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1 " If there’s anything I’ve learned from polyamory, it’s that the quickest way to destroy a relationship is to try to make it into something it’s not, to force it into a box that it doesn’t really fit in, and to slap labels on something and assume that those labels give the relationship value. No, no, and no. What you end up with is damaged goods in a mislabeled package that end up absolutely where you didn’t want to send the damn thing in the first place. "
― Page Turner , Poly Land: My Brutally Honest Adventures in Polyamory
2 " It’s natural to avoid the things we fear. Seeking out what terrifies me seems insane on a certain level, but more and more, the longer I’m alive, I find myself drawn to my most intense feelings, both good and bad. It seems that they are screaming out to me for a reason and that I have to know what they’re trying to say. "
3 " I was terrified of opening my marriage to outside influence. Because it was the center of my life and meant more than anything. But as I thought through my fears, I realized something: Testing that bond was a win-win scenario.Best case, we would weather the challenges, and I would have a wealth of experiences and emotional bonds with others that could complement my life.Worst case, I was wrong about the strength of what we I had together, and it would tear us apart.But if what we had were that easily ruined, was it really all that great in the first place? And wouldn’t I want to know now, 4 years into the marriage, rather than another 20 or 30 years down the road? "
4 " When I date, I date a lot. I give most people a chance but let very few into my heart. Think of it like trying on clothes before you buy them. It takes out the guesswork. Why commit before you’re ready? And ideally you end up having to make fewer returns. Of course there are those awkward moments when you’re standing in unfamiliar light in front of a questionably shaped mirror squinting at your torso and thinking to yourself “Do I have a bra somewhere that’ll make this thing work? Could I get one? "
5 " BDSM stands for Bondage and Discipline, Dominance and Submission, and Sadism and Masochism. Yeah, it should really be BDDSSM, but BDSM looks less like a cat sitting on a keyboard, so they went with that. "
6 " All of us are capable of being someone else’s difficult metamour. "
― Page Turner , Dealing with Difficult Metamours
7 " You want to discuss the situation and the behavior as the problem, and not them. "
8 " Unless you have a portal to Hell hidden in those pants, then I’ve probably seen everything you have to offer. "
― Page Turner , Psychic City (Psychic State Book 1)
9 " Karen had noticed over the years that whether someone else felt interrupted was an entirely subjective phenomenon. Pauses in conversation were often ambiguous. Karen had noted that laidback people rarely seemed to complain of being interrupted, even when they clearly were. And control freaks constantly claimed they were being interrupted, even after quite luxurious pauses. The whole interruption issue seemed less based on clear-cut behavioral cues and more based on the subjective belief of a given speaker that they should still be in control of the discussion. "
10 " Any time you pursue an unconventional path in life, there will be no shortage of people ready and willing to enthusiastically warn you against it. "
11 " It wasn’t anything she’d been warned about, but people who were close to their parents often had a hard time accepting other people who weren't. "
12 " It’s difficult to shame a person who isn’t ashamed. "
13 " Face the demons if they approach, but don't go demon hunting. Do the work needed to keep relationships healthy and strong, but don't invent more work just for the sake of work. "
14 " In general, seeing living things in ink blots is considered the “correct” result. Animals are good. But people are even better. Especially if you can come up with a story where there’s some kind of relationship between them. Ideally, a positive one. Projective tests are all about getting an honest glimpse into a subject’s psyche, and a healthy person, theoretically speaking, is a social animal and will see people when presented with ambiguity. "
15 " There are certain people in this world who aren’t used to kindness. Especially big gestures or grandiose general purpose statements of comfort. Such things always rang hollow to people like that, who were accustomed to a difficult life and being kicked on their ass. It was easy for them to tell themselves you didn’t mean it, that it was something you said to everyone, that you were placating or flattering them. Sometimes you could still get to them though, if you made the kindness small enough, specific enough. Only when you’d broken the kindness down into its smallest components could you reach them. Tiny particles that worked their way through the giant barriers they constructed to keep others out. "
16 " Ladies. One of her least favorite words. It was the verbal equivalent of sanitary napkins. Utilitarian perhaps. But uncomfortable and artificial and never quite able to contain everything it was supposed to. And irrevocably linked with fifth grade health class. The week where the boys and girls were split up and a misleadingly titled film “The Miracle of Birth” dramatized the horrors of childbirth. "
17 " She suspected that was the cause of most suspicion, people’s worry that monogamy could easily be vanquished by a solitary example of something else that was working just fine. People weren’t exactly eager to admit it, but it did seem that a lot of them implicitly viewed monogamy as particularly fragile, and a lot of people did seem to nurse a private worry that the only thing keeping monogamy going was a lack of competing alternative relationship styles – ones that were considered to be viable or healthy in any event.As a result, they were prone to viewing a non-monogamous setup with suspicion, not only more conflicted than they might have otherwise been but also largely unaware of those conflicts. "
18 " There are certain people in this world who have a knack of getting you to say the bold, outrageous thing yourself, talking up to the point where it becomes the obvious conclusion, and then gracefully backing away from actually stating it themselves. "
