Reviews with content warning for Medical content - The Anxious Person's Guide to Non-Monogamy: Your Guide to Open Relationships, Polyamory and Letting Go

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The Anxious Person's Guide to Non-Monogamy: Your Guide to Open Relationships, Polyamory and Letting Go by Lola Phoenix

1 review

bladelikesbooks's review against another edition

hopeful informative reflective fast-paced

5.0

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book, thank you to NetGalley and Jessica Kingsley Publishers for the eARC. This has got to be the best nonfiction book I’ve read so far this year. This specific perspective on polyamory was incredibly useful and important to me as a lot of my identities intersect with the identities of the author.

The author is Acespec, autistic, bisexual, disabled and non-binary and because of the author having these identities, the book uses very inclusive language naturally and heavily emphasises intersectionality and diversity. I feel that often times, reading works by cisgendered straight people, the diversity and intersectionality discussed in their works (if at all) can unfortunately feel forced, however in this author’s work it feels so natural and automatic.

The book includes a lot of general information about polyamory but specifically focuses on the perspective of a person with anxiety. As a person with anxiety, I felt that the discussion topics were structured in a way that I could fully understand and I wasn’t left with any huge unanswered questions and didn’t feel myself going into a spiral of overthinking the possibilities of different situations.

This workbook covers a lot of different discussion topics regarding polyamory and at the end of each chapter, there is a section of questions to help you test your comfortability levels and your boundaries regarding the discussion topic.

Throughout the workbook, the author takes special consideration and affirms the reader that changing their mind on their boundaries, comfortability levels, relationship dynamic is perfectly okay and encourages the reader to have frequent discussion about this with their partners.

In the discussion of sexual health, I liked that the author discussed the different levels of safer sex and emphasised that people have different opinions on sexual safety and not to judge that. The author also discusses possible rules for when one partner has a compromised immune system which I appreciated as this is not something many people would be mindful of.

When discussing the “wrong ways” of polyamory, the author mentions the OPP (One Penis Policy) and points out how this is transphobic. I greatly appreciated this as a trans person.

The author discusses intersectionality a lot throughout the book and emphasises that within polyamorous communities, societal standards are often still applied such as wealthy white women being able to devote more free time to the community and therefore being placed in more important positions and how this effects decision making and diversity. The author also mentions that women of colour are often expected to perform extra emotional and mental labour by being asked to carry out anti-racist teachings.

Towards the end of the book, the author includes an “Anxiety Toolbox” section that aims to help find the root of your anxiety and help you work through it. I greatly appreciate this because, as the author often mentions, accessibility is different for everyone and many people that suffer anxiety unfortunately don’t have the resources or education to healthily deal with it. So having this to look back on and use in the future will be incredible important to many people that otherwise wouldn’t have been able to access a helpful resource such as this.

In the closing statement of the book, the author encourages the reader to seek out different perspectives by authors with other identities than their own and emphasises that their writing isn’t universal but just one person’s perspective. I appreciate this being said because I believe that intersectionality is incredibly important, especially when reading nonfiction books and I love that the author frequently encourages the reader to seek out writings by BIPOC authors so they can get a more rounded view.

I will be purchasing a physical copy of this book and I look forward to rereading it and annotating it and fully working through all of the questions. I think this book will be a brilliant tool for many people to go back to again and again. I highly recommend this if you are a person within the polyamorous community, interested in trying polyamory or even if you just want to become educated on polyamory and have no interest partaking in it.

TWs/CWs - Acephobia; Bullying (past, mentioned); Child Sexual Abuse (past, mentioned); COVID-19 Pandemic (mentioned); Gun Violence; Medication; Neglect (past, mentioned); Sexual Assault (mentioned)

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