Years ago, a man I loved very much handed me a book called The Ethical Slut.

It's essentially a how-to guide for non-monogamous relationships.

This title was emphatically not on my Christmas list.

This man and I had been struggling for a long time

to try to sort out a viable relationship.

We were on again, off again, tears, ultimatums,

and I could not believe he had the gall to hand me this book.

Weren't we working through trust issues already?

Hadn't we just started to see a therapist?

And with so much work to do, he's out here looking for permission to get something on the side.

I felt like I'd gone to a tea party and been served a Molotov cocktail.

The man, on the other hand, seemed to think this book could actually help us.

When my temper cooled, which it did at a geological pace, I reassessed the situation.

I had several well-adjusted friends in non-monogamous arrangements.

Some cultures even expect people to have more than one mate at a time.

Okay, I got ahead of myself. Hi. Hello. I'm Dessa. This is deeply human. And together we are going to

rummage around your intuitions about romantic love, monogamy, and its alternatives.

For the word nerds in the room, Gehen, put your hands down, I see whose, yes, monogamy, strictly speaking, describes being married to only one person.

But we're using it here as we do in casual conversation to describe having a sexual relationship with only one person at a time.

Monogamy is definitely the norm where I grew up.

But why should romantic relationships be exclusive when other relationships don't have to be?

Like, we can love more than one sibling, more than one parent,

...