Loving Arrangements

Nan Bauer-Maglin is professor emerita at the City University of New York. She has published nine collections (seven with coeditors) on topics such as stepfamilies, retirement, feminism, death, dying and choice, and older parenting. Her latest book is Gray Love: Stories About Dating and New Relationships After 60 (Rutgers University Press, 2023). Daniel E. Hood is a retired professor of sociology. He taught at several New York metro-area schools for four decades. His latest books are Gray Love: Stories About Dating and New Relationships After 60 (Rutgers University Press, 2023) and Redemption and Recovery: Parallels of Religion and Science in Addiction Treatment (2012).

"Loving Arrangements is a beautifully curated, generous, and deeply human collection that captures the shifting landscape of intimacy with honesty, nuance, and grace. These courageous essays challenge old assumptions while illuminating the creativity with which people craft relationships that reflect their needs, values, and evolving identities. By bringing together voices across generations, cultures, and orientations, Bauer-Maglin and Hood highlight not only how love changes, but how we change with it. Moving and thought-provoking, this collection offers a refreshing celebration of the many ways people live, love, and belong in an increasingly complex world." - Angelos Bollas, author of Contemporary Irish Masculinities: Male Homosociality in Sally Rooney's Novels"A fascinating collection of personal essays that shines a light on the joys, complexities, and realities of doing relationships 'differently.'" - Ryan Scoats, author of Understanding Threesomes: Gender, Sex, and Consensual Non-Monogamy"Loving Arrangements is the book that says out loud what so many of us know privately: the old rulebook is cracking, and people are courageously writing new ones. This is a compassionate, smart, and deeply human collection that expands our understanding of love, intimacy, and commitment. For anyone rethinking their relationship structure, Loving Arrangements is a powerful guide to what modern love really looks like." - Joe Kort, author of Side Guys: It's Still Sex Even If You Don't Have Intercourse"The contributors to this collection provide enlightening, engaging, and profoundly candid reflections on marriage, sex, cohabitation, partnership, polyamory, and the myriad other relationship styles they pursued. Each essay or poem is highly personal, reflecting a variety of life stages and experiences. Yet the book is greater than the sum of its parts. While a deluge of recent news reports portend the end of marriage and the death of intimacy, Loving Arrangements amplifies alternative narratives by individuals who pursued authentic intimate connections on their own terms." - Rebecca L. Davis author of Fierce Desires: A New History of Sex and Sexuality in America"Loving Arrangements is a collection of first-person accounts of how some people live and love in the modern world. Its contributors have lived their fair share of relationships, both good and bad, some that worked and those that have not. Some essays are funny, some surprising, but all reflect some degree of courage in sharing the complexity of private lives today." - Jack Drescher, clinical professor of psychiatry, Columbia University

• Introduction 1 PART I Questioning Love, Marriage, and the Couple Name-Calling Margaret D. Stetz I Now Pronounce You . . . Whatever You Two Are 27 Susan Ostrov Reality TV, Wedding Fantasies, and Actual Reality Collide Sarah Tucker Jenkins Not Drowning but Waving Beverley Stevens Marriage Might Be Work, but It's a Cushy Desk Job Compared to Being Single Sara Eckel Dancing in a Precarious World Ana Tager My Father's Alzheimer's Romance Stephanie GoldenPART II Alternative Living Arrangements Spelling Bee Love Mimi Schwartz Happily Ever After . . . Helle Trap Friis I Want You Here Always. I Can't Live Without You. Now, Please Go Home. Jaime Teich and Chris Nellen Our Big, Strange Long-Distance Romance Mindy Lewis A Bicoastal Relationship Jon Bagdon Hundred-Mile Marriage Penelope Scambly Schott Margaret Mead and the In-Between D. D. Wood A Ten-Year Odyssey 119 Lisa Gioia-Acres Our Pick-Me-Up-from-a-Colonoscopy List Leah Sherman The Evolving Landscape of Platonic Marriages Pamela Pitman Brown What We Gained and What We Lost: Politics, Partners, and Community Vicki BreitbartPART III Alternative Loving Arrangements The Golden Girls House: Building Our Own Queer Family Renee RomanowskyLoving the Past, Loving the Present: Polyamory and the Space for Both Kelli S. Dunham This Is My Grandmother's Nonmonogamy Crystal Byrd Farmer No One Is Born Knowing: The Myth of Exclusivity Mari Carmen Diaz Piñar, translated by E. Rafael Jacobs-Perez The Bobby Pin Alex Alberto Relationship Anarchy Tierney Senne The Space Between Us Remains the Same (a Long-Lasting, Long-Distance Love Story Spanning Continents and Decades) Max Sharam Fifth Transition Helen Boyd Making Up the Rules as We Go Ariela E. Rosa Highly Sexed: Stages of (Non)Monogamy and (Non)Authentic Living Paige Averett Stunning Ronald E. Hellman Acknowledgments Contributors