What Excites Us!

Episode 29 : Nonmonogamy and Neurodiversity: A Match Made in Brain Heaven with author Alyssa Gonzalez

Transcript:

[00:00:00] Gwyn: Hello and welcome to What Excites Us, the podcast that discusses sex and sexuality throughout time and place, including the here and now. I'm Gwyn Isaacs, a certified sex coach and educator who hopes to spread love and not just because it's the Brooklyn way.

[00:00:26] This episode is a conversation with Alyssa Gonzalez. Author of a brand new book called Non-Monogamy and Neurodiversity, which is part of the more than two series of short, easily digestible, essential primers put out by Thorn Apple Press. Alyssa is a biology PhD. public speaker and writer, "Non-monogamy and Neurodiversity" is her first venture into popular nonfiction books after a career spent on speculative short fiction, science, writing, and technical writing. Her fiction uses science fiction and fantasy elements to explore social isolation, autism, gender, trauma, and the relationship between all of these things. She writes at the Perfumed Void on the subjects of biology, history, sociology, and her experiences as a polyamorous, autistic ex-Catholic, Hispanic, transgender, immigrant to Canada. She lives in Ottawa, Canada with a menagerie of pets, some of whom I got to see on camera, and they are so cute.

[00:01:37] Hi Alyssa. Thank you so much for joining me on What Excites Us. This is super exciting.

[00:01:42] Alyssa: It's a delight to be here.

[00:01:45] Gwyn: You recently wrote a book called Non-Monogamy and Neurodiversity.

[00:01:52] Alyssa: I did.

[00:01:53] Gwyn: And that touches my heart and my neurodiverse brains.

[00:01:59] Alyssa: Hmm. I have been hearing that from a lot of people in my extended circle, which reinforces that this was a book that needed to exist.

[00:02:08] Gwyn: Absolutely. And it's a great book. I don't know if primer is the right word, but it's nice and, short and light. So it's easy to digest.

[00:02:17] Alyssa: Yeah, definitely. That was the intended goal of the series that it's part of, The More Than Two Essentials by Thornapple Press. That they're all meant to be short, accessible treatments of the topic at hand, and people that need more dense or specific versions of this will have to look elsewhere. But this, it covers what most people need, I think.

[00:02:39] Gwyn: What inspired the writing of this book?

[00:02:42] Alyssa: My existence and that of a good three-quarters or more of the human beings, I'm personally acquainted with.

[00:02:50] Gwyn: Fair. Did you approach the publisher? Did they approach you? Was it something that you had in mind before getting with them? Or what was your process?

[00:03:01] Alyssa: I, I'd been thinking of writing some articles and such along these lines, probably a bit more specific than this turned out to be for a while up to this point. That people who are acquainted with my occasional rants on Facebook will have found some of the contents that ended up getting repurposed in here.

[00:03:20] The publisher approached me as being familiar with my body of work and the fact that I personally inhabit some of the qualities that this book is meant to address. They seem to think I was the right person for this job and when they saw my draft, they were convinced they had chosen well because now copies exist.

[00:03:42] Gwyn: Yeah, it's really, it's, absolutely delightful and even though it's something that I know and am, there were certainly plenty of points where I thought, oh, I hadn't thought about it that way, or, Oh, that's why that happens. For instance, the gravitating towards unusual.

[00:04:03] Alyssa: Mm-hmm.

[00:04:05] Gwyn: it just never occurred to me that that was a neurodiverse thing.

[00:04:11] Alyssa: Oh, it so is. There are very few of us that register as normal to the outside and not just because they can sense that we don't operate the way they do. It's firmly that we don't prioritize the same things that they do. And one of the things that is not natural for us is this push toward what is normal.

[00:04:30] We're not scared of being strange necessarily. And once we're in the business of questioning what is normal, all sorts of stuff they don't think about becomes completely natural for us.

[00:04:42] Gwyn: Yeah. I don't remember exactly how you phrased it, but it, it led nicely into why non-monogamy works for so many of us.

[00:04:50] Alyssa: Mm-hmm. . Oh, yeah. Once we start asking questions about why the normal things are the way they are, we often find that they have awful, awful answers and we can do better.

[00:05:05] Gwyn: I love that and the, and the way you pull in the relationship escalator as being something that's normal.

[00:05:13] Alyssa: Mm-hmm. Yep. There's so many things about my life got better once I realized that I was letting the normal societies' heuristics guide me when they didn't actually fit and just stop doing that and finding other people for whom that path makes sense is often the tricky part, because once you're abandoning normal, every, a lot of things feel better.

[00:05:42] Gwyn: Absolutely. How did you figure it out? That you were not, quote unquote, normal?

[00:05:47] Alyssa: So which axis we wanna talk about today?

[00:05:50] Gwyn: Pick one.

[00:05:53] Alyssa: For, for non-monogamy, which is our topic at hand. From the beginning of my romantic and sexual awakening, there, there was something about myself I noticed that did not mesh well with how the people around me tended to operate. Which is that as long as I was getting what I wanted out of my relationships with other people, it just instinctively did not matter to me like what they were doing with other people, unless they gave me a reason to think that I was going to lose what I was getting out of the relationship.

[00:06:27] And it did not occur to me that, you know, I was. Well, I have a better way to phrase that. So for folks who don't know, I'm partly of Cuban American descent, the other half is Puerto Rican. You can have that conversation later. And one of the things that is just part of how that culture works, especially in Miami where I did most of my coming of age.

[00:06:52] Which is, if you've ever watched a telenovela about how loud and shouty everyone gets when romance is on the table, they, they didn't make that up. Most of them aren't even about Cuban Americans specifically, but the pattern fits. And there's this cultural idea in that community and in Hispanic communities more broadly, that one of the ways that you demonstrate that you're in love with someone is loud, bombastic displays of jealousy and having loud feelings about the fact that the person you're in love with has the temerity to have other people they spend time around.

[00:07:25] That making a big show out of not trusting them in all the rest because this possessive impulse is seen as one of the big ways that being in love with someone is supposed to manifest. And that is just not how I operate psychologically. Like I just did not have the energy for that. I did not have it in me to scrutinize the other person's interactions enough to even know where to aim this kind of performance.

[00:07:49] Like it was just fundamentally unnatural to how my mind works. So I was just like they're paying attention to me at all. Like, what? Why would I? Like, no, and, the same time, these people would exercise the same intensity over all of my other connections. And I was like, no they're my friends. I'm spending the time around you that we arranged. What's the problem here? Exactly. But no, that friend was my closest female friend that I'd had an on again off again, crush on for years. And therefore, the fact that I didn't completely abandon her instantly when I entered this relationship was a big problem.

[00:08:27] That is so incredibly tiresome and it kept happening again and again. I learned the hard way that I was not supposed to tell my high school girlfriend who else I'd been looking at at a sheer boredom in math class. Even though I had no relationship whatsoever with those people and had no intention to be more than even superficially polite to any of them, there's just nothing there except the fact that they were in my line of sight during the boring part of math class, and it's just was incredibly tiresome from start to finish and it got me to rather resent this idea that whoever I was a certain level of close with was supposed to be allowed to police all of my other relationships and would also feel neglected if I wasn't doing the same to her is absolutely bizarre.

[00:09:16] But at the time it didn't even occur to me that things could be better. I could, I just knew this way was not working. And it seemed like dealing with this was just the price of having that kind of connection at all in my life. But later on, a different relationship brought up the possibility of having other partners and I was like, hmm, right. You could do that. And it was your idea. So I don't have to feel bad about being excited about it. This, it's definitely not a trap. Okay.

[00:09:48] Gwyn: Yeah, so the concept that one person has to be everything, being a fallacy.

[00:09:56] Alyssa: And once I had that, it fixed so much more about how I was dealing with people. Just when you grow up with as many overlapping kinds of weird as I did, the idea that someone wants to be close to you at all is a rare and treasured thing and you put up with a lot to keep it. But once you know that the one person who picked you isn't the only person you're allowed to have, that you can actually like look around and see how much wider that field actually is, that changes how a person sees her own value.

[00:10:28] And that led to a lot of unhealthy things I was tolerating to no longer seem like they were the price of not being alone. Which I think a lot of people who stick to one partner don't necessarily have this thought process. Whether their relationship is healthy or not, they don't necessarily consider how it reflects on how the way they experience this relationship might be affected by how they see themselves. And these are all lessons I had to learn and not being monogamous for, at this stage, a sizable fraction of my dating life has enabled me to learn them in ways that being monogamous would not have.

[00:11:07] Gwyn: Yeah. I don't expect you to necessarily know the answer to this, but, you alluded to it. Why the relationship escalator model doesn't work for those of us who are neuro spicy?

[00:11:22] Alyssa: Mm-hmm. The answers there are as diverse as neuro divergent people ourselves are. But a big one for me is there are kinds of enmeshment with a partner that at this stage I have empirical evidence do not end well for me. There are classic life steps on the escalator that are things I intend to never do if I can manage it. And a big one is the expectation that people move in together at some point.

[00:11:51] I've had other people living in space that has my name on its documents. It did not end well for me. A lot of us grow up in an environment where our needs and preferences are not honored because we're "weird" and therefore have to learn to be "normal". And therefore the stuff we want that is inconvenient for other people just gets trampled on because we have to learn that we're not gonna get it cuz we're weird and we have to start wanting normal stuff instead. And when we finally get out and live on our own people don't say that to us anymore because no one else has authority over the space we live in.

[00:12:23] The right to put holes in the wall or not notwithstanding. And the expectation that once you're close enough to someone, you have to let them in and have their wishes start mattering for how your space is laid out. That can be deeply anxious at best and psychologically destructive at worst. The control that we can exercise over our spaces when they are specifically ours is healing in an environment where we weren't allowed anywhere near that kind of autonomy before then. So, I intend to be someone who doesn't have roommates for as much of my life as I can possibly manage it. And that is alien to the escalator model.

[00:13:02] Someone who subscribes fully to the escalator model would see my connection to them as lesser, because this is not on the table. There's a big movement of people who don't want to have children. That isn't necessarily as neuro divergent as polyamory probably is. They've spearheaded the child-free idea as well. And that's not something I've explored in detail, but that's another step on the escalator that holds no appeal for me at this time. And it's another one that, if I were still in a relationship that had the escalator as its watchword would be, you know, causing problems for me.

[00:13:39] Gwyn: I think so many people aren't even aware that there is a relationship escalator that we are supposed to be riding on. We just follow what the Hallmark movie tells us to do and what society has been telling us to do.

[00:13:53] Alyssa: Yup and what society says that you being a functional adult who, who we take seriously means you do these things often in this order. And we've all seen how up in arms they are about the changes to the game of Life. But the escalator still looks like the 1950s version. Mm-hmm.

[00:14:17] Gwyn: Oh my God. So I have to say, as an aside, when we got I grew up playing the, you know, 1970s version game of Life, cuz that's where I'm from and when we got the two thousands version for my kids, it was weird. I was like, you want me to get up and do something? Like there's an ATM card. What?

[00:14:44] And I was so flummoxed by that I didn't mm-hmm. I mean, not that I would necessarily, I'm not, that person would stop and analyze the game of Life anyway. But yeah, no, that just totally blew my mind, but yes, absolutely what you're saying. Mm-hmm. In that piece of it, the whole storybook of the game is still completely intact.

[00:15:06] Alyssa: Yep. [00:15:06] Gwyn: You're supposed to ride around, pick college or not. Get kids, put them little pegs in your car.

[00:15:12] Alyssa: Mm-hmm.

[00:15:14] Gwyn: Oh, I love the idea of using the game of Life to demonstrate life.

[00:15:20] Alyssa: Mm-hmm.

[00:15:22] Gwyn: Oh my gosh. That's amazing. Thank you.

[00:15:25] Alyssa: No problem.

[00:15:27] Gwyn: There's some other places that you pointed out where polyamory or non-monogamy, ethical non-monogamy, however you wanna phrase things.

[00:15:35] Alyssa: Mm-hmm.

[00:15:36] Gwyn: and neurodiversity come together really well and one of them that seems so obvious But again, I hadn't really thought about it until you wrote it down, is communication.

[00:15:48] Alyssa: Oh, yes. I tried to write this book with a number of different categories of neuro divergence in minds, and the whole section about why it's structured the way it is in there.

[00:15:58] And one of the things that characterizes a lot of us and autistic people in particular is just. Preference, verging on the fixation, on being very precise and careful with our words. And anytime people are deconstructing and moving away from ingrained social patterns, that means we can't rely on those patterns to fill in the gaps in whatever we're thinking or saying or presenting.

[00:16:25] and that means that thorough, precise communication becomes a lot more useful. And the fact that that is natural for a lot of us is part of what makes so many ways of just being socially weird work for us. Because we can explore and examine and articulate the ways in which we are operating that diverge from what is normal. Because we desperately wish someone told us what normal is.

[00:16:51] In the same terms. It makes a lot of us natural at communicating difficult and involved topics and for identifying the places where, you know, described heuristics and patterns aren't actually covering the situation that we're in and would do well to be laid out more specifically. It's not foolproof. It's a pattern and not like a superpower necessarily. But it's a way in which certain kinds of not aligning with normalcy become easier for people whose brains work a certain way.

[00:17:25] Gwyn: Do you enjoy what you're hearing? Would it warm your heart to help support this work? It would certainly warm mine if you did. There are a couple of easy ways you can do that on the podcast's website whatexcitesus.com, you can click to buy me a coffee or you can opt for a recurring contribution by clicking on the Patreon button. If you choose Patreon it also comes with perks for you. Starting at just $3 a month you can listen to all the episodes ad free and early (when I get them done early). You also get all sorts of random bonus bits going all the way up to private chats with me. So please come visit me at whatexcitesus.com. Oh, and you can talk back to me there too and catch episodes you might have missed. Let's make this a two-way conversation at whatexcitesus.com. Thanks.

[00:18:30] Tell us about new rules.

[00:18:32] Alyssa: So a big thing that comes up that is both a gift and a potential difficulty in being polyamorous as a neuro divergent person, is that a lot of us rely on rules and structures and definitions to just give a sense of scaffolding in order to our worlds. Like, these are the ideas we use to understand other ideas.

[00:18:56] The base material, the foundation that we use to try to make anything else make sense. And so for all that, our rather precise minds can make it easy to deconstruct and move away from a lot of these patterns once they've been taken apart. We can be left at a loss for a similar level of structure for understanding things.

[00:19:17] And so just as important as figuring out which old ways of categorizing and conceptualizing relationships weren't working for us, is building some new ones to use instead. A classic issue is once you can do, you know, quote unquote relationship stuff with multiple people, the line between friendships and more intimate connections can start getting less and less easy to define.

[00:19:41] And some people can just roll with that. I suspect the concept of relationship anarchy that hinges on people just not caring about this anymore and good on them for it. But for people who do benefit from this kind of structure, that the key is finding new things that are different between your partners and your friends.

[00:20:02] It's. Building definitions that actually work for you and relate to how you yourself operate rather than connect to big social ideas you've already decided don't fit. One that works for me is that I rarely buy holiday gifts for people that aren't either my family members who will be at whatever I'm doing on that holiday or my partners.

[00:20:25] If I went further than that, then the connections get more and more tenuous and the gift budget gets bigger and bigger and I find that making sure that my partners are prioritized there is helpful for keeping mentally clear what makes them my partners on top of all the emotional intimacy and so on that they share that I don't necessarily give to any of my other friends.

[00:20:48] Something else that can help is maybe if you're co watching something with someone, you give that a lot more priority when it's your partner and not your other friends. Maybe if there's a show your partner's excited to show you, you make a point to make sure they're around when you start. There's a lot of other things that can be done to indicate that this person has a special importance in your heart that aren't we're gonna move in in six months and get married in 12.

[00:21:16] Gwyn: Right, right. Mm-hmm so using that communication set mm-hmm , where you're getting really, really clear about everything involving the relationship, can help you discern you and your partner, that specific partner, what rules you wanna have in place for going forward. And that can help define the relationship.

[00:21:38] Alyssa: Yeah, I think so.

[00:21:41] Gwyn: Yeah. So going forward with the concept that non-monogamy and neurodiversity can work really well together if you have a bunch of things in place. Like clear communication and discussing the ideas that you want to have moving forward in a relationship. What are some things that people should be on the lookout for?

[00:22:04] Alyssa: Right. Neurodiversity can come with a number of challenges and whether we're talking about the relationship between people with different neurotypes or just a bunch of neuro divergent people who are all connected to each other. It's not all the rule-based sunshine and roses that this conversation has suggested up to this point.

[00:22:25] There's a reason that neuro divergence often gets characterized specifically as a challenge in a lot of interpersonal interactions. A big one is rejection sensitive dysphoria. Which for those who don't know, is a classically A D H D experience, but also shows up elsewhere. In which criticism and difficult conversations can have a vastly outsized emotional impact on someone to the point where they start to doubt their entire value as human beings after what should have been a much smaller conversation than that.

[00:22:56] And left unchecked. This can be very destructive for everyone involved. The person who feels like this, who doesn't recognize that the emotion is out of proportion to the situation that induced it can make rash or unhealthy decisions. Someone who knows their partner behaves this way but doesn't have the tools for helping them with it can end up walking on eggshells around them.

[00:23:18] It can start to look like, but not necessarily be the certain patterns of abuse, even if it's left unchecked long enough and with few enough tools for managing it. So this is a situation where it's just really unpleasant for everyone involved unless everyone involved knows this is what they're dealing with and is aware of how to manage it. So I present some ideas that can be helpful for people who struggle with this. And I know it's something I have to remind myself of every time, you know, I get some feedback at work about a thing I could have done better.

[00:23:55] Another big one is alexithymia. It's something that often comes with the autistic package, but that can turn up elsewhere. Just difficulty identifying your own emotions. It is hard to have our tidy, precise conversations about what people are feeling and what made them feel that way and what we're gonna do about it if you just cannot figure out what is happening.

[00:24:17] And it's very common for neuro divergent people to have a lot of difficulty with identifying our emotions. So getting better at that is critical because relationships are mostly emotions in practice and in a situation where a lot of unexpected stuff can happen and whether it's people's assumptions being tested or things you thought you were okay with turning out to need more conversation and so on. It helps to know what you're feeling well enough to tell someone else about it, and that's not necessarily a natural capacity for many of us.

[00:24:54] So that's something that has to be built if, if these problems are to be avoided. Something I made a point to mention is the neuro divergence is still subject to a tremendous amount of bigotry and just general ill treatments in our worlds, and being on the lookout for patterns that come out from that and being prepared to self-advocate accordingly is important.

[00:25:21] This book is not a guide on defeating the anti neurodivergent bigotry, but I couldn't write it without acknowledging that when people think we're weird, they tend not to hesitate to say so.

[00:25:33] Gwyn: Right. And then if you have RSD, it stings like somebody shot a bullet through you.

[00:25:40] Alyssa: Yeah. And it ties into the fact that I think we're a few generations out from consistently producing neurodivergent adults who aren't also traumatized.

[00:25:50] Gwyn: Wait, what? are, are there any adults that aren't traumatized? I don't think there are.

[00:25:57] Alyssa: Exactly. And one of the results of that is that it's difficult to talk about neurodiversity without acknowledging that most of us carry the scars of being treated badly by the neurotypical mainstream, to the point where that feeds into like what the definitions of neurodiversity even are.

[00:26:15] People have commented that my quote unquote autistic traits show a lot more the more stress I'm under. And part of that is just the very definitions of what autism looks like are often based on our stress responses.

[00:26:33] Gwyn: Oh, that's really interesting.

[00:26:36] Alyssa: Thornapple Press has a whole separate non-monogamy and trauma coming out before too long, so look forward to that.

[00:26:43] Gwyn: Great.

[00:26:43] Alyssa: It's not one of mine, but I'm sure whoever wrote that did a great job. And the fact that it's a whole separate book means that I didn't spend a huge amount of time on it here, but I suspect perceptive readers will find the places where it turns up anyway.

[00:26:58] Gwyn: Sure. It's hard to not buy into what the world tells us we're supposed to be.

[00:27:07] Alyssa: So much, so much, and so much of figuring out how to exist as neurodivergent people in this world is figuring out which parts of that messaging we're just not going to listen to anymore. And once you're abandoning all this awful mainstream messaging, wants to stop you from getting a little weird. Weird is great. All my favorite people are weird.

[00:27:31] Gwyn: I, I agree. I yeah, I can't think of anybody who's in my circle that isn't a little weird at the very least. And it also makes me think of the uh, Steve Martin routine from the seventies about Let's Get Small. And I mean, you know, we know what he was talking about or not, which is fascinating cuz Steve Martin's actually not a stoner. Anyway, total tangent. I don't have any sort of neuro divergencies.

[00:27:56] Alyssa: Yeah, of course not. What are we talking about? Why are all these ADHD memes so relatable?

[00:28:03] Gwyn: What? Um, Oh my goodness. So one of the things you were talking about with alexithymia is mm-hmm, the inability to determine what the emotions are and mm-hmm. , what I'm imagining is a, I'm a beader so I play a lot with, string is a big tangled, mass of string.

[00:28:25] Alyssa: Yup

[00:28:26] Gwyn: Where there's a bunch of different emotions and they're all valid, but you can't really figure out what they are because it's all just one giant heap.

[00:28:35] Alyssa: Mm-hmm. That can definitely be what it feels like. Experiences I've come across is that, especially if you're conflicted about a situation, like all the emotions that cause elevated heart rate can just sort of blend together and, and all you can feel is something big is happening.

[00:28:54] And you have to spend some time with the tangle and get really good at untangling knots to start sorting out what the individual strands are. And maybe you never quite get a handle on some of them, but once you know enough of the others, you can start to get a sense of what exactly your overall appraisal of this difficult, exciting situation is.

[00:29:14] Gwyn: So from your personal experience, could you suggest something that would help somebody in that moment? Not the moment 10 minutes from now when you're a little calmed down, but in that moment of, ahhhhhhhhh

[00:29:30] Alyssa: Deep breaths and removing people from your life, if they don't give you that 10 minutes. if they refuse to acknowledge that you, you require time to figure out how to process something or you'll say something you regret. Then what they want is for you to say something that you'll regret, even if they don't know it yet. And to the extent that we're allowed to curate the people we spend time around, I think we should

[00:29:57] Gwyn: I think that's a large part of what you're saying in this book in general.

[00:30:03] Alyssa: There are very few downsides to spending less time around people that consistently make you feel bad. [00:30:13] Gwyn: Boy, I wish that was a life lesson we could just go paint on a wall somewhere. Maybe we can. Hmm. . .

[00:30:22] Alyssa: Our lawyers have advised us that this may or may not count as vandalism.

[00:30:31] Gwyn: Thank you. I appreciate that. Oh my goodness. So overall, it's a wonderful book. I'm so glad that you wrote it, that it exists, that it can be a really good starting place for people who, mm-hmm. . Are experiencing or even curious about both of these terms. Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm. . Cause so many folks who are neurodiverse don't have any idea. And so many folks who might be interested in ethical non-monogamy or polyamory mm-hmm also don't even know it exists and that it's a possibility.

[00:31:10] Alyssa: Yep. It's absolutely wild. This reality is very amusing to me because I think if I start sketching out, like, like extended molecule diagram, I have to go three or four metamours deep before I find a neurotypical person. It is shockingly natural for people like us, partly because it meshes well with our psychology, partly because we find each other.

[00:31:34] People tend to make friends with people who they naturally mesh with, how their minds work and the results is whatever kind of weird you are, chances are the people around you are also that kind of weird, or at least a compatible kind. And the result is that, you know, neuro divergent people travel in packs and L G B T Q, et cetera, people travel in packs and.

[00:31:57] We, we find each other. It's, it's wonderful. And it's led to me being very amused at what the stereotypes about non-monogamy are, because you either get the romance novel covered, the ultra chiseled lethario, who's the most neurotypical person imaginable. Or you get gross ideas that were not sufficiently desirable and therefore, you know, can't convince someone to be exclusive. So like deprioritize our own desire for exclusivity to get anything at all. I can take one look at the people I'm around and know that neither of those things are true. They're all huge dorks and most of us are smoking hot and can have whatever we want. And what we want is to be huge dorks together.

[00:32:43] Gwyn: Yay! I love huge dorks. [00:32:48] Alyssa: I hope a whale biologist takes that one out of context

[00:32:55] Gwyn: As if, to illustrate my point. So I wanna be mindful, I know that you have things coming up, so is there anything that you wanna be sure to touch on that we haven't before we wrap up?

[00:33:06] Alyssa: I mean, besides shilling my author copies that are gonna go back on my website real soon,

[00:33:11] Gwyn: Woohoo!

[00:33:11] Alyssa: Besides that, the mainstream likes to present neuro divergent people as anything from completely sexless, to totally undesirable, to abusive monsters in the making. And any given person could be any of those things, but that's absolutely not true of neuro divergent people as a group. It's also not true of neurotypical people as a group.

[00:33:35] They're just gross stereotypes in general, wielded to do harm to large groups of people. And one of the results is you'll often see polyamory presented as either a refuge for the undesirable or the province of the only, the most charismatic Instagram influencers. And it's for any demographic of people.

[00:33:59] This is a model of living that can work for people from all sorts of walks of life. And in an economy where it takes seven people to buy a house, I would argue it works for a lot more people then are currently trying it. And not just because I regard the strictures of monogamy as almost inherently toxic. This, this is something that, that some other aspect of you does not have to stop you from exploring.

[00:34:25] Gwyn: Yeah. I would put forward that this book is gonna be good for people who are also neurotypical and monogamous so that they can have a little bit of an idea of people in their lives who are not.

[00:34:40] Alyssa: Oh, yes. To say nothing of how, and examined and self-aware life eludes far too many people who would benefit from it.

[00:34:48] Gwyn: Yeah, that too, for sure. So I always wrap up the interviews. Well, I almost always mm-hmm. , when I remember I wrap up the interviews with what excites you.

[00:35:02] Alyssa: Me. The idea of getting people to think about stuff in ways that they haven't before, hence to experience ideas and possibilities and little chunks of what exists in this world that maybe they'd never even heard of before. And I, that look in people's eyes when they realize that you've brought them a little piece of reality that it didn't even occur to them could possibly exist. I it just one of the best feelings there.

[00:35:33] Gwyn: That's awesome.

[00:35:35] Alyssa: Also, women in crop tops, those are pretty exciting.

[00:35:41] Gwyn: Yay for a multifold answer!

[00:35:47] Oh, that's wonderful. Okay, so Alyssa Gonzalez, where can we find copies of your book called Non-Monogamy and Neurodiversity.

[00:35:56] Alyssa: I am selling signed author copies at alyssacgonzalez.com/store. So that's Gonzalez with two Zeds and no S's. And if you're, don't particularly care if it's signed. And you can go to thornapplepress.ca and explore the various ways to buy them from the publisher or your favorite local bookstore. But signed copies, are at Alyssacgonzalez.com/store. And I just got a whole crate of them right before this interview, so I'm gonna get to put these on real soon.

[00:36:33] Gwyn: Awesome. That's so exciting. And apologies for my very white person pronunciation. But that is What I got.

[00:36:42] Alyssa: It's what it is.

[00:36:44] Gwyn: I also have the speech impediment where I can't, I can't role my Rs. So you know, I just sort of give up a little bit. like I'm white. Sorry, I mean I'm Jewish, but you know,

[00:36:55] Alyssa: I have gotten worse from so many elementary school teachers. Don't worry. [00:36:58] Gwyn: Oh, I can imagine. Thank you so much. This has been truly delightful.

[00:37:03] Alyssa: This was a lot of fun.

[00:37:04] Gwyn: If you enjoyed this conversation, please be sure that you are subscribed so that you'll hear all the other great chats we have here. Also, I would ask that you talk about it with a friend. Having more of these conversations will help reduce the stigma around these topics, which I firmly believe will help the world in general.

[00:37:31] What Excites Us is produced, edited, and hosted by me, Gwyn Isaacs, it's host. At tickle.life, all music is used under the Creative Commons attribution license. The opening song is The Vendetta by Stephen Kartenberg, and this is Quando by Julius h. If you are a musical artist and you would like to send me some music, I would love to hear that.

[00:37:56] Please find me at whatexcitesus.com and everybody, everybody listening at all, I appreciate you and I appreciate and thank you for listening. Bye for now.