The Polyamorists Next Door

This book introduces polyamorous families and explains how they come to be, manage the ins and outs of daily family life, and cope with the challenges they face both within their families and from society at large. Sheff investigates the polyamorous household and reveals its a...

Having a friend or family member come out to you as polyamorous can be confusing and stressful. Chances are, you have a lot of questions: Is this just a phase? Won't they settle down someday? What's going to happen to their kids? Do I have to invite all their partners over for Thanksgiving dinner? Why can't they just keep it in the bedroom? When Someone You Love Is Polyamorous offers answers to these and more questions, to help you better understand and support your polyamorous loved ones.

No one likes a know-it-all, but everyone loves a girl with brains and heart. The Smart Girl's Guide to Polyamory is an intelligent and comprehensive guide to polyamory, open relationships, and other forms of alternative love, offering relationship advice radically different from anything you'll find on the magazine rack. This practical guidebook will help women break free of the mold of traditional monogamy, without the constraints of jealousy, possessiveness, insecurity, and competition. The Smart Girl's Guide to Polyamory incorporates interviews and real-world advice from women of all ages in nontraditional relationships, as well as exercises for building self-awareness, confidence in communication, and strategies for managing and eliminating jealousy. If you're curious about exploring group sex, opening up your current monogamous relationship, or ready to “come out” as polyamorous, this book covers it all! Whether you're a seasoned graduate, a timid freshman, or somewhere in between, you'll learn how to discover and craft unique relationships that are healthy, happy, sexy, and tailor-made for you. Because when it comes to your love life, being a know-it-all is actually a great thing to be.

Welcome to the polycule: the network created by the interconnections of polyamorous relationships. Just like the molecules that make up all living things, polycules come in diverse forms: large, small, tightly bound, loosely connected, static, ever-changing. How do polycules form, what do they look like, how do they transform through time, and how do they, sometimes, end?

Polyamory is not always easy. With multiple partners often come more complex relationships to navigate. This practical guide looks at the common causes of polyamorous breakups, identifies strategies to avoid ending relationships, and provides you with the toolkit to survive a breakup. Kathy Labriola uses real life examples and expert insight as a counselor and nurse. From how to handle jealousy to the practicalities of managing money and time with multiple partners, this book includes tips and insights from the polyamory community. It is inevitable that some relationships will end in a breakup. This book helps you maintain friendships and minimize the impact of a breakup on the rest of your polycule and wider community. Unlike traditional breakup guides, Labriola's book offers insight specific to the polyamory community and addresses the unique challenges that come with multiple partners.

In Love's Refraction, Jillian Deri explores the distinctive question of how and why polyamorists – people who practice consensual non-monogamy – manage jealousy. Her focus is on the polyamorist concept of “compersion” – taking pleasure in a lover's other romantic and sexual encounters.

Through an investigation of sexual interactions and relationship forms that include more than two people, from polyamory, to threesomes, to the complexity of the "down-low" Schippers explores the queer, feminist, and anti-racist potential of multipartnered sex and relationships

The issues that make monogamous dating daunting for people of color—shaming and exclusion by white partners, being fetishized, having realities of everyday racism ignored—occur in polyamorous relationships too, and trying "not to see race" only makes it worse. To make polyamorous communities inclusive, we must all acknowledge our part in perpetuating racism and listen to people of color. Love's Not Color Blind puts forward the framework—through research, anecdotal testimony, and analogy—for understanding, identifying, and confronting racism within polyamorous communities.

Attachment theory has entered the mainstream, but most discussions focus on how we can cultivate secure monogamous relationships. What if, like many people, you're striving for secure, happy attachments with more than one partner? Polyamorous psychotherapist Jessica Fern breaks new ground by extending attachment theory into the realm of consensual nonmonogamy. Using her nested model of attachment and trauma, she expands our understanding of how emotional experiences can influence our relationships. Then, she sets out six specific strategies to help you move toward secure attachments in your multiple relationships. Polysecure is both a trailblazing theoretical treatise and a practical guide.

Expanding the Rainbow brings together cutting-edge empirical research with compelling personal narratives about the experiences and relationships of individuals of diverse gender and sexual identities, focusing on the experiences of bi+, poly, kinky, ace, intersex, and trans people.