Episode Transcript
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Xorje Olivares: I know we’re only just now starting to get to know each other, but there’s something about me you have to know. And believe me, once I tell you, you’re probably going to look at me in a completely different light. Which is a risk I’m willing to take if it means standing in my truth. Ok. Here it goes: I – Xorje Andrés Olivares Urbina – am an aggressive monogamist. I know, right? Y con este cuerpazo? I should be sharing it with everyone who has a thing for chaparritos like me!
But alas, I’ve never been one for sharing…at least not when it comes to my romantic partners. In fact, when I was dating, it was one of the first few questions I would ask: it was like “what do you do for work? Any siblings? What are your concrete thoughts on open relationships and are you ok having sex with me and just me?”
Okay it was never that forward as that, but I was pretty clear upfront with any potential suitor that – I was looking for an exclusive partner. For me, that meant having them as my only love interest, and I theirs. And I want to make sure I specify “love interest” because I absolutely understand that a single person cannot fulfill our every need as adults. That’s what friends, family, coworkers, hobbies are for and I’m not one of those tóxicas. Or am I? But seriously, am I being too rigid in my thinking on this? Should we ALL be breaking free from the prison of monogamy? I’m Xorje Olivares, and today I’m asking the question: Are you comfortable sharing your partner with another lover?
This is Hyphenación – where conversation and cultura meet.
So I’ve been really looking forward to today’s conversation because it is such a sexy topic, I felt like we needed to start with a sexy question. And so I’m gonna ask my two guests who are joining me today what they find sexy in another person. Because for me, it is tattoos. If somebody walks in with tattoos right now and like a bonus if they got an ear pierced, then I am just putty in their hands. And yes, do with that imagery what you will. I’m excited to first welcome to the program Fernanda Fabian, who is a relationship coach and the host of the Polycurious podcast, where she facilitates conversations about non-monogamy. Fernanda, thank you so much for joining us today. And I want to ask you, what do you find sexy in another person?
Fernanda Fabian: I love that question. And you know, my answer might surprise you a little bit because I’m not sure everyone feels that way. But one thing that I always find attractive is when someone says that they’re going to therapy. Because that means that they are actually working on themselves. They’re actually introspective. Hopefully that means they might be better communicating or more aware of their issues. And to me, as much as I do care about physical appearance, sometimes just someone who’s working on their stuff and is able to communicate is just a turn-on.
Xorje Olivares: Love that. Making me think differently about this whole topic. Well, thank you so much for joining us and for providing that answer.
Also excited to welcome Manuel Betancourt, who is a culture writer and the author of the new book, Hello Stranger, which talks about the seductive potential of what it means to be with strangers. Manuel, what is something you find sexy in another person? Whether it is a physical trait, personality trait…
Manuel Betancourt: Yeah, I was struggling. I was like, do I go with the physical trade? I love me some arms. So a nice bicep is sort of where-that’s my sweet spot. But for me, the thing that really grabs me is confidence. Like if someone can walk into a room and sort of lock eyes with me, and just that’s what turns me into putty. That’s what sort of makes me melt.
Xorje Olivares: Well, I’m excited for us to have this chat. And I want us to get into this, especially starting with you Fernanda, about if you could tell us about what your relationship dynamics are and how you started this journey towards what you talk about in your podcast, Polycurious.
Fernanda Fabian: Yeah, of course. So I actually have a very interesting dynamic, which I like to talk about, because I believe that other people might want to consider it. In my case, I am non-monogamous. I’m playing with calling myself poly at this point, because I recently started seeing someone that I’m calling my partner, but that had never happened before. However, my primary partner, who I have been with for almost seven years, is monogamous. So as you can imagine, that’s a very rare situation, rare dynamic, where one person is monogamous and the other person is non-monogamous, especially if the non-monogamous person is the woman. So I’m not an advocate for monogamy or non-monogamy. I just think that people should do whatever works for them. And for me and my partner, that is what works. So that’s why I decided to start the podcast, become a coach and do this work to show other people that it’s possible to do it in a healthy way.
Xorje Olivares: Nice. Manuel, I like the phrasing that Fernanda used about just what works for you. What currently works for you? What is your relationship dynamic currently?
Manuel Betancourt: Yeah, my current relationship dynamic is, I’m in what people would normally call a throuple. And so there’s three of us, and I met them when they had been together for five years. And so we started sort of hanging out, and it soon was clear that the three of us were sort of operating as a unit, as a romantic unit. And so, we like to say that we’re sort of this closed romantic triangle, but it’s very porous sexually. So we sort of practice, it’s an open relationship. We practice consensual non-monogamy. We’re very open and honest about what we do and what we allow ourselves to do with other people, sometimes with each other, sometimes at different place spaces. And that’s sort of what works for us right now. And that came from after being years monogamous sort of marriage. And after I got divorced, I made a conscious choice of what I realized that I wanted, what I realized that what I was looking for and really wanted in a relationship was a kind of openness. And so I never set out to be like, okay, now I’m going to be part of a throuple or now I am going to be a part of poly relationship or polycule. It’s just, as soon as I open the floodgates in my mind to be, like, I’m gonna be open to any kind of relationship dynamic. That grows organically and that sort of fulfills me romantically, sexually, you know, spiritually in all these different ways, like I’m just going to follow that. And what happened was sort of this, um, the throuple and we’re now going on. It’s going to be almost three years now. And Thats where I’m at right now.
Xorje Olivares: I do want to ask Manuel, if there was any hesitation on your part to joining some relationship dynamic. They already knew how to talk to each other. They already know how to fight with one another. They already how to, like, what their body language was with one another.
Manuel Betancourt: Oh, absolutely. And in this, the thing that helped me was that I was in therapy. The thing that I talked about during those first few weeks in therapy was like, I don’t know if I can do this. And like, I needed someone to help me, guide me through and to sort of feel, because it felt like I wasn’t just joining a relationship. It was like I was joining a kind of partnership. They had been together for a while, they lived together, they had this like life together. Like, calibrating that took like a year, just sort of trying to find our bearings so that we would all feel comfortable. Because there was also hesitation on their part, Like they were, this was something that was established and they were also not looking for a third, they were not looking to sort of change. Their dynamic, a lot of stuff they had sort of down pat. And I then became the thing that illuminated a lot of stuff about their relationship and sort of the thing that my therapist at the time kept saying was like, you know, if you found yourself in this situation it’s because there was room for you in the relationship and that they’re making room for that being sort of a very active choice that the three of us were making.
Xorje Olivares: I feel like a lot of this comes down to communication. Each of you have talked a little bit about that. And I want to go to you Fernanda and ask about what that communication looked like with your partner where you’ve brought up this notion of maybe we should try something a little different.
Fernanda Fabian: Yeah, of course, I actually brought it up the second day we met,
Xorje Olivares: Oh, okay,
Fernanda Fabian: Yeah, by the time I met Seth, we actually met at Burning Man. So I think that also contributed to us being like super open and honest from the beginning. So, uh, we were both coming from a very like open space and, you know, the second day, the second night we met, we already felt like this was something really special, sometimes that doesn’t last after Burning Man, but in our case it did. So we were just like putting everything on the table. At that point I had friends that were open. I wasn’t non-monogamous in a primary relationship but I was already having friends with benefits that knew about each other and I was already clear that that’s what I wanted. And when I brought it up, he said, you know, I’m open to it and, you know we’ll figure it out. And then about like a month after we met, he was actually living in San Francisco, I was living in New York, and we were visiting each other and at some point he was like, hey, do you want to be my girlfriend? Which I found adorable because I hadn’t been asked that since high school. But I was like really into him, like feeling like this was really right and I just said yes. And then about like 15 minutes later, I was like hold on one second, does this mean that I cannot have sex with other people. Is that what being a girlfriend means? And he was like, yes. And I was like okay, well, that’s fine. I can make that sacrifice. But I could do that because I knew from the beginning that he was open to it down the line. He was very clear. He said, right now I don’t feel ready for that, but I want to give you what you want. I don’t know if I can, but I will try. So let’s go on stages. He’s also an introvert, so he loves his alone time and he loves to stay home. I’m an extrovert. So for him, it’s not like he’s opposed to non-monogamy and obviously he has the option and I hope that one day he finds someone that he wants to explore with, but he just doesn’t feel the need. So, you know, it was a slow process. And at some points, I was like, Oh, can I just, can I do it? Can I just go on the date? Because he’d be like, Okay, you can, You know, you can go on a date with someone, but they, you know… It’s better if they have a partner as well, and it’s better if it’s someone that you knew before you met me, so it’s not as much of a threat. There were important steps, because they gave him the opportunity to get used to that. So obviously, the first time I went to a play party, the first time I went on a date, he was having a difficult time, but he honestly is amazing and never put that jealousy or that like discomfort on me. He did say, okay, I’m feeling a little bit like, I don’t want to be close to you when you come back from dates, for example, because I’m having a hard time. So then we agreed that when I’d come back from a date which like for me was the opposite. I was just like.
Xorje Olivares: You want to tell him all the information!
Manuel Betancourt: [Laughter]
Fernanda Fabian: Yeah, I was just like on cloud nine from meeting a new person. And then, you know, interestingly enough, that sexual energy, that new relationship energy, as people call it, actually comes back to my primary relationship. So I’d want to connect, you know, and even if we didn’t have sex, I want to like be close and cuddle. And he’d be like, okay, I need a little bit of more time to reconnect after you come back from a date. So we, it was a lot of trial and error. I always recommend people to do it that way, because if we had just started…
Xorje Olivares: Gone off the deep end
Fernanda Fabian: …open right away. He might have had a lot of jealousy, insecurity, a lot of difficult emotions, and it would have been a lot more difficult to actually get where we wanted to go because there would have been a lots of missteps and then repair and all of that. Although some people argue that you should start open right away if that’s what you want, which I think if you have experience with non-monogamy, if you both have experiences with non monogamy that can also work potentially, but The way it worked for me was to. Go very slowly, reassess, talk about feelings, and move from there.
Xorje Olivares: I just feel like it might be so hard I can see that like it takes those early conversations, it takes figuring out what the parameters are, figuring out what your boundaries are. And so Manuel was it easy once you started pursuing non- monogamy to be open and honest and transparent about your feelings of like That’s okay with me and that’s not okay with me.
Manuel Betancourt: Yeah, it took a while. And the other part was, I was dealing with two people, two people who had gone through that process and had figured it out for themselves. So they knew what worked for one another, what parties they go to, what was allowed and what was not allowed. So by the time I came in, there was like no rules. They were very like, you can do whatever you want. A lot of it was sexual. Like we don’t, romantic and dates, like those are not really things of the three of us partake or are interested. I think also because there’s three of us, so they’re like, there’s just enough, just a scheduling a date between the three of us is hard enough. Like, trying just to like…
Xorje Olivares: I’m free Thursday at 3, but then yeah, I don’t quite know where that fits in.
Manuel Betancourt: Yeah, but trying to figure out what I was comfortable with, that maybe the two of them had figured out, worked for them, and then I would be like, oh, actually, like, I get pangs of jealousy, but I don’t want to disrupt what the two them had achieved. So it did took a little bit of a while. It was a little bit of trial and error and I think the thing I kept coming back to is like, it’s okay to be jealous. It’s not okay to make that jealousy that someone else’s problem, right? Like, I can have those feelings, I can have feelings of fear, of anxiety, of inadequacy, of jealousy, like, but learning to not lead with those and learning not to act on those instinctively. Took a while– What does this mean? Is it because I’m insecure? Is it because I need more cuddling? Is it because I need more reassurance? Is it because I felt like you were choosing someone else over me? Uh and it took a while to sort of learn the language. I feel like it still happens to us like sometimes none of this is perfect. Uh none of it is like you you know you don’t get like a diploma and say now, you’re great at being poly.
Xorje Olivares: [laughter]
Manuel Betancourt: No, it’s sort of every single time is something different. And I have gotten better at it.
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Xorje Olivares: So I wanna share a quick story. My partner and I just recently got engaged and it was a fun little like, oh my God, we did it moment. But it was funny because at least two different people after we announced our engagement came up to us and asked us if this was now the moment we were gonna try to be in an open relationship. And I thought it was interesting because it kind of came almost as soon as they said, congratulations. I was like, oh, okay, now you’re making me think at a time where I didn’t know we were going to. Confronted with this question. But I will say that especially as a queer person, as a cisgender gay man, I feel like I receive a lot of judgment because of my decision to be monogamous and because I am pursuing something that seems to feel a bit more heteronormative and a bit more traditional. But I do want to focus in on this issue of judgment. And starting with you Fernanda about having to navigate, feeling judged, not just by family, whoever else you encounter, but by people you feel very close with and wanna feel like you have a deep connection to.
Fernanda Fabian: Yeah, of course. Well, I have to be honest. I’ve been very, very lucky. I grew up in a very liberal family, even though we grew up in Mexico. I’m Mexican. My mom’s side of the family is Cuban, very liberal. We’ve always talked about sex and things like that. And yeah, I didn’t really have a hard time in that realm. I also became non monogamous in Brooklyn, which is…
Xorje Olivares:…the epicenter for exploration.
Fernanda Fabian: The epicenter, exactly, exactly. And have always moved in very liberal circles. Again, the Burning Man community. So I have personally not faced much judgment with close people. However, on social media, I sometimes, especially on TikTok, for some reason on Instagram, I don’t get that much hate, but on TikTok I’ve even had people like recording videos criticizing what I’m doing, especially because… My partner is monogamous and people make an assumption that I’m taking advantage of him. And there’s a lot of layers of feeling like what I’m doing is unethical or something along those lines. I don’t I don’ feel any shame around it, however We’re not fully open. As I mentioned, my partner comes from a religious family. And I understand that their views of marriage and sex are very, very different from mine.
So what has been difficult for me has been to have to hide. Obviously, now this is my career, right? So I often have to hid a little bit what I’m doing as to not damage those relationships with those people that I really care for. And they care for me a lot. But I know that if they knew. Again, especially because their family member, my partner is monogamous, they would just completely change the way they see me and it would just create a lot of issues which I’m trying to avoid. So that’s been difficult. However, what you said is interesting about the gay community being almost judgmental the other way around, of like, why aren’t you being…
Xorje Olivares: I’m making that up, Manuel or is that true?
Manuel Betancourt: Oh, no, I it is a kind of it becomes like a lose lose situation because like if you’re on the one end, they’re like, oh, then you’re clearly just buying into this heteronormative patriarchal traditional assimilationist kind of strategy. And how dare you leave the rest of us radicals behind? Or on the other end, like, you know, you’re breaking all the institutions apart. So how dare you then not leave anything, is nothing sacred? I think for me, what I’ve always come down to is that so long as it’s a choice and it’s a conscious choice that you’re making, like monogamy is not, it’s not a dirty word. I think it’s, oh yeah, to me it’s only, it only becomes badly weaponized when it’s understood to be the default, the norm and therefore the thing that we should all aspire to. So long as we’re all consenting adults and we’re understanding, like the three of us have very different configurations, but all of them seem to be rooted in understanding what each of us want out of the relationship and having open conversations with those we’re with.
Xorje Olivares: I’m curious, are there folks in your family, folks who you are intimately tied to that do or do not know about your relationship dynamic?
Manuel Betancourt: So my entire, I think my entire extended family knows about my relationship. So they know that I’m part of a throuple. And so that’s the extent of what they know about my relationships. I don’t think any of them know about the sort of consensual non-monogamy openness. It’s in my book, but the joy about writing in a language that most of your family does not speak regularly, because all my family is in Columbia. Is that there was a kind of, for my entire adult life, I’ve sort of always bisected my kind of identities with like gayness and queerness exist in English and then families lives or exist in Spanish. It’s this weird associating mechanism but I’ve, sort of, have needed to survive and grapple with and sort of it has helped me. But it is also. Helped keep those boundaries very separate. But like my mom has met my, my boyfriends, we spent holidays together with my brother and siblings and sort of they understand that like that the three of us are a unit. It did feel like a second coming out, like when I had to explain it, when I have to like tell my mom but she was kind of fantastic about it.Uh, every time she’s like, how are the boys doing? What, like she’s very much involved in that aspect of it, Less so in the like We all go to play parties or I have like anonymous sex during the day. But that’s a nice boundary that I feel comfortable maintaining with my family.
Fernanda Fabian: Yeah, right. Because one thing is to be open about the arrangement. Another thing is for them to read your book, or for example, in my case to listen to my podcast. And I have a similar situation where my mom’s side of the family doesn’t speak English. So that well, my mom and a couple of members, so that that helps. And recently, she was like, Oh, I think I can figure out how to translate your podcast. And I’m like, No, no, no. Please do not do that. Let’s keep that separate.
Xorje Olivares: Let’s put it to the people who do know in your life, Fernanda, is there a misconception they have that you had to clear up right away to make sure that they understood you fully and the choices you made fully.
Fernanda Fabian: Yeah, my mom, as open as she has been, had a lot of questions and concerns at first. Her immediate thought was, she doesn’t love Seth or Seth doesn’t love her. Also, she, she adores Seth. And, you know, they have this really cute relationship because Seth doesn’t speak much Spanish either, but they somehow they communicate, they love each other. It’s wonderful. Um, and she was really afraid that I would be, uh, screwing our relationship up because I was dating other people. So it took a few months and even today, sometimes if I’m talking to my mom about another partner of mine, which I do sometimes, and, she knows that said this around, she’ll be like, shh, shhh, Fernanda, shut up. And I’m like, mom, first of all, we’re speaking Spanish. Second of all said knows about this. There’s, there’s nothing, there is nothing to hide. So there’s still that like impulse. But she’s actually come around and she’s seen how beautiful of a relationship set and I have, and she has become a little bit like of an advocate for at least considering the option, which I find amazing given that a lot of people do not have that relationship with their moms. But what I tell people is, if you really feel like there won’t be an open line of communication and it will just cause judgment and a separation with a family member you still want to be close to, then no need to disclose it. But if you think that there might be a little bit of openness, you might be surprised. You just need to kind of introduce it bit by bit and explain the reasons why this is important to you, why you do this. And you might find that people are more open to it than you thought.
Xorje Olivares: I want to end with this one question, starting with you Fernanda. What is one thing that you’ve learned about yourself in pursuing non-monogamy?
Fernanda Fabian: Well, I think I have already shared a little bit about this, but that I thrive through connection and through connecting with other people and that that for me is a way of growing personally. So as much as I’m working on finding validation within myself, being my best friend and like working on that relationship with myself too, when I interact with new partners and new people, they do bring out new parts of myself that I wasn’t. Really aware of. So I think, yeah, for me it has to do with how I see life and how connection is kind of the vehicle that I’m taking to grow as a person and as an individual.
Manuel Betancourt: I have a book to recommend to you for now because my entire book is all about like strangers allow ourselves to see ourselves differently, right, like they give us insights into ourselves that we didn’t know we had. I think the thing that I’ve learned the most about well-exploring non-monogamy and the thing I’ve taught myself is that my libido and my desires are not challenges I think for the longest time I constantly thought of myself as needing to reign in my desires, reigning my libido, like just really corral it into something that is understandable, that is legible, that is controllable, that I can handle and show other people. And I think the thing that I’ve not realized, like I’ve actually worked hard to sort of rewire is that acting on them and acting on them ethically and honestly and with the support and encouragement of my Partners. There’s kind of beauty in them. There is a kind of beauty in being able to sort of follow your bliss and your desire. And to really let that be a really fun way of interacting with the world and with other people and with strangers and with known people and that it’s not about yeah, controlling. I think for the for the longest time, I felt like my desires needed to be sort of caged and domesticated. And instead of just like not let them run wild, but actually allowing myself to follow through them and see where they lead me. And they’ve led into a lot of really fun different places.
Xorje Olivares: To use the language from the intro, just like break free, like Ariana Grande ourselves out of this like prison and just do what we feel is right. Well, I wanna thank each of you for such a lovely informative conversation, especially again, coming from my particular POV, it’s so wonderful to hear other people, especially other Latinos talk about relationships, talk about love and sex, and really get me to change some of these long-held beliefs I had. So I really appreciate your time and you being here with us today.
Fernanda Fabian: Thank you Xorge.
Manuel Betancourt: Thank you
Xorje Olivares: Well, I do want to remind our listeners that you can follow our guests Fernanda has a podcast the poly curious podcast Manuel has a couple books including hello stranger Which is now available all of that information will be in our show notes and also where you can find each of them on social Media and if want to send us an email just email us at HYP at kqed.org Especially if you wanna share your non monogamy experiences, but until then, hasta luego.
Hyphenación is a KQED Studios Production. It is produced by Ana De Almeida Amaral, Alex Tran, and me, Xorje Olivares. Chris Hambrick is our editor. Mixing and mastering by Christopher Beale. Jen Chien is executive producer and KQED’s director of podcasts. Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by the Screen Actors Guild American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, San Francisco, Northern California Local. Thank you to Maha Sanad for her audience engagement support and to podcast operations intern Alana Walker. Thanks to podcast operations manager Katie Sprenger, Video Operations manager Vivian Morales, and our chief content officer Holly Kernan. Special thanks to Megan Tan, Martina Castro, and Paulina Velasco for their development support. Okay mi gente, cuídense.
