Designer Relationships: A Guide to Happy Monogamy, Positive Polyamory, and Optimistic Open Relationships

Designer Relationships Patricia Johnson and Mark A. Michaels Contemporary relationships are in a state of rapid evolution. These changes can and should be empowering. They provide people with the opportunity to develop partnerships based on their own sexualities, understandings, and agreements. This makes it possible to create what Kenneth R. Haslam, MD, founder of the Kinsey Institute’s Polyamory Archive, has called “designer relationships.” You are the designer, along with your partner or partners, and it’s up to you to create a relationship that works and to redesign it when and if appropriate. We invite you to move beyond the binary thinking that deems monogamy and various forms of consensual nonmonogamy to be irreconcilable opposites. The term designer relationship is inclusive. It may encompass: • People who bond emotionally but not sexually. • People who choose to be sexually exclusive. • People who agree to be non-exclusive. • Single people who have occasion