Ethical Slut - Dossie Easton [101]
Partnered people get to share the basics of their lives—working together on shared goals, pooling finances, splitting the hard work of child rearing. Partners also get to share with each other when things are less than pretty—and we all need somebody to let us know that we are still lovable when we are not at our shiniest. The challenge for the single slut is to find ways to deepen the intimacy in relationships that may not be life partnerships.
Being single, on the other hand, offers the opportunity to spend time being purely who you are. Singles enjoy more freedom to explore, fewer obligations, and the ability to lounge around the house in a holey T-shirt playing video games with nobody the wiser. Perhaps you are single for negative, and valid, reasons. The last relationship was a disaster, and you are terrified to try again. You only feel safe controlling your own finances, or your own kitchen, or your own life. The only way you know how to be in a relationship is to try to be the perfect wife, or husband, or lover, or provider, and you’re exhausted from trying to be someone you are not. You are recovering from a breakup, you want to avoid rebound romance, you need time to grieve. You just haven’t found anyone that you really want to live with.
Perhaps you are actively choosing to live single at this time in your life. Living alone, you’re free to explore any kind of relationship that crosses your path. You can love someone who wouldn’t make a good partner. You can love someone who already has a partner and who doesn’t need you to help with the mortgage or taking the kids to the orthodontist. You might choose singlehood because you love the joy of the hunt, the magic of flirtation, all the mystery and excitement of newness. Or you might be choosing to develop sexual connections with your friends, or without possessiveness, or any other relationship that is possible without coupling. Each utterly unique person you meet offers a new mirror in which you can see a new view of yourself: each new lover increases your knowledge of the world and your self-knowledge as well.
Some Thoughts about Love
As our relationships blossom all over the rainbow of possibility, each one may inspire different feelings of love. When we learn to recognize and welcome love as we find it in our hearts in all of its many and marvelous manifestations—sexual love, familial love, friendly love, passionate love, gentle love, overwhelming love, caretaking love, and millions of others—we discover a river of rich and nourishing love that can flow through our lives in a constantly replenishing stream.
The way to feel solid enough to swim in that ever-changing river is to learn to love yourself. Some people believe that to love yourself is selfish, in a negative way, and that to spend some part of your life focusing on yourself is not only selfish but also narcissistic. How do you draw a line between healthy self-esteem and pathological narcissism? How much self are you allowed to have?
Practice self-nurturing, not only to get you through hard times but to guide you into a loving relationship with yourself. When you follow through with a simple act like comforting yourself with homemade soup, bringing home a fragrant flower for your night table, or taking a sweet solitary walk in a beautiful place, then you get an experience of being kind to yourself that can answer all those questions about “what do they mean, love myself?” This question is more easily answered by doing than by thinking.
If you have a hard time feeling valuable when no one is around to tell you that you are, why not do something that is valuable to others? Many unhappy sluts with no date this weekend have gone off to serve dinner to the homeless