mid deconstruction from evangelical faith and we're considering the lifestyle, im worried about the order of operations and doing both at once

so im 33, partner 35, scottish couple in glasgow, both raised in a pretty conservative evangelical free church environment, both fully out of the church about 18 months ago. were properly in the middle of what online ppl call "deconstruction" — reading, podcasts, lots of long walks talking about what we actually believe vs what we were told we believed, the lot. its been intense but mostly good for our marriage, weve gone deeper than we ever did inside the faith. heres my question. about 3 months ago we started thinking about the LS — partly bc one of the things we've been unpacking is how much of our framework for sex and marriage was inherited and untested, and partly bc honestly were both curious. weve been on the apps a bit, no meets yet, lots of chat about it between us. and a friend who left the same church 6 yrs before us and is now in the LS herself has cautioned us — "do the deconstruction first, then decide about the LS, dont do both at once or you'll never know which one was the variable." shes got a point. but i also dont know if its possible to "finish" deconstructing before being open to other things. like the deconstruction is largely the process of being open to other things and seeing what survives. ordering them seems impossible if theyre actually the same project. is anyone here who came thru deconstruction and into the LS — what was the order of operations for you. did you do them sequentially or in parallel and if you did them in parallel did you regret it. and is it actually possible to know which one is the variable in your own marriage if youre changing two things at once...