Wicked Wednesdays No. 72 "N.R.E. New Relationship Energy"

Welcome to “Wicked Wednesdays” a weekly podcast about my experience as an adult film actor and producer. I’ll be sharing my insights into the process of making films, how we got started and lots of candid talk about sex and and relationships with and emphasis on BDSM, Kink, and Polyamorous Relationships. Obviously this will *NOT* be a kid safe Podcast so listener discretion is advised.

This podcast is for educational purposes *ONLY* BDSM and Kink activities can be dangerous and you must assume full responsibility for your own actions.

This week I answer a listener’s question about N.R.E New Relationship Energy. What is it, how do you deal with it from both sides of the relationship and other good advice for having happy polyamours and any other kind of relationships.

Hello, and welcome to Wicked Wednesdays, your weekly podcast on Sex and Sexuality, with an emphasis on BDSM, kink, and polyamorous relationships. I am your host Wicked Fellow, and this week we're going to talk about NRE New Relationship Energy. What is it, how to manage it, and is it a good thing or a bad thing?

Find out this week on the Wicked Wednesdays Podcast. This week's episode is going to focus heavily on polyamorous relationships, but don't think that it applies only to polyamorous relationships. I think you'll see as I go through this that new relationship energy can be an issue in any kind of relationship, whether you're monogamous or not, and you'll see why I think as we move forward with this.

Before we get started this week, I want to send a very special thank you to our newest patrons, Anne and Moodle's Poop. Thank you guys very much for your support, and I really appreciate it, especially like the creative names. I really enjoy that.

If you would like to become a Patreon, head over to wickedfellow.com, and you can find the link to my Patreon there, as well as all of our sites, and that is also where the podcast is hosted if you want to download it directly from there. Instead of relying on Podcast or Spotify or wherever you get your podcast, it's on Audible too, which is fun for me. I'm a big Audible subscriber, have been since the early days of Audible, and it was a lot of fun to see my podcast pop up on that site.

I don't know why. That one particularly made me happy. So, this week's topic is inspired by a viewer question, and I really, really appreciate those.

I cannot tell you how many times I've come up with good episode ideas based on a conversation I had with one of you, or when you guys directly send me questions like, how do I deal with this? And this question is about New Relationship Energy or NRE. And this is something that is most usually talked about in a polyamorous relationship.

And I'm happy about that because I have been neglecting the polyamory side of the podcast, and I haven't done enough episodes about polyamory specifically. I have also talked about NRE or New Relationship Energy briefly before. However, this is a topic that really deserves an episode, and I'm glad to get one out in response to a viewer question.

It seems like we're on a series of three-letter acronym questions. We did TPE last week, and today we're going to do NRE. So, what is New Relationship Energy?

It's pretty self-explanatory, right? If you have a polyamorous partnership, you are in a relationship with somebody, and both of you date outside of your relationship. You have relationships outside of your relationship.

When you embark on a new relationship, there is a lot of excitement and euphoria, and it's really exciting, New Relationship Energy. It can become a problem when it's not managed correctly. So, your existing partner or partners can feel left out very quickly if all of a sudden you devote all of your time and attention to your new relationship.

And in the context of polyamory, that's usually what we're talking about when we say NRE., there's New Relationship Energy. It is a good thing, but it can also be a bad thing.

Relationships are fun, they're exciting, they're fulfilling, that's why we do them. We wouldn't enter into relationships if they were nothing but drudgery and hard work. So, we want to feel excited when we start a new relationship.

We want to have that endorphin rush, and we want to be starry-eyed, and we want to have all those feelings. And I don't want you to discount any of those, or feel like you shouldn't feel that way if you enter into a new relationship. That is normal and healthy.

The problems occur when you lose sight of what you have already. So, overall, new relationship energy is a good and healthy thing. However, I've seen it personally cause a lot of problems in relationships, especially polyamorous relationships.

And what happens is the existing partners feel like they're old news. They're left behind. They're not fun.

They're not exciting anymore. They see you going off with your new partner and having all kinds of fun and spending a lot of time with them. And it's very easy for them to feel neglected.

It's very easy to feel like yesterday's news that you're not important anymore. And this is one of those things that a lot of people fear about polyamory in the first place, that feeling of jealousy, that feeling of abandonment, that feeling of not being worth your partner's time and attention. So NRE plays directly into those fears.

And that's why it's very important for polyamorous people, especially when you're entering into a new relationship, to be very conscious of how you're acting towards your existing partner, partners, and how you are managing your time, how you're managing your attention, how you're managing that level of excitement that you should naturally feel. But you also have to be cognizant of the fact that that can have a negative impact on your existing partners. So outside of poly, you can see the same kind of thing, usually not in relationships, so to speak, though it can be.

If you're a monogamous couple, and one of you forms a new friendship with someone, that can have the same kind of effect. I've often seen monogamous couples feel like, yeah, my partner has this new friend, and they spend all their time together, and I feel like I'm being left out, I don't feel like I'm really part of that situation. That is NRE.

That is exactly the same kind of NRE experience that people are having in a polyamorous relationship. And the NRE., the New Relationship Energy, can have a downside, aside from making your existing partners feel bad, which is it can blind you to potential pitfalls, red flags, that kind of thing.

So, while overall, I believe that NRE is a good thing, I think it's something you should look forward to and you should embrace, and it's exciting and fun. There's nothing wrong with that. But be aware that there are some pitfalls.

Is your New Relationship Energy blinding you to the fact that maybe this is not a good partner for you? They're fun, they're exciting, and you can ignore these little things that have been off-putting about them. That can happen.

You can be blinded, you can be caught up in the moment of this New Relationship, whether it's monogamous, whether it's poly, whether it's whatever. And that new exciting energy can make you a bit blind to potential pitfalls. So for the person that is beginning the New Relationship, there's a lot of responsibility on you, especially in regards to your other partners, to manage that new energy.

So how do you do that? I'm not asking you to pretend that you're not excited about the new relationship. There's nothing wrong with being excited about the new relationship.

But be aware of how you're expressing that excitement to your new partners. Be aware of whether or not this new relationship energy is causing you to neglect your current partners. Be very conscious of it.

Be very aware of it. You might have to step up your game on both sides. You've got this new partner and you're spending time with them and they're fun and they're exciting.

Great. You may need to counterbalance that by spending some extra time doing some extra fun things with your existing partners, making sure that they know that you value them, that you care about them, that you want them in your lives, that they are valuable to you because that's the feeling you need to offset. When they see you go off with your new partner and have a good time, it's very easy for them to feel like, man, I'm feeling lonely, I'm feeling left out.

So, when you come home from that day, when you come home from that weekend, how do you make them feel special? How do you make them feel valued? How do you make them feel like, yes, I have this new person in my life, but you are every bit as important to me as you ever were.

That's why we are in a polyamorous relationship. We are able to manage our affections, our time and our attention over multiple relationships. And I know that's not for everybody.

There's a lot of you listening that are like, nope, that is not for me. I don't want to have anything to do with that. And that's fine.

That's absolutely fine. This is not an evangelical poly podcast. I feel like you're kind of poly or you're not, just like you're kind of kinky or you're not.

I feel like some people are wired to have relationships like this. It is fulfilling and fun. And really, the only way they feel comfortable.

Just like for you, it may be monogamy. And nobody's trying to change your mind on that. That's a crucial thing I want you to take away from these polyamorous episodes and these kinky episodes.

If you're not kinky, I'm not trying to evangelize kink to you. If you're not poly, I'm not trying to make you poly or convince you you should try poly. If it doesn't feel good for you, if it feels off-putting, if it feels scary, if it feels like something you don't want to do, then do not do it.

These episodes are for poly people that need advice on how to manage their poly relationships. Just like it's a kink podcast for people that need to manage their kink relationships. I'm not trying to evangelize to the non-kinky world and bring them into our little club, though they are welcome if they are curious.

So yeah, you have to be very mindful about how you're expressing that NRE. You may need to be a bit careful about how you talk about your new partner to your existing partners. This will vary a lot on how you guys do poly.

I know that there are some poly people where it's really encouraged to be open, to talk about your partners, to have them over for dinner. This is commonly called kitchen table poly, where everybody hangs out together, and that's great. There's nothing wrong with that.

A lot of poly people don't do that. They date separately. They have relationships that are outside of their existing relationships, and they may not hang out together.

They may not ever meet, and that really becomes down to the individual relationship. I cannot tell you that one is better than the other. Personally, I like to have an open, easy communication amongst all my partners.

I like my partners to meet. I don't insist that they be friends, because you can't choose that. Just because I like this person doesn't mean my partner is going to like this person.

And I've had poly relationships where my new partners got along splendidly. They seem to have a better relationship than I had with them, and they had new friends, and they're very excited, and they went off and did stuff without me. And then I had new relationship energy envy, just a little bit.

I was really happy to see that. It always makes me happy when I bring in a partner to a poly situation, and they get along swimmingly with my existing partners. That's the best case scenario.

But I've also had partners that met my existing partners, and there was a feeling of, yeah, I like them, but I don't want to hang out. I don't feel a kinship or a friendship, and I don't want to make it awkward, and I don't want to try and force a relationship there. So that's also fine.

You know, as long as everybody is respectful of each other, that should not be a problem. I don't insist that people hang out. I do like them to meet.

That's kind of a policy of mine, because I want them to have the opportunity to know each other. And also from an ethical standpoint, unfortunately, a lot of people are quote unquote, Polly, but they're not quote unquote Polly. They are just cheating on their partner they have promised to be monogamous with, and that's a bad thing.

So for me, I like to make it very clear. This is my girlfriend. This is my girlfriend.

I would like you guys to meet so that everyone knows it's on the up and up. But that's me. That's kind of how I do things.

But getting back to communication, you want to be careful about really talking up and aggrandizing your new partner to your existing partner. Even if everything you're saying is true, it can make them feel inadequate, right? You have to be aware of how your excitement and energy, and oh, this person is so great, and they really understand me, and we have such great conversations, and they love to do the things that I like to do.

That can make your existing partner feel like, well, shit, you know, I thought you felt that way about me. Now, the thing is, you can feel the same about both partners. You can feel like this person gets me and understands me, and we have great fun together, and we have lots of stuff to talk about.

And you can feel the exact same way about your existing partner. And they can know that intellectually, but it's really important to hear that from you, especially in the context of your new partner. If you're talking with your existing partners and you're going on about how great they are, be very careful to make sure that your existing partners don't feel like an afterthought.

They don't feel like, oh, yeah, and the way that you and I also have that good communication, that doesn't feel good, even if it's true. So be aware of that. Does that mean that you just don't talk about your new partners?

In some relationships, yeah, in some relationships, there isn't that easy communication. There isn't that easy back and forth where we talk about our dates, and we talk about the things we're doing and what's going on in the relationship. Some polyamorous partnerships don't have that.

And it's okay. I wish that everybody could at least have communication. But I know that for some people, that's awkward and uncomfortable, and it makes them feel a little weird to have the details of a date that their partner went on.

Talk to them. Other partners, they love that. They eat it up.

They want it. They encourage it. So there's no one way to do it.

I would encourage communication. But I don't think it's necessarily a sign of an unhealthy relationship if that kind of communication doesn't exist. And you'll very rarely hear me say that, because, you know, what are my three C's?

Communication, consideration, compassion. That's how you make a relationship work. So this falls heavily into the consideration part.

Make sure that what you're saying to your existing partner feels good for them. Make sure that what you're saying to your existing partner doesn't make them feel lesser than your new partner. That is just a fundamental key.

Even if everything you're saying is true, just because it's true doesn't mean that it can't be hurtful to your existing partner. You have to be considerate of their feelings. And we're talking very subtle things because we're dealing with fear, we're dealing with anxiety, we're dealing with those nagging little doubts that exist in every relationship, but can be very present in a polyamorous relationship.

You know, monogamous couples often have the fear of, what if my partner meets somebody else and they're really exciting and they want to go be with them? You know, that's a big fear for a lot of monogamous people. Us poly people, we deal with that day to day.

You know, not only could my partner meet somebody that's fun and exciting and they have a lot of good times with, but they're actually doing it. I watch them walk out the door together. It's a real and present thing in my life.

How do I deal with that? There's a lot of information I want to cover and it's very complicated. I may end up breaking this into more than one episode because we haven't even gotten into how you cope with this as the stay-behind partner, the partner that has a new partner's partner.

I think you can avoid a lot of problems if you are conscious of the fact that yes, you have new relationship energy, you're excited, this is fun, this is a great thing in your life. If you're conscious of that and you take it into consideration that that can affect your existing partner, I feel like you're 70 percent of the way to avoiding these problems. I think a lot of times it happens unconsciously.

You don't really realize it, but you're slowly chipping away time from your existing partner to have a new partner. And this is something that all poly people have to balance, which is asking yourself, do I have time in my life? Do I have energy in my life?

Do I have capacity to bring on a new relationship? Or am I maxed out? Am I poly saturated?

Which is another term you'll hear in the poly community. How many partners can you have? It really depends on the depth and breadth of those relationships.

If there are three or four casual relationships, yeah, you can balance that. I've done that many times in my life. If you have significant, you know, nesting, you live with your partner relationships, there's a limit to how many additional relationships you can maintain and pay them the proper amount of respect while making sure that your existing partner doesn't feel neglected.

This is why it's usually better. In fact, it's almost always better that in a poly relationship, everybody in the relationship is poly. And what I mean by that is there are a lot of poly relationships where one person is essentially monogamous and the other person has multiple partners.

That can work. I make it work all the time. But the person that is monogamous, it's very easy for them to feel neglected because all they have is you.

If they want to go to the movies, they got you. If they want to cuddle on the couch, they've got you. If they want to talk, they've got you

Whereas, you have multiple people that you can call on for those needs. And you have a responsibility if you're in a committed relationship with these other people to be there for them. So, the scales aren't balanced.

On one side, you have one person that you are everything to them. And on the other side, they are really important to you, but they're not everything to you. And that can create a mismatch, that can create an imbalance.

So, again, this is something to factor into your decision on whether or not you should bring on a new partner. Are you already overtaxed? Are you bringing on somebody to enhance and add to your life?

Or are they going to take away from time and attention that you are already very stretched thin on with your existing relationships? And that can be one relationship. It really depends on where you guys are at in your personal relationship.

So, you got to make those decisions very wisely. For the past few years, I've been polysaturated and I had two partners, but I had two full-time partners. They were deep relationships where all my time and attention that I had to spare was used up.

It would have been very irresponsible for me to enter into an additional relationship. It might have been fun, and there might have been time to have, you know, sexy fun times and do some dates. But there's no way I could have given them the time and attention that I feel a partner deserves.

Without taking time and attention away from my existing partners, there's the key. You know, do you have time for this new partner? Big question to ask, but we're going to assume that you do.

So, you got to make those decisions very wisely. For the past few years, I've been polysaturated and I had two partners, but I had two full-time partners. They were deep relationships where all my time and attention that I had to spare was used up.

It would have been very irresponsible for me to enter into an additional relationship. It might have been fun, and there might have been time to have, you know, sexy fun times and do some dates. But there's no way I could have given them the time and attention that I feel a partner deserves.

Without taking time and attention away from my existing partners, there's the key. You know, do you have time for this new partner? Big question to ask, but we're going to assume that you do.

We're going to assume that your existing partner has another partner, so they also have some balancing to do. They also have an alternative. When you're off on your date night, they can have a date night of their own, or they can stay home, but they have the option.

They're not stuck at home because you're out on a date, right? That’s what makes that balancing act so delicate. But we're going to assume that you have time.

We're going to assume that you're in a stable, healthy relationship because, as always, adding a new partner to an unhappy, unstable relationship is not going to make it better. I promise you, that is not how you fix a relationship. It's just like having a baby.

Having a baby will not save a failing marriage. Again, it adds tons of stress. There's joy, there's the whole new baby thing, but that's not how you save a broken relationship.

And a new relationship is not how you handle problems in an existing poly relationship. If you guys aren't getting along, if there is unhappiness within your family, within your little poly family, adding a new person never makes that better, in my experience. Maybe some of you out there have had somebody come in and somehow or another that new person helped balance things and make you guys happier overall.In my experience, adding someone to an existing problem only makes the problem bigger. So, that's me. You know, so furthering the responsibilities of the person taking on a new partner.

Remember that complacency kills more relationships than any other thing. You know, people want to say, oh, well, it's infidelity or it's what? No, it's complacency.

Complacency kills relationships. Do you still treat your partner the same way you did when the relationship was brand new and exciting? That's the question.

When you were really, when every date was an event, where you got dressed as well as you could, and you looked as good as you could, and you made everything as special as you could because you were trying to win this person over to you. Do you still act like that? Do you still treat them with the same amount of excitement and respect?

Probably not. Now, in some ways, that's natural. In some ways, it's not possible to maintain that new relationship energy over a 10-year relationship.It would be great if we could do that. And I've always thought that in pop culture, one of the best relationships on screen is Morticia and Gomez from the Addams Family, that amazing joie de vivre that Gomez has for Morticia. But in real life, we usually can't do that.

We usually don't have the... It would be a little weird, I think, if we could do that. But you can make conscious decisions to help maintain that level of excitement, to make sure your partner knows that, yeah, it's been 10 years, and I care about you, and you've added so much to my life, and I want to show you that.

I don't want to become complacent. I don't want to relax into complacency in this relationship, because it is so deadly to a relationship. Once you move out of that new relationship energy phase, where it's easy, where you want to do all these fun, exciting things with your new partner, you know, 10 years down the road, you got to make an effort.

You got to get up and say, hey, you know what? I have not taken my partner out on a date in a year. And that is ridiculous.

So we're going on a date, and I'm going to make it special. And I'm going to make sure they understand that they are so valuable to me. I'm not going to let them feel like they're yesterday's news.

Especially if I'm getting ready to embark on a new relationship, where I'm going to have those feelings, and I'm going to be treating this new person the way I treated them 10 years ago. Right? That's where new relationship energy can be really damaging to an existing relationship, especially if you've grown complacent.

So, how do you fix it? A, try not to fall into complacency. B, if you are going to bring on a new relationship, you need to step up your game with your existing relationship.

You just can't have the status quo and never go on dates with them, but spend every weekend going on dates with your new partner. That's going to make them feel bad, and justifiably so. So, you gotta be a one-to-one thing

If you want to date with your new partner, you better take your existing partner on a date, too. That's just how it is. If you spend a weekend with them, you better spend a weekend at home.

And I know that I never want there to be a spreadsheet, right? I never want there to be a, I spent 4.5 hours with partner X, so I must spend 4.5 hours with partner Y. That's not what I want.

We have an innate sense of fairness. We have an innate sense of what's right. We don't have to be accountants in our relationship.

But we know, we know when we feel, we know that, yeah, my partner has gone on five dates with this new person, and we haven't gone on a date in a month, and I feel bad about that. And you should feel bad about that, because you're being treated poorly. And this is where we're gonna shift into the what does the existing partner do?

What are their responsibilities in the new relationship energy equation? So, the existing partner, the old partner, the partner that is already in the relationship, what are their responsibilities in helping their partner manage that new relationship energy? Because they do have responsibility, if they want to be a good partner.

So, this is where it gets really tricky, I promise you. But you're going to see a lot of mirrors and parallels here. So, you have a partner and they just got a new girlfriend, boyfriend, they from whatever friend.

And you see them have this new relationship energy. And they're excited and they're getting dolled up and they're going on dates and they're having a great time. And it's natural to feel some envy, to feel some left behindness there.

Being aware of it, again, is about 70% of the issue. It really is. I feel like a lot of that fear and anxiety and doubt and that feeling of being lesser than can be mitigated by understanding what's going on, expecting what's going on to an extent.

So, when one of my partners gets a new partner, I fully expect them to have NRE. I fully expect them to fall off a little bit on our relationship. And sometimes I'm proven wrong.

Sometimes they really rise to the occasion, and they manage to balance that new relationship with our relationship, and they do a great job, and I'm really happy and proud of them for that. But more often than not, I have to realize, yeah, I haven't gotten to talk to them or see them as much as I normally would, and I know why. And the reason why is they're really in the middle of this new relationship energy.

So my choice in that is not to feel like I'm old news, not to feel like I'm lesser, not to feel like I'm the old shoe left behind. It's to encourage them, right? This really feels like the driving advice of turning into the curve, but it really is how it is.

The best way that you can navigate new relationship energy with your partner is to encourage them in their new relationship, which seems counterintuitive, I know. It seems like you're adding gasoline to that fire, but you're really not. By being supportive, by being encouraging, by being understanding, by being considerate and compassionate to them, and understanding that they're in a new relationship, and they're flooded with these new, exciting feelings.

And it's gonna make them a little bit myopic to what's going on around them. And what's going on around them is you. So, by being supportive of them, by encouraging them, by being very receptive to them and sharing in their excitement and their joy, you can really strengthen that bond.

Because your alternative isn't a great option. The alternative would be to be negative towards the new relationship, to try to dissuade them, to try to reign them in, to put up fences and boundaries and start putting limitations on the new relationship, which might be 100% fair, but will ultimately be destructive to the relationship you're trying to preserve. It always works that way.

You can't make someone want to be with you by making them feel guilty and ashamed and fencing them in. You can't do that. That is our first instinct.

It's always our first instinct. My new partner is spending too much time with their new partner, so I'm going to tell them that they can only date twice a week. That's not going to work out.

In the end, you're going to end up losing on that. It doesn't mean that if you're being treated unfairly, you just have to sit back and take it, because that's where the third C of communication comes in. So be compassionate, be caring, be understanding, be encouraging of this new relationship.

But if it gets too much, if it gets to the point where you are being left alone all the time, and your partner is spending all their time with this new person, where you are being ignored, where you are being left behind, there's nothing wrong with having a sit down with your partner and saying, hey, I know you've got this new relationship, and it's fun, and it's exciting, but you are neglecting your existing relationship. That is me. And I don't know if you realize it.

Maybe you're kind of caught up in this new relationship energy, but I really feel like I'm being left behind and I miss you and I like spending time with you, and I like seeing you happy. I really like seeing you happy, but I would also like to see you happy with me sometimes. So can we work this out?

Can you figure out a way to balance what's going on here? I feel like that's a productive conversation because they can absolutely be unaware. They really can be unaware.

You get caught up in the moment, and you get very laser focused on this new thing, and it's very easy to neglect what you already have. So on the person that's dating, the person that has the new relationship, most of the responsibility is on you to avoid doing that, to make sure you're aware and conscious of it, and work to not do that, especially if it's going to make your current partner feel bad. And on the other side, on the person that has a partner who has a new partner, it can be difficult, it can be hard, it can be a little lonely.

You can work through it. You realize that new relationship energy is called new for a reason. And once the relationship settles down, once it settles in, if it lasts, things tend to swing back towards the middle of the pendulum.

So you can kind of expect it at the beginning of a new relationship that you might have a couple months, a few months of them being super into this new person, being super excited, being a little careless and neglectful, which you can remind them gently of, and then things tend to settle back down. How you respond to that is really important, because if you try to come between your partner and this new exciting thing, it makes you the bad guy, even if you're absolutely not the bad guy. Even if you are 100% innocent and you just want to spend time with your partner, if they start to see you as an antagonist, if they start to see you as someone that's taking away the fun and joy in their life, even if it's legitimate, it's going to cause a wedge and a rift in your relationship.

So, you got to decide. You got to decide how it works for you. And remember, maybe it doesn't work for you.

You know, hopefully it doesn't get to that point. But maybe it doesn't work. Maybe they've settled into their new relationship, and it has affected your existing relationship in a way that it makes you unhappy.

You know, what do you do? You know, remember that you always have a choice in a relationship. That choice may be very difficult and uncomfortable because what you can't choose is what the other person wants.

You can't make them want the relationship you want. And that goes both ways. So, if things settle in and it's comfortable again, and the balance of attention and time and compassion and affection equals out to a point where you're happy again, great.

If things don't balance the way that you want, if you end up in a long-term situation where you continually feel neglected and you feel like your partner is spending more and more time with their new partner and you are getting left behind, and that communication isn't working, you've communicated with them and you've told them that you feel alone and abandoned in this and it's not helping, that's when you have to decide what you're going to do. You always have the option to leave the relationship. Unfortunately, you don't have the option to make them do what you want to do.

And that's just how life works. And I know that seems very doom and gloom. It's really not like that most of the time.

Most of the time, it does not end up in, well, you got your new partner and I guess I'm out of here. That's just not how it works. Not in healthy poly relationships.

Not saying it doesn't happen. I've had it happen with me. But for the most part, that's not what happens in my relationships.

Bringing in a new partner, it's a big deal. It can take a lot of adjustment on everybody's side. It takes a lot of communication, compassion and consideration for everybody.

Both the people that are existing in the relationship, the person bringing on a new partner and the new partner. The new partner has got to understand that they're the shiny new thing, but they are joining a carefully balanced machine, and they have to find a way to mesh in those gears. They can't just be a monkey wrench thrown into the works and hope for the best.

That doesn't work out for anybody. So I think I will break this up, and we'll talk about what it's like for a new person to join an existing poly relationship. I think it would be a good idea to break that out as a separate conversation, because that's not something we've talked about before, how to manage joining an existing poly relationship.

So yeah, we'll do that next time on Wicked Wednesdays. Thank you guys very much for spending some time with me. I'm glad to be back.

I do want to keep these coming out on the regular. I know that it's important for you guys. It's important for me as a podcaster to have that consistency, and I'm working very hard to do that.

But I still haven't managed to get episodes in a queue. It's just not something I have time for right now. It would have been great last week if I had one queued up, and I could have just sent it out.

But I didn't. At some point, I will have that queue. Until then, I will try very hard to get in the studio every week.

I am also posting those weekly updates over on Patreon if you are curious about those. You can sign up for as little as a dollar a month, and you can see the weekly update, which is me sitting with a camera, having a little fireside chat with you guys. Some of my patrons like that more than they like the podcast, which I don't know how I feel about, but I am happy for their support, and I will keep putting those podcasts out.

If you can support the podcast, I really appreciate that. If you cannot, do not worry about it. I will always keep the Wicked Ways Studio Podcast free.

I'm never going to put it behind a paywall. As long as I can continue to do it, you can continue to enjoy it for free, because I want to give back to my community. I care about you guys, and this is one very small thing that I can do to help the people that I care about.

I think that as we move forward in these very fraught times, the communities that we create, the people that we feel safe around, are going to be more and more important, and I want to be part of that. So, keep your questions and comments coming. I enjoy your messages.

I enjoy your fan mail. Send all that stuff to me. You can find all my links at wickedfellow.com.

The podcast is hosted there. All of our sites are there, and as another little shameless plug, that's where you can find the Patreon link. All right, guys, that's enough shilling for one week.

As always, consent is king. Take very good care of each other, and I will see you next week.

From Wicked Ways Studio Podcast: Wicked Wednesdays No 72 N.R.E. New Relationship Energy, Feb 20, 2025