Heléne och Mikael är paret bakom boken Vi är swingers.

Det här är ett samtal om en relationsform som fortfarande väcker starka reaktioner, men ganska snabbt blir det tydligt att avsnittet handlar om mycket mer än sex.

Vi pratar om svartsjuka, tillit, samtycke, gränser, frihet, hemligheter och vad det egentligen betyder att känna sig vald när valet faktiskt finns.

Heléne och Mikael berättar om hur de började, vilka regler de hade i början, vad som förändrats med tiden och varför kommunikationen blivit helt central i deras relation.

Vi pratar också om varför swinging inte kan reparera en relation som redan är trasig, varför vissa fantasier kanske mår bäst av att få förbli fantasier och om en hemlighet ibland kan göra mer ont än själva handlingen.

Du behöver inte vilja öppna din relation för att frågorna ska bli dina.

Hur mycket sanning klarar två människor att bära tillsammans?

Hur fria kan vi låta varandra vara och fortfarande känna oss valda?

Stay curious. Stay honest. Stay present. Stay human.

English

🇸🇪 We Are Swingers. On Freedom, Trust and Choosing Each Other

Heléne and Mikael are the couple behind the Swedish book Vi är swingers — We Are Swingers.

This conversation begins with a relationship model that still provokes strong reactions, but it quickly becomes about something much bigger than sex.

We talk about jealousy, trust, consent, boundaries, freedom, secrecy and what it actually means to feel chosen when choice still exists.

Heléne and Mikael share how their journey began, the rules they had in the beginning, what changed as trust grew, and why communication became the foundation of their relationship.

We also explore why opening a relationship cannot repair something that is already broken, why some fantasies may be better left as fantasies, and why a secret can sometimes hurt more than the act itself.

You do not have to want an open relationship for these questions to matter.

How much truth can two people carry together?

How free can we allow each other to be and still feel chosen?

Stay curious. Stay honest. Stay present. Stay human.

Two people can live through the same moment and walk away in two completely different worlds.

One person needs space. The other experiences distance. One thinks they are calming things down. The other feels shut out.

In this chapter of Collecting Maps, I explore what happens when our maps don’t match, how quickly an internal experience can become a verdict about the other person, and why understanding someone is not the same as agreeing with them.

There is a difference between ”I feel abandoned” and ”You are abandoning me”

One describes what is happening inside me. The other turns my experience into a fact about you.

Maybe intimacy is not finding someone whose map perfectly matches ours, but learning how to stay in contact when it doesn’t.

I want to understand your world without disappearing from my own.

Two people. Two maps. One landscape.

Stay curious. Stay honest. Stay present. Stay human.

What if our fantasies say less about what we want to do, and more about who we get to be?

In this chapter of Collecting Maps, I explore why shame is such a poor tool for understanding ourselves, why curiosity without consent isn’t intimacy, and what happens when two people can reveal something true while still remaining completely free in what they choose to do with it.

Underneath it all sits a single question:

Who do we get to become when we stop being ashamed of what moves us?

Not so that every fantasy becomes reality, but so that more of us is allowed into the conversation. First with ourselves, and then, when there’s enough trust, with another person.

Stay curious. Stay honest. Stay present. Stay human.

We tend to talk about desire as if we already know what it is. More closeness, more passion, more sex.

When people say they miss sex, though, they aren’t always talking about it. Sometimes they miss feeling wanted. Sometimes they miss feeling free. Sometimes they miss a version of themselves that felt more awake to their own life.

In this chapter of Collecting Maps, I explore what actually lives underneath desire, why longing rises and fades, and how safety, stress, resentment and the nervous system can quietly shape how much we want.

Desire is not only an accelerator. It also has brakes.

So perhaps the question isn’t simply how to want more.

Maybe it’s what is quietly pressing the brakes, what has gone silent inside us, and what our longing has been trying to tell us all along.

Not only what do I desire?

But when did I stop feeling alive, and what would it take to come back?

Relationships don’t only reveal who the other person is. They reveal us.

The closer someone gets, the more they can awaken parts of us that existed long before they arrived. Old stories, protective patterns, fears of abandonment or rejection, and sometimes reactions that belong as much to our past as to the person standing in front of us.

There is a profound difference between “I feel abandoned” and “you are abandoning me.” One describes what is happening inside me. The other turns my experience into a statement about you.

In this chapter of Collecting Maps, I explore what relationships reveal about us, how we can begin separating what is happening now from what happened then, and the difference between compromise and slowly disappearing inside a relationship.

Perhaps the question isn’t only whether a relationship makes us happy.

Who are we becoming inside it?

Referenced in this episode:
John Bowlby & Mary Ainsworth: Attachment Theory
Sue Johnson: Adult Attachment & Emotionally Focused Therapy
Stephen Drigotas & Caryl Rusbult: The Michelangelo Phenomenon

Falling in love is only the beginning. What happens after we choose each other?

Chemistry may bring two people together, but it doesn’t tell them how to build a life.

In this chapter of Collecting Maps, we move beyond attraction and into the everyday architecture of love: shared values, a shared direction, honesty, responsibility, repair and the willingness to keep choosing each other when love stops feeling effortless.

Because every close relationship will eventually encounter difference.

We misunderstand each other. We disappoint each other. We trigger old wounds. We change.

The question isn’t whether rupture happens. It’s what we do next.

Can we stay curious when we want to defend ourselves? Can we tell the truth without making the other person our enemy? Can we repair what has been hurt without abandoning ourselves in the process?

Perhaps lasting love isn’t something we find and then get to keep.

Perhaps it’s something two people keep creating.

Why do we fall in love with the people we do?

We like to believe attraction is a choice. That we meet someone, get to know them and gradually decide that this is a person we want.

Often, something happens long before that decision.

Our biology, attachment patterns, nervous system and unconscious associations are already shaping who feels exciting, familiar, safe or irresistible to us.

In the first chapter of Collecting Maps, we explore the forces underneath attraction and why chemistry can sometimes tell us as much about ourselves as it does about the person standing in front of us.

Why does one person leave us untouched while another can change the temperature of the room simply by walking into it?

Why can familiarity feel like love?

Why are safety and attraction sometimes drawn together, and sometimes seemingly pulled apart?

Perhaps the most interesting question isn’t who we fall in love with.

It’s what part of us is doing the choosing.

Stay open, stay honest, stay present

What if the biggest challenge in relationships isn’t a lack of love, but a lack of shared language?

In this episode, I explore how conversations with psychologists, neuroscientists, therapists, sexologists, coaches and authors have gradually shaped a broader framework for understanding human connection.

Rather than searching for one answer, we explore why different perspectives often illuminate different parts of the same human landscape and why learning to navigate with more than one map might change the way we understand ourselves, our relationships and the world around us.

One year later.

When I started 34°, I thought I was creating a podcast about love, sex and relationships.

Over the past year, I've spoken with psychologists, neuroscientists, therapists, sexologists, coaches, authors and extraordinary people from around the world.

Looking back, I realise I wasn't just collecting conversations.

I was collecting maps.

Different ways of understanding the same human landscape.

In this anniversary episode, I reflect on the ideas that connect these conversations and why they've become the foundation for what I now call The Architecture of Human Connection.

Perhaps intimacy isn't just about relationships.

Perhaps it's one of the deepest expressions of what it means to be human.

Next week, I'll share where I believe this journey is leading and why it extends far beyond intimacy alone...

For a long time, when something painful happened, I asked why. Why is this happening to me? Now I ask a different question. What is this trying to teach me?

In this episode we explore why love is not a feeling we find once but a practice we keep choosing, what it means to stay curious about someone you already know well, and why the relationships that last are the ones where both people keep becoming.

The best relationships don’t complete us. They expand us.

Thank you for spending these three conversations with me.

Stay honest. Stay present. Stay human.