Oana
Open relationships? What are they myths or reality? What are the do’s and what are the don’ts? And most importantly, are they right for you? These are some of the questions we’re exploring in episode 24 of The Feminine Ankara that empowers you to trust your voice, follow your heart and embrace your womanhood with no fear and no shame. I’m Oana, your host, life coach, and founder of The Feminine.com, an online platform dedicated to women all over the world with the mission of forwarding a new paradigm of how to take care of yourself as a woman on all levels. The Feminine is the embodiment of my coaching method and it brings together a tried and true body of work with the intention of meeting all your questions, concerns, curiosities, and opportunities for growth, self-care, self-love, sensuality, female sexuality, empowerment, career, relationships, sisterhood, everything in between and motherhood. We have so many valuable things to share. So please go visit our website, The Feminine.com, browse through our magazine and read our articles, listen to our previous Uncut episodes, and even start your journey into the world of the feminine. The way we see it with our introductory course, Thefeminine.com Sacred Space.
Oana
Now let’s get back to our today’s topic, which is a very intense topic called open relationships. Ioana is my partner as usual and we’re going to talk about this and really explore this topic more in detail. Hi, Ioana.
Ioana
Hi, Ioana. Hello everyone. I have done my research as usual. But first, before we start, please acknowledge me. I’m wearing a dress.
Oana
Yes, I acknowledge you. For those who don’t know, we have a very cute dynamic between us. And I coached Ioana recently and gave her the assignment to buy a dress and she got very triggered about it and went into an emotional upset about being invalidated about her femininity. But basically, I wasn’t doing that. I was just encouraging her to just give herself a gift and enjoy a beautiful dress. So we had a lot of things stirred up in the community and there were all the sisters in our community. So we have a sacred community and it’s for the graduates of our courses. And it just unleashed a whole range of ideas and sharing and insights for all of us. So yes, technology for the dress.
Ioana
But I also have an idea. I’ve been thinking because you gave me this task. It was actually a task because 99% of the time I’m wearing sports gear because it makes me feel comfortable. But I was thinking, in fact, traditional sports gear is not so comfortable. I mean, it is comfortable, but if you start tapping into a feminine vibration, the things that made you feel comfortable all of a sudden start to feel too tight. And I was thinking there isn’t on the market anything like sports gear made for women like made from silk and cashmere and materials. So we should think of inventing a new type of sports gear for women. I mean, not for women, but for women who are exploring this side of femininity.
Oana
Yes, true, it’s a good business.
Ioana
But now, turning back to our topic today, the idea came after we did the podcast on what we call cheating, even if you don’t like the word. And the girls and the boys in our community started to say, okay, but there’s a difference between cheating and an open relationship. And we asked our community what curiosity questions dramas they have about the open relationship topic. And I would like to quote, just ignite the conversation feedback because it’s not a question for real. Coming from Irina. I chose her feedback because I think it pinpoints the contradictions that this topic generally arises. She says, oh my God, only reading the words’ open relationship gave me chills. I keep on hearing lately about these words. They say, like the people using this way of loving, I don’t know how to call it. They say it means unconditional love, freedom, and trust. But honestly, I judge the topic and it also scares me a lot.
Oana
Why?
Ioana
Because it hits my perfect ideal image of what love really means. Why I chose her feedback because she says that she keeps on hearing about this dynamics, this kind of dynamics. But at the same time, she’s not comfortable with the idea. And she also judges those who choose open relationships. Let’s start from here. What’s your experience as a coach with open relationships?
Oana
It’s a beautiful concept, but in reality, it doesn’t really work. And most of the time we end up suffering rather than experiencing this unconditional love and freedom that is brought up by the concept or the paradigm. And it’s steamed from, you know, that we are polyamorous and we are meant to be polyamorous as a species, and that monogamy is not good for us, which is the premises we can look at from this point of view. We can look at in regards to this topic, but we’re not just sexual instinctual animals that want to reproduce with many other animals. We’re also emotional human beings. We have a soul, we have a spirit. And I think it takes a lot of maturity, emotional maturity on everybody’s side, which is ideal, but it’s not really anchored in reality to experience an open relationship from a place of fulfillment for everybody involved. Most of the time somebody who is not okay is coping with the situation or has an emotional breakdown around the situation, experiencing jealousy or unworthiness or rejection or attraction or seduction, or manipulation. And I’ve never seen three people happy.
Ioana
That’s exactly my fault right now because I felt like I didn’t need anyone choosing to be in an open relationship. All three or all four being happy, at least one has to suffer.
Oana
Well, I don’t know if that’s 100% rule of all or open relationships. Maybe there are people who are experiencing it in a particular context. Some country context around the world can provide a million for this type of experience because if everybody agrees that sex is free and we can just share it and it doesn’t involve necessarily love and we can explore one another from this point of view without the emotional baggage that comes along and we’re living in that type of culture and everybody has the same value. It can work, but it’s a secluded experience in a very secluded context. I don’t think on a societal level that works because we’re very different. So most of the time actually it’s not just one suffering. I’ve seen all three sufferings because the one for suffering is bringing down everybody else in the conversation. So you end up just having a mess of the whole thing. But it’s a hot topic and it’s a very actual topic. People are experiencing it more and more and they’re trying to deal with it from an emotional point of view in a way that’s much more grounded or healthier or even effective.
Ioana
I was thinking when we briefed this podcast, where did I hear for the first time in my life this concept of an open relationship? And they dig and I dig and I think I identified I think it was Facebook. I don’t know if you remember many years ago when the early years of Facebook, you could choose your status on Facebook, and then there were two that became popular culture because of Facebook. It’s complicated and in an operating relationship, human reality is a popular concept. I personally had strong opinions, of course, due to my own experience with this topic. But a few years ago I read a book that changed my optics on the judgment I had because I had a lot of judgment concerning this subject. And I brought the book and I would like to read some extracts from it also to challenge you and also to come forward with an objective perspective because even the world of anthropology and of science, it’s divided between the researchers, historians who think that open relationship is something embedded in our genes, and those who say that it’s only a good excuse to something around. The book is called Sex Dawn.
Ioana
It’s written by Christopher Ryan and Cecila Yetta. I hope I’m pronouncing correct her name and I will just read some passages. In a nutshell, here’s the story we tell in the following pages. A few million years ago, our ancient ancestors, Homo erectus, shifted from a gorilla-like mating system where an Alpha male fought to win and maintain a harem of females to one in which most males had sexual access to females. Few, if any, experts dispute the fossil evidence for this shift, but we part company from those who support a standard narrative. When we look at what this shift signifies, the standard narrative holds that it is when long-term pair bonding began in our species, if each male could have only one female mate at a time, most males would end up with a girl to call their own. Indeed, where there is a debate about the nature of innate human sexuality, the only two acceptable options appear to be that humans evolved to be either monogamous male plus female or polygenous like a male plus female female female female. There is no female plus male male male.
Oana
Yeah, I think that’s misogyny exactly.
Ioana
The conclusion normally is that women generally prefer the former configuration while most men opt in for the latter. After all, we know that the foraging societies in which human beings evolved on a small scale I will skip to get to an even stronger one. To give you a bit of context, it’s about having in our genes the necessity of sharing everything foragers divide and distribute meat, for example, equally, they breastfeed one another’s, babies have little or no privacy from one another and depend upon each other’s survival. Which is true. So the question is, why wouldn’t we do the same with partners? We believe this sharing behavior extended to sex as well, say the authors. A great deal of research, from primatology to anthropology, anatomy, and psychology, points to the same fundamental conclusion. Human beings and our hominid ancestors have spent almost all of the past few million years or so in small, intimate bands in which most adults have several sexual relationships at any given time. This is only to make an idea of what the book digs in. But it’s research-based and it’s really instructive. So if you have judgments about this topic, you should try to read this book at least because it gives you a perspective into how we work as human beings.
Ioana
But I think we need to adapt to our emotions I don’t know how to call it find it comfortable, it’s not normal.
Oana
I think this is very true when we look at ourselves from the perspective of sexuality, but we’re not just sexual beings, or at least our sexuality as it evolves includes an emotional landscape, it includes a soul landscape. And when that comes to play, it is the problem the polyamory, because we haven’t really mastered how to navigate and order our emotions in a way that respects the other, brings love and empathy to one another, and kind of allows us to experience love in a healthy, happy way for all included in a polyamorous system or dynamic. So I think while this anthropological perspective is very spot on taking the perspective of our sexual animal, it doesn’t really carry the day when we’re looking at our emotional animal in a way. And I think this is where it comes into play. And I think one of the reasons why the open relationship has become an actual topic, that’s a public topic, that people are trying it on a social level and they’re open about trying it. I think it’s because we are 2019 exploring our emotions and our emotional landscape and trying to figure it out. I think our ancestors didn’t have that issue.
Oana
They didn’t have a perception of perspective around their emotional landscape. I think they just lived and they were exploring and discovering things as they lived. And while they were living, their instincts were the primordial, dominant part of who they are. But 2019 years, not later, but like a lot of years later, 1000 years later, we’ve tried our sexual impulse. We’ve gone through our instinctual, Karmic, we overpopulated with our sexual instinct. And now I think there’s like on a special level, this opportunity of exploring a different dimension, a much higher dimension, in a way that involves emotion. It’s no wonder that women prefer monogamous relationships because only in a monogamous relationship can your emotion really open up and go deep. So if the woman is more centered around her emotion and that’s how she opens her sexuality, of course, she will prefer a monogamous relationship because this is very natural for her, while the male is more instinctual based and needs the woman to start an emotional process. So of course the man will be much more easygoing with the idea of having sex with other women. But I don’t think these are just general assumptions or perceptions or principles.
Oana
Nowadays I’ve seen women really taking ownership of their sexual instinct and exploring it fully as equally as men. That’s why I was laughing and saying this is misogyny because I’ve seen women loving having polyamorous relationships, loving having sex with more men, and not really going deep emotionally with somebody and respecting their emotional independence and having men having issues with that. So I think it’s a human game.
Ioana
Okay. I think it’s not about what’s good or bad, right or wrong, but about what makes us feel comfortable or uncomfortable. So a question that would really benefit your answer is how can we learn how to include the differences? For example, if we are in a relationship where our partner would like to try to have an open relationship, but we genuinely feel uncomfortable with the idea, how can we tackle this difference so that the relationship has a chance to survive but the other one does not end up frustrated because he’s not free enough.
Oana
Well, it’s a very complex dynamic and I think they need a culture or therapy to navigate through it because if it doesn’t really work for you to be polyamorous and your partner wants this and he doesn’t feel that he’s happy, he feels suffocated or isolated because of your personal nature. I think you’re not having enough compatibility to make it a go-to to give this relationship a chance. In the end, it’s a choice. And if the choices are in contradiction with one another, then I don’t think you have the bridge on which you can create and move forward in a relationship. So it’s really about being very Truthful and very honest and knowing what your limits are and then bringing that honesty to the relationship and see if that honesty and the choices that each one of us is making are going to create a foundation for us to experience our relationship further but I think if somebody really wants to be polyamorous and somebody really wants to be monogamous I think that’s a clash I don’t even think that we have enough time to process all this information I think that you really feel it.
Ioana
You always say to go back to the sacred space of your heart and ask your higher self what’s your truth. Because many times we put ourselves out there in situations or in contexts that make us feel uncomfortable just because it’s normal, just because it’s popular, just because the people around us choose that way and we are not confident enough in what’s safe, or good for us to make a choice from a very strong point. So when you’re surrounded by people who say they have the reasons it doesn’t matter but they seem to choose to be in open relationships and we are not confident enough to say that’s not right for me this is my option.
Oana
I let go actually I think the process is the same in any other given situation like you want to make a step forward in your career and you have to move somewhere particularly and dedicate two years to your career and you’re in this stable monogamous relationship and you have to make a choice that’s an individual choice but it affects the relationship this is a much more controversial topic because it’s more intimate to our emotional landscape and we suffer from it but it’s the same you have to take a step back from the relationship and really take the silence, create the silence around you to feel into what’s right for you and understand what’s right for you and go through that process of tuning in with yourself now if you don’t have the practice of tuning in with yourself you have to start somewhere. Either a self-help book that supports you and teaches you how to meditate or how to stay with yourself without the anxiety of loneliness or our sacred space of the heart. If it clicks and it resonates or a personal coach that you can take to guide you into this process because you have to learn it in a way it doesn’t really come naturally most of us have our intuition and instincts in a way we’re cut off from it they’re blurred for us because we are so accustomed to our society and belonging to our society and pleasing the people around us that we don’t know how to love and be loved in a way that includes our basic needs, our personal needs and then, of course, it’s a risk because if you say this doesn’t work for me then you’re challenging the status of the relationship and you’re challenging the future of the relationship but then again without that, without doing that, how can you really create a future that’s fulfilling for you? I think in any long-term relationship there comes a moment where the relationship is challenged by something, whether it’s the polyamorous dynamic or career change or moving forward and having kids or just going deeper into the emotional landscape and not feeling that the partner is ready for that, so on and so forth yes.
Ioana
It’s pretty obvious that you cannot I mean, at the point you learn that there’s no shortcut, you cannot avoid the process. But the challenge, I think is to make it nontraumatic, to be able to go through the process because it’s a learning process, in the end, to find out what works for you, what’s good for you to find the courage to state your truth. But the challenge is to make it not easy but not transform it into something that will just stay with you for the rest of your life or the trauma Well.
Oana
I think this applies to everything, in my opinion. I think to navigate anything, including your limits in a relationship or your desires, whatever you want to explore, you have to be conscious. That’s why I’m talking so much about the conscious relationship, conscious motherhood, conscious sexuality, conscious femininity, conscious life because consciousness when it’s really brought to the surface and it serves you like the observer that you are moving through the experiences of life, moving through your emotions, moving with your instincts, then it will serve you because the drama and the trauma come from stepping into situations where you’re not feeling ready for or safe and you don’t know how to contact the readiness and the safety. So you’re just exploring them wide open, but from a place that will get you wounded. And you don’t know how to deal with that because you don’t know yourself well conscious relationships, conscious life pattern lifestyle actually includes being the observer of your own process, of your own feelings, of your own ideas, of your own instincts, observing what happens in the dynamic with another, and then really guiding yourself as you move forward. You can explore anything and it doesn’t even have to be a part of the exploration.
Oana
Is figuring out that that works or that doesn’t work? I think you can explore anything, even if your nature works with that exploration or it doesn’t. But if you are conscious, you gain a lot of things. First of all, you gain control of your own self. Second, you learn about yourself through exploration. Third, you’re open-minded and you explore and you really figure out what works and what doesn’t work for you. Fourth, you are very grounded in who you are and what you want in a relationship. And I think that gives you just such a powerful place to be in a relationship, create a relationship, own the space of a relationship that it will just prepare you for a very amazing journey with another human being, whether that journey ends at a particular moment in time or it lasts forever. So consciousness is just that very personal guide, that muscle that turns into a guide, your own guide that just helps you navigate through life, not just polyamory and monogamy. And I think it’s very important. And how do you acquire consciousness? Well, meditation, prayer, ritual, and breathing are just tools that support you and support the observer in you to be activated.
Oana
It’s a muscle, that level of the mind that just doesn’t react but thinks the level of the mind that just doesn’t think philosophically or theoretically thinks pragmatically. You see yourself in the game of life, and you are able to understand yourself in the game of life. So you’re not shy from exploration. You’re open to exploration. You are not shy from vulnerability. You’re diving into vulnerability, but you’re diving it in a way that protects you because you are also the observer. You catch yourself, you have your own back. That muscle is so critical, and I think it will speed up the way in which you integrate whatever information and the emotion and whatever will surface from the exploration. This is, I think, what’s really powerful. And then another thing is just saying yes to the exploration wholeheartedly. Most people just say yes because they’re nice or because it’s fashionable or because they’re afraid to lose their partner or because they have a hidden agenda. Yeah. And it’s not authentic. So unless you’re honest and honesty in itself is the price. It’s not honesty to gain something. It’s not honesty to achieve something.
Oana
It’s really honesty so that you can experience life on a much more intense level. And I think in a way, an open relationship really can be a very powerful opportunity for people to experience themselves, to learn about themselves, and to learn about themselves in relationships and learn about their partner, really, because it triggers so many things. It’s such a taboo. It’s so unconventional. It’s a hardcore experience in a way, for somebody who’s really straightforward monogamous and haven’t had the opportunity to really explore it from an open mind. I don’t think judgment works because judgment in itself is morality, and morality is a very limited construct of experiencing life. The judgments are there to protect us from feelings. It’s just a cover-up of not being willing to look at your feelings, digest them, feel them, hear them, see what’s beneath the first reaction of your feelings, tap into the pain or the anxiety or the trigger that that situation brings to you. Unfortunately, because we’re not conscious and we don’t meditate enough, open relationships turn into a cheating experience and the vibration is brought down.
Ioana
Yes. I want to make this my last question in this podcast because we are running out of time. What’s the difference? I mean, the real difference? Because I’m going back to Irina’s feedback that I read at the beginning of this episode, The Judgment. She confesses that she has about this open relationship topic. I think that most of the judgments. And the confusion comes from overlapping open relationships with cheating or with infidelity. And I would like to end this podcast with you highlighting the main difference between cheating or infidelity and the choice of having an open relationship.
Oana
Honesty.
Ioana
That’s like the sword that cards honesty with yourself at the very beginning and then with your partner.
Oana
Well, honesty, period. Firstly with your partner and then with yourself. Like with cheating and infidelity. Somebody is lying, mostly the person who’s cheating and having a secret affair. So that person is cheating and then you figure it out because you figure it out and then you’re either lying about it because you’re covering that it doesn’t actually happen or you’re confronting the other person with the lie and then the other person either comes honest about it and then there starts the healing process. Why did you lie? Why did you feel the need to lie? And then maybe in that realm of honesty, we can start moving forward and healing our dynamic and bring more awareness to it. At least with an open relationship, we are open. We are honest about where we are in the dynamic of the relationship, what we want, and how we want it, we’re moving forward, including the partner. And if the partner is not ready, we’re holding our initiative until he’s ready or we’re figuring out that we have to stop or take a break because it’s a clash of interests. So honesty, honesty about my intentions, honesty about my actions. I think that’s the difference and honesty in itself will bring the vibration up.
Ioana
Well, thank you, Oana, and thank you for sending your questions. And please keep on doing that. Send us your questions, and your curiosity as challenging as you can as you feel. Thanks.
Oana
Yes. And just know that anytime you experience not honesty, then there’s something to be worked around in relationship to that area or that aspect. So it was a very complicated topic and I’m really glad we dived into it and I think we have to come back to it at some point.
Ioana
But having a question coming from our listeners would help because it gives us a foundation for what’s really going on in people’s lives.
Oana
Yeah. So hurry for those who are brave and are exploring open relationships as we speak because it takes courage and hooray for those who are looking at it beyond judgment.
Ioana
Oh, and by the way, if anybody has a curiosity or would like to hear a masculine voice in this podcast and if you want to have feedback from a man, we are exploring possibilities to include men in the future. So sending ask your questions.
Oana
Absolutely. Thank you, everybody. Have a great day. Bye.
