About Zeina Khalem

I read hundreds of romance novels in the years before and after my divorce. In fact, a romance novel was part of what helped me realize the true nature of my marriage. During that time, I fell in love with the genre. I enjoy fantasy and sci-fi romance, contemporary romance, and historical romance novels the most (here's a list of my favorite romance novel recommendations). I like my romance hot and sensual and erotic. Now I write romance too.

I’ve practiced ethical non-monogamy since 2014. For a while my go-to label was solo-polyamorous, but I currently identify simply as polyamorous (or polyam for short). I have one long-term life partner plus other short- and long-term relationships, partners, and satellite lovers. I tend to get polysaturated at around 3.5 active relationships.

Polyamory came naturally to me after dedicating the first decade of my adult life to the letter of monogamy without much passion or thought. The heteronormative rules of monogamy feel arbitrary and unnecessary to me. I don’t struggle a lot with jealousy (this is the first thing most people ask about) but I do feel jealousy and insecurity sometimes like anyone else. I try to work through those emotions like any other feeling.

I believe that relationships can complement and uplift one another. I don’t want to have to be everything to someone and I don’t want to put that kind of pressure on any one person, either. How wonderful it is to have our needs met by multiple supportive relationships in our lives. I appreciate that ethical non-monogamy allows both my partners and myself to explore many kinds of intimacy and love without limiting the potential and depth of our connections.

The polyamory I practice aims to be transparent, consent-based, and respectful of my partners and their privacy. I like to meet and get to know my metamours (my partners’ partners) if that’s a thing everyone wants to do. Having been deeply isolated before in my marriage, community is important to me. I'm lucky that my chosen city has a wide and diverse polyam scene.

I immigrated to the United States with my family when I was a kid. I grew up with plenty of privileges and I’m trying to pay that forward in my adult life. English is my second of three fluent languages. I am a pansexual, straight-passing cis woman who generally presents femme.

I started pole dancing in 2014. I’ve learned a lot about my body and come a long ways since then – definitely not a straight line by any means. Think more like a squiggle, injuries and recovery mixed with gains in strength and confidence. Speaking of squiggles, sometimes I write about my amateur experience wrangling my curly hair.

I’ve been completely deaf in my right ear my entire life (unilateral profound deafness, single-sided deafness, or SSD). I’ve always assumed I was born this way but the story is my parents found out after I learned how to talk and told them.

While I never hid my disability, I grew up learning to overcompensate for my deafness so it’s mostly invisible in much of my daily life. I have no sense of directional hearing and I hear in mono, so “surround sound” has no dimension for me – it’s just flat. (If I lose my phone I need someone else to help locate the ring.) Loud and crowded situations are very difficult for me to navigate (I call it “socializing on hard mode”) and probably contributed to my lifelong anxiety and social awkwardness. I often accidentally ignore people talking to me on my right side even if they're right next to me. As a result, I've trained my friends to walk on my left.

I only started identifying as “disabled” as an adult. Discovering how to communicate and accommodate my needs around my deafness has made my adult life profoundly easier and more pleasant.

In my teens, I created and maintained a Sailor Moon website that originated a number of lifelong friendships. I do love web designing for myself and this website is my work using the Themeco Pro Theme (affiliate link).

Anyway, thank you for being here and fucking with the things I create. I truly appreciate you. I’d love to connect if any of this resonates with you. Take your pick from the list of platforms above!

You can email me at [email protected] if you'd like to get in touch.

Stay rockward, my friends.