Ethical Slut - Dossie Easton [79]
Don Juan and Doña Juana are portrayed in fiction as carefree explorers—and also heartless and free of care for any pain they may leave in their wake. We don’t believe that you want your freedom at the cost of becoming a callous jerk. If you have invited your partner into this exploration, that means you don’t want to cheat, you want to live your life honestly and honorably. We respect you for that. A lot of other people won’t.
THE OUTSIDE LOVER
We don’t even know what to call you, which makes it hard to talk to you and may make it hard for you to think about your situation. Your role—a potentially loving, giving individual who’s sexually involved with one member of a committed couple—is so distant from most people’s conceptual framework that a nonloaded word for you does not exist. Homewrecker? Mistress? The other woman? (There isn’t even a phrase for “the other man,” in spite of the fact that many, many such men exist.) More civilized, but often equally problematic, are concepts like “secondary” or “tertiary”: this language does define the situation, but we think the implied hierarchy can be demeaning. Do you only count when you are number one? Or does everybody have rights in this constellation?
Whether you are the sweetie, the squeeze, the lover, or whatever, your position in the triangle comes with advantages and disadvantages. On the positive side, nobody expects you to wash their socks, and most of your time with your lover can be spent having fun. You are not expected to support your lover, nor to give up your career to stay home with the kids. On the downside, who do you call when you need a drive to the emergency room? Who do you call when you are sad? When you need support? Do you have any rights at all to your partner’s time, or is there somebody who sees you as the competition, with whom you may never speak or negotiate? While your position conveys few responsibilities, it often also carries very few rights.
THE ONE WHO CHOSE NONE OF THIS
We really hope you didn’t get this book as a Valentine’s Day surprise, but we know that could be the case. It is utterly no fun to be called upon to expand your relationship in ways you never asked for, nor to deal with your beloved’s desires for other lovers after you’d promised to forsake all others. You may be feeling like you’ve had an abyss open up under your feet, with no solid ground anywhere to stand on.
Of course you are distressed, and angry as well—you did not choose this path. Here you are, in a maelstrom of scary feelings you never agreed to undertake. It may take a while for you to get that this is really happening. Eventually, though, this situation must be dealt with: once the subject of opening a relationship is on the table, it cannot be shut away in a drawer again. One way or another, you must find a way to cope with what’s been handed to you and begin considering what may happen next.
It is unfair, of course, that you’re being asked to do hard emotional work that you never chose to do. Is there any reason why you should have to work so hard? Is there anything in it for you?
Well, quite possibly. Perhaps this work will make you stronger. Perhaps you will make an unexpected journey into your own capacities: Maybe you too have the ability to love more than one person. Perhaps it will deepen your relationship with your partner. Perhaps it will improve your sex life. Perhaps you will find a path that allows your relationship to continue, that allows you to grow and change together. Perhaps you can see a faint gleam of a possible freedom somewhere on the horizon.
We can’t promise that any of these will happen for you. But there’s one thing we can promise. If you tackle this difficult situation, and learn whatever you can about yourself and your relationship from it, at the end of it you will have a choice. You may choose to separate, or you and your partner may choose to go back to monogamy,