Partners, Friends, & Feeling Excluded

Some of us are lucky to find romantic partners who love to slide on snow, ride bikes, camp, and do all of the things that we pursue in the outdoors. But when we don't do them together, it can bring up legitimate feelings of exclusion and jealousy. In this episode of Juicy Bits, Jen and Jillian explore the nuances of relationships forged in the outdoors after receiving a heartfelt letter from a listener grappling with these feelings. Whether you're in a long-term monogamous relationship or exploring ethical non-monogamy, working through these issues in relationships is a chance for closer connections and immense learning.

What is Juicy Bits?

We created Juicy Bits because we wanted to continue the conversations that we start out on the trail and on the chair lift. Hosted by our CEO Jen Gurecki and Ambassador Jillian Raymond, they talk candidly about everything from dude soup, to sex, to politics, to equity in the outdoors. We occasionally (read: frequently) drop F-bombs, interview some of the most interesting people in the outdoors and beyond, and say things that many of us think but don’t feel comfortable saying out loud. If you are easily offended or looking for something that is G Rated, this is not the podcast for you. But if you love truth-telling and irreverence, get ready to laugh, cry, and maybe pee your pants a little bit. 

Participant #1:
Hello. Hello and welcome. I'm Jillian Raymond, the co-creator of Juicy Bits and a Coalition Snow Ambassador. And I'm Jen Gurecki, your cohost and the CEO of Coalition Snow. For those of you who are new, get ready to laugh, cry, and maybe pee your pants a little. Juicy Bits is about taking the conversations that we start on the chairlift and at the trailhead and bringing them to you to explore alternative narratives that challenge the status quo about what it means to be a modern woman in the outdoors. Grab your helmet because sometimes it's a bumpy ride. FYI friends, this podcast is for mature audiences, so you've been warned. Let's get to work and juice the patriarchy.

Alright. Good morning, computer and interwebs. Oh, inbox. Dear Jen and Jillian. You two should bleep the Effing. Bleep to bleep. What? No, no, this isn't right. Okay, next one. Oh, good, here's one. Dear Jen and Jillian, you two do not know what the Bleep you are. Bleeping what? This is bullshit. You know me, I don't mind cursing. Ah, it's just because I'm kidding. Listeners, thankfully we do not get emails like this yet. Maybe there's some humans that would like to send these. And don't you know those emails you write and then you just delete because you know that you really shouldn't send that content. But thankfully, most of the letters we get are really thoughtful and they really help us see that what we're doing lands on our listeners in a way that makes them think and has them question the structures that they're in. So that's what we want to talk to you about this morning, is that joy we have in opening and reading and responding to emails and letters from our fans. So thank you, juicy Bits listeners. And Jen, why don't you bring up the one that we're going to touch base on this morning.

Yeah. So for those of you who are new to us this episode, we dropped our first episode of season six a little over a month ago, and within the first week, we received a few letters which we absolutely love. So at any time, please feel free to send us letters. You can do that at [e-mail]. And this letter, we want to share a part that will frame the conversation Jillian and I are having today. So this listener says, the last thing I have is more of an advice seeking note. I am fortunate enough to have a wonderful male partner who I can share the outdoors with and is one of my biggest supporters and allies. However, sharing in the outdoors with a romantic partner can be hard as fuck. We've discovered it takes a lot of communication and sometimes leaving that emotion at the car. That being said, recently I've been making it more of a priority to do women only ski trips. At the same time, if he is planning a trip with just our male buddies, I can't help but feel left out and inadequate, even though he's never made me feel this way. I know that it's entirely in my head, but I wonder if either of you have experienced this before and if you have any insight. Well, Jillian, I'm going to pass this over to you to kick us off because you are the person who's in the partnered relationship. Listeners know that I'm not, but I will talk about these feelings of jealousy and how you are required to deal with them when you're in polyamorous relationships. I have a bit of experience with that. But Jillian, you start because this so speaks to you in terms of being in a partnered relationship with a man for 20 years. So what did you think about this, listeners feelings about jealousy and likely some insecurity around this?

I know I took a bit of time to think about this before I responded. Sometimes things can get lost in email and you want to make sure that you're like addressing what the person said without having the full context. But as soon as this listener shared the idea of just couple and couple dynamics in the backcountry, being hard as fuck and then needing to leave some of those emotions at the car, brennan and I have been playing in the outdoors for we're coming up on 20 years now, this November. And he'll tell you, I had a little bit of like I almost get chills right now sharing it like a little bit of a PTSD from it. Because there have been some really challenging and really hard times that not only test yourself as a confident person, but as an effective communicator, because there are the dynamics with your partner of just loving them and believing in them and wanting them to do the same for you. And then you put yourself in highrisk situations where both people's lives are at stake and both people have something to bring to the table. Now, in my experience, Brennan has been literally the greatest teacher and mentor for me in the mountains. Our first date, kind of in the backcountry, was on the mountaineers route of Mount Whitney, and I was very new to split wording. And if any of you have done the mountaineers route on Whitney, it's not like a casual endeavor. Mount Whitney is by the highest peak in the lower 48, over 14,000ft or just over 14,000ft. And we were climbing the mountaineers route to go do some riding together. I had never worn crampons. I had my split board going horizontally, sort of in a makeshift back. I mean, there was a lot wrong with what I was doing. And even as him and I were doing this together, the sense of inadequacy was on my part due to inexperience. So when this listener was kind of touching based on this, I was thinking back to so much of what I struggled with and challenged was when I would show up and even now, when I show up, I would have to ask myself, like, what am I bringing to the table? Am I able to help these other humans in the backcountry? Am I able to read the tide charts as well, to plan for a Dom Patrol surf? Do I know a safe exit route? So it kind of came down to, what am I contributing? And so maybe fast forward ten years in that process with Brennan and I, there was a lot I was able to learn from him, and then we almost had to not necessarily separate the romantic part, but bring it together as like, we're friends doing this together. We're partners where we're here to keep each other alive. So it was almost like setting the boundaries within a given context because it could get really messy really fast. And I will also say there were times just in the actual physical dynamic of this person, brennan being much stronger, physically bigger, much more capable in certain settings. And that was also something to kind of just learn to put in as part of the dynamic and in the listeners they share, you know, kind of seeking out and spending time with women and women in the back country. And, you know, Brennan guided for a solid ten years, maybe more than that, where he was gone a lot in the winter. And so I started seeking that out myself, and I recognized, like, doing my own abbey level education, being the one that picked the objective, called on the friends, picked the meeting spot, and took on little, you know, leadership roles in the mountains. But still, that collective safety was such a game changer and such a shift in how I felt like I could show up. And I say, I think in my note back to her, I was saying, I try, because this is still an ongoing thing. That sense of feeling inadequate within certain groups can be really real, right? We all want to show up and feel like we're welcomed and we're loved and we're in the right spot, and there's no imposters, but there can still be those levels of insecurity and those questionings of where one fits in a dynamic. And I do think that comes down to really good boundaries and good communication. And then also, if people make you like, there's a few people, I used to call them like, the fuck you breaks. You would get to a point where people would stop, and you would get there, and I'd be, like, sweating and struggling, and I'd be like and they'd be like, okay, we're going. And I'd be like, Fuck you. You've all been sitting here for, like, 20 minutes having a snack, and now you all feel recharged. Like those would be people I would stop wanting to spend that time with because it became more to them about their objective and not so much about having kind of that camaraderie and that community sense in the mountains, which I found and I still find just as enjoyable as maybe our objective. And so I think I hope I'm not taking the listeners right now down kind of this rabbit hole of all right, Julie, now I'm going to write a letter to have you unpack, like, ten things you just said. But really in that sense of I think we've all been in situations in dynamics where there's a sense of inadequacy and jealousy and I'll just wrap up here. Deb before I let you chime in. The biggest point I tried to drive home with this listener and I tried to drive home with myself is and I think they touched on it. Everything comes from us, not at us. And it's one of those Tibetan worldviews that I love in my meditation practice. And so we can remember that as it comes from us, we try to recognize where that is and how deeply rooted it is. And then the other piece is recognizing that we are enough. So as we showed up, we are enough. But if we aren't, say, we legitimately feel like we could not save or help the person that we are out in the back country with. And that does come from us. And it's on us to be and bring our best skill set. Last point. Sometimes it is perfectly awesome to not get asked on a certain ski day or certain expedition, because that in my experience, it's been that person honoring the boundaries I've set. No, I do not want to be out from dark to dark on type two fun for multiple laps with potential frostbite and the things that my partner will engage in. And that's something we lovingly learned over the years. But I will say initially be like, how come I didn't get asked? And I'd be like, oh, that's right, he's not asking me because I've made it very clear that that's not the kind of stuff that is joyful for us to share it in the mountains.

And that's where I think it's a lot of pressure to think you get all the things from one person and that's where those friendships and those group dynamics to foster as adults in this world I think are so valuable. I always think about you and Brennan, the relationship that the two of you have. I love it so much. I always tell you this, I tell Brennan this. I love both of you as humans. I love your relationship. I love your family. The two of you do a really good job of just showing up for each other. So it's really interesting for me to listen to your experiences because it's completely different than my life I have had over the years, serious partners who I would recreate with. And a few of them, it was amazing. I loved going out with them and it hasn't been that way for a while because I haven't wanted to be with. News flash, I haven't wanted to be in a committed relationship with a man for a long time. No one's surprised to hear that. But this letter made me think a lot about just feelings of jealousy in relationships. And one thing that it made me think about was when I choose to engage in a polyamorous relationship, I know that when I say yes to that, that I am going to be confronted with feelings of jealousy all the time. And I tell myself, jealousy is an emotion you can control. You can choose to be jealous. You can choose to not be jealous. You can process it. And one of the things that I've found myself and I catch myself, I kind of giggle about how ridiculous I am when I'm in a polyamorous relationship. I want to be able to date whoever I want to date, and so I will be dating multiple people at one time. It's transparent. It's honest, everybody knows. But I want to be able to do that. But if I have one partner who says, oh, I'm going to go out with so and so, sometimes I do get that ping of jealousy. Even though I want to have my kid, I want to be able to date who I want to date, have all the time I want with my friends, basically do whatever the fuck I want to do when I want to do it. That's really the life that I'm creating here. So I'm kind of an asshole when I get jealous of somebody else doing exactly what I'm doing. But it happens because we're human beings. And so what I try to do in those scenarios is I just make a mental note of it rather than creating this full story, creating an actual fictional story about why this other person is choosing to do whatever they're doing, rather than creating this story, which is going to send me down this downward spiral of just feeling really badly about myself. Just make a mental note. You're feeling jealous. It's okay to be jealous. Don't take these feelings any further. Just move on with it. So I sit with jealousy as it being an emotion, the totally reasonable, fine thing. I just don't let it consume me. I don't take it to the next level where it's going to create a fight with that person, or I'm going to disengage with that person, or I'm going to feel poorly about myself. I have gotten to the point where I just laugh about how my ridiculous double standard and that helps to kind of bring me back to reality. And I wonder if that would be helpful to anybody who, like this listener, explicitly stated that they love their time with their friends.

And I know for me, I love my solo time too. So, you know, just as we want time with our friends and we want our solo time, our partners are going to want the same thing. And in a healthy relationship, it is in no way a reflection of that person's feelings about you. Certainly if it's an unhealthy relationship, it could be something that that person is doing to make you feel poorly about yourself. But in healthy, loving relationships, your partners are going to go do things with other people, and you're not going to be invited, just like you're going to want to do things and not invite them.

And I think you bring up a really good point, Jillian, that thank you for honoring my boundaries and not asking me to do something that is definitely going to result in a fight. Yeah, it's like the learning cycle, right? I mean, Brennan and I are such dorks, right? We're both educators. We both have advanced degrees, and we don't necessarily well, actually, I take that back. There are times where we might be over analyzing our own interactions and behaviors, but there's this sense of like, this learning loop of like, this has happened. We're now going to talk about it, reflect on it. And I'm kind of in this place, I'm really over, like, letting things go because I think the things that we typically want to be like, I'm just going to let that go, have actually been like these struggle or learning points or emotional little milestones. It's kind of like being able to move past it with a sense of a newness right. Or now that I've moved past that, I'm going to not recreate that same state through whatever caused it, the lack of communication, the misinterpretation of established boundaries. And I think that also helps because then you sit with things in a way that you want them to. Your point of like, kind of creating the life that you want. We're both really independent humans, and I think I'm not going to say this happens all the time, but a lot of times mountain enthusiasts, mountain adventurers, there is a sense of independence in that because there's a lot of solitude in what you get, like in the skin track and in hiking. And you might be the type that will push your physical boundaries and whatever that looks like, right, on a whole continuum of engagement in the outdoors. But that sense of independence and adventure, sometimes that can be a little tricky when it doesn't exactly align with someone else's, right? And then again, that's about sort of choosing partners and having different humans to do different things with to keep us that full selves. Like, how fun is it? Then you come back and you're sharing these experiences that another person can relate to, even if you didn't necessarily do them together, and the other person can kind of feel your stoke from that and you feel theirs. I do want to circle back to something you said that I think is so common about creating the fictional story and how that kind of ruminating on those fictional stories. I'm guilty of this all the time. And it's work that I do really for my own selfcare is like pausing and catching yourself to being like something I'm thinking about and feeling.

To your point of emotions being temporary, right? We are not emotions, they are temporary and things we have control over. But often we can get ourselves in a headspace where we are thinking and overthinking something that is not real and not true. It's a completely made up story. And I participated in a meditation series of meditation workshops that Kriste Peoples put on. I highly recommend people look her up and this was one of the main things that we went over. This was years ago, right at the beginning of COVID I was taking these workshops with her because I was like, oh shit is going to get real. I need to build up. I need every tool I can have to be resilient through what is coming. And so I took all these workshops with her and that was a big thing that we worked on. And I tell myself stories all the time. I will catch myself and I will say out loud because I live alone so I talk to myself all the time. Also I talk to myself even if I'm like out, people look at me. But like I will say out loud, jen, you are telling you are making up a story right now. Cut it out. And like, those stories always make us feel bad. Why do we do it? One thing that I've been trying to do and I have been Sarah, who's our operations manager, we've been doing this Mindset Mondays every Monday in our team meeting at Coalition. She's been walking us through a lot of just, you know, how we can change our perspective and deal with the world around us. I've just been trying to create new stories. So when I catch myself thinking about something negative, I try to go back and say, well, what is something positive? Like, what could I fantasize about right now? What could I think about creating this incredible fantasy rather than this nightmare that I'm making up? So normally I just go into like my brain goes into the gutter at that point. But it's fun just fantasize rather than create negative stories. And I also sometimes think about in addition to fantasizing about sex with the various people, also just about the things that I want. That's an easy way out, right? Like you're in this dark place making up this story about how someone feels about you and then you're like, oh wait, but that experience last week with that person was really spectacular. Let me focus on that instead. I also just think about how much time creating those negatives, like how much time that takes away from thinking about the things that you want to create. What if you use that mental energy to create the life that you want or to contemplate the life that you want rather than what you don't want. And I don't always do well. Like, I'm not always good at this, but I've been thinking a lot about this. Every time I go down that rabbit hole, I'm like, why are you doing this? Think about the life you want to have and how you can be creative in your thoughts around that. I hope something that is coming through in this episode for our listeners is the sense that both Jen and I are in the like, we work on this, we try this, we build tools within our own lives. This is by no means like, we've got it all figured out, but I think landing on things that help you move from the negative to the positive, or that sense of self reflection, or as I think of it, as sometimes my positive self talk. Surrounding yourself with those people that share this type of I don't want to say, like, life strategy, that sense of, like, where you put your energy and your focus, and then you're surrounding yourself with people that when you say that, they're like, yeah, this is what I do. This is how this helps. I think there's some fear that can be wrapped up and around that because it forces us to look at ourselves, look at our own thoughts, and really take kind of ownership and accountability for the feelings and the thoughts that we're projecting. Because again, I'll put this on myself. There are definitely times where I have been a total catalyst for things that went in my face. Or I'm like, OOH, I didn't work through that water. OOH, I kind of brought I don't want to say I brought it upon myself, but like, I kind of knew that was going to happen. Like, motherfucker, have you not learned like, little self protection? But then also, like, I'm going to move through this to the point where we are in the, like, yay. Sexy fantasy. Sexy fantasy. That's how it was learned. Have you not learned? It's a quick go to if you need if you are spiraling. For me, it's quick. It's not necessarily the most productive. Like I said, I do try to get into the how can I contemplate the more creative side, like, work on building this life that I want. But sometimes just like, thinking about a good layer works. It really does. One of the other things that I've considered in terms of relationship dynamics, Jillian, and I know this isn't something that you've thought about for 20 years, but when you're single, you do oftentimes contemplate well. What are the characteristics or the traits that you want in somebody who you start dating or somebody who you would potentially think about partnering with? And there's always this list, right?

There's this long list of what you want, and then there's always this list of the things that you don't want. And for the longest time, I've always struggled with somebody who plays in the outdoors the way that I do. And I don't think it's difficult to find people to date who love the outdoors because I actually believe that most people love the outdoors. Right. So it's not that. But my personal form of recreating in the outdoors is sometimes type two, not all the time. But you know what? I love a good let's see how far I can push myself. And then I'm complaining the whole time, but then I'm like, OOH, that was really fun. Right? Particularly on the cycling side of things. I have kind of built a life where I want to make sure that I can be snowboarding a couple of times a week. And I've been doing that for over 20 years, right? So I recognize that the way that I recreate in the outdoors and how much time I put into it and how I build my life around it is not necessarily what most people want to do or are able to do. So it's always been a little bit challenging to have that expectation of somebody else to be with me recreating in those ways all the time. And one of the things that I've been able to come to terms with is and not even come to that makes it sound bad. It's not bad. One of the things that I've embraced is that I have had years and years and years of cultivating these relationships with friends, with friends of all types, and that I know that I'm not alone. I know that I can choose to recreate by myself if I want. But if I want to have friends, whether it's riding bikes or going camping or skiing or whatever, there's people there, and you're one of them. You and I have the best time. When we go out, we always act like it's our first time when we're just, like, screaming and yelling, shout out to you, Cambo. I no longer try to put that on a potential partner because that's my expectation that's about me. And one of the things that I've learned or that I'm learning that I've been working on a lot is how do you shift your perspective? How do you shift your expectations? How do you recognize that that's really about a me thing and that how many potentially wonderful interactions am I not having? Because my expectations are unachievable in the sense of, why would you put so many things on one person? One person shouldn't fulfill everything. Every little need and want that you have shouldn't be fulfilled by one person. That's unfair to do that to an individual person. And I think that that's one reason why I lean into polyamorous relationships, is recognizing that different people bring different things to your life. And that that's something that feels really good to me. But I don't know. I just think a lot about that. Of the expectations we put on potential partners or current partners to be this certain type of outdoorsy or to participate in these activities with us and how that isn't necessarily going to benefit us. I love it. Well, I hope that this will inspire response from the listener that inspired us to record here. I also hope this will inspire listeners to reach out to us. I will say this fabulous human gave us great feedback and great detail on a myriad of episodes. We're in season six, so if you're thinking well, I need some content so I can write to you gals, please go back, revisit earlier seasons, let us know maybe what you'd like to hear a bit about. I think the advice seeking and always the question dropping is a great way and maybe if you get us thinking and talking, we'll get an episode out there on your question or letter as well, listeners, because we would not be doing this if it weren't for you on the other end. So we appreciate it.