Consensual non-monogamy (CNM) is no longer a fringe concept — it is a growing relational reality for many clients. As society shifts, so do our responsibilities as therapists. Yet few of us have been trained to work with clients navigating polyamory, open relationships, or multi-partnered constellations. How do we hold space for relationship structures that challenge our assumptions? How do we avoid unintentionally pathologising difference? And what frameworks actually help?

This practical and affirming video bundle brings together two highly experienced voices in gender, sexual, and relationship diversity (GSRD): Silva Neves and Niki D. In Part One, you’ll gain a foundational understanding of the language, values, and challenges that accompany CNM relationships — including jealousy, compersion, boundaries, and mononormative bias. In Part Two, Niki D introduces her 7-stage model for ethically and sustainably opening up a dyad, offering a roadmap for therapists supporting clients who are experimenting with non-traditional relationship forms.

Whether you’re already working with GSRD clients or just starting to expand your relational fluency, this bundle offers vital insights, practical tools, and a non-judgemental stance to meet your clients where they are.

What’s Included:

• The Polyamorous Choice: Working with Consensual Non-Monogamy in Therapy — Silva Neves & Niki D (3 CPD)
• Helping CNM Clients Navigate Open Relationships: The 7-Stage Model — Niki D (3 CPD)

Who It’s For:

• Therapists encountering CNM presentations in their clinical work
• Relationship and couples therapists looking to work competently with diverse relationship structures
• Practitioners seeking to examine and challenge their own assumptions around monogamy

What You Will Learn:

• How to work with jealousy, compersion, boundary-setting, and relationship fluidity
• The psychological and relational challenges unique to open relationships
• How to avoid mononormative assumptions in your practice
• The 7 key stages for helping couples ethically open their relationships
• How to navigate power imbalances when one partner wants CNM and the other does not
• What therapeutic flexibility looks like in triads, polycules, or group relationship settings

Course 1

The Polyamorous Choice:

Relationship Therapy working with Consensual Non-Monogamy (CNM)

Silva Neves & Niki D

CPD/CE credits: 3

Consensual non-monogamy (CNM) and Ethical non-monogamy (ENM) are terms used interchangeably and both refer to intimate relationships that involve multiple sexual and/or romantic partners or experiences. These open and polyamorous relationships are varied in their diversity as they reflect the values, needs and meanings of the people involved.

The taboo about open relationships in the West has been reducing as a growing trend towards CNM is being observed (BBC, ScienceDirect), both in societal and academic domains. A greater mainstream acceptance coupled with a growing public understanding of non-monogamous relationships is making it possible for people practising CNM to be open about their sexual choices. Dating apps such as OkCupid for example have reported 31% of their 1 million respondents saying Yes to open relationships, whilst the dating app Feeld is designed exclusively for unconventional relationships.

All relationship styles have challenges and CNM relationships come with their own set of unique challenges including societal stigma and relationship minority stress. What has changed is that now clients are bringing these challenges to us as therapists rather than keeping them hidden for fear of being judged. Clients are increasingly looking for our support and guidance as they navigate their open relationships.

Yet counselling and psychotherapy training and relationship therapy courses rarely discuss relationship diversity. No wonder many therapists feel unprepared and challenged by the client’s relationship style fluidity in the face of our society’s norming of monogamous relationships.

• Can therapists adapt to the changing socio-cultural landscape and the increasingly fluid relationship structures that many of our clients are living in?
• Are therapists who hold mainstream values and beliefs about relationships, at risk of imposing normative beliefs, standards, and expectations onto their more flexible and diverse clients?
• How do we adapt existing narrow therapeutic frames in relationship therapy to meet the unique requirements of multi-partnered relationship constellations?

This contemporary training draws on the concepts of Sexology: the up-to-date knowledge of gender identities, sexuality, relationship styles and behaviours, which is crucial knowledge for psychotherapists, psychologists and counsellors so that we don’t unduly pathologise some sexual behaviours that may be unusual, yet not problematic. It focuses on helping relationship therapists work with diverse relationship styles which go beyond the traditional dyad of ‘couples therapy.’

Through presentations, handouts, experiential exercises and case scenarios, in this interactive and practical webinar, we cover:

• An introduction to diverse relationship styles
• Common issues that people in consensual non-monogamous relationships may face – including the topics of compersion, jealousy, gender and sexual fluidity, boundary setting and violations, and anxiety – the shadow side of freedom
• An introduction to models that support the therapist and clients in open and polyamorous relationships – including Niki D’s 7-STAGE MODEL of co-creating an open relationship, Jessica Fern’s HEARTS model for polysecure practice and ‘checking-in’ examples which aid relational negotiation in more complex relationship structures
• Noticing and working with the strengths of those in CNM relationships
• Addressing mononormative bias in the therapist or client

Course 2

Helping CNM* clients navigate open relationships:

The 7-stage model for empowered opening of the dyad

* CNM (Consensually Non-Monogamous)

Niki D.

CPD/CE credits: 3

As therapists, we are as embedded in dominant cultural norms as our clients, and the social construct of monogamy as the promoted standard of relationship ideals, can still deeply inform and skew our beliefs, judgments, and norms. Adopting a non-judgemental position on relationship diversity is just the starting point of our therapeutic journey with clients who practice CNM (Consensual Non-Monogamy).

However, to actively support our clients on their journey of creating open, loving, fulfilling open and polyamorous relationships, therapists need an awareness of the variance in relationships that are not monogamous, as well as knowledge about the specific challenges and joys for our clients living and loving in relationally diverse ways. We may also be required to expand and adapt our existing therapeutic frames in relationship therapy to meet the unique requirements of multi-partnered relationship constellations. 

Following on from the very successful workshop The Polyamorous Choice in Relationship Therapy: working with Consensual Non-Monogamy (CNM), Niki D will present an in-depth, seven-stage model for therapists to assist clients who wish to co-create open relationships.

She will address the common dilemmas and challenges that show up with clients as they move towards open or polyamorous relationships or who maintain already multi-partnered or sexually non-exclusive relationships. She will help us position the model in our practice by making use of client examples and case vignettes when discussing each stage of the model.

Opening up the dyad: Challenges and delights

Clients intending to open a closed relationship need to negotiate, communicate clearly, identify needs, establish boundaries, bump up against them, and then re-clarify those boundaries once more. It is everything that occurs in a closed relationship but dialled up a notch with a few extras thrown in.

While there is no rigid formula for opening up a relationship, this seven-stage model helps guide our clients to avoid the pitfalls, steer clearly through the challenges, and is likely to lead to better outcomes for all involved. We will specifically discuss the following seven stages:

• Imagining
• Discussion
• Contracting
• Experimenting
• Checking-in
• Fine-tuning
• Stabilising

As therapists, we need to be adaptable and flexible when working with multi-partnered clients. Our clients may require solo sessions, couple sessions with primary partners, joint sessions with paramours or metamours, triad sessions, or small group sessions where polyamorous groups (polycules) are involved. This model of flexible relationship therapy allows us to model how fluidity can be ethically responsive to changing norms and relationally diverse ways of living and loving.

There will be time for questions and contributions from people attending as we work together to develop this area of relational awareness to enhance best practices in our work.

Specifically, the webinar will discuss:

• Ethical responses when one person wants to open the relationship and the other doesn’t
• Identifying when mononormativity clouds the perspective of the client and/or therapist
• Knowing how to respond effectively to the 3 D’s (discomfort, disruption, damage)
• Working from a GSRD affirmative stance (gender, sexual, and relationship diverse)
• Supporting clients to become more competent at communication, negotiation and check-ins
• Working with anxiety – the shadow side of freedom
• How to offer safety in a storm (when our client’s experience of social hostility and relationship level stress requires validating and repair)

Overall Programme Learning Objectives for two sessions:

• Explain common issues that people in consensual non-monogamous relationships may face – including the topics of compersion, jealousy, gender and sexual fluidity, boundary setting and violations, and anxiety – the shadow side of freedom
• Discuss mononormative bias in the therapist or client and models that support the therapist and clients in open and polyamorous relationships
• Explain how to notice and work with the strengths of those in CNM relationships
• Discuss the ethical responses when one person wants to open the relationship and the other doesn’t
• Identify when mononormativity clouds the perspective of the client and/or therapist
• Discuss how to offer safety in a storm (when our client’s experience of social hostility and relationship level stress requires validating and repair)

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