Ep02: Broken Privacy and Slowing NRE with Special Guest Alice!

Show Notes:

Valentina’s Relationship Blog, “The Relationship Rebel”: http://www.relationship-rebel.com/

Danny’s Book, “Is now a good time to talk?  How to ask for what you want and get it”: ⁠https://amzn.to/3GNWgwM⁠

Danny’s other site: https://kinkypoly.com/

Danny’s other podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/kinkypolyatheist

Great Quotes & Moments from Episode 02 of Poly Café :

“One of the mistakes I made, possibly, was to not end the current relationship before I started in poly.” ~Alice (PolyCafe.org – s01e02 – 1m50s )

“[Regarding polyamory] It’s easy to get wrapped up in NRE (New Relationship Energy). […] Don’t fall into the mono trap of this person, and getting hyper fixated on one person, and then leaving other relationships on the wayside.  That’s hard to do.” ~Alice (PolyCafe.org – s01e02 – 2m45s )

“I think that I would have told myself that all the things you don’t know you’re doing that are toxic or bad are going to flare up in your face in a big way and you will have to deal with them.” ~Alice (PolyCafe.org – s01e02 – 3m00s )

“[summarizing Alice] You are responsible for you, what your expectations are, and what you are accepting.” ~Danny (PolyCafe.org – s01e02 – 5m00s )

“Monogamy lets you hide a lot and gives you a false sense of security.” ~Valentina (PolyCafe.org – s01e02 – 5m18s )

“I think, in some ways, monogamy teaches us to settle, and it lets us hide from our more toxic traits because you don’t have to deal with them like you do in polyamory.” ~Valentina (PolyCafe.org – s01e02 – 5m43s )

“When you have people that you are so close to and they are all giving you the same feedback, independently, then yeah, it’s kinda hard to not start to recognize that maybe I’ve got some stuff that I need to work on.” ~Danny (PolyCafe.org – s01e02 – 6m23s )

“I was repeating my monogamous dating patterns in polyamory and finding myself in the same situations.” ~Valentina (PolyCafe.org – s01e02 – 6m55s )

“The more I get into polyamory, the less I’m really willing to compromise on. […] I don’t compromise on needs anymore.” ~Valentina (PolyCafe.org – s01e02 – 10m15s )

“I realized, I didn’t have a good relationship, I had a relationship where I went along with everything the other person wanted.” ~Valentina (PolyCafe.org – s01e02 – 11m15s )

“If you’re telling someone your needs, you’re telling them the basic, lowest level of access to you.  Why aren’t you telling them your wants and, ‘you have to meet my wants’?” ~Alice (PolyCafe.org – s01e02 – 12m25s )

“I thought things that were ‘needs’ were ‘wants’. […] I’m at the place where I am actively and objectively looking at, ‘what are my needs?’, because it dawned on me one day that I was compromising on needs and you shouldn’t compromise on needs.” ~Valentina (PolyCafe.org – s01e02 – 12m40s )

“If you have to compromise on a need, that should be the first sign of, ‘this isn’t the relationship for me’.” ~Valentina (PolyCafe.org – s01e02 – 12m58s )

“With ‘needs’ versus ‘wants’ […] I view, society viewing ‘wants’ as ‘extra’.  Like, I don’t have to do that.  That’s an option.  Why is it an option?  What kind of relationships are you going to have if they are not meeting your ‘wants’?” ~Alice (PolyCafe.org – s01e02 – 13m03s )

“It seems like your ‘wants’ are going to lead to a lot of happiness and why would your happiness be optional?” ~Danny (PolyCafe.org – s01e02 – 13m20s )

“I totally agree with their point of, ‘needs being the lowest level of access.  Why are you telling someone the lowest level of effort that they can do to access you?” ~Alice (PolyCafe.org – s01e02 – 13m28s )

“Why are you compromising on a ‘need’.  You compromise on where to get dinner.  You don’t compromise on communication.” ~Valentina (PolyCafe.org – s01e02 – 13m45s )

“‘Red flags’ vs ‘deal breakers’. […] Why not turn some of these ‘needs’ into ‘deal breakers’?  And then go after all the ‘wants’ that would make the relationship next-level awesome.” ~Danny (PolyCafe.org – s01e02 – 14m05s )

“Many of my boundaries, I found, have actually centered around how much information is shared without my being the one to share it.” ~Alice (PolyCafe.org – s01e02 – 16m55s )

“The stereotype of monogamy is –not that everybody is like this, is that one person is supposed to solve/be everything, and the people who have the healthiest monogamous relationships actually have very healthy friendships outside of their relationship.  They have their own lives.” ~Alice (PolyCafe.org – s01e02 – 20m22s )

“Overall, you become less interesting when you just become a copy of each other.” ~Alice (PolyCafe.org – s01e02 – 20m50s )

“The stronger relationships are the ones that have had strife and have found a way to grow and move through it.” ~Alice (PolyCafe.org – s01e02 – 22m36s )

“With a good partner, every time we end up going through something hard, we always come out stronger on the other side.  Give it a month and we’ll say, ‘thank goodness that happened because where would we be today if we hadn’t addressed that?’ ” ~Danny (PolyCafe.org – s01e02 – 23m27s )

“For me, it’s a rule where I don’t let partners pass information through me.  If you want to talk to your meta, you better talk to your meta.” ~Danny (PolyCafe.org – s01e02 – 25m53s )

“I think that we just all kind of assume that people know the levels of privacy when, really, you don’t know what someone considers private or not.” ~Alice (PolyCafe.org – s01e02 – 29m00s )

“One of the things I fall back on a lot of times is, ‘No surprises, please.’  Like, I don’t want to be surprised. I don’t want you to be surprised.  So how can we, like, conduct our operations and our communication and all this ‘privacy’ stuff, in a way that no one ever gets surprised?  And if you do get surprised, can we talk about it so it won’t happen again?” ~Danny (PolyCafe.org – s01e02 – 32m05s )

“And respecting [privacy] after the relationship is over. […] It seems to be that people seem more free to talk about things that happened in their past relationships when their relationship is over, and I really do look at how people talk about other people who they are no longer around and I always think to myself, ‘this is how this person will talk about me when I’m no longer around.’ ” ~Alice (PolyCafe.org – s01e02 – 34m28s )

“There is a lot of value into slowing down and just getting to know a person as a person and observing their behavior.  Observing how they interact with other partners, and their friends, and how they talk about exes.” ~Valentina (PolyCafe.org – s01e02 – 36m42s )

“One of the ways that I slow things down is with time.  By saying, ‘I’m going to give this person this many evenings a week,’ or something like that, is a great way to slow things down.” ~Danny (PolyCafe.org – s01e02 – 37m50s )

“If people can know your trauma, they can know how to manipulate you.” ~Valentina (PolyCafe.org – s01e02 – 41m02s )

“Typically, the first six months is purely NRE [New Relationship Energy] and then that’s when people kinda start to unravel.” ~Valentina (PolyCafe.org – s01e02 – 48m11s )

“The most important things to me when I’m getting to know somebody new is: what their communication style is; how they handle conflict; how they handle being told ‘no’; and how they handle change of plans.  I want to know what your road rage looks like.” ~Valentina (PolyCafe.org – s01e02 – 48m58s )

“It’s been my observation and experience that once people have that ‘partner’ label, they come with a hell of a lot of expectations.” ~Valentina (PolyCafe.org – s01e02 – 56m30s )

“It’s been my lived experience that secrecy breeds abuse.” ~Valentina (PolyCafe.org – s01e02 – 1h04m05s )