Love in Abundance is a grounded, compassionate, and refreshingly realistic guide to the emotional work of polyamory and open relationships. Kathy Labriola brings the perspective of a relationship counselor who has spent years sitting with real people in real distress, which gives the book a different texture from more manifesto-style non-monogamy books.

This is not a book that tries to make polyamory look effortless, glamorous, or morally superior. It is much more interested in what happens after the idealism wears off and people have to deal with jealousy, scheduling, mismatched needs, communication failures, fear, insecurity, and the painful discovery that having good values does not automatically mean having good skills.

That is exactly why the book matters. Labriola treats conflict as workable, not shameful. She does not frame emotional difficulty as proof that someone is “bad at poly” or secretly monogamous. Instead, she shows that complex feelings are part of complex relationships, and that people can learn to move through them with more honesty, care, and self-awareness.

What It’s About

At its heart, Love in Abundance is about the practical and emotional realities of consensual non-monogamy. Labriola focuses less on theory and more on what people actually struggle with when they try to build open, polyamorous, or otherwise nontraditional relationships.

The book looks at common pressure points:

• Jealousy and insecurity.
• Communication breakdowns.
• Time management and competing needs.
• Different expectations between partners.
• Fear of abandonment, comparison, and replacement.
• Conflict between existing partners and new relationships.
• The gap between what people say they believe and what they can emotionally tolerate.

Labriola’s counseling background shows throughout. She does not write as though every problem can be solved by simply being more “evolved” or repeating the right non-monogamous vocabulary. Instead, she recognizes that people bring attachment histories, fears, patterns, and old wounds into new relationship structures.

That makes the book especially useful for readers who feel overwhelmed by the emotional side of non-monogamy. It gives them a way to understand what is happening without immediately pathologizing themselves or blaming their partners.

One of the book’s central strengths is its refusal to treat jealousy as a moral failure. Jealousy is approached as something to investigate, not something to deny. What is underneath it? Fear? Grief? Loss of status? A broken agreement? A need for reassurance? A real incompatibility? Labriola’s approach creates room for nuance, which is often missing in simplistic conversations about polyamory.

Strengths

• Therapeutic and compassionate. Labriola writes with the steadiness of someone who has helped people through difficult conversations many times before. The tone is practical, kind, and emotionally mature, without becoming cold or clinical.
• Realistic about conflict. The book does not pretend that non-monogamy becomes easy once everyone agrees to it. It acknowledges that conflict, jealousy, insecurity, and confusion are normal parts of the process, especially when people are learning new relational skills.
• Useful for people already in the mess. Some books are best read before opening a relationship. This one is especially useful once the difficult feelings have already arrived. If someone is sitting in the middle of a conflict and thinking, “Why is this so hard?” Labriola offers a calmer, more useful answer than shame or panic.
• Good for couples and networks. While the book can help individuals, it is particularly valuable for couples or relationship systems trying to understand repeated patterns. It helps people step back and look at the dynamic instead of only blaming the loudest feeling in the room.
• Normalizes emotional difficulty. This is one of the book’s biggest contributions. Labriola makes it clear that struggling does not automatically mean someone is failing. It may mean there is a skill gap, an unmet need, an unclear agreement, or a deeper fear that needs attention.
• Bridges values and practice. Many people enter non-monogamy with strong beliefs about freedom, honesty, autonomy, and abundance. Labriola helps translate those values into actual behavior, especially when emotions get complicated.

Weaknesses

• Less radical than some readers may expect. Readers looking for a sweeping political, queer, or anti-normative critique of monogamy may find the book more practical than revolutionary. Labriola is focused on helping people function, not necessarily dismantling every cultural script around relationships.
• Can feel counselor-led rather than deeply personal. The therapeutic lens is a strength, but it also means the book may feel less intimate or emotionally lyrical than memoir-driven or more narrative works. Some readers may want more vulnerability, story, or poetic reflection.
• Not always as trauma-informed as newer relationship writing. The book is compassionate, but readers looking for deeper discussion of nervous system responses, trauma triggers, dissociation, coercion, attachment injury, or somatic safety may want to pair it with more current trauma-informed resources.
• May underemphasize power dynamics in some situations. Communication tools are valuable, but not every conflict is caused by misunderstanding. Sometimes the issue is control, manipulation, hierarchy, financial dependence, social pressure, or unequal risk. Readers should be careful not to use “better communication” as a substitute for naming real power problems.
• More useful for problem-solving than identity exploration. If someone is trying to decide whether polyamory is part of their identity, this may not be the first book to reach for. It is more helpful once someone is already navigating non-monogamy and needs support with the emotional and practical consequences.

Why It Still Matters

Love in Abundance still matters because non-monogamy does not only ask people to change relationship structures. It asks them to change habits, expectations, reflexes, and coping mechanisms that may have been built over a lifetime.

That is hard work.

It is easy to talk about abundance when everyone feels secure. It is harder when one partner is falling in love, another feels left behind, a calendar is overloaded, an agreement suddenly feels too vague, or someone realizes they said yes to something they were not emotionally ready for. Labriola’s book belongs in that harder space.

What makes it valuable is its steadiness. It does not shame people for having feelings. It does not romanticize suffering. It does not treat jealousy as either a monster or a trivial inconvenience. It simply says: these feelings are here, they make sense, and now we need to work with them honestly.

For Consent Culture, that matters because consent is not just a one-time agreement. It is an ongoing practice of clarity, emotional honesty, renegotiation, and repair. People cannot consent well if they are hiding their fear, swallowing resentment, pretending not to care, or agreeing to structures they do not understand.

Love in Abundance helps readers slow down enough to notice what is actually happening. It reminds us that emotional complexity is not the enemy of ethical non-monogamy. Avoiding that complexity is.

It may not be the newest or most expansive book in the field, but it remains a steady, practical, humane resource for anyone trying to love more openly without losing themselves, abandoning their needs, or turning every difficult feeling into a crisis.

Related reading

These pieces continue the same thread around books and resource reviews.

• The Polyamory Toolkit – Dan & Dawn Williams
• The Jealousy Workbook – Kathy Labriola
• Open Deeply – Kate Loree