The Ethical Slut

It's important to remember that a breakup isn't necessarily the end of a relationship- it may be, instead, a shift to a different kind of relationship, possibly a relationship between courteous acquaintances, or friends, or maybe even lovers. One of the nice things about being an ethical slut is that your relationships become non-binary; you may have as many ways of relating to your friends and lovers as you have friends and lovers. Dossie remembers: I dated Bill for such a long time- a year and a half -that by the time I announced to our friends that we were officially a couple, everybody laughed at me: big news, ha ha. We moved in together, and that lasted for all of six months before we blew up in a massive fight and separated. It was a year before we could be around each other much, but then we started having sex again, because our sex together had always been really hot. And we wound up getting together once a month or so for fully nine years as good friends, continuing to have the same wonderful steamy sex that had brought us together in the first place.

When a relationship shifts dramatically, it's great if everybody feels calm enough to separate with affection and equanimity. But all too often, partnerships break up, divorce happens, in a harsh way, with painful, angry, hurt and bitter feelings. Grief at losing a relationship that we had counted on cuts deep, and while we are going through the hurtful process of an unwelcome separation, none of us are at our best.

A typical grief process takes about three months to get past the acute phase. What that means is that feelings of grief, loss, abandonment, anger, resentment and what-have-you that are overwhelming or intolerable today will probably seem sad but manageable three months from now. A useful rule of thumb is that as the feelings die down, it's a good time to get back into communication with your ex- have some coffee or go to a movie or some such. It would be a shame not to come out of this breakup with at least a friendship, after all you've shared.

WHO GETS THE FRIENDS? One of the joyous consequences of open sexual lifestyles is that everybody tends to get interconnected in an extended family, sexual circle or tribe. When a couple breaks up with lots of pain, then the whole circle is affected. For the people in pain, it can feel like there is no privacy. Your friends and other lovers may be full of their own ideas about who done who wrong. It hurts them when they feel your pain, so the entire circle may start looking for someone to blame.

Ethically speaking, the separating couple has some responsibility toward their intimate circle, and the circle has some responsibility