Ethical Slut - Dossie Easton [93]
We like to be easygoing about sex, but what people mean by “casual sex” is perhaps too dismissive. Casual sex sounds like we are supposed to be distant: don’t get too close, don’t expect too much, avoid any expression of intimacy or vulnerability.
We are now hearing people refer to certain of their lovers as “friends with benefits.” A euphemism, perhaps, but an interesting concept. Why shouldn’t we share sex with our friends, making sex a natural part of the love and honor and faithfulness and openheartedness that we already share with friends?
We have learned the most, and had the most fun, and made the most wonderful, rich connections, when we have welcomed each new person into our lives just as they are, without trying to force them into the picture that’s labeled “relationship” in our brains. This has been true whether we’ve been single, coupled, part of a group family, or engaged in any one of the myriad other ways of relating that creative and loving sluts can devise.
Couplings
We hear too often of folks who delight in a joyously slutty lifestyle until they “fall in love.” Then, perhaps prodded by cultural messages that love must equal marriage must equal monogamy, they dive into an attempt at a conventional lifestyle, often with disastrous consequences. At least one of your authors—you can insert Janet’s rueful grin here—has proven herself not immune to this kind of programming.
There is no reason why wedding bells, or the equivalent thereof, need to break up that old gang of yours. Many sluts find it possible to combine the committed stability of a life partnership with the manifold pleasures of sex and intimacy with others.
However, there is no question that being a slut within a committed relationship has some special challenges. So much of our cultural baggage tells us that commitment equals ownership—that, as the old bitter joke has it, a ring around the finger equals a ring through the nose. Even people who know better often find (sometimes to their surprise) that their expectations of a committed relationship may include the right to control many aspects of their partner’s lives.
While we’re going to write here about couples for the sake of clarity, all the principles apply equally to threesomes, foursomes, and moresomes. Relationships take their own shapes, but the best ones tend to share some basic principles: good boundaries, mindfulness, and a mutual desire for the well-being of everyone involved.
As you can probably guess, we don’t much like the idea that a relationship commitment specifies anybody’s right to anything beyond mutual respect and caring for each other. Yet once you divorce romantic love from the concept of ownership, what happens? One woman we know, who had never been in an open relationship before, was startled to find that many of her old habits have become irrelevant: “Why should I bother to look for stray hairs on the pillow, trying to sniff out any trace of infidelity, when I know that if he has sex with someone else he’ll simply tell me about it?” Yet there are still issues of boundaries, of responsibility, of courtesy, that complement ownership and promote sustainability, which must be dealt with.
So, how do sluts in love build a life together?
Our friends Ruth and Edward remember:
We had a monogamous relationship for about sixteen years, then opened it up and started interacting with other people. Now we’re trying to figure out what we’re comfortable doing with other people and what we want to reserve for our own relationship. Sometimes, the only way to locate the boundary of our comfort zone is to cross it and feel the discomfort. We try to take small steps, so that the pain is minimal. We’re definitely committed to each other and are each willing to stop doing things that the other finds threatening.
Mostly, you take care of your own stuff, recognize and protect your boundaries, and make agreements to help yourself and your partner feel safe—but we