by Melina | Aug 18, 2021 | Intimacy, Non Monogamy, Polyamory, Relationship Anarchy, Self Care
Just like any healthy ecology, a relationship landscape will naturally shift and transform through the passage of time: trees grow and blossom in spring, fruit through summer, some shed their leaves in autumn. Smaller plants come, and go. Perennial relationships are...
by Melina | Mar 18, 2021 | Non Monogamy, Polyamory, Relationship Anarchy
This article originally appeared on Polysingleish, April 28th, 2015. It has been edited and updated from it’s original version. The most common script that we follow in relationships is that of the Relationship Escalator. Originating in Patriarchal Monogamy,...
by Melina | Sep 18, 2020 | Non Monogamy, Polyamory, Relationship Anarchy
This article originally appeared on Polysingleish, June 28th, 2015. It has been edited and updated from it’s original version. I have a confession: it took me a while to wrap my head around what ‘couple’s privilege’ was all about....
by Melina | Sep 17, 2020 | Non Monogamy, Polyamory
This article originally appeared on Polysingleish, Feb 9th, 2015. It has been edited and updated from it’s original version. The Perfect Polyamorous Person— or PPP for short— develops in all of us who start exploring polyamory. It’s this future...
by Melina | May 3, 2020 | Relationship Anarchy, Self Care
This article was written during the COVID-19 Lockdown. Before you read on, I need to offer acknowledgement that I write under unique circumstances during these lock-down times: I have the privilege to live in an area where there have been few cases, and transmission...
by Melina | Apr 5, 2019 | Intimacy, Monogamy, Non Monogamy
When we hold an expectation of our partner to be everything: best friend, surrogate parent, emotional processor, and the sole person responsible for supplying our life pleasure and happiness, things tend to go awry. We’ve been raised with these expectations, but that...
by Melina | Jan 20, 2019 | Intimacy
There’s more written in polyamorous literature about jealousy and compersion than possibly anything else. And still, the feeling of compersion seems elusive for many. Compersion— a word coined within polyamory but increasingly finding mainstream use— is defined as an...
by Melina | Oct 28, 2018 | Conflict, Conflict Intimacy, Intimacy, Self Care
The Drama Triangle: a model for understanding interpersonal conflict. Again and again I return to this model to understand my own accountability in contributing to conflict, and as a tool for supporting others in navigating conflict. The Drama Triangle is a relational...
by Melina | Aug 29, 2018 | Intimacy, Love
“Enough with the martyrdom, Mel, you need to step out of that.” My friend Chris and I were finishing up a session of peer coaching (because even coaches need coaching from time to time) and he added this as a little aside at the end. We’d been talking about a...
by Melina | Apr 11, 2018 | Intimacy, Self Care
I’ve long believed that the most important relationship we have in our lives is the relationship we have with ourselves. When our relationship with ourselves is poor, that’s when we start to reach out to others in needy, and sometimes codependent ways. We might find...
