Reddit mentions of The Smart Girl's Guide to Polyamory: Everything You Need to Know About Open Relationships, Non-Monogamy, and Alternative Love

Start by reading the /r/polyamory FAQ if you haven't yet.

There are many good books out there, and reading any of these will help fill in a lot of blanks for you:

Opening Up: A Guide to Creating and Sustaining Open Relationships

The Smart Girl's Guide to Polyamory: Everything You Need to Know About Open Relationships, Non-Monogamy, and Alternative Love

The Polyamory Toolkit: A Guidebook for Polyamorous Relationships

Building Open Relationships: Your hands on guide to swinging, polyamory, and beyond!

If you like listening to podcasts, there are a couple good ones I follow: Multiamory Podcast and Polyamory Weekly.

Go slow, read lots, and follow your heart.

A couple of things from my experience:

- I wouldn't necessarily say she's gone full poly. I would more categorize her reactions as NRE. And as such, if you look through that lense then her excitement and overwhelm for experiencing something new with someone else.
- Jealousy/envy/inadequacy is so is something we normally deal with in relationships in general. Often people new to open relationships will create a prescriptive hierarchical relationship structure to protect against that or to limit what their partners can and can't to do to ensure our positions of importance are maintained in the relationship.
- Mistakes will be made when opening up your relationship. That doesn't mean it's damaged or that it needs to be thrown out. But you also have to consider that new agreements are being created and a paradigm shift is being made. In that transition you and she (and other partners and metamours) will all make mistakes. Have room for these and keep an open channel of communication, compassion, and trust for the people you love and want in your life. Holding mistakes over people's heads will only further complicate the issue.
- Did she cheat on you? I would be hard pressed to see it that way, but I get where you're coming from. Again, I'd invite you to look at it a different way: You both established the ability for each other to explore sexually with others, but your perception of her current situation is that she's creating a poly relationship. I don't that she's doing that but rather, as mentioned above, is experiencing NRE and expressing it that way. For me, when I first started non-monogamy my experience when connecting with others was love... until I continued to distinguish for myself that this wasn't love but rather NRE.
- Some people experience being polyamorous, while others in the in relationship might not. My current nesting partner isn't polyamorous but IS non-monogamous. I'm polyamorous. So although the conversation for you both will evolve to developing long-term meaningful love emotions for others, that doesn't mean you're both REQUIRED to do that. Equal but not necessarily even.


I always recommend people new to non-monogamy read A Smart Girl's Guide as a way to help get a full picture on what you want from a non-mongamous relationship. I also recommend you and your partner read it together and work through the exercises.


I also recommend the following podcasts to listen to. Again, listening to them together or apart but then discussing together has always made a difference in the relationships I'm building with people.

- New Relationship Energy (NRE)

- Basics of Boundaries, Rules, Agreements, and Boundaries

- Relationship Hierarchy

- Relationship Anarchy 101, Relationship Anarchist Cookbook


Good luck and update us when you can.

Yes! This is a huge concept so hats off to the OP for this discovery.

Dedeker Winston (co-host of MULTIAMORY podcast and author) discusses this a lot in her book The Smart Girl's Guide to Polyamory: Everything You Need to Know About Open Relationships, Non-Monogamy, and Alternative Love https://www.amazon.com/dp/1510712089/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_R2qWCb0B4Y4XQ.

Whups, I thought I was on a different ENM subreddit anyways, sorry.

The Ethical Slut: A Practical Guide to Polyamory, Open Relationships, and Other Freedoms in Sex and Love

Opening Up: A Guide to Creating and Sustaining Open Relationships

The Smart Girl's Guide to Polyamory: Everything You Need to Know About Open Relationships, Non-Monogamy, and Alternative Love

The Jealousy Workbook: Exercises and Insights for Managing Open Relationships

The Polyamory Toolkit: A Guidebook for Polyamorous Relationships

Building Open Relationships: Your hands on guide to swinging, polyamory, and beyond!

I just realized it's been 7 years since I read that book. Haven't read that latest edition you're holding, but I remember the chapter "Embracing Conflict" (I think that's what it was called) being eye-opening to me.

If anyone out there is interested in ethical non-monogamy, or dope books about relationship skills generally, then read The Ethical Slut (and More Than Two by Rickert and Veaux, plus The Smart Girl's Guide to Polyamory by Winston)

So, if you want to open the relationship to the possibility of sex and love with another person, and you believe you have the capacity to love and honor both of them, I would like to encourage you to read a book or two before you move forward with your boyfriend.

(it's not just for girls)
https://www.amazon.com/Smart-Girls-Guide-Polyamory-Relationships/dp/1510712089

(a little more rules based than I prefer but still good)
https://www.amazon.com/Opening-Up-Creating-Sustaining-Relationships/dp/157344295X

You might also try posing your question in r/polyamory. Those folks have good advice on this stuff and lots of good experience to draw from. And they're totally bi-friendly.

If you're really interested in polyamory then I'd also suggest reading about it. Poly itself isn't that hard, but a lot of unexpected emotions can happen when you attempt it, and some people trying CNM sometimes create and/or agree to rules than can later backfire and destroy the relationships, so... if you like learning from experience of others, you might want to try those:

1. When Someone You Love Is Polyamorous - nice, short, and neutral intro to polyamory - what it is, and what it isn't. Good for family and friends, too.
   
2. The Smart Girl's Guide to Polyamory - more personal approach, written from a girl perspective.
   
3. More Than Two - detailed explanation of many things that might happen in polyamorous relationships, kind of "polyamory bible". Definitively worth reading, too.