Sandra Bravo advocates non-monogamy and collective care in Spain

Sandra Bravo: "Men have been non-monogamous their whole lives"

Writer and media personality Sandra Bravo publishes her second book, If I Loved You, I Don't Remember. Notebook of Shared Vulnerability, linking her experience as a bisensbi, non-monogamous woman with an uncomfortable diagnosis: breaking sensual exclusivity is not revolutionary because men have always done it. What is truly revolutionary, she argues, is caring for one another in a society that creates precarity, exhaustion, and multiple jobs. The author, known for her online community Let's Talk About Polyamory and her first essay All That Stuff I Don't Know How to Explain to My Mother, now in its fifth edition, chose an independent publisher this time to shape a hybrid book mixing intimate diary entries, interviews with friends, tests, stories, and even a blank page for readers to draw the part of their body they wish.

What the book proposes beyond polyamory

The core theme is less about relationship models than the materiality of life. An accident that left her unable to walk for a month—she lives on a fifth floor without an elevator—forced her to confront discourses on interdependence and realize she needed help for basic tasks. From this stems her central thesis: revolution lies not in how many partners you have, but in changing dynamics of cohabitation, consumption, and care. She cites philosopher Marina Garcés to recall that anarchist and feminist approaches to free love from 150 years ago didn't account for two factors: persistent social malaise and intensifying emotional capitalism.

The author thus distances herself from identity-based segarro logic. "I'm no longer in a logic of who I am, but what I need," she states, shifting focus to protests for fair wages and dignified rents. Harsh LGBT-phobic logics, she adds, also attack basic rights. The book introduces the concept of the "care pod," developed in San Francisco to describe groups of people organizing around specific common care goals using new technologies. In her case, a Telegram group coordinated tasks like buying food, taking out trash, or providing company. It’s the modern version, she says, of what grandmothers did in villages.

Friends as knowledge sources versus academia

The second half of the book consists of interviews with friends. Bravo champions this popular knowledge against the typical university professor who speaks only because his title validates him. Her friends appear without surnames or detailed professions, because academia doesn’t grant them value. She wanted to recover what recently allowed women to survive: sharing life stories, violences, and joys at the laundry house. Telling our lives, she argues, is a revolutionary act.

Reception: from respect to ridicule

Reaction to the book and interview has been a battleground. Some defend that the author is direct, honest, and has the right to do whatever she wants with her life. At the opposite extreme, some accuse her of selling a life that isn’t as exciting as portrayed, seeking attention when physical appearance no longer serves as a lure, or promoting promiscuity. Several messages compare her discourse to hippies and 1960s feminists, or the Movida of the 80s, arguing that if the topic needs such insistence, it’s because people instinctively tend toward tradition.

Another current, more uncomfortable for the author’s narrative, points to a practical contradiction: free love fails to cover basic needs during crises. The accident she narrates—finding herself alone and dependent on a support network—is cited by those who argue that family and long-time friends remain the real safety net. Some go further, claiming traditional models aren’t failing, but rather the lack of sarracena that replaced them.

The underlying clash: materiality versus identity

The book leaves an unresolved paradox. Bravo renounces the segarro label to focus on material conditions, yet her promotion still revolves around the sensual label. And her audience splits between those seeing her proposal as a step toward a more solidary society and those reading it as an excuse to justify a life they suspect will end in loneliness. The author is clear: when sustaining life is difficult, sustaining everything else is too. Whether this thesis holds up is what the book leaves open.