Open Monogamy, Jealousy & Mismatched Desires | Dr. Tammy Nelson on Rethinking Relationship Agreements

If you’ve ever struggled with mismatched desires, defining commitment with a partner, or navigating the messier side of non-monogamy — this episode is for you.

In this candid conversation, I talk with Dr. Tammy Nelson, sexologist, therapist, TEDx speaker, and author of Open Monogamy. With 35+ years of experience working with couples in both monogamous and open relationships, Tammy brings a nuanced lens to everything from sexual boredom and emotional disconnection to jealousy, relationship fatigue, and the evolving nature of commitment.

We explore:

• Why mismatched desires and “monogamy gaps” show up even in non-monogamy
• How open relationships can become more intimate — not less — when built on clarity
• Tools for navigating jealousy, initiating hard conversations, and honoring shifting needs
• The danger of jumping to a solution before naming the real problem
• Why fantasy, communication, and appreciation matter more than frequency or rules

🛠️ Relationship Tools You’ll Walk Away With:

• How to co-create a flexible relationship agreement (that actually works)
• A framework for checking in when needs or desires change
• What to say when your partner reacts with fear or defensiveness
• Why shared language (and revisiting your agreements) matters more than labels

Tammy’s insights offer a refreshing, non-shaming perspective for anyone doing the work of building relationships that actually fit. Whether you're deep in your ENM journey or just refining your agreements, there’s something in here for you.

Curious to learn more? Check out Dr. Tammy Nelson's book, "Open Monogamy: A Guide to Co-Creating Your Ideal Relationship Agreement," and visit her website at https://www.drtammynelson.com/ for additional resources and insights. Mention this episode to get her free download: 100 Questions for Your Monogamy Agreement

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Transcript

what if the problem in your relationship isn't that you want too much but that you've been taught to want too little in today's episode I'm chatting with Dr tammy Nelson she's a board-certified sexologist a licensed therapist a TEDex speaker the author of Open Monogamy and some other books and we're talking about everything from sexless marriages mismatched desires emotional disconnection to the myths that we've been fed about what marriage and commitment are supposed to look like quote unquote dr tammy is sharing some powerful insights from her 35 years of experience working with couples and individuals in both traditional and non-traditional relationships and she doesn't shy away from the hard stuff enjoy oh amazing okay we'll just do it how about that um so first welcome to Nope we're not monogamous thank you uhhuh uhhuh and I would love uh would you tell the listeners a little bit about who you are uh yes sure i'm happy to i'm Dr tammy Nelson i'm a sexyologist and a certified sex therapist a certified sex and couples therapist i'm an IMO relationship therapist i've been a therapist for like 35 years i mean I know that ages me but it's been a long time and I have a private practice where I see couples and people in alternative relationships and individuals i do retreats for people with ketamine for couples and people in opening and closing their relationships um I have a podcast The Trouble with Sex i have a TED talk um about open monogamy and I have six books the most recent is called Open Monogamy a guide to co-creating your ideal relationship agreement and I'm here in Los Angeles where it's nice and sunny today amazing wow that's fantastic thank you um open monogamy tell me about that how does that work well you know people in the world of open relationships don't like that title because it says monogamy and people in the traditionally monogamous world don't like it because it says open but open monogamy is really um you know monogamy is a legal term it just means being married to one person versus polygamy which means being married to more than one and people sometimes you've probably found this too like in the press they they confuse polygamy and polyamory and I want to say no that's not a thing um but open monogamy is really where you have a primary or central partner but you have a a flexible fluid relationship agreement and there's a a monogamy continuum so you know you could go anywhere on that continuum from you could be traditionally monogamous but share maybe your fantasies or look at porn together or um or even just admit that you might be attracted to other people i mean for some couples that's really a slippery slope right all the way to maybe watching other people have sex either online or in a party or maybe having sex with other people if you're around or maybe having an emotional attachment but only with your partner involved all the way to the far side of the continuum where there's total anarchy but the um the idea is to help people communicate about what they want and it's not my it's not my choice and my I don't really have a judgment but what my job is to help you figure out what you want yeah yeah that's brilliant that is you know I I while I'm non- monogamous and I mostly work with non- monogous people I also have clients who are monogous and who are just like I something isn't working what do we do right and so like having to figure fig figuring out what what changes can happen because we're kind of given this like one-sizefits-all idea of what like marriage or a relationship is supposed to look like except we don't actually know what it is like it's very vague

it's like only look at me

ever that just doesn't work no I think 98% of people have fantasies of people other than their spouse like it Yeah you know and people that are married and pretending that they're monogous 50% of those people are cheating so you know our ideas of monogamy are based on morality and those rules you know it was kind of an experiment that had its run and it worked when we lived to be a certain age and when um in our particular culture in our westernized world you know when women stayed home because it worked for the family and you know we only had like two kids and you stayed at a company for your whole career and you know the world was just different that nuclear family experiment is over i mean it doesn't really work financially it doesn't work doesn't work for women and women tend to be higher educated and they have um better jobs actually than men and we have all kinds of different family scenarios and it's actually better to have more partners now like if it's more and don't you want more people to like be invested in your children and in your well-being and your aren't you like um I think we discovered this during the pandemic like some people were really good at forging for toilet paper and some people were like you know what I think I need another partner to homeschool my kids because I suck at this you know what I think a lot of people discovered like the multiplicity of relationships is actually really beneficial in many ways yeah yeah absolutely and when and and especially when when they realize that like that doesn't mean that it has to be a sexual romantic relationship but we can just expand our community and have like a lot of intimacy in there yep otherwise it feels really scary or threatening for people well and I think it is scary and threatening way loneliness is the biggest epidemic right now you know they there's a study that said 33% of Americans adult Americans say that loneliness is their biggest problem like that's so sad to me there's her mhm it really is yeah yeah wow what in in in your opinion what do you think is the biggest misconception that people have about like non- monogous relationships or even open monogamy well you know I think you found me through um I I do some consulting for Ashley Madison and they have 90 million members worldwide so I mean that blew my mind it's not that people are not looking for um variety or outside partnerships i mean people want connection like that's how we heal from trauma it's how we make sense of who we are as people i just think that people don't necessarily look for another person they look to be another person and I really want your listeners to hear that like if you're in a relationship with someone that is looking for another partner or if you're looking for another partner if you're cheating or opening or whatever all of those outside relationships it's not necessarily that you're looking for someone else it's that you're looking to be someone else and I think that is the biggest growth experience that we can get from all of this like who are you with this person versus who are you with this person and can you be this person with people at home or not like how how much of of your life are you living in integrity and how much are you splitting off and compartmentalizing and I don't mean integrity from a moral perspective i just mean like integrating like so things aren't aren't hidden and split off and um you don't have to use all that energy to to hide things that's takes a lot of energy yeah yeah yes yes totally totally uh I had read a book called The Hidden Wholeness that was written by a Quaker man that talks about this about living as like the mo just who you really are i'm going to write that down and uh yeah it's brilliant it's so good uh he led like men's circles and and just allowed people to just bring like say their truths in all sorts of different ways and was finding like so much healing and people just literally just saying like this is a thing that I think about created so much healing and I can see that in relationships a lot where just saying like hey this is a fantasy I have or hey I I think about maybe opening up or I think about having a threesome does saying the thing doesn't mean either your partner agrees or you break up it means like we're having a conversation and just sharing our thoughts and our ideas and and what's happening internally and it's so freeing it also doesn't mean you have to do it so yeah but I love that you said you know it doesn't mean you you have to break up i mean it also doesn't mean you have to take it into action like sometimes just the fantasy of the threesome is juicy enough to last a lifetime and maybe maybe for some people it's safer too who knows but you can talk about a lot of fantasy before you take anything into action and actually that's kind of what I suggest to people is like you should talk about this as a what if conversation like what if we did this what how could this benefit us and what could be the risks well what if we did it this way how could the you know this benefit us and what are the risks like I think you should have that those conversations as fantasy before you actually you know leave your house or call someone up to come over call the neighbor or whatever like you know work it through in that way not to the point of communication fatigue which I think we can get stuck in you know talk yeah something to death till like 2 o'clock in the morning and over talking and sort of suck again and again

but but like you're saying like talking about fantasies I think is the first step yeah totally totally um I had a thought about that but I lost it i said a lot in there i'm sorry the No no the ADHD hit we go off in like ADHD tangent uhhuh uhhuh i love it i love it

um yeah talking about oh yes I remember so so I I often have people like like couples will come to me a lot of people wind up opening their relationship out of um you know there was some infidelity or or they jumped to that as the solution like I'm I'm having troubles here or there's something missing something I don't like or I want something different and they automatically decide what the solution to that should be and then they take that solution to their partner rather than the problem to their partner uh is often what winds up happening and I'm like and so many bumps in the road and so many arguments and fights and hurts can be avoided if they would take the problem to their partner first and talk about that rather than deciding what the solution is and going "Here's what we need to do." Because they don't actually know what all the solutions are what all the possibilities are they're just like in their own little bubble trying to figure it out um and so I wonder you've been doing this a long time how do you how do you guide people in that and like coming together and and sharing authentically what's going on for them um you know there's so many points in that you think the brain is just the same this the same uh highway um so the first thing you said was like that I really liked where you said you know people take the solution to their partners of the problem first i thought that really well put um I also appreciated what you said about you know opening a relationship is not a way to fix your relationship in fact if it's or if it's broken um it's only going to get worse so there's reasons that it's not working and you got to explore those first it's really helpful and is really fun to expand on what's already working you know if you have a good solid foundation and you're in a good space you're just spreading that around with more people and it works pretty well at least you know for periods of time you can always back it up but the idea of um opening your relationship to to continue an affair is kind of like asking your partner for permission to have what was a nonconsentual non- monogamous relationship to now be consensual you know you're asking for permission like you're asking a parent and so now you're parentifying partner please please mom or please dad can I please date can we get a puppy can I have permission i'm gonna go out fried like no that totally desexualizes first of all your relationship at home because it's parentified now that's not really what an open relationship is that's just you know creating rules and asking for um a dysfunctional behavior to to continue as something that might save you now that's not to say that open relationships don't sometimes start with um secrets cuz I think they do sometimes they start with this just the secret of what you're holding in your mind like God I really would like to do this and I don't know how to talk to my partner about it um and that in and of itself could be a problem like how do you bring it up so in my book Open Monogamy I have a lot of like dialogues like this is how you should talk to your partner and this is what you should say and this is how you can bring it up and these are the dialogues back and forth but I think um for your listeners one way to start a conversation might be I heard this podcast and you know it's interesting because you know they were saying that open relationships um can actually improve your marriage you can actually stay together and have a a marriage or a committed partnership with someone and still be emotionally or sexually or romantically involved with other people what do you think of that idea can you imagine like I don't know i don't know if we could do ever do that could you like ever think that maybe that could be us like really talk about it as a what if yeah yeah yeah yeah and I wonder the the thing that always comes to mind for me when I'm um hear that or even when I give that very similar advice right is then what if their partner is someone who's automatically like "Wait you what you want to do what what what's wrong with me like you don't love me anymore you want to leave you want to go sleep with someone else like what are you talking about?" And I And what do you do it's a common response to people who don't really know that the other person's ever thought about that right so the way that I help people process their feelings is that I think I think you have four resources in your relationship time attention affection and sex so when the partner that sort of surprised or resistant to the idea is like "What the hell?" Um we might want to ask well when you're thinking what the hell what are you thinking that you might lose or not get enough of or something that is going to be taken away from you or what are you not getting enough of in your relationship now that it feels like geez I'm going to get even less now um you know for me time is like a big thing like sometimes I'm envious of even of my clients who are like have a bunch of partners on different nights and a calendar and they have and I'm like spit them all in

um so busy i don't understand how you have 13 partners it's so it's so um so for some people it might be like you know I don't get enough time from you now like you're going to you're going to take my weekend away for for other people it might be wait a minute I barely get eye contact anymore like you come home you sit on the couch you play with the kids or you're whatever um and so how come that's d going to be directed to someone else and the same thing with affection and sex however ironically when someone brings this topic up it's like a wakeup moment in the relationship so you spend more time talking about it now you are making eye contact you are paying attention to each other because you're sort of seeing each other from a different perspective like I don't really know you and now I'm curious who the hell you are and actually a bad thing yeah yeah yeah it it I mean that's what happens when we first start start like dating someone right is we're getting to know this person and then and then we know them and we figure well I know everything about them and we kind of become complacent and then they bring up something new and you're like wait exactly who are you what's going on here exactly I mean we're attracted to people in the space in between us right so yes you know when they're next to us on the couch every night not so much but the the curiosity that we have in the beginning isn't is part of the intrigue but then if there's unknown own parts then it feels like wait a minute we're not as intimate as I thought we were and so it can feel intriguing like it did in the beginning it can also feel like I guess we're not that close and but the you know the just statistically and anecdotally what I see is that open relationships actually do make people closer if they have the communication skills to process it yeah yeah yeah absolutely that's you know I get I do a lot of uh you know the podcast and then like free classes and stuff like that and and I almost always include the caveat like all the advice I'm giving you here is assuming that your relationship is already pretty healthy that you guys communicate that you talk about things and isn't like an abusive situation because all of this goes out the window if that's what's going on yeah well exactly exactly yeah and yeah you know monogamy commitment relationships they're not it's not uh black or white right it's not a polarization you're either closed or open you know it's not like if your partner says "I want an open relationship." You might think "Oh my god we're going to be polyamorous and people are going to move in with us and where are we going to put them?" And like it's a lot of gray in between so much yeah and so that's a uh an important part to to communicate about like what do you mean when you say that are you just saying that you know we want to go to a party some some exciting way or you know what exactly does that mean sometimes people don't even know what they mean they just want to drop it into the conversation like bam okay topic let's talk yeah yeah yeah like they have no idea what is what possibilities are there like like what is on the menu right like can you give me a menu of options here that I can choose from which is in my book by the way yes yes good good good uh which gives that kind of great I always call it the like uh from like a light switch right people think like open or closed i'm like you in get rid of the light switch and install a dimmer free install a little dimmer switch for mood lighting he loves those dimmers every house he goes into he's like "What dimmer i don't get it." Me too that's I think we replaced almost all of ours and then you have to buy special light bulbs it's a whole thing but it's not just off or on it's more subtle and you create environments and relation you know and relation yeah you're right they're not binary right it's not closed or open and you know we have an interesting sort of just this whole world of therapists and the lifestyle people and the people who are poly some people have gone so far in that direction that they've come around the other side to be somewhat um rigid about what we call ourselves and and I think that's a that's sort of the opposite of where what we're going for like it doesn't matter how you slot yourself into um you know a definition what matters more is how the two of you define it like how do you want to define the relationship what do you want to do how do you want to act what's important what are your values you know that the relationship always comes first or the kids come first or honesty comes first or privacy or we never tell people at work or like what are the things that you can agree on that you'll always come back to it doesn't matter what other people think it really matters what you think absolutely absolutely 100% i had a friend um ask me he said he said "Well we're not polyamorous someone recently told me we're not polyamorous because we don't have a triad." And I was like "What?" And he said "Well yeah they said that because we date separately and we don't have a third partner that we're not polyamorous." And I was like "That's not how that works." So so just someone had told him that that was the definition of polyamory and he's very polyamorous and I was like no no somebody told you wrong you told me somebody told me like I that they thought they were kitchen table but they'd never had breakfast together so they couldn't identify that way i was like oh that's not what that means oh I know see I mean ring I mean like plant

brunch it means that everybody knows each other and gets along and yeah and you know I know a lot of people you know you you're younger than me but I know a lot of people in my generation that would never define themselves as polyamorous but they might have f like friends that they have sex with on the weekends you know what I mean like and during the week they go to the PTA meeting or they you know they serve on the board or whatever but it it's just a it partly a generational thing like that term does not apply to a lot of people they don't they wouldn't define themselves that way they didn't grow up with that term they didn't learn it in school that's for sure yeah yeah yeah yeah i actually that that's funny i do know several people who you know have been like swingers for 20 years and they've been sleeping with the same friends for 15 of those they they travel together and they have whole life events together and I'm like you're you guys are kind of

partners in my mind you define it how you want and and my friends would call it you know that they're sexy friends or that Yeah you know like there there's a there's just a different nomenclature I think yeah yeah absolutely absolutely yeah um you know you you've been doing this a long time i think you mentioned uh what 30 years 35 that's amazing i love that i love that so much um so you've been doing this for for like 35 years what would you say is the biggest lie that we've been sold about like marriage or commitment okay so I can think of a couple but the one that comes to mind right now is that men get bored with marriage and look for sex and women just want to fall in love and have relationships and I can tell you that's not true it's not true from my research and um it the research actually shows from a sociological perspective and anthrop anthropologically biologically women are bored with marriage much sooner than men actually it's much less rewarding for women we have much more you know heterero women have much more responsibility in marriage we've taken on more more roles it's frustrating and we get tired of the sex like we are not happy around mid marriage so women tend to have as many affairs as men we just don't tell anyone we don't tell the researchers you know affairs are based on dishonesty right so you can't get honest answers to to research but the reality is women um will cheat and be much more subtle about it because of the risks you know historically the risks much higher for women so and the other the other piece about men wanting sex versus relationship you know I can tell you that I did um when I wrote the book When You're the One Who Cheats I had two profiles that they let me do on Ashley Madison so I didn't interact with anyone but I put up anonymous profiles one as a man and one as a woman and I just said this my name was Tom and Tracy or something and I said I was 6'2 F and as a woman I was 5'8 I was blonde i gave like no information but the the responses I got were fascinating so as a man as Tom women sent me um pictures of themselves in lingerie um boob shots um bathing suit shots like all these sexy pictures and all of the requests were I just want to have sex with you after you put the kids on the bus i don't want a relationship i don't want to hear about your problems tell your wife your problems i don't want to have anything to do with that and I don't need to see you every week like that's not a thing and almost every one of them wanted like kinky hot sex like really yeah yeah and now you know it's a self- selected population a lot of them were around the same age kind of middle-aged their kids were a little older old enough to put them on the bus you know and older so there was an age range when I was a woman the men were writing to me saying um that they weren't happy at home emotionally and they were looking for basically a parallel partnership like they wanted a girlfriend they wanted the girlfriend experience like they wanted to text me every day they wanted to make sure I wasn't involved with other men and they wanted to know that um we could have more than just a one night stand and that was true for all the letters that I got so it really flips the script on like really are men just looking for sex no they're looking for emotional connection and women want good sex so we all want all of it um which is also true but we can't you know focus on these like gender norms or these heteronormative roles that we put on people around sexuality and around monogamy and relationships they just don't fit anymore it's just not able now if you're in the Midwest and you're listening and you're in a more um sort of conservative space where it seems like everyone is um married and happy you know ask your friends if they're still having good sex ask your friends if they're having an affair like find out what's really going on in marriage today and um and there's a shift because we're living longer we we're expected to have sex well into our 80s you know so we got a long time to figure this out yeah yeah yeah yeah you know I I was a few years ago i was at a like a sex toy party it was mostly monogous women that were there and the lady behind me says "Oh my husband gets a [ __ ] on his birthday and that's it otherwise he can stuff it." And I thought "Really what?" like she was just like you know I don't think she liked her husband but she certainly didn't want to have sex with him and I'm thinking well maybe what's going on here like what because like I want to have sex with mine he was done he was done yeah yeah yeah so I wonder I wonder what um what what is what kind of a like resuscitation tools would you would you suggest to someone like people want to have better sex with their partners and they want you know or maybe they want more emotional connection how do they how do they find that well I can tell you that it's not pathological or diagnostic to not want to have disappointing sex so truly truly she's like "You know what i don't want to go back in there because what's the point like I've tried over and over and over again and it just is not pleasurable." Then blame her but you know your partner's not going to know what you like unless you tell them and you may not know what you like unless you figure it out for yourself and then you know we're like two sides of a bridge so it doesn't matter if you're gay um trans straight we have a relationship that's like um a bridge where one of you is on one side and the other person's on the other side so you have to take care of your side of the bridge figure out your sexuality your needs your desires what turns you on what buttons to push and they have to figure out their side of the bridge you know what turns them on is desire and um how they function sexually is arousal so what happens in their body can they have an orgasm can they reach um you know ejaculation upon demand like what what's going on in the body because it could be medical it could be medication like there's all kinds of stuff that could be happening in your body and then there's the relationship which is the bridge like how do you communicate all that stuff people are not taught to talk about sex they're taught to talk about you know doing the dishes taking the garbage out um and then like you said which I thought was so smart then they skip to oh maybe we should open a relationship so we're barely talking about the garbage but you know let's blow it wide open which may be fine for many couples and maybe that's what they need but to improve the sex that you have you have to understand the sex that you want yes yes absolutely yeah and then talk about it talk about Yeah and I can tell you and secret to this if you don't if you don't mind the seu and this is kind of the secret of the universe is that you always get more of what you appreciate so if you continue to point out what's not working what you're not getting enough of what your partner's doing wrong and trust me I'm very good at this at the criticizing like I'm I'm honed to a skill um but if you if you keep doing that then it just reinforces that neurological pathway in your brain kind of like a deer path in the woods to oh talking about sex leads to conflict and so I'm either going to fight or me or fawn or whatever freeze like a dome in the headlights you know um so the way that you change your sex life is to point out what's what's working and expand on that you know an example is like you know what one thing I really appreciate about our sex life i know we don't ever have sex but I remember 20 years ago when we had that sex in the shower that night that was really fun i really love that i'd like to do more of that so that you're expanding on something that's working even if you've only done it once or even if um you don't do it often instead of going in and saying "I have this fantasy." First start off with what you're already doing because if you start with a fantasy sometimes your partner will be like "Where did you come up with that?" You know "Do you are you cheating on me do you have a porn person that you've seen do this?" You know like you can talk about fantasies but first talk about what's already working for you um let your partner know you appreciate it and trust me you that will open their prefrontal cortex and they'll be like "Oh tell me more about what you appreciate." Like appreciation yeah yeah yeah i call it sandwiching right if you start with the good stuff and you end with the good stuff then everything in the middle like you can throw some vegetables in there and it's totally fine what do most of your listeners ask you what are they interested in um so the main topics that wind up coming up are around jealousy jealousy is a big one mhm um opening up opening up their relationship and that just that entire uh

arc um and then mismatched desires right whether that is like sexually or just in in uh non- monogamy right like where one wants polyamory one just wants a bi-weekly friend with benefits right um those are probably the big ones okay yeah i mean I'm happy to talk about those unless you have a question in mind that you want to mention no yeah i would love I would love to hear your insights on that well um the question about mismatched desires like I call that a a monogamy gap and I oh I can tell you that everyone has a monogamy gap it's not just people in open relationships it's everyone has a different idea of what monogamy or you can replace the word with commitment what that actually means or even replace that with relationship what does it mean to be in a relationship you learn differently because you learned from different parents and so you know we have this um implicit assumption that we both understand the same and agree on the same and want the same and you know my implicit assumption about monogamy is that um you know it's it's not okay to go to strip clubs your implicit assumption is I've been going to strip clubs since I was 14 it doesn't count um you know I hear that about pornography all the time like yeah some people think pornography is cheating other people are like I've been doing this since I was 10 like has nothing to do with you so making your understanding about what is monogamous explicit will give you more understanding about that monogamy gap because the the betrayal and the hurt usually comes from really not understanding like okay you've been going to to strip club since you were 10 like who brought you there oh well it was all my family my uncles my brothers it was about being a man and you know they thought I was straight and I was actually gay and this is what happened and that you know like I've heard so many stories about people who really didn't understand their partner's history of their parents' marriage of what sex meant to mom or dad or their parents or their their caretakers or whoever brought them up one of the best ways to understand your monogamy gap what you're each expecting from your relationship is to ask the question what does your parents think about sex and yeah people are like or I don't know or it didn't happen or they did it all the time or you know um my mother told me the biggest problems she ever had in her life were because of sex and I was like six years old so but if you think about it I have made it my mission in life to tell people that sex is the solution instead of the problem like we will uh continue our parents mission in our relationships professional or personal because we're we're trying to heal like generation to generation so you might have a parent that you know got divorced a lot of the past couple generations kids grew up in in families that got divorced or had affairs and so you may have this desire to say "Look we might be married but we're not dead we're going to be attracted to other people we're just not going to lie about it like our parents did and we're not going to trade our partner in for someone else because that didn't work for my parents so it's a doover it's a redo of that um that monogamy lesson that you learned um and it's important to talk about because we we don't really talk about it when we first meet you know I promise to love honor you and never send a text to my ex on Instagram you mean

Yeah yeah yeah yeah that's brilliant that's actually It's funny because dating non- monogously we actually talk about all those things right up front wow exactly yeah yeah that's fantastic yeah do you want to uh say more about that because I think that's so true i'd love to hear your thoughts on that yeah yeah yeah it is true because like you know it especially with online dating it makes it really easy to like just ask all the questions up front like like what are you looking for right is are you looking for sex are you looking for a relationship are you looking for a friend to hang out with who maybe gives you head every once in a while like what are you looking for what are your agreements with your other partners what are your safer sex agreements uh how do you what are what are your values um what does friendship actually mean to you what does sex mean to you right like you can talk about all of those things before you've even gone on a first date does any of it line up with me perfect great yeah totally and if you're if you're a gay male partner you talk very quickly about like are you a bottom or a top like you know we don't necessarily do that if you're in a heterosexual relationship or a lesbian relationship so yeah you know the idea of like communicating your needs and I just want to reiterate like you don't just do that once because you change over and over you know every every seven years or so like there's a whole new you and you kind of want different things and it's really important i mean we renew our driver's license every couple years you got to renew your monogamy agreement pretty often with all Yeah you know to check in with everybody absolutely absolutely i always tell my clients like you get to change your mind you you have new especially people who go from monogamy to non- monogamy they start out going "Here's what I think I want right i I want to open up so I can have gang bangs." And then they go and have a gang bang and they're like "Oh that's real overwhelming and is probably better as a fantasy." Uh Heather Bur's going "But I thought that's why we opened up." No you don't have to keep having them because that's what you thought you wanted you have more experiences and more data to to make your decisions on now exactly exactly i will from again totally anecdotally just from people in my practice or knowing people I don't have any research on this but I do see that in heterosexual couples the um the man will usually come up with the idea first of opening up it takes women a little bit longer to like wrap their minds around it but then when they do open up men want to close it faster they're like "Okay I'm done." And women are like "I think we closing." Nope you open Pandora's box it's open now he's saying we are out of the box so you can't that is exactly what I see oh it is oh that's good uhhuh uhhuh yeah i would say like probably 80% of the couples I work with that is what I see like wait I thought this was going to be fun and now my emotions are all activated and I'm having all these feelings and I'm having to like re-examine what it means to be a man and what it means to be desired and what it means to date somebody or interact with somebody other than the woman I've been interacting with for 20 years uh there's a lot that comes up true yeah there's a lot and how come she gets to have all the fun and she's getting all the interest and I can't I can't find anybody nobody wants to sleep with me and you know there's a lot that happens yeah yeah yeah yeah absolutely absolutely and the ones that stick with it like like do the the internal work whether they stay open or not isn't isn't the point but the ones who do that internal work wind up so much happier do you want to say more about the internal work i just love having this conversation with you it's very interesting yeah totally yeah i think it it comes one figuring out what is their actual beliefs their opinions their thoughts what they really want in their life versus what they've been told they're supposed to want who they're attracted to versus who they've been told they're supposed to be attracted to uh you know what sex looks like and uh especially the the part of making it not just about their penis everything else around around sex they just wind up going "Oh there's so much more that that can be satisfying in my life that can bring me joy that can that I can provide joy there's so many more ways that are available that I had no idea because most men are are told like you know stick it to her be a man and go to work and then go to bed like what whatever order that goes in but everything else they aren't told they can do right stick it to her stick it to her hard hard with no lube and until you orgasm because that's successful sex that's what they've been Yeah yep yep and I'm like take your dick out of the equation and then see what happens you're going to have a whole new sex life yeah it's a challenge uhhuh uhhuh uhhuh is there anything else that you want to share with the listeners that I haven't asked you um I mean we you mentioned jealousy and Oh yeah i mean I know that everyone has all the therapists that are working with open relationships have the standard answer which is jealousy is really about you and you need to work on yourself and figure out why you feel inadequate and what's coming up for you i mean I think that's true but I also think jealousy can be the canary in the coal mine like I think you should listen to your jealousy i think jealousy can be an intuitive hint that this is not working for me and I don't like this and you know I I personally believe everyone should have a veto but I don't think it works all the time because if you if you say "Okay I'm vetoing this person," then it kind of sets up more longing right for the thing that you can't have maybe I didn't really want them but now that I can't have them I really want them um but it it's important to see it as the need for more conversation and more clarity like yes what am I actually jealous of is it the time going back to the time that you're spending with them is it the attention are you texting them all the time when we're at the dinner table um you know is it that we're not affectionate anymore like we don't touch when we're watching TV you're on your chair i'm on mine um it's not always about the sex you know people automatically assume I'm jealous cuz you're having sex with another person that's not necessarily the first thing people will answer so you know yes of course if you're seeing someone else and you're um they're younger or better looking or smarter or they have something that I don't have yeah I might be envious but the the real issue I think is goes back to what I said in the beginning like who do who do you become when you're with that other person and how I get to see that person you know you're so charming and funny and you know you help them do the dishes like where is that person at home yeah yeah yeah yeah i love that because that's that's kind of I always tell people if you if you couldn't use the word jealousy then what would you be feeling how would you describe what's going on get rid of the word jealousy because it's too easy now now what's going on it's very smart because it's a very complex emotion there's a that's just like the tip of the iceberg there's a lot underneath that kind of like it's an umbrella term for a lot of other things it's kind of like communication issues or desire issues like there's a lot underneath all that stuff i say the same thing if you can't use the word communication then how would you describe the problem that's smart that's very smart yeah i bet you're very good with couples thank

you sometimes I get there they're hard it's very hard it's hard work h Yeah yeah it is but it's fun it's good stuff um how could people find you uh they can go to drt tammy Nelson.com it's dr r t a m y ls o n and you can find all my books there or on Amazon and actually if people want to write to me through the website and say they heard me on your show I'll give you a free ebook like a download with like the first questions to ask or a have one that's like 100 questions for your monogamy agreement something like that i'll give you a d a free dialogue about how to have these conversations if you're beginning or in the midst or maybe thinking about closing but I'm happy to do it but they have to tell me that they heard us talking this fabulous conversation today amazing that's so generous thank you i'll I'll make sure it goes in the in the show notes for people uh I have one more question for you and this one is not for the uh main episode it goes to our supporters at patreon.comnotminogus

and uh the segment's just the tip and it's what is your best or favorite sex tip [Music] amazing thank you so so much for coming on the show with me thanks for having me it was fun i really hope that this conversation gave you something good to think about maybe even permission to start asking some questions that you've been afraid to say out loud dr tammy Nelson brought so much depth and nuance to the table and I'm grateful that we got to explore the like gray areas of desire commitment modern love uh and if you want even more from Dr tammy head over to patreon.com/notmonogamous to check out our bonus segment Just the Tip where she's sharing her favorite sex tip uh it's simple it's powerful and really it's something you might want to try tonight so as always thank you for listening if this episode resonated for you please rate it review it share it with somebody else who needs to hear it other people want to know that their desires aren't too much and that they're not alone in wanting more bye [Music]