Polysecure? Jessica Fern's groundbreaking book on attachment and polyamory

Psychotherapy has a depressingly low cure rate. That's slowly improving, but it seems to stay about 100 years behind physical-body medicine in terms of curing and preventing the disorders it confronts, as opposed to just helping patients cope. Its many different methods don't seem to matter much; studies keep finding that effectiveness mostly depends on the therapist's bond with the patient. Kind of at the level of your great-great-grandparents' family medical doctor with his comforting black bag in 1921.

Therapies based on attachment theory, however, have earned a better reputation. Research evidence supports their usefulness and the underlying rationale, and the relationship-therapy world has taken this on board.

Attachment theory is based on findings that a young child's relationship with their earliest primary caregiver, especially during times of stress, seems to shape how they will relate to other people for life. These early experiences are said to result in four basic attachment styles, called secure, insecure-avoidant, insecure-anxious, and insecure-disorganized. Emotionally-Focused Therapy (EFT) for troubled couples is rooted in this.

My introduction to this came from presentations given at polyamory conventions by Jessica Fern, a poly psychotherapist from Boulder, Colorado. She has broken new ground by extending attachment theory into practices for people in polyamory and other forms of consensual non-monogamy. Poly life can certainly test people's skills at managing complex intimate relationships jumbled up with issues of one's own psyche, at advanced levels.

And now Fern is out with her awaited book.

Polysecure: Attachment, Trauma, and Consensual Nonmonogamy (Thorntree Press, 2020) is smart, readable, path-setting, and deeply caring. And practical. She presents abundant material that will inform poly-friendly therapists everywhere, and she offers six particular strategies that will help polyfolks and their beloveds to become more "polysecure" in their relationships.

She writes:

"I've combed through the literature on the conditions needed to create secure attachment in adult romantic relationships and considered what I've experienced and witnessed in the polyamory partnerships that I've counseled." The six practices she has come up with get the acronym "HEARTS, which I use to encapsulate the different ingredients, skills, capacities and ways of being required for secure functioning in multiple attachment-based partnerships."

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Lindsay Hayes, a grad student working on an MA in counseling psychology with plans to open a therapy practice for polyfolks, interviewed Fern about the book. I said I'd be grateful if she would guest-post her interview here, and she said yes! So here you go.

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An Interview with Jessica Fern, Author of PolySecure

By Lindsay Hayes

In 2014, Jessica Fern found that her therapy practice was getting an abundance of clients wanting to know more about polyamory. After one particular week in which three separate sets of clients brought up polyamory in their sessions, she knew she needed to learn more. While she had been aware of the practice, Fern knew she needed to do more in-depth reading. She read books such as Sex at Dawn to further enhance her effectiveness as a therapist. To her surprise, she found that what she was learning had as much personal relevance as it did professionally. 

Jessica Fern

In her book Polysecure: Attachment, Trauma, and Consensual Nonmonogamy, Jessica Fern provides a new model for those in, or considering being in, polyamorous relationships. The book takes a well-known psychotherapy methodology, Attachment Theory, and applies it to polyamory. A goal of the book is to help those in relationships foster what's called secure attachment. The underlying, and most important, goal is to help people form a secure attachment with themselves and their own emotional wellbeing. “Knowing how to stand securely on your own two feet and how to be your own safe haven...is fundamental,” Fern writes. 

These ideas, based on her work as a therapist, were further developed as she began to speak at polyamory conferences. “I gave a talk at Southwest Love Fest in 2019 titled Cultivating Secure Attachment in Polyamorous Relationships. We had to move rooms at the last minute because there were so many people wanting to hear the talk. Here I am, looking out at a room of 200 people who are like ‘Help us! This poly stuff is hard,’ ” she told me, recalling the experience. “I wrote this for them.”

It's her first book. When I asked about the process of writing it, she said “Writing the book energized me.” In the past she’d found writing projects tiresome. With this book she was determined to enjoy the process. Even getting stuck was sometimes rewarding. “There was this one moment in the book where I was super stuck. I didn’t know how to make one section of the book transition into the rest. I was stuck. And then I heard this inner voice that asked me to ‘just read it in the future.’ So I meditated and tried to read it. The next morning as I was drifting in and out of sleep, I saw that page that I needed. That moment was really fun.”

Fern tells me she also wrote it with fellow therapists in mind. Her clients and other people tell her stories of therapists ill-equipped to deal with or even hostile to polyamory. As a trained therapist, she is keenly aware of how underserved this population is. Research on polyamory is lacking compared with monogamy, and psychological and therapeutic education is similarly lacking -- though that should be changing rapidly with the American Psychological Association's new Committee on Consensual Non-monogamy. One of the committee's missions is to "promote the development and delivery of affirmative psychological services to CNM-identified individuals." 

Fern thinks the shortage of knowledgeable therapists is one reason for the enthusiastic reaction her book has elicited. “ ‘I wish this book had been around years ago’ is something I’ve heard quite a few times,” she says. “So I think the book did what I was hoping for -- it filled a gap in poly literature.”  

Before wrapping up our conversation, I asked what it was like to do a book tour during a pandemic. “This might sound bad, but it made it easier!” Rather than worrying about time off work for travel, figuring out childcare arrangements, and other logistics, she enjoyed being able to do virtual interviews and talks. “It’s actually great. Except when people want signed copies,” she laughed.

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Lindsay Hayes is a student, adjunct instructor, writer, consultant, and bunny mom extraordinaire. She holds an MA in communication and is currently working on her MA in counseling psychology. She looks forward to opening her private therapy practice to help poly folks iron out life’s inevitable wrinkles. Her master’s thesis is a year-long narrative inquiry of polyamorous individuals.

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UPDATE: A positive review of the book by the editor of Greater Good magazine, Jeremy Adam Smith: What Polyamory Can Teach Us About Secure Attachment (March 26, 2021). "A new book provides lessons for everyone about cultivating strong emotional attachments with romantic partners."

In many ways, monogamy tries to externally create the conditions for secure attachment even when the individuals involved do not internally have secure attachment styles: legal marriage, home ownership, sexual exclusivity, and children stitch people together to a degree that is difficult to unravel. As Fern warns, however, this structure provides only the illusion of emotional security....

Greater Good is a publication of Berkeley's Greater Good Science Center. "The Greater Good Science Center studies the psychology, sociology, and neuroscience of well-being, and teaches skills that foster a thriving, resilient, and compassionate society." 

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Friday Polyamory News Roundup: Tales of "how poly remade me for the better," and a student's radical broadening of that. The Oneidas, Brides mag, and more.

●  Psychologist and poly relationship therapist Jessica Fern, who specializes in attachment theory, has a significant new book out: Polysecure: Attachment, Trauma and Consensual Nonmonogamy. Fern has been an excellent and effective presenter at many poly conventions back when they were happening in person.

Across the Atlantic, her new book just became a jumping-off point for a long feature article in The Irish Times: Building bridges: How polyamory made me a better friend, lover and person (Sept. 19). The article is another in the "how polyamory remade me for the better" category. I posted about some others last week.  

When singer Jess Kavanagh discovered polyamory, she didn’t expect it to improve every facet of her life

Singer Jess Kavanagh: ‘Having multiple romantic partners has forced me to investigate elements of my emotional coping mechanisms that were unsustainable and hidden among the nooks and crannies of monogamous comforts.’ (Photograph: Dara Mac Dónaills) 

By Jess Kavanagh

 

My relationship with my partner has come a long way from me sobbing into a gin and tonic two years ago, clumsily asking for an open relationship. At that point, I had a very little idea of what I was asking for or what I was getting myself into.

...Although I am still extremely new to these experiences of sharing my partner and dating in a scene which is overwhelmingly catering to monogamy, some lessons I have learned from my dating journey have been very unexpected.

Jessica Fern, psychologist and author of Polysecure: Attachment, Trauma and Consensual Nonmonogamy, describes consensual non-monogamy as “the practice of having multiple sexual and/or romantic partners at the same time, where all people involved are aware of this relationship arrangement and consent to it” and polyamory as a “part of consensual monogamy . . . looking for multiple people to be in love with”.

On a Saturday afternoon I sat down for a discussion with Fern about how polyamory is becoming not only a realistic relationship choice, but also a distinct way for us to employ emotional work and express a collective love at a time where there is a global lack.

...Having multiple romantic partners has forced me to investigate elements of my emotional coping mechanisms that were unsustainable and hidden among the nooks and crannies of monogamous comforts. There is a narrative held dear in our society that once we are our loved one’s only sexual and romantic partner, that allows us to feel secure in that relationship.

Fern says: “In such cases, our self-esteem and sense of worth are contingent on our partner being monogamously committed to us instead of anchored in our own internal sense of self-worth, self-love and self-esteem.” In polyamory, when that narrative isn’t available as relationship-scaffolding, it is crucial to find other ways to make our partner(s) feel special and to re-establish a sense of inner-security. The freedom and innovation in these explorations can be transformative.

As I began to date other people, I started to experience my first bumps in the road. I was developing big crushes and chasing those butterflies to my detriment. In polyamory terms, this high is called NRE or “new relationship energy”. I was overextending myself to keep certain people interested.

...It was crucial for me to manage my insecurities and I started to take my emotional health very seriously. I started meditating more, researching attachment theory, trauma, and seeking therapy. Although all rejections and break-ups warrant varying levels of processing, the emotional maintenance I was doing reduced wallowing and self-destructive behaviour across all aspects of my life. A byproduct of polyamory I never expected.

...In the past, I found single, monogamous culture internalising what Fern calls a “hyper-independence”: a lack of accountability to casual partners' emotions, a type of frenzied everyone out for themselves behaviour. This always made me feel uncomfortable, having to extract love from sex if the outcome wasn’t monogamy. ...

Then there is friendship. Polyamory has given me the ability to see the nuance of romance, and moments of platonic intimacy with friends as much as with partners. I have found myself waking up energised and loved-up from a night out with pals in the way I would feel after a good date. I have more friend crushes. The boundaries of connection have not blurred, but shifted, where I can feel varied shades of love along the spectrum of the romantic to the platonic.

...There is something we all can take from an orientation that embraces the imperfect, heralds respectful communication, and acknowledges the many embodiments of love.

Fern says: “Non-monogamy can offer a bigger sense of love that we all need, [it] breaks down the nuclear-ness, the Us vs Them mentality and provides bridges of love to different people.” ...

Polysecure: Attachment, Trauma and Consensual Nonmonogamy is published by Thorntree Press in October.

●  And another such testimonial, in MamaMia!  'At 21, I was in a relationship with an older married man – and his wife' (Sept. 18)

By Anonymous

...At 21 I found myself dating an older, married, polyamorous man, and the way I love has never been the same since.

...It began from a simple Bumble date... on which he wore his wedding ring.

At first, I was very sceptical as to how open his relationship with his wife was, but he was incredibly honest about his previous relationships and dating patterns.

We easily clicked, and he was the most interesting person I had ever met. The way he explained his approach to love was fascinating, and I was hooked. 

..In this particular situation, he and his wife were each other’s primary partners, while she also had a long-term boyfriend and continued to date other people as well. However, as their relationship with each other changed, they dropped the hierarchical measure of relationships.

At first, I couldn’t really wrap my head around why you would actively go out and seek other people when you’re in a happy and healthy relationship to start with. ...

...I soon realised polyamory was instead about the joy of love. ...

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..So what did I learn?

My whole perception of love and relationships changed within the short span of our relationship. 

I began this experience with a very short-sighted view of what a healthy dynamic is and found that a relationship doesn’t need to conform to the traditional norms that society has defined. 

In my previous relationships, I was quite defensive and often jealous. Through the experience of polyamory, I learnt to understand where my jealousy was stemming from and to critically analyse whether it was derived from my own insecurities or rooted deeper within the relationship itself, such as needing more quality time together. 

I came to terms with facing potential conflict such as possible trust issues and relying on communication to overcome these challenges. It was also striking to me how traditional monogamous relationships are often framed with very possessive language, creating an extremely toxic culture of jealousy and controlling behaviour. 

Polyamory invigorated my sense of self-worth and inner strength which I was unaware that I had. ...

...Polyamory felt like a boot camp for these skills which significantly developed my muscles in these areas. I now feel ready and prepared for the next relationship coming my way, and I’m excited for when it does.

●  The same day, a more radical generalization of those discoveries appeared in The Campus student newspaper of Allegheny College: Could polyamorous relationships mitigate the shortcomings of the nuclear family?  (Sept. 18)

By Peyton Britt, Opinion Editor

...In her book “What Love Is: And What It Could Be,” philosopher Carrie Jenkins notes that changes in society occur against a foundation of the pre-existing conventions. She considers monogamy a principal characteristic of romantic love’s social role, that role being to curtail love between grown adults and force it into the mold of the stable nuclear family.

...I imagine a society in which children whose two parents are fighting can go stay the night with a third parent until the home environment is peaceful again. I imagine women in abusive relationships finding solace, and eventually escape, with the support and assurance of their other husbands. I imagine teenagers with qualms about their rapidly developing identities having more than two parental figures whom they can consult and with whom they can relate. I imagine a man leaving for his third shift job as a partner returns from first shift, both equally comforted to know that their wife will not be alone in the burden of childcare. I see no issue with broadening what constitutes as a family in order to strengthen a sense of community. 

I also imagine that traditionally monogamous, heterosexual relationships will continue to create nuclear family units, a possibility by which I am unbothered. The society for which I yearn is simply one in which love is unfettered by the strains of convention, and people give and receive affection in whatever multifarious fashions they desire. ...

●  Sign of the times: Brides magazine, a juggernaut of the traditional wedding-industrial complex for 85 years, now presents How to Know if an Open Marriage Is Right for You (Sept. 24). The advice is decently good, granted that it's entirely couple-centric.

Navigating non-monogamy with your partner is no small feat but, if you’re both willing to put in the work, can ultimately bring you two closer than ever. It takes two to make a thing go right—right? That math might just have a little wiggle room.

...“When people come into my practice wanting non-monogamy, it’s usually because they had a pivotal moment,” explains [relationship therapist Gwen] Lotery, but need help clarifying and communicating it with their partner. “I realize this is coming from a therapist,” she laughs, “but counseling can really help with that!” 

O'Malley Photographers

For couples that do come to her wondering if an open marriage is the right path, she empowers them to ask each other exciting, sometimes uncomfortable, and very much crucial questions such as, “Is your idea purely sexual, or more of another relationship? Do you play [outside the marriage] together, or do you play separately? Both?” Then, based on those answers, the pair can decide if and how they want to move forward.

...“The biggest mistake a couple can do is jump in,” warns Lotery. She compares opening up a marriage successfully to training for a marathon, saying, “You wouldn’t buy tennis shoes on Friday and then run the marathon Sunday—you won’t make it!” What does work, in her professional opinion, is “a lot of talking, a lot of listening … and most importantly, only going as far and fast as the slowest partner is ready for.” Below, we’ve broken down her advice into three core components....

...Lotery does have one final (and might we add excellent!) piece of advice: “More important than learning how to communicate, hands down, is listening.” In her own practice, she regularly “really [teaches] people how to listen well because, if you understand what your partner is saying or wanting or desiring, there’s bound to be more compassion and a willingness to stay curious and connect.” ...

●  Erin K. Barnes writes us, "I wrote this article about my cute relationship with my metamour for Men's Health and wanted to spread the word!"

I'm BFFs With My Metamour: My Husband Has a Girlfriend, and Now We're Friends

That’s right: the love of my life is dating another woman, and she’s awesome.

By Erin K. Barnes | Sept. 24

My husband has a girlfriend...and I love her. That’s right: the love of my life is dating another woman, and she’s awesome.

The topic of my metamour—that’s my partner’s partner, in polyamorous terms—is controversial. It doesn’t matter that it was my idea to open our marriage. It doesn’t matter how my husband Cliff looks at me with heart eyes, or how many sizzling affairs I have. Most people feel sorry for me, or even disgusted, that I actually like the woman who—as they see it—threatens to replace me.

...A number of my girlfriends kept my non-monogamy a secret from their spouses for fear they wouldn’t be allowed around me. I wondered, would their husbands restrict them from associating with a single woman? Why was I so different? Cliff’s best friend pulled me aside tearfully after a night of drinking, telling me, “I don’t want to lose you.”

I didn’t blame them; despite the myriad polyamory explainers on the internet like this one, most people misunderstand our arrangement.

It wasn’t always this way. ...

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One night, I lay awake with my pulse pounding, gripped with the sudden courage to tell my husband that I wanted to have sex with other people. I put his hand on my breast to cushion the blow...and woke him from a dead sleep.

“There’s something I’ve been wanting to talk to you about,” I whispered. ... I said I was grateful we were still in love after 17 years. That I felt like I was going through a change, and rather than rebel alone, I wanted him to be my partner in crime. And that it really turned me on to think of us in an open marriage.

My husband sat up in bed. “Wow,” he said. I had always been the vanilla one. “Yes,” he said, kissing me. “Yes!”

Cliff looked as giddy as I had when he had proposed; only this time, we were choosing us, and setting each other free. ...

With freedom, my pent-up sexual tension deflated. I could be around hot dads without losing my mind. I indulged in pastimes I never thought I’d relive, like lying in bed with a new man, tracing his tattoos with my fingertips and alternating between talking and rendering each other speechless. I also explored profound platonic friendships with men I’d have surely missed out on in monogamy.

Cliff wanted kitchen table polyamory, where both partners have serious secondary relationships. I wanted lust and extramarital fun. In a twist of irony, I fell in love with someone new and had my heart broken, organically extending my own boundaries. While my family didn’t need to know the details, I didn’t hide my feelings. “Children,” I began with puffy eyes, “I’d like to introduce you to the music of the Smiths. They tell people that it’s okay to feel sad sometimes.” Being a 37-year-old mom with a broken heart sucked, but knowing it was possible to love two people at once gave me stability for what was to come. ...

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When the time came for Cliff to go to Allison’s house for an intimate date night, I texted her, saying, “I hope this isn’t weird, but I wanted to introduce myself so you know that I’m okay with this.”

We followed each other on Instagram and discovered we share the same absurd sense of humor. We gleefully bonded over memes. She entered our lives respectfully, without being pushy, but she also didn’t hide from me, nor I from her.

...Today, we have a happy little polycule. Allison and I hang out together, and when we do, Cliff sends us video chats that start with a grinning, “Hey ladies...” Cliff is notoriously late to everything, so Allison helps him get home on time. ...

Society wants me to hate this gem of a person -- the person who texted me after our dog died to send us “love beams,” only she accidentally wrote “love beans,” so now we often jokingly send each other “love beans.” People want to believe that I’m either a freak or uncommonly evolved to handle this unconventional arrangement. In truth, I’m not very remarkable at all; it’s simply not that hard. Concepts that once seemed terrifying are surprisingly easy when we meet the people involved...and they’re awesome.

●  The BBC just posted a 7-minute mini-documentary on the Oneida Colony, America's 19th-century attempt at a polyamorous religious utopia that seems to be getting ever more attention as the decades pass. If you've wondered what the Oneidas were actually about, it's a good quickie. Oneida: The 'free-love utopia' that chased immortality (video by Maria Badia, posted Sept. 24). It's part of the BBC's  "Hidden History" series, "delving into the mysteries of the past to shed light on the present."

I hadn't known, for one thing, that the Oneidas were preterists: Christians who believe that the Second Coming of Jesus already occurred in 70 AD (in the lifetime of his original followers as he promised), that the Kingdom of Heaven has existed on Earth ever since, and that we only need to understand this and act on it.

●  Announcements:  

     – Loving More online group discussion, Tuesday October 6, 7:00 - 8:30 pm Mountain time; 9 to 10:30 Eastern. "Join Loving More for an online polyamory discussion. This is open to all Loving More meetup members and is hosted from our office in Loveland, Colorado. Topic: TBD. Discussion is always open to current issues people may be dealing with." Hosted by Robyn Trask. 

     – The Poly Dallas Millennium conference, which centers the Black experience (people of all colors welcome) will happen online this year, November 6-8. CEUs available for psychology professionals. Facebook.

     –  Polycon Canada, November 22-23. "24 hr livestream event from sundown Nov 22 to sundown Nov 23 (Pacific time). Honouring Intersectionality and Diversity in our Communities."

     – Have an announcement that ought to be here? Email me at alan7388 (at) gmail.com.

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