Show Notes Myco (it/its) and fern (they/them) discuss what it's like to shift expectations of their relationships in relation to plurality. They discuss the process and importance of, and difficulties with unmasking their plurality. They talk about the importance of valuing all the unique relationship dynamics that they see playing out. They also discuss the similarities in public attitude between polyamory and plurality, both 'othered' and treated as if they are odd instead of just regular variations of human experience. Image Description: The words "From one to many" pop forward from a creamy white background. The word "one" is colored half in green, half in peach. The word "many" is a mosaic of colors. Between the words sit two grey boxes with colored circles lined up on either side of the boxes. Squiggly colorful lines connect the circles to each other. The top grey box has only two colored circles, and two squiggly lines between them. The bottom has seven colored circles, and many lines. Transcript: transcription doc Fern (they/them): Hello!   Myco (it/its): We did not discuss who was leading this today! We did not discuss it in advance.   F: I will, is that ok?   M: Yeah.   F: I felt bad for a second because I feel like I always do. So that’s why I was like oh shit I don’t wanna take over.    M: Honestly?   F: You like when I take over?   M: You’re a really good leader.    F: Whee thank you! Alright.   Hello and welcome to another episode of Liberatory Naysayers. Yay. I am fern. They/them please.    M: Myco. It/its.    F: Today we are talking about…   M: More plural stuff?   F: More plural stuff!   M: Specifically a thing that should be very obvious but has not been and occurred to us over the past week. And has been potentially revolutionary.    F: Yeah! We had an epiphany recently that made us go wait! We’ve been doing this wrong the whole time!   M: I mean I wouldn’t say wrong.    F: I wouldn’t either.   M: I would just say as hard as possible?   F: God, hard mode, yes. No for real. It’s very true.   M: Yeah. To everybody’s credit we’ve been working really hard together.   F: Yes, we have.   M: It’s just been harder than needed I think.    F: We’ll get into why it was harder too cuz we have some reasons for that. But it’s ok.   Myco, would you like to tell our dear listeners why you chose the title you did for this episode?   M: Oh yeah. Unless you follow the instagram, you probably don’t know that I like to draw the episode graphics. It’s fun. I enjoy it.    In the process of making it I was thinking about this idea of moving from one relationship between fern and Myco. Toward acknowledging that there are many relationships between everybody. Those dynamics are different often. Even when they mirror each other in interesting ways between different people. There’s a lot going on.    Sorry. Rambly.   F: No, that answers it. From one to many. That’s what that means. You were thinking of things as one to one, and then we were like wait it’s not truly one to one.   M: It’s not and a lot of times thinking it is, or expecting it to be, is leading to conflict.   F: Mmm yes.One of the reasons we sort of fell into that pattern of interacting with each other is because of the need to mask. Right? Or maybe you would call it the habit of masking.   M: Oh 100% yeah.   F: Sometimes we don’t need to, but we just are doing it anyway. How is that, do you think, impacted things for you personally? Masking vs unmasking?   M: It makes everything really hard. Life is harder. Having to mask. Having to have spent years doing that. We have faced pretty intensive violence for any expression of madness or even just human emotion in our life. So I think it impacts the mask. Doesn’t it? The more violence that creates it, the harder it is to let go of. It’s like hammered in there you know?    F: Yes.   M: It is as natural as breathing.   F: Do you find that even in your own private space with trusted people that it’s hard to unmask.