Input:
 Prompt: Write a chapter on making agreements in ethical sluthood, emphasizing the importance of clear communication and consent. Discuss the concept of agreements versus rules and provide examples of different types of agreements that successful sluts have used in their relationships.

Begin by discussing the importance of clear communication and consent in making agreements in ethical sluthood. Point out that while many day-to-day relationships are based on unspoken agreements, it's crucial to take nothing for granted when trying something as complex and unprecedented as ethical sluthood.

Explain the concept of agreements versus rules, emphasizing that agreements are mutually agreed-upon, conscious decisions that are flexible enough to accommodate individuality, growth, and change. Provide examples of agreements that successful sluts have used in their relationships, such as always spending the night together, taking turns watching each other's kids, and setting limits on phone calls, internet time, and so on, with other partners.

Discuss the importance of consent in making agreements, defining it as an active collaboration for the pleasure and well-being of all concerned. Emphasize that consent means that everyone involved must accept responsibility for knowing their own feelings and communicating them, and that this is not always easy.

Provide strategies for defining what's going on for you, such as asking a partner or friend who understands multiple relationships to devote some time to hearing you out and asking the right questions to help you untangle a complicated feeling. Point out that blaming, manipulation, bullying, and moral condemnation do not belong in the agreement-making process and that a good agreement must include a commitment from all concerned to listen to one another's concerns and feelings in an open-minded and unprejudiced way.

End the chapter by emphasizing that the purpose of an agreement is to find a way in which everybody can win and that the single most important thing to remember is that the purpose of an agreement is to respect emotional limits and find a way in which everyone can win.

Response:
# 17

# MAKING AGREEMENTS

Most successful relationships, from casual acquaintanceship through lifetime monogamy, are based on assumptions that are really unstated agreements about behavior: you dont kiss your mailman, you dont tip your mother. These are the unspoken rules we learn very early in our lives from our parents, our playmates, and our cultures. People who break these unspoken rules are often considered odd, sometimes even crazy, because the values and judgments behind the social agreements about how we relate to one another are so deeply ingrained that we are usually not even aware that we have made any agreement at all.

In many day-to-day relationships, like your relationships with neighbors and coworkers, its probably fine to rely on those implicit, built-in agreements. But when youre trying something as complicated and unprecedented as ethical sluthood, we think its very important to take nothing for granted. Talk with the people in your life about your agreements, and negotiate the conditions, environments, and behaviors that will get your own needs met and respect everybodys boundaries.

Youll often hear people talking about the rules of their relationships. But "rules" implies a certain rigidity, that there is a right way and a wrong way to run your relationship and that there will be penalties if you do it wrong. We understand that there are many different ways that people may choose to relate to each other, so we prefer to use the word _agreements_ to describe mutually agreed-upon, conscious decisions, flexible enough to accommodate individuality, growth, and change. These agreements are sometimes a little fuzzy, particularly if youre used to the hard edges of rules. A little fuzziness is okay: your agreement will either get clarified later if it needs to be—or it wont, in which case its probably clear enough.

How do you know when you need an agreement? You can tell by listening to your emotions. If something comes up that leaves you feeling upset or angry or invisible or whatever, thats an area in which you and your sweetie may need to discuss making an agreement. We suggest that you let go right now of the idea that you can predict every single situation that might come up in your relationships and make a rule to cover it. Many perfectly good agreements get made by twenty-twenty hindsight: a problem comes up, and, instead of arguing over whose fault it was, the people involved simply make an agreement to try to prevent that problem from coming up again or to deal with it when it does.

Our friends Laurie and Chris became extraordinarily flexible agreement makers through practicing a lot:

> We met at the Renaissance Faire and connected right away. Although we didnt feel ready to jump into marriage right off, we did get handfasted [an ancient Celtic rite of romantic commitment] about five months after we met. Our handfasting included an agreement that if we still wanted to be together a year and a day later, wed get married. And we did.
>
> When we first decided to get handfasted, Chris proposed an agreement in which wed be free to be sexual with other people during Faire but at no other time. Laurie felt shocked by his desire to do this and insecure about what might happen. So we decided to postpone a decision until the next summers Faire, after wed gotten married.
>
> During the first year of our marriage, the agreement was for Faire only, and then after that we extended it to the weekend preparatory workshops as well as to Faire itself. At one of these, Laurie met a guy with whom she got fairly seriously involved—it was our first ongoing relationship outside the marriage. At that point, things opened up all the way to where Laurie was spending a lot of her time with her other lover, and Chris didnt like it much; he felt that he wasnt getting enough time with Laurie.
>
> So we renegotiated. We decided that either of us could sleep over with another partner twice a month. We felt that twice a month was often enough for fun but not so often as to encourage a threateningly strong bond with someone else. Thats been working pretty well for a while, although weve compromised on a case-by-case basis a time or two.
>
> Were still working out the bugs—among other things, were hoping to become parents pretty soon, and were not sure how a baby will affect our relationship. But our agreements have always been at least tolerable, and at times theyve offered a relief valve thats kept us from fleeing the relationship in terror!

In the twenty years since this interview, Laurie and Chriss children have grown into teenagerhood, and the two of them are still together and still happily slutty.

Consent

So what constitutes a good agreement? In our opinion, the single most important hallmark of agreement is _consent_ , which we define as an active collaboration for the pleasure and well-being of all concerned. In the case of polyamory, this means that we consider the feelings of people not directly involved—other partners, children, and other people whose lives are affected by our agreements—and obtain consent when necessary.

We want to remind you that there is absolutely no way to make a list of agreements that will cover every contingency and are so clear they can never be misunderstood. When difficulties arise, we recommend spending as little time as possible trying to figure out what went wrong. Instead, invest your energy in figuring out what youre going to do next.

"We define consent as an active collaboration for the pleasure and well-being of all concerned."

Defining consent can sometimes be tricky. If someone consents under pressure, we dont think that meets the "active collaboration" criterion. And you cant consent to something you dont know about: "Well, you didnt say I _couldnt_ fly to Boise for two weeks with this flight attendant I just met" does not constitute consent.

To achieve this kind of active consent, everyone involved must accept responsibility for knowing their own feelings and communicating them—but this isnt always easy. Sometimes feelings dont want to be pulled to the surface and examined; you may simply know that you feel bad. Give yourself the time and support you need to get to know that feeling, perhaps using some of the strategies we discuss in chapter 15, "Roadmaps through Jealousy." If you feel you need help in defining whats going on for you, its okay to ask for that help, possibly by asking a partner or a friend who understands multiple relationships to devote some time to hearing you out. Physical or verbal reassurance often makes a huge difference, and sometimes a wise friend or therapist can ask the right questions to help you untangle a complicated feeling. Once you start listening to your own feelings, youll have a much easier time getting your needs and desires out there where everybody can hear them and make agreements to help meet them.

Many of us need some support in asking for what we want. We need to feel sure that the needs we reveal will not be held against us. We may feel pretty vulnerable in and around our emotional limits, so its important to recognize that these limits are valid: "I need to feel loved," "I need to feel that Im important to you," "I need to know that you find me attractive," "I need you to listen and care about me when I feel hurt."

Blaming, manipulation, bullying, and moral condemnation do not belong in the agreement-making process. The process of making a good agreement must include a commitment from all concerned to listen to one anothers concerns and feelings in an open-minded and unprejudiced way. If you are waiting for your partner to reveal a weakness so that you can exploit it as ammunition to "win" your argument, you are not ready to make a satisfactory agreement.

Legalistic hairsplitting is another enemy of good agreements. We know one couple whose agreement was that either of them would let the other one know within twenty-four hours if they were going to have sex with someone else. One of them called the other one from another city to let her know that hed had sex the night before. "But you said youd give me twenty-four hours notice!" she cried angrily. "I never said twenty-four hours _before_ ," he pointed out. This loophole-finding legalistic behavior left neither individual feeling that their agreement had worked for them. The moral: be clear, be specific, and above all, negotiate in good faith; this is not about cheating anymore.

Agreements need to be realistic and clearly defined—if youre not sure whether youre keeping an agreement, it may be time to redefine that agreement. It is unrealistic, for example, to ask your partners never to enter into sexual interactions with people that they care about "too much." There is no way to define "too much," and few of us conceive of our slutty utopia as a world in which you are only allowed to share sex with people you dont care about at all. None of us can truthfully agree to feel only this way or that way: our agreements need to have room in them for real emotions, whatever they may be. A more concrete agreement would be to limit outside dates to once a month, which might serve the same purpose.

Agreements do not have to be equal. People are different and unique, and what pushes my buttons might be perfectly okay with you. So one partner may want to hear all the graphic details about what a sweetie does with their other lover—but when the tables are turned, the sweetie wants no more detail about their partners outside engagements than absolutely necessary. One person might find it very important that their partner not stay out overnight, whereas said partner might actually enjoy an occasional opportunity to watch the late movie all alone and eat crackers in bed.

One friend of ours says:

> Bill and I have very different needs when it comes to relationships. I feel no need to be monogamous; Im quite comfortable having sex with people I like, but theyre not affairs of the heart—whereas his sexual connections are either very casual, like at parties, or very deep and long term. Weve formed agreements that meet both our needs—mine for friendly partners, his for long-term secondary relationships.

When thinking about agreements for an open relationship, most people start out by listing what their partner shouldnt do: dont kiss her on the mouth, dont treat him better than you do me. Some "thou shalt nots" _are_ necessary: agreements need to be made, for example, about sexual connections with relatives, neighbors, and coworkers. But many negative agreements are really about protecting your partner from feeling hurt or jealous; were not big fans of these, although we recognize that they sometimes have their place as an intermediate step. We think that the best agreements to protect your partner from emotional pain are positive rather than restrictive: lets have a special date next weekend, I will find time to listen to you when you hurt, Ill tell you how much I love you again and again.

"Fairness means we care about how each person feels and make agreements to help all of us feel as good as possible."

Everyone needs a sense of emotional safety to succeed at feeling secure in open relationships, but thinking up agreements that will help both partners feel emotionally safe can be confusing. In the process of unlearning jealousy we will all at some time be asking our partners to take some risk, to agree to feel some painful feelings, to fall down a few times to learn how to ride the emotional bicycle of truly free love.

EXERCISE: EIGHT STEPS TO WIN-WIN CONFLICT RESOLUTION

1\. Take time out to ventilate anger.

2\. Select one issue to work on.

3\. Make an appointment to talk.

4\. Take three minutes each to state how you feel while your partner listens. Hint: Use I-statements, avoid you-messages, and consider allowing some time and a change of activities between each persons statement, so you can refocus away from whatever responses to your partner youve thought up and talk about your own issues. Try as hard as you can to describe your emotions about the issue.

5\. Brainstorm. Write a list of all possible solutions, even silly ones.

6\. Edit the list. Cross out any suggestions that either person feels they could not live with.

7\. Choose a solution to try for a specific period of time—perhaps two to four weeks.

8\. Reevaluate when that time is up.

One way you can make agreements to respect emotional limits is to ask for whatever might make you feel a _little bit_ safer—reassurance, compliments, affection, a special ritual for homecoming after a date—and then when that works and you feel a little safer, take another step toward even more safety, and soon you will feel safe enough to expand your explorations further and further. Each tiny step in the direction of freedom will eventually get you there. One of the things that works about reassurance is that once we understand that our partner or partners, or maybe even _their_ partners, are willing to help us with our feelings, we feel more secure and need less protection as we go along.

The single most important thing to remember is that the purpose of an agreement is to find a way in which everybody can win.

Making Space for Difference

You and your sweetie might have different visions about what your relationship will be. For one person, it could be a lot of recreational sex, one-night stands, or party play; another might yearn for one primary and one special secondary relationship. Some people enjoy many relationships that make extended families out of their lovers and their lovers lovers; others look for a three- or four-person group marriage.

Negotiating difference, however, can be done and is being done successfully every day. So what if one person wants BDSM or tantra or wild orgies, and the other wants walks on the beach at sunset? Once youve opened your relationship to other people who may be more accepting of those desires, anything is possible. Agreements may be asymmetrical to account for different desires and different feelings, and each individual may need a different kind of reassurance: the relationship-lover may feel shy and unhip, the party animal may feel judged or threatened by long-term partners, and each needs to have their own feelings validated and cared for.

Some Agreements

Weve done some asking around among our friends and colleagues to find out what kinds of relationship agreements have worked for others. Here is a partial list of agreements weve heard from some very successful sluts.

Notice as you read it how many different kinds of agreements it contains—some are sexual, some are relationship-oriented; some are thou-shalts and some thou-shalt-nots; some are logistical and some sentimental. Just so you know that were not recommending any of these, you should also note that some are mutually exclusive. Were presenting this list as a discussion opener, not as how it ought to be. However, everybody _has_ to make some agreements about sexual health and safer sex.

• We always spend the night together except when one of us is traveling.

• Well take turns watching everyones kids on the weekend.

• Neither/none of us will [specific sexual act] with other partners.

• We always provide advance notice of potential other partners.

• Dont tell me/us about other partners.

• Tell me/us everything you did with other partners.

• Other partners must be [specific gender].

• New partners meet everyone involved.

• Sex beyond our couple/group will only be: group sex/party sex/anonymous sex/committed sex….

• We will check in to confirm safety after a get-together with a new partner.

• Everybody chips in for the babysitter.

• Be sure to save some hot sexual energy for me/us.

• No sex with other partners in our bed/house.

• We set limits on phone calls, Internet time, and so on, with other partners.

• We establish quality time with one another.

• We dont take off the rings that symbolize our relationship.

• We must reach agreements about who is too close to have sex with: neighbors, coworkers, close friends, former lovers, your doctor, your partners therapist?…

• Well spend an hour cuddling and reconnecting afterward.

Predictability

Our experience is that most people we know need some kind of predictability to deal with the stresses of open relationships: its easier to handle a nervous-making situation if you know when it is going to happen and when it is going to be over. You can plan to do something supportive with a friend, go to a movie, visit Mom, whatever—and tell yourself that you only have to handle things for this chunk of time, and then your sweetie will come back and maybe you can plan a celebratory reunion.

Most people have a hard time dealing with surprises, which can feel like land mines exploding. Very few of us would be comfortable living with the possibility that our partner might go home with someone else at any time, from any party we go to, from the restaurant where we thought we were just going for a cup of coffee—no place, no time we could count on. One partner of our acquaintance was working across the country from his spouse during a time when he was first struggling to deal with his jealousy. He made an agreement to know when his partner was playing with someone else because, as he put it, "If I know when they are out with someone else, I also know when they arent, and then I can relax most of the time."

If you feel that planning takes too much of the spontaneity out of your life, then think about declaring one night or one weekend a month to be open season—then you can make a decision whether to join your partners in cruising or sit this one out in a quieter milieu. An agreement to be unpredictable at some specified time is, after all, predictable.

What Is the Emotional Cost?

One way to think about possible agreements is to consider the potential emotional cost to each person involved. Weve already talked about some of the emotions you may encounter as you and your partners begin to explore; your cost is what you risk feeling that might be difficult or painful. A conversation about each persons "emotional cost" can clear a lot of foggy air and clarify whats getting in the way of making an agreement that feels stuck. One agreement might be simply to have this conversation when certain issues are in play: many emotions can be satisfied simply by listening to them.

If you imagine little to no emotional cost in whatever agreement youre contemplating, maybe its time to try challenging yourself a bit more. (Or maybe youre just a brilliantly talented slut who never has emotional difficulty with any of your partners having any kind of connection with anyone else, in which case were looking forward to reading _your_ book.) On the other hand, if the emotional cost seems so great that you cant imagine managing it at the same time as you run the rest of your life, you may have overestimated your ability this time: consider negotiating an agreement that feels a little bit easier.

On Veto Power

In making the decision to open up to new partners, one of the steps many people in closed relationships take is to try "veto power"—where an existing partner has the right to "veto" their partners outside sexual or romantic connections.

Basic slut ethics should not allow you to abuse veto power to prevent your partner from having sex with anyone at all by vetoing everybody—a strategy that may seem tempting, because until you unlearn jealousy, all outside engagements can look very threatening. Sometimes you need to gather up your strength, face down your fears, and unlearn by doing. And sometimes, when you do, it might be easier than you thought it would be, and what you might learn is that you are stronger and more sure of yourself and your love than you thought you were.

Nevertheless, we recognize that veto power can be reassuring when youre making your first steps into a more open relationship structure. But we encourage you to think about what that reassurance actually means.

Veto power says, "If you propose a partner I dont feel comfortable with, I can tell you so, and youll abandon your relationship with that person." But what happens if the proposing partner decides nevertheless to pursue their relationship with the vetoed person? Well, we guess the vetoer has two choices: they can either suck it up and keep going (usually after some very painful conflict) or walk away from the relationship.

Which—surprise!—is exactly the same choice everyone faces when an outside partner comes into a relationship, whether or not its by mutual agreement. For that matter, this is the fundamental choice at stake when any kind of relationship conflict arises: the decision of whether to do the hard work of sticking around or the equally hard (although different) work of leaving. So what is your veto power actually giving you that you dont already have?

If agreeing to veto power increases your sense of security during the early days of opening your relationships, thats fine. But we suspect that if you decide to drop the formal veto power and move toward a more fluid process of accepting outside partners, youll notice very little difference in the way your relationship actually works—unless, of course, it actually works better.

When There Is No Agreement

There are probably a lot of issues in your life about which you feel no need to reach agreement. Everyone deals with differences in relationships all the time, as any night person married to a morning person can tell you. However, lack of agreement can feel less comfortable in the close-to-the-bone field of sexual relationships. When feelings run high, particularly about sexual issues, its easy to want to believe that your way is right and that all other ways are wrong.

One way to avoid the trap of turning a difference into a moral argument is to look carefully at ownership: who owns what in this disagreement anyway? What is As investment in this particular choice, how is B feeling different about it, and what are we afraid might happen if we cant agree? Try to get really clear on how each person feels before you even think about what you want to do.

It can help to remember that you have been living with differences and disagreements with everyone in your life ever since you met them. When you discover a sexual difference with one person, it has probably been there all along. Remember that youve been getting along fine without this particular agreement—if youve made it this far, you can live with the lack of agreement a little longer. Let time be your friend. When difference is difficult, allow yourselves the time to thoroughly explore the feelings that are driving the disagreement and arrange to lead a rewarding life while you explore. You really can agree to disagree. Between the "yes" of full agreement and the "no" of full disagreement is a whole big gray area of "no-agreement-yet," "tolerable-disagreement," or even "who-cares?" Sometimes you will eventually find it possible to make an agreement, and other times you wont.

Occasionally, however, you will hit an area in which agreement is both necessary and impossible. For many people, the whole issue of nonmonogamy may be one of these; childbearing is another frequent point of contention. We suggest flexibility and compromise seeking, possibly with the help of a qualified therapist.

But if agreement simply cannot be reached, we think the skills you learned in trying to reach agreement can come in very handy as you practice not blaming, not judging, and not manipulating, as you work to change or even end a relationship that cannot reconcile its differences.

Some people agree to end a relationship and then discover that later on, when the stress of parting has eased, they can agree on a new kind of relationship with the same person. Others cannot. But either way, forthright and openhearted discussion of disagreements and agreements will lead to a cleaner and less stressful outcome.

Reaching Agreement

So how do you find an agreement that will work for everyone? A good place to start is by defining your goals. A goal is not the same as an agreement: your goal is what youre trying to accomplish, and your agreement is the means youre using to try to get there. For example, if your goal is to prevent anyone from feeling taken advantage of, your agreement might be to ensure that nobodys personal time, space, or belongings are being infringed on. So start with getting clear on what feels like infringement to each person involved and use that for your guidelines.

Often you will discover a goal by tripping over a problem: "Last night, when you and Sam were in our bedroom together, my feet were freezing and I couldnt get in there to get my bedroom slippers." The goal is to prevent this problem from coming up again—what kinds of agreements might help achieve that goal? Answering these questions will require an honest (and often difficult) look at what the _real_ problem is: is it that your feet are cold or that you resent being kicked out of your own bedroom or that youre feeling left out?

Once youve defined your problem and your goal, its time to start figuring out a good agreement. It might be appropriate to do a trial agreement, to put a time limitation (a weekend, a week, a month, a year) on your newborn agreement to see how it feels to everybody concerned. After the time is up, you can sit down again to discuss what worked, what didnt, and whether to continue your agreement or revise it or scrap it.

In our experience, its rare for an agreement to last a lifetime without change: human beings change, and so do agreements. The way you can tell that your agreement needs to change is when someone doesnt agree to it anymore. Janet and one of her partners, for example, began their relationship with an agreement that they could be sexual with other people, but that they couldnt fall in love with anyone else. Then one of them did. (In hindsight, Janet admits, this seems like a fairly silly agreement—as though you could simply decide not to fall in love!) She remembers:

> There was a period in which we were having "check-ins" one or two times a day. This was a situation neither of us had ever planned on. We found it was very important to stay in the moment and to stay with tangible things—yes, it feels okay if she sleeps over while Im out of town; no, it doesnt feel right for you to bring the two of us to the same party. We found, during that experience as well as similar ones that came later, that the words "in love with" made us both feel kind of panicky—that agreements that dwelt on measurable factors such as time, behavior, and space worked better for us.

Expect to try out some agreements and find out that they dont work, and expect to need to change them. You will get better at this process with practice, and in time you may know your own and your partners needs so well that negotiating agreements will be easy. But in the beginning, while you are learning, tidiness wont count anywhere near as much as tolerance.

When you first set out, some of these discussions may get quite heated: remember, anger is an emotion that tells you what is important to you. What is constructive about these difficult times is what you learn about your partners and about yourself.

Remember that there are many good ways to structure your sluttery. Structure is not what makes you safe from hard feelings—your ability to take care of yourself is what counts. So whatever structure you choose, hold it fairly loosely. Your agreements are not taking care of you; you are.

Dont get discouraged—all the successful sluts you see who seem so carefree have fought over their agreements. You too can work your way through this tangled web of assumptions and emotions and learn to love with openness and freedom.

"Your agreements are not taking care of you; you are."


Input:
 Prompt: Write a chapter on opening an existing relationship to more sexual partners, emphasizing the challenges and potential benefits of this process. Address the different perspectives of the adventurous lover, the outside lover, and the one who did not choose this path. Discuss the issue of cheating and provide strategies for couples to navigate this situation in an ethical way.

Begin by acknowledging that opening an existing relationship to more sexual partners is a complex process that requires care, thought, practice, and work. Address the different perspectives of the adventurous lover, the outside lover, and the one who did not choose this path.

For the adventurous lover, emphasize that while they may know what they want, it takes hard work to step out of the cultural paradigm of monogamy. Encourage them to be patient and understanding with their partner's feelings and to approach the situation with care and compassion.

For the outside lover, acknowledge the advantages and disadvantages of their position. On the positive side, most of their time with their lover can be spent having fun without the responsibilities of supporting them or giving up their career to stay home with the kids. On the downside, they may have few rights to their beloved's time and may not know who to turn to when they need support.

For the one who did not choose this path, acknowledge the distress and anger they may be feeling. Encourage them to find a way to deal with the situation and to consider the potential benefits of opening the relationship, such as improved communication skills, greater security, and personal growth.

Next, discuss the issue of cheating and provide strategies for couples to navigate this situation in an ethical way. Encourage the nonconsenting partner to explore their feelings of anger and betrayal and to work with their partner to rebuild trust. Suggest that they may want to consider separating or returning to monogamy, but also emphasize the potential benefits of a more open relationship.

Provide exercises and strategies for couples to work through their feelings and negotiate agreements that work for everyone involved. Suggest that they start by comparing their visions of a more open future and figuring out how to get from here to there in small, manageable steps. Encourage them to be patient with themselves and with each other and to celebrate their progress along the way.

Response:
# 18

# OPENING AN EXISTING RELATIONSHIP

Many people come to a time when they want to open their relationship to more sexual partners. But when your relationship was established under conventional monogamous agreements, you cant expect to proclaim "Open Sesame!" and have everything fall magically into place. Like everything else about ethical sluthood, opening an existing relationship requires care, thought, practice, and work.

The relationship that you want to open may or may not be a life partnership; you may or may not be living together. You might have been practicing serial monogamy, with the usual occasional overlap. Or you may be keeping all your lovers compartmentalized, and want to move toward something more like a family or tribe. You may be looking for adventures outside of a triad or a group marriage. The work of opening is still work, no matter the nature of your relationship.

Turning Some into More

If you and your lovers are beginning this work with equal agreement that you all want to create this expansiveness in your lives, then congratulations and welcome to the path. You will probably encounter some unexpected disagreements about the way this new life will look—so you still dont get to skip this chapter.

In our experience, though, its much more common that one person wants to open the door to outside connections and another hasnt ever even considered it and is appalled by the idea. This situation is definitely more difficult, especially when an outside partner—potential or actual, open or secret—is waiting in the wings and probably cares a lot about the outcome of this process. A lot of people dont really think about monogamy until they make a connection with someone who feels important to them and they dont want to give up their beloved or get a divorce or split up the kids. You could be in any of these roles: the one with the lust for adventure, the new love who is not a partner, and the sometimes stunned partner to the would-be adventurer.

In physics, the triangle is considered one of the most structurally sound and well-balanced structures—but in relationships, the very phrase "love triangle" carries a whiff of tabloid drama. This particular situation is not made any easier by the fact that its been happening for as long as there have been relationships. It can help to remember that it is utterly normal to have differences in desire in any relationship—you dont need to both get excited about the same flavor of ice cream. Making room for everyones desires _can_ work for all concerned—we know many people who have done so, reaching accommodations that work for everyone involved. Lets look at the dilemma from three different points of view.

The Adventurous Lover

The advantage of being in this position is that you know, more or less, what you want. Perhaps you bought this book for a partner, hoping for some freedom down the road and wishing fervently for some way to reach agreement without going through a whole lot of agony. However, you and your beloved are, like all of us, products of our culture, and it takes hard work to step out of the paradigm upon which your entire previous existence was based—good work, rewarding work, life-changing work, but still hard work.

Guilt is one of the most uncomfortable emotions we can feel. Most people feel guilty when something they do causes pain to the people they care about. When you place your desire for an open relationship on the table and someone you love has a hard time with it, you will probably feel very guilty.

You cant wave a magic wand and change another persons mind—thats the hard work we must each do for ourselves. It will hurt. There may be tears and rage and bitterness, and you will feel guilty.

Libertines are portrayed in fiction as carefree explorers—and also heartless and free of care for any pain they may leave in their wake. We dont believe that you want your freedom at the cost of becoming a callous jerk. If you have invited people you care about into this exploration, that means you dont want to cheat but to live your life honestly and honorably. We respect you for that. A lot of other people wont.

The Outside Lover

We dont 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 whos sexually involved with one or more members of a committed relationship—is so distant from most peoples conceptual framework that a nonloaded word for you does not exist: "homewrecker," "mistress," "the other woman"? (There isnt even a phrase for "the other man," in spite of the fact that 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 constellation comes with advantages and disadvantages. On the positive side, 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 ride to the emergency room? Who do you call when you are sad or when you need support? Do you have any rights at all to your beloveds 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 didnt get this book as a Valentines Day surprise, but we know that could be the case. It is no fun to be called upon to expand your relationship in ways you never asked for, nor to deal with your beloveds desires for other lovers after theyd promised to forsake all others. You may be feeling like youve 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. Yet here you are, in a maelstrom of scary feelings you never agreed to experience. 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 whats been handed to you and begin considering what may happen next.

It is unfair, of course, that youre 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 there is. 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 improve your communication skills and deepen your relationship. Perhaps learning that your beloved will still come home to you after an adventure will end up making you feel _more_ secure. Perhaps it will free you from traditional views of relationship as ownership, opening new horizons for connecting. Perhaps it will give you much-needed personal time. Perhaps it will improve your sex life. Perhaps you can see a faint gleam of a possible freedom somewhere on the horizon.

We cant promise that any of these will happen for you. But theres 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, or you may try a more open relationship…but whatever you do, it will be because youre looking at all your possibilities and _choosing_ —not reacting blindly, not doing what youve been told, not choosing the easy way just because its easy, but making your own, informed, heartfelt choice.

Later in this chapter, well give you some ideas about ways to keep this difficult negotiation as productive as possible. But first we want to talk about a situation that we know some of our readers are confronting.

Cheating

Sometimes the relationship is already open, kind of, only someone doesnt know it yet. This situation can be very hard to deal with, but it does happen, and often.

Discovering that you have been and are currently being cheated on can be awful. Feelings of shame, betrayal, and lost trust are frequent consequences. Many people in this position are plagued with questions: "Am I not desirable?" "What did I do wrong?" All these feelings are legitimate, and we dont believe you did anything wrong beyond accepting the stories you grew up on about what "happily ever after" is supposed to mean.

It can help to remember that a cheating spouse who wants to open up a primary relationship is taking steps toward _more_ honesty, showing respect for you and your relationship. They wouldnt go to all this trouble if they wanted to get rid of you.

It can be hard to remember your partners goodwill, though, while you are struggling to digest this unwelcome news. Although it may be comforting to focus your pain into righteous outrage—and you are justified in doing so—something more needs to happen if you and your relationship are going to survive and thrive.

What do we see when we look at cheating with an open mind and with compassion toward everyone involved? Our culture would like to have it that cheating happens rarely, that its an anomaly. Kinsey discovered otherwise more than a half century ago: slightly more than half of theoretically monogamous marriages back then actually were not. So cheating is not unusual and is not perpetrated only by heartless sex addicts.

Conventional therapeutic wisdom is that cheating is a symptom of something wrong in the relationship and that working on the relationship will make the cheating go away. Sometimes this is indeed true. But cheating is not necessarily about some failure in your connection, and it is cruel to tell people that something is wrong with a perfectly good relationship just because desire has a way of squirming out of bounds.

You may feel betrayed or grief-stricken or furious. Youve been launched into these feelings without any warning and not by your choice. It can be particularly hard to learn that your partner has been engaging in far-out sexual activities like kink or cross-dressing (if youre struggling with this issue, please look at our book _When Someone You Love IsKinky_).

Working to open a relationship under these conditions is far less than optimal—how is a nonconsenting partner supposed to find a way to feel secure and loved when the rug has been pulled out from under them? But many relationships do eventually find their way through this thorny thicket.

We are talking about a life situation in which many people experience particularly fiery anger. This exercise can be a first step in getting to know that anger and understand it, rather than just avoiding it like the plague and then erupting when you cant stand it anymore.

EXERCISE: WHAT IS ANGER GOOD FOR?

For this exercise, start out thinking like an ecologist. Remember in school how they taught you that everything in nature has its job, its contribution (the maggots eat the dead mouse and turn it into rich soil, and then the rose can bloom)?

So why do we experience anger? What does anger contribute to our emotional ecologies and to our intimate relationships? How does your anger help you? How does it protect you? Write a list. Examples might include helping you discover your limits, energizing you to action, letting you release tension.

You might put this list on the refrigerator and add items over a week or two as you experience them.

Then, the next time you feel angry, you can ask yourself: "How is my anger trying to take care of me?"

Intellectually understanding cheating doesnt make it that much easier to handle when you discover that its _your_ lover who is doing it…but it might help you figure out where you want to go from here. The challenge of rebuilding trust can be hard to contemplate, and you need to figure out how you can meet it halfway. Your beloved cant make you trust, cant really even earn your trust as though it were a salary—you have to decide that its worth your while to grant it.

Furthermore, there is the problem of the outside lover waiting, patiently or not, in the wings, while you are starting from scratch trying to orient yourself to the situation. This person has feelings too, and has good reasons for not wanting to remain a dirty little secret.

You and your partner will probably have to spend some time together working through feelings of anger, betrayal, and guilt. But when you have those feelings under some degree of control, you will next have to look at the future and begin working—preferably together—on some solutions.

It may be that you will wind up separating, or perhaps the two of you will return to monogamy. Your local bookstore offers many excellent books to support you through either of those alternatives. But this book is called _The Ethical Slut_ , so lets assume for now that you are at least considering the possibility of more openness in your relationship.

First Openings

For everyone involved in this situation to get from where you are right now—perhaps angry, perhaps scared, almost certainly confused—to somewhere new, you need to make a commitment to push yourself a little beyond your comfort level. Just a little—but still, you need to push yourself. It doesnt work if someone else has to push for you, and it doesnt work if you are pushing someone else. You each have to push yourselves so you can discover how much stronger you are than you thought you were.

A good way to start would be to sit down together in a peaceful place and compare your visions of a more open future. Perhaps you could each write a little about what your relationship would look like if it were perfect, and perfectly easy. When you compare notes, you may find out that you have very different visions: one person may want to be the Queen of Sluts at sex parties; another may be looking for a lover who wants to go backpacking and make out on a mountainside. One of you may be yearning for anonymous sex with no obligations; another may desire an ongoing relationship with one or two people who stay connected and join the family.

Dont panic. You dont have to want the exact same thing, and you can figure out agreements that make it possible for you both to make your dreams come true.

It can be overwhelming to look at the dream with no idea how it can possibly be brought into reality—take a moment to let go of panic. The next part is to figure out how you are going to get from here to there. You dont have to teleport to your destination in an instant—you will get where you are going one step at a time. You dont learn to swim by jumping into the ocean, and you wont get comfortable with any of this by castigating yourself for not being comfortable already.

EXERCISE: HIERARCHY OF HARD, OR HOW TO GET FROM HERE TO THERE IN HOWEVER MANY ABSOLUTELY EASY STEPS

Heres an exercise about choosing the first step you want to take.

Choose a very concrete goal to focus on, one about which you have some anxiety. Poly issues might include looking at personal ads together, introducing your lovers, making a date, having a sleepover, talking about safer sex. Choose an issue to practice with that is relatively easy for you today.

Think about the steps you would have to take to get from here to there—agreements, negotiations, asking for what you want, scheduling time, finding a babysitter, and so on. Write each of these steps on an index card. If any step looks too enormous, break it down into a few steps. Sort of like teaching three-year-olds to bake cookies, make each step very simple before you go on to the next one.

Then lay out the cards and put them in order from the easiest to the hardest, or from the safest to the scariest, according to how intense it feels when you think about that step. You may get new information about yourself when you do this.

Then pick up the safest, easiest card; figure out how you could take that step and march onward! When youve accomplished that, and learned whatever you learned from doing it, put the card away and go to work on the next step, which is now the easiest step.

Never take anything but the easiest step.

Designing Your Learning Curve

The kinds of agreements that sluts make to deal with emotional comfort zones fall, loosely speaking, into two categories: agreements that avoid scary feelings and agreements that take a risk of feeling something that might be uncomfortable or scary, but not terrifying. Make a list of all the agreements you might consider entering into and divide them into "avoidant" and "risky." Avoidant strategies might include dont ask, dont tell; dont rock the boat; dont let me find out; I will never meet your lover; only on Thursday nights when Im out with my lover, so Ill never be home alone. These might be good agreements for people who are starting out on this path in that they are taking the very smallest risks with the tightest possible containers. This is how we form a learning curve.

If you choose only avoidant strategies, however, you can wind up keeping yourself frozen in your present state; avoidant strategies are how you feel safe, but risky strategies are how you grow.

If you are required to keep your activities secret from each other, then you have, well, a big secret. Secrets will not bring you closer together—they often create more distance. Suppose you have a fight with an outside lover, and your life partner can tell youre upset. How do you deal with these realities and not disclose anything about your outside connections? Or you could wind up not knowing something that everyone else in your community knows, and then you might find out about it from a friend who thinks you already know. Many people find that the stories they make up in their heads in the absence of information are scarier than the reality. How can you reassure yourself without knowing whats happening?

Many people find it easier not to hear about the specifics of their sweeties lovemaking with others, and we dont see a lot of problems with that. Eventually, you might find it a turn-on, but there is no need to start there, or even get there, unless such sharing is important to one of you. Full disclosure is a lovely ideal but often an acutely uncomfortable reality.

Think very hard about any agreements that add up to "Dont have too much fun." Agreements about safer sex, of course, are required. But in the long run, its 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 whether this agreement will be kept and a lot of uproar if you suspect it is not.

You have the right to expect your beloved to be open with prospective partners about your existence. Your partner may be surprised to learn that this will make them more attractive to some people than a single person would be—an outsider can play with them and not have to worry about whether they are going to show up with a U-Haul. When you and your sweeties are 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. But if a prospective outside sweetie is new to polyamory, you will need to negotiate another set of agreements and establish a learning curve for this relationship.

Taking Some Tiny Risks

Entry-level risk-taking strategies might include things like checking out personal ads on the Internet together. What photos in the ads does each of you respond to? How do you feel about that? What does your partner think about the people you find attractive? 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 see there.

You can take the risk of arousing one of your 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 one another when jealous feelings are being felt in the present. Try writing about how it feels. Maybe you could invent a fantasy that feels like that and invent yourself as the competent character who figures out a happy solution.

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 youll 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 23, "Sex and Pleasure" (this page), only this time list all the things associated with starting and maintaining a poly life: coffee dates, answering an ad, exchanging phone numbers at a party, flirting, all the way up to actual dates, sleepovers, and various kinds of erotic activity. 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 the "Hierarchy of Hard" cards we talked about in the exercise earlier in this chapter (this page). You will use these two exercises over and over again, because each time you get good at any part of what you are attempting, the scariness 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 dont agree on for twenty minutes. Find a good time when you can focus and when you wont 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 isnt 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 skill is to open up the controversy and then figure out a way to stop and close it back down until the next time.

Use good communication tools and set the timer. When the twenty minutes are up, take a few deep breaths and let go, let go, let go of wherever you are in the argument. It is a terrifically useful skill to know how to stop. It is much safer to start talking about a controversy when you have agreed not to yell at each other until you are exhausted and go to bed in a huff. You may find that after you stop talking, you will be thinking about what you said and what your partner said, and in a day or two you may very well get some new ideas about how you feel and what might work. By the time you come together next week for Twenty-Minute Fight round two, you may surprise yourselves by how much closer to understanding or accepting each others positions you have come.

We have deliberately suggested some extremely easy adventures to start with—like looking at ads or talking about all the cuties dancing at the club. These are very safe ways to take a tiny risk. Pay attention to what feelings come up and talk about them. Remember that feelings like to flow. Please dont assume that how you feel today is how you will always feel: the whole purpose of this endeavor is to open up your options about your feelings.

You may be surprised by whats difficult or by whats easy. Give yourself a gold star for whats easy—thats a strength you already have. Give yourself another gold star for even thinking about something thats hard—this is the work you are setting out to do.

Well make more suggestions about how to launch your partnership into happy sluthood in chapter 20, "Couples and Groups," and chapter 23, "Sex and Pleasure." We have also listed some good books in Further Reading, and your computers search engine is your nonjudgmental best friend.

All these suggestions will take time and energy. Please dont forget, however, to set aside some time and energy to share pleasurable experiences with the partner you already have: go dancing, go to the beach, watch a favorite movie together, play a game you both enjoy, visit a favorite restaurant for a lovely meal. Shared pleasure is the solid foundation that will make all these wonderful explorations possible—catch up with your email later.


Input:
 Prompt: Write a chapter on the challenges and strategies for finding partners and friends as a member of a sexual minority, specifically as a polyamorous individual. Discuss the importance of having realistic expectations and being open-minded, as well as the potential benefits of taking people as they come.

Begin by acknowledging the special challenges that members of sexual minorities face in finding partners and friends. Polyamory is not readily understood or accepted in many social environments, and if you're also gay, lesbian, bisexual, asexual, transgender, or interested in a specialized area of sexuality such as cross-dressing or BDSM, you are doubly or triply challenged. However, it is possible and eminently achievable to find the connections of your dreams.

Next, discuss the importance of having realistic expectations. While it may be tempting to create a "who" list that includes only people who fit a certain physical or intellectual standard, it is important to remember that people are more than just their appearance or qualifications. Encourage readers to be open-minded and to consider the potential benefits of taking people as they come. Remind them that even people who don't fit their ideal may have unique qualities that make them attractive and lovable.

Provide exercises and strategies for finding potential partners and friends. Suggest that readers begin by imagining what kind of relationship they want, whether it's a casual fling or a lifelong partnership. Encourage them to be clear about their intentions and to communicate openly and honestly with potential partners. Suggest that they look for venues where they are likely to find like-minded individuals, such as polyamory support groups or social events for people with alternative lifestyles.

Finally, acknowledge the potential challenges of finding partners and friends as a member of a sexual minority. Remind readers that they may encounter people who are not open to their lifestyle or who have unrealistic expectations of their own. Encourage them to be patient and persistent, and to remember that finding the right connections takes time and effort.

Response:
# 19

# MAKING CONNECTION

Any member of a sexual minority faces special challenges in finding partners and friends—and, as a slut or slut-wannabe, you are most assuredly a member of a sexual minority. Polyamory is not readily understood or accepted in very many social environments. If youre also gay, lesbian, bisexual, asexual, transgender, or interested in a specialized area of sexuality such as cross-dressing or BDSM, you are doubly or triply challenged. Making the connections of your dreams is not only possible but eminently achievable, as thousands of abundantly connected sluts can happily attest.

However, wed be the last people to tell you that it will always be easy. Weve heard, and lived, too many sad, frustrating stories about near misses: partners who are fine with an open relationship until someone falls in love, at which point they freak out and demand monogamy; or partners who rhapsodize about sexual openness and free love in principle but fall apart when faced with the reality. Some partners may become successfully polyamorous but come to a time when their needs, desires, and limits simply dont fit together well enough.

Yet many people _do_ succeed in finding each other for relationships ranging from casual to lifetime. So, how do you find friends, lovers, and potential partners who not only share your values and beliefs, but are also emotionally, intellectually, and sexually compatible with you?

What?

A good place to start is by imagining what kind of relationship you want. Do you want someone with whom you can buy a house and raise a family, someone you can meet once a year for a hot and heavy weekend of role-playing fun, or Ms., Mr., or Mx. Right Now? Knowing what you want up front can prevent a lot of misunderstandings and hurt feelings later.

If youre worried that nobody could possibly want what you have to offer, dont be so sure. While it may be harder to find someone who wants to be a secondary partner or a role-play buddy or the parent of your children, it is certainly possible—in fact, there are undoubtedly at least a few people out there who are looking for just such a situation.

There are many, many ways to relate that lie between a one-night stand and a marriage. You may not know in advance what kind of relationship will develop with the person who intrigues you tonight, and that person may not fit whatever space in your life you thought you were looking to fill. Taking people as they come, how they are, and today, can lead you to wonderful surprises that more than make up for the occasional disappointment. So watch out for your preconceptions and be ready to approach new people with an open mind and an open heart.

"Taking people as they come can lead you to wonderful surprises that more than make up for the occasional disappointment."

Expect situations to change. Someone you thought was just an occasional playmate may evolve into a much more important figure in your personal landscape. When this happens—and it has happened to both of us—it is important to keep that person, and anyone else involved, thoroughly briefed on the emotional shifts youre experiencing. It may be that your friend is feeling the same way toward you…and this could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship. Or the object of your desire may not be in a place where a deep emotional commitment feels right. In any case, treat this changed relationship as though it were a new one—in a way, it is. It may be that the two of you can go on connecting in your original, casual manner, or you may have to part for a while to rediscover your original equilibrium. Mindfulness, lots of empathy, and plenty of honest communication are strongly recommended. It can help to spend some time remembering what was hot and wonderful, and then prepare to make room for a new relationship—possibly with the same person.

Who?

Next, begin thinking about _who_ youre looking for. The trick in making this decision is to be neither too specific nor too vague. If your "who" list basically includes anybody who is breathing and who is willing to have sex with you, you are perhaps broadening your field a bit too much. Even if you dont have strong preferences about gender, age, appearance, background, or intelligence, you probably do want someone who will not lie to you, steal from you, hurt you, or exploit you: basic sanity, honesty, and respectfulness are on most of our lists. It is also perfectly fine to acknowledge those preferences that are genuinely important to you: if you prefer men to women or people your own age to people much older or younger, nobody is going to report you to the Equal Opportunity Commission.

On the other hand, if your "who" list reads like a set of technical specifications—gender, age, weight, height, coloring, mode of dress, educational background, breast size, penis size, sexual kinks—we suspect that you may be more interested in making love to your own fantasy than you are to a real live person. Many of us are conditioned to react sexually to a rather unrealistic standard of appearance and behavior: porn queens and kings are fun to watch in the movies, but they rarely appear in our living rooms. If you expect your new honey to be gorgeous, intelligent, loving, and highly sexual all the time, you are almost certainly setting yourself up for a lifetime of disappointment—few people can achieve those standards, and nobody can maintain them twenty-four hours a day.

We cant tell you the exact cutoff point at which a healthy preference becomes an unrealistic desire; only you can look inside yourself to do that. We do think that physical appearance, wealth, and social status have very little to do with the person behind them, and if any of those criteria appear high up on your "who" list, you may be a little bit stuck in your fantasy. Try getting to know some people who _dont_ meet those criteria. We have a hunch that if you get to know them and like them, you will discover that they have their own unique beauties just waiting there for someone to notice them.

EXERCISE: THE AIRPORT GAME

Next time you find yourself in a public place like an airport or mall, find a place to sit where you can look at people without drawing attention to yourself. Then, for each person you look at, imagine—what might be this persons lovers favorite thing about them? Do they have a strong stride, a sweet smile, bright eyes, powerful shoulders, hair that looks soft to the touch? Pretty much everybody is, or has been, loved by someone—see whether you can see what makes this particular person lovable and lustworthy, even if theyre not the kind of person youre used to seeing that way.

An important note: even people who _are_ gorgeous or rich or busty or whatever dont usually like to feel that their beauty, their wallet, or their breasts are their most attractive quality. Those who partner successfully with them often consider such qualities a happy bonus that has little or nothing to do with why they chose that person in the first place.

Where?

Where do sluts gather? What are your best-bet venues for finding the bedmate, playmate, or lifemate of your dreams?

In the two decades since we first wrote this book, the answer to that question has changed a great deal. _Polyamory_ is now listed in the _Oxford English Dictionary_. Newspapers, magazines, and websites worldwide have run detailed articles describing this strange new lifestyle. Support groups have sprung up in all major U.S. cities and many smaller ones; several larger annual conferences draw connection-minded sluts from all over the world.

It is impossible to list the wide variety of polyamory-related venues that are available to you, because there are too many and they change too fast, but your search engine is your friend: useful search terms may include _polyamory_ , _open relationships_ , _swinging_ , _ethical slut_ , _nonmonogamy_ , and/or _alternative relationships_ , along with whatever specialized terms (such as location, gender, and sexual orientation) might help you sort out the websites that will be most useful to you. One small caveat: there are almost as many definitions of most of these words as there are people using them. You may find yourself confronting people who insist that whatever youre doing (swinging, **fuck-buddy** circles, casual play, group sex, whatever) isnt really what you think it is: the most conservative definition of polyamory, for example, encompasses only long-term committed multipartner relationships. In this, as in so many other things, a great question to ask is, "What exactly do you mean by that?"

If, for whatever reason, the online communities dont feel like the right place for your quest, there are many options for seeking out other sluts in person. It is difficult to find sluts in dance clubs—the music is often too loud for an exchange of ideas or ambitions. Try searching the Web for "ethical slut" and "polyamory" with "munch" and "meetup," along with the name of your area, and meet some people who like to get together and talk about the lifestyle. We find a lot of ethical sluts exploring alternative realities: try your local Society for Creative Anachronism and other historical reenactment groups, and know that many Renaissance Faires are practically sluts trade conferences. Check out science fiction conventions or live-action role-playing game groups. If your sluttery has a spiritual leaning, many groups of neopagans are far more open than traditional Judeo-Christian religions to alternative lifestyles. (Many others arent, so dont make any untoward assumptions.) Atheist and skeptic groups also include more than their share of people interested in exploring sluttery.

Another good place to look can be in workshops, seminars, and gatherings that have to do with human sexuality or intimacy. While cruising is, understandably, not allowed at some of these activities (people baring their souls are doing difficult work that can be disturbed by having to be on guard against unwanted advances), graduates often go on meeting socially long after the actual session is over. Several regional and national conferences about sexuality and intimacy are attended by many kindred slutty spirits.

When you go to events where you can expect to meet like-minded folk, you will usually need to invest a little time in becoming a member of the group you are visiting. Start out by making friends, and dont be friendly only to people you want to pursue. Make as many friends as you can, and people will start to trust you. One good initial tactic is to go find some people like yourself, not your ideal opposite number, and make friends with them: they probably know people you will like.

Most of these gathering places and events are made possible by a lot of hard-working volunteers, so the absolute best way to get to know people in a group you like is to volunteer to do something useful: greet folks at the door, help with refreshments, join the clean-up crew. You will meet a ton of people, and they will be grateful to you. Both of your authors have become valued members of many communities by helping out and by offering our living rooms as meeting places to support groups and social functions (and then we dont even have to leave home to attend).

Personal Ads

Sluts have been finding each other through personal ads for decades, and personal-ad partner finding has expanded enormously in the last decade or two, fueled by the widespread availability of Internet access.

A search on "polyamory personal ads," perhaps with the name of your city or state, turns up websites that host poly and alternative personal ads for people of all genders and orientations. Another free option is a couple of online social media sites targeted to people who share a particular sexual interest, such as BDSM. Not only do these sites typically offer personal ads (often sorted by location), but they also host special interest groups where you can get to know people who share your particular interests and kinks. Many such groups collaborate on occasional in-person meetups as well.

You can also download apps for your mobile device that enable you to find like-minded people in your area. Some of these are used primarily for immediate hookups, while others are likelier to produce people interested in longer-term connections: we suggest you find out which one any particular app is for, if you hope to avoid uncomfortable misunderstandings.

Some sites specialize in matchmaking. These typically cost money and are primarily targeted to those seeking long-term relationships; some specialize in particular religious orientations, professional statuses, racial categories, ages, or personal lifestyles. At this time, many of these services do not support nonmonogamous lifestyles, and some will even take down ads that mention poly, but we hope that will change as polyfolk become more visible.

PLACING AN AD

Many people find the experience of creating a profile, a page, or a personal ad on social media to be quite difficult, requiring a degree of self-examination and self-marketing that feels acutely uncomfortable. After all, hardly anyone likes to think of themselves as a product to be marketed—yet, when you compose an ad, thats exactly what youre doing. One of your authors, a former advertising copywriter, has a few suggestions that may make it a bit less painful.

Do you want to bring in as many qualified people as possible or just a few? Your answer to this question will dictate some of your ad-writing strategies. If you are young, cisgender, hetero or bi, thin, female, and healthy, an ad that casts a wide net will draw more responses than you can possibly answer, so a better strategy might be to "narrowcast"—to include information about yourself that will enable inappropriate responders to look elsewhere. (Youll still get plenty of inappropriate responses, but youll be able to sort them out because of all the negatives in your ad that theyve conveniently overlooked. Janet ran personal ads for a while that described her as middle-aged, plump, bisexual, butch, partnered, and a BDSM top, and still got dozens of responses from guys who clearly had seen only that she was female and willing.)

On the other hand, if you fall into a category that puts you in less demand—which is, lets face it, most of us—then youll have to decide for yourself how widely to cast your net. If you know yourself to be charming, easy to get along with, open-minded, and smart, then perhaps your reader doesnt need to know right this second that youre carrying a few more pounds than youd prefer or that a health condition sometimes prevents you from having as much fun as youd wish. (It is, however, conventional to mention up front if youre already in a relationship in which your beloveds have some say in how you arrange your romantic life.)

Do you want to include a photo? Ads with photos draw more responses than those without, so your strategy will dictate the answer to that question. Many people prefer to choose a photo that is not immediately recognizable, for privacy reasons; a face turned mostly away from the camera or partly in shadow is a compromise. Please make sure the photo is recent and a good likeness—after all, youre hoping to meet at least one of your readers face to face at some point, and you dont want to start a potential new relationship with someone feeling misled. We do not recommend using photos of your sexual parts unless you are looking only for quickie hookups, and even then, many readers find them offensive.

One advantage over the old days of personal ads in magazines and newspapers is that you can fine-tune your ad online if it isnt working the way youd wish. If youre getting swamped with unqualified responses, put in a few of your quirks and flaws. If youre not getting enough responses, take a few out.

Still stuck? Ask a close friend—or, better yet, an ex with whom youre on good terms—for help. Maybe you can write an ad for them, and they can write one for you. You may not end up using exactly the ad they wrote, but it can be a great aid in figuring out what your closest friends love about you, which is probably what the new lover youll someday meet will love about you, too.

"One advantage over the old days is that you can fine-tune your ad if it isnt working the way youd wish."

Whatever you choose, we advise you to be yourself—so that you can meet someone who is interested in you, exactly how you are. The consequences of overly enthusiastic advertising include waking up in the morning with someone who is crazy about a person who is not you. This wont do you any good at all.

WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?

When you meet people through a personal ad, it is customary to get to know them in stages, starting with email correspondence, then perhaps a phone conversation, and then a no-strings get-together in a public place for coffee or a meal so that you can get to know the other person slowly and with as little pressure as possible. Be aware that you know nothing about this person beyond words on a screen, so take the same precautions you would take in meeting any other stranger.

A special case: What if you fall in love with a person who wants monogamy? This situation is going to be tough. We know that this is a valid disagreement, and also a very basic difference. In our more thoughtless moments, we have blithely assumed that once this delightful person who has won our heart discovers that ethical sluttery is possible, they will instantly want to join in—but that is not always the case. Please remember that nobody is right and nobody is wrong; this is about two different ways of structuring a relationship, and both, or all, choices are valid. You may choose for the present to continue exploring this relationship because it is precious to you and you want to see how things evolve, even if you may be disappointed at some time in the future. Both of you need to agree to tolerate the ambiguity of knowing that you want something different. Entering into a relationship while planning to change your partner is not respectful to your beloved and could make big trouble later on.

Make "for the time being" agreements about how you will live at present, and seek out knowledge and experience that will help you understand each others positions. Read this book together; read a good book on intimacy. Refrain from bad-mouthing each others choices. Attend some workshops together—maybe one on poly and one on hot monogamy. Join some online support groups on relevant topics, and find time to discuss what you learn from all of these sources.

Consider the wide spectrum of relationship options available to you—perhaps the one that best fits your needs may not be what you thought you were looking for. Meanwhile, we feel sure that you entered into this potentially difficult situation because there is a great deal that you treasure in this particular relationship and that the value of your love together outweighs the differences between you. Whether you wind up as friends, lovers, spouses, or something else thats unique to your pairing, we hope youll find a way to keep on cherishing that love.