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omorkaFinally finished a book I ordered well over a year ago, Anthony Ravenscroft's Polyamory: Roadmaps for the Clueless and Hopeful. It's the only Poly 201 book I've ever found.
Let me expand on that for a moment for those of you who aren't familiar with the mess that is the poly bookshelf. There are a lot of Poly 101 books, which range in quality from execrable to pretty good. The two best known in the poly circles I travel in are Deborah Anapol's Polyamory: The New Love Without Limits, which was groundbreaking when it was published but is mired in self-congratulatory verbiage and a muzzy newage mindset, and Easton and Listz's The Ethical Slut, which has actually held up pretty well, considering. Celeste West's Lesbian Polyfidelity is also pretty good on that front, although the focus, as you can guess from the title, is a little narrow (although she seems to consider open group marriage polyfidelitous). And, in fact, most of the poly books that exist are Poly 101s. They're also almost all evangelistic. They not only think poly is awesome, they want you, the reader, to discover how awesome it is. The few other books that exist tend to be how-to books for very specific relationship structures - often the FMF V-triad, but sometimes the two-het-couple quad. 313 courses, if you'll permit me to extend the metaphor a bit past the stretching point.
Ravenscroft claims not to have read any of the three books I mentioned above. This might be one of the reasons his book is different; not knowing what ground has already been trod, he doesn't feel any pressure not to wander past it. And while the book does share some of the same territory as Ethical Slut, for the most part it's that rarity, a general poly book that gets past the "This is awesome! You should try it!" evangelical mode and the very basics, and actually deals with the nitty-gritty of living poly - a 201 course.
The vast majority of the book is written out of the author's own experience. Overall, I'd consider that a strength, since "Don't do this" has more strength coming from someone who did it and can show you the scar. However, it does result in one strange emphasis and one fairly serious omission right off the bat.
My reading of the book is that he's absolutely obsessed with various permutations on the FMF cohabiting triad - closed, open, V, delta, very occasionally FFM. Now, there are two reasons for this. One is that he spent ten years in an open FMF delta cohabiting triad, so much of his own poly experience is from that perspective. The other is that an awful lot of people who are initially exploring polyamory want a closed polyfidelitous triad, and are a couple - either both straight or a straight male and a bi or bi-curious female - looking for another woman. (Ravenscroft makes it sound as if this is more than half the poly-newbies out there. That doesn't match my experience, but I'll agree "Couple seeking Hot Bi Babe" does happen with startling regularity.) But it does mean that the book doesn't explore other structures - the quad (whether closed or open), the intimate network, etc. - as much as I'd like, and generally assumes that you, the reader, are going to be cohabiting with your poly lovers eventually, which I suspect is not as true as he guesses, especially for intimate-network polys.
He also gives very short shrift to gay and lesbian polyamory, and rarely addresses bisexuality outside of the various triad structures. Again, I suspect this is because he lacks the experience to address it outside of those circumstances, although he mentions "ex-boyfriends" of his a couple of times. This is probably not as big a weakness as the above, as most of the practical stuff he mentions - the cohabiting stuff, scheduling, multilateral conflict resolution - doesn't change much with the genders of the people involved.
And the practical stuff is pretty helpful. It's not exhaustive, but the conflict resolution chapter could easily become a book in its own right, and what's presented is a good start. He addresses not just finding local polys but determining whether the community (a word he uses sparingly, and explains why) is healthy or not. A large portion of the book is about owning one's own relationship crap and dealing with it, and helping other people do the same, instead of ignoring one's own and trying to rescue other people from theirs, or worse, using theirs as an excuse not to deal with yours. Given that I have seen polyfolk "chasing NRE" to avoid dealing with their own relationship crap, and have myself on occasion been guilty of chasing sex for the same purpose, these sections struck me as quite useful.
Perhaps what sets Ravenscroft apart from most other poly authors is that, while he's no fan of institutional monogamy - I have yet to read a poly author who liked traditional heterosexual monogamous marriage - he's more likely to warn the reader away from polyamory than to proselytize. He's up front about this being a tough lifestyle with no cultural safety nets. And he's honest about its ability to destabilize existing relationships, especially ones grounded in the monogamous cultural assumptions. While his cynical tone can be a little off-putting (as can his ego - but then, you have to have that sort of ego to think anyone wants to read ~280 pages of your personal life), there is something refreshing about a poly author who is willing to state that this isn't for everyone, and probably wouldn't be even without all the cultural programming.
Truly experienced polyfolk won't need to read this, as they'll have lived pretty much everything Ravenscroft describes, or seen it elsewhere in the poly community and dodged it. And it's really not meant for those just sticking their toes in the pool (I'd point them at Ethical Slut, still, despite its flaws and age). But for those who have juggled a poly relationship already and want the benefit of one very opinionated but fairly sensible experienced poly's life lessons, I'd highly recommend the book.
Let me expand on that for a moment for those of you who aren't familiar with the mess that is the poly bookshelf. There are a lot of Poly 101 books, which range in quality from execrable to pretty good. The two best known in the poly circles I travel in are Deborah Anapol's Polyamory: The New Love Without Limits, which was groundbreaking when it was published but is mired in self-congratulatory verbiage and a muzzy newage mindset, and Easton and Listz's The Ethical Slut, which has actually held up pretty well, considering. Celeste West's Lesbian Polyfidelity is also pretty good on that front, although the focus, as you can guess from the title, is a little narrow (although she seems to consider open group marriage polyfidelitous). And, in fact, most of the poly books that exist are Poly 101s. They're also almost all evangelistic. They not only think poly is awesome, they want you, the reader, to discover how awesome it is. The few other books that exist tend to be how-to books for very specific relationship structures - often the FMF V-triad, but sometimes the two-het-couple quad. 313 courses, if you'll permit me to extend the metaphor a bit past the stretching point.
Ravenscroft claims not to have read any of the three books I mentioned above. This might be one of the reasons his book is different; not knowing what ground has already been trod, he doesn't feel any pressure not to wander past it. And while the book does share some of the same territory as Ethical Slut, for the most part it's that rarity, a general poly book that gets past the "This is awesome! You should try it!" evangelical mode and the very basics, and actually deals with the nitty-gritty of living poly - a 201 course.
The vast majority of the book is written out of the author's own experience. Overall, I'd consider that a strength, since "Don't do this" has more strength coming from someone who did it and can show you the scar. However, it does result in one strange emphasis and one fairly serious omission right off the bat.
My reading of the book is that he's absolutely obsessed with various permutations on the FMF cohabiting triad - closed, open, V, delta, very occasionally FFM. Now, there are two reasons for this. One is that he spent ten years in an open FMF delta cohabiting triad, so much of his own poly experience is from that perspective. The other is that an awful lot of people who are initially exploring polyamory want a closed polyfidelitous triad, and are a couple - either both straight or a straight male and a bi or bi-curious female - looking for another woman. (Ravenscroft makes it sound as if this is more than half the poly-newbies out there. That doesn't match my experience, but I'll agree "Couple seeking Hot Bi Babe" does happen with startling regularity.) But it does mean that the book doesn't explore other structures - the quad (whether closed or open), the intimate network, etc. - as much as I'd like, and generally assumes that you, the reader, are going to be cohabiting with your poly lovers eventually, which I suspect is not as true as he guesses, especially for intimate-network polys.
He also gives very short shrift to gay and lesbian polyamory, and rarely addresses bisexuality outside of the various triad structures. Again, I suspect this is because he lacks the experience to address it outside of those circumstances, although he mentions "ex-boyfriends" of his a couple of times. This is probably not as big a weakness as the above, as most of the practical stuff he mentions - the cohabiting stuff, scheduling, multilateral conflict resolution - doesn't change much with the genders of the people involved.
And the practical stuff is pretty helpful. It's not exhaustive, but the conflict resolution chapter could easily become a book in its own right, and what's presented is a good start. He addresses not just finding local polys but determining whether the community (a word he uses sparingly, and explains why) is healthy or not. A large portion of the book is about owning one's own relationship crap and dealing with it, and helping other people do the same, instead of ignoring one's own and trying to rescue other people from theirs, or worse, using theirs as an excuse not to deal with yours. Given that I have seen polyfolk "chasing NRE" to avoid dealing with their own relationship crap, and have myself on occasion been guilty of chasing sex for the same purpose, these sections struck me as quite useful.
Perhaps what sets Ravenscroft apart from most other poly authors is that, while he's no fan of institutional monogamy - I have yet to read a poly author who liked traditional heterosexual monogamous marriage - he's more likely to warn the reader away from polyamory than to proselytize. He's up front about this being a tough lifestyle with no cultural safety nets. And he's honest about its ability to destabilize existing relationships, especially ones grounded in the monogamous cultural assumptions. While his cynical tone can be a little off-putting (as can his ego - but then, you have to have that sort of ego to think anyone wants to read ~280 pages of your personal life), there is something refreshing about a poly author who is willing to state that this isn't for everyone, and probably wouldn't be even without all the cultural programming.
Truly experienced polyfolk won't need to read this, as they'll have lived pretty much everything Ravenscroft describes, or seen it elsewhere in the poly community and dodged it. And it's really not meant for those just sticking their toes in the pool (I'd point them at Ethical Slut, still, despite its flaws and age). But for those who have juggled a poly relationship already and want the benefit of one very opinionated but fairly sensible experienced poly's life lessons, I'd highly recommend the book.
