I Just Finished the Heated Rivalry Book at Midnight. Here’s What This ENM Relationship Coach Can’t Stop Thinking About.

I want to tell you something a little embarrassing.

Last night, at some hour that was firmly past when a responsible adult should be awake, I turned the final page of Rachel Reid’s Heated Rivalry.

I may have made a noise that woke up my cat.

I’m not going to tell you what kind of noise. But I will tell you that I immediately wanted to start the book again from page one.

This is not typical behavior for me. I am a Master Certified Coach with nearly 10,000 coaching hours, a podcast with listeners in 160 countries, and what I like to think is a reasonably dignified professional life.

And yet. Here I am. Absolutely feral over two fictional hockey players.

Welcome to the Heated Rivalry fandom, I guess. Population: approximately nine million people and counting.

 

How I Got Here

A few weeks ago, I attended a Heated Rivalry Rave at the Howard Theatre in Washington DC. For those of you who don’t know — yes, that is a real thing that exists. A room full of people dancing and celebrating a show about two rival hockey players who spend a decade almost choosing each other before finally, breathtakingly, doing it.

As someone who lives in the DC area, it was practically my civic duty to attend.

But here is what I didn’t expect: standing in that room, watching the pure joy on people’s faces — the permission they were giving themselves to be openly, unabashedly obsessed — I felt something click into place professionally.

Because I recognized what I was seeing.

I’ve spent twenty years helping people release shame around how they love, who they desire, and who they are. And that room was a live demonstration of exactly what happens when shame loses its grip. People show up. Fully. Joyfully. Without apology.

So I went home, ordered the books, and apparently lost two weeks of sleep.

Worth it. Completely worth it.

 

What I Keep Thinking About as a Relationship Coach

Here’s the question I’ve been getting since I started talking about this show online:

“Is Heated Rivalry an ENM story? Is Shane and Ilya’s relationship ethical non-monogamy?”

The short answer is: no — and also kind of yes. Let me explain, because the distinction matters and it’s actually one of the most interesting things about this show.

Shane and Ilya are NOT polyamorous. By the end of the series, we understand that each of them has loved only one person in their entire lives. Each other. That is not polyamory. Polyamory involves multiple loves — and for these two men, there has only ever been one.

But their behavior for most of the story IS a form of ethical non-monogamy.

Ilya has Svetlana. Shane has Rose. Both men are aware of the other’s parallel relationships. Nobody is being deceived. Nobody is being cheated on. The relating between them is consensual and transparent — even if it is never labeled as such, even if it happens entirely in private.

That IS consensual non-monogamy. And that distinction is one that most of the cultural commentary around this show has completely missed.

Being in the closet and practicing ethical non-monogamy are two completely separate things. Shane and Ilya hide their queerness from the world — because professional hockey would punish them for it. But between themselves? Complete honesty. Complete consent. That IS ethical.

I say this not just as a relationship coach who specializes in CNM — but as someone who has practiced ethical non-monogamy for over twenty years. This is not a theoretical distinction for me. It is lived.

And what strikes me most about how Rachel Reid wrote this dynamic is how quietly, almost invisibly, she modeled what consent and transparency actually look like in practice. Not as a lecture. Not as a plot device. Just as two people who extended each other a kind of radical honesty that most people — in any kind of relationship — never manage.

 

What This Show Is Really About

Here is what I think is actually driving the nine million viewers and the sold-out raves and the fan communities that have formed almost overnight:

This show is about the cost of hiding who you are.

Shane and Ilya are not just hiding a relationship. They are hiding themselves — their desires, their authentic identities, the full truth of who they are — in an environment that has made it clear those things are not welcome. Professional hockey in the early 2000s was not a place you could be soft. Vulnerable. Queer. In love with your rival.

And they paid for that. A decade of almost. A decade of close enough but not quite. A decade of choosing safety over truth.

As a trauma-informed coach, I can tell you that this is one of the most common and costly patterns I see in my practice. Not just in the LGBTQ+ community — though the stakes there are uniquely high — but in anyone who has been told, explicitly or implicitly, that the way they love is wrong.

The body keeps the score of every time we chose hiding over truth. And the relationships pay the price.

What Heated Rivalry does — what Rachel Reid does, brilliantly — is show us both sides of that cost. The cost of hiding. And the extraordinary, almost unbearable beauty of finally stopping.

That is what Episode 6 is. That is why nine million people watched it and then sat very still for a while afterward.

And that is why — in 2026, as LGBTQ+ rights are being actively stripped away, as people who have spent decades fighting simply to exist are being told once again that they are wrong — this show feels like more than entertainment. It feels like a reminder. Your love is real. Your life is beautiful. You deserve to be seen.

 

Why I’m Talking About This

I am a relationship coach. My work is helping people navigate consensual non-monogamy — the jealousy, the communication, the shame, the extraordinary possibility of it. I have done this for nearly a decade with nearly 10,000 coaching hours.

I am also a genuine, embarrassingly enthusiastic fan who finished a book at midnight and may have woken up her cat.

Both of those things are true at the same time. And I think that combination — professional expertise and authentic fandom — is exactly why I keep getting messages from people in this community who want to know what I see in this show.

So I’m going to keep talking about it. The ENM dynamics. The attachment styles. The identity closet. The consent. The shame and the liberation. All of it.

Because this show is doing something important — and I think the conversation around it deserves more than just scene breakdowns and thirst edits.

Though I fully support the thirst edits. Obviously.

 

If This Resonates With You

If you’re watching Heated Rivalry and finding yourself unexpectedly emotional — if something in Shane and Ilya’s story is hitting closer to home than a fictional hockey romance probably should — I want you to know that’s not an accident.

The themes in this show are real. The cost of hiding who you are is real. The longing to be seen and loved exactly as you are is real.

And if you’re navigating any of this in your own relationships — the jealousy, the shame, the fear, the desire to love more authentically — I made a free masterclass that might be the most useful 39 minutes you spend this week.

It’s not about hockey. But it is about everything Shane and Ilya were trying to find their way toward.