Latest / The Sexology Lab / Why We Get Jealous: Dr. Justin Mogilski on Pair Bonding, Competition, and Communication | Episode 13

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Why We Get Jealous: Dr. Justin Mogilski on Pair Bonding, Competition, and Communication | Episode 13 · The Sexology Lab

0:00
It's not so much the attraction that's the problem, but perhaps
0:02
what you do about it. And so I think what a lot of
0:04
people who are consensually non monogamous understand is that
0:07
you can talk about these things and actually alleviate a lot of
0:10
anxieties and a lot of years around those experiences by
0:14
learning to communicate about them with your partner.
0:16
What can consensual, non monogamous relationships teach
0:19
us about communication, jealousy, and the way humans
0:22
really bond? Today in the lab, we're joined
0:25
by Doctor Justin Mogilski, an evolutionary psychologist and
0:29
associate professor leading an international research team
0:33
studying how people in consensually non monogamous
0:36
relationships make their relationships work.
0:39
In this conversation, we explore attraction, disclosure,
0:43
jealousy, infidelity, parenting, and the surprising ways
0:48
evolutionary psychology can help us better understand modern
0:52
relationships. If you've ever wondered what
0:55
science can teach us about love, attachment, and human
0:59
connection, this episode is for you.
1:01
Welcome to Sexology Lab. Each week, we speak with the
1:05
most compelling minds in modern sexology to ask the questions
1:09
shaping the future of desire, connection, and human Wellness.
1:13
Let's dive in. Welcome, Justin.
1:16
And thank you for having me, it's fun to be here.
1:18
Yeah, thanks so much for being with us today.
1:20
I want to jump in with a question now.
1:22
What is one thing that people in consensually non monogamous
1:26
relationships know about relationships that most
1:30
monogamous couples don't? Maybe the extent to which you
1:33
can actually share information and you think that that
1:36
information will be tricky to handle, but it's actually less
1:39
tricky than you think. Where my mind goes to is one of
1:41
the things that we identified in our research is something like a
1:44
attraction disclosure. So that is actually talking to
1:47
your partner about your attractions to other people.
1:49
And I think that that's often seen as kind of a big no no,
1:51
especially to monogamous people, because it's seen as kind of
1:54
like this kindness to hide the information from your partner
1:57
and not let them kind of deal with that or understand that you
1:59
are human and that you may have attractions to other people.
2:02
And it's not so much the attraction that's the problem,
2:05
but perhaps what you do about it.
2:06
And so I think what a lot of people who are conventionally
2:08
non monogamous understand is that you can talk about these
2:12
things and actually alleviate a lot of anxieties and a lot of
2:15
fears around those experiences by learning to communicate about
2:18
them with your partner. That's one of the biggest
2:20
insights that I think people who are non monogamous have is that
2:24
there's this set of challenges that comes along with having
2:27
multiple partners. People who are monogamous deal
2:29
with those same challenges. They just approach it a
2:32
different way when people who are CNM consensually non
2:35
monogamous approach it in a way that's a kind of bringing their
2:37
partner into a lot of these decisions and kind of letting
2:40
them go through maybe some of those difficult experiences and
2:43
learning from them. Yeah, I love that you said that
2:45
because I think growing up in a culture of monogamy, you're
2:48
given this message that's like, you can't even look at another
2:51
person or else it's like cheating, you know?
2:54
And I think we're taught that you would never bring that up to
2:56
a partner. Yeah, yeah.
2:57
It's de facto always cheating. And therefore, if you admit it,
3:00
what you're doing is you're admitting you're lying.
3:02
But really what you could be doing is just admitting that you
3:05
have an experience, such as being attracted to someone else,
3:08
wanting to explore that connection.
3:10
And then maybe the decision is ultimately you don't, right?
3:13
You talk about it with your partner and you decide that's
3:15
actually something that's going to get in the way and it just
3:18
isn't feasible. But at the same time, you could
3:20
talk about it and maybe realize maybe there's a mutual benefit
3:23
to potentially being non monogamous or having, you know,
3:25
acting on those experiences. And if there is, what can we do
3:29
to prevent some of the problems you might anticipate?
3:32
Now I want to talk about you for a moment.
3:34
So what is your 32nd origin story?
3:37
How did you find your way into sexual health research and when
3:40
did you realize this is my specialty area?
3:43
I didn't start here and even know if I would call it my
3:45
specialty area. I'm trained as an evolutionary
3:47
psychologist. So I came up, I got my PhD at
3:49
Oakland University and there I studied things like infidelity,
3:53
mate preferences, what people are looking for in a partner,
3:56
what happens when people are mismatched on certain
3:58
characteristics. And from that kind of studying
4:01
the adapted design of the brain and how our brain is helping us
4:05
to navigate relationships and some of the problems that we'll
4:08
encounter when we're in relationships.
4:09
But then I met someone who was consensually non monogamous.
4:12
They were telling me, you know, this is one of my experiences
4:14
and I said, how do you make this work?
4:16
And so honestly, it's just been a journey of given what I had
4:19
learned about relationships up to that point, how do you make
4:22
it work? What are you doing?
4:23
And is it actually successful? Because I think a lot of people
4:26
kind of look at consensual monogamy and they think, well,
4:29
this clearly isn't going to work.
4:30
This isn't going to be successful, and yet there was
4:32
someone here saying, hey, we make it work, we're happy, we're
4:35
not hurting people. So I wanted to explore that.
4:37
Yeah, I love that. Now, what is 1 current shift or
4:41
trend in the sexual health space that genuinely excites you right
4:45
now? I think how we communicate
4:47
about, for example, STI's or things that are kind of
4:50
difficult to talk about. So for example, you can talk
4:51
about and disclose your attraction to someone else to a
4:54
partner, but when it comes to something like STI's, it's
4:56
actually very difficult to trust the information that you get
4:59
from someone else because very, very often those are private
5:02
medical records. You can't actually go in and
5:04
see, say someone's statuses. And So what do you do to kind of
5:08
foster trust or foster some sense that the information you
5:11
are conveying is trustworthy? And I think that is going to be
5:15
kind of a big wave of the future there.
5:16
Otherwise, in terms of sexual health, a lot of sex tech is
5:21
really starting to develop, especially for people who have
5:23
had difficulties either having sex or getting into sex or
5:26
whatnot because of certain physical limitations, mental
5:29
limitations. And so some of the technical
5:31
analogy that helps with that, especially people who are older
5:33
and who who maybe, you know, need assistance at no fault of
5:36
their own, to the extent to which we're able to make these
5:40
tools accessible in a way that helps people have more
5:43
satisfying sex lives and relationships in general.
5:45
The more that we make that available to people, the safer,
5:48
more predictable, more reliable relationships get because of
5:51
these tools. I think that will solve so many
5:54
hardships in people's lives. All right, now if you could
5:56
teach the world one essential insight about consensual non
6:01
monogamy, something that really moves the needle, what would
6:04
that be? I think a lot of people believe
6:06
that if you want to be non monogamous, what you need is to
6:09
be exceptionally intelligent or have a lot of self-control.
6:12
I see this argument made to the extent that, well, OK, if you
6:15
have more than one partner, you're going to have to inhibit
6:19
some impulses to make sure that you are treating each partner
6:22
well before you act on impulses or do the things that you want
6:25
to. So there's a lot of kind of
6:26
impulse control that helps. If you're intelligent, that
6:28
helps to navigate a lot of the issues that can run into with
6:31
non monogamy. I actually think that that is
6:34
not necessarily the most productive way to look at it.
6:36
The point is that ultimately, if you're smarter and you're kind
6:39
of have impulse control, that can help with a lot.
6:41
Most people have grown up in what you might call a
6:44
mononormative culture. That is what predominantly what
6:48
you see is monogamy. Predominantly what you see are
6:50
the practices for making monogamy work.
6:53
Chances are people who are more intelligent or have better
6:55
impulse control are probably doing better simply because
6:58
people are not prepared to make non monogamy work in a way that
7:02
is more ethical or that doesn't harm people.
7:05
If we were to prepare people better and give them good
7:09
scripts for how to do non monogamy, there would be less of
7:13
a barrier to entry than most people believe.
7:16
So if I had to kind of dispel A myth or comment on that, I think
7:19
a lot of people are afraid of it because they think I'm just not
7:21
going to be able to make this work.
7:22
It's important to realize that you're working from a place of
7:24
kind of a disadvantage, right? You're working with not enough
7:27
knowledge to really navigate some of the challenges that
7:30
people experience. In general, we have very poor
7:33
education about how to do that, and that is really what's
7:35
getting in the way of navigating these kinds of relationships
7:38
more responsibly. Yeah, so you don't have to be a
7:40
super genius to be in ACNM relationship.
7:43
You just have to have some education and some frameworks to
7:46
follow. Yep, and the experience and
7:49
perhaps kind of a culture that supports what you might need.
7:53
For example, sexual health actually could be a worse
7:56
problem for many people practicing non monogamy simply
8:00
because if they were to admit that they need, say, to get STI
8:04
tests or they have done this thing, what that's doing is it's
8:07
not just that you're having trouble getting access to sexual
8:10
health services. It might be that to get those
8:13
services you need to admit that you have lied or you have
8:15
cheated, right? And so if you get rid of the
8:18
cheating element now, how much of a barrier is there for you
8:21
seeking something to improve your sexual health?
8:24
I think the barrier is far less. Yeah.
8:26
And then a lot of, like, providers and professionals
8:28
aren't educated on consensual non monogamy.
8:31
So if you go to like, a health clinic or even a doctor's
8:34
office, they might look at you a little odd because they have no
8:38
idea what you're doing. Yeah.
8:40
So better education for everybody.
8:42
Now at Sexual Health Alliance, we train a lot of people who
8:45
work in sexual health spaces. So what's the most important
8:48
thing that you want to tell professionals about CNM?
8:52
One of the things that we've done is we've identified
8:54
practices that people can engage in, but I actually think that
8:57
what I've learned since we've done this is it's less useful to
9:02
give advice about how people should do consensual non
9:05
monogamy. As much as perhaps there are
9:08
certain issues, there are certain challenges, certain
9:10
topics that will show up again and again, problems that people
9:13
will run into that maybe deserve focus during therapy, during
9:20
counseling, a lot of consensual non monogamy and making that
9:23
work, especially for a, to say a couple or people who are opening
9:26
up is not to say, we'll do this, do this, do this, do this and
9:30
you're going to be fine. But rather, maybe you need to
9:32
think about disclosing attraction to a partner.
9:35
Or have you discussed how comfortable do you feel with
9:38
your partner about communicating jealousy?
9:40
What are some of the barriers there?
9:41
And so it's not so much, hey, go communicate about jealousy and
9:44
everything's going to be fine. Because maybe if you talk about
9:47
jealousy, things blow up, but it could be that you need to
9:50
actually focus on. This is something you need to
9:52
focus on because maybe right now you're not communicating very
9:56
well or there's something getting in the way of you
9:58
communicating very well. You don't give advice.
10:00
What you do is you help someone kind of work through what
10:03
they're going through, figuring out what's their personality,
10:06
how's that working in what's their home environment like, are
10:09
their children involved, etcetera, etcetera.
10:11
All these these variables. But then once you figure that
10:13
out, then maybe focus on particular challenges that you
10:17
will tend to encounter with people who are working through
10:20
non monogamy. So I think focusing on, for
10:23
example, STI management or focusing on how resources are
10:26
distributed among partners, right?
10:28
So maybe there's some amount of conflict happening because the
10:32
way that people are sharing resources, spending time with
10:35
one another, engaging in hobbies together, there's some kind of
10:38
conflict that arises there because of the way the resources
10:41
are shared. Or maybe conversion, right?
10:43
You can't tell someone to just feel conversion, but is there
10:47
something that you can do to foster this feeling of enjoyment
10:52
that your partner is spending time with someone else?
10:54
That is great advice because not every person is the same, not
10:58
every relationship structure is the same.
11:00
You have so many different personalities in there.
11:03
You can't just come in and say this is what you should do.
11:05
This is not going to work. All right, now I want to talk to
11:08
you about evolution and CNN from an evolutionary perspective.
11:14
What is most surprising to you about consensual non monogamy?
11:19
Yeah. So one of the things that we
11:20
actually know pretty well is that humans are a pair bonding
11:23
species. So regardless of whether you're
11:25
monogamous or not, which is a different thing, that is you're
11:28
exclusive to one another. What humans tend to do is we
11:30
pair bond, we find someone else, we get attracted to them, we
11:34
have chemical cascades that contribute to you feeling close
11:37
to someone else. And because we are a pair
11:39
bonding species, we also so tend to have certain reactions that
11:44
help to keep that pair bond together.
11:46
So for example, jealousy as an emotion is actually something
11:49
that helps us to stay together. Because if you detect that your
11:52
partner is interacting with someone else and you fear that
11:55
they might leave you for the other person, the jealousy will
11:58
motivate you to go. If I feel like my relationship
12:00
is a little more unstable or it might dissolve or something like
12:04
that, then maybe what I should do is I should bring it up with
12:06
my partner. I should express that jealousy
12:08
to some degree to let them know, hey, I still care about you,
12:11
right? This is important to me.
12:13
We need to address this. And so given that we have this
12:16
motivation to form pair bonds and to protect them, then the
12:19
next step is, well, how do you actually incorporate 1/3, a
12:23
fourth or other people into that dynamic while still maintaining
12:28
the pair bond? And so I think the tricky part
12:31
and the part that I've kind of run into again and again is how
12:34
do you find this middle ground between the evolved
12:37
psychological machinery that has kept us pair bonded close
12:41
together, which is facilitated childcare as well?
12:44
Because that's the purpose of a pair bond is ultimately to
12:46
provide support structure to potential offspring.
12:49
How are people taking this system that is meant to kind of
12:52
keep people in pair bonds and potentially keep away
12:54
competitors? And now you are essentially
12:57
inviting someone who could be a competitor, not that they are,
13:01
but maybe they are going to compete for time and resources
13:04
or how time is spent with children, et cetera.
13:07
This is the puzzle that I'm working through it.
13:09
How does an evolutionary framework help or sometimes
13:12
complement our understanding of consensual nominogamy?
13:16
Because like you were saying, you would think that you would
13:18
see somebody like this is a competitor.
13:20
So is there like personality traits or a cultural aspect or
13:24
other things that come into play here?
13:26
So the big advantage of using evolutionary theory for
13:30
anything, for any, for any scientific endeavor, what a
13:32
theory is useful for is making predictions, right?
13:35
So we could make all kinds of explanations of why is this
13:39
personality not getting along with this one and all that would
13:41
be very interesting. The advantage of using
13:43
evolutionary theory here is again, we're making predictions.
13:46
And so one of the predictions that I made when I did my
13:49
research using this perspective was I think that there are
13:52
certain problems that people are going to run into when they're
13:55
trying to be non monogamous. For example, there are recurrent
13:59
issues like let's say you're a man and then your female partner
14:03
has sex with another man. What can happen is you can get
14:05
pregnant and then the original partner, the original man, can
14:09
be cuckolded and that would be a problem reproductively because
14:12
it's not his genes getting passed on, it's someone else's.
14:16
So I can predict just based on the fact that we tend to see
14:19
competition across animal species.
14:22
So it's not just humans. We see the same kinds of
14:25
competition, especially among people of the same sex, but also
14:28
competition between people of the opposite sex.
14:31
We see that competition happening in other animals.
14:33
So we can make the prediction that we are probably going to
14:36
have many of the same problems. For most of the history of
14:39
evolutionary psychology and those who study romantic
14:41
relationships, that's precisely what they've been doing and then
14:44
demonstrating. And so here the idea is people
14:48
who are trying to be consensually non monogamous,
14:51
they're still biological animals.
14:53
They are going to run up against all the same problems as
14:56
everyone else. People who are monogamous and
14:58
people who have decided what I'm going to do is I'm just going to
15:00
ignore more other relationships and be monogamous, be exclusive,
15:03
right? But instead what they're doing
15:05
is they're saying, well, we still want to pursue these other
15:08
relationships. We want to foster connections.
15:10
We want to at least be able to flirt.
15:11
We want some of that freedom. So really what my prediction
15:14
was, people have to figure out approaches, strategies,
15:18
different practices for resolving some of those problems
15:23
that we should predict given that we are just also biological
15:27
animals trying to survive, reproduce, compete, find good
15:31
partners, keep those good partners, make sure that they
15:34
help us raise children, etc, etc.
15:36
It's all the same problems, it's just there might be a little bit
15:39
extra. One of the things we do know is
15:40
that there are certain people who tend to perceive the world
15:44
in a more competitive way. The most common term for that is
15:47
it's a 0 sum worldview. The idea that in any interaction
15:52
with someone else, 0 sum means that if I win, you must lose,
15:57
and if you win, I must lose. It's essentially that doggy dog
16:01
mentality that either I get in there first, I get what I want,
16:04
or I'm going to lose, right? They published a study actually
16:07
looking at 0 sum beliefs and they found that people who are
16:10
in consensually non monogamous relationships do tend to endorse
16:13
fewer of these zero sum beliefs and they endorse more of what
16:16
are called positive sum beliefs. That is, by me interacting with
16:20
you, we both benefit. We're both getting something out
16:23
of this and therefore we're willing to do it.
16:25
We form this relationship and we are putting on this episode,
16:28
right? And so we see this is more of a
16:30
positive, some interaction with competitiveness and especially
16:33
monogamy. It's very easy to see other
16:36
people as competitors. And that is something that we
16:39
would to some degree predict from evolutionary theory.
16:42
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17:22
So I want to talk about your CNM research.
17:24
So you're leading an international team of over 40
17:27
researchers studying relationship maintenance in CNM.
17:31
So what was the core question that launched this project?
17:35
The core question was how do people do it?
17:37
How do people make CNM work? One of my earlier papers was on
17:41
what's called life history, and it kind of Harkins to what I was
17:43
describing before. As you have these different
17:45
strategies of reproduction, you can kind of go fast and lots of
17:50
children or slow and invest in many of them.
17:53
I collected that data actually looked at measurements of
17:56
whether people tend to possess the characteristics of 1
18:00
strategy or another because you tend to see certain personality
18:03
characteristics go with one strategy versus another.
18:06
And what we did find is that people in consensually non
18:09
monogamous relationships compared to people in monogamous
18:11
relationships, they tend to have more of the traits that you
18:14
would expect of someone who's kind of a faster life history
18:18
strategist, someone who is doing that quantity over quality game
18:22
in terms of number of partners and number of offspring.
18:24
What that really means is they were more willing to take
18:26
certain types of risks, social risks, they're more willing to
18:29
engage in risk taking behavior. The other weird thing that you
18:32
tend to see with fast life history strategist, specifically
18:34
females of a species, because this is something you see
18:36
regardless of humans, females, when a species tend to go
18:39
through a puberty earlier. And the idea is that if you
18:42
start earlier, then you can have more children earlier and then
18:47
kind of get that process out of the way.
18:49
A number of reasons that's adaptive.
18:50
So we follow some of these traits.
18:52
But at the same time, people in consensually non monogamous
18:55
relationships are still satisfied.
18:57
They're still forming these longer term relationships that,
19:01
you know, the relationship satisfaction is very similar.
19:03
So I kind of ran into this weird situation where individuals who
19:06
are consensually non monogamous, they might have a different
19:09
profile of personality, maybe a profile personality that you
19:12
would expect would create more conflict, right, riskier
19:16
behavior. And so if people are set up for
19:20
this particular strategy, my guess was, well, maybe they're
19:23
achieving the same level of satisfaction because they're
19:26
doing something extra that kind of keeps those personality
19:30
traits in check, right? So if you're someone who is a
19:32
high risk taker, the solution is not to hector you until you're
19:36
not a risk taker anymore. It's to do things to make sure
19:39
that the risky behaviors you engage in are actually safer,
19:42
right? So for example, if you're
19:44
someone who is very interested in sex, you know you want to
19:47
have sex with multiple partners, the solution may not be don't
19:50
have sex with multiple partners. It might be take the precautions
19:53
that you need to make sure that nothing bad happened by virtue
19:57
of you doing that. And so that was really the
19:59
inspiration. From there, we collected a bunch
20:01
of data. We asked a bunch of people, you
20:02
know, what do you do to make consensual non monogamous
20:04
relationship work? And so far, I would say that the
20:07
data we've collected has supported that interpretation
20:10
that these are people who maybe are prone to doing things that
20:15
can be risky within a relationship, but they're also
20:18
doing things to reduce that risk.
20:20
Yeah, and I mean the really it makes sense.
20:22
People who aren't willing to take risks and aren't willing to
20:26
be in risky social situations are not going to comfortably be
20:30
able to thrive in a consensually non monogamous relationship.
20:34
That's interesting. Yeah.
20:35
Yeah. Because you might have to expose
20:37
yourself to some amount of risk, right?
20:38
And then those people, I think, can benefit from the same things
20:42
that the riskier people are doing, but the outcome is that
20:45
they just kind of feel safer about it.
20:47
There's one paper that colleague and I just submitted using the
20:50
data that we had where we were looking at something called
20:51
regulatory focus. So when you're managing your
20:55
emotions, when you're trying to regulate negative emotions, what
20:57
is your goal ultimately? Is your goal to prevent bad
21:01
things from happening or is your goal to promote good things
21:05
happening to you? And I think you can have either
21:07
of those motivations, right? If maybe you're someone who's
21:10
more motivated to have new experiences, you know, find new
21:12
partners, make new connections, what you're going to do is
21:15
probably the things that help promote that.
21:17
And so some of these practices that we've identified what we
21:20
found are more helpful to people who are promotion focused
21:24
because it helps them to achieve what they want to get from the
21:27
relationship. But then there are other
21:29
practices that help people who are prevention focused, who are
21:32
more cautious. And they're saying, I would love
21:34
to do this, but there are all these things in the way of me
21:38
doing it. It's not that I have this great
21:40
need to go out and have multiple partners.
21:42
It's that I'm kind of interested, but I have more in
21:44
the way than I have motivating me to kind of take that risk.
21:48
And like what you said, the first thing I thought was
21:50
anxiety. Like if you're anxious, you're
21:52
always trying to prevent problems from happening all the
21:55
time. Yep.
21:56
Yep, Yep, that's what anxiety is.
21:58
You're looking to the future and you have no idea what it looks
22:00
like, right? All right, So tell me more about
22:03
some of these relationship maintenance practices.
22:06
What are the some of the most consistent that you've seen so?
22:08
Far so the most consistent, the ones that were strongest in our
22:11
data set were actually that attraction disclosures, telling
22:14
your partner that you are attracted to other people.
22:16
And then the other one was how easily you communicate about
22:20
jealousy. And I want to be clear, it's not
22:21
whether you do communicate about jealousy, but whether you feel
22:24
comfortable to communicate jealousy if you're feeling it.
22:27
And the idea there is how competent are you at
22:30
communicating this information, responding to it, having a
22:35
discussion about it, what you should do in response to that
22:38
jealousy. That's where I think the skill
22:40
is. Communication about jealousy was
22:41
very strongly related to a lot of our outcomes.
22:44
So we measured 3 big categories. We measured overall satisfaction
22:49
in the relationship. We measured the amount of
22:50
conflict that they tend to experience.
22:53
And then we also measured their health, so their physical
22:55
health, their mental health, as well as their sexual health.
22:57
And So what we found was that people who are communicating
23:00
better about jealousy, there was a very strong relationship
23:04
between that and better satisfaction.
23:06
And I need to check because this is a newer manuscript, but I
23:09
believe it was also associated with far less conflict.
23:12
It was only slightly related to sexual health there.
23:15
I think jealousy will help with that, but there are other things
23:18
that you can do for sexual health.
23:19
That's the big one. Attraction disclosure was
23:21
likewise people who were disclosing their attraction.
23:24
They tended to be happier, less conflictual, and I don't think
23:27
that one was related to health. Willingness to care for
23:29
children, that was kind of a big one that really, I think applies
23:32
specifically to to parents who are Poly.
23:34
If you have a partner, one of the concerns you might have is
23:37
if you bring someone else into either an existing situation or
23:42
you're starting a new one, you might be concerned about how
23:45
that partner is going to interact with your children.
23:47
There are plenty of people who say, honestly, I just don't want
23:50
you to have any interaction with my children, right?
23:52
They want propriety over how those children are raised, what
23:55
they're exposed to. Maybe they decide this person
23:58
isn't someone I want around my children for whatever reason.
24:00
But there are also people who say, well, yeah, I would love
24:03
for you to be involved. In fact, that would be great.
24:05
I want to raise my children and kind of a more community focused
24:08
atmosphere. I want them to interact with
24:10
multiple people, learn different personalities right through the
24:13
home environment. Either of those can work.
24:15
But I think underneath that is in either situation, you could
24:19
communicate to your partner that if they wanted to, if it were
24:23
relevant, you would be willing to help care.
24:26
Maybe you don't provide very much care, but you'd be willing
24:28
to do that because children take up a lot of time.
24:30
There are a lot of resources. So if someone out there is
24:33
willing to do something to be flexible with your children,
24:35
that's going to help a lot, right?
24:37
And that might actually be attractive too.
24:38
I'm thinking about children. Have you ever noticed that
24:41
there's like different types of jealousy?
24:44
Like maybe someone is not jealous of another partner, but
24:47
they're jealous of someone else caring for their child.
24:50
That's actually one of the things we're going to be
24:52
studying in our next project, which will be starting soon, is
24:55
much more about child care. There's a lot in our data set we
24:57
don't know about children, but one of the differences we know
24:59
about jealousy is that men tend to be more upset by sexual
25:03
jealousy than what's called emotional infidelity.
25:05
They experience sexual jealousy more easily than emotional
25:08
jealousy. They kind of respond to and are
25:10
distressed more by the thought of their partner having sex with
25:13
someone else versus as women a stronger distress towards their
25:16
partner falling in love with someone else.
25:19
And so I wonder to what degree if the other person is taking
25:23
care of the children. What that's doing is it's
25:25
showing your husband, hey, this woman's really good at taking
25:29
care of children. Maybe he's going to fall in love
25:31
with her for that. Maybe they're going to have
25:32
their own children. And there's going to be that
25:33
investment, the resource investment, the time investment,
25:36
the emotional investment. Legitimately, that could be a
25:38
reasonable anxiety or fear, right?
25:41
All right. Now, if you had to translate
25:42
your findings into practical relationship advice, what would
25:47
some of those tips be? Looking at the nine different
25:50
practices that we identified in our study, it's not a matter of
25:54
just do these things and everything will be better.
25:56
It's rather talk about these subjects, talk about the
25:59
disclosure of attraction, talk about conversion, talk about
26:02
sexual health, talk about how resources are being distributed.
26:05
And so I am hesitant to say that anyone should do any particular
26:10
thing. For example, one of the items
26:11
that I haven't talked about yet is hierarchy.
26:13
A lot of people in CNM relationships, they'll practice
26:15
hierarchy where one partner will be primary and maybe another one
26:19
will be secondary. And often what's happening there
26:21
is the primary partner might have preferential access to
26:24
resources. You might live with a primary
26:26
partner but not live with the secondary.
26:28
What's unclear is whether that's helpful or harmful because I
26:32
think it depends, right? If you're very hierarchical,
26:35
that kind of hierarchy could protect protect a pair bond
26:37
unit. Let's say you have children
26:38
together, you have shared property together.
26:40
You're giving that partner the attention that the resources
26:44
that they need for the relationship to really function
26:46
at the level that has been expected, right?
26:48
But at the same time, I think there's a lot of wisdom to
26:50
people who argue for non hierarchy whereby often the
26:54
secondary partner gets shortchanged, they get treated
26:57
as a not full relationship. They're kind of kept on the
26:59
sidelines a little bit and they're told to wait a lot.
27:01
So which one of those works? I'm not sure because I think
27:05
it's complicated. I think the higher hierarchy
27:07
will work for some people in some situations and non
27:09
hierarchy will be better for other people in other
27:10
situations. So I would be hesitant to say
27:13
you should do this. You should be hierarchical, you
27:15
should be non hierarchical. But I do think that what advice
27:19
I would give is you should have a conversation about how much
27:22
hierarchy do you need to actually make this relationship
27:26
satisfying, right? Because if you have children
27:28
together, that's an obligation that you have, that's something
27:31
that you did together and that obligations not going away.
27:33
So you might have to legitimately give those children
27:36
more time than you would give to another partner, or give more
27:40
time to your primary partner with whom you've had children,
27:42
just because that's a necessity. But maybe through that
27:44
conversation you realize I'm being possessive or I'm
27:48
demanding your time in a way that's actually genuinely
27:51
unfair, and it's unfair to the second partner.
27:53
So I think having the conversation will help to reveal
27:56
what do we need to preserve to make this relationship work, but
28:00
also what might need to change so that we can actually make
28:03
room for someone else. Again, don't do particular
28:07
things, just have conversations about particular topics.
28:10
I think that's a great advice. All right.
28:12
I want to talk briefly about safer sex practices.
28:16
How do safer sex practices differ on average between CNM
28:22
and monogamous population? So one of the manuscripts that
28:25
we've recently submitted is we use data from my data set as
28:28
well as data from a national Finnish data set.
28:32
So we had a lot of people. We had like about 1000 people in
28:35
our sample. And then we had 11,000 people in
28:37
the Finnish sample. And what we found is that
28:40
overall, people who had multiple partners in either sample, they
28:43
were no more likely to be safe about sex.
28:45
They were no more likely to actually say, oh, you know, I'm
28:48
not putting myself in these situations except for Poly
28:51
people people, people who are polyamorous.
28:54
This is all self report, so it could be false.
28:56
But the people who are polyamorous are saying actually
28:58
we're getting tested for STI's very regularly.
29:01
They scored much higher on these indices of doing things that are
29:04
safe for having sex with multiple people.
29:05
What I suspect might be happening here is if you compare
29:09
polyamory to other types of consensual nominogamy,
29:12
polyamorous people, they find important connection and kind of
29:16
emotional warmth, love, wanting to have that bond with someone
29:19
else. And I think what that does is it
29:22
might actually behave kind of protectively where if you are
29:25
bonded to someone, if you are warm to them, if you love them,
29:28
you are invested in their well-being.
29:30
You are invested in making sure that nothing bad happens to
29:33
them. So there people are probably
29:35
being very responsible, very conscientious to protect the
29:39
people that they care about versus someone maybe if you're a
29:42
swinger, if you're an open relationship, you're hooking up,
29:44
you may not interact with these people again.
29:46
And so the amount of caution you take where you're saying, well,
29:50
how much do I really care about about this person's well-being,
29:53
It might legitimately be less than a partner who you are very
29:56
connected to. And this is one of the things
29:58
you see is some swinger populations, they do have higher
30:01
rates of STISI wouldn't call that the most common pattern,
30:05
but in certain situations you're going to see that.
30:07
So it really depends, I would say from network to network.
30:11
Some networks of partners are very responsible and that does
30:15
come across in some of the data. But then there are plenty of
30:18
networks that are not responsible.
30:19
So I would say the really good advice here in terms of sexual
30:22
health is you have to take that responsibility into your own
30:25
hands. In ideal world, you'd be able to
30:28
trust your network and that they would be 100% honest with you.
30:31
But you might also have to take some of your own precautions,
30:34
take that personal responsibility yourself.
30:36
And I think that if everyone took that personal
30:39
responsibility more, you would de facto create these safer
30:44
communities. Before we go, I'd like to do a
30:46
lightning round with you. So the first few things that
30:48
come to mind. All right, the first one, one
30:51
myth about CNM that you'd love to retire.
30:54
A lot of people see themselves, for example, as very jealous
30:58
people, and because they are very jealous and they have this
31:01
strong emotional reaction, they will not be fit to any kind of
31:05
non monogamy. They couldn't make it work.
31:07
There's not built for it, right? What we know though is that
31:10
there are plenty of people who start out having very, very
31:12
strong reactions not because they are on some level
31:16
biologically more predisposed to jealousy.
31:18
They might be on some level. However, a lot of that intended
31:22
jealousy could again, come from not being prepared to deal with
31:26
it, not being prepared to talk with a partner about it.
31:29
And so if you are not prepared to talk about it, you're going
31:32
to have a really strong reaction because what else are you going
31:35
to do to keep your partner around?
31:37
Then kind of tell them I'm really upset that you're
31:39
thinking about having sex or falling in love with someone
31:41
else, right? Sometimes, like someone might
31:44
think that they would be super jealous and then when they're
31:47
actually in the situation, maybe like they actually feel a little
31:51
differently. Yep, Yep.
31:53
Yeah, a lot of jealousy can come from just.
31:54
You're fabricating what will be, which may be very different from
31:59
what actually. Is right, right.
32:01
All right. Next question.
32:02
What's 1 research finding that most surprised you?
32:06
People do define infidelity differently.
32:08
What we found is that people who are in monogamous relationships
32:11
tend to define infidelity based on specific acts.
32:14
So that is, if you're having sex with someone else, if you're
32:16
falling in love with them, that's infidelity.
32:18
Compare that to people who are consensual, non monogamous.
32:21
What they're doing is they they are being very precise to say if
32:24
it involves deception or it involves breaking an agreement.
32:28
That is what infidelity is. One of the things I think a lot
32:31
of people assume is everyone defines infidelity the same way.
32:34
They do not. People define it differently and
32:36
you have to take that into account.
32:37
Yeah, that's so interesting. 1 research question you wish
32:41
someone would fund tomorrow. How people parent and
32:45
consensually non monogamous relationships, I think that that
32:48
is something that we do not know.
32:49
All the data that I gathered is about how people initiate these
32:52
relationships and then maintain them just between, say, a pair
32:55
bond or between multiple people. But I have no data about what
32:59
happens when you kind of throw children in there and then how
33:01
people navigate that. And I think that is an entirely
33:04
different beast. And I will say this, I'm
33:06
convinced that Polly, especially polyamorous families are doing
33:11
really well to raise their children.
33:12
And I think that that is true. I, I believe that.
33:15
However, as a scientist, I have to say I don't think the data is
33:19
all there yet. I don't think we have really
33:21
good large scale data about how people are managing childcare
33:25
when they're being non monogamous.
33:27
And what we do have is usually non monogamy looks like cheating
33:31
or it looks like something that happens outside the confines of
33:33
monogamy. So if we could get funding for a
33:36
study that is examining parent specifically in these
33:40
consensually non monogamous relationships, I think that
33:42
would reveal a lot of really interesting information.
33:45
Totally agree. All right, now, if you could
33:48
leave one message for the next generation, our Gen.
33:52
Z's, our Gen. alphas, what would that message be and why does it
33:55
matter right now? The most satisfying experiences
33:58
I've ever had, whether emotional, sexual or otherwise,
34:01
has always been in a long term, committed.
34:04
Not necessarily exclusive, committed, mutually supportive,
34:08
loving, safe relationship. We maybe collectively are
34:11
getting worse at figuring out how to maintain long term
34:14
relationships in a way that's really satisfying.
34:17
So my advice would be learn how to build relationships that are
34:21
durable, that are trusting, where you're able to communicate
34:25
about difficult things, things that you really don't want to
34:27
talk about and don't avoid them and be humble because just
34:30
because you think your partner's really bad at communicating, you
34:33
probably are too. You know, I'm going to leave it
34:35
on that. I love it.
34:36
That's great advice. All right, before we go, I want
34:39
to ask you about your experience presenting with Sexual Health
34:44
Alliance at our annual sexological conference.
34:47
I loved it. So I don't normally go to
34:50
conferences with therapists or anything.
34:52
I'm usually straight scientific. And I will tell you it's a very
34:55
humbling experience to get up in front of a group of people and
34:58
say, this is the data I collected and here's how I think
35:00
you should apply it. And then they go, you don't know
35:03
how to apply anything, do you? Not They didn't say that.
35:05
But ultimately it was like, it was like, oh, OK, well, how
35:08
would you do this? What would you do this?
35:09
How would you, you know? So there was this translational
35:12
process of kind of taking science and making it practical
35:15
for people that I don't really think about very often.
35:17
And that was that was great for me.
35:19
But otherwise, the people are fantastic.
35:21
I felt integrated as conferences go and groups of people, it's a
35:25
gem. It's a gem among a sea of
35:27
conferences. This felt like people are here
35:29
because they want to be there, They're learning with each
35:31
other, they're helping each other.
35:32
I thought it was a great experience.
35:34
I love hearing that so much. We have such a passionate,
35:36
engaged community, and that's one of the things I love about
35:39
Sexual Health Alliance. It's every single person.
35:41
It just loves this work in one capacity or another.
35:45
It's human work. It's humanitarian right?
35:47
Ultimately, Sexual said this before.
35:49
You solve some of the basic problems that people have when
35:51
they're in relationships. That filters out into solving so
35:55
many problems in life. All right, Justin, thank you so
35:57
much for being with. Us today.
35:59
Yeah, anytime. All right, bye everyone.
36:02
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