Ethical Slut - Dossie Easton [100]
Two of our favorite sluts have been together nearly twenty years, loving each other and a lot of other wonderful people. One year, for Tina’s birthday, Trace bought her what we think is the ultimate birthday present: three season tickets to an excellent performance series … one for Tina, one for Trace, and one for whichever of Tina’s lovers she chose to invite to each event. (Dossie got to see Ravi Shankar!)
Primary and Primary and …
Some very capable sluts maintain more than one primary relationship. Dossie has known one such couple, Robert and Celia, for almost four decades. They together raised two children from previous relationships, and subsequently some grandchildren. Each has another primary partner, both usually women, and family relationships with all their exes. Robert’s outside partner May was originally lover to Celia’s lover Judy back in 1985, then became lovers with Celia, and finally with Robert from 1988 to the present and, they intend, on into the future. Some years ago Miranda and Celia lived upstairs, and Robert and May lived downstairs. Currently Cheryl, another of Celia’s previous girlfriends, lives upstairs and helps with the grandchildren; Miranda, another of Celia’s exes, visits two days a week since she lives out of town but attends school nearby. Are you dizzy yet? All of these people, plus many other friends and lovers of various degrees of intimacy, both present and historical, and most of their friends and lovers, form a very long-term extended family that has lived, loved, and raised children together for nearly forty years and plans to care for one another in their old age. We are impressed.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The Single Slut
TO LIVE SINGLE is unusual in most cultures. Most people look on their periods of singlehood as temporary, often accidental, and to be ended as quickly as possible. You are recovering from your last relationship, mourning a breakup, or too busy working on a career to handle hunting for romance. Perhaps there aren’t any good candidates around right now. Something better will surely come along soon … so you wait, not even thinking of making a lifestyle out of how you are living today. Your authors hasten to assure you that there there are more positive approaches to the lifestyle of the single slut.
What would it be like to be intentionally single, to choose for some period of time to live by yourself? Potential partners can pop up when you least expect them—and in a culture that is built in twos, any relationship that has any life in it is generally regarded as an express train to couplehood. How, then, to stay single?
What would your social support network look like? Would everybody regard you as an outlaw? Might it be possible to get your needs met and feel loved and secure through a community of friends, lovers, family, mentors—your personal human resources?
Building your network by yourself can be hard at first—no one but you to make the phone calls, schedule dates for lunch or the movies, make sure to stay connected. It’s up to you to build yourself a family, and it’s up to you to take care of yourself gently and with an open heart.
Your relationship with yourself is a lifelong commitment. When you are single, you have unique opportunities to live out that relationship with yourself, to find out who you are, and to celebrate your journey in whatever relationships you may move through as you travel through your life. To live single and in love with many is a voyage of self-discovery, an opportunity to get to know yourself intimately and to work on any changes you want to make in your life. Dossie was single when she first struggled with her jealousy, and having it all to herself made it easier to see inside herself rather than blame someone else, and to make conscious decisions about how she wanted to deal with her feelings.
We are not here to advocate being single over being partnered—this is not an either/or choice. But our culture tends to discount singlehood as a lifestyle,