Table Of Content“A quiet story of trial, error and triumph that fundamentally questions everything we think we know about
relationships in general, and polyamory in particular.”
— AV FLOX, sex, science and tech journalist, editor-in-chief at Slantist “Franklin’s
powerful memoir isn’t just a love story—it’s a story about redefining love and
developing the self-awareness to treat the people we love with trust and compassion.
Many of us are taught from an early age that it’s impossible to love someone without
wanting to control them, but this book shows that this need to control often says
more about our own insecurities than about the people we love. Even if you’re not
polyamorous, read this book: it’ll make you question your own assumptions in the best
way.”
— MIRI MOGILEVSKY, blogger at Brute Reason and The Daily Dot “A simple tale of love
and heartbreak and pretends to be nothing more; it needs to be nothing more. But
there are also beautiful passages to take away, inspiring quotes and tender moments
packaged between glimpses of the Franklin few of us know, the one whose favourite
high school video game was Atari Star Wars, the one who was a dropout from college,
the one who loves deeply and passionately.”
— LOUISA LEONTIADES, author of The Husband Swap “This book tells the story of
how Franklin came to the much-needed conclusion that secondary partners matter—
and winds up being an eloquent, full-throated defense of how everyone’s needs in poly
relationships must be met, not just primaries. An excellent summary of the bad early
days of poly, and a reminder of how far we’ve come.”
,
— FERRETT STEINMETZ kink educator and Nebula-nominated author of Flex “This is
a great read for anyone who has questioned the status quo or wondered what
intriguing adventures wait on the road less traveled. Daring souls will appreciate
Veaux's frank wit and searing self-critique in this fascinating memoir of unruly love."
— DR. ELISABETH SHEFF, author of The Polyamorists Next Door and editor of Stories
From the Polycule “I found peace in The Game Changer because it let me know that I
was not alone in my dynamic. It let me know that I was allowed to love in whatever
way I needed, and that sometimes families are unconventional.”
— REBECCA HILES, blogger at The Frisky Fairy “While More Than Two inspired me to
think about relationships differently and to approach those around me with a new
level of compassion and honesty, The Game Changer instead serves as a source of
hope, assuring you that those efforts are worth it. Veaux is someone who I have often
held up as a sort of alternative relationships guru, but in this book, he shows that he
has, for much of his life, been just as lost and confused as I have often felt.”
— ISAAC CROSS, blogger at XCBDSM
THE GAME CHANGER
ALSO BY FRANKLIN VEAUX
More Than Two: A practical guide to ethical polyamory
co-authored with Eve Rickert
Thorntree Press, 2014
THE
GAME CHANGER
A MEMOIR OF DISRUPTIVE LOVE
FRANKLIN VEAUX
The Game Changer A memoir of disruptive love Text ©2015 by Franklin Veaux Foreword ©2015 by AV
Flox
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without
written permission from the publisher except in the case of brief quotations in critical articles and
reviews.
Thorntree Press, LLC
PO Box 301231
Portland, OR 97294
[email protected]
Cover photo adapted from Untitled (nude) by Karl Struss, 1919,The Museum of Photographic Arts.
eBook design by Franklin Veaux
GlitchR typeface (title page) by Zach M.A. Smith Substantive editing by Eve Rickert Copy-editing by Amy
Haagsma Proofreading by Roma Ilnyckyj
Publisher’s Cataloging-In-Publication Data (Prepared by The Donohue Group, Inc.)
Veaux, Franklin.
The game changer : a memoir of disruptive love / Franklin Veaux.
1 electronic resource
Issued also in print.
ISBN: 978-0-9913997-6-5
1. Veaux, Franklin--Relations with women. 2. Husbands—Biography. 3. Open marriage. 4. Non-
monogamous relationships. 5. Man-woman relationships. 6. Autobiography. I. Title.
HQ980 .V432 2015eb
306.84/23092
To my giraffe
Do you want me to tell you something really subversive? Love is everything it’s
cracked up to be. That’s why people are so cynical about it. It really is worth fighting
for, being brave for, risking everything for. And the trouble is, if you don’t risk
anything, you risk even more.
— ERICA JONG, Fear of Flying
FOREWORD
On journeys into ourselves, most of us know better than to harbor any hope for
a map. But a map—the Map of the Lands of Human Sexuality, to be more specific
—is exactly how I found Franklin Veaux. It’s difficult to explain how much his
work exploring the ethics of interpersonal relationships has influenced my own
trajectory. If I have seen further, it has been by standing on his shoulders.
Franklin has been sharing his thoughts on polyamory for 18 years online,
but the man himself has remained a thing apart from his readers. As a writer, I
intimately understand this: you give of yourself to the ideas you express and to
the words that frame them, and you grant these words to the reader—but
neither the words nor the ideas they convey mean the reader is entitled to you.
But I also know that, as writers, our conclusions, our biases and our insights
are by-products of how we process our experiences. To give the reader both the
ideas and the experiences is an act of incredible trust. That trust is what you
now hold in your hand.
The Game Changer is more than a personal narrative about a man’s quest to
find love: it is an explorer’s notebook. Alongside Franklin, we begin to unravel
society’s expectations of relationships and to question its fundamental
assumption: that love is a thing for two. But if two isn’t love’s only
configuration, what are the others? And how does a person shape relationships
differently while remaining accountable to his or her partners?
When Franklin began this journey, polyamory was not an established
concept. His website, where he delineated good practices based on his
experiences, would eventually become a resource for many others, but for him,
there were no guidelines. Here, he poignantly describes the lovers he drove
away as he struggled to find a balance between safeguarding the relationship
he’d established with his wife, Celeste, and the other connections he forged
along the way.
He would discover that to make this journey to a place of fulfillment, to a
place where the relationships he had were as satisfying to others as they were
Description:To make an open marriage work, Franklin and Celeste knew they needed to make sure no one else ever came between them. That meant there had to be rules. No overnights, no falling in love, and either one of them could ask the other to end an outside relationship if it became too much to deal with. It
