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A Geek’s Guide to Unicorn Ranching

It started over a year ago with a letter from a reader:

Do you have any advice for couples who are about to open up their relationships? 

My partner and I are new to poly. We don’t know where to begin. We’d like to find someone to date together. We’ve talked to a bunch of people online, but they called us unicorn hunters. I looked this up, and it’s apparently an insult. Means that we’re unethical and selfish. 

I don’t feel like we are, but maybe there’s something there? If I’m doing things the wrong way, I’d like to do better. 

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I sent them links to some articles I’d written. Gave them book recommendations for some basic polyamory primers. And wrote them a new article – “Unicorn Ranchers: Don’t Hunt, Create a Sanctuary.”

After it came out, they wrote back to me with the piece’s final line:

If you’re looking for a unicorn, as many are, don’t be the hunting kind. Be the spoiling kind. Be unicorn ranchers.

 And a single word: How?

P.S., they wrote, I’ve read those books you recommended already. They didn’t help. But you write in a way that does. 

A Quickstart Guide to Polyamory

If it had just been this one person, it surely would have ended then. But I kept getting messages about these same issues. They were my most frequently asked questions.

I started to see that there was a need for a quickstart guide to polyamory. Something that was an entertaining read, full of substantive information but easy to get through. A quick, concise read. Because a book that doesn’t get read helps no one.

Something funny, non-judgemental, based in research.

This book needed to exist. And I was just the nerd to make it happen.

So I went to work.

Couples Tested, Relationship Anarchist Approved

I’m happy to say it’s done.

The beta read included some folks who were coupled and new to polyamory. They loved the book, which was great to hear.

But I knew I was really on to something when another one of the book’s beta readers let me know that he planned on buying two copies:

  1. One for himself. Even though he wasn’t new to poly or coupled and more of a relationship anarchist than anything else, he still loved the book–especially the section on jealousy and insecurity.
  2. One as a gift for his friends who had been trying to pick up a girl together on Tinder. “I think this will actually be helpful to them in a way that other stuff hasn’t,” he said.

A Geek’s Guide to Unicorn Ranching

A Geek’s Guide to Unicorn Ranching covers:

  • The steps you should take before opening up your relationship to make sure you’re on the same page
  • How to set a relationship agreement (including examples of actual relationship agreements)
  • The different kinds of polyamorous relationship structures and systems
  • Common pitfalls newly poly couples face and how to avoid them
  • The high-success method for dating poly people
  • Effective ways to manage jealousy and insecurity

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You can purchase the book from the links below. Want to help out? Leave a review after you’ve read the book. Thank you all!

Featured Image: NONE – Cynthia Lee, ©2017 Braided Studios, LLC