Author: Harper Eliot

I think I have written here before about the lack of communication in my family; about the ways in which we live alongside one another but tell each other very little. In our household there is a sense that we will share what we are asked to share, and not much more. We are not the kind of people who talk about our days in great detail or even offer updates, unless we are explicitly asked. Thinking about it as I write, this might explain a few things about last week’s column… But I digress. Along with this independence and…

Twice this week it has been implied, by people whose opinion I greatly respect, that my being non-monogamous sets me apart; that most people aren’t like me; and, perhaps most poignantly, that non-monogamy is something I am rather than something I do. In both cases I know there was no malice in these implications. In fact, there was little emotional inflection whatsoever; they were just words, but, because we seem to lack a familiar vocabulary around non-monogamy, they were pieced together somewhat awkwardly. Really, if I’m being honest, they were the kind of sentences that no one remembers. Sewn into…

My concerns each week, my considerations and interests, change. The one thing that remains constant – although it too evolves – is my desire to write these concerns and considerations. Perhaps there are times when I would prefer to write for meaning and have the structure of the writing overlooked, but for the most part, the way in which I use my words and the inflection a certain order of paragraphs provides is as important as the meaning conveyed by the words themselves. With this in mind, it sometimes seems appropriate to step back and look at the process through…

Last week, in the style of the wonderful Cunning Minx, I wrote myself a User Manual. The basic idea of the user manual is that you write about your emotional and sexual turn ons, your turn offs, your background and family history, basically anything that effects the way you interact with people; particularly things that are likely to bring you closer to someone you’re dating. It’s a great idea, and even if you don’t want to show it to potential dates, I found the experience quite self-revelatory. The final section of the user manual is about turn offs, and writing…

My core relationship is with someone who, like me, is still navigating the ins and outs of non-monogamy. Neither of us are seasoned in this, and although we’d both played around with it in the past, and I had been openly non-monogamous for several months before I met him, we are still finding plenty of things to negotiate, discuss and ponder. And one of those things is – yes, I’m going to talk about it again – jealousy. I have written about jealousy here a couple of times before, about how I personally handle it, but of course, my way…

A few weeks ago I wrote about attending a wedding where I spent time with old friends and was happy to find that my fairly new, non-monogamous love life was met with interest and support, rather than judgement and disdain. A happy discovery for all! And I’m not going to complain about this state of affairs… But, there is one aspect of the several conversations I had about non-monogamy that particularly struck me. Three times that I recall, but maybe more – I was quite drunk by the end of the evening; okay, the middle of the evening – when…

If you have been reading my Life on the Swingset blog – The Novice Non-Monogamist – since the beginning, you might remember, way back at the start of the year, I wrote a piece about jealousy, about my struggles with it, and how I was learning to breathe through it. Since then I am happy to report that I have been feeling jealous far less often, and that when the emotion does rear its ugly head, I find myself able to untangle the knots in my stomach and diffuse the scenarios screaming through my head with much more ease. This…

Friday morning at five o’clock I found myself on a long coach journey, headed North for the wedding of one of my oldest friends. We met at ten, disliked one another at fourteen, fucked each other at eighteen, paced the stage as lovers at nineteen, and at twenty-three I am proud to say we are still tight enough that I was sat just one row behind his family, in a small church, as he said his vows to the beautiful red-headed girl he met at university. And truly, sincerely, I could not be happier for them both. I might not…

A few weeks ago my Daddy and I had a big fight; trust was broken, horrible things were said, and several times I felt I was right on the brink of losing him altogether. The key part of that sentence is not to do with the loss, but to do with why I felt that way. It occurred to me, in the aftermath, as things were slowly coming back together, and we were picking up the pieces, that in general I am incredibly quick to pull the trigger on my relationships. This may explain why I’ve never been in a…

Over the past week or so, I’ve been considering the idea that some people may be innately monogamous or innately non-monogamous. That is to say, there are people who, even if they had the discussion with their partners about being non-monogamous, laid out the rules, the guidelines, communicated, did everything right, when it came down to it, there’s still a chance they simply wouldn’t be interested in anyone but their partners. I think this is what Mollena Williams calls heart-bonding. Your head could be open to the possibility of several different loves; but your heart may still be beating for…