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benjch 's review for:
Polysecure: Attachment, Trauma and Consensual Nonmonogamy
by Jessica Fern
I picked this up as I noticed that I held some very mono-normative bias, and wanted to understand polyamory and the emotions/attachment surrounding it. This was probably not the best book to read as an introduction. This is a fairly academic text that leans very heavily on attachment theory, which I'm not sure I fully buy into.
This may be reductive of me, but it felt like this book tried to sort everyone into one of the 4 attachment types, and then provide broad recommendations for how to engage in polyamory or consensual non-monogamy. Because of this, it was very problem-oriented, which was not ideal for someone trying to understand, and coming from a very mono-normative perspective.
I will concur with some other reviewers that the majority of the book is not actually about consensual nonmonogamy, but about attachment theory and trauma. Fern doesn't get into the CNM discussion really at all until 60% of the way into the book.
My primary gripe is with Fern's HEARTS structure, which felt like a relationship framework built around an acronym rather than a real approach to relationship security. I see some of the points that she was going for, but on the whole felt it wasn't coherent.
I found this interesting, but ultimately unhelpful for me, but I don't know that I can hold that against it. I think for someone currently engaging in CNM and struggling with relationship insecurity, this may be fairly helpful. For me, it was a 2/5.
This may be reductive of me, but it felt like this book tried to sort everyone into one of the 4 attachment types, and then provide broad recommendations for how to engage in polyamory or consensual non-monogamy. Because of this, it was very problem-oriented, which was not ideal for someone trying to understand, and coming from a very mono-normative perspective.
I will concur with some other reviewers that the majority of the book is not actually about consensual nonmonogamy, but about attachment theory and trauma. Fern doesn't get into the CNM discussion really at all until 60% of the way into the book.
My primary gripe is with Fern's HEARTS structure, which felt like a relationship framework built around an acronym rather than a real approach to relationship security. I see some of the points that she was going for, but on the whole felt it wasn't coherent.
I found this interesting, but ultimately unhelpful for me, but I don't know that I can hold that against it. I think for someone currently engaging in CNM and struggling with relationship insecurity, this may be fairly helpful. For me, it was a 2/5.