Ethical Slut - Dossie Easton [34]
Can we tell you how to avoid feeling bad? Nope. But we think you’d forgive a friend or lover who misunderstood or made a mistake, and we hope you’ll grant yourself the same amnesty. (As Morticia Addams says: “Don’t beat yourself up, Gomez; that’s my job.”) Knowing, loving, and respecting yourself is an absolute prerequisite to knowing, loving, and respecting someone else. Cut yourself some slack.
A friend of ours, when she trips over some surprisingly intense emotional response, says, philosophically, “Oh well—AFOG,” which stands, she says, for Another Fucking Opportunity for Growth. Learning from one’s mistakes isn’t fun, but it’s way better than not learning at all.
TELLING THE TRUTH
Throughout your experience—as you feel pain, ambivalence, joy—you must speak your own truth, first to yourself, and then to those around you. Silent suffering and self-deception have no place in this lifestyle. Pretending that you feel great when you’re in agony will not make you a better slut; it will make you bitterly unhappy, and it may make those who care about you even unhappier. Everybody feels bad sometimes, so you are in excellent company. And when you have the courage to be open about a vulnerable feeling, everyone around you gets permission to be open with theirs.
When you tell the truth, you discover how much you have in common with the people you care about. Honesty puts you all in an excellent position to support yourselves and each other in a life based on understanding and loving acceptance. As you dig deeper and share your discoveries, you may learn more about yourself and others than you ever knew before. Welcome that knowledge, and keep on digging for more.
EXERCISE Some Affirmations to Try
I deserve love.
My body is sexy just the way it is.
I ask for whatever I want, and say no to whatever I don’t.
I turn difficulties into opportunities for growth.
Each new connection expands me.
I contain all I need for a life full of delight.
Sex is a beautiful expression of my loving spirit.
I am on my personal path to ecstasy.
CHAPTER NINE
Boundaries
MANY PEOPLE BELIEVE that to be a slut is to be indiscriminate, to not care about who you make love with, and thus to not care about yourself. They believe that we live in excessively wide open spaces, with no discrimination, no fences, no boundaries. Nothing could be further from the truth. To be an ethical slut you need to have very good boundaries that are clear, strong, flexible, and, above all, conscious.
One very successful slut we interviewed is outraged by accusations of indiscriminacy, pointing out that sluts get a great deal of opportunity to develop exquisitely sophisticated discrimination: “We actually have more boundaries than most folks because we have more points of contact,” more experience relating in very different ways to very diverse people.
What Are Boundaries?
It is basic to any relationship, and particularly important in open relationships, that no one can own another peron. Some of us who are kinked that way may explore kinds of power exchange that we call “ownership,” but regardless of our relationship style it is essential and incontrovertible that we each own ourselves—lock, stock, and barrel. We each have the responsibility of living our own lives, determining our individual needs, and arranging to get those needs met. We cannot live through a partner, nor can we assume that just because we have a lover, all of our needs should automatically be satisfied. Many of us have been taught that if our lover does not meet every need, this must not be true love, our lover must be somehow inadequate, or we must be at fault—too needy or undeserving or some other sin.
If you were brought up to believe that your relationship would provide your other, or (shudder) better, half, or that your destiny is to submerge your identity in a relationship, you will probably have to put some attention into learning about your own boundaries. Boundaries