The Game Changer: A Memoir of Disruptive Love

Finally, after incredible struggle, the manuscript for my memoir The Game Changer is finished and in copyediting. You can preorder it now on Amazon. Writing this book has been one of the most difficult things I’ve ever done. I’ve been thinking of it as The...

Some thoughts on community and abuse

Update: If you are looking for help with an abusive situation, please see this list of resources. Eve and I have been writing quite a lot about abuse in polyamorous relationships here lately. We’re even doing a workshop on it at Poly Living in Philadelphia next...

Compassion

The book More Than Two talks several times about compassion. The word appears 100 times in the book. Compassion, we say, is a necessary part of a successful relationship. On another forum, someone recently asked, “So what is compassion?” And it occurred to...

Back in the cabin again!

I’m typing this blog post in front of a huge picture window overlooking a temperate rainforest in rural Washington state, which means I’m back at the cabin where Eve Rickert and I wrote our polyamory book More Than Two. The cabin kitty, Whiskers, has been...

#WLAMF no. 33: Black belt mistakes

Some time ago, I wrote about dating black belts. I prefer to date people who have already demonstrated the skills required to treat others well in a relationship–that is, people who are black belts at relationships. It’s a common misconception among folks...

#WLAMF no. 32: Relationship negativity

There is a concept in sex-positive circles of “sex negativity.” Sex negativity is the notion that sex is intrinsically bad, dangerous, dirty, or wrong, unless it occurs within certain tightly prescribed conditions (for example, in marriage for...

#WLAMF no. 30: Building up, not tearing down

There’s a common theme to the problem-solving approach we see in many poly relationships: bringing things down to the same level instead of building things up to the same level. For example, when a new relationship starts, it often comes bundled with a lot of crazy...

#WLAMF no. 23: Relationship rights

Way back in 2003, I proposed a “secondary’s bill of rights” for polyamorous relationships. This Bill of Rights, much of which was written by my partner Shelly, came out of our attempts to navigate the hierarchical relationship I was in at the time...