Ethical Slut - Dossie Easton [33]
Get yourself an appointment calendar or PDA and use it (Janet used to schedule sex with her first husband, Finn, with the cryptic note “F.F.” —just in case a coworker should glance into her Day Runner). Some families of sluts have discovered complex online calendars that they can keep jointly, and thus everyone can see what everyone else is doing and make plans accordingly. Once you’ve made a commitment to spend time together for any reason, keep it—we know you’re busy, but postponing important relationship work to attend to other business does not speak well of the significance you give your relationships, does it?
KNOWING YOURSELF …
And knowing your programming. As we have said before, we are all carrying around a lot of garbage in our minds about sex and gender. No one can grow up in our culture and escape picking up puritanical and inaccurate ideas about sex. Some of these beliefs are buried so deep they can drive our behavior unconsciously, without our knowing it, and cause a great deal of pain and confusion to ourselves and the people we love. All too often, in the name of these beliefs, we oppress other people, and ourselves.
These deeply held beliefs are the roots of sexism and sex-negativism, and to be a radical slut you are going to have to uproot them. To truly know yourself is to live on a constant journey of self-exploration, to learn about yourself from reading, therapy, and, best of all, talking incessantly with others who are traveling on similar paths. This hard work is well worth it because it is the way you become free to choose how you want to live and love, own your life, and become truly the author of your experience.
OWNING YOUR FEELINGS
A basic precept of intimate communication is that each person owns her own feelings. No one “makes” you feel jealous or insecure—the person who makes you feel that way is you. No matter what the other person is doing, what you feel in response is determined inside you. Even when somebody deliberately tries to hurt you, you make a choice about how you feel. You might feel angry, or hurt, or frightened, or guilty (one of your authors was raised Catholic, so she was trained to feel guilty about astonishing stuff). The choice, not usually conscious, happens inside you.
This understanding is not as easy as it sounds. When you feel rotten, it can be hard to accept the responsibility for how you feel: wouldn’t this be easier if it were someone else’s fault? Then maybe that person could fix it, and if not, well, maybe you can go ballistic and vent a little steam and melt the whole relationship down in the process.
The problem is that when you blame someone else for how you feel, you disempower yourself from finding solutions. If this is someone else’s fault, only that person can fix it, right? So poor you can’t do anything but sit there and moan.
On the other hand, when you own your feelings, you have lots of choices. You can talk about how you feel, you can choose whether or not you want to act on these feelings (no more “the devil made me do it”), you can learn how to understand yourself better, you can comfort yourself or ask for comfort. Owning your feelings is basic to understanding the boundaries of where you end and the next person begins and the perfect first step toward self-acceptance and self-love.
GOING EASY ON YOURSELF
As prepared as you are, as centered as you are, as stable as you are, you are going to trip over problems you never anticipated—we guarantee it.
Perhaps the most important step in dealing with problems is to recognize that they will happen and that it’s okay that they do. You’ll make mistakes. You’ll encounter