Ethical Slut - Dossie Easton [103]
You are responsible for respecting the other relationships of your lovers, especially their life partners, and for treating these people with respect, empathy, and openheartedness.
You are responsible for safer sex: opening discussion with potential partners, making your own decisions about your level of acceptable risk, respecting other people’s decisions, and learning to be adept with barriers and little bits of essential rubber.
You are responsible for owning your feelings, as is everyone else. Learn to handle your own crises and get support when you need it from others who are free to be there for you at that particular time.
You are responsible for being straightforward about your intentions. When you practice being openly affectionate with your lovers, they may expect more from you than you are offering, and you must be willing to speak out and make yourself and your desires clear to all concerned.
You are responsible for finding ways to say what another person might not want to hear. Single sluts may need to state uncomfortable truths in relationships that might not have the customary intimacy for such vulnerable discussions.
You are responsible for promoting intimacy in all your relationships. If being single means that you are committed to being coolly invulnerable in all situations, you’ll be living in a cold and distant world.
You must value and welcome all of your lovers as the wonderful, brilliant, unique human beings that they surely are.
Rainbow of Connections
If you’re single and slutty, you may find yourself interacting with a lot of different people in a lot of different patterns. Here are a few that we’ve encountered and that you may too.
SINGLES WITH SINGLES
Isn’t it funny how we call single people “available?” Available for what? When you are single, your lovers might be other singles, but that doesn’t mean that each of those relationships is anything like any other. With one person you may love to go dancing, with another it’s hiking.
With any individual, you might be dating frequently, regularly, irregularly, or rarely. That rare time might be a very special thing—quantity doesn’t always equal quality. When everyone is single and no one is auditioning for partners, then each relationship is free to seek its own level, and there may be fewer obstacles to flowing into exactly the relationship that fits for the two of you.
Just because you are single and not planning on changing that right now, please don’t take your lovers for granted. Let them know how precious and valuable they are to you. Convention says we should be more reserved: we say let’s change that convention. We love hot dates, and we also love warmth.
PARTNER TO A PARTNER
You may be dating someone who has a long-term, life-sharing partner—married or living together. When you are dating that person, there is someone else whose feelings must be taken into account.
Perhaps you find yourself in the position of sleeping with someone who’s cheating. Whatever you think about the ethics involved—different sluts make different choices on this one—it is certain that difficulties can arise when your lover’s partner doesn’t know about your connection. Contortions may be required to keep the partner from finding out—and even with all the cleverness and forethought in the world, there is no sure way to keep such a big secret forever. This kind of secrecy imposes pretty severe limits: if the relationship consists of weekly trysts at the no-tell motel, how much connection can really take place? If the relationship goes well, someone may very well wind up wanting more. It’s the “outside” lover in a secret affair who will most likely get abandoned if anybody gets caught.
Perhaps your sweetie is in a “don’t ask, don’t tell” agreement; many couples new to nonmonogamy try this one in an attempt to feel safer. In our experience, this can create problems for all concerned. First, most people find their