I have decided to change the way this blog is licensed and to start using a Creative Commons licence instead of simple copyright. At the same time, I am giving away the pdf version of Open Fidelity – an A-Z Guide free under the same Creative Commons licence: it is now here.

This is part of a broader rethink of the purpose of the book and blog that I’ve been doing in the last few weeks. I’ve realised that the attempt to make this project into a business has been working against my aims. I would like the world to know more about Open Fidelity, and charging people to read about it hasn’t helped with this.

I’ve been influenced by the open source software movement and also the open access publishing movement. I think the time has come for me to make my work available to all, without unreasonable restrictions, for reuse and distribution, so that as many people can learn about these ideas as possible. I have made a new version of the book for this purpose, which is unchanged in the A-Z pages but has some changes in the copyright page and a couple of pages about future projects have been removed from the end. This version is an unrestricted pdf file, so you can print it and copy text from it.

The terms of the licence I have chosen for both the book and this blog are available here. Briefly, they say that you are free to copy, distribute and display the work under the following conditions: you must give the original author (me) credit; you may not use it for commercial purposes; and you may not alter, transform, or build upon it. For any reuse or distribution, you must make the licence terms clear to others. Any of these conditions can be waived if you get my permission, however. If you would like to translate it into another language, for example, I’d like you to contact me to arrange permission, though I’m very likely to give it.

So if you haven’t yet read Open Fidelity – an A-Z Guide, download a copy now.

I may not be posting very often from now on, but will post occasional announcements when something interesting comes up. Oh, and in case you’re wondering from my previous post, the TV appearance I mentioned was cancelled. The series it was going to be part of isn’t yet out but should still be interesting.

For those interested in WordPress technicalities, I’ve activated the Akismet and Peter’s Custom Anti-Spam plugins as well as changing the options on the blog.

Any comments on commenting?!

PS. Using the new way of commenting, your email address will remain in the input box after you’ve posted your comment. Don’t panic – it isn’t visible to anyone except you. If you don’t like it staying there for others on your computer to see, try deleting cookies that come from this website (Firefox: Tools, Options, Privacy, Show cookies, search – other browsers probably similar).

My vision for this site was, and still is, of a place where people concerned with these issues could talk to each other, share their stories, and form a community. It hasn’t yet happened, but I hope it can start  happening now.

If you have found any posts useful, please comment on them and say so. If you think something I have said is mistaken, or unclear, or over-simplified, please comment. If you have a story that relates to something I’ve written, please add it. If you think the whole concept is rubbish, I’d love to hear why – and then other readers can comment on what you say.

You can do all this without revealing your identity to other readers, and if you wish you don’t even have to give me any idea of your identity either. To comment you need to register (I insist on this to avoid spam comments), and that requires only an email address, which only I will see, and a username, which others will see. If you wish you can set up a new webmail address using a service like GMail, Yahoo or Hotmail, which can make you completely anonymous.

In time, the amount of discussion this blog generates will show how useful it is being. If it isn’t useful, maybe I’ll eventually call it a day though I fully intend to keep posting for a good while yet!

First, you’ve probably guessed by now that I’m not the kind of blogger who writes in intimate detail about my daily life. I’ve never quite understood why some people want to do this – it’s just not my thing to reveal so much to the whole world. One reason is that Anna is my real name, so I can’t hide behind a pseudonym. But I will reveal bits of my life as we go along, when they are relevant to what I’m trying to say.

Some basic facts: I live in London, UK; I’m in my mid-30s; I am a bisexual woman. I am in a long-term open relationship; I am good friends with my previous long-term partner, with whom I also had an open relationship. I’ve been researching ethical non-monogamy since 2004. I am a Quaker. I am very lucky to be part of a close family that have supported this project from the beginning.

Personality-wise, I’m a bit of an intellectual: sometimes I’d rather retreat into a book than deal with the world around me, but sometimes I think I can be intellectual in a useful way. I have been accused of being tactless, though I can be sensitive too. I have lots of good acquaintances and just a few very close friends. I can bluff proficiently in geek, but I’m not really a geek (I’m on the edge – see below). I like personality tests, so for those who are interested in them too, I am a type 5 on the Enneagram and INTJ in Myers Briggs. Oh, and a Capricorn if you believe in that stuff too – the bit about being down to earth seems right, anyway. I value free time over possessions and comfort over beauty. I’m a fan of Terry Pratchett, Heroes, OpenOffice and David Attenborough.

One thing I’ve realised is that I’m someone who feels comfortable on the edge of groups of people. Most relevant to this blog is that I’m on the edge of the bisexual community. I am sometimes attracted to women as well as men, and I’ve been to events such as Bicon and London bisexual groups (BU and LBWG) for ten or so years. But for most of that time my primary partner has been a man and I find I fit well enough into the mainstream heterosexual community. Well, mostly: I’ve always had a problem with marriage and the assumption of monogamy, so I knew I wasn’t going to settle down and be a good wife, even if I did find one man I wanted to stay with. This led me to the polyamory community, which I suppose I am part of, though I sometimes get the feeling I’m ‘not poly enough’.

Through the bi and poly communities I’ve met quite a few people who are into BDSM (Bondage and Discipline (BD), Dominance and Submission (DS), Sadism and Masochism (SM); see this useful article for a fuller definition). I’ve discovered that the BDSM community is a thriving one that overlaps with the bisexual community. This is particularly important here, because although I’m only on the very edge of the BDSM community, I have learned quite a bit from them about negotiation, about being straightforward and upfront about the kind of relationship and/or sex and want, and about going out to find someone who wants to offer you that. It is the antithesis of the hetero romantic ideal of just waiting for someone special to come along and then sticking with them even if you find they can’t turn you on. I find this a refreshing way of thinking and I would like to help those not in the BDSM community to hear more about it.

So that’s an advantage of being on the edge: you can help one group to understand and learn from another, while not being so deeply involved in either group that what you say isn’t heard by the others. Of course the risk of being on the edge is that you can be accused by both groups of not knowing the full story!

Another group I’m on the edge of is ‘religious people’. I am part of the British tradition of liberal unprogrammed Quakerism, which I see as sitting on the liberal edge of Christianity, and perhaps even on the edge of religion altogether, which allows Quakers at times to help nonreligious people to understand why the concept of God is useful to some, and to help religious people to understand why it is less useful to others. You won’t see much about religion in this blog, but Quakerism has very much influenced my ethical principle, and particularly my willingness to question assumptions about morality.

Finally, I am also on the edge of the ‘scientists’ group. I studied biology, did a PhD in evolutionary biology and did a research job for a couple of years, became an editor on several biology journals and then went freelance – moving one step away from scientists and then another but still reading research as part of my job. I’m hoping that in the Open Fidelity project I can use the scientific way of thinking and apply it to human relationships, in so far as it can be applied to such complex systems. For example, I like to state my assumptions, put forward hypotheses, look for evidence, and question any conclusion that lacks strong evidence. I also like the way that scientists criticise each other’s ideas as ideas, usually managing not to make criticisms personal. I hope you will criticise my ideas in the same spirit.

I hope this helps you feel you know me, at least a little. In the next post I promise I’ll start on the real-life stories of Open Fidelity without further delay!

[Edited 2009 to remove surname]

• A few are the friends whose stories first inspired me to look into open relationships.

• Some are Quakers whose stories I heard about through the Quaker grapevine.

• Some are friends of friends, of lovers and of former lovers.

• Some I met in the bisexual community.

• Some have contacted me after hearing about the project from web communities and e-mail lists, volunteering their stories.

The curious thing is that, whenever I’ve told someone new about the project, the chances are they say something like “Oh, I have a friend/I had an aunt/I know a couple who are doing exactly that!” Most of these friends or relatives haven’t publicised their open/multiple relationships, but those close to them knew about it and could tell me.

I then had to persuade people to talk to me to the book. The fact that I am not a journalist probably helped, as was the fact that I have had an open relationship myself, and in some cases my Quakerism helped. I guaranteed that I would do all I could to keep their identities confidential, which means nearly all the names (and some biographical details) have been changed.

Most of the stories came to me through recorded interviews. Some people wrote to me and I extracted and slightly edited parts of what they wrote. When someone is quoted here, the text has always been seen and approved by the person who provided the quote (or in a few cases a partner). Where I have edited someone’s words, this was to improve the grammar or sentence structure or make the meaning clear in the final context, and I have been careful never to change anyone’s meaning.

As the interviews have taken place over the course of several years and I have kept in touch with each interviewee, one problem that arose was that their circumstances quite often changed over that time. Some of the couples in open relationships decided to be monogamous; others split up, sometimes amicably and sometimes not. A few stories turned out to be not as good examples as I had thought, as people turned out not to have been as good at honesty and keeping promises as they had originally seemed. This is inevitable when you are dealing with real human beings. In some cases I have focused on the period when a relationship fitted the description of Open Fidelity and omitted other periods of the protagonists’ lives. Sometimes I didn’t know the later story, or could only hear one side of it, so it didn’t seem right to include it. But I am pretty confident that stories I tell are still valid – the relationships were open and faithful at the time, whatever happened later. In other cases I have been able to get a reliable update on the story, so I will talk about several phases of the relationship here.

I am still interviewing and looking for stories for this blog, so if you think your story of honest (or even dishonest) non-monogamy would be useful for others in your situation to hear and you would like to share it anonymously, do get in touch.

This minibook came out in October 2006, published by Purple Sofa Publications (a publisher set up especially for the purpose). It is entitled Open Fidelity – an A-Z Guide and the full details are on the ‘Books’ tab. If you want to read the distilled wisdom from this blog without any of the waffle, buy the book now (click on the ‘Sales’ tab at the top)!

After that was published and the minor storm in the media about it had abated, I got on with writing what I called ‘the main book’: a full-length book detailing all my research and interviews and ideas. And it was carrying along, slowly, in between me doing other things (like life) and trying to make a living.

But it was beginning to dawn on me that this is going to take a very long time to come to fruition, and that the financial rewards in the end are likely to be pretty small, if anything, unless it becomes a bestseller. So I started to wonder about alternatives ways of getting my ideas into the public domain that would involve less of a delay. I’m not completely altruistic, and I want to make sure I get credited for the parts of all this that are original, and it would be useful to make a little money as well, if only so that I can spend more of my time on the project.

So the result is this blog. At some point another book might arise out of this and non-blog material. In the future there will be adverts on the blog, hopefully unobtrusive ones. I will be looking for ways to make money from the blog without jeopardising the main aim of the project, which is to inform people about the possibilities of honest non-monogamy and help them to avoid cheating on their partners.