As somebody who read the book first right after it was published, and again many times over the years, and as someone who has been involved in promoting the ideas in it – sometimes deliberately and sometimes less so, it was grand to be able to tell some of my stories and to talk about where I’ve got to with this stuff with the idea of relationship diversity.

This book was the inspiration for me writing Rewriting the Rules, and the blog posts, zines and books which have followed. I wanted to write a more European/British book on relationships which covered the diversity of ways of relating rather than focusing on polyamory, but also drawing upon the wisdom from openly non-monogamous movements, and other non-normative communities around sex, love, and gender.

You can listen to the show here:

The Book of Polyamory

The post New Radio Show: The Book of Polyamory – The Ethical Slut appeared first on Rewriting The Rules.

Check out the article if you want to read more about polyamory, how it’s been depicted in cinema, and why this most recent representation is one of the best. Here’s my original interview with Anna so you can read more of my own thoughts…

How would you define polyamory, briefly?

Literally translated it means ‘many loves’ and it’s the idea that it’s possible – and often positive – to have more than one partner-style relationship at the same time. There are lots of different forms of polyamory, so it’s worth seeing that as a broad umbrella term for lots of different kinds of open, or consensual, non-monogamy.

What did you think of Professor Marston and the Wonder Women?

I loved it. I thought it was a wonderful combination of being moving, thought-provoking, and really funny in places. I cried quite a lot all the way through it, so I’d suggest people take a hanky! It was also wonderful to see such a positive depiction of polyamory, and to know it is based on a real life story. Certainly the things the characters went through will be very familiar to polyamorous viewers.

How rare is it to see positive depictions of polyamory in the media? 

It’s very rare sadly. In fact if you think about it, very often the media do the exact opposite of putting polyamory across as a viable option. A person being in love with two people at once is a staple of much drama from romcoms and soap operas to advice columns and tabloid news headlines. Almost always the outcome is that they are forced to choose one person and to let go of the other. This reinforces the idea that the only normal, natural, or good way to have relationships is lifelong monogamy, which is a real shame because actually there are many different ways of doing relationships.

How do you feel polyamory is usually depicted in films?

In the media non-monogamy of any kind is generally depicted pretty poorly if it is portrayed at all – as something dangerous, weird, or doomed to failure. The most common depiction is of secret monogamy, or infidelity, which people are punished for – in films like Fatal Attraction or Unfaithful. Sometimes open relationships are represented but they end in tragedy or difficulty, like in The Ice Storm or Vicky Cristina Barcelona. There are a few more positive depictions of open non-monogamy in films like Shortbus, Kinsey, Summer Lovers, or – kindof – Her. Big Love and You, Me, Her are TV Shows that have explored these themes more positively – although in relation to fairly limited forms of polyamory.

How have attitudes changed over the decades (if at all)?

Definitely they are changing slowly. When I started studying this area fifteen years ago or so virtually all the reporting around polyamory was sensationalist and negative, saying it could never work, or it was ‘taking all the fun out of affairs’, or was bad for kids of polyamorous parents, for example. Now we have a wealth of research on just how common polyamory is (about 5% of people in the US are openly non-monogamous, for example), about the diversity of ways of doing relationships that are available, and about how positive polyamorous families can be for children. The media has latched on to some of this, like Elizabeth Sheff’s column in Psychology Today, Esther Perel’s popular TED talks and books, or Dan Savage’s advice about monogamous, non-monogamous, and monogamish relationships. I find, nowadays, that my self-help writing about diverse relationship styles is reported much more positively than it used to be, for example open non-monogamy is often presented as a more consensual option than secret infidelity.

Do you think film has the influence to change perceptions of polyamory?

I hope so. Watching Professor Marston and the Wonder Women I found myself thinking, ‘how could anybody watching this fail to understand that loving two people at once is completely possible and can be extremely positive for all concerned?’ The thing about fiction is that it encourages empathy with the characters, and so hopefully can reach people’s hearts, while more evidence-based arguments can reach their minds. However I also found the film very sad because many of the battles they fought are still being fought today. The internalised shame that one of the characters feels is very familiar to therapists like me who work with polyamorous people. The accusations that they were damaging their kids is also still sadly common. And, of course, there is still no legal recognition of polyamorous relationships – indeed during the same-sex marriage campaigns both sides argued against extending marriage rights to more than two people. We’ve still got a long way to go.

Any other thoughts?

It’s important to say that depicting polyamory is not about saying it’s superior to monogamy, just that there are many different relationship styles, and that different things work for different people. It would be great if we could embrace relationship diversity instead of trying to force people into a one-size-fits-all model.

The post Polyamory and Wonder Women appeared first on Rewriting The Rules.

• Valuing different kinds of relationships at a similar level (whether they are romantic, collegiate, platonic, family, sexual, etc.)
• Negotiated mutually agreed-upon ways of doing things rather than conforming to a strict set of relationship rules.
• Prioritising the freedom and independence of individuals and relationships rather than a sense of people belonging to each other, or relationships being constrained or limited due to their label or cultural assumptions (e.g. about what a friendship or romantic relationship should be like).

If you want to think more about your own relationship styles you might want to check out this relationship user guide zine that Justin Hancock and I recently put together. Justin and I are also currently working on a joint website about sex and relationship advice: coming soon!

Here’s the start of the RA article with a link to where you can read the rest if you’re enjoying it…

Relationship Anarchy Takes The Judgment Out Of Love

by Clare Wiley

Mel Mariposa Cassidy has lots of partners in her life. There’s the boyfriend who lives nearby in her East Vancouver neighborhood, and the partner who’s a few hours away on Vancouver Island. Then there’s the man who lives in the U.S.—they don’t see each other very often, but he’s the one who feels most like a soulmate. And that’s not to mention Mel’s closest friend—a woman she describes as her “platonic-ish life partner.” Meanwhile, she lives with her best friend, an ex-lover who’s listed as her emergency contact.

But Mel isn’t polyamorous. She’s a relationship anarchist—meaning she doesn’t distinguish between the romantic, sexual, and platonic relationships in her life. Members of the community she belongs to have decided that traditional monogamy, and often polyamory, aren’t working for them. They want less structure, fewer hierarchies. And so they’ve committed to a model that’s at once simple and radical: They give all their relationships equal footing.

Mel has an ongoing conversation with each of her partners to continuously discuss and examine the partnership, establishing what everyone wants to get out of it. She also makes sure that everyone’s clear that no one person is privileged above any other.

“It allows me to be very true to where I’m at in any given moment,” Mel says. “So if I’m not feeling like I want to have a date with someone, then I can just say ‘hey you know what, I want to have more time alone right now.’ It’s about finding that common ground from moment to moment. There’s a lot less complacency in relationship anarchy.”

The term “relationship anarchy” was coined by the Swedish activist and creative Andie Nordgren. In 2012, she wrote the Relationship Anarchy manifesto, laying out guidelines for a radically different approach to relationships. These include “Love and respect instead of entitlement” and “Heterosexism is rampant out there, but don’t let fear lead you.” Other guidelines declare “Trust is better” and “Build for the lovely unexpected,” which encourages followers to be spontaneous.

“In RA, the idea is that all kinds of relationships are important,” says Dr. Meg-John Barker, a relationship anarchist as well as a senior psychology lecturer and sex and gender therapist. “You don’t privilege romantic or sexual relationships over other kinds, such as platonic relationships. RA also tends to strongly emphasize the freedom of those involved, and ongoing negotiation of the relationship, whereas some versions of polyamory are more rules or contract based.” Read more…

The post New article on valuing different kinds of relationships equally appeared first on Rewriting The Rules.

For my bits of the days I put together a zine bringing together some of my thoughts on relationships from the last decade or so, and asking what I hope are a useful set of questions about our relationships – whether or not we see ourselves, or our relationships, as queer.

The zine takes as a starting point the word queer, and the different possible meanings of that term. Then it applies these different meanings to relationships to ask the question ‘what does a queer relationship look like?’ Particular it explores the cultural acceptability of different kinds of relationships, different relationship labels, the idea of relationships being on multiple dimensions, and what it’s like to shift from the question of what relationships we have, to how we do them.

You can download the zine here. It prints out best in booklet form, but fine to read it as a pdf on an e-reader or computer also.

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The post Non/monogamy appeared first on Rewriting The Rules.

Here’s one I did on monogamy:

Are we hardwired to be monogamous or is it a social construct that is arguably unnatural?

Like most aspects of human experience our relationships styles are biopsychosocial. It’s not a matter of nature or nurture, hardwiring or social construct. Rather the way we form relationships is influenced by a complex web of biological, psychological and social aspects which would be impossible to disentangle.

Certainly the diversity of relationship styles across humans and other animals suggests that it is very unlikely that any one kind of style (monogamous or non-monogamous) is ‘hard-wired’ from the start. However, the processes of our bodies and brains certainly operate together with the experiences we have through life and the messages we receive from the culture around us to shape the ways in which we experience love, desire, and so on.

How hard or misleading do you think it is to live with the view that boy meets girl, they fall in love, get married, remain faithful and live happily ever after?

I think that there is a problem when any one model of relationships gets presented as the ideal and/or only acceptable way of doing relationships. It would be just as much of a problem if the ideal was that everybody had to have five concurrent partners, or that relationships were only expected to last for two years, for example.

The reality is that different things work for different people at different times. There are a vast diversity of ways of doing relationships: serial monogamy, polygamy, hook-ups, friends with benefits, life-long relationships, celibacy, swinging, singledom, open relationships, polyamory, and relationship anarchy, to name just a few. And even within any of these examples, there are a myriad different ways of understanding and experiencing the relationships involved.

A one-size-fits-all model is damaging for anybody who doesn’t fit and is therefore excluded, and often stigmatised and given fewer rights. It is also often damaging for those who do fit, but feel a massive pressure to ensure that their relationship meets the narrow range of expectations which are placed upon it. For example people often feel that they must meet every marker of a ‘successful’ relationships (living together, marriage, kids) at the ‘appropriate’ time, and believe that they have to demonstrate ‘happily ever after’ constantly, rather than being able to admit to the inevitable tough parts of a long term relationship.

How much has our concept of marriage changed over time and how would you describe it now?

Marriage has changed a great deal over time. I’m not a historian myself, but Stephanie Coontz’s book ‘Marriage: A History’ is very helpful on this. She explains how, in Western cultures, it is only in recent decades that marriage has become so much about romantic love. Previously it had much more to do with, for example, bringing families together and matters of economy, work and child-rearing.

Changes such as declining religion, unstable jobs, and the fact that people move around rather than staying in smaller communities have all meant that people look to romantic relationships to meet all of their needs in a way they never have before. Partners are often now expected to be best friends, passionate lovers, constant companions, support networks, sources of validation, co-parents, and carers-when-ill. And romantic love relationships are often viewed as being by far the most important relationship in our lives rather than one of many relationships.

I think this does put relationships under a lot of pressure. Many people – whether in monogamous or non-monogamous relationships – are looking for ways of managing things differently in this rather new situation that they find themselves in.

How acceptable do you think polyamory, negotiated infidelity etc are in the UK? Why do we shun these?

Things have certainly shifted in the last decade to the point that there is greater awareness and acceptance of various non-monogamous ways of doing relationships: whether openly (like polyamory) or more secretly (like negotiated infidelity). However, there is still no legal recognition of such relationships (indeed the very notion was ridiculed on all sides of the recent same-sex marriage debates) and there remains a good deal of stigma around both infidelity and forms of consensual non-monogamy.

In a time of uncertainty I think people often want to cling to the idea that there must be one true, natural, right, normal way of doing things, and that ensuring that everyone does things that way is the best way of keeping everyone safe. However, I think that actually the opposite is the case. Restricting people in this way is often very damaging to both those who fit the ‘norm’ and those who don’t.

A model which appreciates that there are diverse ways of doing relationships, being sexual, expressing love, parenting, forming families, and so forth, is kinder and more flexible, and enables us to focus on things that really matter such as how to treat each other ethically and how best to communicate and support each other in all our relationships.

The post Monogamy appeared first on Rewriting The Rules.

Content warning: relationship conflict and abusive relationships are touched on briefly in this post.

A decade ago I started studying three topics that have pretty much defined my career: open non-monogamy, BDSM, and bisexuality. I just checked my CV and found that my first academic publication in these areas came out in 2004: an interview with the ever-fabulous Jen Yockney of Bi Community News for the Lesbian and Gay Psychology Review (now appropriately renamed the Psychology of Sexualities Review). That was quickly followed by an interview, in the same publication, with the equally wonderful Dossie Easton, about her writing on kink and polyamory.

Me and Jen Yockney more recently

It’d taken me six years since finishing my PhD to start researching these topics. My first paper based on my PhD (on a different topic) had been rejected with cruel comments from one reviewer. So I decided that academic research wasn’t for me and to focus on teaching, which I really enjoyed. I still have major issues with that side of academia. But then I started to read about gender and sexuality for my teaching, and to attend more interdisciplinary conferences. I realised that it was possible – perhaps even beneficial – to research topics that were personally relevant.

Although I can’t say that this guiding principle has made for a completely easy ride (to say the least!), I have learnt a huge amount from researching polyamorous, BDSM, and bi communities. My work has always been led by the question of what we (i.e. everybody) can learn from such communities, rather than the more traditional psychological question of how they can be explained. The answers I’ve explored have focused on the benefits of more open approaches to relationships rules around monogamy, the consensual arrangements that kinky folk use in their sexual activities, and non-binary understandings of sexual attraction (i.e. not just attraction to either ‘the same’ or ‘the opposite’ gender).

Recently I’ve been reflecting on the directions that my thinking about relationships has taken in the last few years. I realised that these themes of openness, consent, and non-binary are still very present, but in different forms. Previously I’d just thought of openness in the context of non-monogamy, consent in the context of (kinky) sex, and non-binary in the context of sexuality.

I thought I’d write a couple of blog posts to explain the ways in which my thinking has expanded out lately, considering the benefits of applying openness and consent to our relationships in a much broader way. Regarding non-binary I have a much longer piece of writing bubbling away about what happens when we apply this concept beyond sexuality and gender to our ways of relating, feeling, and thinking.

I’ll spend the rest of this post on openness.

Open non-monogamous relationships

Probably the first revelation in my explorations of open non-monogamy was the fact that it was possible at all. Wider culture presents long term monogamy as the only way of doing relationships, with non-monogamy only being possible in the form of cheating, which will inevitably mean the end of the relationship.

I found that various forms of swinging and open relationships offer the possibility of couples having additional sexual relationships in an honest and open way. Primary/secondary polyamorous couples show that it is also possible to have love relationships outside a primary couple.

I also found that polyamory opens up the possibility of relationships beyond this conventional couple-based model. There are Vs, triads and quads, poly families and networks, and all kinds of other ways of managing multiple love relationships. This offers an alternative to the conventional model of putting The One partner or spouse way at the top of a hierarchy of important relationships, with all of the high expectations this places on that relationship.

The diversity of love relationship concepts, by Kirstin Rohwer

However, as I explored these things myself and talked with colleagues about it, one thing that became apparent was that many of these models still generally place romantic, or sexual, partnerships as more important than other kinds of relationships. In fact there can be a risk that the division between partners and friends becomes even larger when we have more partners, and perhaps even less time or energy for friends, or for other kinds of relationships including our relationship with ourselves.

Another thing which I recognised in myself and others was that it becomes possible in open non-monogamy to replace a search for The One perfect partner with a search for the perfect relationship style which will solve all the problems inherent in close relationships and/or mean that you are constantly bathed in the reassurance and validation of multiple adoring gazes.

Neither of these issues is a reason to reject open non-monogamy in favour of a return to monogamy. It’s not an all-or-nothing situation where we can find one universally ‘right’ way of doing relationships and dismiss all the others. Rather I concluded that we need to embrace the diversity of possible relationship structures: versions of singledom, coupledom and polyamory; monogamies and non-monogamies and all the possibilities in between; friends-based, family-based, and partner-based models; and anything else that people are doing. Along with this it’s important to recognise that different things work for different people and at different times in their lives.

It ain’t what you do it’s the way that you do it

So that is probably about where I got to in the monogamy chapter of Rewriting the Rules and the other writing I was doing about open non-monogamy around that time.

Since then I’ve increasingly recognised how – in many areas – it seems like we get so focused on what people do that we pay much less attention to how they are doing it. I’ve started to wonder if the latter question might actually be the more useful one.

For example, this year I’ve been analysing sex advice books (more blog posts on that topic will doubtless be arriving soon!) It took me a while to realise one of the major problems with them: they were all about what people do sexually rather than how they do it. So all the advice was about trying different positions or ‘spicing things up’ with toys or techniques. There was much less on what I would see as the more important matters of how you figure out what you like, how you communicate that to others, how you ensure consent, how you learn about different bodies, and lots of other kinds of how. In the book that Justin Hancock and I are writing on this topic one thing that we’ve already decided is that the focus will be much more on the how.

Going back to relationships I think a lot can be gained from a more how-based approach. As I said I’m increasingly convinced that issues of what people do, in terms of structuring their relationships, is rather less important than how they relate within them. Both academic research and media on these topics often gets obsessed with the what: Look at those crazy polyamorists, or swingers, or whatever! Instead perhaps it’d be more valuable to look across all different kinds of relationships to explore how people do their relationships in ways that work well, or not so well, for them.

This brings me back to openness because I think that is a key part of this how. I’m going to touch on three ways in which we might consider the openness of our relationships which go beyond whether they are monogamous or not, and could apply just as much to monogamous as non-monogamous relationships. These are:

• Being open to vulnerability,
• Opening the windows on our relationships, and
• Opening up our possibilities.

Open to vulnerability

The research on conflict suggests that we tend to respond in two ways when there is conflict in our relationships. We tend to withdraw, or we tend to attack. Withdrawing includes all of the different ways of putting up defences to protect ourselves. Attacking includes all of the different ways of projecting the conflict outwards, onto the other person, instead of accepting any responsibility ourselves.

Strong versions of withdrawal would include things like storming out, or completely shutting down. Weaker versions would include shifting the conversation to avoid the topic, subtly putting up our defences so the other person can’t get in, or distancing from a relationship without letting the other person know there’s a problem.

Strong version of attacking would include hurling abuse and insults, or physical attack. Weaker versions would include sharply dismissing another point of view, niggling and nagging at the other person to let them know about aspects of them that we don’t think are okay, jokey putdowns, or complaining about them to other people.

Both of these strategies of withdrawal and attack are ways of protecting ourselves where we’re vulnerable. Think about conflicts you’ve had. They only tend to happen when someone has triggered something you feel vulnerable about –whether you’re consciously aware of that at the time or not. If that triggering doesn’t happen then it isn’t really a conflict. It’s just one person having a go and another person finding it easy to empathise with them and/or to step away kindly.

A – very challenging – alternative to withdrawal or attack in situations where we’ve been triggered is openness. This involves staying open to the vulnerability that we are feeling rather than putting up our defences, or attacking or projecting blame.

Another part of this is being open to the vulnerability in others: recognising that their withdrawal and/or attack likely stems from their own vulnerability. This is perhaps an even greater challenge as it involves being open and compassionate to others at the very moment that they are being the most difficult, threatening, and hard to empathise with.

Whether with ourselves or with others, such openness involves staying with the situation rather than attempting to shut it down; taking the the time to notice what is going on (which will likely involve taking some time out before returning to it); recognising that there is a sensible reason for the seemingly inexplicable behaviour of the other person or ourselves; and going slowly and gently enough to find it (or trusting that it is there if it doesn’t easily reveal itself). It also involves the openness to let the other person know about our vulnerability, or to listen to theirs in the vulnerable situation of realising that we are the one who triggered it.

This form of openness is clearly applicable to all relationships, not just partner ones. Although it may be the relationships that we spend most time in, and that we are most highly invested in, that challenge us the most because it is much less easy to simply withdraw from them.

Opening the windows on our relationships
One question that you might well have had reading the previous section is about abusive dynamics. The idea of being open to our vulnerability, and to the vulnerability of others, is certainly a challenging one to apply to situations when one person is consistently physically or emotionally attacking the other. This is something I’ll return to in the next post on consent.

Another important aspect of openness occurs to me when thinking about abusive relationships. Something that we know from the research on domestic abuse is that abusers tend to isolate their partners from friends and family, pressurising them into keeping aspects of the relationship secret. A particularly worrying thing about the popular Fifty Shades of Grey series is that Christian doesn’t allow Ana to talk about the kinky side of their relationship with anybody in her life.

Fifty Shades of Grey: Not the most open relationship

So another important aspect of openness in relationships could be how open they are to other people beyond the relationship itself. Perhaps it could be a warning bell in any relationship if we’re feeling that we have to keep elements of it private or secret, or that we are unable to talk about the difficult parts of the relationship with other people.

Recently I was in a pub conversation with somebody who was complaining about how badly her housemates were at doing the chores. She was in the process of moving out and her partner, who she was moving in with, nervously said that he hoped that she would be able to talk about the issue directly with him if it became a problem, rather than discussing it with friends in the pub!

I take the partner’s point of course. Part of openness to vulnerability would, I hope, be that we could try to talk with each other directly when there is a problem. But I also found myself thinking that I would like it if my partner (or any other person in a relationship with me) felt able to chat to other close people about our issues. Of course it would feel vulnerable for me to know that this was happening, but actually I would prefer the safety of feeling that vulnerability whilst knowing that our relationship was getting fresh air through it in this way, to the more questionable safety of keeping our ‘dirty laundry’ to ourselves.

Abusive dynamics are not specific to physical violence. Nor are they specific to situations where just one person abuses another: it can be a lot more even between the people concerned. And nor are they specific to partner relationships, as anybody who has ever been in an abusive friendship or a bullying situation at work will confirm.

Openness in the form of transparency, or letting others in, is therefore another aspect of open relationships that is well worth exploring for ourselves, and with the people we’re in relationships with, no matter what kind of relationship it is.

As I explored in the conflict chapter of Rewriting the Rules, the current cultural pressure is to present our relationships as perfect, and to never admit to any struggles. Bringing this kind of air and spaciousness to our relationships could be beneficial not only to us, but also to the people we open up to because they won’t be able to use our supposedly ‘perfect’ relationship as an unrealistic point of comparison any more. Such openness more widely could also help us, as a culture, to recognise that relationships of all kinds can be tough, rather than suggesting that any one kind of relationship structure will really lead to ‘happy-ever-after’.

Opening up our possibilities?

So we’ve considered openness in the form of being open to vulnerability (our own, and other people’s), and in the form of transparency in relationships. A final form that I thought of is whether any particular relationships opens up, or closes down, the possibilities of the people in it.

When I wrote the break-up chapter of Rewriting the Rules I realised that most of the chapter failed to address the most urgent question that people tend to have around break-up, which is how to know when they should break-up with someone. I struggled with providing advice about this because, of course, it is so specific to that person and their situation. One suggestion I did come up with was to think about whether it felt like the relationship was more opening up the possibilities of the people in it or more closing them down.

I still don’t want to do much more than put that idea out there as one to think about, perhaps not just at the end of the relationship but all the way through it, and in all kinds of relationships: parent/child, friends, siblings, colleagues, and neighbours, as well as partners.

Of course it is likely that there are all kinds of openings up and closings down going on constantly, but the different ways in which this is happening, and how that feels for us, seem like useful things to reflect upon, ourselves and with the other person or people. This is another thing that will come up again in the next post on consent because it is definitely interwoven with treating people consensually.

Concluding thoughts

Now that I come to the end of this long post (thank-you if you’ve made it all the way through) I realise that this whole series could be titled ‘rewriting rewriting the rules’!

I guess it’s also part of this way of seeing these things to acknowledge the inevitable imperfection of any one thing that I write, and to try to be open and transparent about that. While I’m alive everything is a process: a work in progress. An ongoing blog is a good way of capturing that.

Find out more

For more on non-monogamous or polyamorous relationships, check out these blog posts:

• Consensual relationships revisited
• Non-monogamy
• What is non-monogamy?
• Is non-monogamy for you?
• Polyamory and wonder women
• Polyamory books
• Monogamy
• Infidelity

You can find my books and zines about relationships here:

• Make Your Own Relationship User Guide
• Queer relationships zine
• Rewriting the Rules
• The Secrets of Enduring Love
• Enjoy Sex (How, When and IF You Want To)

The post Open Relationships Revisited appeared first on Rewriting The Rules.

Here’s one on non-monogamous relationships.

I understand that there has been a couple of recent books (yours and Catherine Hakim´s) discussing the attitudes about infidelity  in the UK? Do you think that is just a coincidence or is it a sign of the times?

It definitely feels like a current topic with many books and movies raising questions about the challenges of being in long term relationships and about how we deal with infidelity when it occurs.

Catherine Hakim’s book looks at the recent trend of dating websites for people who are looking for lovers outside their marriage. My book explores all of the many ways in which people at the moment are rewriting the rules of their relationships.

I think that the ‘rules’ about infidelity are being questioned right now for a combination of reasons. First, as people live longer what is meant by a ‘long term’ relationship becomes potentially much longer than it was in previously. Secondly, people are now looking for a lot more from a partner or spouse than they might have done in the past. It is common for people to expect such relationships to remain romantic and sexual throughout as well as providing a close friendship, a sense of belonging and security, and personal validation. This can be a great deal of pressure to put on one person, and that is a big part of the reason why people often end up looking elsewhere and having infidelities.

Is it more difficult to be faithful to one partner today? If so – why?

The problem relates to a common tension in relationships. At the same time that we are looking for safety and companionship in a relationship, we are also all trying to reach our own goals in life and we value our independence.

This tension between belonging and freedom plays out in a number of ways in relationships. For example, we might find ourselves in serial monogamy where we search for a partner when we crave love and belonging, but break-up with them when we start feeling stifled and yearning for independence. Another way the tension plays out is in infidelities. These can meet our need to feel more free and to remind ourselves who we are without our partner, whilst retaining the relationship.

Another reason that it is difficult to be faithful is something that Esther Perel explores in her excellent book, Mating in Captivity. She says that we are looking for ‘warmth’ and ‘heat’ from the same relationship. We want to be secure and comfortable with a partner, perhaps building a family with them, at the same time as wanting to have a hot and exciting relationship. It is hard to get both these things from the same person, which might be another reason for people seeking infidelities.

Is there a problem with our cultural attitude about infidelity? If so – what?

There is a problem because all of the pressure we culturally put on relationships makes it more likely that infidelity will happen but, at the same time, infidelities are very frowned upon in many countries and often seen as being a reason to break-up a relationship.

Catherine Hakim suggests that people in France are more relaxed about casual infidelities (or ‘play-fairs’) and that it is generally expected and accepted that married people will have sex with other people at some point. Other researchers like Lisa Wade have written about ‘hook-up culture’ in the US where college students have several more casual sexual relationships rather than having one main relationship and additional infidelities. It is useful to see that different groups and cultures have different ways of doing relationships because it opens up the possibility of doing things differently and finding our own ways forward.

Infidelity is sometimes being presented as a way of saving marriages or long relationships? Do you agree that having a secret affair, is good for the primary relationship?

The problem that I have with all of this is with the secret aspect of it all. Certainly there are cases when people have had affairs and it is good for the relationship long term, perhaps because it came out in the open and encouraged the people involved to communicate more. However, much more frequently if the affair is uncovered it causes a great deal of pain for everyone involved. The person having the affair is often blamed and feels terribly guilty, their partner frequently feels very hurt and betrayed, and the person who the affair was with may well end up losing somebody who they loved and had become very important in their life. It can also be very hard for friends and family who feel pressured to take sides.

What are the negative aspects of infidelity? 

In the case of secret affairs which come out into the open there can be real damage to the sense of trust between the main partners because they realise that they have been lied to. Feelings of guilt and shame, betrayal and self-doubt, are also very common. It can also be very painful for the person who the affair was with, and for any children and other family members.

If the infidelity remains secret then there can be a lot of fear of being found out, as well as constraints on how the affair relationship can develop given that it has to remain hidden.

Many marriages end in divorce – what do you think are the most important reasons for that?

There are many reasons for the break-up of relationships – people changing in different directions, recognition of incompatibilities, etc. – but I think that a big part of it is the pressure that relationships are under to provide so many of our needs. When we look for a ‘perfect’ partner and try to be a ‘perfect’ partner for somebody else, we are doomed to fail, and painful break-ups often follow from the recognition that we cannot be everything to each other.

Infidelity is often involved with this because people frequently look elsewhere when they feel that their partner isn’t meeting all their needs any more, or when they realise that their partner has stopped seeing them as perfect.

A big part of the solution is to put less pressure on romantic relationships and to recognise all of the important relationships that we have in our lives (with friends, family, colleagues, and others, as well as with partners). Also if we can acknowledge that people and relationships change over time our relationships may be more flexible and able to shift, and we may feel less need to blame each other if we do go our separate ways.

Is there an alternative to the marriage plus secret affairs model?

My research has mostly focused upon open alternatives to secret affairs. Many people now are pursuing honest ways of having more than one sexual and/or romantic relationship. For example, the ‘new monogamy’ or ‘monogamish relationship’ involves having one main relationship but with openness to flirtations and friendships of various kinds outside of it. Open relationships and swinging involve having one romantic partner but many sexual partners. Polyamorous people have multiple romantic relationships in various different ways. People who are interested in relationship anarchy value the freedom of themselves and of their partners to make their own decisions in all of their relationships.

Most of these kinds of relationships emphasize ongoing trust and communication. There are an increasing number of books available about how to communicate about monogamy and other aspects of relationships. Readers who are interested might find it useful to read Dossie Easton and Janet Hardy’s book The Ethical Slut and Tristan Taormino’s Opening Up: A guide to creating and sustaining open relationships.

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Here is the talk, and beneath it a written version:

Relationship Uncertainty

I want to start with a list of advice about relationships which I’ve found in various self-help books, problem pages and magazine articles:

• Never waste an opportunity to say ‘I love you’: Don’t be the first to use the L word.
• Take her at face value: Figure out the hidden reason why she’s upset.
• Don’t use complete sentences during sex: Talk dirty, he’ll love it.
• Work at your relationship: Be spontaneous.

Confusing right?

As a culture we’re currently in a state of relationship uncertainty. At the same time that we’ve opened up to same sex marriage, government insists that monogamous coupledom is the only good basis for a family. There has never been greater gender equality, but there’s a constant pull back to the view that men and women are from different planets. And, whilst some commentators argue that we should loosen our views around affairs and infidelity, others argue that we should tighten restrictions around people watching online porn – because this is seen as bad for relationships.

Why are we in such uncertainty? First of all, declining religion, unstable jobs, and the fact we all move around rather than staying in smaller communities have all meant that we look to romantic relationships to meet all of our needs in a way we never have before. Love has become the new religion.

At the same time we’re encouraged by the media, by advertisers, and by each other, to be independent individuals who fulfill our own goals in life and are true to ourselves no matter what.

This creates a tension as we long for belonging, togetherness and connection with a partner, at the same time that we strive for individual freedom, independence and personal fulfillment.

There are two main things that we tend do when faced with such uncertainty: Either we look back to the old rules that have been around before – and cling onto those for some sense of security, or we create new rules – but often we cling onto these just as tightly.

For the rest of the talk I’ll explore these two paths, and then consider an alternative: embracing the uncertainty that we find ourselves in in our relationships.

Grasping the old rules

The first option, in such a state of uncertainty, is to turn to the old rules of relationships and to grasp hold of these to get some sense of stability.

We see this in a lot of the mainstream advice about relationships which promises that we can find The One who will complete us and provide us with a happily-ever-after, so long as we follow a particular set of rules.

Often the rules are about gender. Back in the 1990s the best-selling book, The Rules, promised women that they would find the perfect man who would stay with them forever if only they would return to traditional femininity: Let him take the initiative; don’t talk too much, laugh too much, or demand too much, and he’ll have to make you his.

Almost as a direct response to this, the seduction communities of the early 2000s advised men on how to become alpha males and play the game that would make them irresistible to women.

Once in a relationship, there is a battalion of relationship therapists, agony aunts and experts on hand to ensure that we stay together forever in a constant state of love and great sex. Anything else is considered to be a failure.

There are many problems with this approach. First of all, this idea that we can find everything in one person is not actually an old one. It’s only since around the 1950s that we’ve expected our romantic partner to be our soulmate, our best friend, our perfect sex partner, and sole co-parent. As historian, Stephanie Coontz, says ‘people have always loved a love story. But for most of the past our ancestors didn’t try to live in one.’

Secondly, of course, this is a great deal of pressure to put on one person throughout the increasingly long lives that we are likely to be spending together. Nobody can provide us with constant love, great sex, validation of everything we do, and total security. Indeed, as my colleague and TED talker Esther Perel points out, many of the things that we require from a partner are contradictory: safety and excitement, shared lives and the freedom to do what we want to do, everyday togetherness and constant passion.

So we see many people bouncing from one person to another in serial monogamy, or having affair after affair, staying bitterly in relationships that don’t match their expectations, or giving up on the whole endeavour having been bruised and battered by one too many painful separations.

Graspingthe new rules

There is a story that Terry Pratchett tells about what happens when you have a bucket full of crabs. If one crab tries to escape the bucket, Pratchett says, the other crabs pull it back in.

Thus it is with the rules of relationships. They may not be working very well, but if anybody tries to propose something different they are quickly shouted down and brought back into line. The mass media tells us that anybody who is doing sex, gender, or relationships differently is – at best – a weirdo worthy of ridicule, and – at worst – a dangerous threat to society. Just think about how people who are kinky, or trans people, or people in open relationships, are generally portrayed in movies and newspaper articles.

However, occasionally a crab does manage to get out of the bucket and finds itself scuttling around out on the beach. What happens then? Because it is so precarious and scary out there alone, the strong tendency is to find another bucket and to settle in with all the other crabs there. As I say in my book, there are gay crab buckets, kinky crab buckets, polyamorous crab buckets, and every other kind of crab bucket you could imagine.

What this means is that, when we do come up with another way of doing relationships, we often grasp hold of that just as tightly as other people do to the old rules.

For example, in recent years lots of groups have come up with alternatives to monogamy. However, such groups often quickly find themselves in a crab bucket mentality. Perhaps they say it’s only okay to have sex with other people, but not to develop loving feelings. Or that we must have lots of rules in place to protect the specialness of the primary relationship. Or that everybody must be free to do whatever they want and feelings of jealousy or insecurity are not allowed. Whatever version of relationships we develop, it very easily becomes something a rigid system that we see as the only way, or better than the alternatives. Any crab who tries to do something different is pulled back into the bucket.

Embracing Uncertainty

I’ve suggested that, as a culture, we have tended to pass on old rules of relationships which are not helpful – perhaps even damaging. However I’ve also warned that – when we try to develop different rules to pass on to people which might offer helpful alternatives – these often become just as inflexible and brittle as the old rules.

What is the alternative? The idea that I would like to pass on is that of embracing uncertainty.

The author, Martine Batchelor, puts it this way. ‘Imagine,’ she says ‘that I am holding an object made of gold. It is so precious and it is mine – I feel I must hold onto it. I grasp it, curling my fingers so as not to drop it, so that nobody can take it away from me. What happens after a while? Not only do my hand and arm get cramp but I cannot use my hand for anything else. When you grip something, you create tension and limit yourself. Dropping the golden object is not the solution.’ The alternative is ‘learning to relax to uncurl the fingers and gently open the hand. When my hand is wide open and there is no tension, the precious object can rest lightly on my palm. I can still value the object and take care of it; I can put it down and pick it up; I can use my hand for doing something else.’

So what does this mean for relationships? It means that whether we’re turning to the old rules, or developing new ones, we try to avoid the tendency to grasp them tightly or to hurl them away. Instead, we hold them gently, recognising what they offer, but also their limitations. Rather than insisting on rigidly adhering to them we can treat them flexibly, recognising that they might need to shift over time as situations and people change.

Perhaps we can take the same approach to our relationships themselves. Instead of grasping hold of one person, or a few people, in our lives and insisting that they meet all of our needs, perhaps we can hold all of our relationships more gently, appreciating what we have with partners but also with friends, family, and colleagues. From people we are close with to those with whom we share only a fleeting connection.

Holding relationships gently means that we can see them more clearly, noticing when things need to change rather than becoming stuck in the dilemma of staying together just as we are or breaking up and never seeing each other again.

In this way perhaps we can learn that people in our lives are not objects that need to be figured out and played according to some set of rules, so that we can get what we want from them. Rather they are complex people in their own right, ever-changing and with their own contradictions and vulnerabilities, hopes and fears, triumphs and tragedies. Perhaps we can then be present to that person as they are right now, instead of grabbing hold of them or rejecting them entirely.

Those are the kinds of ideas about relationships that I would like to pass on.

There is an Italian translation of this talk here: http://www.poliamore.org/riscrivere-le-regole-delle-relazioni/

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