The RA Smörgåsbord and the Worksheet-ification of Relationship Anarchy

Stub • 681 Words • Non-monogamy • 12/10/2025

⚠️ This post contains a rougher cut of my thoughts on the topic and may be updated in the future. Please forgive any mistakes or lack of polish!

What is the Worksheet-ification of Relationship Anarchy?

I am a large proponent of Relationship Anarchy. Like a lot of people, my first introduction to RA was the Relationship Anarchy Smörgåsbord. Theory is very important, but I do like how there is at least some focus on praxis with the worksheets. The Smörgåsbord is especially helpful because it shows the possibilities.

However I do believe that these worksheets can cause a shallow engagement with the principles of Relationship Anarchy (if they are just going off the worksheet). RA is about building your own relationships, but also about eliminating hierarchy between relationships. I think that this is harder to express in a worksheet, but I do think that it is always important to remember.

Critique of the Sheets

A lot of the following critiques are on the worksheet(s) themselves. This is of course a lot to put on something that is only really meant to be a conversation starter, but I truly do think that the structure of an activity can affect the structure of the discourse.

The critique will focus on a few worksheets that I have found online:

• Relationship Anarchy Smörgåsbord
  • Alternate Version
• The Relationship Menu
• The Relationship Anarcomb

I do want to say that there is nothing wrong with using these worksheets! I would highly recommend even non-RA people to use them as well, but for budding Relationship Anarchists I would caution against feeling complacent after just the worksheet. I wouldn’t even be here without this worksheets, but also there is always room to evolve.

You are not (really) building from nothing

From what I’ve seen (which of course can be skewed), the conversation of Relationship Anarchy and building your relationships is a frame of building a relationship from nothing. This makes sense to me because I think it is empowering to be able to start from nothing because it means that you don’t have to inherit any baggage from cultural expectations of certain relationship types. With this being said, I do think that is quite hard/counter-intuitive to try to do this especially if you aren’t really sure of the future trajectory of your relationship.

I think that you should identify dynamics.

A lot of it is recognizing that a relationship cannot be your everything so part of it is accepting that and not stigmatizing it or giving it a negative connotation for one person not to be your all. You may have someone who you are really close with but may never really understand your lived experience. There is no “right” way to respond to this, you get to decide if you want to keep/build a relationship with this person or not.

It feels very point-in-time and not future/growth-oriented

Something like the Relationship Menu gets at this where you have “Must Have”, “Like to Have”, “Maybe”, and “Off-Limits”. I think a better conceptual category for “Maybe” would be “Open to Reconsideration in the Future” and “Would Grow Into”.

But to be clear, the discussion of the progression should not be under the framework of the escalator or even really a staircase. The escalator appeals to a sense of it only going in one direction whereas a staircase you can go up or down how you like. However inherent to both of these models is hierarchical thinking.

Conversational topics are not immediately clear

The listing of things makes it more checklist oriented. This is fine and makes it an efficient activity to complete, but I think that the conversations that you have out of the activity are really more important than the filling out of the worksheet itself.

I also think that the items do not always directly dovetail nicely into conversation questions. For something like “Money”, “Payments”, or “Sharing Resources” it might be better surfaced if you ask something like, “When we go somewhere, who pays?”

Very action oriented

Basically it just “things you do in a relationship” which is only part of a relationship!

Ways of connecting/relating are not really discussed

What you share with someone is very important (content), but how you connect is also important (process).