Love Without Emergency #2 (Digital)

This is the digital file, sent as a pdf. For the print version click here.

The follow up to Love Without Emergency shares what I have learned about navigating trauma, attachment, and polyamory in the three years since I put out the first installment. In particular, it focuses on disorganized attachment, having anxious tendencies with some partners, and avoidant tendencies with others. It feels like the other piece of the puzzle, offering more insight into the avoidant aspect, whereas the first installment focused more on the anxious aspect.

What if you're polyamorous, anxious as fuck with one partner, and unable to totally let other partners in? What if you have complex ptsd and feel fucking insane but you are committed to being poly? What if, years in, you still get nervous system flooded sometimes? What if you are realizing that you are way more avoidant than you thought? What if you want more intimacy and simultaneously push it away? What if your anxiety is part of your avoidance? What if you have sexual trauma and feel sex repulsed sometimes, and polyamory increases a sense of pressure to have a lot of sex?

Love Without Emergency #2 explores these and many other questions. It's a reflection on navigating polyamory with attachment issues and trauma, and it goes deeper than the standard issues with jealousy. It's about surrendering control, facing ambivalence, and listening to the 'no'. It's about loving someone who loves others, and dating when dating is hard. It's a love letter to the process of learning to love without emergency, through the mess and confusion of complex trauma and disorganized attachment.