Continued from The Ethical Slut (book review) – Part 1

In the section “Flirting and Cruising” there’s a subsection “For Trans and Non-binary People” (page 109), which was rather wonderful to find that odd-balls (or no-balls) like me her special consideration when it comes to flirting and cruising!

The chapter “Keeping Sex Safe”covers all the usual methods of performing safer sex but alerts the reader to the specific challenges of open/poly relationships.

acting on desire without responsibility is unethical.

Page 118

This warning is within a subsection about wishful thinking as regards disease prevention (and pregnancy prevention). The authors recognise that a slutty lifestyle could put oneself, one’s partners, and one’s one-off flings in harm’s way.

Much of this book so far has been about being considerate of the feelings of lovers and partners and the honest and authentic realisation of self; this chapter highlights the dangers of HIV and other diseases and the care that must be taken to avoid their transmission.

You must be prepared to share your sexual decision making and history with any potential partners you encounter. If consent is at the cure if ethical sluthood – and it is – your partners must be able to give informed consent to whatever risks are involved in having sex with you.

Page 121

Learning to have difficult conversations seems to be central to the premis of ethical slutting; of course (and the book starts this also), you have the right to request the same information from somebody else. Honesty is the key to an open and fulfilling life.

At the very end of the chapter on child-rearing in a poly household, there’s a few paragraphs of the creators of Wonder Woman: she was created as an Amazonian princess suggested by one of two women in a triad (the third person was the male in the relationship). Wonder Woman also had strong kink elements, such as domination and submission, the bracelets, and (of course) the whip.

Monogamy is not a cure for jealousy

Page 135

There’s more a person can feel jealous of than another lover. Maybe my experiences at the hands of another’s jealousy over how I spend my time have made me overly cautious of arousing jealousy. I have often heard my husband complain that I spend too much time on this it that and not enough on him. If he can be stirred to jealousy by time I spent doing things, and given my aversion to difficult situations, it’s no wonder that it’s taken decades for me to bring up the idea of an open relationship.

This same chapter raised 6 the idea that jealousy might even be a social construct rather than a true human emotion. What does that mean? Maybe it means that it’s easier to handle than we thought!

This is when your emotions are just likely to bring you to grief – when you believe that need to avoid feeling them.

Page 139

I have already learnt, in my readings, that those parts of myself that I deny are the parts that have the greatest power to act through my subconscious and do the greatest harm to me and those I love. That is why I put such high importance on exploring myself, understanding who I am, and what I stand for.

One way not to feel a feeling is to project it into your partner. Projection is a psychological defence that involves trying to move a painful feeling outside of yourself by running your emotional movie on someone else, as if that person were a screen for your fears and fantasies.

Page 139

What a horrific and accurate description of what I have done to my husband with my unwanted feelings. Not jealousy, but shame I have put onto him – my shame – of everything that I thought I was to be shameful about. Hell! I even thought he was going to tell me that he was transsexual himself (this was before I came out as non-binary).

When you feel overpowered, outgunned, or shouted down, you will be resentful, and the problem will go on being a problem.

Page 161

I often feel outsmarted by my husband; he’s very quick in a discussion – or argument – he’s less likely to be overwhelmed with emotion, well, he won’t be the one that shutsdown. He is comfortable being angry and expressing it. He says that sometimes when people are angry they raise their voices – although if I raise my voice it seems that I am wrong to do so – I guess I just do not understand the rules of having a row.

Good, clean, honest anger was never communicated in my family: my mum usually avoided it (although I do remember that she sometimes works get angry with me); my dad seemed permanently angry when I was young.

For my husband, he feels that his anger isn’t heard (see below) because of my limited ability to deal with it.

For me, I feel that my anger is dismissed as irrational. He is too quick for me and I am too afraid. Anger seems to always escalate into horrible situations and I never feel that it is ever resolved.

Most people don’t put their stuff aside very well when it seems that their issues will never get heard.

Page 161

This is something that my husband struggles with because of the way I am in conversations. He has a lot of hurt and pain that needs to be expressed. His frustration is that he can only do it in tiny doses because I cannot deal with anything bigger. That’s really hard on him and not fair, even if I cannot think of how it could be different.

It is a violation of our boundaries when another person presumes to tell us what our inner truth is.

Page 165

“Discussions” with my husband seen to involve a lot of him saying “you do this” or “you make me feel that”, sometimes he’ll try to arrive a feeling, a motive to what he sees as my actions. I do feel somehow violated when he does that, it feels unfair somehow, or an invasion, an attack. Whatever I’m feeling, an extra feeling is sure to follow: my defences go up and I become more resistant to whatever he is trying to communicate with me.

remember, anger is an emotion that tells you what is important to you.

Page 185

I have a lot of gears around anger: the threat of violence, the irrational outbursts, the things said in ways that hurt rather than inform. I fear these things in me as well as in other people.

Recently, I’ve realised that I fear it because it’s too fast: people who communicate from a place of anger can be communicating from a primitive part of the brain, a part which is all reflex. They think and talk faster than I can process – and things get out of hand and out of control.

When threatened with anger, I usually shutdown, since escape is often impossible or unwise. Shutdowns are involuntary and seem uncontrollable. When I shutdown, I often feel as though I am being assaulted. I guess, that in some way, I am being assaulted.

However, what this quote tells me it’s that both my anger and the other person’s can tell me what matters in any situation. That is something worth thinking about!

Even if I shutdown and retreat into myself, if I can capture what made the other person (out myself) angry, then I can learn something important.

It’s not fun to be called upon to expand your relationship in ways you never agreed for, nor to deal with your beloved’s desire for other lovers after they’ve promised to foresake all others; you may be feeling like you’ve had an abyss open up under your feet, with no solid ground anywhere to stand on.

Page 189

My husband has struggled with everything that’s gone on:

1. First, he heard that I had dark sexual fantasies that he’d realised that I’d been coercing him into helping me fulfil.
2. He was so shocked by that revelation that he missed the humdinger launched at in the same conversation: his husband wanted to be castrated.
3. Then he realised that his husband wanted to open the relationship up.
4. Which he took to mean that he wasn’t good enough.
5. Then this opening up request, developed to almost seem like a request for polyamory.
6. Finally, when he’d had enough and needed some space, he asked his husband to leave … only for his husband to then find that he liked his own space!

It’s no wonder that my husband struggles so much with what’s happened to him because of the upheavals in my life as I try to work out who I am.

He never imagined that this quiet, reserved, and somewhat prudish person held such depths.

He’s suddenly realised that he never really knew me. After twenty-seven years together, that is one hell of a shock for anybody.

It’s shattered his fragile self-esteem and left him so much more vulnerable. It is heartbreaking to see this man that I love so broken by the changes in my life.

I have been so confused. I have also been honest. These two things don’t work well too reassure anybody.

It’s possible, that my husband would have been up for an open relationship way back at the beginning when he was still young and excited for life’s possibilities. At the age of sixty he is offered freedom – and he feels that he is too old to enjoy it. It’s not surprising that he feels more than a little angry and resentful about it.

None of this has been his choice.

It can help to remember that a cheating spouse who wants to open up a primary relationship is taking steps towards more honesty, showing respect for you and your relationship. They wouldn’t go to all this trouble if they wanted to get rid of you

Page 190

Depending on your point of view, I have not cheated on my husband. He feels that I have in sharing my inner fantasies with strangers rather than with him. I understand his point of view, but I don’t subscribe to it. I respect his feelings, but I cannot take responsibility for them.

Is that fair of me?

When I started sharing how I was feeling about myself, and about “us”, this was an opening up within the relationship. I had never been open with him about my Innermost thoughts and feelings before. I’d not been able to face them myself, so how could I?

The people I spoke to online were crucial in gaining enough understanding of myself to be able to express what I’m understood at that point to my husband.

He gradually lost control of his own mental health in the process and much destruction has been done as a result.

At the risk of being accused of the “poor mes” and playing the victim, I do not feel rewarded for my honesty. It has been devastating for my husband. By extension, it has been devastating for me.

I struggle to see how this is ever going to get any easier unless I can trust that I can say whatever the latest crazy thing that’s in my mind without my husband going into meltdown.

The problem, I feel, is with both of us. I cannot predict what impact my words will have on him with any accuracy. He cannot predict, with any accuracy, how he will react to whatever I say.

This feels volatile.

To be continued …