On June 6, Victoria Onken and I will host a free live stream about polyamory, non-monogamy, and what relationships actually look like outside of conventional templates.
Victoria lives in Amsterdam and has been in polyamorous relationships for many years. But what is especially valuable to me is not just that, but the depth of her journey. She grew up in a very conservative Soviet family, went through emigration, marriage, motherhood, crises, therapy, jealousy, and the reimagining of love and family—and at some point, she began to wonder: do relationships really have to look only one way?
Today she is a relationship & ENM coach, working with people in complex and non-traditional relationships, and she trains therapists on how to support non-monogamous relationships without judgment or templates.
And I am a sexologist and relationship counselor. I live in an open relationship myself, and in my practice, I increasingly see how differently intimacy, love, attachment, and agreements between people can be structured. And I think it is important to talk not just about non-monogamy itself, but also about the fact that open relationships, polyamory, swinging, relationship anarchy, and other formats are not the same thing. They often involve very different values, expectations, emotional processes, and ways of building connections.
During the live stream, we will talk about:
— what polyamory is and how it differs from an open relationship;
— how people arrive at non-monogamy;
— whether it is possible to love multiple people at the same time;
— how jealousy, safety, and attachment are structured;
— why some couples open up their relationships;
— what mistakes and crises almost everyone goes through;
— and why the conversation about non-monogamy is actually much broader than just a conversation about sex.
This will not be a debate or an attempt to convince anyone. Rather, it will be an honest, human conversation about love, choice, freedom, fears, and how much relationships
https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/aMtc-ElCR6KGH0pHSxHq7g
