Making fair agreements in polyamory and non-monogamy

4 minute read

“We just want to make sure we stay on the same page. You know, things are fair,” Kevin said. With a smooth tone and an easy smile, he joked with me about how this would protect his future with his wife. He was confident that keeping things even-steven in their relationship agreements would ensure that neither of them got ahead of the other. 

Yeah. It doesn’t work that way.

There’s a paradox when it comes to agreements. 

If you try to make your agreements perfectly uniform for everyone involved- trouble is coming.

If you make things different for the wrong reasons, it sets the stage for abusive power dynamics.

Adding nuance to relationship agreements

It seems simple enough–make agreements that are a set of rules that apply to everyone. But we aren’t the same. We have different needs, wants, and desires, different bottom-line requirements, and different access to opportunities. 

Our agreements must be asymmetric. 

“But that’s not fair!” Kevin did not like the idea of an asymmetric agreement– he wanted to know that Lena would be held to the same rules he was holding himself to. “It just makes sense to have one set of rules we both follow.”

When I review agreements with people, I’m not looking for them to be matchy-matchy. I’m looking for how the agreements help everyone feel more connected and how they encourage everyone to be treated with their full humanity–including new partners who aren’t in the room yet. 

Navigating the complexities of relationships, particularly non-monogamous and polyamorous ones, means you need agreements. We all have them, but in my many years working as a relationship coach, I can verify that most people rely on implicit agreements or “an ongoing conversation” rather than getting clear and explicit with each other. Then when life happens, they wonder why they don’t seem to remember their implicit, verbal agreements the same way. 

Shocking.

Explicit agreements are essential for setting expectations and managing relationship dynamics effectively. But making them with the primary aim of balance and sameness usually backfires.

Asymmetry as a Necessity

Episode 150 of the "Playing with Fire" podcast explores why asymmetry in agreements is not just common but often necessary in non-monogamous relationships. Asymmetry acknowledges that each individual has different needs, desires, and boundaries. Trying to enforce symmetry, where each party gives and receives equally, can lead to unrealistic expectations and may not truly meet the needs of everyone involved.

When Kevin finally came around to the idea of asymmetry it was a revelation. 

He’d been trying to avoid being the asshole, “I don’t wanna be one of those guys who has a one-penis policy or some crap like that.” So his original intent was great, he wanted to encourage autonomy and fairness… but he missed the mark. He asked for his wife to only go on dates when he was also able to make connections and offered to cancel his dates if his wife wasn’t meeting anyone. 

In just a few months they’d managed to turn off several potential partners because they each bailed on new people if their anchor partner didn’t also have plans. Then it got worse in a way Kevin never expected. It turns out, he falls into the throes of new relationship energy harder and faster than Lena tended to. She tried to tell him it was okay, but he struggled to believe they could have a healthy relationship that wasn’t super “balanced.”

What if balance isn’t the goal? What if fair doesn’t look like symmetry? How will you handle it when your partner’s needs, wants, or boundaries mean that a unilateral agreement doesn’t work?

Download episode 150 of Playing with Fire: Asymmetric Agreements to learn all the details about upgrading your relationship agreement skills!

Episode 150 Transcript

This transcript was auto-generated, and may contain some errors.

Ken Hamilton 0:02
Hey, today I wanted to talk about something that comes up in the year of opening all the time agreements.

Joli Hamilton 0:09
agreement we do we spend a lot of time talking so much

Ken Hamilton 0:13
time, and it's very important. But I want to talk about specific kinds of agreements. Asymmetric agreements.

Joli Hamilton 0:19
Oh, you mean, the only kind there can really ever be?

Ken Hamilton 0:23
Oh, I suppose. Yeah, it's 100%. True.

Joli Hamilton 0:27
Well, I know I mean, I'm being I'm being ridiculous. Of course, you can. You can make agreements that are not asymmetric. But I think the longer I have been making agreements myself, the more I've come to question whether what an agreement is for, if not to account for the fact that we're quite different. And so our agreements have to be a symmetric, they can't be focused too much on keeping everything same disease, or there are issues that come up. So yeah, I love this topic. Yeah, me too.

Ken Hamilton 1:06
Which means we start right off defining terms. What is an agreement? Well,

Joli Hamilton 1:11
I mean, in the context of a relationship, an intimate or close relationship of any kind. I think there are two really important factors that make an agreement and agreement, which is one that it's explicit, right? We can't implicit agreements. I not sure you can say that's an agreement. Yeah, I'm not sure. Well, we can have implicit expectations, we can have implicit assumptions. But I'm not sure we could qualify that as an agreement. Because if we're not being explicit, then I'm not sure I can consent to being in that. And this is this gets tricky, really fast, because of course, we're all alive in a dynamic environment. And that means that stuff's changing. And so we, of course, have to make decisions sometimes that we don't have explicit agreements about but but for what you're talking about, I think it's important to to name that agreements are explicitly communicated. Yes. They're explicitly communicated about.

Ken Hamilton 2:20
Because when I think of agreement, I think, okay, we we are both committing to the same thing. And that's where it kind of breaks down with implicit things is, how do we know it's the same if we haven't said what it is,

Joli Hamilton 2:34
right. In other words, we wouldn't even know whether we're talking like literally defining our terms the same and so right, we start off in trouble. The other thing that comes to mind is it needs to be mutual. So that all the people who are being held to this agreement, all of the people who are collaborating on this agreement, deserve to have a say in the creation of it, I really believe in CO created agreements. And this does get a little tricky. And I think we should just have a sort of sidebar here that sometimes people are in power exchange relationships, where they have explicitly exchanged power and and allotted the sum of their personal power to someone else to make decisions for them. And that's done by agreement to That's right. So like the the agreement phase needs to pre emptive has to happen before you hand over that power. And then from there, I would say that, so you can have an umbrella agreement in which you agree to handle versus a decision making power, about certain elements of life, you hand over that power to someone else. But you still need to have the explicit consensual mutual agreement that happens that allows for that otherwise, again, I think we're playing fast and loose with the concept of agreement.

Ken Hamilton 3:55
Yeah. And we were generally here talking about things in the context of relationships and non monogamy. But this topic, I mean, we've run across this, like, the whole time, like non monogamy, or or not, for example, who's in charge of the kids schooling? Oh, sure. I mean, it was divided up, we talked about and divided up the responsibilities of life.

Joli Hamilton 4:23
Right. And we ran businesses together. I mean, we still are right. This is a business that I own. I am the CEO and founder, but you currently work as operations director. And that is a roll all by itself that, you know, has its own decision making power. Yep. And yet, we had to come to a mutual agreement about what the decision making power and what the capacity and scope is. So I think that you know, just talking about agreements, it sounds very dry, but I think it's actually a really exciting, I think conversation about power dynamics and how we perceive each other. And it to me every time we have agreement based conversations, I learn more about you.

Ken Hamilton 5:06
That's what I was just gonna say about the learning about each other. And myself when we talk about agreement, yep, I absolutely learn about you. And I also learn about myself, because I often often don't really know what I want, until I'm making a decision about it. And agreements, as you mentioned earlier, are kind of, they're related to the decisions we make,

Joli Hamilton 5:29
I was just listening to a lecture by Marie Stein, a union analyst, who I respect quite a lot. And he was talking about how we don't truly know our values until we are forced to make decisions about them. And he was he was talking about in the realm of, you know, identifying our core complexes and starting to make, make our inner world our interiority really visible to ourselves, because it's, it's one thing Yeah, to say I value all of this, it's another thing altogether to say, yeah, now you have to prioritize.

Ken Hamilton 6:09
And it really is a different thing.

Joli Hamilton 6:11
So when we have these explicit conversations, where we negotiate about what each of us wants, it also allows me to see you as a changing human. And that's something foundational to the premise of our relationship that I really value is that you allow me to change. And I mean, you've had an amazing, such a remarkable last 18 months of growth and change, that thank you, I can see it. When I look at our written agreements, I can actually see the transformation that you've undergone during that time. And I don't think it would have been visible to me. If we had been just having a conversation, a lot of times when people talk to me about agreements, they'll say, Well, you know, we're just in an ongoing conversation, right. And I get it, I understand the temptation that that is, especially if you live with someone to just be in constant conversation about what's up in your relationships, but writing things down, allows you to see the growth trajectory that you're on, and it allows you to, like, actually relate to these earlier versions of yourself and your partners in a different way. You know, I've said before that, you know, writing is thinking, but writing is also this beautiful way to be able to honor and celebrate the the changes. And yeah, the the changes that you've made over the last 18 months are visible to me in that way. And in our power exchange agreements are the same thing. Because we, we also play with Power Exchange, and I can see how different you are and how different you show up. And all of these things, let me trust you in our relationship more, which makes it easier to ask for what I actually want, actually need. And trust that you'll show up and ask for what you need and what you want. Those are core pieces of making agreements.

Ken Hamilton 8:07
And we're talking about agreements in general. One of the benefits that I get out of it is not just learning what I want, but I've actually thrown my cap over the wall a couple of times, by writing down agreements,

Joli Hamilton 8:24
describe what that phrase means. So

Ken Hamilton 8:28
the story of the picture I have is a group of of school kids. I don't know why this is my picture, but as a group of school kids, and they're like, Hey, we're going to climb over that wall, like I don't think you can. And so one of them takes his calf, throws it up over the wall. He's like, Well, I have to go over now. Because if I don't come home with my cap, I'm going to be in big trouble.

Joli Hamilton 8:53
I think Uncle Colin used to tell us that story. Yeah. Did you hear it first from my uncle Colin?

Ken Hamilton 8:58
Maybe? I've heard it multiple times, including Terry Pratchett. Oh, I think the picture that is most certainly, because he was such an amazing writer.

Joli Hamilton 9:08
I love that. You you use that phrase. Often. I think that applying it to the concept of agreements. So then let's differentiate a little bit here because I think that there are some people make aspirational agreements,

Ken Hamilton 9:22
say that's throwing a cap over the wall is an aspirational agreement. I'm pretty sure I can get it if I throw it over. I think I can make it over the wall. So

Joli Hamilton 9:30
I appreciate it when you understand that you're making an aspirational agreements versus grandiose

Ken Hamilton 9:37
agreements. Exactly.

Joli Hamilton 9:38
Because that was the beginning.

Ken Hamilton 9:41
relationship. The beginning decade of our relationship was characterized by me making grandiose agreements, things that not only did I not know if I could, well, actually, I just assumed I could. I didn't have a plan. I didn't have just like the law. least amount of thought about how I was going to uphold this agreement. I made it because well, of course, I can uphold an agreement that caused so much trouble.

Joli Hamilton 10:09
And you know, I see people do this all the time somebody wrote to me just recently, they they wrote down, they sent me a message, saying what the very vague but basic agreement that they had made with their partner was, and I said, Okay, so how are you going to do it? And they said, I don't know, it doesn't really seem possible for us to do it this way. And no, I don't think we could really do that. And that doesn't sound any fun. Like, okay, so you have no plan on how to execute it. And that's the agreement you have. What do you think your chances of success are? Any I mean,

Ken Hamilton 10:49
I can tell you what my success rate was when I have made agreements like that, right?

Joli Hamilton 10:54
I mean, it's funny, when we think about somebody else doing this, it's humorous. But I see people do it all the time. And I know I have done it myself, where I've made those agreements that really are there as aspirational, as in the best part of myself really, truly does want to be able to hold to this. And that's not all of me. I contain multitudes. And some of me is two years old. Some of me is kind of a bitch. And some of me is also lazy. So like, Is my whole self on board? And maybe most importantly, is the part of me who gets to make the decisions in the moment when that agreement needs to be upheld. Are they on board?

Ken Hamilton 11:34
Oh, that's very important. Yeah. Because

Joli Hamilton 11:37
if they're not, then it calls into question whether Do you have an agreement maker who's like this very formal, awesome part of you, and then an agreement executor, who's a total dipshit.

Ken Hamilton 11:52
And then there's another aspect to this that I'm just thinking about now, which is okay, so I make this agreement without having thought about what kinds of decisions I'm going to have to make to uphold these these aspects, the sorry, not these these grandiose, idealistic agreement. So it's like, I'm sure, it'll be fine. Best case scenario agreements. And it's not just best case scenario, although that's mostly what they were their agreements that I make. And then when it comes time, because I haven't thought about the decisions I'll have to make, when it comes time to make the decisions to uphold the agreement, I find out those decisions aren't in line with my values. Now what I just got myself into a tangle, and I was like, Okay, I got commitments to uphold, but then I have hold up hold commitments to myself about my own values. Plus, I've, you know, I've already, like, I committed to those values as well. So what do I do now? Okay,

Joli Hamilton 12:47
so I, I'm guessing that we are both actually remembering the same grandiose commitment, and epic failure. When you call that sorry,

Ken Hamilton 12:56
I can't pick one out of a pile, but it will recognize the one you're thinking of

Joli Hamilton 13:02
having promised one of your partners that you would be home and celebrating a particular holiday with her. And then I was at the hospital and my mother was dying one. So you you were standing there with this, this need to prioritize, I'm sure something you'd never thought about having to prioritize, and having to make a decision. In that moment. I and I get it. But we they're not all that serious. There were others. You know, there were a bit that was just a dream and example. Yeah, that was actually the first time I mean, that goes back now 1413 and a half years. And I that's just one example of a thing that happened all the time. That I think you're putting beautiful words to have I thought about the decisions, I'll have to make the choices, the prioritizations the way that I will have to align my values and my choices. And that requires a level of being able to put myself in different situations to be able to use my imagination. And I remember you and I struggling with this quite a lot because you are you do a beautiful job of being in the moment I suck at being in the moment.

Ken Hamilton 14:24
The other hand, you do a beautiful job of imagining the future. I

Joli Hamilton 14:28
am. I'm really good at threat detection in the future. And also at seeing my worst self in the future. I have for whatever for good or bad. I'm good at seeing like, oh, I might have a migraine that day. And I would feel differently or Oh What if I'm feeling really selfish and jealous that day? How will I behave that? I think that's um, that comes pretty naturally to me, and it lets me frequently not overreach. So I appreciate your statement about like, yeah, wanting to throw your cap over the While but yeah, that's that comes at potentially a big cost because your partners, your agreement partners may be real damn sick of you saying I got you. I'm gonna do this. I'm showing up

Ken Hamilton 15:18
just dropped your hat into a volcano plan. Why didn't have a plan?

Joli Hamilton 15:24
Well one of the one of the ways that I know that we struggled with this had to do with you not understanding that you needed to be resourced. Haha,

Ken Hamilton 15:32
yeah. Well, it's the grant. It's part of why I say grandiose. It's like, well, I'm, I'm infinitely capable, infinitely capable. I have no like, temporal restrictions on me, I have access to infinite time, infinite energy, infinite emotional regulation, full

Joli Hamilton 15:51
on god complex or just a hero complex.

Ken Hamilton 15:55
You know, I was gonna say, hero, I was gonna say superhero.

Joli Hamilton 16:00
But superhero complex and a god complex are the same thing. They're

Ken Hamilton 16:04
the same thing. And it was specifically around time, and I could I could go into this deeper, I find it very fascinating how crazy I am. But

Joli Hamilton 16:15
well, you are fascinating. And I love your particular brand of crazy. It works just fine for me. Aren't we all? I humans. But let's go back to agreements. So when we when I think about agreements being explicit and mutual, and ideally, at least in Jolie's world, written down and written down does not have to mean I'm not looking for you to have like a contract that you haul out. I'm saying, like, write down what you agreed to. It could be bullet points, or some of my best agreements, the ones that I'm able to hold most strongly are literally just like three or four bullet points that I that I can hold really carefully. Because like, yeah, there it gets, I understand the spirit of this thing. But that brings us to a question of fairness in agreements, because if we're negotiating with another person, or with multiple people, one of the traps I see people fall into all the time is, but aren't our agreements supposed to be fair? And so let's just say I've got them they're explicit in their mutual and they're written down. Yeah. But if my agreements need to be fair, I there's, well, there's a bunch to tease apart here, because fairness is like, it's an interesting I, dia, but in general, when when I hear people pulling apart the nuances of the troubles they're going through, often at the center of those troubles lies, hurt feelings around whether the agreements that they have made feel fair. And whether they're fair enough, or whether the way that they're being asked to allow for difference in their agreements, whether that's fair, and it's just not fair. These are the kinds of words that I hear coming up. And I think it's worth doing a little etymology on fair a little, or at the very least, some definitions. I mean, fair means a lot of things. But I think we asked this word to hold a lot for us, when it comes to agreement, I

Ken Hamilton 18:23
was thinking about how we started off by saying it should be explicit, needs to not be implicit, because so that we can both be aware of what we're agreeing to. And the word fair is so broad, that using it in the context of an agreement, yeah, fully leads, it puts us into the realm of implicit because,

Joli Hamilton 18:46
well, in the very least, interpretive, right, like how fear is usually we usually mean it to mean something like, it's, it feels fair, often there's a modifier on that word fair. It we want it to feel fair. In other words, we want this agreement to make us feel a certain way. And that is also asking kind of a lot from some words. But the definitions, you know, when I just popped open for dictionaries, and looked over a few definitions, and the first one that was in all the different dictionaries that I looked, was free from bias, free from dishonesty free from injustice. Okay. Now, that version of fair, I would say, cool. I mean, free from bias is not the same as saying it needs to be the same, right? I want to be aware of my biases, so that I can work to account for them. Fair for it, meaning being free from dishonesty. Cool. Yeah. I mean, I don't want to be making agreements that are inherently built on dishonesty. But another one Another couple of ways that I see it defined is, as legitimately sought to be fair as to be sought, legitimately, like there's like an effort toward legitimacy, or to be marked by impartiality. And the last definition, and I think this one's maybe the most interesting for this conversation is free from self interest, prejudice and favoritism. And that's the definition that I think is really cool, because we're making agreements, and we need to advocate for ourself, right. So, and I, and I am the only one who can truly know my own needs, my wants, my boundaries, my bottom line requirements. So I need to I, I would, again, really call into question whether fair is really what we're looking for here, I think we can be more clear and say that, we're looking for the people who show up to the agreement making process, to be honest, we're looking for the people who show up to the agreement process, to act with honest self interest, I want my agreement partners to make clear where they're where their interests lie, where their prejudices and biases lie. You know, I'm a researcher. And one of the things that I love about qualitative research, at least the way I was taught qualitative research, is we can never be free from bias. So instead, we have to account for it, we have to assume that we have bias as researchers and take it into account as best we can by having like, for instance, my last study, there, I had an auditor for my my data. So to help me account for the biases that are inherent, I'm a non monogamous person, that my auditor was a monogamous person. So just to help start dealing with the fact that we're biased at

Ken Hamilton 21:58
first definition of free from bias and free from dishonesty, dishonesty is way more important because you're not going to be free from bias. Right. But being able to be honest about it, lets you have a conversation that can lead you to an agreement that is clear and explicit. And, and the other thing is, and I know this gets murky, but let's face it, we are humans we are murky is yeah, I want you to get what you want. Like when I'm in agreement, making an agreement with someone I care about, like okay, well, what are you looking for? How can I help you get it? And I'm hoping that you're coming into it with a similar point of view, which is how, how can you help me get what I want?

Joli Hamilton 22:45
Right, so collaboration. Now we're getting to the point that I think is most important, what and I think what we really set out to discuss today, which is that if we're collaborating on an agreement, so rather than seeing an agreement as a, an adversarial thing, where I'm coming to the table with my self interest at the, at the heart of everything, and I'm going to advocate for getting all of my stuff and you're coming from your position and whoever else we're agreeing, right, and there's an adversarial approach there. Instead, we're coming to the table, ideally holding Yes, self interest and other interest and holding a tender heart for the fact that we are different people. We are, we are different people we have, here we are we've incarnated, we're here, we're present. And I am over here in this body, mind, soul, and you're over there, and that body, mind soul. And our inherent difference is what makes relation possible. And I love that. I'm so damn lucky to have gotten to do this. But since we're individuals, there's difference between us. And difference means different needs different wants different likes different trauma, history, different recovery, different identities. Do my agreements need to be fair as insane? Or do they need to be fair as in accounting for the fact that we are different, and therefore they need to be they need they need to be asymmetric, sufficiently asymmetric to account for the fact that we are different.

Ken Hamilton 24:28
And the thing that we're trying to avoid with those those definitions about avoiding dishonesty and avoiding bias and agenda, which is a word I put in there, but is avoiding abuse, right. We want a sufficiently symmetric but not abusively asymmetric agreement. And

Joli Hamilton 24:48
that it feels to me reminds me of the saying, you know, the spirit of the thing, right like the the spirit of an agreement that is asymmetric. As in it looks like to an outsider's view, it might look like you get more and I get less of something. Right, but like, what's the spirit of this agreement? So it makes me think of. So last year, you took a break from dating. And you specifically you chose that I did not request it, I wasn't looking for you requested, if anything, I kept having to be reminded that you had said you were taking a break from dating and I needed to not pressure you to be out dating, or to be spending energy in that direction. And so an outsider taking a cursory glance at our relationship from a distance, might have seen that I had access to other lovers, other deep friendships, and you were kind of insulated at the time, you were spending a lot of time just on your own with yourself. And it might have looked like I had more of something. But you wanted the thing you had. Yeah. And I wanted the thing I have. And yet, it would also be possible, because I've seen it and I have felt it. It's happened before to be in an agreement that is abusively asymmetric, with almost the same outside look where one person doesn't feel comfortable with their partner dating. And so he's like, No, I don't. How about if you don't date for me? But since you're okay with me dating? I'll date. And now Yep, we get the same outside look, where one of us is eating one of us isn't. But it's not attending to the actual needs. There it is other people? Except it also is it is it's attending. So in that scenario, if I'm the one who's like, Yeah, I'm not really comfortable with you dating. So how about if you stay home? Because I have that need. And maybe you have a need for me to be calm. So you're like, Okay, well, that meets my name for Julie to be calm. And then also I Julie still has a need for more sexual partner. So Julie's gonna go out and have more sexual partners. And so that meets Julie's other need. And that meets Ken's other need for Joleen not to be grumpy because she doesn't have other sexual partners. Theoretically, some of your needs are being met. But that's a real dick move on my bar

Ken Hamilton 27:33
and not go in order for someone to know the difference. They would have to come and actually talk to me about what my experience is of this like so then you'd have to be able to admit, admit it to be able to admit it. Yeah.

Joli Hamilton 27:46
You did. And and I would, too, in order to really dig into this, we'd have to really start to grapple with the fact that sometimes we want things that are it's not just that they're not fair. They're not nice. They're not kind.

Ken Hamilton 28:01
Yeah. And yeah, fair is like miles away from kind of like they have almost no relationship. Yeah.

Joli Hamilton 28:10
One of the things that I have struggled with is the use of the word balanced. A lot of times when people have they're still trying to have these conversations about fairness is they'll say, I just want balance. But again, this is why I find the word asymmetry to be helpful. Like, yeah, well, if I mean, from a physics perspective, depending on the particular if you had a if you had a fulcrum under a lever, right, like, depending on where you move that fulcrum, you're gonna get a different balance spot. And so a seesaw with a big kid on one side and a little kid on another and needs to you got to move that pivot point over, it's, we have to account for the fact that our asymmetries exist. We have to, we have to do stuff with them. I think that this, this takes such a, it takes nuance and a level of experimentation.

Ken Hamilton 29:08
Right? Well, you know, early on, I was talking about how making agreements, and then upholding them helps me understand myself and my wants, and my values and my goals in more detail. And so sometimes, and this isn't about aspirational or grandiose agreements, it's just, you know, life is complicated, and you make an agreement, and then you hold it up against the real world, and you learn all kinds of stuff about what you have to do to uphold it, which is why agreements, which is why we talk about agreements and not rules, because then you we make this agreement, you know, when you and I've done this, we make an agreement about about something about how we spend our time or something and then we like like this dating thing, and then we go out and we implement it and then Then a little while we come back, and it's like, Well, okay, so how'd that go? How's that feeling? For you? Is this? Is this meeting enough of your goals? To be something that you're comfortable continuing to agree with? Or do we revise it? And

Joli Hamilton 30:13
can my nervous system handle it? Yeah. Because I can. There have been plenty of times where I'm like, yep, this agreement meets my goals. And it technically even meets my needs, except now my body's screaming. Okay, yeah, now we have a whole other issue. And I have to also take that into account. And oftentimes, I don't know ahead of time, what my response is gonna be until later. I think that's, that's why I like the short term agreement format. So I use a concept called Minimum Viable agreements and Minimum Viable agreements, or intentional, short term agreement containers, one to four weeks long, designed to make space for people to consciously create simple small agreements, like over just like one or two domains of life, like me, keep them small, so that they can start feeling into like, what, what does my body do if I make this agreement, so you made an agreement around not dating, and you were the one that was saying like this is, it was basically an agreement with yourself. And you notified me of this agreement, you were like, this is this is what I'm going to be doing. And it this is a little bit about semantics here. Now, we didn't call that a rule, because it was your agreement with yourself that you got to rescind whenever you wanted, you had set a basic agreement with yourself that you're going to take a year, but you might have gotten to eight months, and then like so I have revisited this agreement. And I have, I've mined this experiment for everything I feel like I need from it. And so now I'm gonna make a new agreement. And the same thing is true of agreements that we have with each other. I mean, we've gone through whole periods of time where one or the other of us was upholding more of this or less of that, whatever. And everything from finances, to homeschooling to energy spent on our dating life for our sex, life, everything. And the the consistency of like revisiting the agreements on on a time like on a regular basis, rather than just waiting until they fall apart. That really matters to me,

Ken Hamilton 32:26
that's a really important little strategy right there to revisit the agreements before they become untenable before they start causing problems. So

Joli Hamilton 32:40
that's why I really like short term containers, because most of us have a tendency to just say, I'm going to make this agreement. And we'll leave it in place until it doesn't fit anymore. But that also puts pressure on both of us or all of us to now somebody is eventually going to have to say, so we need to talk and non phrase anybody wants to hear really, I'm

Ken Hamilton 33:05
such a fan of the scheduled in advance discussion,

Joli Hamilton 33:11
which doesn't mean you can't still also have that moment where like, oh,

Ken Hamilton 33:15
you can but yeah, having having a built in container for agreements means that when it's when the time comes that again, we both agreed to that, that we're going to revisit the agreement and revisiting the agreement could be working for you. Yep. Working for me. Yep. Okay,

Joli Hamilton 33:34
we keep going. Right. And sometimes we just put the whole right back in place, like,

Ken Hamilton 33:39
but but having it there means nobody, nobody's the bad guy. Yeah, nobody's the bad guy who says that this isn't working for me anymore. Because that that can feel awkward. It's not awkward. Yeah.

Joli Hamilton 33:54
So this reminds me of so I've been I've been really into my house plants. Lately, as as seen behind you. I'm very into my house plant. It's because my children so my last child got his license, and I got like 17 house plants immediately. They're much easier to take care of than teenagers, but they do still need care. And it's reminding me so there's, you can put your plants on a watering schedule. And that's great. Like I have the I have this these this watering app that reminds me like, hey, check your Monstera on do this. I still need to stick my hand in the soil and actually check it because it might not actually be time. So there's this there's this balance between Yes, you want to have a regular reminder that the agreement needs tending. And I need to actually look at what's going on in the situation. So we had, we have an every three year agreements, which we use to rebound like it's an off ramp either of us can say so. I'm out we need to reimagine the whole relationship. And one of the years that came up, we were due for our agreement. My brother had cancer and was living with us. And turned out he was dying. We did not have that the conversation that September, we didn't he was like, we just didn't we were like, No, we're going to revisit this.

Ken Hamilton 35:18
When we put it all there was an agreement we made to get right. So we did we

Joli Hamilton 35:22
did a short term, we were like, Nope, this can't happen right now. Because I need I need you. And I asked, I was like, I need you to be all in for me for however long this takes

Ken Hamilton 35:32
committed to that. And it it was a it was a separate agreement, bounded, unfortunately, that overrode this other agreement.

Joli Hamilton 35:44
Right. And it wasn't, it wasn't on like an in perpetuity it was we overrode it without Well, let's revisit this in six months. And as it turned out six months from now, and he was actually in his dying process. And we said, well, we're not doing anything now. So we put it off on for another six months until he had passed. And it was profound to me that you were like, you were willing to just be there and commit to being in that process with me no matter what. And I, I get it, I imagine that there are people listening to this saying like, what kind of asshole would it have been if he turned his back? But the thing is, we had this ongoing agreement to tend to our agreements, right. And I felt so held by the fact that you were willing to also say, Yep, and it doesn't make sense right now. So let's now have another agreement, to tend to that agreement, when we could actually do it. And give it the full attention that it deserves. Give it that full love that it deserves. And also, ya know, I will commit basically, you give me a bonus here. And I say you gave it to me. It was my brother. So your brother in law? It's not like you weren't hurting? It's not like you weren't in there. I mean, you did? Absolutely. Just as much care for him as I did. But there was it's just a great reminder to me that fair, doesn't fucking matter at all. Nope. There's nothing fair in that entire year of our minds. There's nothing fair for John, that was no access,

Ken Hamilton 37:15
even if it was a sensible, no, it's,

Joli Hamilton 37:19
it's horrifying. Yeah, we make agreements that that need to hold our messy, ridiculous, grief filled joy filled lives. And so they need to be sufficiently flexible. And back to that word, we started with asymmetric, asymmetric, because like, in that particular year, you showed up, you brought an immense amount of attention, and care. And it was my brother who was dying. And there was an asymmetry in the feeling. When I think about an earlier time, a much lighter time that we were making an agreement. I went back to grad school, after we closed the gym. I went back to grad school, and you handled making money while I was getting my master's degree, and you just handled it and let me have that time. And we came to a very clear agreement about why that was, how that was gonna go. And yeah, again, they're not. Okay, they weren't about fair.

Ken Hamilton 38:29
I gotta say it. So as a physicist and an engineer, I know like, from all of my training and the math that I've done, which is a lot, if you have symmetry, fucking nothing's going to happen. If you have a system that is 100%, symmetric, nothing will happen there. Nothing will change, nothing will grow. If our universe had been had, like, okay, let's Big Bang, let's say that the Big Bang happened in a completely symmetric way. Nothing but we wouldn't be here, there would be nothing to happen. It is the asymmetries that actually provide the energy for things to happen. So yep, we could work really hard at making agreements that were as symmetric as we knew how to make them. And first of all, we would not succeed because we're both living creatures. And inherently we don't have access to that kind of symmetry. But we could try really hard. And in order to uphold them, we would have to make sure we stifled our growth stifled each other's growth who would have to sit still. So that's that's my little soapbox. Lecture on what symmetry looks like to a physicist. It's not a goal. I don't want symmetry because then I would not get the dynamic, exciting life that I want.

Joli Hamilton 39:54
Dude, I can't do any better than that. Mic drop. Thank you. Love you