Feelings of jealousy and envy often bring up a sense of shame or insecurity. Yet both jealousy and envy arise even in early childhood as we vie for parents’ attention, desire a sibling’s toy, or jockey for a positions in friend groups. And, as feelings of romantic love come into our lives, it’s the big emotion of jealousy than can have a way of creeping deeper into our relationships. If left unchecked, jealousy can foster anxiety, tension, resentment, and worse. But I’ve found that if we step back to see jealousy as a teacher–a signal that we’re feeling threatened or are unsafe in some way–this often unsettling emotion can be channeled into both self-growth and relationship growth.

Today, I’m joined by Dr. Joli Hamilton, research psychologist and relationship expert, who will take us on a deep dive into the heart of love and jealousy. Topics discussed include sex, sexuality, monogamy, nonmonogamy, betrayal, love, relationships, fidelity, infidelity, consensual nonmonogamy, polyamory, jealousy, envy, compersion, emotions, feelings, discussion, honesty, explicit agreements, implicit agreements, secure attachment, insecure attachment, anxious attachment, avoidant attachment, fear, insecurity, anxiety, archetypes, individuation, alchemy, personal growth, and healthy relationships.

Please note that this episode contains sensitive material; listener discretion is advised.

Emergency Assistance Note: If you or someone you know needs immediate support, please call your emergency services. In the US, 24/7 help is available by calling “911,” “988” (Suicide and Crisis Hotline), or SAMSA (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration) at 1-800-662-HELP (4357). Support/informational links are in the show notes.

Connect with Dr. Carla Manly:

Website: https://www.drcarlamanly.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drcarlamanly/

Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/drcarlamanly/

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Books by Dr. Carla Manly:

Joy From Fear: Create the Life of Your Dreams by Making Fear Your Friend

Date Smart: Transform Your Relationships and Love Fearlessly

Aging Joyfully: A Woman’s Guide to Optimal Health, Relationships, and Fulfillment for Her 50s and Beyond

The Joy of Imperfect Love: The Art of Creating Healthy, Securely Attached Relationships

Oracle decks by Dr. Carla Manly:

Etsy

Amazon

Connect with Dr. Joli Hamilton:

Website: https://www.jolihamilton.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drjoli_hamilton/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dr.joli.hamilton/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joli-hamilton-phd/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCz8_u_0Z6omnIJKqklSNVVw

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@drjoli_hamilton?lang=en

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Jealousy, Betrayal, Sex, and Healthy Love with Relationship Expert Dr. Joli Hamilton

How to Have Deep Conversations About Love, Sex, and Intimacy

Feelings of jealousy and envy often bring up a sense of shame or insecurity. Yet, both jealousy and envy arise even in early childhood as we vie for parents’ attention, desire a sibling’s toy, or jockey for a position in a friend group. As feelings of romantic love come into our lives, it’s the big emotion of jealousy that can have a way of creeping deeper into our intimate relationships.

If left unchecked, jealousy can foster anxiety, tension, resentment, and worse. I found that if we step back to see jealousy as a teacher, a signal that we’re feeling threatened or unsafe in some way, this often unsettling emotion can be channeled into both self-growth and relationship growth. In this episode, I’m joined by a research psychologist and relationship expert who will take us on a deep dive into the heart of love and jealousy.

We’ll focus on this reader’s real-life question. “My wife announced that she wants to have sex outside of our marriage. We’ve been together for five years. I thought our sex life was good. This all hit me by surprise. I’m an open-minded guy, but this is beyond what I can handle. Thinking about her having sex with someone else makes me expletive-removed sick.

She says I’m not the jealous type and that she thought I’d be cool about it, but I’m not. I’m angry and jealous even at the thought of her being with someone else. Is what my wife wants normal? With that question as the focus of this episode, this is the show. Please note that this episode may contain sensitive information. Reader discretion is advised.

I’m joined by a wonderful special guest, Dr. Joli Hamilton, research psychologist, certified sex educator, TEDx speaker, author, mother of seven, and so much more. Welcome to the show, Dr. Joli. It’s a joy to have you with us.

Thank you for having me, and thank you to the reader for having such a juicy question. I appreciate it.

Thank you. It is juicy. I could feel some big feelings coming up in me as I was even reading it. Before we launch into this very juicy and quite common problem, or increasingly common because it’s an age-old issue, let me ask you a little bit about what makes you, you.

The thing that stands out the most about me is that I like messes. Maybe having seven kids makes that clear already, but I like the messy stuff. Your show title, Imperfect Love, aligns with me because when I think about my own life and what has made me, me, it’s allowing things to be messy so that I can continue on my own individuation journey and so that I can experience what’s real for me.

Loving messes doesn’t mean that it’s easy. I find that attraction to messes has also led me to have specific interests, such as my research interest in jealousy. Jealousy is a messy emotion. My love for jealousy comes from not just tolerating, but enjoying the complications that come from an emotion that we don’t usually talk about.

Thank you for that wonderful prelude. As you were talking about how much you love messiness, I was thinking, “I’m the person who likes cleaning up messiness.” I like it, but it’s not because of a love of messiness. It’s more that I’d like things to be tidy, so I clean up with a smile, but it’s to restore it to tidiness, whereas you enjoy being in the mud.

If I’m in the mud, I’m okay with it, but I’m still waiting to get back to the clean zone. I’m like, “How can I clean it up?” That’s very interesting. I love your perspective. I also like how you bring up how jealousy is such a messy emotion because it often brings up our big emotions. The core five, which are fear, disgust, anger, sadness, and joy, can be troublesome because we have a lot of messages around, “You can be joyful, but you can’t be angry.”

When jealousy steps into a relationship, depending upon how it’s processed, and maybe this is your experience too, people will use it as a way of pointing the finger at the other person and saying, “I should be able to look at other women,” or, “I should be able to kiss other men or whatever it is. It’s your problem.” It’s a very interesting topic that we can dive into. You used a word that I’m familiar with, but I am wondering if maybe our readers aren’t. You talk about individuation. It is one of my favorite words. Could you set the stage by explaining that bit right there?

Individuation As A Conscious Life Path

Yeah. How I usually describe it to people who may be unfamiliar with the premise of Jungian psychology, which I know we both studied and enjoyed, is that the process of individuation is the continual experience of becoming more and more yourself by bringing unconscious material into your conscious awareness. Some of it happens because we are growing, changing, and life is happening to us. Most of our actual individuation happens because we point-focused attention on our growth processes. We process it. We get into that mud, and that allows the proverbial lotus to bloom.

My individuation journey has been deeply impacted by jealousy and by non-monogamy, my personal one. For me, when I’m talking about individuation, I am looking at how my relationships and my experiences in relationships inform and help me experience an individuation path versus the other option, which would be to live with blinders on and not look at what else my soul is calling for.

Thank you. I like how you normalize it. As someone who had no idea what individuation was before, I stepped on the path of getting my doctorate, and you would think I may have learned it during my Master’s, but I didn’t, or somewhere earlier in life. One of your taglines is coloring outside the lines. If you’re not permitted to color outside the lines or don’t even know what it might look like to color outside the lines, that idea of individuation where you start finding out, “Who am I? What am I? Let me step over here. Let me step over there,” some people are supported in that early on in life. Other people experience it only in midlife or later years. Some people, sadly, never experience it at all.

I noticed a book behind you that’s talking about alchemy. When we go through that process of alchemy, turning the leaden parts of ourselves or our relationships to gold, we must go through fire. That fire is not easy. It is not gentle, but it is so worth it when you get to the other side. It’s not a one-and-done process. We repeat it. We go into the areas and let the unconscious become conscious. Sometimes, it’s easier than others, but sometimes, you’re in that hot fire of having to look at stuff.

This is exactly why my own podcast is titled Playing With Fire, because, to my mind, it is this continual playing with fire in a responsible way that has allowed me to enjoy the messiness of individuating. A lot of people, I find, get overwhelmed with it because it all sounds like work. In fact, what we’re talking about is living your life, but living it with some conscious, intentional reflection built into your day-by-day and the cycles of your years and your whole life. That is worth the price of admission to me. At the same time, if you’re not familiar with it, no harm, no foul. If you don’t know the language of individuation, then you may have been participating in it with one arm tied behind your back, not even realizing there are people out there talking about, “How do I become more myself over time?”

Sometimes, we use words like conscious relationships or mindfulness for us to think, “I’m supposed to breathe,” or, “I’m supposed to watch how much peanut butter I put on my bread.” Mindfulness can be extended to, “Why am I feeling this feeling? Where did that come from? How can I use this feeling, in this case, jealousy, to find out more about myself and my relationship?

How can I notice if it’s rooted in feelings of shame or what someone told me? If my wife wants to do this, what would that look like? How could I respond? Is it something we can work on together and decide together on how this is going to look?” Once we become mindful or conscious, then we’re already on that path. We don’t know the outcome.

None of us do.

We don’t. We often operate out of fear. It is the fear of, “This is the known, so I’m going to stay in the known.” Who knows what the reader might find once he works with his partner? He might find he also wants to have sex outside the relationship. He might decide, “That’s never for me. I can’t be with a partner who wants that.” We don’t know what the outcome is, but it sure is messy. It can be interesting, if not fun, to take that journey.

Non-Monogamy As A Catalyst For Individuation

You asked at the opening what makes me, me. I discovered a lot about who I was through grappling with what it would be to exist outside of the mainstream narrative of monogamy. That was part of what cracked open the rest of my life. That happened at 32. Non-monogamy is not for everyone. It doesn’t need to be for you. That’s fine. The question is, could the exploration of this potentially serve your individuation? Could you use that exploration to grow closer to yourself, especially your capital S Self? Could you use it to build intimacy with your partner?

That isn’t so much about whether you go have sex with other people or whether you build relationships with other people. It’s about could you be in the question together, or is even being in a question antithetical? Does that feel like, “This is bad and this is wrong.” That leads us right back to, “The mono normativity that I have experienced up until now, why is that inherently wrong?” We don’t have to decide to participate to let the question be alive.

The Power Of Questions, The Depth Of Self, & The Shadow Of Jealousy

Beautifully said. I believe that so many times in relationships, no matter the type of relationship, whether it be work, friendship, or certainly that vulnerable world of intimate relationships, we are afraid to ask questions. We are afraid to ask questions of the partner and questions of ourselves. I am such a curious person. Anyone who’s around me knows I’m like, “What about this? What about that? What do you think of this?”

It doesn’t mean, “What do you think about jumping off with a parachute?” We don’t need to do it, but it sure is fun to ask the question and to be with people who can tolerate the learning that is in the field of exploring the question. You used another term that I’m familiar with, the capital S Self. Could you tell our audience a little bit what Capital S Self is and why that’s different from the regular little S self?

I use that to differentiate for my whole audience. When I’m connected to capital S Self, I am connected to something that is both within me and beyond my ego self, my day-to-day, the part of me that needs to do my job, raise my kids, and take care of all the things, but be connected between that little version of me who has to do all those things and something much grander. There’s something much deeper, both within and without.

It’s hard. I find that the self is incredibly challenging to describe. It’s easier to feel it. Once you’ve felt it, it’s like, “This is me understanding that there is a self. There is a version of me that is not limited to this very narrowly defined experience I’ve had up until now.” It’s an awakening moment to come into connection with that.

I find it somewhat akin to Freud’s superego, but in a sense, it has this grounded component of being this oak tree that is watching all of life happen around you, not being ever too attached to it.

For me, it does feel very much tree-like. I don’t usually talk about my higher self because I’m not looking to transcend this mortal plane. I’m here for a reason. I don’t even know what that reason is in totality. I am looking to connect both downward and upward. I want to be connected. Being in the mystery and being in the questions for myself is intimacy-building within myself. It is also being in the questions with my beloved others. Those may be our intimate romantic partners. Those could also be our closest friends. Those could be whoever we connect to. Being in the mystery with those people, we have exponential growth possibilities.

We can see with friendships, jumping back to jealousy, jealousy often pervades those relationships as well. It’s a terrific topic for us to realize that jealousy is a part of life. It is one of our more basic emotions, and to be able to question. Let’s say you’re out with two of your besties and you’re feeling jealous because they’re chatting away. You’re feeling a little sidelined.

Ask yourself, “What’s coming up for me? What is this about? What does it remind me of in my past? What’s happening?” You’re not judging it, but noticing. That’s why I love seeing our emotions as teachers. If we don’t judge them, learn to step back, and witness them, they can be wonderful indicators or signals of wounds that we have that may need some TLC.

In the case of jealousy, too, we can also talk about the cultural wound. We don’t talk about jealousy and envy. These are two distinct emotions, but we often conflate them. We don’t talk about them in the larger picture, even though jealousy is rooted in our most primal instinctual selves. We can spot jealousy in infants as young as six months old. We have research studies backing that up, which is amazing.

Jealousy serves a purpose, so we don’t want to try to get rid of it, but also, we don’t talk about it. When we’re talking about tending the wound, it’s not just a personal wound. It’s not, “Do I have a jealousy problem? “ It’s collectively that we have a jealousy problem. Jealousy is at the root of so much domestic violence. Jealousy is at the root of so much pain and misunderstanding.

I’ve asked thousands of people, and I have never yet met an adult who has told me, “My parents sat down and talked to me about how to deal with jealousy when it started coming up. We worked through that. It’s not the easiest thing, but I understand.” Even people who said, “My parents did work to help me understand sadness and anger,” jealousy gets shoved in the shame box.

Look at our depictions of it. I look at jealousy as an archetypal emotion. It’s interesting to see jealousy depicted as a green-eyed monster. Jealousy is depicted with this monstrous face. Anything depicted like that we put into the shame category. We don’t talk about it. When we do, we have conversations like this, and we start to attend not only to the personal wounds, but to the cultural complexes of all of Western society, at the very least.

Jealousy As An Archetypal Emotion

Let’s take a pause. You used one of my favorite words, which is archetypes. For people who’ve read other episodes, they know about me talking about archetypes. If you haven’t, let’s pause for a brief description of what an archetype is. Back to you.

My research was rooted in the question of whether jealousy is an archetypal emotion. Archetypal, meaning, is it both fundamental, mundane, universal, experienced, and it happens, and at the same time, completely overwhelming? Jealousy fits this category. My research is qualitative. When I ask people to describe their jealous experiences, frequently, they will use descriptions of, “It came out of nowhere and it swept me off my feet.”

“It comes up from within, and it grips me. I can’t get away from it,” or, “It feels like it’s killing me.” That is the hallmark of we are not just dealing with some little thing that could be gotten rid of. We are dealing with something that is part of our primordial ground. This is what it is to be a human, to have these experiences with these universal patterns of human behavior.

The Difference Between Jealousy & Envy

Those are our archetypes. Readers, you can often see archetypal images. If I held up a card that showed a full orphan, no matter where I went around the world, people would understand, “Full orphan.” Those are examples of archetypes. Jealousy is one of those feelings that we feel no matter where we go, some cultures more than others, but it would still be universal. You talked about the difference. We often don’t slow down because we tend to conflate jealousy and envy. We tend to use them interchangeably, and yet they are vastly different. They have some things in common, but could you describe the differences between jealousy and envy?

Sure. Envy and jealousy, we tend to use the words the same. We sort them out by looking at the shape that you can see in the relationship. If I’m feeling envious, there is me and the person I am envious of. There are two of us, a dyad. I want something that they have, or I want to be who they are. There’s longing. There’s desire. I force something, like, “I want to have it. I want to be it.”

With jealousy, you’ll spot a triangle. Jealousy is a triangular emotion. There will be three individuals. There’s me, if I’m the jealous one, and the beloved or the valued other. That doesn’t have to be a romantic valued other. We can experience value in our friends, our parents, and our mentor relationships, and in any place.

A boss can even fit in that spot where they’re like, “I want their attention. I want to be connected to them.” We have the third. The third is the perceived interrupter. This is the one whom we imagine or see evidence of potentially interrupting our connection to the valued other. It’s this presence of the third that differentiates between envy and jealousy.

We need to do this differentiation. It’s been clearly outlined for a very long time that envy, while it’s incredibly painful and is named as one of the seven deadly sins, and it is also an archetypal emotion, there is this longing in there that we could also use to motivate us. We could say, “It points us in the direction of something we want.” Whereas jealousy is the fear of this interruption.

That perceived other in that triangle, we can make them up. They do not have to be a real person. We can say, “She’s looking at my husband this way,” or, “They are going to interfere with my connection,” or, “I hate that my best friend made a new best friend. I hate this.” It could be that, but it could also be, “Why are they clicking so many hearts on that Instagram post? Why are they so quick to laugh at that person’s jokes?” It could be subtle. It could be that we imagine even when my partner is away, someone else could interrupt. The imagination is a powerful thing.

When that triangle is present, we have jealousy. The sticky part is that I can also have jealousy and envy show up at the exact same time. If I am experiencing jealousy and I want to deepen my connection with the valued other but I fear it’s going to be interrupted, I may be looking at that perceived interrupter and thinking they’re better than me, smarter than me, richer than me, or whatever than me, at which point I have envy at the same time. This gets complicated because I have these two big, messy emotions that we don’t talk about and we often feel shameful about, and we’ve got to deal with both of them. It’s complicated. It’s hard

It is, and so very human. That’s the part where the messiness to sort out the details sometimes is easier. People find themselves jumping over the envy or the jealousy and going straight to rage or anger because they’re easier. It doesn’t solve anything, but it can be a very quick leap straight to being angry.

There are two schools of thought. One says jealousy is a basic emotion. It comes with a whole bunch of other emotions nearby, like sadness, anger, and grief. The other is that jealousy is made of these other emotions. I think of it as, “Here comes jealousy. What other emotions is it packing? What flavor is it?” Anger and rage are easier to act on, and they encourage us to point our fingers at our partner.

If I feel jealous, it is tempting to point my finger directly at my partner and say, “Stop doing whatever you’re doing. You’re not allowed to do that. You have to change what you’re doing because I have this feeling.” That could be a reasonable conversation to have if your relationship expectations are not being met. Let’s say you found out that your partner did something that constitutes a betrayal in the context of your relationship. You need to have that conversation.

We also often experience jealousy that isn’t about actual betrayal, and that is about how we are experiencing our partner having a life or having friendships. Let’s go back to that best friend scenario. Our friends get to have other friends. Most of us understand that we can’t look at a best friend and demand that they don’t have any other friends, but we look at our partners and say, “If I’m feeling jealous, you have to stop whatever you’re doing.”

That invites some questions about exactly what that means. Do they have to not have contact with other people in order for you to feel safe? If so, what’s going on there? Is that based on reality, or is that based on the perception that men and women shouldn’t be friends? Is that based on the perception that there shouldn’t have to be agreements? Your partner should never do anything that makes you uncomfortable.

If we look at jealousy as something that’s deeply rooted, and it’s rooted in that primal instinct to stay connected to my caregiver, it feels like I am cast back into this, “I’m going to die. I will not survive this.” We’re acting from a very child-like place because that’s where our jealousy was rooted. Here I am, a 45-year-old woman who is acting and needs to take stock of, “What’s going on here? Are my expectations being thwarted? What’s happening?

Am I ashamed about this happening at all? Do I need my partner to stop what they’re doing?” Have I even stopped to ask, “What are you doing? What’s happening here?” Sometimes, we imagine jealousy right out of thin air. Some of us are quite prone to that. Others are less prone to it. It’s a very individual experience.

Attachment Style & Emotional Dysregulation

It goes a lot, I’ve found, to attachment style. Not exclusively, but people who tend to be securely attached tend to be less quick to emotional dysregulation. People who are insecurely attached, whatever the type, whether it’s more dismissive or more toward the anxious, it, especially for anxious attachment, can bring up big jealousy very quickly and, as you are wonderful at pointing out, all of the shame realized or not that’s underneath.

We have to be thoughtful about what this means. It has to do with what’s happening and what I am observing, but it also has to do with the narratives I tell about jealousy. What does jealousy mean about my relationship? What does jealousy mean about me? Do I like what conclusions I am jumping to? When I was doing my research studies, what I found was people who were dealing with jealousy successfully, as in it was still happening, they were experiencing it, and they weren’t magically devoid of jealousy, were following a very similar set of patterns over and over again.

They were able to notice jealousy sensations in their body. They were able to name jealousy and say, “This sucks, but I’m jealous.” At least we know what we’re dealing with now. They could dig in and deal with the fact that jealousy is about the stories that we are telling. Sometimes, those stories are rooted in actual, factual, objective reality. A lot of times, those stories are connected to all the patterns of betrayal that we have ever experienced in our lives from infancy on.

Those jealousy narratives will then color how we see what’s happening in our relationship. After that, those people are also able to ask for what they need, make clear relationship expectations, and then even work on fostering compersion if they want to. Compersion is the opposite end of the spectrum from jealousy. It’s feeling joy for your partner’s joy. Your partner’s experiencing pleasurable attention from someone else, and you’re like, “I’m happy for them.” Not everybody experiences that, but a lot of my research participants did.

The more trust we have in a relationship, the more that a sense of compersion is likely to arise. If you see your partner talking to another person or talking to one of your friends, or a friend talking to a friend, if you have trust in that friend group, trust in that relationship, or whatever it is, you’re going to be like, “Look at them having such a great time. I’m so happy for that,” because of the thread of trust that permeates the relationship that you are not feeling threatened.

Let’s jump. From the question of the day, I’m imagining, not certain, that this person felt that there is either an implicit or explicit agreement with their partner to be monogamous. Thus, it seems like betrayal. You’ve used the word a couple of times. Even though the person didn’t use the word betrayal, it sounds as if a big piece of this feels like a betrayal. It’s like, “We have this agreement that we’re exclusive. Now you’re talking about someone else.” I’m not mentioning or diving into all the pieces that are like, “What about my sexuality? Am I not enough? Am I not a good enough partner? What’s happening here?” There are a lot of layers.

There’s a lot to unpack.

When we look at the betrayal piece and the importance of relationship agreements, agreement isn’t hard and fast, they can be co-created and changed as the relationship moves. I am thinking of my fourth book, The Joy of Imperfect Love, where I say that so many agreements that we have are implicit in our relationship.

We never sit down and co-create the ones that feel right because we don’t want to be in the messiness. We don’t like that messiness. If we go through the messiness of co-creating very explicit, clear agreements, then it creates safety, and we are all on the same page. If we don’t do that, then it can get messy quickly. Either way, we need to face the messiness. What is your sense of how betrayal might fit into this picture?

Monogamy, Betrayal, & Relationship Agreements

We don’t know about what the level of implicit versus explicit agreement is in this person’s experience, but we can very clearly see that in the normative culture of Western society, monogamy is the presumed norm. There’s the term mononormativity. That means we privilege and prioritize monogamy. We assume it to be the default position for all partnered romantic relationships. What happens is that most people go on that assumption without getting super clear.

Often, there’s an early on define-the-relationship conversation where we’re like, “Are we exclusive? Okay.” People will go for the next 40 years based on 1 conversation they had a couple of weeks into a relationship of, “We are exclusive,” without ever digging into what exclusive means. I know that can sound ridiculous if you’re coming from a monogamous mindset where you say, “This is the default. Monogamy means what monogamy means.”

It’s interesting to look at the research and look at what it means to individuals. Every monogamous person has a different understanding of exactly what that means. We can get into the weeds for a moment and say that for one person, monogamy might look like, “You can go out with your friends. You were out at a bar and flirtatiously bought somebody a drink? Sure.” They’ll then say the phrase, “Nothing happened, right?”

The nothing happened is in that gray zone of all the stuff we don’t talk about, but we agreed that nothing would happen. Does nothing happened mean kissing? Does it mean sex? Does it mean you get their phone number? Does it mean, “I never even talked to them. I made eyes at them across a room.” Would ordering a drink for someone be a huge betrayal or violation? It sounds funny to people, but I get worried about anyone who’s doing monogamy, who doesn’t have a clear fidelity agreement that they update as they grow and change.

Our imagination of what monogamy is is incredibly unique. I have never met people who are automatically in sync, and they understand exactly the same set of rules. Instead, it becomes all the stuff we don’t talk about. This becomes fertile ground for betrayal to happen. Betrayal is about me violating your expectation of what should happen. If we’ve never talked about it, then I could also feel betrayed by the thought that you thought I couldn’t do something. That could also be experienced.

In the question, we heard that. The wife posited, “You’re pretty open-minded. I thought you’d be cool with it.” He’s like, “I’m not cool with it.” I have been in this woman’s shoes. I was in a marriage where my husband did not enjoy the sex we were having. He was not very interested. We had very different drives. When I posed the idea of non-monogamy, I genuinely thought he’d be like, “We’ll have to figure out what we do. We’ll have to talk about it or whatever.” That was not his response. He had a very similar response.

It is reasonable to have an outsized reaction if your life view got turned upside down, but that doesn’t mean that it wasn’t a good thing that it got turned upside down. The next thing that could happen is a long series of conversations about, “What does it mean for our sex life to be working? What does it mean for it not to be working? What do we want from each other in our intimacy or in our connection? How could we co-create that? What does it mean that you want to have these other experiences?”

There are so many versions of non-monogamy. What does it even mean to want to have sex beyond your dyad? There are so many different ways that could play out, including ways that it’s possible this person would feel like, “Maybe that is hot.” Maybe it could be in the right context, but we don’t know enough. Instead, we default to, “I am confused.” Let’s rely on the mononorm where we don’t touch that. That is a beehive we don’t poke. Let’s not poke it. Let’s instead put on our beekeeper suits, walk over to it carefully, tend to this thriving hive of questions, and get in there like, “What’s going on that brought this question to the forefront?”

Normalizing Conversations About Sex

I love your perspective because it’s about the conversation. I often say in couples work that even though it’s such a basic part of our lives, people don’t want to talk about sex. Look at it like you’re in a kitchen. You have no trouble asking for more salt or more pepper. Let’s bring some things in. Let’s get this new device. Let’s get a new blender. Let’s get this. Let’s have more tomato sauce. People have no trouble with that. Think about your sex life that way.

Have conversations about having a little more salt or a little more pepper and what that looks like. When we start making conversation itself normal, in the muddiness and enjoying, not just doing the conversation, we are finding, “A little bit of anxiety coming up for me. I wasn’t raised talking about such things. I can still converse even if my heart’s beating rapidly, or I feel flushed and my stomach’s a bit queasy.” We are realizing all of these are normal responses when we’re talking about something that seems scary, unfamiliar, or forbidden.

A lot of times, there’s this background of talk about sex being forbidden. Who knows? In this case, if the partners are able to come to the table and start tending to their beehive, we don’t know. Maybe she does want to explore outside the marriage. Maybe she wants to have conversations about sex. Sometimes, we do poke that beehive to see what kind of response we’re going to get. We won’t get anywhere unless we sit down and have the conversations often again and again because they’re generally not one-and-done.

It’s shocking to me when people find my work, come to me, and be like, “Can we book a session?” I’m like, “I’m sorry. I only work with people for at least a year. That is my minimum.” This is an ongoing process that we have to engage in. We have to dig into where this is coming from and what you want. Also, you don’t know what you don’t know yet.

Continuous Exploration & Experimentation In Intimacy

We have to not just be in a conversation but also start experimenting, not necessarily with sex with other people, which is jumping into the deep end, but what happens if we start experimenting with what sex is for us? What is intimacy? How do we start working with our differentiation, like knowing where I stop and you start? How do I start doing that? We have to be in that process for a long time.

At the end, the reader said, “Is this normal?” The answer is yes. We know it’s normal because this is what your wife asked for. It is normal by definition for people to have wants. There is no question of whether something that a human is going through is normal, but we could ask a better question, which is, “What’s going on here? This is a change. Why is it a change? What happened?”

I want to go back to your kitchen metaphor and say sometimes, our partner comes home and says, “I’ve been digging in and doing some reading. I am going vegan. That’s me. I am going vegan from now on. That means big changes to our kitchen. We have to figure out how to do that. What happens if you’re still an omnivore and I’m eating vegan? How do we do that?” That is a big thing to take on.

It is also asking, “Tell me more about what being vegan means to you. Where did this come from? What’s happening? Let’s talk about it.”

Without trying to talk them out of it. You’re getting curious.

Often, I’ve found that when someone makes a big statement like that, they are trying to do big work inside themselves. A big statement of, “I’m this,” or, “I’m that,” is a window that’s open or a door that’s a little bit open. They don’t know they want to walk through the door, but they do know they want to explore it.

I also appreciate how you brought up how important it is to be looking at this as not a right or a wrong, but an opportunity. I could see why you work with people for a year. It could even be starting to get into what it means to be faithful. You’re 100% right. For one person, seeing somebody send a text to somebody, which can be a simple text like, “I like you,” can feel like a betrayal. There is no right or wrong, but going through all of the steps.

I love this part. I don’t necessarily see it as work either, because as you are doing this work as a couple, whether it’s you and your partner, you and a family member, or whatever it is, you get to learn more about yourself. I love that part of things. I believe that why I am here is to keep learning and evolving. As humans, if we keep learning and evolving, it becomes less about right or wrong or good or bad. It’s more about, “What’s going on? Tell me more.”

I see so many people struggle when they get this question. Often, what has happened is there’s a fairly big gap in their awareness of who each other is. The gap has opened as one person often is doing a bunch of inner reckoning and realizing that they have wants and needs that feel unmet. They’re knowing themselves in a different way. They start learning a whole bunch about the different forms of non-monogamy, or about, “What is possible if we let go of this one rule to rule them all that says we do exclusivity? What happens?” They start exploring. They’re listening to podcasts. They’re reading books. The gap starts to open up where, at some point, they need to talk to the person they’re partnered with.

The Challenges Of Exploring Non-Monogamy & Managing Betrayal Feelings

You asked about betrayal. The person who’s being asked often does feel betrayed. The betrayal isn’t the question. The betrayal is about action, but the question gets framed as betrayal. Right away, we make the cap even bigger. If I say, “It’s not reasonable. It’s not normal for you to be questioning this,” what I am questioning isn’t their desire for no monogamy. I am questioning all of, “I’m learning. I’m growing. I’m reckoning with something inside. I’m doing this inner work. I’m finding bits of me.”

If you can stay out of that knee-jerk reaction to be like, “Shut that down. That is not reasonable. You’re not normal,” you have a chance to get to know your partner much better. While you’re doing that, potentially, you’re going to find out that you’re no longer compatible. That is a possible outcome. Sometimes, you find out the compatibility was in the gap there. It was in the, “We had stopped being compatible because we didn’t know each other. We had started growing apart, and it was too scary to talk about these things.”

Getting back into the question and being compassionate to each other about what it means to question a norm that I thought I was going to have and I could take for granted is such tender work. In everybody’s role here, everybody’s got tender work to do because it tends to also bring up big issues of, “Why am I not enough? Right?” Our knee-jerk response is, “Why am I not enough?” It’s not about that at all.

I have never seen a couple come to me where the person who wanted to open was saying they’re not enough. If that were the case, they would have left you. We live in a society where divorce can happen, and you can separate. Instead, what they’ve come up with is this question of, “I want more. I have this imagination that something else is possible.”

I would love for the people who are asking that question to ask it like, “Would you go on this adventure with me? Would you be in this discovery process with me?” Whatever you do, don’t take action before you’ve agreed to be in that discovery process together because that’s where the betrayal starts to take root. We have to deal with deep wounds that have happened while people are trying to change their relationship. It is hard. It does make things ten times harder.

The Evolution Of Tender Work In Relationships & Jealousy

I love how you approach it and look at it as tender work because it is tender work. It is an evolution. To avoid causing harm, you want to be doing it consciously and mindfully. You are evolving and working with each other. A year of sessions is 52 hours if they go every week for a year. In 52 hours, that’s a little more than one work week.

I’m a believer that any work we do in psychotherapy, when we’re doing good work, makes us better and more evolved people. That generally makes us show up in the world better and in our relationships in healthier ways. Why wouldn’t we want to do that if we can afford it? That’s sometimes the big question. I love how you approach this entire topic with such empathy, honesty, and genuineness. It’s fabulous. Any other pieces you want to highlight for our audience?

I would drive home the point that jealousy can be worked with wherever it’s showing up in your life. It’s so important to take it seriously that jealousy isn’t something to say, “I’m going to will it to go away.” We need to get closer to it. I know it’s tempting to say, “Make it go away.” Jealousy results are so much better when we lean in, get super curious, and allow ourselves to experience it, get to know it in our bodies, and start to unpack it deeply. Please do that.

Thank you for saying that. I often say that no emotion is good or bad. It’s what we do with that emotion that can have positive or negative results. We can see that, like anger, it’s not good or bad. If we use anger to harm someone, like punch them or something, that is going to have a negative outcome. If we use our anger to say, “I’m angry here. I’m feeling so angry about X, Y, or Z,” what happens? It’s the same thing that you’re talking about the whole way through. It’s the safe discussions that can lead us deeper into ourselves and our relationships. You are amazing. Thank you for the work you do. Where can our audience find you?

Anybody who wants to follow my work through jealousy and non-monogamy, please join me. I have a one-hour salon where we talk about what it takes to do non-monogamy well. You can join us at the next free salon at OpenEasier.com. If you want to find the rest of my work, you can easily find me on all the socials @DrJoli_Hamilton. I’m on Instagram, TikTok, and all the places.

Thank you so much. I appreciate your time, your energy, and your message. To our audience, thank you, as always, for joining us. This was an incredibly juicy adventure. I hope it helped you look at some areas of your life and relationships that you might want to nudge into deeper conversation.

Important Links

• Dr. Joli Hamilton
• Playing With Fire
•  The 5 Pillars of Successful Open Relating: A 1-hour Virtual Salon (FREE)
• Dr. Joli Hamilton on Instagram
• Dr. Joli Hamilton on TikTok
• Dr. Joli Hamilton on LinkedIn
• Dr. Joli Hamilton on Facebook
• Dr. Joli Hamilton on YouTube
• Project Relationship: The Entrepreneur’s Action Plan for Passionate, Sustainable Love
• The Joy of Imperfect Love
• NAMI HelpLine
• Carla Marie Manly, PhD
• Dr. Carla Marie Manly on Instagram
• Dr. Carla Marie Manly on X
• Dr. Carla Marie Manly on Facebook
• Dr. Carla Marie Manly on LinkedIn
• Dr. Carla Marie Manly on YouTube
• Dr. Carla Marie Manly on TikTok

About Dr. Joli Hamilton

Dr. Joli Hamilton is the relationship coach for couples who color outside the lines & founder of The Year of Opening. She is a research psychologist, TEDx speaker, best-selling author, and AASECT certified sex educator. Joli also co-hosts the Playing With Fire podcast. Joli’s been featured in The New York Times, CNN, Vogue, Cosmo, and NPR. She’s spent the past two decades studying and reimagining what love can be if we open our imaginations to possibility. Joli helps people create non-monogamous partnerships that are custom-built for their authentic selves, no more shrinking, pretending, or hiding required.