I want to start with an admission: I admired these people.
Aubrey Marcus built something rare — a platform where vulnerability, masculinity, and genuine spiritual seeking could coexist. I respected that. I’ve read the books, followed the journey, and even attended the Eros Mystery School in person. I went as someone genuinely curious, genuinely open.
So this isn’t a takedown. It’s not a culture war shot from someone who never engaged with the ideas. It’s a reflection from someone who did engage — and came away with questions that nobody else in this conversation seems to be asking.
Everyone has an opinion on the Aubrey-Vylana-Alana throuple. The internet has taken sides on whether polyamory is valid, whether “Radical Monogamy” is a meaningful term or a contradiction, whether spiritual relationships can transcend conventional structures.
What I haven’t seen — in any of the think pieces, the podcast responses, the social media debates — is anyone asking the obvious question:
What about the children?
The Conversation We’re Not Having
I work with adults. Trauma-informed psychedelic-assisted therapy, nervous system regulation, deep integration work. And what I see, day after day, are grown people metabolising the consequences of their childhood environments. Not just the dramatic ones — abuse, neglect, violence. The quieter ones. The divided loyalties. The sense that they had to compete for a parent’s attention. The confusion of never quite knowing which version of “family” was the real one.
I am also a mother. Of twins. I make mistakes — probably every day. I like to joke that I’m saving for the therapist while other parents save for college. So I’m humble about the fact that most parents have the best of intentions… and they still fail.
What the Science Says — Clearly and Without Apology
Children don’t understand sacred union, soul contracts, or womb alchemy. They understand who is tucking them in at night. Whether their parent is present or distracted. Whether they have to compete for love.
The developmental psychology on this is not ambiguous. John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth’s foundational work on attachment theory — confirmed and extended by decades of subsequent research — shows that children thrive when they have:
- Secure attachment to primary caregivers
- Predictable, consistent emotional responses
- Clear boundaries modeled and respected
- Freedom from triangulation and adult emotional complexity
A 2010 study by Beebe et al. found that the quality of caregiver interaction at four months predicts attachment security at twelve months. Not years later — months. The nervous system is forming its map of the world that early. It is logging: am I safe? am I seen? is love reliable?
A 2020 meta-analysis in Health Psychology Review confirmed that secure attachment in committed relationships correlates with better immune function, longer life expectancy, and greater stress resilience in adults. We are still living out what happened to us before we could talk.
There is little to no scientific evidence that three-parent romantic configurations — particularly volatile or evolving ones — offer equivalent attachment security for children. What research exists on communal and experimental family structures points toward a consistent pattern: complexity, divided loyalties, and emotional instability in the caregiving environment create lasting imprints on developing nervous systems.
This isn’t conservative moral panic. This is developmental biology.
“Ayahuasca Told Me…” — and Other Dangerous Absolutes
Now we get to the part I’m uniquely positioned to speak to.
I’ve heard the phrase “Ayahuasca told me…” or “Spirit told me…” or “The Goddess told me…” more times than I can count. Often from people still in the radiance of ceremony, still metabolising an experience that hasn’t been integrated. Still confusing intensity for truth.
I’ve been in that loop myself. And I paid the price.
Psychedelic experiences can carry profound personal revelation. I believe this deeply — it’s the foundation of my work. But these insights are starting points for reflection, not permission slips for radical life changes that affect others. Especially children.
The medicine shows us our fears and our deepest desires. It speaks in symbols, in longing, in the language of the psyche. Without grounded integration, what we receive in ceremony is raw material — not instruction.
This brings me to Abraham.
In one of the Aubrey Marcus podcasts, Marc Gafni references the story of Abraham and Isaac — God commanding Abraham to sacrifice his son — as a parable about learning to distinguish the authentic inner voice from external authority. It’s actually a profound psychological point. Jung explored the same territory in Answer to Job — the question of how we relate to a God we’ve created in our own image, how we find moral autonomy without simply inverting one authority for another.
I love this framing. I think it’s genuinely important work.
But here’s the contradiction that troubles me: if the lesson of Abraham is don’t follow divine commands blindly, find your own authentic voice — then why is “Ayahuasca told me” being treated as an absolute? Why is Spirit’s instruction to restructure your family, have children within an experimental container, redefine monogamy — why is that different from the command Abraham questioned?
Abraham, in the end, didn’t sacrifice his son.
The whole point of the story, psychologically, is that we must find the internal authority mature enough to say: no. Not this. Not my child.
What I Witnessed in Person
When I attended the Eros Mystery School, I came as an admirer. I came open.
What I witnessed in the throuple dynamic live was different from the curated narrative. The tension was palpable. The undercurrents were difficult to ignore. Whatever the public story, the energetic reality felt strained — still very much in process, unresolved, alive with friction that hadn’t found ground yet.
I wouldn’t want to raise children inside that atmosphere. Not because friction is wrong — friction is human — but because children shouldn’t be holding the emotional charge of adults who are still figuring out the shape of their own container.
The Influence Problem
To their credit, the trio has been careful to say they are not recommending this as a model for others — only that it’s what feels true for them. I respect that nuance.
And still: when you have millions of followers, a charismatic platform, and the language of spiritual evolution wrapped around your personal choices, your life becomes an implicit recommendation whether you intend it or not. Influence carries responsibility. And I’m not convinced that responsibility is being held with the depth it deserves.
“Radical Monogamy” as a term for a triad dynamic is — let’s be honest — linguistic acrobatics. Monogamy means one. When we start coining phrases that make contradictions sound enlightened, we’re not evolving. We’re bypassing.
We’ve Seen This Before
This is not a new story.
From Osho to Keith Raniere to Father Divine, spiritual leaders have used elevated language and mystical frameworks to justify multiple partners, scattered families, and catastrophic consequences for the children raised within those systems. The adults who grew up in these environments — I’ve sat with some of them — carry wounds that are remarkably consistent: confusion, divided loyalties, emotional neglect wrapped in the language of freedom.
This isn’t theoretical. These are real people with real damage.
The trappings change. The neuroscience doesn’t.
The Real Question
So the debate isn’t really is polyamory valid? For consenting adults, navigating their own nervous systems, their own attachment wounds, their own lives — that’s a conversation worth having.
The question is: Are we willing to use our children as the test subjects in our spiritual experiments?
In a world already overwhelmed with insecure attachment, abandonment wounds, and children exposed to adult emotional complexity before they have the developmental resources to metabolise it — are we helping or harming when we build family systems that defy everything we know about what children actually need?
This isn’t about shaming desire. It’s about remembering what’s sacred.
And sometimes what’s most sacred isn’t the ecstatic edge of personal transformation. Sometimes it’s the quiet, unsexy, deeply regulated consistency that helps a young soul feel safe enough to become themselves.
So by all means — evolve your love. Explore your edges. Heal your wounds. Use the medicine. Find your authentic voice.
But if you’re going to bring children into the mix, do it with reverence, not rebellion.
Because they didn’t choose the path. You did.
Questions Worth Sitting With
Is polyamory harmful to children? While polyamory can work for some adults, most developmental research emphasises the importance of stable, secure attachment to primary caregivers. Three-parent dynamics often introduce complexity, triangulation, and emotional inconsistency — factors that can compromise a child’s sense of safety and identity during critical developmental phases.
Can secure attachment exist in non-traditional family structures? In theory, yes — but it requires extraordinary levels of emotional maturity, co-regulation, and consistency from all caregivers. In practice, most experimental or evolving relationships struggle to provide the predictability children need. The question isn’t whether it’s theoretically possible. It’s whether the conditions are actually present.
Is ayahuasca a reliable guide for major life decisions? Ayahuasca can reveal deep emotional truths, but these should be understood as starting points for integration, not absolute commands. Without grounded follow-through, psychedelic insights can become spiritual bypassing — or projections of unresolved trauma and desire dressed in the language of revelation. Abraham didn’t sacrifice his son. That’s the point.
What does the science say about children and secure attachment? Extensive research — Bowlby, Ainsworth, Beebe and others — shows that children thrive when emotional responses are consistent, boundaries are clear, and primary caregivers are attuned and present. Secure attachment correlates with better mental health, social development, immune function, and life outcomes across the lifespan. It is not optional. It is foundational.
If You’re Carrying This
If you were raised in a household where adult spiritual experiments took precedence over your need for safety — you’re not alone. The confusion, the divided loyalties, the sense that love was conditional on going along with something you didn’t choose: these are real wounds, and they can be healed.
At Vine of the Soul Retreats, we work with attachment trauma, nervous system dysregulation, and the kind of deep integration that plant medicine can open but can’t complete on its own.
If this resonates — let’s talk.
Sources:
- Ainsworth, M. D., Blehar, M., Waters, E., & Wall, S. (1978). Patterns of Attachment: A Psychological Study of the Strange Situation. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
- Beebe, B., Jaffe, J., Markese, S., et al. (2010). “The origins of 12-month attachment: A microanalysis of 4-month mother-infant interaction.” Attachment & Human Development, 12(1-2), 3–141. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20390524/
- Chopik, W. J., O’Brien, E., & Konrath, S. H. (2017). “Associations among relational values, support, health, and well-being across the adult lifespan.” Personal Relationships. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/pere.12187
- Fisher, H. E., Aron, A., & Brown, L. L. (2006). “Romantic love: A mammalian brain system for mate choice.” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 361, 2173–2186. https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rstb.2006.1938
- Jung, C. G. (1952). Answer to Job. Rascher Verlag.
- Moors, A. C., Matsick, J. L., & Schechinger, H. A. (2017). “Unique and shared relationship benefits of consensually non-monogamous and monogamous relationships.” European Psychologist, 22(1), 55–71. https://doi.org/10.1027/1016-9040/a000278
