Life's Questions Answered: Open Relationships

Join the "Life Questions Answered" conversation with Neuro Synthesist, Brinn Tomes & Dr Karolien Notebeart on "Open Relationships"

In this episode, Brinn & Karolien discuss the term "open relationships" by exploring the term and its effects on a relationship. In their episodes, Brinn & Karolien openly receive questions from their audiences which they discuss on a monthly podcast.

Please feel free to drop us your questions here on Insight timer and we'll try and include them in our session here.

Please note: This track may include some explicit language.

Transcript

Good to see you.

Yes.

Good to see you too.

And welcome again to both of us on our show episode of,

You know,

Life and life's questions answered.

And we've got one or two people joining us now so we can just wait maybe one or two minutes.

How have you been otherwise?

How's your week been?

Very good.

Well,

Unfortunately,

I was quite sick.

I have been quite sick.

I think you can still hear it.

This is not my natural voice,

But I feel much better.

I have a lot of energy again,

So much better.

Thanks a lot.

And yourself,

How are you?

Always styling and always raising a beautiful young human being like yourself,

My beautiful daughter.

So it's always exciting.

And for those who are joining us right now,

Thank you very much and welcome to all of you.

And we look forward to sharing this exciting chat.

It's quite a topic that was written into us that we're going to be obviously exploring from different angles today.

We'll just maybe wait one or two more minutes before we continue.

What do you think,

Karin?

Yes,

Indeed.

I think that's a great idea.

So for those who joined us already,

Again,

Also from my side,

A warm welcome.

Interesting topic we're looking at today.

We did receive quite a good message about this topic.

So I can imagine that I think a good few of you actually might be interested in having a look at how we can coach a topic as such the one that we are dealing with today.

Yeah,

That's great.

And I mean,

Just a repeat of what the message is and just give a little bit more opportunity for one or two other people to join.

And for those of you who are here already,

The question of today is,

And it was written in by a young lady said,

I never thought I would be in this situation.

But my husband wants an open sexual relationship.

It's not something I'm comfortable with.

But he's the love of my life.

And I will be willing to try.

Have you been through this?

Any advice?

So that's what the question is today.

Are you ready to tackle this one?

Absolutely.

I'm so ready to tackle this one.

All right,

Great.

Yes,

Indeed.

And just what we're waiting,

Is there any comments from the audience?

Funny enough that we can have a look at on the topic.

Any questions and stuff?

We're just going to wait another minute or so to see if there's or to wait for others who are wanting to be in the session as well.

Just give them a chance that they can finish up what they were doing.

But has anybody got any questions about the topic or has any comments that we can read before we get started?

I did notice indeed that when we posted this topic,

There were quite a few reactions on the topic itself.

I think it's a topic that triggers quite a few of us,

I would say.

So interesting to see.

I mean,

This is a trending topic.

I mean,

That's the interesting thing,

Right?

Is that from the dating world or not even the dating world in relationships and all those kind of things.

It's quite exciting.

Okay,

So I think the minute has now gone through and let's carry on.

Thank you for those who all joined on the time.

And we're very excited to have you here for another session of Life Questions Answered with Dr.

Karoli Noortenbert and myself.

And let's kick off the Instagram live and I'm going to re-ask the question.

Okay,

So the question from one of our audience members this week is,

I never thought I'd be in this situation,

But my husband wants an open sexual relationship.

It's not something I'm comfortable with,

But he's the love of my life and I'm willing to try.

Have you ever been through this?

Any advice?

So in a coaching session with somebody asking the question,

Karoli,

What would you advise them?

What would your process be?

What advice could you give this person who's written this awesome question there?

Indeed,

Yeah.

In fact,

When we received this question,

This reminded me of one other coaching topic that I dealt with just a few years back.

And in fact,

It's pretty much the same topic.

So this lady that I coached,

This was a lady in her late 40s,

Also still very young,

I would say.

And she was in a relationship or a marriage with her husband for 25 years.

And she also received a request at some point from her husband out of nowhere.

This is the way that she formulated it,

Out of nowhere.

She received a message from the husband saying,

You know,

He wants to start an open relationship,

An open sexual relationship.

In fact,

It went even so far that he had already selected the person that he wanted to sleep with,

A young lady,

15 years.

Well,

Yeah,

You laugh with it,

But for her,

It was quite her world all of a sudden standing upside down because she didn't see this coming at all.

And she came to me with this topic and she said like,

Okay,

This is the situation.

And I asked her,

Okay,

How do you feel about it?

And the first thing.

.

.

He'd already selected,

Sorry to interrupt you,

He'd already selected who he wanted to be with,

Right?

Indeed.

This made it of course a very urgent topic and also a very concrete topic.

And so she came to me and she explained what had happened and I asked her how she feels about it.

And she said,

I'm open to trying it because I don't want to lose my husband.

I mean,

If I receive an answer like that as a coach,

I mean,

Some kind of bells start ringing already because I'm kind of wondering,

And I think this is the first step in the coaching process is to get a better understanding of what really drives her.

Does she really want that?

What are the values,

The wishes that she has that are driving her to make this decision?

And so this is the first thing that we started to dig in.

And after some talking,

Some questions that we asked,

And as a coach,

We tried to apply the art of not knowing as much as possible,

Meaning that we don't go into coaching situation and we're going to judge and say,

This is what you should do because eventually the answer lies in the coaching.

And if you ask the right questions,

Those people will come themselves to what's important to them.

So this is how we started off.

And I started to ask questions and what came out very quickly is that there were in fact two major issues on the table.

The first issue was she's afraid to be alone.

She doesn't want to lose her husband,

Which is of course a very normal thing.

I would say to happen.

It's very natural.

Exactly.

You're in a marriage for such a long time.

It's a habit.

You wake up every day together.

You have established so many structures and systems where you're a part,

Where you're a couple,

You're a part of these systems as a couple,

You have two children.

So it's not such an easy thing just to think of that.

Okay.

If I don't want that,

I'm going to lose him.

I will end up on my own.

So this was really one side.

The other side was the entire side about,

Do I actually want to go into an open relationship?

That was different.

You know,

I think it was important to separate these two.

And when I looked at that and I asked her and I asked her,

You know,

Are you willing to try that?

Pretty much very quickly it came out that she said,

I'm actually willing to let him do his thing,

But I'm not going to do it myself because actually I don't want it at all.

I don't want to be with another man or sleep with another man.

So if it's really that important to him,

He's the love of my life kind of thing,

Which is that I will,

I will let him do his thing.

And I was like,

Okay,

This is already one thing that is clear.

First,

We have the fear of being alone and on the other side,

We have her feeling of,

I actually don't want to sleep with somebody else.

And in fact,

And again,

This is because she was afraid to end up alone.

She would actually allow him to do what he wanted.

And I think then it's time to dig in into the latter part,

Whether this is really something that you want.

So I mean,

So was there conflict or was it more like compromise?

What did you feel that is to take away from that?

Because there's both sides,

Right?

It's like if you have a friendship or a relationship and you are technically two fellow travelers in your lives,

The question is,

Is allowing the other person to do what they want,

Their own individualism,

If we can call it that,

And be supportive of that because that's what they want for themselves.

Is that compromising or is that sharing and allowing?

Or is it the other side of this,

Something hidden between that?

Where does that lie for you in terms of that conversation and in terms of this question?

Yeah,

It's a very good question.

After again,

Digging into that,

Do I want my husband to sleep with this other lady or not?

There,

It was very clear that in fact,

It was absolutely killing her.

She was so much crossing her own boundaries of self-respect.

And I think once you start crossing your own boundaries of self-respect and you start hurting yourself by agreeing to certain kind of things in your relationship and you are even violating your own values,

The values that you stand for in a relationship,

I believe that's the moment we don't talk about compromising anymore,

But this really is about a conflict,

An inner conflict.

This is an inner conflict that is not going away by just allowing it to be there and ignoring it.

So in fact,

One way that she could have gone is to say,

Listen,

I really don't want that.

This is absolutely killing me,

But he's the love of my life.

So I let him do it and I just deal with my own inner conflict.

I believe the way that at least was happening to her.

So we're talking about this particular case.

I think it was damaging herself so much that I don't think this was the right option for her to go for.

Well,

It will create regression,

Won't it?

Because the other person will then constantly question their own self-esteem.

Yeah,

Indeed.

Eventually,

This part of the entire coaching topic has a lot to do with self-respect.

And this is eventually what we worked on.

So we started to dig into what are the values you stand for?

And I suppose this is exactly the way you would talk about what is your truth?

What is it that you stand for?

So this is what we started to look into and I started to ask her questions about what is important in a relationship.

And many of the things were still fine,

I would say,

In her relationship,

But exactly this here had to do with the fact that she wanted to have an exclusive romantic relationship.

This was for her,

Took a little bit longer than just the few minutes we're talking here.

But eventually,

This is what came out for her in a very clear way.

She wanted to have an exclusive romantic relationship.

So this brought us actually to the next level.

Wow,

That's awesome.

And I mean,

And that next level,

How did she progress from there in terms of her own wants and needs?

And did she eventually come to those kind of conclusions?

I mean,

With a question like this that we're asked,

What is the basic starting point for somebody who has this type of question?

Where would you say to them,

Right,

Okay,

Write down on a piece of paper?

Or what would be the steps that you would use in your coaching practice to try and extract this?

Because obviously,

This person who wrote us this question is not here in our coaching.

Or she might be watching the show,

Of course,

And we hope so.

And if you're out there,

Thank you very much for the beautiful question.

That's a great topic.

And over to you,

Where would you start with it?

Yeah,

I find it's especially about asking the right questions,

About asking,

You know,

Again,

Why would you want to do this?

Why would you allow your husband to do that?

Okay,

Is the love of your life and then really reflecting on how do you feel about it?

What is really regardless of the fact that your husband is the love of your life,

That he's doing all that?

What effect does this have on you?

So tune in with yourself and how do you resonate with the entire situation?

And it's by really connecting to what you feel in these kind of situations that you get a clearer image of what is good for me and what is not good for me.

And once you start getting this feeling of the emotions that you have in these particular situations,

The way we did it is we started to look at,

Okay,

What are the values for you if it comes to relationships?

And eventually,

This is how she came to the clear idea for herself.

Having an exclusive relationship for me is really key.

It is important.

Anything else for me,

It just doesn't work because I really suffer from that.

And eventually,

And I thought this was quite brilliant,

And she said,

You know,

If I would express this to my husband saying I don't want that because it makes me suffer.

And if he said goes ahead,

In fact,

What I can conclude that he's not the love of my life because the love of my life is just not a person who will make me or who will see me suffering just to get his own needs met.

And this was for us a huge starting point to have a look at,

Okay,

These are your values.

What are we going to do with it?

And here,

It's not just very simply about you leave your husband or you stay with your husband.

There are so many other options in between.

And I think this is like the beauty of coaching to have a look at the options that are closest to the values that you have.

And so this was the starting point for us to work out a strategy on how she was going to deal with that.

Okay,

Awesome.

Yeah,

It's an exciting topic.

And for yourself,

I mean,

What is your,

May I ask you what your personal standpoint on something like this?

And,

You know,

Because it's an interesting topic.

Yeah,

Indeed.

Yeah.

Well,

Eventually what we came to do,

And this is,

I think,

Pretty much something that I would also have done in that respect.

I mean,

Again,

I think for everybody who's listening,

Whichever way you want to lead your relationship,

I think as long as this is what mutual consent,

Mutual respect,

If we're talking about adults,

I think,

You know,

You really pretty much do what you want and there is no judgment.

For me personally,

It's also something that I wish for is an exclusive relationship.

So I do understand in that respect what my coach is saying,

But even if I wouldn't understand them,

Still,

It doesn't matter.

Eventually it's about finding out what my coach wants.

But my standpoint was,

Indeed,

I could relate to what the lady was saying.

And eventually the strategy that she worked out,

Which I think was a very nice one,

Is that she,

Eventually she went to her husband and she made him an offer.

And she made an offer saying like,

Listen,

This is what I stand for.

We've been married for 25 years.

What I stand for is,

I mean,

The love that we have in the relationship,

The children that we have in the relationship,

Being faithful to each other,

Helping each other out,

Supporting each other out.

And she's formulating and saying,

This is everything that I can give you,

But I can't go beyond that.

I can't actually delete the idea of an exclusive relationship because it's just too important to me.

And this is what I stand for.

And this is what I have to offer.

If you want that,

I'm fully going to go for it together with you.

And if you don't want that,

That's also fine.

Then you just go your own way with that.

And this is what you did.

And you know,

Bryn,

I don't think there is anything more attractive than a person who knows what he or she is standing for,

Who can express it as a wish,

As an offer,

And then just offer it.

And if the offer is not taken,

Then you walk away.

This is how it is.

And this is what he did.

This is what she did eventually.

And I think this is also the way that I would have dealt with it.

It's good to know what you stand for and to express it,

To say,

These are my boundaries.

This is a line I cannot cross.

And yeah,

If you don't want to go along with me,

It's a bit like what you said.

If you don't want to walk together this life with me,

That's fine too.

Then you take a different route.

And then I take this route.

And then of course,

If you end up on your own,

You have other issues to deal with.

But I think eventually,

Every other option for her was so much better than going through with this open relationship where she was up,

She wasn't sleeping,

She was suffering from that.

No,

That's terrible.

Terrible things that happen.

Yeah.

But,

You know,

Brin,

Given that you've thrown the ball to me,

How do you stand to the topic itself?

It might be interesting to get a few views on this topic.

Well,

Having lived a lifestyle of drug sex and rock and roll,

I did have a partner who liked girls.

So I've experienced both sides of this.

And she liked girls and therefore we had an open relationship that we could have other women sexually.

And that's every guy's dream,

Right?

If you think about it,

It's the perfect concept.

But it's hard work.

And it's actually,

From my personal opinion,

And again,

For anybody out there,

I'm just sharing an experience for myself from what I've learned through that to give you a mirror,

A perspective to look at,

That you don't really see when you are wanting or desiring that side,

Because I wanted and desired that side.

And it was great because I got it,

Right?

But the problem is that when we are energetic beings that are constantly connecting with people,

And we connect on a more sort of vibration,

A spiritual level,

If you wanted to call it that.

And when you entangle with somebody,

Because we are male and female in terms of this context,

I'm not saying,

I obviously haven't experienced same sex relationships.

So therefore I can't comment on those.

But I can only comment on my experience in my relationship that I'm talking about in this experience.

But when you entwine with somebody in a sexual matter,

Whether it be a male,

Female,

Whatever it is,

Your own personal sexuality,

You are connecting with them on a much deeper level.

And when you start involving other people,

I found in my experience,

I found that the boundaries of that relationship get moved so,

So much that there is no going back.

And it becomes very gray what those boundaries are.

And what I found for myself in that particular time is that I was looking around and looking for the next person to involve in our relationship.

Because that was what we were able to do.

And what I found is that my focus then about our relationship started to drift because of the fact that I was open to the idea of always including somebody else.

The other thing is that when you are including somebody else in a relationship,

You are making it more complicated.

Because there's always a power struggle.

And the power struggle is,

You know,

It's something that comes down to our primal instincts,

Is that the female is looking for,

And again,

This is in a context of a primal context,

I'm not saying any gender equalities,

Any of those,

It's not that conversation.

We're talking about very simply the fact that there is a power struggle on traditional or sorry,

Traditional,

Our innate beginning primal instinct,

Which is that a female is looking to hunt for an alpha male and the alpha male is looking for a woman to bear his kids,

That kind of stuff.

It's very primal in that kind of sense.

But when you are involving it,

When you're having multiple partners,

It's becoming a power struggle because of the fact that it doesn't matter whether you're a male or female type relationship,

There's a power struggle to be that position with the other person.

And that power struggle exists and makes it very blurry,

It makes communication blurry,

You are constantly creating suffering.

Now,

Where I go about my whole concept in what I've learned through my life is that we all have the highest attainment in life,

Which is happiness.

But yet we say,

If I have this,

I'll be happy,

If I have that,

I'll be happy.

And we're always saying if,

If,

If,

And when I have this,

I'll be happy.

And when you get it,

The baseline changes and then you want something else to be happy,

Right?

And during this whole process,

It's simply that we come to a place of what we call suffering.

So we suffer the whole time and we're the greatest sufferers in the world,

Because we create our own suffering by complicating things the whole time.

And so very much so when you move this border,

I feel in my own personal capacity of having an open relationship before,

Is when you move that border,

You end up suffering because you're always wondering about,

Did I speak too much to this person when I should have been speaking to my,

My person?

And did I do this?

Did I do that?

And you're,

You're creating a whole lot of wasted time and wasted energy instead of just concentrating on what you have.

Now that if you find yourself in a place that you don't want to be with that person in that relationship anymore,

That's okay.

And every single person needs to choose what it is that's best for them on every single moment in every single day.

It's not a moment to moment thing.

And so while whether you've had a 25 year relationship together and the person decides that they want something different for themselves,

That's okay.

And it's okay not to want the same thing,

Because if that person decides they want something else and you want something else,

That's,

That's fantastic because each person must do what they want for themselves on their particular moment.

But ensuring that the wolf that you feed is a good wolf.

And what that means is that whatever you are feeling inside of you is that you're doing it with good,

Loving,

Caring intentions towards yourself and towards another,

Because then you are being true to yourself.

And truth to yourself is the guide that I usually teach people in my coaching programs and workshops is about feeling intuitively in your body what tells you if you're doing something right or wrong for you on every single moment.

And so it's like saying,

Well,

This is what I want.

I want to open relationship.

Okay.

What does it feel like?

Well,

Okay.

My responsibilities are to tell my other partner that that's what I want for myself,

But I can only be responsible for my feelings and what I want from that.

The other person must be responsible for their feelings and what they want in the concept.

And so you go and you discuss the concept of it and they say,

No,

They don't want that.

And that's okay,

Because that's their feeling that they're ones and they're responsible for their internal chemistry.

And so just bringing it back is that I personally felt that also having had an open relationship,

I mean,

You know,

We,

We have five goals in our relationship.

And so it was a lot of work.

I found it terribly confusing because there's constantly new relationships happening with every single person other than it just being a sexual relationship.

There's a constant ongoing bonding that's happening.

It's quite sacred in a way.

And I found that the boundaries got moved.

And when you move those boundaries,

I find it's very difficult to come back from having those boundaries while there's some people might do it.

I believe for myself that there's a trust that kind of deteriorates and there's always,

And I think this is the key point for me is that there's always one person who gets hurt.

And when one person gets hurt,

I think that's not the whole point of it.

And so therefore it's best to be truthful and honest about what each person wants in the relationship.

If one person wants to go the other way,

That's fine,

But you just need to be and have your truth,

What you want.

Don't do it for other people.

Just do what you want first and the other person will spill over from there.

That would be my sharing of my,

My mad strategy and experience.

Yeah,

But it's beautiful,

Bruno.

I think,

Yeah,

I think especially what you say about the entire do it for yourself and not for somebody else.

This is such an important thing.

This has so much to do with self-respect.

And if you don't have self-respect and you don't show self-respect,

People are not going to respect you.

And a person,

Again,

I'm repeating myself,

But I think it's important.

A person who really respects herself or himself and who knows what he or she stands for is an attractive person.

You will attract the right people.

You're going to attract the people with the right intentions.

And those people who love you,

They will love you for the person you are with the values that you have developed.

So it would be a shame to let your decision be driven by fear.

Let your decision be driven by love for yourself and also love for the other.

More in that direction rather than letting fear take the upper hand here,

Because fear eventually leads to not the good situations.

Yeah,

Exactly.

No,

Exactly.

I mean,

It's very well put that.

And it's been awesome sharing this fantastic comment or this question,

Sorry,

Sharing this fantastic question that somebody raised.

And to those who are watching,

We welcome any questions that we can discuss on our shows between,

Well,

Caroline and myself are coaches and mentors,

And we do different programs,

Which we do either as individuals,

And we also do them in group settings and things like that.

And we are openly always tackling things that are happening with you as a person,

As an individual,

Whether it be yourself or your family or things that are happening in your life.

And we welcome those questions.

So please keep them coming and keep challenging us on them because we will share our insights and our knowledge and our experience as coaches and in our personal capacity as well.

Yeah,

Indeed.

Great.

And also,

If you've just watched this video,

Because our live sessions are always posted on our channels,

If you've watched this video,

Let us know in the comments,

Like,

How do you feel about this topic?

It's a topic that more and more is discussed in society,

I suppose,

Also among friends,

At least for me,

I hear many different opinions on the topic.

I think it's very interesting.

So if you have an opinion on that,

Let us know in a respectful way,

Just write your opinion here as a comment on this video.

We are very interested to see what other people also have as an opinion on this interesting topic.

Well,

Thank you for another beautiful session,

Caroline.

Thank you so much,

Bryn.

An interesting topic.

I'm looking forward to next week's interesting topic.

Yeah,

Indeed.

I'm sure we have a long list to select from.

We select another interesting topic.

And again,

If you've just watched the video,

Let us know in the comments how you feel about the topic.

Perhaps it's also a good exercise to reflect for yourself on how you really feel about it.

Have a beautiful day to all.

Beautiful day.

Namaste.

Bye-bye.