Polyamorous holidays: When you’re the secondary
“I’m looking for advice on surviving the holidays as a Secondary. My only current partner is married, and also lives very close to his biological family, whom he is also very close to emotionally. He’s told at least his mother that he’s dating someone, but she has essentially bent over backwards to ignore our relationship. Although we don’t subscribe to an emotional hierarchy, there’s still the functional/social hierarchy of him living with her, being accepted by his family, etc., and holidays really seem to heighten that glitch in the matrix.
“My own very small biological family lives too far away for me to spend time with. My partner is spending the holidays with his family (no big surprise) and his wife (also not a surprise.) We’re doing some personal celebration things on days around the holidays, but they’re very solitary activities. I find that it’s very much getting to me that I’m alone during this time of family togetherness. I’m making the best of it spending time with friends, but it hurts to not be able to spend the time with the person I love the most, and additionally to feel like I am socially “erased” from his life during this time. I’d like to know how other people have dealt with similar feelings of being the Invisible Partner during a very rough part of the year to be alone.”
read moreBook tour and another book tour!
My new book The Game Changer: A Memoir of Disruptive Love is about to come out! It officially publishes September 23. I’m be doing a 10-city book tour on the West Coast of the United States. If you’re along my route, I hope you’ll be able to make it out!
Then, after the book tour for The Game Changer, my partner Eve Rickert and I are going on a second book tour, this time through Europe for More Than Two. Oh, and along the way, we’ll be speaking at some conventions as well. here’s where to catch up with us!
read moreFranklin and…err…some chick.
Last year, my partner Eve and I wrote a book. It’s quite a massive book, weighing in north of 150,000 words. In it you will find our thoughts, ideas and experiences with polyamory–a rather complex subject, as you might imagine. It took an incredible amount of effort to write. I’m very proud of what we created (and if you haven’t checked it out already, I recommend it. But of course, I might be biased.)
We’ve received a lot of feedback about the book. Not just on Amazon, though 80 five-star reviews is kind of nice, but from people who’ve told us things like “your book changed my life” and “your book saved my relationship.”
Which is awesome. I think we’ve accomplished something amazing.
And yet…
read moreSome thoughts on little white lies
I have oft observed a very strange thing in romantic relationships, and that is good things our partners say to us tend to bounce off as though our self-conception were made of Teflon, whereas bad things have amazing power to stick. If our partner tells us “I think you’re beautiful; I am totally attracted to you,” it is easy to say “well, he doesn’t really mean it,” and not to internalize it. But a partner saying “I don’t think you look good in that dress” sticks tenaciously, and can haunt us for weeks.
Why is that?
There might be a lot of reasons, but I think one of them is the little white lie.
read moreIt’s finally here! The More Than Two audiobook! (Also, Kimchi Cuddles!)
Okay everyone, you can finally stop messaging and tweeting at us about when the More Than Two audiobook will be out: it’s finally here! You can order it on Amazon now, iTunes coming soon. Please share!
And in other news… The amazing webcomic Kimchi Cuddles is going to be a book! Creator Tikva Wolf launched her crowdfunding campaign today (in collaboration with my & Franklin’s publishing company, Thorntree Press), and she’s already up over $5,000. There are some great perks there—including copies of More Than Two and other Thorntree books. And an awesome crowdfunding video. Please go check it out and support her now.
read moreBehind the scenes with The Game Changer: Cover design
Many years ago, my game-changing partner (whom I call Amber in The Game Changer) talked to a therapist about why she felt lonely and isolated. Her therapist told her there was nothing wrong with her: she felt alienated from others because she was a giraffe surrounded by alligators.
No matter how well-intentioned alligators are, they can not understand or relate to giraffes. Giraffes and alligators have very different needs and live very different lives. An alligator might sincerely reach out to a giraffe—by offering it a bit of meat torn from the carcass of some unlucky water buffalo, say—but that isn’t likely to help the giraffe much.
Amber was my giraffe. She was the first person I knew who really got me in a way my other partners never had. It turns out, I have a bit of giraffe in me, too.
read moreThe 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 Big Book of Franklin Gets It Wrong, because it tells the story of the most awful things I have ever done, the greatest mistakes I’ve ever made, and the various ways I’ve hurt people close to me in the quest to figure out how to make this whole polyamory thing work. It’s been written and re-written and re-re-written (I went through four complete drafts and numerous smaller revisions and edits, prompted in large part by the incredible support and comments I’ve received from people who looked at the early versions).
read moreWe’re coming to Europe!
Wow, you guys! It’s been an amazing six months. The book More Than Two has sold over 8,000 copies. The manuscript for Franklin’s forthcoming memoir, The Game Changer, goes to copy-editing on Monday. And we’ve been invited to speak at Poly Day North in Manchester, UK, this October… and we figured, hey! Let’s do a Europe book tour! We have lots of backers and fans in the UK and Europe, and we’ve gotten enough frequent flyer miles over the last year to cover the tickets. So, we’re doing it. If you live across the water, we need your help! We need folks to help plan local events, and we need places to stay. So if you want us to come visit you, please fill out this short survey. Our tour route will be based entirely on where we have fan support.
read moreResources on abuse in polyamorous relationships
Franklin and I have just wrapped up a very well-attended session on abuse in polyamorous relationships at the Poly Living 2015 conference in Philadelphia, which was a follow-up to Franklin’s keynote last night on “Telling Our Stories, Changing the World.” We’re very grateful that so many people came to the session, especially the numerous mental health professionals who contributed their expertise to the discussion. We wanted to make the resources mentioned at the session available here for easy access.
read moreSome thoughts on community and abuse
Right now I think the poly community has come to a place where we can either content ourselves with talking about respect and consent the way the BDSM community has, or we can work to make it a cornerstone of the social groups we create. I look at the kink scene and the path it’s taken, and I’m afraid. I don’t want the poly scene to become like that.
read moreBuy My Books
