A follower made a great point: human art is becoming the new organic label. And just like buying organic, figuring out if it's actually real is getting tougher by the day.
Another follower who has a graphic design company told me that even with a strict no AI policy, artists are still trying to pass off AI work as their own. So it's a bit bleak. But I’m going to give this one last shot over the next few days. If it doesn't work out, I'm just going to roll up my sleeves and create it myself because yeah that poster has to go down.
Most people practicing polyamory have couple privilege.
Maybe they opened an existing relationship. Maybe their first serious connection became the “main” one because society treated it that way. Either way, monogamous culture gives established couples more legitimacy, protection, and power than other relationships.
That’s what couple privilege is.
And every time this conversation comes up, I hear the same thing:
“Hierarchy is natural.”
“Egalitarian polyamory is unrealistic.”
But that conflates structural privilege with personal choice.
There’s a difference between having privilege within a system and choosing to enforce that privilege in your relationships.
We already understand this in other social justice conversations. White people can work to dismantle white privilege. Men can reject patriarchal entitlement and practice healthier masculinity. But people rarely talk about how those with couple privilege can actively challenge the systems benefiting them too.
And yes, dismantling couple privilege is hard. But saying it’s “impossible” often just means someone values their comfort more than equity.
If you benefit from couple privilege in polyamory, it’s your responsibility to examine it, challenge it, and stop letting your other partners absorb the harm of it.
In my latest Substack, I break down:
— the difference between couple privilege and hierarchy
— what “sneakyarchy” looks like
— 14 ways to dismantle couple privilege
— how to create security without control
— what egalitarian polyamory actually looks like in practice
— how to tell the difference between neglect and internalized mononormativity
If you’ve ever felt secondary, guilty for wanting equity, or unsure whether your relationships align with your values, this piece will give you language and practical tools to navigate it.
Link in comments and in our stories today.
STOP FASTING EMOTIONALLY. If you’ve been practicing polyamory (or are curious about it) and constantly find yourself wondering if you’re “too needy,” or just bad at polyamory… I need you to read this very carefully:
Your attachment needs do not magically disappear just because you have more than one partner.
A huge percentage of the people who come to me for coaching think they’re maladjusted to polyamory because they have needs. They are struggling because they think they should just accept crumbs in polyamory. That doing that is being flexible and open minded. Then they wonder why their nervous system is constantly feeling outside its zone of tolerance.
Monogamy runs on autopilot, the script has been written for you by culture. Polyamory runs on manual mode. If you don’t know your manual, you default to being neglected.
In my latest article on substack “Your 5 Core Needs in a Polyamorous Relationship” I list a key part of the framework to shift your relationships from constant anxiety to radical security.
What you’ll learn inside this piece:
The 5 Non-Negotiables: The precise categories of needs you must answer for yourself before you can ever expect a partner to meet them.
The Reality of Bandwidth: How to look past polyamorous ideology and audit a partner’s actual capacity to show up for you.
The “Messy List”: Why protecting your emotional ecosystem is not being controlling or hierarchical but mandatory.
Neurodivergence & Attachment: How ADHD, autism, and BPD flip the script on emotional safety, and how to build custom agreements that actually work for your brain.
This isn’t about how to be a “cooler,” lower-maintenance partner. This is about building the discipline to know what you require to feel safe, asking for it without apology, and letting go of connections that require you to shrink yourself.
Stop wondering why you feel like you’re not just cutting it in polyamory. It’s time to design them around your actual values, not someone else’s script for neglect.
Why do so many couples freeze up when it’s time to actually open their relationship… even after doing “all the work”?
For a lot of people, it’s because they’ve slowly poured their entire identity, security, and emotional needs into one person. When your whole world is wrapped up in your partner, opening up stops feeling exciting and starts feeling terrifying.
I see this especially with my American clients. We live in a culture with almost no community safety net, no universal healthcare, weak social support, and neighborhoods built for isolation. Of course polyamory feels threatening when so much is riding on one relationship.
Modern life is designed around monogamy.
But here’s the good news: you can come back to yourself. You can rebuild your own friendships, passions, and sense of identity outside of your partnership.
That’s where the real work (and freedom) begins, by returning to you.
It’s Pride Month, and the debate often resurfaces or polyamorists: should cis-het polyamorists be allowed to march in Pride parades? After thoughtful reflection, this queer person says, yes. And here’s why.
Pride has always been about more than identity, it’s about resistance. A rebellion against the policing of our bodies, desires, and freedoms. It began as an uprising against a state that criminalized queerness, gender nonconformity, and non-normative s*xuality. Pride is not just a celebration; it’s a refusal to comply with systems that try to dictate how we live and love.
And monogamy, specifically, state-sanctioned, white, patriarchal monogamy—is a core part of that system. It’s the relational model the state most rewards and protects, and it’s no coincidence. Compulsory monogamy has been used to uphold inheritance systems, control women's bodies, erase queerness, and enforce racial hierarchies. To question that structure is deeply political—and deeply aligned with the spirit of Pride.
Yes, there are valid concerns about cis-het people co-opting queer spaces. Those concerns deserve attention and accountability. But pushing back against normativity means embracing all who are challenging the rules, especially those challenging the sexual and relational norms that underpin white supremacy and heteropatriarchy.
So, should cis-het poly folks be at Pride? If they’re showing up in solidarity, aware of their privilege, and committed to dismantling the systems that hurt us all, then yes. Because the goal isn’t a narrower gate. The goal is liberation. For all of us.
🔍 Looking for support on your polyamory journey? Book a 1:1 coaching session, grab tickets to our Intro to Polyamory from a Decolonizing Lens workshop, or explore deeper articles on Substack. Links in bio.
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It’s the best dating someone who is already seasoned in polyamory. You don’t have to walk them through the deep deconditioning from compulsory monogamy culture. You can just date.
Luckily, these days, so many people are already non-monogamous, especially if you live in a major progressive city.
I often get comments and DMs from people who feel overwhelmed by decolonization and do not know where to start. And I always say: start small.
It is unrealistic to believe you have to undo generations of conditioning overnight while still surviving in the middle of empire. Your ancestors, your family, your body, and your society were forcibly shaped over time. So of course unlearning will also take time.
Decolonization is not a one-time achievement. It is a constant practice. It is the slow adjustment of your mind, your relationships, your habits, your desires, and your life.
Think of it literally like exercise. Calisthenics means small, repeatable practices that build your capacity over time. You do not build strength by walking into a gym once and trying to lift the heaviest weight in the room. You start where you are. You build the muscle.
That is what I mean by decolonizing calisthenics.
Maybe, for now, the practice is simply sitting with the discomfort of the subject without running away from it. Once you build capacity for that, maybe it becomes questioning one inherited belief. Then maybe it becomes changing one habit, one relationship pattern, one way you relate to land, family, time, love, or community.
You add as you go. You do what you can manage. You move in ways that feel honest, grounded, and possible.
Because ultimately, this is not about performing purity. It is about coming back to your soul.
Being a hinge is a unique and often under-taught role in our society. It asks for skills that many of us were never raised to develop, especially in a culture that treats the couple as the default. A good hinge has to manage multiple relationships while navigating needs that may sometimes be hard to reconcile.
More than anything, being a good hinge requires being grounded in yourself. You need enough self-awareness to know what you want, enough emotional regulation to not collapse under pressure, and enough integrity to avoid allowing one partner’s emotions to dictate another partner’s life.
On Substack, I wrote a list of 10 essential practices for being a healthy hinge so your polyamorous relationships can thrive.
Men flock to polyamory and ENM thinking they've finally found a socially acceptable loophole. They get to have their cake, eat it too, and call it progressive.
Then reality hits.
Polyamory is one of the most emotionally demanding relationship structures you can choose. There are frameworks, conversations, and a level of accountability that most people have never had to practice in one relationship, let alone multiple!
And the moment they realize this isn't just socially sanctioned cheating They fold. Every time.
Multiple partners isn't a privilege for the avoidant. It's a practice for the emotionally grown.
Codependency in polyamory doesn’t get nearly enough airtime, and it should, because it can destroy relationships that had every reason to thrive.
Differentiation is the most critical foundation a couple needs to establish before opening up. Without a secure, individuated sense of self, the transition from monogamy to polyamory doesn’t expand a relationship. It stress-tests every unhealed wound in it. And codependency is one of the most common wounds people bring through that door.
What makes it so insidious is how many forms it takes. I share my own horror story on Substack, but as a coach, I’ve also witnessed some remarkably destructive codependent metamour dynamics. The hinge partner often feels overwhelmed and paralyzed, caught between people they love, yet rarely identifies the root cause. They know something is wrong. They just can’t quite name it.
And the codependent partner almost never recognizes themselves as such. They experience their behavior as love, as devotion, as simply caring deeply and dealing themselves with a selfish metamour. That’s because codependency has a light side, and this is what makes it so difficult to spot.
Codependent partners are often exquisitely attuned to what their loved ones need. They anticipate, they soothe, they show up. They are the ones who remember the small things, who text at exactly the right moment, who would drop everything without being asked.
It’s hard to see the danger in that kind of sweetness. It’s hard to name something as harmful when it arrives wrapped in sensitivity and care. But underneath that attentiveness is a quiet desperation: a self that dissolves into the needs of others because it doesn’t feel safe to exist independently.
In polyamory, that pattern has more surface area to work with. More partners. More perceived threats. More opportunities to manage, soothe, and control through love.
The codependent doesn’t see it as control. They see it as creating community. But community isn't a hive mind.
I love talking about monogamy as a social construct, because of how deeply it’s been internalized by folks as a norm while its history is often erased. Anthropological research shows that strict, lifelong monogamy has not been the dominant human arrangement across societies; many Indigenous and pre-colonial cultures practiced a range of relationship systems, including polygyny, fluid partnerships, and kinship networks not centered on nuclear families. Even Engels, in The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, argues that monogamy emerged alongside private property and inheritance systems rather than as a natural human default. The very word “family” comes from the Latin familia, meant the slaves of a man. And colonization to the Latin word for farmer.
This ties to the agricultural revolution which marked a turning point where land ownership, surplus, and inheritance became central, reinforcing patriarchy and control over women’s reproductive capacity. Scholars widely link this period to the consolidation of male dominance and more rigid family structures. European colonialism exported these hierarchical systems globally, often suppressing diverse Indigenous kinship models in favor of patriarchal, monogamous norms. These structures later aligned with capitalist systems that depend on unpaid reproductive labor and gendered divisions of work. A society organized primarily around care, reciprocity, and collective well-being would challenge these foundations, which is why these relationship norms are so tightly defended and reproduced.
If you’re ready to go deeper, we offer:
📝 Relationship agreements for dyads, and polycules
📚 Substack essays for deeper dives into polyamory, decolonization, politics and relational ethics
Non-monogamists can’t catch a break lately. We keep getting dragged into scandals where men introduce “non-monogamy” like it’s a last-minute loophole instead of a relationship structure that requires communication, consent, and reassurance adjustment.
And obviously, the way these guys allegedly attempted non-monogamy was a recipe for disaster.
I do have a theory, though: I wonder if the theatre run was part of it. These women were away, busy, focused, and in the middle of major career pivots, and these men suddenly had more time alone than usual and thought, “Great time to do someone else.” Literally.
It's opportunism.
Thoughts?
Bei nicht-monogamen Beziehungsmodellen scheiden sich die Geister. Die einen sehen darin Freiheit, die anderen pure Bindungsangst. Eine Frage, die dabei kaum gestellt wird: Warum lieben wir eigentlich so, wie wir lieben? Warum gilt Monogamie als Standard, den man verteidigen oder verlassen kann, aber nie als Konstrukt mit eigener Geschichte? Und was hat die eigene Präferenz bei der Partner*innenwahl mit Rassismus zu tun?
Millie Boella und Nick Piperno von @decolonizinglove stellen genau diese Fragen. Im Interview sprechen die beiden Beziehungscoaches darüber, wie tief koloniale Narrative in unser Liebesleben eingeschrieben sind, welche Verbindung es zwischen Polyamorie und Queerness gibt und warum Nicht-Monogamie unbedingt auch im Zusammenhang mit kritischer Männlichkeit gedacht werden muss.
🔗 Das vollständige Interview findest du jetzt im Magazin über den Link in unserem Profil.
[🖼️: Bildbeschreibung im Alternativtext]
These get confused all the time, but they couldn't be more different. Let's break it down.
👇
ENM vs. Polyamory
Ethical non-monogamy is not the same thing as polyamory. ENM is an umbrella term. It includes many different forms of non-monogamy: open relationships, swinging, monogamish arrangements, polyamory, and more. Polyamory is one branch under that umbrella. It involves the capacity, desire, or practice of having multiple loving, romantic, or emotionally intimate relationships with the knowledge and consent of everyone involved. So when someone says, “I’m non-monogamous,” that is only the beginning of the conversation. Non-monogamous how?
Polygamy vs. Polyamory
Polygamy typically is polygyny means one man, multiple wives, rooted in religion or tradition. Polyamory is gender-neutral, egalitarian, and built on the full consent of everyone involved.
Polyamory vs. Cheating
Cheating is deception, secrecy, and broken trust. Polyamory is a relationship orientation rooted in transparency, negotiation, and mutual consent. Cheating can also happen in polyamory.
Polyamory vs. Swinging
Both involve multiple partners but the why differs. Swinging is recreational. Polyamory is about building genuine emotional and romantic bonds independently.
Polyamory vs. Open Relationships
Open relationships center a couple with casual outside connections. Polyamory opens the door to full love, commitment, and life-building with more than one person.
Polyamory vs. Commitment Issues
Being poly doesn't mean running from commitment. It often means more of it. Multiple schedules, emotional needs, and long-term futures don't manage themselves.
Those who think polyamory is merely about collecting as many people as possible will ultimately fail at polyamory.
Polyamory is not about acquisition. It is not about building a little empire of partners, lovers, situationships, admirers, and emotional supply.
There is a reason patriarchal empire chose monogamy as its relational norm. If your goal is to treat people like objects you own, control, inherit, exchange, possess, or organize around your ego, then monogamy has historically served that project very well.
But polyamory, at its best, is about consensual freedom.
Consent requires informed decision-making. It requires communication. It requires honesty about what you can offer, what you cannot offer, what agreements exist, what risks are present, and how your choices affect other people.
Polyamory is not the absence of responsibility.
It is the multiplication of responsibility.
This isn't just a personal milestone; it’s a signals a shift in the cultural tide. It turns out the world is far more hungry for decolonizing the mind than for the status quo.
There is a delicious irony in how we got here: I climbed this list on the strength of a piece educating people on setting healthy boundaries. Meanwhile, the man I just surpassed is a felon who was incarcerated precisely because he refuses to respect women’s boundaries. The message is clear: the future is based on consent, not domination.
To every single one of my paid subscribers: thank you.
Monogamy and colonialism go hand in hand because both are built on the belief that people can be owned.
Land. Bodies. Labour. Love.
Colonialism taught people that possessiveness is devotion. That control is safety. And monogamy, as a social system, took that same scarcity logic and dragged it into intimacy.
Now even love is treated like private property.
This is why polyamory feels like an attack to some. It asks the ultimate question: If love were truly free, would it still choose you?
Would someone still come home if they were free?
Couples opening up often haven’t disentangled from couple privilege and codependency. They rush into polyamory without doing the hard inner work first. Unfortunately for the bisexual women demographic, these sort of couples begin their foray into polyamory by unicorn hunting for a third. These couples treat bisexual women as experimental play things that don’t full agency, and are disposable for the primary couple who always have the security of each other. You shouldn’t be dating someone, unless you can be fully responsible for how your actions effect their emotional well-being.
There is nothing wrong with triads or throuples if they organically form. But going to hunt for a unicorn or wizard (male version), is wrong.
*Some people misconstrued the ending: KTP isn’t something that is forced. KTP is benign and valid. KTP just means metas/polycules comfortable being in each other’s company. There are however some people that try to force KTP. And that’s where things can get toxic with this polycule relating style.
💖 Use our Relationship Agreement Generator to set boundaries and agreements for your polycule!
I finally wrote a comprehensive guide on boundaries in polyamory because mainstream material is missing two huge pieces: how to navigate boundaries when you come from a non-individualistic culture, and what to do when you and your partner have completely clashing boundary styles.
Some of us need high transparency and structured agreements to feel safe. Others feel suffocated and controlled by those exact same agreements.
This carousel breaks down the absolute basics: the vital difference between boundaries, rules, and agreements, while touching on the shadows of codependency and control.
For the deep dive, the nuances, and all my recommended resources, head over to the full piece on our Substack!
I’m hot. My polycule is hot. My polyamorous friends are hot. And I’m not just talking about the outside. I think naturally polyamorous folks have especially the hottest minds. Like, you never even were monogamous, you started outside the matrix. Hot.
Feel sad for those trapped in compulsory monogamy culture. Conscious monogamists are hot though.
Thread by @goddess.khali
Next Event
📆 The Art of Being a Hinge Workshop - April 24
5:00pm PST / 8:00pm EDT /
April 25 5:30am IST / 9:00am JST / 10:00am AEST / 2:00pm NZST
