Loving Arrangements

Doubting the "nature" of traditional family relations is timely, though unnerving for many. The 29 personal essays in Loving Arrangements explore the continuing processes of change and alteration in the understanding and experience of loving marital and non-marital relationships. It begins with challenges to the language associated with marriage and the couple, such as wife/husband and faithfulness/cheating, raising questions about romantic love and the exclusivity of the marital couple. It then explores living arrangements: people who are coupled but bring others into their relationship (sexual or nonsexual partners), couples who are together but live apart, couples who design alternative living arrangements and want to find connection outside in communes and co-housing. It then discusses alternative loving relationships: rejecting monogamy for additional simultaneous amorous relationships, equating friendships with romantic relationships, and dealing with gender transformations within relationships.