May 16, 2022 • 28 mins
The question on everyone’s mind: Is it possible to be in love with more than one person at the same time? Sex therapist and best-selling author Dr. Ian Kerner and Kinsey Institute research fellow and podcast host Dr. Justin Lehmiller share their expertise when it comes to the complications of loving more than one person at a time. Dr. C. Sue Carter teaches us what we have in common with prairie voles. And Maggie shares a story about the time she was in love with two people and still wound up being the jealous maniac.
Dr. C. Sue Carter
https://kinseyinstitute.org/about/profiles/cscarter.php
Dr. Ian Kerner
https://www.iankerner.com/
Dr. Ian Kerner’s best-selling book, She Comes First
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0060538260/
Dr. Justin Lehmiller
https://www.sexandpsychology.com
https://open.spotify.com/show/6DCIGjOUaenoKdY71N7NqI
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/conversations-with-friends-strangers--5711089/support.
Dr. C. Sue Carter
https://kinseyinstitute.org/about/profiles/cscarter.php
Dr. Ian Kerner
https://www.iankerner.com/
Dr. Ian Kerner’s best-selling book, She Comes First
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0060538260/
Dr. Justin Lehmiller
https://www.sexandpsychology.com
https://open.spotify.com/show/6DCIGjOUaenoKdY71N7NqI
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/conversations-with-friends-strangers--5711089/support.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Straw Hut Media Prairie val Sir, some people have called
them potato chips of the Prairie.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Welcome to Conversations with Friends and Strangers.
Speaker 3 (00:12):
I'm Maggie, I'm Nolam. In the show, we.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Take a closer look at the complicated relationships in the
Hulu series Conversations with Friends.
Speaker 3 (00:19):
We'll meet some of the cast and crew, chat with experts,
and share our own kind of sexy, kind of uncomfortable,
but relatable stories about the messy relationships we find ourselves
in today. We can't help but ask is it possible
to be in love with more than one person at
the same time.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
To help us answer that question, we'll talk to sex
therapist and best selling author doctor Ian Kerner and Kinsey
Institute research fellow and podcast host doctor Justin Lee Miller.
Speaker 3 (00:45):
His podcast is so good, he really is. We learn
what we have in common with prairie roles. As doctor
Sue Carter tells us about her research into the biological
aspects of monogamy, Is it that weird snacks and their snacks? Yes?
Speaker 4 (00:58):
No?
Speaker 3 (00:59):
And he tells us about the time that she tried
to love two people at the same time.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
Makes it sound like I was having a threesome. She
were trained to entice people. There's no threesome. Let's recap.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
Excellent.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
We're still in Croatia. It's the last day.
Speaker 3 (01:13):
Nick and Francis talk in the morning about their situation,
and we learn that he's still in love with Melissa.
Francis clearly wasn't ready to hear that.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
At dinner, Francis gets mad at Melissa and Valerie, her agent,
for the callous way they talk about Nick's depression.
Speaker 3 (01:27):
Bobby comes to comfort her. There's a moment of tenderness.
They hold hands.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
Melissa kind of explains herself to frances and she asks
if there's anything she should know. Later, Nick and Francis
talk about the complications and the risks of their relationship
and obviously have more sex, but this time Bobby walks in.
The secret is out.
Speaker 4 (01:45):
It doesn't change the way that I feel about you.
Speaker 5 (01:49):
It is.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
Don't great a bit us.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
So I've been thinking a lot about what Nick said here.
I mean, what does that mean and how.
Speaker 3 (01:59):
Is it possible?
Speaker 6 (02:00):
Sometimes it's hard enough to be in one relationship, you know,
much less two relationships or three different relationships.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
That's Ian Kerner. He's the best selling author of She
Comes First.
Speaker 6 (02:11):
Just the complexity of managing so many different relationships. Two
people may be primary partners and they each have other
partners who are their secondary partners, but then the secondary
partners sometimes want to be the primary partners, and it
just creates a lot of friction for the person who
has sort of both the primary partner and the secondary partner,
(02:33):
they can really be pulled in both directions and there
can just be a lot of jealousy and sort of
negative dynamics. So that's where I would say a lot
of folks are in the secondary position are like, I
don't want to be a secondary. I want to be
a primary. But then if they're primary doesn't want to
be their primary, then that secondary might though get a primary,
(02:54):
And then now the secondary has a primary, but the
secondary is also secondary to the primary, and it just
gets as you can imagine, I'm kind of confusing.
Speaker 3 (03:03):
I think you could look at Francis, it's a secondary
inner story and maybe she doesn't quite want to admit it,
but she's hoping to become the primary in the future.
Speaker 6 (03:10):
I was working with another couple and they decided to
start dating another couple, but they weren't quite having the
same sexual experiences or the same quality of sexual experiences,
so it really led one partner to be much more
envious and jealous of their partner who was really having
(03:32):
such incredible sexual experiences. So, you know, those are some
of the complexities that I kind of run across amongst others.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
And this is almost what we have going on in
conversations with friends, right, Right, Bobby and Francis have a
history of love. Melissa and Nick obviously have love between them,
and then there's the attraction between Bobby and Melissa, yeah,
for sure, and then there's the affair between Francis and Nick.
It feels like if they could all just get on
the same page, they could build themselves a really beautiful quadruple.
(04:05):
There's a word for it, It's called a quad And
when it comes to jealousy, you know, it's an issue
in consensually non monogamous relationships as well as monogamous relationships. Right,
how does jealousy kind of start? And what are the
ways that people are you know, is there like terminal jealousy,
I guess is a question that I have, and like,
(04:28):
how how do people cope with that? In both situations.
Speaker 6 (04:33):
I think you've got to sort of look at, you know,
what was the impetus to become non monogamous and are
both partners really doing this because it's in both of
their personalities and they both are totally up for signing
up for non monogamy. Some couples really find themselves that
they're sort of their sexual personalities are really in tune
(04:54):
and they want more sexual ventuousness, sometimes together sometimes with
us their partners. I feel like where jealousy can start
to settle in is where one partner was a little
more of the passenger than the driver or the co driver,
and wasn't as really signed up for non monogamy as
(05:15):
their partner was. And you know, maybe they were interested
in it, maybe they could go for it, but it
was really at their partner's lead. Yeah, but I'm not
sure that I answer answered the question.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
Yeah, I mean it was a very vague question, but
that is a good answer for it. I think that jealousy,
as you know, being kind of paired with possessiveness and
also with fear of abandonment or insecurity. Do you like
when you're working with a couple to figure out roots
of jealousy or get past jealousy. What are some of
(05:48):
the things that you What are some of the things
that you would like talk about or explore.
Speaker 5 (05:52):
Well.
Speaker 6 (05:53):
I really think that it's important for a couple to
have a really strong primary story and to have a
lot of trust and a lot of intimacy, and to
have a lot a lot of parts that they're of
their relationship that they can really experience together. And if
you have a strong sense of your primary story h
(06:15):
and it doesn't include sex, then you might be more
willing to, you know, go into some kind of consensual
non monogamy. I think. I think ultimately there's a balance
between privacy and secrecy, And with the couples that I
work with, there really isn't jealousy. There's still a respect
(06:39):
for privacy, but there's just a lot of transparency and
a lot of open communication.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
People can be in love and have meaningful relationships.
Speaker 6 (06:49):
It's not some kind of finite resource.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
Yeah, I depress you to sleep with someone who loves
someone else and if they.
Speaker 3 (06:57):
Love me too. It's if there is one thing missing
from our formula in conversations with friends is communication. No
one seems equipped with interpersonal skills to communicate and if
they did, it would be a very different book. I
want to talk a little bit more about what I
called terminal jealousy when I was awkwardly phrasing that question.
I guess what I mean when I say that is
(07:19):
really just a fundamental lack of trust. You know, when
trust has been gutted so severely that it can't be rebuilt. Basically,
you know, the relationship is a teardown. And it makes
me realize there's no healthy relationship, monogamous or not, without
a strong foundation of trust. We talk to a lot
of people about consensual non monogamy, and regardless of the
way people answer the questions of whether or not you
(07:40):
can be in love with more than one person at
the same time, most of the examples of relationships were
really about sexual explorations and not necessarily about being in
love with multiple people.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
That said, generally, our cultural awareness of quote unquote non
traditional relationships has progressed a lot in the last few
hundred years, but you know, history is hard to pin down.
The monoculture is much more mono now than probably ever
before with the Internet and monogamy, though it seems like
the norm now isn't really as long standing.
Speaker 4 (08:11):
As you might think, there is vast cross cultural variability
when it comes to monogamy and consensual non monogamy, and
there's also vast historical variability in these things as well.
You know, for example, at different points in human history,
it would appear that non monogamy was the norm and
(08:31):
that monogamy only really became the norm much more recently.
And so monogamy in some ways is kind of like
this recent invention that's been imposed upon us, where we
are told that this is the only way to be
to exist in a relationship, particularly in a culture like
the United States, and in other cultures there's a bit
(08:51):
more freedom and flexibility around these things. And so in France,
for example, it's well known that affairs can and do
happen necessarily that everybody's okay with everything that's happening, or
that they necessarily want it to but there's sort of
this kind of tacit agreement that you know, you're not
necessarily always just going to be with one another. And
(09:12):
that's just one of many examples around the world of
how monogamy and consensual non monogamy vary. So it's fascinating
to look at all of this and cross cultural and
historical context, and it's something that continues to evolve.
Speaker 7 (09:27):
I know, I feel like we're getting to a point
in society where everything is just like in Flux, which
is a good thing.
Speaker 2 (09:35):
I believe this is Emmanuel Okoyer, who plays Francis and
Bobby's friend Andrew.
Speaker 7 (09:40):
Because I I can't remember if it was a podcast
or like where I heard this before, but I heard
that like monogamy almost sort of coincides with like the
agricultural revolution that we all went through, like twelve thousand
years ago. We went from from a largely hunter gatherer
sort of lifestyle, traveling nomadic lifestyle to a very fixed
(10:03):
type of lifestyle which is more focused on private ownership.
Speaker 2 (10:11):
I did a little bit of research to try to
figure out what you heard, and I think it was
an episode of the show Explained on Netflix. And honestly,
we could devote an entire twelve part podcast to the
history of monogamy.
Speaker 3 (10:23):
That will be one thousand years per episode.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
Totally manageable. But there's a lot of points of contention
about the origins biologically and culturally, and if we're going
to look at the evolutionary side, we really should call
it pair bonding and not monogamy.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
These kinds of bonds require a specific neurochemistry, a specific
kind of wiring of the brain, and that requires two molecules,
oxytocin and phase of press. Both of these are very
ancient molecules compared to the chemistry of behavior in general.
(11:03):
They're actually kind of modern.
Speaker 2 (11:06):
Oh yeah, baby, we're getting into narrow peptide.
Speaker 3 (11:09):
I love it when you talk dirty to me.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
After the break, the scientific side of monogamy.
Speaker 3 (11:14):
Pair bonding, right, welcome back today. We're trying to answer
the question is it possible to be in love with
more than one person at the same time?
Speaker 2 (11:31):
And when we started looking at monogamy and its origins,
it felt only natural to reach out to doctor c.
Sue Carter, a neurobiologist who spent the last forty years
researching the physiology of love and social bonds.
Speaker 1 (11:45):
They're called prairie folds. The animal weight focused on I
was working with another biology justtin. He had found male
female pairs living together as long as they were both alive.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
Even if one died. The family unit, which often included offspring,
wouldn't usually accept an unfamiliar male.
Speaker 1 (12:06):
And so we began to realize there was something very
special about these animals and that it had sort of
obvious parallels with human behavior.
Speaker 3 (12:16):
Social bonding in mammals is rare, doctor Carter tells us.
The estimate is between three to five percent of species
having the capacity to form a long lasting social bond,
and this is where those neuropeptides come in.
Speaker 1 (12:29):
So the specific molecule called oxytocin is only found in mammals,
and mammals are really more dependent on sociality of a
selective kind than most other species. The basic biology of
(12:50):
what we humans call love or social bonds is based
on the same neural factors, probably different brain struck but
the same basic chemicals across at least all mammals.
Speaker 2 (13:05):
And what makes it really interesting is that these neuropeptides
don't only support social behavior specifically oxytocin.
Speaker 3 (13:12):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (13:13):
Oxytocin is much more than Billie Eilish's horniest song.
Speaker 1 (13:18):
It supports the immune system and the autonomic nervous system.
It helps us heal after wounds. It is associated with longevity.
We can't say it causes longevity because those experiments are
very hard to do, but there's a correlation among different species,
(13:42):
and species that have a lot of sociality and high
levels of oxytocin tend to live longer. In fact, prairie
folds live two or three times longer than other small
rodents that look otherwise about the same, like a mouse.
Great example, But.
Speaker 3 (14:01):
Pair bonding in general and social bonds aren't quite the
same thing.
Speaker 2 (14:04):
Yeah, they're related, but not exactly the same. From an
evolutionary standpoint, we would assume that our ability to create
social bonds and maybe specifically monogamous bonds, helped our genes
get passed down.
Speaker 1 (14:15):
We don't actually know exactly what kinds of what biologists
call selective factors or selective forces are biasing a given
species to a pair bond versus some other kind of
social system.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
The usual assumption doctor Carter tells us is that if
an animal can successfully reproduce, they'll do it in the easiest,
most efficient way they can.
Speaker 1 (14:42):
The goal, in biological terms is offspring that are successfully
raised to be old enough to pass those the genes
they received on to their offspring, and humans, being one
of the most adaptive, perhaps the most adaptive species on
(15:03):
the planet, can manage that task in lots of ways. Okay,
but most naturally free living mammals are restricted by their environment,
by how much food they can get, by how their
sort of system of life exists, and so you won't
(15:28):
find in most mammals very much variation and lifestyle, at
least within a given environment. But prairievals are very interesting
because they lived originally and still do on the prairie
of North America. They're found into Canada and now pretty
(15:52):
far into the United States where the Great Prairie is found.
And we don't know exactly what happened, but someplace along
the line, their ancestors were probably not monogamous, but monogamy
became a successful strategy, And in fact they're really not
(16:13):
exactly monogamous. They're more communal in that animals will stay
in the family. About seventy percent of the offspring actually
helped to raise their younger siblings.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
I know what you're thinking right now.
Speaker 3 (16:28):
What am I thinking?
Speaker 2 (16:29):
You're thinking about birds? Right What about birds that meet
for life?
Speaker 1 (16:33):
Birds in general use a relatively similar molecule called mesotocin.
Pair bonding of birds is more common than in mammals.
About maybe as high as ninety five percent of all
bird species show social bonds, and it's assumed by biologists
(16:57):
at least that the reason birds are so dependent on
bonds is that they Most bird species live in nensts,
and it takes two parents to raise the offspring. With mammals,
it varies a lot, including humans, because we can perfectly
(17:19):
well raise a baby with only a mother, as long
as that mother has physical support from some other place,
a grocery store of family, a social system design to
help out. It's a very big energetic burden to have
(17:43):
a baby, and of course a big energetic burden to
have a relationship of any kind.
Speaker 3 (17:56):
And while we're here talking about pure bonding and love hormones, Maggie,
you have a story about being in love with more
than one person at a time, right.
Speaker 2 (18:03):
Yeah, I guess I do. And the energetic burden of
a relationship that doctor Carter was talking about, it makes
me think of what I found so difficult in my
attempts at consensual non monogamy. So the one I'm thinking
about right now, I was twenty three at the time.
He was in his mid to late thirties. He was
a poet who worshiped at the altar of Pokowski. We'll
call him Jeff a thick Boston accent, major dad bod,
(18:25):
and I found him very charming and magnetic, even though
he wasn't necessarily the most handsome guy you've ever seen
in your life. So he started hanging out, and when
the conversation eventually came up about what we were doing together,
I think it was me who suggested an open relationship.
Speaker 3 (18:42):
Okay, interesting, why did you suggest that?
Speaker 7 (18:44):
Well?
Speaker 2 (18:45):
I was still very much involved in a very messy
way with an ex of mine who i'd probably say
was my first love. We can call him Robert. He
was up in Berkeley while I was down in Long Beach,
and although the committed part of our relationship had ended
years prior, we continued to see each other and talk
to each other pretty regularly, and I took a lot
of trips up there to see him.
Speaker 3 (19:05):
That makes sense that you would like to keep that
connection going.
Speaker 2 (19:08):
Yeah, totally. And so I remember at the beginning of
my relationship with Jeff, I had a trip planned to
go see Robert, and at that point Jeff had actually
already told me that he loved me. I hadn't set
it back, but he had put that out there, and
I remember I was on the megabus back home from
Berkeley from my visit with Robert, and Jeff texted me
(19:29):
that he loved me, and in that moment, I really
wanted to say it back. And I was feeling really
confused because I knew for a fact that I was
in love with Robert, and in my mind the only
reason we weren't together was geographical issues, you know. But
also I did feel like I loved Jeff. I was
I was sure of that in my body, and I
actually did end up saying it back to him. And
(19:52):
I remember texting Robert about it and saying, you know,
I'm in this new relationship and I feel like it's
kind of getting serious and I'm feeling conflicted, and he said,
bas I think you should pursue it. And that relationship
with Robert actually blew up just a few months after
the relationship with Jeff did because spoiler alert, it didn't
turn out super well. So what was the agreement with Jeff. Well,
(20:12):
we agreed we could sleep with other people as long
as we use protection and as long as it was
just sex and nothing emotional. We also agreed that we
wouldn't talk about it with each other if something happened
because we thought that would probably get too messy, we'd
get jealous, and we didn't want to bring that into
the conversation.
Speaker 3 (20:29):
So where did it all go wrong? The biggest problem was.
Speaker 2 (20:32):
That I was desperately trying to finish my college degree,
actually two college degrees. I was working three jobs, and
I was also playing in a band pretty regularly, so
every minute of my free time was going to him. Meanwhile,
he was unemployed, taking one class at community college. He
had nothing but time, you know, so the opportunity for
(20:53):
exploration was very unbalanced. He was out having wild and
crazy sex, and I was basically losing my mind from stress.
Another complication is I'm an introvert. I need a lot
of alone time. I had literally zero extra energy to
give to any more relationships. So one night we're hanging
out of his apartment. I think he was cooking dinner,
(21:15):
and I saw a text message come in on his
phone from some other girl. And I don't really remember
if I tried to look at it or if it
was an accident, but it said something super super sexual
like I'm home alone, I'm naked and wishing I had
some company, like very explicit, and I just felt my
stomach flip over. It was like I went cold and
(21:36):
I didn't say anything. He came back and I pretended
everything was normal. We ate dinner, but that night, while
he was sleeping, I creeped into his phone, invaded his privacy,
and broke our agreement. Basically, Maggie, Yeah, I read through
the texts and he was having this like really explicit,
(21:56):
kind of trashy thing with this girl that I never
heard of, and I was come completely out of my
mind with jealousy.
Speaker 3 (22:02):
Was it just one girl or were there multiple girls?
Speaker 2 (22:06):
I only saw about this one, But you know, I
ended up looking through all of his text messages.
Speaker 3 (22:10):
I was like where the rest?
Speaker 2 (22:11):
You know, It's just I felt so jealous and so angry,
and I even got like really judgy about it too,
because I was like, you know, he's got nothing going
on in his life. He's you know, Pikowski was a misogynist,
and you know what, what I just was like, it
just came from my deepest, darkest insecurities and worst part
(22:36):
of me.
Speaker 3 (22:36):
Wait, Baggy, is this the reason you hate Pukowski. I
don't hate Pokowski. When I was rereading Bukowski, you were like,
I don't know about Bukowski. I'm over it. I think
he's overrated.
Speaker 2 (22:45):
But but but I don't hate him.
Speaker 3 (22:48):
No, I like Pukowski. So I'm curious what was your
reasoning while was going through your head when you were
reading all these texts and being so angry. I mean,
technically he didn't break any of the roles, but you did. Yeah, no,
he did not raise any of those roles. Was it
was all me?
Speaker 2 (23:02):
Sorry to get technical here, No, you're one hundred percent right. Honestly,
I was not thinking logically in that moment. All I
felt was this super deep urge to know what was happening,
and as I was reading it, I just felt like,
this is not fair. I you know, I felt like
I've barely slept around. All that I've done is you know,
(23:23):
I have the trip to see my ex. Obviously we
had sex, and then there's also some one random German
dude that I met at a bar. We had pretty
mediocre sex. It actually may have been after I found
this out, because I was like, I gotta go have
some sex or.
Speaker 3 (23:35):
Whatever, and meantime Jeff was having like this sexual awakening
and you're like, I mean, I don't.
Speaker 2 (23:40):
Think it was a sexual awakening for him.
Speaker 3 (23:42):
I think he was just like living his best life,
you know, I mean he sounds like a catch.
Speaker 2 (23:47):
Yeah, well, you mean he was sweet, but so I
tried to ignore it at first, and then it was
just that jealousy was so intense that I told him
we need to close our relationship. We can't sleep with
other people anymore. It's too much for me.
Speaker 3 (24:01):
And what did he say?
Speaker 2 (24:02):
And he agreed to it. He's sweet eye. But after
that happened, it was like something switched in me. I
was no longer easy going. I was totally completely irrational.
I was jealous about everything. I was stealing his phone
at every opportunity.
Speaker 3 (24:21):
You know, it not one of your best moments, I know,
definitely not.
Speaker 2 (24:27):
We managed to keep it together for a couple of weeks,
I think, but we were really just making each other miserable.
After that, there was no coming back from it. So
we ended up bringing up obviously, and you know we're
we're friendly to this day.
Speaker 3 (24:41):
Do you want to do some Pokowski slam poetry together?
You know, he was actually a very good poet.
Speaker 2 (24:46):
He had one line in a poem that I really
really loved. It was Olympus is a skipping stone and
all the gods have beer bellies.
Speaker 3 (24:54):
I thought that was really good. That's a very good line.
I mean, I can see why you would fall for him.
Would you ever consider trying consentual nominogamy again? You know
at this point?
Speaker 2 (25:04):
No, though, I do think I have much better coping
mechanisms and communication skills now than I did it twenty three,
So if I did want to give it a shot,
the odds would be much much more in my favor.
Speaker 3 (25:23):
In this episode, episode five, I feel like there's a
hint at something more going on between Bobby and Francis.
There's this part after Francis had her little moment of
indignation for Nick and she storms off that Bobby comes
and finds her, and it's just very intimate. Are you okay?
Speaker 1 (25:41):
Yeah, it's just a bit overwhelmed. I know, it's so good.
Speaker 7 (25:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (25:51):
It's then at their best in those scenes, like they
are really like finding each other again. I think in
those moments, like they really you just see the love,
especially Bobby's love for Francis. You just see like she
has her back, she is going to remind her and
take care of her. And then that moment by the
(26:11):
wall when they kind of they have their moment. They
held hands and I think the book it's a kiss,
but actually, like that handholding was kind of all you needed.
I felt that, like it felt so intense and romantic
but also like confusing, and you know, it said so
much in that really small gesture. I thought that was
(26:33):
pretty special.
Speaker 2 (26:34):
But then, of course Bobby discovers the affair at the
end of the episode, and we know that things are
about to get much much more complicated. I know, sat
(27:04):
a show, don't know, Emmy all. This show is hosted
and produced by me, Maggie.
Speaker 3 (27:14):
Bowles and me No I'm Gadweiser.
Speaker 2 (27:16):
It's written and edited by me, with assistant editing by Noah.
Our supervising producer is Ryan Tillotson, with help from Tyler Nielsen,
Frank Driscoll, Nick Bailey and the entire Straw Hut team.
Theme music is by Maggie Glass and Square Fish and
Big thanks to Aria Vishay, Lauren Thorpe, Exavior Salas, and
the Hulu team.
Speaker 1 (27:34):
No Magery Smiles, A Little Shot, a Little Show, Papoo
Straw Hut Media Prairie val Sir, some people have called
them potato chips of the Prairie.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Welcome to Conversations with Friends and Strangers.
Speaker 3 (00:12):
I'm Maggie, I'm Nolam. In the show, we.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Take a closer look at the complicated relationships in the
Hulu series Conversations with Friends.
Speaker 3 (00:19):
We'll meet some of the cast and crew, chat with experts,
and share our own kind of sexy, kind of uncomfortable,
but relatable stories about the messy relationships we find ourselves
in today. We can't help but ask is it possible
to be in love with more than one person at
the same time.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
To help us answer that question, we'll talk to sex
therapist and best selling author doctor Ian Kerner and Kinsey
Institute research fellow and podcast host doctor Justin Lee Miller.
Speaker 3 (00:45):
His podcast is so good, he really is. We learn
what we have in common with prairie roles. As doctor
Sue Carter tells us about her research into the biological
aspects of monogamy, Is it that weird snacks and their snacks? Yes?
Speaker 4 (00:58):
No?
Speaker 3 (00:59):
And he tells us about the time that she tried
to love two people at the same time.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
Makes it sound like I was having a threesome. She
were trained to entice people. There's no threesome. Let's recap.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
Excellent.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
We're still in Croatia. It's the last day.
Speaker 3 (01:13):
Nick and Francis talk in the morning about their situation,
and we learn that he's still in love with Melissa.
Francis clearly wasn't ready to hear that.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
At dinner, Francis gets mad at Melissa and Valerie, her agent,
for the callous way they talk about Nick's depression.
Speaker 3 (01:27):
Bobby comes to comfort her. There's a moment of tenderness.
They hold hands.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
Melissa kind of explains herself to frances and she asks
if there's anything she should know. Later, Nick and Francis
talk about the complications and the risks of their relationship
and obviously have more sex, but this time Bobby walks in.
The secret is out.
Speaker 4 (01:45):
It doesn't change the way that I feel about you.
Speaker 5 (01:49):
It is.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
Don't great a bit us.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
So I've been thinking a lot about what Nick said here.
I mean, what does that mean and how.
Speaker 3 (01:59):
Is it possible?
Speaker 6 (02:00):
Sometimes it's hard enough to be in one relationship, you know,
much less two relationships or three different relationships.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
That's Ian Kerner. He's the best selling author of She
Comes First.
Speaker 6 (02:11):
Just the complexity of managing so many different relationships. Two
people may be primary partners and they each have other
partners who are their secondary partners, but then the secondary
partners sometimes want to be the primary partners, and it
just creates a lot of friction for the person who
has sort of both the primary partner and the secondary partner,
(02:33):
they can really be pulled in both directions and there
can just be a lot of jealousy and sort of
negative dynamics. So that's where I would say a lot
of folks are in the secondary position are like, I
don't want to be a secondary. I want to be
a primary. But then if they're primary doesn't want to
be their primary, then that secondary might though get a primary,
(02:54):
And then now the secondary has a primary, but the
secondary is also secondary to the primary, and it just
gets as you can imagine, I'm kind of confusing.
Speaker 3 (03:03):
I think you could look at Francis, it's a secondary
inner story and maybe she doesn't quite want to admit it,
but she's hoping to become the primary in the future.
Speaker 6 (03:10):
I was working with another couple and they decided to
start dating another couple, but they weren't quite having the
same sexual experiences or the same quality of sexual experiences,
so it really led one partner to be much more
envious and jealous of their partner who was really having
(03:32):
such incredible sexual experiences. So, you know, those are some
of the complexities that I kind of run across amongst others.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
And this is almost what we have going on in
conversations with friends, right, Right, Bobby and Francis have a
history of love. Melissa and Nick obviously have love between them,
and then there's the attraction between Bobby and Melissa, yeah,
for sure, and then there's the affair between Francis and Nick.
It feels like if they could all just get on
the same page, they could build themselves a really beautiful quadruple.
(04:05):
There's a word for it, It's called a quad And
when it comes to jealousy, you know, it's an issue
in consensually non monogamous relationships as well as monogamous relationships. Right,
how does jealousy kind of start? And what are the
ways that people are you know, is there like terminal jealousy,
I guess is a question that I have, and like,
(04:28):
how how do people cope with that? In both situations.
Speaker 6 (04:33):
I think you've got to sort of look at, you know,
what was the impetus to become non monogamous and are
both partners really doing this because it's in both of
their personalities and they both are totally up for signing
up for non monogamy. Some couples really find themselves that
they're sort of their sexual personalities are really in tune
(04:54):
and they want more sexual ventuousness, sometimes together sometimes with
us their partners. I feel like where jealousy can start
to settle in is where one partner was a little
more of the passenger than the driver or the co driver,
and wasn't as really signed up for non monogamy as
(05:15):
their partner was. And you know, maybe they were interested
in it, maybe they could go for it, but it
was really at their partner's lead. Yeah, but I'm not
sure that I answer answered the question.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
Yeah, I mean it was a very vague question, but
that is a good answer for it. I think that jealousy,
as you know, being kind of paired with possessiveness and
also with fear of abandonment or insecurity. Do you like
when you're working with a couple to figure out roots
of jealousy or get past jealousy. What are some of
(05:48):
the things that you What are some of the things
that you would like talk about or explore.
Speaker 5 (05:52):
Well.
Speaker 6 (05:53):
I really think that it's important for a couple to
have a really strong primary story and to have a
lot of trust and a lot of intimacy, and to
have a lot a lot of parts that they're of
their relationship that they can really experience together. And if
you have a strong sense of your primary story h
(06:15):
and it doesn't include sex, then you might be more
willing to, you know, go into some kind of consensual
non monogamy. I think. I think ultimately there's a balance
between privacy and secrecy, And with the couples that I
work with, there really isn't jealousy. There's still a respect
(06:39):
for privacy, but there's just a lot of transparency and
a lot of open communication.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
People can be in love and have meaningful relationships.
Speaker 6 (06:49):
It's not some kind of finite resource.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
Yeah, I depress you to sleep with someone who loves
someone else and if they.
Speaker 3 (06:57):
Love me too. It's if there is one thing missing
from our formula in conversations with friends is communication. No
one seems equipped with interpersonal skills to communicate and if
they did, it would be a very different book. I
want to talk a little bit more about what I
called terminal jealousy when I was awkwardly phrasing that question.
I guess what I mean when I say that is
(07:19):
really just a fundamental lack of trust. You know, when
trust has been gutted so severely that it can't be rebuilt. Basically,
you know, the relationship is a teardown. And it makes
me realize there's no healthy relationship, monogamous or not, without
a strong foundation of trust. We talk to a lot
of people about consensual non monogamy, and regardless of the
way people answer the questions of whether or not you
(07:40):
can be in love with more than one person at
the same time, most of the examples of relationships were
really about sexual explorations and not necessarily about being in
love with multiple people.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
That said, generally, our cultural awareness of quote unquote non
traditional relationships has progressed a lot in the last few
hundred years, but you know, history is hard to pin down.
The monoculture is much more mono now than probably ever
before with the Internet and monogamy, though it seems like
the norm now isn't really as long standing.
Speaker 4 (08:11):
As you might think, there is vast cross cultural variability
when it comes to monogamy and consensual non monogamy, and
there's also vast historical variability in these things as well.
You know, for example, at different points in human history,
it would appear that non monogamy was the norm and
(08:31):
that monogamy only really became the norm much more recently.
And so monogamy in some ways is kind of like
this recent invention that's been imposed upon us, where we
are told that this is the only way to be
to exist in a relationship, particularly in a culture like
the United States, and in other cultures there's a bit
(08:51):
more freedom and flexibility around these things. And so in France,
for example, it's well known that affairs can and do
happen necessarily that everybody's okay with everything that's happening, or
that they necessarily want it to but there's sort of
this kind of tacit agreement that you know, you're not
necessarily always just going to be with one another. And
(09:12):
that's just one of many examples around the world of
how monogamy and consensual non monogamy vary. So it's fascinating
to look at all of this and cross cultural and
historical context, and it's something that continues to evolve.
Speaker 7 (09:27):
I know, I feel like we're getting to a point
in society where everything is just like in Flux, which
is a good thing.
Speaker 2 (09:35):
I believe this is Emmanuel Okoyer, who plays Francis and
Bobby's friend Andrew.
Speaker 7 (09:40):
Because I I can't remember if it was a podcast
or like where I heard this before, but I heard
that like monogamy almost sort of coincides with like the
agricultural revolution that we all went through, like twelve thousand
years ago. We went from from a largely hunter gatherer
sort of lifestyle, traveling nomadic lifestyle to a very fixed
(10:03):
type of lifestyle which is more focused on private ownership.
Speaker 2 (10:11):
I did a little bit of research to try to
figure out what you heard, and I think it was
an episode of the show Explained on Netflix. And honestly,
we could devote an entire twelve part podcast to the
history of monogamy.
Speaker 3 (10:23):
That will be one thousand years per episode.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
Totally manageable. But there's a lot of points of contention
about the origins biologically and culturally, and if we're going
to look at the evolutionary side, we really should call
it pair bonding and not monogamy.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
These kinds of bonds require a specific neurochemistry, a specific
kind of wiring of the brain, and that requires two molecules,
oxytocin and phase of press. Both of these are very
ancient molecules compared to the chemistry of behavior in general.
(11:03):
They're actually kind of modern.
Speaker 2 (11:06):
Oh yeah, baby, we're getting into narrow peptide.
Speaker 3 (11:09):
I love it when you talk dirty to me.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
After the break, the scientific side of monogamy.
Speaker 3 (11:14):
Pair bonding, right, welcome back today. We're trying to answer
the question is it possible to be in love with
more than one person at the same time?
Speaker 2 (11:31):
And when we started looking at monogamy and its origins,
it felt only natural to reach out to doctor c.
Sue Carter, a neurobiologist who spent the last forty years
researching the physiology of love and social bonds.
Speaker 1 (11:45):
They're called prairie folds. The animal weight focused on I
was working with another biology justtin. He had found male
female pairs living together as long as they were both alive.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
Even if one died. The family unit, which often included offspring,
wouldn't usually accept an unfamiliar male.
Speaker 1 (12:06):
And so we began to realize there was something very
special about these animals and that it had sort of
obvious parallels with human behavior.
Speaker 3 (12:16):
Social bonding in mammals is rare, doctor Carter tells us.
The estimate is between three to five percent of species
having the capacity to form a long lasting social bond,
and this is where those neuropeptides come in.
Speaker 1 (12:29):
So the specific molecule called oxytocin is only found in mammals,
and mammals are really more dependent on sociality of a
selective kind than most other species. The basic biology of
(12:50):
what we humans call love or social bonds is based
on the same neural factors, probably different brain struck but
the same basic chemicals across at least all mammals.
Speaker 2 (13:05):
And what makes it really interesting is that these neuropeptides
don't only support social behavior specifically oxytocin.
Speaker 3 (13:12):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (13:13):
Oxytocin is much more than Billie Eilish's horniest song.
Speaker 1 (13:18):
It supports the immune system and the autonomic nervous system.
It helps us heal after wounds. It is associated with longevity.
We can't say it causes longevity because those experiments are
very hard to do, but there's a correlation among different species,
(13:42):
and species that have a lot of sociality and high
levels of oxytocin tend to live longer. In fact, prairie
folds live two or three times longer than other small
rodents that look otherwise about the same, like a mouse.
Great example, But.
Speaker 3 (14:01):
Pair bonding in general and social bonds aren't quite the
same thing.
Speaker 2 (14:04):
Yeah, they're related, but not exactly the same. From an
evolutionary standpoint, we would assume that our ability to create
social bonds and maybe specifically monogamous bonds, helped our genes
get passed down.
Speaker 1 (14:15):
We don't actually know exactly what kinds of what biologists
call selective factors or selective forces are biasing a given
species to a pair bond versus some other kind of
social system.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
The usual assumption doctor Carter tells us is that if
an animal can successfully reproduce, they'll do it in the easiest,
most efficient way they can.
Speaker 1 (14:42):
The goal, in biological terms is offspring that are successfully
raised to be old enough to pass those the genes
they received on to their offspring, and humans, being one
of the most adaptive, perhaps the most adaptive species on
(15:03):
the planet, can manage that task in lots of ways. Okay,
but most naturally free living mammals are restricted by their environment,
by how much food they can get, by how their
sort of system of life exists, and so you won't
(15:28):
find in most mammals very much variation and lifestyle, at
least within a given environment. But prairievals are very interesting
because they lived originally and still do on the prairie
of North America. They're found into Canada and now pretty
(15:52):
far into the United States where the Great Prairie is found.
And we don't know exactly what happened, but someplace along
the line, their ancestors were probably not monogamous, but monogamy
became a successful strategy, And in fact they're really not
(16:13):
exactly monogamous. They're more communal in that animals will stay
in the family. About seventy percent of the offspring actually
helped to raise their younger siblings.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
I know what you're thinking right now.
Speaker 3 (16:28):
What am I thinking?
Speaker 2 (16:29):
You're thinking about birds? Right What about birds that meet
for life?
Speaker 1 (16:33):
Birds in general use a relatively similar molecule called mesotocin.
Pair bonding of birds is more common than in mammals.
About maybe as high as ninety five percent of all
bird species show social bonds, and it's assumed by biologists
(16:57):
at least that the reason birds are so dependent on
bonds is that they Most bird species live in nensts,
and it takes two parents to raise the offspring. With mammals,
it varies a lot, including humans, because we can perfectly
(17:19):
well raise a baby with only a mother, as long
as that mother has physical support from some other place,
a grocery store of family, a social system design to
help out. It's a very big energetic burden to have
(17:43):
a baby, and of course a big energetic burden to
have a relationship of any kind.
Speaker 3 (17:56):
And while we're here talking about pure bonding and love hormones, Maggie,
you have a story about being in love with more
than one person at a time, right.
Speaker 2 (18:03):
Yeah, I guess I do. And the energetic burden of
a relationship that doctor Carter was talking about, it makes
me think of what I found so difficult in my
attempts at consensual non monogamy. So the one I'm thinking
about right now, I was twenty three at the time.
He was in his mid to late thirties. He was
a poet who worshiped at the altar of Pokowski. We'll
call him Jeff a thick Boston accent, major dad bod,
(18:25):
and I found him very charming and magnetic, even though
he wasn't necessarily the most handsome guy you've ever seen
in your life. So he started hanging out, and when
the conversation eventually came up about what we were doing together,
I think it was me who suggested an open relationship.
Speaker 3 (18:42):
Okay, interesting, why did you suggest that?
Speaker 7 (18:44):
Well?
Speaker 2 (18:45):
I was still very much involved in a very messy
way with an ex of mine who i'd probably say
was my first love. We can call him Robert. He
was up in Berkeley while I was down in Long Beach,
and although the committed part of our relationship had ended
years prior, we continued to see each other and talk
to each other pretty regularly, and I took a lot
of trips up there to see him.
Speaker 3 (19:05):
That makes sense that you would like to keep that
connection going.
Speaker 2 (19:08):
Yeah, totally. And so I remember at the beginning of
my relationship with Jeff, I had a trip planned to
go see Robert, and at that point Jeff had actually
already told me that he loved me. I hadn't set
it back, but he had put that out there, and
I remember I was on the megabus back home from
Berkeley from my visit with Robert, and Jeff texted me
(19:29):
that he loved me, and in that moment, I really
wanted to say it back. And I was feeling really
confused because I knew for a fact that I was
in love with Robert, and in my mind the only
reason we weren't together was geographical issues, you know. But
also I did feel like I loved Jeff. I was
I was sure of that in my body, and I
actually did end up saying it back to him. And
(19:52):
I remember texting Robert about it and saying, you know,
I'm in this new relationship and I feel like it's
kind of getting serious and I'm feeling conflicted, and he said,
bas I think you should pursue it. And that relationship
with Robert actually blew up just a few months after
the relationship with Jeff did because spoiler alert, it didn't
turn out super well. So what was the agreement with Jeff. Well,
(20:12):
we agreed we could sleep with other people as long
as we use protection and as long as it was
just sex and nothing emotional. We also agreed that we
wouldn't talk about it with each other if something happened
because we thought that would probably get too messy, we'd
get jealous, and we didn't want to bring that into
the conversation.
Speaker 3 (20:29):
So where did it all go wrong? The biggest problem was.
Speaker 2 (20:32):
That I was desperately trying to finish my college degree,
actually two college degrees. I was working three jobs, and
I was also playing in a band pretty regularly, so
every minute of my free time was going to him. Meanwhile,
he was unemployed, taking one class at community college. He
had nothing but time, you know, so the opportunity for
(20:53):
exploration was very unbalanced. He was out having wild and
crazy sex, and I was basically losing my mind from stress.
Another complication is I'm an introvert. I need a lot
of alone time. I had literally zero extra energy to
give to any more relationships. So one night we're hanging
out of his apartment. I think he was cooking dinner,
(21:15):
and I saw a text message come in on his
phone from some other girl. And I don't really remember
if I tried to look at it or if it
was an accident, but it said something super super sexual
like I'm home alone, I'm naked and wishing I had
some company, like very explicit, and I just felt my
stomach flip over. It was like I went cold and
(21:36):
I didn't say anything. He came back and I pretended
everything was normal. We ate dinner, but that night, while
he was sleeping, I creeped into his phone, invaded his privacy,
and broke our agreement. Basically, Maggie, Yeah, I read through
the texts and he was having this like really explicit,
(21:56):
kind of trashy thing with this girl that I never
heard of, and I was come completely out of my
mind with jealousy.
Speaker 3 (22:02):
Was it just one girl or were there multiple girls?
Speaker 2 (22:06):
I only saw about this one, But you know, I
ended up looking through all of his text messages.
Speaker 3 (22:10):
I was like where the rest?
Speaker 2 (22:11):
You know, It's just I felt so jealous and so angry,
and I even got like really judgy about it too,
because I was like, you know, he's got nothing going
on in his life. He's you know, Pikowski was a misogynist,
and you know what, what I just was like, it
just came from my deepest, darkest insecurities and worst part
(22:36):
of me.
Speaker 3 (22:36):
Wait, Baggy, is this the reason you hate Pukowski. I
don't hate Pokowski. When I was rereading Bukowski, you were like,
I don't know about Bukowski. I'm over it. I think
he's overrated.
Speaker 2 (22:45):
But but but I don't hate him.
Speaker 3 (22:48):
No, I like Pukowski. So I'm curious what was your
reasoning while was going through your head when you were
reading all these texts and being so angry. I mean,
technically he didn't break any of the roles, but you did. Yeah, no,
he did not raise any of those roles. Was it
was all me?
Speaker 2 (23:02):
Sorry to get technical here, No, you're one hundred percent right. Honestly,
I was not thinking logically in that moment. All I
felt was this super deep urge to know what was happening,
and as I was reading it, I just felt like,
this is not fair. I you know, I felt like
I've barely slept around. All that I've done is you know,
(23:23):
I have the trip to see my ex. Obviously we
had sex, and then there's also some one random German
dude that I met at a bar. We had pretty
mediocre sex. It actually may have been after I found
this out, because I was like, I gotta go have
some sex or.
Speaker 3 (23:35):
Whatever, and meantime Jeff was having like this sexual awakening
and you're like, I mean, I don't.
Speaker 2 (23:40):
Think it was a sexual awakening for him.
Speaker 3 (23:42):
I think he was just like living his best life,
you know, I mean he sounds like a catch.
Speaker 2 (23:47):
Yeah, well, you mean he was sweet, but so I
tried to ignore it at first, and then it was
just that jealousy was so intense that I told him
we need to close our relationship. We can't sleep with
other people anymore. It's too much for me.
Speaker 3 (24:01):
And what did he say?
Speaker 2 (24:02):
And he agreed to it. He's sweet eye. But after
that happened, it was like something switched in me. I
was no longer easy going. I was totally completely irrational.
I was jealous about everything. I was stealing his phone
at every opportunity.
Speaker 3 (24:21):
You know, it not one of your best moments, I know,
definitely not.
Speaker 2 (24:27):
We managed to keep it together for a couple of weeks,
I think, but we were really just making each other miserable.
After that, there was no coming back from it. So
we ended up bringing up obviously, and you know we're
we're friendly to this day.
Speaker 3 (24:41):
Do you want to do some Pokowski slam poetry together?
You know, he was actually a very good poet.
Speaker 2 (24:46):
He had one line in a poem that I really
really loved. It was Olympus is a skipping stone and
all the gods have beer bellies.
Speaker 3 (24:54):
I thought that was really good. That's a very good line.
I mean, I can see why you would fall for him.
Would you ever consider trying consentual nominogamy again? You know
at this point?
Speaker 2 (25:04):
No, though, I do think I have much better coping
mechanisms and communication skills now than I did it twenty three,
So if I did want to give it a shot,
the odds would be much much more in my favor.
Speaker 3 (25:23):
In this episode, episode five, I feel like there's a
hint at something more going on between Bobby and Francis.
There's this part after Francis had her little moment of
indignation for Nick and she storms off that Bobby comes
and finds her, and it's just very intimate. Are you okay?
Speaker 1 (25:41):
Yeah, it's just a bit overwhelmed. I know, it's so good.
Speaker 7 (25:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (25:51):
It's then at their best in those scenes, like they
are really like finding each other again. I think in
those moments, like they really you just see the love,
especially Bobby's love for Francis. You just see like she
has her back, she is going to remind her and
take care of her. And then that moment by the
(26:11):
wall when they kind of they have their moment. They
held hands and I think the book it's a kiss,
but actually, like that handholding was kind of all you needed.
I felt that, like it felt so intense and romantic
but also like confusing, and you know, it said so
much in that really small gesture. I thought that was
(26:33):
pretty special.
Speaker 2 (26:34):
But then, of course Bobby discovers the affair at the
end of the episode, and we know that things are
about to get much much more complicated. I know, sat
(27:04):
a show, don't know, Emmy all. This show is hosted
and produced by me, Maggie.
Speaker 3 (27:14):
Bowles and me No I'm Gadweiser.
Speaker 2 (27:16):
It's written and edited by me, with assistant editing by Noah.
Our supervising producer is Ryan Tillotson, with help from Tyler Nielsen,
Frank Driscoll, Nick Bailey and the entire Straw Hut team.
Theme music is by Maggie Glass and Square Fish and
Big thanks to Aria Vishay, Lauren Thorpe, Exavior Salas, and
the Hulu team.
Speaker 1 (27:34):
No Magery Smiles, A Little Shot, a Little Show, Papoo
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