How to Open Your Relationship Without Burning It Down, Creative Monogamy, & Create the Relationship You Want With Dr. Joli Hamilton

Ep 302: How to Open Your Relationship Without Burning It Down, Creative Monogamy, Create the Relationship You Want With Dr. Joli Hamilton. Joli is a relationship coach for couples who color outside the lines, a research psychologist, a TEDx speaker, a best-selling author, an AASECT Certified Sex Educator, and host of the podcast Playing with Fire. We talked about how we all like fire, spice, spark but we need to be smart in how we play with fire. She wants people to choose monogamy and not be trapped by it, or not choose monogamy and define their relationships how they want them, whether that be monogamous or non-monogamous. She helps people define and curate their relationships to be what they want them to be. There are no rules! She focuses on harm reduction, there are many ways to love. She points out that not all desires need to see the light of day, some are private and oftentimes your fantasy life is a way to try out new ideas and test the water before discussing with your partner. She addressed the fact that grief work needs to happen and be done when a couple changes their relationship or decides to try out opening their relationship. Those couples also need to grieve the imagined future. She talks about how people can deal with the question they may have--why am I not enough for you? She graciously pointed out that there are millions of ways to open a relationship and taking a stance that fear may be less important than exploration may be helpful. It's about a negotiated relationship, not a dictatorship or cookie cutter life dictated by culture/society.  Denying conversations is to deny really knowing and learning about your partner how they are today, not yesterday, but today. Shame is so challenging to deal with, as are envy and jealousy, but she gives tools around these topics. Abusive relationships need to address abuse first before any other topics, she advises us to decide to work on the relationship or end it. Negotiation is the key to happy relationships and to decide where to be expansive and where to be exclusive creates a relationship co-created by both (or all) members of the relationship. She uses "Growth over comfort" and suggests all people should choose statements to align them and help them process/navigate emotions and feelings. She talked about creative monogamy, defined relationships (which can help people talk about their relationships with others), and how communication now can help us understand our partners as they are now since we all grow and change over time. She shared how to reignite your relationships by thinking about your definition of sex (she has a tool for this), how we should all strive to be a partner who celebrates our partner's weirdness but will also draw lines and boundaries. She touched on why unconditional relationship viewpoints can be dangerous. Connect with Joli here: https://linkin.bio/drjoli_hamilton https://spotifyanchor-web.app.link/e/4Zc9TSb05tb https://www.jolihamilton.com/TYO Ruan's Books and FREE ARC for Audiobooks: https://books.ruanwillowauthor.com/ Support the show Newsletters https://subscribepage.io/ruanwillow https://linktr.ee/RuanWillow Affiliate Firm Tech 15% OFF with code ruan15 https://myfirmtech.com/ruanwillow