Alternative Dating & Poly Relationship Etiquette
2024-04-20 08:00 - 17:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Live the Dream Center, 8515 Penfield Ave., Winnetka, CA, 91306, United States
What do you do when your wife brings her lover home for dinner? Who sleeps where if he offers (or is invited) to stay overnight? If your wife is sick on a night, you’ve got a date, should you cancel and stay home with her? Should your girlfriend keep you company if you do stay home? Is it proper poly behavior to bring a lady home for dinner with your wife before taking her to bed or only if considering a serious long-term relationship with her? Should a residential triad (one woman & two men for example) sleep all together or alternate between joining the lady in her bed? What are your responsibilities if you become involved with your lover’s new boyfriend and he is short on time for both of you and his other poly loves? Emily Post did not cover this stuff, but we will!

Bi? Pansexual? Or?
2024-05-18 11:00 - 16:00 | CA
This meeting is led by a trans woman and cis male both identifying as Pansexual and both unmarried at present. They have many years of experience in the poly lifestyle. When I (Terry) first heard the term Pansexual, I thought it was just a fancy name for Bisexual. Apparently not. That term refers to people who are attracted to both men and women, possibly only those born male or female and still identifying as such. Pansexual means for some that they are open to sexualove relationships with anyone whom they feel a connection to regardless of whether they identify as male, female, pre op or post op transexuals, non-binary or even asexual. Each of these possibilities is just one more way of expressing the Being (or Spirit) within. Elaine and Matt will share their own experiences and what they have observed in their dating and long-term poly partnership experiences. Please feel free to share your own unique take on this subject as well as any questions you have for our presenters.

Outlander by Diana Gabaldon: Poly? Science Fiction/Fantasy?
2024-06-15 11:00 - 16:00 | Live and on Zoom, 8515 Penfield Ave, Winnetka, CA, 91306, United States
Yes to all that. It is even Pagan, as time travel is accomplished by going Through the Stones — best done at the time of Samhain. I have on my refrigerator a magnet which says “Not only was I a bigamist and an adulteress, I had enjoyed it.” Claire Frazier on her wedding night to Jamie, the Love of her life.
Having traveled backward in time to the 1700s, Claire fell in love with and married Jamie while still wed (in some sense) to Frank, a man who would not be born for 200 years. Yet she chose to wear Frank’s ring as well as Jamie’s even after Frank’s death in her own time. Another character in that Past time marries two men who are twin brothers.
When I asked the writer, at a presentation, whether she was polyamorous, as I offered her a Live The Dream newsletter (to my daughter’s embarrassment, as she knew the author from handling autograph tables for many years at SF cons), Diana said, “Haven’t you read my books?” and laughingly took the newsletter. She wrote those books to explore what kind of love lasts for fifty years, with Jamie and Clare as the example of long-lasting erotic joy well into grandparenthood, deep caring that endures through deep emotional trauma, and commitment that defies space and time.
I love the books and the TV series. Speaking on this topic is my birthday gift to myself: June 15 is my 71st birthday. Cake and ice cream for me—let us know if you have a June birthday to celebrate along with mine—we will add your name to the cake.

Group Living, Intentional Communities and Polyamory: How Can YOU Create the Group House or Intimate Network of Your Dreams?
2024-07-20 11:00 - 16:00 | Live and on Zoom, 8515 Penfield Ave, Winnetka, CA, 91306, United States
Today we will discuss group living, its advantages/disadvantages, whether it would be right for you, and how you could put together a group house if that is your desire.
Penfield House (about 3500 sq. feet) has been a group house since 2003. It actually got its start from an unintentional group house, bursting at the seams in 1100 square feet, consisting of Terry and Paul (a married couple) adding a third (Marcus) to make a triad, with Water Brother Carl Dietz, and (sometimes) Terry’s Dad. I raised my two children there, but it was not big enough for 5 adults! The move to a bigger place was made possible by the addition of Will Jarvis (still a household member today, May of 2024, after caring for my best friend Glen’s father for a few years until his passing at age 103). The 2003 move happened as a result of one of those exercises we will be doing at this meeting in which everyone writes down where they want to live and what they could come up with financially to do that. The exercise is used to show the kind of wonderful upper-scale home a group can buy when they do not have to pay for 4 hot tubs, 4 kitchens, 4 living rooms, etc. Sometimes the exercise results in a real group house getting together, as ours did.
In the 21st century, it is becoming more and more common for those of retirement age to put together intentional communities of like-minded people, some of which are poly.
Burning Man is an excellent example of an intentional community. Though it exists as a physical community only temporarily, for about 10 days a year, many of those involved in it attend events and interact with other Burners year-round. Lots of Polyamory in this group. One of the camps is called Poly Paradise. The kids of Burners are growing up in this environment. How does that affect their future lives and personalities? Some Burners and their kids have formed group houses of their own inspired by Burning Man philosophy.
The May Moon Magick Festival which we attended for Oberon and Rhiannan’s wedding was held on the grounds of a multigenerational intentional Pagan community, Cerren Ered, which we had the pleasure to be part of during our few days at the festival. Many of the Cerren Ered members are poly, since the neopagan community is much affected by the philosophy of Stranger in a Strange Land (the inspiration for Church of All Worlds, the first legally recognized neo-pagan religion in the USA), and by the example of CAW’s founder, Oberon Zell, who has been in group marriage with up to eight people at a time and is a firm believer in Polyamory. We may have some of the members of that Pagan group who hosted the Festival speaking to us during the Zoom part of this meeting—working on it as of this writing.

Atlas Shrugged: What If Ayn Rand Had Made Her Characters As Poly as She Was?
2024-08-17 11:00 - 16:00 | Live and on Zoom, 8515 Penfield Ave, Winnetka, CA, 91306, United States
Ayn Rand married Frank O’Connor in 1929. In 1954, she began a passionate relationship with Nathaniel Branden. It is widely reported that both Any Rand’s husband and Nathaniel Brandon’s wife approved of this affair; thus, it would now be considered a polyamorous relationship.
In Ayn Rand’s book Atlas Shrugged, Dagny Taggart deeply loved three men in her life–great men who could live up to her greatness. Francisco was her first teen love, whom she adored with a passion and who shared with her the knowledge that sexual love was something to be gloried in without shame or guilt; something which it was right for these two free-spirited youths (with world-changing destinies) to learn from each other.
Francisco loved Dagny his whole life long, though he spent many years apart from her pretending to be a playboy for purposes having nothing to do with romance and everything to do with Brains on Strike. She thought her relationship with him was over for many years and had found no other man worthy of her attention during that time.
Already in her 30s, her love was again IGNITED with top Industrialist Hank Rearden, a married man whose wife did not share with him nor support his devotion to his Steel business nor approve of his shameful need for sex with her. It was Dagny who helped him realize he had a right to delight in his sexuality and that his choice of her as his Lady was in complete alignment with the other excellent values that made him the Business Man she so respected.
Finally, there was John Galt, the brilliant inventor of a motor that could gift the world with limitless energy–at the price of respect for the mind that created it. It was to him she finally gave her heart and her body to the exclusion of Hank and Francisco who continued to love her and were compassionately understanding of this Highest choice of the man both of them loved and followed. A beautiful story… of ENTIRELY NEEDLESS sacrifices by characters who supposedly had learned not to make sacrifices, created by an author who knew better!
Dagny Taggart could have found John Galt, then realized that Francisco had behaved honorably in all the years they were apart, holding his love for her as a sacred fire within himself. Since Francisco loved and was deeply committed to John already, a triad between the three of them could have worked out perfectly. When Francisco found her miraculously alive in the Valley after believing she had died in a plane crash, she could have told him all that she felt with complete honesty, letting him know that there was room for both him and John to be her primary partners. Later, Hank could have been added either as a live-in lover for Dagny or as a beloved non-residential secondary partner always welcome in their home. No one gets hurt.
There was certainly enough of Dagny living, breathing, and willing to satisfy the desires of men who had lived mostly with only their fantasies of her to sustain them for many years. The love and respect all the men involved had for each other would make jealousy unlikely and (if it did come up) something to be dealt with like any other emotional illness rather than something to base one’s life on. Had John and Francisco offered her this option, she might have been too happily engaged in carrying it out that she would have stayed in the Valley her first time there rather than choosing to go back to a rapidly disintegrating world of looters who had taken charge of the US government, and who would not permit her to do what was needed to keep her railroad physically safe to ride upon for passengers as well as financially viable for herself and those who invested capital into it.
Dagny could even have had a child by John and then by each of the others if they wanted one. Additionally, John, Francisco, and Hank might want to consider spreading their excellent genetic materials (and their unbridled affections) to other fine Ladies who were available in John’s Gulch…
Think about it; limits on wealth and production were unacceptable, but limits on Love were unexamined and unchallenged. The very people who did not take what the Experts said to be so as a given in their businesses and their political lives had swallowed hook, line, and sinker the looting of that most precious aspect of living–romantic Love and Joy.
How many unexamined ass-umptions are you carrying around to mess up your life?

From Family Synergy to Live the Dream: Carrying the Torch
2024-09-21 11:00 - 16:00 | Live and on Zoom, 8515 Penfield Ave, Winnetka, CA, 91306, United States
Live the Dream
Founded in 1987 by Terry Brussel and Brian Gitt
Based on the philosophy of Family Synergy,
Founded 1971 by Hy Levy and Pat LaFollette
THE BEGINNINGS OF SYNERGY:
Multiply Committed Relationships, Group Living and Group Marriage
Excerpt from Fifty Years of Polyamory In America: A Guided Tour of a Growing Movement
by Glen Olson and Terry Brussel-Rogers
Synergy-Noun: the interaction or cooperation of two or more organizations, substances or other agents to produce a combined effect greater than the sum of their separate effects. (combined: Free Merriam-Webster online/Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language, 1978)
Hy Levy and his wife Joyce were looking for something different. An engineer in his thirties, he recalls he and his wife were not looking to join a commune to make a political statement about planetary resources or create a model for co-operative living ‒ things that others were looking for. He was actually inspired by the utopian novels of Robert Rimmer (The Harrad Experiment, Proposition 31), an author who proposed that group marriage, built of couples finding other couples and marrying them, could work and be a powerful and joyful lifestyle.
He recalls that in the late 1960’s, early 1970’s, many utopian groups were trying to form, some advocating every form of sexual freedom, but after attending meetings put on by numerous groups, he and his wife realized they were looking for something else. They already had two small children and they were not teenagers trying to change the world, they were people looking to enrich their lives and the lives of others they cared about.
“It was very hard to meet people,” he says, “the only way to contact other like-minded people was to put an ad in the LA Free Press and wait for someone to answer it, or answer someone else’s ad.”
Eventually, after answering a large number of ads and putting in one of their own, they met Pat and Ann LaFollette. Hy remembers, “We met each other, we liked each other, in fact Pat and I got along fabulously well.” The LaFollettes had also read Robert Rimmer and were looking for the same things the Levys were.
A deep friendship developed. It became clear that the two couples, though looking for the same thing, were not quite the right mix to build a marriage together, so they went as a foursome to a number of discussion groups on communes.
About that adventure Hy states, “We blew people away because all they wanted to talk about is who takes out the garbage, or how to decide who takes out the garbage ‒ and we wanted to talk about being in a place where people cared about each other. The reason for being there was not political or economic, it was to live with someone you cared for… We ended up getting attacked a lot, because our views were so dissimilar to those of the rest of the room.”
The men were so dismayed at the reception they were getting they decided to put in an ad of their own, advertising a meeting to discuss the philosophies of Robert Rimmer. The meeting drew a group of about a dozen people and was supposed to be about three hours long.
But the idea caught fire. At the end of the discussion period no one was ready to leave so they adjured to a local restaurant for dinner and returned to continue the discussion.
Sometime late in the evening they decided that they should do more than just talk about the ideas of Robert Rimmer, it was time to do something about it. So they formed a steering committee, composed of everyone who was at the meeting, and resolved to go forward. Of course, the group had no name, a problem which would need a solution sooner than they realized.
One of the new steering committee members mentioned that Robert Rimmer would be in town the following month, giving a talk at a convention. He proposed they attend the convention to hear Rimmer speak ‒ and to advertise their existence to any like-minded people.
Now came the problem: they had a group, what to call it? In trying to define what they were looking for Pat LaFollette and Hy Levy had often stated they were looking to build a “synergy” in their lives, create stronger, vital relationships based on their marriages, and to provide a stronger family experience for the adults AND the children.
It hit Hy, and perhaps Pat also at the same time, that they were talking about Family. Obviously, the organization should be called Family Synergy. Later they would invent the term “expanded family” (like the extended family of Grandma, Grandpa, Mom, Dad, their kids and maybe some Aunts and Uncles with their kids) to denote those adults and children that you spent a lot of time with and did family activities with, who were family, but who did not happen to be related to you by blood.
The Levys and the LaFollettes attended that convention the following month and met Robert Rimmer. They remember finding a way to get invited up on stage with him and made their announcement. Pat recalls, “At that time I was an artist and had a huge artists loft in the skid row area of Los Angeles. It was four or five thousand feet. We held the next meeting there just in case we got a good turnout.”
In fact, fifty or sixty people showed up, and Family Synergy was in business.
In 1987, Live the Dream was formed as a spin-off of the Family Synergy special interest group Explore, Come Live with Us. The organizations were apart and then together again until Family Synergy’s 40th Anniversary Reunion, at which point Terry Brussel-Rogers declared her intent to continue Family Synergy as Live the Dream. How did that happen and how is Live the Dream continuing to carry out the original vision of the founders of Family Synergy?

Group Marriage/Group Living SF Samples
2024-12-21 11:00 - 16:00 | Live and on Zoom, 8515 Penfield Ave, Winnetka, CA, 91306, United States
Saturday December 21, 2024 Live: 11 AM – 4 PM PST Zoom: 11-1 PST
Group Marriage/Group Living SF Samples: Robert A. Heinlein (Future History), Spider Robinson (Callahan books) & S. M. Sterling’s Novels of the Change:Fantasy or reality? What aspects of these do we want in our own lives & how can we create them?

Winter Solstice Ritual and Holiday Party
2024-12-21 18:00 - 23:00 | Live the Dream Center, 8515 Penfield Ave., Winnetka, CA, 91306, United States
6 PM: Pot Luck Dinner7:30 PM: Winter Solstice Ritual led by High Priestess Lillith
Latkes (provided by Live the Dream, along with Apple Sauce and Sour Cream), songs about the Maccabees, dreidels, lighted up Christmas miniature houses, and a Winter Solstice ritual. Although Hanukkah doesn’t start until December 25th this year, we will still light a candle in a menorah in celebration.
Did we forget a ritual important to you? Tell us and we’ll add it. Bring stories/songs/poetry to share. There will be live and recorded music of various holiday flavors… and Karaoke!
Bring: Your favorite holiday dish for pot luck supper—(big enough for 10 to share). There will be a GIFT EXCHANGE at 7 PM: Bring a wrapped science fiction, erotic (tasteful please!), fantasy, or magikal gift item ($10-$15) if you want to participate.
Sharing our holidays is part of what weaves the bonds of Family in a group like ours. Understanding what is important to each of us during this festive season and how we celebrate it is a way to grow closer and delight in our diversity.
Clothing optional Jacuzzi (with holiday music playing inside it!) available all afternoon and evening–bring sandals and towels.
(Crash space available by arrangement when you RSVP.)
Good Yule!

Happy St. Patrick’s Day! Celtic Polyamory – Real and in SF
2025-03-15 11:00 - 16:00 | Live and on Zoom, 8515 Penfield Ave, Winnetka, CA, 91306, United States
Handfasting has its roots in Celtic tradition, the most common being the Year and A Day commitment ceremony. Originally, this was a time for couples to get to know each other by living together and deciding if they wanted to spend their lives together. If a pregnancy resulted from it, the handfasting became a legal marriage.
Today we have ways to prevent an unintended pregnancy and not everyone doing this is of an age where such a thing would even be possible. Still, it is something more committed than just “living together” or even being engaged without living together. The custom is very common among Pagans, many of whom are poly.
We will also discuss handfasting as one method of making a commitment to someone you are adding to your marriage in a serious way. Such a relationship may look like an open committed legal marriage between two people or a plural marriage by contract with similar rights and responsibilities to a legal marriage. SF books such as The Avatar by Poul Anderson and Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Darkover novels are full of Celtic delights.
We will enjoy corn beef and cabbage for our potluck lunch and Irish music in our clothing-optional hot tub.

The Meaning of Beltane: Pagan and Poly, Led by Diana Morningstar, Priestess of Church of All Worlds and Caretaker of Annwfn, CAW's Sacred Land
2025-04-19 11:00 - 13:00 | Live and on Zoom, 8515 Penfield Ave, Winnetka, CA, 91306, United States
Diana will discuss traditional Beltane rituals, their historic roots and what they mean for today’s Poly community. Having participated in and led many such rituals, she will also share her most memorable Beltane experiences and how she plans on making the one coming up first week end in May a most memorable Festival for all of us!

Renaissance Pleasure Faire Poly Connections
2025-05-17 10:00 - 13:00 | Live and on Zoom, 8515 Penfield Ave, Winnetka, CA, 91306, United States
The Renaissance Pleasure Faire of Southern California was founded by Phyllis and Ron Patterson in 1963. Between that time and this couples have met at the Faire, married in its Wedding Garden, and brought their children back to enjoy it. Some of them have been in Guilds which feature role play Families which can become very real for the 6-12 weekends of Faire and preparing for Faire each year… perhaps for decades.
The children may regard Faire family as Aunts, Uncles and perhaps cousins by Choice. There are couples who having met at Faire and formed romantic relationships there, have legal marriages separate from Faire. In some cases, spouses who do not go to Faire or choose put in the time and commitment necessary to be part of one of these Guilds know about these romantic connections which have perhaps gone on for many years before they knew or married their husband or wife and have consented to them.
If they meet and form friendships with such people, it can lead to kitchen table polyamory or even group marriage. Or they may just accept that for the weekends of Faire, this relationship will continue separately from the marriage.
Some of this may depend on whether the other partner lives close enough to spend time together separate from Faire. I believe that as long as the non-Faire spouse knows and willingly consents to the arrangement, it is poly. If they do not know or do not willing consent to it, that is just garden variety cheating. What do you think?

Darkover Novels by Marion Zimmer Bradley and Filk!
2025-09-20 11:00 - 13:00 | Live and on Zoom, 8515 Penfield Ave, Winnetka, CA, 91306, United States
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. Many women found themselves unable to bear children on the new world. This resulted in a society where a fertile woman having more than one child by the same man was considered a kind of selfishness. Group marriage became the norm and ties of fosterage frequently stronger than ties of blood.
Many new writers as well as successful professional writers have chosen to create stories in the Darkover universe dealing with the alternative lifestyle of multiply committed relationships. We’ll focus on Marion’s own Spell Sword and Forbidden Tower, two novels based on a real life two couple group marriage which lasted 16 years!
1 pm Pot Luck lunch—bring something healthy and delicious to share
2-4 Socializing in clothing optional hot tub.
We may watch a Poly Movie or do verbal/nonverbal sensitivity exercises between the meeting and the Filk as the group decides.
6 Pot Luck dinner – bring something healthy and delicious to share.
Filk Sing follows at 6:30 on Zoom and in person—music of science fiction and the Space Age from the Ballad of Appollo 13 to the hilarious Star Trek based Banned from Argo in all its many forms. We have all kinds of Poly Filk, too, including selections from Kathy Mar’s Living the Dream album and Craig Brussel Roger’s Half of Me. You should see what he does with The Tennessee Waltz!

Building a Faire Family/Intentional Community: Koroneburg
2025-10-18 10:00 - 23:00 | Live and on Zoom, 8515 Penfield Ave, Winnetka, CA, 91306, United States
Twenty-Nine Years of the Koroneburg Renaissance Festival
with Baron Henirich von Laufer
Presented by the Baron Himself, Chuck Spitler
For 29 years, Chuck Spitler has been the Baron. Played him as an actor? Maybe at first, but after a generation or two of children have grown up spending 6 weekends of summer with this Uncle by choice and are now bringing their children to see the Faire, be in jousts for the Baron’s entertainment, and just EXPERIENCE it, the Baron in many ways is the Reality. This is not like the Renaissance Pleasure Faire of Southern California, where the Queen is just an actress playing a role. I have seen the owners of this Faire wisely taking council with the Baron on many things, from promotion to the activities being offered to who should be in them.
The buildings were real and stood all year round, creating a feeling of traveling through Time to be there.
In August of 2025, dark news came that Koroneburg was to be closed down after Riverside County Parks decided not to offer the Festival a renewed lease. All those beloved buildings, knocked down and gone!
Is there a way that Koroneburg could be brought back to Life? Perhaps. Chuck is in the process of writing a book about the Koroneburg Renaissance Festival – its history and how to build something like this wherever you are. That will keep it alive for those who come after.
11 to 1 Poly discussion live and on zoom. Live only after that.
1 Pot Luck lunch – bring something healthy and delicious to share.
2 to 3:45 Afternoon activity: Exercises for developing intimacy – empathic communication to enhance your love life and friendships. Clothing-optional jacuzzi available.
4 to 5:45 Socializing in the shaded, clothing-optional hot tub or watch a Poly movie in the living room.
6 Pot Luck dinner – bring your favorite Halloween-themed dish to share with 10 people.
7:15 All Hallows Eve Samhain Ritual led by Terry and Craig Brussel Rogers.
8 to 11 Halloween Party. If you want to present anything perhaps relating to the costume (or body paint) you choose to wear, do let us know. We may play the Rocky Horror Picture Show. It’s traditional, after all!

Poly SF Sampler Discussion, Winter Solstice Ritual, Hanukkah and Winter Holiday Party
2025-12-20 11:00 - 23:00 | Live and on Zoom, 8515 Penfield Ave, Winnetka, CA, 91306, United States
Discuss the Poly content in stories by Robert A Heinlein, Spider Robinson, S. M. Stirling, and others. Enjoy a potluck lunch. Laze about in the hot tub, discussing polyamory, science fiction, and other topics. Enjoy a potluck dinner. Celebrate the winter solstice in a ritual lead by High Priestess Lilith. Exchange gifts. Play and listen to music. Sing a bit. Have a good time.

Memorial for Leslie Fish
2026-01-17 11:00 - 23:00 | Live and on Zoom, 8515 Penfield Ave, Winnetka, CA, 91306, United States
Live the Dream will host a memorial day for Leslie Fish, Poly anarchist and prolific filk writer/performer.
Joining us for this Memorial to speak about Leslie and share their personal experiences with her:

Oberon Zell, founder of Church of All Worlds, the first officially recognized Neopagan religion in the US.

Paul Gibbons, Political Activist/Libertarian/Anarchist and Water Brother to Leslie Fish.

Elaine Anderson, Deputy Lady in Waiting to the Queen of Caid in the SCA for 2025.

Terry Brussel-Rogers, Founder of Live the Dream and Leslie’s Water Brother will share her knowledge of some of Leslie’s Poly experiences.

Additional speakers may be announced in the future.
The day includes a potluck lunch and a potluck dinner. There is afternoon time for discussion, socializing, etc.
In the evening, Live the Dream will host the monthly LAFA (Los Angeles Filkers Anonymous) filksing, focusing on Leslie and her music.
The Live the Dream meeting will be Live and On Zoom 11am – 1 pm PT.
The LAFA filk will be Live and On Zoom 6 – 11 pm PT; the first hour will be a live and virtual dinner, with music commencing at 7 pm PT.
