Input:
 Prompt: Write a chapter about infinite possibilities in sluthood, including asexuality, celibacy, platonic relationships, and relationship anarchy. Discuss the concept of a "celibate slut" or "asexual slut" and the importance of including the freedom to not have sex in any definition of sexual freedom.

In this chapter, also explore the idea that sluthood is not just about sex, but about all kinds of possibilities. Discuss the importance of friendship and the opportunities it offers for intimacy, companionship, and support. Explain why friendship is an excellent reason to have sex, and that sex is an excellent way to maintain a friendship.

Next, discuss the concept of relationship anarchy, a lifestyle decision not to take one partner as a "primary" and others as "secondaries" but instead to maintain each relationship as separate and to make as few rules as possible. Explore the benefits and challenges of this approach, including the importance of freedom above commitment and the need to hone skills at intimacy, connection, and expressing affection.

Finally, discuss the joys and challenges of living single as a slut, including the need to pay attention to how you are getting your sexual, emotional, and social needs met. Encourage readers to be aware of their needs and wants and to go about getting them met with full consciousness. Offer examples of how this can be done in an infinite variety of ways.

End the chapter with a discussion of the concept of "monogamish," an agreement between both halves of a couple that their bond takes precedence over any outside connections, but that the occasional brief fling is acceptable and perhaps even desirable for keeping the home fires burning. Explain why this concept has caught on and how it can be a toe that couples can dip in the water to test the temperature of nonmonogamy.

Response:
# 7

# INFINITE POSSIBILITIES

The first edition of this book was subtitled "A Guide to Infinite Sexual Possibilities." Now that we're older and a little bit wiser, even that sweeping statement seems a bit limiting: sluthood means infinite possibilities of all kinds, not just the sexual. If you think a "celibate slut" is a contradiction in terms, we have a few surprises in store for you: sluthood lives in the brain, not between the legs, and can fit comfortably and joyously into whatever consensual sexual and relationship pattern you choose.

Asexuality and Celibacy

Folks who say no thanks to sex are becoming an increasingly visible minority. _Asexuality_ refers to people who don't experience sexual attraction, and _celibacy_ refers to those who feel attraction but prefer not to act on it. We think that any kind of sexual freedom must include the freedom to _not_ have sex, without being pestered or **pathologized**.

Asexuality is considered a sexual orientation. Some asexuals have sexual feelings that they may prefer to express by having sex with themselves only; others do not experience sexual feelings at all. Some are willing to share sex with a partner to give that partner pleasure; others prefer to avoid it altogether. Some enjoy nongenital forms of eroticism such as BDSM, tantra, or role-playing; others prefer to steer clear of the whole idea.

Celibacy, on the other hand, is a choice, one that may offer a way to focus on emotional, intellectual, or spiritual concerns. People for whom sex or relationships have caused problems may choose a period of celibacy as a pathway toward self-examination: "What kind of person am I when I'm being me just for myself?"

Some people are celibate, but not by choice: people who are incarcerated, ill or disabled, geographically isolated, or socially unskilled may have trouble finding partners. Others are celibate simply because they do not, for whatever reason, feel like being sociable or sexual for a while, or perhaps for good.

We do not see "celibate slut" or "asexual slut" as in any way a contradiction in terms. There are infinite ways of relating to other people—romantically, intimately, domestically, and more—and if you've opened your life and heart to as many of those ways as possible, you're one of us.

Platonic Relationships, aka Friendships

One friend of ours drives us nuts by moaning, "I don't have a relationship…just all these _friends!_ " We have news for him, and for you: friendship _is_ a relationship, an important one that offers tremendous opportunities for the things we need most out of our relationships: intimacy, companionship, support in times of trouble, and more.

We are amused by sluthood-skeptics who are appalled by the idea of loving more than one person…and who nonetheless have a best friend, someone with whom they share their deepest secrets, who may in fact be as important a part of their lives as their spouse or lover. If you have a lover and a best friend who are not the same person, you're already practicing many of the skills of sluthood as you manage each of their needs for intimacy, time, and affection.

Friendly Sex

If one of those good, intimate friends becomes your lover…what then? Will it ruin the friendship? Will it lead to something more, something that threatens another part of your life? These are the concerns of many people encountering the possibilities of friendly sex for the first time.

The cultural ban on having sex with your friends is an inevitable offshoot of a societal belief that the only acceptable reason to have sex is to lead to a monogamous, marriage-like relationship. We believe, on the other hand, that friendship is an excellent reason to have sex, and that sex is an excellent way to maintain a friendship.

How do you learn to share intimacy without falling in love? We would propose that we _do_ love our friends, whether or not we have sex with them: these individuals are our family, often more permanent in our lives than marriages. With practice, we can develop an intimacy based on warmth and mutual respect, much freer than desperation, neediness, or the blind insanity of falling in love—that's why the relationships between "friends with benefits" are so immensely valuable. When we acknowledge the love and respect and appreciation that we share with lovers we would never marry, sexual friendships can become not only possible but preferred. So while you're worrying that your sexual desire could cost you your best friend, the more experienced slut could be wondering why you are the only friend they've never fucked.

"We believe that friendship is an excellent reason to have sex, and that sex is an excellent way to maintain a friendship."

Dossie, when she was first a feminist, vowed to remain unpartnered for five years to find out who she might be when she was not trying to be somebody's "old lady." She had many wonderful relationships during those years, a rainbow of intimacies, including the sharing of childrearing and households and fixing cars and, of course, lots of lovely sex and affection. She decided that if she made sure to be affectionate, to let people know what she loved about them, that most would find a way to be comfortable with her, and it worked. Her quest helped her discover new ways of being in the world as a woman and as a sexual human being—the foundation of who she is and what she teaches today.

Similarly, some people limit their intimacy to one or two people in their lives, and it can feel risky to expand your sense of intimate connection with more people. Nothing increases intimacy better than shared vulnerabilities, and sometimes that can feel scary. But when you take the risk of sharing a scary feeling, you actually deepen your connection and often get responses in kind, like "I feel scared, too!" or "I can understand that; please tell me more." There is no reason why any relationship in our lives can't be blessed with intimacy.

Each relationship seeks its own level, or will if you let it. Like water, you and whatever person has caught your fancy can flow together as long as you let it happen in the way that is fitting to you both.

Relationship Anarchy

One of the newer terms in the poly lexicon, **relationship anarchy** , refers to a lifestyle decision not to take one partner as a "primary" and others as "secondaries" (or any hierarchy of that kind) but instead to maintain each relationship as separate and to make as few rules as possible.

Anarchists seek to avoid hierarchies in all areas of life, an idealistic goal that can be more complicated than it sounds. We benefit from questioning boundaries and structures that our society may take for granted, so anarchists are a rich source of exploring "outside the box" and looking at what life and love might be like when we avoid imposing structure on it.

Relationship anarchy generally values freedom above commitment, so its practitioners prefer to minimize agreements and other promises regarding sexual or romantic behavior. This does not, of course, mean everyone has free rein to be awful—even the wildest anarchist might need some basic understanding regarding safer sex, the absence of physical or emotional abuse, and so on, to feel safe enough to engage with any given partner. And relationship anarchists still need to hone their skills at intimacy, connection, and expressing affection. But if you're the kind of person who chafes under authority and feels rules are made to be broken, you might find a good fit as a relationship anarchist.

Living Single

For some sluts, being single may be a temporary condition between partners, a recommended period of healing from a recent breakup, or a chosen lifestyle for the long term. Being single is a good way to get to know who you are when you are not trying to fit as the other half of somebody else; learning to enjoy living with yourself gives you a lot to share with partners when you choose to connect. Single sluthood has its own joys and challenges, which is why we're going to deal with it at much greater length later in this book.

"Being single is a good way to get to know who you are when you are not trying to fit as the other half of somebody else."

In monogamy-centrist culture, singles too often journey in the Land of One-Night Stands, in which you go home with a pickup and share some hot sex, and then, the next morning, you look at each other and decide whether the relationship has life-partner potential. If not, you leave, with much embarrassment, and the unspoken rule is that you will never be comfortable with that weighed-in-the-balance-and-found-wanting person again. Sex as audition happens because most people have no script for sexual intimacy in the mid-range between complete stranger and total commitment.

Single sluts, though, can play the field in a variety of ways. One distinguishing dimension is how separate you keep your lovers. So one form of sluttery for the single involves multiple partners who have no interaction, indeed, no information, about each other; this avoids complications at the cost of limiting certain kinds of intimacy, such as opportunities for mutual support and the development of community.

Or you may choose to introduce your lovers to each other, perhaps over Sunday brunch. This may sound wild or impossible or like a script for disaster, but don't knock it if you haven't tried it. Your lovers have a lot in common—you, for example—and they may very well like each other.

If you are a single person in any open sexual lifestyle, you must pay attention to how you are getting your sexual, emotional, and social needs met. You can do this in an infinite variety of ways. The important thing is to be _aware_ of your needs and wants so you can go about getting them met with full consciousness. If you pretend that you have no needs for sex, affection, or emotional support, you are lying to yourself, and you will wind up trying to get your needs met by indirect methods that won't work very well. People who do this often get called _manipulative_ or _passive-aggressive_ —terms, in our opinion, for people who have not figured out how to get their needs met in a straightforward manner.

When you figure out what you want and ask for it, you'll be surprised how often the answer is yes. Think how relieved you might feel when someone asks you for support or a hug or otherwise lets you know how to please them. Think of how competent and just plain good you feel when you can truly help another person, whether it's by offering a shoulder to cry on or that just-right stimulation that leads to the perfect orgasm. Give your friends the opportunity to feel good by fulfilling you, too.

"Monogamish"

Coined by the sex columnist Dan Savage in 2011, the term **monogamish** has caught on with a rapidity that makes us think perhaps such a word has been needed for a long time.

Monogamish is an agreement between both halves of a couple that their bond takes precedence over any outside connections, but that the occasional brief fling is acceptable and perhaps even desirable for keeping the home fires burning. Many monogamish couples take mutually agreed upon third parties into their beds from time to time or agree together on an "anything goes" night for one-time fun. We've heard of more than a few monogamous couples who playfully make "one time" exceptions for a celebrity crush: "Okay, if you can get Dan Savage into bed with you, you go right ahead"—which we guess could be fantasy monogamishness.

For the many couples who are titillated by the thought of an occasional outside dalliance but not ready to make the full jump into polyamory, a monogamish agreement is the toe you can dip in the water to test the temperature.

Partnerships

There are multiple forms of open relationship for the partnered, including serial monogamy, in which one's various partners are separated in time, and the ever-popular nonconsensual nonmonogamy, otherwise known as cheating. We can think of these lifestyles as unconscious free love, but your authors feel both freer and safer when we love right out in the open.

It is axiomatic that open relationships work best when a couple or established group takes care of each other and their relationship first, before they include others in their dynamic. So the slut partnership needs to be willing to do the work we will describe later in this book to communicate well and to handle jealousy, insecurity, and territoriality with the highest consciousness. People in such partnerships need to know and communicate their boundaries, to make and keep agreements, and to respect both each other's boundaries and the boundaries they've set for their relationships. Couples and groups also need to make sure to nourish their own connection to keep it happy, healthy, and fulfilling.

Partnerships can have a secondary relationship outside of the primary or a number of lovers that don't get ranked in any hierarchy. Relationships vary in how close or distant they are emotionally and physically and in how much contact is involved. Some may be short term, while others may last for years or even a lifetime; some may involve getting together twice a week, others twice a year.

People new to polyamory tend to spend a lot of energy defining their boundaries. They usually focus more at first on what they _don't_ want their partner to do—the activities that make them feel, for some reason, unsafe or downright terrified—than on their actual desires. Setting these limits is, for many people, a necessary first step into the disorienting world of sluthood. However, as partnerships become more sophisticated at operating the boundaries of their relationship, they tend to focus more on what they _would_ enjoy and then strategize about how they can make it safe. How to create and follow this learning curve will be covered in more detail in chapter 18, "Opening an Existing Relationship."

One woman of our acquaintance has a lifelong lifestyle of having two primary partners, one man and one woman, with her other partners and her primaries' other partners forming a huge network. Her relationships historically have lasted many years, through raising children and grandchildren, and her exes are still active members of her extended family.

In some open relationships, each partner seeks out other partners pretty much separately, often making agreements about who gets to cruise which club when, or taking care to avoid running into each other on the Internet or in personal ads. They may talk about their adventures with each other and occasionally introduce play partners to their live-in lovers.

Others seek out a close match with another couple so they can play, either as a foursome or by switching partners, with people they have met and chosen together. Many polyamorous couples make a fine lifestyle out of seeking relationships with couples who are most like them, who share their values and boundaries. Such pairings of pairs can become lifelong attachments and generate both hot sex and true family interconnectedness.

And others allow their relationships to settle where they do and to change over time. Sometimes we have reconnected with an old lover after quite a few years and found a fit like an old glove.

Hierarchies and Alternatives

Many polyfolk like to use a hierarchical terminology to define their relationships: the people they live with in a marriage-like arrangement are _primaries_ , the people they love but don't live with are _secondaries_ , the people they enjoy spending (often sexual) time with, perhaps not as often or with less commitment, are _tertiaries_. Other language used for couplings are _life partner_ and the rather sweet _nesting partner_.

While this terminology is pervasive, and sometimes useful as a shorthand, we have some concerns about a system that inherently ranks the importance of the people in our lives. Janet says, "E is my life partner and Dossie is my coauthor. If I'm buying a house, E's the most important; if I'm writing a book, Dossie is. Each of them has their own place in my life—why do I have to rank them?"

More Than Two

People can make commitments to each other in numbers greater than two. The level of commitment may vary, as when an existing couple makes a commitment to a third partner or even a fourth. Relationships that add, and inevitably also subtract, members over time tend to form very complex structures, with new configurations of family roles that they generally invent by trial and error. Individuals in groups that come together as a threesome or foursome may find their roles within the family developing, growing, and changing over time: the person who feels like the "mother" of the group this year might well transition to "kid" or "dad" over time or with each different partner.

Triads allow three partners, in any combination of genders, to form a family unit. Some people grow into triadic or quadratic families as they attain deepening involvement with one or more members who started as outside lovers. Others actively seek members for group marriages to fulfill their ideal of the kind of family they want to live in. We have heard of people who identify as "trisexual" because they are so strongly attuned to the idea of living and loving as part of a threesome.

"Transcend competitiveness: there's enough of everything for everybody."

Balancing triads can be challenging: in any ménage à trois there are actually three couples, A & B, B & C, and C & A, and each of these relationships will be different. In a triad, as with the siblings of a family, all the relationships will not be at the same level at the same time; we've heard of lengthy arguments over which member of a triad should ride in the back seat of the car. In all forms of ethical sluthood, but perhaps especially in triads, it is vital to find ways to transcend competitiveness: there's enough of everything for everybody.

Public Sex

Sluts in any kind of relationship may enjoy group sex. Environments for orgies, party houses, sex clubs, swing houses, bathhouses, and glory holes are available in many major cities in a variety of forms and for nearly all sexual preferences. We will tell you all about them in chapter 24. A group sex environment may constitute a safe field of exploration for a monogamish couple. They can attend parties together or separately, cruise singly or as a twosome, meet each other's friends, and play with a variety of people, all the while maintaining whatever connection with each other they feel good about. In this way, sex outside the primary relationship is defined by the specific environment in which it happens.

Group sex environments often develop their own families, people who participate regularly and get to know each other and may share other activities, like giant Thanksgiving dinners. The film _Shortbus_ portrays the varied and fascinating individuals who form a chosen family through their friendly neighborhood sex club.

Chosen Family

_Circle_ is a word we use for a set of connections among a group of people that actually might look more like a constellation, with some people near the hub and connected to several others and others near the outside and connected to only one or two and, perhaps, part of another constellation as well. These constellations may be casual or may become extended families, with provisions for raising children, making a living, taking care of the sick or aging, and purchasing property.

Dr. James Ramey, in his wonderful book _Intimate Friendships_ , documented his observations that nonmonogamy could facilitate the formation of what he described as kinship networks, communities bound together by the intimacies of their sexual connections, perhaps serving the same functions as villages did in a smaller world. Some of us have taken to referring to our groupings as _tribes_.

Circles of sexual friends are common—some people call these friends "fuck buddies." Such circles may be open and welcome new members, typically brought in by other members. When you are part of such a circle, new lovers of any member are potential friends and family members of your own, so the focus changes from competition and exclusivity to a sense of inclusion and welcome, often very warm indeed.

Other circles are closed, with new members welcome only by agreement with existing members. Closed circles are sometimes set up as a strategy for safety from HIV infection and other sexually transmitted conditions and also to deal with alienation in an overpopulated world. In a closed circle, the notion is that you can play with anyone in the circle (all of whom have made agreements about safer sex and are all perhaps of known STI status), but you don't have sex with anyone outside the group. Thus you get to play around with a variety of relationships and still stay in a limited field. Such lifestyles are sometimes known as **polyfidelity**.

These are just a few of the ways in which sluts have chosen to organize their lives and loves. You get to choose one or several or invent one of your own. We think that relationship structures should be designed to fit the people in them rather than people chosen to fit some abstract ideal of the perfect relationship. There's no right or wrong way to do this as long as everyone's having fun and getting their needs met.

In Praise of Monogamy

Although monogamy isn't the choice of either of your authors, we nevertheless applaud it as one of the infinite possibilities available to the thoughtful slut—one that offers a different set of risks and rewards than other relationships but an excellent choice for many, either temporarily or permanently.

A friend of ours (born only a few years before the initial publication of this book, who first read it when she was scandalously young) recently said, "I was talking to a friend of mine who's monogamous, and it seemed like some odd sort of BDSM contract: an agreement to share their sexuality only with one person. Not _wrong_ , of course, not if both people agree to it. Just…weird."

And we think that if you can't understand why anyone would choose monogamy, you could think of it as a contract, just like the one a dominant/ submissive couple might sign to solidify their agreements with one another, as valid as any other consensual and well-informed relationship choice.

What are the advantages of monogamy? We think they might include:

• A way to focus your energy on just one partner instead of spreading it over several

• A way to keep the decks cleared for other major responsibilities (a new baby, graduate school, a demanding career…)

• A commitment to stretch your sexual interests to meet your partner's desires rather than sending those desires outside the relationship—or the reverse, to make a willing sacrifice of some personal desires toward the well-being of the relationship

• The simplicity of maintaining a straightforward calendar and not having to accommodate anyone's needs beyond yours, your partner's, and those of any dependents you might care for

And of course, there's no law saying that once you choose monogamy (or, for that matter, any other relationship style), you must stick to it forever and ever. Janet thinks that in a world where all relationship choices were available without judgment or social sanction, many people might choose a pattern of relationship styles that corresponded to their life changes: sluttery during early adulthood, monogamy during the frantic years of career building and childrearing, then some sort of polyamory (either within the original couple or as a single person, post-breakup) during middle age, and at last a gentle and loving wind down into affectionate celibacy. Although we have heard of some remarkably slutty retirement communities.

The only objection we have to monogamy is not to the practice itself but to the widespread belief that it's your only moral choice. By this point in the book, we hope you've figured out that it is only one of myriad choices and that you get to decide for yourself (with input from your partners) what relationship style will work best for you.

If you think it over carefully and decide you want monogamy, you'll still need most if not all of the skills you're learning about in this book: jealousy, time management issues, the natural ebb and flow of desire, and all the rest of it happen to monogamists, too. So please read on.


Input:
 Prompt: Write a chapter about abundance in sluthood, discussing the concept of starvation economies and how they can be a trap. Explain how these beliefs are often deeply buried and hard to see, both in individuals and in our culture.

In this chapter, also explore the idea of letting go of past fears of starvation and trusting that the world will be generous. Discuss the importance of self-reliance, self-nurturing, and spending time in your own company as a safety net.

Next, discuss the real-world limits that exist in contrast to starvation economies, such as time and space. Offer practical advice for dealing with these limits, such as careful planning, respecting one another's realities, and staying flexible.

Also, discuss the concept of sexual economies and the biological realities that govern many aspects of sexuality. Offer solutions for dealing with these realities, such as readjusting your expectations of what constitutes sex and investigating possibilities for orgasm without ejaculation.

Finally, discuss the importance of deciding what limits you want to the openness of your relationship based on reality and not fear or illusion. Offer advice for dealing with feelings of insecurity and deprivation, such as frequent check-ins, good communication, and internal reality checks.

End the chapter with a discussion of the Oneida Community, a free love community that lasted for more than thirty years and embraced the expanded sexual practice of orgasm without ejaculation as a sacrament. Discuss the ethos of women's rights that was very advanced for its era, but also the unfortunate eugenics practices that were adopted.

Response:
# 8

# ABUNDANCE

Many traditional attitudes about sexuality are based on the unspoken belief that there isn't enough of _something_ —love, sex, friendship, commitment—to go around. If you believe this, if you think that there's a limited amount of what you want, it can seem very important to stake your claim to your share of it. You may believe that you have to take your share away from somebody else, because if it's such a very good thing, someone else is probably competing with you for it. Or you may believe that if someone else gets something, that means there must be less of it for you.

We want all of our readers to get everything they want. Here are some ideas that might help you over some of the obstacles on the path.

Starvation Economies

People often learn about starvation economies in childhood, when experiences with parents who are emotionally depleted or otherwise unavailable teach us that we must work hard to get our emotional needs met. We learn that if we relax our vigilance for even a moment, a mysterious someone or something may take the love we need away from us. Some of us may even have experienced real-world hunger—having to compete for the food that keeps us alive—or outright neglect, deprivation, or abuse. Or we may learn starvation economies later in life, from manipulative, withholding, or punitive lovers, spouses, or friends.

The beliefs acquired in childhood are usually deeply buried and hard to see, both in individuals and in our culture. So you may have to look carefully to see the pattern. When is it okay to want anything? People may think that if you love Bill that means you must love Mary less, or if you're committed to your relationship with your friend, you must be less committed to your relationship with your spouse. And then how do you know if you're number one in a partner's heart?

This kind of thinking is a trap. We know, for example, that having a second child doesn't usually mean that a parent loves the first child less, and that the person who owns three pets doesn't necessarily give any less care to any one of them than the person who owns one. But when it comes to sex, love, and romance, it's hard for most people to believe that more for you doesn't mean less for me, and we often behave as if desperate starvation is just around the corner if we don't stockpile some love right now.

Letting Go

Getting over past fears of starvation can be one of the biggest challenges of ethical sluthood. It requires an enormous leap of faith: you have to let go of some of what feels like yours, trusting that it will be replaced in abundance by a generous world. You need to get clear that you deserve love and nurturance and warmth and sex. If the world hasn't been all that generous to you in the past, this may be very difficult.

Unfortunately, we can't promise you that the world _will_ be generous to you. We think it will, that if you loosen your possessive grip on the love that's already yours, you'll get more from the person who loves you and maybe from some other people, too. It certainly has worked for us. But, especially in the beginning, letting go of starvation economies can feel a lot like flying on a trapeze: you have to let go of the security you already have, trusting that at the end of the leap, there will always be something else to catch you.

Is there a safety net for this kind of daredevilry? Well, yes, but it's going to require another leap of faith…because the safety net is _you:_ your self-reliance, your self-nurturing, your ability to spend time in your own company. If being alone seems unbearable to you, the courage required to relinquish what's "yours" may be impossible to summon.

On the other hand, what an incredibly free feeling it is to realize that there _is_ enough love, sex, commitment, support, and nurturing to go around! Janet used to spend the nights when her partner was out with someone else by securing a date with one of her other lovers so she wouldn't have to be alone. Now, she says, "I know that option is there for me if I want it, but much more often, I choose to spend that time in my own company, enjoying the opportunity for solitary self-indulgence." Knowing that the world offers plenty of companionship, she feels safe enough to not need that reassurance.

Real-World Limits

In contrast to starvation economies, some of the things we want really _are_ limited. There are only twenty-four hours in the day, for example— so trying to find enough time to do all the wonderfully slutty things we enjoy, with all the people we care about, can be a real challenge and sometimes impossible.

Time is the biggest real-world limit we encounter in trying to live and love as we like. This problem is hardly exclusive to sluts; monogamous folks also run into problems finding the time for sex, companionship, and communication.

Careful planning can help—if you don't already keep a shared datebook or online calendar, now is a good time to start. Respecting one another's realities, and staying flexible, is important. Crises happen: a sick child, a work emergency, or even another partner who needs companionship and reassurance during a particularly bad time. You might also want to do some thinking about how much time you need to get your needs met: do you really have to stay over and have breakfast together the next day, or would an hour or two of cuddling and talk be just as nice?

However you work out your schedule, remember that everybody concerned needs to know about it, and that may include more people than you are used to thinking about. A friend of ours, having failed to inform his wife's lover about an engagement that affected their schedule, moaned: "I know I told _someone_."

Don't forget to schedule time to relate to your partner and play with your kids. And don't leave yourself out: many busy sluts find it important to schedule alone time for rest and replenishment. Janet, when she lived in a Grand Central Station–like group household, had an arrangement with her girlfriend that she could occasionally use the girlfriend's house for solitary retreats—a rare and precious gift—when the girlfriend was out of town.

Space is another real-world limit for many people. Few of us are fortunate enough to live in multiroom mansions with rooms dedicated exclusively to sex. If you're in your bedroom with your friend and your live-in partner is sleepy and wants to go to bed, you've got a problem. Crashing on a narrow couch in one's own apartment while one's partner disports with someone else in one's bed may be beyond the limits of even the most advanced slut. When you share your bedroom or other play space with a partner or lover(s), we suggest making clear agreements well in advance of any date and sticking strictly to them. This problem may be solved by separate bedrooms or personal spaces if you can afford them. One couple we interviewed said, "Having separate bedrooms is a nonnegotiable need for us; we wouldn't be able to maintain this lifestyle without them."

Possessions can also be an issue. It's only natural to want to share our stuff with the people we care about. But this urge can cause problems when possessions—money, food, art, sex toys—belong, legally or emotionally, to more than one person. If there's any chance that someone feels a sense of possession about an item, we strongly recommend that you talk carefully with that person before you share the item with someone else. This rule is sometimes simple: you don't let your lover polish off the carton of milk that your spouse was planning to drink for breakfast. It sometimes gets tricky, though. While you may have the technical right to give away a gift that was given to you by someone else, the wife who sees her husband's Father's Day tie around his lover's neck may feel understandably miffed. Similarly, it's a good idea to get consent about sharing an item that was made for you by a lover or is something that the two of you bought together during an intimate shopping trip on your anniversary. Many sluts, for the purposes of hygiene and/or emotional attachment, set aside certain sex toys for use with only one person: _my_ vibrator, _Harry's_ dildo. Lending or giving jointly owned money without discussing it with the co-owner is, we hope it's not necessary to say, unacceptable.

Sexual Economies

The "tyranny of hydraulics" is Dossie's phrase for the biological realities that govern many aspects of sexuality. While it might be nice to think that you're a sexual superhero who can generate erections on demand _ad infinitum_ , neither of us has yet met such a person. A partner who is looking forward to conventional sexual activities with a lover may be quite understandably disappointed to find them unavailable by virtue of having ejaculated with another partner earlier that day. And even the most multiply orgasmic of us can't stay turned on forever.

Such problems can often be solved by readjusting your expectations of what constitutes sex—does it really always require an erection, an orgasm, an ejaculation? If partner A reaches orgasm before partner B, is there any reason why lovely stimulations can't continue until partner B comes to their happy ending?

Practitioners of tantric yoga have developed ways by which many penis owners can experience orgasm without ejaculation. These strategies are only somewhat useful for birth control and safer sex and are certainly no substitute for condoms. But they come with a wonderful side effect: those who learn to orgasm without ejaculating may conquer their refractory period, becoming able to come many times. Practitioners of many other kinds of sex have developed ways in which enthusiastic sluts can give their partners one or many orgasms and enjoy a surfeit of sensual pleasures themselves, regardless of their physiological state of arousal. Erections may come and go, but the rest of the nervous system works pretty much all the time. Before you give up on polyamory because of the tyranny of hydraulics, we suggest you investigate at least some of these possibilities (take a look at chapter 23, "Sex and Pleasure," and some of the books in Further Reading).

Remember outercourse. Remember the huge range of sexual delights that don't have any relationship whatsoever to erections. Remember sensuality. Rediscover massage for its own sake. Share a fabulously smutty conversation about what you'd like to do to each other.

"Erections may come and go, but the rest of the nervous system works pretty much all the time."

Are You Really Going to Starve?

When you try to decide what limits you want to the openness of your relationship, it's not always easy to tell which are based on reality and which on fear or illusion. First, you have to pinpoint the areas in your life where you feel insecure, where you perceive the possibility of deprivation—a task that requires a lot of self-searching and honesty. It helps to ask, "What am I afraid might happen?"

Is your partner's fondness for their friend really going to make them fall out of love with you? What if your partner doesn't think you're special anymore? What if your partner is so ecstatically happy that they don't need you? Why would your partner ever want you, anyway? These are some of the horrible little thoughts that pop up in our minds when we're scared of starving.

You need to decide whether the thing you fear is actually possible. Then you need to choose what you want to do about it. Frequent check-ins, good communication to keep you aware of whether anyone's feeling deprived or overextended, and lots of internal reality checks (is your disappointment that they can't get it up really just that, or is it anger or jealousy over their date last night?) can help. We'll talk later about how to get reassurance and support when you're afraid.

Limits Can Stretch

Sometimes, you just have to try it and see. The old chestnut, "If you love something, let it go" is sentimental, but more than a kernel of truth lies at its core. In the same way that dieters are sometimes counseled to let themselves get hungry to see what that feels like and learn that they can survive the feeling, you may need to let yourself feel deprived, simply to prove to yourself that feeling deprived isn't the end of the world. Sometimes letting go of one pleasure opens your eyes to another that was there from the start; sometimes a new one comes along; sometimes you find out you don't need it all that much right now anyway. We can't tell you what letting go will feel like; all we can do is assure you that you will learn something from it.

Learning new things takes time, so give yourself plenty. It can be useful to get clear with what you are working on learning right now—like how to feel safe and sexy and special when your partner is out on a date—and promise yourself you will learn the next thing, well, next. Every change, small or large, is accomplished one step at a time, so work on this step today, and you'll be ready for the next one tomorrow or maybe next week—working on today's step is how you get ready for tomorrow.

Poly Pioneers: The Oneida Community

John Humphrey Noyes was a Protestant preacher in rural Vermont in the 1840s when he discovered a connection between sex and spirituality. Noyes felt terrible about wanting sex after his wife had suffered through four dangerous pregnancies culminating in stillbirths, so he experimented with sex that could not result in pregnancy. He discovered that men, by slowing down the sexual act and possibly applying pressure to the perineum, could learn to have orgasms without ejaculating. This practice made possible multiple orgasms for men, and, to his surprise, intensified the orgasmic experience to the level of religious ecstasy.

Noyes embraced this expanded sexual practice as sacrament, preaching that the sexual organs were "the medium of the noblest worship of God." (Many religious groups around the world have explored similar philosophies, creating a substantial body of books, websites, and workshops available to the erotic explorer. If you're curious, point your favorite search engine to terms like _tantra_ , _healing tao_ , and _qodoushka_.)

Noyes and his congregation soon developed a free love community that lasted in its purest form for more than thirty years. To escape judgmental neighbors, the congregation acquired land in rural New York, in the town of Oneida, where they eventually built a nintey-three-bedroom mansion and established businesses to support their community, including the still-functioning Oneida Community Silverware.

Oneida sought to live free of acquisitiveness and possessiveness. Exclusive relationships were discouraged, and Oneidans worked to avoid what they called "sticky love"—by which they meant romance or falling in love—in favor of communal love.

The community evolved an ethos of women's rights that was very advanced for its era. Efforts were made to ensure equality in work between men and women; women cut their hair short and wore knee-length dresses with bloomers, giving them freedom of movement; women were active participants in choosing sexual partners and were sent off to colleges and law schools and medical schools. Children were raised communally from about eighteen months of age to accustom them to a communal life, discourage excessive attachment between children and parents, and free the women to explore whatever work or learning inspired them.

Unfortunately, Oneida was not immune to the nineteenth-century fad of eugenics. Noyes jumped on the bandwagon, determining that his community was the best possible place to breed supermen and superwomen and began to control in great detail who should propagate with whom. Guess who Noyes thought had the best genes? He had many descendants with many different mothers.

Eventually, Noyes was forced to flee to Canada, fearing prosecution under the Comstock Laws that criminalized even writing about birth control as obscenity. In the absence of Noyes's missionary zeal, the community continued for a while, mutually supportive but much less communal—getting married more often, building private houses for couples and families on the communal land, and so on. Eventually it looked a lot more like a nice small town than a commune.

The mansion still stands as a museum.


Input:
 Prompt: Write a chapter about the skills needed to be a successful slut. Discuss the importance of self-examination and ask readers to consider what they expect from this way of living and what rewards they can foresee. Provide examples of benefits cited by people who have already made the journey.

Next, discuss the importance of doing this for the right reasons, such as personal excitement, learning and growth, and personal freedom, rather than being pressured by a partner or peer group.

Then, explain that sexual change can be a path of reprogramming oneself, with abundant sex and love as the carrot and fear of deprivation, boredom, or self-loathing as the stick. Explain that what has been learned can be unlearned and that new skills can be learned.

Finally, provide a list of tools for successful sluttery, including communication, emotional honesty, affection, faithfulness, limit setting, planning, knowing yourself, owning your feelings, going easy on yourself, telling the truth, and practicing affirmations. Provide detailed explanations and examples for each tool.

End the chapter with a brief history of shame, discussing how most people grew up in an atmosphere of shame about bodies and sex and how this can be overcome through curiosity and self-exploration.

Response:
# 9

# SLUT SKILLS

Great sluts are made, not born. The skills you need to keep you and your partners happy and growing get developed through a combination of conscious effort and frequent practice. There are skills you can learn that will help start your adventure on the right foot and keep it on track.

Self-examination, in our opinion, is always a good idea—when you are journeying without a map, having a clear picture of your _internal_ landscape becomes essential. Ask yourself: What do you expect from this way of living your life? What rewards can you foresee that will compensate you for doing the hard work of learning to be secure in a world of shifting relationships? Some people who have already made the journey cite benefits like sexual variety, less dependence on a single relationship, or a sense of belonging to a network of friends, lovers, and partners. The people we interviewed said things like this:

• "I get relief from pressure—I don't have to fulfill every single thing my partner needs or wants, which means I don't have to try to be somebody I'm not."

• "People have different ways of knowing and understanding things, so intimacy with various people expands my appreciation of the universe."

• "I can have hot erotic experiences without genital sex and without compromising my emotional monogamy."

• "My lifestyle gives me personal freedom, independence, and responsibility in a way that being in an exclusive couple does not."

• "I don't believe that humans are designed to be monogamous. Monogamy goes against my instincts."

• "I never feel that the grass might be greener on the other side of the fence—I've been there."

• "Outside partners are an infusion of sexual juice into my primary relationship."

As you read this book and hear some stories about successful sluts, you may discover special benefits for you. What are your reasons for choosing this path?

Alas, many people begin to explore open relationships because their partner is pushing them into it or because all their friends are doing it and they don't want to seem prudish. We ask that you get clear within yourself that you're doing this for _you—_ because it excites you, because it offers opportunities for learning and growth and fun, because you want to. Make no mistake, this can be a rocky road. If you're navigating it for the wrong reasons, resentment can easily poison the very relationships you set out to improve.

Sexual change can be a path of reprogramming yourself, with abundant sex and love as the carrot and the fear of deprivation, boredom, or self-loathing as the stick. Because we don't believe the urge toward monogamy is innate, we think you must have learned your feelings and beliefs _somewhere—_ from your parents, from your past lovers, from your culture. What you have learned, you can obviously unlearn, and you can learn something new. Exploring your feelings and changing your reactions to them can be difficult—but what a feeling of power and triumph each time you succeed!

"Sexual change can be a path of reprogramming yourself, with abundant sex and love as the carrot and the fear of deprivation, boredom, or self-loathing as the stick."

Tools for Successful Sluttery

The people we know who succeed at ethical sluthood usually have a set of skills that helps them forge their pathway cleanly, honestly, and with a minimum of unnecessary pain. Here are some of the skills we think are important.

COMMUNICATION

Learning to talk clearly, and listen effectively, is critical. A technique for good listening is to listen to what your partner has to say without interrupting and let them know you heard them by telling them what you think they just said. Use this clarification technique _before_ you respond with your own thoughts and feelings. In this way, you make sure you have clear understanding before you go on with your discussion. Similarly, if you're the one talking, it's not fair to expect your partner to read your mind—take the time and effort to be as clear and thorough in your explanation as you can, and be sure to include information about the emotions you're feeling as well as the facts involved.

If your communications often seem to go awry, it might be a good idea to spend some time and effort learning better communication skills: many adult education facilities offer excellent communication classes for couples, and you can do an Internet search on "communications skills couples" with the name of your area to find something near you.

EMOTIONAL HONESTY

Being able to ask for and receive reassurance and support is crucial. One of Janet's partners used to request, when Janet was off to a joyously anticipated date with one of her other lovers, "Just tell me I don't have anything to worry about." Janet reports that it felt very good to know that he was willing to ask for reassurance when he needed it and that he trusted her to tell the truth about her feelings. If you imagine his feelings if he felt insecure and _didn't_ ask for reassurance, you can see why it's so important to get your needs met up front.

We have all been afraid to ask, we have all failed to ask, we have all been irked with our lovers when they didn't read our minds and offer us the reassurance we crave, and we have all thought, "I shouldn't _have_ to ask." Let's remember to honor the courage it takes to ask for support, to share vulnerable feelings. Let's pat ourselves on the back when we do the things that scare us, and then let's do them some more.

"Let's remember to honor the courage it takes to ask for support, to share vulnerable feelings."

AFFECTION

Similarly, it's vital to be able to _give_ reassurance and support, both in response to a request and on your own. If you can't tell your partners that you love them or give them a heartfelt compliment or tell them what you think is so wonderful about them, it may be optimistic to assume that they'll be able to remain secure enough to accommodate your other relationships.

Put some thought into how you can let your partners know how important they are to you. We recommend lots of hugging, touching, verbal affection, sincere flattery, little "love ya" gifts, and whatever else helps everyone feel secure and connected.

FAITHFULNESS

If you have one or more primary relationships, take a look at what you can do to reinforce their primacy. Many people in long-term relationships have certain activities that they keep only for their life partners—particular sexual behaviors, sleepovers, terms of affection, or whatever. Look at your public behavior—are you comfortable introducing your partner to the cute number you are flirting with at a wild party? We figure any cutie who would be put off by meeting our spouses will likely make trouble in the future, so it's better if we find out now. Make agreements with your partners before the party, and then you need never wonder whether you are welcome to join a group or a conversation that your beloved is enjoying.

Pay attention, also, to how you acknowledge your nonprimary relationships. How will a partner you may never live with feel loved and secure? What rights does this partner have to your time and attention? How can you offer affection and reassurance to everyone who is important to you? Make it a point to let everyone you love know it. Make agreements with your life partner or partners about what you will do when an outside partner needs support or has a crisis like an accident or illness. Who makes the chicken soup? Maybe it's you.

LIMIT SETTING

To be a happy slut, you need to know how—and when—to say no. Having a clear sense of your own limits, and respecting those limits, can keep you feeling good about yourself and help prevent those morning-after blues. Some limits may be about sexual behaviors: Would you have sex with a gender other than the one you usually do? Would you try a kind of sex you think is kinky? Limits about safer sex and birth control are obviously required: some things you definitely do not want to bring home with you. Limits might be about relationship styles, such as frequency of contact or intensity of connection. We also encourage you to think about ethical dilemmas and how you'd react to them. Would you, for example, be a lover to a coupled individual whose partner didn't know about your involvement? Would you lie to a lover, fake an orgasm?

And then there's the very, very important limit of, "I don't want to," even if it's your anniversary, even if you're supposed to want to, even if you haven't for a long time. No excuses are needed.

When you respect your own limits, others will learn to respect them, too. People tend to live up to your standards when you are not afraid to set them. Only when everyone's limits are out in the open do you become free to ask for your dearest fantasies, secure in the knowledge that if your friend doesn't want to, they won't. From this position we can ask for the earth and often end up getting a goodly chunk of it.

PLANNING

Successful sluts know that relationships don't just happen—they take work, planning, and commitment. Few of us have so much time on our hands that we can simply have conversations, sex, recreation, family time, or even fights whenever we feel like it—mundane reality has a tendency to get in the way of such important stuff. And yes, we do think fighting is important and necessary—we'll talk more about the hows and whys in chapter 16, "Embracing Conflict." If scheduling a fight seems a little bit absurd, just imagine the results of letting the tension build for several days because you _haven't_ made time to argue.

Get yourself a group calendar and use it: some of the online calendars, where everyone can enter appointments and see what other appointments others have made, work well for this. Once you've made a commitment to spend time together for any reason, keep it—we know you're busy, but postponing important relationship work to attend to other business does not speak well of the significance you give your relationships, does it?

KNOWING YOURSELF

As we have said before, we are all carrying around a lot of garbage in our minds about sex and gender; some of these beliefs are buried so deep they can drive our behavior unconsciously, creating confusion and causing a great deal of pain to ourselves and the people we love.

These deeply held beliefs are the roots of sexism and sex-negativity, and to be a radical slut, you are going to have to uproot them. To truly know yourself is to live on a constant journey of self-exploration, to learn about yourself from reading, therapy, and, best of all, talking incessantly with others who are traveling on similar paths. This hard work is well worth it because it is the way you become free to choose how you want to live and love, own your life, and become truly the author of your experience.

"To truly know yourself is to live on a constant journey of self-exploration."

OWNING YOUR FEELINGS

A basic precept of intimate communication is that each person owns their own feelings. No one "makes" you feel jealous or insecure— the person who makes you feel that way is you. No matter what the other person is doing, what you feel in response is determined inside you. Even when somebody deliberately tries to hurt you, you make a choice about how you feel. You might feel angry or hurt or frightened or guilty. The choice, not usually conscious, happens inside you.

Reaching this understanding is not as easy as it sounds. When you feel rotten, it can be hard to accept the responsibility for how you feel: wouldn't this be easier if it were someone else's fault? The problem is that when you blame someone else for how you feel, you disempower yourself. If this is someone else's fault, only that person can fix it, right? So poor you can't do anything but sit there and moan.

On the other hand, when you own your feelings, you have lots of choices. You can talk about how you feel, you can choose whether or not you want to act on those feelings, you can learn how to understand yourself better, you can comfort yourself or ask for comfort. Owning your feelings is basic to understanding the boundaries of where you end and the next person begins and the perfect first step toward self-acceptance and self-love.

"When you own your feelings, you have lots of choices."

GOING EASY ON YOURSELF

As prepared, as centered, as stable as you are, you _are_ going to trip over problems you never anticipated—we guarantee it.

Perhaps the most important step in dealing with problems is to recognize that they will happen and that it's okay that they do. You'll make mistakes. You'll encounter beliefs, myths, and "buttons" you never knew you had. There will be times when you'll feel pretty awful.

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. 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 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

Maybe these affirmations will work for you or maybe you need to create your own. Whatever you come up with, write them down, post them on your refrigerator, carry them around in your pocket, and when you feel you need to, stand in front of a mirror and tell them to yourself.

· 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 can 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.

A Brief History of Shame

Most of us grew up in an atmosphere of shame about bodies and sex. We were taught shame at a very early age, before we could understand more than the acutely uncomfortable feeling.

Those of us who have seen very young children explore their bodies know that toddlers explore those interesting-feeling parts in the crotch with the same innocent curiosity that leads them to play with their toes: they are learning their bodies.

And that gets us to a very important truth: every single one of us was taught not to masturbate in the living room. Here the parents' response predicts the future: Many parents will respond to any childhood masturbation with shock and horror, teaching us that our genitals are dirty and shameful. Some lucky few of us had parents who gently taught us that big people masturbate in their bedrooms with the door shut—and that population is, we are glad to note, steadily increasing.

If we take a look within ourselves when shame arises, we might find the places where we block ourselves, where somehow we believe that something is very wrong with us, and no one will ever love us or choose to connect with us once they see our brokenness. So how do we create a path to recovery from any shame we learned when we were too small to understand why?

Here are words to live by: _the enemy of shame is curiosity_ —the same curiosity we might have been punished for when we were two. Curiosity that wants to be playful, to explore what feels good; curiosity that lets us wonder why our tongues get tied and our cheeks burn when the moment comes to tell a person who loves and accepts us what, precisely, we dream of doing with them.

So how can we get from where we are to where we want to be, free of all that worrying and shame? Use your curiosity to ask, "How did I learn this?" "What did I come to believe about myself when I was taught that touching myself 'down there' was shameful?" "What do I believe about myself today?" "What do I think would be a healthier belief?"

Perhaps if we give ourselves some comfort and support, perhaps if we remember to offer comfort and support when someone we care about is stuck in the same sort of way, perhaps we can come to believe that we deserve comfort and support.

Another of the great virtues of curiosity is that, in sexual exploration, we can become those children we once were, delightedly exploring how this feels, how that feels, giggling and writhing, asking how does my body work, how does your body work? We can unbridle our curiosity. Get silly with it. Play.

Dossie the therapist maintains that in sex we may find comfort and resolution of our deepest fears by giving them a healing injection of the life force in the form of an orgasm. Think of sexual joy as a proud, strong message that I am, and we are, on some very profound level, _all right._


Input:
 Prompt: Write a chapter about boundaries in relationships, focusing on the importance of clear, strong, flexible, and conscious boundaries. Address the misconception that being a slut means being indiscriminate and explain how sluts actually have more boundaries due to the variety of relationships they engage in.

Discuss the concept of ownership and emphasize that no one can own another person. Explain that each person is responsible for their own emotions and needs, and that it is essential to understand where one person ends and another begins.

Provide advice on owning one's choices and feelings, and explain the importance of not taking responsibility for a lover's emotions. Discuss the dangers of fix-it messages and the importance of actively listening to a lover's emotions without trying to fix them.

Explain the concept of relationship boundaries and discuss how agreements between partners create these boundaries. Emphasize the importance of respecting everyone's relationships, including children, families of origin, neighbors, exes, and so on.

Discuss the importance of learning from mistakes and avoiding dumping and projection. Provide examples of how to share feelings without dumping and how to avoid projecting one's own expectations onto a partner.

Explain the concept of role boundaries and discuss how people may play out different roles with different partners. Provide examples of how different boundaries and limits may be necessary with different partners.

Finally, discuss the concept of asexuality and aromanticism, define these terms, and explain how people with these orientations may find sluthood a good fit. Emphasize that connection can be made in all sorts of ways, genital and nongenital, and that having genital sex does not make a relationship somehow more "real."

Response:
# 10

# 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.

"No one can own another person."

What Are Boundaries?

It is basic to any relationship, and particularly important in open relationships, that no one can own another person. Some of us who are kinked that way may explore kinds of power exchanges 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 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 are how we understand where I end and you begin, where we meet, and how we are separate individuals. You need to figure out where your limits are, what constitutes comfortable distance or closeness between yourself and others in various situations, and particularly the ways in which you and your lovers are individual and unique.

"When you grasp your emotions, you have something unbelievably valuable to bring to your relationships."

Owning Your Choices

As we've already discussed, each person owns their own emotions, and each person is responsible for dealing with those emotions. Understanding this is the first step to claiming something very precious—your own feelings. And when you grasp your feelings, you have something unbelievably valuable to bring to your relationships.

When you find yourself responding to someone else's behavior, it can be easy to dwell on what that person has done and how terrible it is and what exactly they should do to fix it. Instead, try looking at your own feelings as a message about your internal state of being, and then decide how you want to deal with whatever's going on. Do you want to find out more? Do you want to discuss a limit? Do you want a little time to yourself to calm down and get centered? Do you want to be heard about something? When you take responsibility, you get these choices, and more.

What you are _not_ responsible for is your lover's emotions. You can choose to be supportive—we're great believers in the healing power of listening—but it is not your job to fix anything. Once you understand that your lover's emotions are not your job or your fault, you can listen and really hear without falling victim to an overwhelming need to figure out whose fault it is or to make the emotion change or go away.

Some people habitually respond to a lover's pain and confusion with an intense desire to fix something. Fix-it messages can feel like invalidation to the person who is trying to express an emotion. "Why don't you just do this…try that…forget about it…relax!" sends the message that the person expressing the emotion has overlooked some obvious and simple solution and is an idiot for feeling bad in the first place.

Being responsible for your emotions doesn't mean that you have to conquer all your difficult feelings bareknuckled and solo. You can ask for the help you need—reassurance, validation, a shoulder to cry on, an ear to vent in, a brain to brainstorm with—from friends, lovers, and/or a good therapist. And you, in turn, will do your best to make yourself available when your friends and lovers need this kind of help from you…right?

Learning to operate your emotional system consciously may require changing some old habits and can feel very shaky, sort of like learning to ride a bicycle. You'll probably fall down a few times, but if you pick yourself up and keep going, eventually you'll get the feel of it. And once you get your balance, you'll never forget.

Relationship Boundaries

Relationships also have boundaries. The agreements that free-loving singles, couples, and families make with respect for each other's feelings constitute the boundaries of their relationships. In an open sexual community, it is important to deal with each relationship within its own boundaries. For example, you figure out your limits with your partners before you go to the sex party, you don't use your lover to diss your spouse, and decisions are made with input from everyone affected by them and not behind anybody's back.

Communities based on sex and intimacy work best when everybody has respect for everybody's relationships, which includes not only lovers but also children, families of origin, neighbors, exes, and so on. When everyone is conscious of and caring about boundaries, such communities can evolve into highly connected family systems.

"You can't learn from your errors if you always have to be right."

Be willing to learn from your mistakes. Boundaries can get tricky at times, so we hope you give yourself lots of slack to explore. Expect to learn by trial and error, and have compassion for yourself when things inevitably don't work out the way you hoped they would. Remember, you can't learn from your errors if you always have to be right!

Dumping

One place where people often get confused is differentiating between the honest sharing of feelings and dumping. Dumping means using others as your garbage pit, spewing your problematic stuff all over them and leaving it there. Dumping usually carries the expectation that the dumpee will do something about the problem, even if it's simply to take on the burden of worrying so that the dumper can stop. Usually you can avoid dumping by making it totally clear that your need to share your emotional state carries no obligation for your listener: "I don't like your having a date with Paula tonight," followed by a heavy and pregnant silence, carries an entirely different weight than, "I'm feeling insecure about your date with Paula tonight, but I want you to go ahead and have it. Are you okay with listening to some of my fears? Can we talk a bit about ways that I might be able to feel a little safer?"

Projection

Another trick to watch out for is projection: using another person as a screen to run your movie on. You see your fantasy and miss the real person. You imagine you know this person's thoughts, when in fact you are thinking about your fears. Maybe you imagine that they will respond the same way your parents did: "I know you'll reject me if I don't make a lot of money," "You'll never respect me if I show you my sadness." Or you might be projecting your expectations, projections that your lovers—who are not mind readers—can never live up to: "You're supposed to take care of me!" and "Whaddaya mean, you're not horny? _I'm_ horny!"

When you make a commitment to own your own emotions, you can stop projecting them onto people you care about. Then you can be free to see the people you love clearly, in all their glory. When you find yourself thinking blameful thoughts about your partner, you might ask yourself: "What do I own here?" What you see inside might be something like, "Wow, I sound just like my father when he was angry" or "I feel the way I did when I was eight and used to hide in the closet when I was upset." Then you might go to your lover and share how whatever was going on woke up some old tapes of yours, and you can brainstorm what you want to do about that. When each of you work together to own your stuff, then your partner can support you in exploring your emotions and, more important, learn to stop projecting onto you as well. Then you need never again feel like a puppet in somebody else's show.

Role Boundaries

You may find yourself playing out different roles, indeed, feeling like a somewhat different person with different partners. With one partner you might feel young and vulnerable and protected; with another, you are earth mother. With one lover you might feel careful and solid and safe; with another you might be dashing and reckless. These boundaries may seem unfamiliar or confusing when we don't have much experience with living in multiple relationships.

Janet once got a wonderful feeling of acceptance for all her parts at a party:

> I enjoy games in which I role-play the part of a little girl, but my then-partner wasn't comfortable with them. After a bit of searching, though, I found within my circle of acquaintances a man who enjoyed being a "daddy" as much as I enjoyed having one. My partner was delighted I'd found a safe place to play that role, and we both felt I'd made a good choice in selecting someone to whom I could entrust such vulnerable parts of me. "Daddy" and I got together once or twice a month for finger painting, watching Disney movies, eating peanut butter sandwiches, and other somewhat more adult pleasures.
>
> At one point I attended a party where both my life partner and my "daddy" were in attendance. From across the room, I saw the two of them chatting, and I headed over to say hi. As I drew closer, my partner held his arm out invitingly and called, "Hey, hon, come over and hang out with your dad and your boyfriend for a while." The feeling of acceptance, and the warmth of knowing the two men accepted and honored each other's role in my life, was amazing.

One of the things people get out of multiple relationships is the chance to be all of their various selves. When two people meet, they relate where they intersect, where they have complementary roles in similar scripts. So by being different things with different lovers, we might find ourselves having different boundaries, limits, and relationship styles in different circumstances.

Your own internal variety might manifest in many ways. For instance, you might be calm and centered when Lover A is angry, but Lover B's irritability is distressing to you—it "pushes your buttons," perhaps reminding you of a past lover or a punitive parent. Here is an opportunity to take charge of your buttons. When your buttons are your own, it becomes much easier to figure out what your limits need to be with Lover B and to understand that they may be altogether different from your limits with Lover A.

Forget about fairness. Ethical sluttery does not mean that all things come out equal. Different relationships have different boundaries, different limits, and different potentials. So if your lover has found someone that they can share a certain activity with, and you would like your lover to share that with you too, the question is not, "Why don't you do that with me?" but "That sounds interesting; how do you suppose we could make that work for us?"

This is how one woman we interviewed put it:

> My open sexual lifestyle gives me personal freedom, independence, and responsibility in a way that being an exclusive couple doesn't. Because I'm responsible, every day, for my needs being met (or not), and for creating and maintaining the relationships in my life, I can take nothing for granted. Every person I meet has the potential for whatever it is that's right between me and that person, regardless of how my relationships are with anybody else. And so this lifestyle gives me a very concrete feeling of individuality that I re-create every day. I feel more like a grown-up, adult, responsible person when I know that my life, all of it—who I fuck, who I relate to, how I relate to them—is all my choice. I promised my partner that I would share my life with him, and that implies to me that I have a life to share—a complete life. And it's clear to me that he's here because he wants to be here, wherever "here" is. We are with each other, every day, because we really want to be.

On Asexuality

The Asexual Visibility and Education Network defines an asexual as "someone who does not experience sexual attraction." A parallel identity is the "aromantic," who may or may not also be asexual but does not relate to people romantically. There are many gradations of both asexuality and aromanticism: people speak of "graysexuals," who are somewhere between asexual and sexual; "demisexuals," who feel sexual only toward people they love; and many others (with parallel categories available to the aromantic). We can't possibly list all the categories of asexuality and aromanticism here, but we encourage you to seek out more information about these orientations if they're unfamiliar to you—many people are startled to find in themselves some kinship with at least some asexual/aromantic identities.

Like all sexual orientations, asexuality and aromanticism may be fluid, evolving as any given individual grows and changes. Or they may stay stable from earliest self-awareness onward.

Many asexuals and aromantics find sluthood a good fit, as they can connect with partners in the ways that work for them, while the partners can seek ways of connecting with others that the asexual and/or aromantic partner is not interested in sharing.

Janet has attended some asexuality panels and workshops and has been amazed by how many talking points they had in common with ethical sluthood, including the idea that connection can be made in all sorts of ways, genital and nongenital, and that having genital sex does not make a relationship somehow more "real."


Input:
  Prompt: Write a chapter about the unethical slut, discussing the negative behaviors that are contrary to the ethical slut's principles.

Address the idea that some people treat sex like a game or a contest, trying to conquer unwilling partners or collect trophies. Discuss the concept of set collectors and explain why this behavior does not meet the requirements for mutual respect.

Discuss the idea of ranking people based on shallow values and explain why love is not a game that can be won by scoring high on a hierarchy of such values. Emphasize the importance of avoiding hierarchies and relating to people as individuals rather than ranks.

Discuss the issue of nonconsensual nonmonogamy and explain why this behavior is unethical. Discuss the difficulty some people may have in adapting to the idea of consensual sluthood and the importance of openness and honesty in all sexual relationships.

Emphasize the importance of safe sex practices and explain why refusing to use barriers that protect against viruses is unethical. Discuss the importance of honesty and dealing with the realities of viruses and bacteria.

Discuss the importance of not making promises that cannot be kept and the importance of being honest about one's desires and intentions. Provide examples of how dishonesty can hurt others and explain why it is important to learn from one's mistakes.

Finally, discuss the issue of revenge fucking and explain why this behavior is dishonorable and abusive. Discuss the importance of treating lovers as people and forming relationships based on honesty, intimacy, and emotional connection rather than dishonesty and manipulation.

Response:
# 11

# THE UNETHICAL SLUT

Some people treat sex as a big-game hunt—trying to conquer the unwilling and unwitting victim, as though the object of their attention would never decide to share sex with them unless tricked into it. Believing that a person would have to be a fool to make love with you is often, we observe, a self-fulfilling prophecy. Using sex to shore up sagging self-esteem by stealing someone else's does not work to build a solid sense of self-worth, and this thief of love will have to go on stealing more and more without ever feeling fulfilled.

Such people often approach open sexual lifestyles as if keeping score. Set collectors and trophy fuckers treat their partners like prizes in a contest they have set out to win.

The concept of set collectors may be new to you, but we assure you that such people exist. A friend of ours once discovered that a would-be lover of hers had already had sex with her mother and her sister and was hoping to complete the set. Sex that means treating your partners as collectibles does not meet our requirements for mutual respect.

Some people approach "scoring" as if all people can be ranked on a hierarchy from the most to the least desirable and the way to make the most points and assure yourself of a high rank is to collect partners as high up the ladder as you can reach. People gain in rank and value in these hierarchies by being thin, young, cute, gym-toned, wealthy, and/or of high social status.

We do not believe that love is a game that you can win by scoring high on a hierarchy of shallow values. We know from extensive experience that appearance and wealth are not predictors of good loving. We try to avoid ranking people as better or worse than each other and are unhappy with those who want to relate to our rank more than our selves. Hierarchies produce victims on the top as well as the bottom, because it is almost as alienating to be approached by too many people for the wrong reasons as it is to be approached by nobody at all.

Some who have a history of nonconsensual nonmonogamy may get attached to the sense of secrecy, of getting away with something. These folks may have a very hard time adapting to the idea of consensual sluthood—they're so used to concealing their activities from their partners that they may even have built that furtive feeling into their erotic life, hooked on the adrenaline rush they get from forbidden fruit. It takes a pretty substantial leap of faith, and maybe some creative fantasizing and role-playing, for such individuals to open up their hidden places and experience the greater joy that can come from knowing that nobody is getting hurt by their fun.

People who refuse to learn to use barriers that get between people and viruses are not ethical sluts. They are, quite simply, playing dirty when they argue with lovers about allowing potentially infectious sex, insisting on sex without barriers, or attempting to sneak around a lover's limits about safer sex. Refusing to deal with the realities of viruses and bacteria because of embarrassment is also unethical: a good slut speaks the truth even if blushing furiously.

Ethical sluts do not make promises they can't keep. If you are attracted to someone who is looking for a life partnership and what you want is a lighthearted affair (or vice versa), you need to be honest about that, even if that means saying, "No, thank you" to sex until your feelings for each other are more on a par. Mistakes can easily be made—sometimes accidentally and sometimes when we should have predicted that someone would get hurt.

We have both made such mistakes. Now, your older and wiser authors have discovered a couple of limits of our own: we do not share sex with anyone that we're not at least potentially interested in sharing sex with again, and we believe that anything worth doing is worth waiting for until the time is right. One hallmark of a skillful slut is to learn from one's mistakes and keep going. Dossie made such a mistake when she was very young and stupid:

> My long-term relationship had just broken up and I was pretty broken up about it myself. I went out to the coffee shop in Greenwich Village and saw my recent ex in earnest conversation with a cute young thing who was not me. I felt horribly betrayed, lost, and worthless. Just then, a young man who had been attracted to me, and for whom I had no serious feelings, came up to speak to me. It somehow seemed appropriate to go home with him and let him soothe my ruffled feathers, but I regretted it the next day when I found myself hurting his feelings and leaving him in the lurch. To further aggravate my guilt, it turned out that what my ex was doing with that sweet girl was beating his bosom about how horrible he felt about breaking up with me—we wound up getting back together. I have always felt that I took advantage of the young man who offered me his affection, which I thoughtlessly took and then gave right back to him. It would have been kinder had I just said no.

And that brings us to revenge fucking. It is truly nasty to arrange to have sex with one person to get back at another. To arouse one person's insecurities, jealousy, and other painful feelings on purpose is dishonorable, and to use another person as a puppet in your play is disrespectful and often downright abusive. In psychopathology, being "antisocial" is defined as behaving with flagrant disregard for the rights, and we would add the feelings, of others. We prefer to relate to sociable people.

What do you do when someone in your intimate circle is not playing honestly? It helps if the people in your extended family have ways to talk about what is going on, to share experiences and feelings. If everyone is too ashamed to admit to having been misused by someone with an untrustworthy hidden agenda, then no one will have the information they need to protect themselves. There is no shame in having believed someone's lies, and most of us at some time or other have given our trust to someone who turned out not to be worthy of it. It is possible to fool an honest person, but we hope you have enough humility to learn from your mistakes and not get fooled twice.

All these difficult scripts are about somebody not being honest and are also about somebody having sex while avoiding intimacy and emotional connection. When you are not telling the truth, you cannot be present; when you are not present, you can't be connected to anyone else; and when you are not connected, how can you feel anything at all?

By treating lovers as people and letting relationships take the shapes they want instead of the forms forced on them by the culture around them, ethical sluts can form relationships that last.