77 - Life Changes and Polyamory

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes! Change is an unavoidable part of life but that doesn't keep it from being scary sometimes. We have a lot of personal experience with big life changes like moving to new states or countries, deaths of family or friends, transitioning from monogamy to polyamory, and much more. In this episode we discuss some the things we've learned about dealing with change and how to make it as painless as possible. 

Often one of the most helpful things is knowing that you're not alone in struggling with change. Hopefully our stories and advice about finding community at the times when you need it most will help you with your current changes and also in preparation for the changes that will happen in the future. As the saying goes, "The only constant in life is change," so it's something that all of us can benefit from learning about.

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Multiamory was created by Dedeker Winston, Jase Lindgren, and Emily Matlack.

Our theme music is Forms I Know I Did by Josh and Anand.

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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.

Emily: [MUSIC]

Jase: On this episode of the Multiamory Podcast, we are talking about ch-ch-ch-ch-changes.

Emily: Turn and face the strange. Ch-ch-changes.

Jase: Yes, and we're gonna do it all in the form of a musical.

Emily: No, we're not.

Jase: No. Sadly, we're not. I know, right? It would be awesome.

Emily: I know. I'm Emily.

Jase: I'm Jase. On this episode, we're talking about change in relationships and life changes. And we're going to go over a lot of different scenarios that can be stressful changes in your life and in your relationships. Some even good changes can be stressful at the same time. And then we're also going to talk about some tips on how to make change a little bit easier.

Emily: Yeah.

Emily: Unfortunately, Dedeker is on a plane as we record.

Jase: Right. I mean, not unfortunately. Nice for her, but.

Jase: I mean, nice for her, but it's unfortunate that she's not here with us.

Emily: Yes. Yes. And that we're missing her so much, so.

Jase: So much.

Emily: Safe travels, Dedeker.

Jase: And we only have two-part harmony in our musical.

Emily: Exactly. Instead of three part harmony. Exactly.

Jase: which we could have had if she was here. I know.

Emily: Yeah.

Jase: All right, so Emily, talk to me about change. What are we talking about here? What's bringing this up?

Emily: That's a good question. I mean, I think you and I have both been through a lot of change in the last couple years. My goodness, a huge amount from the two of us separating and initially even before that turning to polyamory and being polyamorous to begin with, that's a huge change.

Jase: Sure, yeah, even before that. So yeah, maybe over the last four years has been a lot of change.

Emily: You're right, yeah.

Jase: Right, sure, changing from being monogamous to being polyamorous and then with us no longer being in romantic relationship. That was a big change. And then we've also had changes in our other relationships and in our jobs, families, all sorts of stuff.

Jase: And I think that's pretty common. I mean, and that's that's sort of the universal thing here is that change is universal. Change is, life is change. That, the only thing that's constant in life is change.

Emily: Yes.

Jase: And so that's why this is an important topic to talk about, because it does happen all the time.

Emily: Life is ever changing.

Jase: So, let's go over some kind of examples and maybe share some of our experiences or ways that these can affect your life and your relationships.

Emily: Yeah, so the first one is gonna be the loss of a job or even acquiring a job.

Jase: Right.

Emily: Or multiple in my case.

Jase: Well, sure, of having like five jobs. Yeah.

Emily: Yeah, I mean, I currently have four jobs, three regular restaurant jobs, and this all kind of happened since I think November of this year or of last year and so yeah, I mean that has changed my life hugely just because of the lack of time that I have at any given point.

Jase: Sure, right. So when you look online for stuff about dealing with change in your life, a lot of times it's either about change that you're doing intentionally, like trying to change a habit or change your lifestyle, or it's about dealing with some sort of negative change, like dealing with a breakup or a divorce or a death. And one of the things we wanted to point out is that when it comes to stressful change, it can also be positive things. It could also be acquiring a job because it's gonna change what your routine is like. It's going to change how much free time you have.

Emily: Yeah.

Jase: And so if we're thinking about this from the point of view of dating or having relationships or having multiple relationships, which can be a lot more demanding of your time, acquiring a new job could be really exciting, but also all of a sudden that other partner who only works evenings and now you work daytimes, that's gonna be a lot more challenging for you to see each other.

Emily: For sure.

Jase: Yeah, that these are all big changes. I mean, another one is the example of moving, moving to a new city or even a new country. And I don't mean moving separately, we'll get to that later, but moving together. I've, let's see, twice now have moved with a partner. This is back when I was monogamous, but I moved to, well, moved short term to Russia with a partner and then moved from there to Seattle with a partner. That same partner. And then years later moved to Los Angeles with a partner.

Emily: Yeah.

Jase: And yeah, like those things are huge stressors on your relationship.

Emily: Oh, for sure.

Jase: Because you're in a new place, you don't have the same, you don't have the same routines, you don't have the same friends, you're reestablishing all of that. And it can be, as I experienced, very stressful on that relationship.

Emily: Exactly, like causing it to end potentially.

Jase: Right, it can, yeah.

Emily: Yeah, it can. It doesn't have to, but I know. Yeah, and that thing that you looked up, you said moving or changing cities can be just one of the most stressful things on a relationship or on a person, period.

Jase: Yeah, that it's up there in terms of the amount of stress that that can cause in your life. Yeah.

Jase: I mean, another one that we have here is a death, which, like I said, when you look up ways to cope with change or cope with stressful situations, this is one of the number one things that will come up is about coping with a death or the loss of somebody. And yeah, and the thing too is in relationships, this could be, you know, your partner losing someone as well.

Jase: And then to complicate it even further, it could be that you have multiple partners and one of them has a death in the family and that can then trickle down and become maybe a source of stress in another relationship of yours.

Emily: Yeah, for sure.

Jase: Or, maybe one of your partners has another partner who has something like that happen in their family and it might make them have less time for you or they might be more emotionally drained by dealing with that.

Emily: Exactly.

Jase: That they don't have the same emotional patience that you're used to them having for you. Right. Things like that.

Emily: No, for sure. Yeah.

Jase: But then the one that we want to talk about a few of these though that are a little more specific to polyamory or at least to dating in general. And the first of these is one that as you who listen to the show know that I'm very familiar with is--

Jase: changing from a close proximity relationship, meaning you live in the same city, to a long distance relationship. As you know, about 10 months ago, Dedeker started traveling and has been doing that for 10 months now, where not only is it long distance, but it's also across the world. It's not just like a five hour drive, it's not, you know, it's a little more involved to be able to see each other. And that's something that, especially when that first started and I've been thinking about this because I met a friend recently in Japan who just moved away from Japan after being there for a while and is now doing a long-distance relationship with her partner from there and that has been you know, we've been talking about how hard that is and what's interesting for me is that it reminded me well, you know, just of how hard that is for one, but it also did help me to see how that has gotten better for me. Yeah. That I remember, I mean, Emily remembers this very well.

Emily: Oh, for sure.

Jase: When Dedeker was first leaving, I was a mess. It was awful. I was incredibly sad about it. And that over time now, it's not so upsetting. Like, I'm still sad to not be around her, but it's not something that's dominating my thoughts in terms of being upset or being sad about that. And it's something that in talking with my friend, have been trying to say, hey, if you stick with it, it does get a little bit easier, I promise. It doesn't seem like it right now. But you do kind of get used to change. And that's sort of a theme of some of the things that we're going to be talking about today is this idea that we all adapt all the time, that we're always changing, and that one of the tricks that we'll get into more later with change is accepting that change is part of life and not trying to hold on to the past or wanting things to go back to the way that they were or thinking they always have to stay the same.

Emily: Yeah.

Jase: I found that the more I was able to accept the fact that our relationship is long distance and getting to appreciate the things that come with that, you know, that the excitement of getting to see each other, even though it's more rare, the fact that it's like we'll get to see each other for a longer amount of time or a more intense amount of time or something.

Emily: Plus you get to go to different countries when you see her.

Jase: Sure. Yeah, then in my case when I go to see her, I get to go to another country like Japan. And but then, you know, And also I get to hear about her adventures in other countries. And you know that there's just sort of focusing on what is rather than what I might wish it was or what I thought it was gonna be or something like that. Yeah.

Jase: So Emily, why don't you take the next one here and just kind of in a similar vein of a relationship change.

Emily: Yeah, I mean changes in existing relationships will sometimes happen. In the example of Jase and I when we decided to become polyamorous, the change from monogamous to polyamorous. Gosh, that was a really big change, one that we had to think a lot about and do a lot of self-realization and self-work and stuff in moving through that. And then in the same way, a mono-poly relationship to a poly-poly relationship, Right.

Jase: where one partner was polyamorous and the--

Emily: other one was monogamous. And then, yeah, they, the monogamous partner decides, hey, I'm, I want to try this out. I actually do think that there's some value to it and I've seen you do it for a while and I want to explore that. Even for the polyamorous partner, if they've had a lot of time to be polyamorous and can conceptually accept that, even that change can sometimes be very jarring and very difficult potentially, and a lot of feelings can come up from that, even ones of jealousy or not rational thoughts or whatever, just because it is a change in the relationship that you once had.

Jase: Right, that even if you're poly and have been poly a long time, when your monogamous partner switches to being poly, that can be hard and you'll be like, we've seen this with multiple friends of ours in that situation. It's like, gosh, why is this so hard?

Emily: Yeah, it's like, this doesn't make sense.

Jase: This is something I'm familiar with. And it's because it's a change. Yeah.

Jase: It's because of that, change is difficult. We want to think that we always know what to expect. And so when we enter these times where things are changing and we don't feel as much like we know what to expect from the future, that does get, it's scarier.

Emily: Yeah, and I think you can have a sense of preciousness to relationships sometimes. You're like, well, this is a known quantity. I know what this is going to be. It matters to me very much, and I understand the box that I put it in. And then when that box is kind of taken away, which so often happens in polyamory in general, then that can be like a really jarring experience. Yeah, regardless of whether or not you're polyamorous with other people, and they have partners if you're with a monogamous person and they have never done that before, it can definitely be scary.

Jase: Right, and so again in talking about the kind of accepting the change, as we were saying when we first transitioned from being monogamous to polyamorous, it was very difficult. And you don't always know how it's going to be difficult in advance. It's like things will come up or you just sort of feel the sense of discomfort because of the change. But then that it does also get better with time.

Emily: Yeah, and the positive changes that come in, in those surprise you as well. When you're like, wait a minute, shit, this thing now actually turns me on, or I'm really excited by the prospect of my partner dating someone else and I'm really happy for them and that I get to see them be excited about someone that brings me joy. And that change can also be, it can be really positive but also surprising.

Jase: Right, yeah, yeah, and so that's another one just like in talking to my friend about transitioning into a long-distance relationship, where I kind of have to be like, I know you might not believe it right now, and this might not be the most comforting thing right now, but it does get better. It does get less painful. You get used to it and you also learn to find the good things in it. The same thing in when people transition from monogamy to polyamory, one of the kind of jokes in the poly community is that you spend more time talking about being poly than actually being poly.

Emily: Yeah, that's a really good point.

Jase: And I definitely think that for most people, ourselves included, that was true.

Emily: Yeah, at least at the beginning.

Jase: The first while, six months or a year? Yeah, not two years.

Emily: But yeah, at least six months to a year, you're right.

Jase: Yeah, but it does start to, as you have all those conversations, which are incredibly important to do, you start to need them less and you start to get more used to this. And that conversation is kind of a way of coping with that change.

Emily: For sure. Are we all on the same page here? Yeah, I know. Communication, we'll talk about this more, obviously the thing that we talk about across the board in all of our podcasts is communication, communication, communication.

Jase: Yeah, definitely.

Emily: Yeah, especially when these changes are happening. If I have a change in my life with my partner or partners, then to be on the same page and to kind of figure out where they're at is incredibly important to me at least. Yeah.

Jase: Well, and I think another big part of this is the idea of communicating about things and talking about things, getting support, not only from your partner, but also from other people. Because understanding that other people either have gone through or are going through the same things that you are is really helpful. Because one of the things in change is you feel like everything's falling out from under you and that you're alone. And even if when we were transitioning from monogamy to polyamory, our experiences were not the same. And so we would talk to each other a lot But it wasn't until later when we had a little more of a community, more other people that we could talk to about it, that I think we both had sort of a stronger foundation.

Emily: Sure, yeah. That community is really important.

Jase: Yeah, exactly. Just understanding that you're not alone. That other people feel the same things that you do or have dealt with those. Yeah.

Emily: The next one, one that I can't specifically speak about as well, and I don't know if you can either, Jase, but monogamous to swinging, you know, we've had Cooper S. Beckett on the show and various people who are swingers, yeah.

Jase: Yeah, I would recommend for that one checking out his book, My Life on the Swingset, which is a book put together from a bunch of his blog posts over the course of many years from he and his wife first kind of trying swinging to ending up being more polyamorous and sort of the whole spectrum there. But yeah, a lot of the same stuff of needing a lot of conversation, understanding there's gonna be surprises, finding a community of people to not only to help you understand that you're not alone, but also to help you out with some tips and things that maybe you could learn on your own, but will be less painful if you learn them from someone else.

Emily: Meaning if you go to a swinger's party and just to have like a guideline or what is it?

Jase: Yeah, I guess to kind of get advice from people who've done it before instead of just feeling like you've got it all figured out.

Jase: I mean the same with polyamory, like listening to a podcast before you do it.

Emily: Like this one.

Jase: Yeah. Or reading books and there's only so much you can learn, not, you've got to actually do something to really learn about it. But one of my favorite sort of wise sayings or whatever is that, you know, everyone talks about the importance of learning from your mistakes. And the saying that I like goes, yes, but any fool can learn from his mistakes, but a wise man learns from the mistakes of others. So that kind of, that's why we try on this show to share with you some things that we're like, yeah, we wish we'd known this because it would have saved us.

Emily: You wise men and women out there. Yeah, can learn from our mistakes. You be wiser than us.

Jase: Exactly. Yeah.

Emily: We'll make all the mistakes over here, and then you can do all the learning.

Jase: No, I'm sure we'll leave plenty for you.

Emily: to make for yourself. That's true.

Jase: But yeah, anyway, so with swinging, same thing. Yeah.

Jase: It's kind of, you know, reading about that, understanding what some of the mistakes are. I really like the book for polyamory, I really like the book the Game Changer by Franklin Veaux because it talks about a lot of mistakes and a lot of difficulties in the form of a memoir. Kind of like Cooper S. Beckett's My Life on the Swingset. It's not like an instruction book, it's more, hey here's what happened with me and the things that I learned from it. Yeah, to me both those books were really helpful and informative.

Emily: Yeah, I mean Cooper, well let's see Cooper's novel that he did most recently, I learned a lot from that because it was cool and it was--

Jase: A Life Less Monogamous.

Emily: A Life Less Monogamous, yeah. It was something that I, a relationship structure that I wasn't currently in or that I didn't really know a lot about and even though it was in a novel form, I was like, wow, this is incredibly informative.

Jase: Based on his personal experiences.

Emily: Exactly, and that was super, super cool.

Jase: Definitely. And then the last one that we want to cover here is the loss of a major relationship for you or a partner. So this, you know, we all understand that dealing with breakups can be hard, but in polyamory, there's an added level of difficulty where if you have a major breakup, you're still with your other partners. You don't quite have that same, I don't know if you'd call it a luxury, of getting to kind of retreat into yourself and just sort of throw a pity party for a while. Or maybe it's good that it kind of forces us not to go there and try to stay present with our other partners. But also, if you have a partner who gets out of a serious relationship, there's gonna be a lot of changes. One of those might be that they suddenly have a bunch more free time that they want you to help fill. Same if you have the breakup, you might want your partners to spend a bunch more time with you and they might already be busy or you might be like, I can't see you this much or, okay, I want to support you and then you end up stressing yourself out. That's something to really be aware of. And then also that it could make someone a lot more sensitive or a lot more afraid of certain things. I've definitely found that that's something that's happened in my relationships. When partners or myself have had major relationships end, that will be more sensitive to certain things that had to do with that old relationship that weren't a problem before in ours but then kind of become this issue because you have this fear around it.

Emily: Yeah, you're taking emotional baggage from the old relationships and putting it into the new one, yeah.

Jase: Exactly, yeah. Yeah, definitely. All right, so something that we were kind of dancing around earlier. Let's get to it now. Is that even a change in a relationship that's not necessarily a loss? So my example of a relationship changing to become long-distance.

Emily: You're not losing that relationship.

Jase: It's just changing. But this is still there's still a sense of loss and there's still a sense of grieving and mourning that goes along with that. And so one of the things that's really important is to allow yourself to grieve. It's to understand that it's okay to be sad about a change even if your logical mind is like nothing bad is happening. You can't be upset about this. To accept that change is an emotional thing.

Emily: And not all emotions are rational.

Jase: Right, yes. That's also a recurring theme.

Emily: Indeed of all of us for sure. Okay, so in addition if something's happening where your partner, for example, is having a lot of new relationship energy and you feel as though this is a big change, you feel as though they are not spending enough time with you or that it's the quality of time that they're spending with you is not as good as it once was. I urge you to give your partners the benefit of the doubt. A change may be affecting them as well. And then, I mean, you need to be understanding of their feelings, understanding that they may be really excited about something, Again, that may not always be there. You can gently nudge them in the direction of, hey, I want more quality time with us or I want to be able to feel, I don't know, just like we're spending good amounts of time together or whatever.

Jase: Right, we talk a lot about the idea of quality over quantity.

Emily: Yes, for sure.

Jase: That you might think, well, they're spending less time with me if they're dating other people.

Emily: Or, are they gonna, a fear that they're gonna love you less or something because all this new relationship energy is coming up.

Jase: But focusing on the time that you do spend together, having it be really quality time.

Emily: Exactly.

Jase: And not just more time.

Emily: Yeah, I mean love is not a quantitative thing.

Jase: Sure, yeah. Yeah, exactly. That's something I've definitely found is helpful with that. But also, like you're saying, give your partner the benefit of the doubt. And this is true too for say that the two of you move somewhere. You might feel like this move is really difficult for you and it barely affects your partner at all. It probably is affecting them more than you think it is. And also maybe more than they even think it is if they feel very strong about it. This is something that with saying goodbye to Dedeker just recently when I was coming back from spending a month with her in Japan, it was really hard and it felt like I was really upset about it and it didn't affect her as much. And in talking about it more, I started to really understand how much it did affect her and we just have different ways of showing it.

Emily: For sure.

Jase: So that idea of giving your partner the benefit of the doubt, that they're also going through stuff too.

Emily: Yeah.

Jase: That you're not alone.

Emily: Absolutely.

Jase: And we'll go back to that theme. And then also that we always aren't aware of the way that that change is affecting us. Like I said, that maybe I'll be more, change could be happening in my life, like a new job or a loss of a job, and I might change in the way that I behave with my partners and not even know it. Right? Or with my friends or whoever. Exactly. Yeah.

Emily: This is something that comes up jealousy, which we've talked about a lot in different ways. But yeah, I mean, especially if you're going from a mono to a poly relationship, jealousy can come up. And, you know, jealousy, you can accept your own jealousy and your own feelings. And again, they're not always going to be rational. But in addition, don't necessarily blame your partner for your emotions. Jealousy isn't rational, jealousy isn't going to be their fault for your feelings of jealousy. But instead, you know, try to figure out like am I feeling, I don't know, inadequate in some way? Again, am I feeling like my time is going to be taken away with this partner because they're all of a sudden spending time with more people? Like what is it that I'm afraid of and try to address those things. Right.

Jase: Something that we've talked about, that we talked about on our Five Ways to Suck Less at Communication episode about nonviolent communication.

Emily: Yes, very important.

Jase: Yes, one of the things that we do-- one of the things in there is sort of separating out what's happening from the effects of it. Yeah.

Jase: And so something that's really common, both in positive and negative, is this expression of you make me happy, or you make me feel good, or you make me jealous, or you make me feel insecure. And if you listen to the language, it's you are making me feel this.

Emily: Yeah, regardless of whether it's negative or positive.

Jase: Right. And the truth of it is that something might be happening or someone may be doing something, but your feelings are your own. Yes.

Jase: They're coming from yourself. That's not to say that we're Vulcans who have control over all of our emotions or should strive to not feel them or something. That's not what I'm saying. No.

Jase: But just to understand that they're coming from within. They're coming from the combination of your past experiences and your beliefs and all of this. And it's not someone else or some event making you feel that, but that you are just feeling it. So in nonviolent communication, the idea is to say, I am feeling... you know, this is the situation that happened, and this is how I feel. It's kind of an and statement, rather than a because of statement.

Emily: And you're kind of placing the feeling away from your partner. You're not pushing the situation on them and saying--

Jase: you make me feel this.

Emily: you are this, you are that. Rather this situation has made me feel this way and my feelings and my reaction to them are my own entirely. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

Jase: And that isn't to say that it's not, you know, that the solution might not be connected to something that they're doing or something that they're going to do or something they can do to help, but there's something really important about separating out those things. Yeah. Kind of taking ownership of your own jealousy and your own feelings. Not saying, well because they're my own feelings you don't have to do anything to help me.

Emily: Sure, but.

Jase: But, you know, taking responsibility for them. Yeah.

Jase: And also taking responsibility for trying to make them better and trying to improve them and not just saying, well my partner needs to figure that out.

Emily: Yeah, I mean you're not always gonna be right. You can have feelings and they're not necessarily going, I mean your feelings are your own and they're valid but But you can also sort of piece apart the reasoning behind them and then sort of move forward from them. And that's not going to necessarily be your partner's problem or their fault. Yeah.

Jase: Something that I want to share that Dedeker and I talked about, that she was reading in an article recently. I don't remember what the article was, but if she remembers, I'll see if we can put it in the notes for this.

Emily: Lovely.

Jase: But it was talking about sulking, in relationship when you're not getting what you want and you sulk and you pout about it because of whatever it is your partner is not spending enough time with you or they're not having enough sex with you or they're not whatever. And basically this this author was saying that they believe that this comes from our first experience of love in our lives which is from our parents when we're babies.

Emily: Yeah.

Jase: And as a baby, you're unhappy about something or you're uncomfortable and so you whine or you cry. And your parents, because they're your parents, just start trying things.

Emily: Yeah. And they basically, early in life, they know what you need better than you do. Huh. And so they're constantly just guessing and trying to figure out what it is that you want and just kind of always doing all of the solving for you because you don't have the capability to ask for what you need. Or maybe you don't even understand yet that, oh, I'm upset because I'm hungry. Maybe you don't even understand that yet as a baby.

Emily: Gosh, yeah.

Jase: And so that we carry that forward into our lives, and that if we don't feel like we're getting what we want from our partners, there's this part of us that wants to be loved in that way that we were as babies, where our partners try to find the solution for us, that they would just sort of endlessly dote on us and try different things and try to figure out what's gonna make us feel better.

Emily: That's really interesting.

Jase: And that it's an important thing to be aware of both in terms of yourself that, you know, the importance of realizing that they're not your parents.

Emily: No.

Jase: That love is different as an adult and that you need to be clearer about what it is that you want.

Emily: Yeah, and take responsibility for it.

Jase: And take responsibility for it. And also don't feel like there's something wrong with them because they're not figuring out how to solve your problems.

Emily: Yes.

Jase: And then on the other side of it, too, is using this knowledge as a way to be a little more forgiving of your partner when they are sulking like that and understanding that it is that childlike part of themselves. It's not this adult manipulative thing necessarily.

Emily: But it's the I want love.

Jase: It's a deep thing that they want love, they want to be taken care of. Yeah.

Jase: And kind of be forgiving of that.

Emily: Yeah.

Jase: I am human and I need to be loved. Just like everybody else does. I am human and I need to be loved.

Jase: Yeah, yeah.

Jase: Told you it was gonna be a musical episode.

Emily: Yeah, apparently it is for sure. That was beautiful singing, Jase.

Jase: Thank you.

Emily: Yeah, the last thing I just wanted to say, this is a little quote from Franklin Veaux in his book, the Game Changer. And I really love this quote. He says that, like I said, it takes courage letting go of the idea that the way things are now is the way they should always be as gutsy, but then life rewards courage. And I mean, heck yes, because, you know, polyamory, I was scared to death of it for a while, like a good six months. But I think it has been one of the more profound things in my life. And it did take a lot of courage from myself, and it took a lot of courage from Jase, knowing that this was gonna be very difficult for me, but we sort of persevered and continued to move on and and keep going with it. And I think especially for him too, I mean this is very much you are unapologetically poly as you like to say, and it has changed our life I think for the better in a very profound and huge way. So that's that's a really that's It's a really good thing and change can really be for the better. Yeah.

Jase: And I hope that for those of you out there that whether or not you are poly yourselves, that it as a thing that exists and that we talk about on this show can be something that improves your life as well.

Emily: Yes.

Jase: And if it is, to wrap this up here, something that would help our show a ton is to write us a review. Go on iTunes or on Stitcher or wherever you listen to podcasts. And if we have helped you, write us a review about that. It helps us show up higher in search results. It helps new people find the show. And it also makes us feel amazing. And it's what motivates us to keep doing this. Also, if you guys want to support us on Patreon, that's also hugely helpful. Both of those things are honestly like the two biggest things that you could possibly do to help us keep doing this show.

Emily: Yes.

Jase: Really, we love it so much.

Emily: Yes, we do.

Jase: Please send us your questions. And your thoughts to info@multiamory.com you can also tweet at us @multiamory or find us on Facebook, Multiamory. And we love hearing from you guys and sometimes it might take us a few weeks to get back to you but we respond to every email that we get personally. So thank you guys so much for writing in and we love you and we'll see you next week.

Emily: Yes, bye. Thank you.

Jase: Bye.

Emily: Bye.