The Afterglow Of Judgment Day
For the first few minutes as I rise to greet the day, in the haze of early morning sleep, I don’t yet remember that I am flash frozen by thousands of strangers in the static pixels of a meme. Oh the sweet groggy amnesia of those first waking minutes! But soon enough, the weight of the outrage that was sparked after announcing our post-conventional relationship infuses into my spirit like pencil lead. It’s deeply painful. Like beyond what you could even imagine. But I want to be clear: I’m not looking for sympathy.
Because even though the impact of the podcast was not what we wanted, it was exactly what we needed. The multipolar response to the episode has given us so many gifts.
There have been hundreds of people who have reached out on social and in real life, who were deeply moved by the honesty and authenticity of the podcast. Most of them have no interest in replicating our relationship structure, which is great, because I have never once recommended that anyone follow me on this path.
But I’ve heard story after story of people who opened up to their partner and just shared what was real in their heart. That is more than we ever wanted, hoped, or expected. Because in reality, we weren’t exactly clear on why we were doing the podcast in the first place, it was just something that we felt we needed to do. The relationship agreement with my beloved warrior queen Vylana had evolved and expanded to include our beloved Alana, Vylana’s lover Joshua, and we believed we ought to tell people that, beyond just our friends & family and the Fit For Service crew. I’m honestly surprised that this didn’t get out prior to the podcast, given that we announced it at every event and explored the challenges of it in our curriculum.
But the real gifts have come from the negativity, which also was naively unexpected. And that too was exactly what we needed. The first thing it did was it sparked some really deep and necessary conversations about where we are, and the future we are building together.
Has Vylana fully forgiven me for asking to change the terms of our original partnership agreement?
Do I trust that Vylana and Alana are actually choosing this unconventional relationship structure in their full power and authority?
Am I absolutely and utterly devoted to this new agreement?
Will it really fucking work?
I believe the answers are yes, but these are all questions that we are actively in the process of asking and exploring deeply. This is such a blessing, and it’s one of the beautiful things about exposing your ideas to the wild. You may think you have the greatest business plan, but you don’t know if it will work until you expose it to the world. This is the virtue of public discourse, it gives incredible feedback, whether you like it or not.
Consider the fallout from the nomenclature used to explicate our post-conventional relationship. We came up with a name that was intentionally paradoxical; honoring the sacred marriage between Vy and I, and the reality of the deep love for others that we had experienced. We called it radical monogamy in the field of erotic mystics, but we now fully understand the critiques and confusion the name created, so we’ll come up with something else. Maybe it should be radical fidelity in the field of erotic mystics. Because I genuinely believe that speaking honestly about your desires and offering someone the full agency to choose what is in their best interest, is the definition of fidelity. There are no secrets, no hidden desires, no separation between any of us. We don’t worry about each other looking through our phones because there is nothing to hide.
Fundamentally marriage is an agreement. If people believe that a person should have no right to ask their partner if they are willing to modify and update the agreement, then no wonder the divorce rates for first marriages are projected at 41% and adultery rates look like a bitcoin chart.
One solution to reducing the amount of divorces, would be to make the practice illegal entirely. If that is what you believe the solution should be, I actually respect your argument. I don’t agree with it, but I respect it. Of course I’m biased because I wouldn’t exist if that was the law. My parents had both been divorced when they conceived me. If they had stuck with their original partners, I wouldn’t even be alive. And if they hadn’t remarried after they birthed me, I would never have received the toughness I got from my stepfather, and the knowledge about holistic health that I got from my stepmother. But if you aren’t advocating for a regressive repeal of the legality of divorce, you are in a bit of a double bind when you attack us: because instead of divorcing, Vylana and I chose to stay together. And it wasn’t an automatic choice. She took three months of separation from me of her own volition in 2023 to get really clear with herself. She looked deep inside, talked to all her friends and family, and decided of her own sovereign will that she still wanted to stay married to me - and was willing to include Alana and her own lovers to come in that marriage.
Since then my wife and I have laughed many times about how challenging it is to be with someone who is just like you, from the opposite sex. Vylana and I really are twin flames. But the thing about finding your twin flame, is that you are a perfect mirror for each other. And this usually means that you trigger the hell out of each other. Which Vylana and I do.
But since we are both more dedicated to evolution than we are stubbornly protective of the patterns in our identity complex - We love that we challenge each other.
Maybe not in the moment, but always in hindsight. I have illuminated and processed more of my own shadow from being with Vylana, than with anyone else ever. And she would say the same about me. Simultaneously, we’ve also had the absolute best fucking time together.
So of course divorce was on the table as we came to know ourselves and each other more deeply. You don’t ever fully know someone until you have met their shadow. And just to note, for those of you who are slandering our love by saying she’s only staying in this unconventional relationship for the money, I never even asked for a prenup with Vylana. If I was using money as some type of manipulative leverage all along, don’t you think I would have gotten a prenup? I have always offered a generous financial safe harbor (correlating to my adjusting means for generosity) for every committed partner I have ever been with, all the way since before Caitlyn, in 2005. I want to know that my partner isn’t with me for the money. If they just want the money, I desperately want them to take it, because I am clearly confused and we are not aligned in the depth of love that I desire. What I want is real, honest love. Isn’t that what everyone wants?
The only truly disappointing aspect of the dialogue that the podcast sparked, are the people who have decided to stop being in the conversation. The ones who have come to a conclusion of certainty, putting a label like “Spiritual Narcissist” in place of the living and breathing nuance of a real human being. I might as well make myself into an action figure, so people can really voodoo some needles into the caricatured effigy I have become.
This of course wouldn’t be enough for some, like the dozens of messages from people we received who are actively praying for some kind of judgment from God. For others who aren’t quite as enraged, perhaps if I checked myself into some kind of Narcissist's Anonymous rehab center, they could eke out a condescending forgiveness.
This type of righteousness is a symptom of an immature mind. You always have to leave a place for the humility of understanding that we are all