Is it really possible to fall in love with more than one person at a time?
Cathy: Can you really fall in love with more than one person at a time? This is Reid Mihalko from http://www.ReidAboutSex.com
Reid: Cathy Vartuli from http://www.TheIntimacyDojo.com
Cathy: And we talk about poly a lot but we had someone write in really sweet beautiful question about, you were talking about your slut protocols and how not to fall in love and they were like, “It is possible to fall in love with more than one person?”
Reid: I don’t know, I would ask you know, moms about their twins and obviously they have to pick one.
Cathy: I think a lot in our society teaches people that romantic love is just like. It’s a one…
Reid: I’m sorry twins, I’m sorry there’s only one can survive. There must be only one.
Cathy: I do think that our society implies off of over and over again that you have one soul mate, and if you find another, that means you like…
Reid: It means you have not have been soul mates with the..
Cathy and Reid: First one
Cathy: Or yeah, something is broken or wrong. I think that romantic love is not that much different from other kinds of love? I mean, yeah there are genitals involved often with romantic love but you can love as many people as your heart wants to love.
Reid: You can binge in as many Net flick show as you’d like and yes it is hard to watch two Net flick shows at the same time but sometimes it is worth the effort.
Cathy: It is more worth to love multiple people. You scheduling becomes…
Reid: Some people are glad in the punishment, I mean. I’m going to say always question cultural advice, like what your culture is telling you. Just be a little bit skeptical, only because, you know, how old is that advice? Some of that advice is really great because it is timely because it has built human beings and human beings you know, there are certain things that we tend to do, you know, your children at some point when they are teenagers, will never listen to you and they will, they go through phase of hating you, that’s pretty normal. And then there’s things like that has more to do with self-expression and you know what makes us happy and we’re kind of moving in some parts of the world from survival mode, even though there are still struggles out there but in some cultures in some other part of the world it is now about thriving and self-expression so what makes you happiest and if being with multiple people makes you happiest, you know, then go for that and you know, I think you can fall in love with multiple people at the same time.
Cathy: Well, one of the reasons why I am so passionate about what you teach, and what I teach and some of these educators teach is I think so many of us didn’t know how to form love or make conscious choices about who we connected with, so if we stumbled along through life not knowing how to flirt, not knowing how to have clear authentic communication, if we found one person we resonated enough to get past our blocks and fears and connect with, that must be the one, that person must be it. And we just clung to that, and admittedly from 200 years ago we might have 3 people to choose from in our little community.
Reid: From town or village.
Cathy: There were available for mating with. And you had to be economically, you had to live with them for the rest of your life and support each other. We don’t live in that world anymore. I get to live, you know, I get to have my own house, my own, I don’t need to have a romantic partner or a marriage to have a really good life and so I think when we are smarter and more conscious about who we fall in love with and I love that with your Slut Protocols people can actually choose how to attach and connect with people.
Reid: So the casual sex protocol is what I’d like to call Slut Protocols are some ideas on how to avoid falling in love unconsciously or unintentionally. And so if you want to get the handout it’s at www.ReidAboutSex.com/Protocols
Cathy: It doesn’t just…
Reid: Or protocols, I think its protocols.
Cathy: We’ll put the link below. But the really cool thing is what Reid‘s talking about is that, it does apply to people that are sleeping together but the same exact approach can be taken if you are dating. Like you don’t have to spend every waking minute with someone and bonding with someone.
Reid: To ensure that you fall in love?
Cathy: Right! And you can actually go, “Hmm… Is this someone I want to fall in love with? Is this someone I want to connect with?” And take it a little slower and make conscious choices rather than, “Well, I have chemistry with this person, I should, that must mean we are destined to be together and I should dive in as fast as I can and try to grab that while it is there.”
Reid: This is all, your mileage may vary, these are just ideas, I’m not saying certainly, maybe Cathy is, that this is the way to approach life but I think it’s great food for thought and to challenge the assumptions that you may, you might never have challenge before and I know people out there, who maybe they can fall in love with multiple people but they are just happy to be in love with just one person and that’s fine for them.
Cathy: Absolutely fine, yeah.
Reid: So this is also not about making things wrong as with all of my advice, please just consider it, if it is useful for you, take it. If it’s not useful to you, chuck it, and just keep going and find the tools that work for you so you can build the world that you want.
Cathy: Yeah, and if you find that you want to fall in love with more than one person, there is nothing wrong with that.
Reid: And I also promote being transparent and having the difficult conversations and for some people under relationship agreements, falling in love with another person would be problematic for the relationship that they have set up. So if you are looking for more tools on how to navigate difficult conversations, things like that, then the Difficult Conversation Formulas maybe useful and you can go to www.ReidAboutSex.com/convo and get a free worksheet for that.
Cathy: We hope this help.
Reid: Bye! Leave a comment.
