Everyone has their own concept of what “monogamy” means—and most people assume their partners and spouses are on the same page. Couples may assume that they are monogamous, but never discuss exactly what the monogamy agreement means to them. What happens when this implicit agreement is broken? After infidelity, relationships can become strained as both partners lose trust and faith in each other. The New Monogamy offers a way out of these difficulties for couples struggling to stay together after infidelity. Couples make these implicit assumptions and agreements explicit so that each partner knows exactly what is expected of them in the future and what they can expect from their partner. Author Tammy Nelson helps couples regain trust, romance, and intimacy after infidelity by redefining the monogamy contract. The new monogamy contract is an explicit relationship agreement created after the affair that allows each partner to openly, honestly, and safely share their desires, expectations, and limitations. This agreement does not create an open marriage, but rather, an open conversation wherein each partner can have a say in setting the ground rules for their relationship. The book first helps couples rebuild trust after the affair, then engages in a series of Imago dialogues based on questions about what each partner really wants in the relationship, not what you think you should want or what a partner wants you to want. The New Monogamy includes questionnaires, checklists, and candid questions for partners to ask that help welcome complete honesty and trust back into the relationship. Then, the book helps couples make an erotic recovery from infidelity by addressing erotic problems that may surface and offers advice for helping couples return to desiring and trusting one another. After an affair, it’s impossible to go back to the way the relationship was before, but this book offers the chance for a new beginning.

NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF 2020! NPR BEST BOOK OF 2020 PEOPLE MAGAZINE TOP TEN BOOKS OF THE YEAR BOOKPAGE BEST BOOK OF 2020 GOOD HOUSEKEEPING BEST BOOK OF 2020 “A sensual and perceptive novel. . . . With humor and humanity, Miller resists the simple scorned-wife story and instead crafts a revelatory tale of the complexities—and the absurdities—of love, infidelity, and grief.” —O, the Oprah Magazine A brilliantly insightful novel, engrossing and haunting, about marriage, love, family, happiness and sorrow, from New York Times bestselling author Sue Miller. Graham and Annie have been married for nearly thirty years. Their seemingly effortless devotion has long been the envy of their circle of friends and acquaintances. By all appearances, they are a golden couple. Graham is a bookseller, a big, gregarious man with large appetites—curious, eager to please, a lover of life, and the convivial host of frequent, lively parties at his and Annie’s comfortable house in Cambridge. Annie, more reserved and introspective, is a photographer. She is about to have her first gallery show after a six-year lull and is worried that the best years of her career may be behind her. They have two adult children; Lucas, Graham’s son with his first wife, Frieda, works in New York. Annie and Graham’s daughter, Sarah, lives in San Francisco. Though Frieda is an integral part of this far-flung, loving family, Annie feels confident in the knowledge that she is Graham’s last and greatest love. When Graham suddenly dies—this man whose enormous presence has seemed to dominate their lives together—Annie is lost. What is the point of going on, she wonders, without him? Then, while she is still mourning Graham intensely, she discovers a ruinous secret, one that will spiral her into darkness and force her to question whether she ever truly knew the man who loved her.

This text provides a groundbreaking look at sexual instincts and offers a clinical psychologist's and sex therapist's insights and solutions to the challenges of monogamous relationships. Monogamous relationships are firmly embedded in the framework of our society, and yet the divorce rate and common failures of intimacy in long-term relationships challenges the efficacy of this paradigm. Oddly, the concept of monogamy has been virtually ignored by mental health professionals, while anthropologists, sociologists, biologists, and zoologists have researched and explored the topic. Monogamy: The Untold Story presents not only the scientific research about the challenges of monogamy, but also the practical solutions to overcome them. In part one, the author explores sexual instincts and monogamy from an anthropological, biological, psychological, and social perspective. Part two offers men and women a step-by-step guide to enhancing passion and strengthening their intimate bond by capitalizing on their natural sexual instincts.

A must read for anyone who's been thinking about having an affair. Includes real-life narratives of people who have cheated. Provides insights for those who are single and cheating with a married person. Offers therapists, clergy, and counselors a look into the cheater's motivation.

Through an investigation of sexual interactions and relationship forms that include more than two people, from polyamory, to threesomes, to the complexity of the "down-low" Schippers explores the queer, feminist, and anti-racist potential of multipartnered sex and relationships

In Love and Freedom, Jorge Ferrer proposes a paradigm shift in how romantic relationships are conceptualized, a step forward in the evolution of modern relationships. In the same way that the transgender movement surmounted the gender binary, Ferrer defines how a parallel step can—and should—be taken with the relational style binary. This book offers the first systematic discussion of relationship modes beyond monogamy and polyamory, as well as introduces the notion of “relational freedom” as the capability to choose one’s relational style free from biological, psychological, and sociocultural conditionings. To achieve these goals, Ferrer first discusses a number of critical categories—specifically, monopride/polyphobia, and polypride/monophobia—that mediate the contemporary “mono–poly wars,” that is, the predicament of mutual competition among monogamists and polyamorists. The ideological nature of these “mono–poly wars” is demonstrated through a review of available empirical literature on the psychological health and relationship quality of monogamous and polyamorous individuals and couples. Then, after showing how monogamy and polyamory ultimately reinforce each other, Ferrer articulates three relational pathways to living in-between, through, and beyond the mono/poly binary: fluidity, hybridity, and transcendence. Moving beyond that binary opens a fuzzy, liminal, and multivocal relational space that Ferrer calls novogamy. In this groundbreaking book, readers will learn practical tools to not only transform jealousy, but also enhance their relational freedom while being aware of key issues of diversity and social justice. They will also learn novel criteria to evaluate the success of their intimate relationships, and be introduced to a transformed vision of romantic love beyond both monocentrism and emerging polynormativities.

In Undoing Monogamy Angela Willey offers a radically interdisciplinary exploration of the concept of monogamy in U.S. science and culture, propelled by queer feminist desires for new modes of conceptualization and new forms of belonging. She approaches the politics and materiality of monogamy as intertwined with one another such that disciplinary ways of knowing themselves become an object of critical inquiry. Refusing to answer the naturalization of monogamy with a naturalization of nonmonogamy, Willey demands a critical reorientation toward the monogamy question in the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities. The book examines colonial sexual science, monogamous voles, polyamory, and the work of Alison Bechdel and Audre Lorde to show how challenging the lens through which human nature is seen as monogamous or nonmonogamous forces us to reconsider our investments in coupling and in disciplinary notions of biological bodies.