The Ethical Slut, Third Edition A Practical Guide to Polyamory, Open Relationships, and Other Freedoms in Sex and Love

you will discover that there are as many ways to be sexual as there are to be human, and all of them are valid, an abundance of ways to relate, to love, to express gender, to share sex, to form families, to be in the world, to be human... and none of them in any way reduces or invalidates any of the others.

You create this intimacy the way you learn to ride a bike-by trial and error, slipping and falling, and ultimately zooming along together. Just like riding a bike, you'll never forget this particular intimacy or your own role in it.

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?

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.

Trans people can teach us a lot about the determination to be free.

Even people who consider themselves sex-positive and sexually lib- erated often fall into a different trap-the trap of rationalizing sex. Releasing physical tension, relieving menstrual cramps, maintaining mental health, preventing prostate problems, making babies, cement- ing relationships, and so on are all admirable goals, and wonderful side benefits of sex. But they are not what sex is for. People have sex because it feels very good, and then they feel good about themselves. Pleasure is a complete and worthwhile goal in and of itself: the worthiness of pleasure is one of the core values of ethical sluthood.d

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—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.

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.

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.