The best books about polyamory and open relationships

I have found this book to be essential reading for my own life as well as in providing culturally-competent and effective counseling for clients in my private practice. 

Rowman and Littlefield has been a pioneer in publishing books with accurate and up-to-date information about consensual non-monogamy, LGBTQ issues, and kink and BDSM relationships. This is especially important as they make these books available to universities and other institutions that are training therapists and psychologists so that these clinicians will be qualified to work with these specialized populations that are so often misunderstood and cannot find appropriate mental health services. In addition, these books are written so that the layperson can understand and benefit from them. As a result, individuals who are seeking guidance and information about alternative sexualities and non-traditional relationships can easily utilize these books in their own lives.

Dr. Deborah Anapol wrote what is recognized as the first book explicitly about nonmonogamous relationships, Polyamory: The New Love Without Limits. She had to self-publish in 1997 because no publishing company wanted to touch a book on what was, at the time, such a transgressive subject Anapol’s book was a beacon of light for me and for many people who were struggling to create and sustain polyamorous relationships, at a time when very little information was available, and most people felt very alone with no support or guidance for their relationships. This book was the first to create a road map to help people have happy and healthy nonmonogamous relationships. And for those of us who had already been involved in successful polyamorous relationships for decades, Anapol’s book provided validation and confirmation that we were utilizing best practices as well as conducting our relationships in an ethical manner.

By the time Dr. Anapol wrote this book, a mainstream publisher like Rowman and Littlefield was willing to publish on this controversial subject. The book explains why some people choose relationships where they and their partners have the freedom to have multiple sexual and/or love relationships, as well as providing a primer on how to conduct such relationships ethically and honestly. While Anapol’s first book provided guidance and tools for successful polyamorous relationships, this book benefits from being written 20 years later, when a lot more people were openly practicing polyamory. As a result, she was able to interview many people who had created happy and healthy open relationships and could offer their hard-earned lessons and advice. Many of her interview subjects tackle the tough subject of jealousy, which is the key obstacle for most people in making polyamory work. They offer some fresh perspectives and approaches to managing and overcoming jealousy in open relationships.

Another treasured book on my “polyamory bookshelf” is Martha Kauppi’s fantastic book, Polyamory: A Clinical Toolkit for Therapists (and Their Clients), also published by Rowman and Littlefiled in 2020. This is the first and only training manual for psychologists and psychotherapists who want to provide highly-skilled therapy for polyamorous individuals, couples, and others in nonmonogamous relationship configurations. 

I have been waiting for over 30 years for someone to write this book! I receive calls nearly every week from confused and anxious therapists who have absolutely no idea how to provide counseling for clients who have come to them for help with their nonmonogamous relationships. I also frequently hear from individuals and couples who have gone to numerous therapists for counseling about their polyamorous relationships and the therapists have done more harm than good, due to a lack of training and knowledge about this type of relationship. Thanks to this ground-breaking book, therapists can get the education they need to work competently with this rapidly-growing demographic of polyamorous people. 

And this book is not just for therapists, as it is written in layperson’s language and can be extremely useful to anyone seeking to increase their understanding of polyamorous relationships. There are lots of exercises in the book that can be used as self-help techniques for those who cannot find a poly-competent therapist in their area. 

Another book full of great information and fascinating people is Elisabeth Sheff’s The Polyamorists Next Door: Inside Multi-Partner Relationships and Families. Sheff has been engaged in a nearly 30-year longitudinal study of polyamorous families with children, studying how children fare in these very non-traditional families. Her conclusion? Kids do as well being raised by poly parents as they do in any other type of family: they thrive as long as the parents are providing a safe and nurturing environment for them and giving them adequate love and attention. I recommend this book highly, as it has such in-depth interviews with both the parents and children in these unusual families, and you really get to know these families!

Her findings are very similar to those done by scholars studying children raised in LGBT families, demonstrating the truth of that bumper sticker that says, “Love Makes a Family.” Sheff has continued to study and interview these families at intervals, which is particularly fascinating now that most of the children in those families are adults. She is about to publish a new book about her most recent findings, and I can’t wait to read what the now-adult children have to say about having been raised in polyamorous families!

This is a brand-new Rowman and Littlefield book by Glen Olson and Terry Lee Brussel-Rogers, fresh off the presses in December 2022: Fifty Years of Polyamory in America: A Guided Tour of a Growing Movement. Both Olson and Brussel-Rogers have been involved in the polyamory movement for nearly half a century, and have been founding members of some of the pivotal polyamory organizations throughout the decades. They know this history both personally and politically, and know most of the key players and have interviewed them extensively for the book. 

Even though I have been involved in the polyamory community and movement for decades, I learned so much from this book! This is not a dry history book; it’s a very fascinating and lively read! The book chronicles the evolution of polyamorous philosophy and ideas, as well as the organizational development involved in taking this lifestyle from a very discreet experience of a few isolated people and tiny, very private groups, to a large movement that became very public. In addition, it describes the support structures that polyamorous people developed to educate people about this relationship style and to protect polyamorous people from discrimination and other negative consequences due to their relationships.