Evolution or Trauma?

Unpacking the Controversial Aubrey Marcus Podcast Episode From a Different Angle

A recent Aubrey Marcus podcast has caused quite the ruckus online over the last couple weeks.

The comments have recently been disabled on the video. But when I saw it a couple days after it was published, I read over 1000 comments, 99% of which were people (men and women) turned off by what was happening in this conversation. I was pleasantly surprised to see that because it shows faith in humanity as well as increasing spiritual discernment among individuals and in the collective consciousness.

I want to preface this post with a clear intention that this is not about judging the lifestyle of polyamory or ethical non-monogamy or the people who partake in it. If you're into that, you do you, boo-boo. Though I would challenge you to consider the possibility that you may be exploring that lifestyle in an attempt to heal the childhood trauma of neglect, loss, abandonment, rejection or sexual abuse. And it might be making it worse.

Toward the beginning of the episode, the therapist points out that 60-70% of relationships involve some form of cheating. This is often used as a qualifier for polyamory. And it's probably true that most men and women lack sexual discipline. Yet that's also like justifying why we should gravitate toward the lowest common denominator in society instead of recognizing our personal challenges with temptation and wanting to work on maturing and evolving beyond our primal instincts.

In full disclosure, I explored the poly lifestyle 10-15 years ago. I've been both the Vylana and the Alana in that dynamic. I’ve also accepted go with the flow situationships where I was sure the guy was sleeping around behind my back and I either didn’t have the courage to ask or I did and he lied. Casual entanglements either end in drama or the fizzling out of chemistry. Choosing between polyamory and silent cheating is like a double bind for a person with a monogamous value system.

Nowadays, after doing a lot of inner work and healing, I'd rather be single and celibate until I find my divine counterpart soulmate who shares common values, lifestyle and spiritual mission. I do believe he exists and I have faith in divine timing.

Meanwhile I’ve discovered that you can have sexual discipline and soul-driven passion. I enjoy experiencing eros through writing, dancing, nature, contemplation of beauty and synchronicity, creativity and the healing arts.

The erotic isn't just about sex and the physical body. That's toe-dipping and an avoidance of the depths. Eros much more expansive than that. It's a cosmic force that can move the soul.

From a Substack called Museguided:

Eros, in its ancient, Platonic sense, is the force that binds the soul to the world, that moves us toward beauty, mystery, and becoming. It is not reducible to sex, though it may include it. It is a metaphysical orientation: the decision, over and over again, to seek intensity over numbness, expansion over contraction, intimacy over control. And that decision (sometimes a whisper, sometimes a roar) is how life begins, and how it deepens.

To choose an erotic life is not simply to chase pleasure or gratification; that would be to mistake Eros for Hedone. Rather, it is to say “yes” to the kind of friction that transforms. It is the decision to let yourself be undone by what draws you in. Consider the artist who gives herself over to a vision she cannot explain, or the thinker who risks intellectual exile to defend an idea no one else yet believes. These are not logical paths. They are not chosen for stability or acclaim. They are chosen because something inexplicable stirs… a vibration, a recognition, a hunger that refuses to be ignored. The erotic decision is the one that defies linearity and invites metamorphosis. Is it a transaction? Of course not, it is transfiguration. And while it may bring ecstasy, it also invites vulnerability, risk, and loss. That is its sacred cost.

Erotic Decisions

Repetition loops of ancestral trauma

Sex can be amazing, loving and transcendent in the right container. Yet it can also be traumatizing or empty—the mere superficial gratification of external validation and genital pleasure—as well as a portal to the demons of lust. Lust brings turbulence.

Sexual trauma doesn't heal by having a partner who is honest about having sex with others or openly sharing your partner in threesomes and orgies.

Exposure therapy doesn't heal trauma. It only makes it worse. Phobias aren’t healed with exposure therapy either. Phobias are the subconscious memory of ancestral trauma that we’re unaware we’re carrying for those who came before us.

The frozen trauma needs to be thawed out with awareness, then digested and processed little by little in a safe container, then replaced by a new imprint.

We are the sum of all our ancestors, so our personal trauma integration also involves ancestral trauma integration. If we have a history of betrayal wounding, it’s very likely that we are caught in an archetypical repetition pattern of a historical loop, one in which those who came before us were also trapped, albeit in unique ways based on their own experience. What carries over is the feeling, the emotional residue, the energetic distortions and subconscious belief programming.

Our species is carrying quite a lot of sexual trauma, among so many other things.

A new energetic imprint that replaces sexual betrayal trauma for a person who deeply desires a devoted, loyal and monogamous relationship would take place in that kind of container, which is completely different than what the person experienced before. Yet the relationship itself doesn’t do the healing. It does the amplifying. The inner work is still required to release the emotional residue and reprogram the distortions in order to alter the story.

The challenge is that people with unresolved sexual trauma often feel drawn to partners who end up reinforcing those same traumas, intentionally or unintentionally.

Admittedly, the podcast episode triggered old suppressed unresolved feelings of my own, which I'm grateful to have had the opportunity to become aware of, unpack and process over the last couple weeks before I decided to write this.

When we are deceived

I was heartbroken for Vylana while watching this episode and hearing the distortions of language used to hide the dissonance of the energy behind the words.

Aubrey asserts that he can't live in deception and he's a stallion of eros. He starts the conversation off by framing what he's doing as so much better than his friends who he watched over the years lie and cheat on their partners. Granted, ethical non-monogamy is probably one step up the ladder, yet still trapped in the lower rungs of the physical chakras.

I was angry and disgusted to hear Aubrey praise himself for helping his wife heal from her past relational trauma of betrayal by being open and honest about f*cking other women.

Those words are coming through the demons of lust and pride. I'm not saying he's a bad person. We can all be portals to demonic energy and negative entities disguising themselves as something divine when we are misled by distortions and deception.

Pride is the gateway drug to the rest of the demonic portals. As humans, none of us have natural immunity to that. It requires constant self-examination, self-honesty and inner work to recognize when we are allowing ourselves to be misled and swept up in it.

I'm intimately familiar with the spiritual narcissism and grooming that takes place as a person is coerced into the polyamorous dynamic when their value system is based on monogamy.

Coercive control is abusive, as many people learned during the COVID campaign. A person ends up making a decision that they didn't want under pressure, duress and deception.

Being married and financially dependent on a spouse who launched your career and connected you to their network of people that your success is entangled with is ripe terrain for making choices against one's own values and integrity if those must be sacrificed in order to maintain the relationship, community and status.

Fortunately, I wasn’t married at the time so it was a lot easier to walk away. I recognize how I got coerced into polyamory many years ago, even though deep down what I most wanted was a divine counterpart soulmate. Yet I went against my values and got pulled in due to my pride, insecurity and unresolved childhood sexual trauma.

I heard many of the same spiritually-wrapped rationalizations via gaslighting:

"I don't want to deceive you. I want to be honest with you."

"Most relationships involve cheating. Wouldn't you rather someone just be honest about it instead of hiding it?"

"I have so much eros/love to give."

"Love is infinite and you can love more than one person."

"Spirit showed me I need to have sex with/impregnate them."

"Love requires sacrifices."

"I thought you were open-minded and evolved."

(The one I didn't hear in the podcast was, "the bonobos!")

It's wild how the same phrases are used around the world, coming from the universal demons of lust and pride that speak all languages and whisper in our ears when we are not in alignment and integrity. The best repellent for that seduction is to do the inner work of self-honesty and trauma integration, which creates healthy discernment, self-discipline, self-respect and self-love instead of looking for the balm in someone else or the external validation to temporarily bring relief.

As a side note, I've heard of all kinds of spiritual and sexual abuse taking place in medicine communities where people are coerced out of their standards and values based on misleading promises of honesty and healing. I’m mentioning it because this story is also connected to the plant medicine, which can be very helpful yet also incredibly confusing in a container of social or relational deception.

In Peru, I heard of ayahuasca shamans who told vulnerable women under the influence of the medicine that they have many dark entities around them. That part may have be true. The pain of unresolved trauma attracts dark entities. The shaman offers the cure: if the woman has sex with him, the darkness will go away.

When we deceive ourselves

I'm also intimately familiar with the way the target then gaslights themselves into accepting things like polyamory, even though it goes against our own values and dreams.

This is all too easy when we come from the shame-based trauma programming that set us up to fawn, appease, fix, please and perform in order to prove our worthiness, goodness and devotion.

I am familiar with going along with it and taking the liberty to do the same thing, even though that’s not what I wanted, in order to get even and show the other person what it feels like to know their partner is with someone else. Maybe then he’ll realize he wants to choose me. Spoiler alert: that doesn’t happen.

None of that is healing. It's just more ego power struggles and compounding trauma. The worst part wasn’t being deceived. It was actually the heavy weight of regret for deceiving myself, stepping out of integrity and lowering my own standards.

This isn't gender specific, by the way. Men can also be targets of these coercion campaigns. I've worked with men whose wife or partner coerced them into open relational dynamics that they didn't want. Their soul was crushed.

Hearing Vylana speak and express her suffering while trying to justify it to herself in the name of loving her husband—and then reading the comment she wrote on the podcast in response to all the pushback (before the comments were disabled)—I heard so much of my own past.

You could say I'm projecting here by interpreting her pain and tears as suffering because she’s unhappy in a situation that isn’t what she really wants. That’s true, I am projecting. I'm also empathizing, with the wisdom of experience, for someone who is going through something similar to what I did, recognizing that I made all the same rationalizations to justify my own choices to myself.

I'm grateful they posted this episode because it's stirring up quite a public conversation. It's inviting all of us examine ourselves more deeply. It's an opportunity to clarify our personal values, evaluate our integrity, and process emotional residue from the past.

What is it that you really want in relationship? Are you still carrying resentments and regrets from past relational experiences? This exploration can lead to greater inner liberation.

Now I have deeper compassion for my past self (and for Vylana) because I know how easily a person can get pulled into the coercion in the name of sacrificing for love.

I know what it's like to make the choice to consent to something that brings so much pain and confusion because it requires giving up one's own values and integrity. I know what it's like when my own ego justifies why it's okay and how it’s the loving thing to do, in the name of evolution and devotion.

I made those mistakes and I forgave myself as well as those who coerced me into it.

Freedom or licentiousness? Love or self-abandonment?

There's also a good lesson in here about not idealizing gurus, thought leaders, cultural icons or anyone else.

It's actually in perfect alignment with the changing times as we are leaving the Era of Pisces and moving in to the Era of Aquarius. Gone are the days when we are outsourcing our authority through reliance on gurus, teachers, churches or other authority figures to tell us what is right and true.

We are outgrowing that and perhaps this is why many people had such a strong reaction to that podcast episode instead of going along with the fantasy. A lot of people said they were crushed because they idealized Aubrey and his marriage as an example of spiritual evolution and divine union.

It's time that we turned inward for the truth.

Of course we can learn, appreciate and get inspired by what others say and show through their example. Again, the key is to run it all through our discernment, taking the wheat and leaving the chaff. Accessing inner truth requires clearing the trauma that's distorting and blocking the inner connection with Higher Self.

We are all human with our flaws and challenges, which is why it can be helpful to see ourselves in the mirror of others.

My teacher in Peru, who certainly had his own character flaws that exposed my own, taught me many valuable things. One of those is the difference between libertad and libertinaje (freedom and licentiousness). One leads to expansion, the other to indulgence.

Don Américo’s work was about salk'a, the Andean art of becoming free, non-domesticated energy. He was careful not to translate salk’a as wild, because that word has other connotations.

Freedom is an inner state of consciousness. It's not about imprudently doing whatever you want, whenever you want. Freedom is sometimes confused with self-abandonment and recklessness.

Is Vylana more free by sacrificing her values and soul desires in order to make her husband happy? Is Aubrey being reckless with her heart? Only they would know the answer, and perhaps only in retrospect.

I remember having the the toxic hope of, "He'll eventually change his mind and choose me, I just need to show him my devotion," and "I love him and want him to be happy, so if this is what it takes... He'll eventually recognize my sacrifice and want to make me happy too."

But that's not love. It's self-abandonment.

When we aren't honest with ourselves, we can confuse love with self-abandonment.

I believe love requires freedom. It's more like stewardship than possession.

I believe it's possible to experience freedom within a container of honest, loyal, devoted monogamy.

Love requires some compromise. Do we eat sushi or salad tonight? Do we paint the living room blue or gray? Are you driving or am I driving today?

But love isn't about sacrificing one's values and standards. That’s not alignment.

This kind of self-sacrifice is similar to the COVID we're all in this together and do your part campaigns. It's the anti-life morality of soul cannibalism, even if this one is couched in spirituality.

Our power is in our choice.

A deception by any other name

Divine union may take many forms, yet what it's not is deception.

Deception isn't a sacred form of relating to self or others. Deceptive situations and relationships are karmic repetitions of the past that we are trying to heal, often in all the wrong ways. Wrong, not as in judgment, but as in that which leads us away from what we really want and who we really are.

The healing path usually looks a lot like this:

Yet there's always something to learn, even from the most painful experiences.

Inevitably we are drawn to the people and situations where we are reminded of our unhealed wounds so we can become more aware of these and heal them. This is why we have the compulsion to repeat the past. It’s also why history repeats itself on the collective level.

Surely this podcast episode is an example of that, for all parties involved, in their own unique ways. It’s also why it triggered up to the surface something in all of us who observed it and saw ourselves, in some way, in the mirror.

Divine union starts within. Just like healing starts within. Then we can amplify our inner healing through restorative connection and activate the codes of divine union together. But first, the inner work. Otherwise it's an unconscious painful dance of trauma meeting trauma, twisting the knife in the very places we are already wounded, yet hoping this is finally the person or relationship that’s going to bring healing, relief and peace.

I have compassion for the people in the podcast conversation, though admittedly I feel disgusted with the way the two men are creating a deceptive container with words.

Containment is the masculine art of creating and holding a container in which the feminine energy can feel safe and supported to self-express. It requires attunement, which was lacking because they were driving the conversation with an agenda, sacrificing presence in the process.

I can see how the two men are also coming from their own wounding and unresolved trauma. And that part makes them human. Yet I think what they're promoting is deceptive, and doing harm to others, whether they realize it or not.

Aubrey and his therapist are calling it, "radical monogamy," but it's just rebranding polyamory or ethical NON-monogamy. I think the only word you can put before monogamy to make it make sense in this context, is the word non.

The really gross thing is getting a mental health authority figure involved to promote the distortion of the term, "radical monogamy," calling it, "the evolution of relationship," to relieve the shame for people who feel like they failed at expectations of monogamy.

It reminds me of when some therapists enabled the coercive control and psychological abuse of society during the COVID campaign. In particular, A Trauma-Informed Approach to Vaccine Fear, the memo co-signed by world-renowned trauma experts on how to restore trust and appeal to trauma survivors to get vaxxed. They specifically referenced safety and choice.

It's not a surprise that this kind of deceptive language is emerging during these times when men are having babies and vaccines are effective, but everyone needs to roll up their sleeve for it to work.

We are living in a peak time of deception, and that includes self-deception. These times require strong spiritual discernment and self-honesty.

I've been in the place of both Vylana and Alana in these poly dynamics. Alana seemingly has the better end of the deal, as she's the third party. She gets to play the role of the one who fills the unfillable lack in the couple, which is created by their unresolved trauma. Yet it's only a temporary sense of satisfaction for all parties.

Aubrey went on and on about how pure Alana is, while subtly devaluing his wife with a lack of compliments, mainly focusing on how hard she's working to grow and how grateful he is that she's continually pushing her edges and dying over and over again while sacrificing herself to love him the way he needs to be loved.

The third party in these situations usually gets love-bombed as the gift, the jewel, the saving grace and just what the couple needed. That feels relieving, temporarily, for the third party if they feel like they're not enough due to unresolved trauma that was reinforced in painful adult relationships.

But inevitably it feels painful, too. When you’re the third party, eventually you realize how much pain you're participating in causing one person in the couple who's trying so hard to pretend like it's okay, even if everyone is choosing and consenting to the dynamic.

The heaviest part is the regret of our own actions, not what others do to us. It’s just easier to be angry at others. We hold on to the resentments and regrets until we are done learning from them—ready to forgive ourselves and others—and set ourselves free.

That includes ignoring the early red flags, which there were in this case as there were in all the situations I got myself into. We ignore the red flags when the fantasy projected on the cave wall is a welcome distraction from the pain we are carrying from long before.

We can only discern the difference between fantasy and reality when we do the inner work of trauma integration, and even that is a process, layer by layer.

It’s actually the trauma that invites us to evolve through existential pressure. So in the end, the trauma highlighted in the subtext of this episode is evolutionary, just not in the context of the words being used.