This is Dr. Alexandra Solomon.
91. loving bravely: horizontal with your marriage 101 professor (1 of 2)
horizontal is Slow Radio about intimacies of all kinds. It is entirely recorded while reclining. I think of it as consensual eavesdropping- we’re lying down, wearing robes, sharing secrets, in your ears.
Alexandra: To me, bravery is: the ability to stay present to uncertainty, to stay present to emotion, to start a conversation when you don’t know where it’s going to go. You know, to just start with whatever small piece of truth you have your head around, and then just to go from there. I find, I find my— I do this, I watch my clients do this: we silence ourselves if we can’t script out— like I’ll hear people say, “Yeah but I can’t bring that up because I don’t know where it’ll go. I don’t know, I don’t know how— I can’t say that because I don’t know how my partner will respond.” Or, “I don’t know what will happen if we start talking about that.” So to me bravery is about starting with that little, that small, local… piece of understanding that you have—
Lila: The microscopic truth.
Alexandra: Yeah, and then just saying, “I don’t know where this is gonna go, but I’m gonna put this piece out there, and will you meet me with it? Will you sit with me in this little microscopic piece of my truth, and can we just, unfold it together?
Lila: Yeahhh.
Alexandra: That’s so brave.
Lila: I’m happy to be in the not-knowing with you.
Alexandra: […] We’re not really supported in doing that, you know, and our cultural narrative is so much about making something good/bad, right/wrong, win/lose, powerful/powerless— we have so many binaries that just limit us. And so, bravery is also about just, grey. Allowing there to be grey, allowing there to be not-knowing, meeting something with saying, “Tell me more about that. I want to understand how that is for you.” […] “I’m not you, but I want to understand you.” Holding space, while somebody, works something through. We’re so fricking relational. I— I mean, the vast majority of the time, I don’t know how I feel about something, until I’ve turned towards somebody that I care, care for, trust, and I can sort of start to listen myself into understanding. Be listened into understanding. And that’s also, brave.
horizontal is Slow Radio about intimacies of all kinds. It is entirely recorded while reclining. I think of it as consensual eavesdropping— we’re lying down, wearing robes, sharing secrets, in your ears.
In this episode, I lie down with Dr. Alexandra Solomon: clinical psychologist, author of books, Northwestern University Professor, and creator of the internationally-renowned undergrad course “Marriage 101,” which I wish was taught to every incoming freshman in college (and ideally, every outgoing senior in high school) and really, to every adult everywhere who didn’t take that class— across the world.
I read about the course a few years back, long before I met Alexandra in person, in an article in The Atlantic, titled “The First Lesson of Marriage 101: There Are No Soul Mates.” In Marriage 101, she guides students, through both book-learning and experiential means, towards relational self-awareness, guiding them through an understanding of attraction, conflict, sex, and forgiveness. Who doesn’t need this class?! We all need this class! I need this class!
Alexandra’s entire body of work, it seems, is devoted to guiding us to make heathy, conscious choices in love.
Her 2017 book Loving Bravely: Twenty Lessons of Self-Discovery to Help You Get the Love You Want, is an ongoing dose of compassion, and I imagine that her forthcoming book, Taking Sexy Back: How to Own Your Sexuality and Create the Relationship You Want will be a guide to undoing the shame that most of us were indoctrinated with by religion and our sex-negative society.
You can do a deep dive into her work on dralexandrasolomon.com
Each horizontal conversation is between two and five hours long, and divided into two parts (except for the 5 hour-long one, which was divided into 4).
Part one, like this episode, is available in all the podcast places, and part two is available exclusively to patrons of the horizontal arts.
Patreon is like the love child of crowdfunding and a subscription service. A great big Happy Dance welcome to my newest patrons — Jacob, Hannah, & Michael. Elisa, Amanda, Becca, & Dominique. Helena, Matt, Farah, Bob, Eric, & Joe. And an extra excited Happy Dance to Rex, for doubling their pledge this month!
Here’s the deal with the Happy Dance:
I come from anxious and depressive stock. I’m also a recovering perfectionist. No accomplishment was ever big enough. I would look at celebrities and compare and despair. Nothing I achieved felt like success. I felt good about it for perhaps half a second, and then re-commenced thinking about other people who had accomplished so much more. Now I’m in the process of rewiring my nervous system for celebration and joy. I decided approximately a year ago to celebrate every accomplishment, no matter how small, no matter how big, with comparable enthusiasm. Hence: the Happy Dance.
Every time I get notified of a new patron, I stop what I’m doing, wherever I am (literally: on the subway, in the hot tub, at the podcast conference) and do an elaborate Happy Dance that lasts for a solid 15 seconds at least, long enough for me to bypass any bit of embarrassment and to viscerally feel the joy rush through my body.
Happy Dance Video
No Description
I made a pact with myself when I was in college. I determined that the compliments I think in my head don’t belong to me. And if they don’t belong to me, I need to return them to their rightful owners: the people I think them about. Having this philosophy has spread a lot of joy that would otherwise have never been actualized. So, in much the same way, I think that Happy Dance belongs to my patron. And I’m now making a Happy Dance video for each and every new patron!
So for access to The Full Horizontal, all the part twos going back to the beginning, including next week’s episode with Dr. Alexandra Solomon — as well as for your very own Happy Dance video — become a patron of the horizontal arts.
In this, part one of my conversation with Dr. Alexandra Solomon, I talk a lot. It’s just so lovely to have a capaciously compassionate, therapeutic ear. I’ve missed that.
We talk about:
- weddingburn, a microdose & my little secret
- compersion, sexual boredom, & novelty drive
- choosing nonmonogamy out of fear
- the gendering of purpose
- how college-age Alexandra met her husband and had to recalibrate her ideas of masculinity
- the question: what lies at the intersection of your skills, your passion, and your pain? (this is what I encouraged Patrick to ask himself, in order to seek out his purpose)
- the attachment styles: secure, anxious, avoidant, & disorganized
- neediness, turn-off, and uncertainty
- the difference between separation and shame
- her definition of loving bravely
- how Alexandra had decided she could only be the smart girl, not the pretty one
- how today in her adult life, she holds space for study and scholarship and love and sex all to coexist
Now come lie down with us in Midtown Manhattan, New York, New York.
horizontal with Alexandra Solomon in Midtown Manhattan. New York, New York. May 2019
Oh, and!
One of my key takeaways from the — phenomenal — Podcast Movement conference in Orlando was the realization that I haven’t been asking you to subscribe! If you enjoy this episode, would you please take a moment and hit the subscribe button in your podcast player of choice? It makes a difference. Every subscriber helps me toward my mission of making the world a more intimate place.
And if you found this episode with Dr. Alexandra Solomon powerful, would you share it with someone who could use a compassionate voice in their ear?
Thank you.
In next week’s episode, part two of my conversation with Dr. Solomon, we discuss marriage, navigating mismatched libidos, the difficulty of being an academic in the field of sexuality, the faculty Greek chorus in her head, taking sexy back, teaching college kids how to communicate with their lovers, and the societal pressure for women to be beautiful while brilliant.
Thank you for listening. Thank you for getting horizontal.
Links to Things:
Alexandra’s website, dralexandrasolomon.com
Alexandra’s eponymous book Loving Bravely
Her forthcoming book, Taking Sexy Back
Steve Dean’s horizontal episodes, 82. 200 dating profiles & 83. you do not have voting rights in this startup (relationship) — in which he conceptualizes romantic relationships as start-ups
Where to learn about emotion-focused therapy
Dr. Ruth, the best-known sex therapist in the world, whose radio show Sexually Speaking was the inspiration behind Alexandra’s early fascination with love & sex
The person who taught Lila one of the most powerful questions she has ever learned: Bex Caputo of Bex Talks Sex. The question is: Would you like empathy or solutions?
Show Notes: (if you share, please link to the post or the Patreon!)
[18:32] The first conversation Lila had with a metamour.
Lila: This is amazing because I’ve met her, and in person we had this conversation where she said, “You know, I’m not sure what kind of relationship I want, but I’m looking for my person; I’m looking for my primary.” And I said, “I completely identify with that, completely understand that, and there are some schools of thought about it, and one school of thought is: that any energy that you spend on a person who you know is not your person, is taken away from, finding your person. And there’s another school of thought. And this school of thought says, Anything that juices you up, that nourishes you, that makes you glow, that gives you orgasms, that makes you excited, sends and radiates that energy out into the world, and will bring people to you. And potentially bring your person to you.” And I said to her— we were at this gig that— my partner is a musician who has not been playing in recent years, and, so he’s been jamming with a friend of his, and he got to play bass on one song, and so we both went to see him. And it was the first time that she and I were meeting. And I said, “If it would be nourishing for you. If you can adopt this philosophy, and believe it, that anything that makes you radiate will be more likely to bring your partner to you— because I think it’s— if you believe the other thing, if you believe that it’s gonna preclude you from meeting the person, (overlapping) then you’re not gonna meet the person.”
Alexandra: You’re not going to; no. ‘Cause you won’t even recognize them.
Lila: “But if you can believe and feel that it will be nourishing for you, I, would be okay with that. And, would want you to have that.” And I meant it. Now it was tested. And I can see that I really did mean it. And I do mean it. And I feel so excited, and proud of myself— I thought I was a person who was just incorrigibly jealous, and would never be able to feel compersion.
[21:25] How Lila considers herself poly-adjacent.
Lila: For 5 years I’ve lived amongst polyamorous and nonmonogamous people, of all different kinds— swingers and, staunchy polyamorous people and, you know, all different permutations of nonmonogamy, and I would call myself ‘poly-adjacent.’ Because— (Lila laughs)
Alexandra: Oh my gosh! (Alexandra laughs)
Lila: Because I was next to them.
Alexandra: Yeahyeahyeah yeah; you were not of them.
Lila: And I did not think that I was wired that way. Yet! If I look back at all of my relationships, which have not been that many, and have been quite brief, the longest having been a year, I can see that I became sexually bored very quickly. Very very. Almost with— I mean, month? Maybe. Maybe, a few months. And, wow. That is data… that lets me know that my novelty drive might be quite high. And I know, intellectually, that there are ways to navigate that, but I had not yet found a person that I felt safe enough, to put them into practice with. Somebody who, who’s commitment to communication, self-inquiry, and growth is so high, as high as mine, that we could walk together. I said to him very early on that, being with him reminded me of the quote, “We’re all just walking each other home.”
Alexandra: I love that quote, Ram Dass, mmhmm.
[23:02] Why it’s important for Alexandra to hear Lila’s relationship story.
Alexandra: Hearing your story about how you’re navigating this, I think is really important for me because, because I spend most of my time in a clinical space, the stories that I hear about people trying to see whether consensual nonmonogamy could be part of their lives are oftentimes— I hear a lot of stories about women who are — well, not just women — who are feeling like they need to enter that space (overlapping) because a partner wants them to—
Lila: (overlapping) Who are coerced into it, yes, yes.
Alexandra: Yeah! And so that— I think that we really— I’m feeling like I really, want, systems for people to be able to discern, love versus fear. Right, like I choose this, I choose this from a place of, like you’re saying— what you’re noticing is a kind of reckoning around your own sexuality, like What is my sexuality? Where am I on a spectrum of novelty? Like: How much novelty do I need, how much can they happen with my partner, how much does that need to happen with a different partner?
Lila: Yes.
Alexandra: And I hear how incredibly internal it is, about your relationship to your sexuality. […] And then your space with your partner becomes a container in which you can explore that— and that’s so different than, than feeling like you just have to enter […] that space in order to keep a partner around!
Lila: And I see and hear a lot of that and it makes me very—
Alexandra: You do?
Lila: Yes! Yes, in my community. And … yeah, it, it hurts. Rather than being a dojo or a playground, it feels like another constraint. Except it’s the other way around. Right? Instead of being constrained to monogamy, constrained to one person… people are feeling like, they actually have to— yes! Have to open, in order to keep— their partner, and that it’s not really native to them, that decision!
[26:35] Steve Dean’s concept of romantic relationships as start-ups. Listen to his horizontal episodes for a robust analogy, 82. 200 dating profiles & 83. you do not have voting rights in this startup (relationship)
[28:27] Lila’s private marriage fantasy.
Lila: I feel a little embarrassed to say this, but I really thought that I was gonna (clears throat) marry a film director.
[29:47] Alexandra on the gendering of purpose.
Lila: My partner is still discovering his purpose— and so I can see, almost see superimposed over him, the man that he can be, and I imagine, is going to be. And I still love him now. He’s an amazing human now. But I’m wondering, shall I, can I, nurture, as he grows into that man.
Alexandra: Well, dang, that’s got legs everywhere, doesn’t it? Because that’s— there’s something really gendered, […] that idea of having, you know, a man with purpose is sort of different than a woman with purpose, because Man With Purpose links us to the entire archetype of provider. […] And so that’s another paradigm that you are watching yourself wrestle with. […] You’re 10 years down the road, further down the road of life than he is, and so there’s a way that you inhabit, like a more traditional sort of masculine archetype around that, around […] wisdom, maturity, clarity of vision, that wouldn’t make sense— it wouldn’t make sense to expect it of somebody who is a full decade earlier in his journey, and so there’s something, I imagine, for you that’s getting reorganized around, the construct of Man.
Lila: And I know how much I enjoy that archetypal paradigm.
[32:46] How Alexandra met her husband and had to recalibrate her idea of masculinity.
Alexandra: I wrote about this in Loving Bravely. My husband Todd and I have been together for— it’ll be 21 years, this summer—
Lila: WOW.
Alexandra: So we met freshman year of college. We lived across the hall from each other in the dorm. And, I’m this like, really tall, really (laughs) large, I take up a— like a spacious woman, and he is this, […] small guy. You know, he’s much shorter than I am. […] And so when we first met, like I— he was so funny, kind, really genuine, and so we developed a really deep friendship. And, and we would be, we had the same group of friends, we developed the same group of friends in the dorm, and would, you know, party together and study together and all of this, and it would always be the two of us, we would end up, you know, somewhere in the corner, just like, cracking each other up. And he developed feelings for me before I developed feelings for him. Because I— he didn’t fit in my— he didn’t fit in a construct for me. You know?
Lila: He was not your idea of Boyfriend.
Alexandra: No! Not at all! And what really helped— I started studying Women’s Studies, and started to like, look at these constructs— masculinity and femininity, and that really helped me bust through, ‘cause I, I’m from a family of really very traditional masculine men. Like, flannel shirts. Hunting. Fishing. Tools. Like those kinds of things. And, and Todd is not that, but he is an anchor and a rock, and holds his masculinity in a way that: I just had to reorganize. I had to reorganize, so that I could open myself to that, and experience polarity in a different way than what I had thought it would be.
[34:36] Lila’s “How to Find Your Purpose Work” question.
Lila: I’ve been just offering some questions about how he might […] find, something that feels like what he’s meant to do in the world by looking at his skills— which are engineering (he fixes all the things, he builds all the things), his passions— which is this internal work, this self-excavation, this men’s work, and: his pain. What is— and I’ve been asking, I’ve been posing this question: What work is at the intersection of your skills, your passion, and your pain?
[37:10] Alexandra teaches Lila about the field of attachment science, and its newest revelation.
Alexandra: The field of attachment science started, back in the day, there was the idea that human beings, […] babies, attach to their mamas, because mamas provided milk. The attachment was based on, like you nourish me physically and that’s why I’m attached to you. And then, the very first attachment scientist— like, remember in Psychology 101, there was like, Harry Harlow’s monkeys? He would take these monkeys, separate them from their mamas, which is— wouldn’t be able to— I don’t even know if you could do that study today, ‘cause it’s, wretched. Yet we do it at the Southern border—
Lila: Oh God.
Alexandra: Separate babies from their mamas, (Lila groans/cries) like it’s so— f— ugh, anyways, it, just—
Lila: Horrifying.
Alexandra: Horrifying, because babies and their loving adults need to be together. So he would separate baby monkeys from their mamas, and then put them in a cage, and there was a wire mama, that would provide milk, and then there was a cloth mama, that was soft, but didn’t provide milk. And the monkeys would go to the wire mama, to get the milk, and then they would quick as they could, get over to the cloth mama for […] nurturing.
Lila: I just got chills on my legs, hearing that.
Alexandra: Mmhmm. And so this was the first time we were able— science was able to say, like, attachment is actually about comfort and touch and soothing. It’s just just about— it’s not just transactional: you give me something. And so then it became (big inhale) studying humans, and the ways that human babies attach to their mamas, and there was all these studies where they would like do a— they would separate the child from the mom, briefly, and then study how they reunited. And from that, from watching those interactions, they kind of categorized all of us, and they said that by 18 months, you have an attachment style— and if your mom leaves you, and she comes and you reunite, and you go to her and you give her a hug, you’re securely attached, ‘cause it shows that you missed her while she was gone, and then when you got back together you were really happy to see her. That was secure attachment style. And then, avoidant attachment style: she left, and then when she came back, you ignored her. That was avoidant attachment style, you kinda shut down in the absence, and then you just didn’t really open back up. And then the anxious attached was: she left, and when she came back, you ran to her and you just fell apart, and you were like, inconsolable. And the fourth kind would be, a disorganized attachment style, which is: when you get reunited, you hit her, and you run away from her, and you run ba— like you’re not sure what to do with her, you’re kinda all over the place.
Lila: Ahhhhh.
Alexandra: And then the next wave of attachment scientists basically said that when we grow up, we replicate, […] so we have an attachment style with our primary caregivers by 18 months, 2 years old, and the idea was, that’s your attachment style forever and ever. But then, these next researchers kind of were like, I think that’s actually—
Lila: That doesn’t seem reasonable.
Alexandra: Right, and so they would watch how— we do, we do tend to replicate attachment styles from childhood, we do bring those patterns into adult relationships, so if we’re avoidantly-attached, we do tend to be avoidant in our relationships. But the amazing thing is, that it turns out, because love is so powerful, because intimate relationships are so powerful, people change attachment styles in their relationships.
[42:34] The dance of neediness, turn-off, and uncertainty.
[47:39] According to the research of Justin Lehmiller, threesomes are the number one sexual fantasy in the U.S.
[50:00] Alexandra’s little-girl identity as the smart girl, not the pretty one.
Alexandra: This is how my TED Talk is going to start. […] My primary identity is nerdy and bookish— that’s my first way of knowing myself. I was the girl with her nose in a book all the time. And that I came to— in my little-girl mind, I made a split, that you had to either be a smart girl or a pretty girl. And my mom was a beauty queen— like literally, a beauty queen, […] she’s won beauty contests, like that was sort of her, genesis. And also, even now, into her 70s, she’ll wear like a feather boa […] and […] sparkly makeup and not even think tw— and a high heel, not even think twice about it. She— so I felt like she occupied that space and so I think that in my little-girl logic, I had to be smart. And I was smart; and I took a lot of pride in being smart. That was my primary identity. But I also— I have always been fascinated by, by love and by sex and I remember— as maybe like an 11, 12, 13 year-old— this was in the 80s, and Dr. Ruth was, you know, she was a thing. And so I would on Sunday nights go, into my room, and like, hide under my covers with my walkman, and listen to her show. But it felt like— it was just like a dirty secret, you know, like, I didn’t think I could be both those things: smart, and interested in love and sex and intimacy— those were like, really different worlds, you know? […] I couldn’t be all that— like you sorta had to— I had to not be out with that. […] The next generation of that was in college, so I’m studying Women’s Studies, and here again, I had a schism between Women’s Studies and feminism over here, and then the study of love over there. I thought to be a feminist I needed to study things like, violence and body image and race and power, and that love was really just— who has got time for that? Because we were really tryin’ to (Alexandra chuckles) conquer social issues here. That love was really too feminine and too soft. And then, in grad school I needed to secure funding for my second year of grad school, and there was a position available at the Family Institute, studying couples and I just kind of applied for that job and made up some story about how I was really interested in that, and I really wasn’t, ‘cause I didn’t think I could be, and then I got into it and it really suits me, and it was like a reclamation, of a part of myself I had lost, you know, like (gasp) but I love, I’ve always loved ro— I read romance novels as a kid, and so for me to be able to be able to make space for all of that, for study and scholarship and love and sex, and, like to kind of, be able to just hold all of that has been really important for me. And, we were talking before we started recording about how I still feel like, I think, maybe for all of us, or at least for me this is true— I feel like I have to keep expanding my career to fit me.
[55:00] Alexandra on the need for de-role-ing, particularly as a woman working in a high-powered career.
[56:12] The difference between separation and shame.
Alexandra: There’s a difference between separation, and shame. A boundary— there needs to be a boundary. A boundary then: When my speech therapist self is forward-facing, I’m in a role, I have a job to do, I have a task, I have a function. And then I can open up this other part of me in a separate space, and that it doesn’t need to be loaded up with shame, like there’s something wrong or dirty or bad about that— but there’s, there’s a separation.
Lila: So you’re making a distinction, that separation doesn’t necessarily equal repression.
[58:46] Alexandra’s definition of loving bravery.
Alexandra: To me, bravery is: the ability to stay present to uncertainty, to stay present to emotion, to start a conversation when you don’t know where it’s going to go. You know, to just start with whatever small piece of truth you have your head around, and then just to go from there. I find, I find my— I do this, I watch my clients do this: we silence ourselves if we can’t script out— like I’ll hear people say, “Yeah but I can’t bring that up because I don’t know where it’ll go. I don’t know, I don’t know how— I can’t say that because I don’t know how my partner will respond.” Or, “I don’t know what will happen if we start talking about that.” So to me bravery is about starting with that little, that small, local… piece of understanding that you have—
Lila: The microscopic truth.
Alexandra: Yeah, and then just saying, “I don’t know where this is gonna go, but I’m gonna put this piece out there, and will you meet me with it? Will you sit with me in this little microscopic piece of my truth, and can we just, unfold it together?
Lila: Yeahhh.
Alexandra: That’s so brave.
Lila: I’m happy to be in the not-knowing with you.
Alexandra: […] We’re not really supported in doing that, you know, and our cultural narrative is so much about making something good/bad, right/wrong, win/lose, powerful/powerless— we have so many binaries that just limit us. And so, bravery is also about just, grey. Allowing there to be grey, allowing there to be not-knowing, meeting something with saying, “Tell me more about that. I want to understand how that is for you.” […] “I’m not you, but I want to understand you.” Holding space, while somebody, works something through. We’re so fricking relational. I— I mean, the vast majority of the time, I don’t know how I feel about something, until I’ve turned towards somebody that I care, care for, trust, and I can sort of start to listen myself into understanding. Be listened into understanding. And that’s also, brave.
[1:05:35] One of the most powerful questions Lila has ever learned, from the sex educator Bex Caputo of Bex Talks Sex: Would you like empathy or solutions?
91. loving bravely: horizontal with your marriage 101 professor (1 of 2)
horizontal is Slow Radio about intimacies of all kinds. It is entirely recorded while reclining. I think of it as consensual eavesdropping- we’re lying down, wearing robes, sharing secrets, in your ears.
