This is Geoffrey Miller.
To listen to this episode, click the saucy redhead on the peach background, and become a patron of the horizontal arts…
Geoffrey: I know a lot of people who can harness this jealous erotic energy very early in relationships.
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Geoffrey: The people I tend to date and keep dating, have shit to do in their real life… and then, polyamory is their sexuality.
Lila: You’re distinguishing it from their real life?
Geoffrey: Well their real life like their career. Their professional life.
Lila: Okay, their professional life.
Geoffrey: Poly is their sex life and how they have, relationships and pleasure and fulfilment and connection and intimacy and all that. And that’s great. But, there’s a mindset that says, I wanna get the most I can out of that poly life— as efficiently as possible. And then there’s a different view that says, The drama and the processing is sort of part of the fun for me, right, and that’s fine, those people can do that. I tend not to end up dating them very long, because that’s not intrinsically rewarding to me. I’m happy to go through it and kind of talk things through but once there’s a solution, I like to kind of like, have that solution and use it.
Lila: I’m definitely seeing how much time it’s taking away from the podcast and what I’m trying to do career-wise and in the world, and from other avenues where I want to be giving energy. It does make sense. I’m learning the skill of nonmonogamy — which I may or may not continue to use, who knows — but I’m trying to learn a new skill.
Geoffrey: And I think also, it matters a lot who you’re talking to — if it’s a couple of like, Gen Z, 21 year-olds trying to process their feelings together, and they haven’t read a) any evolutionary psychology, or psychology at all, or b) anything about relationships in general, or c) anything specific about poly issues, and they’re just kind of like, trying to reinvent the wheel, then, the number of insights per hour of talk, they’re gonna get is gonna be very low! Whereas, if they were like, Okay, let’s get serious about this shit, and like, research it, and find out about things, and find some poly mentors who can guide us, and talk to people who’ve done it before, and be smart about it, they could get 10x more progress per hour.
Lila: (chuckling) Per Processing Hour… PPH. (laughing)
Geoffrey: And then that means—
Lila: 10x insights!
Geoffrey: So why does the efficiency matter, ‘cause it leaves more time available for—
Lila: Self-actualization…
Geoffrey: All the good shit, like going to Burning Man or having threesomes (Lila laughs) or making podcasts or—
Lila: Yes, writing books. Having adventures. And I want to have a lot of adventures! A lot more adventures!
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Geoffrey: The problems that male sexual jealousy used to solve are now solved by technology.
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Geoffrey: Of course, knowing that she’d been seeing other guys made the first sex with her, in Paris, super hot. And I guess that was the first inkling I had that jealousy is a lie— it’s kind of an, an illusion. It’s deceptive, it tells your brain, This is crucial information for survival and reproduction, and you must pay attention to it. You must keep track of everything sexually your lover’s doing at all times. And if you don’t, you’re a loser, and an idiot. And I guess that experience planted the seed of doubt in my mind — ‘cause I thought a lot about it, even in November and December of that year. Why do I really care? Right? And I kinda poked at it from the, the safer sex angle and the contraception angle and none of those were really an issue. I poked at it from the, Oh, maybe she’ll abandon me and— what? Live the rest of her life in Paris? No, not likely. None of my rationalizations worked, and, you know, I was already a psych major at that point—
Lila: Your irrationalizations. (chuckles)
Geoffrey: Yeah. And, I thought, this is a really peculiar part of human nature, that this emotion can convince you to put the rest of your life on hold, and ruminate only about the fact that, you know, “your woman” on the other side of the ocean, God forbid had fun with another man.
Lila: (chuckling) Right!
Geoffrey: With no strings attached, and he treated her fine, and they were safe, and, now she’s coming back into your loving arms, and… I almost had this dialogue with jealousy, like, Dude, what the fuck is your problem? Why are you so psychotically obsessed with this? And jealousy would come back with basically, I’m just a strong feeling. I’m an absorbing state for all of your attention. Isn’t that enough? And I’d be like, No, jealousy. You’re just an attention-seeking narcissist.
Geoffrey: So there’s no particular moral from that, but it did give me a little bit of a distance from… jealousy and I guess from emotions in general… And it also lead me to think a lot about women’s sexual sovereignty and freedom. ‘Cause you know, I had joined the Men’s Feminist Union at Columbia University freshman year, and I considered myself a strong feminist at that point, and I thought women should have sexual freedom, and reproductive freedom, and all that. But when, there was any conflict between those ethical values and my jealousy— you know, the jealousy won for a minute. But then I asked myself like, In an ideal world, would you want a young woman to be able to enjoy the adventure and romance of Paris, her semester abroad? Without some fucking boyfriend back in New York, freaking out over nothing. Basically. I would say, Yeah, of course, of course women should have that freedom.
Welcome to part two of my voluminous, ranging conversation with Geoffrey Miller, PhD, evolutionary psychologist, author, out polyamorist, and professor of Human Sexuality.
To listen to this episode, and for access to all the other part twos (what I call “The Full Horizontal”):
During this part of the recording, the trains are even more frequent; the toddlers galumphing upstairs: relentless. So that’s what we’re working with here.
In episode 88, poly by nature, we talked about his family dynasty, growing up with intellectual, activist parents, his Dad’s weekly pre-college briefings about Things That Will Happen in New York, an act of sexual altruism, CPR dummies and the lady ghosts of the asylum, the difference between anthropology and evolutionary psychology, 80s cotillions, dating before cell phones, similarities between Geoffrey and his brother the preacher, heteroflexibility, bisexual stigma, future sex-positive societies, talking to college students about polyamory, how Geoffrey met his first wife and became an Instant Stepdad, struggling with monogamy, stepfathering in prehistory, how marital therapy fails men, psychotherapy solutions vs. manosphere solutions, why most clinical psychologists aren’t well-versed in different relationship styles, and Geoffrey’s coming-out-poly story. And then I began the tale of how I met Patrick.
This episode encompasses the rest of that story.
We also discuss my catharsis around jealousy, the moment in high school that I kinked, meeting a metamour for the first time—
metamour (noun) = the lover of your lover.
—a taste of compersion, jealousy as an erotic supercharger, mate choice, hypergamy, & validation, threesomes and unicorn-hunting—
unicorn-hunting (verb) = a somewhat derisive term used to describe the process of a couple going on the prowl to find a person to have sex with both of them.
—how much processing is too much processing, Geoffrey & Diana’s grown-up professional poly and their shared Darwinian view of emotions, the evolutionary functions of jealousy, designer relationships, how sexuality is still a subject in which a researcher can lose credibility for having more experience, Geoffrey’s academic paper on lap dancers & ovulation, what makes his poly relationships work…
and Geoffrey tells me a story about his college girlfriend’s year in Paris, and his relationship to his own jealousy.
In next week’s episode, I lie down with the ladies of Skirt Club, a play party designed exclusively for bicurious women… that I attended a couple of months ago.
I’m so glad you’re here.
Until next week, may you have many people to love, something important to do, and something to look forward to. I’m deeply looking forward to a spa day with Tiana (my guest in episodes 78, 79, 80, & 81). Mmmm, spa day.
Come lie down with us again in Bushwick, Brooklyn.
horizontal with Geoffrey Miller in Bushwick, Brooklyn. May 2019
Links to Things:
Geoffrey’s website, primalpoly.com
Geoffrey’s Twitter, where he is very active and sometimes rants and has put his foot in his mouth once or twice
Mate: Become the Man Women Want, the book Geoffrey co-authored with Tucker Max, that I listened to before I met him
The Mating Grounds, Geoffrey’s podcast with Tucker
The Secondaries Bill of Rights, and information on how author of More Than Two revised the bill into The Relationship Bill of Rights
Geoffrey’s friend David Ley has written several books on human sexuality
Tell Me What You Want, Justin Lehmiller’s book, drawing from his research on sexual fantasies
Designer Relationships, the book Geoffrey assigned in his polyamory class for its briefness and practicality
Opening Up, Tristan Taormino’s book about nonmonogamy, that Geoffrey recommends
Professor Marston and the Wonder Women, a movie that Lila saw twice in the theatres, and Geoffrey recommends to his Human Sexuality students
Kinsey, another movie Geoffrey recommends to Human Sexuality students
“Ovulatory Cycle Effects on Tip-Earning by Lap Dancers,” one of Geoffrey’s academic papers
To listen to this episode, click the saucy redhead on the peach background, and become a patron of the horizontal arts…
