Refinery29
by HAYLEY MACMILLEN
From time to time, The Bed Post features other voices opening up about what gets in the way of good sex. This week, I speak with relationship coach Effy Blue.
Effy Blue does not believe that one relationship size fits all. It’s a belief that is hard-won from her repeat attempts — and failures — to adhere to the dictates of monogamy. After her marriage crumbled in the wake of infidelity on her part, Turkish-born and U.K.-raised Effy gave up on relationships altogether. “I poured myself into my career, and I had this great job [at a marketing agency] that took me around the world, which also helped me not build relationships because I was moving from country to country about every six to eight months or a year,” she tells me.
When Effy eventually settled in New York City and discovered the city’s sex-positive community, she recognized her own sexual and romantic identity in the polyamorists she met. Now a relationship coach, she helps couples design consensually non-monogamous arrangements in pursuit of the fulfillment Effy finally enjoys in her own relationships — emphasis on the plural. As she writes on her website, “A romantic relationship is collaboration, a joint creative project to build something as unique and individual as the people creating it.” And Effy practices what she preaches. I spoke with Effy about her journey from married monogamy to polyamory, her coaching practice, and why polyamorists’ most difficult challenge isn’t jealousy (it’s scheduling).
What do you do as a relationship coach?
“I focus on very hands-on, practical, problem-solving guiding and facilitation. I predominantly focus on couples who are either transitioning or curious about ethical non-monogamy. I also have some single clients who are looking to develop a relationship that is ethically non-monogamous, and I work with them also on figuring out what that is.”
How did you find your way to this work?
“I’d been married and divorced, and one of the recurring questions that I was having in my relationships is that I would go in a relationship, I would settle in the relationship, I would be very, very happy and content in that relationship, and then I would cheat.
“And then I would go back to my partner and confess and say, ‘Look, I’m sorry this happened, I still love you, but this is just something that I’ve done and I’m not proud of it.’ And it would end in tears and it would end in heartbreak and this kept happening and happening and happening, and then I sort of gave up on relationships and I figured that they just weren’t for me. In one of the discussions with my ex-partner, I remember in the middle of an argument, he was like, ‘How do you think I feel?’ I was like, ‘I don’t know, maybe you feel okay about it?’ and he was like ‘Are you out of your mind?’ I remember that moment very clearly — Are you out of your mind? My gut was like, I don’t think I am, but I see what you’re saying — maybe I am.
“Then I came to New York, and I decided that New York was going to be home, that I wasn’t going to travel anymore, and one of the things that I was really interested in exploring was my kinky side. I was so off relationships, but I really wanted to explore my sexual expression, and through the world of kink, I was introduced to polyamory. And I met polyamorous people and I listened into their conversations and learned about their relationships and just a lightbulb went off. It was like Oh, I’m not the only person that thinks she can do this.
“It was a huge shift in my life. I realized that there were a bunch of people who felt the same way as I did, that they could have multiple relationships and still sustain one special one and that relationships came in all the shapes and sizes, and that monogamy as we know it is just one way of doing it — it’s just very heavily prescribed, so that’s the only way we know how to do it. …