Join Danny, Valentina and their special guest Enzo as they talk about navigating an ocean of different types of relationships, giving patience and forgiveness, and understanding your poly self better.
In this episode, we talk about coming out as bisexual and how it’s different than coming out as poly. How no one is expected to be a perfect communicator, but a little patience, forgiveness, and understanding goes a long way. Loving yourself, validating your emotions, having boundaries and deal breakers, and letting go of unkind friends. Then taking it all in stride with a laugh because we’re all just humans who are doing our best at being human and sometimes we accidently get in each other’s blast zones.
Our special guest, Enzo has been polyamorous for 5+ years, recently came out as bisexual, and is a retired standup comedian.
Show Notes:
Valentina’s 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
Great Quotes & Moments from Episode 09 of Poly Café :
“I like the fact that we can have relationships, friendships, sex ships, non-ships, any type of ships without any problems. Aside from as long as your ship doesn’t mess with the other ship.” ~Enzo (PolyCafe.org – s01:ep09 – 2m25s)
“When you’re in the mono realm, everything makes everybody jealous. Everything.” ~Enzo (PolyCafe.org – s01:ep09 – 3m13s)
“with your anxiety especially, or your insecurity, sometimes you just need to stop and thank your body for protecting you . ‘Thank you, brain, for protecting me. Thank you, heart, for warning me but I’m okay now. We don’t have to do this anymore’.” ~Valentina Hartman (PolyCafe.org – s01: ep09 – 5m55s)
“In the ocean of my life, you are the ship in the ocean of my life. […] I’m the ocean. You’re in my ships that are on my ocean. I am the ocean.” ~Enzo (PolyCafe.org – s01:ep09 – 7m50s)
“Actually, I used it a lot with comedy, with my customers and stuff like that. Like if my buddy, if one of my good customers is getting chewed out by his wife, I’ll go, ‘Haha. You should see me once a month, –twice a month, –three times a month. –I’m going back down to one girl this time!’ and he’ll laugh.” ~Enzo (PolyCafe.org – s01:ep09 – 13m19s)
(Asked, “how would you describe being bi?“) “Well, it’s a pain in the ass.” ~Enzo (PolyCafe.org – s01:ep09 – 14m25s)
“ ‘Who you are,’ that’s funny. Are you ever anybody who you were? No. I’m better than who I was.” ~Enzo (PolyCafe.org – s01:ep09 – 15m14s)
“I’ve always wanted a motorcycle. So my motorcycle crew that I hang out with, they call me bike sexual –bike curious. That’s what it is, bike curious. –because I don’t have a bike, but I want one, so I’m bike curious.” ~Enzo (PolyCafe.org – s01:ep09 – 15m58s)
(Asked, “wondering if you had maybe any advice for any of our listeners who might be a little bit stuck in their sexuality and they’re like trying to break out”.) “If you’re a male bodied human, and you’re going for another male bodied human, just know that you know exactly what you like. And you’re really good at it, I promise. That’s my advice.” ~Enzo (PolyCafe.org – s01:ep09 – 16m23s)
“Don’t be afraid to be yourself. If you’re afraid to be yourself, then I don’t think you’ll ever be yourself.” ~Enzo (PolyCafe.org – s01:ep09 – 16m41s)
“It’s actually quite empowering to be able to walk away from people who, for the most part, are okay people in your life, but for those one parts are asshats. You don’t need any friends that are even partial asshats.” ~Enzo (PolyCafe.org – s01:ep09 – 17m02s)
“Move on. Assholes are assholes, and if they don’t prove they’re going to be better. They’re always going to be assholes.” ~Enzo (PolyCafe.org – s01:ep09 – 18m10s)
“The strongest relationships that I have are with people who approached me with misunderstanding and asked for clarification or said, ‘this thing you did really hurt me.’ And being able to work problems out, those relationships are strong and last longer then the relationships where people where there’s a misunderstanding, and they talk to everybody but you about it, and then it grows into this huge thing, and now you just lost a bunch of friends and you’re not even sure where you went wrong..” ~Valentina Hartman (PolyCafe.org – s01: ep09 – 18m57s)
“I am not looking for the perfect communicator. I am not looking for the perfect partner. I’m looking for somebody where, things go wrong, because things will go wrong, I’m looking for someone who can come to me and we can work through it and recover together.” ~Danny Burbol (PolyCafe.org – s01: ep09 – 19m32s)
“It doesn’t matter what you do wrong, it’s all about the recovery.” ~Danny Burbol (PolyCafe.org – s01: ep09 – 19m58s)
“Nobody’s out there to hurt you. They’re only trying to find themselves and you happen to be shrapnel. Everybody happens to be hit by shrapnel when people are finding themselves, I found out, and it’s not purposeful. […] ” ~Enzo (PolyCafe.org – s01:ep09 – 21m36s)
“Yeah, I feel like, sometimes dating multiple people feels like trying to walk through a minefield blindfolded.” ~Valentina Hartman (PolyCafe.org – s01: ep09 – 22m48s)
“Is this person a person who’s going to keep me where I am, or help me get further on my journey. Are we meant to walk this path together a little bit?” ~Danny Burbol (PolyCafe.org – s01: ep09 – 23m44s)
“Hey, if you’re coming out, don’t look so hard. Just know that people are there for you and they will be there for you.” ~Enzo (PolyCafe.org – s01:ep09 – 24m58s)
“Love yourself. If you love yourself, people that love themselves will love you too.” ~Enzo (PolyCafe.org – s01:ep09 – 25m09s)
“You’ve got three times. You tell at me three times? I’m out after the third time.” ~Enzo (PolyCafe.org – s01:ep09 – 25m58s)
“It’s the patience of taking the time to let them show you who they are.” ~Valentina Hartman (PolyCafe.org – s01: ep09 – 27m38s)
“My relationship triangle. […] Those are the three things that I think will be essential to any any relationship. Poly, mono, anything. You have to understand. We’re all human. You have to be patient with the choices that humans make, and you have to be forgiving in those choices if they affect things, because choices affect things.” ~Enzo (PolyCafe.org – s01:ep09 – 27m44s)
“Humans are just humans. […] We tend to make a mess. And it’s not always on purpose, but everyone’s just trying to do their thing and figure themselves, out in theory. And yeah, so give that little bit of forgiveness.” ~Danny Burbol (PolyCafe.org – s01: ep09 – 28m17s)
“We just all have to have a little bit of patience and forgiveness with each other. That’s what I try to try to do for myself.” ~Enzo (PolyCafe.org – s01:ep09 – 29m21s)
“And another thing, that I would tell myself back in the day is, I would divorce my mono [monogamous] relationship a lot quicker. I would divorce my mono self.” ~Enzo (PolyCafe.org – s01:ep09 – 29m38s)
“maybe you didn’t get the thing you thought you wanted, but it doesn’t mean that there isn’t something better that you haven’t yet imagined.” ~Valentina Hartman (PolyCafe.org – s01: ep09 – 35m06s)
“Someone made the comment of ‘eventually people will age out of polyamory’. And so many of us were like, ‘I’m in my 40s, I’m in my 50s,’ and it’s almost like, no, this is just like this whole new journey that you’re discovering. And I don’t think you can age out of it. I think you actually age into it.” ~Valentina Hartman (PolyCafe.org – s01: ep09 – 38m18s)
“I definitely feel like, polyamory is human. Humans just being humans, that’s what we are. And somewhere along the lines, someone came and hijacked that and did a lot of things about like crushing sexuality and saying, you can only be with one person and just doing all these things, in my opinion, to control other people.” ~Danny Burbol (PolyCafe.org – s01: ep09 – 39m09s)
“Never expect your life to be the same ever again. You’re poly now. Your life is never going to be the same. So don’t reminisce on things that were because they will never be. What you once were, you’re going to be completely different.” ~Enzo (PolyCafe.org – s01:ep09 – 40m17s)
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