July 2, 2025 • 37 mins
If there was a class on how to go Boysober, Melissa Febos’ book The Dry Season would be at the top of the syllabus. Melissa’s new memoir recounts time when she did what Hope could not — give up dating, romance, and sex for an entire year. Hope talks to Melissa to better understand how she achieved this and how it rewired her brain to not be guided by the patterns of old relationships.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Fixing your attachment issues and abandonment issues one oh one.
Here's a chat GV two put together for me. Here's
a tailored syllabus with a focus on addressing attachment issues
related to seeking male validation. Here's what the course title
would be, Overcoming Dependency on Male Validation Course description. This
course explores attachment and abandonment issues related to seeking male validation.
(00:22):
Dudeents me. We'll engage with foundational texts and practical guides
to understand the root cause of this dependency and develop
strategies and building self esteem and healthy relationship. And that's
something I'm really looking to do because sometimes with therapy,
I feel like we've been talking about the same thing
since I was fucking thirteen, you know, But they never
give you strategies. Sometimes therapy never gives you strategies. You're
(00:45):
just word vombit for an hour and that feels good
and that's nice, and you do get somewhere and you
do learn about yourself, but then you leave and you're like,
I care, how am I gonna fix this?
Speaker 2 (00:55):
Though?
Speaker 1 (00:57):
When I first thought of going boysover, I can wondering
what a syllabus would look like for a class on
unlearning my romantic patterns. So I asked my friend chatchpt
and it gave me a ten week course filled with
some of the most helpful books I've read during my journey.
Along the way, I've added some supplemental reading to the list,
(01:20):
and I'm pushing my latest obsession straight to the top
of that boys sober syllabus The Dry Season by Melissa Phebos.
On this episode, we'll talk to the woman who did
what I could, not give updating, romance and sex for
an entire year. I'm hopewordered and welcome to boys Over
(01:43):
a space where we're learning and unlearning all the myths
were taught about love and relationships. Last month, when Melissa
Phebos's book The Dry Season came out, I couldn't wait
to read it. I was eager to compare our experiences
and maybe a new roadmap to fix my own issues.
Reading the book, I felt comforted, supported, and inspired to
(02:07):
keep understanding my own relationship to relationships. Melissa came out
of that year with her brain rewired to not be
guided by her old patterns. I wanted to talk to
her to better understand how she did that, to see
how we can do the personal work to make real
change in our lives. Melissa, Welcome to Boysover. Thank you
(02:34):
so much for being.
Speaker 3 (02:35):
Here, Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1 (02:38):
I also had a goal of giving up sex for
a year, but I did not stay as strong as
you did. I think a lot about a quote from
earlier in your book that really resonated with me. You wrote,
I did not give up sex to get freedom from men,
though many of the things I wanted freedom from were
(02:59):
inaugurated by them. I had given up sex because my
life had fallen apart and I needed to change that.
Can you walk me through what you wanted to change
most deeply and why giving up sex had to be
a part of that equation.
Speaker 3 (03:12):
You know.
Speaker 4 (03:13):
I think before I started my celibate period, I had
sort of a story about myself and my relationships, and
part of it was that I must be exempt from
compulsory heterosexual behavior to a great extent, because I was
mostly in relationships with women, and I'd been queer my
(03:33):
whole life and identified as a feminist my whole life.
Speaker 3 (03:37):
I thought that would protect me.
Speaker 4 (03:39):
But then I found myself at this really kind of
ugly bottom.
Speaker 3 (03:43):
I didn't have to look.
Speaker 4 (03:44):
At it very hard to be like, oh no, this
looks actually quite familiar. I am like bending myself into
a pretzel, trying to be the perfect partner, sort of
making compromises without even being asked to, and and a
lot of them popped up in the sexual realm of
my life, which was really disturbing and surprising to see.
Speaker 3 (04:07):
You know.
Speaker 4 (04:08):
I realized pretty early in my celibacy that I was
having and had been having a lot of sex that
I felt ambivalent about. Like I was having good sex
across my adult life too, but I really had this
buried belief that I could only say I wasn't in
the mood so many times before I had to just
do it, you know, even when I had partners who,
(04:30):
in hindsight absolutely would not have wanted me to be
doing that. It was just like my programming, and so
I thought, Okay, this is an inside job. I'm going
to have to get in there and do some rewiring
because this cannot go on.
Speaker 1 (04:45):
I think you talk about choosing versus using, and that
is something I have a difficult time with when it
comes to sex, because I think often sex for me
is like a bit of escape, and it's just easier
to say yes, than it is to like really express
and contemplate how you feel. So I resonate with this
sense of using sex to avoid something else, and I
(05:08):
know that comes up in conversations of recovery. You obviously
have a long history with recovery, so giving something up
and doing this kind of untangling is not new for you.
But I think sex and abstinence specifically was new. Can
you talk about the differences between like this kind of
(05:28):
recovery versus a substance.
Speaker 4 (05:31):
I was really grateful for the tools that I had
learned in recovery. I've been sober in twelve step from
drugs and alcohol for more than ten years when I
did this, so I had worked the steps the number
of times, and the tools I learned in sobriety were
tools that applied to every situation, not just addictive situations.
(05:52):
So I sort of knew what to do, and I thought,
all right, I'll just use all of the tools at
my disposal to try to figure out what is going
on with my reallyationship to this. Because I know that
there is a compulsive element, even if it's not like
a full fledged addiction, I'm definitely exhibiting some of those
behaviors where I want to change and I can't, and
I feel a little bit powerless over it. I mean,
(06:14):
just abstinence itself. I was like, I'll start with ninety days,
and that was like a unit of measurement that I
knew from sobriety. It was sort of a detox period.
And then I decided to make an inventory because I
knew you can't know what's really going on until you
take stock, and so I made a really long list
(06:34):
and started examining it.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
I want to talk about that inventory you took because
I loved the questions. I'm going to read them really quickly.
Where have I been selfish? Where have I been dishonest?
Where have I have been inconsiderate? Whom have I hurt?
Where was I at fault? What should I have done instead?
These are powerful questions, and I don't think everyone takes
the time to turn those questions internal. Can you tell
(06:59):
me you uncovered about yourself through these questions?
Speaker 3 (07:04):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (07:04):
It was incredibly deep and super uncomfortable for me to
perform this kind of autopsy on my own behavior. But
it was also so heartening because I had this story
about myself for most of my life, like I'm a
really passionate person, I'm a romantic I'm just the kind
of person who falls in love a lot.
Speaker 3 (07:26):
And I had this sort of heroic image.
Speaker 4 (07:29):
Of myself because I had worked really, really hard in
my relationships, like I felt like I had compromised a lot.
I had sort of toiled in the salt mine of
my own mind and expectations and really tried to avoid
conflict and keep my partners from being disappointed and sort
of syncopate our tastes in ways that were sometimes very
(07:51):
uncomfortable for me. And I had in many ways short
changed all my other interests in the service of what
I thought was being a good partner. And when I
answered these questions, I thought, wait, what is dishonesty? Is
it overlying or is it also omission? And it is
(08:11):
also omission? And when I thought about the catalog of
things I had omitted from my relationships, it was groundshaking.
I thought, Oh, no, I have not been doing what
I thought I was doing.
Speaker 3 (08:27):
In fact, it had.
Speaker 4 (08:28):
Been like a form of manipulation. And I believed then
and I believe now, that when you withhold large swaths
of reality, whether it's your personality or other truths from someone.
You are taking away their agency. You are preventing them
from understanding their whole reality and therefore making it impossible
(08:50):
for them to make true choices. And that is not
heroic behavior.
Speaker 3 (08:55):
It's actually exploded of behavior.
Speaker 4 (08:59):
Yeah, it didn't feel great, but it also made me
feel really empowered because before I had done the inventory,
I thought, I don't know what to do. I'm doing
all this work and it's still sort of going wrong
every time. And when I looked at the real truth
of how complicit I had been and the dissolution of
my relationships and why they hadn't worked, I thought, oh,
(09:21):
I have a huge part in this, and therefore there's
a lot of things that I can change.
Speaker 3 (09:26):
So it gave me like a to do list.
Speaker 4 (09:29):
It made me feel really hopeful as soon as I
finished being sort of devastated about my own role.
Speaker 1 (09:35):
Yeah, I resonate with this word omission, and I do
think it's something we're kind of taught as women. If
you just hold back your wants and needs, that is
the best thing you can do for someone. When in
all honesty, it is being honest and being truthful. The
desire element of all of this, I think a lot
(09:56):
of times we can think about desire as a really
empowering thing. Oh women, we can finally have desire. Now,
what a beautiful and liberatory thing. Right, But can you
talk about how your relationship to desire has changed and
how you see it now.
Speaker 4 (10:13):
It changed forever that year?
Speaker 2 (10:16):
You know.
Speaker 4 (10:16):
I think there's sort of this very basic instinct that
we have for desire and longing and the erotic, and
it is absolutely gorgeous and totally natural in all of
its forms. Right, But because I have this very specific
brain that when it gets certain tastes, brain chemicals, gets
(10:38):
very hungry for more, irrespective of the consequence or the
emotional reality.
Speaker 3 (10:44):
Yeah, I can just find.
Speaker 4 (10:45):
A way to turn any good natural instinct into like
something that's going to hurt me in other people. And
so I remember being like twelve, thirteen, maybe even younger,
and getting that fluttery feeling for other people and it's emotional, psychological, physical,
and just locking into it like a little pitfull and
(11:08):
being like, that's what I want. More is better and
chasing it to the decriment of my own social reality,
my own physical reality. And when I was really young,
I would get into situations where I would sort of
chase that feeling. I didn't feel like I was allowed
to say no when I got into sexual situations where
(11:29):
there was an expectation, and so I had a lot
of sexual experiences that I consented to but that I
didn't feel great about, and that really sort of colored
my relationship to sex and desire. And as I got
older in many ways that continued. But I also ended
up getting into emotional entanglements where I didn't really reciprocate
(11:54):
the feelings that the people I was involved with were,
but I had been chasing that yummy brain chemical feeling,
and then I ended up hurting people and sending mixed messages,
and my behavior and my sort of erotic inclinations were
like not lined up with my emotional attachments like in
the inventory.
Speaker 3 (12:14):
It was very repetitive.
Speaker 4 (12:16):
It was like, oh, I was chasing a certain set
of feelings, got into an emotional entanglement where the other
person was emotionally involved, and hurt them by being like
I'm not really into this, over and over and over again.
Speaker 1 (12:29):
I don't know if you resonate with this, but I
know for me, it is the chase that is so delicious,
Like you said, having that hunger and playing that game
and playing that part, and then you get to the
finish line, so to speak, and then it's like, wait,
this isn't fun for me anymore. And then the other
person is like, wait, but I thought this is what
(12:49):
you wanted, and you're like me too, I don't know, like.
Speaker 4 (12:52):
Yeah, and you know, I mean I mostly was dating women, and.
Speaker 3 (12:55):
Women moved fast emotionally, and.
Speaker 4 (12:58):
So the stakes got hot I really fast.
Speaker 1 (13:01):
Totally.
Speaker 3 (13:02):
Yeah, I made a mess a lot of times.
Speaker 4 (13:05):
Like one of the big resolutions that I got to
as a result of that time and as a result
of the inventory was slow down, totally, low down and
match up. Where are you actually emotionally? Are you just
chasing a feeling? Are you really interested in this person?
Go as slow as you need to so that you
(13:27):
actually know what's going on and you're not just high
on adrenaline and serotonin and dopamine.
Speaker 3 (13:35):
Like, just let it settle.
Speaker 4 (13:36):
And make sure that your actions are aligning with your
emotional reality. And for me, that means taking a beat
and being like, where am I actually? Let's just like
let that initial thrill settle down so that I can
figure out where my actual feelings lie. So that it
don't hurt anybody and I don't create wreckage and have
to make amends.
Speaker 1 (14:12):
I think one of the most difficult things for me
is like really untangling a compulsion or an honest feeling.
And I was surprised and super interested in how this
book examines religion and spirituality specifically because I think in
the beginning of my celibacy journey, I got a little
(14:33):
bit angry because I felt like it had been turned
into this like purity project and all these religious memories
of growing up came back to me where I was
just really mad at having praise for celibacy. But it
sounds like your relationship to spirituality kind of shifted and
maybe even specifically prayer. Can you talk about that kind
(14:54):
of transformation? And like where you hold prayer now? Is
that where you find the difference between what you really
want and what you might think you want.
Speaker 4 (15:05):
Yeah, And it has everything to do with that pause, right,
Like it's just not in my makeup to have a
pause or to give myself the space and the grace
to understand what is really true for me, Like I
am such a little animal in that way, and so
I need a set of practices like I need something greater.
(15:28):
And I'm careful in how I talk about this because
I don't come from a super religious background. My dad
is like a fervent ex Catholic, and so I have judgments,
but I didn't have trauma around spirituality and I didn't
have any sort of framework for practicing it. So when
I sort of was on my knees in like not
a spiritual way, like my life is kind of ruined,
(15:50):
what am I going to do?
Speaker 3 (15:51):
Way I was in that.
Speaker 4 (15:52):
State in the foxhol you become willing to do things
that you weren't willing before, and I thought, Okay, I
need to be open to things that I wasn't open
to before because my way of doing things is not working.
Speaker 3 (16:06):
I need new role models.
Speaker 4 (16:07):
Because I had always sort of worshiped these famous artists
who were total res in their love lives because they
need to ratify my own behavior, and I needed to
proof that someone could be an exciting artist and also
be totally chaotic in their love life. And when that
crashed and burned for me, I was like, I need
a new model for living, and so I started reading
(16:27):
about women who were voluntarily celibate but were also incredibly powerful,
and pretty quickly I got to like Nuns and I
was like, you really, like, I don't think this is
going to be fruitful for me, But almost instantly it was.
And I realized really quickly that these very spiritual women
across history had been living incredibly powerful, ambitious, creative, erotic
(16:52):
lives that were very much like the kind of life
I wanted. I thought, all right, let me set down
my biases, let me set down this helpful education that
my dad gave me, and humble myself a little bit,
and see what there is here for me. Do I
actually know better than centuries of self actualized women across
history who flourished and changed their societies and lived in
(17:15):
total accordance with their own beliefs, which is something that
I've failed to.
Speaker 1 (17:19):
Do in this tiime.
Speaker 4 (17:21):
And I just opened my mind and I thought, what
do I have to learn from these people who drew
strength from spiritual sources and from their conception of higher
powers and used it to live in accordance with their
own beliefs and had these incredibly ambitious, beautiful lives in
a time when it was like literally illegal. And I
(17:43):
found myself living in what felt like a surprising beautiful lineage,
and prayer suddenly meant something very different to me. It
wasn't like the prostration to this patriarchal male figure that
I had always thought it was. It was just a
gesture of surrender to something greater that had to do
(18:03):
with nature and female lineage and the community of women
and sort of queer folks that I felt deeply connected
to across space and time.
Speaker 1 (18:15):
Yeah, I don't know why that makes me so emotional,
Like I just I feel like maybe the concept of prayer,
you know, has been so twisted and so to think
of it in that way. I loved when you said
prayer is the person praying, and God is whatever answers.
You talk about celibacy and abundance, and it seems like
(18:37):
your spiritual life has like grown in a lot of
abundant ways. Can you talk a little bit about what
you've gained over the last year.
Speaker 4 (18:47):
I think like my friendship's almost instantly deepened, and I
had this very romantic experience with my friends where I
was able to sort of find true love and affection
and emotional depth, and like it just made space for
intimacy in my other relationships like family, friends, other kinds
(19:09):
of animals art. I described this painting that is actually
on the cover of the book, and you said earlier
that the chase is the best part, and that was
one thousand percent true for me. I had this super
erotic crush on this painting, but I'm never going to
consummate my crush on a painting, so I just get
to kind of live in the eros of my feelings
(19:33):
about that art work. And that felt like a revelation
to me, where I was like, Oh, I don't have
to consummate it. I can just stay this feeling and
love this feeling and use that source of energy to
make art and appreciate it and just let the world
in a way that is not using other.
Speaker 3 (19:53):
People for that source.
Speaker 4 (19:54):
I can just be a conduit of that energy, and
I can use it to push it outward and really
p deductive ways. And my relationship to food totally changed
because for the first time in my life, it wasn't like, well, what.
Speaker 3 (20:07):
Do you want to eat?
Speaker 4 (20:08):
Well, what do you want to eat that would be
fine with me? I was alone in my apartment like,
oh my god, I'm so hungry.
Speaker 3 (20:14):
What would make me the happiest?
Speaker 4 (20:16):
Is it like a plate of chocolate and cheese and strawberries,
like I'm going to eat that in bed at midnight.
Every sensual experience in my life really opened up and
became more vivid than it had ever been before. And
it's been sort of the project of my life since
then to really hold on to that and stay open
(20:37):
to all of that, even when I'm in romantic relationships
with other people.
Speaker 1 (20:42):
I also fell in love with the painting, but I
did consummate it by getting it as a tattoo, and
then I immediately regret of it, and now I'm getting
it removed like so fun. No, it was bad, Like
I got the biggest tattoo of my life and I
was like, I didn't meet her on my arm.
Speaker 3 (20:58):
I love that, I feel so seeing.
Speaker 4 (21:03):
I just just so you know, I just got a
massive cover up tattoo on my lower back because there
were multiple people's names back there from earlier her life,
and I was like, these don't mean what they once did,
so I'm going to start a new chapter.
Speaker 1 (21:20):
It's really inspiring this language you use, like you don't
have to consummate something. And I was talking to my
therapist the other day about a female friendship that I
have that always felt kind of romantic, and I was like,
I don't know what's going on, and she was like
my therapist was like, we always want to consummate something,
and maybe just a truth about that is like you
don't have to, Like you can just live in that
(21:43):
feeling of love and appreciate it. You don't have to
do something so drastic.
Speaker 3 (21:49):
It's true.
Speaker 4 (21:50):
I think it's like biological. Yeah, it's like biological, but
it's also kind of capitalist, right, Like you want it,
you get it, you can have it, and having it
is sometimes not as good as wanting it. Sometimes watching
it is the best part.
Speaker 1 (22:06):
Yeah, I completely agree. You talk a lot about these
beautiful moments like having cheese and strawberries in like a
delicious bed all by yourself. But something you quoted your
psychotherapist friend saying where she was like, I think you're
going to get really depressed. You might even get suicidal.
That resonated with me specifically because I was like, yeah,
I got there, like in the earlier parts of my
(22:29):
experience with this. So I wanted to ask you if
you had any down, bad moments where you just maybe
even felt dangerous in some ways.
Speaker 4 (22:39):
Yeah, you know, I didn't get quite too the depths
that she postulated, but there definitely were moments like, you know,
I had never thought that I was afraid to be alone,
but I had just been running so hard away from
it for so long that I never gave myself a
chance to feel.
Speaker 3 (22:57):
How I felt about being alone.
Speaker 4 (22:59):
And I I think when I first sort of pulled
the veil back and saw who I had actually been
in the past, it was pretty devastating to have it
revealed that I am not the person I thought I was,
and that in fact I compromised and.
Speaker 3 (23:14):
Used these other people and really hurt them.
Speaker 4 (23:17):
That felt really ugly and made me feel pretty hopeless.
Speaker 3 (23:20):
And there was also like a couple.
Speaker 4 (23:23):
Of moments during that year where I sort of clicked
back into my old behavior, like I really had to
be inside of the reality of the fact that I
could absolutely go back and continue what I was doing
and just hate myself. That was very much an option,
and I thought, do I really have the agency that
I've been working for?
Speaker 3 (23:43):
Can I stop this?
Speaker 4 (23:44):
And thankfully the answer turned out to be yes, But
it was a narrow margin.
Speaker 3 (23:49):
It was not easy.
Speaker 4 (23:51):
I really had to, like Marshal, the gumption of all
of everything I'd learned and the parts of me that
really wanted to live a more true existence.
Speaker 5 (24:00):
It's a practice, like you have to just keep exercising
those new behaviors or for me, I will absolutely slip
back into my old programming.
Speaker 3 (24:11):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:11):
I think there's really something to be said about healing
never having a finish line, because I think so many
of us we want to heal and just be like, Okay,
checked that box. But I know in my experience too,
like you said, that old programming is always there. Something
that really resonated with me that I think came out
of your inventory once you sort of read it to
(24:32):
your spiritual leader. Would you call them your role model,
your confidante?
Speaker 3 (24:38):
Yeah, I call them the spiritual director, but the.
Speaker 1 (24:41):
Director okay, and I need to find one of my own.
That's something that I was really thinking is I was like,
who could I read my notebook to? That's not the internet,
you know what I mean? Because that anyways, she said
something that I think was so powerful that resonated with me,
talking about the difference between or maybe there's no difference
(25:02):
between people pleasing and people using.
Speaker 4 (25:06):
Yeah, you know, I have seen the pattern in the inventory,
but I am really good at avoiding the full breadth
of unflattering truths, and I knew that about myself, So
I thought, let me share this with someone who loves
me but is not going to flatter me, who will
be honest about what they hear here. I shared it
(25:28):
with them and they were like, look, you have some
really understandable reasons for having this behavior, but like I'm
going to land a really harsh truth on you.
Speaker 3 (25:40):
And you're a user.
Speaker 4 (25:41):
You've used these people. And I was like, but I've
been such a people pleaser, and they said, Melissa, people
pleasing is people using And I almost like fell out,
like I almost turned to ash because I it was
like instantly I knew it was true, and it all
just kind of clicked into place, and I thought, I've
not been trying to keep them happy because I care
(26:02):
about their happiness, or I care about their happiness because
it makes me feel safe, and disappointing other people or
them being upset with me creates so much anxiety in
me that I am willing to manipulate reality to whatever
extent necessary to keep everybody happy with me all the time.
Speaker 3 (26:21):
And I am exhausted.
Speaker 4 (26:23):
And it is also a form of really comprehensive dishonesty
and manipulation, and I thought, these are not loving acts,
these are fear based acts. These are manipulative acts. And
it just instantly colored my whole past in a way
that like I had sort of seen, but I hadn't
fully seen. And I was like, got it. This has
(26:46):
been a lose lose situation.
Speaker 1 (26:48):
I love the way you say that, like it's like, okay,
like so sure, I know that when i'm people, please,
I'm maybe dancing around some truth, But when a trusted
friend says something like that, it is so un ignorable.
I love the conversation around generosity disconnected from fear. Can
you talk about how you untangle generosity from fear? Now?
Speaker 4 (27:11):
That was one of the biggest takeaways of that year
and the one that has been most instrumental in my
love life. Now you know, I'm married. Now, I've been
married for it'll be four years very soon. And my
definition of love, which used to be much more based
on like pop songs and love stories and like if
(27:31):
you find the right person, you'll never fight and it'll
just click into place, and it really was all just
like sexy descriptions of dependency. My definition of love now,
which I came up with that year, is not based
on dependency, It is not based on need. It is
based on our full agency, choosing the other person every
(27:55):
single day that we are with them, choosing to support
their flourishing even when it's not exactly what we want
from them in that moment. It's a much more autonomous
definition of love. My wife and I are separate people
and sometimes we need separate things. We both need a
lot of alone time. We don't always sleep in the
(28:15):
same bed, we don't always want to have sex at
the same times, and we have cultivated a relationship where
those differences don't threaten our attachment because we don't need
the other person. We want to be with them, enjoy
our life together, and choose it every single day, hour
by hour. And of course there are compromises and things
(28:37):
you do for your partner that are what you necessarily
most want to be doing in that moment, but they
are not compromises that allied essential parts of our being,
and they're not compromises that hide our true wants and desires.
We're very honest about who we are, and that's not
always easy. But I would not be able to do
(28:58):
it without that being definition of love and be without
having a willing collaborator who also treasures the person I
actually am and not the person I'm trying to oregon
me myself into.
Speaker 2 (29:11):
To keep her happy.
Speaker 1 (29:31):
Do you think without this year of taking time to
be alone with yourself, do you think you and your
wife would have found each other or do you think
you would have the relationship you have now? Or do
you think this moment really sort of set you up
to be with someone in this way?
Speaker 4 (29:48):
Oh a thousand percent, it would not have worked.
Speaker 6 (29:52):
We might have found each other because chemistry, you know,
but I would have wrecked it. I would have I
would have done what I always did in the past.
Speaker 5 (30:03):
I would have gone way too fast, and then I
would have been like.
Speaker 3 (30:07):
Eh, what is this? I can't you know.
Speaker 4 (30:10):
I would not have had the tools to communicate to
her the kind of relationship that I really wanted. And so,
like literally, on like our first date, I was like, look,
I've had this period of celibacy. This is what I've
done in the past. I don't want to do that anymore.
I need a lot of alone time. I really want
(30:30):
to be honest and have radical communication. And she was like, yes,
let's go.
Speaker 1 (30:37):
I love to hear this. There's a moment in your
book you mentioned pinning a list on your wall of
twelve things you wanted to embody in your future relationships.
Can you quickly talk about how you came up with
those twelve things.
Speaker 4 (30:52):
I came up with that list in the second half
of that year, after I had read the inventory to
my mentor and sat with it, and as I was
turning towards like, Okay, if I am ever going to
be in another relationship, I can't just be operating on
instinct or on vibes. I need very clear guidelines because
(31:13):
my instincts have gotten me to the.
Speaker 3 (31:16):
Place I don't want to go back to. So I
really I went back.
Speaker 4 (31:19):
And I looked at the inventory, and I looked at
the behaviors, and I thought, what are the opposite of
these behaviors?
Speaker 3 (31:25):
What is the.
Speaker 4 (31:25):
Opposite of people pleasing? What is the opposite of omitting
true things about myself? What is the opposite of these
messy little entanglements? And so I sort of came up
with this mirror version, like no getting involved with people
who are already involved with other people, No hiding parts
of myself that I think will be unacceptable to the
(31:47):
other person.
Speaker 3 (31:48):
It's basically a description.
Speaker 4 (31:50):
Of like a radically honest approach to dating, going slow,
not having sex if I don't want to not having
sex before I know something, which, like, it feels important
to say that these are not universal guidelines, and there
are people who can do the things that I did
and not make a mess of their life and other people's.
(32:10):
But for me specifically, there were very clear patterns that
made me feel ashamed of myself, and I was like,
I don't ever want to do the things that make
me feel that way again or that hurt other people.
Speaker 1 (32:23):
Do you feel like you are embodying those twelve things?
And is there a reason why you chose the number twelve?
Speaker 3 (32:30):
You know, that's really funny.
Speaker 4 (32:32):
No one's actually ever pointed that out, and I've never
thought about the fact that there are twelve, but it
feels like the number twelve has a kind of emotional
home for me. I have a good adde totally, but yeah,
I think not in every minute of my life and
my embodying them, Like, of course, there are still moments
in my relationship where the should energy gets really loud,
(32:55):
and like my wife and I have taken periods of
celibacy inside of our relationlationship to do the process when
it feels like the internal pressure of expectations is getting
kind of weird or like we've definitely used all of
the tools that I gleaned in that year, like inside
of our relationship, but those twelve guidelines have remained my
(33:19):
north star, and I do feel like over the course
of the whole time, it has absolutely been the thing
I am reaching for and the ideal that I am
holding and the sort of home that I return to.
And for me, it has to be explicit like that,
like I needed to have an actual list that I
like printed out and looked at.
Speaker 1 (33:38):
I think doing the inventory and then looking at your
personal habits, patterns, whatever, is probably one of the only
ways to do it in a way that is correct,
to personalize it. Lastly, I love the way you ended
the book you wrote, just it's so simple. Begin here,
(33:58):
it's raining that feels like a bit of an invitation
to people, and I'm just wondering, like what you would
say to someone who's sort of at the beginning and
it's a bit of a it's a bit of a storm.
This is personal.
Speaker 4 (34:12):
Yeah, totally very happy to some of it we've already
touched on totally.
Speaker 3 (34:18):
Start small, like I can't.
Speaker 4 (34:21):
As soon as something seems like too big to face,
I run right into the thing that's been comforting me,
and I go right to my most comforting escapes. And
then it becomes a kind of feedback loop where I
feel like I failed, Like think about what actually feels
feasible and define the parameters of it very clearly, think
(34:41):
about what is the thing that you really need respite from.
And for me, it turned out to be like, really
it was like sex with other people, but not just
sex for me. It was really the like psycho emotional
complex of that feeling that I was chasing.
Speaker 3 (34:58):
Sex was just part of it. For me.
Speaker 4 (35:00):
It was okay to masturbate, but not to flirt, like
really think about what the crux of it is.
Speaker 3 (35:05):
For you, and.
Speaker 4 (35:08):
Marshal your community to help you, Like I sort of
talk to people who had had similar experiences, talked to
my therapist about it, had a little team that was
doing it with me, Like I've never been able to
change myself in isolation.
Speaker 3 (35:22):
It just doesn't work for me.
Speaker 4 (35:24):
It's like doing surgery on myself, Like I can't I
need the support of a community that really gets the project,
like you need more than two hands to sort of
carry you through that process.
Speaker 1 (35:36):
You are so inspiring and really have provided such a
framework of doing this in a way that is empowering
and is not covered in some sort of like in
a beautifully spiritual and empowering way. So thank you so
much for coming on and having this show with me.
Appreciate it so much.
Speaker 4 (35:55):
Thank you so much. I love talking with you. And
when you do decide to do the rest of the year.
Speaker 3 (36:02):
Call me listen.
Speaker 1 (36:03):
I'm going slow one day at a time. Be careful
what you wish for, Melissa, because I will be calling
you whenever I start to doubt my new Boysover journey.
But for now, that conversation is definitely enough inspiration for
me to keep heading down the right path. Thanks so
(36:24):
much to Melissa for talking to us and for her
wonderful book. I urge everyone to go read it. Thanks y'all,
and talk next week. Boysover is a production of iHeart Podcasts.
I'm Your Host, Hopewordard. Our executive producers are Christina Everett
(36:48):
and Julie Pinero. Our supervising producer is Emily meronoff engineering
by Bahid Fraser and mixing and mastering by Aboo Zafar.
If you liked this episode, please tell a friend and
don't forget to rate, review, and subscribe to boy Sober
on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, and wherever you get
your favorite shows.
Fixing your attachment issues and abandonment issues one oh one.
Here's a chat GV two put together for me. Here's
a tailored syllabus with a focus on addressing attachment issues
related to seeking male validation. Here's what the course title
would be, Overcoming Dependency on Male Validation Course description. This
course explores attachment and abandonment issues related to seeking male validation.
(00:22):
Dudeents me. We'll engage with foundational texts and practical guides
to understand the root cause of this dependency and develop
strategies and building self esteem and healthy relationship. And that's
something I'm really looking to do because sometimes with therapy,
I feel like we've been talking about the same thing
since I was fucking thirteen, you know, But they never
give you strategies. Sometimes therapy never gives you strategies. You're
(00:45):
just word vombit for an hour and that feels good
and that's nice, and you do get somewhere and you
do learn about yourself, but then you leave and you're like,
I care, how am I gonna fix this?
Speaker 2 (00:55):
Though?
Speaker 1 (00:57):
When I first thought of going boysover, I can wondering
what a syllabus would look like for a class on
unlearning my romantic patterns. So I asked my friend chatchpt
and it gave me a ten week course filled with
some of the most helpful books I've read during my journey.
Along the way, I've added some supplemental reading to the list,
(01:20):
and I'm pushing my latest obsession straight to the top
of that boys sober syllabus The Dry Season by Melissa Phebos.
On this episode, we'll talk to the woman who did
what I could, not give updating, romance and sex for
an entire year. I'm hopewordered and welcome to boys Over
(01:43):
a space where we're learning and unlearning all the myths
were taught about love and relationships. Last month, when Melissa
Phebos's book The Dry Season came out, I couldn't wait
to read it. I was eager to compare our experiences
and maybe a new roadmap to fix my own issues.
Reading the book, I felt comforted, supported, and inspired to
(02:07):
keep understanding my own relationship to relationships. Melissa came out
of that year with her brain rewired to not be
guided by her old patterns. I wanted to talk to
her to better understand how she did that, to see
how we can do the personal work to make real
change in our lives. Melissa, Welcome to Boysover. Thank you
(02:34):
so much for being.
Speaker 3 (02:35):
Here, Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1 (02:38):
I also had a goal of giving up sex for
a year, but I did not stay as strong as
you did. I think a lot about a quote from
earlier in your book that really resonated with me. You wrote,
I did not give up sex to get freedom from men,
though many of the things I wanted freedom from were
(02:59):
inaugurated by them. I had given up sex because my
life had fallen apart and I needed to change that.
Can you walk me through what you wanted to change
most deeply and why giving up sex had to be
a part of that equation.
Speaker 3 (03:12):
You know.
Speaker 4 (03:13):
I think before I started my celibate period, I had
sort of a story about myself and my relationships, and
part of it was that I must be exempt from
compulsory heterosexual behavior to a great extent, because I was
mostly in relationships with women, and I'd been queer my
(03:33):
whole life and identified as a feminist my whole life.
Speaker 3 (03:37):
I thought that would protect me.
Speaker 4 (03:39):
But then I found myself at this really kind of
ugly bottom.
Speaker 3 (03:43):
I didn't have to look.
Speaker 4 (03:44):
At it very hard to be like, oh no, this
looks actually quite familiar. I am like bending myself into
a pretzel, trying to be the perfect partner, sort of
making compromises without even being asked to, and and a
lot of them popped up in the sexual realm of
my life, which was really disturbing and surprising to see.
Speaker 3 (04:07):
You know.
Speaker 4 (04:08):
I realized pretty early in my celibacy that I was
having and had been having a lot of sex that
I felt ambivalent about. Like I was having good sex
across my adult life too, but I really had this
buried belief that I could only say I wasn't in
the mood so many times before I had to just
do it, you know, even when I had partners who,
(04:30):
in hindsight absolutely would not have wanted me to be
doing that. It was just like my programming, and so
I thought, Okay, this is an inside job. I'm going
to have to get in there and do some rewiring
because this cannot go on.
Speaker 1 (04:45):
I think you talk about choosing versus using, and that
is something I have a difficult time with when it
comes to sex, because I think often sex for me
is like a bit of escape, and it's just easier
to say yes, than it is to like really express
and contemplate how you feel. So I resonate with this
sense of using sex to avoid something else, and I
(05:08):
know that comes up in conversations of recovery. You obviously
have a long history with recovery, so giving something up
and doing this kind of untangling is not new for you.
But I think sex and abstinence specifically was new. Can
you talk about the differences between like this kind of
(05:28):
recovery versus a substance.
Speaker 4 (05:31):
I was really grateful for the tools that I had
learned in recovery. I've been sober in twelve step from
drugs and alcohol for more than ten years when I
did this, so I had worked the steps the number
of times, and the tools I learned in sobriety were
tools that applied to every situation, not just addictive situations.
(05:52):
So I sort of knew what to do, and I thought,
all right, I'll just use all of the tools at
my disposal to try to figure out what is going
on with my reallyationship to this. Because I know that
there is a compulsive element, even if it's not like
a full fledged addiction, I'm definitely exhibiting some of those
behaviors where I want to change and I can't, and
I feel a little bit powerless over it. I mean,
(06:14):
just abstinence itself. I was like, I'll start with ninety days,
and that was like a unit of measurement that I
knew from sobriety. It was sort of a detox period.
And then I decided to make an inventory because I
knew you can't know what's really going on until you
take stock, and so I made a really long list
(06:34):
and started examining it.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
I want to talk about that inventory you took because
I loved the questions. I'm going to read them really quickly.
Where have I been selfish? Where have I been dishonest?
Where have I have been inconsiderate? Whom have I hurt?
Where was I at fault? What should I have done instead?
These are powerful questions, and I don't think everyone takes
the time to turn those questions internal. Can you tell
(06:59):
me you uncovered about yourself through these questions?
Speaker 3 (07:04):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (07:04):
It was incredibly deep and super uncomfortable for me to
perform this kind of autopsy on my own behavior. But
it was also so heartening because I had this story
about myself for most of my life, like I'm a
really passionate person, I'm a romantic I'm just the kind
of person who falls in love a lot.
Speaker 3 (07:26):
And I had this sort of heroic image.
Speaker 4 (07:29):
Of myself because I had worked really, really hard in
my relationships, like I felt like I had compromised a lot.
I had sort of toiled in the salt mine of
my own mind and expectations and really tried to avoid
conflict and keep my partners from being disappointed and sort
of syncopate our tastes in ways that were sometimes very
(07:51):
uncomfortable for me. And I had in many ways short
changed all my other interests in the service of what
I thought was being a good partner. And when I
answered these questions, I thought, wait, what is dishonesty? Is
it overlying or is it also omission? And it is
(08:11):
also omission? And when I thought about the catalog of
things I had omitted from my relationships, it was groundshaking.
I thought, Oh, no, I have not been doing what
I thought I was doing.
Speaker 3 (08:27):
In fact, it had.
Speaker 4 (08:28):
Been like a form of manipulation. And I believed then
and I believe now, that when you withhold large swaths
of reality, whether it's your personality or other truths from someone.
You are taking away their agency. You are preventing them
from understanding their whole reality and therefore making it impossible
(08:50):
for them to make true choices. And that is not
heroic behavior.
Speaker 3 (08:55):
It's actually exploded of behavior.
Speaker 4 (08:59):
Yeah, it didn't feel great, but it also made me
feel really empowered because before I had done the inventory,
I thought, I don't know what to do. I'm doing
all this work and it's still sort of going wrong
every time. And when I looked at the real truth
of how complicit I had been and the dissolution of
my relationships and why they hadn't worked, I thought, oh,
(09:21):
I have a huge part in this, and therefore there's
a lot of things that I can change.
Speaker 3 (09:26):
So it gave me like a to do list.
Speaker 4 (09:29):
It made me feel really hopeful as soon as I
finished being sort of devastated about my own role.
Speaker 1 (09:35):
Yeah, I resonate with this word omission, and I do
think it's something we're kind of taught as women. If
you just hold back your wants and needs, that is
the best thing you can do for someone. When in
all honesty, it is being honest and being truthful. The
desire element of all of this, I think a lot
(09:56):
of times we can think about desire as a really
empowering thing. Oh women, we can finally have desire. Now,
what a beautiful and liberatory thing. Right, But can you
talk about how your relationship to desire has changed and
how you see it now.
Speaker 4 (10:13):
It changed forever that year?
Speaker 2 (10:16):
You know.
Speaker 4 (10:16):
I think there's sort of this very basic instinct that
we have for desire and longing and the erotic, and
it is absolutely gorgeous and totally natural in all of
its forms. Right, But because I have this very specific
brain that when it gets certain tastes, brain chemicals, gets
(10:38):
very hungry for more, irrespective of the consequence or the
emotional reality.
Speaker 3 (10:44):
Yeah, I can just find.
Speaker 4 (10:45):
A way to turn any good natural instinct into like
something that's going to hurt me in other people. And
so I remember being like twelve, thirteen, maybe even younger,
and getting that fluttery feeling for other people and it's emotional, psychological, physical,
and just locking into it like a little pitfull and
(11:08):
being like, that's what I want. More is better and
chasing it to the decriment of my own social reality,
my own physical reality. And when I was really young,
I would get into situations where I would sort of
chase that feeling. I didn't feel like I was allowed
to say no when I got into sexual situations where
(11:29):
there was an expectation, and so I had a lot
of sexual experiences that I consented to but that I
didn't feel great about, and that really sort of colored
my relationship to sex and desire. And as I got
older in many ways that continued. But I also ended
up getting into emotional entanglements where I didn't really reciprocate
(11:54):
the feelings that the people I was involved with were,
but I had been chasing that yummy brain chemical feeling,
and then I ended up hurting people and sending mixed messages,
and my behavior and my sort of erotic inclinations were
like not lined up with my emotional attachments like in
the inventory.
Speaker 3 (12:14):
It was very repetitive.
Speaker 4 (12:16):
It was like, oh, I was chasing a certain set
of feelings, got into an emotional entanglement where the other
person was emotionally involved, and hurt them by being like
I'm not really into this, over and over and over again.
Speaker 1 (12:29):
I don't know if you resonate with this, but I
know for me, it is the chase that is so delicious,
Like you said, having that hunger and playing that game
and playing that part, and then you get to the
finish line, so to speak, and then it's like, wait,
this isn't fun for me anymore. And then the other
person is like, wait, but I thought this is what
(12:49):
you wanted, and you're like me too, I don't know, like.
Speaker 4 (12:52):
Yeah, and you know, I mean I mostly was dating women, and.
Speaker 3 (12:55):
Women moved fast emotionally, and.
Speaker 4 (12:58):
So the stakes got hot I really fast.
Speaker 1 (13:01):
Totally.
Speaker 3 (13:02):
Yeah, I made a mess a lot of times.
Speaker 4 (13:05):
Like one of the big resolutions that I got to
as a result of that time and as a result
of the inventory was slow down, totally, low down and
match up. Where are you actually emotionally? Are you just
chasing a feeling? Are you really interested in this person?
Go as slow as you need to so that you
(13:27):
actually know what's going on and you're not just high
on adrenaline and serotonin and dopamine.
Speaker 3 (13:35):
Like, just let it settle.
Speaker 4 (13:36):
And make sure that your actions are aligning with your
emotional reality. And for me, that means taking a beat
and being like, where am I actually? Let's just like
let that initial thrill settle down so that I can
figure out where my actual feelings lie. So that it
don't hurt anybody and I don't create wreckage and have
to make amends.
Speaker 1 (14:12):
I think one of the most difficult things for me
is like really untangling a compulsion or an honest feeling.
And I was surprised and super interested in how this
book examines religion and spirituality specifically because I think in
the beginning of my celibacy journey, I got a little
(14:33):
bit angry because I felt like it had been turned
into this like purity project and all these religious memories
of growing up came back to me where I was
just really mad at having praise for celibacy. But it
sounds like your relationship to spirituality kind of shifted and
maybe even specifically prayer. Can you talk about that kind
(14:54):
of transformation? And like where you hold prayer now? Is
that where you find the difference between what you really
want and what you might think you want.
Speaker 4 (15:05):
Yeah, And it has everything to do with that pause, right,
Like it's just not in my makeup to have a
pause or to give myself the space and the grace
to understand what is really true for me, Like I
am such a little animal in that way, and so
I need a set of practices like I need something greater.
(15:28):
And I'm careful in how I talk about this because
I don't come from a super religious background. My dad
is like a fervent ex Catholic, and so I have judgments,
but I didn't have trauma around spirituality and I didn't
have any sort of framework for practicing it. So when
I sort of was on my knees in like not
a spiritual way, like my life is kind of ruined,
(15:50):
what am I going to do?
Speaker 3 (15:51):
Way I was in that.
Speaker 4 (15:52):
State in the foxhol you become willing to do things
that you weren't willing before, and I thought, Okay, I
need to be open to things that I wasn't open
to before because my way of doing things is not working.
Speaker 3 (16:06):
I need new role models.
Speaker 4 (16:07):
Because I had always sort of worshiped these famous artists
who were total res in their love lives because they
need to ratify my own behavior, and I needed to
proof that someone could be an exciting artist and also
be totally chaotic in their love life. And when that
crashed and burned for me, I was like, I need
a new model for living, and so I started reading
(16:27):
about women who were voluntarily celibate but were also incredibly powerful,
and pretty quickly I got to like Nuns and I
was like, you really, like, I don't think this is
going to be fruitful for me, But almost instantly it was.
And I realized really quickly that these very spiritual women
across history had been living incredibly powerful, ambitious, creative, erotic
(16:52):
lives that were very much like the kind of life
I wanted. I thought, all right, let me set down
my biases, let me set down this helpful education that
my dad gave me, and humble myself a little bit,
and see what there is here for me. Do I
actually know better than centuries of self actualized women across
history who flourished and changed their societies and lived in
(17:15):
total accordance with their own beliefs, which is something that
I've failed to.
Speaker 1 (17:19):
Do in this tiime.
Speaker 4 (17:21):
And I just opened my mind and I thought, what
do I have to learn from these people who drew
strength from spiritual sources and from their conception of higher
powers and used it to live in accordance with their
own beliefs and had these incredibly ambitious, beautiful lives in
a time when it was like literally illegal. And I
(17:43):
found myself living in what felt like a surprising beautiful lineage,
and prayer suddenly meant something very different to me. It
wasn't like the prostration to this patriarchal male figure that
I had always thought it was. It was just a
gesture of surrender to something greater that had to do
(18:03):
with nature and female lineage and the community of women
and sort of queer folks that I felt deeply connected
to across space and time.
Speaker 1 (18:15):
Yeah, I don't know why that makes me so emotional,
Like I just I feel like maybe the concept of prayer,
you know, has been so twisted and so to think
of it in that way. I loved when you said
prayer is the person praying, and God is whatever answers.
You talk about celibacy and abundance, and it seems like
(18:37):
your spiritual life has like grown in a lot of
abundant ways. Can you talk a little bit about what
you've gained over the last year.
Speaker 4 (18:47):
I think like my friendship's almost instantly deepened, and I
had this very romantic experience with my friends where I
was able to sort of find true love and affection
and emotional depth, and like it just made space for
intimacy in my other relationships like family, friends, other kinds
(19:09):
of animals art. I described this painting that is actually
on the cover of the book, and you said earlier
that the chase is the best part, and that was
one thousand percent true for me. I had this super
erotic crush on this painting, but I'm never going to
consummate my crush on a painting, so I just get
to kind of live in the eros of my feelings
(19:33):
about that art work. And that felt like a revelation
to me, where I was like, Oh, I don't have
to consummate it. I can just stay this feeling and
love this feeling and use that source of energy to
make art and appreciate it and just let the world
in a way that is not using other.
Speaker 3 (19:53):
People for that source.
Speaker 4 (19:54):
I can just be a conduit of that energy, and
I can use it to push it outward and really
p deductive ways. And my relationship to food totally changed
because for the first time in my life, it wasn't like, well, what.
Speaker 3 (20:07):
Do you want to eat?
Speaker 4 (20:08):
Well, what do you want to eat that would be
fine with me? I was alone in my apartment like,
oh my god, I'm so hungry.
Speaker 3 (20:14):
What would make me the happiest?
Speaker 4 (20:16):
Is it like a plate of chocolate and cheese and strawberries,
like I'm going to eat that in bed at midnight.
Every sensual experience in my life really opened up and
became more vivid than it had ever been before. And
it's been sort of the project of my life since
then to really hold on to that and stay open
(20:37):
to all of that, even when I'm in romantic relationships
with other people.
Speaker 1 (20:42):
I also fell in love with the painting, but I
did consummate it by getting it as a tattoo, and
then I immediately regret of it, and now I'm getting
it removed like so fun. No, it was bad, Like
I got the biggest tattoo of my life and I
was like, I didn't meet her on my arm.
Speaker 3 (20:58):
I love that, I feel so seeing.
Speaker 4 (21:03):
I just just so you know, I just got a
massive cover up tattoo on my lower back because there
were multiple people's names back there from earlier her life,
and I was like, these don't mean what they once did,
so I'm going to start a new chapter.
Speaker 1 (21:20):
It's really inspiring this language you use, like you don't
have to consummate something. And I was talking to my
therapist the other day about a female friendship that I
have that always felt kind of romantic, and I was like,
I don't know what's going on, and she was like
my therapist was like, we always want to consummate something,
and maybe just a truth about that is like you
don't have to, Like you can just live in that
(21:43):
feeling of love and appreciate it. You don't have to
do something so drastic.
Speaker 3 (21:49):
It's true.
Speaker 4 (21:50):
I think it's like biological. Yeah, it's like biological, but
it's also kind of capitalist, right, Like you want it,
you get it, you can have it, and having it
is sometimes not as good as wanting it. Sometimes watching
it is the best part.
Speaker 1 (22:06):
Yeah, I completely agree. You talk a lot about these
beautiful moments like having cheese and strawberries in like a
delicious bed all by yourself. But something you quoted your
psychotherapist friend saying where she was like, I think you're
going to get really depressed. You might even get suicidal.
That resonated with me specifically because I was like, yeah,
I got there, like in the earlier parts of my
(22:29):
experience with this. So I wanted to ask you if
you had any down, bad moments where you just maybe
even felt dangerous in some ways.
Speaker 4 (22:39):
Yeah, you know, I didn't get quite too the depths
that she postulated, but there definitely were moments like, you know,
I had never thought that I was afraid to be alone,
but I had just been running so hard away from
it for so long that I never gave myself a
chance to feel.
Speaker 3 (22:57):
How I felt about being alone.
Speaker 4 (22:59):
And I I think when I first sort of pulled
the veil back and saw who I had actually been
in the past, it was pretty devastating to have it
revealed that I am not the person I thought I was,
and that in fact I compromised and.
Speaker 3 (23:14):
Used these other people and really hurt them.
Speaker 4 (23:17):
That felt really ugly and made me feel pretty hopeless.
Speaker 3 (23:20):
And there was also like a couple.
Speaker 4 (23:23):
Of moments during that year where I sort of clicked
back into my old behavior, like I really had to
be inside of the reality of the fact that I
could absolutely go back and continue what I was doing
and just hate myself. That was very much an option,
and I thought, do I really have the agency that
I've been working for?
Speaker 3 (23:43):
Can I stop this?
Speaker 4 (23:44):
And thankfully the answer turned out to be yes, But
it was a narrow margin.
Speaker 3 (23:49):
It was not easy.
Speaker 4 (23:51):
I really had to, like Marshal, the gumption of all
of everything I'd learned and the parts of me that
really wanted to live a more true existence.
Speaker 5 (24:00):
It's a practice, like you have to just keep exercising
those new behaviors or for me, I will absolutely slip
back into my old programming.
Speaker 3 (24:11):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:11):
I think there's really something to be said about healing
never having a finish line, because I think so many
of us we want to heal and just be like, Okay,
checked that box. But I know in my experience too,
like you said, that old programming is always there. Something
that really resonated with me that I think came out
of your inventory once you sort of read it to
(24:32):
your spiritual leader. Would you call them your role model,
your confidante?
Speaker 3 (24:38):
Yeah, I call them the spiritual director, but the.
Speaker 1 (24:41):
Director okay, and I need to find one of my own.
That's something that I was really thinking is I was like,
who could I read my notebook to? That's not the internet,
you know what I mean? Because that anyways, she said
something that I think was so powerful that resonated with me,
talking about the difference between or maybe there's no difference
(25:02):
between people pleasing and people using.
Speaker 4 (25:06):
Yeah, you know, I have seen the pattern in the inventory,
but I am really good at avoiding the full breadth
of unflattering truths, and I knew that about myself, So
I thought, let me share this with someone who loves
me but is not going to flatter me, who will
be honest about what they hear here. I shared it
(25:28):
with them and they were like, look, you have some
really understandable reasons for having this behavior, but like I'm
going to land a really harsh truth on you.
Speaker 3 (25:40):
And you're a user.
Speaker 4 (25:41):
You've used these people. And I was like, but I've
been such a people pleaser, and they said, Melissa, people
pleasing is people using And I almost like fell out,
like I almost turned to ash because I it was
like instantly I knew it was true, and it all
just kind of clicked into place, and I thought, I've
not been trying to keep them happy because I care
(26:02):
about their happiness, or I care about their happiness because
it makes me feel safe, and disappointing other people or
them being upset with me creates so much anxiety in
me that I am willing to manipulate reality to whatever
extent necessary to keep everybody happy with me all the time.
Speaker 3 (26:21):
And I am exhausted.
Speaker 4 (26:23):
And it is also a form of really comprehensive dishonesty
and manipulation, and I thought, these are not loving acts,
these are fear based acts. These are manipulative acts. And
it just instantly colored my whole past in a way
that like I had sort of seen, but I hadn't
fully seen. And I was like, got it. This has
(26:46):
been a lose lose situation.
Speaker 1 (26:48):
I love the way you say that, like it's like, okay,
like so sure, I know that when i'm people, please,
I'm maybe dancing around some truth, But when a trusted
friend says something like that, it is so un ignorable.
I love the conversation around generosity disconnected from fear. Can
you talk about how you untangle generosity from fear? Now?
Speaker 4 (27:11):
That was one of the biggest takeaways of that year
and the one that has been most instrumental in my
love life. Now you know, I'm married. Now, I've been
married for it'll be four years very soon. And my
definition of love, which used to be much more based
on like pop songs and love stories and like if
(27:31):
you find the right person, you'll never fight and it'll
just click into place, and it really was all just
like sexy descriptions of dependency. My definition of love now,
which I came up with that year, is not based
on dependency, It is not based on need. It is
based on our full agency, choosing the other person every
(27:55):
single day that we are with them, choosing to support
their flourishing even when it's not exactly what we want
from them in that moment. It's a much more autonomous
definition of love. My wife and I are separate people
and sometimes we need separate things. We both need a
lot of alone time. We don't always sleep in the
(28:15):
same bed, we don't always want to have sex at
the same times, and we have cultivated a relationship where
those differences don't threaten our attachment because we don't need
the other person. We want to be with them, enjoy
our life together, and choose it every single day, hour
by hour. And of course there are compromises and things
(28:37):
you do for your partner that are what you necessarily
most want to be doing in that moment, but they
are not compromises that allied essential parts of our being,
and they're not compromises that hide our true wants and desires.
We're very honest about who we are, and that's not
always easy. But I would not be able to do
(28:58):
it without that being definition of love and be without
having a willing collaborator who also treasures the person I
actually am and not the person I'm trying to oregon
me myself into.
Speaker 2 (29:11):
To keep her happy.
Speaker 1 (29:31):
Do you think without this year of taking time to
be alone with yourself, do you think you and your
wife would have found each other or do you think
you would have the relationship you have now? Or do
you think this moment really sort of set you up
to be with someone in this way?
Speaker 4 (29:48):
Oh a thousand percent, it would not have worked.
Speaker 6 (29:52):
We might have found each other because chemistry, you know,
but I would have wrecked it. I would have I
would have done what I always did in the past.
Speaker 5 (30:03):
I would have gone way too fast, and then I
would have been like.
Speaker 3 (30:07):
Eh, what is this? I can't you know.
Speaker 4 (30:10):
I would not have had the tools to communicate to
her the kind of relationship that I really wanted. And so,
like literally, on like our first date, I was like, look,
I've had this period of celibacy. This is what I've
done in the past. I don't want to do that anymore.
I need a lot of alone time. I really want
(30:30):
to be honest and have radical communication. And she was like, yes,
let's go.
Speaker 1 (30:37):
I love to hear this. There's a moment in your
book you mentioned pinning a list on your wall of
twelve things you wanted to embody in your future relationships.
Can you quickly talk about how you came up with
those twelve things.
Speaker 4 (30:52):
I came up with that list in the second half
of that year, after I had read the inventory to
my mentor and sat with it, and as I was
turning towards like, Okay, if I am ever going to
be in another relationship, I can't just be operating on
instinct or on vibes. I need very clear guidelines because
(31:13):
my instincts have gotten me to the.
Speaker 3 (31:16):
Place I don't want to go back to. So I
really I went back.
Speaker 4 (31:19):
And I looked at the inventory, and I looked at
the behaviors, and I thought, what are the opposite of
these behaviors?
Speaker 3 (31:25):
What is the.
Speaker 4 (31:25):
Opposite of people pleasing? What is the opposite of omitting
true things about myself? What is the opposite of these
messy little entanglements? And so I sort of came up
with this mirror version, like no getting involved with people
who are already involved with other people, No hiding parts
of myself that I think will be unacceptable to the
(31:47):
other person.
Speaker 3 (31:48):
It's basically a description.
Speaker 4 (31:50):
Of like a radically honest approach to dating, going slow,
not having sex if I don't want to not having
sex before I know something, which, like, it feels important
to say that these are not universal guidelines, and there
are people who can do the things that I did
and not make a mess of their life and other people's.
(32:10):
But for me specifically, there were very clear patterns that
made me feel ashamed of myself, and I was like,
I don't ever want to do the things that make
me feel that way again or that hurt other people.
Speaker 1 (32:23):
Do you feel like you are embodying those twelve things?
And is there a reason why you chose the number twelve?
Speaker 3 (32:30):
You know, that's really funny.
Speaker 4 (32:32):
No one's actually ever pointed that out, and I've never
thought about the fact that there are twelve, but it
feels like the number twelve has a kind of emotional
home for me. I have a good adde totally, but yeah,
I think not in every minute of my life and
my embodying them, Like, of course, there are still moments
in my relationship where the should energy gets really loud,
(32:55):
and like my wife and I have taken periods of
celibacy inside of our relationlationship to do the process when
it feels like the internal pressure of expectations is getting
kind of weird or like we've definitely used all of
the tools that I gleaned in that year, like inside
of our relationship, but those twelve guidelines have remained my
(33:19):
north star, and I do feel like over the course
of the whole time, it has absolutely been the thing
I am reaching for and the ideal that I am
holding and the sort of home that I return to.
And for me, it has to be explicit like that,
like I needed to have an actual list that I
like printed out and looked at.
Speaker 1 (33:38):
I think doing the inventory and then looking at your
personal habits, patterns, whatever, is probably one of the only
ways to do it in a way that is correct,
to personalize it. Lastly, I love the way you ended
the book you wrote, just it's so simple. Begin here,
(33:58):
it's raining that feels like a bit of an invitation
to people, and I'm just wondering, like what you would
say to someone who's sort of at the beginning and
it's a bit of a it's a bit of a storm.
This is personal.
Speaker 4 (34:12):
Yeah, totally very happy to some of it we've already
touched on totally.
Speaker 3 (34:18):
Start small, like I can't.
Speaker 4 (34:21):
As soon as something seems like too big to face,
I run right into the thing that's been comforting me,
and I go right to my most comforting escapes. And
then it becomes a kind of feedback loop where I
feel like I failed, Like think about what actually feels
feasible and define the parameters of it very clearly, think
(34:41):
about what is the thing that you really need respite from.
And for me, it turned out to be like, really
it was like sex with other people, but not just
sex for me. It was really the like psycho emotional
complex of that feeling that I was chasing.
Speaker 3 (34:58):
Sex was just part of it. For me.
Speaker 4 (35:00):
It was okay to masturbate, but not to flirt, like
really think about what the crux of it is.
Speaker 3 (35:05):
For you, and.
Speaker 4 (35:08):
Marshal your community to help you, Like I sort of
talk to people who had had similar experiences, talked to
my therapist about it, had a little team that was
doing it with me, Like I've never been able to
change myself in isolation.
Speaker 3 (35:22):
It just doesn't work for me.
Speaker 4 (35:24):
It's like doing surgery on myself, Like I can't I
need the support of a community that really gets the project,
like you need more than two hands to sort of
carry you through that process.
Speaker 1 (35:36):
You are so inspiring and really have provided such a
framework of doing this in a way that is empowering
and is not covered in some sort of like in
a beautifully spiritual and empowering way. So thank you so
much for coming on and having this show with me.
Appreciate it so much.
Speaker 4 (35:55):
Thank you so much. I love talking with you. And
when you do decide to do the rest of the year.
Speaker 3 (36:02):
Call me listen.
Speaker 1 (36:03):
I'm going slow one day at a time. Be careful
what you wish for, Melissa, because I will be calling
you whenever I start to doubt my new Boysover journey.
But for now, that conversation is definitely enough inspiration for
me to keep heading down the right path. Thanks so
(36:24):
much to Melissa for talking to us and for her
wonderful book. I urge everyone to go read it. Thanks y'all,
and talk next week. Boysover is a production of iHeart Podcasts.
I'm Your Host, Hopewordard. Our executive producers are Christina Everett
(36:48):
and Julie Pinero. Our supervising producer is Emily meronoff engineering
by Bahid Fraser and mixing and mastering by Aboo Zafar.
If you liked this episode, please tell a friend and
don't forget to rate, review, and subscribe to boy Sober
on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, and wherever you get
your favorite shows.
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