Jan 10, 2012 0
Non-Monogamy Resource Round-Up
Over the last few months, I’ve started to see more and more incoming requests for an overview of non-monogamy resources, to the point where it’s become more practical to post them here than reply to everyone who asks. Feel free to be intimidated by the wall-of-text and run away, but I think skimming may be more useful!
Useful, Random Internet Stuff
Franklin is a guy I met on LiveJournal who happens to write some good poly / consensual non-monogamy stuff; his intro page is here: http://www.xeromag.com/fvpoly.html The Polyamory 101, Practical Jealousy Management, and Making Relationships Suck articles linked too on the front page are all a good read, and there are a bunch of other practical entries linked to on the right hand side, He also writes about jealousy and refrigerators here! http://tacit.livejournal.com/157242.html
Gestalt is an ex-lover of a podcaster I discovered very early on when I was starting to research relationship models. He wrote this, and honestly, I just like this because it’s about burritos: http://polytripod.blogspot.com/2009/04/pgs-seven-layer-burrito-of-intimacy.html And this guy writes polyamory and dim sum metaphors: http://whatexit.org/tal/mywritings/dimsum.html Clearly I’m obsessed with food and food metaphors.
The Polyamorous Misanthrope is a very good blog; lots of common sense: http://www.polyamorousmisanthrope.com/
The archives are huge and full of interesting of posts, but three I bookmarked for myself were these ones:
Am I Ready For Polyamory – http://www.polyamorousmisanthrope.com/2008/11/03/am-i-ready-for-polyamory/
The Key Factor to Polyamory Relationship Success – http://www.polyamorousmisanthrope.com/2010/10/05/the-key-factor-to-polyamory-relationship-success/
Handling Jealousy: How to Fuck Up – http://www.polyamorousmisanthrope.com/2010/08/18/handling-jealousy-how-to-fuck-up/
Also there’s an interesting blog called Polyamory in the News – http://polyinthemedia.blogspot.com – which follows non-monogamy news from a more political and analytical point of view, which is a really nice break from interpersonal/communication/relationship stuff, which can get a bit overwhelming. (One of the things I’ve been learning in the past year is to try to back off sometimes and have a break from trying so goddamn hard. But it’s hard for perfectionists to try hard to back off from trying hard!)
Forums and Podcasts
Minx does the PolyWeekly podcasts, which are generally good value – there’s a huge archive, full of interesting stuff: http://polyweekly.com/ I haven’t caught up with the podcasts during 2011, so not sure whether the quality of the content has remained high, but I was planning on downloading a whole bunch this month to see. It’s generally been a good resource in the past.
There are also forums on the PolyWeekly site – I don’t check in much anymore (used to a couple of years ago) – I’ve made a couple of good friends via the forum, but they tend to go through their cycles of good and snarkystupid fail (very much like any internet forum).
There are a couple of Australian forums – I have logins for most of them, but haven’t spent any significant time there, so can’t vouch for the quality. One of the main ones is PolyOz – http://polyoz.net.au/home
To be honest, after spending a little while on forums to get an idea of what people’s lives were like, I stopped looking at forums entirely. They’re so very full of people looking for support with their problems, and so lacking in people talking about enjoying the life they’ve chosen. Maybe worth a browse, but at least for me, far from being a really positive resource.
Books
There are also an increasing number of non-monogamy books out there, often from wildly differing points of view (although I’m sure you have a pretty good bullshit detector). I have these ones, which I’m always happy to lend out:
Opening Up: A Guide to Creating and Sustaining Open Relationships: http://www.amazon.com/o/ASIN/157344295X
(Tristan Taormino’s quite an interesting woman – she’s a pornographer, writer & sex educator, and has quite a good site full of non-monogamy resources too – http://www.openingup.net/ Because I am a big perve, I will also note that she is just gorgeous.)
The Ethical Slut: A Guide to Infinite Sexual Possibilities: http://www.amazon.com/o/ASIN/1890159018
(This is the first major book written on the subject that I know of; it’s a bit fluffy, ‘love is awesome’ -esque for me, but it is interesting historically.)
Open: Love, Sex, and Life in an Open Marriage: http://www.amazon.com/o/ASIN/158005241X
(Nathalie’s late dog, Tessa, chewed this on up a bit, but it’s still good! It’s partly a narrative of the author’s experiences, with some more abstract discussion, if I recall.)
The Polyamory Handbook: A User’s Guide: http://www.amazon.com/o/ASIN/1434373444
(Pretty thorough and pragmatic; haven’t looked at it for a while, but I think it ticks off most of the major areas worthy of consideration.)
New sites I’ve noticed recently but haven’t had time to look at yet; do not vouch for quality of content (let me know if they’re dreadful!):
http://www.notyourmothersplayground.com
http://worldpolyamoryassociation.net
There are also a few other areas that are really worth taking some time to look into, although they’re wall-of-text topics in their own right:
Sexual-health: Having open, specific and honest conversations, negotiating boundaries and engaging less awkwardly in a discussion of expectations and needs before entering a new relationship.
Communication: Spending some time reading general information on human communication in interpersonal relationships is so very worthwhile – I can’t overstate the importance of this one. The thing is, we’re not innately good at this (and rarely culturally conditioned to be). My personal experience is that it’s most valuable to look at this as an ongoing process, not as an end-point – owning our fuck-ups is equally important as doing things well in the first place, and we all make mistakes.
Consent & boundaries: As much as I wish these were easy, clear-cut issues, they’re not. It’s worth – for any human being – putting some serious thought into this area. My own experience is that these issues really come into the foreground when one can’t cruise on ‘this is how ordinary relationships work’ privilege, and that as a socially anxious person, I’ve needed to learn some skills around having conversations I find fundamentally awkward, in spite of the awkwardness.
Kink: There’s certainly a cross-over between the kink community and the non-monogamous. I suspect it’s because non-monogamy is often a doorway to asking for what you really want, and raising new ideas that are often intimidating to raise. But the non-monogamy community is not the kink community, and it’s important to say explicitly that no-one with an interest in different relationship models should ever feel pressured to be involved in anything beyond their own wishes. I realise that this is obvious, but also that it’s sometimes challenging to see something normalised in a community and to feel some social pressure to conform.
Slut-shaming: There’s always going to be someone who’s going to deal out some slut-shaming. Such is our messed-up existence, and it’s not a bad idea to be aware of it and do some reading or talking on it. If it happens to you and you’re not dealing with it well (or start to worry that there’s some validity in it), the best approach can be to hand a little of your concern over to your friends or community. Hopefully you will find a kick-ass friend who can shout ‘bring it!’, hug you, and remind you that slut-shaming has roots in intolerance, bigotry and privilege.
Mental health: Put some time into examining and caring for your own mental health. Just do the work. I cannot conceive of anything more important than this.
Social, aka You Are Not The Only One
For the locals, we have a small and friendly Perth meetup on the first Wednesday of every month (it’s usually at The Court, is purely social – drinks/coffee/food/no agenda) and can vary between around ten and twenty-something people on any given month. We get all sorts of people coming along; those in multi-person households, stable but open relationships, parents with kids, singles, non-monogamy-friendly people who aren’t currently looking for anyone new and so forth. In the last year we’ve started to do some thinking around pub meetings not being as inclusive for everyone as we’d like, and are keen to run some other things in 2012; picnics, rock-climbing and more have been suggested. You can get notifications by signing up to the super-low-volume announcement list here: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/perth-poly-meetup There’s also a closed Facebook group and a Google Calendar available on request. It’s pretty relaxed, isn’t a meat market in any way, and so far we’ve managed to keep it free of creepy people looking to pick up by only spreading it by word-of-mouth. (I’m told that this one time, a guy came and waited until the end to say ‘so…we all know what happens now…’ and incurred the wrath of all, never to return.
As if this post were not sufficient in the way of information-saturation, please do add any of your useful links and recommendations in the comments!
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