Most arguments about hierarchy and veto are not really arguments about rules. They are arguments about who counts. One person believes the answer to “who gets a say in my relationships” is settled and obvious; the other has just learned that it is not. And everything painful happens in that gap. Start with definitions, because…
Unicorn hunting is the polyamory community’s most reliable argument, and the reason is not that couples are villains. A couple who go looking for one bisexual woman to date them both are usually running on assumptions they have never had to examine. From inside the search it feels like generosity, since they are offering love…
Most relationships do not end because somebody decided to end them. They end by default. The Tuesday nights stop, the texts thin out, and nobody ever says out loud that the shape has changed. To de-escalate a relationship on purpose is to do the opposite: name the change while there is still enough goodwill to…
Nobody hands you a script for the moment a relationship becomes a platonic relationship. There is no announcement and no agreed date. One evening you simply notice that the way you love someone has changed register, that the electricity has gone quiet and something steadier has taken its place, and neither of you is sure…
If your metamour moving in with your partner is already on the calendar, you are probably holding two reactions at once and feeling guilty about one of them. Relief, because the logistics finally make sense. And something rawer, because a house you do not live in is about to draw the shape of your week….
There is a particular kind of grief that arrives the first time you notice your marriage is no longer your primary relationship. Nothing has ended. Your spouse still makes the coffee and still knows exactly how you take it. Yet the center of gravity has moved, and you both feel it, and neither of you…