Ethical Slut - Dossie Easton [32]
Put some thought into how you can let your partners know how important they are to you. We recommend lots of hugging, touching, verbal affection, sincere flattery, little “love ya” gifts, and whatever else helps everyone feel secure and connected.
FAITHFULNESS
This may seem like an odd word to read in this context, but even the most outrageous slut can be, in the words of Cole Porter, “always true to you, darlin’, in my fashion.” Our friend Richard says, “A lot of people describe having sex with only one person as ‘being faithful.’ It seems to me that faithfulness has very little to do with who you have sex with.” Faithfulness is about honoring your commitments and respecting your friends and lovers, about caring for their well-being as well as your own.
If you have a primary relationship, take a look at what you can do to reinforce its primary-ness. Many people in couples have certain activities that they keep only for their life partners—particular sexual behaviors, sleepovers, terms of affection, or whatever. Look at your public behavior—are you comfortable introducing your partner to the cute number you are flirting with at a wild party? We are: we figure any cutie who would be put off by meeting our spouses will likely make trouble in the future, so it’s better if we find out now. Make agreements with your partner before the party, and then you need never wonder if you are welcome to join a group or a conversation that your beloved is enjoying.
Pay attention, also, to how you acknowledge your nonprimary relationships. How will a partner you may never live with feel loved and secure? What rights does this partner have to your time and attention? How can you offer affection and reassurance to everyone who is important to you? Make it a point to let everyone you love know it. Make agreements with your life partner about what you will do when an outside partner needs support or has a crisis like an accident or illness. Who makes the chicken soup? How about you? (Both of your authors make great chicken soup.)
LIMIT-SETTING
To be a happy slut, you need to know how—and when—to say no. Having a clear sense of your own limits, and respecting those limits, can keep you feeling good about yourself and help prevent those morning-after blues. Some limits may be about sexual behaviors: Would you have sex with a gender other than the one you usually do? Would you try a kind of sex you think is kinky? Limits about safer sex and birth control are obviously required; there are some things you definitely do not want to bring home with you. Some limits might be about relationship styles, such as frequency of contact or intensity of connection. We also encourage you to think about ethical dilemmas and how you’d react to them. Would you, for example, be a lover to a coupled individual whose partner didn’t know about your involvement? Would you lie to a lover? Fake an orgasm?
And then there’s the very, very important limit of “I don’t want to.” “No, thank you, I don’t feel like sex right now.” Even if it’s your anniversary. Even if you’re supposed to want to. Even if you haven’t for a long time. No excuses needed.
When you respect your own limits, others will learn to respect them too. People tend to live up to your standards when you are not afraid to set them. Only when everyone’s limits are out in the open do you become free to ask for your dearest fantasies, secure in the knowledge that if your friend doesn’t want to, he won’t. From this position we can ask for the earth and wind up getting a goodly chunk of it.
PLANNING
Successful sluts know that relationships don’t just happen—they take work, planning, and commitment. Few of us have so much time on our hands that we can simply have conversations,