Recommended Reading

This is a great book about relationships and learning to be authentic within them. So often we feel like we have to change ourselves to keep our Dear Love. This book explains how to keep your own authenticity as well as maintain wonderful, loving relationships. It’s not specifically a poly book, but it is, indeed, very poly friendly.
“Thou art God!” may not mean what you think it means. Read very, very carefully. If it seems new agey or fluffybunny to you, dig deeper.
This book is actually not only intended for the up and coming executive, but is a set of really good tools for a life well-lived. Business models these days actually do talk about the fact that people and relationships are the most important things, and Dr. Covey has been beating the drum for that very concept for decades. Although I suspect it’d horrify the author, this book is great for sussing out who and what you are, and where you’re going, and focusing on what you value — even if those values are hard “American mainstream”. It’s another book that’s really good for people who want to be true to themselves and life better lives from it.
The book’s characters are mostly non-monogamous, and it has several group marriages in it. I’m really mostly recommending it because it has an almost textbook example of how a poly family can go badly wrong! While my own marriage did not implode in quite the same way, having been through a poly divorce, I find the scenario far more plausible and believable than when I first read Friday at sixteen!
The book is a trifle “Seventies” and doesn’t actually deal a whole bunch with the sexually open side. But in the face of that, it’s a good read and makes a great point about how being joined at the hip in a marriage isn’t really a great idea.
The Oneida Community was a 250 person group marriage in the nineteenth century. They got a lot wrong and a lot right. Their example is imminently worthy of study for any polyamorous person. Sadly, I think that such a community would be considered a cult today, and I doubt they’d've gotten off as light as they did in the gentler, freer and more sexually open Victorian times.
Tirzah Miller was a member of the Oneida Community and one of the participants in their breeding program. Her diary is a fascinating read, and gives you an interesting perspective on what it was like to live as a woman in the Oneida Community.
Relationships Blogs - Blogged Blog Directory