The Ethical Slut (22 page)

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 also their partners, are willing to help us with our feelings, we feel more secure and need less and less protection as we go along.

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

We’ve 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 we’ve 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 thou shalts and some thou shalt nots; some logistical and some sentimental. Just so you know that we’re not recommending any of these, you should also note that some are mutually exclusive. We’re presenting this list as a discussion opener, not as how it ought to be. Everybody
has
to make some agreements about sexual health and safer sex.

• We always use condoms and barriers for all possible fluid exchanges.
  
• We always spend the night together except when one of us is traveling.
  
• I’ll watch everyone’s kids this weekend, you do it next weekend.
  
• Neither of us will [specific sexual act] with other partners.
  
• Either of us can veto the other’s potential other partners.
  
• We always provide advance notice of potential other partners.
  
• Don’t tell me about other partners.
  
• Tell me everything you did with other partners.
  
• Other partners must be same-sex/opposite-sex.
  
• We always meet each other’s partners—no strangers.
  
• Outside sex will only be: group sex / party sex / anonymous sex / committed sex …
  
• We must check in with each other to confirm safety after a get-together with a new partner.
  
• Everybody chips in for the babysitter.
  
• We see others on Friday nights only.
  
• Saturday nights are for us.
  
• Be sure to save some hot sexual energy for me.
  
• Sex with other partners is off limits in our bed/house.
  
• We set limits on phone calls, Internet time, etc., with other partners.
  
• We establish quality time with each other.
  
• We establish agreements about who can talk about what to whom.
  
• Don’t take off the ring I gave you.
  
• Little gifts and cards help me feel less abandoned.
  
• Who is too close to have sex with? Neighbors? Schoolmates? Coworkers? Close friends? Former lovers? Your doctor? Your lawyer? Your partner’s therapist? Your sibling? …
  
• We’ll spend an hour cuddling and reconnecting afterward.
  

Our experience is that we need some kind of predictability to deal with the stresses of open relationships. Most people can handle a nervous-making situation much better if they 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 would be secure. 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 she is out with someone else, I also know when she isn’t, 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 partner in cruising or sit this one out in a quieter milieu. An agreement to be unpredictable at some specified time is, after all, predictable.

There are probably a lot of things in your life on 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, it’s 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 A’s investment in this particular choice, how is B feeling different about it, and what are we afraid might happen if we can’t agree? Try to get really clear on how each person feels before you even think about what you want to do about this issue at hand. Understanding your own and your partner’s emotions will lead to new and better ideas for agreements or resolution.

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, and yet you still like each other and share a lot of good stuff. Remember that you’ve been getting along fine without this particular agreement. If you’ve made it this far, you can live with the lack of agreement a little longer. Let time be your friend, and 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 do it. 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, or tolerable-disagreement, or even who-cares?

Sometimes you will eventually find it possible to make an agreement, and other times you won’t. 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 open-hearted discussion of disagreements and agreements will lead to a cleaner and less stressful outcome.

You and your sweetie might have different visions about what polyamory will be for you. 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 S/M, or tantra, or
wild orgies, and the other wants walks on the beach at sunset? Once you’ve opened your relationship to other people who may be more accepting of those desires, anything is possible—Dossie has worked with a number of couples with these kinds of differences. 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.

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 you’re trying to accomplish, and your agreement is the means you’re 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 nobody’s 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 couldn’t 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 you’re feeling threatened and left out?

Once you’ve defined your problem and your goal, it’s 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 didn’t, and whether to continue your agreement or revise it or scrap it.

In our experience, it’s 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 doesn’t 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 couldn’t fall in love with anyone else. Then one of them did. (In hindsight, this seems like a fairly silly agreement—as though you could simply decide not to fall in love!) She remembers,

Expect to try out some agreements and find out that they don’t 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 partner’s needs so well that negotiating agreements will be easy. But in the beginning, while you are learning, tidiness won’t 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.

Don’t 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.

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 can’t expect to proclaim “Open Sesame!” and have everything fall magically into place. Like everything else about ethical sluthood—and perhaps even more than other ways of relating—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 dating and 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.

For the sake of simplicity, we are going to talk about opening a relationship between an existing two-person couple—but the principles and skills we discuss here can apply to lovers in any configuration.

If you and your lover are beginning this work with equal agreement that you both 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 don’t get to skip this chapter.

In our experience, though, it’s much more common that one person wants to open the door to outside connections and the other hasn’t ever even considered it and is appalled by the idea. This situation is definitely more difficult, especially when the third member of the triangle, the 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 don’t really think about monogamy until they make a connection with someone who feels important to them and they don’t want to give up their beloved life partner, or get a divorce, or split up the kids. You could be in any of these roles in the triangle: 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.