Polywise

Polywise is the title of a 2023 book by Jessica Fern and David Cooley, and within the community it has become shorthand for the ongoing practice of secure polyamory. Where Fern's earlier Polysecure was largely about building secure attachment in a polyamorous frame, Polywise is about sustaining it over years — through partner additions, partner departures, the changing demands of life stages, and the small daily decisions that either reinforce security or quietly erode it.

The framing is borrowed from attachment theory and adapted for non-monogamous structures. Secure attachment is not a fixed state achieved once; it is a quality maintained through specific practices. In a polyamorous context those practices include things like: returning home (literally or relationally) after time with a metamour with care, not just narration; making transitions between relationships gentle rather than abrupt; noticing one's own protective behaviours and naming them; investing in the metamour relationships that surround one's partner.

The book and the practice it names are widely cited in clinical ENM-affirming therapy. It is not the only contemporary framework — Polyamory and Attachment by Joli Hamilton, the Multiamory podcast's accumulated frameworks, and the still-canonical More Than Two are also commonly referenced — but Polywise has become a shorthand reference point for the maintenance-phase work that polyamory requires.