The Idealist's Case

There is a pattern in the data on consensual non-monogamy that confounds outside observers. Long-term practitioners of cuckolding — couples who have s

The dominant cultural narrative about cuckolding runs something like this: it is what happens when a man gives up. He cannot satisfy his partner, so h

There is a proposition that underlies everything we argue about cuckolding at its best, and it is time to state it directly. The proposition is this:

The most persistent objection to cuckolding is moral rather than clinical: it attracts damaged people. Weak men. Selfish women. Predatory thirds. The

The idealist's case for cuckolding holds that the practice, when entered with emotional sophistication, secure attachment, and deliberate relational a

Emotional sophistication is the capacity to hold multiple, contradictory emotional states simultaneously without collapsing into defense, dissociation

Internal Family Systems therapy, developed by Richard Schwartz in the early 1990s, teaches clients to identify and hold space for contradictory intern

Strip away the aesthetic. Remove the erotic specificity. Look only at the structural requirements — the relational muscles that must be present and ac

There is an extensive literature on what cuckolding relationships look like when they fail — the jealousy spirals, the resentment, the dissolution. Wh

The distinction between aspiration and compulsion in sexual behavior is, in clinical terms, the difference between choosing a practice from a position