Episode 134 - Exploring Polyamory and Compulsory Monogamy Culture - with Millie & Nick from Decolonizing Love
Millie & Nick are educators on polyamory and how European colonization changed how we love. In this episode, we dig into the history behind our current mainstream relationship model, explore why more and more people choose to be polyamorous, deconstruct the most common misconceptions in regard to having multiple partners, and finally discuss how monogamous lovers can strengthen their connection by borrowing skills essential in polyamory.
Topics
Introduction to Decolonizing Love and its focus on polyamory from a decolonizing perspective
The impact of colonization on relationships and the Western obsession with romantic love.
Communication, boundaries, managing jealousy, and developing emotional intelligence.
Positive aspects of polyamory and its impact on personal growth.
Links
👉 If you are ready to have your most daring end-of-year so far, click here to join my intensive 1:1 Coaching program THE AUDACITY.
Resources
Decolonizing Love on Instagram:
Transcript
[AUTO-GENERATED]
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:00:06]:
Welcome to the self growth Nerds podcast. I'm your host, Marie, a courage coach, creative soul, and adventure seeker. Since through hiking the Pacific Crest Trail in 2019, I'm on a mission to help you embrace your most confident self so you can achieve your dreams too. If you're eager for deep conversations, big questions, and meaningful connections, join me on the quest to discovering how we can create a more magical and memorable life. Hello, Nerds. How are you this week? I am really good. Today we have two guests on the podcast, millie and Nick from Decolonizing Love. So I'll tell you about why I decided to invite them, and then I'll pass the mic to them so they can introduce themselves. So Millie and Nick educate people online about polyamory. And as you know, if you've been listening to the podcast, I left a long term monogamous relationship about five months ago. And since then, I've been exploring a lot. I came out as queer, and I've been reading a lot of books about the different ways to be in relationships. Before I jump into something else, I want to make sure that I am in alignment with my values. I'm looking at everything that is possible, and I was reading books like Polysecure More Than Two, and in my research, I came across their Instagram account, Decolonizing Love and fell down the rabbit hole. They are really fascinating. So welcome, Millie and Nick. Please tell my listeners about who you.
Millie Boella [00:01:52]:
Are, what's your story, and yeah, thank you, Marie-Pier Tremplay. We are very happy to be here as fellow nerds. So my name is Millie, and this is my partner Nick, and we're both polyamorous. And as you said, we run a social enterprise called Decolonizing Love. Through social media, we educate about polyamory from a decolonizing perspective, but we also use polyamory as an inroad to talk about how colonization affects relationality in general. So my decolonization and indigenizing political philosophy began in Kenya, where I'm from. I'm of mixed Kenyan origin. My father is half Kalanjin tribe and half Italian, and my mother is of the Durobo, Maasai and Kikuyu tribes and is also a fifth Asian and Indigenous Mexican. My father worked with the United Nations, so I also lived in Israel and Thailand and Cambodia. And then when I was a teen, I moved to the Netherlands before coming to do my undergrad here in Toronto, Canada, which is where we both live. So the beauty of a life, of a nomadic existence between indigenous cultures, the Global South and the west, is that you don't take for granted that culture is a societal construct. Because my formative years were in the Global South, I found the Western obsession with romantic love and how they went about romantic love and their lack of community really odd. I grew up in a pretty political household. My father was passionate about the Palestinian cause. My mother worked as strengthening community, and that is very important for indigenous people to life. And my stepfather is an environmentalist, so invariably I became an activist. My activism serendipitously led me to non monogamy activism. First for only people of color in Toronto because there was a lot of racism in the mainstream polyamorous community before I eventually co founded Decolonizing Love with Nick for the wider world.
Nick Piperno [00:03:56]:
And hello everyone, I'm Nick. My story isn't so I want to say your story is like a book, like a movie.
Millie Boella [00:04:08]:
Epic.
Nick Piperno [00:04:09]:
Epic, yes. My story isn't so epic. I am born and raised in Montreal, Quebec. Yes. And I have Italian and Greek roots. And so my upbringing was pretty much traditional. So very monogamous, very much where we're told by family that you're going to have kids, you're going to get married, you're going to follow that script. Very patriarchal as well. My family growing up, I would get these influences and really gear myself up for that type of life. However, when it came to love, things were very different for me internally. Like very different. I had very different feelings from what I was told I was supposed to have. For example, whenever I had certain relationships, I never felt this amount of possession or jealousy towards not saying that a requirement to be polyamorous is no jealousy. But for me, my personal story is I never felt any possession or jealousy. And I always questioned kind of like the notion of marriage and whether it's necessary. And I think that part comes more from being in Quebec. And Quebecas in general have the lowest instances of marriage compared to all of North America, I should say. But that has another reason and another history for that. But I still question marriage. I questioned a lot of things but still went with the flow. And then I met Millie 13 years ago and she ended up telling me about polyamory, about something that she wanted to do. And at first I was super curious. I was also happy because I was like, I didn't even know this was a thing. I didn't even know you can do this. I didn't even know this was an option. There was like this secret code in the game that unlocked another world or something. And somehow nobody told me about this. I knew about people cheating and I guess that made me a little jaded in relationships and kind of thinking everybody's cheating. I don't know about this whole love for life, whether we can stay with somebody for 50 years, the same person. I think Millie just made me realize that, okay, a lot of what intuitively I was know there was a world for. And so then started kind of like going down the rabbit hole, to use your words of learning. About Polyamory a little bit more so going on Facebook groups, different types of forums, threads to really learn about, kind of like the different issues and the same as you learnt more than two. Kind of like everybody's primer to polyamory and then other books and then learned along the way. And this is where we are today. So that's kind of like my story less epic.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:07:53]:
But yes, I keep seeing the image of a fish in a fishbowl. You're swimming in the water. You were kind of looking around, questioning the water, but felt like there was no other option. And Millie was looking at the water from the outside, came in with her.
Nick Piperno [00:08:11]:
Outside perspective and then she just poured the whole fishbowl over. And then I just started gasping and jumping up and down like a fish.
Millie Boella [00:08:25]:
The wider waters. Is all this like an arca? You're like, there's all this yeah, it's.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:08:31]:
Breaking the fishbowl, but actually the fishbowl was in an ocean. And there's so many more possibilities.
Nick Piperno [00:08:39]:
Because.
Millie Boella [00:08:40]:
I've dated different people who are new to who I introduced to polyamory. And I think Nick was one of the best transition into polyamory. And I think there's some people who will want to stay in the know. There's some people, even when you show them the possibility that the wider world, they don't want to swim away from their know. You wanted to explore the wider world. You were like, oh, my God, there's more to life. Some people, even when they're given those options, don't want.
Nick Piperno [00:09:12]:
I want to specify in our experience that's a large majority of people that's not to say that everybody's going to be like that, but a large majority of people do end up when they kind of see outside and see that that's a possibility. And they take that leap to learn introspect, learn the skills, it becomes amazing. We've also met people that have taken that leap and learned everything and then consciously decided to be monogamous as well. And that is just as fine as well. Absolutely. But in our personal belief, and there's no way to really prove this yet, but we do think that there is a large majority of people that are naturally polyamorous. And it's just because of this culture, this compulsory monogamy culture, that kind of confines us in this world where we think monogamy is the only option.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:10:26]:
I love that you bring this up because that's going to segue into my next question. Before I came across your account, I had never heard of the term compulsory monogamy culture. So I would really love for you to tell my listeners what that means. And also, I'm familiar with the idea of decolonization, but I had never heard about it when it comes to relationships. So what does that mean to you and what's the history behind that?
Millie Boella [00:10:57]:
So I will answer the first part of that question about decolonizing and how that relates to relationships, and then Nick will answer the question around the history of compulsory monogamy and what does compulsory monogamy mean? So we talk about and we titled it our page Decolonizing Love because a lot of people don't even know that love is affected by colonization. A lot of people don't even know, in general much about the history of colonization. And a lot of the time, we attribute colonization only to land, resources and enslavement. But colonization affected every single part of our lives. It was a complete turnover of the Old World to this New World order. So when we are decolonized in love, we're critically examining and challenges the way in which colonization, imperialism, and dominant culture narratives have shaped our understanding of love, relationships, and intimacy. So we recognize that colonialism not only impose political and economic control, but they impose Eurocentric values, norms and structures onto various aspects of life, including relationships. So to decolonize love is to reclaim and honor diverse cultural and historical ways of forming connections, intimacy, and family structures that have been marginalized or suppressed by colonial forces.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:12:31]:
I love this. And could you give us an example, like a specific example of how colonization influenced relationships?
Millie Boella [00:12:39]:
Absolutely. So we can look at Turtle we're going to look at Turtle Island. I think it's good because we're all here. You're in Quebec. We're here in Ontario. So when the British came here, women on Turtle Island had quite a lot of freedom. They had free sexual relations with men. The way that families were formed here was mostly people lived in extended kin network, but women were not tied to the men who that they had children with. And the British found this free sexual liberation of women just uncal, barbaric, uncivilized. And also they didn't respect the fact that land was not owned. To them, land was a private commodified, whilst land was owned by the community in Indigenous cultures. So what they started to do was start to privatize land and say, only men can own land. And women, to be able to gain security, had to be married to a man. And you could not marry multiple men, and men could not marry multiple women. And the only institution that would recognize your marriage no longer be tribal culture. It would be the church. And so in this way, you are forcing people to survive, to have dignity, especially for women. Their only survival is going to be now through a man, through marriage, through this Christian customs. So in this way, compulsory monogamy culture was forced onto Indigenous women in this country.
Nick Piperno [00:14:31]:
An example, I think that kind of goes a little bit into the history.
Millie Boella [00:14:36]:
Yeah, it goes into history, but you can start in the agriculture revolution.
Nick Piperno [00:14:43]:
Know, a lot of what Millie says kind of ties into how compulsory monogamy culture started. It really started with kind of like it's deeply intertwined with the societal shifts that happened with the agricultural revolution, like Millie said, and the rise of, you know, Millie talked a little bit about how previously there was a lot of nomadic hunter and gatherer societies, and the idea of inheritance and property rights weren't really there until really that agricultural revolution. And the reason why was because property or inheritance was passed down through your own lineage. And men needed to find a way to guarantee that their children were their own lineage. And there was no science, there was no paternity tests back in the days, the only way to know that was to control the woman that they were sleeping with and control to ensure that the woman doesn't sleep around with other men. And so I want to specify men were still allowed to sleep with other women, but it was really that control of the women because that was the only way they could know and pass down. This really marked a shift from more communal and flexible forms of relationships to stricter monogamous unions. And now in the context of religion though, and how that plays into, there was a shift from fertility gods or fertility religions and goddesses, gods and goddesses in many different parts of the world. And there was a shift from these type of gods and goddesses to patriarchal structures. That's where you hear about Zeus, right, being the head of all the gods. And then after all these polytheists religion moved to a monotheist where it was one god who's a man as know it's. With this shift in these beliefs, then these societies became more hierarchical, more patriarchal, and it shifted to a more male dominated narrative, which mirrored the rise of patriarchal family structures as well. And so the rise of Christianity, and particularly in the Roman Empire and later its dominance of Europe, played a significant role in further enforcing monogamy. So obviously, Christianity emphasized sexual purity, marriage and the monogamous family unit that aligned with the interests of the Roman Empire. And this sought to control social order and inheritance. And so as Christianity gained more and more power, it consolidated its influence by promoting monogamy as the only legitimate form of relationship. And this is really the essence of compulsory monogamy culture. It's that only legitimate form that's acceptable. So condemned all other types of alternative practices as immoral diabolical heretical. And the Church's control over marriage and its role in shaping societal norms solidified the link between Christianity, patriarchy and compulsory monogamy. Now, it's also important to also note that compulsory monogamy serve the interests of colonial powers by furthering their control over indigenous populations and reinforcing their ideologies, as kind of Millie mentioned a little bit, it also plays a crucial role in the emergence of capitalism. So monogamous family units served as units of labor and consumption, aligning with the needs of capitalistic production and consumption patterns. And so the nuclear family became a source of labor, with men working outside the home, women taking care of domestic responsibilities, creating a stable workforce for industrialization. And so that served its purpose for industrialization. And this arrangement also facilitated the accumulation of private property, inheritance and the passing down of wealth, all of which are central to capitalistic economic systems. And so everything in essence, the history of compulsory monogamy is a complex interplay of agricultural shifts, patriarchal control, religious transformation, colonial expansion, and economic interests. It reflects how cultural, religious and economic forces converged to shape our understanding of love, relationships and family structure in ways that often reinforced power, imbalances and marginalized alternatives to how we relate.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:20:09]:
But all this is super subtle because we don't want this to look like a tool for power. So at some point, we have to sprinkle some romanticism on top of that.
Nick Piperno [00:20:20]:
Well, yeah, and you raise a good point. I mean, I think romanticism, the romanticism movement also finds a way to solidify or almost like, give credibility and validate this a little bit more.
Millie Boella [00:20:40]:
So when we look at the history of romantic culture and the look at love marriages, it's interesting how over the last couple of hundred years, it's really been feminism and that's pushed romanticism. But then patriarchy has this way of always co opting all the romantic movement of feminism because back when is that it was considered that women didn't need to have orgasms when they were married. Is that the way that a man had sex with his wife was very different from the way he had sex in a brothel? A good woman, a married woman, was a woman who was there to just take care of her husband, be with the kids. She didn't have any desires, she didn't have any orgasms. She was very chaste. That was what it was. And then women were like, no, we also have needs. We should be romanced, we should also have orgasms and everything. But it was this interesting way that when we look at dating culture dating culture also coincides with the rise of marketing. When you look at romantic love, it coincides with the thing of the idea of having this big shiny ring so that this will prove your marriage. So this way that the system would be like, oh, women, yeah, you definitely should be romance with a diamond ring.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:22:01]:
There's money there. Let's take advantage.
Millie Boella [00:22:06]:
Continue. It's always been very nefarious where that patriarchy romantic love is literally only a couple of hundred years as an idea, as a basis of marriage, because beforehand people would get married to strengthen social ties or family ties.
Nick Piperno [00:22:23]:
Political reasons.
Millie Boella [00:22:24]:
Political reasons. I always find it hilarious that in today's age that we think Romeo and Juliet is a book that shows you perfect romantic love. But back in the day, it was to show you why romantic love is a bad idea. And that's not a basis to be in love because, look, you just killed some members of your whole family. Now you're dead at 1314 years old after three days of knowing each other. Right, right. But that was what Shakespeare wrote those books for. But now this is amnesia.
Nick Piperno [00:22:55]:
It was called a tragedy.
Millie Boella [00:22:56]:
It was called a tragedy for our reasoning. Exactly. But we now live in this age of so much amnesia. We don't know that what the history of compulsory monogamy culture is. We don't know the history of romantic love. We just have it as a given. This culture teaches us is that everybody should aspire to romantic love. And if you are not aspiring to be in a monogamous relationship, there's something wrong with you. You're deviant in some sort of way. And it's not even the way that we have been for most of our human history. And what we do is try to teach people a little bit about try to wake people up to what this myth has been that we've been taught over the last 300 years.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:23:45]:
Yeah, there's a teenage part of me that doesn't want to wake up, that's like, want to go? No. All the rom coms I have watched and all the feelings it made me feel, it's like, no, this was not real. It's fascinating and blowing my mind. And now I'd love to shift from history to more personally about you. What brought each one of you to polyamory? And why do you keep choosing polyamory every day?
Millie Boella [00:24:23]:
I've never, ever chosen monogamy.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:24:29]:
One thing about Millie is she's always been polyamorous. Yes.
Millie Boella [00:24:33]:
I've never been monogamous. So the way I started was when I was a child. I lived for a while in Maasai territory on the outskirts of Nairobi, Kenya. And the Maasai are one of the few tribes in my country who still keep to the traditions. They have barely assimilated. And so polygamy, a lot of them are polygamous. And whenever I say, people are like, oh, the men are the only ones who are allowed to marry multiple women. And so the women are all controlled by men. It's very patriarchal. I'm like, no, not at all. Is that women are yes, only men are allowed to marry multiple women, but women are allowed to have multiple lovers, and they do. And when a man goes hunting, comes back and sees a spear in front of his wife's hut, that means she's with her boyfriend. Don't disturb. And she can have babies with another man. It won't take her boyfriend's name. It will just take her husband's last name. But she's allowed to do that. And twice a year, all the women in the village go on a girl's gone out wild trip. And other men in other villages are scared because they know what time it is. All the wild Maasai girls are out. And so I lived in this tribal community for a while, but I went to school inside the city, and a lot of my family are assimilated into more Western ideas of relationships like monogamy and marriages, and they're Christian. And I just was to see the hypocrisy of people who had assimilated into Western ideas of relationships, and I would compare it to the stability of those who had kept a traditional indigenous ways. And I would see a lot of cheating inside Western, those who are dissimilar to Western ideas of relationships. There was a lot of divorces in Kenya. We also have a lot of orphan children. And the thing about traditional culture and the way families work is that there were no real orphans, is that if someone's mom died or dad died, there were usually multiple wives, there was usually extended kid network, so there were never orphans. So our traditional way had all this natural safety net that Western culture and relationships did not have. But I like the honesty of my traditional ways. And I went to a wedding of one of my uncles and he was getting married for, I think, the third time. He got his third two divorces and was getting married for a third time. And I was just in there watching him give his vows, saying he'll be with this woman forever. And I was like, liar. You said that two times before, Millie.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:27:16]:
Don't you know that the third time is the right time?
Millie Boella [00:27:21]:
I just looked around me and I was looking at all the adults being like, how is everybody not saying anything? And this guy cheats? And we all know that. And I was like, I do not want to be part of this way of being. I think I want to prefer being the way the masais are, where people are honest about desire and who they want to be with. And I'd rather live an honest life than this performance that Westerners have of relationships that just people being deceitful and divorces and broken marriages and sexless times. I don't want any of this. So I chose my indigenous culture because.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:28:01]:
Of that honesty being one of your biggest why?
Millie Boella [00:28:06]:
Yeah, the number I nick knows this about me. Anyone who dates me knows. For me, it's like honesty is such an important, integral part for me about having a relationships. And I think a lot of the way that people do relationships in the west is very performance. There's a lot of performance like compulsory monogamy culture is a script. This is how you should do things. Not people really introspecting what they want, who they are. I'm a mix of different tribes and one of my tribes is the Kikuyu tribe. It's a very matriarchal tribe. And what I love about it is that you can also marry yourself in the Kikuyu tribe. You can have sister wives and there's so many options in it because what they want to know is who are you? And then tell us who we are and we'll celebrate that. And I thought in such a much beautiful way than this one size fits all model that Western culture gives you. I prefer the model of us journeying, who we are and us celebrating that.
Nick Piperno [00:29:10]:
For me. So going back to the question, why do I choose polyamory every day? And I look back at the different experiences I've had and I feel that what polyamory has given me are incredible amount of skills. Not only organizational skills because you do need organizational skills management pro. Yes, but I think what it develops is very great communication skills because one of the tenets of polyamory is learning how to communicate in a way where sometimes that is trauma informed because you will bring up a lot of trauma in yourself and in your partners. Also developing the skills. It's really learning a lot about consent and the importance of consent, the importance of expressing your needs, expressing your boundaries, expressing it's, going further into expressing your needs. It's like what are your personal requirements for security? And really digging deep to get to know yourself at a level and then learning to express those things, learning how to relate to different personalities. We can obviously do that if we're a serial monogamous. Whether we date one person, break up, date another person, break up, that's just serial monogamy. We can definitely learn that. I feel that when you're dating multiple people at the same time, I think you learn exponentially. It's kind of like learning on steroids how to really communicate and relate to different personalities and kind of learning to adapt yourself. And I think these are skills that you can apply to work, to friendships, to anything. And so and lastly, I just want to say that, you know, it's like with all that, it's like your level of growth or your speed of growth, personal growth really goes into hyperspeed. Because I've definitely learned so much about myself and about others that I feel like I grew a lot. And I continue to with every relationship I have. There's always things that I'm learning. And when I say I learn a lot about myself. One of the things that having different relationships, what you get to realize is we all have personalities but different people activate different facets of our personality. So when I have a relationship with Millie, for example, she's going to activate a certain part of my personality but there's other parts of my personality that remain dormant. And Millie doesn't activate just because the dynamics of our two personalities, our two relationships, our relationships and how we relate and another person is going to activate other elements of my personality as well. And you get to learn different aspects about yourself. And also Millie's going to trigger me in certain ways. It's going to activate not only personalities but certain traumas and another individual is going to activate other traumas that I didn't even know. But but it's really the amount of learning is incredible. And so this is what allows me to continue to be polyamorous every day. On top of everything Millie said about the honesty aspect. Freedom. I think this is something that we haven't really mentioned or highlighted, but I think this is one of the major tenets of a lot of individuals that are polyamorous. Like the freedom to explore, not being confined and being free to explore different crushes different, loves different and seeing them through and not feeling like, oh, I'm already taken.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:33:56]:
I can't really yes, that was a big thing for me. So, yes, honesty, learning and growth. But when I was in a relationship, I remember meeting someone else and feeling super connected to that other person and wanting to explore that connection, to be able to go deep in that connection, but telling myself, oh, well, I'm not allowed to. And that rule didn't really make sense to me. It was like, well, why, though? Because I could explore that connection, experience that person fully and still that wouldn't change anything to how I feel about my partner. And that's where the mind fuck, excuse my French, happened, where realizing that's actually one of my values depth and connection and experience and freedom. And maybe there is a way, a model that allows me to live more in accordance to my values.
Millie Boella [00:34:57]:
Yeah, absolutely.
Nick Piperno [00:34:59]:
That's probably a myth. I think that if we follow love from somebody else, it's going to diminish or hurt our current relationship. I think that's did you want to say Millie?
Millie Boella [00:35:17]:
No. On a similar note, that our hearts can only love one person, that our hearts are actually pretty big and we can love so much more. And yeah, I was just thinking also about that. One of the reasons why I also prefer polyamory to compulsory monogamy culture is I don't want to be the jailer of somebody else. I don't want a prison guard, I don't want to have to police. But I think there's also I was talking to a romantic interest of mine about the physiology of jealousy. So one of my romantic interests, he was recently in a relationship where the person was trying to force him to be monogamous. And he was saying about how physically he felt completely off because for the first time he was feeling like trying to be monogamous. He also started to realize his body shift to starting to look at her in a way that was different, that he never felt before, where he was like, why is she talking to that guy? He's trying to feel physically jealous. And I don't want to invite those sort of negative feelings where I've got to feel controlling and protective over my relationship in that sort of way. I want my partner to be free and for just him to want to do the right thing for me. And I look sometimes at monogamous people who are partaking in compulsion, monogamy, and they're constantly playing police guard. They're constantly on the lookout for threats to their relationship. And I think that's not a way to live a life. I just think that's a terrible way to constantly be on guard. Who are you talking to? Who's on your phone? What do you like? That girl on Instagram? Why is that girl talking to you like that? That's just a way. To live like that constantly. I don't know why people want you know, I just think it's such a toxic characteristic that's been normalized in society.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:37:18]:
I saw a video that I think RuPaul filmed and saying, oh, I love my partner so much that I would never want to limit them.
Millie Boella [00:37:28]:
Yes.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:37:29]:
Coming from a place of love versus we've been taught that that's not love.
Nick Piperno [00:37:37]:
Yeah. There's a similar expression that's been said throughout the years that if you love something, set them free. If they love you back, they will come back. And the fact that I think the purest form of love is giving somebody the freedom to choose, and they're free. And if they come back and choose you every day, not just you, but if they choose to spend their time with you and continuously spend their time with you, they love you. And you've allowed them that freedom to do that. You're not forcing them.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:38:24]:
That's beautiful. Nick, you've mentioned one myth, and I want to explore more of them, one that comes to mind. One thing that I've heard personally is along the lines of, well, you can't have your cake and eat it too. You can't have everything that's just wanting to have everything. What are your thoughts on that? And what are the most popular myths that you're faced with?
Millie Boella [00:38:57]:
Why not?
Nick Piperno [00:38:58]:
Yeah. What if I like cake? What if I like cake? I want to have it all. One that determined that I cannot have it and eat it. Exactly.
Millie Boella [00:39:10]:
This comes back to how colonial capitalism and Christian Puritan ethics views what you're allowed to have and pleasure and love. It all comes back to this idea of scarcity, that there's only this much and only you can have this much. Otherwise you are greedy and selfish. And he doesn't like pleasure. Puritan Christian culture does not like pleasure. Right. And thing is, we are actually able to love multiple people responsibly and how our hearts are big enough and capable enough, and we all have multiple friends. We're capable of doing it. You're capable of balancing all those different things. And a lot of people we hear say things like, you're a commitment foe. But I'm always like, no, polyamory is actually the love of commitment. If anything, it's like people will never say, oh, you have three jobs. How can you commit to them? All right, so why not the same thing with a relationship you are capable of committing to multiple people. So these are some of the myth that we often hear and things said against polyamorous people and that monogamy is better for family or polyamory is open cheating, which has always been my favorite one.
Nick Piperno [00:40:34]:
Polyamory is only sex based.
Millie Boella [00:40:38]:
We're sex obsessed deviants who are only into g's, and we must have a problem in our relationship. That's why it's an open relationship. And all of these things really say more about the person that's saying it does about their actual understanding of polyamorous people because if you knew polyamorous people, for one, is that they're people who introspect relationships pretty strongly, that they're always unpacking and learning. Because the thing about polyamory is that it requires a degree of emotional skill sets that's very different than that required for monogamy, is that in polyamory that you have to be very conscientious and introspective of boundaries for things to go. For relationships to be able to go well is that you have to have great communication skills. You're constantly balancing your commitment and responsibilities to various partners. And that sort of intentional thinking is not as much inside compulsory monogamy culture. Compulsory monogamy is a script. And so.
Nick Piperno [00:41:59]:
Let'S go through the myths and really we can do kind of like a rapid fire.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:42:04]:
Let's do it.
Nick Piperno [00:42:05]:
Let's do you know, I think Millie's named a it's polyamory is only sex. So the term polyamory, it's a little bit of a misnomer because poly is Greek and amory is Latin. So it's using kind of Greek and Latin roots. It's like the proper term. It would have been probably polyphilia or mono polyphilia and then multi amory. Multi amory. That would have been kind of like if we wanted. But anyways, the point there is the amory part. It means love. Love. It doesn't mean sex. It's not polysex. It's polylove. So it's having multiple and that is a requirement, the ability and the capacity to love more than one person. And so we really truly think that if you are in a monogamish relationship or an open relationship where you have one partner and you're just opening up your relationship just to have sex with others, but you're not in love, you are not polyamorous, that is not part of the tenets of polyamory. You're just a monogamous couple that decided to open up your relationship for just sex. So that's one thing. Another myth is monogamy is better for families. There have been very early research showing that kids that grow up in polyamorous households or intentional communal families actually do fare a lot better. That's because they have more adults where they can go for advice. They have more adults that take care of them, that give them attention. How many times do we hear in this day and age where you have two working parents in the nuclear family and they're so busy, they're always on their phone or they're always working, the kids don't get any attention. So they're always on their phones or their technology or playing video games and stuff like that. And they don't get what's needed to be a kid and grow up. They need the attention of adults to really guide them. And so with more parental figures, you do end up having a lot more emotionally stable children. So, yes, it's still early research on that, but that's one of the things.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:44:46]:
Polyamory I just want to add a little anecdote here. I was talking with a woman who lived in a four people household. And she said like, oh, usually two of us put the kids to bed and the other two clean the kitchen and pack the lunches for the next day. So when the kids are in bed, everything is done and we can all just relax. It's just more hands on deck. Right?
Nick Piperno [00:45:08]:
And that just goes to show that this idea of the nuclear family is not sustainable. It's not sustainable in this day and age. Polyamory is open cheating. We've gotten this a lot. So really understanding the term cheating, it doesn't mean cheating cannot exist in polyamory. But the term cheating really means it's just like cheating on an exam or you are breaking a boundary or you're lying about something, you're being dishonest about something. But when we talk about how polyamory is about honesty, it's open honesty. Cheating is kind of like a little bit of the opposite. It's about being dishonest. This is where that's a myth. Are there any other myths that we haven't kind of talked about a little bit?
Millie Boella [00:46:14]:
I think we went through most of them.
Nick Piperno [00:46:16]:
Yeah, those are the big ones we receive. There are a few others, but I think those are the big ones.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:46:21]:
One of the big word also that comes up a lot when I talk about polyamory is, oh, I could never do this. I'd be too jealous. I think jealousy. How would you approach that?
Millie Boella [00:46:39]:
Whether you're in a monogamous or in a polyamorous, you should always be addressing jealousy is that there's no such thing as oh, I'm too jealous. I think sometimes the problem is that people have been infantilized emotionally and been told that that's something that they should never be addressing or working upon themselves. Is that that's something if you are feeling jealous, you need to go to the root cause. Like jealousy is just a teacher and you should use it to guide you to the root cause as to why you're feeling this way. And it should never be an excuse to control another human being. You're never entitled to control another human being. Is that if you're feeling jealous, you need to address it? Do you have a childhood wound? Do you have a trauma? What are you fearing? Where is it shown in your body? What is it saying about what your relationship needs? But whatever it needs should never be control of another person. And a lot of people say that I'm just a jealous person. And that to me, just saying, like, I'm an angry person is that that would never be an excuse. You need to work on your anger issues if you're an angry person. Same thing with jealousy. You need to work on it. That's what that says. It's not an identity.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:47:50]:
And jealousy is not a free pass.
Millie Boella [00:47:52]:
Yes, jealousy is not a free pass. Exactly.
Nick Piperno [00:47:57]:
No. I just wanted to add that it's like any negative emotion, like jealousy is an emotion just like anger, just like sadness. And when we are experiencing these different emotions, like Millie said, let's not attribute it to our identity. We don't say, I'm a sad person. I'm an angry person. I'm a depressive person. Emotions are there to guide us. They're there. They're signals that our body tells us that there's something either wrong or something good. Because when we're happy, I mean, that's a happy so it's an invitation to really look within ourselves into where this is coming from, where this is. And when Millie says that it should not be used to control another person, this is something that, again, compulsory monogamy culture has taught us that when we feel jealous, that's the end of the sentence. It's full stop. And that everybody should accommodate us because we're feeling jealous. Imagine being able to say, I'm angry, and because I'm angry, you have to pamper me and treat me good so that I don't feel angry anymore, or it just doesn't make sense. Yes, it's about managing the jealousy.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:49:37]:
So other than doing your inner work and strengthening your inner safety, how do you both create security? Help the other person feel secure in the relationship? Do you have examples of how you can do that?
Nick Piperno [00:49:56]:
Do you want to say how we do it to each other? You say what I do, and I'll say what you do.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:50:02]:
Oh, I love this little game.
Millie Boella [00:50:06]:
Okay. Nick does so many things. I think one of the reasons why we've been together 13 years and why we clicked from the get go is the fact that is our honest communication or communication skills, which you had from the get go and the ways that you create. We we tackle our issues as they come. We don't ever wait on them. Nick is very much about, all right, we got to discuss it. And he started this more than me is that there's something we talk about it. We go into the root cause of to where it is emotionally what's really going on, and we don't sleep until it is discussed, or we make a date about when this will absolutely be discussed and unpacked.
Nick Piperno [00:51:07]:
And there's an action plan and there's.
Millie Boella [00:51:09]:
An action plan about how to resolve it. And that sort of ensures that we deal with things as they come. So that's one of the ways that we work through things. Another thing that I think this has been something we co joined did is that we have a five page agreement on our relationship, and we've gone through all sorts of things about that we need to reflect upon. And so it's been stuff like our boundaries. For example, our Say six policy is very much like, written down time that we spent together. What's that going to look like during coming vacations, during the year? How do we want to spend this? Even into deep into things like funeral plans, end of life ideas, which a lot of people avoid, but you really need to talk about them.
Nick Piperno [00:52:05]:
Also breakup plans.
Millie Boella [00:52:06]:
Not just we have breakup plans.
Nick Piperno [00:52:08]:
Yeah, it's what happens if we break up.
Millie Boella [00:52:10]:
We break know, having an ethics around that right now and talking about that. So those are sort of the things that we do to create security.
Nick Piperno [00:52:23]:
I want to add things that Millie does. So Millie is very good with words of affirmation. Very good with words of affirmation. And so she always makes it a point to say things that she likes about me, admires about me. And so that adds to the security. There's also the physical touch as well, where it's like we always make sure to hug each other every day, kiss every time I leave for work, I always kiss me. And so it's stuff that we also have found ways to really check in with each other, and they become a little bit more frequent when there's new partners that are involved. So it's just to make sure that we're feeling good about it. And it's not necessarily about permission or anything, but more about just it's like making sure that we're good together because it's one of the things that we really feel. And it's one of the struggles in polyamory. It's where when there's a new relationship, there's this thing called new relationship energy, and some people call it the honeymoon phase and everything. And sometimes when you have an older relationship and if it's very old, there's that old relationship energy. And so sometimes the new relationship energy takes over and you end up neglecting your other relationships. And it's something to be very aware of that you're checking in with your other relationships, making sure everybody's okay emotionally and secure, even if you're filled with dopamine it's with this new partner. And so I think it's something that we do a lot of as well.
Millie Boella [00:54:35]:
Yeah, and to add on to that is that Nicholas between me and his other partner. And so we have a check in and check out every single time. So when he's going to be going to the other partner for, let's say, a week? We have a checkout moment. How was everything during the last week? Anything we should deal? Anything we should work on? How are you doing? Blah, blah, blah. And then we have a check in where we catch up together. We'll have like a wine and wine or we'll go to a bar or tea or tea. We'll talk and then we'll just have a moment to reconnect. I haven't seen you in a week. How's things? What did you do? So we have those moments to reconnect as a relationship. And I think that's one of the things I actually think is very beautiful about polyamory is that you never really get sick of seeing your partner every day. You don't go into a routine or everything. It really is truly that distance makes the heart grow fonder. I'm always excited when it's a day when Nick is going to be coming home. And it's been 13 years and my friends know this about me is that when Nick it's a day Nick is coming home, they'll just see me all giddy and be like, is Nick coming home? She's like, yes, Nick is coming home today. My baby's coming home today. I'm going to make him this and this and this. It's like little two dogs jumping up and just really excited to see each other. So it's like, yeah. That's one of the things that we do in our relationship.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:56:05]:
A lot harder to take the other person for granted is what I hear.
Millie Boella [00:56:10]:
Yes, absolutely. You can't take them for granted in polyamory. I think you also really learn because due to it from dating other people, what you have at home, if you go and see all the dating markets out there, you'd be like, I'm so happy that you exist. But also, even when I've been, I've had some great partners. But it's weird. It's like a light is that this light doesn't diminish this light. All it does is magnify the entire light inside my life.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:56:52]:
Wow.
Millie Boella [00:56:53]:
Yeah. So when I'm in love with somebody else, it actually magnifies my love for Nick even more.
Nick Piperno [00:56:58]:
And it's beautiful. It's symbiotic. They both feed on each other. Yes, absolutely. I would say when I'm more in love with my other partner, I'm more in love with Millie. When I'm more in love with Millie, I'm more in love with my other partner.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:57:14]:
It's symbiotic for sure doesn't take over because we could think that new relationship energy, oh, my God, my feelings are so much bigger for this new person. Therefore it means that I love them more. But that's also we have to be aware of all the chemicals and all of that.
Millie Boella [00:57:34]:
Yeah. I think it's a maturity thing. Maybe when people are new to numb monogamy and transitioning is that new relationship is something that they can believe, oh, maybe I'm really in love with this new person. But if you've gone through the motions of new relationship energy, often while being polyamorous, you kind of understand it in a different context of what's going on in your brain and everything, and you learn how to pull that energy into your relationship wing for other things. And that's what I've learned to do over my life. I've never believed in monogamous myth, so my brain would never be like, oh, this person must be the one that's never happened.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:58:18]:
And one thing that you shared that is really big for me is earlier you were talking about how compulsory monogamy gives you a script to follow. You just follow what the instruction manual tells you. So it's going to be easy versus you. You made your own unique agreement that honors both of your desires and needs. So it's trashing the script, putting the script in the trash and creating your own way of being together.
Nick Piperno [00:58:55]:
Yeah. And a lot of people don't know there's a script. They follow the script but are not conscious that there is a script. Hence Millie saying to get out of the matrix. In a way, using that analogy. And I see it more like what's in the script. It comes as a package. It's kind of like when you go to a restaurant and you got the what do you call it, the menu jewel or the Today's special. But you get the appetizer, the entree and the dessert all for one price. Right. And so what polyamory ends up doing, it deconstructs and you can take things ala, cat what you want in your relationship and how you want it. And things don't come as a package. You don't need to see a person every day, have sex with them all the time, marry them, have a baby, live with them and they don't all come in the same package. With polyamory you can deconstruct those things and choose, depending on the person, what you want with them and you can customize it how you want.
Millie Boella [01:00:17]:
Yeah. And I think that's the reason why in today's age especially, you're going to see polyamory rise because more and more so, people want things customized to who they are. We live in this time where we're able to do things that are customized to our life in so many different ways. You don't have to go to work, you can work from home, you don't have to live here, you can have this gender, you can have this different sexual orientation. Is that you can be so many things. So why not also that apply that to the relationship aspect of who we are right now is that we have a 56% divorce rate. You have a 50% to 70% is in North America. In North America.
Nick Piperno [01:01:04]:
Yeah. I just want to specify and you.
Millie Boella [01:01:06]:
Have a 50 70% infidelity rate and then you also have, I believe it's been like 60% of long term marriages are nearly sexless. Right. Is that this is not sustainable and something is going to give. And the fact that compulsory monogamy is only a couple of hundred years old, it is a construct that's holding it hasn't held for very long, is that we are mammals, we are animals and we are probably going to default to our natural nature. And non monogamy is closer to our natural inclination than monogamy is.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [01:01:48]:
The box is shaking. The box is cracking.
Millie Boella [01:01:54]:
I think it does neatly coincide with the collapse of the environment in some ways is that we're going back to our natural state of being because is that this artificial way of life is not sustainable.
Nick Piperno [01:02:08]:
It coincides also with a post capitalistic world as well.
Millie Boella [01:02:14]:
Late capitalism. I don't think it's post yet. It'll be nice to be a post.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [01:02:21]:
Yeah. This is fascinating and I want to leave my listeners with some actionable things that they can apply if they're in a monogamous relationship right now, what can they learn from polyamory without saying, okay, I'm jumping into polyamory tomorrow. What can they learn from this way of being in relationship?
Nick Piperno [01:02:49]:
Yeah, so I want to first start out with two points. So one is I'm glad you made that specification. You don't have to be polyamorous. And we're not saying that everybody has to be polyamorous to live their best life and everything. There are certain people, and we call them conscious monogamists that understand the other side, really know all the benefits. And despite all that, they consciously choose to be monogamous because they feel they can only love one person. That's their capacity and that is okay and that is valid. And I want to say that and highlight that. Nevertheless, we do have on our social media accounts a lot of monogamous people that follow us. And they follow us not because they want to be polyamorous, because there's a lot that they learn from our account and they apply it to their own relationships. And so I'll just name a few that we've heard over the years. One is because a lot of polyamorous relationships require a high level of communication shin they learn how to communicate with different things, how to communicate their feelings, how to fight, how to communicate their boundaries, their expectations. And you can have all these things in a monogamous relationship as well. And so learning how to communicate, have open and honest communication with a partner is something that a lot of monogamous people in our experience have learned from our account, the explicit negotiation of boundaries. So talking about boundaries, really, we're constantly I wouldn't say as much now, but if you're going to kind of be at the beginning, if you're going to be in a relationship with somebody and you're near the beginning of your relationship and you're exploring polyamory with them, you're going to be negotiating boundaries a lot and agreements. You're going to be learning what you want. For example, when there's a new partner and you're going to be sleeping over or you're going to be sleeping with that person, do you want to be notified before or after? These are boundaries. It's what safe sex boundaries do you want to have? How often do you want to see your partner? So these things that you're going to be constantly negotiating now, these are in the context of polyamory, but there are certainly boundaries that you can negotiate with a partner in a monogamous setting as well. So that's other things. We talked today about jealousy, managing jealousy and nobody's immune to jealousy. There are polyamorous individuals that are jealous. There are monogamous individuals that are jealous. And so understanding and learning how to manage your jealousy and learning how to root cause, know where it comes from is really something that a lot of monogamous people turn to polyamorous people to really learn about how to do that and how to have those discussions with their partner. We have a few videos on codependence. This is something that monogamous individuals experience a lot in relationships. There is a lot of codependent people and we tend to lose ourselves in relationships sometimes when we're monogamous. And so what polyamorous individuals really teach is kind of like that exploration of your own individual self and really coming back to you and not losing yourself. Being able to if you're in a monogamous relationship, being able to go out by yourself. Do these hobbies by yourself or with friends without your partner going to parties by yourself, not having to always have your plus one. Be your partner. And that's gaining that freedom, that independence that you can still do in a monogamous relationship. And I would say lastly, it's really that whole emotional intelligence piece. Polyamorous individuals often develop a high level of emotional intelligence because they have to.
Millie Boella [01:07:27]:
You will not adapt the animal adapts.
Nick Piperno [01:07:30]:
You will not survive. If you need to be able to manage your own emotions, being able to communicate and relate and deal with conflict resolution with other partners. The worst is when I'm in conflict with all my partners at once. I feel like those are the moments where I told Oliver, those are the moments where I just want to go to this cabin and escape and just be there for like a whole week.
Millie Boella [01:08:05]:
And it's worse when they're both in the same room and angry at you.
Nick Piperno [01:08:08]:
Oh yeah, when they're both in the same room. So learning how to navigate those complex interactions in situations, learning to develop empathy, self awareness, conflict resolution skills. Like I mentioned, I think this is something that monogamous individuals can learn as well from polyamory. So I think those are the five things I would say.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [01:08:32]:
Wow, this is amazing. Thank you so much for coming here. Blowing our minds. So many more questions come to mind, but maybe there will have to be a part two. Can you tell my listeners where they can find you, where they can learn more about you and about polyamory?
Millie Boella [01:08:55]:
We are on all social media. We are on TikTok, we are on you can find Decolonize Love as well on Instagram. We are on YouTube and we are on Facebook.
Nick Piperno [01:09:08]:
And Threads.
Millie Boella [01:09:09]:
And threads.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [01:09:11]:
The new place to be, not an.
Millie Boella [01:09:14]:
X and we're not going to be.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [01:09:17]:
And all of these links are going to be in the show notes. So thank you so much, Millie and Nick, for being here.
Millie Boella [01:09:26]:
Thank you for having us. This was amazing and also wishing you also luck on your polyamory journey.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [01:09:35]:
Thank you. I will let you know how it goes. And to everyone listening, have a beautiful week and please reach out to us if you have insights that you want to share. I would love to hear your thoughts. Bye. Hey, if you love what you're hearing on the Self Growth Nerds podcast and you want individual help finding a new direction for your life and developing the courage to make your dreams a reality. You have to check out how we can work together on Selfgrowners.com or message me on Instagram at growth. Nerds. My clients say they would have needed that support years ago. So if you're tired of feeling like you're wasting your life, don't wait. Get in touch now. And I cannot wait to meet you. Hey.