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“Are we really STILL saying ethical non‑monogamy?”—Julius has thoughts | S4 EP 99

• Julius • Season 4 • Episode 8

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We dig into how communication, boundaries, and honesty make non‑monogamy work, and why adding “ethical” to the label misses the point. Julius shares practical skills for active listening, handling jealousy, scheduling across partners, and repairing after mistakes.

• reframing “ethical” non‑monogamy as skills and consent
• core pillars of communication, boundaries, and truth
• personal non‑negotiables and spoken expectations
• context for hard talks and when to pause
• active listening behaviors that signal care
• transparency, vulnerability, and trust building
• jealousy as a feeling, response as a choice
• time management, calendars, and buffers
• nonverbal leaks, naming needs, and repair
• relationship anarchy as consent‑driven design

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SPEAKER_01:

Welcome to Around the Kinky Campfire. Grab a seat, pour a drink, and let's turn up the heat. This is the podcast where we explore the wild, wonderful, and sometimes wicked world of kink, BDSM, and alternative lifestyles. Whether you're a seasoned player, a curious newbie, or just here for the story, we've got something for you. Join us on Thursdays on your favorite podcast platform as we share experiences, dive into deep discussions, and may even spark a little fire of your own. No shame, no judgment, just real talk around the kinky campfire. Let's get lit. Welcome back, everybody, to another episode of Around the King Campfire. This is your host, the Fervescence, HH Julius Marquis, or just Julius, if you're feeling unofficially unfancy. Today we are going to talk about a topic that seems very popular with the people, and I want to reiterate it as we go into more of a deep dive. As y'all campsers know, we are a non-monogamy, kink, and queer podcast with a little bit of geek along with it. But I wanted to uh go into a deeper dive in the relationship anarchy. As you know, Julius likes to teach to the relationship anarchy and talk all about it. So I'm going to do a deep dive with that. But let's just start with an overall uh blanket, overall umbrella of non-monogamy in the first place. Of course, relationship anarchy can relate to monogamous people as well. But I'm gonna start with the non-monogamy side because that's the one I'm more familiar with, have more experience with. Kind of sorta. Kind of sorta. Because I was always a relationship or like a relationship dater, a um pretty much an always uh serial dater when it was when I was in the monogamous world. So I never had any like serious relationships. Um so even then I really didn't know what a monogamous relationship was, or living with anybody, having roommates and all that stuff. So I want to go in the deeper dive as far as that concern and start there as we go into um more um in-depth topics, kind of like a 201 to finish out the year, since we've just been kind of uh doing 101 introductory stuff so far. I like to get deep. If y'all don't know, I like to get deep. And I'm I'm trying to hold back now until I start building up the education side of things and um getting into the deeper questions, which is something I enjoy so so much, and probably gonna highlight some of that towards the end of the year. But let's see. Uh before we get into that, all that there and in between, we are going to do our ASMR five seconds or so. Uh going down to one second. But for today, we have uh berry monkey fruited triple, a sour berry twist. It is 9.5 ABV, which is pretty high for a sour. Um the can looks amazing. Picked it up from a local grocery store, and I was like, hmm, it's a sour, so I'm probably in. Once again, not sponsored from the uh Victory Brewing Company. I don't know what city. Oh, wait, it's right here. Pennsylvania. Ooh, okay. Pretty good. Pennsylvania. I've already had one or two from this particular uh six-pack, and I'm planning on having more because it is delicious. But as we go into it here, let's see if we can make it to five seconds. That's what she said.

SPEAKER_00:

Three, two, one. Yep, there we go.

SPEAKER_01:

That was very cold. I like my drinks nice and cold, and that was cold and delicious and very berry. Okay, here we go. I'm going to try to finish this before the alcohol hits me. I have not been drinking too much alcohol recently, but um, this should be interesting. Okay, so the official title of this episode is How to Communicate Effectively in Ethical Nonmonogamy. As you know, we don't really care about the ethical part or the consensual part because it's still non-monogamy. Why are you doing either one of those if it's not ethical or non-monogamous? Are you practicing non-ethical non-monogamy? Like, why would you do this? Are we practicing ethical monogamy? Nobody says that, so why are we putting the ethical in front of there? Very hot take from Julius, but I don't really give a fuck. Because this is my podcast, and I have opinions and I do my research and I have emotions. So there you go. Just leave the ethical out of there. It's non-monogamy. So we'll put quotes around that title. It's work in progress, we'll put it that way. Um, I want to focus on communication, uh, boundary setting, and setting being your truthful self, truthful self. So you want to be like abruptly honest or yeah, that be an asshole with honesty, but it's like you have to be honest with yourself. And I would say, once again, that is done through meditation. You gotta do your meditation, people. If you don't know how your true self is in general, then how are you gonna do that in a relationship with other people? One would argue. I I would argue that. I don't know how you would even begin to start doing that if you are not uh being truthful with yourself and your partner. I do not understand how that even works. Uh please, someone explain to me if that is a thing you do and you are not being truthful to yourself. I have people, people, I have people. I have friends, and I know people that uh have marriages that go on like that, and it's like they're not being truthful with themselves, and I I feel sorry for my friends, and you you're doing that kind of thing, but it's like, huh. Okay, so we're going to have a nice long relationship without the uh uh truthfulness in there, and it's like uh, okay. Um I would argue that this is a great tool to have for people that are trying to change the relationship, either going from monogamy or to non-monogamy, yay, or going from non-monogamy to monogamy. Boo. No, I'm just kidding. On the yays and the booze. Uh do it is true to you. I'm all a big fan of the a la carte method, and that means that you try stuff out and see if it fits you. If you try monogamy non-monogamy and you've been the monogamous for a while and you want to go back to monogamy, then feel free to try that. Some people believe that non-monogamy and um all the different things that fall under it are an action and not an orientation. Not something I agree with here, but if that's something you believe, more power to you. Um I I just I I know for me that I'm going to be non-monogamous. Even if I only have one partner, I still in my soul and in my being will be a non-monogamous person, even with just the one partner. But we will discuss that between ourselves and come out with some kind of uh compromise.

SPEAKER_00:

I don't even know if it's a compromise, workaround, however you want to put that. Okay? Alright, so communication, boundaries, honesty. Put that on there.

SPEAKER_01:

I was gonna say trust, all that stuff, please. Goodness gracious. Uh and you know, y'all know that I like getting out of the comfortability of it all. So if you are in a comfortable place, but this is not working out for you, or used to feeling that for yourself, you need something different. This is a start to getting out of your comfort zone. Gotta live in your uncomfort zone. Get used to being get comfortable being uncomfortable because you can't evolve without it. I'll keep saying that over and over again. I'll say that forever and ever. You'll hear it in multiple episodes because it's something I believe in. Gotta get used to being uncomfortable. It's the only way to grow. Only way to grow and evolve. All those different kinds of things. Okay. So let's start off with the beginning. Communication is the backbone of non-monogamy. Communication is the backbone of any relationship. Let's just put it that way. Is you got to good have good healthy communication skills. We're not going to go into a deep dive of communication skills. I feel like that's a whole different podcast on its own. But good communication skills is the background backbone of relationships. You gotta be able to talk about that kind of stuff. And just, you know, trust your partner to be able to accept that as a thing. If you're talking about how you feel, I hope you have a partner that kind of relates to you in that and can see that you're not trying to be like uh the damaging to the relationship. You try to actually make the relationship better for the both of you. And I hope you guys can do that, have the trust to get into that. I just don't uh understand. I mean, I and I'm not trying to talk from like a high horse here, like because I've done it as well. It's like something I've I've gone through in relationships. It's like um I don't have I don't trust my partner is gonna be able to take the information I give and then receive it. And it's like I try to avoid the conflict, and it's like that's not gonna help because even if I'm not saying it out loud, I'm still feeling it in some way, and it's showing in some non-verbal way, even though I'm not physically speaking it with my body out of my mouth into their ears. So it's it's like you got you gotta have these conversations. That's just that's just all there's to it. You gotta you gotta have these conversations with your partner. And then it's um they're gonna know. If they're any kind of good partner, good. What is that? What is that? Anyways, if there are any kind of if you have any kind of like closeness in the relationship, I would hope they trust you to tell that you're telling them something that's not damaging to the relationship. You're not trying to be an asshole or anything like that. It's like you're trying to make the relationship better. So I would hope that you know, work on the communication skills. And like I said, there's so many people have different types of communication skills. I know for me, if I'm in any kind of public situation and you want to talk to me about relationship stuff, I'm not listening. It's not, it's not possible. Just go ahead and just put a put a pin in that conversation. Well, we'll have it in the privacy of our own home, and we can have that conversation later. But yeah, if you're any out anywhere outside, don't have a serious conversation with me. And it's like that's just not gonna work. So I know for me, you want effective communication, it's gotta be just uh just the all the interested parties. I was just gonna say the two of us, but that might not be the case either. All interested parties, and that's it. And then we can have a some a conversation uh by ourselves, and then at that point I'll be able to listen to what you're saying. Because yeah, I I'm just yeah, I'm not paying attention if it's out in public. I have so much social anxiety out there. You think I'm paying attention to you, you can have a serious conversation with me outside the confines of my safe safety net and or um bed my my happy place, my safe zone.

SPEAKER_00:

Nope. Okay.

SPEAKER_01:

Another thing you want to do with uh communicating effectively in relationships is have relationship agreements. So not only should you be doing this on your own, you should have your own agreements with yourself and what you are comfortable with having in a relationship. Let me try to put that in a less complicated way. So you have your needs-wants list, right? But there's also another list you should have with yourself in relationships that you are allowing or not allowing, or I don't want to say ex well, expecting, but you should say the expectations. Don't unspeak them. Speak them. Unspoken expectations lead to future resentments. You want to speak those expectations. Julius is a cuddler, okay? I'm not going to be uh quote, quote, I'm not. Sure. It's uh it's a it's a quote thing. Maybe there's always nuance in everything. But for me, right now, in this point in time, Julius is not going to have a partner that is not interested in cuddling and intimacy. I need that physical touch. That's something that is needed in a relationship. I myself, myself, do not understand getting into a relationship where there's no cuddling. I cannot do that. Sex is eh preferred, but not needed. I need cuddling, though. So I know for me that is one thing, and it's an outwardly showing thing, so it's an external thing, so that's not really, you know, something that can like not be hidden. I mean, something I would also prefer is like a sense of humor. If my partner doesn't have a sense of humor, doesn't get comedy, it's like, ooh, that's probably not gonna work either. So those are like two things that I need out of a partner, otherwise, it's just not gonna be a relationship. We can probably be friends or even acquaintances. If you ain't got a sense of humor, I don't know if I could be friends with you either, just honestly saying we might be able to maybe be acquaintances. Uh but sense of humor is also relative as well. Yeah, I need I need those two things in a in a partner in order to be able in a relationship with him. Cuddling and sense of humor, some kind of comedy understanding. Because I am sarcastic and dripping with irony. Both of those things, it's like yeah, that's um that's uh oh goodness. Yeah, sorry ruminating there because that's just something I need for myself. So if you don't have agreement with yourself, your own personal morals, I don't know how you're gonna go into a relationship without that kind of thing. And then you have to again figure out in that relationship what you need out of it. Because I know for me, it really depends on the partner what I need. So I have something for myself, but then there's you know, good negotiations between different partners that uh the that the needs and wants change for that kind of thing. And then also you got to figure out, you know, this is a whole nother person, it's not an inanimate object, so you don't know what they need as well. So you have that conversation with people. If you're not talking about this, and you just make an assumptions getting into relationships, it's like, whoa, not everybody wants to move in with people. I know that's like a big thing in society nowadays. Everybody wants to assume that everybody else wants to move in together. It's like some people don't want to do that, or they don't want to do that with you. It's like that could be a thing, and you should talk about that. If you need somebody to live in the same domicile as you do, then you probably should have that conversation. Uh yeah. You uh have that conversation before you go any farther because not everybody wants to move in with you. Sorry, that's uh Julius here to wreck your bubble, and I'm here to wreck it. Not everybody wants your ass up in their house. That's just something that goes on, and maybe they don't want your stinky ass in your bed. No, you might not be stinky, I'm joking. Or they just might not want your ass in your in the in your bed, in their bed. So that could be something something you could talk about. And oh man. Okay. So I'm trying to be concise with all these things, but they every one of these topics I'm talking about could be a whole episode on their own, which they might be. Effective communication, boundary setting, that kind of thing is like, oh, these could all be something that could be uh topic, topic, topicized, episodic, be a whole episode about, especially in only like 20, 25 minutes. 100% can go deeper on any of these things. Alright, so the next thing we have is listening. You know, could do a whole episode on active listening, but that's the thing you need to do. There are actually physical ways to show that you are listening to somebody, and sometimes that's all somebody needs. They don't even need you to respond. I'm not gonna go into the binary here, but we I can you can get what I'm saying without me saying it. There are certain people that just need to vent on a regular basis, and there's certain people that don't know how to sit there and just listen and not do anything and not do anything. Y'all know who I'm talking about without me even saying it right now. There's certain people that need to or have a need to try to fix shit, and it's like, nope, you can just sit there and listen. Nice slow nod. Two up and two down. All right? Two up and two down. If you don't know what I'm talking about, there are people that actually talk about communication and how to listen. Tilt your head off to the side of like a 45-degree angle, shows inquisit inquisitization. That's not the word, but I just made it up right there. And it shows that you are listening and but you don't need to do anything. Those are two things right there, just a slow nod, and you ain't gotta say mm-hmm or uh-huh, or okay, nothing. You ain't gotta say nothing, just a slow nod, and they will understand that you are listening to them, and then you tilt your head slightly, 45-degree angle, and that shows that you're interested in what they're saying. Those are two things right there. You can take that and expand from that as you will. There's multiple other steps to show that you're an active listener, and yeah, that's very helpful in relationship and good communication. These are all good communication steps. Oh boy. Okay, the next one is very interesting because it has to deal with trust more than the other ones, and it's like transparency and uh trust and vulnerability. Why are you not opening up to your partner? I just read recently, read recently. It was like an article or something like that, or a survey about people that uh share their cell phone uh passwords and unlock things uh and and laptops and computers and stuff with their partner. If you're married to somebody for especially like more than five years, just throwing a random number out there, is like, how are you not sharing your cell phone uh with them? I don't understand that. Why what are you hiding? You live with this person, you've most cases had a child with this person, you let you bust it inside of them, or they bust it inside of you, you have multiple children, but then you can't share cell phones with each other. What are you hiding? That I don't understand. For my married um listeners out there in campsters, please explain that to me. Somebody message me and explain to me how that makes sense. I've seen that on Reddit, and now I saw that on this little uh survey thing in an article, in a news article, and it's like, what? The percentage of people that don't share their cell phone password with their partner was way higher of a percentage than I thought it would be. And it's like you don't trust your partner? I don't I don't understand this. So be vulnerable with your partner. If you're with them, especially like what? Why are you getting married to somebody you don't trust them? Be vulnerable with a person. My uncle touched me when I was two years old, and I still remember you know coming in coming in the room and telling me bedtime stories. That's not really supposed to be a joke. I hope no nobody laughed at that. That stuff actually does happen. Body keeps the score, that's in that book. And it's like you don't you don't share that with your partner, and then this whole time you're doing something that's not helpful. I'll just say not helpful to the relationship. I'm not gonna say weird, just not helpful to the relationship, and you're wondering why your relationship is on a rocky path. And it's like, oh, this was buried deep in them in the mind crevices, and I didn't deal with it.

SPEAKER_00:

It's like be vulnerable about that stuff with your partner. I don't I don't know.

SPEAKER_01:

Get all that out before you get married. I would I would say, of course, I don't know what I'm talking about, because y'all know how I feel about marriage. So I'm talking about me out of my ass on that particular thing, but I just don't understand how that can be. Once again, that's my opinion. Do with it what you will. Oh boy, here we go. Now we bring up the big old J word. That's not Julius, it's called jealousy. Oh, yeah, this is another thing that people have. People have feelings. I didn't know if y'all knew that. People have feelings, and guess what? The eastern and the western mental people agree that you can't control your feelings. You can control your reactions, you can't control your feelings.

SPEAKER_00:

Everybody has feelings, just gotta learn how to deal with them. Again, we all have feelings, you can't control them.

SPEAKER_01:

I'm pretty sure most of us work at some point. Most of us. Of course, there's the unhoused. Not talking about that. I'm talking about the average. Most people work, most people have money. Did you know in order to work, you gotta be not an asshole? Can't just go around slapping people that frustrate you, even though you're frustrated a lot of the times. Um, if you're not one of those people that's frustrated a lot of times, good for you. I cheers and applaud you, but there's a lot of times in my job where I get frustrated. Even in my hobbies, I get frustrated, but I don't go around slapping people that frustrate me. No. So that's a feeling that is had, and you control your reaction. You know, saying you take a minute, go breathe, or go talk to somebody else or something. But you you know, you control that. So why can't we do that with jealousy? I ask you people, especially the people that are like, Oh, I could never be non-monogamous or poly. I'm just so jealous. It's like there's a lot of reasons to be jealous. You think we're not jealous at some point? Also, you don't think I'm jealous from not even my partner has another partner? It's like, oh, they went on a family trip to Spokane. I don't know, random place. It's like, you don't think I'm jealous of that? Or they have like a sibling that they're really close to as an only child. I get jealous of all my friends when they talk about their siblings, not even just partners. And it's like, yeah, I have feelings, but you know, those are manageable. But I guess you can't control them, they are manageable. So, yeah, that stuff is very interesting when people say that kind of stuff. It's like, oh yeah, yes, we all have feelings. There's there's ways to manage them. Not saying it's easy, but there's ways to manage them. I'm so confused by this. Like, oh, I'd be so jealous. Like, yes, we're all jealous of something at some point, of somebody. Jealousy and envy as well. Envy's tied into jealousy.

SPEAKER_00:

That's a thing. Manageable, 100% manageable.

SPEAKER_01:

People make careers off of meditation and therapy and managing feelings. There's literally a thing called anger management where you think people work on this stuff. That's all part of it. I'm not even gonna go because some people say, Oh, some feelings are more than others, and it's like it's all feelings. We're we're adult humans here. Let's work on these things. Oh, and this one, next to next topic is specific kind of with just people that have multiple partners, but yeah, time management is a thing. Google calendars, I don't know what iPhone people do, iPhone calendars, whatever it is. Learn to use that shit. Calendar making and keeping maintenance is uh very much a skill that we all need to have, because yeah, that's a thing. Managing those calendars, and I know for me, not diagnosed as ADHD, but definitely neurospicy. Even the act of putting the calendar note into the calendar is like I don't know, stubbornness and like not even procrastination. It's the the actual action of putting it in there is like something gotta be learned, and it's like fuck doing that is just fucking annoying. And it's like, okay, we need to do this, and yet we are not doing it. Makes no sense, but it happens.

unknown:

Ugh!

SPEAKER_01:

So frustrating. But yeah, time management, scheduling, calendar work, all those kind of things is very much something you need, and um non-monogamy, especially, and I mean monogamy probably too. You know, kids got soccer practice, you gotta put all that shit in there too. But with multiple partners, you never want to ooh man. Oh man, make it a scheduling conflict and schedule and double book something, and it's two dates in the same. So bad. So bad. Yeah, do yeah. Hopefully you don't do that. It would suck. Um, ooh, man. That there's some mistakes that Julius has made, and that's that's one of them. And it's like, it happens, and you gotta work on it. And I would say when you first get into a relationship with somebody, no matter how many partners you have, which partner it is, you might want to have a conversation about how to handle those kind of things because it could happen. And it's like, yeah, especially if our relationship anarchy folks with our non-hierarchy, it's like, how do you you you gotta figure out how to make those schedules a thing? I'm just telling you. Oof, yeah, that's a mm-mm. Yeah, I probably need to make a topic about that. I'm making a lot of nonverbal noises. Because this point hits hard. It's like, yeah, it's a really simple thing to work on, a habit to work on, but it yeah, it's really costly when you make that mistake. Hopefully, your partners understand. They're newer to non-monogamy, they might be a little bit more reactionary than most, but it's like you should talk about that kind of stuff. Oof, goodness. Um, let's see here. And then next we have uh nonverbals. So I kind of talked about that before. Um, this little note is uh when you do make mistakes and um when you do nonverbal stuff, once again, you gotta speak it. Even if you're not saying it, if partners quote unquote any good, they will be able to tell you got something on your mind, you need something to say. So just go ahead and say it. Be out in the open for it. This is one of the things that uh newer people to good communication um can can use. Here you go. Here's a little toolkit from the Julius tool uh tool chest. Is uh if you have it even if you're not saying it, people can read you. Just go ahead and say it. It's all over your face, even though you haven't said it. And uh if you you know, if you make mistakes, it's make mistakes, you know? That's how that's what you do, especially around here on the around the King Campfire. We appreciate mistakes. Go out and fuck up and be willing to apologize. Give a good apology. Wonder to make an episode about it. But right now, really quick, good apology. Own it. Like I made the mistake, and I will truthfully and honestly try not to do it again. That's the key part. If you keep making the same mistake and it doesn't seem like you're trying to make a difference, then take your apology and shove it up your ass, because it doesn't mean anything. Make no sense you keep apologizing for the same thing. You actually have to try not to do it again. So even if you make a mistake, remember, good apology helps, and also working on it the next time is another good thing to do. Okay. This is a very uh hard episode for old Julius to do because I want to rant on each part for a little bit harder. And it's like uh yeah, there's uh there's there's a lot of things I can break down and make whole episodes about, but I'm not going to right now. I hope that is enough with the uh communication and effectively doing it in non-monogamy. Let's just say all relationships. You need those kind of things for all relationships. Probably go deeper into each one in the future at some point, especially the listening one. That is one skill that I learned recently is active listening. And I was like, oh shit. Okay. Yeah. It's like shut the fuck up and just listen. That's that's really what it is. Pay attention, put your phone down, that kind of thing. Look at the person in their eyes, hopefully, if they're not like moving around or whatever, but look at them and pay attention. That's slow nod. I'm telling you right now, that slow nod is when I first used that, it was so effective right off the bat, it's like, huh. Wow, these uh expert people are know what they're talking about. There's a communication experts out there that know all about this stuff. Anyways, now I'm rambling. All right, this is another episode of Round the Kiki Campfire. This is your effervescent host, HH Julius Marquise, or just Julius for short. Go ahead and jump on the Instagrams and the Twitters and all that stuff and give me some emails. Let me know if you have any questions about anything I talked about, especially some, especially something I'm passionate about, like relationship anarchy and just communication in general. Well, let me know. But if not, thank you for listening and downloading and all those different things, and we'll catch you next time. Hello. That's a wrap for this episode of the Around the Kinky Campfire podcast. We love having you by the fire and we'd love to hear from you. Got a kinky question, a steamy story, or a topic you want us to cover? Slide into our DMs and send us a message at AroundTheKinky Campfire, Campfire with a K at yahoo.com. Don't forget to subscribe, rate, and review wherever you're listening. Your support helps keep the flames burning and the conversations flowing. Follow us on Twitter, Kinky Campfire, Campfire with a K, YouTube, Around the Kinky Campfire, Campfire with a K, or Instagram, Campfire Kinksters, CampfireWithAK. To stay in the loop, join the community and keep the kink alive between episodes on Thursdays. Until next time, stay safe, stay sexy, and keep that fire burning.