Playing With Fire 241 Betrayal & Non-Monogamy with Eve Rickert
Betrayal isn’t a fun topic for anyone. But when it comes to non-monogamy, betrayal can actually be really hard to identify, because we often don’t have clear cultural scripts and shared assumptions about what’s okay and what’s not. This can open us up to profound experiences of betrayal that make you question not just your partner, but yourself and reality.
Eve Rickert (co-author of the second edition of More Than Two and publisher at Thornapple Press) joins us for a MUCH-needed conversation about her powerful new book, Nonmonogamy and Betrayal. We're talking situationships that masquerade as real relationships, people who act like they're building attachment-based connections while secretly keeping one foot out the door, and the ways non-monogamy's flexibility can actually get weaponized against us.
If you've ever felt like you were in one relationship while your partner thought you were in something completely different, or if you're struggling to name what went wrong when someone hurt you (but technically didn't break an explicit agreement), this episode is essential listening. We draw on personal experiences of both experiencing and causing betrayal, and we get real about the repair work that has to happen.
In this episode, we talk about:
— How betrayal is more than just breaking agreements—it's a violation of trust that removes your agency and ability to consent to the reality you're actually living
— The difference between betrayals within a relationship (like broken agreements) and betrayals about the relationship (where you discover the whole thing wasn't what you thought it was)
— Eve's concept of "bees in the closet"—when your partner makes major changes without your input and then acts like you should have explicitly negotiated against something no reasonable person would expect
— Situationships and Schrödinger's relationships: how refusing to define what you're doing creates plausible deniability and sets the stage for betrayal
— Why casual relationships actually require more communication and clearer agreements than "serious" ones
— The secretly monogamous partner who uses non-monogamy language but is really just waiting for you to become their life partner
— How betrayal destroys self-trust, not just trust in your partner, and why repairing with yourself has to come before repairing the relationship
— Poly under duress as a potential betrayal that can go both ways, and how self-betrayal happens when you say yes but mean no
— Why the flexibility of non-monogamy can get weaponized
— The reality that repair isn't always possible (and why that might be the case)
— Practical approaches to rebuilding trust after betrayal
Resources mentioned in this episode:
— Eve Rickert's book Nonmonogamy and Betrayal (available at Thornapple Press and wherever you buy books)
— The second edition of *More Than Two* by Eve Rickert and Andrea Zanin
— Eve's blog post "Bees in the Closet"
— Visit thornapplepress.ca for all of Eve's books and more!
— Repair Skills YouTube playlist
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Music: Dance of Felt by Blue Dot Sessions