“In her latest book, Jessica Fern has crafted the map to guide readers and lovers venturing into the uncharted. With great care and necessary nuance, Polywise is a must-read for anyone navigating open relationships."

—Esther Perel

“Polywise emphasizes transitions—whether from monogamy to nonmonogamy, or from one form of nonmonogamy to another. It is these transitional periods that can easily reveal the grinding mechanisms behind the scenes, and the cracks in a relationship’s infrastructure. This is where many of us need the most help, and so Polywise goes straight to the heart of the matter, offering balms for healing and genuinely feasible strategies for making these things…not painless, perhaps, but hopefully a little kinder to all involved, and certainly survivable.

 

As I read, I found myself particularly inspired by the collaborative spirit of Polywise, incorporating as it does several sections written by David Cooley, with whom Fern has been “classmates, friends, lovers, husband and wife, co-parents, ex-husband and ex-wife, family of choice, housemates, life partners and now, even co-authors.” The book’s very existence is tangible proof of the general fact that relationship transitions need not be losses. More generally, you can feel in these pages the accumulated practical wisdom that comes from seeking emergent patterns in the data, rather than simply imposing pre- conceived ideas. And Fern’s data are, in a sense, us, the nonmonogamous: this is a book about our real lives and real loves, as represented in the kinds of challenges that came up repeatedly for her non-monogamous clients and interviewees.

The practical and the theoretical are integrated seamlessly in this book, just like in real life. Many of us will be visiting the wisdom of Polywise over and over again as our relationships grow and change, like the living things they are."

—Carrie Jenkins, professor of philosophy at the University of British Columbia and the author of What Love Is (and What it Could Be) and Sad Love: Romance and the Search for Meaning, and Nonmonogamy and Happiness.

“As someone who’s experienced a multitude of relationship transitions throughout the course of my life, I found Polywise to be incredibly profound. This book moves past the polyamory 101 manual into graduate-level territory. It’s an exceptional achievement that will be required reading for anyone practicing consensual nonmonogamy, from seasoned veteran to timid newbie alike.” 

—Emily Sotelo Matlack, co-host of the Multiamory Podcast and co-author of Multiamory: Essential Tools for Modern Relationships

“So often advice about nonmongamy feels like it is addressing the visible issues at hand—jealousy, boundaries, communication, etc—so relationships can survive. In Polywise, Jessica Fern and David Cooley help readers understand the often unseen root causes of those symptoms and give them the strategies they need so their relationships can actually thrive."

—JoEllen Notte, author of The Monster Under the Bed: Sex, Depression, and the Conversations We Aren’t Having and In It Together: Navigating Depression with Partners, Friends, and Family