You can find Rachael Rose on social media & the web at @Hedonish.
Transcript
Dr. Liz Powell: Hey, everyone! Welcome back to Poly 201. I am Dr. Liz from Sex-Positive Psych.
Rachael Rose: I’m Rachael Rose from Hedonish.com.
Dr. Liz Powell: And Rachael, I’m so excited to hear what is your Poly 201 tip.
Rachael Rose: So something I run into with my long-term partner, and opening up a relationship has been a lot of timing issues, trying to figure out how we spend time together and then something like negative feelings when one of us has plans and the other one doesn’t. I think it has been really helpful trying to figure out a couple of next week that we can spend time together for just the two of us. We try not to make plans unless something urgent comes up on those nights.
Dr. Liz Powell: Sure.
Rachael Rose: And then taking maybe a couple of nights a week where you can have plans with other people with the ends that the other person has some time to plan things for themselves to do.
Dr. Liz Powell: Awesome.
Rachael Rose: So that has been really helpful.
Dr. Liz Powell: Yeah. Calendaring is one of the biggest things of like establishing monogamy.
Rachael Rose: I love Google Calendar.
Dr. Liz Powell: God! Google Calendar is so good. I almost wish there was a different tool like there have been a bunch of apps that I’ve tried to have like other tools like there was one where you could put in your polycule so you can all share your calendars together but it just didn’t work very well from other reviews that I read. And I – Google Calendar can also be really complicated like I find sharing my Google Calendar to be like a very vulnerable step with someone like I don’t have any current partners who I’ve shared my Google Calendar with. And I’m coming up on my one year anniversary with one of my partners and then like almost four months with another and I don’t think any of them have my Google Calendar.
Rachael Rose: I think outside of my roommate and my nesting partner, everybody else gets like the blocks that I’m available but not the descriptions or the time. So if there weren’t plans, they can see that.
Dr. Liz Powell: Got you.
Rachael Rose: So they can be like, “Hey, are you free Thursday night? I don’t see anything on there but maybe you have. And I have like five calendars because I have too many projects.
Dr. Liz Powell: Right.
Rachael Rose: But the advantage is they have at least an idea of where to start of trying to make plans with me.
Dr. Liz Powell: Yeah. And you can always make like a separate calendar that’s just you’re like scheduling in daytime calendar.
Rachael Rose: Right.
Dr. Liz Powell: Another thing that you said about like this time management was like time for the two of you, time for like stuff with other people. Do you work on finding time for you? Like setting aside like your own date nights?
Rachael Rose: I am personally very bad at that.
Dr. Liz Powell: I’m personally bad at it too, which is why I brought it out. [Laughter]
Rachael Rose: I don’t need time. I can do all the things. My body is a machine and I don’t need sleep or food or water.
Dr. Liz Powell: So here are my things with time. Number one, when you work for yourself, you can theoretically never be not working.
Rachael Rose: That’s my problem.
Dr. Liz Powell: Yeah, that’s …
Rachael Rose: That’s our problem.
Dr. Liz Powell: I’m kind of theoretically always working and like I’ve been trying to be better about setting aside days and times that are for like me to do fun things or for me to do nice things for myself or like have self-care or rest and recovery. And I found that for me in particular, if I don’t put it on my calendar, something else will get scheduled.
Rachael Rose: It’s true.
Dr. Liz Powell: So I’ve been working on like trying to put stuff in my calendar to take care of myself as well so I can think about it as like dating myself, dating my established partners, dating new people, dating my business.
Rachael Rose: That’s a huge relationship right there.
Dr. Liz Powell: Business is my primary relationship. [Laughter]
Rachael Rose: It really is. I find that I tried this because I work myself as well, a schedule that works for me and specifically also my chronic illness which I have some – a handful of them [0:03:02] [Phonetic] that I need to deal with. And so I know that mornings are not always great for me. So I try to start my day later in the day and I really – I have a couple of hobbies including – one of them is pole dancing. I love it.
Dr. Liz Powell: I miss doing pole.
Rachael Rose: It’s a lot of fun.
Dr. Liz Powell: It’s so good.
Rachael Rose: And I have classes that are couple of mornings a week so I make sure to like I get up on those mornings. It gives me a good reason to get out of bed because I’m not a morning person. And then when I get home, it’s like around lunchtime so eat and then I get to work.
Dr. Liz Powell: OK.
Rachael Rose: So like I think I have to maybe without consciously realizing it built that into my schedule a little bit because it works better for me and my health.
Dr. Liz Powell: Super cool.
Rachael Rose: And it’s fun.
Dr. Liz Powell: Yeah. Awesome.
Rachael Rose: Cool.
Dr. Liz Powell: Well, thank you so much for sharing your Poly 201 tip.
Rachael Rose: Thank you.
Dr. Liz Powell: I’ll put a link to all your stuff in the show notes. And stay tune for more Poly 201 tips.
Rachael Rose: Yay!
Dr. Liz Powell: Thanks.
Rachael Rose: Bye.
[End of transcript]
