There are two very different ways of getting lost in another person. One makes the rest of the room disappear and somehow leaves you feeling more alive. The other starts with connection and ends with your whole night revolving around somebody else: where they are, how they feel, what they need, whether you can say no.

In Connected, Not Entangled, I look at the patterns that can grow in that space: the Monitor, the Rescuer, the Pleaser, the Human Pacifier, the Shepherd and the Lone Wolf. Not as labels, but as different ways we try to create safety, belonging or control when connection starts to feel uncertain. Each one gives us something in the moment. Each one also has a price.

The question running through the article is not whether we should need each other less. It is whether, inside all that closeness, care, fear and attachment, we still have enough freedom to choose. Can we ask for support without handing over responsibility? Can we hear a no without treating it as abandonment? Can we get wonderfully lost in each other without losing our ability to be ourselves?

What happens when we build family outside the usual monogamous script, and then that family starts changing?

Polyamory gives us more freedom to shape relationships, households and parenting in ways that fit the people involved. But it also means more relationships, more moving parts, and often less cultural guidance about who is responsible for what when something shifts. A new partner becomes important, somebody wants more independence, a relationship ends, capacity changes, an adult role grows or disappears. The whole family has to reorganise around it.

This second part looks at what that means when children are part of the system. How do we build enough flexibility for the adults without asking the children to become endlessly adaptable? How do we make room for several important attachment figures while keeping responsibility clear? And what do children learn about love, conflict, belonging and change from watching a poly family deal with all of this?

What happens when we stop looking at polyamory only as a relationship structure and start looking at the whole family around the child?

After Terry Real’s Thinking Systemically workshop, I started thinking about who carries what inside poly families: responsibility, care, authority, emotional labour, continuity. More adults can mean more support, more attachment figures and more capacity, but only if the structure is clear enough that nobody quietly ends up holding a role they never chose. Especially the child.

This first part looks at the hidden architecture of chosen family: the difference between romantic relationships, household roles, parenting and attachment; what happens when responsibilities stay undefined; and why “we’re all family” is beautiful, but not quite enough to tell us who is actually responsible when life gets messy.

Co-regulation sounds like something therapists do in quiet rooms.

In reality, it happens everywhere. In a hug. In a joke. In the way someone looks at you when you’re overwhelmed and somehow makes your body believe, “Okay. I’m still here. I still belong.”

And sometimes it happens at 2 a.m. at Four Play in KitKatClub Berlin, while the bass is shaking the walls and your friend suddenly appears beside you with that look. Maybe they’ve just been rejected. Maybe they saw their partner in a scene they weren’t prepared for. Maybe ten minutes ago they were laughing and completely fine. And now they’re staring at the floor saying, “I just need a minute.”

That is often the moment when we panic and start fixing.

But sometimes the person beside you doesn’t need advice, explanations, or a nervous-system TED Talk. They need you to stay beside them without making the moment harder.

This piece is about the small things that help us find each other again: how to support someone without taking over, how to recognise different regulation languages, how to ask for what actually helps, and why letting yourself receive care can be just as important as knowing how to give it.

Even the most advanced night creatures can get overwhelmed.

A scene goes further than expected. Your partner disappears. The room suddenly feels too loud. Your body changes its mind before your conscious brain has caught up.

Dancing in the Storm is about what happens in that moment: how to recognise the early signs of flooding, come back into your body, and recover enough of yourself to choose what happens next.

Not to become perfectly calm.
Not to tolerate more.
Not to self-gaslight with breathing exercises.

Just to find your way back to yourself before the storm makes every decision.

Jealousy has a terrible PR team.

We call it “the green‑eyed monster,” treat it as proof we’re insecure, or as evidence we’re not “sex‑positive” enough. In sex‑positive and ENM spaces, the pressure doubles: you’re supposed to be enlightened, endlessly compersive, totally chill while your partner is kissing, flogging, or melting for someone else a few meters away.

And yet, there’s that moment.

You walk into the club full of love and trust, genuinely excited for both of you to play. Two hours later, one unexpected scene or one too‑long kiss and your chest tightens, your stomach drops, and your brain whispers, “Something is wrong.”

This piece is not about killing jealousy or pretending it isn’t there. It’s about what happens if, instead of treating jealousy as a personal failure, you treat it as a signal. A messy, inconvenient, but deeply honest messenger that can either burn your night down, or become a bridge into more truth, more care, and more intimacy.

In a culture obsessed with “authenticity,” the word “performance” has a bad reputation. We hear it and think: fake, hollow, try‑hard. But the reality of human psychology (and club culture) is much more complicated than that. On Friday I asked the room: “Let’s play true or false, and then debate a bit. Some say the real sign of maturity is being able to hold two opposing ideas in your head at the same time. Let’s see if we can do this here.” Because when it comes to performance, both things are true at once.

The line between performing as a tool for growth and performing as a form of self‑betrayal is razor‑thin. It’s a tightrope we walk all night long – and, honestly, all our lives. Trying on a new persona can be a superpower. It lets you explore parts of yourself that don’t get invited to the Monday‑morning meeting. But performance becomes a trap the moment you start acting out a script someone else wrote for you: pushing yourself to look “cool,” to please a partner, to fit a mold, while your nervous system is quietly screaming no.