Recipes for Disaster: an anarchist cookbook

It's probably just as common for lovers in a non-monogamous relationship to feel insecure about their longing for monogamy, or at least some of the reassurances it professes to offer, as it is for them to feel ashamed of their desires for others. It is important

that we avoid developing a competitive culture of non-monogamy, in which people must feel shame for wanting anything "bourgeois" or "traditional." Everything, every desire and need, has to be respected, or else this is no revolution after all, just the estabHshing of a different norm. If it's important to you that you're non-monogamous, you may well have developed a insistent or even confrontational attitude about it, in the face of this unwelcoming society; make sure that this doesn't translate to you making others feel they must live up to some standard around you. Accept whatever others tell you about their needs supportively?they are doing you a favor by being up front with you. Maybe the differences in what you want mean you can't be involved in certain ways, at least for the time being. That's still better than making each other miserable, struggling to get each other to change or denying your needs for one another.

The terms your relationship starts on will probably set the tone for it for a long time to come. Lovers who begin on shared terms of non-monogamy and successfully establish trust with each other will probably have little trouble maintaining a healthy non-monogamous relationship for as long as both desire to. Lovers who start out in a monogamous relationship and decide to change the terms to non-monogamous, however, may You can spice up a first date by" well encounter difficulties, as their expectations and ways of feeling safe and loved may resolving to get in trouble with the already be tied to the question of the other partner's "faithfulness." Now, if you really authorities for something dreadfuify want to wreck a relationship, start it out on monogamous terms (or simply leave the ni^ht;7oXellyou!datlofyour issue unaddressed, so assumptions can develop unchecked by reality), then sleep with plan, of course. someone else, and afterwards tell your partner you want to be non-monogamous; for maximum destruction, don't even confide that you've slept with or are sleeping with someone else?let your partner discover it as a surprise. Obviously, this is not the way to go about having a healthy love affair.

Non-Monogamous Relationships 399

Handi'mg jealousy

'"This is not an attempt to legislate

for tliose wlio prefer anonymous,

promiscuous encounters in bati^rooms

and cruising parks ? do what you want,

proi>ided you lool< out for each other!

Non-Monogamous Relationships 400