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VET POTENTIAL LOVERS,
ADVICE FOR NEWBIES
Hi Sasha and Janet,
My name is A. My wife and I have been married for 2 years
but been together
(with a few interruptions) for 10. We have been drawn of
late to the polyamorous
lifestyle but have not made any final decisions and have not
acted upon our
curiosities.
I saw your video on pajamatv and was impressed by what you
both had to say. I
really respect what you and other polyamorous people are
doing, and regardless
of whether my wife S and I decide to become active in
polyamory, I just want to
say thank you for being open and honest and having the
backbone to live the way
you want to live.
The more we talk, the more we research, the more we are
drawn to being a part of something as beautiful as polyamory.
At the same time, we are apprehensive about the potential
pitfalls.
Do you have any advice for a married couple who is thinking
of opening up their
relationship? We are open, accepting, excited, but nervous.
Best,
A
Sasha:
Get to know prospective lovers well--e-groups, meetups,
conferences, dates with socially liberal friends give the
info to avoid drunks, drama and undesirables
as lovers and find like-minded candidates.
Then with wife, discuss, giving each other veto power. If
it's go-ahead, make
sure the candidates have no significant other lovers who'd
suffer if you took
their sweetheart(s) on as lovers (call or meet the SOs if
possible).
Then create a specifically erotic date as Janet suggests
below.
Janet: THE POLY LOVE-IN: SHARING SACRED SEXUALITY When you
and new lovers get together to make love for the first time,
you can better honor your fertility and health concerns once
you've heard each other's sexual health information, asked
questions and perhaps performed a home-HIV test.
Each of you tells her or his sexual history. Share your test
results for
sexually transmitted and other contagious diseases. Say who
and how you've
touched sexually since your last HIV tests. Say what methods
you used (or
didn't) for disease protection. State your fertility status.
Notice your partners' body language and eye movements as
they share their sexual history. Body and eye movement can
indicate truth (people lie most about sex). Ask questions
until you get enough information to make intelligent
decisions.
WEIGH WHAT WANT & DON'T WANT
Focus, breathe, find your center. Notice signals your body
sends you. Is your
belly tense, head aching, breathing rapid? Then gather your
thoughts and take
turns saying what you seek, prefer and what you do not want
sexually with each
person at the love-in (. Consider all health, emotional and
social factors and
remember, you can say "No" anytime.
CENTER YOURSELF BETWEEN INNER GIVER & TAKER
You may hide your desires if your Giver-- an inner voice
that says to please
others first–dominates you. Your Giver knows how to make
other people
comfortable. Trouble is, sometimes giving becomes more than
an option, your
Giver becomes your main voice, the only one you hear inside.
Your Giver takes
you over and can ignore your own needs.
If your Giver dominates you, you do what other people want
you to do so they'll
like you. You think, "I'm nice and just naturally try to
make them happy first."
This may please them and you for a while.
But when you automatically please others first, you suppress
your ability to
choose how you want to interact sexually with your lovers at
the love-in. The
Giver, always gratifying others, keeps your Taker--the part
of you that wants to
meet your own needs–offstage.
Offstage in your unconscious, your Taker gathers strength
and bitterness and can
explode without consideration of your inner ecology or
relations with your
polymates.
What works for me is inclusive, pair-bonded loving
(Mono-poly), with Sasha and I
each having a veto on one another's sexual involvement.
Sasha never
exercises his veto, but I often do. In inclusive loving, All
sexualloving takes
place in each others' presence. Relating to other couples
has to be right for
both of us, no small requirement, since we're bi, eccentric
and intense and we
need all-round approbation with our lovers.
Show your protective voices that you can, from your
discerning center,
experiment with new behaviors and still feel secure. From
your Center, face your
sexual self, overcome your family and cultural programming,
burn karma, heal
trauma and drop inhibitions. If your love group encourages
emotional release and
reprogramming, emotions you experience in the love-in give
you a chance to heal
and learn.
STATE DESIRES & LIMITATIONS
Tell each person how you want to share sex with her or him.
You don't have to
justify a request; just state it. Hear but don't judge
other's requests.
When you request, say, double penetration, your love-in
lovers may or may not
give you that. If they ask you to do something you need not
comply. Offer each
other alternative intimacies. Match your sexual interactions
with your comfort
level. Perhaps, refrain from coitus at first. A man may, in
some instances,
ejaculate only with his mate but share oral sex with others
in the group.
Many woman, like me, were forced, raped, controlled,
manipulated or dominated by
male caretakers or lovers. We may have attitudes that limit
our sexuality.
If you have primary partners present at the love-in, after
each person
expresses sexual wants and limits, tell your partners how
you feel about their
sexual desires for others and ask them to say how s/he feels
about your sexual
requests. Reach consensus with your partners before engaging
in sex with others.
Always honor and respect the wants, desires and needs of
your partners to limit
how you relate to the others at the love-in. Give your
primary partners they
want and thereby create space for their healing, space where
they can feel safe.
Then they can open up later on in the current encounter or
future episodes
rather than retreat and shut down from this experience or
from polyamory.
Your partner, through hesitancy, reflects a part that is not
healed within him
or in your relationship and must be addressed before he can
expand sexually. The
sexual sharing must satisfy your partners as well as you for
polyamory to work.
You may have requested something on the line of the
following: "Sue, I would
like you to have intercourse with me and Joe, I would like
for you to stroke my
hair while Sue and I make love."
Sue may respond, "Tom, I don't know you that well at this
point and I am not
comfortable with saying yes right now, but I would be
willing to let you honor
my pearl." [kiss her clitoral head]
Joe, who is Sue's husband may add, "It's fine with me if you
make love with Sue
at this time, and I am open to it whenever she is
comfortable. However, I would
like to assist your joining, at that time. And yes, I would
love to stoke your
hair when you two make love and also pleasure you in any way
you would both
desire."
Ann, your wife may interject, "I wouldn't be comfortable
with Sue and my husband
joining together and Tom assisting until after Sue and I
connect first and get
to know each other intimately in that fashion. Once we know
and love each other,
then I am open to anything."
And so on around the group until all have expressed their
desires, preferences
and limitations. But, no matter what you expressed in the
beginning, you can
change your mind at any time.
And honor emotional interruptions to sexualloving. Honor a
person's feelings and
don't take them personally. An upset person, her history and
her life's
experiences trigger her and she'll process and reveal what
is up for her in her
own time and way.
As a group, you can be there for her in ways she previously
never thought
possible. Let her release things long pent up and heal and
reprogram herself.
In my first love-in I had a negative reaction in the middle
of sexualloving.
We were in a group of about 6 people where many were
pleasuring each other. One
man who had been orally playing with me asked permission if
he could put on a
condom and enter me. At first I said, Yes," then I said,
"No," then "Yes," "No,"
"Yes" and finally, "No!" It was a miracle! I had broken
through my Giver
for the first time in my life and finally stated what I
actually wanted, which
was no! That didn't mean no forever, that meant no for now.
Or maybe it was
never, but I didn't have to justify it or explain it.
This was the first time in my life I had been asked what I
wanted. Before the
love-in, I had always thought that I was responsible for
men's erections, so I
was very wary of getting alone with anyone unless I was
absolutely, positively
sure that I wanted to be sexually intimate with them.
Because I was sexually abused as a child, it was difficult
for me to be
assertive and say no in sexual situations. I hadn't the
courage to state what I
wanted. In fact, I hardly knew what I wanted. I discovered
what I wanted through
time and by experiencing what I did not want.
Painfully shy, blocked, and conditioned not to hurt the
other person's feelings,
I gave in sometimes to what they wanted so as not to hurt
them. Afterwards I
would feel awful; guilty, ashamed, repulsed, frightened. I
became adept at
avoiding certain people and places where I could be trapped,
so it didn't happen
very often. But once was far too many. Consequently, due to
my inability to be
strong and state my wishes, I experienced a few situations
in my life where I
was almost date-raped.
When I became fully aware of what had just happened, I
cried. At last I was
respected and honored enough that my wishes and desires had
come into play. No
longer was I just a sexual object, expected to perform,
satisfy and obey. Here
my pleasure and comfort was placed first, before anyone
else's. The two men in
that group were true gentlemen, who didn't make me feel
guilty for wanting or
not wanting what I wanted.
Poly group lovemaking is adult play. As children we romped
free in the streets
or fields, playing football or racing till our hearts desire
and our bodies
collapsed. If we set the scene, create a safe and
comfortable format, and honor
and respect all the participants, we create the foundation
for an adult
playground, where once again we cut loose and free ourselves
to experience the
same abandon that we knew long ago and far away when we were
young and innocent.
Loving together with your beloveds and including them in
decisions of the heart
and mind allows for love to grow, expand and include others
from a place of
fullness and feeling complete. This miracle of group poly
lovemaking allows you
to actualize in a sexual sense the feelings of loving more
than one that you
have already experienced in your life because you have loved
more than one
friend, family member or child at the same time.
Sasha and I enjoy our adventures in polyland. Just like
monogamy, sometimes
relationships with others works, sometimes they work for a
while, and sometimes
they don't work at all.
What I've learned about myself from this lifestyle is that I
love everyone I've
ever loved and that love is independent of involvement and
locale. Through
daring to love, no matter if it is "win" or "lose", I've
learned that I have an
incredible ability to love and that the more that I love the
more I can love.
For me I have discovered that love truly is endless,
boundless and eternal. As a
result of my experiences, I believe that the natural
condition of souls is
"loving oneness." I also believe that when we humans die we
realize that we
truly do love each and every one of us; equally, totally,
unconditionally and
completely.
My poly life and this living experiment are my attempt to
bring a bit of heaven
here to earth, if only for myself and those that dare to
explore with us.
janetlessin@aol.com
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World Polyamory Association 
