Instead of getting stuck in existing relational molds, we can become the architects of our relationships. The potential rewards are exciting, but there are many traps and unhealthy dynamics to overcome to get there. In this episode, Jessica Fern offers invaluable wisdom and guidelines to help us shine bright in our relationships, no matter how we choose to design them. 

-GUEST BIOGRAPHY-

Jessica Fern is a Psychotherapist, Coach, and Certified Clinical Trauma Professional. Jessica is the author of Polysecure: Attachment, Trauma, and Nonmonogamy and The Polysecure Workbook: Healing Your Attachment and Creating Security in Loving Relationships. In her international private practice, Jessica works with individuals, couples, and people in multiple-partner relationships who no longer want to be limited by their reactive patterns, cultural conditioning, insecure attachment styles, and past traumas, helping them to embody new possibilities in life and love. Learn more at JessicaFern.com. 

-EPISODE SUMMARY-

PRACTICES: 

• Allow yourself to be the designer of the relationships of your life. Use trial and error and conversations to get there. 
• Be creative when choosing empowering language to describe a relationship or celebrating a commitment. 
• Identify your shared interests and pleasures in a relationship. 
• Close your eyes and bring all the channels of purpose that go outside of yourself back in. Then, sit, feel and breathe. 

IDEAS:

• A safe haven is when a caretaker responds to our physical and emotional needs. 
• A secure base is what allows us to venture into the world and take risks. 
• Free yourself from a rigid definition of what play and fun are. 
• Another way of exploring play is looking at what makes you feel alive. 
• Sexploration: feeling safe to explore new areas in sex (ex. wrestling, pillow fighting, playing tricks).
• Ethical non-monogamy is an umbrella term that describes having multiple partners while everyone knows. 
• Instead of calling someone an ex, use the term that best describes your current relationship. 
• If a relationship ends, instead of thinking it should have been longer, celebrate and accept what it was. 
• An attachment relationship is one where people mutually rely on each other (ex. partner, friend, family). 
• A rigid binary doesn’t encapsulate the experience of being human. 
• It takes a village to raise a child and people are getting creative about what that village might look like. 
• Expressed delight: delight for the beingness of someone. 
• Compersion: the happiness we feel when our partners are with other people. 
• It’s easy to push our emotions onto others like a hot potato instead of sitting with them.
• Polyamory requires respect, agreements, consent and consideration. 
• Prepare a care strategy before having a primal attachment panic (before, during, after, and healing modalities).
• Codependent = I’m not ok without you.
• Interdependent = I'm ok when I'm not with you, and I love it when I'm with you.
• You are the source of your happiness and purpose. 

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