When You’re Ready to Learn…

Polyamory was some­thing com­pletely new and excit­ing to me when I first entered the world of kink and BDSM. The very idea that the default of monogamy that soci­ety thrust upon me wasn’t the only optional avail­able was tit­il­lat­ing, excit­ing, and fright­en­ing. Yes, fright­en­ing — though the idea held some appeal, there were so many unknowns that I had no idea where to even begin my explo­ration. In my per­sonal life, I had no good exam­ples of polyamory work­ing in real life sit­u­a­tions, and on the inter­net, the few pos­i­tive exam­ples I found were greatly out­num­bered by the tales of drama I found.

In fact, when D and I tried our first and so far only attempt at poly, it was such a dis­as­ter through and through that I almost swore it off for­ever, decid­ing that at least the drama from one rela­tion­ship had to be less than that of mul­ti­ple rela­tion­ships. Since that time, though, I have grown a lit­tle older and a lit­tle wiser. A year or so has passed since then, and I have found a wealth of resources and infor­ma­tion that I wish I had known  about back then. One of the absolute best that I would rec­om­mend to any­one want­ing to know more about rela­tion­ships, whether they be polyamorous or monog­a­mous is Tris­tan Taormino’s Open­ing Up.

Tris­tan Taormino is a well known name in the sex com­mu­nity — she is an award win­ning author, colum­nist, edi­tor and sex edu­ca­tor. You may know her from her work with Vivid or her own pro­duc­tion com­pany, Smart Ass Pro­duc­tions. Per­son­ally, I still remem­ber her as a edi­tor of the les­bian mag­a­zine, On Our Backs.  As the author of Open­ing Up, Taormino care­fully and method­i­cally tack­les an issue that, while still taboo to much of main­stream Amer­ica, is rapidly becom­ing a lifestyle choice or option for many who have decided not to limit them­selves to soci­etal “norms”.

I think Open­ing Up is a great book — to me, it is *the* book to read on polyamory. Taormino tack­les the sub­ject in its entirety, pro­vid­ing def­i­n­i­tions and expla­na­tions of dif­fer­ent lifestyle choices within the umbrella term of polyamory. She explains that there are many dif­fer­ent “styles” of poly and that what works for one group of peo­ple may not work for oth­ers. She also goes into the all impor­tant topic of com­mu­ni­ca­tion — while extremely impor­tant in any rela­tion­ship, she explains why it is so cru­cial to rela­tion­ships con­tain­ing more than two peo­ple, and she offers help­ful tips and sug­ges­tions to help you on y0ur per­sonal jour­ney, should you choose to make it. But most impor­tantly, and this is my favorite part of the book, she doesn’t diss monogamy either. Too many web­sites, peo­ple and groups in favor or sup­port of polyamory come off as vir­u­lently anti-monogamy. After my bad expe­ri­ence with poly, when I decided to remain monog­a­mous, I was lam­basted by some within the com­mu­nity for allow­ing myself to be close minded because the state of monogamy was “unnat­ural”. Taormino doesn’t judge, she merely seeks to inform. She just wants you to know that there are other options avail­able to you should you choose to explore “open­ing up” your relationship.

This is a book that every­one, whether kinky or vanilla, should read — it’s absolutely essen­tial. Pick it up from Babe­land right now and take advan­tage of  20% off on staff favorites!