Ethical Slut - Dossie Easton [83]
Think very hard about any agreements that add up to “don’t have too much fun.” Agreements about safer sex, of course, are absolutely required. But in the long run it’s not going to make you feel very safe if your lover agrees not to, for instance, kiss someone, or not do any of a long list of activities. All you will get for that is a lot of wondering if this agreement will be kept and a lot of uproar if you suspect it is not.
You have the right to expect your spouse to be open with prospective partners about having a life partner already. You may be surprised to learn that this will make both of you more attractive to some people than a single person would be—an outside partner can play with either one of you and not have to worry about whether you are going to show up with a U-Haul. By being honest about the relationship you are looking for, you will attract people who are ready and willing to deal with the realities of your life.
There are distinct advantages to connecting with experienced sluts—their knowledge can be very helpful. When a prospective outside sweetie is new to polyamory, you will negotiate another set of agreements and establish a learning curve for this relationship.
Risk-taking strategies might include things like full disclosure or checking out personal ads on the Internet together: your first steps on your learning curve can be virtual steps if those feel like the easiest to take. What photos in the ads does your partner respond to? How do you feel about that? What does your partner think about the people you find attractive? What happens if you field a couple of characters on Second Life or flirt online in one of your fantasy identities? Or you might go out to a club together and talk about what it would be like to flirt with any of the hotties you might find there.
You can take the risk of arousing one of those scary emotions almost as an experiment, to see how it feels, learn about yourself, and explore how you can take care of yourself and reassure each other when jealous feelings are being felt in the present.
One risk that we advise you to take involves making the time in your busy lives to talk about how you are feeling about all this. There are a lot of exercises in this book about communication: try them. On the next page you’ll find another script for talking about difficult feelings.
We have said before that nothing creates intimacy like shared vulnerabilities—so we advise you to savor all the closeness that you open up with each other when you start taking risks.
You can also use the “Yes, No, Maybe” exercise in chapter 21, “Sex and Pleasure,” only this time list all the poly things: coffee dates, answering an ad, exchanging phone numbers at a party, flirting, all the way up to actual dates, sleepovers, and sex. The items that wind up on your Yes lists are the ones to start with, and then you can negotiate what it would take to make it safe enough to try something on your Maybe list. The No list states your absolute limits at this time and maybe forever. Compare this to your “Hierarchy of Hard” cards we talked about in the exercise earlier in this chapter. These two exercises you will use over and over again, because each time you get good at any part of what you are attempting, the scary level of all the items will change. Every time you learn something new, you become stronger and more confident.
EXERCISE The Twenty-Minute Fight
Make an appointment with your partner to discuss something you don’t agree on for twenty minutes. Find a good time when you can focus, and when you won’t have to do anything stressful right after—perhaps plan to watch a movie.
Try this first with a small disagreement, something not terribly heated, just for practice. How do you manage to stop after twenty minutes when the discussion isn’t finished? Our most difficult disagreements are not going to be resolved in hours of talking, arguing, or yelling—maybe not even in weeks or months. Difficult issues take time to work on. So one important