Privacy. That thing where you get to choose how much of your personal life is on display, yeah? Privacy is pretty critical to one’s emotional well-being and sense of safety. We depend on those close to us to keep our confidence, and there is a reasonable expectation of privacy when we allow ourselves to be [...]
When you view your partners, and yourself, as autonomous individuals who exist in proximity to each other but aren’t defined by it, you’re rewarded with relationships based on secure connections between adults.
Love is abundant and not a zero sum game. That is, loving others will never reduce what’s available for others. We experience this all the time with friends, children, siblings, etc. It truly is an infinite resource. But while love is an infinite resource, our lives are full of others that are. Regardless of your [...]
Once upon a time I was bounced from a polyamory-focused group on social media for insisting that their tolerance of certain behaviors in the group created a safe space for abusers. Specifically, allowing couples seeking to add a “third” to their existing relationship to do so unchallenged. For folks who’ve been in the non-monogamous community [...]
Many assume non-monogamy is all about the sex. So much so, non-mono folks often avoid bringing it up as an aspect of relationships. But guess what? You should talk about sex! This isn’t going to be a clinic on how to have safer sex because: 1) I am not a sexual health professional 2) Everyone’s [...]
** New Word Alert! Complosion: when you want to feel happy that your partner is experiencing something with someone else they are involved with, but it all blows up in your psyche instead. [see: opposite of compersion] ** . . . Yes, I 100% made that word up . . . One of my most [...]
I came to a difficult realization recently: a boundary I thought I had was not, in fact, a boundary. You see I had what I thought was a solid set of limits around a particular safety issue. I stated them and they were accepted, but when it came time for me to enforce them, I [...]
One of the most common questions I see agonized over in ENM community groups is how to walk one’s children through the concept of intentional non-monogamy. The default position appears to be to keep one’s children in the dark, likening one’s rejection of compulsory monogamy to sexual deviance. I have a different take; no one [...]
A common stumbling block in relationships, non-monogamy in particular, is feeling like you must know what your partner is up to in order to feel safe in your relationship. Inevitably we find this is just an illusion; a thing we tell ourselves in order to feel safe because that’s what we’ve been immersed in our [...]
I’m in an obnoxious amount of non-monogamy focused groups on social media. So many, in fact, that the majority of activity online most days is speed-reading the same queries over and over from various newcomers. I do not attempt to answer even a quarter of them because there are plenty of folks out there with [...]
Poly With a Big Heart 