Eri.
105. mom-ogomish: horizontal with expat parents (2 of 4)
Hello horizontal lovers. horizontal with lila is Slow Radio. Consensual eavesdropping. Intimate talks about intimate topics recorded while lying down right next to each other, wearing robes. This is part two of my four-episode arc with Eri Kardos Patel and Jaymin Patel, recorded in February 2020.
Eri: For Jaymin and I specifically, we choose open relating because it feels more like there’s a dance and a flow and we’re constantly checking ourselves to see how, like what is the right fit for us, in this moment, in this stage of our lives, in this stage of our relationship or relationships. And sometimes, we’re monogamous. And sometimes, we’re polyamorous, and sometimes, we want to— I called it mom-ogamish, when I was just having children and breast-feeding, I didn’t wanna see anybody else. It’s like, how can you be fluid and dance with it? And so, I don’t like the label polyamory for me personally, because sometimes I’m poly and sometimes I’m not. And sometimes I’m monogamous and sometimes I’m not. And just like I don’t think there’s any black and whites in this world, I don’t want to be under one label, so I like the fluidity of saying, we do open-relating, because in my mind it means that it’s more of a dance, and we can choose how we openly relate— with ourselves, with each other, with the world and, it feels less confined. […]
Lila: Maybe because it’s a verb. Maybe what you like about it is that it feels active, so that it’s continually happening.
Eri: I like that.
Lila: In the moment, and you keep talking, and you keep dancing, rather than you say, “I am in an open relationship, and this is how it goes.”
Eri’s book.
Hello horizontal lovers.
horizontal with lila is Slow Radio.
Consensual eavesdropping.
Intimate talks about intimate topics recorded while lying down right next to each other, wearing robes.
This is part two of my four-episode arc with Eri Kardos Patel and Jaymin Patel, recorded in February 2020.
Eri & Jay are world travelers, long-time digital nomads, co-parents of two young children, and American expats in Bali. Eri is the author of the book Relationship Agreements, Jaymin the creator of The Integrated Father.
In part one, episode 104. good kids gone wild, Jay and I told our origin stories, and Eri began hers.
Jaymin’s story involved a strict Indian family, sisters and aunties aplenty, bi-cultural identity, being a model Hindu and a very very very good boy, doing right by his parents, musical theatre, people-pleaser recovery, embracing his weird, Adlerian psych, and positive discipline.
Eri’s involved 3 siblings, constant uprootings, dance, 5 or 6 baptisms, being a very very very good girl, backpacking across the world, youth hostel life, sex addiction worries & Christian counseling, one excellent Sugar Daddy, Seattle, sex-positivity, and her longtime open relating partner Adam.
In part two, we pick up with:
- Eri’s sexy Seattle life
- BDSM as a highway to vulnerability
- the art of submission
- aftermath of a fight or regrettable incident
- being seen, heard, & loved
- reprogramming people’s erotic lives
- open relating vs. open relationships
- and how the longtime nomad couple finally settled in Bali.
This conversation was recorded over the course of approximately 5 hours.
It’s divided into four parts: the first two, episodes 104 & 105, are available in all the podcast places, and the last two: episodes 106 & 107, will be exclusive to patrons of the horizontal arts.
For access to The Full Horizontal, including 106, 107, and all the part twos (or in this case, threes and fours), become a patron of the horizontal arts!
This is my livelihood for the foreseeable future, so, to all of my current and future patrons:
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Thank for my subsistence.
And thank you for making the world a more intimate place.
Now come lie down with us again, in Ubud, Bali, Indonesia.
Links to Things:
Eri’s website, EriKardos.com
Beyond Mom-Mode, Eri’s most recent venture, designed to nourish the nurturer
Bondagelessons.com, the beginning of Eri’s BDSM journey
Eri’s dating program for couples, The Great Date Challenge
The Nurtured Heart Approach, a parenting tool Eri recommends
Eri’s handout about Gottman’s Aftermath of a Fight or Regrettable Incident protocol (downloadable)
Gottman’s book on education kids about emotions — Emotion Coaching
A blog about my Wednesday night meltdown at the pyramid temple: Burning Man 2018
Show Notes:
(if you share excerpts, please link to this page or the horizontal Patreon!)
[6:05] Eri on open relating vs. open relationships
[7:51] Lila on assumptions and the “Short Lexicon of Misunderstood Words”
Lila: Those are such fantastic questions. What does monogamy mean to you? What does polyamory mean to you? I was talking to these girls that I met the other night, at Zest, and I was saying how— how we think we know what cheating is. (both giggle) But we don’t know what cheating is for somebody else! For some people — I have come to hear — the other person watching porn, or masturbating, is cheating. Now I would never consider that cheating, myself. And I would be like, “Go on and do your thing!” Unless it’s something brought to an unhealthy degree, that feels damaging to what is between us— then it would need to be something addressed, right? And it reminds me of— did you ever read Milan Kundera’s The Book of Laughter and Forgetting?
Eri: No.
Lila: […] One of the parts that I have always remembered— and it’s been years since I’ve read it, is “A Short Lexicon of Misunderstood Words.” And he’s talking about a couple, and he goes into a few of them, and the one that I remember, is parade. And what parade meant to… her… was fascism. Because that is where she grew up. (It might have been him, but, I’m gonna say her.) Because that is the society she grew up in— parades were forced, you had to do it, you were marching not of your own volition… it was constricting, it was regimented, and it felt oppressive. And to him — though it might have been her — parades were, were joy, were sitting on the parent’s shoulders, were balloons, were, you know, unicorns and rainbows. And… that one word, that you could just easily use the word, you think you know, what it means, to the other person, and you… really might not know.
[10:32] Being seen, heard, and loved.
Lila: So it seems like a lot of your work is removing the assumptions by making things explicit.
Eri: Mmmn, so much. And also by uncovering the story. We all carry stories. […] Everyone’s telling the story— the world is made of stories, and so, looking at different angles you’re coming from. You can tell the same story from a different angle, and have it have a totally different meaning. And then the other thing is that everyone wants to be seen, heard, and loved. And that’s pretty much the foundation for everything I do with my family and my clients and my work.
[11:23] What it means to Eri to be seen, how kids can’t be witnessed enough, and moms are exhausted because nobody’s witnessing them.
[13:09] BDSM and kink became Eri’s highway to vulnerability.
Eri: To be seen is to be vulnerable. And the fastest way to vulnerability that I have ever found is through kink and BDSM. […] I ended up talking with a friend of mine once, who was doing a lot of work around trauma and vulnerability and how do you really process that and hold it and she’s like, y’know, “I’ve been working on this for years, and the best thing I’ve ever found was through healthy kink.” And I’m like, “That sounds so fucked up.” (both laugh) And then I go to my coaching program, and they’re like, “You need to work on vulnerability!” And I’m like, “Shit!” This women, she’s like, “You are gonna— I want you to meet my Dom.” So she connects us, around the time of this original conversation, via email, and he’s like, “Yeah, great, let’s meet and have tea or coffee, and we can talk about it,” and I am scared shitless of this idea, so I like, bail. And a year later is when the coaching program is like, “No, you still need to work on vulnerability.” And so it’s like, “Aw, man!” So I ended up emailing him back, I’m like, “Hey! Remember me! So, we were supposed to have dinner and I totally went AWOL on you, so, can I, um, you still wanna get that dinner?” He’s like, “No, I’m really busy.”
Lila: (laughs) Fair.
Eri: And being the pleaser and the perfect one who gets everything she wants, I’m like, “Fuck that shit! I’m gonna get you to take me to dinner!” (both laugh) So his website’s in his signature,
Bondagelessons.com, and I go and I notice that this person — his name is Max — is teaching a 16-hour rope workshop. I know nothing about rope, so at this point in time—
Lila: Sixteen hours!
Eri: Where you should be able to learn everything from never having held a rope before to being able to do suspensions, and I was like, “Sweet! I will learn how to do ropes to get his attention.” So luckily, at this point, I know somebody who does ropes, so I’m like, “Hey! Can I borrow your ropes?” And he’s like, “Yeah, go for it.” And I ask a friend of mine, who’s a burlesque dancer and also like a badass boss babe, and I’m like, “Do you wanna learn ropes with me?” And she’s like, “Yeah, let’s do it.” So we end up going together to this 16-hour course. And the day after the course was over, I get an email from Max saying, “So about that dinner!” […] So we end up meeting, and he’s like, “Why are you here? What do you want?” I’m like, “I want to ask you some questions, ‘cause I heard that kink and BDSM is really good for vulnerability but— all of my upbringing tells me that it’s taboo and it’s sinful and it’s wrong and it’s really fucked up. And, so basically what I’m asking for is: Can we do one scene so I can prove that this is really fucked up and it’s not for me?” (Lila laughs) And thus began the most incredible several years of me being in partnership with a pro Dom, and learning the art of submission, and really growing as a human, especially around courage and vulnerability, which, you know, Brené Brown talks about all the time. And finding the most beautiful intimacy, and, instead of running from the things that were already in me that I was so scared to show, I just embraced them, and I was able to let the trauma free; I was able to let the old stories free. There are healthy outlets to still play out the “good girl” and the “bad boy.” There’s all this room to be playful! And to have fun, and have connection, and I think a lot of people are so caught up in the, we’re not supposed to do that, and we’re also not supposed to have fun in our culture anymore, it’s like, we’re so serious all the time. So when people ask me, “What is kink? Are you gonna get hurt? You gonna cry? Is somebody gonna hit you a lot?” I’m like, “It’s whatever you make it.” I met a woman whose kink was pop rocks.
[17:19] Lila’s waxes rhapsodic about sensation play and her favorite household sensation play object.
[17:40] Eri’s dating program for couples, The Great Date Challenge.
Eri & Jay on what was, presumably, a rather great date.
[18:30] The origins of Eri’s coaching work & how we can influence our children’s experience by liberating ourselves
Eri: I found joy in leading people on a similar journey, to experience their soul and experience their shadows, and be okay with all of it, and be held in a safe container. One of my clients is Hollywood celebrity, and at one point he just said, “Eri, being with you, working with you is like, just being embraced by your kindergarten teacher and being able to tell her everything! And I’m like, “Sweet!” (laughter) But it’s so much more—
Lila: But you’re you’re, you’re doing a reprogramming, right. So if you have that figure, or somebody who feels like that, who’s saying, “It’s okay! You know, it’s okay that you want to do that. It’s okay that you like that. It’s okay that, you know, these are your fantasies.” You’re— you’re rewiring him!
Eri: Completely.
Lila: It’s gorgeous.
Eri: Which, it turns out, he’s also a Dad. So, the generational impact of how he’s showing up for his partner, for his child— it’s huge! And that’s one of the reasons why I think Jaymin and I are both right now being called to work with parents. Because we’ve come on this huge journey in terms of our careers, and then as lovers, and in relationship, and doing a lot of work here, and now looking at: Wow, how do we influence our children? ‘Cause we’ve done all this work and what if we could save them a lot of time and money and therapy and all the things. What if we just taught them what they really need to know now which is: How to authentically connect with people around them? And their own souls and take care of themself and self-soothe and learn how they are empowered and how they can be seen in a healthy way, and how they can look at their own judgements of themselves and their own judgements of what they want, and make their own decisions, not based on pleasing everyone else.
[20:52] Eri on The Gottman Institute and Aftermath of a Fight or Regrettable Incident (link to her downloadable worksheet).
[23:59] The Gottman’s book on educating kids about emotions & the basic Emotion Coaching steps
Eri: Children grow up into adults, and if children learn how to handle their emotions, they’re much more capable adults.
Lila: Oh my God yesss.
[26:26] Lila tells a story about self-talk and the redheaded man at the cafe.
[30:40] Do you need to be understood in order to be witnessed? What does being understood mean to Lila? What does being seen mean to Eri? Jaymin wants to be understood and to be known; Eri doesn’t need to be understood to feel seen.
[32:55] Being seen during my Wednesday night meltdown at the pyramid temple: Burning Man 2018
[37:40] The Erotic Blueprints and my episodes with Leidy Dahiana, Erotic Blueprint Coach, in which she tells the story of the most mind-blowing sex of her life (Episode 97)
[38:54] How the nomad couple settled in Bali, specifically in Ubud, the healer, the cultural capital
[39:45] Beyond Mom-Mode, Eri’s newest venture, designed to nourish the nurturer (+ her first mom retreat in Bali)
Eri: Almost all of us go through this huge transition where we’re like, “Oh my gosh, who are we?” And then we’re creating this life, and we have to take care of this life. We lose touch with who we are, and we just give, give, give, and we deplete ourselves, and maybe we squeeze in a shower every couple days if we’re lucky and, so many women experience a loss of identity when they become mothers — and this goes for all caregivers — but I can speak from the voice of being a mom.
[42:28] On permission.
Eri: One of the things I’ve seen time and time again as a relationship coach, is that people just need to be given permission to do the thing they already know inside of them they want to do, or is right for them. It’s like: teaching people how to follow their intuition and gift themselves what they know they need. So it’s like, Okay well. I’m just gonna be your boss. I’m your Domme. I’m your Mama-Domme. You’re coming to Bali. And the agenda is to take care of yourself and celebrate you. Because when you are celebrated, when you love on yourself, you’re gonna go home and you’re gonna be a better partner, you’re gonna be a better mama, you’re gonna be a better community member, and you’re gonna model what it’s like to be healthy for your children, and stop yelling at them and stop being off-balance, and stop wondering why everything is so f-ing hard all the time, because you will have found yourself again and you’ll know who you are.
[43:19] What does Lila need to give herself permission to do / break up with / transition out of?
105. mom-ogomish: horizontal with expat parents (2 of 4)
Hello horizontal lovers. horizontal with lila is Slow Radio. Consensual eavesdropping. Intimate talks about intimate topics recorded while lying down right next to each other, wearing robes. This is part two of my four-episode arc with Eri Kardos Patel and Jaymin Patel, recorded in February 2020.
