Our understanding of gender, sexuality, and relationships is always evolving. A friend recently shared a Facebook memory featuring the Attraction Layer Cake (https://cake.avris.it/) and we remarked that it is now dated, but neither of us knew of anything that’s been created since. So I made my own graphic, differentiating between different types of attraction to […]
Trauma and the Erotic
cw: sexual abuse, emotional abuse I have this growing realization of this thing that I have to deal with at some point. It’s something I’ve been putting off dealing with for a long time. But you can’t contain trauma; it seeps through the cracks of any container you try to put it in. The spillover […]
To Speak, or Not To Speak?
A work meeting today has me feeling some kind of way. I keep thinking about gender, and specifically, gendered communication styles. I am a member of a small but growing department, and we were having a check-in and reflection about how things have been going, and what could be better in the future when the […]
The Planner
Today on the playground a little girl ran up to myself and another TA. “So-and-so and so-and-so won’t play with me!” she said. “I keep asking and asking and they keep saying no.” All we could do was validate her feelings and explain that sometimes other kids won’t want to play, and then you have […]
Pushing Through
The past few weeks have been difficult. Not only because of the election. Several members of the poly family have been going through their own crises, and I found myself in the position of trying to hold things down for everyone. I had also just come back from my conference, however, and started a new […]
What is Love?
Sometimes I feel like English breaks down for me and people are speaking a foreign language. Had dinner with a friend who is going through a break up. They said, of their now ex-partner, something to the effect of, “I love this person, but I am not in love with them. I mean, I care about them.” […]
Everyone has baggage.
Seriously. They do. This is going to be a post about “things I wish someone had told me a decade ago.” (Or maybe they did and I just wasn’t ready to hear it yet. Always possible.) One of the results of growing up in a dysfunctional dynamic is that it is possible to become used […]
Relationship Anarchy Means Not Knowing How Many Partners You Have
In the four months since my most recent break up, I’ve done massive amounts of personal growth. When I first came to poly, it was because I fell in love with a friend who was already in a long-distance polyamorous relationship. I did a lot of work to learn about poly to be with her […]
Labor of Love: Thoughts on Domesticity
Perhaps for the first time in my life, I am living in a truly egalitarian household. It occurred to me today, as I was feeding the sourdough starter and making pancakes from the extras. One of my roommates had to run out the door, but said, “Please, save me one!” Three feminist femmes living together […]
Conflict Resolution in Poly
Sometimes if a relationship implodes, you finally learn to push past your defense mechanisms in other relationships to stop the pattern in its track. Growing up in an emotionally abusive family, I have always been conflict avoidant. My sister and I would take turns keeping the peace, and my role as peacekeeper followed me into […]