Episode 2: relationship anarchy & intimacy with ashtin berry

Chichi Agorom:

In season one of the show, we are exploring the theme of intimacy as you know, particularly how our stories of who we believe we have to be impacts our experience of intimacy. And every other episode we will talk to someone who identifies with one of the nine enneagram types. And in between those episodes we'll have what I'm calling expert episodes where we learn from people who have wisdom to share around this topic. So to start us off this season in a conversation that I have literally been counting down for, I'm really excited to have Ashtin Berry joining me today.

Ashtin Berry (she/her) is a lot of things. For one, she’s someone who has made a point of it being as hard as possible to condense who they are into two small paragraphs, but here we are. Ashtin is an activist, educator, sommelier, mixologist, sociologist, beverage consultant, human being, and creator of not just cocktails but change. By 25 she had a decade of experience in hospitality, and by now, she’s been the beverage director of a half dozen spots and worked with many brands you’ve heard of. In that time, Ashtin’s also earned Imbibe Magazine’s 2019 Bartender of the Year and Observer’s 50 Most Influential People in Dining and Nightlife, and 50 Best bars 2020 Icon Award.As an activist—and this is all while doing everything stated above—Berry has developed an intersectional framework for building spaces that has culminated in her present day focus of consent-based communication and building open, honest spaces where employees are people that can do more than simply survive. In 2018, her creative content agency Radical XChange was born, and she launched the yearly multi-day symposium Resistance Served to celebrate and contextualize the contributions of the African Diaspora in hospitality. She’s been recognized for her advocacy work as a member of the World’s 50 Next. And in that time, she’s still managed to find time to read, travel, and track down amazing shoes. So y'all see why I'm really excited to talk to her. Right? All right, here we go. Ashtin, welcome to the show.

Ashtin Berry:
Hi. Thank you for having me. I feel so honored.

Chichi Agorom:
I feel so honored. So, I was introduced to you through the conversation you had with Dr. Blay, Dr. Yaba Blay a few months ago, I think now. And one, I can't believe I didn't know of you before then. Two, I couldn't stop talking about that live for days. Like I talked everyone's ear off. I was like, this was incredible. This was life changing for me. It felt like you articulated so beautifully so many things that I have wanted to, or so many ways that I've wanted to talk about and think about relationships that I didn't know there was already a structure for. And it just felt like listening to you was permission giving for me. Like it gave me permission to be more me.

Ashtin Berry:
Oh. Thank you.

Chichi Agorom:
Listening to you and watching you live in your freedom, I was like, oh, I'm free to be me too. Like this is incredible.

Ashtin Berry:
Oh thank you. We all, we all are free to be us. I still get messages about that live like about once a week I get someone who DMed me about this live, and it's so funny because, you know, I wasn't, I was just talking, I didn't, I didn't really think...

Chichi Agorom:
Right. That was what was so beautiful about it. It was like, this is not rehearsed, this is not a performance. This is really, it seems like this is really just who she is. Yeah. And that was incredible.

Ashtin Berry:
No, thank you. Thank you. I tried to show, I tried to really always ground myself and showing up in my authentic self and my full self was one of the promises I made myself, well a while ago. But I remember right before I turned 30, I took a solo trip and one of the things that I promised myself was that I wouldn't lose that. And that when I felt it slipping away, I would actively make sure that I held on and pulled myself back to it. Cause the world we live in is so easy to get distracted and get moved away and be out of body and end up living in other people's scripts of what life should look like. So I try to do that. I try to do that pretty like advantageously and intentionally to show up fully. Show up as you and the you you are today because that may not look like the you–you know, consistency is not about a conformity to our performance from the days before. It's about who we are in the present. So yeah. I try.

Chichi Agorom:
I love that. Okay, before we get into it, my first question is what identities do you hold that are most important for us to know?

Ashtin Berry:
Ooh. Ooh. Being Black and femme I think is something that is so critical. and I say Black and femme because, you know, the older I get the more I question if the structure of what we think a woman is, specifically in the global north, actually encapsulates the expansiveness of being a Black woman. And if it, sometimes is constricting us to try to formulate into patriarchal ideas of what womanhood is. So I say Black femme, I do use she/her/hers pronouns. But I do think that there is–and you know, this may ruffle some feathers–but I do think that there in some ways is an inherent queerness to Black femininity and being a Black femme. And I think I've always kind of known that in my bones, but as I get older, it's become clear and clearer to clearer and clearer to me in the ways that also I, I know intimacy, I know romance and things, it's become clearer and clearer to me.

So I would say that would be my most important. And then I would say although it's like relatively new, it's so clear to me. You know, I am a neurodivergent person. I'm a late bloomer. I mean not late bloomer, but late diagnosis autistic and ADHD. And I think that those are really important because I think that many of the things that now people kind of love about me are things that really all throughout my childhood were really suppressed and people said were not things that were going to benefit me as I grew as a person. And many people try to have me assimilate to what they thought was more kind of affable to what, you know, a young woman should be like. so I would say those things are probably the most important identities for me.

Chichi Agorom:
Yeah. Thank you for sharing those. So, you do a lot of things. I was reading your bio at the start of this episode, you do a lot.

Ashtin Berry:
I do

Chichi Agorom:
An educator, a mixologist, a sociologist, an activist, so many things. What would you say, I'm curious, what would you say is the connection point between all of the things you do? What's like the common value or ethic that grounds you and brings you back to yourself even with all the different roles you play?

Ashtin Berry:
It's care work. I tell people all the time when people look at my page, they're always like, well, why do you call yourself a hospitality activist? So much of what you do can expand past that. But I think that's because we have inherently devalued the role that service workers play in our life. And I think that's because we don't see it as care work or maintenance or see them as supplemental care agents maintaining our lives. And I think that being in the hospitality industry made me lean into some of the things, some of my natural given talents that I always kind of avoided, which is people told me since I was young, I should be a teacher. People told me since I was young–my mom was always in advocacy and activism work–that I should be an activist or an advocate and blah blah. And those are things that I tried to run from as a young person and a young adult and hospitality really in this beautiful way called me back to it. And I realized that the weaving of it was the way in which we perform care. Education is a care practice, advocacy and activist work as a care practice. There's nothing more intimate than serving someone a meal or a drink. And that there is care in all of those practices.

Chichi Agorom:
Wow. I never thought about education as a care practice.

Ashtin Berry:
Education is absolutely a care practice. And if we saw teachers the way we saw doctors as people who are caring for the mental grooming of our children's souls and even adult souls and minds, I think we would appreciate it so much more. Education is absolutely care work.

Chichi Agorom:
Wow. That's really beautiful. Thank you. So the grounding ethic is care work.

Ashtin Berry:
Yes.

Chichi Agorom:
I love that. So in this season I'm focusing on intimacy as like the overarching theme. And it's one of the reasons I was excited to talk to you. I use the Enneagram as my framework for work that I do with people and just generally meaning that there are these nine core stories in terms of general overarching archetype stories that we hold about who we believe we have to be to be okay. It's like the story we tight fist to say it has to be this or nothing else. I have to be this way or I'm not safe, I'm not loved and I don't belong. And it's a combination of a story formed from things that we experienced and often is reinforced by the people around us, the world around us. So it's hard to disengage and say, this is just a story and there's more to me than my story.

But I love hearing from people specifically what that word intimacy means to you. Because we all have different relationships with it and different understandings of it. And so what does intimacy mean for you specifically?

Ashtin Berry:
Hmm. Intimacy is a spectrum. And when I say spectrum, I do not mean that it's linear. I mean that it's kaleidoscopic. And what I mean by that is like, like a kaleidoscope that switches in the undercurrents of color, it can be really in your face and presenting upfront or it can be kind of muted and behind some things. Intimacy has the ability to kind of transform. And that's influenced by the space we're in, who that intimacy was with, if it's intentional, meaning explicitly or implicitly formed. I think we experience intimacy way more in our lives than we realize and we negate it because it doesn't look like the way society has informed intimacy. And I think that there is an intimacy of the mind. I think that there is an intimacy of the body and I think there's an intimacy of the spiritual.

And I think that there's an intimacy with the self. We talk a lot about self-care. We talk a lot about self-love, we talk a lot about self-awareness. What we don't talk about is self intimacy. And the ways in which we know the layers of ourselves. But I would also say that intimacy, if you just want a quick definition, which I know I struggle with–intimacy is a form of honesty that does not call for our explicit notation of it. We don't have to name intimacy in this space for it to be present.

Chichi Agorom:
Hmm.

Ashtin Berry:
And many things need to be constructed for us, for it to be felt, to be known. And intimacy is one of those things that I think is liminal. Yeah.

Chichi Agorom:
Okay. We're gonna have to back up. There was a lot there. I would love to hear more. Because I agree with the different forms, the different iterations of intimacy. Intimacy of the mind, intimacy of I think you said the body , intimacy of the self. And there was another one I'm missing. Spiritual.

Ashtin Berry:
Spiritual. Which is what I'm working on. I'm realizing that is one of the places that I have lacked intimacy. I have armor, but I will say I don't have armor the way that I think most people assume that I do, or many people have. Not that I don't have armor, but I think that my armor is a lean into transparency because I'm horrible at maintaining armor. And so at a young age, I just was like, I kind of gotta give this up. This is hard to maintain. But I do think that one of the places that I did start to create armor, I realized is with what is a spiritual practice. And one of the places that I'm realizing as I'm really delving into it like, what is my spiritual practice?

How do I engage spiritually? Because, you know, a lot of people say, I'm not religious, I'm spiritual, but what does that mean? And I realized around 28, that I really didn't know what that meant. I felt as if I was a spiritual person. I know I'm a spiritual person, but I don't know what a spiritual practice is. And I realized that's because I lacked intimacy with being, embodying spirit. Like what is spirit? What is spirituality? What are the frameworks of it? . And I think in order to do that, it calls for another peeling of the onion, of the self, of intimacy. It calls for a level of vulnerability, to admit your fears around being spiritual, if that's something that hasn't been in your life or been modeled or that you've seen in ways that you wanna embody. Did I answer your question? I hope I did.

Chichi Agorom:
Yeah, you did. About the spiritual part of it and then like, the intimacy of the mind and intimacy of the body.

Ashtin Berry:
I think, you know, to nerd out a little bit I, and I still might do it, but before the pandemic I was actually gearing up to go back, take some science classes because I was seriously interested in going to get a degree in neuroscience, and one of those things was the intersection of sociology, psychology, and neuroscience and really breaking down our processes. And I don't think you need to have this type of degree. But I do think that oftentimes we don't ask ourselves how do I process information? Or how do I communicate? And these may seem like sterile practices, but they're not. They give us a lot of insight into the ways that we've learned how to survive, the ways that we've learned how to love, the ways that we've learned how to avoid, the ways that we've learned to create defenses.

And these are very important, being intimate with how your mind works allows us to shift the way that we not only engage with loving ourselves, but loving others. And it prevents the storytelling that we often do. I think that also that plays into the intimacy with our body, right? Your body is giving your brain all this information. It's giving your soul all this information and how can you really process and have the level of awareness and intimacy you want with yourself without an understanding of how that connection works.

Chichi Agorom:
Yeah.

Ashtin Berry:
You know, I realized I've been reading a lot more on eastern medicine and specifically Chinese, you know, medicine through teas. It's always interested me, but lately I've been getting more into it. And in one of the articles I was reading, it was really great. She said, you know, one of the issues with the west is they hope to commandeer all of our practices, whether it be gua sha, whether it be yoga. And she said, but they perform the activity without an understanding of its connection to their processes. And I was like, yeah. Oh my. You know, cause she's like, you can do all of these things over and over. You can do the physical movements, but unless you have a connection with how this process is impacting you, you are merely just performing the act. Not actually leaning into a practice that is not only about healing of the body, but that it is really a spiritual embodiment in many ways. Yoga specifically, and I think that this is also why we fall short in our relationships and our attempts to change and do movement work, is this lack of intimacy of how our processes and our body are connected.

Chichi Agorom:
And you know, just that last piece, then I'm thinking about how if we are not intimate with our minds and our bodies and ourselves, then what we rely on in relating to each other is performance.

Ashtin Berry:
And this is why so many people in low context countries, that's a communication form. We in America and the global north mostly operate in the low context communication forms. So we start relationships quickly and they end quickly. Because once the performance begins to disintegrate, what else do we have to hold onto?

Chichi Agorom:
Yeah.

Ashtin Berry:
And I think this is also why we see so many people suffering from loneliness, right? I do not believe that you need to love yourself in order to be loved. I do not believe you need to love yourself in order to have community. But I do think that there are barriers to having a level of intimacy and community you want, not when you lack maybe a self love, but when you lack a self vulnerability and knowing of your processes in your mind.

And I think part of when people are trying to be like, oh, you have to love yourself to know how others love you, oftentimes I think they're just repeating that becuse it's something we say. But I think people who sometimes are saying it, are trying to get to the heart of, if you don't know yourself and have an awareness of the process, the mind, the body, the spiritual thing, you can't communicate and negotiate your needs for greater community.

Chichi Agorom:
Yeah. And I would also say, if I don't know myself, I can still be loved. If I don't love myself, I can still be loved. But this is part of that connection I think to the intimacy of the mind where if I'm not able to name that this is the story I'm telling for myself, for example, my story, part of my story is that I have to earn love. So I have to do something other than just be who I am to earn love. So there's lots of love around me, but if I'm more attached to the story and if I haven't named that that is the story, if I'm so attached to this is the story of how I must be and how things are, then when there's love that's offered to me that I didn't work hard to earn, I throw it out because it's not real. Because it doesn't match my story.

Ashtin Berry:
And also when you don't even know there's a story you're telling, you can't even begin to have a conversation about how to course correct. You also can't hear people who are trying to get you out of the story. Which is one of the things that I realized when I was healing from having, you know, complex trauma from my childhood, was that I couldn't hear the attempts from people. My story was that people don't help me, people don't show up for me. Because I was still dealing with the abandonment issues from my childhood when the reality was, people were showing up for me and I couldn't recognize it because I had still not come to terms with the fact that I had told myself a story and had blinders on to anything that did not look specifically like what I thought showing up was.

Also, I don't know, when you have an intimacy of all those things, you begin to understand the way that capitalism has internalized in us for us to win in relationships. Rather than have true knowing in relationships. And even nowadays, I engage with people who sometimes I'm like, pause. Because part of this awareness is knowing also when you can't go there with some people because you know that they aren't ready to have a conversation about this isn't a battle. As Dr. Blay said, this ain't rap beef, you know what I mean? We aren't actually having a battle. What we're having is a conflict to try to negotiate how we engage. But that's something that's really difficult to do when both parties aren't at the same level of intimacy of awareness so that they can be equally accountable for the story that they're bringing in. Because it's not like the story just stays with us. We bring 'em into spaces. And we story tell together. And we play roles. So

Chichi Agorom:
And we hold other people to those stories too. I think about, you know, the capitalism and the performing thing for me go hand in hand because there's so much of capitalism that requires us to perform the role to be successful, to be seen as valuable, to be seen as

Ashtin Berry:
All of capitalism is about performance.

Chichi Agorom:
So then we do that to each other.

Ashtin Berry:
So we do that to each other. I tell people one of the two things that we have done is internalize capitalism and internalize the carceral system. We like to not only choose where people are on a hierarchy, a hierarchy of deservedness–who deserves what based on their value. But then we also like to act as judge, jury and executioner based off of once we put them there of what punitive measures or what award systems they are worthy of based on where we've placed them. And that's something that every day I have to check myself and be like, oh, that ain't your job. That ain't your business. Is that an opinion or an analysis?

And and we have to know the difference. Cause there's nothing wrong, because people will say, well, you know, everybody can have an opinion. And we should also know that opinions are judgements. And that's not inherently negative. It's not even inherently negative to have judgements. But it's about how we place those and how we insert those and how we project those into space. And how those interfere with us having intimacy.

Chichi Agorom:
Yes. Which is, so in that conversation with, with Dr. Blay, you were talking about consensual communication and I hear so much of that in already in the conversation that we're having. But one of the things that I really love about the way you talk about it and then the more I'm learning about what relationship anarchy is, I love this emphasis on communication, on language, on naming things and like communicating about what we really mean, what we really need and desire instead of holding up this structure that's been given to us by the external world to say, this is what a relationship should look like. This is what partnership should look like, this is what romance should look like. I remember you saying like, the idea that we all have the same definition is not true and that can lead to us, that can lead to separation. Because I think that this is what it means, but you think this is what it means and we're not actually talking about these very different things.

Ashtin Berry:
We're performing two different things.

Chichi Agorom:
Yes. So I would just love to hear about–maybe what I wanna ask is what is relationship anarchy? I know that communication is one of the big principles within relationship anarchy. So what is that, what does it mean to be a relationship anarchist?

Ashtin Berry:
So I just wanna say that relationship anarchist, the gentleman who came up with it–I'm forgetting his name, I'll look it up–he created itI for polyamorous relationships. So when most people look at it, they say, oh, this is for polyamory, but you do not need to be polyamorous to take away the learnings and teachers. And he actually says that he's like, anybody could apply this to their relationships.

Chichi Agorom:
I think his name is Andie, right? Andie Nordgren.

Ashtin Berry:
That's what it is, Andie. And relationship anarchy is a focus on not assuming that we know the needs of people we are in relationship with just because we share intimacy. A lot of times our proximity to people or the amount of time we speak makes us assume that we know what they want. That we have these shared definitions and relationship anarchy is asking for us to take a step back and ask us to actually design what a healthy relationship looks like for all parties involved. And the reason why I really think it's important is because nowadays, let's be real, everybody is traumatized, right? Everybody is coming in, we all have baggage. And so often we don't wanna talk about the baggage until it gets to that place. But we also don't wanna talk about the needs until we get to the place that something is wrong because it's considered uncool or you're not going with the flow or it's considered uncouth. And what relationship anarchy is saying that we can't negotiate health without consent.

I'm paraphrasing but that's the basis of it. And I think what it does is, it takes away the shame of people naming what they need because so often, and I hear these conversations on TikTok and on social media, people being like, I'm doing all this and now she's asking for this. And the question that I'm always wondering in my head when I see these conversations generally about hetero relationships is: did they ask for that? Or are you performing that based on your definition of what you think it means. And if the desire is to really show people they are loved and cared for, why must they adhere to the performance you have in your head?

Chichi Agorom:
Ooh. I think it's so intimate. It's so vulnerable. One, to be able to name what I need requires me to be intimate with myself and to lean into the vulnerability of saying, okay, here's what I need. Two, if I'm the other person and you say this way that you're showing up for me is not what helps me feel loved, these are the things that help me feel loved, I have to lean into the vulnerability of being a beginner, of doing something that I don't normally do, of learning something new, of failing maybe, of messing up. And that feels like, no, that's too much. So I wanna stick with what gives me control instead of actually showing up for you.

Ashtin Berry:
But this is the thing that we need to talk about. Which is that although there's all these people now claiming they're ethically nonmonogamous or polyamorous, that's a whole nother story. People who are truly in those lifestyles are releasing from control. They're not saying that they're not gonna have emotions, they're not saying that they're not gonna sometimes want control. But this is again, one of the ways that white supremacy culture, surveillance culture, capitalism, what I was talking about, the internalizing of the carceral system has given us the idea that control is a form of safety. And control is not a form of safety.

Chichi Agorom:
No.

Ashtin Berry:
Not in healthy relationships. We don't need to control people we love. We need to have consensual buy-in that is an agreement in social contracts of how we treat each other to be loved. I said this on Dr. Blay's [live] I think one of the reasons why we have all of the issues that we have just even in larger society is because we often are looking at things through a lens, even if we don't realize it, of we want this to look like this rather than is this what people have named they need? And so I think that one of the conversations that relationship anarchy pulls us to is getting us out of performance. And going back to something bell hooks said, which is that we don't innately know love. Love is not an innate knowing.

It is something we do. It is a discipline. We have to work at it. It takes constant effort and relationship anarchy is saying yes, and here's a framework for how you can do that. And for those who are wondering why it's called relationship anarchy, it's because it doesn't position certain types of relationships over other, it's not a hierarchal design. Your romantic partner isn't more important than your familial people or platonic people. It's saying these are all people in my life that all have a role and I don't need to place them in hierarchal in order for them to have value or, or in order for them to be cared for.

Chichi Agorom:
Yeah. It's like another beautiful–thinking back to your grounding ethic of care work, it feels like this is another extension of that, right?

Ashtin Berry:
Yeah. I really, I came across relationship anarchy because I was in this point in my life where I just really wanted to change my relationships. I really wanted to change how I was relating to people. I had been in therapy, I'm a self-aware person, but my relationships on every front just didn't seem like they were working. And all of the methods that everybody kept giving me, I'm like, but I'm doing that. I'm trying that. And they just did not seem to give me what I wanted. And then I was Googling, I was reading papers, I was all types of stuff. And I read this medium paper by a woman who was, who was saying like, I asked for an open marriage and now I'm jealous.

What do I do? You know, and she was writing her process and she put that relationship anarchy chart in it. And I just thought it was so interesting at the time I thought, oh wow, she is so much more evolved than I am. You know? But then I read it and I was like, wow, how beautiful is this? Right? Yeah. That she's not feeling shamed from feeling jealous. Her husband's not shaming her for feeling jealous. The other partner that they have is not shaming her for feeling jealous, but they're coming together to figure out what she is missing in the dynamic and the relationship so that she feels secure and that's not something that has to happen. And I was like, wow, people can do that?

That sounds nice. Even if that's not the type of relationship I'm looking for, I just thought about all of the places it could be applied in my life. And I was so lucky to come across new friends that have now been my friends for years who are also looking to create relationships differently. And so we got to practice with one another and it was and is beautiful, but it also has informed our other relationships. You know, and we talk about that a lot, about the ways that our relationship has informed us being able to take those skills to other relationships and name things explicitly. I think one of the things that I learned from relationship anarchy isI that the transformation of relationship doesn't necessarily mean it has to break or die, but it means that you have to have the right container and the vulnerability to openly discuss that. Are we actually at odds because something is going on with us or are we at odds because we both in our bodies know our relationship is changing and we are fighting to hold onto something that no longer fits us.

Chichi Agorom:
Hmm. Yeah. I really love that so much. And for maybe like the past few years, that's how I think about how I want to be loved in a long-term partnership is that the thing I wanna commit to is a co-created container that supports both people's thriving and wellness and healing and growth and all of those things. And that once that container is no longer the right container that supports those things, that loving me, me loving the other person looks like we have a conversation about what other container could be built.

Ashtin Berry:
I have a friend they weekly have dinner with their former partner. They're married, and I asked them, I said, every week, wow, isn't that a lot? And they were like, no, this is someone who was in my life for years. We are family now and we are still family. We are no longer romantically tied, but we are still family and we maintain our relationship in this way and this is our commitment to maintaining that relationship in a respectful way that allows us still to be family. And that was just, I'm like that's beautiful.

Chichi Agorom:
That's the lack of performance because they weren't performing what being in a romantic relationship should look like. Which means once you don't play that role anymore, you're discarded.

Ashtin Berry:
Right. Which I have a big issue with, but it's really difficult in heteronormative spaces to switch that because everybody believes, not everybody, but a lot of people believe always that there's ulterior motives to maintaining relationships. which is sad and also shows how little we trust each other.

Chichi Agorom:
Yeah. The trust piece is huge.

Ashtin Berry:
Well you can't have vulnerability without trust. Right? Yeah. And that's even with ourselves, right? Like, you know, I think sometimes people don't trust themselves.

Chichi Agorom:
Oh, a hundred Percent,

Ashtin Berry:
Which is a conversation we don't like to have. About how the ways in which when we don't trust ourselves, it places veils even within our introspection, right?. And then the question becomes for me, what about yourself could you know that would make you not want to be you anymore?

Chichi Agorom:
Hmm.

Ashtin Berry:
There's nothing I could know about myself that would make me no longer want to be me.

Chichi Agorom:
Yeah. I can't think of anything that would be...

Ashtin Berry:
Right. So if you know that there is nothing you could know about yourself that would make you not want to be you, then what is the fear? And I think a lot of times we place that fear–not saying that there isn't a true fear from society or rejection from other people–but a lot of times it's easier to project that as a story of it's because of these people or because of these things rather than a conversation about is it because we've rejected others for these same things?

Chichi Agorom:
Ooh, yes. That's the question I'm asking all the time.

Ashtin Berry:
Right. Is it because I would have to deal with the contradictory nature of which I've pushed away people for the things that I can see in myself,

Chichi Agorom:
That part.

Ashtin Berry:

Or is it because simply I don't wanna have to be accountable for the way that I don't process my emotions?

Chichi Agorom:

Yeah. And it's easier to make it about you than it is for me to be accountable.

Ashtin Berry:

And that's not to say that we haven't had lived [experiences] that make us...where people have done harm and things, but ultimately our healing is our responsibility.

Chichi Agorom:

Yes.

Ashtin Berry:

And so I think bringing it back to the conversation about vulnerability is like you can't have vulnerability without trust.

Chichi Agorom:

Yeah. I can't let you go without talking about one of my favorite parts of that conversation I listened to, which was your practice of, I don't know, do you call it an intake form? Because that's what I have been referring to it as. But I mean

Ashtin Berry:

That's basically what it is.

Chichi Agorom:

Okay, where you create, you have these sets of questions that you offer to people. And what I loved about how you were talking about it is that it's not just for lovers, right? Like you do this with your, I think you even said start with your friendships,

Ashtin Berry:

Yeah. I have it with three of my friends now. I'm working the rest of my friends to get there.

So I, when I found relationship anarchy, I was like, I love this. And the nerd in me and the autistic in me was like, the best way to do this and get the most information is to create a Google form. And so I was like, this is what we're gonna do and you can make a QR code so people can easily access it.

Chichi Agorom:

A QR...that is brilliant. Amazing.

Ashtin Berry:

I was like, here you go. And so it started off as something where I was just trying to figure out where the disconnect between what I wanted and what people were giving me was happening and kind of if the way I was seeing things were actually happening the way I thought they were from their perception. I was kind of like, huh, maybe the way that I'm perceiving things isn't actually what's happening. Like maybe there's a different way this is happening and I'm missing some stuff. So it started off kind of like that and I made it and it was simple and it had four questions and it. I did start this using this with romantic partners first. And then after I decided to become celibate and I wanted to really change the way I was having relationships period, not just romantic ones, like my friendships.

I decided to send it to one of my friends who is great and she loves stuff like this. And we hung out and we kind of had like a little bit of like a weird...I was in this transformative period, so was she. And we kind of had this weird thing. I wrote her an email and it seemed like we still weren't working out. So I sent her this kind of in intake form and was like, the next time we hung out, what would you like to happen? You know, what would a good time look like to you? I had a few questions and she answered them and she was like, Hey, could you answer the same things for me? So I did. And it was then, after having multiple encounters where we both left frustrated, we had this great time and I was like, cool.

And I was like, well, hmm. Then I sent her a thing and was like, Hey, do you mind answering these questions? And it was like, how do you communicate? Like when I give you feedback, is it helpful or not? Cause a lot of our stuff was just like, she felt like I was nitpicking at her because she would be venting about things happening in her life and I would be pointing out the patterns because I'm neurodivergent and patterns is what we do. And so I would be like, well you have a pattern of this behavior, so if you keep doing this thing <laugh>. And she would be like, that's not helpful, that doesn't feel like love to me. It feels like judgment. And so with that, we just found that it was a great way for us to figure out like, oh, she clearly wanted me in her life. I clearly wanted her my life, but we just didn't have a container for the growing pains of us becoming young adults to being grown the containers we had just weren't working no more. We needed new containers.

And this is one of the ways that we created those. And then I started dating again. And if anybody's gone through celibacy, you know that pre-celibacy you and and post-celibacy you are probably very different. And I was someone who, I'll be honest, I was great at sex. Like when I started really having sex, I was great at it, and then I went celibate and suddenly sex was weird. I felt awkward. The things that people...like, there's always an awkwardness. I had felt awkward before, but this was different. I felt like it wasn't an I'm new to sex awkwardness.

It was a, I had asked all my questions through celibacy, which were now changing who I was attracted to and when I reentered the dating world, basically I'm still dating my type pre-celibacy and I hadn't–even though I don't have a physical type–but I hadn't realized that the things and attributes I was gonna need to look for after celibacy were gonna change. Which means that suddenly I was in this position where I was really interested in dating, getting back out there, but I didn't know who my talent pool, what pool I should be pulling from anymore. I was like, oh no, we've got a recruitment issue.

Chichi Agorom:

We need new talent.

Ashtin Berry:

We need new talent, but we don't know the pool to get from. And so I just opened the door wide open. I was like, all right, we're not gonna narrow this. We're gonna put some age restrictions, some kind of like, you know, I want you to be an ethical person type of things and we're gonna just go from there and we're just gonna have to try different things. And what I realized from doing this was like, okay, I need a way to really understand these different experiences I'm having. So I started sending these intake forms. Did you enjoy the day? What did you like about the date? What was the conversation like?

Chichi Agorom:

Oh, after, okay.

Ashtin Berry:

Mm-hmm. Because it's weird to do it with the first date. The first date what I generally do is I send a text message. If they're like, Hey we should do something, I say, what makes a good date for you? And I always ask every single person I go on a date with: what makes a good date for you? And sometimes they say they don't know and I'm like, well think about it and then we should go on a date. And I also always say we, we should plan the date.

And the reason why I do that is because I know what makes a good date for me is intention and presence. I don't wanna see you going through the motions. And also, I don't want a fucking coffee date

Chichi Agorom:

<laugh>. Right.

Ashtin Berry:

If we going on a date, we going on a date. And so yeah, just sending that question and then we go on a date. Sometimes I would do this and sometimes I wouldn't. And the dates where I did do this, like a little beforehand what makes a great date and the after take, the experience was just so much more robust than me going with the flow.

And also if the person didn't really wanna answer those questions, the date always felt flat, but the people who were like, Hey, I never had anybody ask me that, that was great and I feel like it set the tone and blah blah blah blah blah and things of that nature. And so I started getting really intentional about it and I started making it where I made it really cute. You know, I made it so that it was this cute little thing that they could get a QR code. And then of course me, after I started having sex again, I had to make one for an intake form after sex. Cause why not get all the information you can get.

Chichi Agorom:

Are those questions like, did you feel connected? What were your favorite positions?

Ashtin Berry:

Yeah. Some of them are just like did you enjoy the sex? What was enjoyable about it? Some of them are more like, was the connection the hype for you or was the physicality the hype for you? What were your expectations? Like all types of things. And what I found was that, one, it really helped with my anxiety about the patriarchal ideas and stories that we're told as women about performing for men. Because it showed me that men really interested in connecting with me were also just as nervous, you know what I mean? And they were like, I was nervous and blah blah. You saying this really helped me kind of relax and blah blah and I liked that we've talked or we did this and da da da da da. And of course the goodie bag is always a highlight.

Chichi Agorom:

I love the goodie bag

Ashtin Berry:

If people make it through to the goodie bag, that's always a highlight. But yeah, it was something that I would do. And then after, if I got in a relationship, it was something that I still do as a check-in. The intake form is something that everybody should do. Everybody keeps saying–maybe I will do it, maybe I'll make a template and put it out there for people to use.

Chichi Agorom:

Please. Because I will be the first person to download and pay you for it.

Ashtin Berry:

So here's what I will say for everybody who is doing this intake form, you need to know what you want as well. And also you don't push this labor. If you see somebody's not really responding, then that's your answer. People are gonna show you if they're interested in it, even if it's weird or something that they're not used to. But don't try to force it. And even if you find that it's not working and you like the person go, go ahead with it. But what I will say is that it really does show who has the malleability and curiosity for things that are new. And that is a skill that I really value in relationships. Not everybody, but I do. So if it is something you value, you are gonna find out really, really, really quick if this person is interested in going on that journey.

The other thing that I will say about this is you need to know what you want. I do not think this intake form is helpful if you don't know what you want. And when I say know what you want, not even out of the relationship, but also what you want sexually. I think on Dr. Blay's podcast I talked about that. I have a folder that I share with partners. And you know, the beginning folder is, is kind of like, hey, but the folder also is for things that are like kind of could be difficult to talk about, which is like, hey, I have a past trauma of sexual assault. So these things make me feel unsafe. You know what I mean? And I don't wanna interrupt a moment by having to stop you to tell you that thing.

I wanna give you this upfront so that you kind of have an awareness of it. And if it happens, I have no problem reminding you, but I wanna let you know and blah, blah blah. And that has been so helpful. So many partners have been like, thank you, thank you. Because I've had men say like, I'm worried about triggering a woman. You know what I mean? Or handling it right. And blah, blah. And just having that knowledge was like, okay, cool. I know how to go in this situation. But you gotta know what you want. And I think every woman should have a folder. There are ways to do encrypted folders. Y'all don't be putting it on Google.

Chichi Agorom:

Don't do that.

Ashtin Berry:

Pay that 14.99 or 7.99 a month and have your little encrypted folder. Come on now. And you can put things that you like and it doesn't need to be, it can be whatever you want. It can be visual, it can be books, it can be erotica, it can be whatever you want. But what it does is it creates a romance ritual and pleasure rituals with whoever you're about to engage with. And I also think we have to have a whole other conversation about do people actually know what they want in relationships or are they just modeling what they think valuable relationships are? Because when I talk to a lot of people about relationships, my guy friends, my girlfriends outside of my queer friends, like specifically my friends and heteronormal relationships, a lot of times I ask them questions like, okay, but like, what? Well that's not it. What do you want? And they can't answer. So how is somebody supposed to provide you but you don't know.

Chichi Agorom:

Right.

Ashtin Berry:

But they're just supposed to do it.

Chichi Agorom:

They're just supposed to know <laugh>.

Ashtin Berry:

And then they will turn around and be like, oh, but I'm not a mind reader. And it's like, okay, well that goes both ways.

And also I think that, I think a lot of it goes back to our other conversation. People don't wanna be vulnerable. Saying what you want and naming it means having to deal with rejection and being someone who's willing to own that means honestly maybe being single for longer period periods of time than your counterparts. I tell people all the time, I could be in a relationship, I could be in relationship after relationship or relationship. I'm not because the relationships I want to have, I'm interested in them being healthy in a way that not everyone is committed to. And I'm not interested in the labor of engaging in superficial relationships that make me then have to do the emotional cleanup afterwards that may prevent me from actually being present when something I do want comes along.

Chichi Agorom:

Yes. Yeah.

Ashtin Berry:

Hearing no or even hearing multiple nos isn't a testament that it can't be a reality.

Chichi Agorom:

Right. That's what I love about the freedom of relationship anarchy or these constructs is that you get to talk to the person, to these individual people and co-create, this is what works for us versus this is what's expected and we have to figure out how to fit into that. I remember you talking about the communication piece and like the people that you talk to once every six months or once a month or whatever. And I'm one where I don't wanna talk to anybody every day. Like, I love people and I don't want to talk to you every day. Not my family or my best friends

Ashtin Berry:

I got a dog, I don't be wanting to talk to his ass every day.

Chichi Agorom:

Right. So I'm like, but we live in a world where the story is, for me to know you're interested in me, you have to text me every morning and I'm like, no, actually I would prefer for you to not do that.

Ashtin Berry:

That's infatuation. Yeah.

I think knowing that all of these things inform each other makes us know that the work we do in one area really does change the way that that work looks like in another things. So often we try to compartmentalize what the work is, and so it becomes a checklist and I gotta do this and I gotta work on this and I gotta work on this, I gotta work on this. When really if we're, like I said this in my post the other day, consistency is about a conformity to a logic and a ethic. And when you know that your consistency is about aligning with the logic and ethic, it makes the way that you operate in the world much more malleable and flexible because you are detached from the performance and more in tune with the presence of how you show up. And I think that's what I'm always trying to do regardless of what part of my life it is, I'm just trying to get better at being like, is this what society has asked of me? Or am I being consistent with my logic and ethic? And if there's a dissonance between those two things, is it my job to negotiate that dissonance or just to show up as myself?

Chichi Agorom:

Oof. Thank you for showing up as yourself.

Ashtin Berry:

Yeah. I just, love love. I'm a hopeless romantic. It shocks people. People are like, what? And I'm like, I'm a hopeless romantic. I love, love. But I realized that like in order to have more of it, we gotta name it.

Chichi Agorom:

Yeah.

Ashtin Berry:

Oh, we didn't tell people what the goodie bags were. Can I tell people?

Chichi Agorom:

Yeah.

Ashtin Berry:

Okay. So let me walk you guys through a goodie bag and I just tell people this: I don't let just anybody in my house. I feel like your house is a sanctuary. It's a safe space. So, you know, if you invited somebody in your house, it should be someone you have built a container of trust with, you know that they're gonna act right and you're never gonna have to hopefully regret them knowing your address right? There should be a level of trust. But also being who I am, I don't really want you to linger <laugh> Like, you can stay the night, but I don't really want you just in my place. I have ended up with, as a younger woman, I ended up with three different boyfriends who just kind of never left.

The great thing for people to do is you can buy these in little packs. You can get 'em off Amazon or you know, a local store and everything like this. Cause I have these little goody bags which has a toothbrush, a washcloth, just some items they need to freshen up in the morning. I kind of leave that and generally there's a snack. I don't want y'all to think I just got like a box of these sitting somewhere, right? Like generally this is when I'm in the dating process, I'll make up a few of these, you know, have 'em set aside. And if I know I'm having a date and there's a possibility that we'll come back, I'll put together a little snack situation. So like in the morning it's just all already together. And as someone who's in the hospitality industry, I just feel like it's great hospitality <laugh>

Chichi Agorom:

You want 'em to have a good experience the whole way through.

Ashtin Berry:

Who doesn't leave happy when you hand them a bottle of water? You know, because anybody who's done that next day walk, you're like, oh, I gotta go find coffee, I gotta go find water...And then I gotta get home and brush. But when you allow people to leave, like, Ooh, I got a wash. I got my teeth brushed. I was able to get like a little snack or blah blah and send them on their day. It feels really good. And I just think that everybody should have some type of, it doesn't have to be a goody bag, can be whatever you design, but I think that showing that level of care for even people who you may not be like this is a life partner, in return if they are a gracious person–which I hope you're dating gracious, caring people–they will also model that and return it to you.

Chichi Agorom:

Hmm. Yeah.

Ashtin Berry:

I have had partners be like, you showing up like this made me wanna do this. Cause I was like, damn, she really, she really did that. Okay, let me think about what I'm gonna do. And I love that. I wanna go tit for tat in how we care for each other.

Chichi Agorom:

Yeah.

Ashtin Berry:

I said on Dr. Blay's podcast where I got the idea from, I got it from a lover who had a practice where he would be like, Hey, you wanna take a shower? He'd give you a toothbrush, blah, blah. And then he'd be like, let's go grab a coffee. . And that's when he said goodbye.

Chichi Agorom:

Mm-hmm.

Ashtin Berry:

And it didn't make you feel pushed out. You felt really special. And then a couple hours later I was like, oh damn

Chichi Agorom:

<laugh>, he really wanted me gone.

Ashtin Berry:

That was a smooth way to get me the fuck up his house.

Chichi Agorom:

Yeah.

Ashtin Berry:

And I just think that those routines are just as special. And I think when we show that we care for people on a casual level, it also shows the care that we would have if we ever ended the relationship with someone.

Chichi Agorom:

Right. Yeah.

Ashtin Berry:

I hope I answered everything.

Chichi Agorom:

You did. You are brilliant and wonderful. Thank you so much. How can our listeners continue to engage with you and your brilliance? Anything you would like to tell 'em about?

Ashtin Berry:

Well, you can follow me at @thecollectress and my website will be up beginning of April. So that'll be up and you can follow it. It'll be www.ashtinberry.com. And yeah, that's the way to keep up with me. And thank you so much for having me. This was so lovely. I really enjoy you. Thank you for asking me. And this was, you know, I've been on a no press no, no nothing hiatus. So this was a great way to dip my toe back into doing podcasts and being a guest and stuff. This was such a pleasurable experience.

Chichi Agorom:

Thank you. This was such a gift to me. I have been fangirling and crushing from a distance, so this is like...I'm done for the day, honestly.

Ashtin Berry:

Get the intake form together.

Chichi Agorom:

I will. I will.

Ashtin Berry:

Also just shout to Dr. Blay for bringing us together. Thank you so much.

Chichi Agorom:

We love you, Dr. Blay.

Ashtin Berry:

Love. That interview on Instagram has sent me so many interesting and lovely people and including you, and I'm just grateful.

Chichi Agorom:

Thank you for being you.

Ashtin Berry:

Thank you. Have a good one.