Exploring Non-Monogamy During My Sacred Slut Summer

After spending most of my life exploring my sexuality through the lens of monogamy, I discovered a surprising truth about myself: I don’t actually want one romantic partner. This revelation led me to a new way of looking at my relationships and opened the door for me to finally explore non-monogamy.

I spent the last several months, which I dubbed my Sacred Slut Summer, intentionally exploring non-monogamy and how my intimate, romantic relationships can be sacred and fulfilling without being exclusive.

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Choosing to explore love and intimacy through open relationships is a culmination of all my previous romantic experiences, and while some of those were better than others, each experience led me on this path to accepting the kind of love I find so much more satisfying – at least for now!

It’s also offered me a new opportunity to explore the kind of transparency and discernment that non-monogamy requires, and allowed me to lean into my interactions with the Divine and my self-love framework as I accept this new revelation in my romantic life.

I’m no expert on non-monogamy, but I hope you’ll find insights that you can take from my experiences and filter them into your own life and relationships, whether they are open, exclusive, or something else entirely.

Listen to episode 399 now!

In episode 399 of the Embodied Podcast we discuss:

[04:01] Reaffirming my purpose here on earth
[06:05] My first experience with my sexuality
[08:25] How I’ve learned to appreciate all the lessons I’ve gained from my past intimate relationships
[11:49] The differences between my conscious hoe phase and the more reckless promiscuity of my teens and twenties
[13:40] How taking a break from dating taught me about experiencing intimacy and pleasure in a more sacred way
[16:55] How I came to the revelation that I really didn’t want a partner
[19:37] The sacred prostitute and my inspiration for my Sacred Slut Summer
[23:23] Exploring the kinship that connects all of us
[26:01] Discovering the relational “nutrients” that I could only receive through intimate, romantic relationships
[28:53] Redefining my views on non-monogamy
[34:01] Why my relationship with my constellation of companions is so fulfilling right now
[37:13] How this exploration fits into my self-love framework
[38:15] Why non-monogamy requires transparency and discernment
[40:48] The absolute, wildest story from my Sacred Slut Summer and the opportunity it offered to practice discernment
[43:56] How I offered opportunity to heal and repair the transparency and openness in this relationship
[47:29] Why I’m still not comfortable offering specific advice on this topic

Resources mentioned by Elizabeth in episode 399 “Exploring Non-Monogamy During My Sacred Slut Summer”:

Quotes from this Week’s Episode of the Embodied Podcast:

[00:05:36] I am well aware that a lot of people should not be out here making the choices that I make. It’s about listening for what is here for you personally and for context.
[00:07:26] I also hid my deepest desires and curiosities from my friends and even my romantic partners, boyfriends, lovers, whatever, until well into my thirties. […] I really didn’t encounter like the topic, the concept, the energy of sex positivity until my early thirties. And even then I would first have to journey through the underbelly of it in many different ways before finally integrating it into my life.
[00:11:31] Some people might think this is semantics, but words are very powerful and this is why I name things
[00:14:21] Entering into Sacred Slut Summer, it was about letting love lead and guide, dropping as many judgments as possible and following more subtle energetics of intimacy, and also a tuning myself to the more subtle nuances of my own intuition, and believing in and being available for mutual healing and also nourishment in mysterious and unexpected ways
[00:16:58] I met this great man that was everything I’d been saying I wanted and I could not have been more bored after a couple of weeks. I checked in with myself around this to see if I was being love-avoidant. But really I was starting to contact this truth in me that I really didn’t want a partner.
[00:22:26] When I’m asking myself “what do I really want?” I’m actually asking “What is it the Divine wants through me?” So my wants, my desires are whatever the Divine wants and desires through me.
[00:31:16] That’s been a refinement of how to open up and attune myself to getting the attention I want without also inviting in more of the attention I don’t want. This has been one of the most exciting parts about it. Energetic boundaries for the win
[00:35:29] This is actually why self-knowledge and self-acceptance are parts of my self-love framework. Because some of us just know that certain things that really work for others don’t work for us.
[00:35:56] I cannot even tell you how deeply satisfying it feels to exchange the energy, adoration, attention and intimacy with these men and between the three of them, to feel the consistent flow of like men and sexual energy and connection in my life that I’ve been craving for years and unable to find in relationship with just one person. And the mutuality of it all is probably my favorite part.
[00:38:59] The big thing was breaking the pattern of telling myself, I don’t know when people are lying, but really, the deeper, more subtle thing was, I didn’t want to believe that people are lying.
[00:45:01] I do enough healing work with other people in my professional life to know that it’s not always a won’t, it’s a can’t. Some people just can’t be truthful or honest, because of their fears of abandonment and rejection. These things have such a grip on them.

How was this episode for you?

Was this episode helpful for you today? I’d love to know what quote or lesson touched your soul. Let me know in the comments below OR share the episode on Instagram, tag me your stories @elizabethdialto, or send me a DM!

About the Embodied Podcast with Elizabeth DiAlto

Since 2013 I’ve been developing a body of work that helps women embody self-love, healing, and wholeness. We do this by focusing on the four levels of consciousness – physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual.

In practical terms, this looks like exploring tools and practices to help you tune into the deep wisdom of the body and the knowing of the heart, which I believe are gateways to our souls. Then we cultivate a new relationship with our minds that allows the mind to serve this wisdom and knowledge and soul connection, rather than override it, which is what many of us were taught.

If you’ve been doing self-help or spiritual development work for a while, these are the types of foundational things that often people overlook in pursuit of fancier concepts that often aren’t practical or sustainable. Here, we will focus on building these strong foundations so you can honestly and thoroughly embody self-love. If you’re feeling it, subscribe to the show, and leave us a review wherever you listen from. You can also keep up with show updates and community discussion on Instagram here.

Transcript for Episode 399 “Exploring Non-Monogamy During My Sacred Slut Summer“:

– Hello, everybody. Welcome to episode number 399 of the “Embodied Podcast”. Can’t believe we’re episode number 399. I said I was gonna record this episode as like the first episode back, I made a post on Instagram back in August and I decided not to, I decided to let it be the second episode back ’cause I really wanted to do last week’s episode for my birthday week, the 39 lessons in 39 years. So, if you haven’t listened to that one it’s certainly not a precursor to this one, you could listen to that one at any time. That one’s episode number 398. This one is episode number 399, so any links or resources or anything that I mention, other episodes in this one can be found at our show notes page at untameyourself.com/399, as well today if you’re listening in real-time, like you’re one of those loyal listeners who boots these things up on Mondays when we post them, so you’re listening on Monday, September 19th, 2022. Today is the last day of my annual birthday sale, there’s two offerings going on in the birthday sale this year, a Fall Equinox Embodiment Bundle where you get my All Things Desire workshop coming up on September 25th and on September 22nd for the Fall Equinox, I’m teaching a Wild Soul fusion class. If you go to untameyourself.com/bday39, like my 39th birthday, bday39, you can get all the details about the birthday sale. And if you’re listening to this after the 19th but before the 22nd or the 25th, you can still sign up. Go to untameyourself.com/workshops, you just won’t get the discount. untameyourself.com/workshops and untameyourself.com/equinox for the class. Now, again, if you just go to the show notes page, untameyouself.com/399, you can actually just get all those links in one place. For those of you watching today on YouTube, it’s funny ’cause last week a big part of that episode was that I just let it flow, I didn’t outline it, The 39 lessons, I just let them kinda come through in an intuitive flow. This whole episode, I have really written out what I wanted to share and what I wanted to talk about, mainly to keep myself focused so I don’t go on all these wild tangents, ’cause I really could go on some wild tangents in this episode. This could be a three hour episode, this could be a documentary, to be quite honest, because my sacred slut summer was really quite the experience. So, if you’re watching on YouTube I’m gonna be referring to my notes, so you might see me over here looking like I’m reading and that is because I can. ‘Cause I am, rather. All right, let’s dive in. Let’s dive into the notes here. I wanna start out by saying a few things, with every year of my life I am more and more certain that part of my purpose here in this lifetime is to question as much programming as possible, book a ton of traditions and decolonize, re-indigenize and rematriate so much of what this culture we live in and have had passed down onto us, indoctrinates us into. So, breaking intergenerational traumas, breaking cultural traumas, systems, conditions, programs, all kinds of stuff like that. This is one of the reasons why I’ve chosen to be child-free, and by the way it’s not to say that people with kids can’t do that stuff too but, for me, on my personal path I just feel like the more freedom I can have so I could do those things and take certain risks without putting other people at risk, just feels like such a really important part of who I am and what I came here for. Second thing I wanna say is, I know sex and intimacy could be very triggering topics for folks so this is your content warning, we’re gonna get all up in that today. And please remember not to compare yourself, but to just take in what I’m sharing and put it through your own lens and filter of what’s relatable or potentially inspiring or illuminating for you. Nothing I share is ever meant to be or set any kind of standard for anyone else, or any kind of pitch for making the same life choices I make, ’cause, quite honestly, I am well aware that a lot of people should not be out here making the choices that I make. So, it’s not about that but it’s about listening for what is here for you personally. And for context, it also might be good to know, for those of you who don’t know, whether you’re newer to the show or just haven’t heard an episode where I’ve discussed this before, that I am a highly sexual person with no history of sexual trauma. My sexuality was first activated consciously when I was six years old, I remember the very first time I felt the tingles of turn-on in my little pussy was while watching the Paula Abdul video for Coldhearted Snake. I remember I was at my babysitter’s house and somehow I was in the living room by myself, which was weird ’cause there were other kids in the house and a couple adults, but I was by myself somehow watching this music video. And I remember thinking I shouldn’t be feeling what I was feeling, and that I would definitely get in trouble if an adult came in the room, which is really interesting. How, without even really having much context for pleasure or sex at the age of six, something in me was already associating that with being wrong or inappropriate. I started touching myself and had my first orgasm somewhere between eight and 10, I had my first kiss when I was 11 in the sixth grade, that’s also when I saw my first penis and gave my first hand job. And all of this was so exhilarating to me, and while I still carried that, “I probably shouldn’t be doing this, I will definitely get in trouble if the adults in my life find out about this,” feeling well into my teens, probably until I got to college and I was finally living on my own, I did let myself explore a lot. However, I also hid my deepest desires and curiosities from my friends, and even my romantic partners, boyfriends, lovers, whatever, until well into my 30s. I’ve also had a few boyfriends in my life whose sex drive was well below mine, and I felt a lot of things about that. Some of which came from within me, some of which came from them projecting their insecurities on me, and I really didn’t encounter the topic, the concept, the energy of sex positivity until my early 30s. And even then, I would first have to journey through the underbelly of it in many different ways before finally integrating both the light and shadow aspects of that, and confidently coming into my own expression and relationship to it. So, again, just a little backstory ’cause I know people come from different places so I feel like the context is important. So, I’ve had several serious relationships in my life, dating, beginning in high school up until 2020. And, really, they were all big learning and stepping stones for me in my life and on my path, and I can say now I’m super grateful for all of them. For the most part I felt pretty grateful along the way too, but sometimes it just took a little healing and reflection afterwards to kinda see what the gems were from everybody. But after 2018, specifically after healing from an emotionally abusive relationship that I got out of in 2016, and learning about codependency, detoxing from some of these bodies of work that I really got hooked into, and some of you might remember me talking about on the podcast in the early days back in 2015 and 2016, like the work of David Deida, this polarity stuff; a lot of which are these teachings from men about women on how to be more feminine, but really it’s how to be like submissive and subservient to men in a lot of ways. Energy does have polarity in all kinds of contexts so there’s a level on which there’s some usefulness, but a lot of it is just trash. A lot of it is really trash and really not helpful, especially for women, and also not for men either. The work of Allison Armstrong, which again there were some gems in there but a lot of it was also just teaching women how to cater to men’s fragility and insecurities and, what’s the word I’m looking for, just lack of capacity for emotional relating and transparent communication. That body of work really guides women to do a lot of heavy lifting so that men don’t have to but calls it not being emasculating, which we could do a whole episode about that. And I found just more aligned philosophies and approaches to dating with mentors like Ken Page, my friend Ezzie Spencer, a woman named Eva Clay. They’ve all been on the podcast, by the way, we’ll link to their episodes in the show notes. And I started to see dating and intimacy and relationships differently around 2018, and this kicked off what I affectionately like to refer to as my conscious ho phase. And at the time I wasn’t actually thinking of that in the context of non-monogamy, it was just dating. Ultimately I still wanted a partner, and I’ll say something here that will make more sense later in the episode, but I was actually laughing in the ocean yesterday at my beach birthday party with some friends about the difference between my conscious ho phase and sacred slut summer, which I’m talking about in this podcast episode today. Some people might think this is semantics but words are very powerful and this is why I name things, excuse me. I’m recording this very early in the morning and when you haven’t really talked yet, sometimes the yawns start to come. So, that might happen a little bit more, but my conscious ho phase was about intentionally doing what I wanted from a place of deep self-love versus the kind of reckless promiscuity of my teens and into my early 20s where I was still operating around objectification. Objectifying myself, objectifying others, seeking to feel my power through sexuality, and also rebelling against being fetishized for being mixed race, ethnically ambiguous, having big titties, being a curvy person. There was all kinds of stuff going on in that time that I wanted to kinda rewrite and redefine my own experiences, I wanted to get into my own agency and my own authority around that stuff rather than just be responding to the external responses and reactions, and approaches to me. So, there was just a lot of stuff that I didn’t need to bring from my past into my present when I started my conscious ho phase, but I did really need to practice boundaries following my desires, urges, and impulses, learning the difference between impulses and intuition, and continuing to sober up from the codependency that ran my life until my early 30s. And that was actually really important ’cause I had done a lot of healing around codependency, but I had also taken like a year and a half off from dating. And it’s real easy to not be codependent when you’re not engaging with people romantically, I mean, at least it was… I shouldn’t say it’s really easy, that’s actually not true, for some people it’s harder with family members or certain friends or whomever, it depends on the relational dynamics. But, for me, romantic or intimate connections are and have been the hardest place to not go back into codependency, so for me that was a nice little practice ground and an intentional healing experiment to take everything that I had learned when I wasn’t dating or being intimate with people, and now practice it in the field of dating and intimacy. I was also really opening up to and allowing pleasure to be okay just for the sake of pleasure, and I was beginning to experience intimacy in a more sacred way too. I wasn’t fully there with that yet. So, this year entering into sacred slut summer it was more about letting love lead and guide, dropping all judgments, as many judgements as possible and following more subtle energetics of intimacy, and also attuning myself to the more subtle nuances of my own intuition, as well as believing in and being available for mutual healing and also nourishment in mysterious and unexpected ways. So, a deeper more reverent, respectful and beautiful energy. And for some of you that might not compute, who don’t have those kinds of associations with sex or especially sex outside of a committed partnership, and that’s cool I don’t expect everyone to be able to relate to everything in this episode. But to circle back, the conscious ho phase went on for a few years, on and off, that was the phase I was in, though I would still take breaks when I needed breaks. I got into a relationship in 2020 right in the beginning of the pandemic, which I ended after a few months for a couple reasons, mainly because I had worked so hard to cultivate a lot of peace and joy in my life and the person I was seeing had a lot of chaos and drama in his life via his relationship with his child’s mother; and he was a single dad with full custody of a two-year-old. So, he had no time to work on himself, deal with his issues, or to work on a relationship with me. Then obviously it was COVID, I moved up to the Bay in October of 2020, wasn’t doing a lot of dating that time. I did have a pandemic boo for a little bit in early 2021, and then a major crush when I moved to Miami on a super unavailable man, which ended up being really painful but also great because that man, who’s a friend now, really initiated me out of the pattern of falling for unavailable men. I really finally got tired of my own bullshit on that one and broke that pattern after my experience with him, which, by the way, if you wanna hear more about that and how that whole thing was transformational. I recorded a podcast episode called how to love well, it’s episode number 375, untameyourself.com/375, will also link that up in the show notes if you wanna check that out. And then in November of 2021 I met this great man, amazing man, was kind of everything I’d been saying I wanted, and I could not have been more bored after a couple of weeks. And I checked in with myself around this to see was I being love avoidant or anything else, but really I was starting to contact this truth in me that would emerge more clearly over the next six months, that I really didn’t want a partner. Now, I’ve mentioned already, I’ve taken many long breaks over the years from men and dating and intimacy, so this kicked off another one of those breaks for me. And while I felt into it and really just enjoyed being nourished by Miami and my friendships, my community, I started out the year with an emergency gallbladder surgery so I was healing from that and, obviously, dating and intimacy was certainly not a priority during that time. But then just this past June, 2022, with the full moon and Sagittarius and the summer solstice really close together, I got this big energy, this big… I don’t even wanna call it an impulse, like an impetus, almost like I was like pushed up to the starting line of this new phase, this new journey of my life to explore non-monogamy intentionally. And, listen, for years I had been joking, “I don’t know if I wanna partner or a roster.” ‘Cause during the conscious ho phase I did enjoy being with a couple different people, having a few different people in the orbit at once, and that’s just dating but it’s also not monogamous. But, again, I just wasn’t thinking of it that way at that time ’cause I was just dating and, again, I still wanted a partner. So, going into this summer and being like, “Okay, I don’t want a partner but I do want like depth, companionship, intimacy, consistency, deep friendship, I just don’t wanna be fucking around with people I’m not here for like booty calls and casual encounters. So, is that possible? Let me actually intentionally explore this for myself. And, listen, I had been resistant to it for a number of years because I did not have a great association with polyamorous or non-monogamous people, because of just some really like shady, messy, emotionally and energetically unregulated shit that I saw when I lived in San Diego many years ago. How those people behaved, there was a lot of delusion around it, just real, real, funky, real messy energy. So, like everything, I had to come to this on my own terms, and I decided to intentionally use the last year and some change of my 30s, so in June I was still 38, I just turned 39, to explore. And I updated my language, though, from like, “Do I want a partner or do I wanna roster?” And roster to me felt like objectifying, like I was just creating a lineup. Not like that, I decided to call it a constellation of companions, which I love the way that feels. So, I also give myself permission, and this was edgier for me, this was pushing into an edge, to explore the sacred prostitute archetype. Many years ago, it was 2014, I was at a conference in Los Angeles and I was sitting next to this wonderful man named Neil Moore, he’s been on the podcast many years ago. And he had on this, what’s the word for it, an amulet maybe, it wasn’t just a necklace it was this big thing. And I asked him what it was, and I can never remember the name of the tribe but he was telling me it was the symbol of this tribe of women, these temple priestesses, basically, who would fuck the war out of the soldiers returning from battle. And just even that tiny description stirred something in my soul that I couldn’t explain, that I was certainly afraid of and intimidated by for so many reasons. But something resonated and reverberated in my system around that being something a woman could do with her sexuality, as a service, as a healer. So, that seed got planted for me. So, that’s how my sacred slut summer began and, really, it’s not just a summer thing but the alliteration, sacred slut summer, the alliteration is just irresistible. I also wanted to give myself permission to try it out for a few months, I was like, “All right, let’s call this sacred slut summer. I’m pretty sure I wanna intentionally dedicate the last year of my 30s to this but, like all things, I’m gonna let myself try it out and see if I wanna keep going,” so that’s what I did. And so far not only have I not changed my mind but I’m even more enthusiastic about where it’s taking me. I wanna share some things I deeply considered at the beginning and throughout, mainly the question, “What do I really want?” And, for me, when I’m asking myself what do I really want, I’m actually asking like, “What does the divine want through me?” So, my wants, my desires are whatever the divine wants and desires through me, so just wanna be clear about that. And I looked at this through a lens of, “What am I not getting from my friendships and my kinships, or can I not get from my friendships or my kinships?” What relational nutrients, we think about the food pyramid and all the things we’re supposed to have, the nutrients, the nutrition we’re supposed to have in our diet. So, I like to think of relationships like that, what relational nutrients, what’s in my food pyramid of relationships? So, what relational nutrients am I missing? And I wanna make a note on the word kinship. I think it was last year that my friend, dear friend of mine, Jessica Fish, who has also been on the podcast. I refer people to her episode all the time, by the way, it’s called “Divesting From Perfectionism”, we’ll get a link to that in the show notes as well, sent me this podcast episode. It was episode number 157 of the, “For The Wild Podcast”, which I had never heard of before and I’ve not listened to another episode since. But the guest was Dr. Kim TallBear and I’m just gonna read you the description because it really touched me. They talked about this concept of relational multiplicity that, again, was just like , like, reverberated, resonated in my soul and my whole system really felt a seed taking root to germinate. So, here’s the description of that podcast, “Dr. TallBear’s enlivening perceptions echo from the personal to collective, inviting thrilling possibilities to open ourselves to many nourishing forms of relating to one another. Dr. TallBear and Ayana confront Western science’s continued appropriation of indigenous sexuality, ancestry and creation, while unearthing our universal desires for love and belonging. Let us rekindle more generous and sustaining forms of intimacy that flow beyond the bounds of coupledom, embracing all of our kin alike.” And what was cool in this episode, they also described our kin not just being people. Animals, trees, nature, the land, the breeze, the sun, the moon, everything, everything is our kin. And experiencing life that way, especially since I got to Miami, has again just been so satisfying, so fulfilling and kinda like they said, rekindling more generous and sustaining forms of intimacy that flow beyond the bounds of coupledom. It just really helped me to see where I had tied up what was possible in terms of intimacy and fulfillment and satisfaction in just in such a limited way. And, again, I’m not out here bashing monogamy ’cause sometimes people can’t hear folks enthusiastically talk about one thing without taking it as an affront to the whatever’s on the other side of the spectrum. This is not that, okay. All of you who are listening, who are in your monogamous relationships, that is beautiful and I hope they’re amazing and I’m super… I am pro, whatever satisfies, sustains, fulfills you. Okay, so let’s just be clear about that too. So, I was considering at the beginning of sacred slut summer, what could I really only receive? So, if I factor in, what am I receiving, what sustains me in my friendships and my kinships? What was I missing that I could really only receive from intimate, romantic or sexual connections with men, or uniquely receive in a way that would just feel and be different than the way I receive those nutrients in platonic relationships. So, I came up with certain qualities of love and pleasure and play, and connection, depth, consistency, intimacy, transparent communication, companionship, ease, and of course, wild amazing nourishing and enlivening sex, since I’m heterosexual. I also thought about what do I really not want, and the biggest thing that I don’t want is to integrate someone into my day-to-day life, to try and make one person my everything or be that for someone else. I’m super not interested in that. And I shared this, I’m gonna read you an email I sent the Wild Soul Community back in August, around that full moon in Aquarius. It goes a little deeper into all of this. Excuse me. Some of it will repeat things I’ve already said but anytime something gets repeated, we might need to hear it more than once or in a different way or a different phrasing, or whatever, and maybe not, but either way here’s what I wrote. This is a pretty personal share that I originally posted in the School of Sacred Embodiment, Mighty Networks, but decided to put in an email as well. This Leo season has been a wildly healing and transformational one, everything has been moving so fast. What is true one day is often not true the next or has a different flavor to it, which is nuanced. I’m sure some of you can relate. I wanted to pop in here and offer something that might help you with your releasing, if you do that around the full moon. There’s a quote from Danielle LaPorte, who I’m no longer a fan of, but really was back in 2011 when I came across it, “Feel free to change, when you discover something true about yourself put it into action, regardless of who you were yesterday.” This summer I’ve given myself permission to try something on that I’ve been curious about for a while, but also had a lot of judgment about because of past experiences, non-monogamy. I realized that all my dating life, even when I really wasn’t looking for a partner I still had the programming for monogamy running in the background. For years I joked that I didn’t know if I wanted a partner or a roster, but I’d only ever intentionally dated for partnership. So, this summer I decided to shift to dating intentionally for the roster, which I actually started calling the constellation of companions because that feels more accurate and reflective of these beautiful connections I’ve been forming. What this has opened up for me and in me, revealed to me about my heart’s most genuine desires, the abundance of intimacy that’s available to me and how incredible so many men can be. And I’m hetero but I’m sure this can apply in other contexts. When I’m not trying to get them into this box I think I want to be in that I really don’t, among other things, has really been blowing my mind, my heart, and also helping me heal and liberate myself from literal decades of unaligned and subpar dating experiences. It’s also been helping me heal daddy issues I didn’t even know I had. Now, am I sharing this to advocate for non-monogamy? If that’s your thing or you’re interested in it, cool. I’m also not an expert and it really is complex. I’m sharing in hopes of sparking something or anything within you, that’s really true, that’s unacknowledged and considered fully, that you perhaps haven’t let yourself explore with honesty and intention because your programming says, “I’m not that kind of person,” or, “We’re not those kinds of people.” If you have strong family of origin or social, or group, or community programming that isn’t actually aligned for you, what might you be willing or able to let go of or at least loosen your grip on during this full moon; to create space for what is currently more true, interesting, deserving of your attention, and maybe even revolutionary for your own life and path? Related to Wild Dreaming, our Leo season theme, in the Wild Soul Sacred Body Community, for a few years I felt like having Venus and Leo was almost a curse. Chani Nicholas describes it as, “You love love and adore adoring.” Trying to find one person who can meet me in that, both in giving and receiving was honestly feeling impossible. The Wild Dream I’ve allowed myself to explore recently is perhaps it’s possible, and then some, just in a different way. I also had a lot of resistance to opening myself up to this much attention from men because I’ve spent a lot of my life fending off unwanted attention from men. So, that’s been a refinement, how to open up and attune myself to getting the attention I want without also inviting in more of the attention I don’t want. This has been one of the most exciting parts about it, energetic boundaries for the win. So, again, I invite you to put that in your own context. What might you be wanting that you’re closed off from or not available before because you assume it has to come with side effects you don’t wanna deal with. Can you let that fear or assumption go and see what might be available with clear intentions and good energetic boundaries around it? The last thing I’ll share, in this case, in case it resonates for you, in the same context I’m offering or some other way. Sunday morning, I was driving home from spending the night with a new lover and something hit me that really made me laugh, but felt completely true in my bones. I currently feel the same way about men that I do about children, I love them I just don’t want my own. I like to spend short periods of time with them, then go home to my peaceful life. I’m really not up for having to integrate them into my day-to-day. This is not transactional, though, there’s a lot of care, respect, mutual adoration and connection going on because I’m not interested in anything casual or surface level. So, that was long and a little windy, a lot of you know that’s how my brain works by now. So, that was the email I sent out in August and you noticed references to some things Leo season, having my Venus and Leo, that’s like astrological stuff if you’re interested in it, As well as Wild Dreaming, every month in the Wild Soul Sacred Body Community we have a theme for a healing journey that we work for the month. And our theme in August, in Leo season, was Wild Dreaming. So, just those little reference points so that makes sense to everybody. Now, I’m not gonna get all up in the juiciest bits and details of how many men I met or slept with, or talked to this summer, I’m saving that stuff for fictional books I will write someday that will be inspired by true events. But I do wanna share with you details in the sense of outcomes and insights, and I will share the craziest story of the whole summer at the end of the episode. So, where I am landing now, so I’m recording this episode on Monday, September 12th, by the way, I procrastinated on recording this for weeks, actually. I thought I was ready like two weeks ago and I was like, “No.” ‘Cause this is deep, this is vulnerable, this is personal stuff. I might have a little vulnerability hangover after this but probably not, though, because the reason I procrastinated ’cause I was really feeling into what to share and what not to share. So, here’s what I do, here’s what I actually feel quite comfortable sharing. I currently have three steady, consistent lovers and I am absolutely in love with the variety. One of the things about dating for monogamy that was really hard for me, which might not be hard for others, is I very rarely meet men who can actually meet me in all of my mystical depth and devotion, enough to actually consider partnering with. It just is what it is, this is not a limiting belief, I’ve really looked at it and examined it and done the work around that. It’s not being jaded, I experience the same thing in personal friendships and relationships. I have a lot of close and good friends but only a handful of real deep, deep friendships that I could be my whole self with and share absolutely everything with. And obviously I wouldn’t commit myself to a relationship with someone I can’t be my whole self with. So, what I found early on in sacred slut summer is because the goal wasn’t to partner with anyone, I could just relax and appreciate all these amazing qualities about the men I was meeting, rather than dismissing them for 35 reasons I wouldn’t merge my life with theirs. So, now of course someone can argue that they have better experiences in monogamy or what I’m describing is available a monogamy, but that’s literally never been my personal experience. And we have to remember that we’re all built very differently, so what one person experiences in one way another person really might not. This is actually why self-knowledge and self-acceptance are parts of my self-love framework, because some of us just know certain things that really work for others don’t work for us, and at a certain point, excuse me. At a certain point we get to stop trying to make those things work, square peg round hole, and just surrender defining another pathway. So, that’s what this has been about for me this summer and I cannot even tell you how deeply satisfying it feels to exchange the energy, adoration, attention and intimacy with these men, and between the three of them to feel the consistent flow of man and sexual energy, and connection in my life, that I’ve been craving for years, and unable to find in a relationship with just one person, and the mutuality of it all is probably my favorite part. Few other things, transparency is super liberating. All my lovers know that I’m not a monogamous person, they aren’t either. And with one of them I talk about our experiences with other people, the other two, it’s more don’t ask don’t tell, except when it comes to sexual health related stuff. And that’s cool, I love boundaries so having the transparent communication, deciding what’s on the table, what’s not, with each type of person, what are we open to what are we not, all those types of things. Super fun for me. I realize that would not be fun for a lot of people who that kind of communication is stressful or hard, or whatever. But I really do believe anyone can learn how to communicate in that way, it does take some work and practice, though. Self-love has been everything in this exploration. And, again, for those of you who are not familiar with my embodied self-love framework, it’s awareness, acceptance, knowledge, trust, respect, and then also boundaries, so thank goodness for the medicine of that framework. Discernment around who I share what with, huge insight for me this summer. This has been a whole side experience to the exploration, realizing which of my friends are safest or wisest to share or process with. I have a couple friends who seemed like they would be but actually aren’t, mainly because we’re just in different places in our healing and liberation journeys, and so I’ve done a lot of calibrating and recalibrating around who I shared what with. On the subject of lying, I’ve shared before in other episodes, I previously thought that I didn’t have a good sense of when people are lying or not, because lying has never really been my default practice, but I realized this summer that that actually wasn’t true; I actually do know when people are lying. The real issue was, I didn’t wanna believe what I knew. I so want people to be better than they actually are and I’m inclined, and this is related to some family dysfunction, to make excuses for men. I broke myself of that pattern this summer and it feels so freaking… Kind of like how I broke myself of the pattern of falling for unavailable men with my friend last year, this summer the big thing was breaking the pattern of telling myself, “I don’t know when people are lying,” but really the deeper, more subtle thing was, “I don’t wanna believe that people are lying,” ’cause there’s a lot of grief, that sucks. But allowing myself to acknowledge that of course I do know, I just don’t want to know what I know. That was super, super healing. And so, on that point about lying, I will wrap up the episode with the craziest frigging story of the summer. And, listen, some of you might be like, “This is not crazy at all.” It was crazy for me. And this thing about Miami that I’ve never experienced in any other city I’ve lived, loved or dated in, which is the number of just the volume of men out here who are like in relationships and cheating on their wives, or their girlfriends, or trying to. But what’s interesting about it is it’s like a lot of really brazen people who are just real open about that that’s what they’re doing, and trying to just like recruit you into it. One man showed up to a date, pointed out his wedding ring, he’s like, “oh, just wanted to make sure you notice that.” I’m like, “I shouldn’t have to notice that you should have told me about it before you got here.” And it was funny ’cause I was like, “Are you in an open relationship?” He’s like, “No.” I’m like, “Then why did you come? Did you really think you were just gonna sit down across from me at this coffee shop, tell me you’re married and I was gonna be like, cool, no problem, proceed.” Instead I like grilled him, I had so many questions. I was like, “Wait a minute, why did you…” ‘Cause he was newly married, I’m like, “Why did you even get married?” Anyway, and I encountered several other men this summer, but this was the first one. Back in June this man I really connected with, I was so excited about him ’cause he was from north of Jersey, also Puerto Rican, just a funny sense of humor, culture, I got him, we instantly clicked in. I was like, “I know this person.” And not like I know everything about this person but this vibe, this energy, this attitude, I get this and I really, really like it. And I was having so much fun talking to this dude, father of three kids, and I think I’ve probably mentioned before I totally have a soft spot for single dads. And so I was operating for our first couple weeks of engaging, thinking this dude was a single dad. So, after we were intimate, and here’s what was so mind boggling about this, he wasn’t transparent about being in an open marriage, He was in an open marriage but he wasn’t transparent about that; which to me was like so ridiculous because if he would’ve said so it would’ve been fine, but he didn’t. And so after we were intimate, we were talking one day and he’s sending me little videos of the kids and stuff, and clearly there’s a woman taking the videos because he’s in them and she’s laughing and saying things. And I’m like, “Time out, do you have a wife or a girlfriend?” And he goes, “Yes and yes, LOL.” Gotta love when someone tries to minimize a big moment in conversation with a fucking LOL. He goes, “Why do you think I asked you if you play with women?” which I don’t. I was like, “Okay, so you wanted me to make the leap in logic from do you play with women to because I’m married and my wife likes to play with women?” I was like, “Wow, this is the poorest communication skills I’ve ever encountered in my life.” And I was like, “All right, I gotta feel into this, I’m super not into the dishonesty here.” And this is something a friend of mine, Antesa Jensen, who’s also been on the podcast. She gave me this term, “He didn’t necessarily lie outright but he was obscuring the truth.” Because, again, there was that weird… It’s like, he didn’t tell me but then he wasn’t trying to hide it ’cause he was sending me videos that the wife took. But I’m like, “What the is going on, is this the confession? What is happening here?” And I was like, “All right, cool.” But I also wanted to do something differently than I used to do. In the past I would just be like kick this to the curb in an instant, not look back, not even think about it, but ’cause part of the inspiration of sacred slut summer and also embracing the sacred prostitute archetype has a lot to do with healing, I was like, “I would like to give you an opportunity to repair this and here’s what I would need in order to do that.” And I was like, “I would like to have a conversation with your wife because clearly your communication skills are lacking, and if I’m gonna proceed with this connection I really need to know what are the boundaries, what are the agreements?” He was like incapable of communicating that stuff but he really did not want to directly say anything, and I’m like, “There’s obviously something shady around that,” but what I could also really feel. And this was part of the lying thing, the spectrum that lying exists on from like blatant lies to people who are lies of omission or obscuring the truth. I was like, “Clearly you don’t wanna be completely forthright with me, or can’t.” Because I do enough healing work with other people in my professional life to know that it’s not always a won’t it’s a can’t. Some people just can’t go there, they can’t be truthful or honest, their fears of abandonment and rejection, and these things have such a grip on them they just don’t think they could tell the truth. So I’m like, “All right, let me bring immense compassion to this, but also not abandon myself at all.” So I’m like, “All right, if I can have a conversation with your wife, maybe we could repair this and move forward.” That didn’t end up happening, it took some time but eventually the wife did text me. Now, the other thing to me that is will be a mystery until the end of time is, was it really his wife? I will literally never know. We texted back and forth a little bit and I was like, “I don’t know, I need to get on the phone or FaceTime, or whatever, to really see who this is.” And she said she was gonna call me one day and she didn’t, and at that point I was just like, “Hey, I’m done with y’all.” I didn’t say it like that I was like, “Listen, I’m just gonna wish you all the best and move on, this is a little much for me and I’m not interested. I would like to close the energetic loop.” But that was the craziest story this summer, for me, because I’ve never encountered, I’ve never been intimate with a married person unknowingly or knowingly. And that was just Wild, the whole thing. I was literally laughing while it was happening but also I was actually upset, for sure, ’cause I really liked this person and I’m like, “Why did you have to go ruin this amazing connection by fucking not being honest?” But it was cool, I was very happy with how I approached it and how I took care of myself, and also stayed open to letting him repair the damage he had done by not being truthful. But that’s just that, that’s not how it went. So, anyway, some of these people out here, so interesting. So, that’s my sacred slut summer y’all, that’s what I’m sharing. I would love to hear from you. If you listen to the episode, share it, tag me on social media, send me a message. You can email us a hello at untameyourself.com, if you have your own experiences of these kinds of explorations, I’d love to hear about it. What I will say, though, is I’m certainly not gonna be the best person or a resource for advice on this because I’m new and I’m navigating my own experience, so I just wanna say that because I know a lot of you, especially long-time listeners, you’ll pop in and ask me stuff. And there are a lot of things that I’m very qualified to give advice on, I would not say I’m qualified to give advice on this. Certainly, anyone is qualified to share their own experience and that’s what this was, so please don’t take any of this as advice or advisement, it’s just the experience I had and am having and will continue to explore. So, hope you enjoyed it. Again, the show notes are at untameyourself.com/399, and for those of you, again, listening in real-time on Monday, September 19th, today is the last day of the birthday sale, make sure you go and check out those offerings at untameyourself.com/bday39. And I will talk to you, see you, and be with you all next week.

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