Today we're tackling a heavy topic: denial. Most of us have dealt with this at one point or another, especially when it comes to relationships, whether it's denial that that relationship is over or whether or not someone is attracted to you. We'll be doing a deep dive into why we often fall into denial, whether or not denial can be a helpful force in our lives, and how to know if you're in denial.

The image that I had in my head was, what is on the dark side of the moon of denial?

Right?

What is the thing that denial is trying to cover up? And the closest answer I could come up with, a thing that seems to be a through line through so many of these, is the experience of despair. I think that to be rejected, to be broken up with, to experience a loss, to experience friction or conflict, that there's a certain amount of despair that could be something that could suck us in. I think ultimately that's the thing that we're all trying to avoid whenever we slip into denial is because having to be in despair is scary and really uncomfortable. And I think many of us have a fear that if I slip into despair about something, I won't be able to get out of that despair, and it's just going to suck forever. And so denial protects us.

Welcome to the Multiamory Podcast. I'm Jase.

I'm Emily.

And I'm Dedeker.

We believe in looking to the future of relationships, not maintaining the status quo of the past.

Whether you're monogamous, polyamorous, swinging, casually dating, or if you just do relationships differently, we see you and we're here for you.

On this episode of the Multiamory Podcast, we're talking about denial. Many of us have been in a familiar dance with denial. Maybe you just got out of a bad relationship, you're dealing with the grief and the pain, and as you're healing, you start to look back and process what happened. You may have these thoughts come up like, How did I not see this coming? or Why didn't I leave earlier? or Why didn't I say something sooner? or Why was I in denial about what was happening in that relationship for so long? Today we're going to dive into why we fall into denial, look at whether denial can ever be helpful, why we might do it, and also how to know if you're in denial about something and how to snap out of it if that's appropriate. This topic can get very heavy, so one of our goals for this episode is to approach it from a more neutral sense, not when you're acutely dealing with that pain, but from this lens of looking back and saying, what can I learn from those experiences where I've experienced denial and what can we learn from those?

Have the two of you ever asked yourselves such questions after the end of a relationship? Have you ever looked back and realized that you've maybe were in denial about something big for a long time?

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

Do you share?

Oh, my gosh.

I can think of one example that's just, I was in denial that this person just wasn't that into me, but they weren't being super clear about it. But looking back, I'm like, no, but that should have been clear. They just weren't feeling it. And so I would have been better off just realizing that.

Yeah. What were the things that you saw in hindsight that you think you weren't seeing at the time or weren't acknowledging at the time?

I think, well, it's hard because looking back, we can then apply causality to things that we have more information. But like the thing of always being a little bit hard to pin down scheduling-wise, there's always that sort of, well, maybe let me see. I don't know if I'll be available. And some people just are a little wishy-washy even if they are into you, so maybe that isn't fair to say I should have noticed that. But it was just little stuff like that of just being like, I don't feel like this person seems as excited to be with me as they should, or as someone should if they're going to be with me. I guess that's kind of what I would say looking back on that one.

And I have a quick question, though. At the time, what was your story about that behavior from that person?

Just that they're an LA person.

Oh, well, that's fair.

You're not wrong.

Yeah, you're definitely not wrong.

Yeah, yeah. 'Cause I've been sometimes that person where it's like, I'm just busy and it, it's that. So, you know.

What about you, Emily?

Oh, gosh. I mean, in my entire last major relationship, just years and years and years of denial. But mostly, I think, denial because I really wanted to try to make it work and I felt like it deserved the time and energy to give it a good college try. That turned into almost a decade of probably something that I should have ended way, way beforehand. And we're talking like incompatibilities, just the ways in which we wanted to conduct our lives. I think, yeah, the non-monogamy versus monogamy aspect, the fact that a lot of things that I did were triggering to this partner, including being on a podcast with the two of you. And so I think all of those things, it just, I kept telling myself, I can fix it. I can make this better. I can change myself in a certain way to make it not so difficult on him and on the relationship. But that was all bullshit. I was just dead wrong. There was nothing I could do.

The more we sit here and talk about it, the more examples are coming to mind, too, of situations kind of on the opposite of the other one. Maybe not the opposite exactly, but just a relationship where looking back, I was like, yes, I was very attracted to this person, but nothing else was very compatible and they weren't that nice and very demanding and not listening when I would try to say, these are some boundaries I have about not being available or about how much time I want to spend together or how entwined to get. But I was just attracted enough that I just didn't pay enough attention to those until it ended. And then it was kind of this, whoa. Like I woke up from a trance of like, what have I been doing? What is going on?

Oh, dude, what was that moment for you? Was it literally once the relationship was over? Did it kick in a few months later where you're like, Whoa, what was that about? Or was it immediate?

It was pretty quick, pretty quick after the relationship ended. And it's like, who ended it? I honestly couldn't say. I think it was a little bit of it just sort of fell apart from both sides. But yeah, it was kind of that waking up afterward being like, that feeling of you're coming out of a mushroom trip or you were drugged or being like, Whoa, what just happened? Where have I been? What have I been doing? It just felt maybe not that dramatic, but it felt kind of like that.

So I don't want this episode to be just a total bummer of us all just thinking about all the horrible relationship mistakes that we made or the red flags that we completely have missed. Because the more that I chewed on this topic, the more I realized that we can take almost a neutral look at denial as a phenomenon, because I don't think it's 100% bad in all cases. Even though here, obviously we're like, oh man, we should have seen things sooner, or my denial prevented me from leaving this relationship when I should have, or prevented me from dating this person in the first place, or whatever. But I stand before you, I'm just a girl standing in front of her two podcast hosts asking them to take a neutral look at denial.

Mm. Mm.

Wow.

So a little bit of background. The concept of denial, specifically as a psychological defense mechanism was developed and introduced by Freud in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, you know, the Freud times. So he specifically discussed this idea of denial. The German word is, oh dear, Verneinung, Verneinung, maybe it means negation specifically. Okay. And the news to me, his youngest daughter, Anna Freud, further developed this concept and wrote further about denial being one of just many defense mechanisms that protect the ego from anxiety specifically. We're going to get more into that later, but that's a little bit of background of, that's when we first start to see this idea of denial even being a concept whatsoever. At least a formalized psychological concept.

Denial also is on the grief spectrum, right?

Oh, like the classic stages of grief, yes.

Correct, yes. So I find that interesting as well, and probably a defense mechanism there too to be able to soften the blow of the intensity that you just went through, whether it be a breakup or a divorce or the death of someone.

Totally.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

And in the second half of this episode, we'll get more into what it is exactly that denial tends to protect us from. But first I wanted to highlight what denial looks like in real life. I have a list of behaviors. These are pulled from an article by Dr. Carly Claney from the website Relational Psych. Emily, if you would do the honors.

Of reading through this list of denial behaviors. Ugh, because I've probably done all of them at some point in my life. Here we go. The first one is avoidance. So refusing to talk about or acknowledge the problem. Next is justification. So finding ways to rationalize behavior or situations that are problematic. Yeah, that's a good one.

Yeah, check. I'm playing bingo here, yeah.

It's already a bingo. We only said two.

I know, right? Blame shifting responsibility to others or external circumstances. Yeah, I see a lot of people doing this when they don't want to, I think, take responsibility for something that they've done. They're like, ah, well, if I had only had the right running shoes that day, I would have run the marathon. Better or something. Sure. Persistence continuing with harmful behavior despite negative consequences.

Yeah.

And this, I think maybe the super classic example of this is addiction behaviors where, and I know there's that old adage about how the first step to resolving a problem is acknowledging that you have a problem, that there can be this denial that there's a problem at all, right? And so I keep doing the addictive behavior or substance even though I can see that there's negative consequences or effects on myself, my body, my community, my relationships, my job.

And the next one kind of goes hand in hand with that, where you have promises where you repeatedly vowed to address the issue in the future without ever taking action. So you may recognize that you have a problem and say you're going to do something about it, maybe even try to do something about it, but then eventually just go back to doing the thing that you have been doing all along.

Yeah.

Distraction. So focusing on unrelated activities to avoid thinking about the problem. That's me, knowing I have to write a Multiamory episode, but I'm like, But I'm going to do the laundry and vacuum. How about that?

Yeah.

And finally, minimization. So downplaying the severity or importance of a problem, that's a big one for me. Just saying, it's going to be fine. It's going to be fine.

Everything's fine. I think that's what we call a blackout in professional bingo terms.

Oh, really? It's all of them.

Every single square on the card has been filled in.

Every single one.

Yeah. Wow. Oh boy. Yeah.

So, let's talk a little bit about some situations where these can show up, right? We've talked about this a little bit already, but one, I guess a soft start would be just denial that the relationship is really not working. I think that both of my examples were kind of different versions of that where it's like, this just isn't working, but one or even both people are denying that fact.

This is one that I've also heard you specifically talk about, Jase, but denial that the relationship is actually over. I'm thinking about it from the standpoint of knowing that you're not particularly compatible with someone and you understand that there's going to be an expiration on the time that you have with them to a degree, but you still may see them once in a while or sleep with them once in a while because it feels good in the moment. And so I don't really want to let go of this, even though ultimately I know that it's not particularly good for me.

Right, which is different from, we've just de-escalated, and that is a relationship that works, where it's like, I know that ultimately this isn't great, and we're prolonging some hurt here. Definitely falls into that category of minimizing, being like, oh, it's all right. It's not that bad. And then persistence of continuing to do it, even if you realize, oh, yeah, I usually don't feel great after this, or we end up fighting again after this, or they're sad, or I'm sad, or something like that.

Right.

Or if the persistence of clinging onto an ex of still wanting to communicate with them all the time or sleep with them or still sleeping with them even when you know that like Jase said, you don't feel so great afterwards that yeah, I think that can be a form of denial. I think a super common one is being in denial about red flags that you see in someone, especially if you're under the influence of new relationship energy. That again, that really clouds our judgment about a person. And so already there's the chemicals that cloud our judgment. But then on top of that, we may even be able to see that there's red flags. But maybe do that minimizing of, well, it probably won't be that bad, or maybe it'll actually be good for me to be with a person who's like this, or, oh, this person is only like this because of this particular external factor, or any number of reasons that we can use to justify seeing those red flags, but then pretending like we don't see them.

Yeah, it's amazing just in your description of that, I feel like you hit so many of the behaviors that we just talked about. I heard the justification, as well as blame on external circumstances, as well as the persistence and minimization. Yeah, so many of those can get hit just in a short description.

I remember very early on in my very long-term relationship, I was still in NRE with this person, and I went on a date with somebody else who was a guy. I remember how upset my partner was about that fact that I went on a date. Just very, very, very upset about it. And I feel like I minimized that reaction to myself because I was like, well, we'll figure it out. Maybe this won't be the case always, but it definitely sort of became the through line of a lot of that relationship that non-monogamy was not going to be okay, and especially not non-monogamy with somebody who is of the opposite gender.

Sure. Yeah. I think along those lines, there can be a denial just about how bad things actually are, kind of focusing more on that minimizing of maybe it's like, I know they're bad, but they're not that bad and something's better than nothing. So I'll stay in this relationship or so we'll keep going along here. But there's things I like about them. I hear that one so often. But they have some really good traits too. But there's good stuff. It's like, yes. There's good stuff about everyone. They're a human being, right? That doesn't mean the same thing as this is a good relationship.

I think there's also, and maybe we're seeing this more plainly nowadays, but just denial of plain facts. I mean, all of us have different cognitive biases that can prevent us from just accepting reality as it is, right? As I was doing research for this episode, I found out about things like it's called truth bias. So as in like people that we know and trust, we tend to assume are telling the truth. And therefore that means that sometimes people, especially a loved one, can be lying to us about something and maybe we can even really suspect that they're lying. And yet still our brain maybe wants to give them the benefit of the doubt. You hear this from people who if they've been in a relationship with someone who lied to them a lot or covered up a lot of stuff and they're finding out about it after the fact, of course, there's the hindsight 2020 phenomenon of looking back and being like, I should have known. They were so sketchy and I had a bad feeling about that. And yet I still trusted that they were telling the truth or wanted to deny that they weren't telling the truth. Yeah.

A few episodes back, we talked about this study where people would be shown some statistics and then were given a conclusion that either agreed or disagreed with their political leanings and then asked them if this data supports that opinion. And basically what the case it was trying to make was that we come in so biased that we don't even see whether the statistics actually reinforce what we're saying or argue against it because we've already made up our mind about what the conclusion should be. But I think that a lot of the headlines about that study were more, people suck at understanding statistics or people suck at reading data. And while that's also probably true, I think there's a big part of that if you go in assuming something, you're going to find evidence to back that up and you're going to ignore the evidence that doesn't. And I think I've also seen the flip side of what you were just saying, Dedeker, where someone could come in not trusting anything, even if there is no reason not to. Again, probably because of a past experience, but that for them, that can be really hard to look at the evidence that's actually there. And instead it's just, I'm coming in with this assumption that everyone I date's going to lie to me or people are going to try to do this sort of thing. So on both sides, I've definitely seen that kind of, I don't know if that counts as denial in that situation, but it's similarly trying to be self protective.

Yeah.

Under the same umbrella of denial of plain facts, I could go on a multi hour rant about denial about sexual health risks specifically. I don't want to be that person. I do think that most people in the non-monogamous communities tend to be maybe a little bit more proactive about their own sex education and about their own risk tolerance and stuff like that. But at the same time, I'm just often so floored by how people can behave in ways as though there is zero risk whatsoever, even when they're plainly confronted with the evidence. Because again, we evaluate risk not just based on logic and evidence, but also based on our feelings, and these more irrational parts of ourselves. And so hence, that's where I see a lot of people get into trouble, specifically when it comes to sexual health risk, right? There can be this rampant sense of denial that like, oh, well, that's not going to happen to me.

Sure.

There's no way I'm going to catch that, or there's no way this person is going to transmit an infection to me, or there's no way that I'm going to get this person pregnant or things like that. And just to clarify, I'm not sharing this to stigmatize anyone who had, has, or will have an STI, because that's most of us on the planet. But just to clarify that also to go the opposite direction and operate as though there's zero risk whatsoever to yourself and to others is also also a pretty egregious form of denial.

Yeah.

A big one that I have done that I'm trying to be better about is this denial of self, ultimately, within relationships especially. And that is, with needs or boundaries or desires or preferences, all of these things that we know deep down that we want and that we long for and that make us happy, but because of various factors in our lives, whether it be circumstance, whether it be the person that we're with trying to keep something together, for instance, we deny them. And speaking from personal experience, it's really incredible to come out of that on the other side and realize, wow, I need to not do that anymore, and I need to be able to recognize the things that I want and to allow myself those things. Yeah, I think it'd be really easy.

For people to downplay.

And to be honest, I tend to see women and femmes do this a little bit more. Cause I think they're a little more socialized into wanting to shrink themselves for somebody else's sake.

Right.

Or to kind of almost gaslight ourselves into like, well, I don't really need X, Y, and Z. Or to ask for X, Y, and Z. That would be too selfish. That would be a little too much. And I think what you shared earlier, Emily, about having that sense of like, I can fix it, I can do it. I think is also pretty a typical side effect of that, of I don't need to ask for anything, I can fix it. I can fix myself so that I don't need this thing, or I can fix my partner or whatever.

That's mostly what it comes down to in terms of the fixing it is, well, I'll just omit this thing from my life, or I will try to downplay it or not talk about it or not say that I need it, because ultimately that will make it better.

So earlier we talked about someone denying that the relationship's really not working or denying that the relationship is actually over. I did find a study that looked at that phenomenon. So this is a 2022 study by Christina Dardis. It was published in the Journal of Family Violence. It's called Coping with Relationship Loss by Denial and Acceptance: Direct and Indirect Associations with Engagement in Post-Relationship Pursuit Behaviors among College Men and Women. That's a mouthful. It is a mouthful, yes. So the sample was 821 undergrads who had recently gone through a breakup within the past two years. And to cut to the chase, the study found that coping with a breakup by denial was associated with increases in minor and severe post relationship pursuit behaviors, or as they call ppbs across genders. And what a post relationship pursuit behavior is, is repeated unwanted or unsolicited attempts to pursue a former partner after a relationship has ended. So things like unwanted phone calls and texts, unwanted in-person conversations, sending repeated text messages, posting on social media, sending flowers or cards, or showing up to the person's house unannounced. So basically they found like the more that someone is in denial that the relationship is over, the more likely they are to engage in these behaviors. The sort of like not really taking no for an answer or not really, and I think this also gets into maybe doing a little bit of bargaining or trying to win the person back because they're in denial that the relationship is actually over.

Yeah, I mean, it makes sense, right? That if you don't think it's over, then to you, that's not weird to pursuing or reaching out to this person, right?

Yes.

Or it's possible that you want to be reaching out and connecting with this person, and so the only way that your brain can square that cognitive dissonance is by denying the reality of what's happening. We don't know which is the cause and the effect there, but definitely there's a connection. Well, all of this that we've covered so far paints a pretty dire picture. However, I think it's important for us to realize that this is a pretty common experience, and there's greater or lesser degrees of it. But if you've ever experienced any of these things, to know that you're not alone and you're not broken, that that is just something that happens. And so in this next part, we want to talk about is denial ever a good thing? Why did we as humans start doing this in the first place? But before we get to that, we're going to take a quick break to talk about some of this show, as well as to remind you that if you would rather get ad-free episodes that come out a day early, access to our monthly video processing groups, and access to our amazing Discord community with episode discussion channels and channels for all sorts of different topics, you can go to multiamory.com/join and sign up on our sliding scale pricing there. In the meantime, take a listen to our sponsors for this episode and use our links or promo codes, because that also does directly support our show.

So to bring in maybe trying to look at denial as not directly a negative thing, as we've teased, clearly denial protects us from something and it helps us cope with difficult things, with a lot of things actually. And so I wanted to dive into what is it that denial protects us from? And in most of the examples that we've personally shared, there's this clear reoccurring theme of denial protecting us from either relationship conflict or relationship loss, so everything from like what you shared Jase about if I don't accept that this person is not that interested, then I don't have to deal with the discomfort of realizing that maybe I'm being rejected. If I acknowledge that I'm not being treated well in this particular relationship, then there might be a big conflict or a breakup that I'm not ready for, right? And so it's easy for me to just deny that this treatment is so bad or deny that the relationship is not working. Libby Sinback over on the Making Polyamory Work podcast talks about this concept of, quote, misery stabilizers, and sometimes specifically introducing non-monogamy into a monogamous relationship can function as a misery stabilizer, as in it's not working. Opening a relationship is not actually fixing things, but it's providing a stabilizing force because we don't have to deal with a breakup, maybe.

Okay. Interesting.

And I think we've all seen that with the classic example of someone who's trying to open up their relationship as a fix for ongoing systemic issues and why it often doesn't work. But why people turn to it is because it can feel more stable and more protective than to have to step out of the denial that maybe this relationship has run its course or maybe it's not working.

Sure. Yeah. If we just did it different, then maybe it would work. That kind of denial that there's actually something more fundamental here that's just not compatible or not working. Yeah, I get what you're saying. Yeah.

I see.

And maybe slightly less dire, but I do think that denial protects us from certain situations where there might be awkwardness or social friction. So I'm thinking about a situation when you're with your friends and maybe your friend says something really awkward or embarrassing. Yeah, off color, right? And you and everybody else there, you just pretend like it didn't happen. We don't acknowledge it, we don't say anything. We just change the subject and move on. We're all creating this little group bubble of denial that we're participating in together in order to reduce the social friction. And I don't think that's always a bad thing. It's a little bit protective of everyone involved. Maybe you want to protect your friend who said the off color thing. Maybe you want to protect yourself. Maybe you want to protect the cohesion of the moment or the event or the group that's there. I think we do stuff like this all the time.

Off color.

Yeah, or thinking too of you're on a date and the other person farts or something like that. There's that kind of, we'll just pretend it didn't happen and we'll just yeah, yeah. To save face to not embarrass anyone. Yeah. I just had an experience last week or the week before where I wish that people had done this for me. I was with a group of people, with a group of work colleagues and we were going to see a talk about this biography of Pharrell Williams. And I was trying to remember his name. And many of you know that names for me sometimes come easily, and sometimes I really struggle. This was one of those struggling moments. And I was like, yeah, we're going to go to the biopic about Will Pharrell. And then I realized my mistake after I said it, and it was like silence for a little while. I was like, just pretend it didn't happen and move on. But then they didn't. They didn't let it go. Oh, they were making fun of you. Yeah. Aw.

The same syllables are in there. Will Ferrell and Pharrell Williams. It's, ha.

But yes, I like that fun, exotic pronunciation of Will Ferrell's name, though.

Yes, Pharrell. Really classing him up.

I love it. Anyway, it does look like a really interesting movie. So it's his biography, but all told with Legos. Yeah.

Cool. Keep an eye out for it. I'm not sure if it's out already or not. It's called Piece by Piece. Anyway.

Wow. The Will Ferrell story. The Will Ferrell story. Yeah, the Will Ferrell story. Talking about Will Ferrell's career as a musician. Anyway, it does look really interesting. So, yeah, going back to what might be some useful aspects of denial, one is that denial can protect us from missing out on an opportunity to mate or bond with someone. So basically, if I acknowledge the red flags that are present with this new partner, then I might miss out on being able to date them or sleep with them. I feel like this one may be sometimes arguable about whether that's really missing out or not, but sure, there is a certain amount of maybe giving more of a benefit of the doubt to see where something could go. It's kind of like I've heard similarly, if you only see someone just for a moment, humans will tend to overestimate how attractive that person was. Like, if you caught a view of them, just as they walked out of the room or something, your brain's going to fill in that they're a lot more attractive to you than you might have if you looked at them for a short amount of time. And basically the answer psychologists theorized was, well, it's because if you only see them for a second, you're not sure. So overestimate how attractive they are so that you'll go find out if you're actually interested.

The Will Ferrell story.

Yeah, the Will Ferrell story.

So good.

So like on a grand evolutionary scale, it worked out better for us to take that chance to pursue rather than to pass on the mating opportunity.

That's fascinating.

Yeah, just like assuming no one's attractive and so then you're never going to pursue or never try to find out.

I guess that's how I've been living my life for the past five years. Okay, well sometimes I have to play the game with myself of like if I find someone attractive out and about, I have to ask myself, are they actually attractive or are they just wearing either A, glasses or B, suspenders? Because I sometimes really overestimate somebody's attractiveness based on their accessories.

Wow.

Yeah, yeah. Don't you-- For me, it's their haircut and hair color. I think for you, yeah, definitely.

Yeah, I mean, it's going to be for Jase. It's going to be like their haircut, their hair color, how androgynous their haircut is.

I love tall women. I don't know what to say. Yeah, sure.

There's that like they're tall equals attractive.

100%.

Yeah, 100%. But yeah, I wonder if this aspect of denial might be similar to that kind of overestimating attractiveness so that we don't not give things a try, perhaps is where it came from. That's just me armchair evopsych theorizing. Another one is it can protect us from emotional instability. So if we deny the impact of a traumatic event, maybe even laugh something off that was actually somewhat traumatic, can help us avoid feeling upset or avoid falling apart at an inopportune moment.

Yeah.

And I think this is something, this can happen on a macro scale with really big upsetting events or traumatic events, but it can also happen on this micro scale. I especially think about anyone who moves for this world having to navigate any systemic issues or microaggressions or stuff like that that there's a certain amount of survival denial, I guess, is how I would label it, where it's like, if you sit with every single hurtful instance, it would just be too upsetting. And so there's a little bit of just having to put your head down and maybe minimize the impact of it or justify it away or blame it on something else so that you can just get through your day without being completely emotionally off kilter.

I think denial can really help with the experience of shame. So saying, if I don't acknowledge how I hurt this person, then I don't have to feel the shame and remorse of what I did. I do think that this is particularly important if the thing that happened was a while ago, for instance, and perhaps a partner is still talking to you about that thing and how much you hurt them, and it continues to go on and on and on. I do feel like often it comes up in the context of, comes to a point where you're like, listen, I need to just not think about this anymore and not continue beating myself up over that thing, because I have to move on in the hopes that also you move on and that we move on together.

That's interesting because that's almost the other side. That's not really denial of the thing, but that's more when something has been repaired as best it can and then needing to let it go. And I think we've talked about that on a past episode as well. But yeah, it is interesting the similarity though between denial as this protective mechanism generally in the shorter term versus what you're talking about there where it's like a lack of letting go. It's almost like the opposite of denial that- Right.

It's like a hyperfixation.

Right. Like a hyperfixation, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

I guess I was thinking about if you're ever in a situation where you just don't want to apologize to someone. I mean, I think of course this is all going to be dependent on the situation of like if an apology isn't appropriate or if you don't feel like you did anything that's worthy of an apology or whatever. But I think about I see these in relationship situations where one partner has felt hurt by the other person and they want an acknowledgment of the hurt, but their partner just won't do that for some reason. And often it is a self protective thing, right? It's and sometimes this is work that I have to do with people that it's an uncomfortable place to go to, to have to acknowledge the impact that your choices had on somebody, especially if it was hurtful, without it being about, like, you take all the blame on yourself and you fall into this pit of shame and it's all about you. You're a terrible person. Right.

But we can have that sense of, if I resist acknowledging the hurt, then I don't have to feel the shame, and I don't have to go down this dark pathway of feeling like I'm a terrible person.

I think this one shows up in the examples we've given before about denying that a breakup happened, or at least denying that I was broken up with versus we just went our separate ways. I feel like that one comes up a lot. It's kind of a joke stereotype in movies and shows where one person's like, yeah, I dumped them because they were a jerk. And the other person says, yeah, it was mutual. We decided it wasn't working out. And so being serious about it, though, I could see that being a sort of, by denying that, I'm able to not feel the shame, in that case, not of like I did something wrong necessarily, but the shame of this person liked me and then didn't like me, and it's that they didn't want to be with me, so that kind of denying the source of a breakup or the absoluteness of a breakup, I could see that being a way to avoid feeling that shame.

Sure. Right?

Denial can also soften cognitive dissonance to a degree, And again, cognitive dissonance occurs when a person's beliefs or attitudes or behaviors are inconsistent with each other. And that inconsistency is really often uncomfortable. And then denial behaviors can reduce that discomfort. So for myself, for instance, I knew that I was pretty clear that I wanted non-monogamy, but I was staying in a relationship where somebody adamantly didn't want non-monogamy. And I was just kind of justifying that dissonance by believing that the relationship will be enough, love will be enough, downplaying our differences, telling myself it was all going to be okay, it would work out, trying not to have any conversations about it or just choosing to not even discuss it or even go there. So I think that denial caused me to not really look at the issue head on, for instance. Overall, I was just avoiding having conversations about it and just trying to downplay and minimize the effect that it was having on myself and my relationship. And ultimately, you know, kind of lying to myself. But it was to try to make the relationship healthier and happier. It was done with that intention, even though I think ultimately it definitely backfired.

Yeah, yeah. And that the denial would be a way to soften that dissonance, right? Of wanting one thing but doing something else.

As I was exploring this topic, I came up with this question of what might be the opposite of denial?

We kind of touched a little bit earlier on one possibility, which was that kind of hyperfixation or like never letting something go.

I thought it was more just acceptance.

Yeah, I think a case can be made that, yeah, of course, if we're not denying something, we're accepting something. But I guess the image that I had in my head was like, what is on the dark side of the moon of denial?

Right?

What is the thing that denial is trying to cover up? And the closest answer I could come up with, a thing that seems to be a through line through so many of these, is the experience of despair. I think that to be rejected, to be broken up with, to experience a loss, to experience friction or conflict, that there's a certain amount of despair that could be something that could suck us in. I think ultimately that's the thing that we're all trying to avoid whenever we slip into denial is because having to be in despair is scary and really uncomfortable. And I think many of us have a fear that if I slip into despair about something, I won't be able to get out of that despair, and it's just going to suck forever. And so denial protects us.

Yeah. Right. Yeah. protects us from falling into that hole of either despairing about ourselves or about other people or the world or any of these things. Yeah.

So I think despair is what we're all afraid of. Maybe more than we should be, because I think the reality is that maybe despair doesn't quite have as much of the hold on us that we think that it will. But that's what holds us back from acceptance. That it's like when we experience a loss, we have the capability of moving through that grief, but we do have to move through it. We have to move through that grief and despair to get to the other side. The other side, which is acceptance, which then allows us to move forward with the rest of our lives. But I think the idea of having to move through grief and despair, whether it's over the state of the world or whether it's over, oh no, the person that I have a crush on doesn't want to go out with me. The idea of that makes us want to kick and scream and fight against it. And so we do so many things in our power to have to avoid feeling that discomfort. And denial is just one of those things.

Yeah, I like putting it that way. Almost like this balance of denial and hope that we feel like if we go into despair, that we'll be there forever, rather than having that hope or that sense of time passing or that nothing stays the same forever. And I think this maybe goes on the denial side as well, that sometimes we could be in denial because it's like, well, it definitely couldn't get any better, or I couldn't possibly have a better outcome, so I'll just try to be as happy as I can with what I have. It's like in both cases, there's maybe an overestimating of the permanence of feelings, or maybe underestimating it sometimes in denial, where it's I'm underestimating that I'm always going to feel uncomfortable, and that this isn't just going to magically get better. Maybe as humans, we're bad at dealing with time.

I think we're definitely bad at it. It's very difficult for us to conceptualize what is something going to look like in the future. I mean, we can catastrophize and we can worry about it, but to really understand in the moment that nothing is permanent and it's going to change, and even this amazing time in your life is not going to last forever, it's hard to not be in denial about that on either end.

Yeah, it's funny, actually. Maybe I take it back. Maybe actually the fact that we can think about time in the future at all, is actually something we're good at compared to other animals who maybe don't think about that cognitively in the same way. And yet it causes us to suffer a lot because we're still not very good at it. Maybe because we haven't been doing it for very long, evolutionarily speaking. I don't know. Throwing out some evo psych theories today. Love it.

All right, before we go on to some clues and some courses of action of how we can handle this, what we can do about it, how we can improve our lives and find beautiful balance that we're all seeking. We're going to take another quick break to talk about a couple sponsors of this show. Please use our promo codes or links that does help support our show. Or of course, if you would rather support directly and get ad free versions of the show, you can go to multiamory.com/join.

So here's the wall that I kept crashing up against when writing this episode is like, but how can we tell when we're in denial about something in our lives or in our relationships. Because all of this that we've been sharing has all been hindsight. We all look back into the past and realize after the fact, but is it actually ever possible to realize that you're in denial in the moment? Or are we just doomed to always be just walking backwards into the future?

Wow, that was beautiful.

Thank you. Thank you. It's not my quote. That's from like a Maori idiom or something like that. But I really want to know what you think. Do you think it's actually possible?

Yes. But I do think it's possible to understand that you're in denial about something. And I think if you were able to look at the times in which you were in denial in the past and learn from them and break that pattern of behavior, then it is possible. It's difficult, but I think it absolutely is possible.

If I could get all Buddhist about it, I would say that perhaps away from denial or to recognize denial, is letting go of some of our attachment, both attachment to specific situations or people, but also attachment to a certain image of ourselves. And that sometimes it's like we're just go, go, go, go, go, and we don't stop to think about those things or acknowledge that everything's temporary. And if we do, I feel like sometimes that can give a little bit of this glimpse into Oh, shit, as soon as I took a day or a weekend to not constantly be doing stuff and just really sit and accept what is, oh gosh, I can see things more clearly now. Jase, it's almost as though you've been reading ahead in the show notes.

Oh, did I actually? I didn't, I didn't.

That's just me being so Buddhist. Yeah, are you being so Buddhist? It's okay.

You'll be like the first half of this sandwich, the first half of the bread on this sandwich, and I'll bring it up in the caboose. I'll be the caboose spread at the end.

I love that. The caboose spread.

Uh-huh. All right. So, okay. So I do think it's still a little bit unclear. And I think you are onto something, Emily, because I did populate a list of some courses of action that people can take to maybe, maybe see about looking at past patterns and seeing if we can find ways to wake ourselves up out of denial.

It's time to pull out your handy dandy Multiamory journal.

Yeah, we've got to make those.

I know.

I love that. That would be so great. And do a past relationship inventory. So if you're in the middle of recovering from a breakup and you feel like maybe in that breakup you were in denial for a long time, you can write down all of the things that this ex, this person said to you in one column, and then write down all of their actions and behaviors in another column. You can also do this with your own words and your own behaviors and kind of compare and contrast the two. See the ways in which your behaviors and your words can be very different and the behaviors and words of your partner can be very different. And even if they tell you something is going to be okay or you tell yourself something is going to be okay, your actions may be saying something very, very different than that.

Yeah, I have to give a shout out to one of my favorite podcasts, Help Me Be Me for this exercise. I do think that unfortunately something that can help to fuel our denial is we can get overly attached to things like, oh, but early on in the relationship, this person said that they loved me or said that they felt this way about me or said that they wanted to offer X, Y, and Z to me. And even if that's not happening, even if they're not treating you very well, we can still be really hung up on Okay, but this is the impression they gave me first, right? And so again, that truth bias comes into play where we can assume, no, that is what the truth is, and then it can fuel that denial even longer.

I think that this exercise can be useful or a variation of it can also be useful if you're in a situation currently. And this could be anything in your life, right? Not just your relationship, but could be about your job or your living situation or whatever. But I know that when dealing with depression and thinking about other people's thoughts about you, one of the exercises that can be given is, okay, what evidence do you have to back that up? And essentially writing it down to be like, oh, well, maybe someone said this criticism. And then say, well, what evidence do I have to the contrary? And then it's like, oh, well, this person actually said they really appreciated this about me or this person. And you kind of realize, usually the way this goes is you realize, oh, actually I've got a lot more evidence that people do like me. And I actually don't have a lot of evidence that people don't, but I'm fixated on the ones that they don't. That's the one I feel. And so it's a way to try to get a little bit of a reality check. I could see that being the case here too, where that writing down, what did they say? What are they doing? What do I say? What am I doing? To maybe you'll have a wake up call doing that and go, oh shit, action wise, there's actually not a lot in the column of us being affectionate and good for each other or not a lot here, even if there's some words or maybe there's not even as many words as I thought there would be. And then if I try to look at the other side, that can kind of help get it outside of your head a little bit and kind of stretch it over time, especially if you did this a number of times on different days. That might start to give you that reality check of, oh, maybe I'm denying some of these things because I don't want to have to accept this.

Another thing that can give you a reality check is stepping out of your own shoes and try to imagine that somebody that you love is in the exact position that you're in. And if your loved one came to you and described their relationship situation or their problems or something that's going on in their life with another person, what would you say to them? This is difficult to do, but I think it's great to be able to be like, Wait a minute, if my friend was telling me about this, I would immediately say, what are you doing? Why are you still in this? I'm not hearing anything good about the relationship, so maybe you need to think about that and look at that and do something about it.

I can think very clearly of some situations in my life where I've had that thought of, if someone else came to me with this story I'm telling right now, here's the advice I would give them and acknowledging, and I know I'm not going to do that because I do want to stick this out or I do want to see if this works or can't help myself. But acknowledging, I would definitely advise someone in my situation not to do what I'm doing. I don't know if that's good or bad. I don't know if that's part of denial or part of waking up from denial, I'm not sure. Related to that is getting an actual outside perspective. So actually going to a trusted friend or a therapist or somebody else in your life to get that reality check of explaining what's going on and actually getting real external feedback and ideally listening to it.

Yeah, I think I've mentioned this before. I'm a huge fan of just having your list of five MVPs, like the people that you trust the most. And this could be your therapist, it could be your best friend, it could be a family member, but the people who you respect that they have their life together enough, their life and relationships together enough that you feel like you can trust their advice just to get different people's perspectives and to get a wide, diverse array of perspectives on a situation.

I love that. It makes me think of the diamond dogs from Ted Lasso.

Indeed.

He'd get them all together just because someone needed to talk it out and have other people reflect back to them. Like, yeah, there it is. There it is. When you do that, it can help to be specific about what you're looking for from them. So saying something like, I'm hoping that you can help me figure out if I'm in denial about what's going on, or if things are just tough right now and there's still hope. I think if you just go to them with those problems, it can be easy as a friend to either jump to, oh yeah, that totally sucks. Oh man, poor you. That's awful that you're having to deal with that. Or they can go to, they're like, it'll be fine, you'll be all right. Either one of those, if they don't know specifically you're looking for this reality check. I think that puts them in a different state of mind to go, huh, yeah, let me actually try to think about it that way and try to give you the feedback you need. Another strategy is called It Could Be Worse, and it's extremely easy to deny our own pain by pointing to someone else that has it worse, or some imagined situation that could be worse. However, if we catch ourselves doing this and often saying, Oh, it could be worse. That's a good clue that we might be denying. Yes, it's good to have a perspective on suffering, but if we're suffering, we're still suffering. It doesn't matter that we could be suffering more. We're still suffering, and that's something worth taking seriously. I think phrases like, It is what it is, or I'll live, or those sorts of things can help.

Jase is throwing fighting words at Emily right now, by the way.

Emily loves to say, It is what it is.

It is what it is, yeah.

If you find yourself saying things like that, I like that. That's a clue to go, huh? Is it actually is what it is? Is it what it is?

No, I told you before, Emily, that when you say that phrase to me and Jase, it's like a bat signal where we're both like, no, Emily, no!

Yeah. Yeah.

I'd like to think that I say it less now. I hope so.

I think you do.

I think a little less. I agree. Yes. Yeah.

All right, the next tool is called What if Nothing Changed? So this is a bit of a thought experiment. If you knew absolutely nothing is going to change in your relationship or in your situation for the next year, five years, 10 years, how would you feel? Now, I have to clarify that this thought experiment is not meant to be like a death sentence. It's not to imply, hey, if you're not happy with how things are now, that's how it's always going to be. Your partner is never going to change or you should never even try to change your relationships because it's always stuck that way. Like, it's not a death sentence. But I do think that it can be something that can highlight, do I have a little bit of this wishful thinking going on that it's automatically going to change on its own? And so therefore, if I invite in this imaginary scenario where I know it's not going to change, what does that bring up for me? So this is just exploratory to see. But if you find, oh yeah, when I think about it not changing for another five years, there's a lot of despair in that actually. It's really depressing and I realize, this is because I'm sort of holding out hope that it is just going to change magically, or it's just going to get better magically. Or maybe I'm just sort of dulling and numbing out my own feelings of frustration around this.

I appreciate in the past when you've asked me, Dedeker, like, what are the behaviors that need to change in order for you to want to continue the relationship? What are the patterns of behavior that need to change? And I think that that can go hand in hand with this and then project that onto is that going to be possible in five to 10 years? Or if it's not, do you really still want to keep doing this?

Yeah.

Okay. And the last one, this is the caboose bread, the sandwich that Jase started to build, and then I'm going to finish building.

Delicious sandwich.

Yeah. I call this Nowhere to Hide. And this is very much inspired by the writings of Pema Chodron. And like Jase, you were talking about if you can carve out even a little bit of breathing room for yourself, time where you slow down and you're not distracting yourself or numbing out or avoiding that, basically when you take away the things that you normally hide behind, it can bring a lot of clarity to you. Now, of course, in the past, I've been a huge fan of going on meditation retreats where you're just isolated for seven days or 10 days and no phone and no distractions, no TV, no music, no books, nothing. And you really, really, really quickly get confronted with a lot of realities about your life and your inner world and things like that. I don't think you have to be that extreme necessarily, but even if you take some time alone just with the minimal distractions, if you carve out a couple of hours, go take a long walk and don't listen to a podcast or music or anything like that, and literally just let yourself be alone with your thoughts, maybe with an intention of like, I want to sit and really take an inventory of what's going on in this relationship or in this area of my life that again, this is scary because we're so afraid that it's just going to be uncomfortable and full of despair and we're just going to get stuck in it and just be so depressed and never get out of it. But I promise you it's not as scary as you think that it is.

Because acceptance is on the other side of it. Something I've in doing that tried to tell myself is to remind myself like I've through bad things before and I've come out of it and I've been okay. And to think about a lot of times these things we're in denial about are not actually life and death type situations. They're serious, but they're not usually life and death. Obviously, if they are, get some help, get some support, because that is very serious. But kind of reminding yourself, I'll be okay can kind of help to set the stage for facing some uncomfortable truths of that kind of reminding yourself, I know I'll be okay.

Even if it's going to suck for a while. Well, thank you for joining us for this episode. This week on our Instagram stories, we're asking the question, have you ever been in denial about something really big and important? So again, you can go to @multiamorypodcast on Instagram to answer that question. Also, the best place to share your thoughts about this episode with other listeners is the episode discussion channel in our Discord server or in our private Facebook group. You can get access to these groups and join our community by going to multiamory.com/join. In addition, you can share with us publicly on Instagram @multiamorypodcast. Multiamory is created and produced by Jase Lindgren, Emily Matlack, and me, Dedeker Winston. Our production assistants are Rachel Schenewerk and Carson Collins. Our theme song is Forms I Know I Did by Jase and Onand from the Fractal Cave EP. The full transcript is available on this episode's page on multiamory.com.