Oh, hi there.

I know we're only just now starting to get to know each other, but there's something about me you should probably know.

And believe me, when I tell you, you're going to look at me in a completely different light and it's a risk I'm willing to take if it means being able to stand in my truth.

Okay, here it goes.

I, Xorje Andres Olivares Urbina, am an aggressive monogamist.

I know, right?

Con este cuerpazo, you would think I'd be sharing it everybody who has a thing for chaparritos like me.

Alas, I've never been one for sharing, at least when it comes to romantic partners.

In fact, when I was dating, it was one of the first questions I would ask.

It was like, what do you do for work?

Do you have any siblings?

What are your concrete thoughts on open relationships and are you okay having sex with me and just me?

Okay was never that forward, but I was pretty clear up front with any potential suitor that I was in the market for an exclusive partner, and for me that meant that they were my only love interest and I theirs.

And I want to specify love interest because I absolutely understand that a single person cannot fulfill our every need as adults.

That's what we have friends for, family, co-workers, hobbies, that sort of thing.

And I'm not one of those toxicas!

But seriously, am I being too rigid in my thinking on this?

Should we all be breaking free from the prison that is monogamy?

I'm Xorje Olivares, and today we're asking this question.

Are you comfortable sharing your partner with another lover?

This is Hyphenación, where conversation and cultura meet.

So I've been really looking forward to today's conversation.

Because it is such a sexy topic, I felt like we needed to start with a sexy question.

And so I'm gonna ask my two guests who are joining me today what they find sexy in another person.

Because for me, it is tattoos.

If somebody walks in with tattoos right now, and like bonus if they got an ear pierced, then I am just putty in their hands.

And yes, do with that imagery, which you will.

But I'm excited to first welcome to the program, Fernanda Fabian, who is a relationship coach and the host of the Polycurious podcast where she facilitates conversations about non-monogamy.

Fernanda, thank you so much for joining us today.

And I wanna ask you, what do you find sexy in another person?

I love that question.

And you know, my answer might surprise you a little bit because I'm not sure everyone feels that way.

But one thing that I always find attractive is when someone says that they're going to therapy, because that means that they are actually working on themselves.

They're actually introspective.

Hopefully that means they might be better communicating or more aware of their issues.

And to me, as much as I do care about physical appearance.

Sometimes just someone who's working on their stuff and is able to communicate is just a turn-on.

I love that.

Making me think differently about this whole topic.

Well, thank you so much for joining us and for providing that answer.

Also excited to welcome Manuel Betancourt, who is a culture writer and the author of the new book, Hello Stranger, which talks about the seductive potential of what it means to be with strangers.

Manuel, what is something you find sexy in another person?

Whether it is a physical trait, personality trait.

Yeah, I was struggling.

I was like, do I go with the physical trait?

I love me some arms, so a nice bicep is sort of where that's my sweet spot.

But for me, the thing that really grabs me is confidence.

Like if someone can walk into a room and sort of lock eyes with me and just that's what turns me into putty.

That's what sort of makes me melt.

Okay.

So just so I can add something that's not so superficial, I'll say it, like if somebody has a sense of humor, if you can make me laugh, then you've got me too.

Well, I'm excited for us to have this chat.

And I do want to preface it all by again, reiterating what I just said in the intro where I am standing kind of firmly here.

I'm a girl just asking a guy to fall in love with her and just saying that I am a monogamist.

It is just how I've been able to approach my relationship since I first knew what dating was.

And I want us to get into this, especially starting with you Fernanda, about if you could tell us about what your relationship dynamics are and how you started this journey towards what you talk about in your podcast, Polycurious.

Yeah, of course.

So I actually have a very interesting dynamic, which I like to talk about because I believe that other people might want to consider it.

In my case, I am non-monogamous.

I'm playing with calling myself Poly at this point because I recently started seeing someone that I'm calling my partner, but that had never happened before.

However, They're my primary partner who I have been with for almost seven years.

Is monogamous.

So as you can imagine, that's a very rare situation, rare dynamic where one person is monologamous and the other person is non-monogamous, especially if the non- monogamous person is the woman.

So I'm not an advocate for monogamy or non- monogamy, I just think that people should do whatever works for them.

And for me and my partner, That's what works.

Manuel, what currently works for you?

What is your relationship dynamic currently?

Yeah, my current relationship with dynamic is, I'm in what people would normally call a throuple.

And so there's this three of us, and I met them when they had been together for five years.

And so we started sort of hanging out, and it soon was clear that the three of us were sort of operating as a unit, as a romantic unit.

And so, we like to say that we're sort of this.

A closed romantic triangle, but it's very porous sexually.

So we sort of practice, it's an open relationship.

We practice consensual non-monogamy.

We're very open and honest about what we do and what we allow ourselves to do with other people, sometimes with each other, sometimes at different play spaces, sometimes in different cities.

And that's sort of what works for us right now.

And that came from after being in years of a monogamous sort of marriage.

And after I got divorced, I made a conscious choice of what I realized that I wanted, what I realize that what I was looking for and really wanted in a relationship was a kind of openness.

And so I never set out to be like, okay, now I'm gonna be part of a throuple or now I am gonna be a part of a poly relationship or a polycule.

It's just, as soon as I open the floodgates in my mind to be, like, I'm going to be open to any kind of relationship dynamic.

That grows organically and that sort of fulfills me romantically, sexually, spiritually in all these different ways.

Like, I'm just gonna follow that.

And what happened and what ended up being sort of in front of me was sort of this thruple and we're now going on, we're gonna be almost three years now that.

So.

That's right now.

I love that you're talking about in this way because I feel like I'm not going to say myself in general because I think having lived in New York, having experienced my my 20s in New York and dating in New York that I don't find love to be at all prescriptive.

Like I like that you can just be spontaneous with it.

You can make decisions based off who you meet at the time that you meet them.

So I love that that's kind of what you're taking about.

But I do want to ask Manuel if there was any hesitation on your part to joining some a relationship dynamic where they already knew how to talk to each other.

They already know how to fight with one another.

They already how to, like, what their body language was with one other.

Absolutely.

And in this, and like Fernanda, the thing that helped me was that I was in therapy.

And the thing that I talked about during those first few weeks in therapy was like I don't know if I can do this.

And like I needed someone to help me guide me through and to sort of feel because it felt like I wasn't just joining a relationship.

It was like I was joining a kind of partnership.

They had been together for a while, they lived together, they had this life together, calibrating that took over like a year.

Just sort of trying to find our bearings so that we would all feel comfortable because there was also hesitation on their part, right?

Like they were, this was something was established, and they were also not looking for a third, they were not looking to sort of change their dynamic, a lot of stuff they had sort of down pat and I then became the thing that illuminated a lot of stuff about their relationship and sort of the thing that my therapist at the time kept saying it was you know, if you found yourself in this situation it's because there was room for you in the relationship and that they're making room for you, being sort of a very active choice for the three of us were making.

I feel like a lot of this comes down to communication.

Each of you have talked a little bit about that.

And I want to go to you Fernanda and ask about what that communication looked like with your partner where you brought up this notion of maybe we should try something a little different.

Yeah, of course.

I actually brought it up the second day we met, and because... Oh, okay!

Yeah, by the time I met Seth, we actually met at Burning Man.

So I think that also contributed to us being super open and honest from the beginning.

We met by the end of the week.

So we were both coming from a very open space.

And the second night we met, we already felt like this was something really special.

Sometimes that doesn't last after Burning Man, but in our case, it did.

Um, so we were just like putting everything on the table.

And again, at that point I had friends that were open.

I wasn't, um, non-monogamous in a primary relationship, but I was already having friends with benefits that knew about each other.

And I was already clear that that's what I wanted.

And when I brought it up, he said, um you know, I'm, I am open to it, um and you know we'll figure it out.

And then about like a month.

After we met, he was actually living in San Francisco, I was living in New York, and we were visiting each other and at some point he was like, hey, do you want to be my girlfriend?

Which I found adorable because I hadn't been asked that since high school.

But I was like really into him, like feeling like this was really right.

And I just said, yes.

And then about like 15 minutes later, I was like hold on one second, does this mean that I cannot have sex with other people.

Is that what being a girlfriend means?

And he was like, yes.

And I was like okay, well, that's fine.

I can make that sacrifice, but I could do that because I knew from the beginning that he was open to it down the line.

He was very clear.

He said, right now I don't feel ready for that, but I want to give you what you want.

I don't know if I can, but I will try.

So, you know, it was a slow process.

And at some points I was like, Oh, can I just.

Can I just do it?

Can I just go on a date?

Because he'd be like, okay, you can go on a date with someone, but it's better if they have a partner as well.

And it's better if it's someone that you knew before you met me.

So it's not as much of a threat.

And obviously, the first time I went to a play party, the first time, I went on a date, he was having a difficult time.

But he honestly is amazing and never put that jealousy or that like discomfort on me, he did say, okay, I'm feeling a little bit like, I don't want to be close to you when you come back from dates, for example, because I'm having a hard time.

So then we agreed that when I'd come back from a date, which like for me, it was the opposite.

I was just like.

You want to steal all the information.

Yeah.

I was just like on cloud nine from meeting a new person.

And then, um, you know, interestingly enough that sexual energy, that new relationship energy, as people call it, actually comes back to my primary relationship.

So I'd want to connect, you know, and even if we didn't have sex, I want to like be close and cuddle.

And he'd be like, okay, I need a little bit of more time to reconnect after you come back from a date.

So we, it was a lot of trial and error.

We decided that I was going to give him time.

Uh, and then, you know, now it's not really an issue, but then I always recommend people to, to do it that way.

Because if we had just started open right away.

Uh-huh.

He might have had a lot of jealousy and security, a lot of difficult emotions, and it would have been a lot more difficult to actually get where we wanted to go because there would have being a lot of missteps and then repair and all that.

Although some people argue that you should start open right away if that's what you want, which I think if you have experience with non-monogamy, if you both have experiences with non monogamy that can also work potentially, but the way it worked for me was to Go very slowly, reassess, talk about feelings, and move from there.

I just feel like it might be so hard if, if both, like coming to an agreed definition and understanding about how you want to see non-monogamy.

I can see that, like, it takes those early conversations.

It takes figuring out what the parameters are figuring out what your boundaries are.

And so, Manuel, was it easy once you started pursuing non- monogamy to be open and honest and transparent about your feelings of like, "That's okay with me and that's not okay with me," depending on what it was from those partners.

Yeah, it took a while.

And the other part was, I was dealing with two people, two people who had gone through the process and had figured it out for themselves, like, so they knew what worked for one another, what parties they go to, what was allowed and what was not allowed.

So by the time I came in, there was like, no rules, like they were very like, you can do whatever you want.

A lot of it was sexual, like we don't romantic and dates like those are not really things that the three of us don't partake or interested.

I think also because there's three of us, so they're like, there's just enough just to scheduling a date between the three of us is hard enough.

I like trying just to like Like, I think we first get three, but then you don't quite know where that fits in.

Yeah, but trying to figure out what I was comfortable with, that maybe the two of them had figured out, worked for them, and then I would be like, oh, actually, I get pangs of jealousy, but I don't want to disrupt what the two of them have achieved.

So it was a little bit of trial and error about what I very comfortable with one of them doing, or the two them doing.

Because the two also approach non-monogamy in what they like outside of the couple or the throuple very differently.

And as it happens, like the three of us look for different things outside.

And so trying to figure out what worked and what made me jealous about one or made me jealousy about the other or made uncomfortable.

And I think the thing I kept coming back to is like, it's okay to be jealous.

It's not okay to make that jealousy that someone else's problem, right?

Like I can have those feelings.

I can feel feelings of fear, of anxiety, of inadequacy, of jealousy, But learning to not lead with those and learning not to act on those instinctively took a while.

Because I was so used to operating on those, like feeling jealous and then lashing out or being angry or having that thing be the way that I then talk about that relationship or that moment and using language like, you made me feel jealous.

And it's like, the jealousy is coming from me.

What do I, what does this mean?

Is it because I'm insecure?

Is it because i need more cuddling?

Is it because I need more reassurance?

Is it because I felt like you were choosing someone else over me?

And it took a while to sort of learn the language.

I feel like it still happens to us.

Like sometimes, you know, none of this is perfect.

None of it is like you, you know, you don't get a diploma and say like, okay, now you're great at being poly.

No, it's sort of every single time is something different and I have gotten better at it.

Only because you did use the word of perfect.

Like it's obviously also not perfect to be in a monogamous relationship.

Like any relationship dynamic, you're gonna realize like, like I'm doing this right or wrong, or like you feel like you're stepping in it at all times.

But I'm curious, at least for me, I say that I pursued monogamy this entire time, not necessarily because I live with any sort of jealousy.

Like I was joking, I'm not really la toxica.

I don't have those feelings.

I think for me I just always seek emotional connections through sex and I like the idea of having that emotional connection with the person that I have spent all these years getting to know intimately in various ways.

And so I feel like this is the best expression of my love to them.

And it's worked.

And I'm glad that it's work.

But I'm curious for you, Fernanda, if there's something about monogamy that just feels misaligned with you, or something that just didn't sit right, which helped usher you into another pursuit.

Yeah, I think for me personally, it has to do with my desire to learn about the world, to grow as a person, and that often happens through connection.

And it doesn't necessarily have to be sexual, but I have found that when that is on the table, that's a possibility.

You can go deeper, even if you never actually get to have sex, or even if your share a kiss once.

I have friends that, you know, we kiss once and that's it, and we're like besties.

And you know, that kiss and that like.

Potential of something else happening that never happened actually made us go deeper, right?

And, you know, it can also be sexual.

It's also about sexual exploration for me personally.

My partner is less kinky than I am, he's less exploratory.

So for me, it also has to do with getting those desires met elsewhere.

And I know there's a lot of stigma around that.

That just makes me less resentful towards my partner.

I still love the sex that we're having.

I still very much enjoy it, but I'm not forcing him to be someone that he's not because I know that I can go and experience that elsewhere.

So you mentioned that for you, emotional connection is very important when having sex.

A lot of monogamous people feel that way, but also a lot of non-monogamous, people feel that way.

And they approach non- monogamy in a way where they have stable partners.

So they might have two or three partners, but they have like very deep emotional bonds with them.

And there's still non- monogamists.

For me, the emotional bond has come a little bit as a surprise with my latest partner, but that's not really like what I was looking for.

In non-monogamy.

Manuel, is there something about monogamy that you feel misaligned with, especially since you mentioned that you were in a monogamous marriage?

So you have some history with this interpretation of love.

Yeah, I think what eventually I realized was like I, for me, it felt constricting.

And for me it felt I had to do a lot of soul searching and sort of figuring out how much of me aspiring to and be committed to monogamy was coming from my own self and how much of that was coming form external pressures, expectations, stories.

These are the stories that we tell.

Romantic stories are about twos.

They're not about threes, they're not groups and all about openness.

They're about the sort of better half.

Soul mate, right, like these things that you're supposed to sort of click in, like this like jigsaw puzzle, you complete me.

And those stories, I sort of realized, locked me in, in behaviors and experiences that I that they were not aligned with what I wanted and sort of what I realized was like, I, for instance, I enjoy flirting.

I enjoy hunting, I I enjoy looking around and being able to follow whatever my desires lead me to on any given day.

And sometimes that is, you know, very fulfilling, sex with my partners, with one of them, with the two of them.

And sometimes it's parties and sometimes that is casual sex in the middle of the day.

Sometimes that is cruising.

And it's I see it sort of like I like having a very expansive kind of palette.

And it took a while to sort of realize like, okay, so if my relationship is not anchored or centered or orbiting around sex, right, like that monogamy, what does it hinge on?

And also then how does sex with my partners, how is, how can it be foundational?

But how is that not the contingent part of the relationship?

I think that's been the hardest part to sort of navigate because I think a lot of us do equate intimacy and emotional connection with sex.

And that if you somehow let something else seep in into that, then you're sort of contaminating it or diluting it as opposed to this theory of abundance.

And so what Fernanda was describing is like, sometimes you can go on a date or you can have the experience and you can bring that back and that actually expands and actually nurtures and nourishes what you have with your primary partner.

So I want to share a quick story.

My partner and I just recently got engaged.

And it was a fun little like, oh my god, we did it moment.

But it was funny because at least two different people after we announced our engagement came up to us and asked us if this was now the moment we were going to try to be in an open relationship.

And I thought it was interesting because it kind of came almost as soon as they said, congratulations.

I was like, Oh, huh, okay.

Now you're making me think at a time where I didn't know we were gonna be confronted with this question.

But I will say that especially as a queer person, as a cisgender gay man, I feel like I receive a lot of judgment because of my decision to be monogamous and because I am pursuing something that seems to feel a bit more heteronormative and a bit more traditional.

But, I do want to focus in on this issue of judgment and starting with you, Fernanda, about having to navigate feeling judged not just by family, whoever else you counter.

But by people you feel very close with and wanna feel like you have a deep connection to.

Yeah, of course.

Well, I have to be honest, I've been very, very lucky.

I grew up in a very liberal family, even though I grew in Mexico.

I'm Mexican.

My mom's side of the family is Cuban, very liberal.

We've always talked about sex and things like that.

I didn't really have a hard time in that realm.

I also became non-monogamous in Brooklyn, which his.

The epicenter for exploration.

The epicenters, exactly, exactly.

And have always moved in very liberal circles, again, the Burning Man community.

So I have personally not faced much judgment with close people.

However, on social media, I sometimes, especially on TikTok, for some reason, on Instagram, I don't get that much hate, but on TikTok I've even had people recording videos, criticizing what I'm doing, especially because... My partner is monogamous and people make an assumption that I'm taking advantage of him.

And there's a lot of like layers of feeling like what I'm doing is unethical or something along those lines.

So I don't love hearing those comments or reading those comments, of course, although they do help with the algorithm.

But, you know, I just know what I'm doing, I don't feel any shame around it.

However... My partner comes from a religious family, and I understand that their views of marriage and sex are very, very different from mine.

So what has been difficult for me has been to have to hide, obviously now that this is my career, right?

So I often have to, hide a little bit what I'm doing as to not damage those relationships with those people that I really care for, and they care for me a lot.

But I know that if they knew, again, especially because their family member, my partner is monogamous, they would just completely change the way they see me and it would just create a lot of issues which I'm trying to avoid.

So that's been difficult.

However, what you said is interesting about the gay community being almost judgmental the other way around of like, why aren't you being... Are you making that up, Manuel, or is that true?

Do you feel?

Oh, no.

It becomes a lose-lose situation.

Because if you're on the one end, they're like, oh, then you're clearly just buying into this heteronormative, patriarchal, traditional, assimilationist kind of strategy.

And how dare you leave the rest of us radicals behind?

Or on the other end, you're breaking all the institutions apart.

Or how dare you then not leave anything is nothing sacred.

I think for me what I've always come down to is that so long as it's a choice and it's a conscious choice that you're making like monogamy is not it's not a dirty word.

I think it's oh yeah to me it's only it only becomes badly weaponized when it's understood to be the default the norm and therefore the thing that we should all aspire to.

But if you know non-monogamy around and you looked at it and you said actually that's not for me, I want to do monogamy.

Okay, that's, I don't know why any of us would have any, I mean, I know why some of us would have some judgment on it, but I do not condone that kind of judgment.

Cause I think it's like, so long as we're all consenting adults and we're understanding, like the three of us have very different configurations, but all of them seem to be rooted in understanding what each of us want out of the relationship and having open conversations with those we're with.

But then this gets it to the- into the issue of disclosure.

And I'm curious, Manuel, are there folks in your family, folks who you are intimately tied to that do or do not know about your relationship dynamic?

So my entire, I think my entire extended family knows about my relationship.

So they know that I'm part of a throuple.

And so that's the extent of what they know about my relationships.

I don't think any of them know about the sort of consensual non-monogamy openness.

It's in my book, but the joy about writing in a language that most of your family does not speak regularly, because all my family is in Columbia.

Is that there was a kind of, for my entire adult life, I've sort of always bisected my kind of identities with like gayness and queerness exist in English and then families lives or exist in Spanish.

It's this weird associating mechanism, but I've, sort of have needed to survive and grapple with and sort of, it has helped me, but it has also helped keep those boundaries very separate.

But like my mom has met my boyfriends.

We spent holidays together with my brother and siblings and sort of they understand that like that the three of us are a unit.

It did feel like a second coming out like when I had to explain it when I have to like tell my mom and it did bridge bring up and dredge up all of those feelings that I had as a teenager when I like disclose something about my sexuality and I felt both personal it needs to be public legible and I needed her to understand it so that I could tell her more about my life.

And I was terrified, you know, and when you're like in your late thirties needing to sort of do that again with your mom, that was a little hard, but she was kind of fantastic about it.

And immediately she was like, okay, tell me more about them.

What do they do?

When am I meeting them?

And she met them like a few weeks later because she came to visit.

And every time she's like, how are the boys doing?

Like she's very much involved in that aspect of it, less so in the like, we all go to play parties, or I have like anonymous sex during the day.

But that's a nice boundary that I feel comfortable maintaining with my family, and with sort of my extended family as well.

Yeah, right.

Because one thing is to be open about the arrangement.

Another thing is for them to read your book, or for example, in my case, to listen to my podcast.

And I have a similar situation where my mom's side of the family doesn't speak English.

So that, well, my mom and a couple of members.

So that that helps.

And recently she was like, oh, I think I can figure out how to translate your podcast.

And I'm like, no, no.

Please do not do that.

Mom, let's keep that separate.

Would you, do you think your mom or, let's put it to the people who do know in your life, Fernanda, is there a misconception they have that you had to clear up right away to make sure that they understood you fully and the choices you made fully?

Yeah, my mom, as open as she has been, had a lot of questions and concerns at first.

Her immediate thought was, she doesn't love Seth or Seth doesn't love her.

Also, she adores Seth and, you know, they have this really cute relationship because Seth doesn' speak much Spanish either, but they somehow they communicate, they love each other.

It's wonderful.

Um, and she was really afraid that I would be, uh, screwing our relationship up because I was dating other people.

So it took a few months and even today, sometimes if I'm talking to my mom about another partner of mine, which I do sometimes, and, she knows that Seth this around, she'll be like, shh, shhh, Fernanda, shut up.

And I'm like, mom, first of all, we're speaking Spanish.

Second of all Seth knows about this.

There's, there's nothing, there is nothing to hide.

So there's still that like impulse.

She's actually come around and she's seen how beautiful of our relationship Seth and I have and she has become a little bit like of an advocate for at least considering the option which I find amazing given that a lot of people do not have that relationship with their moms.

But what I tell people is if you really feel like there won't be an open line of communication and it will just cause cause judgment and a separation with a family member you still want to be close to, then no need to disclose it.

But if you think that there might be a little bit of openness, you might be surprised.

You just need to kind of introduce it bit by bit and explain the reasons why this is important to you, why you do this.

And you might find that people are more open to it than you thought.

Are there still things about non-monogamy or your relationship dynamic that you are struggling with, that you don't have the language for yet and you're just on this quest to make yourself feel comfortable with what you're doing?

First of all, I thought everything would just get easier.

And some of it does.

And other things just are hard.

And the thing that gets easier is how to deal with them.

What I find is that I am still a little, sometimes I'm competitive.

Sometimes I'm saying I'm vain or sometimes I say that I'm insecure and needy.

And so what I sometimes find that I still want to be the thing that they go to first.

So that if they're choosing to do something else or go to something else.

A heart in me sometimes will still be like, well, but I was right here.

Why didn't you decide to spend the night with me?

Why did you decide you go over there?

And I need to remind myself, I need just sort of like step out and be like we were allowing ourselves to that.

And there's still.

Thinking of me like that my space in the relationship is not changing on the day-to-day whatever it is they're doing sort of sexually.

It's not a jab against me, it's not choosing not me, it's choosing something else and so that's that's I find that's the thing that I'm still struggling with and it and that I so easily understand about the choices that I make for myself like when I choose to have someone else over here it's now that I am not choosing my boyfriends, it's not that I'm like, but that's still takes a while.

Mm-hmm.

Day to day.

Is being non-monogamous an identity or is it a practice?

You know, it's interesting because I don't feel like, for example, I've had like months, like half a year where I haven't been seeing other people and I'm okay with that.

So I don't feel like it's as strong of an identity as for other people who feel like they need to be non monogamous constantly in order for them to like feel good about themselves.

However, do I imagine a world where I became fully monogamous?

With my partner and never had sex with someone else?

Absolutely not.

I guess I'm in between seeing it as a big part of my identity and not, because I'm also totally okay with being close for a while and just doing whatever feels right.

But yeah, I think that's another important question to ask.

How important is it for you?

Because you might find that it's not that important for you, and then you have a partner that actually has a really hard time with it.

And then you were like, okay, I'm giving up this part of my identity, and that's fine.

But if that's something that you cannot do, then you need to be straight with your partner from the beginning.

And even if you start off closed, you need to be clear that at some point, this is something that you really need.

And if you don't know, you can also be honest about that.

But at least asking the question is what's important.

I, to me, it's been a practice and cause I don't, I can't wrap it around my sense of self in the sense of like, if I were to isolate parts of myself, I don't think non-monogamy or poly are integral parts of my being, but they're integral parts of what I like and do, do.

So to me they're behaviors.

And so the fact that I'm choosing to do that, and they can be part of my life and my lifestyle and my behavior, but they're not.

And I do know there are people who talk about this like this, that it is sort of who they are.

They identify as poly, even when they're like single and not seeing anyone.

To me, because it's always been tied up in practice, it's how I understand it.

I want to end with this one question, starting with you Fernanda.

What is one thing that you've learned about yourself in pursuing non-monogamy?

Well, I think I have already shared a little bit about this, but that I tried to connection and through connecting with other people and that that for me is a way of growing personally.

So as much as I'm working on finding validation within myself, being my best friend and like working on that relationship with myself too, when I interact with new partners and new people, they do bring out new parts of myself that I wasn't really aware of.

So I think, yeah, for me, it has to do with how I see life and how connection is kind of the vehicle that I'm taking to grow as a person and as an individual.

Um, I have a book to recommend to you for now, like, is my entire book.

It's all about like strangers allow ourselves to see, to see ourselves differently, right?

Like they, they, right.

They give us insights into ourselves that we didn't know we had.

Um, i think the thing that I've learned the most about well exploring non monogamy and the thing I've taught myself is that my that my libido and my desires are not challenges.

I think for the longest time I constantly thought of myself as needing to reign in my desires, reigning my libido, like just really corral it into something that is understandable, that is legible, that it's controllable, that I can handle and show other people.

And I think the thing that I've not realized, like I've actually worked hard to sort of rewire is that acting on them and acting on the ethically and honestly...

Uh, and with the support and encouragement of my, of my partners, um, there's kind of beauty in them.

There's a kind of beauty in being able to sort of, um follow your bliss and your desire and to really let that be a really fun way of interacting with the world and with other people and with strangers and with known people and that it's not about, um, yeah, controlling.

I think for the, for the longest time, I, I felt like my desires needed to be sort of caged and domesticated and instead of just like.

Not let them run wild, but actually allow myself to sort of follow through them and see where they lead me in.

They went into like a lot of really fun different places.

To use the language from the intro, just like break free, like Ariana Grande ourselves out of this like prison of monogamy and just doing what we feel is right.

Well, I want to thank each of you for such a lovely, informative conversation, especially again, coming from my particular POV.

It's so wonderful to hear other people, especially other Latinos talk about relationships, talk about love and sex, and really get me to change some of these long-held beliefs I had.

But.

Thank you so much for your vulnerability and for sharing your experiences and what you've got going on in your lives.

So I really appreciate your time and you being here with us today.

Thank you Xorje.

Well, I do wanna remind our listeners that you can follow our guests.

Fernanda has a podcast, The Polycurious Podcast.

Manuel has a couple books, including Hello Stranger, which is now available.

All of that information will be in our show notes and also where you can find each of them on social media.

And if you wanna find us and if you want to send us an email, just email us at hyp at kqed.org, especially if you wanted to share your non-monogamy experiences.

But until then.

Peace.