This article was published by The Good Men Project on March 22, 2014. The author, Marie S. Crosswell, is a celibate asexual, a radical relationship anarchist, a thinker, and a writer. Her short fiction can be found in Thuglit , Plots with Guns, Flash Fiction Offensive, Beat to a Pulp, Betty Fedora, Dark Corners, and Locked and Loaded: Both Barrels Vol. 3. Her novella Lone Star on a Cowboy Heart was published in July 2016. You can read more by Marie S. Crosswell here.    Marie Crosswell introduces us to relationship anarchy, a new way of redefining – or undefining – relationships.   What is relationship anarchy? Relationship anarchy is a lifestyle, a way of doing personal relationships. Relationship anarchy is a philosophy, specifically a philosophy of love. A relationship anarchist believes that love is abundant and infinite, that all forms of love are equal, that relationships can and should develop organically with no adherence to rules or expectations from outside sources, that two people in any kind of emotionally salient relationship should have the freedom to do whatever they naturally desire both inside their relationship and outside of it with other people. When, where, how, and by who did relationship anarchy get started? It’s unclear. Very few resources exist about relationship anarchy at this point, but it’s definitely a philosophy that’s recently evolved out of the polyamorous community. Two online sources about the “guidelines” of relationship anarchy come from an unknown contributor in New Zealand during the first decade of the 2000sRead more

This book is offered by Marty as a shared resource to members of the RA Seattle community. Copies of More than two … are now available in multiple formats through multiple online retailers. Other titles, including Polyamory and Jealousy: A More Than Two essentials guide, are also available at morethantwo.com Please support Franklin Veaux’s continuing work by making a donation via the links at the bottom of his site. And if you know of or find a way to support Eve Rickert’s continuing work, please let me know.   

Created by Eri Kardos Headed to Burning Man this year? Whether your sweetie(s) is going with you or staying back in the “Default World”, having your relationship(s) ready for the event can be a proactive and powerful step in avoiding potential disaster. The playa has a way of amplifying the current state of your relationship so if you are on the brink of turmoil the playa can bring it out. If your foundation is strong, this could be your opportunity to fortify it even further. There are few environments that challenge connection, intimacy, and vulnerability as well at the Burn does. One of my favorite quotes comes from Smudge: The playa is a crucible. It will melt you down. It could refine you into a gem. It is a magical cauldron filled with the energies of thousands of people, their hopes, dreams, addictions, attitudes, angels and demons, in a freed environment without most of the normal societal stabilizing structures. Things can change and flow in any one person’s consciousness. … Go to a communication workshop together, or something zaney, or run loose in separate directions with the commitment to get together for morning tea at sunrise. … When you’re done with Burning Man, you go home and unless you’re going to jump into someone else’s car, you’re going home together. The event is a 168 hour moment in life; a long moment in a crucible. As a professional International Communications Coach, I love gifting my skills to the playa. After yearsRead more

  Amatonormativity “… the assumption that a central, exclusive, amorous relationship is normal for humans, in that it is a universally shared goal, and that such a relationship is normative, in the sense that it should be aimed at in preference to other relationship types”. 1. Academic review of Prof. Elizabeth Brake’s book, Minimizing marriage: Marriage, morality, and the law. 2. Blog entry by Bella DePaulo, Ph.D. (author of Living Single): Should marriage be abolished, minimized, or left alone? A philosopher explains the moral value of all caring relationships.    Aggie Sez: Couple privilege: Having it doesn’t necessarily make you an asshole (But it might) “It’s not inherently abusive to choose to enshrine aspects of couple privilege in how you conduct relationships — as long as the primary partners are making those decisions strictly as their own criteria and not presuming to impose the conditions nonconsensually after the fact. Other partners may choose to abide by their strictures, or not. And many non-primary partners choose to roll with restrictions and limitations in order to prioritize or protect primary relationships. Often they do so quite cheerfully, and everyone’s happy. But, ask the kinky people you know: When someone is routinely expected to accommodate, sacrifice, or come last — that’s a power dynamic. And presumed, unconscious, or nonconsensual power dynamics tend to be very bad news indeed.”   Angelus Morningstar: The dynamics of polyamory and couple privilege “… in accepting that the dichotomy must be hierarchy-anarchy, one makes the presumption that all non-anarchisticRead more

Cunning Minx’s Polyamory Weekly Blog. Her book 8 Things I wish I’d know about polyamory before I tried it and frakked it up is now available on Amazon. Please support Cunning Minx’s continuing work by making a donation to Cunning Minx’s tip jar on the Poly Weekly site. Cunning Minx, Feb 20, 2008 Gathered for a seminar at A Woman’s Touch in Madison, a rough draft: One: Become a different person. Adopting a non-monogamous mindset and lifestyle in a monogamous world can be a transformative process. The level of communication, self-examination and brutal honesty required for healthy relationships with yourself and your partners is very high and tends to provide a challenge to even the most secure and open people. As you explore and develop relationships, you will most likely discover things about yourself and your partners that will fundamentally change how you think and quite possibly who you are and how you view the world. As with any relationship in which long-term love is involved, you will change. Two: Welcome change and personal growth. If you crave stability and are most comfortable in a world with minimal change, you probably don’t want to be non-monogamous. In fact, you probably don’t want to be in a relationship at all, because exposing yourself to another person’s life will most assuredly change yours, no matter how stable you believe that person to be. Be prepared to find out more about yourself, your fears and your capacity to love than you ever wanted to know.Read more