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“We can’t have change without loss, which is why so often people say they want change but nonetheless stay exactly the same.”
― Lori Gottlieb, Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed

“But I also know something less commonly understood: that change and loss travel together. We can’t have change without loss, which is why so often people say they want change but nonetheless stay exactly the same.”
― Lori Gottlieb, Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed

“I’ve lost more than my relationship in the present. I’ve lost my relationship in the future. We tend to think that the future happens later, but we’re creating it in our minds every day. When the present falls apart, so does the future we had associated with it. And having the future taken away is the mother of all plot twists. But if we spend the present trying to fix the past or control the future, we remain stuck in place, in perpetual regret.”
― Lori Gottlieb, Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed

“However, no matter how willing and eager we were to take on the transition, we were both mostly unaware of the irreversible changes that lay ahead. We experienced changes to each of us individually, changes to our marriage, immense growth in each of our capacity to experience more love, honesty, closeness and pleasure, as well as all the changes that resulted from significant losses, heartbreaks and attachment alterations within our own relationship and with family, friends and other partners. At that time there was nothing in the non-monogamy self-help genre that could fully prepare us for everything our attachment systems were going through, and like many polyamorous couples we had to forge our own path forward, repeatedly stumbling along the way and learning retrospectively at the expense of ourselves, each other and our other partners.”
― Jessica Fern, Polysecure: Attachment, Trauma and Consensual Nonmonogamy

“The psychological model also allows insight into how disruptions in attachment can create significant challenges in the giving and receiving of the love and affection we so desire with our partners.”
― Jessica Fern, Polysecure: Attachment, Trauma and Consensual Nonmonogamy

“Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth’s research shows that children develop attachment styles that are more secure or more insecure, depending on how well their parents are able to be a connected and responsive safe haven for them. If their caretakers are able to meet most of their needs enough of the time, children usually have a secure attachment. But if they experience their parents as inconsistent, inaccessible, unresponsive or even threatening and dangerous, they adapt by developing more insecure attachment styles. If our attachment figures were absent or scary to us as children, we didn’t develop our ability to freely explore and to learn about the world and about our own abilities. When this happens, we develop insecure strategies for engaging with others—we may become more vigilant and anxious or more avoidant and dismissive.”
― Jessica Fern, Polysecure: Attachment, Trauma and Consensual Nonmonogamy

“Caregiver behaviors that could lead a child to take on a deactivating attachment strategy include: Neglecting or abusing the child. Being emotionally cold or rejecting the child. Giving the child hostile, angry or threatening responses. Discouraging a child’s expression of vulnerability. Encouraging (whether explicitly or implicitly) the child to be more self-reliant and independent.”
― Jessica Fern, Polysecure: Attachment, Trauma and Consensual Nonmonogamy

“They take in the messages that the world is a friendly place and that they can ask for what they want because the people in their lives care and are willing to help.”
― Jessica Fern, Polysecure: Attachment, Trauma and Consensual Nonmonogamy

“Too much emphasis on task-based presence. That is, where caregivers are only present when they are trying to educate or teach something to their child that is practical, academic or skills-based.”
― Jessica Fern, Polysecure: Attachment, Trauma and Consensual Nonmonogamy

“People with this attachment style have reported lower levels of relationship satisfaction, trust and commitment,19 as well as having more negative views about sex and lower levels of sexual satisfaction when married.20”
― Jessica Fern, Polysecure: Attachment, Trauma and Consensual Nonmonogamy

“Frequently consumed by fears of abandonment, people functioning out of a preoccupied style will easily give up their own needs or sense of self, yielding to the needs or identity of their partner in order to ensure proximity and relationship security.”
― Jessica Fern, Polysecure: Attachment, Trauma and Consensual Nonmonogamy

“A common predicament that arises in relationships is referred to as the distancer-pursuer dance. In this type of relationship, a person pairs up with their ostensible opposite from an attachment perspective, so one partner (the distancer) constantly seeks more space, while the other (the pursuer) constantly pursues more connection. As the distancer attempts to take physical or emotional space, the pursuer moves in closer to try to bridge the gap. The closer that the pursuer comes, the more the distancer pulls back, which then provokes the pursuer to move in even more. The pursuer never catches up, while the distancer never fully gets the breathing room they need. The pursuer fears that they will be abandoned, while the distancer fears being engulfed.”
― Jessica Fern, Polysecure: Attachment, Trauma and Consensual Nonmonogamy

“A common predicament that arises in relationships is referred to as the distancer-pursuer dance. In this type of relationship, a person pairs up with their ostensible opposite from an attachment perspective, so one partner (the distancer) constantly seeks more space, while the other (the pursuer) constantly pursues more connection. As the distancer attempts to take physical or emotional space, the pursuer moves in closer to try to bridge the gap. The closer that the pursuer comes, the more the distancer pulls back, which then provokes the pursuer to move in even more. The pursuer never catches up, while the distancer never fully gets the breathing room they need. The pursuer fears that they will be abandoned, while the distancer fears being engulfed. In this dance, both partners are left frustrated and unable to get their needs met, often missing that this archetypal pattern has more to do with their inner self than their partner, who is just serving as a mirror reflecting back the parts of them that have been exiled and disowned.”
― Jessica Fern, Polysecure: Attachment, Trauma and Consensual Nonmonogamy

“The distancer has cast off the parts of their self that yearn for closeness and connection and that desperately fear being abandoned. They are drawn to the pursuer, who will act these needs and fears out for them so that the distancer doesn’t have to. The pursuer, in turn, has projected outward the parts of their self that crave autonomy and independence and that are actually afraid of truly being vulnerable, being seen and being close. The pursuer is drawn to the distancer, who will act out these needs and fears for them so that they don’t have to. They are both trying to achieve wholeness, which is what keeps them dancing, but it’s the dance itself that prevents them from taking responsibility for the parts of themselves they have disowned; they instead blame their partners for enacting these elements of themselves.”
― Jessica Fern, Polysecure: Attachment, Trauma and Consensual Nonmonogamy

“As they got older and more social, they felt too embarrassed to have friends over and would often spend more time at friends’ homes to avoid their own. The shame and embarrassment that they experienced at the self level because of their home-level environment contributed to higher levels of attachment avoidance and discomfort with intimacy at the relational level. As this client and I processed through their early attachment experiences at the home level and restored a sense of safety in their nervous system around what it felt like to be in their home now, they were then able to shift into more secure functioning at the self and relationship levels.”
― Jessica Fern, Polysecure: Attachment, Trauma and Consensual Nonmonogamy

“Studies have shown that children with socioeconomic risks are more likely to develop disorganized attachment34 and that children are at an increased risk of disorganized attachment when they are in non-maternal care for more than 60 hours a week, due to parental work hours.”
― Jessica Fern, Polysecure: Attachment, Trauma and Consensual Nonmonogamy

“Open Marriage/Relationship: A relationship where one or both partners in a relationship have sexual or romantic relationships outside of their primary partnership. Open relationships tend to be more focused on having sex and limiting the degree of emotional involvement with others in order to keep the primary, dyadic relationship as the first priority.”
― Jessica Fern, Polysecure: Attachment, Trauma and Consensual Nonmonogamy

“I’ve seen the dangers of people depending on the structure of their relationship to feel safe together. When they change that structure, either through opening up from monogamy or transitioning to a less hierarchical form of CNM, it can expose relational insecurities that were disguised by the pseudo or contrived security acquired from the previous relationship structure. The takeaway message here is not to abolish all relationship hierarchies or shared bank accounts, but instead for people to procure secure attachment from their relational experiences instead of their relationship structures. Allow your direct experience with a partner to be the vehicle to secure attachment instead of having certain relationship concepts, narratives or structures be the vehicle.”
― Jessica Fern, Polysecure: Attachment, Trauma and Consensual Nonmonogamy

“The paradigm shift creates an awakening of the self, where what was previously unexpressed and unrealized is now awakening in someone, potentially turning their entire world and relationships upside down. People may not just be waking up to their nonmonogamous desires or orientation, but also aspects of their sexuality, important identities or forms of oppressions that have previously been denied, exiled or completely unacknowledged. An attachment crisis gets catalyzed from the transition into nonmonogamy.”
― Jessica Fern, Polysecure: Attachment, Trauma and Consensual Nonmonogamy

“Attempting to do CNM with an insecure attachment style or having attachment insecurity arise as a result of becoming nonmonogamous can seriously disrupt a person’s sense of self, as well as their inner and outer safety in ways that can feel unbearable and be unsustainable.”
― Jessica Fern, Polysecure: Attachment, Trauma and Consensual Nonmonogamy

“There can be something very disorienting that happens for some new CNM couples who were first monogamous together and were accustomed to being each other’s main source of comfort, support and relief from distress. As the relationship opens, a partner’s actions with other people (even ethical ones that were agreed upon) can become a source of distress and pose an emotional threat. Everything that this person is doing with other people can become a source of intense fear and insecurity for their pre-existing partner, catapulting them into the paradoxical disorganized dilemma of wanting comfort and safety from the very same person who is triggering their threat response.”
― Jessica Fern, Polysecure: Attachment, Trauma and Consensual Nonmonogamy

“my clients report being highly anxious and off their emotional axis for hours, sometimes even days, before their partner goes on a date with someone else. Others seriously spiral out while the date is happening. Cognitively, they know that their partner is still alive, not abandoning them or doing anything wrong, but their body and emotions are in primal panic. In such cases, jealousy is not a sufficient or accurate description of what is happening for the partner in distress. When primal attachment panic gets mislabeled as jealousy, the partner experiencing it can be left thinking that there is something wrong with them, that this is their issue to figure out on their own and that they should be better at doing CNM.”
― Jessica Fern, Polysecure: Attachment, Trauma and Consensual Nonmonogamy

“In monogamy, if two people do not align in their desires to be attached at a secure level or one person is unable or unwilling to step into secure functioning, then the relationship usually ends (or they just suffer miserably together forever), but when this occurs in nonmonogamy, the relationship might also end, but it doesn’t necessarily have to. Nonmonogamous relationships allow for more flexibility and negotiation about how close, connected and involved partners want to be.”
― Jessica Fern, Polysecure: Attachment, Trauma and Consensual Nonmonogamy

“You and your partner transitioning together to CNM, which you are happy about, but experiencing a real loss of the old relationship that the two of you had together. Even though you might still be together, the relationship has changed, and it’s common to have grief about the past relationship with your partner that is no longer, as well as grief and loss about the monogamous future you had envisioned with them.”
― Jessica Fern, Polysecure: Attachment, Trauma and Consensual Nonmonogamy

“The loss and stress that can occur from no longer being number one to your partner.”
― Jessica Fern, Polysecure: Attachment, Trauma and Consensual Nonmonogamy

“No longer having your partner as your primary safe haven and the person you can tell everything to and process everything with.”
― Jessica Fern, Polysecure: Attachment, Trauma and Consensual Nonmonogamy

“Nonmonogamy can be a pressure cooker for growth. It is commonly and playfully known in the nonmonogamous world that you shouldn’t enter CNM unless you are ready to process, communicate, grow and then process, communicate and grow some more.”
― Jessica Fern, Polysecure: Attachment, Trauma and Consensual Nonmonogamy

“For us to feel safe and secure in our relationships, we need to know that our partners want to be there for us and will be to the best of their ability, and so some level of commitment to being in a relationship together is important. Depending on what stage of relationship you are in, this might look like:”
― Jessica Fern, Polysecure: Attachment, Trauma and Consensual Nonmonogamy

“John Bowlby and his contemporaries believed that for a partner to become an attachment figure, the relationship would serve as both a safe haven and a secure base.68 The bedrock of being polysecure in our relationships is feeling that we have a safe haven to turn to. This happens when our partners care about our safety, seek to respond to our distress, help us to co-regulate and soothe and are a source of emotional and physical support and comfort. Similarly, when our partners are struggling or in need, we can be a safe haven by being there for them in warm, caring and receptive ways.”
― Jessica Fern, Polysecure: Attachment, Trauma and Consensual Nonmonogamy

“In search of relationship safety, our attachment system is primed to seek the answers to certain questions regarding our partners. Both consciously and unconsciously we are looking to know: If I turn towards you, will you be there for me? Will you receive and accept me instead of attack, criticize, dismiss or judge me? Will you comfort me? Will you respond in a way that calms my nervous system? Do I matter to you? Do I make a difference in your life? Can we lean into and rely on each other?”
― Jessica Fern, Polysecure: Attachment, Trauma and Consensual Nonmonogamy