Let’s Be Politically Promiscuous

Part of the Series

Movement Memos

“Our movements are pretty much just made of our relationships — whether we can move together, coordinate, collaborate, figure out disagreements [and] stay loyal to each other when the repression comes down,” says Dean Spade. In this episode of “Movement Memos,” Spade and host Kelly Hayes discuss the lessons of Spade’s new book, Love in a F*cked-Up World: How to Build Relationships, Hook Up, and Raise Hell Together.

Music by Son Monarcas, Pulsed and David Celeste

TRANSCRIPT

Note: This a rush transcript and has been lightly edited for clarity. Copy may not be in its final form.

Kelly Hayes: Welcome to “Movement Memos,” a Truthout podcast about organizing, solidarity and the work of making change. I’m your host, writer and organizer Kelly Hayes. Today, we are talking about how we can bring our liberatory values into our interpersonal relationships. Have you ever been part of an organizing group that fell apart because people treated each other poorly? Or found that your transformative values weren’t showing up in your closest relationships? Have you found yourself chasing the romantic ideals of a society whose norms you despise? If so, you are going to want to hear what my friend Dean Spade has to say over the next hour. Dean Spade is a writer, trans activist, and associate professor at Seattle University School of Law. He’s also a friend of the show and a dear friend of mine. Dean’s latest book, Love in a F*cked-Up World: How to Build Relationships, Hook Up, and Raise Hell Together, offers advice and resources for activists who want to live and love according to their values, and divest from cultural scripts that leave us empty and unfulfilled.

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[musical interlude]

KH: Dean Spade, welcome to “Movement Memos.”

Dean Spade: Thank you for having me back.

KH: How are you doing, friend?

DS: I don’t know if you ever have that feeling like you have a thousand eyeballs and they’re looking in all directions at once. I feel just like there’s so much going on. Wow. And also I’m able to still feel gratitude for being here with you.

KH: I am so grateful to be in conversation with you, friend. I always learn so much from you and I really cherish the opportunity to think alongside you. I am also really grateful for your new book, Love in a F*cked Up World, which I really wish had existed when I was younger. I‘m not usually into self-help books or books about relationships, but I think that’s because I needed a book that frames those topics in a way that jives with my radical politics, and this is that book. I love the politics of this book, and I love the no-nonsense style and the practicality of your advice. It’s such a great resource for people who are trying to live and love according to their values, and whose relationships are tangled up in the movements we’re a part of. So to kick off our discussion, can you talk about why you wanted to write this book?

DS: I mean, as I know you know, because you demonstrate it in your work, our movements are pretty much just made of our relationships — whether we can, as you say, move together, coordinate, collaborate, figure out disagreements, come up with the next practical step, stay loyal to each other when the repression comes down, identify key targets instead of targeting each other. Those things are what make and break the ability for us to do the life-and-death work that we do, whether that’s direct action or mutual aid or whatever we’re up to and we live in a culture that gives us pretty poor relational skills where we are told to compete with other people, where it’s hard to trust each other, it’s hard to be trustworthy. We don’t know what to do with our emotional reactivity and we take it out on each other.

We’re not terribly aware of our emotional landscape because we’re supposed to be really numbed out to get by, and so we often think something’s happening externally that’s happening internally and we are upset and then cause havoc or we blame ourselves really deeply and shame spirals and don’t do the bold actions that we could do because we don’t feel okay about ourselves or we take ourselves away from others. There’s just so many forms of relational difficulty that we have and I’ve been in these movements for about 25 years and the entire time I’ve been of course studying how change happens and studying contemporary historical movements. I’ve also been on my own personal journey of study where I’ve read a lot of self-help books because I’ve been in my own suffering and wanted to show up differently than I show up and seeing myself act in ways or have patterns that weren’t working for me and that I could see were undermining how I wanted to be in the world, who I wanted to be in my intimate relationships, in my collaborations and groups.

And so I think for me, I’ve been writing this book for about 10 years, it’s a really long journey of study just trying to be like, how do I take some things and tools and ideas that are useful from the really terrible self-help literatures, which really are like, they’re individualizing, they take our pain out of political context, they make it seem like it’s our personal problem to solve personally, instead of that it’s a matter of collective action like all of our troubles are. How do I take some of the stuff that’s good and insightful about kind of common patterns of human reactivity and approaches to that and move it into the context that people in our resistance movements agree exists, that we’re doing all this in the context of racial capitalism, patriarchy, and also specifically how to deal with the ableism in that literature and can I take what’s useful and bring it into a context that’s centered in disability justice?

So that’s a lot of what this book is. It’s just really trying to be some practical tools that we could share with each other to try to notice what are the really common patterns of reactivity that when they’re happening you can feel like I’m bad or you’re bad, it’s just me or it’s just you. When really it’s like it’s happening again and again and again in all of our groups and roommate relationships and love relationships and friendships in artistic collaborations and all these spaces and be like, oh, these are patterns. We’re not bad, but we are full of ideas from a culture that shaped us and we can spot them together. We can be loving and gentle towards ourselves and we can actually make choices when the reactivity comes up instead of just acting out kind of on autopilot. That’s my hope because I really feel like we are in very dire times as all of your work helps us see and analyze and we need each other.

The other side has all the money and the guns and that kind of power and the power we have is people power. If all the people and animals and plants on earth are endangered by this death cult that we’re living under and if we can’t move together and do risky stuff and care for each other, it’s all that much worse. We need to stop as much of the harm as possible and care for people and there’s already not enough people getting that support and most people are really disempowered and not part of the kinds of work in their communities that I think ultimately, probably their spirits long for to alleviate suffering.

So I’m hoping that some of the tools in this book help us with how bumpy it is to deal with conflict when we’re living in society that doesn’t prepare us for that, and that makes us conflict averse and that makes us dispose of people instead of caring for conflict and working towards repair. And I’m hoping that people feel some relief when they read it like, “Oh God, that’s not just happening to me.” That’s a collective sort of shape and there’s ways to actually have some different outcomes. I’m not trapped inside this pattern.

KH: I really appreciate your point about how our greatest strength is people power. In order to leverage people power, we need to be able to work together, and have constructive relationships, and not destroy each other over every disagreement or disappointment. And I think your book is such an important tool, in terms of learning to move differently and to break some of the patterns that divide and isolate us.

In your book you write “Relationships are a place where we can practice our values rather than acting out messed up cultural scripts fed to us by corporate media.” What do some of the messed up cultural scripts we are acting out in our relationships look like?

DS: One of them that I talk a lot about in the book is the romance myth. The idea that we’re fed that romantic relationships are the most important relationship, that if you don’t have one, there’s something wrong with you, that you should shape your whole life around it, give up your friends, give up your political projects, give up where you live, whatever, to chase that, that matters more than anything else, that the person that you’re with in that way should be able to read your mind and that if there’s conflict between the two of you in any way or you want different things, it’s because something’s wrong with you or something’s wrong with them, that you should never be attracted to anyone else but them, that it should be easy and natural, just sets up expectations that are unrealistic that can lead to a lot of disappointment, resentment, conflict, blame.

Also, the romance myth includes this idea of a relationship escalator. Your relationship should go through a meet, fall in love, move in together, buy property, have children, get married, whatever that might be subculturally, somewhat different for different people, but it’s kind of an unspoken set of norms about what that should be like and if you don’t want that or the other person doesn’t want that there’s something wrong with you or wrong with them, that they don’t really love you. There’s ways in which we really pressure ourselves and one another with this or get pressured by family or by the culture in general so that people are just doing things that aren’t based in any kind of sense of choice, creativity. It’s just kind of like shame is guiding a lot of it. There’s an idea that the relationship world, the romantic world is a market and you should trade up to people based on racist and ableist beauty norms and you want people with more money.

There’s all these horrible kind of competitive ideologies that also cause people to be very self-hating and spend a lot of time chasing certain kinds of bodies or criticizing our own appearances to an extreme level and just feeling terrible about ourselves and each other and leads to people being in very dead end relationships that are often not sites of creativity but are instead kind of emotional lockdowns that are not generous but are instead resentful or people believing their lives are terrible, because they don’t have this kind of relationship. That’s one example of a script. Another one I talk about in the book is just the disposability, the idea that… I think it’s actually fed a lot in the dating and romance world by the apps kind of the swipe right, swipe left thing like you’re shopping for other people. People do this also in friendships though. If something isn’t perfect with you, I’m just going to get a new one.

I think the idea of the internet making it seem like there’s endless numbers of people that we could reach, which is really an illusion really. Actually, you’re pretty much stuck with people in your community. Frequently you can dislike someone I found in activism and 20 years later, you’ll find they’re still your only ally on this issue in this one place you are, so you better figure it out. So we actually can’t throw each other away. People disagree. We live in a prison-centered society and one of the things that that kind of disposability script does is it makes us really unwilling to give and receive feedback to each other. We’re scared to tell each other directly, “Hey, that hurts my feelings,” or “When you don’t do your tasks in the group, it’s hard on me and some of the people on the team” or “I actually think that this isn’t the right language for the banner,” or whatever.

We don’t tell each other all the little things and then we blow up because we’ve stored so many resentments and built a huge story about the other person or we just disappear and don’t do the things we’d agreed to. And we’re very defensive when people give us feedback because we’re not used to it and so we don’t want to hear it and we think it means that we’re terrible when really they just said “We didn’t do the dishes.” So all of that stuff can really harm us. I also talk a bit in the book about the scarcity myth and capitalism, specifically the idea that there’s not enough and we have to all compete and we should look up at what others who have more than us have and feel constant envy and never notice that there’s lots of people who are struggling more and instead feel generosity and concern about that.

So there’s lots of different pieces, but they get into our minds and we think that they’re our thoughts. I think I will only be happy when I have a giant wedding and this 2.5 children, but really that’s not my thought. That’s a script I got from unending brainwashing from TV and books and movies and songs and whatever. And so a lot of that can lead us to be really far from our values. On the one hand, I’m a feminist and I believe in sex positivity and anti-racism, but then I start dating someone in my activist group and I end up causing a lot of harm because I was disappointed that they didn’t want to be monogamous or they didn’t want to live together or that they… Whatever it is or just that I can’t handle that we didn’t end up having the exact relationship that I wanted.

Just these scripts can become very powerfully connected to our feelings of safety and security and so that we get really activated when something related to the script goes off differently than we hoped and we can become quite destructive to ourselves and others. So learning more about what they are and asking ourselves how to get into a more consensual and less coercive relationship to our desires and also to communicating directly with others about our desires instead of assuming we all have the same desires because they’re scripted, can really shift the amount of wear and tear that these scripts can have on our movement groups, on our personal lives, on our day-to-day.

KH: I relate so much to this question of, are these even my desires, or is this something that I’ve been told and conditioned to want? Because it makes sense that we are lonely, and that we experience feelings of pain and emptiness in a society that is so unjust and alienating. And when we have these feelings, we may think, “Is this discomfort the absence of these things I’ve been told to want?” Because we are surrounded by these depictions of what happiness looks like. Whether it’s on Instagram, or on TV, or in stories that are about other people, who may be completely different from us in every way. And we may think, if I only had a partner, or a traditional family, or whatever else, I could be happy.

But as we know, many people who have all the things we’re told to want are miserable. Just miserable, and sometimes also lonely. Because following these scripts doesn’t give us the tools to navigate anything that’s difficult about relationships, and it also robs us of the chance to explore — to figure out what our own unique journey might look like and mean to us. But, as you said, we start processing these scripts and setting these expectations when we’re very young.

So much of what fucks us up happens or starts when we’re children. So, on that note, can you talk about how these pressures and difficulties we experience as children shape our coping mechanisms and how that shows up in our relationships?

DS: Yeah. It’s like we live in a culture that’s so harsh and it’s just like don’t feel any grief, be quiet, sit in a chair all day and don’t move. The kind things, the kinds of brutal systems we’re coerced into, the kinds of pain we have to witness every day, our loved ones being deported, being in prison, people sleeping outside. There’s so much lockdown on us about how to behave and a lot of that happens in childhood. There’s a really strong way in which what childhood is in our culture is just like being controlled, being told so many of your creative, alive feelings in your body and in your words are not appropriate, not for now. Be quiet. Sit still. And also our caregivers are all traumatized people as well and they have coping mechanisms so we learn from them. It’s not acceptable to be sad or you need to be cheerful or you’re not allowed to feel angry or you need to hide your sexuality or whatever.

And then these can come through specific racial norms, gender norms, et cetera, depending on where we are in the society and what kinds of things our caregivers have had to do to survive or think we need to do to survive. So we all come through childhood really shaped. We had an emotional range that’s limited often like, oh, I can’t feel anger, but I feel a lot of loneliness or I can’t feel loneliness and sadness and grief, but I often feel a lot of anger or whatever it is. A lot of us have limited emotional ranges in some areas. We have scripted reactions.

I’ll give myself as an example. My reaction to almost everything is shame. I grew up in a really chaotic environment with a lot of things happening that I couldn’t control. So the message that I gave to myself to get by was, “I must be able to control this. It’s coming from me. I’m bad. If I’m just good enough, it’ll work out or if things will be better, this thing won’t happen.” It’s a really common one people have. And so when things are weird, instead of being like, “Hey, I don’t think I like this.” Maybe being able to have a boundary with another person or say, “I don’t want to do that again.” I’m like, “What did I do wrong?” Right?

Other people have really externalizing coping mechanisms like a difficult time seeing their role in it and instead they go straight to blaming and fighting someone. Whatever it is, these are all things that sometimes makes sense, but when they become your only move or you have a very limited set of moves because those were the ones that your child psyche clung to, it can really mean that we’re not responding to current reality in the ways that would be most towards what we want or establishing good connections that we want to keep or having dignity in our relationships or feeling belonging. And so one element of this book is kind of noticing what are those coping mechanisms that aren’t really working for me anymore? Being grateful for them. They’re not bad and I’m not bad for having had them and everyone has them. And then being like, is there some liberation I want beyond this?

Do I want to be able to have some reactions I can’t currently have? Do I want to not always have this reaction when it’s not the right time for it? To me, the idea… For me, liberation is responding to the actual conditions that are happening instead of being stuck either in a cultural script that tells us something else is happening and tells us to see the world that way, or in an old reaction that worked for me at another time or that I adapted at another time, I want to be like what’s happening right now and be able to perceive as much of that as I can and respond according to what I actually believe in instead of just doing what I’ve always done. So that does include looking at what we came out of our childhoods with.

Did everybody in our family gossip and nobody talked directly to people? Did people in our family never cry or did they fall apart and lose function during certain kinds of events? And I want to actually be able to be a little more capable during similar things and not follow that pattern, just whatever it was. Or in my family, were there some people who were angry so I never got to be angry or some people were sad, so I never got to be sad. Did I take a kind of complimentary role to others or did I always have to be the caretaker or did I always have to be the sort of diagnosed victim? Or whatever. And just where is that showing up now and what would it be like to have more of my range of aliveness, range of responses available to deal with the realities of my life now?

KH: One point you made in the book that really made me raise my hand and say, “That’s me!” was that a lot of us are stuck in cycles of numbing ourselves and seeking stimulation and instant gratification. How do you see these tendencies manifesting in people’s lives and what can we do about it?

DS: Yeah, I mean I think this is a long-time dynamic in racial capitalism where it’s like you’re supposed to go to work all day, get treated badly, or maybe you’re also the one enforcing rules and kind of numb out to how bad all that feels. Walk down the street and see people suffering, try to numb out to that. Be aware of all of this intense damage and destruction in everyone’s lives, numb out to that and then get off work or get out of school and go numb out with consumption, which is shopping, TV, video games, substances, whatever. But basically it’s like it’s numb morning, noon and night kind of survival. And these systems want us like that because they create so much brutality that if we are all awake to it, we might rise up and stop them, which we are capable of doing since most people on the planet are losing out.

So it’s really hard to acknowledge that we are numbing and to be like, oh, where is the numbness happening and where does it feel bad? I think it really can be motivating to be like, where do I wish I had, could feel more? A lot of us, because we’re numbing to the grief and pain, we then also feel less of the joy, pleasure side of the spectrum of emotions because if you know one side, it kind of numbs the whole thing and what am I using to numb and do I want to pay attention to that and make any adjustments? Not from a judgmental place, but just like I’ve heard this idea that you can ask yourself whether something is really a resilience activity. So when I do this activity, do I leave feeling more connected or more belonging or more aliveness, or do I leave feeling numb?

And a lot of us are drawn to numbing activities because things are so hard, but then afterwards we still feel bad. For me, TV is really numbing and mostly makes me feel pretty bad, whereas going for a walk may make me, like moving my body around a little bit, seeing the plants tends to make me kind of, actually helps me digest what’s going on and feel better afterwards. But I can see the craving for the numbing stuff is there. So just in a non-judgmental way, can I notice what are resilience activities, can I maybe even get friends to support me to help do more of those things? Like, oh, if I do that with a friend, it’s more fun. Or if my friend and I do journaling and then text each other about what it was like or whatever it is that’s more towards aliveness, more towards actually getting to process and integrate the feelings of what’s happening.

There’s a lot of research about how nowadays we don’t have solitude. Most of us are taking in others’ ideas while we’re riding the bus or going to work in the car or doing the laundry. We’re like, we’ve got the TV on or we’ve got the podcast on, or we’re never just with our own thoughts and emotions and having that kind of downtime where we’re not taking in others’ ideas is important because often that’s when a memory will surface, oh, that was a rough conversation yesterday or now I’m thinking more deeply about that headline I saw, or I am remembering something from early in life. Having that kind of chance to integrate and feel can make us more emotionally resilient. And when none of us are doing that, then we show up at the meeting and we’re fighting out the proposal and we’re all kind of in a really reactive state and all the spasming of those reactions is happening in the group and we think we’re discussing the proposal, we’re actually kind of, so much else is in the room that there’s not space for.

That, I think, is impacting a lot of people’s ability to relate to others. It’s making conflicts more explosive. A lot of people are acting stuff out sideways on the internet. So figuring out how to care for that numbing behavior, not judgmentally, but just is there some way to give myself more space to feel what’s happening, especially as we all take in really terrifying news about genocide and ecological crisis and everything that’s happening in our communities and people we love are dying and getting deported, all these things that are happening, can we know that we need more spaciousness? Can we create it for ourselves? Can we create it in groups? I’ve heard you talk about people having groups where we can actually be our full selves, discuss what’s sacred to us and visit grief together.

People are coming up with a lot of really interesting ways, climate grief support groups or survivors of violence support groups, trying not to get all that done. Also, in our meeting, I’ve heard you mention this really eloquently, not thinking we can get through this agenda and when all of us have all of that pent up and there’s no space to express it, and this is our one space of belonging during the week, it’s going to all start to come out sideways. So can we create more spaces of belonging where we can be in those feelings? And also, in our day-to-day check-out how we’re using numbing methods and see if there’s any room to adjust so that we get more resilience activities in there.

KH: Absolutely. I’m also thinking about these numbing behaviors that you’re talking about, and how even things that are unpleasant can be numbing exercises. Like doomscrolling, for example. It’s like, we can sometimes drift through this sea of bad news, without fully embodying an emotional response to any of it. Sometimes we may pause to indulge a reaction, but often, we are just absorbing headlines, and recognizing facts without reckoning with them, psychologically. That, too, can begin to make us numb, and without really understanding why, we might chase that feeling — that sense of knowing a bit more without really coming to terms with what we encounter. We jump to the next fact, story or take before the feelings become too real. I think for me, part of that is about avoiding grief. If my mind keeps moving, I don’t have to sit with my grief and really feel it.

I also think there’s a sense of human connection that gets lost in our reactivity. Like, in the same way that we don’t fully process the information we encounter online, we definitely don’t consider the humanity of the people whose words we react to. And I see these dynamics being replicated offline as well, which people are probably sick of hearing me talk about. But I have been thinking a lot about Elon Musk telling Joe Rogan that empathy is the fundamental weakness of Western civilization. Coming from this fascist billionaire who is one of the most destructive forces on earth, I find that statement downright instructive. He views empathy as a threat, because our regard for one another makes us stronger. It allows us to resist and survive together. Our connectedness threatens our enemies. And they are well positioned, right now, in this regard, because we are disconnected, we are alienated, we are popping off and declaring each other socially and politically dead over nonsense, all the time, and that makes us weak. If we want to become a menace to our enemies, we need to be deeply invested in one another. We need to prioritize our connectedness. Without empathy, we lose. Period.

DS: I mean actually I didn’t know that Elon Musk said that, and I think that’s really helpful to think of him as a person who’s trying to train empathy out of himself so he can do what he’s doing. I think that is really a good reminder of why we would want to be on the other side. I’m also just thinking about when you were saying that, I was thinking about what doomscrolling is like or what scrolling is like. It’s like I see an image of genocide and then I see an ad and then I see a funny meme and then I see an image about the ice caps melting, and then I see an ad and then I see my friend’s breakfast.

There’s no digestion, no integration. It’s kind of the worst case scenario. I’d rather people numb by just watching… It’s actually terrifying that we are going numb while watching things that should bring up the deepest empathy. It’s like we’re practicing being numb to the most painful things, and it’s not what we’re meaning to do. It’s just the way the technology is designed. But I just think all the time about how we’re animals and we’re designed to live in groups. We evolved to live in groups. We only can, and we’ve never in the history of human evolution gotten bad news alone. You get it from another person, like another animal body with facial expressions and is there and often, usually, probably more.

And now here we are for the first time in tens of thousands of years of evolution, receiving bad news totally alone, including when a loved one dies and you find about it on the internet or seeing the deaths of so many people, the torture of so many people, this is so hard on us, and it’s like, of course we’re going into these coping mechanisms of numbness and kind of shocked immobilization, and we really need to be able to connect and mobilize right now.

That’s the most vital thing to stop this really terrifying death cult that’s running everything. We need so many people to engage in caring and disruptive action with others. It’s the safest that we do it in really big numbers usually. And so it’s the opposite response that the technology is training us for and how do we rebel against that? I’m not trying to be either/or about using technologies. I think that they’re all… I mean, mostly they’re using us, but also we do live in this world and there are ways in which we engage with them, but is there any way to have some awareness of what it’s doing to me, make some choices about it, work with others to come up with solutions? People have great ideas. Whenever I have this group conversation, people are like, “Has anyone tried this? Has anyone tried this?” And people really learn stuff from each other. “Oh, that would help me. I could do that. That would be a way to limit this aspect of it.” So I think that more people having those conversations would really help.

[musical interlude]

KH: In your book you write, “To maintain our connections in both romance and friendship, we can cultivate an awareness of sore spots and find ways out of reactivity and learn to find support for strong feelings when they come up.” Can you say more about this?

DS: Yeah, I think what a lot of the book is about is how those moments when strong feelings come up, could I have more choice in those moments instead of just acting out the feeling that comes up? When the feeling comes up, it often tells me this group is terrible, or this person is awful, or I’m awful. And can I be like, oh, I’m having a strong feeling and then maybe even I can name it. I’m having shame or I’m having fear, and maybe even could I put my hand on my own chest or belly and be like, “Yeah, you’re afraid. You’re afraid.” Not trying to change it, not trying to get rid of it with a quick rationalization, but just being like, “A strong feeling is here.” Already, I’ve done so much more to stay aligned with my values.

When I was just in the, you’re bad, that person’s bad, I was probably about to do something like send a mean email or storm out of a group or gossip about somebody. So if I want to avoid acting out things that are disorganizing to our movements that I’ll regret personally, that disconnect me from people I love and need, just knowing when I’m having a strong feeling. And part of that, in the book I talk about this idea of sore spots being like, oh, I often feel left out. So I’m really mad at everyone in this group and it’s kind of because of transphobia, but it’s also because they went up for drinks without me, knowing that that’s a sore spot or even knowing with our friends, other ones could be, I’m quick to anger when this happens, or I have a hard time when people tell me to redo a task, I easily feel to criticize.

And so then just like, okay, how do I want to work with that sore spot? Well, I do want to get feedback, so how can I take care of myself when I get the feedback and I first have this defensive reaction or this shame reaction. Or if I’m working on projects with Kelly over and over again, how can I tell you, “Oh, Kelly, I kind of get weird about big feedback about writing. Can we do it this way? Or can you always tell me first how much you’re glad that we’re working together before you give me the feedback?” Or we can ask our friends for support about things that we know or are sore spots and our lovers and our family members and whoever else. And also we can know they’re not going to remember perfectly our instructions and doesn’t become… I think sometimes people go only as far as finding out more about their trauma or their history and then using it to be like, so everybody else has to fall perfectly in line because this is a sensitivity for me.

We don’t want to do that. I’ll give a light example of that. There was a period where I first started living with my boyfriend and I would sometimes get upset. Someone was coming over and I’d move all of his stuff. I wanted things to look nice, and I was like, “Look, I grew up in chaotic poverty environment where things are really messy and have a lot of, it’s easy for me to go to this shame and this is the way I deal with the shame and you have to deal with it.” And it’s like, well, Dean, there’s a next step there. Yes, good. You found out what the kind of source of this behavior was. Doesn’t mean he has to never put anything down on the table or that you are allowed to move his stuff whenever you want. The next step would be like, “Dean, what’s it like to try to heal the idea that your house is bad and you’re disgusting if things are out of place?”

And instead be like, “Well, it’s my beloved friend Angelica who’s coming over and she loves me, so I’m going to try out leaving the stuff on the table and noticing that she loves…” You know what I mean? We don’t want to just become rigid when we find out that we have a sore spot and expect everyone else to do whatever we say, because we have a sore spot. We want to be like, wow, that sore spot is here. I care about that. I’m going to let people know that it might mean that I sometimes jump to conclusions or am quick to do something. I’m going to apologize for the impacts of that, if I do do that, and I’m going to try to see if I can get any space from that. Could I do less of that? Could I have a counter message in my head?

Doing this, it’s like on the one hand, we’ve got these wounds, we’ve got these reactions, probably been practicing them for a long time, they’re going to keep coming up. So not being like, “Oh no, I’m not fixed.” But also being like, “Is there a little room here that I could change a bit, I could recover from that a little faster or not go as deep into it next time or actually apologize for its impact?” It is possible to change. It’s not the self-help book promise to be a totally new person in 30 days, but there is some space for transformation even in our pretty hardwired psyches that have survived a pretty harsh set of conditions living in this culture. There’s some possibility to have a little more awareness. And it’s like a low bar that can be very satisfying to be like, “Oh, the thing happened and I didn’t quite do the thing I regret.”

KH: I really love this point, and I see myself in so much of what you’re saying. I also want to share that this practice you mentioned, of naming a feeling, has been so important for me. Since I read the book, when I have felt myself having a strong reaction to something, I’ve made a habit of checking in with myself about what’s going on with me, before I respond to something external. As you know, and as some of our listeners know, this has been a bad stretch for me pain wise. And pain can really do a number on our emotions. I’m less patient when I’m in pain. I’m more easily upset. I may not articulate my feelings as well. And, I’m depressed more often, because being in pain is depressing. All of that puts everything that’s happening outside of me, which might upset me, or bump into a sore spot, in a shakier context. So, lately, when something makes me angry, or I feel a big reaction coming on, I check in with myself, and I name what I’m feeling. I might tell myself, “you’re in a lot of pain right now” or “you’re sad.” And naming those feelings and experiences really helps me honor them, instead of being unconsciously governed by them. And in that way, I can sometimes avoid rolling everything that I’m feeling into a reaction that someone else might not deserve, even if they are wrong, or irritating or annoying.

Something else that I have taken from the book that has been a huge help to me is the exercise called “What Else Is True?” Can you talk a bit about that exercise and when and why it might be helpful to folks?

DS: Yeah, totally. I love this exercise. The idea is when we are having a strong feeling like we’re so upset with our lover because they forgot our birthday or they didn’t show up at this thing, or we’re so upset with the group, because they didn’t like our proposal, or we feel this person criticized us in the group or whatever, it can kind of get tunnel vision. All I can see is that Kelly doesn’t like me, whatever, and I’m staying up at night and I am just seeing that in the world and I’m forgetting about the whole other context of my life. So the exercise is a series of things we do to shift that, to try to open the aperture and see more of what’s going on. So there’s a small circle inside a big circle and the small circle, the first time I write the strong feeling I’m having, like “Kelly doesn’t like me and is talking shit about me with other people” or whatever.

And then the bigger circle I write “What else is true about Kelly or the group or whatever the object of this strong feeling is? Oh, I remember that Kelly cared for me in these ways. I remember Kelly shares these values with me.” Anything I can remember, what else is true about Kelly or about the group that is not this thing I’m fixated on? And the next little diagram, another small circle, you again, write the thing you’re fixated on in the circle. In the larger circle, what do I not know? Well, I don’t know why they’re not calling me because it could actually be that they’re not feeling well or they’re dealing with a crisis in their community or their family, or maybe they didn’t talk to me at the meeting because of something I don’t know. So just like, what are all… I don’t know what’s going on with these people.

I don’t know what these people who didn’t talk in the meeting think, whatever. Just remembering that I might be making up a story, jumping to conclusions. There may be things I don’t know. And then the third circle, again, in the small circle, you write the thing that you’re kind of fixated on and the broader circle, what else is true about me? I’m in a couple other groups where I feel more peaceful right now. There’s other people in the group besides Kelly, who I know do support the proposal or I am really happy in my friendships with Angelica and Chandan right now, and I feel loved by them. Just like, can I remember that I have a broader life beyond the thing that’s really activating me right now? And then the next part of the exercise is… there’s a little chart.

On the left side of the chart, you write things you do have control over. I can go for a walk right now and try to cool off. I can try to go to bed early. I can do my tasks from the group, even though I’m not sure if everyone will do theirs. I can talk to a friend confidentially about what I’m struggling with… whatever. What are things I can control? On the right side, you write things you cannot control. I can’t control what people think about me. I can’t control whether this group is going to stay together. Whatever, all of that is, then you rip it off and that part you burn or you flush or whatever. Just what is on my side of the street? What can I actually work with? And the final part of the exercise is a few questions about whether this might be stirring up historical stuff.

Am I feeling like the way I felt in my family or at school in some way like left out, or I’m the only one, or I have to be the truth teller, or I’m not being believed, or am I imagining Kelly is my parent or my sibling who was mean to me or whatever? Am I going down some historical roads of emotional activation? And if so, can I be kind to myself about that? So there’s more happening here than what’s just happening right now in 2025. So how do I want to take care of that? Do I want to have a bath? Do I want to talk to a friend about it? Do I want to look at photos of myself at that age and feel compassion for that person? Do I want to journal about it? Do I want to eat a favorite meal from that time in my life?

And also knowing that there’s historical stuff present might help me not be as reactive at the people in the current story because I might be like, yeah, that some of what’s happening is with them, and some of what’s happening is with me and my history. The whole thing is just designed to try to put this strong feeling into context and maybe feel some gentleness and care for it instead of having to just do what it says.

KH: I love this activity so much, and I find it so helpful.

While we’re talking about how we relate to others, I also want to talk about the concept of interdependence. As Mariame often points out, we’re all interdependent, whether we acknowledge it or not, because we all rely on actions that other people have, will, or won’t take, all the time, in order to survive. In our movements, we often talk about interdependence as something we aspire to, in terms of overcoming individualism, and caring for and defending one another — which is not something everyone has experienced. I remember, early in the pandemic, one of my friends told me she was blown away by some of the mutual aid we were engaging with because people showing up for each other, and caring for each other, to that degree, was something she had never experienced before. So, given that we live in a culture that fetishes independence, and alienates us from experiences of collective care, I am really interested in talking about some of the therapy-speak we use to describe dysfunctional relationships. Particularly, the word codependence. Is this a useful term, and if so, how does it differ from interdependence?

DS: Yeah. I do use the word codependency in the book, even though I know there’s some really good, I use it a little bit, some really good critiques of it as well. Some of those critiques are from disability justice frameworks where people are like… And feminist frameworks and many other frameworks where we’ve realized there can be in a capitalist, racist, patriarchal society of an idea that the best people are independent and don’t receive any care. And what that does is it just hides the care that all people receive to survive and that we’re completely interdependent. And that can also be used to stigmatize those who are narrated in our culture as needing too much care, like old people, people with disabilities, children. And then it can justify ignoring the significance of the labor of those who do most of that care, which is disproportionately women and people of color.

And so there’s a way in which codependency is a kind of negative term in the self-help literature, and I don’t want to carry that baggage, but I do raise it in the book because it occurs so much in self-help literature. And I wanted to talk about what I think it means to me when it’s the most useful, which is it’s the dynamic essentially where I blame you for my feelings or I blame myself for your feelings. So if you’re angry, I’m like, “Oh my God, I have to stop this person’s anger.” Or if I am lonely, I’m like, “You’re making me lonely by not doing enough with me.” It’s like that move we do where we, instead of asking like, “Wow, what’s this feeling for me? What are the many ways in my life that I could support myself while having this feeling and/or get things that I need that this feeling is indicating I’m wanting?”

Instead I’m like, it happens a lot between lovers like, “You are making me lonely,” or “You are not meeting my sexual needs,” or “You are not…” Instead of like, wow, this is my life. I’m having a feeling. The feeling may have historical pieces, the feeling may be related to current. It’s evidence of data about my current conditions and what’s not working for me, but it’s probably not this person’s job to solve my feelings, nor are my feelings their fault, or am I so afraid of your feelings, so afraid I’ll make you angry, so afraid you’ll be disappointed that I’m doing a bunch stuff I don’t want to do. That’s another dimension of codependency, is I’m walking on eggshells trying to make you not feel something, which of course, I cannot control how others feel. That’s an illusion. And I shouldn’t be trying to. I should be doing what I really want to do in this life, not trying to not step out of line.

And so people really often make their lives very small so that their lovers don’t feel jealous or threatened by their friendships or activities. That’s a really common way. People get very isolated in romantic relationships, and the bulk of violence in our society happens in those relationships. It’s the most dangerous place to be. And so we really want to be careful about how we get stuck in that kind of… It’s almost like I become so certain that my security depends on what you feel and think about me, that I become small to try to control that, and then I resent you, and then our relationship is often very dead end or weakened or less pleasurable or less connective because no one’s really being real about what they need and want. Instead, everyone’s kind of doing this dance. And a lot of times that dance relates to the romance myth.

I have to pretend I’m not attracted to anyone else, or I have to pretend that I don’t want to do things that are things you don’t want to do. And people start that in their very early dating, they hide their preferences and activities from the other person. They send each other little often unconscious messages of, “Don’t do this. It’ll make me feel threatened. Don’t do that.” And so that is the typical codependency. Something I’m arguing for in the book is promiscuous support systems. And this is because I think we are interdependent. We all have many, many, many needs for care and connection, and we try to get them from just one person. It’s very unsatisfying and often dangerous and isolating. And so how can I really know that I can have lots of different kinds of friends and connections, some people who I share intellectual projects with, some people who have a shared experience of violence or harm, who I can get support with in a special way.

Some people who love certain activities that I love. How can I also try to not use exclusivity as the way that I value relationships? So if Kelly and I love to always go on road trips together, when Kelly makes a new friend and also goes on road trips, that doesn’t mean anything’s being taken away from me. How can I not have exclusivity be the marker of commitment? Because then that really pushes this isolation piece, pushes people to keep their lives smaller, hide their interest and connections from the people around them. Because really it’s like as all of your work shows us so well, it’s such a dire time. The stakes are so high. We’re going to be living through more and more really scary, disastrous conditions. And we all are kind of not well from it in lots of ways, like long COVID and also ways just emotionally, mentally processing all of the losses and grief.

And so we need to have a lot of people we can call on when we’re in need, not just one because that person might be actually caring for a different crisis or having their own crisis or just ghosting right now. How do we all have many people who we really could tell if something hard is happening? We’re practicing that. We’re showing our real selves to one another. We’re not dancing on eggshells in all these relationships. And instead we’re like, this person could really help me when I’m at my worst. And I would really answer their call when they’re at their worst. And I would help them think through something really, really tangled. And so that we all just feel less alone in how hard it is to navigate both the constant disasters and the kind of culturally coded responses inside ourselves that we can see aren’t working and that we need help working through from friends with shared values.

KH: I love that. And I love the phrase “promiscuous support systems.” I often refer to myself as being ideologically promiscuous. So I support the idea of bringing promiscuity into more and more of our analysis.

DS: All the promiscuity we can get. I love it.

KH: All of it. So is there anything else you would like to share with or ask of the audience today?

DS: I’ll just say along those lines, I think it’s just helpful to notice what is isolating us and are there any ways to build more connection? We’re going to need to break rules with people. As you’ve talked about a lot, we’re going to need to lean on people. So it’s not just people who are just like us. We need to have more people we can keep a secret with at work or in our neighborhoods, some more people who we could share stuff with. Whatever we can do now as conditions are mounting to build more connections. Even if we’re somebody who’s shy or doesn’t feel like we like people that much, we just kind of need this. We need more people who would visit us if we were sick. We need people who we could borrow stuff from. So just any way to build more connections, whether that’s like, let’s have a go-bag party on our block, or let me bring some pie to my neighbor, or let’s make sure we’re integrating people who are living in RVs in our neighborhood and in cars into our social connections.

Anything like that that we can do. And the one other thing I’ve been noticing a lot traveling around and talking to people about this book is we all have to make sure we have some friends who are more radical than us. If we are the most radical person we know, we’re probably being pulled in the wrong direction and we’re not getting challenged enough to expand our solidarities. And it can become a kind of unhealthy space of grandiosity. So if you’re the only person you know who believes certain things, then you’ve got to get some more friends who are pushing the edges of that. Otherwise, it can be lonely. And also it can mean that our thinking and our skills are not developing as much as they could.

KH: I deeply appreciate that call to cultivate connection, in these times. It’s one of the most important things any of us can do right now, and I hope we will all strengthen our relationships and our solidarity networks in the days ahead.

Dean, you are such a source of light for me, and for so many people, and I am so grateful to you for making the time to talk, and for writing this amazing book. As always, I look forward to our next conversation.

DS: Thank you so much. It’s been great to talk to you as always.

[musical interlude]

KH: Well, I really enjoyed that conversation. I always get so much out of talking with Dean, and I hope you found Dean’s insights as helpful as I did. Remember to pick up a copy of Love in a F*cked-Up World: How to Build Relationships, Hook Up, and Raise Hell Together — and if you can, maybe pick up a few to pass around. These insights are desperately needed in our movement spaces, and I hope we can not only read this book, but also have productive conversations about how to bring these ideas into practice.

In these fucked up times, our movements and our relationships are more important than ever, so let’s learn to break the harmful patterns that drive us apart and hold us back. Let’s live and love in ways that are truly liberating and fulfilling. Because we all deserve that.

I want to thank our listeners for joining us today, and remember, our best defense against cynicism is to do good and to remember that the good we do matters. Until next time, I’ll see you in the streets.

Show Notes