Eve Rickert's Blog, page 2

“Controlling People” and the Backwards Connection (guest post)

This is a post written by my friend Shea Emma Fett on her personal blog on February 1, 2015. She has given me permission to repost some of her essays here as guest posts.

This past month, I read Controlling People by Patricia Evans. It was an incredibly useful book to me, and I wanted to write a brief summary of the key themes in case it is useful to anyone else.

First, the book does not provide a framework for all controlling behavior. There are people who engage in abuse and manipulation...

The problem with your request for my compassion (guest post)

This is a post written by my friend Shea Emma Fett on her personal blog on January 18, 2015. She has given me permission to repost some of her essays here as guest posts.

The core elements of every manipulative exchange are remarkably simple. There is a carrot and a stick. If you change your behavior in this way, I will reward you, if you do not, I will punish you.

This project is going to take a lot of extra hours. Are you the kind of team player who is willing to make sacrifices?

The ...

The Big Lie (guest post)

This is a post written by my friend Shea Emma Fett on her personal blog on January 16,2015. She has given me permission to repost some of her essays here as guest posts.

Most of us will do the most damage to others when we are in pain. Not when we’re angry or bitter or vengeful. No. I will hurt other people, I will drain other people, I will fail other people and I will fail to consider other people the most when I am hurting the most.

And I truly believe that the only way out of toxic sel...

The Windows Were Fine to Begin With (guest post)

This is a post written by my friend Shea Emma Fett on her personal blog on December 5, 2014. She has given me permission to repost some of her essays here as guest posts.

Imagine someone walked around your house, and busted every window with a sledgehammer. And at first you pretended that they weren’t broken, and you slept with the cold and the rain blowing on you, and somehow people believed you, even though you looked in the mirror every morning and saw twigs and mud in your hair. And imagi...

Notes on an Unfinished Goodbye

I wish I could tell you

I want you
to find joy

without restraint
or dread
of what comes next
or what you might lose
or what you might owe.

I want you
to learn
what it’s like
to feel everything

without resistance

secure in the knowledge
that you will not 
be drowned.

I want you
(just once)
to feel what it is like
to love
with an open heart
and receive
the same in return.

I want you
to feel
what it is like
to be seen
and known
and truly met

without fear.

I want you
to love someone
who embrace...

Guest Post: On Consent in Romantic Relationships

This is a guest post by my friend Shelly. It was originally published in October 2013 at the More Than Two book blog. It is re-posted here with her permission.

Consent is a radical idea

I would like for this to be the shortest discussion ever. I would like to say that we each have an inalienable right to have domain over our bodies, minds, and choices and end the conversation there. I mean, good people don’t violate consent, and I’m a good person, right?

Well, it’s not really so simple. If th...

#WLAMF 2018 no. 1: My first kiss that wasn’t

CN: Sexual exploitation of a minor.

I recently had an epiphany about my first kiss.

The “official” story of my first kiss, the one I’ve told for my entire adult life, goes like this:

I was 14. I was with a friend at the Last Exit Cafe in Seattle—a place where I spent a solid chunk of my free time in my high school years. It was late evening, and we were sitting out on the back patio, when two men in their 20s approached us. My friend started flirting with one of them (or he with her; I can’t...

A pigeon in a hole

A few years back, my partner Eve Rickert and I wrote a book. You may, if you’re reading this blog, have heard of it. It’s about polyamory, and it’s called More Than Two.

In the book, we said “We’re not experts on polyamory. We believe there are no experts. Polyamory is still too new for that.” The book did rather well, and as a result, a lot of people turn to us as those poly experts of expert polydom who can tell you how it’s done.1

Pigeon, meet hole.

We’re not poly experts because, err, th...

Sometimes, you gotta just burn it all down

Last year, Eve and I started working on a new book, Love More, Be Awesome. It’s a followup to More Than Two, intended for a wider audience than just poly folks. We have an ambitious goal: Love More, Be Awesome is intended to be a user’s manual for being a decent human being.

The book was originally slated to be on shelves at the end of this year, which means it should be in the final stages of proofreading right about now. It’s not.

This afternoon, we set fire to the first draft.

We’ve been...

First, do no harm: Some thoughts on rules as a safety mechanism

Primum non nocere. It’s a Latin phrase that means “first, do no harm.” It’s not part of the Hippocratic Oath, but it is a central tenet of bioethics in most of the world.

It also, I think, makes a pretty good tenet for relationship ethics as well.

A few weeks ago, I received an email from Dan Savage’s personal assistant, asking if I was interested in helping craft a response to a person who’d written in to Mr. Savage with a poly problem.

The problem was that the guy who’d written in was in a...