Expansive Relationship Therapy: Poly, ENM, and Kink-Centered Support in California
Seeking support from an affirming provider for your relationship can be extra difficult when it falls outside the bounds of what society labels “traditional.” As members of society, therapists, too, can hold negative moral judgments about other identities that show up in session, or they display those views in an upfront refusal to provide care. Such unfortunate realities are why identity-specific directories like Kink Aware Professionals remain important. Other modern directories like NQTTCN (the National Queer and Trans Therapists of Color Network) and Inclusive Therapists are steadily growing, which is a massive win for our communities, but finding a provider who actually shares or even actively allies with your identities can still feel out of reach.
As a Black queer, agender, neurodivergent, and polyamorous therapist, I provide identity-affirming telehealth services across California—from Orange County to the Bay Area. We start with a shared understanding, giving you and your people the space to focus on your relational dynamics. In relational therapy here, we focus on the relationship, rebalancing our perspectives to consider communication, limits, and dynamics.
Come As You Are.
Amatonormativity and the "Relationship Escalator"
Society’s expectations and assumptions about relationships give form to the relationship escalator, or the idea that every committed or romantic relationship must move towards moving in together, religious-based marriage ceremony, birth children, and shared assets. This assumption is also wrapped into the foundation of Western psychology and mental health practices. I witnessed my own degree program attempt to be forward-thinking and counter the normalization of marriage in relationships by changing the program name to Couples and Family Therapy—yet that shift continued to exclude nonmonogamy and nonnormative relationships.
The relationship escalator relates closely to amatonormativity, which is the assumption that romantic relationships are a universal goal that provide more value and fulfillment, and therefore should be prioritized over friendships and platonic partnerships (Brake, 2012).
For Black and Indigenous folks, and other people of color, having nonnormative relationship dynamics means dealing with stigma and additional marginalization from community. Because systems of oppression historically used labels of hypersexuality and deviance in attempts to dehumanize and disempower generations of Black and Indigenous people, many of our communities adapted by enforcing these standards as a survival strategy, known as the politics of respectability (Higginbotham, 1993; Hill Collins, 2004). Or modernly, respectability politics.
Today, within our cultures, practicing nonmonogamy can be dismissed as promoting promiscuity or a “white thing” (Sheff & Hammers, 2011). Research shows that deviance is discriminately attributed to Black people and other people of color, creating an tradeoff between individual autonomy and community acceptance (Clardy, 2024; Cohen, 2004).
When partners are dealing with a world that invalidates their gender, sexuality, or ways of being, the expectation of safety in the home or relationship holds much more meaning. Even moreso when looking at the disproportionate rates of discrimination targeted at Black and Indigiqueer communities. Queer folks are five times more likely than cishet people to experience violent crime, with Black queer people experiencing the highest rates overall (Flores et al., 2023). When you have multiple marginalized identities, to survive, you may have learned early on that the general world and systems out there are fundamentally unsafe. These risks are internalized in how we conceptualize safety, generating hypervigilance, hyper-independence, dependence, and other presentations. They also show up in the way community witnesses, intervenes, perpetuates, or supports this reality.
Safety and Intimacy in Relationships
So many life transitions are significant turning points and sources of stress. (Stress can be positive, too!) Adulting isn’t only financials and other aspects of capitalism, but also the parts that are important to keep loneliness at bay, such as maintaining close relationships, building chosen family, or being more intentional about your community. When a community is small, there can be extra pressure to ignore flags and stick with it because it can feel like the safest space we have. This also shapes what safety looks like. Since no relationship exists in a vacuum, even if your relationship does not intentionally include power exchange dynamics, external stressors can cause unspoken dynamics to arise in relationships, such as assumptive gender roles. Conflicts around emotional security, boundaries, or jealousy can extend beyond the personal and into a deeper, collective need for safety and security.
And being in relationship means being vulnerable, defining safety, learning how to lean on others, and moving through emotional experiences like jealousy and compersion. Mainstream relationship advice treats jealousy like a red flag instead of a natural human emotion. It gets marked as a sign of a toxic, unsalvageable, or high-risk relationship. Like all feelings, jealousy is a sign, but of something internal instead of external, letting us know we need self-regulation, clarity, and connection. Despite mainstream assumptions, consensually nonmonogamous relationships don’t experience more jealousy than monogamous ones, instead displaying more intentional communication to process jealousy constructively (Moors et al., 2015). Further studies indicate that compersion, the nonmonogamy-specific experience of joy when knowing your partner feels happiness with a metamour, acts as a protective factor for overall relationship satisfaction and stability (Flicker et al., 2022).
“Codependent” is a term that has become a part of popular psychology, originating from clinical treatment of substance abuse dynamics. People often use it to describe their relationships when they feel they are not independent enough in general, depend on their partner too much, or that the relationship’s communication patterns are unhealthy.
I am anti-codependence as a commonly-used term. Not only is enmeshment a Eurocentric concept, but labelling relationships codependent has not yielded significant beneficial results in my practice, and it detracts from what is there and what can be worked on, while working to actively shame self and/or others. Codependence devalues the validity of your needs and eliminates a potential pathway to examine them by promoting that you should handle them completely on your own. This often leads people who successfully apply the concept of codependence to their life to pull away and isolate themselves from their loved ones instead of processing their relationship. Issues with the idea of codependence gave rise to prodependence. I prefer interdependence. Interdependence is action-oriented and focuses on the goal, instead of labelling relationship dynamics perceived by others to be negative.
While hyper-independence, hypervigilance, and dependence are all natural responses to create safety in an unsafe environment, they can backfire in environments meant to be safer. Accessing safety and moving towards connection again means moving away from pure self-reliance and building interdependence. Brilliant examples of building chosen family and tapping into new ways to access safety lie in the kink community and D/s roles.
Kink, Prudism, and Internalized Community Policing
Being involved in kink means constantly running into reminders that societal prudism censors and shames adult expression. Public intimacy, or “PDA,” is still largely shunned in most areas of the United States, especially when it does not fall within cisheteronormative, monogamous Christian ideals. Media ratings ironically hold gore and violence to very different standards than non-sexual nudity and sex. And content creators find themselves censored on platforms for being or talking about queerness in a pattern that is rapidly increasing.
Prudism, stemming from those same systems of oppression mentioned before, isn’t just an external threat. Respectability politics perform just as well in this area, producing strong biases within the LGBTQIA community itself. Take the ongoing “kink at pride” debate that splits the community, and what constitutes consent in public, as examples. An anxiety that stems from systemic messages about identity drives people to adopt respectability politics and use it to against those who express non-normative intimacy, ignoring the fact that leather and kink communities were pivotal to early gay liberation and the origins of Pride itself (Rubin, 2011). As a result, communities find themselves forced underground and with restricted freedom of expression and interaction.
Respectability politics also directs inward, where those within the community unconsciously monitor and pathologize their own desires. When you are forced to hide your authentic self to avoid professional or social fallout, the resulting hypervigilance impacts how you express yourself around your community and your partners.
Recent data shows that non-binary, queer, and bisexual kinksters report significantly higher rates of healthcare-related discrimination and social stigma (Catalán Águila et al., 2025). When providers have implicit biases against kink and BDSM practitioners, it impacts the working alliance and causes clinical harm (Kolmes et al., 2006). A massive chunk of kinky clients choose to hide their identity from their providers out of a very real fear of being judged, misdiagnosed, or forced to suppress who they are just to stay in treatment.
Historically, most therapists were trained on the blank slate, which in therapy is the idea that the therapist should remain completely and staunchly neutral, refraining from all disclosures of personal details. A therapist operating from this stance will turn any questions or curiosity about them back to the client and primarily reflect back the client’s statements, experiences, and reactions. Less often discussed is that this same idea extrapolates into the professional guideline that therapists should take every step necessary to avoid their clients outside of session. Thus, you will find therapists who, while they can grasp the concept of a small, isolated country town, cannot grasp how their bias fuels the fact that they do not apply the same exception to marginalized cultural communities.
That in and of itself, stems from a history of pathologizing kink and not acknowledging it as a distinct culture. Kink has a unique community, with ways of communicating and interacting that are specific to the culture. Kinksters deserve culturally competent care.
The Seeds of Interdependence
I provide partners and family therapy for up to three participants, spanning polycules, power dynamics, platonic partnerships, chosen family, co-parents, siblings, or friends who want to actively redefine how they connect.
At the core of our work together, we focus on shared values, shared goals, and shared definitions. This may involve exploring themes and challenges from the past, present, and future. The goals of the relationship are the core that we use to ground ourselves throughout this process.
In addition to establishing a safe space and outlining agreements for safety, relational therapy may also include:
Despite the labels we use, the dynamics we develop are unique to our partnerships. Both the labels and how our dynamic shows up can be impacted by external “shoulds” from internalized beliefs or prejudices, capitalism and productivity, or other normative societal ideals. Reexamining commitments, desires, goals, plans, wants, and needs help us reinvigorate existing agreements.
Working through the rough patches will be hard and may bring up old wounds, or make recent ones tender. Challenging ourselves through this helps build flexibility that will be a valuable tool protecting your relationship.
Flexibility will be your guide as we build interdependence that serves you, whether that’s leaning away from hyper-independence or dependence.
We love communication! This work starts early as we set agreements to navigate sessions and create a safe container for the relationship.
All yeses is a go, one no is a no.
Patterns develop in our relationships that often reflect patterns in other areas, like our childhoods and in our workplaces. Reflecting on these patterns gives insight into the impact and areas for growth.
If you are ready to start therapy without worry about minimizing or camouflaging your relationship dynamics, I invite you to reach out for a consultation.
Managed Care vs. Private Pay
As a systemic therapist, all relational services are private pay. Insurance models still do not operate from a systemic framework and instead maintain a medical model of individual pathologization that does not support relational work. Although some therapists attempt workarounds, most insurance plans quite literally do not cover partner and family therapy. Service codes for these services do not exist. The workaround involves designating an “identified patient,” which frames relational work as supplemental to individual therapy for that specific individual’s pathology, which does not allow for actual relational work. One partner must be singled out for diagnosis and a treatment plan developed that supports improvement of their symptoms.
In addition to the fact that relational work is not covered by insurance, insurance companies retain the right to access your records. Companies increasingly rely on algorithms and artificial intelligence to review and flag clinical data, creating substantial digital confidentiality risks for our populations (Rucker et al., 2023). As a private pay client, the risks and limitations involved with insurance are removed. Treatment goals are established for the relationship, not an individual or diagnosis. The course of your treatment is established strictly between you and your therapist. And your relational data will not be audited by an insurance algorithm, increasing your privacy and autonomy in your healthcare.
I'll Be Here.
References
- Brake, E. (2017, August 29). Amatonormativity. Elizabeth Brake. https://elizabethbrake.com/amatonormativity/
- Catalán Águila, M., Fernández Agis, I., & Strizzi, J. M. (2025). Experiences of discrimination among BDSM and kink practitioners. The Journal of Sexual Medicine, 22(11), 2099–2101. https://doi.org/10.1093/jsxmed/qdaf235
- Clardy, J. (2024). Polyamory in Black: A companion justification for minimal marriage. Journal of Applied Philosophy. https://doi.org/10.1111/japp.12749
- Cohen, C. J. (2004). Deviance as resistance: A new research agenda for the study of Black politics. Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race, 1(1), 27–45. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1742058X04040044
- Flicker, S. M., Thouin-Savard, M. I., & Vaughan, M. D. (2022). Factors that facilitate and hinder the experience of compersion among individuals in consensual non-monogamous relationships. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 51(6), 3035–3048. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-022-02333-4
- Flores, A. R., Wilson, B. D. M., Langton, L. L., & Meyer, I. H. (2023). Violent victimization at the intersections of sexual orientation, gender identity, and race: National Crime Victimization Survey, 2017–2019. PLoS ONE, 18(2), Article e0281641. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0281641
- Hill Collins, P. (2004). Black sexual politics: African Americans, gender, and the new racism. Routledge.
- Kolmes, K., Stock, W., & Moser, C. (2006). Investigating bias in psychotherapy with BDSM clients. Journal of Homosexuality, 50(2–3), 301–324. https://doi.org/10.1300/J082v50n02_15
- Moors, A. C., Conley, T. D., Edelstein, R. S., & Chopik, W. J. (2015). Attached to monogamy? Avoidance and anxiety in relationship structures. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 32(4), 481-504. https://doi.org/10.1177/0265407514529065
- Rubin, G. S. (2011). Deviations: A Gayle Rubin reader. Duke University Press.
- Rucker, P., Miller, M., & Armstrong, D. (2023, March 25). How Cigna saves millions by having its doctors reject claims without reading them. ProPublica. https://www.propublica.org/article/cigna-pxdx-medical-health-insurance-rejection-claims
- Sheff, E., & Hammers, C. (2011). The privilege of perversities: Race, class and education among polyamorists and kinksters. Psychology & Sexuality, 2(3), 198–223. https://doi.org/10.1080/19419899.2010.537674