How To Avoid Bad Polyamory Advice

Josh 0:00
All right, everybody. So in today's episode, we're going to talk about how to avoid bad polyamory advice, how to avoid getting bad polyamory advice and acting on it, and also how to avoid giving it. So it is a super important topic. Stay tuned.

Cassie 0:41
Here at Touch of Flavor, we teach non monogamous folks how to overcome their obstacles and build thriving relationships.

Josh 0:48
This podcast is about answering one question, how do you create loving, passionate, secure relationships outside the box? Even if nothing has ever worked before? If you want to know the answer, you are in the right place.

Cassie 1:00
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Josh 1:12
Alright, everybody, so Cassie host chat time, what has been happening?

Cassie 1:16
Um, we've been getting better. That's- that's one thing. Back to more intimacy and fun times and stuff like that, because we actually have the energy to do so.

Josh 1:31
Somewhat, somewhat.

Cassie 1:33
Still working at having the energy for a lot of things.

Josh 1:38
One thing that's been really surprising to me, actually, so for those who didn't catch the last episode, we're coming off of kind of the the side of COVID. And, uh, man, it's been almost a month now, huh?

Cassie 1:51
22 days for me.

Josh 1:52
22 days. I caught it a few days after you. So it's probably closer to like, two weeks. But the really crazy thing to me about it wasn't like, the sick. Like the sick was, I mean, I don't want to say like, better than I anticipated, or worse than I anticipated. Like it kind of was, you know, it wasn't like shockingly less problematic, or shockingly, more problematic. Like it was certainly unpleasant. But the thing to me that's been really shocking, actually is the recovery time.

Cassie 2:26
The linger.

Josh 2:26
The lingering like, oh my lord. Somebody - my health coach referred to it the other day as a COVID Hangover. And I'm like that is a good I mean, at least for me, that's a good description of what's going on. I know your lungs are still bothering you.

Cassie 2:41
Yeah.

Josh 2:41
I'm not having that as much as you are.

Cassie 2:44
Yeah, my lungs are still not happy. I feel like I'm, I feel like I'm trekkin up a mountain in Colorado Springs, like that is how I have felt!

Josh 2:53
Oh it happened that one of the time!

Cassie 2:55
While I was pregnant.

Josh 2:56
That ONE time, okay. It only happened once.

Cassie 3:01
While I was pregnant.

Josh 3:02
While you were preg- Okay. So we went to Colorado Springs. We were out there teaching at a conference. It was Apex, right? We were teaching at Apex in Denver, and then we went to Colorado Springs afterwards. And we went to the local climbing shop. And we were like hey, you know where would be a great place to climb? If you're just here for a couple days? And they were like oh, there's this spot that you have to climb if you're only there for a couple days. Okay, and they give us directions and we go there and nobody bothers to mention- Cassie by the way is like ready to pop at this point.

Cassie 3:34
I am not- when I say I am pregnant - I'm not like a little pregnant. I'm like beach ball being hidden under my shirt pregnant.

Josh 3:40
You weren't quite ready to pop but you were very preggers.

Cassie 3:44
I was seven months pregnant. I was pretty pregnant.I'm like seven is very close to nine- which is when you have a baby. I not I was not very small pregnant, I was very pregnant.

Josh 3:56
So apparently nobody bothered to mention that the actual climbing spot was like three four miles from the parking lot, which may not sound like a lot but it's uphill, it's at elevation. So you know if you've ever spent like time at elevation, like it already makes everything like 10 times harder. And Cassie is like super pregnant. We have this great video of her just like stumbling up the mountain going "This is bullshit. This is such bullshit." So it feels like that.

Cassie 4:40
Yeah, that that is what my lungs feel like.

Josh 4:43
Sounds unpleasant.

Cassie 4:44
It's not great. I don't even get like the satisfaction of knowing I'm getting ready to climb a mountain. Yeah, just going going from my living room to my kitchen feels like climbing a mountain.

Josh 4:57
I'm more having the brain fog and like the fatigue and brain fog. But we are slowly getting better. Totally not something I want to repeat, but slowly getting better. And yeah, when you say back to intimacy, we've actually had like, a couple of like, we're actually back to the point in our household where like, you're in Amanda's date nights, and mine and your date nights, and intimacy time and stuff like that is actually like,

Cassie 5:25
Happening again. Versus just everybody dying wherever they're dying in the house.

Josh 5:29
So. Boom. So that's pretty awesome. And that was pretty fun. And what else? Oh! We can reconnect with a friend? Super happy about that. That's awesome. I was just thinking, how long would you say we've been friends for?

Cassie 5:46
We have been friends for close to 11 years. It was like 11, 12 years.

Josh 5:54
Craziness. That's Craziness.

Cassie 5:56
Because she- we started hanging out. And at the time, man cub was eight years old. And now a man cub is like an adult. So like, around 11 years. Yeah.

Josh 6:12
Speaking of running around, holy- the little lion is like running around doing dishes. We need to bring Amanda on. I think we should next - maybe for next episode actually do like a polycule update. I think it'd be really awesome for people.

Cassie 6:25
Yeah.

Josh 6:25
We can get her baby set and bring Amanda.

Cassie 6:30
Yeah, I think it'd be awesome. But yeah, she is walking and talking and doing so many things. It's been amazing. The last couple of months. It's like she went from like, Okay, you're like sort of toddler to like-child. And like, she's not. She's still just a toddler. But just all of the amazing markers and conversations and opinions that she has now. They've just been remarkable.

Josh 6:56
So yeah, we'll bring Amanda on here. Let's let's plan for next episode. Let's, let's put that in the calendar. We'll bring Amanda on, do an update. I know folks love that. We'll sort out how to do it with the camera. We just need to like, all talk into one mic and just scoot back from the camera, I think would be the solution to that.

Cassie 7:14
Scoot back and cuddle in. Right.

Josh 7:17
I mean, sure. But I think the scooting back is actually the more important piece. And we'll go on from there. But yeah, so anything else you want to throw in Cassie?

Cassie 7:25
No, I think that's really kind of where life has been. And I'm super excited to hop into our topic for the day.

Josh 7:32
All right. So without further ado, let's hop into today's topic.

Josh 7:40
Alright, everybody. So today we're talking about how to avoid bad polyamory advice, and I'm looking forward to this episode, actually, Cassie, because some of this is based on some stuff I've been doing. So it's not some stuff that you're incredibly familiar with. So you're going to need to kind of like bounce off and questions and like be like a third, like, you're gonna kind of get to do like an interview. So that's pretty cool. I'm excited about that, that should be fun. And we want to talk about how to avoid bad polyamory advice, we're mainly going to talk about how to avoid getting it, taking it acting on it, having that impact your relationships, also gonna spend a little bit of time talking about how to avoid giving it because I think that's really important. And something people don't give nearly enough thought to. So be super helpful for everybody. And I want to talk about why this is important. And we're in a time - this like, really crazy time, where non monogamy is becoming more and more and more accepted. And a part of that, and what's come with that, is there is like more advice than ever before. There's so much more advice than when you or I-

Cassie 8:49
Oh, yeah.

Josh 8:49
Started non monogamy like there was like three books at the time. That was it. It was like the Ethical Slut, Opening Up, actually-

Cassie 8:57
And More Than Two hadn't even been written yet.

Josh 8:59
Yeah, More Than Two hadn't been written for a number of years. So it was like those two books. Those were those were the thing.

Unknown Speaker 9:05
Yeah.

Josh 9:07
It's nuts. And now we're in a world where there is a ton of advice. And in some ways, that's really good. I think it's really good. A couple things that are really good. Like, number one, I think it's good that obviously the community is growing so much, and there are so many more people. And moreso, you know, I don't know how much of it's really that there's more people interested. But I think the fact that it's more acceptable and people more able to actually be themselves and be honest, and to even know what to call themselves or know what's going on with them. I think that's great. I think it's great that people have a community, and there's a huge, huge value to community, as you know. Right. You want to talk about community for a second?

Cassie 10:00
Um sure I mean, I think there's a huge value in having folks who are like you, right? Knowing that there's other people like you and not feeling so alone. Because like when we, when we were like, first exploring non monogamy and polyamory and things like that, like, it wasn't a thing, there wasn't a lot of people to talk to about it. And you just kind of felt like the weird person. So having others who are like you can really feel very validating can feel like you're not alone. And it allows you to not be that like weird person, and make you like, doubt yourself and maybe not necessarily pursue what you actually need and want in your relationships.

Josh 10:53
Yeah. And so the other thing now, too, is that any question that you have on non monogamy, there are 100 different people who are super excited to give you their opinion. And to give you advice. And this is actually though, I think, in a lot of ways, a bad thing. And this is where I think the growth of non monogamy and the popularity of non monogamy and really, at the end of the day, it's not about the growth of popularity of monogamy, but the plethora of advice, right now gets to be a bad thing. And it isn't just non-monogamy to be honest with you, it's like anything in this day and age. But the problem is, you know, you any question you have, you know, you go and you look and you find 100 different answers, 100 different opinions, everybody has an opinion 100 different opinions on how you should be doing this, 100 different opinions on how to deal with jealousy, 100 different opinions on how to stop arguing, 100 different opinions on how to connect, 100 different opinions on if your relationships workable, and everybody has these opinions.

Josh 12:05
And the problem is, the amount of information that's available in one way is super awesome. But when it comes to a practical end of actually trying to use it, and to strengthen your relationship, and to find stuff that works, we're actually in a place now where it's harder than ever, to know what advice to follow. Because there's so much noise, that it's hard to pick out the signal, you have 100 different pieces of advice. You don't know what to believe, you don't know what not to believe. 90% of it conflicts with each other. Everybody's super passionate about their opinion. And the other problem is that a lot of times, even when you find a piece of advice that sounds really good maybe even is really good for like the one little specific thing that it's for. It can conflict with a lot of other stuff in your relationship and cause problems other places, you know, even if it works for the one little thing. So the plethora of information that's out there right now has really become a really difficult thing to navigate in a lot of ways. And one place the non monogamy community... I think as a whole, we've done a particularly terrible job... I'll just say it. Is distinguishing bad advice from good advice. Right?

Josh 13:32
You know, you go into like a Facebook group for non monogamy and you ask a question, and you get 50 different answers. And somehow you're supposed to treat all of those equally, right as equally valid opinions. Which makes no sense, because most of the time those answers are all at odds with each other anyways. And this is a place I know you have some pretty strong opinions. But I feel like personally like we just do a crap job of in the non monogamous space, separating bad advice and good advice from each other.

Cassie 14:03
Yeah. And, and I get it because what we're trying to do in the non monogamy space, right? And in the poly groups, and things like that is we're trying to make people feel welcome. And we're trying to make everyone feel good. And here's the thing. That advice is still bad advice, right? And trying to validate each other's advice and ideas and thoughts and everything. While it sounds nice and welcoming. It really just allows for folks to be even more lost in the struggle even more. And the truth is, is that not all advice is equal. It's just not.

Josh 14:43
And here's the thing, and this is what blows my mind about this is that when we're talking about our relationship, talking about the things that are most precious in our lives, we're talking about our partners. We're talking about people we may have invested years into, we're talking about our families. We're talking about, you know, the future of our kids having their parents together, we're talking about people that we love our best friends in the world. And what that looks like, we're talking about our living situation, we're talking about our happiness, our health, we're talking about everything.

Josh 15:18
And yet, as a community, we have no problem just like gambling with people's well being, by telling them 30 different things and being like your good luck trying to figure it out. And the truth of the matter isn't a lot of cases bad advice is worse than no advice. And this is something that Cassie and I, in our work with our clients have really come to realize, because at least when you know, you're blind, you know, you're blind, right? And a lot of times, we know you're blind, you expect to have challenges, you know you're going to run into problems, you're open to being wrong. And to therefore, having things change that things can improve. But when you're running off bad advice, the problem is you think you're doing the right thing. But things are getting worse. And people wind up in these situations, where they're trying and trying, they're putting in all this effort and all this work, but they're putting them into the wrong things they're putting them into things that don't work. And because of that the arguments get worse, the connection drifts further apart. They feel like crappy poly people.

Cassie 16:31
Many times, they feel more angry and more upset with their partners, because I am doing the right thing. It must be you, I'm following this advice. I'm following this, I'm following this. So it actually builds more of a rivalry within the relationships because they think they're doing the right thing.

Josh 16:51
And they each picked the right thing that they liked to hear. Right? Because there was 100 different things. They're all equally valid. So this one sounded really good to me, because this is what I want. This one sounded really good, too, because you wanted it, and now, we are arguing about that. And the truth is, neither of them were right. And they were both going to cause disaster to begin with. And this is the thing that blows my mind. And just, I feel is just completely irresponsible of us as a community. Right? Is, again, like I said, we're gambling with the most important things in people's lives here. And we basically put them in the position of flying blind. Because it's not now that they have no advice, which is what the situation might have been, you know, 10, 15 years ago. Now they have 100 pieces of advice, 99 of which are bad, they have no idea which is which. And this is the kind of thing where like I said, like we're gambling with really important things here.

Josh 17:47
So this is one of the biggest complaints in the biggest places that Cassie and I really believe, or I'll speak for myself, at least, but that the non monogamy community fails its own.

Cassie 18:00
Absolutely.

Josh 18:02
We do an awful job as a group of distinguishing bad advice from good advice. A lot of times we actively try and promote this false equivalency between all advice, which really makes no sense at the end of the day, because, again, if you have pieces of advice that are in opposition to each other, they can't all be right. So it makes no sense. It doesn't work. And yet we do it anyways. And this is a topic that Cassie and I have talked about before. So why are we talking tonight? Well, we're talking tonight, because I always love and we always love putting a bit of a different spin on things and maybe giving you a new way to think about it. And I've been reading a book that is not a relationship book, by the way. That gives, I think, some really good insight into how we can address distinguishing bad advice from good or bad. I want to talk about that. And give you another way to look at this. Right and then Cassie and I will wrap in kind of our points of view and how you can apply those ideas to non-monogamy. And like I said, Cassie, you have been reading this book. So you get to kind of play the role of interviewer and ask questions. I think it'll be super helpful for people. Okay, you ready?

Cassie 19:20
Yeah.

Josh 19:20
Anything else you wanna throw in before we get started?

Cassie 19:22
No.

Josh 19:23
Okay.

Cassie 19:23
I think we're good. I think we're in a good spot to kind of get into the meat and potatoes of it.

Josh 19:27
Meat and potatoes. All right. So, I've been reading a book that our coaches recommended me for other non relationship purposes. It's actually more about leadership and stuff. But there's this book that I've been reading called Principles, and the author's name is Ray... Dalio, is his last name, I may be botching the last name. But basically, it's a set of principles by which this guy runs his life, runs his company, that kind of thing. And he's very, very systematized. It's very interesting. Read lots of cool stuff about management and all that.

Josh 19:59
But, one of the principles- or actually a whole section of them talk about this concept of believability. Which is a fantastic word, by the way, right? And how to think about what believability is how to think about believability, how to assess the believability of different people, different experts, different pieces of advice. And I was reading through this, and I was like, Man, this is dead on. Like, this is spot on, this is so useful for people. And I always love finding principles from other things in life that apply to relationships, you know, sometimes we get a little blind, just looking at relationships and forget that there's lots of I'm going to use the word principles, since that's the title the book, but-

Cassie 20:04
Or models.

Josh 20:43
Lots of principles, lots of models, lots of truths that we can take from other areas of life, whether it's business, whether it's health, whether it's these other things that are more universal truths, right, that that apply equally well, to our relationships. And I think, you know, it's something that's especially important to think about when we're in the non monogamous space, we don't always have the models, the rules, the things like that, for those relationships, that we can, you know, pull from other sources. Right. So believability. So like I said, Ray Dalio, Principles. If you have any interest in reading it. But this is an interesting spin. So I'm going to be giving a couple of quotes about believability from this book. And we're going to spin it into just giving you some tools and some ways to think about assessing whether the advice that you're getting is good or bad, because I don't want to be telling you what's good or bad advice. We're not there to do that, and guide you in all those situations, and all the non monogamy groups you're in, and all the books you're reading, and all the podcasts, you're listening to.

Cassie 21:54
All your friends, all of the groups that you hang out in. And there's there's so many places that you're getting bombarded with advice and ideas and thoughts and things like that, we can't be there for every single one of them.

Josh 22:08
So what we want to do, I want to give you tools that you can think about and evaluate the believability of the advice you're getting. And believability basically is just how likely a piece of advice is to be true, how believable a person is, right? And how likely the advice that they give is likely to be true and is likely to work. Okay. So and I want to start with, and I'm going to be paraphrasing some of this. But I want to start with in the book, when the author's talking about believability, he starts talking about opinions. And this is what kind of caught my attention because we're talking about opinions earlier now everybody has them. Opinions are easy to produce, everyone has plenty of them. And most people are eager to share them, even to fight for them. Unfortunately, many opinions are worthless or even harmful, including a lot of your own. And the idea is this is why it's so important to evaluate what's believable, because at the end of the day an opinion doesn't make something right or accurate or even helpful. Everybody's got opinions. Everybody's got opinions about everything, right?

Cassie 23:18
Yep. Every day, we have hundreds of opinions on things, right. Like, we have opinions on what we wear, we have opinions on food, we have a pinions on our relationships, we have opinions on how we interact with our partners. All of us have a lot of opinions, but they don't necessarily add up to being things that are productive or good or meaningful.

Josh 23:41
And like I said, when we're talking about relationships, a lot of the advice that people give is actively harmful. Right, and it's not intentional. But again, if you're getting 100 different pieces of opinions, some big chunk of them are going to be wrong, and are going to be hurtful and harmful to your relationship if you follow them. So everybody has an opinion and they are all good. So how do you evaluate who is believable? Like, what advice is worth listening to? Who you should listen to? And how you should think about that and evaluate for yourself. And this is where I think this gets really good. Okay, ready? Cassie? Because Cassie hasn't heard any of this. I've already got you after that everybody has an opinion piece then, don't i? Okay. So what makes a believable opinion? And the author proposes that there's two pieces to what you should be looking at as far as what makes a believable opinion. So believable opinions are most likely to come from people. Number one, who have successfully accomplished the thing in question at least three times. Ah, yeah.

Cassie 24:50
I like that one.

Josh 24:50
And who have great explanations of the cause and effect relationships that lead them to their conclusion, basically, who can explain sensibly why what they're saying works.

Cassie 25:01
So basically like a scientist, you can actually be like, if you do point A and point B, it leads to C.

Josh 25:09
Yes.

Cassie 25:09
And being able to explain that to others.

Josh 25:11
Yes. So before we go any further, what are your thoughts on that? Because, again, this is the first time you're hearing this.

Cassie 25:15
I mean, yes, yes. I mean, like, like, here's the thing. And that's, that's one of the things that I see so often, in like Facebook groups and things like that is someone's like, well, I've done this thing. So it's proven. And I'm like, no, like, if you're sitting there, and you're like, I have done this thing. And the only way that it's ever been duplicated, is you. And, by the way, that's not duplicating, right? Like, if you've never actually been able to duplicate it, that doesn't make something sound, it makes something I mean, a broken clock is right twice a day, kind of a thing. And that's why I kind of really like that he said, at least three times, right? Like, we all have these things in our lives, where we're able to make something happen. And it works kinda even if what we did wasn't really the best way, or even a good way to do it. So no, I'm like, Alright, I'm on board.

Josh 26:15
No, that's it. That's, that's legitimately it. And this is what I love about this, when we're talking to you here, right to the listeners, or the watchers, or the audience here is this is really simple. Like this gives you a super easy metric. And I'm gonna go into a little more detail about how I think you can think about applying these because I think there's there's some nuance here. But at the end of the day, somebody is believable, somebody who's giving you an opinion, is believable, right that that opinion is likely to be believable if it comes from a person who has successfully accomplished the thing in question at least three times. I think that thing in question is important. I'll talk about that in a minute. Right? And have great explanations of why what they're saying makes sense. Okay, very simple. It's very simple. This is all you have to think about with this. If somebody is giving you a piece of advice, and it doesn't match those two things, that person isn't believable, you just eliminated 95% of the advice that you're going to get from people about non monogamy and cut through 90% of the noise and focus on the stuff that's most likely to work. Go ahead.

Cassie 27:28
Oh, I was just- I was going to chime in and say when you were like and you know are able to come to the, you know, show you the course that leads to that conclusion. Right. So what you're saying is it can't just be because I say so. Right?

Josh 27:44
Because that's the true way.

Cassie 27:45
Because that's the way-

Josh 27:46
Because if you don't, you're not poly.

Cassie 27:48
Yeah, so you can't do that. None of that stuff.

Josh 27:50
Oh, yeah, you can definitely. That is the first rule of being non monogamous is if you say, real poly people do X, you're automatically right.

Cassie 28:00
Oh, Okay.

Josh 28:02
You didn't know this? How long have you been non-monogamous for?

Cassie 28:07
Ha ha.

Josh 28:07
Okay, so that's how you think about believability. And- this is, this continues, right? As far as the book goes. So the suggestion is, you look at these things, successfully accomplish thing in question at least three times, great explanations of the cause effect relationships, right, being able to explain, I think this word relationships while is a quote in the book, I think is slightly confusing when we're talking about relationships, I'll just say that slightly differently. But the way that the author suggests evaluate that is you treat those who have neither of those as not believable. Again, you just eliminated 90% of people, right? Those who have one of those two things as somewhat believable, and those who have both as the most believable, so you look at, have they accomplished things at least three times. Can they explain why what they're saying as far as advice actually makes sense? And if they have neither of those things, not at all believable, one of those things somewhat believable, both of those things? Most believable. Pretty simple. Yeah. What are your thoughts?

Cassie 29:13
Sounds good.

Josh 29:15
That's it? Just sounds good.

Cassie 29:16
Sounds good. But I do have a question.

Josh 29:18
Yes.

Cassie 29:18
So you're saying most believable? Now does that mean they absolutely are believable?

Josh 29:26
Mmm. I think there's probably going to be degrees, right? I think that there's going to be people who can explain better people who have succeeded more, and they're going to be more believable than people who have less of those things. Right. So I mean, they've accomplished thing at least three times. Okay. Well, somebody who's accomplished it at least 20 times, it's gonna be more believable than somebody who's accomplished it three. How about that?

Cassie 29:49
So what you're saying is, is that you have these these basic principles, and then you can look at those things and the experience and how they're able to do it and Start to maybe rank a little bit as well, like, you know, cuz.

Josh 30:06
Yeah, only if you're first not accepting the myth that everybody's has an equal opinion.

Cassie 30:12
Mm hmm.

Josh 30:13
Right. So here's the thing, like, I wanted to give this to you because like I said, Cassie and I talk about this a little bit differently. But it's the same idea. And I think thinking about it in this way might be more helpful for some of you, right? Just having this hard and fast. You know, if they don't have these things, they're not believable. I think that's something that's really helpful as a metric to cut out a lot of the noise and quite honestly, you know, this is maybe not exactly like, but pretty close to the way I think about this just spelled out a little differently and a little more, less nuanced and more principal-y.

Cassie 30:53
That's good. You took it from me.

Josh 30:54
Yeah.

Cassie 30:55
I was getting ready to be like- would you say more based in like a principle, but okay.

Josh 30:59
Yes. So anything you want to add before we keep going?

Cassie 31:02
Nope.

Josh 31:03
Okay, so that's the basic idea of believability. I want to - I'm actually gonna start using this this word of believability in our talks with people because I think that it's - I like it better than the idea of bad advice, good advice, bad people, good people, that kind of thing. Right? Not that we talk about bad people, good people.

Cassie 31:23
Yeah, I was gonna say we don't ever refer to people as good or bad people. It's just people and recognizing that people don't always have-

Josh 31:29
But lots of people do. And I'm going to start I want to start promoting this concept of believability because I think this is just - this is a really clear cut way to think about it, right? It's not who's a good person, who's a bad person, who's the right poly person, right? It's how believable is this person in the opinions that they're giving me. So, I want to talk though, about what that actually means in terms of non monogamy and how I think about this, how Cassie thinks about this and how you can apply maybe a little more nuance, especially that's specific to non monogamy to these - this idea of believability and to this idea of people have succeeded and things like that. Okay. So I want to I want to build on those with our opinions. And so I've voiced mine and you can voice yours and we'll stack on this.

Cassie 32:16
Sounds good.

Josh 32:17
Okay. So here's what I would be thinking about to evaluate if somebody is believable in terms of non monogamy. Number one, are they polyamorous? One thing that blows my mind now is the number of people who are promoting themselves as poly friendly, right? Which means I'm not going to kick you out the door but doesn't necessarily mean I have any idea what I'm talking about. Right, like so I think the first thing and I'm just gonna go through these, Cassie, line by line the way I'm thinking about them, and get your opinion. I think the first thing that you need to evaluate with somebody who is believable in terms of their opinion about non monogamy, is this person non monogamous. Thoughts?

Cassie 33:05
Yeah.

Josh 33:06
Feedback?

Cassie 33:06
Yes. Um, they, they need to be more than just a little familiar. When you're, when you're when you're getting your advice and your support, it needs to be something that this person is living. Like, I would tell somebody if you're looking for advice on building a business, right? Like, you go and you seek advice from somebody who that's what they do, right? Like that's, that's that's how we live and that's really anywhere.

Josh 33:36
Wait a minute.

Cassie 33:36
Yeah?

Josh 33:37
I'm not going to go seek advice on building a business...

Cassie 33:39
From somebody who builds houses?

Josh 33:40
From my doctor?

Cassie 33:41
No, I don't think so.

Josh 33:42
But they're really smart and they know a lot of stuff.

Cassie 33:44
Yeah, no.

Josh 33:45
I mean, they went to school. They're a doctor.

Cassie 33:49
So you want to go to people who like that's what they live and like that is what their focus is not only is it something that they just like do on the weekends occasionally or whatever, but like this or I've read about, but like this is what I do.

Josh 34:06
So that's the first piece right is are they polyamorous? And that's something I think believability wise that you run into more when you talk about professionals right? You know, that's you're going out you're looking for therapists, you're looking for counselor, a coach, something like that. And they're like, Well, I'm poly friendly, but I'm not monogamous. Well right off the bat that should-

Cassie 34:25
You mean not non monogamous.

Josh 34:27
I'm, yeah, I'm not non monogamous right off the bat. That should disqualify them in your mind. Right? Because they don't have personal experience with what they're talking about. But that's more professionals. This second one that I think about in terms of believability is more among your friends, your peers, the people in non monogamy groups. You know, like, like I said, your friend who - your polyamorous friend who's giving you advice, stuff you're getting from books like stuff in the non monogamous world that I think is really important, which is believability, what do their relationships look like? And I pulled another quote here, Cassie, from principles, which was in this whole topic of believability, which is if you can't successfully do something, don't think you can tell others how it should be done.

Cassie 35:20
Duh.

Josh 35:20
You say that. And one of the biggest things that that shocks my conscience anyways, is the number of people and because Cassie, you and I know because we we talk to people, we chat with people privately. Go ahead, you know what I'm about to say.

Cassie 35:38
Oh, yeah, well, no. And I just wanted to clarify, when I say duh, like when you hear that, it's like, a duh moment. Right? It's like, well, of course, but and then continue. But-

Josh 35:48
But, I mean, I'll say this, and I'll let you go on your typical rant about this. What shocks my conscience, like I said, is the number of people who we see giving advice as just -with this absolute certainty that they're right - and their relationships are garbage?

Cassie 36:06
Oh, yeah, we see it all the time. So you know, we have a Facebook group, we've got, like, close to 17,000 people in this Facebook group, right.

Josh 36:16
And we get to see a lot of things behind the scenes. We chat with these people, we talk to them on the phone, we get messages, all of these things.

Cassie 36:22
Yes. And it's really hard, because occasionally we'll have conversations with people. And we'll have them on the phone, or we'll be messaging them. And it's like, their relationships, like they're, like they've broken up like four of their partners, their current relationship is like, totally in shambles. Everything's awful, they're depressed every day, you know, oh, I'm sitting in my bathroom crying for three hours before going to work. I'm not showing up at my job. Everything is horrible. But somebody else puts a question about how do you deal with jealousy, and they're like, this is how I do it. I have overcome my jealousy. And this is the right way. Let me tell you how to be the best polyamorous person you can be. And it's just agonizing.

Josh 37:04
And listen, folks. Like if you're the one who's getting advice, this isn't that hard to take a couple minutes and look up on seriously, if you're in a non monogamous group, and somebody gives you a piece of advice. And you're just wondering how accurate that is? Click them and see what else they posted.

Cassie 37:20
Please.

Josh 37:20
And go back like four posts, where they're like, Oh, my God, everything's falling apart. I hate my partners.

Cassie 37:27
You can do it. Do it.

Josh 37:30
Right. So like I said, when I'm thinking about believability, are they polyamorous? What do their relationships look like? Those are the first two things like if - and again, you'll eliminate maybe 60, 70% of the people giving you advice. Right there. Just right there. And we haven't even gone deeper yet. We haven't even gotten to have they done this successfully. Or sorry, have they done this, at least three times, successfully accomplished this thing? Because here's the thing, when I'm thinking about if somebody successfully accomplishes a thing, at least three times, I actually don't look at them for that. Like, I want to see, obviously, they have successful relationships, but the thing that they're trying to tell you how to do, right, the thing that they're trying to accomplish at this point, is changing somebody else's relationship, even if they've changed their own. That is a far cry from transforming somebody else's relationship. And this is a huge mistake that people make on both sides of this question is because they think that just because somebody has accomplished something in their own relationship, and there are plenty of non monogamous people out there with good relationships. Again, not as many as are telling you that in that Facebook question, but plenty of people, right.

Josh 38:48
But people fall into this trap of thinking that just because this person did something for themselves, that means they know how to duplicate with somebody else, it does not mean that at all, like Cassie said earlier, somebody could have fallen into finding a solution to this entirely accidentally. And even if they didn't, even if they really worked through this and found a solution that works great for them. That doesn't mean that they have any idea how to duplicate that with someone else. Right? So when you're talking about has somebody successfully accomplished this three times, you need to get really specific on successfully accomplished what? Successfully accomplished helping somebody like you solve the kind of problem that you're having, and get the kind of relationship that you want.

Cassie 39:37
I was gonna say and get you to the goals that you want in your relationship get you to the place that you want to be in your relationship.

Josh 39:44
And this is again, folks, this lack of specificity when people are thinking about believability isn't just something that comes to bite people in Facebook groups, books, that kind of thing. It's also with professionals, right? Nowadays, one thing that I'm seeing that again, is super cool and all Also, in some ways, super troublesome for people is as non monogamy has gotten more and more popular, it's become really in vogue all the sudden for therapists and counselors to put themselves out as poly friendly. Which, again, cool, it's great that they're reasonable open minded human beings who are going to hate you for who you are, like, Yay. I genuinely appreciate there's people like that out there. But have they helped people like you solve the problems that you're having? And 90, 90, 95% of the time, the answer to that is no. Right? They're just not gonna throw you out of their office. So when you're thinking about believability, you're thinking about somebody who has accomplished this thing three times. I think that's I think, personally, I think that is-

Cassie 40:52
A low bar.

Josh 40:53
I think it's a low bar. Yeah, sure. I think I think that is, I think that's a great metric. I think that's like the minimum metric you should aim for. Which is why I love this, this principle so much, right? Like when I see that and I see accomplish this thing successfully, at least three times, I'm like, Yes, that is a reasonable minimum for somebody to be believable.

Cassie 41:12
Minimum was the word I was looking for.

Josh 41:13
Right? But I want you to get really specific about this. Because again, this is what's really easy for people to get caught up in, like, they look at somebody, they're like, Oh, they've overcome jealousy in their relationship three different times. Number one, okay, number two, what, if anything, does that have to do with helping you get through your jealousy? How does it make them believable for that? Right? You have a poly friendly therapist who's helped, you know, three - more than three couples - God, I hope so - heal their relationships, right? But how they helped people, like you, have they helped people get to where you want to go. So it's important. Because one thing that people do a lot of times is they see this, you know, they see something like this principle where they're like, Okay, has to have accomplished at least three times and they don't get specific about what that actually means. Right. And that's an easy way to fall into a trap of finding people who aren't really believable, whose opinions aren't going to be helpful. Anything you want to tack on that?

Cassie 42:20
No, I think you covered it pretty good.

Josh 42:21
Okay. Next piece, and I will let you talk about this. So accomplish this thing at least three times. And they're saying that they have, that's great. Are they just saying they've accomplished helping people like you solve these problems three times? Or can you verify that? Can they prove it?

Cassie 42:45
Yeah, do they have, you know, do they have testimonials? Do they have clients who are raving about the results? Is there a way to check up on that? Because people can say all kinds of things. Like, I can go on Facebook and say that, like, I'm eight foot tall and have green hair? And I can say it, but like, Is there proof of what they're able to do? And are there folks who are willing to like, talk about their results, talk about their accomplishments that you can listen to and see if those people are actually like you?

Josh 43:26
Mm hmm. Right. And so, guys, I'm going to tell you something. I know this may be hard to believe and it may break your heart. Are you ready Cassie? Some people lie.

Cassie 43:39
Oh, you mean really? Like we're not in that movie where nobody can lie about anything?

Josh 43:44
No. And I'm going to tell you something else. I know this is going to shock you deeply and probably turn on its head everything that you believe about the world. When people get on social media, they exaggerate.

Cassie 43:58
Oh, really?

Josh 44:01
Yes.

Cassie 44:02
But why on earth would anybody ever do that?

Josh 44:05
Well, that would be a whole nother episode. But folks, seriously, do you really believe everything that you see on social media? Well, you can't first off because it's on opposite ends of everything. But people bullshit and more than flat out bullshitting and lying. People exaggerate to make themselves look better. All the time. It's human nature. It's what people do. Just because somebody tells you something about what they've accomplished for you about how believable they are. That's great. Can you verify it though? It's not that hard, folks. And we're talking about what you want to look at to verify right? And Cassie and I have said it like, can you see other people saying that they've gotten them this resolved? If you're looking to heal your relationship, if you're looking to solve the arguing, if you're looking to get back the connection, the love navigate your transition to non monogamy.

Josh 45:03
Okay, so what you want to see is that there's people like you, this person has helped at least three people like you achieve this outcome. Okay? And can you verify that? And folks, it's not that hard. It is not that hard. You have somebody, especially you're talking about people who professionally do this for a living, you think they can't find three people who would be happy enough with what they're saying to put stuff out there, really? And I know at this point, people like to throw in Oh, therapy, and you know, like, you know, some people they can't put out like they can't put out their client success stories, they can't let people talk, or they can't do testimonials.

Cassie 45:43
And let me tell you, we have plenty of clients who can't. But we also have plenty of clients who are so thrilled to be able to tell others about the results that they've gotten.

Josh 45:55
And here's the thing, folks that I'm not a therapist, we're pretty clear about that. And that may or may not be true, that therapist literally cannot post client testimonials, even clients who say yes, please use my testimonial. I'm so happy. I love what you did for me, please put this up. Seems a little strange. But that may be true. I don't know. But it doesn't really matter. Because at the end of the day, regardless of the reasons behind it, right? The problem is, if you don't have any third party way to verify to establish somebody's believability, you're gambling at that point, because you're taking their word for it and hoping that this person is super honest and doesn't exaggerate and is just being is just as good as they say they are. Because God knows there's a lot of people out there who are just as good as they'll tell you they are. Right. So that's the first piece.

Josh 46:43
Second piece though, Cassie, can you talk about like when people are looking for proof and verification, the kinds of things they could be looking for. Because one thing that drives me nuts, and I'm seeing this lately in the non monogamous space is like, you get on somebody's website and they have testimonials.

Cassie 47:01
Oh, you mean just written things with like, Bob next to it?

Josh 47:05
And you read them and you're like, that's really- these sound really...

Cassie 47:13
They're all written the same, in like the same format. And...

Josh 47:17
They all sound the exact same. These people are all saying the exact same thing.

Cassie 47:22
Yeah.

Josh 47:23
They're... yeah, you can read them for yourself. You know how when you're reading, like those Amazon reviews and stuff... and you're like, you know who wrote this.

Cassie 47:35
Okay, so here's a couple of things. First off, believe it or not, you will have, even if you are amazing, some discrepancies in your reviews, meaning like, you know, I wish I would have had a little more time with this, or, you know, I got great results. But this part wasn't the most amazing thing ever. Right? Not every single one of your reviews is going to be like, I had an absolutely amazing time. It was fantastic. Everything is wonderful. 5.5 stars. I would question that. Right.

Josh 48:12
And more than that, because I think that's good to question. I want to talk about other things, though. Because I will say I feel like people are getting a little wise to that now. And they're starting to like...

Cassie 48:20
I was starting with the most extreme. And I was wrangling down. So. So beyond that. Look for verified reviews, right? Like if I just have things on my website that are just pasted that are just words, like it's really easy for people to write things up look for like third party sources. Like there's-

Josh 48:40
We use Trustpilot There's Trust Radius, there's a couple of them. But there's, there's there's lots of places now that are independent third party places where people who are using them have to send invites to everybody that they work with. They don't have any, any input at all, into the responses that people give, they can't edit them, they can't take them down. So yeah, there's, there's, there's lots of places like that now. Like I said, we use Trustpilot. But I know there's there's, and that's, I think probably the best known one. But there's plenty of places out there. But the other thing you can do too, is just look for like, video reviews, audio reviews..

Cassie 49:19
And that's what I was going to say is, is the best thing that you can do is look for video and audio. You know, when you're actually able to see people, you get to listen to their stories and see them, then you know they're real, right? And a lot of times when there's like videos and things like that, you can see that these are real people with real stories with real families, things like that. And being able to actually listen and see real people is like the best clear cut way to know that when someone is saying that they've done something and they've duplicated it, to know that.

Josh 49:57
and I know right now there's a couple people out there who are gonna be like, but what about fake like, couldn't people do like fake videos? Yeah, sure, like, if you take anything down far enough, you're going to find, you're going to find some way to game a system, right? But at the end of the day, you have to somewhere, give yourself some kind of metric for believability. And again, all of us know what that feels like, when we're listening to stuff that's faked. You know, when there's like, three videos, and it's clearly somebody reading a script. You can't find them online. They don't seem to exist. Right. Like, you put their face and image search, and it comes back. And it's an actor, and here's the 12 other videos that they've been in. Like, you can figure that shit out.

Cassie 50:36
That they've been in a milk commercial, and, you know. You can figure that shit out.

Josh 50:40
But at the end of the day, folks, especially in this day and age, you know, everybody wants to say they're an expert, everybody. And like I said, it's just human nature, like we all like to build ourselves up, to downplay our weaknesses, to exaggerate what we're good at. Right, when you're talking about believability. And it is, again, going back to principles again, right, is he talks about the importance of like, not just listening to people for their believability, but looking at metrics and their actual results. And this is really, that idea of it. Because when you're trying to determine how believable somebody is the last person you want to check with is them. Right? Like do a little bit of research, it isn't that hard to figure this stuff out and figure out if this person has successfully accomplished, help somebody like you get to where they're trying to go to where you want to go at least three times, hopefully more. And the last time I'll throw in here, Cassie is like you were saying, like degrees of believability, right? You can figure that out from there. You can take these things a step farther and figure out well, if they've helped three people get here, 100 people is better.

Josh 51:50
You can apply this stuff to rank, and really through this to figure out who was believable, and what advice that you should be taking, so that you're not taking the wrong advice. And like I said, gambling with the most precious thing in your life, your relationship. And I'm going to throw one more piece in here folks that I think's really good. This is where I disagree with Ray just a little bit is, you know, treat people who have great explanations as as somewhat believable. I don't know if I agree with that actually. I would agree that people who have both are the most believable, I actually don't know if I would just be interested to get your opinion on this. But somebody who can't prove that they actually have gotten, achieved this thing at all, but who just sound good, I don't actually think that I would encourage folks who are non monogamous, who maybe listen to this, to just treat that as believable without any results. Because I think one of the problems with non monogamy is that there's lots of advice in the non monogamy space that sounds great, and is really disastrous.

Cassie 52:59
I would say it this way, I would rank them slightly higher than the people who don't have any of those things and don't sound good. I mean, it shows a level of intellect and maybe self, you know, like awareness. So again, going back to that system of ranking, maybe slightly higher.

Josh 53:25
So like, neither of those things, not believable. Just great explanation, little bit believable. More believable than the people who also don't have good explanations. Have accomplished this thing at least three times. Somewhat believable. Who have accomplished the thing and can explain. Most believable.

Cassie 53:46
Yes.

Josh 53:48
And that's where I would modify it. I agree with you on that. And here's the other thing folks like so I want to, I want to be really clear on this. And where I think this is important and not. This is a really important distinction. So like I said, lots of bad poly advice, sounds great. But it is also important, regardless, so you want those - I think you want somebody who has successfully accomplished this thing, at least three times. That's a must have. Right. But with that being said, I think it's the most important, but I do think and this is especially if you are looking for advice in like a more formal setting. A therapist, a coach, a counselor, somebody, a professional is actually gonna help you get your relationship to where you want to go. Right. I do think that they should have a plan and be able to explain it to you.

Josh 54:37
And this is what a plan looks like, folks, for those of you who haven't heard us talk about this before, a plan looks like: here's where you're at, here's where you want to go. Here are the steps that will get you from A to B and here's the length of time that that will take. And I do think that that is something - so when I when I think about when I think about people have great explanations in terms of professionals and non monogamy what I think of is you should demand and expect and not settle. Right? You should expect that the person like a person that you're looking for professional help actually has a plan to get you from A to Z, right? Because anybody can come up with like, one thing that sounds great and might work specifically for like about one tiny thing. But a plan is about actually getting you from where you're at, to where you want to be. And it all needs to be cohesive, and it needs to work together. And people need to be able to demonstrate to you how they're going to accomplish that. And you really should know how long it's going to take them to accomplish that, especially if you know you're in a spot where your relationship is on a bit of a clock for things to turn around.

Cassie 55:49
I would say in any situation, you want to have an idea of the time span, but especially when it's one o'clock.

Josh 55:54
100%. So anything else you want to throw in to that piece of it as far as like having a plan, being able to explain that kind of stuff?

Cassie 56:03
I think you covered it pretty well.

Josh 56:04
Okay. So folks, that's how you can really avoid getting bad advice and paying attention to bad advice. And like I said, if you follow those ideas, like I said, I love these I love these principles of looking at has the person accomplish the thing in question at least three times? And you know, can they explain to you, like I said more so like a plan, I think. Especially when you're talking about professionals, and looking at both those and like I said, if you just pay attention to that and believability and think about that, you know, especially with some of those tools Cassie and I gave you specifically around the non monogamy. Are they successful in this? Have they helped other people? Or is this just something they've done for themselves? That's gonna weed out like 95% of the bad advice.

Josh 56:47
And if you do that, it will completely transform your relationships. Because you will not be spending all this time, all this effort on things that don't work, you won't be getting hopeless, because oh my god, we've tried and tried and tried, nothing's worked, when, of course, it hasn't worked, it was never going to work, it was going to cause more problems. Right, you can turn things around, even when it seems like nothing else has worked, because you weren't doing the right things because you weren't looking for believable people. So I really encourage all of you to take away from this, how to evaluate if, if somebody is likely to be giving you if they're believable, they're likely to be giving you good opinions, and really to apply that. Because doing that will be massively impactful on your relationships, now. I want to talk about how not to give other people bad advice before I do. Do you have anything else you wanna throw into that?

Cassie 57:41
No, I was gonna say, do we want to hop into how not to be that person giving bad advice?

Josh 57:46
God Almighty. Yes. So much. And I want to - I want to I'm going to keep it tight, though.

Cassie 57:53
Can I start with something though? Like, before you kind of hop into the things. Give me like two seconds.

Josh 57:59
Go ahead.

Cassie 58:00
So what I want to say is before you're like hearing these things, and you're puffing up, I want to give some acknowledgement just for a minute, right? Like when we're giving advice, it's because we really do care, it's because we want to help other people. And because, like your intentions are really good. And I want to like before we get into like how not to give the bad advice, I just want to acknowledge that when you're doing that you are coming from a really good place. But you also want to make sure that you're not one of those people who are giving the advice or direction that could really, really negatively impact somebody else. So that's all. Go ahead.

Josh 58:40
And as Cassie said, like, you know, in honoring the intent behind that, it's also important to just be honest here. And to recognize, and I said this at the beginning, we're gambling, with people's relationships, with their families, with their kids futures. Right, with what I mean for some of these people with with mental health issues, with suicide with depression, right? With really serious things. Like our relationships touch everything in our lives, everybody in our lives, our well being, our health, right. I 've talked to plenty people had strokes, heart attacks, these kinds of things because the problems in their relationships.

Josh 59:24
So while acknowledging the intention. It's also really important when you're giving advice to realize like, this isn't just you sounding off on the internet. Like this is really important because you never know if the person who's listening to you has any idea how to evaluate believability, if they're just going to look at what you say. And for whatever reason, well, that's because they like it. What you said was the first thing, it seems to make the most sends.

Cassie 1:00:00
It relates.

Josh 1:00:01
it sounds really good. They think that's what it takes to be a good poly person, whatever. They're going to do this thing. So this isn't, I think the first thing in like knowledge and the intention, is if you're giving advice on people's relationships, I really want you to think about the impact that you can have. None of the rest of this stuff I give you is going to matter. Because if you don't think about the effect of that, you're just not gonna care. Right? I want to tell, and I'm going to be completely serious about this for a minute, like when I talk about people's relationships. I at least once or twice a week, talk to somebody whose relationship is at the point that they're thinking about killing themselves. At least I had four in two days last week. So when you're giving your opinion, I really want you to think about the impact that you could potentially have on somebody's life, because most people don't, they're just like, Oh, I'm on Facebook, I'm in a group, I'm just gonna say whatever comes to my mind, I really want you to think about it.

Josh 1:01:17
And now I'll tell you how to think about it. But the first piece is just to understand the impact. And like I said, that you put something out here, and it is, it's gonna cause problems in somebody's relationship, and somebody doesn't know how to evaluate it and they believe that, right. That's how people wind up with their kids living in broken homes. That's how people wind up being miserable, and depressed for years. That's how people wind up harming themselves. So I really want you to understand that the advice that you give, has really serious impact. And Cassie and I see this all the time, we see people who have gotten the wrong advice, and who are just in a disasterous place now.

Josh 1:02:06
Okay, now, how can you think about it? Well, it goes back to this idea of believability. And I'm going back to principles here, because again, this is stuff Cassie and I talk about, but I found something else that puts a really great spin on it that I think will be really helpful for people. So in principles, the way the author suggests that you figure out how to approach giving your opinion is to assess your believability and your believability in respect to the person that you're giving your opinion to.

Josh 1:02:38
So it's being insightful about what your own believability is. So you can go back to those questions. Have I successfully accomplished this thing, which means helping somebody through this problem at least three times? And if the answer to that's no, you need to have an understanding that you're not believable. Like, you may be an awesome person. And you may have really succeeded in this for yourself, and you may be really well meaning but you're not believable, your opinion is not likely to be helpful to the person that you're giving it to. That doesn't mean you shouldn't give your opinion. And this is what I love about this book. But the way that in principle, they suggest that you approach this is that the posture that you take with your opinion, depends on your believability relative to the person that you're talking to. And I do just want to add in here, and I'm going to rebuild on this once.

Josh 1:03:34
I want to take this back just one step to one of these other steps in the back that I really firmly believe, which is if you can successfully do something, don't think that you can tell others how it should be done. Like legitimately, if you can't successfully even do something for yourself. I would just advise you to keep your opinion to yourself. Like why add to the noise or something that you know, you have no idea if it's correct or not. But beyond that, let's talk about believability and how to evaluate. So this is in principles, Cassie, I'll lay this out and then I want to get your feedback.

Josh 1:04:09
Okay. So there's kind of three postures to approach giving your opinion from which is student, teacher, peer. Okay? Now, if you are less believable than the person you're giving your opinion to, you should take the role of a student and primarily ask questions with the goal of understanding. If you're more believable than that person who you're giving your opinion to, then you're always more of a teacher you convey your understanding and answer questions. And if you're equally believable, which folks is going to be where 99% of you who are just giving advice to each other, friends on the internet at poly groups, that kind of thing, is going to be which is you're going to be equally believable with the person you're giving your opinion to. Then you should just have a thoughtful exchange as equals without assuming that you're right.

Cassie 1:04:56
Oh my goodness, I think you might just break the internet.

Josh 1:04:56
I added without assuming that you're right, because I thought people needed to hear that piece.

Cassie 1:05:05
I'm just saying I'm like, wow, like you might break the internet with that one.

Cassie 1:05:08
I broke Poly Facebook.

Cassie 1:05:10
You broke poly Facebook.Yes.

Josh 1:05:13
So what are your thoughts on that? I thought, Again, I thought that was like a super easy, clear, concise way to apply that applies perfectly to non monogamous relationships. And this idea of believability and advice and opinions.

Cassie 1:05:26
I think it's great, I think the idea behind sharing your experience, and letting it be known that it is sharing your experience, not having experience in doing it, not being a guide in it, but sharing your experience. And it being just sort of a equal thought that you're throwing out there. And weighing in that way, or recognizing when you are the student, like, I can't tell you how many times in my life, there has been value in me recognizing that I am not the teacher in the situation, right. And all of us, we might be a teacher somewhere, but we're not a teacher everywhere. And knowing the different role that you're in, when you're in a conversation has so much power and value to you as the person who's trying to help and so much value to the person who's seeking it. Like, I cannot tell you the amount of power that is in that for everyone involved, not just the person seeking advice.

Josh 1:06:28
Well, and as far as what I like about this idea, because like I said, 99% of the conversations right when you're talking about believability, and you look at believability as having accomplished helping people through this at least three times, 99% of the advice that you're giving and getting in Facebook groups in face to face poly groups at munches-

Cassie 1:06:50
Talking to your friends.

Josh 1:06:51
From your your non monogamous friends, any of that is going to fall into that category. And what's great, I think about this idea of if you equally believable, have a thoughtful exchange as equals, is it lets people voice their opinions without anybody, whether it's me giving the opinion, or you receiving it, taking that opinion as gospel, because we both know how believable I am. But we're still able to share and have a thoughtful discussion. And it isn't like stifled which is how I think it should be. But it's just that, it's a discussion. It isn't, this is what I know works. This is how I know you have a successful polyamorous relationship, you're a bad poly person if you don't do this, any of that. Right? It's a discussion.

Cassie 1:07:41
And the great thing is that the person who is seeking advice or looking for help, they can then recognize going back to that whole idea of like knowing, well, this might not be good advice. This might not apply to me. It allows that person to know the difference.

Josh 1:08:02
And the other thing that I will throw out here folks, too, that I think is important is I think again, the vast majority of the value in this for people come in understanding that most of the time, neither of you are believable in these situations where you're giving non monogamous advice and or getting it and that you should just take it that way. But I do want to encourage people, too, I do think it is important to recognize when you should be a student. One place that I find to be incredibly interesting is- I will - and this doesn't happen all the time. But I will occasionally have conversations with people whose relationships are in absolute shambles. Right? And are under the impression that they're like some kind of non monogamy expert for some reason. Even though they -from the standpoint, aren't at all believable, and don't have the fruit on the tree, right, that clearly shows that like they have no idea what they're doing. And they will not understand when it is time to act as a student. And because of that they'll miss really valuable insights that could have really helped their relationships. So I encourage you to understand that as well. I think that that's really important. I think that's a really valuable place. I think it's a place all of us we all like to be important and heard and-

Cassie 1:09:28
Feel significant.

Josh 1:09:29
Feel significant. Yeah, we all want to feel significant. But the fact of the matter is, you know, we all have places in our lives, where we're the student, and where what is is the greatest good for us. And, you know, our growth and you know, in this case our relationships, right, is to ask those questions and to listen with the goal of understanding and Cassie and I have this in our own lives, right? We have mentors that-

Cassie 1:10:00
For our health, like, I'm not a health expert.

Josh 1:10:03
For business, for coaching, right, you know, for all these things, and there's never - and one of the reasons we get so much value out of those relationships is because even though we know, where we're experts, and where we're believable, and where we should be doing the teaching, we also know the places where where we're going to get the most value, is by being the student. Because we're not as believable as the people who we're learning from. So I'd encourage all of you to keep that as well.

Josh 1:10:38
But as far as how to not give other people bad advice, Well, number one, if it isn't something you've done successfully, don't give advice on it. Number two, you know, if you've never, you know, if you don't have successful, non monogamous relationships, don't be giving other people advice on how to do it. Right. Number two, understand if you are giving advice to understand how believable you are, and then decide what is the best way, you know, in the believability of the person you're talking to? And what is the best way to approach this? Is it a student? Is it a teacher? Is it a peer? And understand, like I said that 99% of the time in the situations where you're getting and giving advice around non monogamy, the correct answer is going to be peer. And in that case, you should just have a thoughtful exchange as equals without putting out there that this is gospel. This is what real poly people do. This is what you know works. This is the right thing.

Cassie 1:11:32
This is what you should be doing.

Josh 1:11:34
Any of that. Anything else you wanna throw in?

Cassie 1:11:37
Nope.

Josh 1:11:38
Folks, here's the thing. And this is I wanted to put this out because again, there is so much advice floating around right now. And like I said, it's amazing that the world is getting to a point where non monogamy is becoming more accepted,

Cassie 1:11:52
Talked about.

Josh 1:11:53
It's more acceptable, it's more talked about, you know, I think it's great that you can go and find like a trauma therapist, right? Who is poly friendly, and you know, you can be open about every aspect of your life. Like, all of those things are amazing. I think it's great that there's communities and places for people to congregate. And you also have to understand that, with all that there are now a million opinions on how to do everything. And they cannot all be right. And it is absolutely vital to know how to avoid bad advice. Because when you don't, like I said, you are gambling with the most important things in your life.

Cassie 1:12:42
And I, you know, you said since I get to be Interviewer, right, we've talked a lot. Let me let me ask one of my interviewing questions here. We've talked a lot about bad advice. And we've talked a lot about, you know, not taking in as gospel or taking in as the right way. But what is the value in finding or knowing when you're getting good advice, when that stuff really is believable? What is gained when you know that?

Josh 1:13:11
Let me finish the thought I was on and I'll be happy to answer that.

Cassie 1:13:13
Okay.

Josh 1:13:14
Okay. So it's vital to avoid bad advice. And the best way to do that is to assess the believability of the people who are giving you advice. And you learn some super easy tools in this that will help you cut through all of that noise. I really encourage you to apply this. That's why I'd wanted to bring this to you, Cassie, because like I saw this, I was like, what a great distillation of a lot of the stuff we've been talking about. Right? But just narrowing it down into ways that are super crystal clear for people and give them some ways to apply the ways that we tell people to think about believability.

Cassie 1:13:45
Some basic principles.

Josh 1:13:46
Basic principles, it's unavoidable. Now, you had asked what happens when you find the right advice?

Cassie 1:13:52
But like, what's the what's the like value in that? Like knowing, first of all, like the value in knowing that you have the right advice, that you know, that advice is believable, like, what's the value there? And like, what does it gain you?

Josh 1:14:07
Well, first off certainty, right? Being in a spot where you're not scrambling to reconcile 100 different things. You don't know what's right. You don't know what's wrong, you don't know how to string all these different pieces of advice together. You're arguing with people on the internet, like being in a spot where you have that certainty that you're on the right path to healing your relationships is just an enormous stress off people and people's plates. Because most people they know, or at least they know from what they can see in their life in relationships when what they're doing isn't working. Right. So I think one of the biggest things is just certainty. It's certainty that you're going to overcome your challenges certainty that there is a path forward. It's hope. Because when you talk to somebody who is really believable, and they tell you, Yeah, this relationship can work, as opposed to, you know, the 100 of unbelievable people who are telling you to break up. Like, so I think there's a lot of psychological good there, number one.

Josh 1:15:09
But then there's also obviously a massive amount of good for your relationship. Right? Number one, like I said, it's just getting clarity on what relationships can work and which relationships can't, you know, one of the biggest places that that kills me, where I see unbelievable people giving advice, is telling people to break up. And that relationships won't work when they absolutely will, or telling people to stay together when the relationship absolutely won't work. Right. So I think getting that clarity number one, which does play into the whole certainly thing.

Josh 1:15:38
But then also just being able to turn things around even when other stuff hasn't worked. I can't tell you how many clients we work with, who have tried everything. They've gone in groups, they've read all the books, they've listened to all the podcasts, they've listened to all the videos, they've gone to therapy, they've gone to two different couples, counselors, they've done individual therapy, they've done this and that, and this and that, right. And their relationships are still falling apart. But it isn't because their relationships couldn't be changed. It was because they were going to unbelievable people who it might have been perfectly believable about other things, but it was unbelievable for what they were working on. Right. They were getting bad opinions, bad advice. So things weren't working. And yet, when they show up and start getting the right advice for the situation that they're in, they're able to turn things around and heal the relationship, and see the feelings, and get back the passion, the connection, the love all of that. So I think that, like I said, I think there's a psychological aspect of like certainty. But also, at the end of the day, there's a practical aspect of actually getting to that outcome and that goal that you want.

Josh 1:16:56
I mean, that's it, when you have the right advice, and you have a plan and you have a path, you can close that gap between whatever your relationship looks like now the fighting the arguing, the disconnection, the jealousy, the hurt, that being at the edge of breaking up. And you can get to a point where it's happy and loving and passionate, and connected and secure. And I think that's really, that's it. It allows you to close that gap that you're trying to close in the first place in seeking all this advice, but to actually do it.

Cassie 1:17:33
I couldn't have put it better myself. So yeah, and I think I think that's the biggest thing is that it is, it gives you the ability to actually take action, and gives you the ability to actually get there versus scrambling, which is what a lot of people are doing when they're getting a lot of different things from different sources, and especially when they're getting bad advice.

Josh 1:17:57
So anything else?

Cassie 1:18:00
No, I think we're getting close to wrapping up.

Josh 1:18:02
Yeah. So here's I'm gonna throw in folks now if you're in a spot where you are looking for professional, believable, help with transforming your non-monogamous relationship, with closing the gaps, with getting things back to where you want to be, like we talked about, we're absolutely here for you. I'm sure, you know by now that that is exactly what we do. And as far as believability, we're more on the like 100, 150 and of how many times we've accomplished this, right, than the three. And it's super easy to find, like it's all over the place. I mean, you can go to atouchofflavor.com/stories, you can look us up, you can look us up on Trustpilot. You can - I mean, it's it's all out there, right? You can pull up our videos in our Facebook group, look at our clients, you can go to our site, look at our clients watch their videos, like I said, you can look us up on Trustpilot. It's all there. And if you're listening to this, you obviously have plenty of ways to evaluate whether what you think we say makes sense, right? Because you have the 150 other episodes of this too.

Josh 1:19:05
But again, that's exactly what we do. And if you are tired of where you're at, and you're tired of the bad advice and the uncertainty and you're ready to actually close that gap and have those thriving relationships that you want, we can absolutely help you with that go to attach atouchofflavor.com/talk. Right? We will talk to you about where you're at and what's going on about what can be done with this relationship. And we'll lay out a plan for exactly what it would look like to make those changes. Right? So you can evaluate for yourself, if that makes sense. And if you think that would get you to where you want to go. And that's absolutely there for you. So like I said, atouchofflavor.com/talk. It'll take you to our calendar page. Go ahead, grab up time that works for you. You know, you'll be taken to like a short application, and then we'll call you the time that you picked and we'll walk through with you and go through exactly what the challenges are in your relationship what you're facing, where things are at, where you want to be, and what exactly a plan would need to look like to close that gap and build those thriving relationships. And that's it. We're absolutely here for you all and happy to help you with that. Anything else, Cassie?

Cassie 1:20:12
No, I think that about wraps us up.

Josh 1:20:15
All right, everybody, have a fantastic rest of your week. And we will talk to you all again here very soon.

Josh 1:20:31
Thanks for tuning into today's show. We release new episodes every week. So make sure to subscribe.

Cassie 1:20:38
If you're ready to transform your relationship. And you'd like to see if you're a fit to work with us. Here's what I want you to do next. Head over to atouchofflavor.com/talk and book an appointment to speak with our team. We'll get on the phone with you for about an hour. And we'll get you crystal clear on three things. What's really not working in your relationships, what your dream relationships would look like and a step by step plan to close the gap and save your family even if nothing has worked before.

Josh 1:21:05
We talk with hundreds of non monogamous folks like you every year. And here's the truth, building loving, thriving relationships that doesn't happen on its own. You need expert guidance to make that happen. And unfortunately, when you were building relationships outside the box, that's impossible to find and we get it. But that's exactly what we do. We've helped clients all over the world, save their families, get the passion back, and become best friends again.

Cassie 1:21:29
So if you want to see if we can help you do the same head over to atouchofflavor.com/talk. I'm Cassie.

Josh 1:21:37
And I'm Josh. Let's talk soon