The Journey of Polyamory Starts | Episode 1

Marty: [00:00:01] Welcome to Sharing is Caring a polyamorous podcast, which is all about sharing vulnerably in order to give your audience member access to maybe ways that you haven’t thought about your relationships or your heart or any of that, and you don’t have to be polyamorous to enjoy this, though, if you’re scared of polyamory, walk away because it’s going to get real. If you’re curious about polyamory, our goal here is to be as authentic and vulnerable as we possibly can so that you gain something, we won’t know what that is because you’re all on a different journey just like everybody else we know. So it’s up to you what you get out of it. But we’re going to answer some questions, we are going to say how we structured this polyamorous relationship because every one is different.  And yeah, then we’ll take questions in the future if someone listens to this.  Sound good guys?  

Megan: [00:00:52] Sure.

Marty: [00:00:52] So Megan made a very good point in one of our first practice rounds that you actually need to know something about us in order for this to be relevant. So why don’t we lead with who we are and and then kind of step into maybe one of the questions we get more, most often.  Does that sound good to you two?

Kyle: [00:01:10] It sounds great.

Marty: [00:01:11] Yeah. How did we want to start this? Who wants to go first?

Megan: [00:01:14] Introduce yourself.

Marty: [00:01:16] Okay. Well, I’m Marty. I won’t give you my last name because you can look that up on the Internet. But I am Megan’s husband and have been for coming up on 15 years in August and we’ve been together since college and we are now in this open polyamorous relationship that we slowly stumbled into and then quickly stumbled into and slowly stumbled out of it and stumbled into. And now we don’t even know. Now we have no idea where it’s going. But we have other significant others, like Kyle, who is here, who is my wife’s boyfriend, which is fun to say.  Right.  I feel like I, now that we’re out to our family, I get to say I’m gonna drop this off from my wife’s boyfriend’s house. I actually had an idea in my head getting pulled over the other day because I was on the way to my wife’s boyfriend’s house and the cops like, why are you going so fast?  I got to get my wife’s boyfriend’s house.

Kyle: [00:02:11] In his car.

Marty: [00:02:14] Yeah and then just get that stunned look on their face, like, how does this work? And then they get the questions, which we’ll answer later.  No, I am in my journey. I am starting relationships and have had a couple. And I’ve learned from many of the experiences I had in those relationships. I’m good friends here with Kyle and there’s love amongst the tribe. There’s a lot of things like Compersion,, which Megan taught me about, and I have a blooming relationship arriving from out of the country here in just about a week. Yeah, I’m learning Spanish for her, that’s how awesome this is. It’s been a wild and crazy ride, and… But has had so many benefits and levelling us up. And our relationship is closer and greater and there’s nothing but love in the house. So.

Megan: [00:03:08] Yeah.  And I’ll take the steering wheel for now. I feel like it makes us better parents. We’re actually parents of 4 year old twins. And there’s no way that I would have known a couple years ago that this was going to be the benefit. But it’s real when I think about having more love. I am a more loving person because of this. And Marty and I, we’ve been married for 15 years. And there there’s a lot of shit that happens in that 15 years. We had some companies close. We had like there was some major depression that happened. We had to go through three rounds of IVF and there’s just a lot that built up over that time. And I will definitely be now the first one to admit that I was a resentful, blaming person. And now I look back at my childhood and I realize, okay, that’s kind of the pattern I learned because I also didn’t grow up in a home with a ton of love. My parents ended up getting divorced when I was in high school. So that’s just what I learned. I learned, resent and I didn’t learn open communication. And now I smile and I think about what kind of household or many houses our children are being brought up in and the relationships that are considered normal. And I love it. I think to add to it as well, we sold our home in January. So seven months ago.

Kyle: [00:04:36] Small detail.

Megan: [00:04:37] Small detail.

Marty: [00:04:38] Let’s expand on that. We’re hyper minimalists, polyamorous, world travelers, world schooling, nomads.

Megan: [00:04:42] We’re the most extreme of extreme.

Marty: [00:04:46] We’re basically like everything’s not working. So change everything.

Kyle: [00:04:52] Depattern.

Marty: [00:04:52] Yeah. And I think I was talking about this yesterday with a friend. But when you make decisions like we have to sell everything, move out of the country. Take your 4 year old twins with us, have this open relationship.  At a certain point. The only way to do it is to go all in because the hesitancy or resistance can delay things that are inevitable anyway. And so like when we began the process of selling our home, I didn’t pump the brakes. I was like, go, because the opportunity was now. And in doing all of these changes, including the evolution of these relationships that we’re in.  In that time, it had to go at the pace, we had to choose all in to have the happiness and harmony that we have. Because if we hung, everything we hung on to in the past, every baton we passed and held on to with like dead weight, not letting go. Just caused resistance and caused suffering. So now that we’ve just kind of jumped all in. It’s like aligned and flowy.

Megan: [00:05:58] It’s flowy.

[00:06:01] And I’m Kyle. I’m very lucky to be Megan’s boyfriend. And if I could summarize a little bit about my past. I feel like I’ve been a bachelor for a really long time. I’m now 34 and I don’t think I had a lot of successful relationships and there is probably a lot of reasons for that. And when I look back and now able to see some of the traumas and some of the insecurities that were really defining a lot of the relationships that I had, and it really wasn’t until I met Megan and started opening up my mind to really everything and being more true to myself that I was able to heal past wounds, accept who I was, which is really someone that doesn’t really accept the way that society has created structures and how marriage and typical relationships need to be. And really just trying to ask questions myself and figure out where that leads me. And I’m okay with that. But I think to me that the biggest part of this journey has been, yeah just the part of challenging everything that I’ve known because it hasn’t worked in a similar way, but different. And my life has gotten incredibly exciting and just a lot better in the last year, year and a half, since I’ve met these two. And we’ve been traveling the world which vibes with my life in the way that I want to live right now.  I’m very close with their kids, which means a lot to me. And it’s something that…

Marty: [00:07:50] Uncle Kyle.

Kyle: [00:07:51] Yeah, really. I’ve gotten to be a good uncle in the last few years, but I’ve I’ve learned an incredible amount about myself. I feel really supported and safe in being myself around these two especially and anyone that they’re connected to. And I feel like we’re creating this world that I feel good about. And I would want to have children and other close relationships in. And I think that’s part of what the healing process has been for me.

Marty: [00:08:23] And I think that I recognize that in you, Kyle, that this is a healing process and that is very much in your M.O. or your modus operandi. Right. You’re like your main reason is healing a lot now.  I see that kind of permeating everything that you’re up to and I feel very much the same way. And I see that with you, Megan. But I want to interject a couple of things. I feel like that’s a good kind of beginning summary to who we are. But we’re not experts. We’re experiential experts.  In the sense, we can be experts in our own experiences and share those. But there are some experts out there that have written things and they say they’re not experts either. Two books I’d highly recommend to get vocabulary in this area. Are the experts sluts or Ethical slut. And More than two. Both will say they’re not experts, but they really, really have kind of created language around all this.

Megan: [00:09:18] And I think that’s one of the reasons why we’re sitting here recording this right now, is that we’ve gained so much from those people having the courage to share their own experiences and their own journey. And now that we’re starting to share with more friends and more people, it just even yesterday we were hanging out with some friends and we shared our story and where we’re at with our relationship. And they said they said which I was not expecting that two years ago they were on a summer vacation and they were with a group of other adults. And there were probably six or seven other couples and or, you know, groups of people there. And there were only two people that were not in an open relationship, which we haven’t found that to be our experience.  I hadn’t known anybody.

Marty: [00:10:01] We’re not going to the right places.

Megan: [00:10:02] No, I know, right?

Marty: [00:10:03] Starbucks?

Megan: [00:10:04] So I think my theory is there are actually a lot more people maybe experimenting with this or curious about it, but we’re just not talking about it. And I think that there can be so much value just from putting ourselves out there and from sharing. We’ve learned a lot. There’s a lot that we’ve gained. Kyle was mentioning going through and learning through our insecurities. And there’s lots of questions that we get asked about jealousy. And just this whole process has been a learning process, a letting go of the past, a healing process. And I I feel like there’s more love. And I in my idealistic way, totally. I know this is my carebear idealistic way. I think that if our world was a bit more understanding or maybe talked more about these types of relationships and we could maybe release a little bit that paradigm of there’s only one love. And that’s the way that you should live life. I think that we actually would be living in a more loving world.

Marty: [00:11:03] I love your guys ambition.  What I’ve discovered about myself is I don’t have a greater vision for humanity, or society or nature.  I have a vision to help others who have greater visions. And I  vicariously live through those visions. Yeah, I want everybody listening to this to have a better life and be healthier and heal and all that stuff. But, I just like listening to my own voice.  It’s really at the end of the day what this is all about.  

Megan: [00:11:29] He says with a shit eating grin.

[00:11:31] I think everything you’re saying is totally relevant. And I think that what I hear you also saying is, is that we’re adding to the body of knowledge that’s out there in the polyamorous world, which needs more bodies of knowledge and needs more vulnerability, because there are only a few really good sources of content out there that give you any sort of guidance or idea of what’s going on.

Megan: [00:11:55] Now, I’ll also share too, that it’s not an either or. So either monogamy or polyamorous. And there’s spectrums, there’s shades all in between. And I think that’s one thing the younger generation is teaching me. As far as in the way that they relate to their sexuality, that it’s really a spectrum. And I think relationships can be a spectrum as well. We’re not dealing with a binary world of, oh, you’re either monogamous or you’re totally open. There’s lots of different things in between. And I want to make sure from my perspective is that there’s no one right way. We’ve been in, Marty, you and I’ve been in a monogamous relationship. We didn’t cheat on each other. We had a lot of really incredible experiences, some really hard experiences. But there was a lot of value and a lot of learning out of that monogamous relationship. And now there’s a ton of value in this relationship structure as well. So there’s no one right way.Mm-hmm.

Marty: [00:12:51] Yeah, I agree. There are wrong ways and the wrong ways I think violate the ethics of relationships. And I think that I don’t want to go on ad nauseum about that because it’s in more than two, which is the book I’m currently in and love because it’s everybody, whether you’re polyamorous or monogamous or anything in between would benefit from that book because it talks about the respect of humanity or humans over the relationship. It talks about ethics in relationships and rights and what are the rights and how do we treat rights and even distinctions and types of rights that we have out there.  So I think that’s a great place to start. And I think maybe what we can do to supplement that material is maybe answer some of the questions that we get frequently. Right. And from each of our perspectives, because there’s something else that’s cool that’s going on. Since I’m the pitch guy, I’m just going to set this up, Megan.  Megan is writing a book and we are helping. And how this came about is a personal journal, started last year about seven months ago and opened in Google doc to Kyle and then Kyle creating his and opening to Google doc to her.  So imagine having your very deep, secretive journal be completely open to your partner or not. And they opened it to me and then I didn’t read it. And then I waited.  And then at some point I realized that the support of Megan was a good motivation to journal myself. What I didn’t know that I didn’t know that I would take hold of that journaling and run with it to the point where, like, I’m catching up on the page count and we’re nearly at 500 pages collectively. So there is a book coming. Yes. And it’s going to have multiple topics. And I think the nature of going polyamorous is that it hits multiple parts of your life because you have to level up everywhere. You have to get clear. You have to get radically honest. You have to really do the work. And so I want to commend the two of you that you’ve done the work and doing the work. So this is why I’m even here, because I appreciate you for the work you’ve done.

Kyle: [00:15:03] Thanks, Marty.

Marty: [00:15:03] Yeah.

Kyle: [00:15:04] And I think when I came into this, I realized really quickly that two people that had been together for fifteen, eighteen years have established a certain way that they do things with each other, of course. And I’m coming in very new. And I think what hit me right away was the level of communication that you had with each other. And that was something that I was sorely lacking in all my past relationships and even with myself. Just this is how I’m feeling. Do I even acknowledge it with myself? Next level. So I want to share it with anybody else that I trust? And then do I want to just put it out into the world and see what happens? I think all those things have been a journey for me. But what I saw really quickly was communication is connected to trust in a very deep way. And I had no trust. I had no trust for myself. I wasn’t very good in being monogamous when I should be monogamous with other girlfriends. And I also didn’t trust them. And I think really quickly, I’ve solved that problem by watching you two and learning an incredible amount, but also communicating. What am I feeling? What do I need? And what am I exploring that I think I need and all of that. I think the communication level was always high between you two, I think.  But then the polyamorous level of structure is like we all have to be very communicative. We all have to let each other know. And there’s a safe space for it. Of what are you feeling and what do you need. And to have that, I think allowed me to feel more comfortable with myself, my truth, accepting all things from my kinks, and different things that I’m exploring in my sexuality to just my basic needs. What do I what I want out of this? What I want in my life? I think all those questions are things that I’d always put off because I didn’t know where to start. But I think the communication level has opened the conversation. And I would hope that this opens a conversation for us, for other people, because it’s important. It’s important to share that with other people that are close to you, but to have that conversation with yourself and really be open and honest about it. What’s the harm? I mean, we were going into a world of being very open. And I think we’re you know, we trust that there’s people that will respect that.

Megan: [00:17:29] Yeah.

Marty: [00:17:29] Absolutely.

Megan: [00:17:30] I’m remembering when we first met, I feel like I was kind of living in my head. I was very intellectual. I love my thoughts. I love thinking. I love all of that part. And I didn’t realize, though, how much my heart was cut off. So when you say I didn’t even recognize what I was feeling, that’s exactly the same thing. I felt like I was very much in denial and not in touch with my own heart or my own feelings. And this process has been the very long, sometimes arduous, sometimes incredibly delightful journey from my head to my heart and really understanding that. And now I have this philosophy, or maybe I’ve had it for my whole life, but it really applies now that all relationships are learning vehicles. So what I feel like we’ve done for each other. You know, if Marty and I we did have a really great base of communication already. And with you coming in, we’ve kind of accelerated our learning. And I can see that because our life has changed substantially in the last, you know, year..year and a half.

Marty: [00:18:27] And I think when we’re in a relationship with one another for such a long time and we build our patterns, there’s a lot of color in the relationship, but there’s not a lot of contrast. And the human eye, sees contrasts better than it sees color. And what the opportunity with other relationships have is it’s contrast. We treat the other significant others differently than we treat each other because we have a lot of baggage related to playing house together, raising kids, paying bills, dealing with family, whereas there’s a relationship bubble that you get to sit in with your other significant other because you don’t have this noise and you treat that person differently and voilà. Contrast that. Why I treat my girlfriend better than I treat my wife. Which sounds awesomely crazy.  But like yeah, in that sense, why?  Oh, well, I have a hang up on this with her and I’m treating her poorly in this area. Oh, I can give compassion to this woman. But, I can’t give compassion to my wife of 15 years. That’s stupid. So once you can kind of get to those, identify those kind of ways or behavior. I think that’s where the triangulation comes into play. It just accelerates that shortcut.

Megan: [00:19:33] That word. I love it. Triangulation.

Marty: [00:19:35] We didn’t make up that word.  Mathematician’s made up that word.

Megan: [00:19:38] We use in conversation like it’s totally normal. Like, you know, we triangulate.

Marty: [00:19:42] Euclides?  Whoever made up geometry.  

Kyle: [00:19:43] That’s what we do. We have a term that we don’t know. And then all of a sudden we’re using it.

Marty: [00:19:46] I think what’s going to happen for everyone listening to this and ourselves is that you’re going to pick up a whole new set of vocabulary. Right. Like even exploring swinger communities, just like where we started because it’s the only thing we know, or you can find it online.  But even in that sense, like there is all of these flavors in slices, like life is a spectrum everywhere. If you don’t believe life is the spectrum, shut this off now because it’s not gonna work out for you. But like everything is a spectrum.  Also, I have the shortcut to improving communication with your spouse. Get a degree in communications and pick up your wife there because that’s what I did.  We both have a degree in communications.

Kyle: [00:20:29]  I’ve seen the advantages.

Marty: [00:20:29] One thing we don’t do is shut the fuck up.

Megan: [00:20:34] Since you brought it up. And I hate to leave things on like just open ended. You know, you just mentioned like, oh, swingers. And that’s kind of where we started. Could you describe a little bit , how did we get here?

Marty: [00:20:47] Oh God, that’s a big question.  I guess I’m an instigator of that and probably the primary instigator of that. And not because of what everybody thinks, because the very first thing that everybody thinks is that I open this marriage to get laid with multiple women. And that is not at all the aim, nor was it even the intention to open the relationship yet.

Marty: [00:00:00] What happened was that after reading many books about having kids through three rounds of IVF and all that trying, I discovered that most marriages end up sexless or just get strained. And I was like, not my marriage! But in the process of even going through that discovery, I discovered your heart was off.

Megan: [00:00:17] Saying that my heart…

Marty: [00:00:19] Megan’s heart was off.  There was no vision of the future when challenged with, well, What are your fantasies? She had none. I had been worried for a while that there’s no real intimate relationships in her life, like close friends. And now we have kids, and I grew up in a fairly volatile household of divorce, anger and manipulation and cheating and violence. And it is not anything that I would ever accept for my children. And there is no way Mommy’s heart could be off.  And I am, maybe to our advantage, I have more of a martyr complex from my childhood, like I’m a martial artist and I fought a lot when I was little. And the reason I’m a good fighter is because I can disassociate my emotions and I can step in and I believe I’m expendable. It’s made me a very, very…..

Kyle: [00:01:12] Which also made me a bit nervous coming into this!

Marty: [00:01:15] Yes. But truthfully, I don’t fight.

Kyle: [00:01:18] Yes, we are good now.  

Marty: [00:01:21] But I apply the same kind of scenario to my relationship with my wife and kids. I’m expendable at the cost. If my children’s love is a cost, I am expendable.  And that’s kind of where I had to be first.  But then what that did is it led me to a much more empowered and loving way to work with Megan to discover why her heart is off and then start realizing that things like jealousy and anger in her way. So I was in this process clearing the noise, anything that was in her way, I was going to try to remove, even if he’s at the sacrifice of something I wanted or cared about, or myself.

Megan: [00:02:02] And if you asked me during this time, I would have had no idea that my heart wasn’t on, you know, or that I wasn’t living from my heart.

Marty: [00:02:09] You know that movie, What dreams may come with Robin Williams when they sink into hell, essentially, and the despair of hell does allow you to see that you’re in hell.

Megan: [00:02:20] And how they kept on pulling each other out, so one would come out, and then the other one would flip in and not recognize.

Marty: [00:02:24] Essentially, that’s my vision was like, oh shit, my wife’s in hell and I’m going to go to the edge of the darkness with her and try to pull her out and hopefully not die in the process. And I risked everything because, look, we’re in the state of Illinois and if you divorce me, you will have the kids. You will take all, the house is in your name. You have the car. I took all the risk in the businesses. I own nothing. I will. I don’t look good on paper. I have had a rough childhood. Your family doesn’t like me.  There’s all of these things that that I risked absolute. But that counter-intuitive move removed all the noise and allowed me to see your heart on.  But it worked on me, too. That’s what I didn’t know was gonna happen. Right, this work was very martyr based in the beginning. It was very self-sacrificial. It was very risky.  But my heart was off too and I didn’t know that.

Megan: [00:03:26] I’ve never heard you say it like that.

Marty: [00:03:27] I don’t think I really identified it that way. But yeah, I mean, that’s what I’ve been in search of this whole time. We just lived in South America for five months to find our corazones. Right?

Kyle: [00:03:36] Not a bad place.

Marty: [00:03:40] It’s significant.

Megan: [00:03:42] I love it. The geeky side of me is, you said, counter-intuitive move. And that’s after studying systems. We tend to know where the leverage points are, how there is something that we can do to change what we’re currently in, but we frequently do the wrong thing. So where you could have, Marty, taken the stance of, well, you know her hearts not on, or there’s something that’s off and I’m going to control it.  I’m going to, you know, just try to fix it. You opened it. You really opened it.

Marty: [00:04:12] There was one underlining axiom to that consideration, and that is that in the reading I was doing, it was very clear that one person can’t be everything for someone else.  And it was very clear that my very best and my all was not good enough and it was not complete.  And there was something missing and I couldn’t provide it.

Kyle: [00:04:34] And do you feel relieved to have that now?

Marty: [00:04:37] Oh, yeah, absolutely. Kyle, I can’t tell you how many times where I’m just like thank you Kyle.  I’ve been telling Megan something for fucking fifteen god damn years.

Kyle: [00:04:45] I hear that from both of you honestly.  

Marty: [00:04:45] Fifteen years of like, Megan you do this.  I don’t do that.  You do this Megan all the time. I have video recorded proof and seven witnesses have signed affidavits that you do this. I don’t do that. Kyle’s like, hey, you do this.  She’s like. I totally do that!

Kyle: [00:05:02] I give her a love sandwich first and then I tell her she’s doing something, then I give her love.

Marty: [00:05:06] That’s called priming. You start with something positive and you sandwich in the negative.

Megan: [00:05:10] It’s very skilled.

Marty: [00:05:12] No. Because there’s no noise. So, in the beginning it was frustrating because there’s still risk with you.  You know, look, I’m an outsider.  I’m a street kid, in a lot of ways, I’m a rejected a lot by even my own family. Her family rejects me. And here comes, you know, white guy from Barrington, who’s on paper…

Megan: [00:05:36] He’s inside going, don’t say that about me.

Kyle: [00:05:41] Oh no.  It’s out now.

Marty: [00:05:42] Well, look, you’re not the stereotypical person from these places, but on paper, you look a fuckton better than I do. And there would be people in our relationship that would campaign for you over me in a second.  So there’s this other risk that comes to the table of her taking information from you and not from me. Right in the beginning, it was scary.

Kyle: [00:06:02] Sure.

Marty: [00:06:03] Now it’s like it’s a tool in my weapons chest. It’s say, oh, she’s not listening to me. Go talk to Kyle.

Megan: [00:06:11] It works to all of our benefit. And I have to say to that note that your lover, literally taught you forgiveness.  Taught you how to forgive in one evening.

Kyle: [00:06:21] He forgave Jesus. Which I never thought would happen.

Marty: [00:06:23] I forgave Jesus.  I think I was on acid at the time.

Megan: [00:06:23] No, that was me.  

Marty: [00:06:23] The name of the acid was Jesus.  

Megan: [00:06:23] So, in the the benefits of this type of relationship are, I could one of two things. I could be totally insanely jealous and go, Marty. Fuck you. How could you have learned something from her that I have been trying to teach or provide something for 18 years or I can just go, thank you for providing this experience, something that I couldn’t do or that he wasn’t going to learn through me. He learned through you. And I think that, again, all relationships are learning vehicles, and we don’t have to be everything for everyone else. I also want to go back because I think we skipped a really quickly about how we started. You know, where you were questioning yourself on jealousy and anger and just really going through and guiding yourself to then fast forward where I’m in a relationship with Kyle, because it didn’t happen like that. It didn’t even happen linearly. And it didn’t happen on purpose like we didn’t, Marty. There was never a time in the beginning when we started out these conversations, which were in the car generally when our twins were sleeping in the back. They would fall asleep and we would talk for an hour and a half as long as they would sleep about about love, about life. And honestly, it was kind of hot. We got even into sex and what turns us on and that sexual side really was a .. I got unlocked through the sexual side because that was almost even an easier conversation than the heart conversation, because I didn’t even know that that one was there.

Marty: [00:07:54] I agree. I mean, to kind of step back we did totally skip the whole swingers conversation.

Megan: [00:07:59] So we did.  Let’s go back to that. We are leaving people on the hook if we’re not telling that.

Marty: [00:08:04] All right. All right.  So I think I agree 100 percent. We didn’t have an aim. It was like peeling back one onion layer and finding more onions. Oh, Shit. You found another fucking onion. Here we go.  Right. Like if they were in the car, they did start to elevate and escalate at one point, you know, we’re in this great city of Chicago. Absolutely everything that you could imagine is available in Chicago legal, illegal, taboo, totally normal. Whatever. You’re in a world class city where everything is here. So there’s the community and a larger community than in many areas and there are parties. So we decided if we have access to these communities, let’s not be afraid and let’s check out these communities and not have an agenda. So it wasn’t like we go to have an agenda, but it’s like curiosity. And we knew some people that were swingers and we learned some things about swinging that didn’t connect with us, like swinging and in a very generalized way. And statement is about recreational sex and intimacy is almost forbidden for a lot of couples that participate that way. Of course, there’s swinging polyamorous people and there’s there’s every flavor that you can think of. But I’d say the predominant situation was like, let’s have sex, let’s not be intimate. And that didn’t jive for either one of us.

Megan: [00:09:25] I think we had one experience and we met some nice couples, actually.  We went to a house party and it seemed so normal, like walk in and have some drinks, talk to people, totally normal. It did get crazy towards the end of the night.  But a few takeaways that I was really surprised by the people there and the openness and the way that they were just vulnerable and shared. So although although intimacy, quote unquote, is not part of that swinging world, I think that there’s a lot of openness there, which I found really freeing not just in conversation, but also, what was happening.

Marty: [00:09:59] Open, diverse.

Megan: [00:10:02] Exactly.

Marty: [00:10:02] Accepting, not body shaming, very radically honest, transparent. All of these things about that community were real big positives as well as like forward and generous with teaching.

Megan: [00:10:20] And sharing.  So we went out to dinner actually with a couple, a couple of couples that we had met afterwards and they just just hearing their stories. I was really surprised that probably statistically more than average group of them were really religious in their past lives. And they kind of had come to this. I don’t know. I can’t remember the exact story. Yeah.

Marty: [00:10:45] I have a theory.  I think, like you said, one of the accesses to change is through our own sexuality.

Megan: [00:10:52] Yes.

Marty: [00:10:52] So, some people use their physicality. Some people use their intellect. Some people use their sexuality but there are vehicles or channels or ways to change life.  And I think the one thing that every single person in the swinging community. Every single person in the polyamorous community, in society in this day and age right now have in common is that you have to significantly change your life to participate. And so everybody that’s gone in this has changed something drastic about themselves, because it’s certainly not the indoctrinated world that you grew up in.

Megan: [00:11:26] Very true.

Kyle: [00:11:27] Yeah. And I mean, when I met Megan, I think about the early days where we were just friends and that’s how it all started for me and her. And there was a funny time where I pulled up this thing on LinkedIn that basically pulls your LinkedIn data and it gives you a personality profile. And basically what it said about her was stoic, you know, very structured, very serious. And I’m like, yeah, that’s right on. And I remember how upset she got when I when I was reading this. And I was surprised. I’m like, why does that upset you? And, obviously, now I realize exactly why. That really wasn’t her. But that’s what was on display. That’s what I saw. That’s what the rest of the world was seeing. And that’s, I think, a testament to how far you’ve come.

Marty: [00:12:19] The rest of the world, but me.

Kyle: [00:12:21] Sure.

Marty: [00:12:21] Because there’s a version of Megan that I saw die off. And when I realized it in that moment that I realized my wife’s heart is off and she has no vision of the future. And she has no fantasy. This is the one of the most sensual, sexual, beautiful, powerful, ambitious, driven women I’ve ever met in my life and why I married her and why I was falling in love with her is all of these qualities.  She’s now completely shut off.

Megan: [00:12:49] And it’s like full circle now to totally understand this. We used to call that version of me Barcelona Megan, because when my last year of college, I lived in Barcelona and I felt so free. Really, I was exploring. I was learning languages. I was meeting people and I felt like everything was possible. And I could feel this joy, this flow of life that was, it was brilliant. Now I understand myself. I can say I’m a very sensual person and I think I learn intuitively. But I didn’t I couldn’t have verbalized that before. But what brought me back in this full circle is like I was allowed to be back in my body. I was allowed to use my senses again. I was allowed to use my intuition and feel where I had trained myself, really. And I think that’s part of our culture, especially for a woman is okay, I need to be stoic. That’s the ultimate. I need to not let my emotions rule me and that there’s a certain way to be in society so that I’m not attracting male attention in the way that I don’t want it or, you know, that just all of these things where I literally had shut down part of myself, not to mention we really did go through some traumatic events when our businesses closed and that was traumatic. And it took a while for me to heal, what happened there.

Marty: [00:14:05] So first thing I realize, I owe you an apology. Because Barcelona Megan has been used to shame you, not support you.It’s being used to support you now, but it was used to shame you in the past. I apologize for that.

Megan: [00:14:21] Wow. I’m gonna let that sink in. Yeah.

Marty: [00:14:26] Because it’s a great quality about you. And it’s something that I’m ashamed that I helped to kill off. I’m glad we brought it back.

[00:14:33] Wow. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the power of all of this.  I’m on the verge of tears.  It’s realizing that who I’ve been all along is okay and that I don’t have to be someone else, that I can be me.  And being me now, I’m looking at both of you two in the eyes and just feeling so accepted and so loved and knowing that I support you in being you. The most you that you can be is huge. Yeah. I didn’t realize you had. Yeah, you had to use that as shaming like, oh, that’s Barcelona Megan. Because there was jealousy there. Like talk about jealousy. There was a ton.  We weren’t together one year, I went to Barcelona, we broke up. I dated some Spanish men and some British men and maybe one guy from Argentina.

Marty: [00:15:18] She likes the flavors.

Megan: [00:15:22] Diversity.

Marty: [00:15:22] It was indoctrinated.

Megan: [00:15:23] Yeah.

[00:15:24] You know, one of the things I’m taking on head on is hypermasculinity, toxic masculinity.  And I am a perpetrator. You know, part of what I’ve had to do is forgive myself. I had a very high risk, violent teenage life. And I’ve been a perpetrator of a lot of toxic masculine. I was toxic as a person.  It doesn’t matter that it was male. It was drive and force and coercion and manipulation. Just like it’s taught male energy can be. But I own that in my language.  I have to forgive other men a lot now because it’s so clear.

Kyle: [00:16:08] Yeah, same.

Marty: [00:16:10] I get first pissed off, but then I realize this in the car the other day.

Kyle: [00:16:14] It’s hard to be around, right?

Marty: [00:16:15] Yeah, it’s hard to be around and it’s hard to be around me feeling the same way. So like back in America, after five months, I’ve been driving all over Brazil and Chile. And now, you know, I’ve changed my culture of driving. I come to Chicago and instant asshole! Grandmas flicking you off and everybody’s entitled to their part of the road. And the cars are really big and the lanes are even bigger. This is my space, mother fucker. I’m not letting you in! Crazy kind of Chicago NASCAR on the highway energy.  And I got cut off and I was pissed. And then I asked myself why I’m pissed and it’s because I need to forgive them.  But no, wait. I need to forgive me because I used to drive like them because I used to be them, because I’m actually really angry at the person I used to be in that I ever participated with it. And I’m disgusted with myself and it has nothing to do with the other people.

[00:17:05] Yeah, you said that yesterday. You forgave yourself. Oh, oh, you’re talking about your body. So I am. So physical transformation has been a part of this group as well. And you two.

Kyle: [00:17:17] On the male side.

Megan: [00:17:18] On the male side.

[00:17:20] I had kids. Oh, no.  True, true.  I just had surgery. So Marty has lost 70 pounds over the last three years. And Kyle, you’ve lost …

Kyle: [00:17:30] twenty five.

Megan: [00:17:30] Twenty five.

Marty: [00:17:35] You didn’t have as much to lose.  

Kyle: [00:17:35] It’s not a competition.

Megan: [00:17:37] And I know that’s part of this journey as well. And you were there yesterday in the car. You were just saying something about forgiving the past version of yourself.

Marty: [00:17:47] Yeah, I think this is useful to explain.

Megan: [00:17:49] Yes.

Marty: [00:17:50] And I think other people can relate and might benefit. I lost 70 pounds.  For our international listeners, that’s 30 kilos. There were a lot of reasons. A lot of ways. And that’s a whole other podcast. But what’s occurred is going from 215 pounds to 150 pounds, 140 something pounds. Now maintaining at 155. And I have a visible six pack abs and I’m leaned out but I have excess skin, not tons of it, but I have excess skin.  And this excess skin can undermine my personal experience of myself so I can be as lean as I’ve ever been. I walk a ton. I could walk a 23 mile day, do two and a half hours of kung fu, do an hour of salsa dancing lessons. Burn 3000 calories. Look in the mirror. Be lean as I’ve ever been and be like, Oh, there’s that skin.  And I can get mad at myself from the past for having let myself get as far as I did to now being in a body I could have always had. I always had access to this body. I always had the ability to get back to this health. I never took it. And I just kept getting heavier and heavier and heavier to the point where I’ve damaged my body, where I have this excess skin and this excess skin from my past is ruining the joy of my experience of my body right now because it’s noise and it doesn’t even matter. Like my body is so significantly different than the past that this is such a small blip on the radar of everything. But it’s loud and big in my face sometimes, and I have to forgive the version of myself that slipped into this weight so that I don’t kill the joy that I have right now.of the physicality of my body, because what I was telling you earlier is, I don’t have the same physical objectives as other people that I meet. A lot of them are like, I want to lose weight so I can show off my arm. I want functional fitness so that I can say yes to every adventure presented to me and know I’m going to have a good time. I want to be able to play with my kids to the extent they want to play with me, until they don’t want to play with me anymore. When someone’s like, hey, do you want to ride a horse up the side of the mountain in Chile.  Yes, terrified, but yes.

Kyle: [00:20:02] And sexual endurance as well.

Marty: [00:20:04] Yeah. Everything.

Kyle: [00:20:05] Kind of motivating at this time of our life where maybe other people might be going the other direction.

Marty: [00:20:11] I just turned 40. Right. Actually, at 38, when we really started opening all this up, I had this epiphany. It was like I’ve been having sex for twenty two years. Well, not like continually , for twenty two years since I started. Well in the beginning it sucks. You’re bad at it. You’re terrified. Your partner sucks at it. It’s just like, you know, beginning of sex.

Megan: [00:20:34] He’s not talking about me. He’s just talking about in general.

Marty: [00:20:39] You’re a virgin. You know what the fuck’s going on? Right. It takes a while to get your confidence under you. In this country, especially as a lot of body shaming is. We don’t talk. You go a whole relationship where the guy doesn’t talk. The woman doesn’t talk, you completely guess about each other all the time in which relationships out there. It’s like we’re just going to make assumptions until we get divorced. Right. So then I started thinking my sex life is getting way better, my sex life with Megan is great. And then like I thought, well, if my dick works until I’m sixty, I could have twenty two years of phenomenal sex. Why not? Let’s work on that! So I just see it as like at 40 it used to be doom and gloom. And now I feel like I turned 40 and I’m priming. I’m just getting started. And it feels good.

Megan: [00:21:26] Benjamin Button reversing in age. I think both of you two. And even yesterday. Do you remember what you said yesterday morning?

Kyle: [00:21:32] Which part?

Megan: [00:21:32] The part about the correlation between sex and happiness?

Kyle: [00:21:37] Oh, yes. I mean, I was posing a question, but I think. Yeah. I mean, has anyone ever run a scientific study where they look at  the amount of sex you’re having and how many partners. Probably a lot more detail..like how respectful are you in those relationships but then correlated to happiness.  And yeah, it’s got to be a really powerful, a powerful thing to see if they ever did a study.

Marty: [00:22:04] Yeah. If it’s all consenting.

Megan: [00:22:06] Yes.

Marty: [00:22:07] I think we improved our sex life through this process of opening up before we even opened up. Like I was working on my own physicality and working on understanding. OK. I’m going to take a side note. All right, men. This is for you.  You’ve set the bar really, really fucking low, right? You don’t read anything. You don’t know nothing about the female anatomy. You don’t know what the orgasm looks like for her. And you just go at it for yourself. You have no clue what you’re doing. And it’s all available on this thing called the Internet. Google.

Kyle: [00:22:39] Marty sent me links very early on.

Marty: [00:22:39] I’ll send you an article, the one article that’ll change your life and then ten articles that’ll change her life. At the end of the day, all of the information is available to you. The bar is set so low that unfortunately, women who’ve had to suffer long enough that if you’re just slightly better than the average, you will do a lot better than you were doing before. Just a side note.

Megan: [00:23:00] Oh, my God.  I feel like you can say 10 different things at this point. Number one, that research has paid off for you. For me, actually, for me and for some other lucky ladies out there, too. I totally think that there is a correlation between a healthy sex life and happiness, because I feel like it is so indicative of, number one, your relationship to your own body and how we love ourselves is really how we experience the world. Marty, I have seen you transform your love for your own body. Years ago, you hated your body, literally hated it. You would talk poorly about yourself. It was really hard to be around. And every time I tried to support you in a way, I would make no progress because there was just hate there. Now you love your body.

Megan: [00:00:00] Now you are admiring your journey of everything you’ve done to get to where you are right now.  And Kyle. Have you a similar experience with your body? Because you’ve had also a very similar transformation.

Kyle: [00:00:10] Yeah, I mean, I was actually thinking more about the mental side of sex, which I think is probably discounted or not thought about enough. But I felt like early on I got challenged in my own way of confronting what was blocking me mentally during sex. And I think when this all began, you know, we were having threesomes. And to be clear, not Marty and I, it was just, you know, we were both pleasing Megan together.

Marty: [00:00:38] Serving Megan.

Kyle: [00:00:42] Serving Megan, exactly.

Marty: [00:00:42] That’s one of the fantasy fulfillments on her list.

Kyle: [00:00:43] And that’s actually one of the questions I get a lot. It’s just making sure.

Marty: [00:00:48] I think what you are bringing up is even questions of sexuality. Right? You have to question that.

Kyle: [00:00:53] Well, when you step outside the box, everyone starts going, oh, how far how far over you. And that’s a fair question. But I think what I was trying to get at was more of I realized early on and having threesomes with another guy in the room, which was unique and new for me, how uncomfortable I was with that experience. And that was all me judging myself, thinking that I’m not worthy, that I’m coming into something where you guys know each other and I don’t know her as well as you do, all of these things are going on in my head and I had to confront that. And I think the nice triangulation point that I got recently when we had a threesome was how I was just enjoying it because I knew that Megan was so happy. I love experiencing her in that moment for her. And that to me is is the fun that I get out of it now. And I don’t have that noise, which is beautiful. But just seeing her and appreciating that level of pleasure and ecstasy, I would just call it the pure kind.

Marty: [00:02:00] Yeah, well, kudos to you for being so vulnerable in that. Men don’t have that ability to be that vulnerable. And I think you hit the nail on the head. I wasn’t comfortable. You have the original reasons to are far more than sexual, their control. They’re not allowing you to have a time alone together because there’s fear to be left out that doesn’t exist anymore.

Megan: [00:02:26] We had to work up to that. So that’s why even this whole journey, we didn’t know where it was going.

Marty: [00:02:31] It was really kind of wild, wild West experimental.

Megan: [00:02:34] And I will just point out, because Kyle just shared, there is an example, I think, of your courage and bravery because you are vulnerable. You are willing to go through your just to share your experience. I find that extremely attractive.

Kyle: [00:02:47] That is probably the only reason I do it. She’s reinforcing me.

Marty: [00:02:52] Positive feedback loop.

Kyle: [00:02:53] Yeah, thankfully.

Marty: [00:02:55] I think this is a really good question about sexuality. I think one of the things that we’re plagued with and especially United States anywhere there’s a lot of homophobia is that we’re taught as young men that… Especially in homophobic communities, that anything you think of that could potentially be gay makes you gay.  Right?

Kyle: [00:03:14] There’s a lot of fear there.

Marty: [00:03:16] If you think of a cock and you like it, you’re gay. Even if you never act out on that, even if it’s just …

Kyle: [00:03:21] If you don’t repel it.

Marty: [00:03:22] If you don’t spray holy water on yourself and rebaptize yourself, you’re not going to survive that. But it’s bullshit. It’s a thought experiment.

Kyle: [00:03:31] There’s a connection there to hypermasculinity as well.

Marty: [00:03:33] Exactly. So I had to ask myself a lot of questions about even being able to share Megan.  And the questions that most men, I think in the Western society don’t ever have the courage to ask themselves, you know, other than maybe the men that have come out and are actually living out their fantasy. But most straight men are living out their way. Most men that are straight are afraid to ask themselves anything about homosexuality, anything about seeing each other naked, being in the same room.  What about incidental touch? What about this? Do I like this? Do I not like this? Do I have any desire for it?  Do I not have any desire for it?

Kyle: [00:04:10] And can I have a gay friend?

Marty: [00:04:12] Yeah. How do you then assign yourself a label? I think that labels can be useful, polyamory is a useful label to help identify some of this. But the labels can also be pigeon holes too. What is your sexuality? I like sex.  But kinks are different. Likes are different. All that stuff. And I think. Megan.

Megan: [00:04:34] Yeah, I was just thinking about our journey and how we got here. You mentioned control just there. And I know that we started out this journey even in conversation, talking about we would never do anything outside of the room, you know, that we would always just be together. And I remember as things started to progress with Kyle and I really had a desire to get to know Kyle physically without your presence there.  Because you’re presence, Marty, already shifts the dynamic. And at that point, I had never really known another male body for 18 years. And there was there was also a lot of fear and curiosity there too. It was a self-discovery, I think, of myself sexually.

Marty: [00:05:21] The fear that I had was replace of love.  This is the common consideration is that she’s going to fall in love with someone else and stop loving me and I’m gonna be replaced. Right? Especially when on paper you look better. The family would like him better.  All of these other things are happening and I am at high risk. And who the hell is going to believe a straight married male? What woman is going to believe a straight married male is even polyamorous? I’m literally going into this with no no confidence that I’ll be able to even tell the truth and be heard and seen and even get in a relationship.  So I’m I’m at high risk. It’s very hard for me. But I also recognize that really early that me in here doesn’t give her the experience she needs.  So I started to, make space. And that was something that I don’t even think you could ask me for.

Megan: [00:06:13] No, I didn’t even. I couldn’t have imagined. And I still sit here and wonder how you did it, because I was literally falling in love with Kyle. While you hadn’t even really gone on any dates, like there wasn’t even anyone that was in your life in that way.

Marty: [00:06:30] I know that was happening while I was in the consideration that I might not be able to.

Megan: [00:06:35] Yeah. Yeah.  In fact, we call Marty, Ronin, because he kind of just does his own thing, he busts open space.

Marty: [00:06:45] I think what I’m starting to understand about myself in that context of busting open space and doing things alone like the ronin for those who don’t know is a samurai without a master. I don’t have mentors. That’s not entirely true because I read a lot or whatever, but I don’t have direct mentors. Sort of like this is how you do it.  But I have had a life of being an outcast all the time. I have only recently realized through our moving to South America and changing our life so drastically and finding alignment with myself that I’ve been trying to conform into these roles in society and life and family, that I’ve never been accepted. And I’m never going to be accepted in. And so I’ve always learned alone. I’ve taught myself alone. I’ve learned how I learn alone. I’ve had to navigate most every break down to some degree without any guidance. So it’s not unusual for me, I think is one of the things. The other thing is I lived a high risk life. So risk is something I have learned how to do. And you know this about me, right? I studied game theory for strategy and contract negotiation for like nine years. You do not want to be in an adversarial position with me in a contract negotiation. I will eat your face. I don’t want to. And I don’t even want to do business like that anymore. I don’t even want to participate. But I studied this shit to the Nth Degree. And so there is a part of me that knows when to go all in. It’s just like, OK, well, I’m faced with a scenario where it’s like a zero sum or high risk. I’m going to just go high risk and I just step in.

Megan: [00:08:35] I think I will always be appreciative for the space that you created for me, for us. And I remember actually conversation again in the car where we were talking about this theoretical testing that we were going to do. This is before we went to any party. I think even before we met Kyle and I knew myself well enough to know, I love. And I think I love deeply. And I kind of knew, even though we are saying my heart was off, but I knew myself enough to know I might get lost down this path if we go down there and that I don’t want to go down this path if I can’t love, or if I can’t be fully present with wherever we’re going. And I remember that conversation really, really clearly. And you basically gave me permission to fall in love. It was this forecasting that we couldn’t have known. But I remember that as a key moment of I can’t even allow myself to consider this if we can’t go down that road.

Marty: [00:09:33] What did I want for you is intimacy and love. How could I block that? That’s the whole point. I didn’t know where it was going to lead.

Kyle: [00:09:41] I think that was probably the biggest battle of that that we won in this whole thing. I mean, even from my side. So I was not sharing when this was going on with many people in my life because I don’t think I really know. I didn’t know how to describe it. I was just trying to grasp on to understanding that myself. And I think anytime I did share it, the number one thing that everybody said was don’t fall in love with her. And I remember telling you that later on. But I think that to me was a wall that I put up early on.  Okay, everybody else is saying it. So it must be right.

Marty: [00:10:22] And the same society that I’m completely rejecting about everything I believe in, must be right about this belief.

Kyle: [00:10:29] Exactly.  And I think that was like the big battle I had to win, which was the final. Fuck you,maybe a little bit. But also, just like I’m going to figure this out myself. And if it’s right, I’ll know. And I think when I let that last thing go and I realized that was what you wanted and that I was safe with you. I think that was the huge moment of release. It was really me letting go because the walls are all about control. The walls are all about, you know, things that I have constructed and hanging on. And when I really let go. That was when really love was what occurred. It wasn’t something that I had to manufacture that I have to find. It was something that I just had to let go.

Marty: [00:11:14] That’s funny, too, because like you talk about like when you share and now you’re like a share bear. You share ahead of everybody. I used to overshare, but, I didn’t share with many people either, in part because the risk was this so profound. You’re going to let her love somebody else?

Kyle: [00:11:37] They judge your role.

Marty: [00:11:38] Yeah, and you know, I had something occur to me before game theory conversation, the all in, the risk. There is this moment where the kids had triggered something when they were born about me removing all character flaws and trying to step into the best version of myself. And a point after a weight loss, after opening things up, after all the work that I had done, I realized I’m the best version of me I’ve ever been. So if you’re going to leave now, I’m doomed anyway. Right?  And then as I kept stepping into it, what does she need for me to be the best partner?  You wouldn’t leave the best partner.  If I cook like a gourmet chef. I look like I look and I’m good in the sack. Good parent.  I’m a supportive partner and I allow for all this love. And we can play house well together. If you leave, you’re an idiot. Like at this point, that’s kind of where I pigeon holed you. As one of my security blankets. If she leaves now, the best version of me with all this other shit. She’s ain’t going to find shit like this again. I’m done.

Kyle: [00:12:44] I’m not going to lie that even me. If I hear about Megan meeting other guys, it’s like that ups my game as well where I want to be the best version of myself. I want to be the boyfriend.

Marty: [00:12:58] Polyamory makes you more competitive.  Kyle’s got a nicer ass than I do. Because I have a concave ass.  I’m half Irish, half Indian I don’t know if that combination negates an ass. No, I got to work on having an ass. So Megan gets the benefit of two guys. It’s a healthy competition.

Kyle: [00:13:21] Megan’s blushing.

Megan: [00:13:21] I covering my mouth.  This is hilarious because, number one, the whole competitive orientation or paradigm it’s just not, it’s very masculine. It’s the healthiest way you can be made that masculine.

Marty: [00:13:38] There is a healthy masculine.

Megan: [00:13:39] But great.  I get a lot of benefit because you’re kind of working to be the best versions of yourself. It’s incredible.

Marty: [00:13:49] And through totally different channels and ways like, you know, ice princess over here. I can’t even stand.  I don’t know how you do it, Kyle.  Fucking ice baths. Yeah. Okay. I’m all about body hacking away.  Life hacking.  But I think the Indian in me is like gets close to the coldness, like, fuck,.

Kyle: [00:14:07] Don’t blame it on that, Marty.

Marty: [00:14:08] I’m not putting my foot in this goddamn water.  It’s so cold. I like beaches with bath water, ocean temperatures, I’m not interested in this cold. So we have different routes there.  And the benefits are this healthier version of masculine competition? Because it’s not to dethrone anyone. It’s actually, like you said, to be the best version of ourselves.  My lover, my exes that I had. They taught me a lot and they’re teaching me a lot. And the transparency in these relationships allow them to heal a lot. And there’s just all of this growth going on because we’re all kind of competing with ourselves to be the best version of ourselves.

Megan: [00:14:56] I think that’s the incredible benefit too. Kyle was there for a little while, then we traveled around a little bit with Marty’s lover and it was I got to experience myself as the best version of myself. And it feels great. It really does. It’s like, wow, I get to hold the space and to see you fall in love with another woman and to be there to witness it. To see that incredible vulnerability and energy and to hold that space..

Marty: [00:15:24] And to participate in it.

Megan: [00:15:25] Yes, that’s right. That’s my threesome story. That’s for a later version.

Kyle: [00:15:29] That will be if you follow us and and listen to anything.

Megan: [00:15:38] Yeah. And to experience my own sexuality in that has been really, really incredible. I want to actually go back to a comment that you were making before about I would be an idiot if I left you at this point when you’re the best version of yourself, which is again, really funny, because that’s not even a question in my mind. I know that you have to do the thought experiments, but it doesn’t.

Marty: [00:15:57] But it needs to be resolved.  It can’t be an open loop. Here’s some other advice, you can’t ignore things and little seeds of doubt will turn into

Marty: [00:00:00] Forests of insecurity later, and I am not.  We’ve been tackling insecurity as it arrives. It’s like every insecurity is a signpost to an emotion. We’re feeling less secure. But emotion has thoughts associated. Those thoughts have beliefs associated with them. What are you believing that leads to these thoughts? That leads to these emotions? Those insecurities are incredibly valuable as signposts to uncover hidden beliefs and then examine them. Do I believe this? Why do I believe this? Is this even true? Is this even serving me if it is true? Is there another version that’s better than this?  And that leads to better thoughts, that leads to better emotions. And you have to do that work.  And you have to dig in at that level. Every time you face an insecurity. So like nothing can seed. I have to go through these thought experiments. If you’re out there and you don’t go through the thought experiments, you’re setting yourself up for doom because you’re not allowing yourself to grieve or feel the emotions that come with indoctrinated jealousy or fear or these other insecurities that get planted through society and through your growth and through your communities or your religion or whatever else poisoned your mind early, that needs to be resolved. And they have to have those lips closed in every open loop I find I call a dragon and I’m a dragon hunter. And if I see that my biggest panic right now is when I’m suffering, but I can’t see the dragon, I’m spinning. Everything’s a trigger. And I don’t know what the origin is, the dragons hidden from me. And I then go through a reductive process of reducing out everything. That’s not a variable I can remove to find kind of the essence of the insecurity which I call the dragon. And then it’s like, how the fuck do I slay this thing? And sometimes the dragon is a belief where you have to change your beliefs. Sometimes the dragon is a habit. Sometimes the dragon is two headed and there is actually some kind of co-morbid thing going on here where there’s actually oh, my outside need for validation that I’ve been battling right now is the dragon actually might be from the practice of trying not to want or need anything. I’ve been trying to go through this process of not needing or wanting anything from any of the women or relationships that I made, almost like a Buddhist level. If I don’t want or need, I won’t be let down. But subconsciously, that doesn’t work. And so I love my therapist. My therapist told me maybe, maybe that the wants and needs are there and not acknowledging them takes them from the forefront and puts them in the background and makes them the insecurity and the dragon and all this need for outside validation is coming from this denial of needs and wants, because now it’s like, oh, if you’re not going to do it consciously, subconsciously, you are going to do it anyway.  Right. So it’s something you have to explore. And I feel like there’s this weird thing that happens to me now when I finally see the dragon, I get excited. I used to get terrified. And now I say, I see bastard! And I also know that I transformed my body and I quit drinking. And I’ve changed these things. I’ve opened up my relationship. I’ve been successful with the work that I’ve done and the techniques and strategies have worked in the past. So I have confidence in slaying the dragon. Even if I don’t know how yet, that I will. And when I do, I’ll have the benefits of it. So there’s this just like self fulfilling positive feedback loop in doing it, but don’t leave anything for seeds.

Megan: [00:03:38] Well said, well said. I don’t even know how to follow that up. I see you do it in real time, which is incredible. And I know you walk me through when I go into my, I call them negative thought loops. I’m like a hamster on a wheel where I just keep running that same story, same story, same story over and I think Kyle and I when we talk, we talk about it as in traumas like these are perhaps past traumas that we haven’t resolved. And it’s a bit of our heart that has gotten wounded and we want to, so my whole theory is that our heart gets wounded and we go into our head. We make a rule for ourselves and our life. But that rule only serves to block out part of life. And what we really need to do is just go back into our heart and heal that part.

Marty: [00:04:19] We’ve been handed rules.  Here are the rules.

Marty: [00:04:21] Right. So I want to bring up something, because this superpower that you think I have is actually my personality type and I think far out in the future. And I reverse reason. And I come to my conclusions and I’m conditionally logic minded. But you two have a different way. And it serves me in so many ways.  In Santiago, I’m thinking about I had so much fear. Here’s a woman that I literally fell in love with him like a day. I’m going to tell this part. And then I want your take, Kyle, on this. I had my first ever hall pass. I’m on this vacation for me. And a trip for a friend who’s speaking has never left the country. And I’m his Sherpa, so I advocate the entire trip to this brilliant artist. I know nothing about art. I’m like, I will get us a place to stay for free. You’ll pay for my conference. I will be your Sherpa and you pick everything we do and I’m going to be a sponge. And I have this hall pass and I’m going to go. But I realized like all the way through this week, this 6, 7 days that we are there, that I have no desire for using this hall pass right now.

Megan: [00:05:26] Do people know what a hall pass is?

Marty: [00:05:28] A hall pass is I have permission to  maybe meet someone, contact Megan and get permission to hookup potentially. Right.

Megan: [00:05:36] I think my rule was no sex.

Marty: [00:05:38] No sex. Everything but sex.  Which comes to play later. Yeah. We get all the way to this conference. I was joking and talking to my friend about how I’ve had this hall pass all week but I haven’t felt any ambition to use it because I haven’t felt any connection. And I’m really all about this art and it’s been great. And then low and behold, we get to the conference and I notice this woman and she notices me. We don’t even talk that day,we talked the next day and we spent all this time talking. And I kind of fall for this woman and then I have this opportunity to meet her late on a Sunday, and nothing is open except for clubs and we finally get across I’m in this open marriage. And this whirlwind happens and it’s beyond anything I could have imagined. And it’s just super intense. And it’s like how when I met Megan, it was  instant. I met Megan and, boom, I elbowed the guy next to me in class and was like, that’s the girl I’m going to marry. And he’s like, fuck off and went back to his newspaper or whatever. But this is how it hits me. And so flash forward seven months later, I’m here just to see if she’ll talk to me. I have no plans. Brought my whole family.  A bunch of risk. It’s three weeks. I’m just all risk. We’ll see if she doesn’t want to talk to me, we’ll figure out what to do. But going up to it, all of these insecurities flared and Kyle happened be there for the first week. And we had this conversation where you really cued me into and this is kind of weird.  It’s not about logic anymore, which is really my strength. This is about really heart and clarity. And your ability to observe is strong. And I count on you for it. And so one of the things you said to me is Marty, one of the problems that you have is that you’re not seeking relationships in polyamorous communities. You’re going with the energetic connection. And this person isn’t in the polyamorous community yet or ever will be. So you run this higher risk of failure in these relationships. And it was the pill I had to swallow. Right. Do I want to contrive a relationship in a polyamorous community and try to figure that out and play apps or do whatever that shit is? Or am I just the type of guy that goes with energy and energy is the answer. And I had to deal with that. I don’t know, what are your two views on my first week?

Kyle: [00:07:52] I mean, you had a little bit of anxiety that was built up for weeks or months going into it. I was trying to experience it by having low expectations be the place you should start because I didn’t know much about how much you’ve been talking. And as your friend, I wanted you to have low expectations. And I think that was something that I mentioned was, you know, what do you want to get out of this? OK. But would it be great to just experience her, you know, and enjoy the time with her and all the answers you said were yes. You enjoy being around her. And I think for me, as a guy who’s dated a lot of women over time, and maybe that’s what I can offer to someone that’s been married for a large chunk of time, is that, you can get way ahead of yourself. You can desire certain things. You can have expectations. You can feel energy. But coming back to the present and saying, is this what I want to want to do? Do I want to I want to love this person and letting everything else fall where it may?

Marty: [00:09:05] Yeah, it’s almost more terrifying to allow myself to love her than it is and has been to open up my marriage to let someone else love my wife, because there is this question if I’m lovable. Right. And there’s that question if you’re if I’m toxic and I come from a household with toxic people in it. I fear I’m toxic.  I fear that all the time. To allow myself to love someone else. To allow myself to fall into that and risk that.  Oh, I’ll risk everything else. But I’m not going to risk that. So I risk that this time. And I brought this up, too, because I’ve had to use that same lesson now.  Because she’s a week out from arriving here and I’ve planted all this fear we’ve talked about. I mean, we’ve briefly communicated about it. But, I have to almost start over and allow for it to be whatever it is in order to be true to it, because I do, you know, you do tend to bring all this baggage. What is she going to choose?

Megan: [00:10:06] Everybody tries to figure out the future before anything’s happening.

Marty: [00:10:11] Yeah, when she first showed up and Kyle’s there and Megan’s there and the kids are there and she…

Kyle: [00:10:19] Not overwhelming.

Marty: [00:10:20] Enters this household. What she tells me later as we go to dinner. It was weird and, of course, it’s weird. Yeah, we’re weirdos. She’s like, no, what’s weird is that it was easy and it flowed. And I felt comfortable more than my normal life. And I was like, holy fuck.

Kyle: [00:10:39] I know what that feels.

Marty: [00:10:40] Yeah, I know what it’s like. I can empathize. But it also at the same token, I’m like, wow, there’s someone that loves me that I love have the possibility of even considering this life when they weren’t in this life. And my answer would have been like, probably fucking not.  No way. And for it to even be considered for me was a breakthrough. And even being allowed to be loved. Right. And I think that that’s where I’m gonna go all the way back to the beginning where I didn’t know my heart was off.

Kyle: [00:11:16] That was something that you said that you hadn’t said before.

[00:11:18] I know this is but even this conversation is revelatory. This is why this just keeps happening. We just keep learning through it.

Marty: [00:11:26] You can’t dig into this shit without digging deep and the shit you dig up is going to be real. And it’s going to have many faces because it’s got a first layer and a second layer and then you have an aha moment about it and then it’s months later and is again rearing its head oh the lesson again.

Megan: [00:11:44] Yep. So exactly. I saw you go through this pattern and for you saw her again. And now I’ve seen you go through the same pattern. And it’s really interesting that it just keeps bringing up this insecurity, which is why am I lovable?

Marty: [00:11:57] Ok, this comes from where and I’m going to step into the hypermasculine with empathy and the toxic masculine with empathy. I’ve had a life of being rejected by mothers and women where it’s not even been my fault. I have no chance of my mother listening to this. I have no idea where she is. I have no idea if she’s alive. I have no idea if I ran into her if we would recognize one another at this point because change has been so drastic.  But, the last thing I really got from her, before I cut her out of my life as the kids were born, was her request of me to commit suicide.  This is the type of communication I’m getting. I have no trust.

Megan: [00:12:41] Your mother is also sick and using alcohol.

Marty: [00:12:42] Ok. Slight tangential there. I have a fuck ton of empathy for my mother because what would it take you to get so dark that you would ask your son who you claim to love to kill himself? Okay. Well, you don’t do that if you’re healthy. She’s not. She’s an alcoholic.  Alcoholism with co-morbid disease comes with depression. All these other things. Where’s all that stuff come from? My mom had a lot of traumatic experiences in her life.

Megan: [00:13:09] Which she didn’t heal, she didn’t have the opportunity to.

Marty: [00:13:12] And they came from hyper toxic masculine paradigms, incredibly abusive experiences. And so I have compassion and empathy and forgiveness for her.  But at the same time, a detachment from women where I don’t trust that I won’t be rejected. All of a sudden, randomly. You were there in college, I would get a phone call almost every morning at 6 a.m. I might be partying until 5 AM. She’s drunk at 6 a.m. She’s emotional. She’s suicidal. I answer the call every fucking day. It would be three days of love and then all of a sudden tragedy and fighting because she’s talking shit about me. So it’s so volatile and flip on a dime and then your fucking family hates me and all the women hate me. And it’s like because of paradigms that I’m not even involved in. They’re like even made up stories.

Megan: [00:14:04] So there is again, more trauma there. That is being projected.

Marty: [00:14:06] And being projected on me. I’m just a target of this trauma. So like I have empathy there. But I also have then this detachment from can I even be loved? Like, if you’re going to assign all your negativity to me, that they’re going to assign all the negativity to me and they’re going to assign all the traumas to me. Why wouldn’t every other woman that I meet do that to me? So there is that that that I have to heal and that this gives me access to that I wouldn’t have otherwise had access to. And like you said, people like my lover have walked in after 18 years of you trying to help me to heal these wounds. And she just grabs the wound and says this is how you solve it. And I listened because I was vulnerable and primed in the right place. And I was also in awe of what was happening to me. And I realized that I needed to completely abdicate to the circumstances because I am way out of my wheelhouse and I’m clearly deep in my trauma’s and they see it and I don’t. So I’m just going to accept.

Megan: [00:15:03] Yeah. And as we sit here, I have full confidence as you work through this trauma and this insecurity, that whether or not it’s a week or a month or a year from now, we will listen back to this recording. Oh, yeah, wow, how life has changed. That’s what I was working through then.

Marty: [00:15:19] I pretty much do that at any point of our journal and part of any audio recording because the growth is so exponentially fast.

Megan: [00:15:26] And I think that’s the key. About about this is that we’ve created a loving, a really real loving tribe where we can support each other and it goes, you know, this tripod here and with your lover.  And then it extends out with really close friends that we are going to travel and see. And I feel like that’s key. It’s key for learning and growth and key for healing. And I will be this idealistic person to keep putting out if we created more loving spaces where we could actually safely deal with our traumas and safely heal and we would be then bringing up kids in a less traumatic environment.

Megan: [00:16:10] Every kid of divorce is polyamorous without the amorous part.  Aubrey Marcus said that and you brought that to me.  And you’re right, I think that’s concisely and brilliantly said, yeah, I had seven dads. No, I don’t even know. I have three step siblings that I don’t even know anymore.

Megan: [00:16:24] I’m taking a stand for creating a world in which we actually experience more love and that by experiencing more love for ourselves with other people, we then are bringing up kids in that environment. And they don’t have to deal with as many traumas as we did. And it’s just this positive cycle where the problems that I think we’re facing right now as a society. I don’t know. Who knows? Maybe in a couple generations, hundreds of years from now, we can look back and go, wow, it was when we released that one rule of love, that one rule that you can only love one person and that we allowed each other to love more and just to experience that, because back to Kyle. What Kyle said. In that love was present when you unblocked yourself. And I think that’s just what’s always there. It’s our natural state. We just love. But what’s not natural is also of the all of the rules that we impose on ourselves. All of the limitations and we keep blocking and holding and controlling. And it’s this counterintuitive move because all we want is more love. All we want is safety. But we do the wrong thing. We restrict instead of releasing. And by that releasing and allowing and healing. We just are love. We’re more loving.

Marty: [00:17:36] Our restriction is resistance and our resistance is suffering.

Megan: [00:17:40] Say that one more time.

[00:17:42] I can’t. Just play it back.  Our resistance is suffering. Pain is inevitable. Suffering is a choice. Suffering comes from resisting what’s so.  And it is in that allowance for flow that we remove suffering and we can grieve and process and go through all those things. But what you said just hit me really hard with something. I think Western society is plagued with.  What occurs in most relationships these days, especially through monogamy, through our marriage constructs and all these societal norms is binary scenarios. And when you brought up tribe, it removes the binary and binary is almost automatically adversarial. And if there’s anything that the United States, most Western countries are suffering from, especially the United States, is polarization in this binary scenarios of problem solution, anger, good, bad. You know, there’s no room for a spectrum in a binary scenario.

Megan: [00:18:40] Or even conversation.  

Marty: [00:18:40] Even the limitations to our technology right now is limited by the binary constructs of binary math zeros and ones and the solution to the power of computing in the future is triangulation with quantum computing and the super positions of 0 1 and both at the same time and

Megan: [00:18:57] it is literally a whole new paradigm

Marty: [00:18:59] It is a whole new paradigm of how we solve problems. And it’s much more complex than binary, but I think..

Megan: [00:19:07] We’re ready for an upgrade.

Marty: [00:19:10] Yeah, I think the tribe automatically removes the binary scenario out of it. And it creates what my friend would call force dynamics or what forces are at play and what need attention and need to be improved and what forces need to be ebbed back and blocked to allow for the natural state to emerge, which is love.

Megan: [00:19:34] I see the whole thing as systems and we need a new paradigm which is not gonna be solved.

Marty: [00:19:40] A Non-binary system.

Megan: [00:19:40] Which is why the rule, it’s just breaking a rule. Breaks shit.

Marty: [00:19:45] So polyamory is the quantum love.

Megan: [00:19:48] Actually, we did say that.  We were using that before. Weren’t we?  Quantum love. I love it. Oh. Oh, this has been a very enjoyable conversation.

Kyle: [00:20:00] Yeah, We covered a lot of ground.

Megan: [00:20:03] And there’s so much more to cover. I feel like it’s just we’re like just scratching the surface on a lot of these conversations. We didn’t even get to jealousy, that whole concept. We’ll talk about that later.

Marty: [00:20:15] So why don’t we finish on some advice about jealousy to end this with a little bit of rap up? So I’ll start to give an example. And then you fill it in and then we’ll just wrap up with telling you to love everybody. All right. I believe that, you know, one of the questions I always get is how do you deal with jealousy? How did you deal with that, with your wife dating? You didn’t do anything. You didn’t know you had a possibility of a relationship. And I believe that in this culture, we teach that jealousy proves love. Right. And that if I’m not jealous, I don’t love you. And we are not given avenues to deal with that jealousy at all. And then it permeates everything that we do. So as I started questioning, what am I really jealous of? Am jealous of the sex? Well, if I’m really honest, I probably have some kink towards this. You know, I’ve been campaigning for a threesome with another woman since I was 16 years old. Well, before I met Megan. That’s the bookmarked porn channel on pornhub.  Threesomes. It’s also kind of an indoctrinated thing.  So it’s not the sex, is it the intimacy? No, because I have intimate relationships with others that aren’t romantic and they serve me. And I was worried about your intimacy, that being with anyone, not girlfriends or anybody. So it’s not intimacy that was the problem, it was motivation. Is this a violation? Is she trying to hurt me? Is this trying to replace me? That’s where the jealousy existed. When I removed the idea it’s not replacing love. It’s additive love. And more love doesn’t get rid of other love. We don’t just remove it.

Megan: [00:21:49] It’s not like you’re a parent and you have one child and you don’t love that child.

Marty: [00:21:56] We have a second kid so fuck you.  You’d have to be like a Republican, like we’re gonna save it as a fetus, but shoot it when it’s born. Fucking stupid shit.  Sorry, I’m spicey. But the idea of jealousy, as I started to remove it, I see it everywhere. It’s like when your sister’s stupid husband has. He knows that. I believe better about him. And I don’t care.  And at the end of the day, he had like this beautiful, nice home office setup because he’s got money. So he’s got like these three beautiful monitors and he’s showing it off. And I found myself getting jealous of these computers because I’m a tech nerd. But then I’m like, why am I jealous? I don’t even want to work anymore. Being behind three monitors all day seems like a goddamn nightmare to me, but I’m jealous about it because it’s something I don’t have. So by removing this jealousy in my relationships, I saw envy and I saw all these other places where it wasn’t serving me.  The value of removing it from my loving relationship is that I removed it from my relationship to everything. And now if I see jealousy, if all of a sudden I’m like jealous of something like, wow, especially now as hyper minimalists, if I’m jealous of your car, I don’t even want to own a car.  People try to give us gifts when we travel.  We are minimalists. I have four suitcases. How much does it weigh? I’m not going to carry it. Give me something consumable. I want to eat, drink or smoke it or give me an experience. Otherwise, I’m not taking it. Removing jealousy has a lot of benefits. And you really have to question what you believe about why you’re even using jealousy.

Megan: [00:23:34] How about you, Kyle

Kyle: [00:23:34] Yeah. Jealousy, I think was something that I didn’t realize I was consumed by. There were triggers everywhere in my life, in my daily life. You know, having a competitive orientation, always comparing myself to other people, other guys. And I think that was something that I was in this loop of just dealing with that constant trigger, that constant response to jealousy in other people. And instead of looking inward, focusing on myself and really empowering myself to do things that I want to do and do things that I’m proud of and that I feel good about. Very simple concept. But I think at the bottom of all the jealousy that I had dealt with for many years and I think polluted a lot of my relationships was a trauma going back to high school that I really had never processed. And the crazy thing is that 17 years later, I somehow was able to process this with Megan. And really look at that trauma and just break through it. Love through it. Let it go. Forgive and and move forward. And I feel like 100 pounds is lifted off when you let that go. But also realizing that there are other traumas in my past, small and big, that I needed to start addressing. And that was kind of the beginning of my journey and was realizing a lot of these past traumas are things that I buried under the under the rug, under the bed, trying to hide from them, but they just get bigger and meaner and stronger if you don’t face them. I think that was kind of the one of the bigger lessons I’ve learned through this poly journey is that I’m capable and and willing to face those things. And I have the support of you guys, which has been an incredible experience to not only become aware and share these things and then process and move through them and then go forward. So I think that’s been my experience of trauma and how that’s connected to jealousy and and letting a lot of that stuff go, because it’s just been a story from my past that I didn’t want to let go. And it’s been a lot better since I did.

Marty: [00:25:48] I’ve seen your capacity grow and then used your growth to help aid my growth by seeing you overcome things. And there’s so many more traumas left. We have so many.

Megan: [00:25:59] And Miles and miles to go

Marty: [00:26:01] The Robert Frost and miles and miles to go.

Kyle: [00:26:04] And maybe that’s our friendship. Marty, there’s a lot of reasons why things happen.

Marty: [00:26:10] I think this is the benefit. You have different traumas than I have. But we have this commonality of solving the traumas and a language to do it that I learned, even though I didn’t necessarily have that exact trauma.  Oh, that really applies to this other traumas.

Megan: [00:26:21] which I think ultimately, that’s courage. I think we look at what what we think is courage in standing up and doing all these very public acts. And I don’t think that’s the real courage that we can practice every day is our willingness to go in and kind of look at that. And I see both of you displaying courage every day.

Marty: [00:26:42] Being vulnerable all the time had never really occurred to me as courage because I’ve just always worn it.

Megan: [00:26:54] I think even what we’re doing here is an act of bravery and courage.

Kyle: [00:27:00] To give you a compliment back, you really inspire me, Marty, with with your vulnerability and your truth. You say the truth. And a lot of people don’t like to hear it. A lot of people give you shit for it. But that’s it.  That’s there problem.

Marty: [00:27:14] Vulnerability has been the normal state for me, because I told the guy at Fleet Feet, I’m like, I don’t want running shoes. I want walking shoes. I don’t run. I hate running. I learned how to fight in Martial Arts so that I don’t have to run.

Kyle: [00:27:29] Yeah, right. Fight or flight. I’m not flighting.

Marty: [00:27:32] I’m vulnerable because I learned how to fight so I could be vulnerable all the time. Because you’re going to attack me, Let’s do this. I think that I’ve had this benefit that I’m only now seeing through triangulating between my lover and my wife and these other women that a lot of women hide who they are and have two worlds, because one world of who they are is not acceptable. And other men do this as well in certain cultures and societies. But I’ve been an outcast my whole goddamn life. No one’s ever accepted me. So there’s only one version of me. It’s crazy. What do you mean? I’d never lived two faces. So I don’t always have compassion or empathy or the ability to understand how you hold that space. Because instantly if someone’s like, hey, you should be this. I’m like, oh, fuck you.

Megan: [00:28:24] I think that’s ultimately what attracted me to you early on and still now.  You’re just you. That’s it. You’re just you. For me, I definitely have been that two faced kind of this is the version of me that’s publicly acceptable and everything. And my nice, nice.  How I have to play, how I have to be. But then there’s this other version that you’ve always seen that’s always been there that likes to push the boundaries and likes to be that rebel. And I’m bringing those two together and I’m learning how to drop the mask. And every time it feels scary, it feels fucking scary. Even this. And I know with my intentions, I do want to share this and it feels fucking scary. And I’m like, okay, Megan, this is part of just melding myself because that energy to be someone that I’m not, it is a ridiculous amount of energy. And I just don’t want to do that anymore. I don’t. And I think I’m ready for wherever to maintain that.

Marty: [00:29:17] Before we forget to wrap up with this. What is your take on jealousy now?

Megan: [00:29:23] I never really noticed my own jealousy because I was so focused on probably your jealousy, Marty. And it was never attractive and it always felt restrictive. And where I couldn’t talk about ex-boyfriends, I couldn’t talk about past experiences, I couldn’t talk about a whole part of me that was there. But I think I lost and I saw you go through this and open it up and learn through it. And I don’t think I ever really recognized what my own jealousy was. And now I started losing and getting through my own jealousy when we had kids. When I had another woman take care. Another beautiful woman from Brazil who is still a very big part of our family, took care of our twins when they were born. When I went back to work and I was so fucking jealous. I didn’t even know that’s what it was. And it took me a good two years to work through that, to actually get to the point where I’m like, wow, my children are so lucky, so, so lucky that they get all this love from another woman. And of course, I want that for them. I want the best for them. And I wasn’t seeing that. Now I can see it clearly where I project to you, where there was clear things where I didn’t want the best for you. And I was holding back.

Marty: [00:30:35] So I couldn’t even understand why you would be. I’m not a female. I have no idea what it’s like to be a mother. I have no idea how to even have compassion for your threat, because the way I looked at it was like I grew up in a household where there was very little love going on, especially feminine. And now there’s all of this love. I just saw it as additive. Why are you mad? Kids are surrounded in love constantly.

Megan: [00:31:00] Because I thought I wasn’t enough. You know, there was this jealousy is just a way that we see insecurities and we may not know the base insecurity. And for me, there was a lot of I’m not enough. I should be doing this, a lot of personal shaming. And now I can see it so clearly when it comes up and it does still come up. So there’s little blips, there can be blips of jealousy. And now, just like we’ve got these practices to go, oh, there it is. OK. What is it? I’m reacting a certain way. Why? Oh, I’m insecure. What am I insecure about? And it’s this beautiful practice. And sometimes we can do it by ourselves and sometimes we do it in different ways.

Marty: [00:31:36] Let’s end it on this one. I think this is an appropriate way to tie it up. But sometimes jealousy can lead to a better ass.

Megan: [00:31:46] And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the moral of the story.

Kyle: [00:31:57] The title of the episode.

Marty: [00:31:57] Sometimes jealousy can give you a better ass.  That’s Sharing is Caring a poly podcast.  

Megan: [00:31:57] By Marty and Megan Bhatia and Kyle Henry. Thank you.

Marty: [00:31:59] Now we’ll see who else comes on this show. And I’m not saying comes on this show. But arrives and participates. There’s the spice.  Ciao.