The Ethical Slut (24 page)

We look at the kinds of agreements that sluts make to deal with emotional comfort zones as falling, loosely speaking, into two categories:
agreements that avoid scary feelings, and agreements to take a risk of feeling something that might be uncomfortable or scary, but not terrifying. Make a list of all the agreements you might consider entering into, and divide them into avoidant and risky. Avoidant strategies might include don’t ask, don’t tell; don’t rock the boat; don’t let me find out; I will never meet your lover; only on Thursday nights when I’m out with my lover, so I’ll never be home alone. These might be good agreements for the couple who are starting out on this path, in that they are taking the very smallest risks with the tightest possible containers. This is how we form a learning curve.

If you choose only avoidant strategies, however, you can wind up keeping yourself frozen in your present state. If you don’t talk about what you are doing, then how can you think? If you can’t think, how can you negotiate? How can you reassure yourselves without knowing what is happening? People don’t do well in a vacuum, and many people find that the stories they make up in their heads in the absence of information are scarier than the reality.

In a worst-case scenario, you could wind up not knowing something that everyone else in your community knows, and then you might find out about it from a friend who thinks you already know. Most people don’t much like getting blindsided, so basing your safety on keeping yourself blind is not going to work forever. And if you and your partner have to keep your activities secret from each other, then you have, well, a big secret. Secrets will not bring you closer together—they often create more distance. Suppose you have a fight with your outside lover, and your life partner can tell that you’re upset. How do you deal with these realities and not disclose anything about your outside connections?

Many people find it easier not to hear about the specifics of their partner’s lovemaking with others, and we don’t see a lot of problems with that. Eventually, you might find it a turn-on, but there is no need to start there, or even get there, unless such sharing is important to one of you.

Think very hard about any agreements that add up to “don’t have too much fun.” Agreements about safer sex, of course, are absolutely required. But in the long run it’s not going to make you feel very safe if your lover agrees not to, for instance, kiss someone, or not do any of a
long list of activities. All you will get for that is a lot of wondering if this agreement will be kept and a lot of uproar if you suspect it is not.

You have the right to expect your spouse to be open with prospective partners about having a life partner already. You may be surprised to learn that this will make both of you more attractive to some people than a single person would be—an outside partner can play with either one of you and not have to worry about whether you are going to show up with a U-Haul. By being honest about the relationship you are looking for, you will attract people who are ready and willing to deal with the realities of your life.

There are distinct advantages to connecting with experienced sluts—their knowledge can be very helpful. When a prospective outside sweetie is new to polyamory, you will negotiate another set of agreements and establish a learning curve for this relationship.

Risk-taking strategies might include things like full disclosure or checking out personal ads on the Internet together: your first steps on your learning curve can be virtual steps if those feel like the easiest to take. What photos in the ads does your partner respond to? How do you feel about that? What does your partner think about the people you find attractive? What happens if you field a couple of characters on Second Life or flirt online in one of your fantasy identities? Or you might go out to a club together and talk about what it would be like to flirt with any of the hotties you might find there.

You can take the risk of arousing one of those scary emotions almost as an experiment, to see how it feels, learn about yourself, and explore how you can take care of yourself and reassure each other when jealous feelings are being felt in the present.

One risk that we advise you to take involves making the time in your busy lives to talk about how you are feeling about all this. There are a lot of exercises in this book about communication: try them. On the next page you’ll find another script for talking about difficult feelings.

We have said before that nothing creates intimacy like shared vulnerabilities—so we advise you to savor all the closeness that you open up with each other when you start taking risks.

You can also use the “Yes, No, Maybe” exercise in
chapter 21
, “Sex and Pleasure,” only this time list all the poly things: coffee dates, answering an ad, exchanging phone numbers at a party, flirting, all the
way up to actual dates, sleepovers, and sex. The items that wind up on your Yes lists are the ones to start with, and then you can negotiate what it would take to make it safe enough to try something on your Maybe list. The No list states your absolute limits at this time and maybe forever. Compare this to your “Hierarchy of Hard” cards we talked about in the exercise earlier in this chapter. These two exercises you will use over and over again, because each time you get good at any part of what you are attempting, the scary level of all the items will change. Every time you learn something new, you become stronger and more confident.

We have deliberately suggested some extremely easy places to start with—like looking at ads, or talking about all the cuties dancing at the club. These are very safe places to take a tiny risk, and pay attention to what feelings come up, and talk about them. Remember that feelings like to flow—don’t look for answers, just watch them move on through. Please don’t assume that how you feel today is how you will always feel: the whole purpose of this endeavor is to open up your options about your feelings.

You may be surprised by what’s difficult, or by what’s easy. Give yourself a gold star for what’s easy—that’s a strength you already have. Give yourself another gold star for even thinking about something that’s hard—this is the work you are setting out to do.

Regardless of what decisions you make about other people in your life, it’s a good idea to start from a relationship that feels fulfilling and exciting. If you are delighted with your sex life with your partner, perhaps you don’t need this section. But if your sexuality as a couple has become infrequent, perfunctory, unsatisfying, or nonexistent, please know that this is utterly normal (although not inevitable) in mature relationships. Most of us, when we get settled into a comfortable relationship, find wonderful ease and safety, but as our days get filled with careers and kids and softball and mortgages and building the studio in the garage, there is less energy for sex, and passion may lose both its ease and its urgency.

Before you read on, think for a minute: is the sex in my partnership okay the way it is? Maybe having somewhat less sex these days than you did on your honeymoon is fine for you. It’s a myth that your relationship is a disaster if you’re not getting it on three times a week or for three hours at a time. There are perfectly marvelous partnerships that last for decades and are very satisfying to all concerned, with little or no sex, or with comfortable, routine sex. Don’t feel like you have to change something that feels okay the way it is: when it’s not broken you don’t need to fix it.

If, however, there are changes you would like to make, the first thing you need to do is find some time to talk with your partner, maybe read this section together, and negotiate your learning curve. If this opens
up some hard feelings—and it may—go back to
chapter 14
, “Embracing Conflict,” and consider how you can listen to each other’s feelings without making anyone into a villain. Both of you got you here, and it’s going to take both of you to get somewhere better. So start with what you need to do to get on the same side. We’ll start with discussing a few common problems and some solutions to try.

Where you start depends somewhat on the nature of the problem. Some couples fall out of sexual synch because of a physical difficulty with sex that has eaten away at their sense of intimacy. For others, it can have more to do with the distance caused by the pressures of day-to-day life, or about small resentments that have built up over time and that can make it difficult to find the passion and romance that once inspired you. For many, it is some of each.

Let’s start by talking about sex. It may be that one or both of you has kept silent about some aspect of your sex that isn’t working right, out of some sense of trying to protect your partner’s feelings. Silence will not help: the loving way to treat a sexual problem is to work together on fixing it, and your partner can’t join you if you won’t say what’s wrong. If your partner tends to stop that perfect stroke right when it’s getting good for you or initiates orgasm-seeking activity long before you’re ready, you have to ask for what you want or else you are going to get frustrated and eventually resentful. And if you’ve never told your partner what you need to make you happy, you are depriving both of you of a blissful sex life. Similarly, when your partner has a concern, please don’t take it as a deliberate blow to your sexual self-esteem. Most of us have to learn what our partners like from our partners—there are no clever tricks that work for everyone.

Pay attention to practical matters. Has sex become uncomfortable or painful? The first step here, too, is communication. If your back hurts in some positions, talk to your partner and choose some positions that are comfortable for both of you. Bad disks are not very sexy, but a pillow under the hips or the belly can change what gets strained or stretched. If friction feels unpleasant, pick up samples of some nice lubricants (many erotic boutiques sell sample packs), test them out to find your favorite, and enjoy yourselves. Lubricant is an asset to vaginal play for many women, and an absolute necessity for women in midlife and beyond, or for any form of anal play. If you haven’t tried
it before, you’ll be stunned at how good it can feel for both parties. If penetration still hurts, get a medical checkup to deal with anything that needs medical attention. And if you both want penetration, but his penis isn’t cooperating, consider trying one of the prescription medications now available to help maintain the hard-on once you’ve taken care of the turn-on. Once you start talking about physical issues that can affect sex, you’ll be pleasantly surprised at how many of them are easy to fix.

Alcohol and other intoxicants are not really your friend. Although a small amount of wine or whatever may help you feel less inhibited, nervous people tend to overindulge, and getting hammered will leave you unable to feel anything at all and no fun to play with. We are going for sexual consciousness, not sedation.

For more problem-solving information, we have listed some good books about sex in the Resource Guide at the end of this book, and you can call or email San Francisco Sex Information (also in the Resource Guide) to discuss your question with a trained peer counselor.