Imaging a room full of lovers dancing freely to the loud speakers booming to Robert Palmers voice:
“Your heart sweats, your body shakes
Another kiss is what it takes
You can’t sleep, you can’t eat
There’s no doubt, you’re in deep
Your throat is tight, you can’t breathe
Another kiss is all you need
Ohh oohh…Might as well face it
you’re addicted to love”
Kamala Devi introduces the guest speaker:
The secret to success in Polyamory is having a community of friends and lovers there to see your brilliance and your blindspots. In San Diego, we are fortunate to have a secret weapon. One of my best friends, Daniel, is an evolutionary visionary. By day he works on restructuring global governance, memetics and environmental problems and by night, as a hobby, he likes to help poly people restructure their messy relationships. So, I invited him to be a guest speaker at PolyPalooza and transcribed a series of illuminating talks entitled:
“How to Not Get Fucked Up In Relationships.”
Daniel: I had the fortune here so far to talk with 10 or 12 people who are coming out of being really fucked-up from a previous relationship. And it’s amazing how common the things are that created that fucked up. Right? There’s some really clear patterns, and not just in these 10, but in the thousands that we’ve talk to and that we’ve gone through ourselves. And so we just kind of wanted to offer like a prophylactic. You know, a life preserver for, “Here are really common mistakes that are really tempting to make. And you don’t have to make them.”
This is not so much a list of things to do, but things NOT to do.
Another title for this could be called “Lessons about Where the Landmines Are from Multiple Amputee Cases”. I practice these pretty well now because of the trauma of having failed at almost all of them. So I want to acknowledge that, I was an overachiever and had a nervous breakdown from stupid relationships stuff way younger than KamalaDevi.
And the preamble is, regarding that song we started with: Addicted to Love.
Don’t be a junkie.
So let’s talk about what being a junkie is. And let’s talk about how we can poetize it and make it something more beautiful and idealistic and romantic than it really is. But the difference between love and addiction – let’s get clear on that.
So we want to talk about the brain chemistry that happens in the beginning of a relationship. Just really briefly. It’s a deep neuroscience class, but four neurotransmitters/hormones that are worth understanding. In the beginning of a relationship, especially when the chemistry is strong and the sex is good, Oxytocin goes up. Oxytocin facilitates a sense of bonding. So you feel bonded to them, and you feel safe with them, and you feel open to them. That’s awesome. Oxytocin lowers cortisol, makes you feel more wellness inside of you.
The downsides to oxytocin elevating. Specifically, it retards the functioning of many parts of your left hemisphere and rational process. And it specifically retards the parts of your brain that mediate of time awareness. So you feel like you’ve known them forever, you’ve known them in a past life. Or you want to be with them forever. Or you could die right now happy. Or all those timeless senses. It chemically turns off the part of your brain that mediates time.
Which means you are neuro-physiologically slightly retarded.
And it’s really important to understand what this is and what it isn’t. Because we can actually give you an oxytocin-binding chemical pharmacologically and watch how real that shit is. And then, when your brain works again.you get to see how much you really admire this person and respect them. Is it a good values alignment? Right?
Let’s think about this. So oxytocin also retards your assessment of all of the red flags. Even your awareness of all the red flags. And it’s because this was an evolutionary biology that was determined around procreation. The genes that procreated more got through. Not the ones that made happier sane people, but the ones that procreated better. So your brain is wired to optimize procreation. So if they have some good genetic compatibility expressed by chemistry and good sex, it will sacrifice everything else to optimize that procreative opportunity. Even if you consciously don’t think you want kids. Does that make sense?
All of those places where they’re emotionally immature that you just think are like cute and kind of endearing, that later you’ll be like, “What the fuck was I thinking about?
So that’s the oxytocin chemical. There is also dopamine & serotonin. Let’s talk about these for a minute. Early stage of relationships, dopamine goes up. That’s the pleasure, feels good, do it again. Neurotransmitter, feels good, want to do it again. And as it goes up, again, your neuro-receptor sensitivity goes down.
Which means that anything else that normally produces dopamine – like accomplishing shit and checking off your to-do list and exercising – it doesn’t produce anywhere near as high dopamine hit as evolution made procreation produce. You won’t even be able to feel the good high from those. The normal things you feel high from will be desensitized. In the same way that when a heroin addict is coming down from heroin, rainbows aren’t pretty, sunshine is nice, music doesn’t sound good. They can’t enjoy anything because it’s not their heroine.
And how many people have experience that in relationship, when you’re not getting your relationship hit, nothing else will do it for you? That is addiction, not love. Make sense? And so a healthy relationship actually enhances your ability to appreciate and show up in the rest of life.
So what do you want to do? You actually want to make sure that you keep getting, doing the things that give you good dopamine hits not connected with that person. Keep doing your exercise, keep doing your accomplishments, keep setting goals and checking them off. Learn to moderate your association with that person. And don’t get so many dopamine hits with them in a row so quickly that you desensitize everything else, which means slow the fuck down. Slow the fuck down, right?
Dopamine is the primary addiction chemical for all addiction and produced stronger by sex than anything else. Okay?
Serotonin. Serotonin is your contentment kind of unconditional happiness neurotransmitter. It goes down when you start falling in love. It’s actually an important thing. Because you get a lot of the dopamine hits, and you need the dopamine hits more because your base happiness is lower. This, again, was created to optimize procreation so that all you would want to do is fuck, and nothing else, because that’s what your genes want. Does this make sense?
When you are falling in love, your serotonin is lower. How do you deal with that? Do things that boost serotonin levels. Not with the relationship, so that your dopamine hits aren’t only from there. Limit how much dopamine you get from the relationship. And keep your serotonin up. That’s laying out in the sun and taking naps. That’s taking walks on the beach. That’s meditating. That’s sleeping in. That’s having chill time with friends. That’s reading a book you enjoy. That’s all of those things.
And if you find that you can’t be present with them because your mind’s so fucked on the relationship, don’t see them again for a while. Don’t see them again until you can actually chill and enjoy it. This is called maturity.
There is an overarching principle here, which is that your sanity and your health matter more than everything else. This is the “put your own oxygen mask on before affixing the oxygen mask of others”
Otherwise you don’t have any capacity. Right? So make sure that you’re attending to your sanity and your clarity and your centeredness and your balance and your health first. Relationship second. Make sense? Have we all fucked this one up?
It’s tempting to poetize this. Right? To say, “Oh, I’m going to die anyways. Let’s just to sacrifice everything for love, like Romeo and Juliet.”
Romeo and Juliet were like 14-year-olds. 14-year-olds do that. It’s an immature thing. Right? The difference between love and addiction, or love and infatuation – you don’t fall in love, you grow in love over time, as you really get to know that person and you really respect them and admire them, and you build beautiful things together.
You fall in chemistry infatuation. You fall into addiction. If you’re falling, grab something. And pull yourself out and chill out for a little while. Does this make sense?
Kamala Devi: There are a lot of sex and love addicts running around giving polyamory a bad name. People often equate polyamory to love addiction. And through the years, people have looked at me and my intimate network of 12 lovers and said “That’s just excessive. That’s addictive!” So instead of getting defensive, I have had to do some deep inquiry into “What is addiction?” And over the years I’ve come up with two simple guidelines that have helped me and my clients to see if addiction is at play. So my criteria is twofold.
#1– Is it screwing up the rest of your life? When you’re addicted to something, it has negative consequences on how you function in the rest of your life.
#2– And then, Can you help yourself? Because when you can’t moderate your own behavior–if it feels out of controll– then it’s addiction.
So those are the two criteria by which I ask myself, “Is this healthy love?” And if I can’t help myself and it’s fucking of everything else, I’m addicted. And so I use that to kind of tell.
Daniel: Totally. So a famous study, many of you probably have heard about it, The two marshmallow study. It was first done in the ‘60s. How many people have heard of the two marshmallow study? Okay. I want everybody to know about it. It was an extremely disturbing study, in terms of what its results showed about the human process. A group of researchers did a study with five-year-olds. It took 15 minutes. And then they followed those kids until they were 30 years old. And in this 15 minutes, they could predict how successful their marriages would be, how successful they’d be in their career, how likely they were for mental illness, how likely they were for addiction, and success in all areas of their life – they could predict it with profound statistical accuracy in 15 minutes with a five-year-old. That’s a big deal, right?
And the study’s been repeated more than almost any other study in social sciences and it holds, and it’s worth knowing. The nice thing is, if you were the kind of five-year-old that portended poorly for all those things, it’s changeable. Even as an adult. The study goes like this.
Researcher comes to the kid and offers a snack – it was a marshmallow to begin with – and says, “Do you like marshmallows?”
The kid goes, “Yeah, I love marshmallows.”
He said, “Would you rather have one marshmallow or two marshmallows?”
The kid said, “I’d rather have two.”
He says, “Cool, here’s the deal. I’ll put one marshmallow on the desk and I’m going to leave the room for 15 minutes. You can have this one marshmallow now, or at any time during that point while I’m gone, and you’ll just get that one marshmallow. But if you wait until I get back without eating it, you get two.”
This was a study of impulse control.
Can the kids stay focused on what they want and delay gratification? Or did they take the immediate gratification for a lower price? The kids that went for the one marshmallow had lower SAT scores in high school, had less college graduation rate, had a higher rate of addiction and mental illness and a higher rate of divorce later on. And the kids that postponed succeeded in all areas better. That’s a big deal. Right?
The ability to delay gratification, to not be impulsive, to be able to witness to that impulse and not act on it, is correlated positively with every fucking thing that matters. Right? So you want to strengthen these muscles. You want to strengthen your impulse control muscle. And largely, that means your ability to witness an itch without scratching it. Does this make sense? Have you ever done a meditation where you have to practice that there’s an itch and you notice it, but you don’t scratch it? You can witness it, you just don’t move. Right? This is a great meditation. It actually grows the skill. It’s really good to practice witnessing any impulse and not acting on it.
There were some really interesting things that were studied about those kids. The ones who succeeded didn’t stay there and stare at the marshmallow the whole time. All the kids that stayed and stared at the marshmallow ate it. And they were looking at the clock, they would end up eating it. The kids that succeeded went and did something else. Does that make sense? So when you are wanting to not eat a marshmallow, go do something else. Get your mind off it. And that means, with regard to relationship – that person who you’re wanting to like go slow with and not call back to fast or whatever – go engage in something else.
Kamala Devi: Beautiful. So we just checked with the kitchen and dinner is ready. I’d like to get consensus. Can you hold your hunger for 15 minutes, because this is juicy content?
Audience: Marshmallows! Marshmallows now! I want my marshmallow!
Kamala Devi: Our workshop is ingeniously designed to teach you impulse control.
(Stay tuned, we will post part II of this series next week.)
“You like to think that you’re immune to the stuff
It’s closer to the truth to say you can’t get enough
You know you’re gonna have to face it
You’re addicted to love
Might as well face it, you’re addicted to love”
If you loved this talk you’ll LOVE:
Part 2: A deeper dive into the Poly 10 commandments or best practices for open relationships.
Part 3: Q & A with Daniel: How not to Get Fucked up in Relationships
To get a FREE Copy of Kamala Devi’s “Polyamory Roadmap” please enter your email on the right hand side bar. Or buy the book through Amazon or Kindle or Here: http://www.kamaladevi.com/products-page/books/polyamory-roadmap-e-book-edition
