I had the pleasure of meeting Sydney LaVie during a recruiting call for Unfiltrd and have since gotten to know her a little better since we started working together on her socials and content. A successful appellate and trial lawyer who turned to writing down her adventures in Consensual Non-Monogamy (CNM) as a way of share her experiences and empower other women to explore their own sensuality.
Talking with Sydney
Q: What got you into writing?
A: I was always a nerd and loved writing! I started out my law career as an appellate attorney, a large part of that is being able to write briefs well enough to make the judge see your client’s side of things. If you cannot write well, you cannot make the judge see your side of things and you’re of no help to your clients. It was very easy to translate this skill over to a spicier side of things. In the adult creator realm, you can use your talents to bring joy and fantasy to people’s lives, and in some small way, make their lives a little better. Everyone on the planet has desires and fantasies. One of the things I am able to do with my writings is help other people realize that they may have some of the same fantasies and it’s not impossible to make them real. Those kinds of realizations can be life changing for people. Realizing my fantasies and acting on them has been life changing for me!
Q: Speaking of your fantasies; How did you come into the Ethical Non-Monogamy space? How did you know it was right for you?
A: I was married for 13 years, in a very traditional, monogamous marriage, and I just felt very unfulfilled in that role. I knew once my marriage ended, I needed to explore a different side of myself, the side that had all of these fantasies but couldn’t act on them while in that traditional role. I don’t believe you can get everything you need from one person, it’s impossible for one person to check all of your boxes. When I met my new husband, I told him from the start that I could not be trapped in the box of monogamy again. Being a part of a ENM dynamic has been amazing for both of us as it forces us to communicate our needs to each other in ways we wouldn’t normally in a monogamous relationship. We’re more intimate with each other in many ways because of this. It gives us space to be completely and authentically ourselves. It has been really empowering to be able to experience these things.
Q: So you’ve found yourself in ENM relationship and you’re having all of these wonderful experiences with your husband and your partners. What made you want to write them down and share with the world?
A: Living authentically and being vulnerable is the best way, in my opinion, to make the world a little bit better. It gives people the permission to live their life outside of the box that society has constructed for them, and still be happy and successful. I’m proof that you can be educated AND still have the life you want, not the one people say you’re supposed to have. For me, writing is about showing people that you can get your happily ever after in whatever form you want that to be. Specifically, I want to inspire women with my writings. So often women are trained to be men’s fantasies, there’s very little emphasis on what women can be attracted to and what their fantasies are. So often women get trapped into monogamous relationships where they’re not free to be themselves. I hope they read my stories and realize maybe that’s what they want, and hopefully they can have those conversations and live their lives a little more fulfilled.
Q: What’s been your favorite story so far?
A: I think Nick has been my favorite that I’ve written so far. Nick was our first threesome with another man. It’s super taboo for a woman to want two men. When you think threesome, you usually go to two women and one man, or at least men do. But it was something I wanted, so I talked to my husband about it and we called our friend, Nick. It was an amazing experience for all of us and it honestly brought my husband and I closer as a couple. These different experiences we’ve had in our relationship have brought us closer together and even to different levels and stages in our love for each other. And that’s important in a relationship. We’re also finding that most of the time the real thing is even better than the fantasy.
Q: Okay so switching gears a little; you’re not only writing these stories but you’re also creating content with your husband. How has that experience been for you guys?
A: We’ve really loved working together as a couple. It’s just another one of those things bringing us closer together, we’re constantly talking about new content we can make, photoshoot ideas, stories we can write about and experiences we can share. It’s really forcing us to use the creative parts of our brains in new ways we never would have before. As lawyers, there’s not a whole lot of room to be as creative as you want to, so this has been a lot of fun for us. It’s also showing us that there are some boundaries we need to put in place with each other as we hadn’t initially set out to create this type of content. The toughest part of this whole thing has been finding the right audience. We’re finding that we kind of have to fit ourselves into two different niches. We want to aim our story telling at women, and our spicy content towards men, so it’s definitely been an interesting experience trying to navigate those waters. Breaking into the female audience has been the biggest hurtle. Men are pretty easy to engage with. They are very visual in terms of what they’re interested in, so our content keeps their interest. Women on the other hand have to be very interested in the type of content you’re offering before they convert. With our writing aimed at women, it has been tough finding the best way to engage that audience. But we’ve been getting some help finding ways to wiggle our way into that sector with our Instagram and Tiktok content.
Q: So out of personal curiosity, what made you switch from being a trial lawyer to a content creator and writer?
A: Working for someone else was literally killing me. I needed a better way to live. I remember one day my former boss asked me what my goals looked like for the next stage of my career. My response, “I want to still be alive to see my kids graduate high school and college”. She looked at me like I was a little crazy. I have Crone’s disease; I have had several surgeries to help with this and I currently have to get my nutrients from a port three times a week. I couldn’t sustain a full-time trial lawyer’s schedule and manage my illness at the same time. It was killing me. So I left and started looking to other things. Writing was an outlet for me so I started writing about my adventures in ENM. Now work doesn’t feel like work. It’s been so freeing and life affirming to do this for myself and not for someone else. In today’s world, either capitalism is going to exploit your talents, or you can. And I’ve decided that I would rather reap the benefits of my work instead of letting someone else.
Wrapping up
Over the last few weeks I have gotten to know Sydney and her partner a little better as we’ve been working on their social media profiles together, and I have to say I’m impressed not only with their openness and honesty, especially for something like the Unfiltrd Blog, but their grind! These guys are always working and coming up with something new and exciting. You can check out their writing at www.Sydneylavie.com
See you for next weeks blog 😘 Sara Lyn Chacon
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