If you want a radically honest relationship, you can draw on the creativity and conscientiousness of the growing community that practices the art and science of consensual nonmonogamy, or CNM. Jessica Fern’s Polysecure is a bold, compassionate, and practical primer on why relationships wreck us and how to grow through that pain. It’s so good, you might want to read it several times at once. It puts relationships on hard mode, and the rewards are well worth it.

Polysecure applies attachment theory to the practice of CNM. (CNM encompasses lots of relationship modalities, of which polyamory is one, zipless hookups are another, and “solo poly” is currently my favorite.) The first part sets up the conceptual framework; it’s meticulously researched, highly detailed, and instruction-manual dry. The last part provides on-the-ground advice on how to apply these ideas to almost any relationship, even if it’s just the one with the CD longbox from The Comfort Zone by Vanessa Williams, and it’s essential reading if you plan to get nasty with other humans.

The basic idea of attachment theory is that the bonds we establish with our primary caregivers in childhood can help explain our obnoxious and destructive behavior as adults in relationships with other adults, whether one at a time or several. The big-four attachment styles are:

• Secure: You know you who are and feel good about it. You know what you want and how to get it. You form mutually supportive relationships with others without letting them cramp your style. You’re a very strange person and should donate your body to a large research university.
• Preoccupied: You have a lot of embarrassing needs. You’re afraid of rejection, and you’re afraid being true to yourself will bring it about. Your crushes crush you and you fixate on your limerent love objects, especially when they’ve forgotten you exist (or they’re trying to). You change your address frequently, but your mail goes to 123 Cringe Ct. in Pickme, Connecticut.
• Dismissive: You love your freedom and give others a wide berth so their sloppy-ass feelings don’t stain your upholstery. You distrust others and prefer to be your own boss, lover, confidant, and fashion consultant. You’re lonely, but you can live with it because you’re cool like that, and you wish we were, too.
• Fearful: This one combines the worst of the previous two. You distrust others but crave intense relationships. You value your independence and long for someone to come along and wreck it so you can feel alive. You want people to like you, especially when you don’t like them. After a while, your self-deprecating humor stops being funny.

Examining your attachment style will fricassee the stories you’re telling yourself about yourself and your relationships. It opens your old wounds, breaks your patterns, and affords tremendous opportunities for growth. The same can be said for consensual nonmonogamy, which is why, although its social stigma is fading, it’s unlikely to replace the couple-and-kids standard for American fantasy life.

Fern is clear on all the ways in which CNM will absolutely eviscerate you. It will expose your deepest insecurities while removing many traditional structures for support and shelters for righteous indignation. Hurt people hurt people, and people who deny their own suffering do the most damage. People you love will fuck people who aren’t you, you’ll know about it, and you’ll have to be okay with that. Plus, there’s a lot of pain-in-the-ass project management.

Perhaps you’re not interested in CNM. Maybe you’re in a monogamous relationship and it’s aces. Maybe you’ve succeeded in using the couple-and-kids lifestyle as a hedge against chaos. Bully for you. You should probably get a checkup with a good relationship counselor every 3,000 miles.

While I’m sure some folks experience healthy stability and shared support in monogamous relationships, they can also be an excuse for complacency, stagnation, and douchey double-lives. A lot of you aren’t doing the work and it shows. Most marriages end in divorce or misery. A huge number of allegedly monogamous partners, including an exploding percentage of women, cheat. The costs of rearing kids in atomized nuclear families are becoming prohibitively expensive for people who don’t work all the time. Kids who grow up with two resentful, dishonest parents will likely struggle to form their own secure bonds, perpetuating the cycle of frustration. Your self-righteous suffering is not noble if you aren’t willing to learn from it.

I got into CNM in the wake of my bloodbath of a divorce, and I’ve found it has much to teach about how to have sex on purpose. Much like the kink scene, it has rules, taxonomies, insider vocab, and a nerdy Bay Area smell I initially found off-putting. (I live in Los Angeles, where we toot blow, engage in mutually degrading sex acts, and scream the word “fuck” at each other all weekend without overthinking it.) Now I think it’s way ahead of the curve.

Kinksters and poly folks take sex seriously because they know they’re playing with dynamite. People get hurt, and we should try to hurt ourselves and each other in ways that are helpful. In my experience, kinksters and CNMers – with a few glaring exceptions – are more thoughtful, deliberate, and conscientious about sex than the passive-aggressive serial monogamists I used to hang with. Consensual nonmonogamy feels exquisite if you spent seven years suffering through the non-consensual kind. It affords generous opportunities to grow more generous. It rewards curiosity.

I’m not saying you’re not cool if you’re not polyamorous, but you’re a fool if you don’t tap this book for relationship advice. With the tools and strategies that help freaks like me navigate multiple relationships simultaneously, you should be able to reach a detente on who cleans the fridge and who scrubs the baseboards.

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