Untangling Love: Building Your Own Blueprint — Relationship Anarchy & Identity Work

By Christina Song, LMFT-S, LMHC-S

So far, we’ve talked about what Relationship Anarchy (RA) is — and the emotional muscles it asks us to build. But for many, RA is more than a set of relationship ideas — it’s part of a much bigger process of asking: Who am I, really, when I get to choose for myself?

This is why, for so many queer, neurodivergent, or decolonial thinkers, RA is not just about “who you date” — it’s about reclaiming parts of ourselves that were buried by scripts we never consented to.

Queerness & Deconstructing Compulsory Scripts

RA grew out of queer and feminist movements that have always asked: Who benefits from telling you what love must look like?

Queer theory, from scholars like Adrienne Rich and Audre Lorde, called out “compulsory heterosexuality” — the deep, often invisible expectation that straightness and coupledom are the norm, the goal, and the moral high ground. The “relationship escalator” — date, commit, marry, merge finances, have children — is part of that same structure.

For many queer folks, stepping off that escalator is not just about resisting monogamy; it’s about resisting all the hidden rules that say: This is the only way to be whole.

When we talk about RA, we’re talking about the right to decide what family means, what intimacy looks like, and how we build belonging outside of state-sanctioned, heteronormative boxes.

Neurodivergence & Honoring Difference

Many neurodivergent people — autistic, ADHD, or otherwise wired differently — find RA appealing because it allows for a kind of customization that standard scripts don’t.

Mainstream monogamy often assumes predictability: clear milestones, shared living arrangements, certain ways of showing care. But for people whose needs for connection, sensory space, or routines don’t align neatly with these assumptions, RA offers permission to build something that actually works.

For some, that might mean solo polyamory, nesting with a platonic partner, or maintaining deep friendships that are treated with the same reverence as romantic bonds.

In Rewriting the Rules (Barker, 2013), Meg-John Barker points out that relationship scripts often fail to consider difference: we are not all the same, so why should our ways of loving look the same?

Decolonial Love & Chosen Family

RA is also connected to wider decolonial and anti-capitalist thought. Scholars like Kim TallBear and Eve Tuck have written about how colonialism forced Indigenous, Black, and marginalized communities to adopt narrow definitions of family — punishing kinship structures that didn’t fit the nuclear mold.

When people practice RA today, many are trying to reclaim a sense of kinship that existed long before the modern Western family unit. Chosen family is not a new invention — it’s an ancient practice, remembered and remade in a world that often demands individualism over collective care.

In this way, RA can be a quiet refusal: a reminder that no state, religion, or market gets to dictate who we love or how we live together.

Becoming Who You’re Allowed to Be

At its heart, Relationship Anarchy is an invitation to look at your life and ask: Where am I following scripts that no longer serve me?

Some will find that monogamy does serve them — but perhaps it looks softer, kinder, freer from ownership. Others will find that friendship or community are their truest forms of family. Some will make shifting constellations of lovers, co-parents, and beloved friends that no form ever fully contains.

When we do this work, we don’t just change how we love — we change how we understand ourselves.

A Question to Sit With

If you could build your own blueprint — free of expectation, free of shame — who would you choose to be in relationship with? What would you call them? What promises would you make? What promises would you let go?

In the final piece of this series, we’ll share some practical tools — worksheets, journal prompts, and reading lists — to help you keep untangling love in your own life.

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References:

• Andie Nordgren, The Short Instructional Manifesto for Relationship Anarchy (2006)

• Meg-John Barker, Rewriting the Rules (2013)

• Adrienne Rich, Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence (1980)

• Audre Lorde, Uses of the Erotic (1978)

• Kim TallBear, The Critical Polyamorist blog & related essays

• Eve Tuck & K. Wayne Yang, Decolonization is Not a Metaphor (2012)