From A Closed Cult To Open Love with @chillpolyamory
CW: emotional abuse, eating disorders
In this harrowing, vulnerable episode, Morgan of @chillpolyamory shares her experiences in a cult from the age of 15-21, how she left and unpacked all the internalised shame and guilt around her sexuality, and went on to embrace an open, polyamorous life. We discuss:
- the parallels between high-control groups and certain oppressive religions, and the harm that causes to one's psyche
- how content creation has enabled Morgan to deal with her trigger around public humiliation head-on
- how kink has been a healing way for Morgan to safely and temporarily give up control (and why a 24/7 dynamic is not for her!)
- a surprisingly positive parallel between cults and the polyamorous community?
and much more.
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transcribed by Jenna Cushing-Leubner
Leanne: Welcome to Happy Polydays, a series of intimate conversations about polyamory, sexuality, identity, and relationships, hosted by me – Leanne Yau of the Poly Philia blog.
Leanne: Hello everyone, and welcome to day 13 of the Happy Polydays series. Today I’m joined by Morgan, who runs @chillpolyamory, and we’re going to be talking about her story of moving from a closed cult to open love. And also, we’ll be talking about unpacking shame and shifting beliefs in polyamory. So, welcome Morgan.
Morgan: Hi!
Leanne: It’s so great to speak to you. I’ve followed your content for a really long time. So tell us a bit more about what you do on your page.
Morgan: Sure. My page is @chillpolyamory. I created it first as a way to be visible for a lot of people who don’t feel safe being publicly out. I know that visibility has always mattered to me. And over time, I’ve started sharing more about practical tools and tips for how to turn theory into practice in your day to day polyamorous life.
Leanne: Yeah. I love your content so much, because I think that “chill polyamory” encapsulates the vibe of your account. It’s always pretty patterns and flowers. You present everything in such a big sister kind of way. You know? I always feel so warm watching your videos. I’m a very big fan. So today we’re here to talk about your polyamory origin story. You have a very fascinating story, because you were in a cult at one point and that experience shaped how you practice polyamory today, right? So I want to ask you more about that. As I understand it, this is the first time you’ll be talking about this in a recorded session. So I’m very happy to let you take the reins on telling your story, if you’d like to start at the beginning and tell us how you got to where you are today.
2:00 min
Morgan: Sure. Well, since it is the first time I’m sharing about it, I hope that it is cohesive and not meandering. Essentially – so, I grew up in an environment that was very – you know, everybody tried their best. I love my parents, and it was also just a lot of me raising myself. There was a lot of being alone, and a lot of insecurity. And I think from day one I’ve had an anxiety disorder, but that wasn’t diagnosed until my late 20s. So there was always this tension and fear around interacting with anybody, socially or romantically. So, as I got to puberty, I started self-soothing and coping with bulimia. Just a lot of, “Let me get this anxiety out through purging, and then I’ll have a calm”. Now, obviously, that wasn’t conscious. I just was like, “I want to be skinnier”. I thought that’s what it was about. But underneath that was, “If I can just control my outward appearance, then I will be accepted. I will be loved. I will be included.” So there was always this hunger for inclusion and acceptance that never felt satiated. But, because the eating disorder was so violent and destructive, and I was really spiraling out of control in a short amount of time, my parents were like, “we need to do something. We need to send you somewhere”.
So they sent me to an out-patient therapeutic community that was essentially a rehab, but in the state of Florida in America, there’s not a whole lot of rules. It’s not a regulated industry. You can just say, “Oh, I have a ‘group home’. I have a home for ‘wayward teens’.” And just have a bunch of teens come and give you money, and it’s a really loose thing. And so I was moved into this community against my will. Very much not interested in it. And my parents were doing the loving thing, which was like, “we’re struggling. Can you please save our daughter?” you know? But, yeah. It did take me a lot of years after leaving that community to really unpack that, oh, this actually was a cult, and actually there is a lot of these around the state and around the nation. And they’re just legal enough to not be actionable about what you’re doing is immoral or wrong or harming people or financially abusive.
Leanne: I know you’ve talked about this. You’ve alluded to the fact that you were in a cult on Instagram and on TikTok. But what I didn’t know was that your parents sent you there, in an attempt to help you or save you or heal you or whatever. But first I want to know what the cult was like. How long were you in it, and what happened?
Morgan: I moved in with this woman – so it’s a therapeutically based cult. The leaders were a family of therapists. There was one head leader and her children were like – so there was very much from day one a hierarchy. But it seemed appropriate, because I was like, “Oh. They’re running this business. They’re in charge. They’re the people with degrees, right?” And then their longest term clients – people who were going to them for therapy for ten, twenty, thirty years – started these group homes to bring in children to work on drug addiction, sex addiction (even though I don’t really think a child can be a sex addict, but that’s a separate story), as well as eating disorders.
So by the time I got there in 2002, there were a couple hundred people that were just in a series of homes and the whole community was based around going to twelve step meetings, but twelve step meetings run by the community. So very insular. As well as group therapy every day. I was educated at the counselling center. So they were my educators. They were my employers. I was hired by someone in the community for my first few jobs. They were my surrogate parents. They were raising me. They controlled my money. They controlled when and who and where I could spend time. So yeah. In the beginning, being very desperate, that seemed appropriate. Like, ok, well, I’m a minor. So adults are in charge. I’m obviously not good at running my own life on my own terms. So, even though I went there against my will, the beginning part – the structure of it and people telling me what to do everywhere – felt comforting. Like, oh my god. I’m safe. Thank you for saving my life. You know? And I was restoring a relationship with food that was more balanced. And I had people who could hold me and love me, and it felt like I was home. And that is what is so appealing.
Nobody says, “I want to go and join a cult”. People are like, “I’m lonely. I’m desperate. I’m failing. Where do I go?” So many people who wind up finding themselves in these abusive relationships are people who just are having a need for community. And then narcissists will say, “Oh great. This could be profitable to me!”
[They laugh]
Morgan: So, yeah. The first couple of years, my parents started feeling like, “We’re losing her. She’s speaking weird. She’s dressing weird.” I started just assimilating so much, because I equated safety and camaraderie and guaranteed friendships with the aesthetics and the behaviour of this community. So it seeped in slowly. But I was speaking like a forty-year-old therapist. I was dressing with pearls and sweaters from Ann Taylor.
Leanne: Oh wow.
Morgan: I was a child that was assimilating into this unofficial uniform. An unofficial way of being in the world, which was incredibly focused on like – even though it was secular – a very Catholic kind of purity. No discussing sex. No discussing sexuality. That was “sickness”.
And the nature of it being all about recovery was that if you did anything that made anyone feel uncomfortable. If you said, “Oh hey – I’m sexually attracted to this,” if there was anything that was deviant in any way, you were therefore sick. You were headed to relapse. And the stakes would be artificially raised. I wanted to date a boy in high school, and people were like, you know if you go and try to talk to him, if you spend time with him against our wishes, you’ll be headed to relapse, you’ll be dead in the gutter.
Leanne: Oh my god.
Morgan: I was a sixteen-year-old child who had a crush! So I said – let me back up for just a second. They educated me for the first year. I was pulled out of school. But then my parents could not afford to have me stay there full time anymore. I went back to the high school where I was from. And that was its own brand of traumatic because high school sucks anyway. I started as this very bulimic girl attempting to look like Brittney Spears. And I came back as this very matronly conservative weirdo.
Leanne: Oh wow. Okay. That must have been a trip!
Morgan: It was not my favorite, you know? Actually, I still am in touch with a couple of sweethearts. Some girls I befriended in high school during that time, who, despite all of my weirdness, they were just good people. And so it’s been healing to realize, oh, some people could meet me during that very confusing point and still see me in there, you know?
It seeped in as I was getting older. You know, this micromanaging of my life started happening. It’s like, okay, great. Tell me what to eat. Tell me what not to do to avoid dying. Because clearly I was headed towards that, or at least hospitalization. But, then once I reached some stability, it was like, we don’t want - you’re never done. You’re never done with therapy. You're never done. So there was a lot of planning out who I should live with. They picked which roommates I should have. I had to live with people in the community once I moved out. They were very much saying, “You need to go to a college that’s in Florida. You can not leave us. You cannot leave this community. You won’t be safe. You’ll be dead in a gutter.” They had their ways of reminding you: without us, you will die.
Leanne: And you genuinely believed that, that you would - ?
Morgan: I genuinely believed that. Yeah. And it was reinforced. Because there would always be people who left and then would relapse with whatever their drug of choice was. And I was like, that would be me. I absolutely can’t relapse. So I can never leave these people. That was always the stakes. But when I finally left later, I was like, oh maybe they’re relapsing because they lost everbody they knew and loved overnight. Maybe they just don’t have a fucking support system anymore because you all shunned them, and they turned back to the only coping mechanism they knew.
Leanne: That all helped them and supported their narrative.
Morgan: Exactly. So it was like, oh, well if you don’t want to die, therefore you should go to the school we think you should go to, and study the thing we think you should, and date and talk to who we think you should. And labelling anyone who was outside of that insular, very puritanical, space – labelling them as “unhealthy” really fucked with me. Because I was like, that’s such a hard thing to argue against. Someone’s unhealthy for you – well you can’t… If you say someone’s a bad person, no. They’re a nice person. But if you say someone will be unhealthy for you, you can’t really… I don’t know. I found it really hard to fight back. “Well, you’ve been right about other things about my health. So maybe I should stop interacting with this person.” So, yeah. A lot of micromanaging of my life.
12:55 min
Morgan: Going back to the thing I said about sex addiction. I was labelled a “sex addict” at the age of sixteen. I had never had sex.
Leanne: What?!
Morgan: Yeah. Basically, I wanted to masturbate and I thought boys were cute. And they were like, “This is sick, this is wrong, this is bad. You need to start going to S.A.” So at the age of sixteen, my sex education – because Florida doesn’t really have great sex education in schools – my sex education was Sexaholics Anonymous. I was there [she laughs] hearing horror stories of people whose lives had fallen apart because they couldn’t stop looking at porn and stuff. So I got terrified! I got terrified of sex. And really desexualized myself. Wore giant baggy clothes, no makeup, anything I could do to remove any femininity, to not be attractive to the opposite sex. I was like: This is survival. I can not be attractive, otherwise, I will be dead in the gutter. That’s always where it went.
Leanne: Wow. Yeah. And this reminds me. Just before this, I was having a talk with @puritytopolyamory, where she was talking about purity culture and how there is a lot of correlation between purity culture and rape culture. And she talked about how the responsibility of sexuality is often put in women’s hands. Like what you said, about dressing yourself so you wouldn’t appear attractive, you wouldn’t tempt people. Kind of seeing your own form as inherently sexual in some way. And, you know, that fucks with you. I’m seeing a lot of parallels between her story and yours in that way. The way that you couldn’t just see your body as a body, and you were kind of thinking all kinds of things about, “If I’m attractive, then I’m going to die.”
Morgan: Yeah. I have so many close friends now today who grew up in some kind of evangelical or rigid religious space, because we just have that bond of, like, we know how hard it was to come back from that. Or to unlearn that. Because, yeah, shame was so in the air you breathe in those environments. Especially when your brain is literally forming around those environments. It’s like, oh, well, yeah. If I experience any harassment, or I experience any depression – any hardship is because of me.
Really, especially what high control groups – which can be a softer term for people who don’t feel like “cult” fits, high control groups or high coercion groups – they thrive on you not trusting your own intuition, not trusting yourself. You need to defer executive decisions to the leaders. So that is how that power structure, how that hierarchy stays intact. It’s making you – basically gaslighting you about your own experience. “Oh. No, no. You’re not actually attracted to someone. Your addiction is trying to kill you.” It’s very sneaky. It’s coming out as an attraction. But really, you’re not safe.
Leanne: So you can’t trust your own impulses. You can’t trust your own thoughts. And just any kind of expression of attraction or desire is immediately pathologized.
Morgan: Absolutely. That’s a really succinct way to say it. It’s absolutely pathologized. And I don’t think it’s just women at all. I think there is a lot of policing of femme bodies. But there’s also so much shame that goes towards men or masculine people of like, “You are wrong and sick for your desires,” or, “If you are with a woman or a femme person who has been with other people, therefore you are with a low-value person, which makes you a low-value person”. It hurts everybody. It is just universally harmful. I don’t know what value comes from this, other than the people at the top maintaining control over you. I’ve never spoken to someone who is like, “I’m actually glad I was taught these shameful things”. [laughs]
Within the community I was in, there was healthy people or less healthy people. Your rights within the community would go up the closer you were to following all of the rigid rules you were. So, the woman that I lived with, I love her. I think I’ll always love her. And she was so in the inner circle of the leader of the group. Her husband proposed to her in a therapy session with that woman. It was an infatuation of, like, this is the highest form of romance is to get closer to each other with this woman in our space with us.
There were structural ways that being their version of healthy would reward you. You wouldn’t be confronted so much. You wouldn’t struggle so much. People would be kind to you. They would invite you to things. In the group therapy format, there was so much public humiliation and sort of crowd control directed by the therapist. If you were deviating in any sort of way…
One of my roommates wore pink with green. Colors that kind of clashed. The therapist confronted her on it. Said she was seeking attention. She was acting out in a deviant way. And then instructed all of her friends to tell her everything she’s doing wrong, basically. “Why don’t you share your feedback with her about other ways she can improve?” But it was just a group attack session because she wore pink and green with each other. That’s just an example of how intense the attacking of any deviance would be. Like, let’s cut it off at the root. You know? Let’s absolutely make you doubt your own choices around fashion. Therefore, you’ll absolutely doubt your choices around who and where and what you do with your time and your personal life.
19:35 min
Morgan: So there was such a shaming of any kind of pleasure. To the point where I wasn’t allowed to have sugar or flour. It’s an old – called “grey sheet” for Overeaters Anonymous – old food plan from the seventies that was designed in a very militaristic way and applied to everybody. Now, O.A., they don’t really use that grey sheet anymore. It was way too militant. But this group incorporated this food plan for people who can’t stop eating, or have a compulsive relationship to eating, to anorexics and bulimics. And that’s the worst thing you can do. Because cutting out foods and controlling our foods in a really moral way – like sugar is a “bad food” quote unquote, that’s actually part of our addiction. So I actually loved it. I was like, “Oh great, so I can cut out all of these foods. I can reduce all of the things that I’m eating!” And it was just a non-nuanced understanding of how to even help me, even though they claimed to know about eating disorders. I’ve been to treatments since then and they’ve been like, “That’s shocking that they would do this. That’s just the worst thing you could do. “
Leanne: Yeah, it’s just a different manifestation of the same stuff internally, you know? The anxieties and the issues – the internal thoughts are still the same. They’re just manifesting in different ways. Overeating or undereating – it’s all the same. They’re all kind of eating disorders.
Morgan: Absolutely. Your relationship to food is – a sick relationship to food is a relationship with control. It’s all kind of a relationship with emotions that manifests in a self-harming way with food. And that can run the spectrum. But, specifically, being very militant with my diet was part of my sickness. And that was perpetuated in this community.
Leanne: I actually wanted to touch on what you’re saying about the group therapy and the group shaming and all that kind of stuff. It sounds like there was a lot of community-enforced shaming and kind of humiliation that occurred in this community. I mean, I’m kind of thinking – as a content creator – I have a big platform. I constantly have eyes on me. And that is sometimes anxiety inducing. But with your background – particularly when you’re in this kind of community, where you’re being watched, and it was a high control group – I wonder how that’s shaped your experiences as a content creator and as a person in general.
22:07 min
Morgan: Yeah. I was incredibly private with my personal life in social media for most of my adult life, because of that incredible fear and trauma response of a pile-on. I would see other people do something that the community at large thought, “oh, well that’s the wrong way to speak” or “that’s the wrong thing to do”. And then the casting out of public shaming, basically. I have so much trauma around public shaming. So I only really dipped into becoming a public figure when I was like, oh, well this could be a way to be of service. My desire to be helpful to other people who were struggling outweighed the fear of that kind of treatment. But, yeah, I think I’ve gotten a thicker skin. It’s actually been kind of healing to be so visible and let people disagree with me, and not take that as gospel, of “I’m therefore a bad person”. There’s been a little trial by fire with that. I’ve absolutely had physiological trauma responses to the first time I really posted a video on TikTok. I had so many people on the wrong side of TikTok commenting about how sick and wrong and bad I am, and actually I’m abusive, or actually I’m an abuse victim. And that shit runs old, of just “Actually, you think you’re happy, but you’re not. You’re sick. And let me tell you why”. Armchair diagnosing me and stuff. I started dry heaving and getting dizzy and just having fight or flight responses. And it just took me right back to some really old shit with feeling safe and then being blind-sided by a public pile-on. I’m still sensitive to that. And also not really as fearful. Because I’ve survived it so many times. So both are true.
Leanne: Yeah, for sure. You know, I’ve experienced pile-ons as well, but obviously I don’t have the trauma response. But I still think it’s a very distressing experience. So I can’t imagine with that kind of history you have what it must be like for you.
So, how long were you in this cult? And what motivated you to leave? Or what was the point where you suddenly were like, “Wait. Something’s off”?
24:43 min
Morgan: I was there from the age of 15 to 21. In short, what motivated me to leave was the drive to have sex.
Leanne: [laughs] Okay!
Morgan: When I was eighteen– so a few years before I left – I went on a vacation with my family of origin to the other side of the world. And physically being out of that community just for a couple of weeks opened my eyes a little bit. You’ll see this from a lot of evangelical people who go to college outside of their hometown, and they’re like, “Oh wow. You can live differently.” Or, “These people who were supposed to be really sick and bad for me are actually kind of cool?” You get a taste of questioning the narratives that you’ve always been fed, right? So I think that started - that planted a seed when I was eighteen. But I was so fearful of dying that it took a while for that to really germinate. But an important thing that happened on that vacation is that I masturbated for the first time since I had entered the community. And I felt so bad about it, because masturbation was a “relapse” and I would have to pick up a white chip in S.A. So it was very high stakes for [laughs] a teenager to touch herself.
So, yeah. I had a lot of shame around that. I didn’t tell anybody when I returned. And I think that also the keeping of that secret, but then realizing I’m actually fine? The world didn’t end? Doing the worst possible thing that they told you that you should never do, but actually being fine and it’s not a huge deal? That experience was really impactful.
So there was a pathway within the community to date somebody that was counselor approved. I had this crush on this boy who was in the community as well. But the genders – very binary – were separated. I wasn’t allowed to spend time with guys unless it was a chaperoned environment. So I brought it up for probably about six months in a group, a women-only chat, saying, “Hey. I’m really attracted to this person. I’d like to do this the right way. How should I do that?” And I kept bringing it up, and they were like, “No no. Now’s not the time.“ Or, “it’s not good for that person right now.” Or, “It’s not good for you right now.”
And I got very frustrated. I was like, “I’m trying to do this the way y’all are telling me I should do it. Even if it’s just let me talk to him in therapy with you. Let me go on a chaperoned date. The path usually was: you go on several chaperoned group dates. Then you talk about wanting to hold hands. Then you talk about a desire to kiss. And when your therapist thinks you’re ready, then you can do that. So it’ll take months or even years before you can actually have sex with somebody in a way that isn’t shamed publicly.
Leanne: Wow. Every step of the way, you have to even talk about it?
Morgan: Every step of the way.
Leanne: Yeah. Ok.
Morgan: And you need to have the therapist approve it, and tell you that you’re ready. And don’t try any kinky stuff! Because that’s sick, you know!
[They laugh]
Leanne: Knowing who you are today, that’s so funny!
[They laugh]
Morgan: Yeah. So, yeah. So I went to college, turning twenty-one, and saw so many people who I thought were doing so much worse than me health wise – people who were using drugs, people who were active in an eating disorder – who got to have sex! And I was like, “This isn’t fair!” As a repressed kid, I was like, ”This isn’t – I’m doing ok, you guys! And you’re telling me that I’m going to die if I have sex, but these people aren’t dying?” It just was…
Leanne: The math ain’t mathing!
Morgan: It was so upsetting! The math ain’t mathing! This is really frustrating to me! So I hit a point where I found somebody attractive in one of my classes, and I was like, fuck this. I’m out. I want to go have sex. Thank god for sex drive, because I would have absolutely grown into this sort of complacent mold of a person that they wanted me to be and never have strived to find out who I really am.
So I left, but then immediately got terrified and tried to come back a couple of months later. I was like, “Please let me come back. I don’t know what I’m doing out here. I don’t know how to be a person without you.” And the boy within the community that I had had a crush on and tried to talk to for months…one of my roommates was going on a group date with him. And I was like, “Okay, but I know that takes months to do.” So again – the math ain’t mathing. You’ve been doing this behind my back. This is fucked, because the therapist I was trusting to put me on this path towards doing this the right way, there were secretly machinations of, “We actually think she would be a better fit for him”. But no communicating of that.
Leanne: Oh.
Morgan: The fact that they were like, “Oh, by the way, these two people are going on a group date together.” I’m like, the fuck? Because I’d been trying to do that for awhile. So it just – it hit me that this is how it’s always been. They have an agenda for who should date who. You’re not attracted to somebody, but we think you should date them. You go out on a date with them now. You are? We don’t think you should – you are attracted to somebody that we say no, you know? And I got so infuriated at just realizing that I would never be able to do it the “right” way. I would never have agency in my own life in this community to pursue what I wanted – even in the tiniest way. So I bolted again. I just left. And I think what I’m still digesting is, not only did I think I was going to die, but everybody I loved and I had lived with and all of my best friends, all of my mentors, all of my surrogate family, they thought I was going to die, too. And they stopped talking to me. So that still hits me – of just, wow. [She starts crying] Y’all were really going to let me die. And I really thought dying was better than staying here. Ooff. That still hits. [She sniffles]
Leanne: Yeah.
Morgan: But, yeah. I’m still grateful for that turning point. It still took me about a year to finally have sex with somebody, because I was terrified. And it took me two or three years to try alcohol, because I was terrified.
Leanne: Wow.
Morgan: [laughs] And I left in 2007, so to this day I still check in with partners. I’m like, “Y’all don’t think I’m an alcoholic, right? I had two drinks. That’s not a problem, right?”
Leanne: Wow.
Morgan: I’m still unlearning. Like, no. Engaging in pleasure, or moderate vices? You’re not going to die from that.
Leanne: Yeah. You’re not going to end up in the gutter. [laughs]
Morgan: So, learning that shit. Whatever purity culture you’re in, the aesthetics shift, but the mood and the vibe is always the same of: you can’t trust yourself. Any pleasure is wrong and bad. If you deviate from these seemingly arbitrary rules we’ve provided, you’ll have nothing and no one. And then for me it became a self-fulfilling prophesy. I had nothing and no one. Overnight I was abandoned by 200 people. I was leaving – I was fleeing an abusive relationship with 200 people. But then I also was alone. So I did wind up relapsing with my eating disorder – again, as my only coping mechanism. I begged my parents to send me to a different rehab a couple years after that. And they thankfully gathered all the resources to be able to try to make me do that, so I’m very lucky in that respect. And I still think that there’s value in 12-step meetings. And if I’m struggling, I’ll drop in on one, because luckily that community exposed me to some really helpful tools.
So it’s this mixed bag of, I don’t think any controlling or rigid or puritanical environment, I don’t think it’s all bad. I think, take what’s helpful and leave the rest, and discovering the lines there is a long process that I continue to unpack. But, yeah. I think it’s helpful to not demonize any particular environment. Because then, if you do, the minute you have a nice experience in these environments, or you meet a nice person, you’re like, “Oh, well. They’re not demons, therefore everything they’re saying is bad about this environment, that’s all false, too”. It’s like, no. People are people. There will be love. There will be warmth and acceptance. And in that kind of space, there will be control. There will be invalidation. A couple of people tried to come out as trans when they were teenagers, and were completely rejected for that. Queerness was completely made to be invisible and invalid and sick and wrong. And that absolutely happens in fundamentalist religious spaces as well. So when I talk to people who have left high control communities, and they’re like, “Oh, but I really loved that person, or this mentor was actuallyreally great”. I’m actually like, “That’s valid, too.” You can have loving experiences and it was abusive. Both can be true.
34:10 min
Leanne: Yeah. Yeah. That’s really important to internalize. There’s so much nuance with these things. People often say you can love your parents and hate your parents at the same time. You can think back to a bad relationship that you had and think of the good times, and they can all kind of coexist. It doesn’t have to be black and white, good and bad.
I apply this to breakups. I think there’s this kind of weird dichotomy where with past relationships, we either see it as it was this abusive, no good situation, or they were the one who got away. And there’s no in between, right? So we kind of fall into this trap with the relationships that we demonize, some people might hate themselves for staying in that relationship for so long, going, “Why didn’t I realize sooner? Why didn’t I just get out of that community sooner?” Forgetting that there were good parts of that relationship that motivated them to stay for as long as they did. And then equally, for the ones where you glorify and pedestalize the relationship with, “Oh the “one that got away”” and “I fucked up,” you know? Then you forget that there were bad parts to the relationship. There’s a reason why you left. There’s a reason why you’re not compatible and not together anymore. Obviously not the same thing, but then what you’re saying kind of echoes my personal philosophy about processing past relationships and processing breakups. Because I’m very, very careful not to compartmentalize my exes into one box or another. And to kind of see them holistically, as a whole kind of mix of good and bad. And I imagine that’s kind of how you view that community you were in. I’m sure there were parts of it – people you really bonded to, people you treasured your connections with – and, it was also very harmful.
Morgan: Yeah. And I think when we can accept that about other people, we can also accept that about ourselves. I didn’t love what I did that one time. And also, I can have compassion, you know? Like I’m not a piece of shit. I’m not a terrible person. When we can let go of that binary all or nothing thought process, we can bring so much more nuance, but also so much more compassion to every situation that we wish went better. You know? We don’t have to ruin our day, or ruin our lives, or ruin our relationship. Because there is also room for improvement.
Leanne: Absolutely.
Morgan: A lot of times I’ll talk to people, and they’ll be like, “Why am I so controlling? I feel like I’m fucking up this relationship. I wish I wasn’t so needy”. And I’m like, well, you might have a need. You might be feeling fear. It sounds like a survival skill that maybe served you at one point, you know? To try and get control of this situation, maybe growing up, this was the way you coped. And that’s valid, and now it’s just not serving you in this new context. And both can be true, you know? It’s just, yeah. Have compassion for the duality of all things.
37:10 min
Leanne: So let’s get to polyamory. So did you know that polyamory was a thing prior to joining this community? And what made you gravitate towards polyamory as a practice after this experience?
Morgan: I learned about polyamory in Sexaholics Anonymous -
Leanne: Oh!
Morgan: - and it was addiction. Just point blank, period. So, feared it. Judged it. And also, monogamy – or attempts at monogamy – which were all formed after I left, because I hadn’t dated really prior to that – they were always filled with anxiety and stress, and I either thought “I’m going to get bored and cheat”, or “They’re going to cheat on me.” Cheating was just always present in my mind of like, “This is not possible for me to stay with one person forever.” So I felt really fatalistic that this wouldn’t be sustainable ever. So when in adulthood I was re-exposed to the idea, it was with this community that was really cool and communicative, and I saw it being demonstrably different than addiction. I saw it being demonstrably attractive. And in a strange way, attractive in the same way that the community I was in was attractive, which was: you all have each others’ backs, and you have a variety of role models, and you have a variety of ways to get your needs met. You’re not putting all your eggs in one basket. That’s kind of why I liked staying in a cult for as long as I was. I always had fifteen people to call at any given moment. So that kind of community sense, but without the hierarchy – [she laughs] at least in how I practice it – that was really attractive. So I was terrified going into it. I started practicing it in 2012. I clung to a monogamish aesthetic of like, “No. I need to have a primary.” I didn’t yet know that hierarchy was part of the sickness for me. And I say for me. Yeah. There was a long process of unlearning through learning in the field of what works and what doesn’t work in practice, and discovering that, yeah, this is the most sustainable way for me to love. And unlearning the shame that came with assuming I was being in sex addiction. My mom accused me of that not that long ago. She was like, “Oh, you’re clearly a sex addict.” She likes to call me that every other day. I say that specifically because when people are unlearning shame, it’s not like you’re just leaving behind the people who taught you those things. You might actively be continuously engaging with people who will reinforce that idea, and it is still possible to unlearn and not internalize those false messages.
Leanne: Yeah. And to set boundaries, you know? The whole point of having boundaries is having to enforce them. And it’s the enforcing that can be scary, because you have to stand up for yourself and face up against people who are going to tell you no, or that they’re disappointed in you.
Morgan: Yeah. It continues to be an unlearning process. I’m working with a therapist. I finally had the willingness to go see another therapist like ten years later.
Leanne: Oh god. Wow.
Morgan: [laughs] Yeah. It was a sort of catch-22. Like, I need therapy to help with all these therapists.
[They laugh]
Leanne: Oh my god!
Morgan: But I found a therapist who specializes in cult recovery and a therapist who’s very anti-capitalist and anti-hierarchy. I finally found a right match of a person who gets it. And it has been incredibly healing to actually have a therapist tell me and confirm: you’re doing great. Sometimes we’ll just talk for hours where all she’s doing is validating my own ideas and my own choices. That is so healing. That is so healing.
Leanne: Yeah. So what attracted you to polyamory was the freedom and autonomy and the lack of hierarchy, which was the “sickness”, as you say, when you were in the cult. But I also find it very interesting that the community aspects of it, you drew parallels to when you were in the cult. That’s fascinating to me. Because I would have thought it would be one of those things where you went in the complete opposite direction of what you experienced. But actually, there were similarities. They just weren’t harmful similarities.
Morgan: Yeah, I mean, I was in a hyper independent mode for a long time as a trauma response. Like, “Oh. Anybody could leave me at any time. Trust no one. Rely on no one.” That’s a really common takeaway for people who experience that kind of a thing. So part of the healing is adding more nuance of, like, no. Community actually is nice. Interdependence with the right people is nice and fulfilling.
Leanne: Yes.
Morgan: And so softening and coming away from that hyper independence was – that took time. But it was really an important part of my healing, too.
42:34 min
Leanne: So apart from deconstructing hierarchy in your relationships, I want to hear more about what were your early struggles with polyamory? Because you not only had to unlearn a shit ton of mononormativity, but also all the stuff that you’d learned in the cult around sexuality and shame and all that kind of stuff. How did you make that shift? And what struggles did you come across early on, when you started putting polyamory into practice?
Morgan: Paying attention to my somatic responses was really important. I developed a nausea response to anything that I feared. I still kind of have that. It’s not as intense, but when a partner was kinky, I both desired exploring that and felt like I was going to throw up. So it was really helpful to be like, “What is happening in my body right now? Because my brain is glitching out. It’s hungry and terrified, but what’s happening?” And just grounding and engaging with cognitive behavioral therapy practices, with the support of a therapist, that can really make me feel exploratory and curious, rather than outright running towards something or running away from it. Just sitting in that discomfort and having the willingness to sit in that discomfort of, “I don’t know. I don’t know what I should do next.” That was a great starting point of taking in information, non-judgmentally observing all of the reactions, however contradictory they might be. I think that’s a big part of unlearning shame, is just holding space to be curious without condemnation.
Leanne: I think another thing – and correct me if I’m wrong – because whenever I have clients speaking to me in peer support sessions, something that comes up often is the fear of uncertainty. Because if you’re pursuing an unconventional relationship style, you’re doing everything from scratch and that feel very destabilizing. I’m just thinking – particularly for you, coming from such a high control environment and having other people make decisions for you – while you didn’t have any agency, I imagine there must have been comfort in knowing exactly what you were “supposed” to do. So I wonder, moving into a relationship style where you had to make all your own decisions, and the only certainty was uncertainty, how did you process that? And what was that like?
45:10 min
Morgan: Yeah, I think it’s why a lot of people stay in cults, or high control environments. Because it is so comforting. It’s why people are drawn to fascism. “Please. Give me an easy answer, and tell me exactly what to do!”
[They laugh]
Morgan: You know? That’s so soothing. Let me just be blissfully sleepwalking through my life. I think I still explore that being a submissive in kink spaces. Having a space where I can just not be in charge is nice. So that’s turned out to be a more sustainable and compartmentalized way – I could never do a 24/7 dynamic. I’m like, been there, done that!
[They laugh]
Morgan: But yeah, just having an outlet for that, I think that is part of the human experience. We all just want to relax and not think sometimes. But yeah, processing this freefall of like, “Oh! There’s no roadmap at all for this!” That is scary. But I think because there was no roadmap for just being a person outside of that community, I felt a sense of familiarity, of like, “Well, I’ve done this before.” You can kind of rely on your own “Well, I’ve survived something that’s harder than this, and I figured it out”. So in a way, exploring polyamory and designing relationships helped me trust myself more, because I was like, “Well, I haven’t died in the gutter yet. [Leanne laughs] So, why the hell not? You know? What do I actually have to lose?”
So I think – while I wouldn’t wish my experience on anyone – it did kind of foster a resilience in me that has made this uncertainty of non-monogamy feel doable, feel like: “We’ll figure it out. I won’t be dead by morning.” That was always kind of grounding. Let’s bring the stakes right-sized. Maybe I’ll make a mistake. Maybe someone will break my heart. I’m going to keep on living. So let’s go and try it. Why not.
47:37 min
Leanne: Yeah. So for the last couple minutes of this, I know that you, Morgan, collated some questions from your followers. We picked out the most interesting ones, and they all have to do with processing shame – which, obviously, is your forte! So we can go through some of those now.
Morgan: Sure!
Leanne: So the first one is: “How do you handle the shame of relationships ending, or evolving, or not feeling poly enough?”
Morgan: Yeah, wow. I think it’s really important to check the way that we frame situations. I don’t think it’s possible to be “poly enough” or “queer enough”. There’s no gate-keeper saying: “Yes. You can now enter”. If you have the capacity to love more than one person concurrently, you’re polyamorous. That’s great! Even if you only ever date in straight-presenting relationships, but you’re attracted to other genders. You’re queer. Great! So, to be gentle with ourselves. Again. Avoiding the binary all or nothing. “Well, this dynamic is struggling, therefore I shouldn’t be there.” No. It’s just struggling. So when we feel ashamed that relationships end, they evolve outside of what we anticipated, I find value in exploring that verbally with trusted, unbiased, third parties. Talking to other polyamorous people who we’re not dating. And having that experience validated. Because there will be so many monogamous people we encounter who will be like “Oop. Y’all broke up. Therefore polyamory doesn’t work!”
Leanne: Yeah. Exactly.
Morgan: You know, it’s like, maybe they need it to not be functional, because they don’t want to explore their own capacity for multiplicitous love. You know, just to talk to other community members, and to not feel alone. Because relationships end or change for a myriad of valid reasons.
Leanne: And monogamous people also break up all the time, and they don’t feel not “mono enough”. I think polyamory, some people frame it as a practice. But as you said, you have the capacity or desire, right? Even if you have one partner, or even if you have no partners. It’s about the intentionality, right? As long as that’s your approach, you believe in the abundance of love, and the idea that you can love multiple people concurrently, you are “poly enough”. We don’t have to have multiple relationships to prove a point to people.
And I think some people can very easily fall into this trap, where – because polyamory is so pathologized, and we get so much judgment and negative comments on the daily basis from the mainstream – a lot of people want to prove a point, and prove people wrong. So then they are very outwardly presenting with their multiple relationships, and that ends up being quite detrimental if those relationships end up being unhealthy or not serving them in some way. You feel an urge to hide it, because you don’t want to prove your haters right. I covered this with Claire when we talked about polyamory and abuse, and how this desperation to prove people wrong actually does disservice to the community, because then we brush issues under the carpet. We brush toxic behavior and abuse under the carpet, because we’re so desperate to prove a point that polyamory can work. But the reality is that relationships are messy. And non-monogamous relationships are no different.
So I think that what you said is very, very true. I think that relationships end when they need to end, and there’s no shame in that. And also, there’s no shame in a breakup. Sometimes a dynamic, if that’s kind of what best serves the two of you – it is what it is. I think you’d be doing even more of a disservice to yourself by staying in a relationship just for the sake of it – again, to prove a point. Because what point are you proving? Who are you proving it to?
51:42 min
Leanne: I think we have time for one more. “Any thoughts on feeling ashamed or guilty because you fear you are just chasing love and affection?”
Morgan: I often felt that way. I was like, well, I’m just a lonely, sad, piece of shit who just can’t -
Leanne: Get enough.
Morgan: - yeah. Can’t get enough. Or I fear commitment. I just always want to be fed. Again, checking the narrative that you’re accepting as truth. Just because you desire love, like, you’re a human being. We’re social creatures. We want camaraderie. We want affection. That’s natural. That’s not wrong. And anyone who might have told you it was wrong, maybe investigate: Who gave me this idea that it was wrong to have needs, or to have wants? Because when we accept it as truth of, like, oh I’m just needy, I’m just insatiable. We have to challenge those narratives. Because that’s a judgement. That’s not a fact. It’s an emotion. It’s a condemning thought that might not be rooted in reality, but be rooted in some sort of shaming narrative that somebody gave us a long time ago.
So, I guess whenever I have those self-condemning thoughts, I inquire further. Like, huh. Approach with curiosity. Where’d this come from? When did it start? Would someone else think that about me? Let me ask them actually, and be vulnerable, and say, “do you judge me for this?” Checking our notes. One of the most empowering things to do is to speak back to our internal critique, and be like, “What the fuck are you talking about?” You know? And not associate it as inherently ourselves, inherently our voice, inherently true. No. This narrative might have been given to me. Which means it can be taken away. It might have been learned, which means it can be unlearned. I think it’s valid to want all the love in the world, because you’re a person. That’s great! Sounds lovely!
Leanne: Yeah. And I think from a practical perspective, if someone really is worried that they are kind of just constantly chasing the high of love and affection – because there is a certain type of person that is constantly kind of chasing NRE and is just repetitively just only staying in relationships for as long as they’re passionate and then jumping ship – if you’re worried about that, I would take stock by having a look at: Are you hurting anyone? Are you hurting yourself? Is what you’re doing serving your overarching goals? And also, correct me if I’m wrong, but an addiction is only an addiction if it starts really negatively impacting other areas of your life. It’s one thing to chase love, affection, sex, whatever. But if it starts getting to a point where it’s disrupting your work, or your sleep, or your eating habits, or whatever, then that’s where it starts being perhaps a little bit unhealthy. That’s my personal take on it anyway.
Morgan: Absolutely. I think that’s a helpful thing to point out, is that if you’re pursuing affection and love to your own detriment, or to the detriment of others, and that is tangible – you can point to harm caused – then inquire further still. But maybe with a professional, if they’re accessible to you. What am I running away from? What am I hoping this will fix? Those are helpful questions, because, you know, desiring love is great. Wanting a lover to fix us, or fix something, is not sustainable, in my experience. So, yeah. Checking motivations is always helpful, I think.
Leanne: Yeah. Well, this has been such an amazing chat, Morgan. And thank you so much for being so vulnerable with me. I imagine it must have been difficult to tell this story. So, where can people find you and your wonderful work on social media?
Morgan: Thank you so much! Yes, this was scary to talk about, but I trust you and I love everything you do. So, yeah. It was a good space to talk about it.
I can be found on Instagram and TikTok at @chillpolyamory. I post weekly resources and offer pen pals on patreon.com/chillpolyamory. And I also chat with people for peer support – big sister vibes – on chillpolyamory.com. You can book a chat with me there.
Leanne: Thank you so much for your work, Morgan, and I hope to collaborate with you more in the future. Thank you!
Morgan: Thank you!
Leanne: Thank you for listening to this episode of the Happy Polydays series. If you’d like to support my work, consider becoming a Patreon subscriber at patreon.com/polyphiliablog. You can also follow me at @polyphiliablog on Instagram, Tiktok, Facebook, and Twitter, buy my polyamory merch at polyphiliashop.redbubble.com, or book a peer support session with me on my website polyphilia.blog. Until next time!
