This category explores what it actually looks like to build and maintain healthy relationships in real life, not just in theory. You’ll find guidance on communication, conflict, repair, boundaries, intimacy, and the messy humanity that comes with loving other people. Every post is grounded in clinical insight and practical tools you can use today. And remember, relationships are relationships are relationships are relationships.
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…
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…
Most relationships run on autopilot. We assume we’re on the same page – about sex, texting exes, how often we talk during the day, what counts as cheating – until we realize we’re not. That’s what creating relationship agreements is all about. The truth is, most people don’t create explicit agreements in their relationships. They…
Most of us were never taught how to repair after a fight. We were taught how to win, how to be right, how to move on quickly, or shove it down, or even avoid conflict altogether until the next blow-up. But real repair is not about resolution in the traditional sense, it is about re-connection….
One of the hardest things to sit with in any long-term relationship is the question: Is this a relationship deal breaker or something we can work through? When the stakes are high — the more you care, the harder it is to know if what’s hard right now is just a bump or a wall….