Untangling Love: The Emotional Skills That Make Relationship Anarchy Possible

By Christina Song, LMFT-S, LMHC-S

“Freedom without responsibility is chaos. Freedom with responsibility is care.”

If Relationship Anarchy asks us to tear up the rulebook, it also asks us to write something better in its place — together.

It’s easy to be seduced by the idea of radical freedom in love. Many people arrive at Relationship Anarchy (RA) burnt out by possessiveness, suffocated by the “relationship escalator,” or disillusioned by the idea that one person should meet every need for intimacy, stability, or meaning. But RA isn’t just about saying no to tradition — it’s about practicing a deeper yes to autonomy, consent, and connection that is consciously crafted.

The word anarchy often conjures images of chaos. But in its truest form, anarchism is about mutual aid, collective responsibility, and the belief that people can cooperate freely when given the chance to do so without coercion. In that sense, Relationship Anarchy is less about disorder and more about trust: the trust that people can relate to each other without hierarchy — and that our bonds hold best when they are chosen, not assumed.

The Inner Work of Unlearning

For most of us, stepping into RA means confronting the invisible scripts we carry. Many of these scripts run deep: the myth that real love must be jealous, that closeness must be exclusive, that certain types of relationships — marriage, romantic partnership, sexual coupling — matter more than chosen family or friendship.

To dismantle those beliefs, self-inquiry becomes the first skill. It means pausing to ask uncomfortable questions: What do I actually want? What do I not want? Where did I learn these desires? Andie Nordgren’s 2006 Short Instructional Manifesto for Relationship Anarchy reminds us that “Love is abundant and every relationship is unique.” The first task, then, is to figure out how your abundance wants to flow — without apologizing for it.

Boundaries: The Container for Freedom

If self-inquiry asks us what we want, boundaries shape how we share that desire with others. In mainstream relationships, so many boundaries are implied rather than spoken: monogamy, cohabitation, entanglement of finances. These defaults can feel safe — but they can also hide unspoken resentments, unmet needs, or hidden fears.

RA flips this. The manifesto encourages us to “customize your commitments” — to ask what do we owe each other, and what do we want to offer? Healthy boundaries become the container that makes freedom possible. Without them, freedom quickly turns to confusion or hurt.

Good boundary work is not just about saying “no,” but about making consent clear: How much time do I have? What energy do I have to give? What intimacy is welcome? Every conversation like this builds trust in the relationship — and trust in ourselves.

Talking About the Unspoken

If boundaries are the walls of the house, communication is how we keep it warm. The fantasy of “radical honesty” sounds beautiful until you’re knee-deep in awkward, vulnerable conversations about jealousy, unmet needs, or changes that feel scary.

Relationship Anarchy runs on a simple but demanding fuel: transparency. And not just when it’s convenient. This means saying the thing when it’s easier to hide it. It means asking direct questions instead of dropping hints. It means giving each other permission to say “I don’t know yet” without punishment.

As Meg-John Barker writes in Rewriting the Rules (2013), “The biggest challenge of non-normative relationships is not the lack of rules but the need to make your own, over and over again.” Communication in RA is not a one-time disclosure but an ongoing process — and it often requires learning new emotional languages many of us were never taught.

Jealousy as a Messenger

People outside RA sometimes imagine that anarchists must be so “enlightened” they never feel jealousy. But as many seasoned RA folks will tell you, jealousy is not a sign of failure — it’s part of the work.

RA treats jealousy not as something to banish but as information. What is this feeling telling me? Am I afraid of losing closeness? Do I feel insecure about my own worth? What boundaries or agreements might help me feel more secure without restricting someone else’s freedom?

Books like More Than Two (Rickert & Veaux, 2014) have offered frameworks — sometimes debated, but often still useful — for handling jealousy with compassion, not shame. The goal isn’t to never feel uncomfortable but to respond to discomfort with curiosity instead of control.

Why We Need Community

RA can be beautiful — but it can be lonely if you’re doing it in a culture that still centers the couple, the nuclear family, and the default script. Many people find that the strongest antidote to fear or overwhelm is community: queer friend circles, peer groups, radical families of choice.

When the world doesn’t have a blueprint for your way of loving, sometimes you build it together.

A Gentle Invitation

If Relationship Anarchy has taught us anything, it’s that freedom and care are not opposites — they need each other to thrive.

So ask yourself: What skill do I most need to strengthen if I want my freedom to feel safe? Who could help me practice it?

In our next post, we’ll look deeper at how RA connects to identity — and why so many people find that rewriting their relationships is part of reclaiming who they really are.

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References:

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

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

• Eve Rickert & Franklin Veaux, More Than Two (2014)