The Partnership Lab

Protocol: What if growth doesn’t have to come from one huge leap—but from a hundred smaller experiments?

In this episode, we catch up on the surprisingly large number of small things we’ve been doing lately as we continue figuring out what open relating looks like for us. We talk about preparing for Scottsdale, attending a bisexuality workshop, taking a Kinsey-style sexuality quiz and an ENM placement quiz, and thinking more seriously about how labels can be useful without having to become identities we’re locked into.

Then we get into an idea that tied the whole episode together for us: microdosing ENM. Instead of treating growth like a series of giant tests, what happens if we focus on smaller experiences that stretch our comfort zones, expand our capacity, and teach us something without completely overwhelming us?

🧪 In This Episode:

• Our latest Scottsdale prep—and what we want to do differently this time
• Why Roz is focusing more on comfort, connection, and being herself
• Why attraction, experience, and identity don’t always line up neatly
• How differently we experience emotions in our bodies
• Our aura photos—and what our couple’s photo unexpectedly revealed

🔬 Resources Mentioned:

• Expansive Connections - https://www.expansiveconnection.com/enmblog
• Monogamish Marriage - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-monogamish-marriage/id1586549659
• Kinsey sexuality quiz - https://www.idrlabs.com/kinsey-scale/test.php?srsltid=AfmBOorQlGLIOCOEWd2VhNrtUibYKvFm9lFUgxU6wAYBE-P4oJ1ocQOa
• ENM Placement Test on FetLife - https://enmtriangle.netlify.app/?poly=11.38&swinger=11.38&kinky=11.88
• Aria Diana somatic relationship coaching - https://www.ariadiana.com/
• Nervous-system masterclass - https://youtu.be/2POelrlfPJI?si=eqSRjcmTMXovvtVa
• Hack Your Nervous System card deck - https://hackyournervoussystem.org/
• Aura photography - https://hauswitchstore.com/collections/aura-photos
• Next Book Club Book (Wild Love Theory) - https://a.co/d/02HamK6D

📚 Next Episode:

Scottsdale is almost here. Next time, we’ll talk through our mindset going into the trip, what we learned from Toronto, the smaller goals we want to set for ourselves, and how we’re trying very hard not to spin the fuck out this time.

📩 Email: [email protected] 📱 Instagram: @the_partnership_lab

Disclaimer: These conversations reflect our personal experiences and are not professional advice.

Sometimes the best conversations start with a question you’ve somehow never asked each other, even 20 years in.

This week, Roz brings a question game neither of us has seen ahead of time, and we let it lead us. What starts with childhood dreams, favorite meals, and questionable music choices eventually gets us talking about the beliefs we’ve outgrown, places that changed us, the lives we still imagine for ourselves, and the small ways we make each other feel cared for.

No worksheets. No relationship theory. No big experiment. Just two people who have been together a long time discovering there are still things left to learn about each other. Come hang out with us.

Join the Conversation:

What’s something you recently learned about someone you thought you knew really well? Or, better yet, what question should we ask each other next time?

Instagram: @the_partnership_lab

Email: [email protected]

Disclaimer:

These conversations reflect our own observations and experiences and are not professional or institutional advice. They do not reflect the thoughts or opinions of employers, family, or guests, nor imply their approval of the content shared.

Our second Partnership Lab Book Club turned into something we weren't expecting.

We thought The Other Significant Others by Rhaina Cohen would be a collection of stories about extraordinary friendships. Instead, it became an invitation to question the relationship blueprint we inherited.

Rather than reviewing the book chapter by chapter, we explore the assumptions each story challenged in us—from the idea that marriage should fulfill every emotional need, to why deep male friendship feels so uncommon, to what actually defines a family, a partnership, or a successful relationship.

By the end, we realized the biggest takeaway wasn't about friendship at all.

It was about imagination.

We talk about:

• Why friendship may be carrying far more weight than we realize
• Separating attraction, romance, sexuality, caregiving, and commitment
• Designing your own relationship blueprint instead of inheriting one
• Deep male friendship, masculinity, and emotional intimacy
• What actually makes a family
• Building community before you need it
• Why institutions often lag behind the ways people actually love
• Measuring relationships by how they change us—not just how long they last

Resources

• The Other Significant Others — Rhaina Cohen

Coming Up Next

After a few deeply reflective conversations, we're ready to lighten things up. Next time, Roz is taking the reins for a fun, playful episode exploring fantasies, curiosity, and a few surprises.

Join the Conversation

Have thoughts about the book? Agree with us? Completely disagree? We'd love to hear your perspective. We'd also love recommendations for future Book Club episodes.

• [email protected]
• Instagram: the_partnership_lab

Disclaimer

These conversations reflect our own observations and experiences and are not professional or institutional advice.

Protocol Entry: Compersion

This week, we’re back in Protocol Entry mode with a worksheet, some scores, and a lot of feelings about what the data actually says.

After completing Marie Thouin’s Your Compersion Worksheet, we sit down to compare our results and talk through what surprised us, what didn’t, and what it reveals about where we are in this experiment. Before we get into the results, we catch up on family travel, reaching 400 downloads, joining the chat for our next lifestyle event, a very successful Erika Lust detour, and Max’s experience coming off an antidepressant.

What we found was pretty clear: our relationship foundation feels strong, but the individual work is still very real.

In This Episode:

• why we put intimacy, self-care, and connection nights on the calendar
• discovering new turn-ons through Erika Lust
• anxiety, medication changes, and receiving care from a partner
• Marie Thouin’s definition of compersion
• compersion outside the lifestyle
• metamours and what kind of “other relationship” would feel good or hard
• why the foundation feels strong, even when the individual work is still real

Resources:

• Marie Thouin, Your Compersion Worksheet:
  • https://mariethouin.com/store/p/your-compersion-worksheet

Next Episode:

We'll be doing our second Listener Lab Book Club with: The Other Significant Others by Rhaina Cohen. Read along and send your thoughts—we’ll be breaking it down next episode.

Join the Conversation:

• Email: [email protected]
• Instagram: @the_partnership_lab

Disclaimer: These conversations reflect our personal experiences and are not professional advice.

Bonus: The Dream That Gave Us the Ick

After a long and heavy Toronto recap, we’re back with a shorter bonus episode about something that started as a random dream and turned into a surprisingly useful conversation.

Max had a lifestyle dream that felt a little too real: a house party, a card game, someone from his past, Roz disappearing without a check-in, and a wave of jealousy that stuck around even after waking up. So we used it the way we use most things in this experiment — as data.

In this bonus episode, we talk about what the dream revealed about jealousy, communication, compersion, context, partner vetoes, and why headspace matters. We also wander into Love Is Blind, laughter as a compatibility test, listener feedback, making local lifestyle friends, horror movies after becoming parents, and what we’re building for listeners as we keep learning in real time.

These conversations reflect our own observations and experiences and are not professional or institutional advice. They do not reflect the thoughts or opinions of employers, family, friends, or guests, nor imply their approval of the content shared.

Field Notes: Toronto 2026

In this Field Notes episode, we’re unpacking our Naughty Gym Toronto weekend: our first time at a lifestyle club, our first real sex-club environment, Toronto Pride, a pool party, a first kiss with someone new, naked swimming, sexy outfits, dancing, overstimulation, unexpected emotions, and one shower conversation that changed the entire perspective of the weekend.

Going in, we thought the big question was whether we were ready for parallel play, soft swap, or some kind of first sexual experience with other people. What we learned instead was that our bodies were still catching up to our brains.

This episode is about recalibrating expectations, recognizing smaller wins, learning what safety and arousal actually feel like in a new environment, and realizing that success does not always look like escalation. Sometimes success is telling the truth, taking a break, staying on the same team, and deciding that the experiment is still worth continuing.

In this episode, we talk about:

• having sex at our first sex club
• Toronto Pride, brunch, sexy shopping, and a drag show
• Roz’s first kiss with a lifestyle friend
• redefining what “pushing boundaries” actually means
• why social battery, sensuality, and environment matter
• what this taught us going into future trips like Hedo

These conversations reflect our own observations and experiences and are not professional or institutional advice. They do not reflect the thoughts or opinions of employers, family, friends, or guests, nor imply their approval of the content shared.

Our first sex-club weekend is almost here.

Before heading to Toronto for the Naughty Gym takeover, we sat down separately to answer the questions about what we want, what scares us, what feels exciting, and what might still be too far. Then we shared our answers with each other for the first time.

We talk through why we are going, what would make the weekend feel successful, and what we are each hoping to learn about ourselves. We also get specific about flirting, nudity, public sex, parallel play, soft swap, watching each other interact with other people, and the line between curiosity and readiness.

The biggest surprise was not how different our answers were. It was how closely they aligned.

This is less a list of what is “allowed” and more a protocol for protecting our relationship while giving ourselves enough freedom to explore. We discuss how we will check in, what happens if one of us changes our mind, why the pace of the slowest person matters, and how we can push our boundaries without racing toward a particular outcome.

We also ask ChatGPT to analyze our answers—partly to see whether Roz sounds genuinely enthusiastic and partly to find out what Max’s answers reveal about him. The results get unexpectedly personal.

In this episode

• A vasectomy, a Brazilian wax, and 200 podcast downloads
• Why Toronto feels different from our previous lifestyle experiences
• Green lights, yellow lights, and current red lights
• What our answers reveal about confidence, belonging, and identity
• Why friendship continues to matter more to us than collecting sexual experiences

Resources and places mentioned

• Naughty Gym Toronto Takeover
  • https://www.tickettailor.com/events/naughtygym/2109578
• X Club
  • https://thexclub.net/
• Mermaid Lounge
  • https://mermaidlounge.ca/
• Partnership Lab’s pre-event conversation framework
  • Coming Soon
• Erika Lust Viewing Recommendations
  • The Nine Delights - https://erikalust.com/film/the-nine-delights-swinger-feast
  • Hot Power Couple - https://erikalust.com/film/hot-power-couple

Join the conversation

What conversations do you have before trying something new together? Are there questions we missed that should become part of the next version of our protocol?

Instagram: @the_partnership_lab

Email: [email protected]

Disclaimer

These conversations reflect our own observations and experiences and are not professional or institutional advice. They do not reflect the thoughts or opinions of employers, family, or guests, nor imply their approval of the content shared.

Girl Talk: No Labels, No Pressure

In this episode, Roz sits down with Lee for a special Girl Talk conversation about finding the lifestyle, learning what feels right, and taking your time and letting the journey unfold.

Lee shares how she and her husband discovered Desire, what it felt like to walk into a sex-positive resort for the first time, and why being surrounded by open-minded people changed the way she thought about her body, her marriage, and her sexuality.

They also talk about the Women’s Retreat (see episodes 2&3), feminine energy, exploring attraction to women, the difference between curiosity and pressure, and why “friends first” feels more aligned than jumping straight into play.

This conversation moves through trauma, purity culture, perimenopause, body image, erotic blueprints, nudity, desire, and the very real awkwardness of kissing someone new after twenty years with the same person.

The biggest takeaway: you don’t have to rush. You don’t have to label yourself. You don’t have to perform. Sometimes the lifestyle starts with better conversations, more honesty, and taking your top off at the pool.

Also in this episode:

• The Story of Lee and Mr. B’s entry into the lifestyle
• Why nudity can break down social barriers
• Exploring attraction without forcing a label
• Body image, being seen, and learning to believe your partner
• Music, mood, and setting the scene

Resources mentioned

• Women's Anatomy of Arousal: https://a.co/d/0i3Honnr
• The Erotic Mind: https://a.co/d/09phmIib
• Sex God and the Conservative Church: https://a.co/d/07I5nfRn
• Naked Attraction: https://www.hbomax.com/shows/naked-attraction/7763c6ba-6237-4018-9e65-929ce18838b3
• The Erotic Blueprint: https://missjaiya.com/
• NIGHTSYN: https://music.apple.com/us/artist/nightsyn/1835493175
• Luxe Studios: https://music.apple.com/us/artist/luxe-music-studios/1887523053

Join the Conversation:

Email: [email protected]

Instagram: @the_partnership_lab

Disclaimer: These conversations reflect our personal experiences and are not professional advice.

What exactly is a soft swap? What’s the difference between a hotwife and a stag/vixen dynamic? And why does everyone keep talking about unicorns?

In this bonus episode, we start building a shared vocabulary for the lifestyle by breaking down some of the most common terms you’ll encounter in swinging, ENM spaces, dating apps, and lifestyle communities.

Using our best understanding (and a healthy amount of curiosity), we walk through:

• soft swap vs full swap
• same room vs separate room play
• parallel play
• hotwife dynamics
• stag/vixen relationships
• cuckolding
• bulls and unicorns

We also talk about why communication matters so much, how different communities use these terms differently, and why learning the language can make exploring these spaces feel a lot less intimidating.

This isn’t meant to be the definitive dictionary—just two curious scientists trying to make the terminology a little less overwhelming.

And yes… somehow we also end up talking about Love Is Blind.

Resources Mentioned:

• Feeld glossary - https://feeld.co/glossary
• Polyamory For Dummies - https://a.co/d/0gHXL7DA

Join the Conversation

Got a term we should cover next? Think we butchered one of these definitions?[email protected]

For our first official book club episode, we’re discussing Open by Rachel Krantz — a memoir exploring consensual non-monogamy, power dynamics, abuse, freedom, jealousy, and self-discovery.

What started as a book we expected to be erotic quickly turned into something much heavier and more emotionally complex.

We talk about:

• the unequal power dynamics between Rachel and Adam
• gaslighting and manipulation
• emotional vs sexual jealousy
• why certain dynamics can feel exciting at first… and painful later
• how lifestyle spaces can accelerate emotional intimacy
• Disney princesses (yes, really)
• therapy, individuation, and personal growth inside relationships
• why the book still lands on a hopeful note despite everything Rachel went through

We also share some thoughts on boundaries, communication, and why exploring relationships intentionally requires more emotional honesty than most people realize.

In This Episode We Also Discuss

• Sexual language and boundaries during play
• Why lifestyle spaces can feel emotionally disarming
• “Enlightened” personalities (ie. assholes) in ENM spaces
• Kathy Labriola’s work on jealousy and how it's experienced
• Masculinity and emotional freedom
• Metamour friendships
• Future Book Club picks

Resources Mentioned

• Open by Rachel Krantz - https://a.co/d/0ihlMCvD
• Kathy Labriola books/resources - https://www.kathylabriola.com/
• Feel It All: A Therapist's Guide to Reimagining Your Relationship With Sex - https://a.co/d/0cZMVSQ2
• The Other Significant Others - https://a.co/d/0e8gZJlJ
• Praise - https://a.co/d/07k3m8w7

Join the Conversation

Have thoughts about the book? Agree with us? Completely disagree?

[email protected]

We’d also love recommendations for future Book Club episodes.

Disclaimer

These conversations reflect our own observations and experiences and are not professional or institutional advice.