Revoke Your Moral License
Do you sometimes use doing "the right" or "good' things as an excuse to then turn around and do "bad" or "selfish" things? There's a name for this - it's called moral licensing, and it may not just be messing up your goals, but possibly your relationships.
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Transcript
I really wanna get to the meat of this episode, but before I do, I want to let you know that in case you haven't gotten the memo yet, I will be speaking, along with my partner Kyrr at southwest lovefest April 14th through 16th in Tucson, Arizona. If you haven't gotten your tickets yet, but you are thinking of going, if you're on the fence, get off that fence and see me in Tucson, and I promise you it'll be worth your while. There's gonna be so many amazing speakers and people there, and I'm gonna be bringing some very special and unique making polyamory work swag just for people who come to the conference. So that could be you, and I really hope I'll see you there. Now we're gonna go on to the episode. Before I go, I'm gonna remind you that if you do sign up, you can use my code. goslow, all one word, all lowercase. Go slow to get 10% off your ticket price.
Now on to the show.
I hope y'all are liking the seasons situation. I've, you know rebooted the show. I've had, I'm eight episodes in now. This would be the ninth episode of this season. And I'm just, I gotta tell you, I'm really proud of myself for having rebooted the podcast, switching to seasons. I feel like I've been really good about getting an episode out every week and I was really telling myself, you're doing such a good job. You're being so good. And so I was thinking, well, I'm starting to get behind on my episodes. And I was thinking, well, you know, but I've been so good. It's okay if I just take this week off, right? Like, I've earned it by being good. I can just skip this week and my listeners will forgive me. Right? Right. Does that rationale, that type of rationale, sound familiar to you?
Is that something you've ever done? Have you ever like messed up a good streak of moving toward a goal that you have only to self-sabotage yourself by giving yourself some slack or even doing something that's actively against your goals? Well, you wouldn't be alone. There is actually a name for this phenomenon, and it's called moral licensing. And it's what I'm gonna talk about today. So what is moral licensing? It's basically simply this, it is using good behavior to justify bad behavior. So for instance, if I'm trying to change my diet and maybe eat more nutrient dense foods, then if I ate salads all week, then what I might do is reward myself with a pint of ice cream at the end of the week because I earned it by being so quote unquote good. Now, studies have shown that this is such a powerful thing, this moral licensing that even anticipating doing a good thing, quote unquote good thing, increases the likelihood of someone then doing a bad thing even before they've done the good thing.
So, as an example, in one study, participants who anticipated doing, something morally good, such as like donating money to a charity or giving blood, were more likely to make a racially biased hiring decision in the study, or a spouse racially biased views like, that's wild to me, but I see it. So why am I talking about moral licensing on this show? Well, okay, lemme give you another scenario here. See if this sounds familiar. Have you ever been that partner who is generally a giver? Generally, I will come through for you no matter what type of partner, doing everything that you feel like you're supposed to do, everything that's asked of you, bending over backwards, going even beyond your capacity sometimes. And then you turn around and do something really or selfish or thoughtless or negligent because you feel like you earned it and then you're shocked when your partner gets upset about it, because look at all you do for them.
Look at all you do for them. How dare they, like, gimme a freaking break. Or maybe you have someone like this in your life, someone who really does come through for you in all the ways who is so good. And then periodically blindsides you with stuff that totally undermines all your trust and feelings of safety. Yep. That is moral licensing too. And I see this a lot, with my clients. I see it come up a lot and it is so essential to unwind this in relationships because otherwise moral licensing can completely derail and destroy a healthy relational dynamic, because of the way it undermines trust. And trust is so important in all relationships, but in non-monogamy, you simply cannot be without it. Non-monogamy is inherently disruptive to like a super stable ecosystem. Like you are introducing more variables, you're needing more negotiation, you're needing more ability to really like, have a lot of faith in each other.
And it's because you're breaking a lot of norms and societal rules. I think it's so important to move with intention and care. And if you don't trust each other, it can just be way scary. I'll add one more thing here, which is that at the community level, moral licensing can get especially yucky because if you think you're good poly, sometimes that can make you feel entitled to be really unkind to people who are not doing poly well, like there's that whole concept of being like pollier than thou. And remember, like the scientific study about people imagining and thinking about doing something good, like donating money to charity made them more likely to say or do racist things. And when I think about what it means to be good poly, right, the whole point of being quote unquote good poly is to be kind to be loving.
And if you are being, if you're espousing views that are more kind and loving, or you see them as more evolved, but then you turn around and are harsh and cruel and exclusionary and disrespectful to people who are struggling or who maybe just aren't making the best decisions, but you're not holding them in compassion, that's really going against the thing that you seem to be holding as a value. Just gonna throw that out there. It's something I see a lot. And honestly, using moral licensing to justify choices that are actively going against your own goals and your own desires and your own, commitments, seems to me again, like it's a form of self-sabotage. It it's not, I mean, like, why would you wanna earn the right to then harm the thing that you've been working so hard for? Like, that seems like a real cognitive distortion to me.
And here's where it can get really dark when it comes to moral licensing at its worst. Moral licensing can cause you to kind of split yourself when you're being good, when you're doing what you're supposed to do, when you're being virtuous, oftentimes that is being externally imposed upon you. So you're, it's not something that's really coming from within. It's not intrinsic. And so what can happen is you can actually disconnect from your own embodiment, from your own joy, from your own pleasure. It, you know, it's something that is inherently just costing you rather than giving to you. Because the things that give to you, the things that actually bring you joy and pleasure and embodiment, those are the bad things. So you may be doing the things that your partners want from you, but you're not actually connected to yourself. You're not present for them or available when you're doing those things.
Instead, you're like robotically checking a box. You're objectifying yourself and you're allowing someone else's expectations and morals to control your decision making. But you know, then when you're done doing that, that's when you get to be bad. When you're being bad, you're doing what you really wanna do. You're in your joy, you're in your pleasure, you're in your freedom, you feel fully alive and embodied, but because you're being bad, you have to kind of hide it. You have to wall it away, or you're supposed to feel bad about it. So it comes with a dose of shame. And also you have to make sure that you're walling it away from your partners, because if they were part of it, then it might click into the good category where you're feeling disconnected and controlled. This can be quite a loop to get stuck in because when you have done the bad thing and you're feeling all alive, but again, you're feeling bad about it.
And so then what can happen is you can crash into shame, you can beat yourself up, your partner can get upset with you, and then you can feel bad or even defensive, and that can cause you to disconnect. And then you'll go back into your good mode, which is again, good, but disembodied because you need to like re-earn and make up for the the bad thing that you did. But then after a a period of time of being disconnected, you gotta refill your cup with something bad again, because, you know, we all need pleasure and joy and, frivolity and whimsy to like survive as humans. It's part of our, it's a basic need that we have. So if this sounds like you or if it's something you're experiencing in a partner, first of all, I know that you might be feeling really terrible and stuck, especially me naming it for you, that might feel really overwhelming, but I want you to hear from me that you're not alone and that you won't, you don't have to stay stuck here.
There is a, there is a way out. Now there may be more to unpack than what I'm offering here in this episode in order to get out of this trap. But one thing that may really help you if you're stuck here is just to simply revoke your moral license. So what do I mean by that? There are two things that help you revoke your moral license. The first one is to shift your mindset and make your choices morally neutral. Exercise morally neutral. Eating a pint of ice cream, morally neutral, cleaning your house morally neutral, not cleaning your house, morally neutral, showing up for the people you love. Morally neutral, getting high on edibles, morally neutral, texting all your partners goodnight the way they like morally neutral. Now, some people won't like me saying this, but I'm gonna go this far, y'all, are you ready for it?
Cheating morally neutral, yes, I believe that cheating on its own is morally neutral, provided the STI risks are accounted for and mitigated lying morally neutral. There are times when cheating and lying or even appropriate courses of action, okay, morally neutral, but most of the time, here's the deal, the things that might have sounded like qoute unqoute bad things to you, what they do is they get in the way of your goals. Cheating isn't bad or good, but what it can do is undermine trust and safety in your relationships and create a lot of pain for the people who you love and who love you when what they're wanting is to feel close and feel safe and supported. So I can say it's not a good idea to cheat without saying it's bad or good. Now, maybe you don't totally buy into the idea that all choices are actually really morally neutral.
Maybe that maybe that's too much for you. And so, and that's okay. Like you don't actually have to believe me, in order to start acting as if all your choices are morally neutral. Mainly what you have to do is you have to get off the merry-go-round of, shame and blame for the bad stuff and, feeling pious and virtuous for the good stuff. So like, just watch your mind and don't like guilt yourself or let other people guilt you or engage in this like, I'm being bad way of thinking about yourself when you're making like spontaneous self-indulgent decisions. And then also, you have to take away the feelings of like piety and virtue when you're choosing something that is really just in your interest. Like it's really just supportive of your goals and of your dreams. So like me doing eight podcast episodes in a row, neither good nor bad, morally neutral, it just is.
I don't get any gold stars for that. And if I were to make the decision to take a week off of doing the podcast, that also doesn't make me good or bad. These two things are just a conflict of willpower and impulse of short-term and long-term priorities by taking out the morality. When you make a decision that aligns with your long-term goals, that's it. You just did that and you haven't earned any right to like undermine yourself. Uh, you have to choose pleasure, joy, self-indulgence, et cetera, from a place of this is also in my long-term goals and priorities, which they can be, and I'll get to that later. So once you have made your choices morally neutral or at least acted as if your choices are morally neutral, then you can also do the work toward truly owning and embodying and integrating the choices that you make.
Meaning nobody's making you do anything. If you're choosing to do something that's being asked or expected of you, it's because it's in alignment with your values and goals. Now you have to also be aware of your capacity, your limitations, your boundaries and your needs, and honor those when you are making the choices that are aligning with the things that you wanna do anyway. But from there, if you are honoring all of you, when you are making choices that are in your interests that are towards your long-term goals, then you can be embodied in all of your actions, which not only is good for you, but it also builds connection with the people in your life. And it builds trust with them as well. And it helps you also to connect to yourself when you do choose to indulge in some pleasure or whimsy or spontaneity or whatever, because you absolutely need to feed the parts of you that wanna be indulgent, frivolous, spontaneous, impulsive, whatever.
Pleasure is so important to the human experience. And the thing is, if you have joy and pleasure and like stuff that is just like purely useless or you know, whatever, there, there are ways in which like that can be, again, feeding into and fueling the choices that you're making that are in the interest of your long-term goals that are important to you. So if we integrate those things, like if I take a break from the podcast, maybe that is the rest that I needed to give me the fuel to get through the rest of the season, then I'm integrated. It also means that the people who love me can celebrate with me. The choices that I'm making that are maybe just for me, maybe more indulgent, maybe they can even join me when I am giving to myself. And especially if I'm integrating those choices with my long-term goals and the things, the other things that are important to me, maybe I'm doing it in a way that includes the people I love instead of walling them away and holds them and their interest at heart at the same time.
Ultimately, at the end of the day, when we split things into good or bad, what we're really doing is indulging in feeling better than or less than other people. And it doesn't matter. We're actually all equally worthy and we're all doing the best that we can. And if we can get ourselves off of the cycle of, you know, being in a righteous place and being in a holier than thou place and then, crashing into shame when we fall short. And if we can get out of that, if we can get out of this good, but dead and bad, but alive cycle and instead hold our whole selves in loving compassion and intentionally move towards the things that we truly want and the people we truly wanna be, I think that is what it means to be a good person. So to recap, moral licensing is a really, really common phenomenon of people using good behavior to justify bad behavior, when really is just behavior is just choices.
And the only thing that should determine for you whether or not to make a choice is whether it's in the interest of the things that you want, the things that are important to you and the things you wanna do with your life. If you revoke your moral license, if you divorce yourself from a good, bad binary, and instead make everything morally neutral or act as if everything is morally neutral, get out of the shame and righteousness cycle and instead practice embodying and integrating the choices that you make holding your values and your interests at heart. You're gonna live a much more wholehearted life, honestly, at the end of the day, and you'll have relationships with your partners that can feel more connected, more trusting, and more joyful.
