Leaving Purity Culture, Finding Non-Monogamy: Healing, Desire & Autonomy with Leah Carey, Ep. 122
What happens when you grow up being told your body isn’t yours, your desires are dangerous, and your worth is tied to being someone’s “only one”… and then you finally break free?
In this powerful conversation, I’m joined (again!) by Leah Carey, relationship and intimacy coach and former host of Good Girls Talk About Sex, to talk about what so many folks discover after leaving high-control environments like purity culture, religious abuse, cults, or narcissistic family systems:
→ The floodgates of curiosity open—and suddenly queerness, kink, and non-monogamy are on the table.
We dig into:
Why exploring outside monogamy can feel like a reclamation of autonomy
How high-control systems shape our nervous systems and sexual wiring (and why “just getting over it” isn’t a thing)
The sticky shame messages ex-purity-culture kids drag into adult relationships—and how to start untangling them
How non-monogamy can be a massive relief during seasons of mismatched desire (and Leah’s refreshing take on letting a meta meet your partner’s needs)
Why true sexual freedom often starts with learning what your real yes and no even are
If you’ve ever thought, “Why can’t I just be normal about love and sex?” this episode will remind you—you’re not broken. You just weren’t given a roadmap. And you get to write a new one.
Links & Resources:
Connect with Leah: leahcarey.com | YouTube | @XOLeahCarey on socials
Leah Carey is a Relationship and Intimacy Coach and host of the podcast Good Girls Talk About Sex, which ran from 2019-2024. In a world full of confusing and contradictory messages about intimacy and relationships, Leah helps sex make sense. Drawing on her own healing journey from fear and repression, she specializes in working with people from High-Control childhoods like Purity Culture, narcissistic abuse, cults, and other religious abuse. Regardless of your background, she works with clients to unlearn stigmas and unhealthy patterns around intimacy and communication. Her work has been featured by Buzzfeed, Yahoo, NBCThink, The Journal of Cancer Education, and more.
Learn more about non-monogamy support at elleciapaine.com
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TRANSCRIPT:
Ellecia: [00:00:00] It turns out leaving purity culture doesn't just free your soul. It blows the doors off of your love life. And for a lot of us, that path leads straight to non-monogamy. Hey friends, welcome back to Nope, we're not monogamous. I'm Ellecia Paine, your non-monogamous love, sex, and relationship coach. And today's episode is going to hit deep for anyone who grew up with purity, culture, religious shame, or any kind of high control family system.
Ellecia: We're talking about what happens when you finally break free and you start questioning everything that you were taught about your body, your desires, and realize that you get to rewrite the rules of love and sex, including exploring non-monogamy, kink. And queerness on your own terms. So I've brought back Leah Carey, relationship and Intimacy coach, host of the podcast.
Ellecia: Good Girls talk about sex and someone who knows firsthand what it's like to unlearn shame and reclaim your autonomy. She was previously on episode 31, I believe a couple of years ago. And [00:01:00] today we're gonna dig into how high control systems wire your nervous system for fear and self abandonment. Why curiosity is such a powerful path to learning.
Ellecia: Uh, nope. It's such a powerful path to healing. And Leah shares the most refreshing and pressure-free perspective that I've heard in a long time about mismatched desire and long-term relationships. This one is full of some of those holy crap, it's not just me moments. So grab your headphones. We're about to talk about breaking rules and finding pleasure and figuring out what.
Ellecia: What you actually want. Welcome to, Nope, we're not monogamous. Uh, and I'm really excited that you are back. Leah, I enjoy talking to you so much. Could you tell our listeners a little bit about who you are and what you're, what you do?
Leah: Sure. Well, first of all, thank you for having me back. It's a pleasure to see you again.
Leah: Um, so I am a sex and relationship coach and, uh, and I was on your show I think [00:02:00] about three years ago, I think. So I was just inching my own way into non-monogamy. Um, and now we've been doing this for three years. Uh, it's going beautifully. We can talk about that more later. Um, but part of what has happened in that time is that I have begun to work with a more specific population of people, which is those who have come out of.
Leah: What are called high control environments, that's people who came out of things like purity culture, religious abuse, cults, and my personal background, which is narcissistic abuse. Mm-hmm. And. I have had over these few years the opportunity to dive very deep into my own healing. Um, it took actually a really long time to find a therapist who [00:03:00] specializes in narcissistic abuse, who also took my insurance and had space on their, on their roles.
Leah: Um. But over the last couple years I've been diving deep and in that process I was realizing that my favorite clients to work with were actually my purity culture clients. And that's when I started putting together. The sort of building blocks of understanding, oh, there's some really specific stuff that happens for us in childhood when we are in a system that does not allow for any autonomy that affects our brains in a really particular way, and then continues to sort of affect how we show up as adults in romantic and sexual situations.
Leah: And the reason that I thought this would be a great conversation with you is because [00:04:00] what I'm finding the more of these people who I work with is that so many of us, once we start to break, those binds end up in non-monogamy. Kink spaces, queer spaces, like once you start breaking the rules, you start breaking all the rules.
Ellecia: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Wh why, why, why do you think that combination is is so common? Because I see the same thing. Well, I think
Leah: because I think that, again, when we grow up in, so. People who are familiar with this, um, growing up experience probably don't need me to talk about this, but for people who are not familiar with it, when you grow up in something like purity culture, which is kind of the most widely known, so it's the easiest to talk about, you grow up.
Leah: And this is true for people regardless of gender. You grow up being told this is the right way to have [00:05:00] sex. Mm-hmm. This is when you're allowed to have sex. When you have sex. This is the kind of sex you're allowed to have. When you have sex. This is the thing you're going to feel. And then those messages do get broken down a little bit more by gender.
Leah: So for instance, the boys are taught. You get to have sex whenever you want and when you want it. Then your woman is just supposed to comply and she's supposed to do anything you want her to do. Meanwhile, the little girls are being told you are supposed to have sex whenever your husband wants. You are supposed to do anything he wants and.
Leah: There's really no expectation that you're going to have any pleasure. Mm-hmm. There's no expectation that you should even want it. Like, this is why we have this [00:06:00] trope about like the older women telling the younger women, oh, it's the one-eyed snake will come out on the night of your wedding and you'll, you know, you'll have to deal with that a few times during your marriage so you can get pregnant.
Leah: But that, that's really all you, that's all you. Have to do, because that was kind of the older way. Now the, the younger generations, which would be, you know, people sort of in their fifties and down are learning this newer version, which is, oh, you have sex anytime the man wants, and it looks exactly the way that he wants it to look so that he can have pleasure.
Leah: Yeah. But the woman doesn't. And so. Once we start to break free of that, it's like, oh, first of all, I want to experience pleasure. Second of all, I wanna experience it on my [00:07:00] terms and I wanna try everything because I didn't get to try anything. Yeah. And trying everything when we're an adult means like.
Leah: Like when we're a teenager trying everything probably kind of tops out at like anal, you know? Mm-hmm. But when, when you're an adult, there are so many more options and our society is so much more available. Now to things like kink and queer and non-monogamous culture. So I think that's a very long answer to why this ends up happening with this population so frequently.
Ellecia: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And I, I, I feel like there's something like once you break out of one box, the other boxes are just so much smaller. [00:08:00] Yes. Like, I'm already doing this thing. I'm already going to hell, so why don't I really know that I'm already gonna hell,
Leah: that's exactly it. I'm already going to hell. Why don't I try everything to make it worth it?
Leah: Uhhuh. Yeah, and, and really, I mean, it sounds like a joke, but it's really not like when people leave the church and I, and again, I'm focusing on purity culture because that's the most easy to get. Its. Your arms around, but it's true for all these different populations. But when you leave the church, there's a really good chance that you have to leave behind relationships that cannot grow with you.
Leah: That may mean losing your parents, losing your siblings, losing your best friends, losing your entire church community. Um, and even if some of those people stay with you, they're probably going to be saying to you, well, why don't you, why don't you just come back to church on Sunday? We have this [00:09:00] new, you know, this new preacher.
Leah: I bet you're gonna love him. And, and he'll bring you back into the fold and then you can go to heaven with us. That, that bond is so hard to break. And you're right, once you have made some peace with breaking that one. The others are so much less, like, just less consequential. Not to say they're not hard, they still, you know, they're still challenging for sure, but they're less consequential.
Ellecia: Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. I, I hear that a lot. Um, when I'm working with clients and just everyone I talk to is like, oh, there's like, once you're outside of whatever was considered normal for you. Yeah, everything else just becomes so much more accessible and I think there's like a practice of, of letting go of shame also.
Ellecia: It's like once you've, once you've done some of those hurdles, it just gets [00:10:00] easier and easier.
Leah: Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. And also, two things being true at the same time. One of the things that I say frequently, um, to my purity culture clients is. You may have left purity culture, but purity culture probably has not fully left you yet.
Leah: Mm-hmm. Because it's so deeply embedded in your brain. You were, you were being trained with these messages from the time you were a baby before you had the opportunity for conscious thought. And so there is a lot of stuff. That only comes out to be dealt with once you're trying the new things. So it's like I have to, I have to get through the part where I'm going to allow myself to try non-monogamy.
Leah: I'm gonna allow myself to answer some ads from people who are, you know, [00:11:00] calling themselves ENM, and then you actually get to the part about dating them and you're like. Okay, and this is a conversation I actually just had recently with somebody like, okay, I am like, I'm really excited. I'm dating a few different people.
Leah: This is really fun. But what happens when one of them tells me they wanna get serious? Because I have a very particular message in my mind about what getting serious means.
Ellecia: Mm-hmm.
Leah: And so then we have to unwind, okay, well in this particular community, in this, you know, relationship type that you have chosen, getting serious means something different than it did when you were a kid.
Leah: Mm-hmm. And that might be uncomfortable, and you might need to take some time to get comfortable with these new ideas and, and learning this new way of being.
Ellecia: Yeah. Yeah. It's like [00:12:00] freeing. And terrifying all at the same time?
Leah: Absolutely. Oh my God. Yeah. Yeah. When I went through my, and I didn't call it a deconstruction process at the time, but now I, I do think of it that way.
Leah: When I went through my deconstruction process, I was fucking terrified all of the time, even though I was doing things that were really exciting and fun. I was peeing my pants all the time, Uhhuh. Because like when you are told that you only get to be a particular kind of person, proving otherwise to yourself is terrifying.
Ellecia: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. I wonder what, what would you say, um,
Ellecia: what would be like the top or biggest. Yeah. Um, like internalized messages that people coming out of pure purity culture into [00:13:00] non-monogamy, like what are the biggest things that, that are sticky there for them, and then how, how do they, like, how do you help them unravel that? Like how do you.
Leah: Yeah. How do you
Ellecia: pull that apart?
Leah: Well, a big one is what will my community think? Mm-hmm. What will my parents think? What will my friends from that world think? And so then, you know, we have to go through a process of how open do you want to be? What are your boundaries? Mm-hmm. If you decide that you wanna share this with your parents and your that community, what conversations are you willing to have with them and where are you going to draw a boundary and say, you know what?
Leah: That that. Feels uncomfortable to me. I'm not gonna talk about that with you. Um, if you decide not to talk with them about it, which is also I'm like, I am all for living an out and proud life. And also you get to make [00:14:00] decisions about what is tolerable for you. And so. Talking to your parents about this is not tolerable, that is a valid choice.
Leah: Mm-hmm. And so then we need to look at, okay, how are you going to live a life that is authentic to yourself and also does not involve doing things in a way that your parents will ever find out? Yeah. And in the event that they do find out, how are you going to handle it? Like sort of working through all the, there is no one size fits all answer to any of this.
Leah: Yeah. Just like there's no one size fits all to non-monogamy. Um, there's no one size fits all for people who have left a really coercive high control environment. Everybody's tolerances, especially their risk tolerances are going to be different. Mm-hmm. I can be very out [00:15:00] and, you know, kind of professionally queer because my parents are both dead.
Leah: I don't have anybody who I have to uphold an image for anymore. Yeah. Um, I really don't know that I would've been able to do this work the way I'm doing it. If my mother were still alive, even though she and I were so close and so bonded and loving, she had a very particular image of me in her head. And it wouldn't even have occurred to me to try to revolutionize that.
Leah: I was just committed to being that person.
Ellecia: Yeah,
Leah: because that's who she, who she knew me as, who I knew me as.
Ellecia: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I think that's what, that's something I, I talk to people about a lot is their, the, the big fear that comes up about like, what if my family finds out, or, you know, my community finds [00:16:00] out or just tell, excuse me, gearing up to tell them like the, like big anxiety, shame, all of these big feelings.
Ellecia: Um. And part, part of what we talk about is like one, if they all, if, if, if worst case scenario happened and they were like, you're a terrible person, I never want to talk to you again. Where, where would you be? Would you still have people that support you? Would you still have community or would you literally be alone?
Ellecia: Like, like where, where, where is the fear? What's actually happening there? Right. Yeah. Yeah. Because we kind of blow things up big and a lot of times people are like, oh no, actually I have a whole bunch of friends that like, have nothing to do with that community and uh, I'm really close with my sister, or, you know, whatever.
Ellecia: Like, exactly like, oh, in reality I wouldn't die.
Leah: Yes. Yeah, that, that it can be really easy to turn one fear into this enormous mountain of fear. Mm-hmm. For [00:17:00] sure. For sure. Mm-hmm. And then there are other things that just seem like so much a part of the air that we breathe that you don't even know they're there.
Leah: So when you grow up in many of these cultures, the. Um, the magazines, the girly mags. Mm-hmm. And all, and you know, and we call it corn so that we don't get taken down. Um, all of that is absolutely like not okay. A hundred percent not okay. You are going to hell if you use that stuff. Um, this is something that comes up generally for.
Leah: Little people who were brought up as little boys in purity culture and other religious communities that any type of self-stimulation and any type of, you know, X-rated material is [00:18:00] a hundred percent off limits, never allowed to do it. Mm-hmm. That has some really awful after effects for everyone, regardless of their gender.
Leah: So again, this is a message that the boys are getting, but it affects everybody. Yeah. So yeah. For instance, and these are clients who have given me permission to share, um, parts of their stories. I had one client who, um, he and his wife. Got married, they had saved themselves for their wedding night. They had, you know, they had done some fooling around in advance, but basically it was like over the clothes and maybe under her top, but that was it.
Leah: Um, so they get to the wedding night. They have been doing this level of foreplay for like, whatever it was, [00:19:00] nine months, a year at this point. They just wanna go straight to the real thing,
Ellecia: Uhhuh,
Leah: so they go straight for intercourse. There is no warmup. It's incredibly painful for her because she has not had a chance in that evening to lubricate.
Leah: You can't use those nine months of lubrication that had happened previously. Like you need to lubricate that night. So she hasn't self lubricated. They don't know anything about lubrication from a bottle. 'cause that's not even a thing that exists in that world. Hmm. It sets up them having basically a sexless marriage because she has created this, this connection in her brain between intercourse and pain.
Ellecia: Mm-hmm.
Leah: And the more they try it, the tense she gets. And so the more tense she gets, the more it hurts [00:20:00] and it just becomes a negative feedback cycle. Okay. So there's her. He still has sexual urges. He doesn't want to cause her pain. So he is also like, yeah, I guess not having sex together makes sense, but now what?
Leah: So he turns to magazines and you know, online stuff and eventually he gets caught. They go to a Christian marriage counselor.
Ellecia: Mm-hmm.
Leah: Who says to him, you're a sex addict and you need to go into sex Addicts. S Anonymous, which is a 12 step program, which is unbelievably sex negative. Um. And so he goes, he, he's doing that for like a year before he finds me and he is learning.
Leah: There's [00:21:00] something terribly, terribly wrong with me and I don't know if I'm ever gonna be okay because I don't think that I can follow these rules that are the things that they call sobriety. And then he finds me and he is like. Wait a minute, are you saying that just because I look at this stuff, I'm not bad, like right, you're not bad.
Leah: You are finding an outlet for energy that needs an outlet and you don't wanna cause your wife pain like that in itself is generosity. I hate for the two of you that this has turned into such a deeply painful disconnecting thing. Mm-hmm. But you're being very generous in not wanting to cause her pain.
Leah: Yeah. And you're finding an outlet for your [00:22:00] energy. Why are we calling any of that wrong? That's ridiculous.
Ellecia: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. It's wild.
Leah: It's wild. Yeah, yeah. Like, wait a minute, why? I mean, you wanna beat up every once in a while and that makes you a sex addict. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Wow. I have another client, uh, she and her ex-husband were sent to a Christian marriage therapist for basically the same reason and.
Leah: There. The, the instruction there was that he had to be six months sober before he could engage in sex again. The way that they defined sober was that he didn't lust after anybody. He right, he didn't, he didn't [00:23:00] have sexual contact with anybody, including himself and including his wife. Wow. First of all.
Leah: That's impossible. Like that's just not even human. You don't live in a cave now. Exactly. But don't even have sexual thoughts. Like what? But also what has happened is that she has been cut off from her sexuality. Yeah. Because he's not allowed to have his, and she's only allowed to have hers in Congress with him.
Leah: And so. She is just sort of like, um, you know, collateral damage.
Ellecia: Yeah.
Leah: To him being going through this program of sobriety that's never gonna work. And so he would have to reset his six month clock every few weeks.[00:24:00]
Leah: It's bananas. It's. Yeah. You come out of that and you're like, fuck this. I don't want any part of any of this. But also you come out of it with all of this ingrained shame
Ellecia: mm-hmm. That you
Leah: don't even know that to have words for, because it's all you've ever known. Yeah.
Ellecia: Yeah.
Leah: There's just
Ellecia: so much to unpack and then you go and do things like fuck other people and,
Leah: and you're like, oh my God, what did I just do?
Leah: Exactly, exactly. And some people are gonna come out. Oh, some people are gonna come out and be like, I wanna fuck all the people all at once. I want all of the candy in the store and other people are gonna come out and be like, okay, I need help. Opening the first wrapper on the first [00:25:00] piece of candy, like this is so scary.
Ellecia: Yeah,
Leah: and, and ev both of those like, um, extremes and everywhere in the middle of that are completely normal. I think some people come out and they're like, oh, I'm supposed to X and so if I don't X, then I'm wrong. No, you're still not wrong. You never did anything wrong.
Ellecia: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Ellecia: That's it. It just kind of blows my mind that there's. Huge swaths of people that are just living their lives like this.
Leah: Oh my God. I know. I'm like, oh, it's so painful. There's so
Ellecia: much you could have. Yeah, I know. Orgasms are a thing you could be having.
Leah: I mean, let's not even go to orgasms. Pleasure. Yeah. You could have sensation.
Leah: Yeah. [00:26:00] Because when you are not taught that pleasure is something that you, that is a birthright or you know, or is should be an expectation, you don't even think about it. Yeah. If you spend all your time thinking, okay, is he going to like me if I am at this angle? You know, like, is this going to make my body look the perfect way?
Leah: You're not in your body feeling anything. You're performing. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And you're, that is not a way to have sensation.
Ellecia: Yeah.
Leah: Yeah. But that's how women are taught. To have sex. Now, obviously there's not somebody saying you should be in the bedroom, you know, turning this direction so that he will see this.
Leah: But the, all of the messages you got Yeah. Are about how you look, how you perform, how, how they experience you. So all of your experie is going to be thinking [00:27:00] about how they see you, how they think about you, how they are experiencing.
Ellecia: Yeah. Yeah, totally. Yeah, totally. What, what would you say to someone who's like, just starting to peek, peek behind the curtain of their like maybe religious upbringing and they're like, oh, could I, could I really do something that's different?
Leah: Yeah. Yes, you absolutely can. Like first, the first thing is to start looking at the shame.
Ellecia: Yeah,
Leah: like sure, some people are gonna dive into the physical stuff first. The people who come to me are usually the ones who wanna dive into the, like, I need to unpack a bunch of stuff first. So, um, so the first thing that we're gonna do is look at what are the messages that you got that you aren't even.
Leah: Aware that you got about like if you [00:28:00] believe that your father owns your body until he gives you to your husband, and that your brother is allowed to tell you that the way you're dressed is inappropriate and then you have to go change. Like those are all messages and things that actually happen every day in purity culture.
Leah: Yeah. Yeah. Then we're gonna have some unpacking to do about how you are allowed to inhabit your own body. Yeah. And to not just dress the way that you want, but to have your own experiences and not make them about the other person. Like I think that this is probably. When we start getting into actual, you know, like, I'm gonna go play with this person, um, the biggest thing that comes up, and it is very much the biggest thing that I have had to deal with [00:29:00] is how do I make this about me without feeling selfish?
Leah: How do I not give into everything that they want just because they said they want it, and therefore it's my job to give it to them. How do I allow myself to have my own experience and stay inside my own body while this person also gets to have their experience? I'm not taking anything away from them by trying to.
Leah: Not orchestrate their experience. I'm actually like, this is a huge mind shift to realize when I don't try to orchestrate their experience, then I'm having more fun, which is more fun for them. Yeah. That is a really hard shift for a lot of people to make.
Ellecia: Uh, yeah, for most people. I think [00:30:00] I did not grow up in purity culture, the exact opposite, and I still battle that.
Leah: Yeah. Yeah. I think it's true for everyone. I think it's especially true for those of us brought up as little girls. Yeah. But I think it's true for everyone.
Ellecia: Yeah. Yeah. It's, it that is, that one runs so fricking deep. And, and then, and people, people ask me all the, do I know what my boundaries are without running face first into them, right?
Ellecia: Mm-hmm. And that's exactly that. Like, how do I, how do I say yeah, this is my, yes, this is my no when I don't even know what they are.
Leah: Yeah. Especially when, first of all, you've been told what your yeses and your nos are supposed to be. Yep. And you don't have any control over what you say yes to. And if you say no to.
Leah: If you say, wait, I just got myself twisted up in that sentence. If you say, when you're a [00:31:00] teenager, before you get married, you're, it's your job to say no to everything. And if you even think that something might be a yes, then it's. Your problem because you have caused your brother to stumble, Uhhuh,
Ellecia: Uhhuh.
Ellecia: But
Leah: also if after you get married, you say no to something, then you're a bad woman for not giving your husband everything he wants. How in the hell, in the midst of all that, are you supposed to know what your yeses and nos are? Yeah. Like that? That's an impossible ask.
Ellecia: Yeah. Yeah. That's wild.
Leah: And so then we have to go through that process of, okay, you know, it's like the yes no maybe list.
Leah: Okay, let's go through. And I have, I have one that is very vanilla because a lot of the yes no maybe lists out there tend toward the, the kink, you know, the more extreme, maybe not extreme, but heavier kink. My clients need one that is like, am [00:32:00] I okay holding hands? Am I okay with kissing in public? You know, like, am I, which things am I okay with in theory and how, you know, having whatever conversation we need to around that to make sure that yes, this is actually what I'm thinking and not just repeating old.
Leah: Messaging and then once you've had the experience. Okay. How did you feel about it? Mm-hmm. You know, maybe you were a little shy about kissing in public. Now that you've experienced it, how did it feel? So there's both the, okay, let's try to figure this out. You know, let's try to sort of wrap your mind around where you think you are.
Leah: And then once you've had the experience, okay, now let's go back and debrief and find out where you actually are.
Ellecia: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. That's an important step for sure. How, how, how did you go [00:33:00] from growing up like this to now being non-monogamous?
Leah: So, so I grew up in a home with narcissistic abuse. So the, the details are different than purity culture, but a lot of it is actually the same. I was told who I was allowed to be, what I was allowed to do with my body, um, and all of it was negative. I was, yeah, you know, my father told me that I was fat and ugly and nobody would ever love me.
Leah: Um, and so that's, that is the belief that I carried for the first 40 years of my life because. He was my father. Why would I not believe him? Yeah. Um, even when I had people actively trying to demonstrate to me that it was not true that they were attracted to me, I rejected them. Yeah. Because I was like, well, clearly I am fat and ugly and unattractive, so if you're attracted to me, then there's something wrong with you.
Ellecia: Mm-hmm. [00:34:00]
Leah: You must be crazy.
Ellecia: Right.
Leah: So the only, the only relationships I got into were ones with, you know, borderline abusive people because that was what was familiar to me. Yeah, yeah.
Ellecia: Um.
Leah: My dad died when I was 26, so his voice lived on in my head for a long time after he was gone. I, I truly believe I was brainwashed.
Leah: Like that's, that is part of why I feel like there's so much of a tie between purity, culture cults and narcissistic abuse. Yeah. We all get brainwashed.
Ellecia: Yeah.
Leah: Um, around. You know, our bodies and, and what we're allowed to do. So I was living with those messages for a long time after he died, then my mom died when I was 40, uh, 41.
Leah: Like I said, she had this image of me, [00:35:00] and it never occurred to me that I could be anything other than that image.
Ellecia: Yeah.
Leah: But after she died. I was like, none of this is working for me anymore. I was not happy. I was not a happy person. Mm-hmm. The thing that had kept me. Kind of moving forward each day was that I lived near my mom and she and I were so close.
Leah: Once she was gone, what was I doing? So I ended up going on this, uh, year long solo road trip around the United States that, um. WI told myself was about finding a place I wanted to live. It actually turned into a really profound journey of sexual healing. Mm. Um, where I was, I was finding experiences through Craigslist all over the country.
Leah: Nice. Um, I've, I've actually in the, uh, in the midst of writing this, uh, the [00:36:00] memoir of this time right now, um, good. Yeah. Yeah. And when I decided to settle in Portland, Oregon, and, um, kind of the first thing that happened was that I fell into, I, I did a search on Meetup for sex. Because I was like, I don't know.
Leah: How does, how do you find things and, um, found sex? How does one find sex exactly. Um, I found, uh, a sex positive group here in Portland that is primarily non-monogamous people. And, um, so I started dating non monogamously, which was really uncomfortable. I bet. I really had to deal with a lot of those ideas in my head of, wait, I'm not even supposed to be attractive to one person, let alone I have like eight people who wanna date me and I'm actually like engaging with three or four of them.
Leah: This makes [00:37:00] no sense to me. Um. Uh, my partner and I got together seven-ish years ago, and we decided to be monogamous. Um, we both needed that for sort of just to make sure that we had a really stable foundation. Um, and then three years ago we decided to open, um, it. A very conscious decision because at this point I had already been coaching people, um, some of them through the process of opening.
Leah: Yeah. So I already knew the conversations to have. Yeah. Which made our process about as seamless as it could be. Yeah. Um, not to say we didn't have road bumps. Of course we did. It would've. I would've been concerned if we didn't, but, um, but really it was an incredibly positive experience. It turns out it's a better situation for both of us.
Leah: He [00:38:00] has become so much more verbal, um, and communicative because he has to be in order to maintain multiple relationships. It has allowed me. More freedom to push back against this idea. Like, I still actively deal with this idea that nobody will ever be attracted to me. Mm-hmm. And so the, the fact that I have somebody at home who I know loves me and I have real stability there, and I can go out and have like these, you know, whatever engagements I might have with other people, um, for me that continues to be really healing.
Ellecia: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. That makes so much sense. That's so freaking beautiful. Uh, you know, as you're talking, I'm like, gosh, I often tell people like, begin as you intend to go on. I, I, I work with a lot of people who are like, they know they don't wanna be [00:39:00] monogamous, but they are like, should I, you know, I meet someone, should we have a monogamous relationship?
Ellecia: And then open up? And usually I'm like, no. But the way, the way you're explaining that, I'm like, that is really beautiful. And it, it sounds like, like the conversations we're having. All along the were happening all along the way, which is so important.
Ellecia: So many people build a monogamous relationship and then they just blow it all up.
Leah: Yeah, I absolutely understand what you're saying. I think that if somebody were single and wanting to date non monogamously, I would be like, or wanted to get into a non-monogamous relationship. Then I would be like, all right.
Leah: Let's help you to date non monogamously. Yeah. If somebody is already in a relationship that they want to open, then okay, let's help you with that. Uh, I agree. If somebody ultimately wants to be non-monogamous, then you probably shouldn't [00:40:00] get into a monogamous relationship. With that said. My partner and I both needed stability.
Leah: Yeah. I think we both were aware that at some point we wanted to be non-monogamous, but we were both working and we happen. You know, he also has childhood trauma. We, as always seems to happen, have trauma that like butts right up against each other. Yeah. So we had to spend some time really working through that before we were solid enough.
Leah: Yeah. To open.
Ellecia: Yeah,
Leah: but once we were, we were able to really do it and. The, the, the funny thing is, you know, like the trope is that you open and the woman has like all of these options and the man is just kind of sitting at home twiddling his thumbs complete opposite for us. His first date was with a woman who he's still [00:41:00] seeing now, three years later that he, she is his other, you know, steady girlfriend.
Leah: Every woman he goes out with wants to sleep with him, like literally every single one of them. Meanwhile, I am the one who's home most of the time because I just don't have that much energy to do a lot of dating. But actually this, to me, this is like the most beautiful thing that could have possibly come from us opening is that.
Leah: I, I would say about, I don't know, six-ish months after we opened, I started having some health issues, um, that basically started as a cancer scare. Quickly learned that it wasn't, but ended up having, you know, some extensive period of surgeries and just not being able to do much. Um. And during that [00:42:00] time, my sex drive dis like disappeared.
Leah: Like, no, thank you. And then my surgeon told me I wasn't allowed to have sex for several months. And I think had he and I still been monogamous, I would've felt anxiety. Mm-hmm. And pressure to get back to a place where I could give him sex. So that. He wouldn't be feeling resentful and he wouldn't be, you know, starting to get angry about things and that it would mess up our relationship.
Leah: I knew that he was getting, you know, sex twice a week. And that he would come home and be able to be really present with me. He would be able to talk with her, you know, and sort of decompress from all of the things that happen when you are caretaking.
Ellecia: Yeah.
Leah: A [00:43:00] partner, he had a place to go with those and then he could come home and be really with me.
Leah: Hmm. Um. And so those six months then actually ended up expanding into a couple of years. Not because I don't love him and I absolutely find him attractive and desirable and all those things. I am not interested in PIV intercourse. Yeah. With him or anybody else. I. Am St. And it's not that I think I never will be.
Leah: Yeah. But I am still very much in my, you know, having that space to heal physically.
Ellecia: Mm-hmm.
Leah: Then opened me up to have the space to heal emotionally. And I've been in that space so deeply that I don't have energy for PIV.
Ellecia: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So
Leah: I enjoy making out, I enjoy fooling around, but I just, I don't want intercourse.
Leah: [00:44:00] He still gets to have that, and to me that is like the best possible outcome.
Ellecia: Yeah. That's a really, really refreshing take. I really love that. Yeah. Yeah. That's amazing. It's such a relief. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. It's like, okay. Yeah, no pressure, no, no expectation, no resentment. I love that. Yeah. Yeah.
Leah: I remember writing about this on my personal Facebook page at some point early on.
Leah: Um. And, you know, I was, I, I think I had been out, uh, on Facebook about being non-monogamous at that point, but it wasn't like a big thing. But I wrote about it. And even the monogamous people in my life, the ones who you would think would come back and be like, that's awful. How can you do that? Like, you're just fooling yourself.
Leah: He's gonna leave you. And even my monogamous friends were like. Wow. That's so cool. Uhhuh.
Ellecia: Uhhuh. Yeah. Like everybody's needs are getting [00:45:00] met. Exactly. This is amazing. Yeah. I love that. So good. Oh, fantastic. I wonder, is there, is there anything I haven't asked you that you want to share?
Leah: Yeah. Um, so this is gonna be for the people who have come out of purity culture and other high control backgrounds. Um, it's a piece of information that I wish I had had decades ago. Um, when we grow up in these really high stress. Trauma situations. Um, and there are gonna be people who hear that and be like, okay, purity culture wasn't great, but it wasn't trauma, but it was when you are being told who [00:46:00] you are allowed to be and what you're allowed to do with your body, that is traumatizing to your brain.
Leah: Mm-hmm. Even if you don't experience as a, it, as a like. Oh my God, my life is over. It's still, it's doing something to your brain and part of what's happening is it's creating neural connections in your brain. Um, if you're familiar with the idea of, um, you know, what, what fires together, wires together, and, um, the idea of neuroplasticity, which is that our brains are continually growing and learning and creating these new neural connections, which is why we.
Leah: You know, people will talk about, oh, I'm gonna do this new habit for 40 days. Yeah. That is the process of creating a new neural connection. But when we're in these high stress, high control environments, the neural connections that are being created are, first of all, very short. Um. And they're wiring [00:47:00] together things like, um, you know, this is what I want to eat.
Leah: No, I'm not allowed to eat that. I have to look a particular way, I have to fit into a particular size. Just like, so everything is, is so controlled and the result is that our brains are actually smaller, like literally. When they do autopsies after the fact, 'cause it's not something you can do on a live person, but when they do autopsies after the fact, they find that people who grew up in high control situations literally have smaller volume of brain.
Leah: Because we were not given, and that doesn't mean there's anything wrong with you, and it doesn't mean you did anything wrong. Mm-hmm. It means that you are not given the opportunity to grow and learn the way that you are supposed to and develop this kind of neuroplasticity. We [00:48:00] can begin to develop that later in life.
Leah: All is not lost. But it's part of why it's so hard to break out of this way of thinking to, you know, like you've left purity culture, but it hasn't left you. It's because it's still wired into your brain.
Ellecia: Mm-hmm.
Leah: And we need to actually do the work to start breaking those ties. So that your brain can create new neural connections that actually feed the person who you want to be today.
Ellecia: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. That's amazing. Um, and, and so freaking true. It's so true. I, I was thinking of, uh, an example of a couple that I was working with who. One of them had come from a, a high control situation and the other one had just, you know, had chaos and, [00:49:00] and big T traumas. And, uh, and the one she was, she was just like, you know, we're just doing these things.
Ellecia: Like, it's fine. It's not that big of a deal. But her partner who had, had come from a, a high control environment, um, for him. Having any sort of like big emotion felt like the biggest deal ever. Like it was such a huge thing for him. And he's like, I don't understand. Like he was throwing a fit like a 3-year-old and he's like, I don't understand why I'm reacting this way.
Ellecia: Yeah. Like you have not built resiliency. You, you, you do not have lived experience of having to be resilient and keep carrying on through things that are, are put you in like an emotional upheaval. I was like, this is a thing you actually have to learn how to do. Just like your 3-year-old has to learn how to like.
Ellecia: Deal with his emotions and not throw himself on the floor. Like you're, you're learning the same thing as an adult now.
Leah: Yeah. Yeah. And, and in addition, that's exactly right. [00:50:00] And in addition, when you grow up in these environments. Almost always, you are not allowed to have those feelings. Yeah. So you push them down so deep because they're dangerous to your very survival.
Ellecia: Yeah.
Leah: So like for me, um, my father could not handle it. If anybody was upset, he was great at being upset at other people. Yeah. But he could not handle anybody being upset at him. So there were very few times, I can really only remember three times in my entire relationship with him when I actually said to him, you hurt my feelings, or, you know, something happened that was not okay.
Leah: And every single time. I would express, and then he would start screaming at me because I had hurt him. Yeah, I was the bad person. I was the one who was harming him. [00:51:00] All of that says to me, having any feelings at all. It's literally dangerous to my survival. So I'm gonna push that shit down. I am not gonna feel it.
Leah: And you know what goes with that? I'll of your sexual sensation too. Yep. Because if you're not allowed to feel your feelings, how are you supposed to feel? What's going on in your body?
Ellecia: Yeah.
Leah: You can't do both.
Ellecia: Yeah. Yeah.
Leah: Just shove it all
Ellecia: down.
Leah: Yep. Nothing to see here. Everything's fine.
Ellecia: Yep. Yep, yep, yep.
Ellecia: Amazing. Amazing. I feel like, I feel like there's, so we're at this weird, really neat. Place in time where there's so much information available, but so many people that just don't have it. Like, like, we have so much information here. Here it is, here's the platter. And [00:52:00] like they just, so many people just don't have the opportunity or even, um, have the awareness that the information is there for them to have.
Leah: Mm-hmm.
Ellecia: It's like
Leah: Totally. Yeah. And also the belief that they're allowed to have
Ellecia: it. Yeah.
Leah: Like you could have shown me all of the information in the world about how to have a happy, healthy sex life, and before 40, I would've been like, yeah, that's nice for you, but I don't get to have that.
Ellecia: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Ellecia: Totally.
Leah: It's so sad. I feel so sad for that younger version of me.
Ellecia: Mm-hmm. Honestly. Mm-hmm. Absolutely. And
Leah: yeah. Yeah.
Ellecia: Yeah.
Leah: If, um,
Ellecia: oh, if people wanna get ahold of you, how do they do that?
Leah: Yeah, so, um, my website is leah carey.com. Um, all of my socials are XO Leah Carey. I have to admit, I'm not [00:53:00] great at doing socials.
Leah: Um, but I have recently started both a YouTube and a substack at XO Leah Carey. Um, so you can find me there. Amazing,
Ellecia: amazing. Thank you so much for coming on. This was lovely.
Leah: Oh. Thank you for having me. It's such a joy to see you again.
Ellecia: You too. Whew.
Leah: Okay.
Ellecia: If your brain is buzzing after that one, you're not alone.
Ellecia: Big thanks to Leah Carey for coming back and getting real about what it takes to reclaim your body and your pleasure and your relationships after a high control upbringing. If you wanna check out her first episode, it was episode 31. If you loved this conversation or it just made you feel a little bit less alone.
Ellecia: Do me a favor, hit follow or subscribe wherever you're listening. And if you want more real talk like this, then just leave a quick rating or a review. It helps more people find the show, and I'd love to hear what's landing for you.