Ethical Slut - Dossie Easton [24]
Each relationship seeks its own level, or will if you let it. Like water, you and whatever person has caught your fancy can flow together as long as you let it happen in the way that is fitting to you both.
Living Single
For some sluts, being single may be a temporary condition between partners, a recommended period of healing from a recent breakup, or a chosen lifestyle for the long term. Being single is a good way to get to know who you are when you are not trying to fit as the other half of somebody else; learning to live with yourself and enjoy it gives you a lot to share with a partner when you choose to have one. Single sluthood has its own joys and challenges, which is why we’re going to deal with it at much greater length later in this book.
Single people can play the field in a variety of ways. One distinguishing dimension is how separate you keep your lovers. So one form of sluttery for the single involves multiple partners who have no interaction, indeed no information, about each other; this avoids complications at the cost of limiting certain kinds of intimacy, such as opportunities for mutual support and the development of community.
Or you may choose to introduce your lovers to each other, perhaps over Sunday brunch. This may sound wild, or impossible, or like a script for disaster, but don’t knock it if you haven’t tried it. Your lovers have a lot in common—you, for example—and they may very well like each other. Introducing your lovers helps prevent one of the scariest aspects of jealousy, which is the part where you imagine that your lover’s other lover is taller, thinner, smarter, sexier, and in all ways preferable to funky old you. When you meet that other person or when your lovers meet each other, they meet real people, warts and all, and so often wind up feeling safer.
Introducing your lovers to each other also makes possible the development of a community, or an extended family of people, who are intimately connected through sexual and personal bonds. As more people connect to each other in a variety of ways, including sexual, networks form, and something reminiscent of a clan or a tribe may evolve. Then the question of introducing your lovers can become obsolete, as they may already know each other.
If you are a single person in any open sexual lifestyle, you must pay attention to how you are getting your sexual, emotional, and social needs met. You can do this in an infinite variety of ways. The important thing is to be aware of your needs and wants, so you can go about getting them met with full consciousness. If you pretend that you have no needs, for sex, for affection, for emotional support, you are lying to yourself, and you will wind up trying to get your needs met by indirect methods that won’t work very well. People who do this often get called manipulative or passive-aggressive—terms, in our opinion, for people who have not figured out how to get their needs met in a straightforward manner. Do not commit yourself to a lifetime of hinting and hoping.
When you figure out what you want and ask for it, you’ll be surprised how often the answer is “yes.” Think how relieved you might feel when someone asks you for support, or a hug, or otherwise lets you know how to please him. Think of how competent and just plain good you feel when you can truly help another person, whether it’s by offering a shoulder to cry on or that just-right stimulation that leads to the perfect orgasm. Give your friends the opportunity to feel good by fulfilling you too.
Partnerships
There are multiple forms of open relationships for the partnered, including serial monogamy, where one’s various partners