Sometimes I loooove words, and other times they drive me absolutely insane. The number of times I’ve been asked, “What’s the actual difference between polyamory, open relationships, and swinging?” Or someone brings up SLOWM and asks if that was polyamory vs open relationship vs swinging. And then, depending on the conversation, someone throws relationship anarchy…
Yep. There is, in fact, jealousy in open relationships. There’s jealousy in many different types of relationships — familial, professional, platonic. Jealousy is not an emotional experience exclusive to romantic/sexual connections. I’m now about twelve years (🤯) into running a polyamory-affirming practice, and many years into my own non-monogamous life, I can tell you the…
Most of the questions I get about anal play for beginners start with some version of “is this normal, and where do I even begin?” The first part is easy. Yes, more normal than the cultural conversation suggests. The second part takes a little more time, which is part of why I wrote this. A…
Table of Contents What is good sex? If you asked ten people, you’d probably get ten different answers, and most of them would miss the mark. Almost everything we’ve been taught about what “good sex” means comes from movies and porn that have nothing to do with how real humans actually connect. Here’s what I…
Table of Contents “Is my therapist a good fit?” is one of the most common questions I get, and it’s also one of the hardest to answer in a Google search, because the truth is more nuanced than “here are 5 red flags.” The relationship between you and your therapist is the single most researched…
Table of Contents “How do I tell my parents I’m polyamorous?” is one of the questions I hear most often from non-monogamous clients, and it’s usually followed by, “Do I even need to?” Coming out as polyamorous or non-monogamous to friends and family is complicated in a way that’s hard to prepare for, because it…
Table of Contents “Emotional labor” is one of those terms that gets used constantly but rarely gets explained well. It shows up in arguments, think pieces, and memes, but if you asked five people what emotional labor in relationships actually means, you’d probably get five different answers, and at least two of them would be…
Table of Contents You love your partner. Your partner loves you. But one of you wants non-monogamy and the other doesn’t. And now you’re both wondering: Can this actually work? If you’re in a mono/poly relationship, or considering one, you’re probably carrying a mix of love, fear, confusion, and maybe some grief you haven’t fully…
The way you handle conflict didn’t come from nowhere. Your conflict style in relationships has an origin. Whether you shut down, explode, people-please, intellectualize, or crack jokes when things get tense, there’s a reason you do what you do. And it almost always traces back to something you learned long before you were in the…
Why Valentine’s Day Can Feel So Loaded Valentine’s Day intimacy ideas are everywhere this time of year, yet many people feel more pressure than connection when the holiday approaches. That pressure usually comes from a mix of cultural scripts, relational expectations, and personal narratives and history that converge on one date and ask you to…