The Game Changer

A memoir of disruptive love


The Game Changer: A Memoir of Disruptive Love

The Game Changer book cover My memoir of my 18-year open marriage and the game-changing relationship that transformed my ideas about polyamory.

“An eloquent, full-throated defense of how everyone’s needs in poly relationships must be met, not just primaries. An excellent summary of the bad early days of poly, and a reminder of how far we’ve come.”—Ferrett Steinmetz, kink educator and Nebula-nominated author of Flex.

Note: I am currently working on a second edition of this book, updated with all-new content! Stay tuned!

How to buy it:

The Game Changer is distributed by IPG in the United States and AK Press and Distribution in the United Kingdom and Europe. Retailers and libraries may order through Ingram or Baker & Taylor, directly from IPG at (800) 888-4741, or from Thorntree Press (orders@thorntreepress.com). Thorntree Press also works directly with international retailers and groups.

More about The Game Changer

Franklin and Celeste’s open marriage seemed perfectly safe—until the day Amber entered his life and showed them why the heart does not obey rules.

ISBN: 978-0-9913997-5-8(paperback) / 978-0-9913997-6-5 (ePub)
Copyright © 2015
Publication date: September 23, 2015
232 pages

To make an open marriage work, Franklin and Celeste knew they needed to make sure no one else ever came between them. That meant there had to be rules. No overnights, no falling in love, and either one of them could ask the other to end an outside relationship if it became too much to deal with. It worked for nearly two decades—and their relentless focus on their own relationship let them turn a blind eye to the emotional wreckage they were leaving behind them.

The rules did not prepare them for Amber.

“I have a question,” Amber would say. And whatever came next would send a wrecking ball through Franklin and Celeste’s comforting illusions. Amber was the first of Franklin’s polyamorous secondary partners to insist on being treated like a person, and the first to peel back the layers of insecurity and fear that surrounded their relationship.

Amber was a game changer. A game-changing relationship is one that uproots and redirects your life. It overthrows your assumptions about who you are and why. It awakens you to possibilities you’d never conceived of. It disrupts. And it is the unspoken elephant in the attractive showroom of polyamorous relationships.

This book is the true story of a game-changing relationship that changed not only Franklin and Celeste’s lives, but the face of the modern polyamory movement.

A game-changing relationship can happen to anyone. How will you handle it when it happens to you?

Reviews

Cunning Minx, host of the Polyamory Weekly podcast. “Franklin Veaux, poly cognoscente, has crafted a memoir that is equal parts heartwarming and heartbreaking.”

Miri Mogilevsky, blogger at Brute Reason and The Daily Dot. “Franklin’s powerful memoir isn’t just a love story–it’s a story about redefining love and developing the self-awareness to treat the people we love with trust and compassion. Many of us are taught from an early age that it’s impossible to love someone without wanting to control them, but this book shows that this need to control often says more about our own insecurities than about the people we love. Even if you’re not polyamorous, read this book: it’ll make you question your own assumptions in the best way.”

Ferrett Steinmetz, kink educator and Nebula-nominated author of Flex. “This book tells the story of how Franklin came to the much-needed conclusion that secondary partners matter—and winds up being an eloquent, full-throated defense of how everyone’s needs in poly relationships must be met, not just primaries. An excellent summary of the bad early days of poly, and a reminder of how far we’ve come.”

Isaac Cross, blogger at XCBDSM. “While More Than Two inspired me to think about relationships differently and to approach those around me with a new level of compassion and honesty, Game Changer instead serves as a source of hope, assuring you that those efforts are worth it. Veaux is someone who I have often held up as a sort of alternative relationships guru (a feeling that was entrenched when I read More Than Two), but in this book, he shows that he has, for much of his life, been just as lost and confused as I have often felt.”

Dr. Elisabeth Sheff, author of The Polyamorists Next Door and editor of Stories From the Polycule. “Reading The Game Changer was so thought provoking that it felt like having a deep and roving conversation with a very witty person about what it means to be truly authentic — only without the pressure to be clever yourself because half of it is happening inside your own head. This is a great read for anyone who has questioned the status quo or wondered what intriguing adventures wait on the road less traveled. Daring souls will appreciate Veaux’s frank wit and searing self-critique in this fascinating memoir of unruly love.”