587 - Discomfort Around Sex: Listener Q&A

Guilt and sex

We’re diving into another listener question this week! Today’s Q&A focuses on discomfort around sex, even when openly non-monogamous. The listener question we’ll be discussing today is:

Is it common to still feel some discomfort or shame about having sex with someone outside your primary relationship even after being poly for a long time?

Despite having been open (at least to anyone I’d date) about being polyamorous, and even after establishing boundaries and building connection with someone new (who is also non monogamous and totally on board), I often feel heavy and some kind of guilt-like emotions, even if I don't believe I’m doing anything wrong or causing anyone pain (my primary partner is highly compersive, and they are supportive and also date other people.) Is this common in polyamorous relationships, or is it just lingering Purity Culture :(?

Mistakenly in the Midwest

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Transcript

If you find any transcription errors, please let us know at info@multiamory.com and we will fix it ASAP.

Jase: Looking at your social group and then also looking at your feelings about this, how have they changed over time? And I know sometimes that's hard to recall because it might always seem like it used to be better in the past or that it used to be worse in the past. But to try to think about, did I used to feel this same level of guilt or fear of my partner's reaction?

Emily: No.

Jase: Or has this changed? And then look at, is it because I'm exposed to more people suffering from this, or is it just that this is less a normal part of my social group right now? That's an interesting question, and I'm already asking myself this.

Jase: Welcome to the Multiamory Podcast. I'm Jase.

Emily: I'm Emily.

Dedeker: And I'm Dedeker Winston.

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 do relationships differently, we see you and we're here for you.

Jase: On this episode of the Multiamory Podcast, we're talking about still feeling discomfort or even shame about having sex with a new person, even after you've been polyamorous for a long time and everybody is on board with it. Sex is something that can carry a lot of baggage with you for a long time. And so today we're going to get into a Listener Q&A about that and see if we can figure out why this is, what's going on here, and what can we do about it. If you're interested in learning more 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 and can help a lot when having these kinds of harder conversations as well. You can find links to buy it at multiamory.com/book or just go to your local bookstore and ask them to have it in stock if they don't already.

Dedeker: A quick disclaimer: the three of us have spent a lot of time learning about healthy relationship communication, but also a part of what makes relationships so interesting is that they're all different. So everybody's situation is unique. As you're listening to this person's story, we encourage you to use your own judgment, seek professional help if needed, and remember that you are the only expert on your own life and feelings, and your decisions are your own.

Emily: Alrighty, here's the question. Is it common to still feel some discomfort or shame about having sex with someone outside your primary relationship, even after being poly for a long time? Despite having been open, at least to anyone I date, about being polyamorous, and even after establishing boundaries and building connection with someone new who is also non-monogamous and totally on board, I often feel heavy and some kind of guilt-like emotions, even if I don't believe I'm doing anything wrong or causing anyone pain. My primary partner is highly Compersive, and they are supportive and also date other people. Is this common in polyamorous relationships, or is it just lingering purity culture? Signed mistakenly in the Midwest.

Dedeker: Well, that was—

Jase: they accidentally ended up in the Midwest.

Dedeker: Maybe.

Emily: Yeah, I'm not sure why they're mistaken.

Dedeker: This is a mistake. I didn't mean to be here. Also that last question is, or is it just lingering purity culture, colon frowny face, also a little frowny emoticon as well. Can we start out talking about purity culture?

Emily: Content warning, content warning, content warning in case that's upsetting to you, but I'm glad that we're doing that because that is not something that I am super duper familiar with, with the exception of what you two have spoken to me about going through it on our other podcast, Drunk Bible Study. We talked about this a little bit, but it's not something that I'm super duper familiar with, with the exception of how it permeates just regular Western culture, puritanical stuff and all that.

Dedeker: Well, I'll set to the side that in America, we already have a long legacy of sex negativity, stemming from our puritanical roots in general. So of course, that's something that influences everybody and is probably at play here. But because this person specifically cited purity culture capitalized as well, I'm gonna make the guess that they're referring to this very particular Christian flavor of purity culture and sex negativity that I was raised in, that Jase was raised in, that still exists. I mean, I don't run in those Christian circles anymore so much, but just from the little bits I see, it still exists in its own 2010s-era form. However, I do think that the version that Jase and I grew up with in the '90s, early 2000s was a very particular peak of Christian purity culture where there was just this extreme obsession with making sure the young people don't have sex before marriage and the young people don't talk about sex and don't think about sex. And so we're going to write all these books for them that talk about not thinking about and not talking about sex. We're going to create all these programs and Sunday school and youth group activities that are all about them not talking about and not thinking about sex.

Emily: And look where that got us now.

Dedeker: I know, I know. Here I am. Here Jase is. Here we all are.

Emily: Well, not just that, but hearing you speak about all of that makes me think of the fact that I guess Gen Z and Gen Alpha aren't having sex.

Dedeker: Allegedly. Yeah. That's, that's a whole other thing.

Emily: A whole other can of worms.

Dedeker: But yes. But in a nutshell, so in a nutshell, as I was trying to evoke, there was this weird irony that this movement was so sex-obsessed, in my view, but its stated aim was about making sure people don't have sex, making sure people keep themselves quote-unquote pure until they get married. A lot of very misogynistic emphasis on women being the gatekeepers of sex, and they need to be modest because if a man quote-unquote stumbles, it's her fault if she's dressing too provocatively or things like that. Yeah, I signed not one but two purity pledges that I would save myself for marriage. So I'm in a contract with God twice, twice over.

Emily: Two contracts with God.

Jase: Wow.

Dedeker: So the first thing I want to say to Mistakenly in the Midwest is you're definitely not alone in this. There are so many people, poly or not, who were raised in this particular flavor in this particular era of purity culture and have fortunately since recognize just how extremely damaging it was and how much it encouraged people to distrust their bodies, how much for a lot of people— because I have a lot of friends who were Christian who got married, for instance, way too young and got married way too young mostly because they wanted to have sex and that was the only way that they could have sex. And where it was this weird culture where sex is extremely discouraged, but then once you're married, then it's like, great, let her rip, you who have had no sexual communication and no education around pleasure or anything about what you like. Yeah, now just go have a healthy sexual relationship. And it messed a lot of people up. So all that to say is that it's quite possible it's lingering purity culture. That seems pretty reasonable to expect here, that, yeah, on top of the fact that we already live in a pretty sex-negative culture, that, yeah, it just means that sex is gonna feel inherently wrong or inherently dirty or inherently selfish sometimes. And I think that then that can get amplified when it's something maybe quote unquote more subversive like this, of being polyamorous, even when you're getting all these messages from the people that you care about that, no, this is good. Of course, with my somatic background, I'm kind of like, yeah, your brain can get all these messages, but your body probably still remembers the tension of not letting yourself feel pleasure, or not letting yourself feel arousal, or not letting yourself explore something sexually, right? And the body can sometimes hang on to these things for a longer time.

Emily: I never grew up with any of that, but I do think that it tends to be in our culture in general, especially maybe millennial culture, like what you're talking about, Dedeker Winston. I feel like a lot of us grew up around this idea still that marriage is where you should have sex for the first time. And I even received that message even though I was in no way religious growing up.

Dedeker: Where did you get that message from?

Emily: My mother.

Dedeker: Do you remember? Really?

Jase: Absolutely.

Emily: Yeah. I think that it was something that she— she put it as though, sex just makes everything more complicated, which, I mean, yes. And I think that when I did start having sex, that was a little bit of a shock and a little bit of a challenge for her, which is understandable for a lot of people. I think seeing their child go off in the world and start having sex is a— it's a big milestone for anyone. But I just want to say, even if those of you are out there having similar feelings come up, it may not even be linked to necessarily religion or religious baggage.

Dedeker: It's still in the air.

Emily: It's still in the air. It's all in the air. And that is just something for all of us to be aware of, because unpacking that probably takes years, and it's not going to be something that's fixed overnight by just knowing that, okay, all of my partners are they're ushering me into feelings of Compersion for everyone involved, and it should be great. And yet, I still have this lingering feeling, and I think that that's completely understandable. I've definitely had moments in my life with certain partners where I've felt more or less guilty about engaging with certain people. They were not similar to this because this sounds like an ideal scenario. But when there was any tension around me sleeping with someone else or getting close to or intimate with someone else within my more primary relationship or more established relationship, that's when I tended to feel more guilty about engaging in any sort of sex or sex act with someone else.

Jase: I agree that this— that the purity culture thing influences it a lot, of internalizing these feelings of guilt. But I think that there's also this aspect, if we're looking at the question asker here talking about feeling guilt about it, and they mention their partner being very compersive and positive and everything about it, but it feels like if I'm reading between the lines, part of this is not just their own guilt, but this guilt that if I'm doing this, it must be hurting somebody else, right? This must be hurting my partner somehow. And I agree that that's one where that level of guilt really changes partner to partner, but I feel like it can also just change over time based on not just how your relationship's going, but just how things are going culturally, or what sort of conversations are happening around you, right? Like, how much are you exposed to other people being upset by those things? And so you're like, oh, I'm worried about that happening to me if I sleep with someone else, then my partner's all upset about it. Or, I know that during the MeToo movement, a lot of stuff changed in terms of what we're paying attention to. Right. And then it resulted in these very drastically diverging paths for for men and I think for women too. But, you know, for men, there was kind of this drastically diverging either I'm terrible or I'm going to be really defensive. Right. And it was hard for there to be a middle ground there. And I think that all of us collectively are still trying to figure out what that means now. Like, how do we— how do we exist? But it may be increased an amount of fear that you might accidentally hurt somebody without realizing it. Maybe that extends in this case to your partner when you sleep with someone new. So I feel like there's just a lot of stuff going on there, and I feel like what we worry about can be very influenced by our social groups, whether that's online or whether that's in person. But I just wonder, for this question asker, has this always been the case, or do you feel like you've noticed this more recently? And do you think this could be related to— is this conversation happening a lot more within your friend group or your online communities or something like that? Just as a place to explore, as a place to look into.

Dedeker: You know, that's so interesting you point that out, because I think for myself personally, it's why whenever there's a new op-ed on polyamory or whatever, or people are like, this person wrote this big takedown of non-monogamy or whatever, I really just try my best to not engage with it because sometimes when I do, even if I'm like, oh, this person's stupid, or their arguments are bad, or I know that what this person thinks doesn't reflect my values or who I am, there is still something about that. I think our monkey brains still wait— yeah, our social context and what other people think about us, again, below this level of even conscious thought where you can consciously know, yeah, I don't agree with that, but that information still gets in there. And that's really Interesting.

Jase: Before we continue diving into this, we're going to take a quick break to talk about some sponsors for this show. We do really appreciate them for supporting us, letting us do this show for free every week. But of course, if you would rather support us directly, if you appreciate what we're doing here, you can go to multiamory.com/join and join our community there, and you'll get access to things like our monthly video groups, as well as our amazing invite-only exclusive community. Really great place to process and talk about questions exactly like this.

Dedeker: Okay, I'm gonna bring us back in with a confession.

Emily: Oh, please.

Dedeker: which is that I experienced this, to be totally honest.

Emily: Oh, really?

Dedeker: Yeah. Well, I don't know if I feel heaviness and guilt, but I even still to this day, after what feels like 600 years of polyamory, I still feel a weird anxiety around having sex with other people. And for me it manifests, Jase, as really wanting your approval or your stamp of approval. Because again, I have a similar situation, I think, to mistakenly in the Midwest where it's like you've never gotten upset with me, you've never punished me. me having sex with someone else has never necessarily been the source of huge destructive relationship conflict or stuff like that. you're very compersive, you're very supportive, and you're also dating other people and stuff like that. But I still will have this lingering anxiety of like, but I gotta make sure that he's okay with it, that you give me the stamp of approval. Yeah.

Jase: And so here's the thing, I have to confess something too.

Dedeker: Oh boy, are we all going to confess something?

Emily: Sure, we can all confess.

Dedeker: Are you also in breach of contract with God?

Jase: I actually never signed one of those.

Dedeker: Okay, good.

Jase: All of my promises were verbal only, handshake agreements with God.

Dedeker: Okay, that's the way to do it.

Emily: Wait, you and God shook hands that you wouldn't have sex before marriage? I also broke your promise to God.

Jase: Yeah, it wasn't in writing. Not in writing like Dedeker.

Emily: Dedeker, did you have a promise ring?

Dedeker: I didn't, no. Never went to the ring stage.

Emily: Or a purity ring? Okay.

Dedeker: Just the contract stage.

Emily: Got it. So you weren't married to God.

Dedeker: No.

Jase: Yeah. No, but I listened to a lot of Purity Ring, the band. They're not a Christian band, but—

Dedeker: Jase, we need to hear your confession though.

Jase: Yeah, sorry. My confession. Is that— I really struggle with that. I struggle with—

Emily: oh, you do?

Jase: Guilt about having sex with someone, not even the first time, but every time. There is a part of me that just feels like this time's gonna upset her. This time Dedeker is going to feel hurt by it, or something, right? Or that person's other partner is going to be upset this time.

Dedeker: Like, I—

Jase: and I feel like for me it's gotten worse in the last few years, and I don't know why. And I do wonder if it's an unfortunate side effect of just getting exposed to a lot of other people suffering and going through hard things. Sure. I don't know if it's that or if there's something else going on in my life like a heightened desire for safety or something. I don't know.

Dedeker: I do get that from working with clients. Sometimes you get this weird, secondary knock-on effect.

Emily: Yeah, you know, for sure.

Dedeker: I always hesitate to call it secondary trauma because that feels like too dramatic, but sometimes it's like your brain perceives that you're in this— I don't know, you're in this group of people where this is normal for people to be really upset by these things, and so therefore that's a risk that I need to be scanning for.

Jase: Yeah, yeah.

Emily: This is tough because I was in a relationship where if I did anything sexual with someone else, that was cause for me to get punished.

Dedeker: Yeah.

Jase: And so you actually did have that experience?

Emily: 100%. But I do think that now I, I don't know if I want to say punished, but I probably could be better about being more Compersive when my partner has sex, which is a lot more than I do. And I think again, when I look at— if we're looking at a gendered construct of having sex with other people and the frequency and the barrier to entry and all of those things, generally, it's a lot less scary for a guy in a heterosexual relationship to go out and have sex with a woman There's always the question when a woman goes out and maybe picks someone up, am I going to be safe? And that means a lot of things. That means sexual safety, that means pregnancy risk, that means physical safety. Am I going to get hurt by this person or worse? And I think that I recently have really, I have taken that, all of that baggage into consideration when it comes to sleeping with other people. Before I get to know them. And so I just really haven't much. And this question asker has not revealed or said anything about their gender or pronouns, and therefore clearly we've got stuff on all sides of this. Yeah, that's the thing though, right? And what I was going to say before is that I was going to say, they're talking about primacy and they're talking about primary partners, and I wondered if potentially they were once monogamous and then became non-monogamous, and if there's residual baggage from feeling like, oh, when we were monogamous, this would have been a problem if I had slept with someone else. And so with this specific person, I feel bad. But the two of you, for instance, have never been monogamous, and yet you still feel this, which is really fascinating to me. What the hell is going on there, guys?

Jase: Yeah, something that was occurring to me while we're thinking about this, because we focused before on what sort of negative focus you're exposed to. But I think there's also the flip side of that, of the people in your social group, whether this is other partners or this is just within your friend group and your social group. But are they having casual sex? And that's like a normal part of conversation that comes up, because I'm also thinking back and I feel like that's changed for me, that I feel like I used to be—

Emily: absolutely right—

Jase: more socially involved with more sex-positive community groups and at least in the last few years, I feel like my friend group has been more monogamous and more coupled. I think part of that's just getting a little bit older, that less single friends sleeping around as well. And so it also could be that of just feeling like, oh, this is abnormal, versus being in a social context where, oh yeah, that's what we do, this is fun, this is— everyone's having a great time, everyone's loving it. Yeah. Or even just hearing about your friends having hookups and whatever, that that's a normal part of what you do. So, right, yeah, I suppose maybe I'm putting too much emphasis on, oh, it's all because you're focusing on the negative, and it could just be this is less— seems less normal. Because I was just thinking about while you were talking about that, Emily, of your partner having more sex with other people. And I feel like in a way that might be a relief for me because then I'm like, well, then I don't have to feel guilty because yeah, you got all that going on, this would be fine. Versus I think especially during times when I know Dedeker Winston's not dating as much, I do feel like my fear of guilt or whatever about dating or having sex is higher. And maybe that's not just, oh, because she'll think it's unfair, but maybe it's just what I'm exposed to or what seems normal around me.

Dedeker: Wait, hold on, but is this just because the three of us are perfectionist overthinkers about everything in life? And that could be part of it too.

Jase: That could be part of it too. But hey, we might not be the only ones who do that. So this could be helpful to someone out there.

Emily: Yes, probably many of us feel this way.

Jase: Yeah. So I feel like there's a lot of questions here that I want to ask myself, but also I think our question asker can ask themself, which is that, looking at your social group and then also looking at your feelings about this, how have they changed over time? And I know sometimes that's hard to recall because it might always seem like it used to be better in the past or that it used to be worse in the past. But to try to think about, did I used to feel this same level of guilt or fear of my partner's reaction?

Emily: No.

Jase: Or has this changed? And then look at, is it because I'm exposed to more people suffering from this, or is it just that this is less a normal part of my social group right now? That's an interesting question, and I'm already asking myself this, but I think that could be an approach here as well because it might change what you'd want to do about it. And that's something I want to get into in a little bit here too, is what, what can we look at? Do we have any stats about this? What can we do?

Dedeker: Well, I don't have stats. I have what my suggestions would be, if I was working with this person, especially somatically, right? Because that's my specialty. Yeah. So, I see two possibilities here— two options, I'll say, not two possibilities— two options. One of them is that, if you're feeling like, I'm ready to explore this, I'm ready to get curious about what's actually here, that's an opportunity for when you notice those moments of the heaviness or the guilt, that's like, okay, I'm actually gonna sit with it. I'm not gonna distract myself. I'm not gonna go seek comfort. I'm not gonna distract myself with my phone. I'm gonna actually sit with it and feel it. Feel what it feels like in my chest or in my stomach or in my limbs or whatever it is. Getting curious about what does this actually feel like? And then seeing what happens, right? And so, when you actually sit with a body sensation, sometimes it shifts into something else. Sometimes it disappears. Sometimes it's like, oh, this guilt that I've actually been struggling to not feel, this heaviness that I've actually been struggling to not feel, once I actually sit and feel it, then it only lasted 7 seconds, and now it's gone, and now I'm moving on, right? Or it may evoke something important for you, right? Like, when you actually sit and feel that heaviness in your chest, it may evoke a particular memory from your upbringing in purity culture, or it may evoke a particular memory of a past partner, right, that your body may be like, right, this feels like this time before when things were much more scary and it was much more dangerous for me to be having sex with somebody else. And that's just interesting information, right, about the ways that your nervous system and your body is trying to protect you by evoking these similar feelings. So that's one piece, is to explore it if you're feeling like you have the resources and the capacity to do so. But if you're not feeling that, then I think the other place is to just take care of your body and try to introduce alternative states to your body, like counterstates to the guilt and the heaviness as much as possible. So what that means would be like, let's say you feel the heaviness and the guilt come in right after you're done having sex with your other partner, and that's a cue to you to lean in and cuddle, or ask for them to hold you really tight, or ask for them to go on a walk with you, or really trying to lean into— I'm gonna try to maximize actually the pleasant sensations for my body in this moment, even if it's still there, even if the guilt is still there, the heaviness is still there, right? But I'm also trying to introduce this information into my body that it is physically safe in this situation, and it can be physically soothed in this situation that it thinks might be dangerous. And then same thing, like when you come home to your primary partner, lean into having them hug you and cuddle you and soothe you. Just trying to introduce as much comfort, relief, soothing, safety signals to your body as possible. And if you actually let yourself attune to that and actually really pay attention to what that's like, that is something that can help shift that over time. It takes time, but it can help to shift, just giving your body different information. Because again, it sounds like your brain— you can tell yourself, I'm on board with this, this is what I want, and I know my new partner over here is non-monogamous and totally on board, and my primary partner is really compersive and supportive and whatever. But the thing I say all the time is that everything from the neck down doesn't speak English, so it doesn't understand the logical, the cognitive part. You need to introduce that message of safety via the language that your body actually understands.

Emily: That also made me think about the conditions in which you maybe speak about sleeping with someone else with your partner, meaning that it doesn't have to be a big, 'okay, sit down, we're going to talk about the fact that I slept with someone last night,' but rather it's a little bit more off the cuff, matter of fact. 'Hey, I just wanted to let you know, I ended up going home with someone last night. We had fun. It was cool. I spent the night. I didn't. Might hit them up again at some point', but that it's not this big to-do because I do think the body is also sort of primed to when it's a sit-down conversation. 'Oh yeah, we're about to brace, we're about to tense, we're about to get scared.' And your nervous system reacts in a very specific way to that type of conversation rather than something that's a little bit more off the cuff or just 'hey, I'm kind of vibing with someone. I might not be available via text the rest of the night because I'm not sure what's going to happen, but I might end up going home with them. So yeah, just wanted to let you know.' And then that way, also having your partner be able to reflect back to you, 'great, have a great time.' And the two of you sort of having this reciprocal 'everything's okay'.

Dedeker: Kind of like a fake it till you make it.

Emily: Exactly. Yeah. Fake it till you make it. I think I've gotten in a lot of trouble on either end of that, making it into such a big to-do when it doesn't need to be. When, you know, if you're kind of abiding by all of the parameters that the two of you have put in place for your relationship, your agreements, etc. As long as those things are happening, it's chill.

Dedeker: Yeah.

Jase: So I did try to do a little bit of research into this, and it's hard because it's such a niche topic in the context of non-monogamy, right? Because if you look at feelings of guilt about sex just in general, the type of research is generally either around focusing on feeling guilt afterward. Which a lot of that research tends to be focused on women and showing that that's more likely for women to feel that, super cool. And then for men, some of it is the kind of more focused around the approach anxiety that's increased over time of like, I don't want to be creepy, I don't want to be harming people, don't want to be defined by that. But one thing I did find that I thought was interesting is when it comes to sex, like sex with a new person especially, there's anxiety that's going to come up just naturally, right? The excitement and anxiety, adrenaline.

Emily: Yeah, all of that, right?

Jase: That it's unknown, it's a little scary, but it's also exciting, all of that, right? And that I was looking at, there's some research about what are the physical, you could say somatic, experience of feeling guilty. And of being anxious, and that they share a lot of physical traits in common. So there's a tight chest, there's maybe a twisty upset stomach, there's a race in the mind, right, of cortisol flooding into the brain. So you're really perceiving everything, you're ready, ready for anything. And that if we're primed to think this is guilt, it's like, yeah, those feelings line up with guilt.

Emily: Yeah.

Jase: But it's possible to look at that and say, yeah, these— the same experience, if I thought of it as just anxiety or nervousness or excitement, my brain could then identify this feeling as something different. Right. So, and you could think about the same thing comes up with fear and excitement, right? Where, you know, you're walking down an alleyway and you find yourself tensing a little bit, becoming sort of hypervigilant, and you identify that as fear. But then, you know, you're about to have sex with someone new. You have some of those same physical experiences. Is this fear or is this nervousness, excitement, right? That they share physical symptoms in common. And there is a lot of research to show that we don't have emotions that then cause our body to feel things, that it's more of a loop that goes back and forth. And sometimes our body can misinterpret the physical sensation coming up as a certain emotion that it's—

Emily: Well, our brain might misinterpret what that physical sensation is telling us.

Jase: Right. And the word for this, if you want to look it up, is called interoception, which is fun.

Emily: Ooh, like Inception, but with tarot cards.

Dedeker: Like proprioception.

Emily: Like proprioception. Yeah.

Jase: Interoception. Yeah. I think of it as like you're interrogating your perception of your body. I don't think that's where it comes from, but that's an article.

Emily: Yeah. Nice.

Jase: But anyways, the idea is that you feel something physically and then your brain goes, okay, I'm feeling something. What might this be? And so then your brain is trying to put together a story. It's trying to find a meaning for this. And so it's like, oh, well, maybe it's because you're afraid of this, or maybe it's because you feel guilt about this. And so one option there is to do the reframe, which is a big part of cognitive behavioral therapy. It's just that, how can I change my thinking about this? Is it possible to just be like, I'm just excited and this nervousness is excitement? And I, as I was looking into this, I was realizing I'm like, yep, I think that's a big part for me too. Because there's that nervousness of like, are they gonna like sex with me? Am I gonna like sex with them? Am I gonna do sex good enough in this instance, right? Like, there's a lot of pieces that go in that you can be nervous and anxious about, but it could be easy to go, oh no, it's because I'm anxious about my partner, or it's because I feel guilty about this. And this is yet another one. Thank you for writing in this question, because it's basically all of us are now inspecting ourselves. Yeah.

Dedeker: Yeah, it's a good one. Maybe we'll also find ourselves mistakenly in the Midwest one of these days.

Emily: Actually, you just came from there, dude.

Jase: I was just mistakenly in the Midwest.

Dedeker: You were intentionally in the Midwest. That's true.

Emily: You're right.

Jase: I guess I was there intentionally.

Emily: Well, thank you, Mistakenly in the Midwest. I don't think that when I picked this question, I realized how much it would be an interrogation into ourselves and our own psyche. But it was, and really, really interesting to think about and to examine because I think all of us have been there and all of us are still currently working through it, apparently. So, you're not alone and know that we really appreciate you being vulnerable and sharing with us. So for all of you out there, we have a Question of the Week which is going to be on our Instagram stories, and that question is, when do you feel guilty when it comes to sex? Because if you're anything like us, you might feel guilt from time to time. So something to examine. This is going to be anonymous. So tell us everything. We can't wait to see your results. Tell us all your guilty, sexy secrets. There you go. And 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 these groups and join our exclusive community by going to multiamory.com/join. In addition, you can share with us publicly on Instagram @multiamory_podcast.

Emily: Multiamory is created and produced by Jase Lindgren, Dedeker Winston, and me, Emily Matlack. Our production assistant is Carson Collins. 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.