April is approaching and it’s almost time for SHA’s Sexceptional Weekend: MONOGAMISH! Plus Advanced Skills for Open and Poly Relationships
To help you prepare for this weekend, the SHA Team has rounded up some sexceptional blogs all about consensual nonmonogamy. Here you will get an introduction to CNM and be ready for the educational weekend in April.
Tips for approaching CNM with your partner
What is consensual non-monogamy? The American Psychological Association (APA) Commission on Consensual Non-Monogamy describes it as an “umbrella term” for partners that engage in consensual sexual or romantic relationships with multiple people. This includes various labels: open relationship, polygamy, swinging…etc. The CNM lifestyle resists gender, sexuality, and relationship norms by establishing that love and intimacy aren’t solely defined by long-term monogamous partnerships, as many of us were led to believe.
Tips for Approaching Consensual Non-Monogamy with Your Partner — Sexual Health Alliance.
Analyzing the term “Consensual Non-Monogamy”
When it comes to consensual non-monogamy, most people probably spend more time thinking about the logistics or the sexual gratification of having multiple partners. Yet, the words we use to talk and think about different topics matter. That’s why it’s worth analyzing what it means when we describe the act of having consensual relationships with more than one person as “consensual non-monogamy,” which is often abbreviated as CNM.
Consensual Nonmonogamy: What's in a Name? — Sexual Health Alliance.
Learn more about Mononormativity
You might already be familiar with concepts like heternormativity and cisnormativity: the social narratives according to which compulsory heterosexuality and cisgender identification are perpetuated and reinforced. Through these narratives, any way of being other than the heterosexual and cisgender “default” is considered to be in some way deviant, deficient, defective, or delusional. It is through these narratives that the insidious ideologies of homophobia and transphobia find their roots: the more heterosexuality and cisgender identification are reinforced as the center of potential human experience, the more any other sexual or gender identity is pushed to the margins.
What is Mononormativity? — Sexual Health Alliance
Books about Consensual Non-Monogamy
The Ethical Slut, Third Edition: A Practical Guide to Polyamory, Open Relationships, and Other Freedoms in Sex and Love by Janet W. Hardy and Dossie Easton
Polysecure: Attachment, Trauma and Consensual Nonmonogamy by Jessica Fern