Radical Relating with Mel Cassidy

Dr. Alex Iantaffi talks with Mel Cassidy about relationships, non-monogamy, queerness, the power of somatic practices, and love on the path towards collective liberation. 

Mel Cassidy is a somatic relationship coach committed to the path of liberatory love and rewilding intimacy. They specialize in working with queer and questioning humans (and those who love them) exploring post-monogamous relationships—with a focus on polyamory, solo polyamory, and relationship anarchy. They are of Irish, Greek, and Khorakhane Romani descent and have lived in 3 countries, across 3 continents. They currently live in British Columbia, Canada, and work with clients and students around the world. Their first book, Radical Relating, A Queer and Polyamory-Informed Guide to Love Beyond the Myth of Monogamy, is published by North Atlantic Books.

Find out more about Mel and their work at the following links: 

Website: radicalrelating.ca

Social Media: @radicalrelating on IG/FB/Substack/Insight Timer

More on the Radical Relating Book:
 www.radicalrelating.ca/book

Instagram: GenderStories
Hosted by Alex Iantaffi
Music by Maxwell von Raven
Gender Stories logo by Lior Effinger-Weintraub

Transcript

Alex Iantaffi (they/he/lui) (00:01)
Hello and welcome to another episode of Gender Stories. I know that I'm always excited, elated, delighted. I am. I just know the coolest people, or I get to know the coolest people, during the podcast. And today it is my absolute pleasure and privilege and joy to introduce my colleague and friend, Mel Cassidy Mel is a somatic relationship coach committed to the path of liberatory love and rewilding intimacy.

They specialize in working with queer and questioning humans and those who love them, exploring post-monogamous relationships with a focus on polyamory, solo polyamory, and relationship anarchy. They're of Irish, Greek, and Khorakhane  Romani descent and have lived in three countries across three continents. They currently live in British Columbia, Canada, and work with clients and students around the world.

Their first book, is amazing. I've got it here in my hands and the cover looks so good. Their first book, Radical Relating, a Queer and Polyamory Informed Guide to Love Beyond the Myth of Monogamy is published by North Atlantic Books. And I am so excited that I got to not only read a copy in advance, but then get a physical copy. If you're watching on YouTube, you can see just how pretty the cover is. It's just beautiful kind of orange and pink and purple and blue colors. And, ⁓ and I can't wait to talk with you, Mel, about your fantastic book. And I'm not just saying that, ⁓ because I'm cited in it. It's really wonderful. So welcome Mel.

Mel (01:32)
I was wondering if you found where I cited you yet.

Alex Iantaffi (they/he/lui) (01:39)
I did, I did. And I have to say, I had that moment, especially like the quote, I mean, you referenced my work, but then you have this beautiful quote ⁓ at the beginning of the last chapter. And I was like, where did I write this? yeah, that is good. Did I write that? Where did I write that? It was really funny in that moment, but yes, I found it. ⁓ But maybe, know what, I'll read it for a minute. Cause I feel that really describes a lot about the connection I felt with you from the moment I've met you, like in terms of, I know we have a shared passion for like somatic work and of course for intentional relating. And I think this quote, was like, when did I write this? But this is the quote that we're talking about in case you don't have the book yet. "What is liberation if not the work of love every day, including love for ourselves because we're not separate from the world. What is love if not liberation for each and every one of us?"

I like, yes, I wholeheartedly believe that. And I think this is a wonderful guide for people who maybe are like, how do I do this, right? If love is the work of liberation, if love is also unlearning, which is something you really do with your clients and with your course of detoxing from monogamy, right? Monogamy culture.

Like, how do I do it? And I think this book does give just such wonderful guidance on that. So maybe let's start from why you wrote it, why you wrote the book. I always like to ask that question to authors.

Mel (03:14)
I started thinking about writing a book years ago. When people ask me, how long did it take you? I'm like, seven months or 10 years. How are we counting this? But in my early experiences of polyamory, which was around 2011, 2012, 2013, what I just kept encountering, and I was very clear, monogamy doesn't feel healthy for me. It's not working for me. And then I dive into

polyamory and I'm finding the same unhealthy behaviors being repeated. And in some ways, because I was dating more people, I felt like I was getting more exposure to them. Like it wasn't just I was dealing with, you know, one unhealthy or toxic dynamic. Suddenly I had multiple unhealthy toxic dynamics and I'm like, wait, this is, this was not what was advertised. What is going on here? And, and so

Alex Iantaffi (they/he/lui) (04:01)
Mm-hmm.

That is so real.

Mel (04:10)
you know, I'm an endlessly inquisitive person. And I was like, well, what is going on with this? Like, what is causing these behaviors to still show up? It must be something that's not just about monogamy. Or maybe it's some kind of monogamy story that we're carrying over with us into non-monogamy. And so from there, I just leaned into my curiosity and that became a lot of my work. know, before I was a coach, I was writing a blog.

And I would explore these ideas in my blog from like my personal experiences. ⁓ And then when I became a coach, I started going, ⁓ like I'm really seeing how this shows up for other people. And that led me to go, well, what's the solution? Where are the tools that can support us? And, you before I became a coach, I was a body worker and...

I knew about somatic work and I had done, I did training in somatic movement and as you know, I've been training in somatic experiencing. And I really felt like there is a more kinder, compassionate way for us to go about relating. And it means we have to slow down. But a lot of us are scared. The nuclear family paradigm we've lived in for 75 years.

has atrophied our relational skills for being able to be with more people. And we need to get back to basics. So, you know, I think in summary, like the reason I wrote this book is I wanted to offer something as a bomb, as like a healing bomb for all of the unhealthy behaviors that continued to get perpetuated even in polyamory spaces, even in some of the like non-monogamy literature we have.

Alex Iantaffi (they/he/lui) (05:55)
and

Mel (05:59)
there is unhealthy dynamics that are being perpetuated, right? And that's, you know, spread this culture of harm in some cases. ⁓ And I wanted to offer something that just like, I go back to this Buckminster Fuller quote, you know, you don't fight the existing reality, you create a new paradigm that makes the old one obsolete. That's what I wanted to do.

Alex Iantaffi (they/he/lui) (06:25)
Absolutely, not ambitious at all as a project, but I relate because I'm all about, think in a way we're both kind of builders and creators, right? We're really interested in like, but what are the alternatives? What are the other frameworks? What are the other possibilities, right? And I think that's where somatic work can also bring that expansiveness on a really embodied level of like, okay, my nervous system might be experiencing this because of this hangover of monogamy.

of the nuclear family, of colonialism, of patriarchy, but I know there is more space as well in my nervous system. I know the liberation is possible. And I love that that is infused all through the book. You've got wonderful somatic exercises. You have so many tools that you give people. And I love also that this has very much like, there's a queer lens, there's an anarchy lens, right?

Mel (07:00)
Yeah. Yeah.

Alex Iantaffi (they/he/lui) (07:22)
you know, relationship anarchy lens. And when I think about when I first came into polyamory, you know, in the late nineties, I was like, okay, I'm done with monogamy. And I was like, I'm so old. And then when I started being openly polyamorous 25 and change years ago, it was such a different landscape to be completely honest. And I had a very similar experience. I was like, I'm gone.

Mel (07:41)
Yeah.

Alex Iantaffi (they/he/lui) (07:45)
monogamy, sex and all this ways that didn't work for me and also felt dangerous as well. I think for me, there was this element that I felt there was somewhat a little more safety not being in a closed monogamous relationship as a survivor of intimate partner violence. And yet here I was finding all the same toxic dynamic, ⁓ even if it was same gender relationships rather than opposite gender relationships, right? Whether it was with

Mel (08:06)
Thank

Alex Iantaffi (they/he/lui) (08:14)
multiple people. So I so related to some of what you were saying. And at the same time, there was so much pushback on really looking at the structural ⁓ harm, the structural dynamics, you know, there was this idea of like, well, polyamorous revolutionary and some of us were minoritized, but like, but is it or is it just the same shit repackaged and the same people benefit? You know what I'm talking about?

Mel (08:41)
Oh

yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like when Soda brands rebrand, it's like brand new looks and great taste.

Alex Iantaffi (they/he/lui) (08:51)
Exactly. It felt a little bit like that. So maybe let's go there. Let's talk about gender specifically, because this is gender stories, right? And I sure experienced a lot of really not great dynamics across all my genders, you know, because when I started my polyamorous journey, I was still very fan presenting ⁓ queer, but not yet identifying as trans. And then of course, you know, a few years into that I transitioned.

And I'm really, you do talk about the patriarchy. You do talk about gender in the book as well. So what do you think is the role that gender plays in our relationships, all our relationships, not necessarily just romantic, but I know just the light question,

Mel (09:40)
Just

starting with the easy, easy, small and clear questions. Yeah. I mean, I think the most relevant piece of this is the narratives around how we're expected to show up in relationships based on our gender or even more like based on the sex we were assigned at birth. ⁓ And that, you know, that plays into this idea of patriarchal monogamy. So that is basically the idea that

Alex Iantaffi (they/he/lui) (09:42)
Bye. Bye.

don't know.

Mel (10:09)
⁓ intimate sexual relationships are between a man and a woman. And the man is gonna be like the breadwinner and the provider and the woman's gonna take care of the home and the children, right? And that plays into like that nuclear family, which is, you know, has only been around for 75 years and yet we think it's like the be all and end all. And so within that paradigm, even when we are going into queering our relationships,

a lot of us still feel drawn, like we have to somehow adhere to that. Like I used to live in a rural part of British Columbia and I ran into so many queer ⁓ couples who were doing the nuclear family. They had their queer nuclear family and I was very perplexed and I was like, yeah, like I hate saying it, but like I can see who wears the proverbial pants in the relationship because you've really leaned into just re-ascribing those gender roles.

Alex Iantaffi (they/he/lui) (10:53)
Yeah.

Yes.

Mel (11:08)
between you. ⁓ And like I don't want to shame anyone for doing that because I think that's a survival strategy, right? We blend into the dominant paradigm in order to survive. And sometimes I think we need to do that in a like masking way. ⁓ But what are we doing on the inside? Like how are we navigating that internally? ⁓ And so where I think it comes in interesting as well as like

Alex Iantaffi (they/he/lui) (11:16)
Absolutely.

Mel (11:37)
the way that we are relating to other genders and the expectations we may have on them based on, again, those patriarchal monogamous scripts. ⁓ One of the pieces that I confronted very early on was this narrative of like, men are always gonna be pursuing sex and they always are horny and they always want to fuck. And women are the gatekeepers of sex and we decide whether the sex gets to happen or not, know, hopefully.

Alex Iantaffi (they/he/lui) (12:06)
Mm-hmm.

Mel (12:06)
And

also this like decentering, like a women don't feel pleasure or like stories like, women aren't, you know, visually aroused and things like that. And I remember encountering these ideas and going like, what, what? That's what you expect woman to be? Maybe I'm not woman. I mean, that was part of my like my own gender awakening, but ⁓ also just kind of being in that space of going, ⁓ no, this all feels like bullshit.

Alex Iantaffi (they/he/lui) (12:27)
Mm-hmm.

Mel (12:36)
It all feels like there's all these stories of how we're supposed to relate to other people. And we default to them because it feels easier to have a script. Just like for many of us, we default to the gender we were assigned at birth because nobody gives us an alternative, right? It's a script that's given. You're gonna wear this dress, you're gonna put this bow in your hair, you're gonna do X, Y, Z, and then that's good and you don't have to think about it.

Alex Iantaffi (they/he/lui) (13:03)
Mm-hmm.

Mel (13:07)
And so to challenge that, you know, there's a whole debate about whether polyamory is an orientation or not. And I would say in the book, like, I don't think polyamory itself is the orientation. think non-monogamy is the orientation. And polyamory is one of many ways that you could manifest that orientation. But I think there's something to be said for queering up.

Alex Iantaffi (they/he/lui) (13:28)
and

Mel (13:33)
the way we do relationships in the same way that we can queer our gender experience, in the same way that we queer our sexuality. ⁓ We can queer the way we're doing relationships, and one of the ways we can do that is challenging the gender-based assumptions, basically.

Alex Iantaffi (they/he/lui) (13:51)
Absolutely. And that is something that if we're not careful, anyone can perpetuate, right? Because it's like, that's the other thing that I think it's easy to think, well, know, only cis people perpetuate, right, gender stereotypes. And I was like, no, we are all shaped by narratives of gender in a lot of ways. And so it's been really interesting, even, you know, whether it's T for T relationships or trans and cis relationships, I still found that, for example, because

often, you know, and this is very cisgenderist, but sometimes we're like, but you have such feminine, right, inner quote, energy, right? Like my masculinity, so to speak, even those words are all like, what do they even mean? Right, it's very feminine. And then, and then I'm like, well, what does that mean that I'm going to end up with a lot of emotional labor, which often seems to be the case, right? And even when you try to have those conversations and people hide sometimes be

behind identities, right? Well, this couldn't possibly be a gender dynamic because it's the same gender relationship or it's a T for T relationship. was like, you can absolutely have gender dynamics in my experience in any relationships. And so, yes, it is that how do we queer all the stories and really able to step back, don't take things personally and be like, okay, how have I been shaped? What do I wanna keep? What do I wanna filter through? What do I... ⁓

want to negotiate, you know, and how do I do it? Because I think otherwise people take it very personally, right? It's like, well, I couldn't possibly be a toxic masculinity. I'm like, you know, a non-binary person. was like, I feel like anybody can perpetuate toxic cisgenderism or masculinity or whatever we call it. Does that make sense what I'm talking about?

Mel (15:23)
Yeah.

Yeah, and I would draw a parallel, like when someone is transitioning away from a gender script that they were given that doesn't match who they are, you are still in a process of unlearning, right? You're in a perpetual process of unlearning. That process of unlearning is going to be lifelong. And there's always going to be things, and it's painful when it comes up, right? It's painful.

Alex Iantaffi (they/he/lui) (15:52)
Absolutely.

Mel (16:06)
when someone else calls you in on it or you catch yourself doing something that you're like, I just did that because I was told if I do that, I'm a good girl or a good boy, right? And I think there's something similar when we're coming out of mononormativity and exploring non-monogamy or post-monogamous relationships.

Alex Iantaffi (they/he/lui) (16:17)
Mm-hmm.

Mel (16:30)
there's a pain and a grief around, my God, I just acted from a monogamous paradigm. Why am I behaving in this way? Why is it so hard to shake this feeling of like possession or jealousy or insecurity around what's happening in my my polycule? And, ⁓ you know, and I think in the same way as we approach that in gender, we have to really develop self-compassion.

Alex Iantaffi (they/he/lui) (16:37)
Mm-hmm.

Mel (16:59)
We also really have to hold space that's compassionate for other people. Like this is one of the things I talk about in the book. You have to have permission to be messy. You have to embrace the mess. It doesn't mean you go seek it out, but that we have to let go of the way that perfectionism is weaponized. And we weaponize it against ourselves.

Alex Iantaffi (they/he/lui) (17:13)
Yes!

Mel (17:24)
And then we weaponize it against others because it's been weaponized against us by white supremacy culture. And so we really have to let go of that and make it okay for there to be messiness and have the tools that we can be with the messiness, right? That we can somatically engage of like, okay, you know, that wasn't great, that hurt, that...

That was not within my capacity to engage with in the moment, but like, I love you and I really want to figure out a way through this. Let's, what do we need? What does your nervous system need? What, how can we be supportive of this experience? And what I find that is so magical is that as soon as people have that permission to be messy, it is much easier for them to address the internalized

pieces that they're struggling.

Alex Iantaffi (they/he/lui) (18:24)
That rings so true. feel like there are like 10 threads, at least from what you just said, that I want to kind of pull at. First of all, I love that framing of unlearning because I think sometimes when we think about gender or even monogamy, we think of this idea of socialization and then we fall back into like easy binaries. And for me, it's more about really what we've learned about everybody, not just about our gender assigned at birth, but other people's gender assigned at birth. Like it's what you said earlier, like...

You had to unlearn how male sexuality, in air quotes, was, and how women's sexuality, again, in air quotes, was. It's like we're all shaped by those dominant discourses, by those scripts. And so it is a process of unlearning. It is a process of shedding. Like, go for it.

Mel (19:13)
Well, and I think, ⁓ see if I can pull this thread out a little bit more, the ways that we assume a different gender behaves than the one we were socialized can influence how we then show up. And I sometimes feel like a bit of imposter syndrome presenting myself as non-binary because I'm like, don't feel like, I don't have blue hair. Like I don't look like the stereotype.

Alex Iantaffi (they/he/lui) (19:17)
Mm-hmm.

I feel it.

I'll hear you there so you're good.

Mel (19:42)
non-binary. Like I have a very

femme presentation, but like my gender is there's a lot of gender going on. And, and, and, know, that's me kind of like, what am I putting myself, what am I comparing myself to? And, you know, because again, this is in the, in the transing and queering of gender, this is still a realm that we are getting to explore. And so we look for

Alex Iantaffi (they/he/lui) (19:49)
Uh-huh.

Mel (20:11)
Well, who's doing that? Who can I have as a role model? And sometimes that becomes like aesthetic inspiration. Sometimes that becomes like a role model for our behaviors. And in non-monogamy, we go, okay, I know I'm very clear what monogamy is. There's a thousand books that tell me what monogamy is. There's a box. We know what's in it. And as soon as I step outside of that box, well, what am I doing? And so we look to who else is doing that?

And then there's a, whether it's conscious or unconscious, we are trying to emulate what we assume they are doing.

And you know, sometimes that might work for you, but there are, you could have a hundred people in the room who are non-monogamous and you will have a hundred different approaches to non-monogamy. So the way that somebody else has done it is not necessarily the way that you are gonna do it. And I think one of the skills that we've kind of lost as a culture is that ability to really ⁓ discern for ourselves.

what we need, right? We've kind of gotten used to like, here's the limited menu. And you can only have one of these options, just like you can either be a boy or a girl. ⁓ And so you can either be, you know, monogamous this way or non-monogamous in one of these three or four ways. And I really want to blast that open because I think...

Alex Iantaffi (they/he/lui) (21:30)
Yes.

Mel (21:45)
what works for me is going to be different from what works for you and what's going to be different than works for a friend. And yet that doesn't mean that they're incompatible, right? Because there can be similar values driving it. There can be overlap of needs and overlap around where we are compatible and where we can integrate together. And ⁓ I think to have the tools to understand that.

the tools to map that out rather than just following Google Maps giving you directions. That's again, this is coming back to like, did I write the book? That's what I really hope people will get from the book is that this is a map. This is not just follow from A to B to C. It's not just directions. It's teaching you how to map it out.

Alex Iantaffi (they/he/lui) (22:20)
huh.

And that's what I love about the book so much, this wonderful book. I'm just gonna show it again because I really love this cover by the way. It's just beautiful art. But what I really love about this book is this kind of like, there is no one size fits all. And I think sometimes people get so stuck with like the labels and the rules, right? Even when I'm like.

Even when I'm training therapists around working with non-monogamy or working with mixed orientation relationships in any kind of way, people are like, but what about contracts? What about agreements? Right. And I have a deep hate of relational contracts. And if they work for you, that's great. That just, am not like a contract person. I don't know if it's because I have a lot of water in my astrological chart or whatever it is, but I am like, if you give me a relationship contract, I'm like, what?

does this even mean? Because also then you have to unpack every piece, right? And I've seen it go very wrong, right? As a couples therapist, as a family therapist, I've seen that go really wrong. And we could talk about all the things I've seen go very wrong, but in my own life too, ⁓ as we all try to figure it out. But I think that people want certainty. I guess that's what I'm trying to say, that people are like, if I have a contract,

I'm gonna feel safe as I set off for this unchartered sea, right? Or ocean or territory, whichever metaphor we wanna use. Or if I put a label to this, right? I remember an ex say, well, I'm a relationship anarchist. That's why this didn't work. I was like, ⁓ I have like a little different understanding of what happened there, but that's okay, right? Because if we hide behind like, this is who I am and this is how you do it.

then we're not having the conversation about, I'm going to minute, what works for me and what works for you? Why is this so difficult? And how all the other things in our lives intersects. As a neurodivergent person, I have a hard time with transition. When a partner starts dating somebody new, and I'm an anxious attacher.

I'm going to have some feelings. It's not that I don't want the person today, somebody else, but I need a little space to adapt and get used to like different dynamics and, know, and sometimes it's easier than others. And in my experience, it's like the more openness there is to like, you get to have your feelings. I got to have my feelings. We can talk about it. We can figure out if there's any thing that needs to be adjusted. But ultimately we know that.

We want each other's well-being and happiness. And that's the North Star, for want of a better word, if we stay with this navigation metaphor. ⁓ That, for me, is where the magic is. That's, for me, what has worked in my longest-term relationships, whether it's romantic relationships, whether it's friendships, whether it's collaborations. I don't know. Does that make sense, what I'm saying?

Mel (25:17)
I'm good.

Yeah, it absolutely does. And this kind of ties in with one of the concepts I talk about in the book, which is these layers of relating. ⁓ You know, we very often ⁓ jump to the deepest layer by making an assumption. So these layers are awareness, safety, intimacy and relationship. And at the beginning of a relationship, we don't actually know what's going to happen. Right? We assume we know who the other person is.

Alex Iantaffi (they/he/lui) (26:03)
Yeah.

Mel (26:06)
we can feel into the potential of a connection. We're like, oh, this is nice chemistry. There's something possible here. Let's see what happens. And then we're lending our trust to that fantasy. And over time, we're going to discover, OK, here's where the fantasy is accurate. Here's where it's not accurate. And I think when we feel that that fantasy is being challenged,

Alex Iantaffi (they/he/lui) (26:11)
Yeah.

Mel (26:35)
There are all these ways that we will try to grasp onto the fantasy and the prescriptive labeling, the contract making, the rules, all of that. It very often is coming from that place of like, I'm really trying to hold onto a fantasy that I'm not ready to let go of. Like it's a grief process essentially.

Alex Iantaffi (they/he/lui) (26:55)
⁓

absolutely, I've been there. Yeah.

Mel (26:58)
And so, you one of the things that we have to learn how to do is to slow down our process of genuinely moving into relationship. But to do that, we have to have other things in our life that are supporting us with a sense of relational security, ⁓ attachment, ⁓ selfhood.

all of those pieces because if your entire sense of self safety is relying on a partnership and that's why you're leaning in to be like, we are going to label this, we're gonna lock this in because that's what I've learned to do in monogamy culture. ⁓ And then your fantasy, if that relationship turns out to be more fantasy than reality, you're going to find yourself feeling very destabilized.

Right? It's a high level of distress. And I've been there. I'm sure, you know, and we've probably both seen lots of people going there. And ⁓ it's not an impossible place to get out of, but it's a place where there's so much grief and a lot of loss. And ⁓ it can be a journey to come out of that and recognize that it's not you.

Alex Iantaffi (they/he/lui) (28:00)
Same.

Mm-hmm.

Mel (28:23)
We live in a culture that has denied us access to more support and told us we're going to get it from monogamy.

Alex Iantaffi (they/he/lui) (28:30)
I love, yeah, exactly.

I love that. And I love that you write about this in the book as well a little bit when you talk about self-abandonment, right? And that's something that, for example, I really, the last breakup, one of the gifts of that has been that I really focused on like, what would it look like not to abandon myself so that

by the time the relationship shifted or could have shifted or ended whatever, it wasn't as hard as it's been in the past because actually I felt very grounded in myself, if that makes sense, right? And I think that's one of the things that often traditional ideas of monogamy, but even in non-monogamy, there can be some of that. It's like we don't need to self-abandon to be in relationship with others. In fact, the...

The less we self abandon, the better the relationship in my experience, right? The more we're rooted in like, this is who I am, these are my needs and wants. Sometimes there's gonna be convergence, sometimes there's gonna be divergence. If they were converging with somebody else and then they diverge, can we change the relational container rather than put into question the whole connection? that, you know, and I think that's really hard for folks to do. I think often I...

done it myself, I've seen other people do it, we're still attached, but this is what this relationship is, right? And then, yeah.

Mel (29:54)
Yeah.

Well, there's a romanticization of that self abandonment. Like I talk about in the book is like a litany, right? We have this kind of narrative that we put in our minds of like, I have to keep doing this. I have to sacrifice. I have to put myself aside in order to demonstrate my love for this other person. And as you said, like it impacts the quality of relationships.

Alex Iantaffi (they/he/lui) (30:00)
Yes, absolutely.

Mel (30:23)
I mean, for me, on the receiving end of that, when I recognize that I have a partner or even a friend who's doing that, it's really hard for me to trust them. Because if you're sacrificing yourself, that means you're ignoring your no. So how can I possibly trust your yes?

Alex Iantaffi (they/he/lui) (30:29)
I thought that

Yes.

Exactly. I love that. I talk about that with people all the time. If I can't trust your no, I can't trust your yes, right? That's why we want to be authentic in relationship, to really show up authentically in relationships. But that's still so hard for people to do because there is this fear. If I show up authentically, I'm still going to be worthy of love, right? Is that such deep fears for belonging, you know?

Mel (31:11)
And there's another layer of that, which is, you know, what becomes possible when we're honoring ourselves? And I always come back to the role of self-relationship in being resilient against dominant culture, right? And of course, we're living in a time right now, I have the privilege of being north of the border, but even here we're seeing things too. And like there's,

in the face of white supremacy, in the face of fascism, in the face of a lot of different systems that really thrive on people feeling unworthy, thrive on people feeling powerless, self-honouring, not abandoning yourself, knowing your power, showing up to your relationships authentically and truthfully.

Alex Iantaffi (they/he/lui) (31:52)
Hmm.

Mel (32:10)
These are all skills that will terrify those powers. And I truly think this is why they are so scared of trans and queer and anarchy because we say we don't recognize your power over us.

Alex Iantaffi (they/he/lui) (32:21)
I don't know.

Absolutely.

100%. Yeah. ⁓ I'm sorry. I got excited. Yes.

Mel (32:32)
We thrive. It is exciting.

We thrive in spite of their oppression because their rules don't even apply to us.

Alex Iantaffi (they/he/lui) (32:43)
⁓ huh.

Absolutely.

Exactly. And we don't even need the legitimacy of the state, right? It's like, and even though like idea of state and term, you know, is questionable ⁓ in a lot of ways, right? And it's very different, I think, than sovereignty, the idea of state, you know, and we could go on a tangent on that, but I want, was having so much, yeah, go ahead. Let's do it.

Mel (33:14)
Well, I think I want to tie that into something we talked about before we started recording, which is that

Romani saying of, ⁓ borders are scars on the earth. And, you know, I really, when it's part of writing the book, you know, I really dove into how we create attachment experiences, not just with people, but with the land. And

Alex Iantaffi (they/he/lui) (33:25)
Mm-hmm.

Mel (33:41)
And then thinking about that quote, you know, from my ancestral traditions of, well, how do we relate, you know, when there's borders in our relationships, when there's borders to our loving, that feels like a scar on humanity. And so there's all these different parallels here around like what we see happening in the global consciousness around

Alex Iantaffi (they/he/lui) (34:01)
Mm-hmm.

Mel (34:09)
we are not free till we are all free, like that collective liberation mentality and goal and the awakening of that. And I'm not saying that you have to be polyamorous to do that, but I think that there's an expansion of these ideas that's going on. to me, what I'm really curious about is like, how do we then apply that into our romantic and intimate relationships? Because if...

you're doing liberatory work everywhere else, but then you're like, no, this one person is mine. This one person belongs to me exclusively and no one else. Then what is that about?

Alex Iantaffi (they/he/lui) (34:42)
Exactly.

And even more than that, like if we, because it's not just about romantic relationships, I think this is such an important point. It's also about all our relationships, right? It's about resources, right? If for example, I only share my resources, whether they're financial, emotional, cognitive, with like my family of origin, right? It's like, what does that mean, right? And I've seen so many people, even so many queer people sometimes fall back on like differentiating.

between whether it's family of origin or whether this is my family, right? And I'm like, rather than other people in community, because I don't think it's just about romantic relationship. I think it's also about how we show up to our friendships, how we show up to community, you know, whether we feel like, you know, whatever kind of wealth we have, it doesn't have to be financial wealth, can also be like stability. It can be stable housing. can be...

wealth of knowledge, right? It can be having access to networks, like, right? There are so many different kinds of wealth, but if we hoard it, I think in certain ways, that is also not liberatory, right? And yet, even I've seen it, even folks were like, yes, I'm an anarchist or I'm all for collective liberation. And then there is this like closing of the ranks, if that makes sense. ⁓ Yeah.

Mel (36:09)
Yeah. And we can

have boundaries around how we share, right? You don't have to just go full communitarian, but I think it's not being so precious with it in a sense of like, and I think that also invites us to really see the humanity in each other, really see the deep truth that each person can hold and the needs that we all have. ⁓

Alex Iantaffi (they/he/lui) (36:14)
Absolutely, of course, yeah. No.

Exactly.

Mel (36:39)
And one of the things that I really wanted to focus on in the book is that this isn't just about how to do polyamory. This is for all the people who are like, yes, standard patriarchal, hetero and mononormativity is not working for me, but I don't know what to do to switch that up. And so I look at it in terms of not just erotic relationships, but also social and emotional and practical. And I think we're used to as queer humans,

Alex Iantaffi (they/he/lui) (36:51)
Mm-hmm. ⁓

Mel (37:09)
the idea of having family of choice, the idea of, okay, we're gonna have a collective home of quirky queers and that's how we're gonna survive the housing crisis. ⁓ And so we have these concepts there, but I really feel like, again, everybody kind of gets to that point where they will feel challenged by the scarcity paradigm coming in. And you see that through the last few years with pandemic and lockdown.

Alex Iantaffi (they/he/lui) (37:16)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mel (37:38)
lot of people suddenly felt the scarcity paradigm kicking in. ⁓ I've seen a lot of people move back towards more monogamy as a strategy for safety. ⁓ And even in what's happening now, people are like, well, I need to be with my spouse or my common law partner. Let's move in together because that feels safer with everything that's going on. And yet, safety is in numbers.

Alex Iantaffi (they/he/lui) (37:41)
Yeah.

Mel (38:08)
Safety is in widening your network of support, in growing your ecosystem of connections. And that doesn't mean you have to go date everybody, but it does mean like, how do you share your resources with more people? How do you invite more people into your spheres of love and intimacy?

Alex Iantaffi (they/he/lui) (38:31)
Absolutely. And I love that. I agree that it's not just about non-monogamy. I know people who are monogamous who are able to practice their monogamy in that way, where they do not abandon their friendship or there isn't kind of the same hard line between this is my relationship, right? These are my friendships. And I think it is possible no matter what the relational container is, but it's so fascinating because Mac John and I were just talking about

something related. think on the weekend we were catching up after a few months of not being able to catch each other. And we were talking about all the parallels in our lives and I was going more internal and they were going more connected. But one of the things we talked about was, you know, isn't it interesting that it's so hard for people to do this kind of collective housing, intentional housing. And then I think a lot of us are finding ourselves in this

families in air quotes They're not family of origin or blood families. They're really families of belonging. And we started really talking about how it's very different when people are leading with values and ideology over people and folks who are leading with relationship first. I was talking with them about how we both have this value. Even our creative partnership, it works so well because it's always been relationship first.

Right? and, you know, we started as a romantic relationship, but even when we broke up, whatever that means in those terms and our relationship changed, it was always like, I care about you, you care about me. We also care about community and what happens when a relationship changes shape. You know, we didn't want to be there like, you can be at this party and I can be at this party. You can have this people. could have this. I was like, this feels so gross to both of us. Right.

And so I think there's a, you know what I'm talking about, right? Some people do that.

Mel (40:26)
yeah, I'm just trying to imagine

knowing Meg-John as well. Just trying to imagine you and Meg-John trying to navigate that note.

Alex Iantaffi (they/he/lui) (40:33)
Yeah. No, that was like, we were very clear that that is not how we wanted to do it. Right. We were like, we don't know what the alternative is because this was a bit 20 some years ago. This would have been like 2004 when we were having those conversations. Right. So it's been a minute, but we were like, okay, this got to be another way of negotiating this. But for me, it's like, there is this difference when people see the relationship as more important than

you know, this attachment or holding on to like rules or values or I mean, values are important. Don't get me wrong. But there is something about the care for the connection that feels really important, which, I think that's what I love in your book as well, that I think that care for the relationship comes through. I don't know. Does that make sense?

Mel (41:28)
Yeah, and it reminds me of that principle in somatic experiencing of being present to the here and now. Right? So in SE we talk about like, you trauma takes us away from presence to the here and now. Trauma can leave us stuck in the past and, you know, we're time traveling to try and find resolution or it can leave us fantasizing about the future. And so we do somatic practices to have more capacity to be present to the here and now. And I think

Alex Iantaffi (they/he/lui) (41:35)
Yes.

Mm-hmm

Yes.

Mm-hmm.

Mel (41:56)
that is very true of relationships, right? We can be stuck in the past of like, why is it not like it used to be? Or we can be stuck in our fantasy of, one day, this will happen. But to actually be present to the here and now is such a powerful gift. And to be able to honor where every relationship is at any given moment is really, really powerful. mean, in my own life, I find it very hard to

Alex Iantaffi (they/he/lui) (42:03)
Yes.

Mel (42:25)
put hard and fast definitions on a lot of my relationships. Because I was like, you know, the people I love the dearest are my chosen family or my friends. And they're the people I'm prioritizing over lovers and partners most of the time. And I've had partners who don't understand that and were like, why aren't you prioritizing me? And I'm like, because I don't want to, because that's not what I feel is authentic here.

Alex Iantaffi (they/he/lui) (42:29)
Mm-hmm, same.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mel (42:52)
It

feels really exhausting to try and change that beyond a certain degree. Obviously, let's explore what's possible, but I'm not going that far. I don't have the capacity to do that much. And I think to just get really true and honest about this is what's real. This is the here and now. I think of my roommate who is, I'm.

I love her so much. We've just moved in together. We've known each other for a decade. We dated a decade ago, you know, and that love has never left. And there's a ⁓ tremendous sense of ease in our relationship always. And there's this like unending support for each other. And so there's just this like, it's a sweetness to it that we know we can just

be completely fluid in how we're showing up for each other. Are we showing up as friends? Are we showing up as roommates? Like what hat are we wearing right now? And I think that kind of fluidity in all our relationships is itself liberating. if no other reason, ⁓ you are expending less energy stressing out about a relationship not being what you want it to be.

Alex Iantaffi (they/he/lui) (44:17)
Oh, absolutely. And relationships change over time, right? One of my nesting partnerships, we've been together for over 25 years. I've fallen in and out of love, you know, and we've had long periods of no sex, right? And sometimes I think, oh, wow, if we'd been monogamous, I think our relationship would have survived in terms of friendship because it is so...

authentic and honest and we have such deep, genuine care for each other. And also we made that commitment, right? We're committed to each other's happiness. Our friendship is way more important than any other. And friendship even feels redacted. It's really the deep care we add for one another. The deep care we have for one another is more important than whatever happens to our relational container. And I think that's why we've been together for over 25 years, because

we have been able to be in the here and now, even when it's hard and we had hard conversations and we have to process a lot of our own feelings and swap for each other's feelings and all of that. But it's such a gift. I think that, you know, there's a few connections. One is that to me, it does connect to this idea of like borders, right? It's like when we create those rigid borders, even between type of relationships, right? Like I, and...

And then another piece of like, that we don't like, there's something about when we label relationships in ways that are so rigid. I don't think we can honor the year and now, right? Like, ⁓ I know that culturally one of the things I often talk about is like, I don't understand dating. Like dating is like, it's still, you know, I'm

I've lived in Anglo dominant speaking countries for 32 years and I couldn't give you a definition of dating. I'm like, is this like a Hulu trial? Like, you know, 30 days and then you decide if like this person passes the, you know, I'm like, okay, we're getting to know each other. We might be in an initial stage of relationship and then we might decide where that maybe friendship is a good relational container. We might decide.

we're compatible sexually, but not romantically. We might decide we're one thing and then another, but I find that people often want to make those distinction, right? Well, now we're dating. Now it's that there's even somebody who's like, you know, small our relationship, big our relationship. was like, I don't know what that means. ⁓ I mean, they're all relationships, right? It's like the, if I go visit another land,

Mel (46:50)
Mm-hmm.

Alex Iantaffi (they/he/lui) (47:02)
I'm going to be in a temporary relationship with that land and place and I want to honor it. And I want to be respectful, even if it's not a long-term relationship, right? Similarly for me with people, I'm like, even if it's like a hookup, I still want to be really, I want to honor the year and now. And that seems really something that's really hard for a lot of folks, especially white folks to capture. don't know, I saw you smile, so I don't know.

Mel (47:28)
Well, and when

we've been taught that sex is the measure of success in relationships and like you have hot sex, that means you have to like spend your life with this person. Like, you know, those narratives, it puts a lot of weight on the sex. so, you know, people go into distress of like, the sex isn't the same or you haven't had sex in a week or something. And I'm like, a week? That's not long at all.

Alex Iantaffi (they/he/lui) (47:36)
Yes.

Yeah.

That's not very long at all, I agree. ⁓

Mel (47:59)
But

for some people that feels like an eternity. And I think honoring that we as human beings change, as people we change, as we age we change, our bodies physiologically change. And I think of it as like, there's a change in the seasons. Over time, any ecosystem changes. ⁓ Where I used to live, there's a beautiful, beautiful river, the Pentledge River or Pentlick River.

Alex Iantaffi (they/he/lui) (48:02)
Mm-hmm.

Mel (48:28)
And I wrote a lot of this book sitting next to the river. I did a lot of my editing there. And every summer when I would go down there, and every summer there would be a little more erosion. And there'd be like new plants that turned up. And there'd be like slight shifts in the ecosystem. And then like maybe some part crumbled away and a tree had fallen down. Ecosystems are not static. Nothing in nature is static, not even the rock.

And so as relationships, and this goes back to that metaphor I use in the book of the relationship ecology and the relationship landscape, know, sometimes we have a relationship and it's over here in this part of our garden. And it's like, it's not thriving here. used to thrive here. We need to transplant this to somewhere where it's gonna be better nourished. It's gonna get better water. It's gonna get better nutrients.

Alex Iantaffi (they/he/lui) (49:05)
Yes.

Mel (49:22)
Sometimes, yeah, we need to bring in more nutrients. So we need to do some work to replenish what's supporting this relationship. But it's okay to move them around and it's okay to honor that your ecosystem does change because that is the nature. That is the only constant in the universe, change.

Alex Iantaffi (they/he/lui) (49:26)
Mm-hmm.

Absolutely. And how important it is to like be authentic and also really recognize that in relationships, we might change at different paces. And so there might also be a little bit of like imbalance as we go through those changes or, you know, like just like in nature, right? As things change, there can be some, you know, it's not always pleasant. It's not always pretty. And I think that we are so

I don't know, sometimes it feels like whether it's capitalism, whether it's patriarchy, whether it's colonialism or white supremacy, we have become so attached to things being neatly packaged. And like, this is what this is, right? And this is the right way to do it. And this is the wrong way to do it. And I don't think that any relationships can be that way, just like the ecosystems are not that way. We shaped and changed, we adapt, we figure it out. ⁓

And if we are not willing to do that, I think that a lot of pain then can be caused to ourselves and each other. You know, and I've definitely done it. I've definitely, I've had the grasping, right? And I understand I have a lot of empathy for it, but I know the more I can be really honest and authentic and vulnerable, then the more authentic and honest and vulnerable my relationships are if that's reciprocated, if that makes sense.

Mel (51:10)
Yeah,

yeah. And that's, that's where I feel like the somatic practices again come in so helpful because they help us stay soft and open. And to go back to the book, you know, I, I intersperse the chapters with these somatic pauses with relational practices with reflective journaling prompts, because I see so often when we get scared, we disconnect.

Alex Iantaffi (they/he/lui) (51:27)
Yes.

Mel (51:36)
from our own softness and we go into like an intellectual rigidity as a strategy for dealing with overwhelm. And there was a lot of that in polyamorous spaces where we get very good at being very intellectual and coming up with new words and new terms and new rules and new structures. And I mean, I'm guilty of that too, but.

Alex Iantaffi (they/he/lui) (51:41)
Absolutely.

So many words and

so many rules, that's real.

Mel (52:02)
But, you know, to soften that, to make this something that is more of an embodied journey into the book, like for the book launch online, I was like, I don't want to do a book reading, we're going to do a book experiencing. And so there's some art in the book and the artist Joan Trimfam, who I've known for years, and it's just the most wonderful human, ⁓ she took that art and she created coloring pages based on it.

So we gave people a blank coloring page so that they could engage with the book in a different way. And so now we've put that together to be like a little side thing that people can buy on my website of like, can have this other way to engage in this. And I'm really excited to see how people take that invitation and like, you know, explore it to its possibilities of how do you make this an engaged embodied.

Alex Iantaffi (they/he/lui) (52:33)
I that.

Mel (53:02)
practice for yourself. That this is not just an intellectual theoretical exercise. My invitation to you is very much put this into practice. How do you live and breathe in a more radical way in the ways that you are relating, not just in your intimate relationships, but with everybody because our world needs it.

Alex Iantaffi (they/he/lui) (53:06)
Mm-hmm.

Exactly. And I was trying to find one of the beautiful illustrations, but I was so engrossed in what you were saying that I couldn't pay attention to two things at once. But the illustrations are really beautiful. And of course, when you're looking for something, you can never find it. Oh, here we go. This is one of my favorite. Oh my God. That's the one that I was looking for. I was like, that's one of my favorites. Oh my God. That is so funny. I was like, this is the one. I mean, I found that I picked, I was like, this is the one I'm looking for.

Mel (53:38)
I can show you I got I got one bookmark here. Where is that?

Alex Iantaffi (they/he/lui) (53:51)
It's just this beautiful illustration and it just feels so, because it is a relational landscape and it's so gorgeous. If you're on YouTube, you can see it. And if you're just listening to this, you might have to go to the YouTube episode and watch towards the end to see the picture. ⁓

Mel (54:08)
Well, and with

the art, you know, the idea was that each of these quadrants have different qualities to them. So like the emotional quadrant is all about the heart and the heart is, you know, takes on the quality of water because emotions are fluid. And so Joan drew all these like, yeah, all these different, your heart teacher. And it's this like fluid landscape. So there's water and there's like a lotus flower in there. And then

Alex Iantaffi (they/he/lui) (54:16)
Yes.

I that's what happened to my heart t-shirt.

Mel (54:37)
we look at practical and practical's earth. And so there's a lot more roots and stones and soil. And then the erotic is fire. And so it's more like an arid desert, beautiful landscape. There's a cactus in there. And the social landscape is more about air because intellect and ideas and sound and the sharing of ideas. And so there's more like kind of breezy birch trees. the way that Joan

Joan has a gift for taking these very complex ideas and synthesizing them into art. ⁓ And so I really, wanted to include them because I think it's another way that we can engage. And then when you see these things out in nature, maybe you will be reminded of these concepts.

Alex Iantaffi (they/he/lui) (55:10)
Mm-hmm.

Absolutely. I love that. love that. was like, that's exactly the illustration I was looking for. ⁓ I feel like I could just be having this conversation forever. It's like, it's such nourishment to talk about all of this. And I love that we started talking about, you know, love as a practice of liberation. And in a way that this is what I really, really love about this book is that it gives tools for that practice.

You know, and when I think about how hard I had to, and I'm not getting a little emotional because it was really hard over the last, you know, 25 plus years to figure out what kind of relationship am I going to have if I'm not going to do this monogamous relationship, right? There were not a lot of examples, you know, the the free love folks of the seventies did not look appealing. There were a lot of really real issues with patriarchy there. mean, hearts and stars. I also have a lot of

And their polyamory was not my polyamory. And then there was like the excitement when relationship anarchy came out as a framework, which I also have a lot of thoughts about that gets weaponized in interesting ways, I think, as a term, but that's a whole other conversation. And so I love that we started from love as practice of liberation and that we are ending kind of our episode, much as I would like to keep talking. And we'll have to have more conversation.

about how it's also a skillful practice. And this is, think, what this book is about. It's like, how do we get the skills? What are the skills? What are the ways of practicing those skills? Because I would have loved to have this book in my hands 25 years ago, and in the hands of my nursing partner at the time, where God bless him, was like, well, I want to be in your life, so I guess we'll figure it out.

That is, that was literally our relationship agreement. I was like, I'm queer. I don't even know if I'm into cis men anymore. I haven't been with a cis man for a few years, you know? And it was just like, fair. I just want to be in your life. We'll figure it out, you know, and we're selling each other's lives, you know? And, and that for me, like if, if we had this, I think I would have spared myself and probably other people. I'm sure other people.

Mel (57:29)
you

Alex Iantaffi (they/he/lui) (57:48)
a lot of pain, ⁓ you know, and so I love it. I love that we have a guide, a map for some skills and some practices that I think anybody, or not, polyamorous or not, monogamous or not, can benefit from. I really think your book is such medicine and such a gift to the world. So thank you for writing it, truly.

Mel (58:11)
Thank you. ⁓

thank you, Alex. ⁓

Alex Iantaffi (they/he/lui) (58:15)
Yeah,

I really mean it. just gonna like, that's why I'm like, I slowed myself down because I'm like, I do have a lot of gratitude for this as I was reading it. I did tear up a few times and go, oh, I wish I knew that. Oh, I wish I could go back in time and tell that to my 20 something years old, right? I wish I could tell that to my 30 something years old, right? And what a beautiful thing to see it being birthed into the world. And I don't think it's an accident that so many of us are thinking about.

relationships and relating this year. So many of us have books like Dean's Pay, who I interviewed last week or the week before, what is time, has a book on relationships, right? So watch out for the episode, Gender Stories Listeners. You know, you have a book about relationship. Mac John and I have a book about relationship. TAC Molloy has a book about relationships. It's like there is such hunger for those tools for this practice. So thank you. ⁓

Mel (58:52)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Alex Iantaffi (they/he/lui) (59:13)
And the world is also a lot. So one of the questions I've been asking all my guests when we come towards the end of the episode is what is in your life at the moment? Maybe a practice, maybe something, anything really that's bringing you pleasure or nourishment or comfort, or just simply some spaciousness and a little breath.

Mel (59:37)
Hmm. You know, I just moved a few weeks ago and ⁓ last night I was like, I need to take myself for a walk in the neighborhood. It was like one of the last kind of warm evenings that we'll have, I think, for a while. And I ended up in the park nearby and just sitting on the swings and I looked up and I could see stars and I was like, yes, I can see the stars.

There's just something lovely whenever I sit on a swing set, you know, that sense of play that comes back, that reminder of the joyful child that has no burdens, has no constrictions put on them yet. And I just sat there kicking my feet back and forth and...

It was the most soothing, grounding evening for me. ⁓ Because I was also in nature and just like smelling the smell of the earth that I'm around now and noticing how it's different from what I've been used to for the last few years. just that like there's something about being in nature helps me connect more deeply to myself. ⁓ And I'm really grateful that I have access to that.

Alex Iantaffi (they/he/lui) (1:00:42)
Yes.

Mel (1:00:58)
like really close by and like I'm in a pretty urban area but you know that there's always those little gems that you can find ⁓ and so for me yeah it's the times I get to spend in nature.

Alex Iantaffi (they/he/lui) (1:01:14)
love that. And I feel that I was just in my amok in nature yesterday going, oh yes, the trees and the birds and the sky and the clouds. It's like so yummy and beautiful. And is there anything that we haven't talked about that you hope that we would talk about or anything that you want to leave the Gender Stories listeners or watchers for those of you who watching on YouTube with?

Mel (1:01:39)
I mean, I feel like there's things we could talk about for hours and hours and hours and hours, which I think we're gonna have a chance to, because we're gonna be presenting at a conference together later this year. ⁓ I think I just wanna thank you because you are, I know you were like, Ash, I'm old, but you are one of the elders.

Alex Iantaffi (they/he/lui) (1:01:43)
True.

Mm-hmm.

Mel (1:02:06)
I'm sure that comes with mixed feelings, but I think of eldership not just about age. Eldership is around wisdom and the sharing of wisdom. And this work isn't possible without the elders who have come before. And as you know, your wonderful colleague Meg John helped mentor me through the writing process. And I'm indebted to them for this too. And there are so many incredible elders. ⁓

Alex Iantaffi (they/he/lui) (1:02:06)
Bye.

Mel (1:02:35)
that bring their wisdom to this and that have also brought their misadventures to this world of non-monogamy that I think we're all collectively unpacking going, how do we do this in better ways? And so to honor that lineage of wisdom and I think is really important. So thank you for all that you do and how you show up in the world and the spaces that you create and the kindness that you bring to everybody because

your role modeling what we all want to and I think will benefit from cultivating more of in ourselves.

Alex Iantaffi (they/he/lui) (1:03:10)
thank you. I still feel like such a mess, which is why whenever anybody uses the word elder, I was like, I have so much to learn still. Like, you know.

Mel (1:03:18)
Embrace the mess.

It's great.

Alex Iantaffi (they/he/lui) (1:03:21)
The mess is the message, as McJohn has taught me. And don't we just learn in the mess, just like kids play with mud and figure out what to do with it. And I think that that's another thing that there is like, you talk about such important topics, but there is also like a wonder and a beauty and a playfulness all through. And I really love that, that everything is held.

with very open hands, I feel. And that's also my experience as I've been getting to know you, you know, through our conversations that, that spaciousness and I so appreciate it. So thank you. Thank you for brushing this book and thank you for all the work that you do outside of writing this book of coaching people, holding people as they navigate this.

And dear Gender Stories listeners, thank you for listening or watching if you're watching this on YouTube. And I hope that whatever your relational container, you can find ways of loving that truly feel free and liberated for you and for the people around you. And until next time.