- Voice: Eve Rickert narrates the material personally, keeping the audiobook a single, direct voice throughout rather than a performed reading of someone else's words.
- Big ideas: broken trust in nonmonogamous relationships, forms of betrayal beyond cheating, recognition and healing
- Atmosphere: Direct and reflective, more clinical than confessional
- Worth it?: A focused, useful listen if betrayal in a nonmonogamous relationship is already on your mind, too narrow as a general introduction
Eve Rickert opens this audiobook with a plain claim: nonmonogamy comes in enough different shapes that none of them can honestly call itself a safe model of intimacy, not the jet-setting partner juggling several far-flung lovers, and not the homebound triad raising a family instead of chasing the nightlife scene. Both, the synopsis says, carry the same basic opportunity to do right or wrong by a partner.
Wherever There Is Trust, Betrayal Is Possible
A simple chain of logic drives the material here: wherever there is trust, there is the potential for betrayal, and intimacy, whether exclusive or not, whether exploratory or confined, is never risk free. As long as there have been love stories, the synopsis argues, there has been love lost through deception, abandonment, or callous disregard, and nonmonogamy does not exempt anyone from that pattern just because more people are involved or more rules are agreed to in advance. Even the most casual of connections requires trust, the synopsis points out, which means even the lightest nonmonogamous arrangement carries some version of this same exposure, not just the deeper, more entangled ones.
Rickert names betrayal forms that go beyond the obvious. Yes, cheating happens in nonmonogamous relationships too, the synopsis concedes directly, but it also names cliquish in-group bullying, having personal information shared by a partner who was supposed to be trusted with it, and the specific humiliation of watching someone trade up for a partner offering more social, sexual, or economic capital. Trust can be broken in a great number of ways, and each one gets treated here as its own distinct wound rather than a variation on simple cheating. The synopsis is explicit that the book's real target is not cheating itself but a wider habit it identifies among people who practice nonmonogamy, a tendency to downplay or minimize how destructive broken trust actually is, both to the person betrayed and to the wider community around them.
Rickert's Eighty-One Minutes Read Like a Long Essay
Rickert's credentials matter for how this audiobook positions itself. As co-author of More Than Two, Second Edition: Cultivating Nonmonogamous Relationships with Kindness and Integrity, Rickert already has a substantial book addressing nonmonogamy broadly, which frees this shorter release to go deep on one specific piece of that larger subject, the varieties of betrayal and what recognition and healing from them can look like, rather than re-covering ground the earlier book already handles. That existing track record also gives some assurance about the perspective behind this narrower release, even without any listener reviews yet to confirm how it lands in practice.
Genuinely short at one hour and twenty one minutes, the runtime here is closer to a long essay than a book length treatment, and a companion PDF ships alongside the audio according to the listing. That combination suggests the material rewards being read as well as heard, useful if any of the specific betrayal categories described benefit from having text to sit with rather than only audio moving past in real time. A short, tightly scoped runtime also fits the subject matter in a specific way: betrayal recovery reflections often work better as something a listener can return to in a single focused sitting rather than spread across many hours.
Freshly Released, With Nothing Yet to Weigh It Against
No star rating and no review count show on this listing at all, so there is nothing here to weigh against your own read of the synopsis. This one arrives with a completely clean slate rather than any track record from other listeners, which is worth knowing before you buy: everything in this review is built from the publisher's own framing, not from a chorus of outside reactions. That likely reflects how recently this specific release reached listeners, given its January 2026 release date, rather than anything about how the material itself is landing.
Given the short runtime, do not expect the exhaustive treatment More Than Two offers on nonmonogamy as a whole. The synopsis frames this explicitly as a reflection on one slice of that larger subject, broken trust specifically, rather than a comprehensive guide to nonmonogamous relationships from the ground up, so go in with that narrower scope in mind and treat it as a companion to the earlier book rather than a replacement for it.
For People Already Processing a Betrayal
People in or considering nonmonogamous relationships who are processing a betrayal are the aim here, along with partners and communities trying to understand betrayal dynamics beyond simple cheating, the in-group bullying and information-sharing violations the synopsis specifically calls out among them. Thornapple Press has positioned this as a focused, practical reflection rather than a theoretical overview, which suits a listener dealing with something concrete right now rather than one doing general research. It could also work for a partner on the other side of a betrayal, trying to understand the damage from the inside rather than only from their own hurt.
General newcomers to nonmonogamy should probably look elsewhere first, since this assumes some existing familiarity with the subject or a specific situation already in mind. Anyone newer to the topic would likely get more out of starting with a broader primer before narrowing in on betrayal specifically as this one does, and might reasonably start with the more comprehensive More Than Two before circling back later to this shorter, sharper companion piece once a specific question about trust has already surfaced.
How long is the Nonmonogamy and Betrayal audiobook?
It runs one hour and twenty one minutes, closer to a long essay than a full length book, and a companion PDF is included with the purchase alongside the audio according to the listing itself, per its own product description on the page.
Does this audiobook only cover cheating, or other kinds of betrayal too?
It goes well beyond cheating. The synopsis specifically names in-group bullying, having personal information shared by a trusted partner, and the humiliation of being traded up for a partner with more social or economic capital as distinct forms of betrayal covered here.
Does this audiobook come with any additional material?
Yes. The listing notes that purchasing this title includes an accompanying PDF made available alongside the audio in your library, useful if some of the material benefits from being read closely rather than only heard once in passing on a first listen.
