend to cause me anxiety, like in a variety of of different factors and ways. And I think that's such a good way of helping to mitigate that and to work through it, hopefully, between partners, especially if you can do it maybe on a monthly basis and then maybe even a weekly basis. If I'm seeing my partner on Sunday and then I know Monday is coming up, the new week is coming up to say what's on the docket for the week or what do you anticipate happening? And then that can kind of hopefully give me some understanding of how available or not he might be. Yeah, I will say
Jase: with that, it goes back to the communication piece because I've sometimes had relationships where that question of like, what's your week look like this week? Makes me feel stressed out about like, oh gosh, like, okay, well, I don't know yet, but I know I'm probably going to be busy, but they're asking me now, like, when am I free? Like, I interpret it as that question. So I do think there's, communication that needs to go into that as well of kind of maybe reframing it as not just like, what do you have going on this week, but sort of
Emily: overall exciting things, your capacity or yeah, sure. Like, do you have anything that you're excited about this week? I don't know. Yeah, that reframing is smart. That's something that doesn't feel anxiety inducing to that individual, but rather, what are you looking forward to? Or what are things, you know, are there specific events that you're looking forward to this week? Just again, so that each of you can try to lessen the anxiety that may or may not occur from that conversation. Or
Jase: modeling what it is you're looking for by sharing what you've got going on first. So it is kind of this, like, what's your week look like this week? For me, like, I've got these things coming up. I think I'm probably gonna be tired this week. Or like, you know, all these meetings got canceled on my schedule. So, you know, my manager's taking the week off, so I've got a chill week this week, whatever it is. Just to kind of give a sense of like, you just want an overall impression, not here's the days you're available, I'm going to claim all of them. Totally. Which can definitely be a problem in any relationship, really. We've covered a lot of ground here, and I think for me, this might be a lesson that I need to go back and like listen to this episode again to remind myself of these, because we had a lot of information in this one. But I think there's a lot to unpack here. And also just as a little teaser for myself, I've been thinking a lot about like, what would a calendaring app look like if it were more emotionally focused and less logistical focused? Interesting. Like for example, if someone in a work context, we're like, oh yeah, let's have a meeting about this. And they send me their Calendly link. I immediately am like, well, whatever. Like, I don't want to schedule with you then. You're putting this on me? Yeah,
Dedeker: I'm excited. I like this is great. Okay, because this is, because the thing that drives me crazy is when people are like, Cool, let's meet. I'm free on Mondays, Wednesdays between 2:45 and 6:45 Eastern, or maybe on this particular date, like, no, I want the Calendly link, Jase. Wow. All these people who send Calendly links to Jase, just send them to me. I feel soothed by
Jase: that. Good. That's interesting. That's really interesting because I often, like, if someone sends me that, I'll be like, no, I'll send you my Calendly link. Like, take that, you book with me. Because I don't know, somehow for me it brings up like the whole, I'm making an appointment with my doctor or something, where it's kind of like I'm having to come to them to be like, Can I please get your time? So
Dedeker: it's about power for you. Okay, sorry. This is all about coming back to you making a calendar app that's more emotionally focused rather
Jase: than logistically focused. Right. And then also thinking about like, how do you manage privacy that's not, oh, I've got to check all these boxes and make all these custom groups and figure out all this complicated stuff to like, how do I set up a calendar that feels like it's focused more on people interacting with people, whether you're using it professionally or not? So anyone out there who had some interesting thoughts about that, hit me up in our Discord. You can go check that out@multiamory.com/discord. You can get information about it. And then of course you get access to all our channels if you join our community@multiamory.com/join. I've been thinking about this a lot recently, so curious what other people think about it. We also have our Question of the Week on our Instagram Stories, which is what's one scheduling habit that has helped or hurt your relationships the most? Very curious to hear what people have to say about that. You can do that on our Instagram@multiamorypodcast. You can answer anonymously and then we can repost those. The best place to share your thoughts with other listeners, if you want to talk about this more, is in the episode discussion channel. On our Discord server, or you can post in our private Facebook group. You can get access to these groups and join our exclusive community by going to multiamory.com/join. In addition, you can share with us publicly on Instagram.
Jase: Multiamory is created and produced by Emily Matlack, Dedeker Winston, and me, Jase Lindgren. Our production assistant is Carson Collins. Our theme song is Forms I Know I Did by Josh and Anand from the Fractal Cave EP. This episode's transcript is available on this episode's page on multiamory.com.