This week's guest is Erin Tillman, aka "The Dating Advice Girl," who has joined us to talk about health checkups in relationships and to give her valuable perspective on relationship health and wellness.

As with many other things, approaching domestic violence and intimate partner violence within polyamorous relationships can sometimes require different approaches than is traditional. This week we're joined with Christy Croft, a violence prevention trainer who has over ten years of experience as a crisis hotline advocate, support group leader, and more. They have partnered with us this week to bring an inside perspective on how to address intimate partner violence in non-monogamous relationships.

Relationships such as triads and quads which contain more than two people are largely disputed, discussed, and sometimes practiced in polyamory. Many people have had bad experiences with them while others love them, so this episode is going over some common conflicts people run into with three-person (or more) relationships as well as some challenges that may be a little more prevalent than in two-person dyads.

Part 2 of our series on going to therapy covers how to choose a therapist, some special considerations to think about when deciding on the type of therapy, and some non-traditional outlets for therapy, such as different apps.

If you're asking if you should go to therapy, the answer is probably yes, but in this episode, we're laying out some common questions people might ask regarding therapy, as well as some different types of therapy that professionals offer and what might be best for your particular situation.

We're joined by Jessica Fern, author of the upcoming book Polysecure: Attachment, Trauma, and Consensual Non-monogamy. She is also a psychotherapist, public speaker, and relationship and trauma specialist, and this week she's talking with us about trauma and attachment theories, as well as strategies for gaining more secure attachments.

This week's guest is Laurie Penny, an author, journalist, and screenwriter from the UK and has joined us to discuss polyamory and feminism and how they intersect. Laurie is the author of seven books which can be found online. Find them on Twitter at @pennyred and check out their Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/lauriepenny

This episode is all about breakups and de-coupling with intention! We're sharing some important steps to take when transitioning a relationship out of a romantic one and how this transition might affect your other relationships and different aspects of your life.

It's time to go back for repairs again for a bit...instead of talking about fallout after a fight, however, this episode covers ways to get your fights with partners back on track. When your fights start to get out of hand, it's important to recognize what's happening and implement ways to de-escalate further issues.

What does it even mean to "get closure?" It's a phrase used a lot for a lot of different situations, but what does it actually mean? When is it necessary? When is it NOT necessary? Take a dive with us into closure and the psychology around it!

Ghosting has become quite a common way to end a relationship or prevent one from starting these days. On this episode, we're exploring why people ghost, the positives and negatives of ghosting, how to react if you've been ghosted, and how to fight the urge to ghost others.

Join us and our guest, Marie Thouin, as she tells us about her qualitative research on compersion, as well as her own opinions and experiences with ethical non-monogamy.

Part of being a human is learning how to recalibrate your mind when transitioning from one situation to another. This can be especially difficult for polyamorous people changing from one partner to another, so this episode helps outline some ways to make the switch mentally when engaging in different tasks or social situations.

Language is a highly nuanced tool that we all use, and so today we're examining how it can affect relationships, reclamation of certain words for different communities, and more.

Image credit: https://www.woodenearth.com/blogs/wooden-blog

This week is part 2 of our series on shame, which covers shame specifically around nontraditional and polyamorous relationships, healthy vs. unhealthy shame (not to be confused with healthy shaming), and countershaming.

This week we're kicking off a two-part series on shame in relationships: where it comes from, why we feel it, how it can affect our relationships (especially nontraditional ones), and ways to deal with feeling it to counteract its effects.

Giving and receiving apologies can be a lot harder than it sounds; there's more nuance than a simple "I'm sorry." This week, we're discussing how to properly receive and offer apologies, as well as briefly covering boundaries, empathy, and unburdening guilt. In addition, we're sharing some advice from Dr. Karina Schumann, a psychology professor at the University of Pittsburgh who studies conflict resolution.

What do you struggle with in your relationships? What is your greatest strength? Inspired by some questions our friend and author Kevin Patterson asked, we're exploring why it's important for us to be familiar with each other's strengths and weaknesses in relationships, and identifying them, both in ourselves and in our partners.

Being criticized is difficult, especially when it's a friend, partner, or family member providing the criticism. Today we're covering how to handle receiving criticism gracefully and learning how to improve yourself, be a better communicator, and bring people together instead of pushing them apart.

Gloria Jackson-Nefertiti is a public speaker, poet, panelist, art model, sex-positive, autistic, bisexual, polyamorous cancer survivor. She joined us today to discuss shame, how it relates to identity as well as other emotions, and her well-known workshop Transcending Shame.
Gloria has a website that is linked in this post, and she is also active on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.