Live The Dream

Who We Are

Is an education and support group for those who, originally inspired by the writings of Robert Heinlein, Robert Rimmer, and Marion Zimmer Bradley, are now ready to LIVE such alternative lifestyles as cooperative living, open relationships, and group marriage. Many of our concepts on multiply committed relationships come from Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land and The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. Live the Dream also sponsors a Nest of Church of All Worlds , the real-life, over fifty-year-old spiritual movement inspired by Stranger in a Strange Land. Live the Dream was founded in 1987 by Terry Brussel and Brian Gitt, inspired by Family Synergy founded in 1971 by Hy Levy and Pat LaFollette.

Upcoming Events

Saturday, August 16th, 2025, LIVE: 11 AM – 4 PM PT, Zoom: 11 AM – 1 PM PT

The Harrad Experiment: Learning to be Poly in College

Led by Will Jarvis

Will Jarvis attended Goddard College, an experimental college in Vermont. Robert Rimmer lived nearby in Massachusetts, and is thought to have used Goddard Collage as a foundation when he wrote The Harrad Experiment. The one in the book featured coed dorms in which young men and women were encouraged to form relationships ranging from friendship to sexual love connections. How much of the real life school was reflected in the book? We’ll find out!

Darkover Novels by Marion Zimmer Bradley
Followed by Filking!

We’ll discuss fascinating novels based on the concept of a world on which a few hundred Terrans were marooned in crashed space ships hundreds of years ago and were forced to build a viable community from this limited gene pool.

morning-glory-and-oberon-on-Live-The-Dream

In a 2004 video interview Oberon is asked about the origin of the word and begins a reminisce that is quite revealing. The year was 1990. As he recalls it, Morning Glory was in the middle of a favorite and long-running rant about how people in the pagan community who were in non-monogamous relationships just could Not Follow The Rules about conducting multiple relationships successfully.

She happened to be voicing this complaint to her spouse of 16 years, Oberon, and Diane, their spouse of 8 years, who had heard it before, many times. Diane innocently suggested that since the rules were so important, maybe MG should write them up for everyone to see and they would publish them in an issue of the Green Egg, the premiere magazine at that time of the pagan and neo-pagan community. If she did that the rules would be read by thousands.

Morning Glory loved the idea and set right to work, pulling her two spouses into the project for inspiration. Sometime during the process, they came to the realization that there was no single term that everyone agreed on or used to describe what they do, and that the terms in use were awkward or bulky. Oberon, with his love of the Greek language, pointed out that the Greek prefix poly was already in use to describe other non-monogamous relationships. There was polygyny, polygamy, how bout poly- something? The problem was the Greek suffix fidelitus sounded more like a disease than a desirable life choice.

MG solved the problem in great fashion. In a separate interview in 2013 with cable program Destination America, she stated that she really liked the French term amor, and also the Latin amo, amos, amat, so she combined the Greek and Latin together to make polyamory. An enduring term and the primary identifier of a movement was born.

Here, then are The Rules, as delineated by Morning Glory Zell in the fall 1990 issue of the Green Egg.