The Ethical Slut Part 5

When you make a commitment to own your own stuff, you can stop projecting and see the people you love clearly in all their glory.

When all of you work together to own your stuff, each of you, then you will never again feel like a puppet in somebody else's show.

role boundaries This boundary may seem unfamiliar because we dont have that much experience with living in multiple relations.h.i.+ps. 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 das.h.i.+ng and reckless.

Catherine got a wonderful feeling of acceptance for all her parts from a recent moment: I enjoy games in which I role-play the port of a "little girl" but my regular partner isn't comfortable with them. After a bit of searching, though, I found within my circle of acquaintances a man who enjoys being a "Daddy" as much as I enjoy 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 get together once or twice a month for finger-painting, watching Disney movies, eating peanut b.u.t.ter sandwiches, and other slightly more adult pleasures.

Recently 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 here 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 relations.h.i.+ps 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, being different things to different lovers, we might find ourselves having different boundaries, limits and relations.h.i.+p styles in different circ.u.mstances.

This might manifest in a variety of ways. For instance, I might be calm and centered when Lover A is angry, but Lover B's irritability is distressing to me- it "pushes my b.u.t.tons," perhaps reminding me of a past lover or a punitive parent. In this case, I need to own my b.u.t.tons, and figure out if my limits with Lover B are going to be different from my limits with Lover A. Forget about fairness. Ethical s.l.u.ttery does not mean that all things come out equal. Different relations.h.i.+ps have different boundaries, different limits, and different potentials. So if your lover has found someone that she can share a certain activity with, and you would like to share that with her too, the question is not "Why dont 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 s.e.xual 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 relations.h.i.+ps 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 relations.h.i.+ps are with anybody else. And so this lifestyle gives me a very concrete feeling of individuality, that I recreate every day. I feel more like a grownup, adult, responsible person when I know that my life, all of it, who I f.u.c.k, 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, wherever "here" is. We are with each other, every day, because we really want to be. Our choices are real.

CHAPTER 2. s.l.u.t ECONOMIES.

As we have said before, many traditional att.i.tudes about s.e.xuality are based on the idea that there isn't enough of something- love, s.e.x, friends.h.i.+p, 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, since if it's all that good a thing someone else probably already has it (how unfair!). Or you may believe that if someone else gets something, that means there must be less of it for you.

starvation economies We call this kind of thinking "starvation economies." People often learn about starvation economies in childhood, when parents who are emotionally depleted or unavailable teach us that we must work hard to get our emotional needs metso 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 (if you didn't grab first, your brother got all the potatoes), or outright neglect, deprivation or abuse. We may learn starvation economies later in life, from manipulative, withholding or punitive lovers, spouses or friends.

The beliefs acquired in childhood usually run deep, both in individuals and in our culture. So you may have to look carefully to see the pattern. You can see it in a small way in the kind of "complaining contests" some people engage in: "Boy, did I have a rotten day today."

"You think your day was rotten- wait till you hear about my day! "as though there were a limited amount of sympathy in the world, and the only way to get the amount due you was to compete for it. People may think that if you love Bill that means you must love Mary less, or if you're committed to your relations.h.i.+p with your friend you must be less committed to your relations.h.i.+p with your spouse.

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 each one than the person who owns one. But when it comes to s.e.x, particularly s.e.x with a romantic component, it's hard for most people to believe that more for you doesn't mean less for me.

letting go Getting over past fears of starvation can be one of the biggest challenges of ethical s.l.u.t hood 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, and more, by a generous world. You need to get clear that you deserve love and nurturance and warmth and s.e.x. And 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 false starvation economies can feel a lot like trapeze-swinging letting go of what you already have (or believe that you have), trusting that at the end of the leap there will always be something else to grab.

Is there a safety net for this kind of dare devilry 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" the things that stand between you and aloneness, may be impossible to summon.

On the other hand, what an incredibly free feeling it is to realize that there is enough love, s.e.x, commitment, support and nurturing to go around! Catherine used to spend the nights when her partner was out with someone else by getting together with one of her own 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 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 companions.h.i.+p, she feels safe enough to not need that rea.s.surance.

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 s.l.u.tty things you enjoy, with all the people you care about, can be a real challenge (and sometimes may simply not be possible).

Time is the biggest real-world limit we encounter in trying to live and love as we like. This problem is hardly exclusive to s.l.u.ts; monogamous folks run into problems finding the time for s.e.x, companions.h.i.+p and communication, too. Careful planning can help- if you dont already keep a fairly detailed datebook or computerized 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 companions.h.i.+p and rea.s.surance 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 her schedule, moaned: "I know I told someone!"

Don't forget to schedule time to relate to your partner and play with your kids. And dont leave yourself out: many busy s.l.u.ts find it important to schedule alone time for rest and replenishment. Catherine, who lives in a Grand Central Stationlike group household, has an arrangement with her girlfriend that she can occasionally use Barbara's house for solitary retreats- a rare and precious gift- while Barbara is out of town.

s.p.a.ce is another real-world limit for many people. Few of us are fortunate enough to live in multi-room mansions with rooms dedicated exclusively to s.e.x. 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. Cras.h.i.+ng on a narrow couch in your own apartment, while your partner disports with someone else in your bed, may be beyond the limits of even the most advanced s.l.u.t. This problem may be solved by separate bedrooms or personal s.p.a.ces 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." Sometimes a hotel room or other rented or borrowed s.p.a.ce can be another good solution. If neither of these is an option, we suggest making clear agreements about what times the shared s.p.a.ce is available for other-partner s.e.x, and sticking strictly to them.

Things. It's only natural to want to share our possessions with the people we care about. But this urge can cause problems when possessions- money, food, art, 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 dont let your lover polish off the carton of milk that your spouse was planning to drink for breakfast.

But it sometimes gets tricky, too. While you may have the legal 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. (These are some of the advanced boundaries we told you about.) Similarly, it's not a good idea to share with someone else an item that was made for you by a lover, or that the two of you bought together during an intimate shopping trip. Many s.l.u.ts, for the purposes of hygiene and/or emotional attachment, set aside certain s.e.x toys for use with only one person: my vibrator, Harry's d.i.l.d.o. Lending or giving jointly owned money without discussing it with the co-owner is, we hope it's not necessary to say, unacceptable.

"The tyranny of hydraulics." This is Dossie's phrase for the biological realities that govern many aspects of s.e.xuality. While it might be nice to think that you're a s.e.xual superman who can generate erections on demand ad infinitum, neither of us has yet met such a man.

A partner who is looking forward to conventional s.e.xual activities with a male lover may be quite understandably disappointed to find him unavailable by virtue of having e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed with another partner earlier that day. And even the most multiply o.r.g.a.s.mic of women can't stay turned on forever.

Such problems can often be solved by readjusting your expectations of what const.i.tutes s.e.x" does it really always require an erection? An o.r.g.a.s.m? An e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n? Pract.i.tioners of tantric yoga have developed ways by which many men can experience o.r.g.a.s.m without e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n. These strategies are only somewhat useful for birth control and safer s.e.x, and are certainly no subst.i.tute for rubbers. But they come with a wonderful side effect: men who learn to o.r.g.a.s.m without e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.n.g. are able to come many times, like women. And pract.i.tioners of many other kinds of s.e.x have developed ways in which enthusiastic s.l.u.ts can give their partners one or many o.r.g.a.s.ms, regardless of their own state of arousal. Before you give up on polyamory because of "the tyranny of hydraulics," we suggest you investigate at least some of these possibilities (our earlier chapter on Enjoying s.e.x, and some of the books in the Bibliography, will help).

Remember outer course Remember sensuality. Rediscover ma.s.sage for its own sake. Share a seriously filthy conversation about what you'd like to do to each other tomorrow.

AM I REALLY GOING TO STARVE?.

When you try to decide what limits you want to the openness of your relations.h.i.+p, it's not always easy to tell which fears 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- which requires a lot of self-searching and honesty. It helps to ask, "What am I afraid might happen?"

Is my partner's fondness for his friend really going to make him fall out of love with me? What if my partner doesn't think I'm special any more? What if she's so ecstatically happy that she doesn't need me?

Why would she ever want me, anyway? These are some of the horrible little thoughts that pop up in all of our minds when we're scared of starving.

You need to decide whether your fear is a possible reality, or something that probably wouldn't happen. 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 he couldn't get it up really just that, or is it anger or jealousy over his date last night?) can help. We'll talk later about how to get rea.s.surance when you're afraid.

LIMITS CAN STRETCH.

Sometimes, you just have to try it and see. The old chestnut about "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 a dieter is sometimes counseled to let himself get hungry in order to see what that feels like, 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 dont need it all that much right now anyway. We can't tell you what letting go will feel like; all we can do is a.s.sure you that you will learn something from it. Scary... and satisfying!

A song to remember: Love is a rose and you better not pick it Only grows when it's on the vine Handful of thorns and you know you missed it Lose your love when you say the word "mine."10

CHAPTERS. JEALOUSY.

"Let jealousy be your teacher. Jealousy can lead you to the very places where you most need healing. It can be your guide into your own dark side and show you the way to total self-realization. Jealousy can teach you how to live in peace with yourself and with the whole world if you let it. "Deborah Anapol, Love Without Limits For many people, the biggest obstacle to free love is the emotion we call jealousy.

Jealousy feels really rotten and most of us will go to great lengths to avoid feeling it. However, your authors believe that most people take the destructive power of jealousy way too much for granted, that they give their jealousy far more power than it deserves. After many years of living free and dealing successfully with jealousy, we tend to forget that we live in a culture that considers it acceptable to divorce or even murder a s.e.xually explorative partner who has committed the unthinkable crime of arousing jealousy in us. We danced happily for years to a bouncy Beatles tune before we noticed the lyrics that threatened, "I'd rather see you dead, little girl, than to see you with another man..."

Let us point out here that monogamy is not a cure for jealousy. Joe managed to get pathologically jealous without Dossie ever cheating. We have all had experiences of being ferociously jealous of work that keeps our partner away or distracted from us, or of our lover's decision to cruise the Internet instead of our bodies, or of Monday (and Tuesday and Wednesday and...) Night Football. Jealousy is not exclusive to s.l.u.ts; it's an emotion we all have to deal with in our relations.h.i.+ps.

Many people believe that s.e.xual territoriality is a natural part of individual and social evolution, and use jealousy as justification to go berserk, and stop being a sane, responsible and ethical human being.

Threatened with feeling jealous, we allow our brains to turn to static on the excuse that we are acting on instinct.

What Is Jealousy?

We cannot ask this question too often. What is jealousy to you? Does jealousy really exist, and is it what we think it is? Once we are willing to confront the feeling of jealousy rather than run away from it, we can see more clearly what jealousy truly is for each of us.

Jealousy may be an expression of insecurity, of fear of rejection, fear of abandonment, feeling left out, feeling not good enough, or feeling inadequate.

Sometimes what we perceive as jealousy is actually something else.

Think through the details of how jealousy works with you. What bothers you the most? Is it that you dont want her to do those things to someone else, or that you do want her to do them to you? Jealousy might actually be envy, and envy is often very easy to fix: why not make a date with your lover to do what you have just discovered you are missing?

Sometimes jealousy has at its roots feelings of grief and loss, which can be harder to interpret. We have been taught by our culture that when our partner has s.e.x with another, we have lost something. Not to sound dumb, but we are confused. What have we lost? When our partner comes home from a hot date with another, often she is excited, turned on and has some new ideas she would like to try out at home. We fail to see what we lose in this situation.

On the other hand, sometimes the truth is that we are becoming aware on an intuitive level that our partner is moving away from us, and it might be true that we are losing the relations.h.i.+p that we cherish.

That does happen. And the fact that supposedly monogamous people everywhere often leave one partner for what they perceive as greener gra.s.s with another is not much consolation when it happens to you.

We watched a friend of ours go through feelings of deep grief and loss when she perceived that her partner's lover was trying, quite nearly successfully, to abscond with him. In this case, her pain threw a spotlight on some dishonesty and manipulation on the part of the third party, and gave her partner the strength to break off from the lover and to find other lovers who had greater respect for his primary bond.

On the other hand, this scenario might just as easily have ended in a breakup; we'll talk more about breakups, and dealing with them ethically with care for your own and your partner's feelings, in the chapter on "s.l.u.ts In Love."

Jealousy might also be a.s.sociated with feelings of compet.i.tiveness and wanting to be number one. Dossie's daughter, when young, once asked her, "If there were an Olympics of s.e.x would you win a gold medal?" We say thank the G.o.ddess there is no Olympics of s.e.x, because s.e.xual achievement is not measurable- so get that ruler out of here. We cannot rank each and every one of us on some hierarchical ladder of who is or is not the most desirable, or the better f.u.c.k. What a horrid idea! We want to live in a world where each person's s.e.xuality is valued for its own sake, not for how it measures up to any standard beyond our own pleasure. And if you learn from someone else's experience something that you would like to add to your own repertoire of skills, you can certainly learn to do it without wasting time tras.h.i.+ng yourself for not already having known how.

Fear of being s.e.xually inadequate can be particularly potent. But allow us to rea.s.sure you that eventually, when you succeed in establis.h.i.+ng the lifestyle you are dreaming about, you will be so familiar with so many different individuals' ways of expressing s.e.xuality that you will no longer have to wonder how your s.e.xuality compares to another's; you'll know from direct experience. You can learn from your lovers, and your lovers' lovers, and your lovers'

lovers' lovers, to be the s.e.xual superstar you would like to be.

Unlearning Jealousy To change the way you experience a feeling takes time, so expect a gradual process, learning as you go, by trial and error. And there will be trials, and you will make errors.

Start by giving yourself permission to learn new ways. Allow yourself to not know what you dont know, to be ignorant. You must allow yourself to make mistakes you have no choice. So rea.s.sure yourself: there is no graceful way to unlearn jealousy. It's kind of like learning to skate- you have to fall down and make a fool of yourself a few times before you become as graceful as a swan.

The challenge becomes learning to establish within yourself a strong foundation of internal security that is not dependent on s.e.xual exclusivity, or owners.h.i.+p of your partner. This is part of the larger question of how to grasp your personal power and learn to understand and love yourself without such a desperate need for another person to validate you. You become free to give and receive validation, not from need or obligation, but from love and caring. We suggest most strongly that you put some effort into learning to validate yourself- believe us, you're worth it.

Many people find that as they develop their polyamorous families, they actually get validation from lots and lots of people and thus become less dependent on their partner's approval. Their needs and their sources of nourishment get spread out over a wider territory.

We can't tell you how to banish jealousy, or how to exorcise it as if it were a demon. Jealousy is not a cancer that you can cut out. It is a part of you, a way that you express fear and hurt. What you can do is change the way you experience jealousy, learn to deal with it as you learn to deal with-any emotion- until it becomes, not overwhelming and not exactly pleasant, but tolerable: a mild disturbance, like a rainy day rather than a typhoon.

DlSEMPOWER YOUR JEALOUSY One woman we talked to had some very good ideas about what you can do about jealousy: I notice that jealousy comes and goes, depending on how good I feel about myself. When I'm not taking care of getting what I want, it's easy to get jealous and think that someone else is getting what I am not. I need to remember that it's my job to get my needs met. I feel the jealousy, but I'm not willing to act on it, so it mostly goes away.

Once you have made a commitment to refuse to act on your jealousy, you become free to start reducing the amount of power you let your jealousy have over you One way to do this is simply by allowing yourself to feel it. Just feel it. It will hurt, and you will feel frightened and confused, but if you sit still, and listen to yourself with compa.s.sion and support for the scared child inside, the first thing you will learn is that the experience of jealousy is survivable. You have the strength to get through it.

We have heard s.l.u.ts accuse each other of being jealous as if it were a crime. "See? Look at you1 You're jealous, aren't you? Don't try to deny it1" It is particularly important that you own your jealousy, to yourself and to your intimates. If you try to pretend that you are not jealous when you are, others will perceive you as dishonest, or worse yet, they may believe you, and see no need to support or protect you because you're fine, right? If you pretend to yourself that you are not jealous when you are, then your own emotions may try devious routes to bring themselves to your attention, which can generate intensely irrational feelings and behavior, temper tantrums and hissy fits, or perhaps even make you physically ill.

When you deny your jealousy to yourself, you take from yourself the opportunity to be in sympathy with yourself and to support and comfort yourself. When you deny jealousy, or any other difficult emotion, you put yourself in a harsh and difficult landscape, full of pitfalls and land mines. "Acting out" means doing things you dont understand, driven by emotions you have refused to be aware of- and denying your jealousy can lead you to act out harsh feelings in ways you will regret later Sometimes acting out takes the form of making ultimatums about what your partner may and may not door, worse, trying to enforce retroactive "agreements" by getting all righteously indignant about how anybody could have figured out that it wasn't okay to take Bob to the movie you wanted to see, and aren't both of them inconsiderate and rotten? You cannot deal constructively with jealousy by making the other guys wrong Jealousy is an emotion that arises inside you; no person and no behavior can "make" you jealous. Like it or not, the only person who can make that jealousy hurt less or go away is you.

Listening to your lover when she is feeling jealous can be difficult.

Sometimes we find it easier to feel angry and push our beloved away than to stay close when she is in pain, to stay in empathy, to support, to care When we blame a lover for being jealous, we are trying to justify our intense desire to not have to listen to how much he hurts when we are on the way out the door to play with someone else. This is a crummy way to avoid dealing with our own feelings of guilt.

If this sounds familiar to you, if you have experienced times like this in your life, we recommend that you practice the skill of staying quietly with both your own and your lovers' pain. Remember, you dont have to fix anything all you have to do is listen, to yourself or another, and understand that this hurts. Period.

The way to unlearn jealousy is to be willing to experience it. By actively choosing to experience a painful feeling like jealousy, you are already starting to reduce its power over you First, you decide that you will not allow your jealousy to make you run screaming over the horizon And so you exercise your first form of control over jealousy I will hold steady and stay with myself and my feelings.

Catherine and her partner had a difficult moment when she first told him that she was in love with one of her lovers.

I'd been seeing this woman for a while, and realized, much to my surprise, that my feelings toward her had gone beyond simple s.e.xual friends.h.i.+p and into a deep romantic emotion that I identified as being in love. When I told Jay about this, I think his first impulse was to feel threatened, insecure, and, yes, jealous. I could feel him getting close to exploding. It was hard for me not to try to fix things, to take back what I'd said about being in love, or to simply leave the discussion altogether because I felt scared and guilty.

But Jay stayed on course, allowing the feelings to present themselves, but not allowing them to drive him into acting angry or defensive. He asked me some questions about what exactly this meant to us, and I was able to explain that I wasn't planning to leave him, that my love for her was in no way a threat to my love for him, that she and I weren't expecting to become primary partners- that, really, nothing had changed except my own emotions and the words I was using to describe them. We still re-visit this discussion from time to time, especially when our busy schedules permit me to spend some extra time with my lover. And, so far, we've all been able to recognize and honor one another's emotions, and things are going great.

You can feel jealousy without acting on it. In fact, flying into a rage and breaking all the crockery, or calling your lover's lover and hanging up every fifteen minutes during your first sleepless night, or picking a fight with whoever's handy all these are things that people do in order to not feel jealous, in order to not feel scared and small.

When you hold still with your jealousy, you will find that it is possible to feel something difficult without getting frantic, or doing anything you dont choose to do. You will have taken your second step at disempowering your jealousy. You've told your jealousy that you will not allow it to destroy your loving relations.h.i.+ps.

Your pain is the breaking of the sh.e.l.l that encloses your understanding.

Even as the stone of the fruit must break, that its heart may stand in the sun, so must you know pain.

And could you keep your heart in wonder at the daily miracles of your life, your pain would not seem less wondrous than your joy: And you would accept the seasons of your heart, even as you have always accepted the seasons that pa.s.s over your fields. And you would watch with serenity through the winters of your grief."

Weathering the Storm So here you are, holding still, feeling rotten. Now what do you do?

Get as comfortable as you can and listen to yourself. Explore your feelings, nourish them, treasure them- they are the most essential part of you.

Be good to yourself, and remember that the most important part of love is not the love, however wonderful, that you or another can have for your beauty and strength and virtue. The real test of love is when a person- including you- can know your weaknesses, your stupidities and your smallnesses, and still love you.

Remember, as you look at yourself, to look kindly, and also remember that you are not balancing a checkbook. Anything you see that you dont like, or that you want to change, is not a debit that you subtract from your virtues. Learn to reflect on your strengths and virtues.

and it becomes easier to look constructively at your weaknesses. Keep your virtues at their full value, and cherish them.

Start by setting yourself the task of getting through a short period of time with your jealousy, like an evening or an afternoon when your partner may be off with another. Make a pact with yourself that you will stay with your feelings, whatever they may be, for a short period of time. If a whole evening or night seems like too long, start with five or ten minutes, then arrange to distract yourself with a video or whatever.

IT MIGHT BE EASIER THAN YOU THOUGHT.

One of the possible, and indeed common, outcomes will be that your partner will go off on a date with another, and you will feel just fine. Surprise! Your antic.i.p.ation may have been a lot worse than the actual event. Experienced s.l.u.ts often find that they only feel jealous now and then. When they do experience jealousy, they can examine these specific experiences to see what they can learn about themselves, and if they can think of what might make this particular sort of event safer and easier.

One couple we talked to is working to maintain their primary relations.h.i.+p in a difficult situation: one of them is out of town most of the time on business, and thus much of their activity with other partners takes place under circ.u.mstances that prevent them from reconnecting physically to the primary relations.h.i.+p afterwards. One of their agreements is that they talk on the phone every single night, regardless of where they are or how busy they are. Often, their conversations take place after one of them has spent time connecting with an outside partner. One of them notes that during these conversations, he allows my feelings. I dont hesitate to say anything I want; in fact, he encourages me to. I've found that just being allowed to say these things, to talk about my jealousy and sadness, somehow defuses them. They lose a lot of their power because they meet no resistance from him- he just listens to them and lets them be.

feel your feelings Painful feelings, even the most intense of them, have a tendency to run their course if you let them, so an initial strategy is to make yourself as comfortable as possible and wait till the feelings die down. Find your feelings, jealousy or hurt or anger or whatever, and let them flow through you, like a river. Your mind may be racing with nasty thoughts, angry, blaming, focusing on some detail that you're absolutely certain those other people did wrong, obsessing on believing that someone is taking advantage of you, or riding roughshod over your feelings. This hurts a lot, so surely it must be somebody's fault!

Allow us to rea.s.sure you: you are not an idiot. We all go through this. Don't die of shame, just let these thoughts run through you too.

Feelings, once uncovered, can be better understood by reflecting on them. It is useful to have scripts and strategies for self-exploration. Journal writing, preferably with total disregard for grammar and syntax, can be a good way to vent feelings and learn about yourself at the same time. It is okay to cover pages of your journal with f.u.c.k f.u.c.k f.u.c.k f.u.c.k f.u.c.k I HATE THIS! in bright red ink; if this feels good to you we recommend you get a large size journal. Try writing down your stream of consciousness, which means whatever you find in your head whether or not it makes sense, and see what you get.

Treasures, jewels of self knowledge are often found here.

You can get a big drawing pad and a set of oil pastels, which are crayons for grownups. These big crayons encourage expression with bright colors, and discourage getting hung up on details (they're too fat to get crabby with). Sometimes you will draw, and get squiggles, and that's great- the smallest thing you can accomplish still helps you hold still for a while, and rant in color. Other times, you may surprise yourself with a drawing that is profoundly meaningful to you.

Both of us use drawing a lot to vent our strong feelings and discover things about ourselves- Dossie quit smoking this way, and Catherine used it as an important tool to get out of suburbia and recover her s.l.u.t hood -and we a.s.sure you that neither of us is a great artist.