Individuation and Navigating Differences with Joli Hamilton
What happens when exploring different relationship styles reveals uncomfortable differences between you and a partner? In this episode, Libby talks with Dr. Joli Hamilton about polyamory as a sacred process of individuation and grief.
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Transcript
Joli:
The individuation experience is one that we opt into. We decide, do we want to now attempt over time to unfettered ourselves from the expectations of society, from the expectations of Yes. Our, our partners. Do we want to like, really face ourselves and even untangle ourselves from the parts of us that we can't accept? Like, can we, can we come to have that, that relationship to a self that can watch who we are, right? Can we, can we do that?
Libby:
Hi Jolie. I'm so happy that you're here today with me on my show.
Joli:
Yay. Thank you. How are you having me, Libby? I'm, I was, I've been looking forward to having another conversation with you, and then we get to record it so young. Yeah,
Libby:
I mean, I always love talking to you. We could talk for hours. <Laugh>
Joli:
We could, we should probably keep it to like a timeframe that other people would want to listen to. Yeah,
Libby:
Yeah. If you're listening, I promise you won't be more than half an hour <laugh>. And if it's longer than that, we break it into two parts, which is great. So I wanted to bring this question to you that I get a lot. I've actually like, 'cause I take questions, listener questions through my website. Sometimes I get them through Instagram dms as well. And this is a question that I've gotten repeatedly. And so I'm actually consolidating a lot of different questions into this one question. Which goes something like this. My partner and I have decided we're gonna try non-monogamy. So they're an established couple, they're opening up, but that's actually not even always the case. I've had couples that I've worked with and couples who have reached out who are starting their coupledom, non-monogamous as well. So they're starting out non-monogamous, desiring to be with other people.
Libby:
But there's a tricky part that they're having a hard time with. And the hard time that they're having is, the reason why I wanna be non-monogamous is because I know that I can love multiple people and I wanna have multiple deep relationships with people. And that just feels really aligned to me. The reason my partner wants to be non-monogamous is they wanna have lots of sex, right? And they wanna have lots of sex with lots of people. And to me, that feels so foreign and so different from how I wanna do it. And I feel really uncomfortable with how they are pursuing partners, how they are thinking about what it means to have other partners. And then they are so uncomfortable with the possibility that I might fall in love with somebody. And that I'm really wanting a lot of depth and, and again, some version of this question, right?
Libby:
Like, there are other versions like where it's just this difference of this is how I wanna do non-monogamy, and my partner wants to do it really, really differently. Like, one of us really wants to like actively date and be on the apps and try to find lots of people. The other one of us is like, you know, I really just don't wanna try to look too hard, but if something comes my way, then I wanna be open to it. And there's this discomfort that they have. Like, how do we square this difference that we have? And it made me think of you, <laugh> of you, because I feel like your, one of your messages is how do we deal with these differences that show up in our partnerships? Right? And it made me think of individuation. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So I guess I'm wondering, do you get this question from your people too? How do we deal with this difference? Yeah.
Joli:
Oh, Libby, so I, I love this conversation because the whole reason for me to exist in this space at all is that I see non-monogamy as a potential individuation path. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>. So people can choose, you don't have to, you could do this for other reasons, but they can choose to see how all these differences, all these ways that they are noticing that they're not the same as their partner can be part of how they start recognizing who they are coming into relationship to self.
Libby:
Yeah. Well, and I wanna interrupt you here just for people who may have never heard the word individuation before. Yeah. Would you be willing to define it for us?
Joli:
Yeah. A concise description. So the, the, the easiest casual description is the process, the ongoing process that you undergo to become the most you version of you possible by coming into relationship with yourself, by bringing unconscious material forward and getting to know all that stuff that you are. And most of us have an experience of that, that starts when we're children. And we think about like, okay, so I, I did, I differentiated from my parents and I, and I stood up for myself in, in high school, and then I went out on my own path, right?
Libby:
That whole rebellious period, right? Yeah.
Joli:
Mm-Hmm. Like all very important. But that's really differentiation, individuation from a Jungian perspective. So I studied an archetypal psychology from that perspective, that word means something very specific, and it really begins around midlife, around getting, getting to the time where you've established enough of your way of moving in the world. And now we move into a more technical description, which is, yeah, you're gonna have to integrate your shadow, which means bringing all that unconscious stuff forward, really wrestling with who you are, discarding the personas, the things that people asked you to be that don't fit you. And, and remembering the parts of you that you cut off because you thought you couldn't be. I mean,
Libby:
Right.
Joli:
Right. I'm guessing you hear that and you're like, bing, bing, bing. Of course. That's related. It's to the
Libby:
Path of, well, well, here's the thing I'm wondering. So, because what I just heard you say is that it's a developmental phase of human hood in your Yeah.
Joli:
That not everybody chooses. Here's the thing, this one's optional. <Laugh>, this
Libby:
One's optional. Okay. Well, okay. So individual, but it, what I'm hearing is that there's a phase that we go through when we're children, where we separate from our parents and we see ourselves as separate entities. Yep. And then we really establish our own, who we are, what we wanna be in the world. Yep.
Joli:
Our ego strength, we might say that we're not
Libby:
Just doing what we've been told. Yep. We're, we're holding onto what, who we really wanna be. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. But, you know, but it's interesting because I mean, yeah, no, right, because like I know people in their twenties who yeah, they think they're being who they really wanna be, but they're still influenced by society, by their friends, by the partner that they wanna be with all of this stuff. And you're saying like, yeah. And so as we continue onward and maturing, we do kind of shape ourselves and contort ourselves to fit what's expected of us, what we have to do, what we think we need to be in order to be loved. And then we reach this other phase of our lives when we're a little bit older, where we go, oh, maybe I wanna do this thing where I figure out who I am again. Yeah. But in a different way.
Joli:
Yeah, exactly. Is that right? That is so, okay. This is where I think there is this nuanced conversation, because we're talking about differentiation a lot, I think in the non-monogamy world. Yeah. Very important.
Libby:
And individuation is different,
Joli:
Is what I mean. Yeah. I think of differentiation is the trailhead where from where you could decide to embark on your individuation journey, journey, your mature adult individuation journey. And for most of us, the period of time between our teens and our, say mid thirties ish, although that's, that's a flexible thing, but somewhere in there we are doing the work of Yes. Becoming ourselves, but also having to build the ego strength to stand in this messy world and to deal with systems of oppression and to handle the fact that we experience trauma and an ongoing world that isn't necessarily amenable to who we want to be. Right. We're doing that. Right. And that differentiation, like allowing myself to like recognize in small and large ways, I am different from others, I'm different from you, I'm different from you. It's very one-to-one in a way. I, oh, I'm, I'm seeing how I'm different from these people.
Joli:
Super important. And if you happen to be in an, in a really tightly enmeshed couplehood, it's really important to start doing that disentangling and saying, oh, I'm even different from this person who I've sort of grown around. I grew myself to fit around them. Right. All very important. And then how young puts it is the individuation experience is one that we opt into. We decide, do we want to now attempt over time to unfettered ourselves from the expectations of society, from the expectations of Yes. Our, our partners. Do we want to like really face ourselves and even untangle ourselves from the parts of us that we can't accept? Like, can we, can we come to have that, that relationship to a self that can watch who we are? Right. Can we, can we do that? And there's a, there's an accusation that gets thrown out about Jungian work because Jung said, not everyone individuates.
Joli:
And that is often taken to be elitist. And I understand why for one thing we're translating out of German, almost anything you translate out of German can be taken to be elitist, especially from that timeframe. <Laugh>. Right. That make sense? Uhhuh, what I, what I see him meaning is you don't have to do that if you feel held in your cultural container, if you feel held in your microcosm of society, if you feel nourished and nurtured and nothing's bumping up against you, and you don't have that welling up within where you're like, this hurts and I need more or different. Cool. Yeah, that's fine. You don't have to do this. But for some of us, we become incredibly uncomfortable. And we have what, what poets have called the dark night of the soul where thing, and it's not a night, it's usually a few years <laugh>.
Joli:
Yeah. Where everything falls apart. And from there, one of the paths out is to say, I'm going to own the fact that I am both part of the unity that is the universe. And I am a unique instance of that. And I'm gonna wrestle with that. And that's my work, that's my work in the world. It is deep inner psychological work. It's very spiritual for a lot of people. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> to the point where many people even see it as religious. I don't happen to, but it, it, it is why I say like, psyche is my religion. If I were going to choose one, that's it. Because for me, being on that journey is how I recognize my, my beingness in the world. And you don't have to. And that's a place where we can find two people having different motivations for non-monogamy. If one person's taking that like, deep dive path and the others like,
Libby:
Just gonna have some fun.
Joli:
Yeah. I thought we were gonna get laid. What, what's the deal <laugh> like?
Libby:
Well, and, and I guess I wanna make sure that I name here, you know, as someone who is definitely on the, I don't know if I know how to do casual anything at all, ever period. Like just that's not how I'm wired. I, there's no judgment here about like, which way is better or which way is more Right. Or or which way is more evolved or anything like that. 'cause I think that there is a lot of like shaming in our culture. Yeah. And, and like, I just wanna make sure that people hear this from, from both of us. But you know, that, that there's no, that all of the ways are great. And also it's not a binary, you can be super slutty and wanna go super deep and you can also not wanna go super deep and not be super slutty <laugh>. Like, there's all different ways to go, but, but yeah, there are these moments when there's this difference. Yeah.
Joli:
That's it.
Libby:
And so you're talking about this is potentially an individuation opportunity.
Joli:
Yeah, exactly. An opportunity that, again, we don't have to choose. Some people see that door crack open and they're like, you know what? I think that's gonna break everything. So I'm gonna just close that for right now. Maybe I'll come back or not.
Libby:
And that is so important actually, because that was actually what was coming up for me as you were talking about this. I was like, Ooh, Jolie. But like, should we be so, so, so individuated? Because sometimes what that means is that we end up alone, or we end up, like you said, breaking things or we end up, like I have people in my spheres where like they're really, like you said, really wrestling hard with who they really are and how they've built their life and it doesn't fit who they are. And then they're stuck with this difficult choice of do I break my entire life to be who I really am and do I wanna pay that cost? And it's not as simple. I mean, I think that we make it out, like in the movies, obviously, make it out as being as simple as just like, break everything and be who you are. And yet, I, I just, I wanna hold that like you don't, you don't have to. And that, that might, that there might be a very high cost to that to do that. Right.
Joli:
So let's, let's take on possibly my biggest argument with the entire Jungian like philosophy <laugh>, because I am, I am massively a,
Libby:
I love starting fights on the internet. <Laugh>. Yeah. Let's pick a fight.
Joli:
I am an, i, I definitely love and find a lot of myself through that theory, that theoretical lens. But there is a tendency for people to isolate. In the Jungian world, there is a tendency for it to only be welcoming to the highly introverted soul <laugh>. There is a tendency for people to her, like hermetically seal themselves off and pretend like that is individuating. And I'm going to say 100% no. And Jung even, and I can back, I, I brought the receipts. Yeah. I can back myself up because Jung said, individuation does not happen in isolation. We cannot go to Mount Everest and be in the cave and be an individuated soul. We have to be in relationship to others. That's how we know. So we need the differentiation piece. We need that one-to-one understanding of, oh, I am noticing self by recognizing your sacred otherness.
Joli:
We need that. And we not, we don't just need it once. We need it in an ongoing way, which means that disruption that it feels like to be in the, the mismatch of like, oh, we want this for different reasons. That is part of the work that is part of the growth. Is it uncomfortable? Yes. But it also isn't, it's absolutely an opportunity to sit with the discomfort and say, well, what if I, what if I suspend my belief that because we're different, we need to be separate and we try to actually create something new. And this is where we get, now we're getting really into it. The transcendent function en enters the picture. The transcendent function is the, the concept of these two, these two beings come together. And the third thing, they can only, they can only exist because of the tension that these two people bring into the world. They're not the same Mm-Hmm. And this, we don't know. And this is I think how wildly innovative new relationship patterns start. This is how people break the mold and create whole new pathways for other people to say, oh, we could do that. Awesome. Mm-Hmm hmm. And that's why I love the world of, of like non-monogamy influencers, because I'm like, they're showing that there are so many paths. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Yeah. I don't need to follow their path. I can just see the tension of how they're co-creating with their people and see that they're creating all of these new like openings for possibility.
Libby:
Yeah.
Joli:
I got really heady there for a second.
Libby:
<Laugh>. Oh, you know what? You were so excited. It was so cute. <Laugh>.
Joli:
I do, I do get very excited about this.
Libby:
So let's drill it down to this situation. Let's pick one. I'll pick the, let's pick the person who's looking for multiple soulmates and the person who's looking for multiple bed mates and or multiple mates. Like if, if somebody came to you and said, Jolie, how, how do I individu in this situation? What am I supposed to do? Yeah. Like, because it's all, it's all well and good to understand the theoretical, but like, what am I supposed to actually do when I notice my partner, like going out with a third person that week, and I feel so uncomfortable in my system, my system's just going, why is he doing that? Or why is she doing that? You know, and like, what does this all mean? And meanwhile, like, I'm connecting to my one partner and having this deep emotional expressive experience, and I'm trying to share it with my partner, and she's like going, ah, don't tell me about that. I don't wanna hear about it.
Joli:
Yep. I mean, I, you do, I've literally had that in my office this week, so, yep. Makes sense to me. You know, I, you know, what stands out to me there is how most of the time, the, the big discomfort comes up. And then when we're running to look for safety, a lot of us run to a place that I, I mean, it's, it's reasonable. We run to our values, but it's also a little dangerous because the, what do I do? If you, if you run to like, okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna run to my values. What are the values I have for opening? If your value set is drastically different from one of your partners, then you may now decide that you are in, you are, you are in righteous judgment of the way they're doing it. If you, for instance, really have some, some concerns about casual partnership, well that's, for you to wrestle with that is, that is work for you to do, to figure out why.
Joli:
Like that is. There's, there's a whole line of thought you could go down to see why, why, like what is behind there? What are the stories I tell myself? What is the risk? Have I actually assessed the risk, or am I telling myself a story about the, what the risk is? What is this? What does it mean for me? Right. But I see people get caught in this spot where they're now, they polarize with each other in a, in an icky way because one of them says, Nope, that's out of alignment with my values. And then they, they accidentally make the leap to say, that means it's bad. What you're doing is bad. And not, well, not only don't think they say it, but they they feeling it.
Libby:
Well, no. What often happens, at least in my observation, is they get caught in a ongoing argument of trying to convince the other one, right. Not that they're bad or that they're wrong, but actually of the overarching value system that leads, that would, that if they bought into it, would inevitably lead them to change their behavior. Right. <laugh>. And then they're in this loop of asking, not asking for anything, but just trying to convince the person of their point of view, which will then lead to behavior change. And it's such a loop when they're not, they don't agree. Like, they just don't agree, like on the, on the baseline principles of this is what it means to sleep with someone, or this is what it means to fall in love with someone. And they think that if they just convinced the other persons
Joli:
Right.
Libby:
And you're right. I do think that then they're, they're, they, they're both claiming this high ground of, no, I am. Right. And they cannot hold that. There is no Right.
Joli:
Right. And, and just being with that, you asked what to do. It's that it's suspending the idea that there is a right way. But how do you sit with that? Like, what do you do? What are the actual, what are the actions? Because it's one thing to talk about what are our motivations. It's another thing altogether to talk about what are the actions? How do I,
Libby:
How do you actually fit with it?
Joli:
How do I actually manage myself? How do I not point fingers? And this is where I hear the word shame, enter the story a lot. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative> specifically. I hear a lot of people say, she's shaming me. He's shaming me. They're shaming me.
Libby:
Yeah.
Joli:
Are they, or are you are like, I, I don't know. That's a, that now we have to get really into Are you experiencing that? Like, there might be shame. Yeah.
Libby:
Well, I do think that, I do think that happens when you're in that place of righteousness. Right. You know, here's what I think though. Can I, can I drop a bomb in here? Go for it. I think that attempt to convince someone, and then that missed attempt to convince someone where we go into a place of either shame or blame. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>, what we're trying to avoid is grief.
Joli:
Yep. I agree. I agree.
Libby:
Because what we want, and I just wanna say it's reasonable to want this, it feels really good when you're on the same page. That feels really good. What do you want tonight? Chinese? Oh my God, me too. Perfect. Easy done. You know? Right. There's no wrestling. There's no rumbling in that. That feels nice when that's there.
Joli:
And we feel validated.
Libby:
Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Yeah, that's true. We also see ourselves reflected back in the other person. They see them reflected back in us. There's this beautiful harmony. So when we're in this moment of mismatch where like, oh, you see this really, really differently from me, oh my gosh, I'm alone.
Joli:
Right?
Libby:
Oh, I don't wanna be alone. That's really hard. And then I just have to feel that. Yep. I don't wanna feel that. I wanna make you bad <laugh>.
Joli:
Yeah. So much easier to make you bad. But there's the, there's the gift, there's the, the beauty too is what if I, what if I step out of the, the cycle of needing to be imperfect alignment and imagine instead harmonizing with someone. What if, what if You don't need to be the on the same note, but we are on different notes that can play together. If I can do that, I would, I would say that is evidence of individuation. That is evidence that you are recognizing the difference. And now you are making big leaps forward in your maturity, in your, in your growth by saying, I don't agree with you. And rather than try to convince you, rather than get locked in that cycle and, and basically say, if you only understood, which is a little infantalizing, a little pathology, right? If you only understood you would agree with me, you must not understand this. Right?
Libby:
And so then I'm gonna keep at it.
Joli:
So I'll keep going for years if you only, so if I step out of that and I say, wow, we are so different. Now my, my options for actions are actually narrowed. They're like, there are fewer options, but the options that are left are, they're cleaner. They're like, they, they will, they will resonate differently. There are options like learning to sit with that discomfort or renegotiating what this relationship's purpose is. What does this make, you know, for the example you used, what comes to mind is, I hear a lot of people now safer sex enters the chat, right? <Laugh>, if one person wants to have more sex, more casual sex, wants to engage with people in a different way, a lot of times the partner who is more into having like deep relationships that are prolonged sustained, maybe much fewer of them. Yeah. Safer sex feels like an objective thing to say. Like, Nope, nope, nope,
Libby:
Hang on. Well, and it gives you something that you can, you can kind of go to that gives you some kind of entitlement to make requests from a place of, like you said, sort of objective righteousness. Yeah. And then you feel entitled to exert some control because it's about safety, right? It's about your health.
Joli:
Right. Exactly. And, and this is where we forget that the, at the core under all of this is us negotiating the relationship that we want. And it may in fact change if your risk tolerance, for instance, is lower, if you do not have the, the capacity, the embodied capacity right now to tolerate the, the sexual health risk level that your partner is willing to tolerate, okay, what are you gonna do to stay in connection?
Libby:
Yeah.
Joli:
And also not shame them and not say that is bad, but say, okay, well, let's, we need to reconfigure
Libby:
And, and not to feel like you get to tell them how many partners or what types of things you get to do together. Yeah. I mean, and, and, and again, that doesn't mean you don't get to negotiate, right? Of course you get to negotiate because
Joli:
You get to set your boundaries for yourself. But,
Libby:
And, and you get to set boundaries for yourself, which is different, right? There's setting boundaries for yourself. Like these things would be just things I would not do, right? And then there's, these are things I would like to ask you to do if you're open to it to make me feel more okay, or to make us feel like more we can do certain things together, right? And then also, what are your boundaries? What are the things that you definitely wouldn't do? And that I, and that, so that I can kind of know, how are you seeing this? Mm-Hmm, <affirmative>. Just so that I can have a
Libby:
Sense of like what I can expect
Joli:
Right? And, you know, and this is where I find a lot of folks, they, they may shame themselves too, right? Oh, sure. So now, now the other piece of the shame shows up where, because a partner is setting a boundary about what's okay for them, I interpret that as they're shaming me. And I can easily go to that place, especially if I'm actually having a little bit of trouble accepting my own yummy sluttiness or if I'm like, dealing with my own internalized issues around this. So, and, and it's way easier to say they're shaming me than to say, oh, I'm actually struggling a little bit with how I make this okay. Or how I say, yeah, I really am going to prioritize these, these multiple more casual connections because that is what feels right for me and that is not bad. And I'm gonna like stand in that not from a righteous place, but from a like, nope, that's my honest truth. And that means that we may not relate in the same way anymore. And can we, can we negotiate where is, where is our space to negotiate in there?
