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Polyamory and Cults.

I’ve been chewing on this subject for years. Every time I go to write about it, I feel nervous, afraid that people will think I’m talking about them. I have written and rewritten and drafted and cut so much from this (all without any AI assistance).

There are so many polyamory groups that could be called a cult. Groups like Oneida in the late 1800s and Kerista in the mid-1900s who challenged the status quo of mono-normativity in the name of freedom, but ended up recreating some of the structures of power they pushed back against. To be clear: polyamory itself is not a cult; it’s a relational practice (and for some, an orientation). But it’s a relational practice that, for various reasons, is prone to high-control behaviours. And, in addition, there are cults and cult-like figures that prey on polyamorous individuals or use polyamorous structures to exploit others. Whilst these may be few, their impact can have big ripples. They not only add to stigma about non-monogamy in general, but they can also enact real harm on innocent people who were simply wanting to share love with more people.

In other words, the issue of high-control behaviours isn’t limited to cults: the same unhealthy dynamics that show up in cults can show up in our one-on-one intimate relationships. And in polycules, high-control and coercive behaviours can sometimes form a kind of mini-cult.

Control is antithetical to what actually makes non-monogamy, polyamory, and Relationship Anarchy viable, namely: collaboration. So this is what I want to unpack and explore: how high-control dynamics can show up in non-monogamy (and sometimes lead to cults or proto-cults), how we can practice collaboration in our ways of relating, and, ultimately, how we go about creating real community.

Understanding why polyamory is prone to high-control behaviour and vulnerable to would-be cult leaders is the basis of what I am going to explore in this series of three articles. I want to elucidate the root causes of control in non-monogamy, with the hope that doing so might help us all be better partners and better recognize the red flags in others and in ourselves. In this series, we will look at the dynamics of coercion and control, not just through the lens of the control-to-mini-cult-to-full-fledged-cult pipeline, but also to consider how and why the nervous system engages in these dynamics. In this, I’m informed by my own lived experience as a survivor of a high-control polycule, my training in somatics, and my decade of work as a relationship coach working with non-monogamous individuals and relationships.

This is a big topic to tackle, so please forgive me for not trying to tackle it all in one go.

In part one, I’ll discuss the reasons why control behaviours show up in relationships, what makes us vulnerable to control, and practices we can do to fortify ourselves against external controlling behaviours — whether they come from a group leader or an intimate partner. In part two, I’ll dive into the mechanisms of control from a somatic perspective, looking at how the nervous system responds to a perceived loss of control based on a desire and need for connection and relationality. In part three, I’ll consider what it means to step outside of control-based behaviours and power-over/under relationship dynamics, and examine principles for collaborative relationships that can support dyadic and group experiences. And of course, throughout, I’ll share some relevant personal anecdotes.

What Is Control?

Control is a strategy for dealing with the disruption or interruption of connection.

I believe we’re all wired to seek out connection, and that this is one of the most primal driving forces behind everything we do. When life is overwhelming, or there is chaos, it is normal and natural to want to find some kind of order in that chaos. In Somatic Experiencing, we might call this orienting, much like how you might need to take a moment to get your bearings when you step off a fast-moving fairground ride, or the way you take a deep breath in when stepping out of the airport in a new place; your sensory systems and your brain need to re-orient. But when there’s too much happening, and it happens too quickly, waiting for our system to orient to everything means we risk being caught in a kind of limbo where we can’t ascertain safety or lack of safety — and that is where control kicks in. By exerting some control over external circumstances, we can potentially reduce how much is happening, or how quickly it’s happening, and make it a little less overwhelming for our nervous systems. This can be a wise and necessary somatic response.

When control becomes not just a response, but is ingrained as a habit and celebrated as a behaviour, it takes on very different characteristics. Under colonialism, patriarchy, and capitalism, we’re told that connection is gained by hoarding power and/or resources — or by at least demonstrating that one holds power and resources. And these systems of supremacy offer us so many strategies for control over others.

What makes us vulnerable to control:
Aloneness And The Search for Belonging

The World Health Organization says that loneliness affects one in six people globally. At the same time, Statistics Canada reported that well over 50% of adults over the age of 50 feel lonely “always or often”. Many of us live disconnected from the land and ecosystems around us, and, thanks to isolating hetero-mono-normative relationship structures like the Nuclear Family, we often feel disconnected from one another.

There are many different ways we have responded to loneliness — and capitalism, as it always does, innovates to make money from the human experience. These days, we see it in the form of VR porn, the rise of AI companions, and real estate investors rebranding cooperative living models as luxury lifestyle living in micro-suites with communal areas. Even so, we still can find relational responses to loneliness: Mutual Aid. Chosen family. Kinship Networks. Relationship Anarchy. And yes, even Polyamory. These phenomena expand our sense of meaningful relationships beyond our family of origin and dyadic partnerships. They are expressions of connection to more than just one. They tend to deconstruct systems of power that reinforce isolating capitalist and colonial structures. And they offer an avenue towards finding community and that ever-elusive sense of belonging.

My own experience of alone-ness is intersected with the experience of being a third-culture kid: nowhere in the world have I travelled and felt truly at home or truly feel I belong. Generations of genocide and other traumas mean I have a fragmented relationship to my elders and genetic kin. I can track all the many ways I’ve gone about seeking a place to belong — like changing my accent when I moved to Canada so that I could ‘fit in’ — but there are perpetually one or more parts of myself that feel like they have to be put aside for me to feel welcomed. By the time I landed in the non-monogamous scene in the early 2010s, I was so hungry for a place to belong that I overlooked red flags and, for a time, found myself embroiled in connections that were high-control, unhealthy, and perhaps just a little bit culty.

The experience of ‘belonging’ is a deeply embodied sense of safety. When we feel like we ‘belong’ somewhere, our nervous system registers an absence of threat. We feel trust in those around us to understand and support us, and we feel like we understand and can easily support these others. Cycles of stress and vigilance slow down and might even cease. There is somatic ease, and from here a person may find that they feel more capacity in all aspects of their life.

Looking For Connection

For many of us, after our family and culture of origin, the first place we seek a sense of belonging is in partnerships. We are taught to grow a nuclear family of our own to fulfill our purpose in society. But if you’re reading this, you have probably found that the nuclear family doesn’t quite deliver (maybe for some, but certainly not for the vast majority), and maybe you’ve felt hungry for a wider sense of connection. Some crave a village, a network of attachment that might reflect pre-colonial relational practices. This can be a motivation for opening up into polyamory in the first place, and to be clear, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. I’m all for conscious opening up as a means to find one’s village of meaningful relationships; I just don’t think your village should be limited (or even centred around) your romantic partners. But it's this dearth of deep connection alongside hunger for greater purpose and meaning that can leave us vulnerable to the influence of high-control relationships and groups.

In non-monogamy, there can be a sense of connection when you find someone else who is non-monogamous. And today, you can find plenty of non-monogamous people sharing their experiences. Charismatic partners, community leaders, and social media influencers may intentionally or unintentionally build a following by stating simple truths, validating the experiences of people who have felt ostracized and lost, and offering a space where people can experience belonging and welcome. Seasoned non-monogamists will inevitably have smart, intelligent insights. Maybe even diagrams and metaphors and terms that help you understand what you’re doing, and maybe even correct you if you’re misusing a term.

To be clear: most of the time, this is actually pretty benign; the majority of people with some years of experience in polyamory or in organizing community events and spaces have a good grasp of consent, autonomy, and how to support people’s agency when a following shows up. But there’s power in having a following, and occasionally there are personalities who misuse their power, deny the agency and experiences of their partners, community members, fans, and followers — and cause tremendous harm.

The promise of belonging to a group of people who have purpose and direction is enticing, especially if you’ve been starving for connection. And in particular, anyone who has lived and/or experienced intergenerational trauma of loss of connection to culture/land, etc., may be particularly vulnerable to the temptation to lean deeper into the group relationship than is safe. People who are struggling with internalized shame about their desires for non-monogamy, or who have been ostracised or bullied by family members or friends about their relationships, may be hungry for a family-of-choice, and new friendships that accept and support them.

Most of the time, people can absolutely find kind, respectful spaces and build healthy experiences of belonging through the connections they make in polyamory. But when there are cult-like personalities involved, the warm welcome of inclusion in a relationship (be it a polycule, a community space, or an online forum) often becomes dependent on adhering to someone’s idea of One True Way To Do Polyamory.

Letting Go Of Agency:
Loss of Relationship to Self

I’m a survivor of a high-control polycule.

A lot of the details are blocked in my memory. Still, I experienced this particular polycule as a group of people who were quick to enforce a standard of perfect relational behaviours and punish one another when they failed to meet those standards. More than a couple of the folks in this polycule held some social status as ‘experts’ on polyamory. I didn’t observe much compassion, but I did witness a lot of attempts to control. Immediately looped in to communications with several metamors and meta-metamors, I was informed that my other partners (who no one in this polycule had met) were unethical because their partnership agreements prioritized their kids. I was chastised for not allocating equal time in my schedule to all my partners, and pressured into giving up valuable self-care time to accommodate more dates. I tried to defend the right to be a unicorn if I wanted to, and was told I was brainwashed by patriarchy to think such a thing. After a few months, I left the relationship that connected me to that polycule because I was exhausted by constantly defending myself and my relationship decisions, and I had become absolutely terrified of contradicting the status quo and expressing my truth with anyone in the polycule.

I was vulnerable to that kind of control and social coercion: I had just come out as bisexual and polyamorous, and the relationship with my homophobic mother had ruptured as a result. I was also newly divorced and navigating the reinvention of my whole life. I felt separated from many of the things that had, for better or worse, been anchors in my life. My new life centred around my polyamorousness, and I desperately wanted to establish stability in it. For me, the stakes felt high. I said yes and went along with what I was told was The Right Way To Do Polyamory because I thought it would win me favour, secure me in supportive relationships, and help me to belong.

This was transactional belonging: I was allowed as long as I played by the rules. When I challenged the status quo, I was bullied, shut down, and later (even after I had left that polycule) ‘cancelled’ for having questioned things at all. The whole experience left me overwhelmed, scarred, and scared. As I found different, smarter, more trauma-informed and compassionate people in the polyamorous world, I began to recover and find my own path again. I vowed that I would not be swayed again, and worked on addressing the things that had left me vulnerable.

Paying Attention to Power and Control

I have found that very often the people who hold power in a network of relationships are unaware of the power they hold. Like so many other forms of privilege, we can be ignorant of the ways that others may perceive and interact with us. And while some people really do seek out positions of power to have power over others, I’d like to think that the vast majority of those who do are coming from a place of wanting to support and steward others toward good experiences.

In the mini-cults that can show up in polycules, it can be that one or two strong personalities set the tone for others to follow. Where I’ve seen polycule-cults form that have harmed, that harm has been rooted in an insistence of there being a singular right way to do polyamory — and it can feel hard to challenge the social mores once you have developed loving feelings for anyone in a polycule.

In larger cults, the kind of Cults with a capital C that you see documentaries or exposés on, there’s also often one or two strong personalities that set a doctrine for everyone to follow. The worst of these are often connected to delusions like aliens coming to rescue the true believers. Such cults have often (although not always) used sexuality as a means to recruit and control members. Cult leaders may arrange marriages between followers, or tell followers their approval is required before they sleep with anyone. Some cult leaders have preached chastity for followers while maintaining a collection of lovers of their own.

Whether in a small web of interpersonal relationships or a larger community, what I have found is important to pay attention to is how those who hold power (of any kind) wield that power. Do they seek to impose their way on others, or are they open to conversation and different ideas? Do they use their position to make a stand against individuals who are behaving in toxic, predatory ways, or are they the predatory ones who cancel individuals who challenge their authority? When it comes to working with others, do they dictate what will happen and when, or do they invite collaboration and empower and uplift others’ voices? Is maintaining a relationship with them dependent on transactional ways of engaging that ask you to put yourself aside?

One of my lifelong teachers gave me excellent advice about people in leadership, and it’s advice I remember regularly: she told me to question anyone who claimed expertise. To challenge them. To test them. To look at who they have studied with and question the integrity of what skill and knowledge they hold. As I’ve done this again and again, I’ve found that, whether a teacher, leader, influencer, or otherwise, those who are connected to their empathy, who embody kindness, and (especially in the non-monogamy world) have the capacity to love many, share something very significant in common: they are open and receptive to discussion. They can be humble when challenged.

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(Re)Locating Self

When it comes to being resilient against external control from partners and polycules, I think it is not just about what we do, but also how we do it. When we have surrendered agency (whether by choice or out of a survival response), we have to then reclaim it.

Being dedicated to your self-partnership is an important part of the equation: the clearer you can be on who you are, what you want, what does and doesn’t work for you, and what capacity you have, the easier it is to express your limits and push back against anything that feels controlling from a partner or anyone else, for that matter. When I was recovering from my experiences of being in a high-control polycule, reconnecting to my own voice, affirming my desires (and feeling those desires affirmed by others) was paramount to being able to show up in relationships again as my Self.

Resilient relationships ask us also to address the root causes of control behaviours — and that means connecting with ourselves and others in more loving ways: tolerance, compassion, boundaries, somatic self-awareness; going beyond the binary thinking of belonging vs not belonging and exploring instead the spectrum of ease that we experience in our body-mind-heart-spirit as we engage in different connections and relationships. And this is something else that has helped me in my own journey: examining where the overwhelm of relationship situations has caused me to try to shut others down, and exploring where that response truly matches the circumstances I’ve been through — and where it hasn’t.

Some Practices To Support Your Self Relationship In The Face of Controlling Behaviours From Others

These practices may help you if you’re healing from being in a high-demand relationship (of any kind, including work, family, etc). They focus on supporting agency, rest, and personal space, whilst also nourishing the nervous system with positive experiences related to connection. They might also help you notice if you begin to lean into control-based behaviours.

• Learn to understand the parts of yourself that are feeling scared, and practice compassion for them.

• Develop a diverse network of support: befriend people in non-monogamy who you don’t date. Having more friends and peer supports can help you find ways to locate yourself outside of partnerships.

• Hone your discernment. Discernment looks at nuances. It examines the red flags. It considers the bigger picture of who someone is, rather than the face that is presented. If you’re enjoying someone’s social media content, find out who they are, where they studied or who they have learned from. What lineages of teachings or schools of thought do they align with? You might find it handy to journal your reflections somewhere privately, and go back to read your reflections regularly: this can help you attune to when your intuition has picked up on something that was off before you’ve been able to point at it rationally.

• When you notice your own impulses or desires to control the actions of others, get curious about what you actually need in that moment.

• Learn to recognize power, and when you have it. When we don’t realize how much power we hold, we are more likely to abuse it when we feel threatened or challenged. I once heard that in a relationship, the person who holds most power is the one who will be least impacted by it ending. I don’t know if that’s universally true, but I think it’s a useful question to consider.

• Take time alone to connect with all your parts: heart, body, spirit, and mind. To connect with your heart, you can spend some time exploring your emotions: you might hold a hand over your heart and imagine your breath as it moves in and out of your chest and notice what arises. Or you could re-watch a favourite movie that makes you emotional, or think or write about someone who meant a lot to you who has passed away. To connect with your body, you might move your body (walk, dance) or you might use weighted blankets or a bath to feel gentle pressure on your body as if it is being held. To connect with your mind, you might journal (you can use journal prompts from my book Radical Relating, or you might have other tools to help prompt your journaling). To connect with your spirit, you might explore some art, play a favourite piece of music, or engage in some other form of creative expression. If it is a practice that resonates with you, you might also meditate, pray, or engage in acts of worship or other rituals.

The exploration of Power and Control in Polyamorous Cults and Polycules continues. In Part Two, we’ll be looking at the dynamics of control from a somatic perspective, and in Part Three we’ll dig into the practicalities of moving from relational dynamics based on power and into relational dynamics centred on collaboration.

Thanks for reading. If you’re curious to know more about my work, head to radicalrelating.ca, or visit monogamydetox.com for information on my comprehensive 8 month course for unlearning mononormativity through trauma-informed practices and moving into an embodied, liberatory framework for relating.

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Feelings in polyamory are complex.

And, a truth that few polyamorists may be willing to admit is that it can be exhausting feeling all the feelings that come along with having multiple loves.

One relationship alone can bring up so many emotions — but add more partners to the mix, more relationships (each with its own rhythm, trajectory, and vibe), and we might start to feel multiple sets of contrasting emotions simultaneously. You might be deeply in love with a partner and also anxious about a new relationship you are forming. You might be sad about a change in a relationship while still riding the waves of new-relationship-energy. And you might be angry about changes beyond your control, while still caring for the person who instigated them.

Emotions are multi-faceted responses. They can include psychological states (like distress or ease), impulses towards physical actions (to get into a fight, to leave), and a component of meaning-making (such as “I’m safe” or “I’m not safe”). Emotions usually offer us clues about how we are doing.

When we have a lot of feelings that we are unfamiliar with, it’s easier to get overwhelmed by them. This is as true of enjoyable feelings like love and joy as it is of less enjoyable feelings like anger, jealousy, and sadness. And in non-monogamy, where we may have different and contrasting sets of emotions arising in different relationships at the same time, that overwhelm can be magnified — and sometimes becomes a disruptive force in relationships.

Maybe you’ve experienced this, or you’ve seen or heard others talking about it in polyamory groups: a partner goes from being warm and engaged to dismissive and avoidant. Maybe you’re the partner who’s been feeling emotionally numb or withdrawn from your loved ones. Emotional overwhelm can lead to patterns where we adapt to being emotionally guarded and either feign emotional connection, or go overboard doing emotional labour for the partner who is overwhelmed and beginning to withdraw in a bid to keep their presence with us.

I’ve been getting ready to teach a workshop on this. It’s called Feel Your Feelings, a collaboration with my colleague Leanne Yau of Polyphillia. Click below to sign up- workshop recording is included with ticket price!

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Confession: I barely slept in my first two years of polyamory — and no, it wasn’t (just) for the reasons you might think.

I was plagued with insomnia: my body was exhausted, but my mind was stimulated: I was navigating new ways of relating and felt my mind and heart expanding exponentially — and also breaking — in every direction. I was newly divorced, in my early 30s, and living in a part of Vancouver where every other person seemed to be in an open relationship of some kind. I was enjoying a vibrant and rich dating life, experiencing the growing pains of my first metamour relationships (and conflicts), and at the same time, I was going through estrangement from my mother, who was extremely disapproving of my bisexual polyamorous life.

a 2014 selfie - on a solo weekend away, processing all the emotions, everywhere, all at once

I wasn’t used to experiencing so many emotions all at once. I found myself randomly breaking into tears on my bus commute to work, and staying up late trying to write my feelings out in the hope I might make some sense of them. It was too much for me to fathom all in one go, and so to cope, I pushed them aside. Feeling everything felt like an inconvenience when what I really wanted to do was have fun.

In somatics, ‘orienting’ is how our nervous system determines the direction of safety: we need to be able to take in what we’re experiencing in order to engage with it. In moments when too much is happening, that process of orienting is disrupted, and we may feel ungrounded, anxious, or even panicked.

We don’t just orient to what’s happening externally; we can also orient to what’s happening internally. And those physiological and psychological responses in our nervous system that give rise to emotional states are also things we can orient to. But in polyamory, when there may be a lot going on internally as well as externally, the process of being able to identify and connect with our own emotions can be disrupted. This is what happened to me in my early polyamory days, and I’ve seen it happen to many others too, even seasoned polyamorists: Too many contrasting emotions, happening in a short space of time, can leave a person feeling shocked even when some of those feelings are positive and pleasant — and we may start to compartmentalize how we’re feeling, or even hyper focus on the pleasant ones while shoving the unpleasant ones aside — just to be able to get through the day.

But the problem we face isn’t just that we’re feeling a lot, it’s that we live in a culture where emotional skills have atrophied— having feelings is a perfectly natural and healthy experience, and as a species that is wired for relationship and evolved in community, you’d think maybe there’d be a bit more capacity to navigate all that complexity in our selves, perhaps?

The cultural messages we receive about how to relate to our emotions are strongly influenced by colonialism and specifically white supremacy culture.

In her writing on the characteristics of white supremacy culture, Tema Okun describes a ‘right to comfort’, which shows up as “the belief that those with power have a right to emotional and psychological comfort”, and a value of logic over emotions. ‘Tone policing’ that chastises expressions of anger (especially from femme-presenting and gender non-conforming folks, as well as from POC of any gender) is normalized in dominant culture, and also within progressive spaces that prioritize comfort over authenticity.

If you’ve lived in a culture or family where the only emotional expressions were destructive ones, your nervous system might immediately respond to any emotional expression as if it were violent, disruptive, and harmful. Without role models for healthy relationships to emotions, you might avoid feeling your own and possibly avoid hearing the feelings of others.

On the other hand, if you grew up in a family or culture where big emotions were never expressed, being around big emotions may feel very scary. And even scarier when you notice them coming from you. You might find yourself trying harder to push down not just your own emotions, but others’ as well.

Me? I grew up between cultures and got mixed messages about how I was expected to relate to my feelings. Mediterranean and Latina on my mother’s side, and stoic English on my father’s side. My father’s emotions were like pastels in contrast to the vibrant neon shades of emotion my mother inhabited. It wasn’t until our family moved to Kuwait, where I was immersed in a culture that valued big emotional expression, that I found comfort with my own emotions. But when I moved to Canada in my early 20s, I was yet again confronted with a culture in which emotions and their expression were expected to be subdued.

To be clear: it’s totally okay to feel calm and happy, and I’m not saying that we need to go out of our way to be agitated and angry. What I’m saying is that rather than pushing all emotions aside as inconvenient, as white supremacy would have us do, we need to get better at recognizing when emotions are congruent with our experiences. We need to make sure that when we are happy and calm, we aren’t faking it, because we’ve been subjected to social messaging that shames us for feeling ‘ungrateful’ for what we have, or tells us that big emotions will be disruptive.

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Emotional Presence and Availability in Polyamory

Our capacity for emotional relating pendulates along a spectrum: from witnessing at one end to emotional merging at the other. Emotional merging can be healthy when we are infants and need the support of adult caregivers as we develop our sense of self, but as adults, it leads to codependency and relationships in which we quickly become emotionally dysregulated together. Sometimes, to counterpoint that merging, we become emotionally aloof and even hostile towards others’ emotional expression, fearful of the dysregulation it might bring.

Somewhere between witnessing and merging are emotional presence and emotional availability, and one of the biggest revelations for me about non-monogamy has been around the difference between them.

I noticed it at first in a partner: we’d been on a few dates, and the conversation was just as stimulating and enjoyable as the chemistry. We were starting to open up about our past relationship experiences, and I noticed how well-boundaried he was when it came to sharing about some of his recent relationship past: he shared enough to help me understand where he was at, but not so much as to let me in to being involved in his emotional life. I understood from the context of what he shared that he was probably not very emotionally available (something I was totally okay with), but what was perplexing was that he was very good at being emotionally present and listening empathetically when I shared my own boundaried snippets about my emotional life. In short, he could be present to my emotions: listen with compassion to what I was going through without getting too involved.

This firsthand experience of the difference between emotional availability and emotional presence blew my mind. And when I shared my thoughts with him about it, it blew his mind too: he had other partners wanting more emotional enmeshment with him, and a curiosity arose about whether they were mistaking his listening for emotional availability. I took that curiosity to sessions with my clients and offered them a similar inquiry, and I found that yes, for many people, there’s a difference.

Being emotionally present is about giving our attention and sympathy to another person’s emotional experience, for example, offering condolences to someone who is going through a big loss or congratulating someone on good news. It’s not a lack of care: it’s an emotional connection that’s congruent to the bandwidth of the individual, or to the capacity of the relationship.

Emotional availability goes further: it’s more than being present and witnessing someone else’s emotional experience. We join them in it: we experience our own emotional response to what they’re going through. I think of the times I’ve found myself tearing up when a client tells me about a loss in their life, or the heartfelt joy and excitement when one of my besties told me she was getting married.

When we are emotionally available, we tend to be more engaged in tracking the emotional well-being of those close to us. We don’t just check up on them — we consider them in our plans, think about how things might be impacting them, show way more empathy, and, consequently, we may have an easier time navigating repairs when that emotional availability is mutual. And when there’s a mutually emotionally available connection, I’ve found that the compersion feels much deeper than one of mutual presence.

This might be a controversial take: I think it’s okay to be emotionally present without being emotionally available with some partners. I don’t think this takes away from our experiences of non-monogamy: I think the awareness and transparency of emotional capacity have the potential to enhance our experiences in all of our relationships, and I also think it is absolutely important to communicate that to partners, and to do that, we have to be able to know our own emotional capacity first.

Ultimately, it’s okay if you don’t have much bandwidth for emotionally available relationships. Many people explore forms of non-monogamy that don’t involve a lot of emotional connection, and that’s okay as long as those expectations are clear for all involved.

After some experiences of emotional burnout, I focused on nurturing my friendships, and today, these are the most emotionally available relationships in my ecosystem. I make that clear to the people I date: there’s an emotional hierarchy in my life, and friends are absolutely at the top. In partnerships, I now tend to show up with oodles of emotional presence, and allow my emotional availability to grow as the trust and depth of a relationship grow, not as a currency to earn a deeper or more invested connection, but rather as the fruits of a connection that is growing deeper and is well-nourished. But I didn’t get to this overnight.

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Being An Emotionally Safe Person

Back in my early, insomnia-ridden days of polyamory, I had an experience of what it was like to date someone who wasn’t emotionally safe.

This particular partner had some very rigid ideas about what it looked like to do polyamory ‘right’. They had a habit of sharing a lot of criticism of others, including metamors and extended members of their polycule, judging others as too emotional and unable to be rational. What I took from their critiques was that, to this partner, emotions related to conflict and disagreement were a) always abusive, and b) a sign of bad polyamory. This partner was critiquing in others something that I loved about myself, and that left me feeling emotionally unsafe in the relationship. I made bids for emotional safety: sharing my own emotions about situations in my own life, but I would be immediately shut down, and the conversation would shift.

This partner did not seem to welcome any kind of emotional expression.

So, I held back about how I felt, trying to package my feelings into rational thoughts that might be better received, occasionally inviting my partner to look at other people’s situations from different perspectives. After a few months, I realized I couldn’t hold my discomfort in any longer. I let them know I wanted to go back to a friendship, and not date. I went out of my way to deliver this news gently and kindly, in an environment that felt supportive and resourcing, and tried to ‘speak their language’ by focusing on rationale rather than emotions — but I could tell they felt blindsided. What they expressed in the moment as mild upset later turned to anger and, dare I say, vengeful behaviour — but to this day, I don’t know how I could have spoken up earlier about my emotions with a partner who wasn’t emotionally safe to share with.

That brief relationship contributed to many years of holding back emotionally in my relationships: fluctuating between very rigid, self-protective boundaries and then exploding in big emotions when I couldn’t contain them anymore; at times, I was likely the partner who wasn’t emotionally safe for others. It was only when I moved from city life to the countryside in my late 30s (when my dating life slowed down significantly) that I started sleeping regularly again and began to process what had been going on internally all those years. I realized that pushing aside my emotions for a partner’s comfort was a form of self-sacrifice I had made far too many times in my life. Gradually, and with a lot of somatic work, I learned to recognize my own emotional capacity, identify when I was experiencing emotional discomfort, and better discern others’ capacity to be present or available to my emotional experiences.

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Emotional safety in our relationships is a shared responsibility — but showing up as an emotionally safe person doesn’t necessarily mean our partner will do the same.

Taking emotional responsibility also asks us to become more familiar with the range each of our emotions can take, and to practice noticing and expressing them before they become so loud that they push away the people we want to keep close.

You might sense emotions as changes in your body: heat, tension, a rush of energy, a change in your breathing. You may also notice emotions as impulses to action: to recoil, to lean towards, to move quickly, or to slow down.

As you grow more familiar with your emotional sensations and impulses, you become more comfortable feeling them. Rather than emotions feeling like strangers, they become friends who arrive to communicate important things to us about how we’re doing, rather than overwhelming sensations that we pull away from noticing.

The superpower that is unlocked when we pay more attention to sensations and emotional expressions is that we become attuned to our own emotional capacity. Knowing our own emotional capacity means we can be more open with our loved ones about our emotional availability, and possibly hold more tolerance, compassion, and boundaries when others have emotions to share that feel overwhelming.

Nothing will stop you from having a lot of feelings in your polyamorous relationships: that’s kinda the nature of the beast, and when you make that choice to step into multi-partner dynamics, a lot of feelings is what you’re signing up for. I know that, for me, the journey of learning to relate to my emotions with more awareness and responsibility has been a wonderful alchemical journey, and it’s one that I’m happy to now support others with too.

Thanks for reading. If you’re curious to know more about my work, head to radicalrelating.ca or visit monogamydetox.com for information on my comprehensive 8-month course for unlearning mononormativity through trauma-informed practices and moving into an embodied, liberatory framework for relating.

The Monogamy Detox Starts April 23rd

This month is my grandmother Theodosia’s birthday month.

Her name means ‘gift of god’. It’s not a super common Greek name for girls. She should have been named for her maternal grandmother. Still, as follows Greek naming tradition, when her father died before she was born (killed in a genocide, along with all the men in her family, save one infant cousin who was disguised as a girl), she was given the feminine form of his name, Theodosius.

She was, and continues to be, a gift in my life—someone whose legacy and teachings I look to every day. I keep photos of her around me, and she visits me in my dreams. I hear her last words to me, “You are going far, far, far, up!” over and over like an affirming prophecy that grounds me and nourishes me in the moments I feel stuck and lost.

My grandmother survived so much. Genocide. Childhood abuse from her stepfather. Nazis. Being sterilized when my mother was born prematurely. Medication-induced psychosis and attempts at suicide. Forced to leave her home as a political refugee. Sudden widowhood when she was in her late 40s.

And yet, the woman I knew was boundlessly joyful.

One of thousands of Pontic Greeks who arrived in Thessaloniki during the Greco-Turkish war 100 years ago, my grandmother was raised in a refugee camp by her Romani grandmother, who taught her card games, practices for divination and dream interpretation, and stories passed down through the generations (and long forgotten ancestors from India). But above all else, she taught her to practice joy, and to share this joy with others. And then, my grandmother passed these on to me.

I think that many survivors of systemic oppression know the importance of joy. Those who have experienced some of humanity’s darkest chapters know that we cannot be complacent about joy. Or maybe, it’s that those who do not cultivate moments of joy are the ones who don’t make it: as grim as that sounds, when I think about it that way, I find it makes me think about the urgency and necessity of joy. A choice to be joyful is a choice to claim something that the oppressors cannot control. To retain the capacity to laugh, dance, create, and delight in one another’s company is potent resistance against forces that thrive when we are collapsed, depressed, dissociated, and feel alone. When fighting against oppression, Joy reminds us what we are fighting for.

When I was writing my book, Radical Relating, and, specifically, writing the chapter Shame, Shadow, and Cultivating Compersion, I began to wonder, what if it is joy that is our natural state? A state of being that colonialism, systems of supremacy, and cis-hetero-mono-normativity have tried to suppress in us?

Compersion is a modern term, coined by polyamorists to describe the experience of sympathetic, empathetic joy at someone else’s happiness. It implies an emotion that subverts the mono-normative narratives of love being something that we must possess with exclusivity in order for it to be ‘real’. It denotes both a feeling and a practice of empathetic non-ownership and non-attachment within a polyamorous, multi-partner context, that counters colonial narratives of romantic and sexual relationships. But the concept and sensations it describes are not modern. They are incredibly ancient, and in Sanskrit, the equivalent word is mudita.

Mudita is joy for others: the elation a parent might feel when they see their child accomplishing something, the happiness you feel when a friend shares their good news, the warmth you experience when you witness two elders holding hands as they sit on their porch together. It’s a feeling that reflects a value of non-ownership over positive experience: when one person is experiencing good things, the joy that comes from that does not need to be hoarded. We do not have to be in conflict with one another over joy, to covet one another’s happiness, or to try to control the good feelings of others in order to experience good feelings in ourselves.

I love that non-monogamy has brought the concept of mudita into English through compersion. And I love that compersion isn’t limited to non-monogamy.

My earliest experiences of compersion were marked by expansive affection for my childhood friends. When it was someone I truly loved and cared for, I was never jealous of their good fortune, their relationships, or anything else that brought them joy. The relationship between us inferred that their joy would ripple through the relational web and benefit everyone around them.

When I started to experience compersion in my non-monogamy, at first, it showed up as a warm appreciation for someone’s marriage. A sense of ease after meeting a partner’s partner. Then it began to show up as a heart-opening sensation, a non-possessive witnessing, an emotional availability to be a witness to others’ joy. Seeing the happiness in the eyes of two people I cared for as they gazed at one another. I feel warmth in my heart as lovers tell me about new partners, and I notice the smile on my own face as their eyes light up when they tell me about them. The most elusive for me was erotic compersion, but even that came eventually: the excitement of knowing a partner was experiencing erotic adventures with someone else. And yes, the turn-on of being there to witness and participate.

Compersion expands my heart and my spirit. It helps me move away from the possessive grip that monogamous romantic mythology tells me is necessary to maintain and keep relationships alive, and encourages me to root into the attachment relationship I have with my whole relational ecosystem.

Compersion isn’t ever a one-and-done. To my surprise, compersion sometimes co-exists alongside my shadow emotions. When this happens, it becomes a counterpoint to the doom; it shines with glimmers of hope, warmth, and connection, reminding me that relationships can be a source of joy. There are times when very real conflict and friction mean I don’t experience compersion; instead, I feel fearful, sometimes envious, and perhaps even angry.

An attitude of compersion is something we have to choose to cultivate, even in (and especially in) moments and relationships that hold friction.

I keep coming back to thinking about the importance of us paying attention to the world we want to create post-polycrisis, when the powers of dominance implode, as they inevitably will. When the empires crumble, as all empires must. What world do we want to inherit? I deeply believe that the seeds for that world lie in how we are meeting the present day, and that each of us carries a sacred responsibility to tend a path of kindness forward: our survival, and potential thrival, in a post-facist world depends on the compassion and kindness we cultivate today.

And this brings me back to my grandmother.

In the spring of 1986, my mother, my grandmother, and I travelled to Frankfurt, Germany, to be with our meditation teacher, who was hosting a retreat there. This trip could have been filled with friction. My grandmother sat me down and told me how it was the German doctors who cut her open, the reason she had “three bellybuttons” (her scars had never healed properly, and this is what I called them). I know now that for many years this trauma defined her. Photos of her when my mother was young show her scowling, bitter, angry, even though I had never known her to be that way.

I was horrified! How could we be visiting people who had once been enemies? She explained to me that it was in the past, and that our being there was part of the healing that had to happen after wars. She was not just looking forward to the visit; she was excited for it.

I don’t know what her inner process was like. Still, as an adult, I find myself in awe that she could get to that place in herself, a place not just of forgiveness for this horrendous thing that had been done to her and changed her life, but to a place of feeling joyful about what it meant to be in a country that had once represented that pain. Yes, she was happy to see our meditation teacher. But she could have become possessive about it. She could have complained that people in Germany shouldn’t have what she had. She could have just not gone. But she didn’t. Something in her felt joy that people in Germany would also be experiencing the joyful presence and wisdom of our teacher. She wanted to be there to witness it, to share in it. She felt mudita. Compersion.

Maybe the trip allowed her to confront her shadows and put some pain to rest. Maybe there was a moment when she asked herself what benefit there was to holding on to her anger, or to denying herself joy?

However she got there, I am so glad she did.

Empire wants to separate us from joy. It does this in so many ways, keeping us highly mobilized, vigilant, fearful, and hateful.

The culture of hyper-independence teaches us to hoard joy. It steers us away from Compersion. Social media pettiness feeds neuro-pathways in our brains that direct us towards disgust instead of mudita when we witness joy and happiness in others. We learn to mistrust it, question it, dismantle it. We practice bullying those experiencing joy when we are unable to find joy in ourselves. In some cases, we see others’ joy as a threat.

There is a cost to this. Anger, hatred, fear, disgust: these are the antithesis of joy. They exist as highly mobilized, vigilant states in our nervous system that pull us away from real connection, empathy, and the kinds of relationships and community that allow us to mobilize against oppression healthily. Joy has the potential to release us from those states of mobilization and to bring us back to ourselves, back to others, and to reconnect with our relationality.

Without the reprieve of joyful moments, vigilance can lead us to emotional armouring and extreme self-protection, which in turn can lead to puritanical interpretations of what activism must look like, alongside punitive and carceral actions against activism that looks different. A forever vigilant body may inadvertently recreate the systems of dominance it seeks to dismantle. We become disembodied and live in our intellect, disconnecting from heart, body, and from spirit.

A highly mobilized and vigilant nervous system is often disconnected from our feelings, from our bodies, and from our spirits, and the liberatory movement it creates will reflect that. A liberatory movement that doesn’t include the heart will result in a culture that is sociopathic. A liberatory movement that doesn’t honour the body will result in a culture that is ableist. A liberatory movement that doesn’t honour the spirit will result in a culture of exploitation.

To thrive beyond the oppressive systems of colonialism and empire, we have to find our way out of the vigilant hold it keeps us in; we have to come back into connection with ourselves. The pathway out is through the release joy brings. Joy pendulates our nervous system; it provides an exit door out of fear and back into our bodies, our hearts, and our spirits. Any kind of joyful moment has the potential to do this, and our collective ancestors knew this. They have given us dance, music, song, prayer, art, stories, rituals, foods, and other practices that help us to unwind the knots in our hearts, and bring lightheartedness, play, connection with one another, and so much more.

Anarchist Emma Goldman wrote that a revolution without dancing is not a revolution worth having. Dancing is one of those things that brings us joy. Not selfish joy: whether you’re dancing alone or dancing with others, there’s a sense of expansive joy. Mudita. Compersion. Joy that delights in the warmth and goodness of others. Joy that exponentially multiplies and reminds us of our deep connection to one another.

Which makes me ponder: what if it’s not that sympathetic and empathetic joy is just an ingredient in the revolution — what if joy is the revolution?

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My grandmother passed away in 2002 after several years of battling Alzheimer’s and dementia. She never held a degree. Never ran a business. Never wrote a story. But she left a legacy through the joy she taught me to share.

She lost her languages in the reverse order in which she learned them—first English, then Spanish, then Greek. Her body functions broke down, and sometimes she would go into a panic. But two things stayed constant: her determination to keep going and the joy in her eyes when she saw me.

I wonder what conversations we would have if she were alive today. Would she be proud of me and the work I do? Would she celebrate my writing and my queerness? I wonder what she would think of the state of the world today — and, would she be dancing to the music from the Bad Bunny halftime show, the reggaeton rhythms perhaps feeling at times familiar to the Romani and Greek rhythms she would have danced to in childhood in the refugee camp?

Call it joy, call it compersion, call it mudita: every moment we shared was expansive, loving, uplifting, and deeply nourishing. Rather than passing on the bitterness of her pain and trauma, she gave me the gift of her heart, and I am forever grateful. I see her laughter in mine, her joyful dance in my own joyful dance. She survived and thrived, so that I could also survive and thrive.

The next Vancouver Polyamory 101 is on March 3rd — details will be up on Plura soon.

In the meantime, here's two online events you can catch me at:

Sun Feb 15th: Neuro-colonization of Love: https://tr.ee/oMG3og2M8i

Sun March 1st: Opening Up: Non Monogamy 101: tinyurl.com/nm1012026

Thank you to everyone who tuned in live, and I hope you enjoy the recording of our chat!

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Before I continue, a quick disclaimer: I’m not a citizen or resident of the US, so I do not believe it is my place to say what citizens and residents of the US should do in terms of taking action right now. I feel hope seeing the mobilization of community resistance, and I’ve long been inspired by civil rights leaders from the US. As someone who lives in and holds citizenship of Canada, I confess that I often feel like we’re in that slow-boiling pot up here, and every day I consider what actions I will take to stop the spread of fascism here.

Unless you hold a tremendous amount of privilege, you probably know what it’s like to live through experiences that feel inescapable.

When we feel trapped, we become highly vigilant, sometimes even consumed by rage or fear, and yet may struggle to protect ourselves or know what to do to reach safety.

We may feel opposing impulses to push back at those in power, and to survive by submitting to the will of individuals and systems that appear to have more power than we do.

We may desire to run away, and yet feel compelled to stay and fight.

We may want to get involved but not know where to start, and decide that it doesn’t really affect us directly, so we ignore it.

We may end up suppressing any urge to move or take action because no course of action feels truly safe.

In the language of Somatic Experiencing™, we explore the “inescapable attack” or inescapable threat through the context of animal attacks on humans in the wild. But there are so many other causes of the somatic sensations of feeling trapped: systemic oppression, living in a physically and/or emotionally abusive relationship, poverty, sickness and/or disability, war (including civil war), genocide, being bullied, being cancelled — the list goes on.

It’s almost irrelevant what the cause of this experience is: the sensations of it are the same. And, our nervous systems respond accordingly.

Living in compulsory, patriarchal monogamy, I felt trapped. It wasn’t just the structure and form of the relationship; it was the way my husband held me to his expectations of what being married would mean, and the discomfort he had with my creative endeavours, layered on top of my experience as an immigrant who felt reliant on him as I navigated a country and culture I was unfamiliar with (Canada) and waited for my paperwork to come through. My health suffered, my creativity went into a collapse, and I spent so many years dissociated as a means to endure the situation that I have only very foggy memories of my 20s.

When I left the marriage and entered into the freedom of exploring my queerness, my sexuality, and my polyamory in earnest, every day was filled with the ecstasy of at last, I am free to be my self!

But, even in my polyamorous journey, I ran into experiences where I felt trapped. Controlling metamours, emotionally unavailable partners I was deeply in love with, the feeling that I might have to push my needs and boundaries aside if I wanted to be included, and bullying from people who felt that the soloness in my polyamory made me a threat.

More than once, I have squashed my impulses to leave a painful situation in a relationship, hoping that the payoff of continued connection and intimacy would be worth it. The stress of these situations seemed less painful than the pain of being alone. Instead, my nervous system responded by going into collapse. In one instance, I actually physically collapsed stepping off a bus, colliding into the bus shelter as I passed out on the sidewalk. This incident became a catalyst for me, and I began seeking support to understand what exactly was happening within me that made me feel so trapped, when there wasn’t truly anyone keeping me stuck where I was.

Where I had once been frozen and unsure about how to move forward, I got support to get clear on what I needed to do, and take action to set the boundaries I needed for myself, address the stress, and focus on nurturing the relationships and friendships in my life that did not seek to control how I showed up in my life. I got external support to ‘escape’ the perceived threat, and over time, found my nervous system emerging from years of collapse and back into connection.

Navigating our way out of any perceived threat can be complex. It doesn’t matter if the source of that threat is a partner who guilt-trips us when we don’t meet their expectations, someone bullying us on the internet, or a militant force making its way through the streets. We may not know the way out or which direction to take. Even identifying the threat can be challenging, as so many forms of systemic oppression have been normalized. “Boys will be boys” is often used to excuse a man's harmful behaviour. Leftist and radical spaces can sometimes slide into policing people’s behaviour every bit as much as conservative and fascist ones do. And, some threats come on like that metaphorical slow-boiling pot that the frog doesn’t realize is killing him, till it’s too late.

For centuries, colonial, white supremacist, patriarchal, capitalist/oligarchal systems have built a structure that is based on threat. It’s this structure that we refer to when we talk about Empire. If you aren’t a rich white, cis-het man (or allied to one), you are a target for being controlled, exploited, enslaved, and killed. It’s been happening for centuries, but social media makes it more visible. Every day for the past few years, we have witnessed that trans rights are under threat, that misogyny continues to affect all women, that patriarchy traps men into increasingly rigid parameters of masculinity, that hate crimes are on the rise, and that in Canada, the USA, and Europe, Black, Brown, Indigenous, and diasporic people (such as the Romani) are murdered and go missing at much higher rates than light or white-skinned people.

In my coaching work in non-monogamy, one of the primary things I explore is how to rewire the mono-normative thinking that often leads us to be controlling or self-abandoning in our non-monogamous relationships. I resonate with the saying, “silence the colonizer in your head,” and apply that to silencing the voice of the monogamy hangover that carries over when people begin exploring polyamory — and that can be very loud when there’s any kind of relationship stress.

To survive the trap of Empire, we have to silence the voice of Empire in our heads. Many of us who dream of a better world still carry with us a colonial hangover that continues to push us into being small, dissociated, disembodied, and to be led by fear. It’s a hangover that can push us to behave like colonizers ourselves, and attempt to get free by hoarding power.

I truly believe that all of us, myself included, have to take responsibility for our own personal work to overcome that internalized narrative that believes we’ll only be free of the cage when we’re the ones holding the keys to its door.

This is why I love somatics and working with my nervous system. Because when the nervous system learns to recognize that safety does not, in fact, rest in holding power over and placing others into positions of power under, everything begins to change. The ways we may have internalized colonized thinking (neurocolonization) begin to unravel, and it becomes much, much harder for the systems of power hoarding to make us feel truly trapped.

If you’ve never thought about your nervous system before, let me offer you some non-jargony ways to think about it. Your nervous system has gears that it shifts into in response to what you are doing and experiencing: connection, mobilization, shutdown, and rest. We move through these four states every day: connecting with loved ones, taking action towards our goals, disconnecting after periods of stress (think of when you’re doomscrolling at the end of the day), and resting when we sleep or meditate.

Each of these states has its purpose and reason. None of them are bad.

But, if we are always mobilized, we burn out. If we are always shut down, we disconnect from relationships. If we are always resting, we lose connection. If we are always orienting to connection, we may surrender our autonomy without realizing we’ve done so. Moving between these states, in ways that are congruent with what’s happening around us, is vital.

This ability of our nervous system to shift between states is the essence of resilience. And, resistance to the systems of harm currently inflicting terror on the world relies on our capacity for somatic resilience. To survive, and thrive beyond the crumbling of empires asks us to resolve the inner experience of fearing that inescapable threat. And that means we need to practice navigating out of the state of collapse and into positive, relationally connected mobilization.

SOMATIC ORIENTING PRACTICE

Next time you feel stuck, try this little somatic practice.

You can do this practice seated or lying down.

Put your feet somewhere comfortable. If having your feet touch the ground is more comfortable, you can sit or lie with your knees bent and your feet flat on the earth. Or if you prefer to sit cross-legged, make sure that your sit bones feel grounded and your spine can elongate with ease.

However your body is positioned, make sure this is a position where you can rest without tension.

Take a moment to breathe in without forcing your breath. As you exhale, invite the parts of you feeling tension to let go. If it’s helpful for you, try an audible sigh or hum as you exhale, to encourage more ease as you let your body drop into the caress of gravity.

Gently place a hand on your thighs or knees, and feel the weight of your hand against your legs. You exist within this body, a body that has journeyed with you through so much. Say outloud, or think about, something you are grateful to your Body for.

Now, place a hand on your heart or your belly, and gently pat or rub the area. Feel the warmth your touch brings to your torso, and notice the sensations of blood flowing through your core, as it does day in and day out. Say, or think about, something that you are grateful to your Heart for.

Keeping your eyes open or closed, cup a hand behind your neck or gently touch your face, forehead, or eyebrows. Allow this touch to be comforting, soothing, calming. Notice how your thoughts become more easeful with this touch, and say or think about something that you are grateful to your Mind for.

Let your hands rest by your side, and gently breathe in and out effortlessly, without forcing your breath. As you breathe in, invite your body to be more open, invite your spine to elongate gently, your shoulders to roll back, and your gaze to move slightly upwards. You might imagine or visualize the air that you are breathing into your lungs, the oxygen given to us by the plants, and then the air that you exhale, containing carbon that the plants will breathe. Paying attention to how you breathe can be a reminder of your connection to the ecosystem around you. You can say or think about anything in your life that you are grateful for.

As you complete this practice, gently move your body.

Take your time, and look around you. Drink in your surroundings and pay attention to anything that pleases or is beautiful to you.

When you feel ready, move your body around, shake out your limbs, or dance for a few minutes, and notice if how you feel now is different from how you felt before you did this practice.

You can also find me at radicalrelating.ca, where you can learn more about my somatic coaching and workshops for non-monogamy and relationship anarchy.

Your support means the world to me. Together, we can grow and sustain loving, kind, and compassionate relationships for a better world.

With the social media trend du jour being a comparison of 2016 to 2026, let me tell you- looking back at my life in 2016 has been a stark reminder of why I abandoned “community” and “villaging”, and went on to revisit what I was doing in my polyamory.

In this moment, when so many are seeking community and village-building as a survival response to crumbling systems around them, it feels important to offer counterpoints and share the red flags I’ve stumbled upon in my own anarchist quest to build community through my polyamorous relationships.

TL;DR version: Once Upon A Time, I thought I had found a community. What I had actually found was a would-be cult populated with high-control personalities, none of whom seemed capable of engaging with one another (or anyone else) in a truly trauma-sensitive way, nor of relinquishing power — many of whom were somehow involved in my polycule at the time.

When I stepped away, I shifted my focus to personal healing, understanding why I had gotten so drawn in, and learning how to show up as a better friend.

So, here’s the long version.

As a solo polyamorist (and as someone who has been shouting from the rooftops about it for almost 14 years now), I will be the first person to say this. When you’re polyamorous (and especially when you are solo), you absolutely need community. You need peers (who you aren’t fucking or dating) to help you understand your experience, and you absolutely need friends you can talk to who aren’t going to balk about you dating multiple people.

I’ve always valued community. I grew up with a global sense of my community - I have a global sangham through my spiritual path, and through my years living in Kuwait, I made friends from all over the world. My cultural roots are communitarian (Greek and Romani), despite intergenerational wounds of loss of community through wars and genocides. This has always been in stark contrast to my father’s very British and stoic family (who tend to forget to let everyone know when someone passes away).

Moving to North America, I felt void of community. It wasn’t just that I didn’t know who Mr Dressup was, or had never watched a hockey game. People around me didn’t relate to me the way I wanted to relate to them. I was used to relating generously - feeding my friends and being fed by them, sharing the highs and lows. Canada was a culture shock to my system , and I struggled to find spaces that replicated the kind of friendship I had come to know.

When I was married, part of what I yearned for when we started talking about having threesomes was someone else to share with. I was painfully lonely in my marriage, and lacked friendships that had depth to them. The ‘third’ I sought was someone who I hoped could be a lover, but more importantly, a friend. A friend who might understand me far more than my husband. Someone who might join me in sharing not just a partner, but meals and adventures, and in creating warm, cozy social experiences for others and with others.

Even after my husband and I split, and I began exploring polyamory as a solo, single-ish person, that yearning for the closeness, the family-of-choice, remained strong.

Something I’ve seen happen far too often in polyamory is that we slide into relationships-by-proxy.

Oh, you’re polyamorous? So am I! We must have so much in common!

Oh, look, we’ve dated all the same people, surely we will get along!

I, too, have done this, most especially in the years after I divorced my husband and came out to my mother (in short, she was not supportive, and sought to have me institutionalized for my queerness). Ending one of my core life relationships and losing another left me with a huge void, one that I hoped to fill with loving, supportive polyamorous people (and hopefully, partners too).

There’s an undeniable delight when you find other people whose experiences are in any way similar to your own. The intoxication of this can be mutual, and the platonic new-relationship-energy can carry us just as romantic new-relationship-energy does — until we bump into our incompatibilities and conflicts.

Between 2012 and 2016, I threw myself into what I called “community”. I attended every polyamorous and sex-positive event I could, and even started organizing a few. I was a regular at the polyamory discussion group in Vancouver, took on organizing the polyamory float in the Vancouver Pride Parade (getting DJs and a dancing platform together!) and co-producing various dance events with different individuals and groups around the city. Being involved and having a visible role meant I didn’t have to look for people; they would come to me. My introvert self found it both a relief that I didn’t have to introduce myself to strangers, and simultaneously overwhelming AF when strangers introduced themselves to me. I was hungry to build connections, and through these connections, I thought I had found something that felt like safety.

Eventually, through all these events, I connected with a collection of people who seemed serious about building an intentional community. They talked about it as a village. But a sexy village. A community that would be sex positive and welcoming of everyone’s queerness and kinks. But what started in joyful moments on sexually-charged dance floors would go on to take a turn to the dark side, the culty side.

This is where things get complicated, and let me be forthright that I’m not going to go into details or name names because, quite frankly, I still don’t feel safe around the people who held power in this “village” space. The new-relationship-energy I felt with them crumbled in the face of high-control personalities, conflicting values, and emotional abuse directed at me when I spoke up. I have gone to great lengths to distance myself from any past association with them. So, despite drafting out three pages of the story, I’m not going to share it. Instead, I’m going to share with you my conclusions, and what I now do to grow community.

What makes a community a community, and not just a gathering of people doing the same thing, is the ability to navigate conflict and difference, and to stay connected through that process. To meet conflict without trying to control the people you’re in conflict with.

I think about how Colonialism teaches that relationship is acquired through power, while cults say you get to have relationship through conformity. Community, on the other hand, says relationships start with sharing power while celebrating diversity—and giving a fuck about the well-being, feelings, and inner workings of everyone in the ecosystem.

Community relationship is rooted in conflict intimacy, and that’s a skill we have to cultivate individually. It’s a somatic skill, one that asks us to hold the energies of mobilization within our systems, whilst also staying relational.

This is counter to the way dominant culture has taught us to navigate conflict, which is to adhere to being right. “Being Right” is a power move, where we position ourselves in superiority — and take any challenge to our rightness, or invitation to humility, as an attack on our power and by extension, our selfhood.

As a very slight tangent, I see this is a dynamic that is reinforced by a lot of new age spirituality, neo-tantra, and fascist appropriations of yoga. The root teachings of yogic and tantric traditions that address polarity, especially the shaivite and shakta traditions, present it from a non-dual perspective. That is, the whole point is to transcend the polarity and to experience instead the unity of seemingly different and ‘opposite’ energies. Instead, those who are committed to “being right” and using systems of supremacy to control and coerce, use polarity work to accentuate differences between genders, sex, etc, because that then upholds the power over/under systems that supremacy culture thrives on.

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I say this as someone who spent years working on growing a village with whom to survive and thrive:

A village of lovers may not be the solution you hoped for.

Leaning on your polycule alone may be just as precarious as relying on a single romantic partnership through apocalyptic times.

My experience of this attempt to forge a village via polyamory changed the way I engaged with the whole idea of ‘community’. It opened my eyes to the fallacy of trying to build something new while still entrenched in the ways of the old. After years of describing myself as desiring kitchen-table polyamory, I let go of being attached to that and started to embrace my dating and sexual relationships existing seperate from my friendships and social connections.

I now feel about many so-called ‘community’ projects and the colonial systems they attempt to replace the same way I feel about many ‘men’s circles’ and internalized patriarchy: brand new packaging, same old taste.

So, what do I do instead?

I focus on friendship.

Specifically, I focus on being a good friend to the people whose actions show me they are safe to be friends with.

In the wake of expulsion from the fledgling, proto-cult, polyamorous ‘village’ experiment I fell into a decade ago, I became more discerning about whom I connected with socially. I spent months, years in therapy reflecting on what had led me to surrender so much agency to high-control personalities I mistook to be friends. What attachment wounds did I hold around community and extended family that had primed me for the experience of mistaking the dysfunction for safety?

I decided I needed more people around me with emotional maturity, people who could hold nuance, express conflict while keeping love in their hearts, and who are willing to go deep with me. We may have different ways of living our life, various spiritual practices or approaches to intimate relationships, but the common factor is that we give a fuck about one another — and that doesn’t change when we confront a difference.

I write in my dating profiles that my polyamory is about quality, not quantity, and that my relational ecosystem is focused on friendship. The people I have sex with are not a default priority, and I have found myself with a desire not to push or force relationships with the extended polycule of anyone I date. This practice has not only brought relief to my heart but clarity to my thoughts and given me the spaciousness to move more authentically towards an actual community of authentic relationships — not a de facto assumed community-by-proxy. That isn’t to say that I don’t give a fuck about the people in my extended network of polyamorous connections: I know that we are in a shared ecosystem together. Instead, I practice recognizing where we are, rather than projecting expectations of where I want (or don’t want) us to be. Where relationships (romantic and platonic) used to be a source of stress, they are now a source of expansion, possibility, and liberation.

Today, I have a plethora of friends who understand me far more than my partners or lovers. People who join me in sharing meals, adventures, and with whom I create warm, cozy social experiences for others and with others.

I could write a short essay on each one of the people I consider close friends. I feel blessed to have these close friendships, and I recognize that none of them happened by accident. They’re the result of mutual investments of time, energy, love, and a desire to understand and support one another.

The biggest teacher for me about what really makes a community has come from my spiritual sangham. Many of the people in this sangham have known each other for over 20 years, some for over 40, and they still engage with one another with joy and enthusiasm. There may be debates about who makes the best chai or whose dal was the right amount of spicy, but there is always an overwhelming feeling that we are all there in support of one another’s greatness. There’s no competition for control. No one’s trying to be in charge of everyone else. There’s respect for each person’s gifts, and a desire to support one another when we’re bumping against our personal edges. The collaboration among everyone, from minor tasks like rearranging the cafe seating to major ones like planning a new program, blows me away. A new idea or suggestion from an individual isn’t seen as a challenge; it is welcomed as a gift. Feedback is embraced with love and humility. And even in the midst of experiences of rupture, there’s a desire for connection and understanding.

If you’re someone whose motivation for polyamory has included the desire to find village, I hope that you are not deterred by what I share. Rather, I hope this invites you to reflect on potential red flags and to consider how to identify and navigate the arc of each individual connection, rather than assuming community-by-proxy.

I still believe that the relational skills that support us in our non-monogamy are the same ones that support us to build community. I just suggest that maybe these don’t overlap or intertwine as much as some might like them to — and that there’s nothing wrong with this.

So, consider this an invitation to make 2026 a year where you don’t focus on “building community”, but rather, focus on being a good friend, being a good neighbour, and being someone who is safe to be in community with.

If you’ve enjoyed this piece, please consider being a subscriber. You can subscribe for free, or with a paid subscription you’ll have access to the archives — and, my eternal gratitude.

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