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

If you really want to be the world’s greatest lover, and you want to know exactly what pleases your partner the most, try masturbating in the same room.

First you may need to vent some anger, which will include finding a safe and constructive way to experience it and release some of it. You’ll probably need to make agreements ahead of time about how to do this: Not at your partner? Not in front of the kids? Not behind the wheel? Not after getting high or drinking? Where is it safe for everybody for

“Just tell me I don’t have anything to worry about.”

Most people, though, learned to hide for their own safety or to fight back to protect themselves or to become small and pathetic so that people would take pity on them. If you have any of these responses to conflict—defensiveness, rage, withdrawal, weepiness, whatever—it is certain that you developed them for a good reason.

Cultural blind spots can show up as centrisms: couple-centrism, heterocentrism, eurocentrism. Nonmonogamy, extramarital sex, and open relationships all define themselves by what they aren’t, thus implying that they’re some exception to the “normal” relationships that “normal” people have.

Occasionally, you may decide to dismiss something that’s bugging you because it seems too trivial. However, if that issue comes into your mind three times, it is obviously still bothering you. Perhaps you could start a conversation with, “There’s a small thing that’s been bothering me.”

Good communication begins with everybody talking about their feelings, long before they get to discussing the pros and cons of any solutions. Good communication is based on identifying our feelings, expressing them, and getting validation that our partner hears and understands what we are saying, whether or not they agree. Emotions are not opinions

Here’s a happy way to answer the question of what is sex: if you or your partner is wondering whether you’re having sex at any given moment, you probably are. We like to use an expanded definition of sex, including more than genitals, more than intercourse, more than penetration, and, while we definitely wouldn’t leave them out, much more than the

The Jealousy Workbook: Exercises and Insights for Managing Open

“Oh well—AFOG,” which stands, she says, for “Another Fucking Opportunity for Growth.”