Non-Monogamy Hacks With The Ethical Slut

All relationships, monogamous or otherwise, feature some degree of conflict andinsecurity. It’s like forgetting your phone charger or listening to screaming babies on trainsor watching teenagers dancing on TikTok – it’s just a truth of life, you’re never going to get away from it.But relationships can become strained by these issues if the participants don’t have a fully-stocked arsenal of self-awareness and tools to navigate the difficult times. 

On top of the issues that people have to deal with in any relationship style, non-monogamists have to also contend with society’s norms and values that place a weighty social stigma on our lifestyles. So we need a non-monogamous community – advocates and fellow compatriots we can rely on for guidance and support. 

We also need to take the time to educate ourselves using quality resources on the topic. If you move in certain circles, there’s always one book you see on people’s bookshelves –The Ethical Slut, written by Dossie Easton and Janet Hardy – it’s pretty much the bible on this topic. It’s a practical roadmap for people who engage in non-monogamous relationships.

Janet Hardy is an author and educator on alternative sexualities and relationships, she’s written 13 books on the topic. As part of our on-going attempts to help our community develop in the craft of sluttery, we asked her some questions about non-monogamy. 

Klub Verboten: What's a piece of advice that you wish you'd been given when you first started on your journey of non-monogamy?

Janet Hardy: Expect to fuck it up sometimes, everybody does. Be prepared for that to happen and have some strategies in mind for how you're going to deal with it when it does happen, because it will. There's any number of ways to screw it up, you might forget to tell somebody something they needed to know for example, but you need the strategies for talking things through when it happens. 

You can't change the past, someone has fucked up, but the question is how you go from there to strengthening your relationship based on the knowledge that they did something they would prefer not to have or shouldn't have? And how do you prevent that from happening again in the same way? You need to look towards the future, rather than the past, when that happens. 

It's very difficult; everybody wants to blame when something like that happens. Blaming is the most useless thing in the world, because that's not what you're trying to achieve. Blaming is disempowering, because if what went wrong is all the other person's fault, then you’re stuffed – you can't do anything to fix it. It's also fighting about the past which cannot be changed. All of our first instincts are to blame when there's conflict, that would be a really good thing to learnnot to do early on.

Why do we tend to blame? 

It’s learned from earliest childhood. You know, ‘There are cookies gone from the cookie jar? Who did it?’ (Or biscuits I guess they would be there.) Nobody likes to be the bad guy. Nobody likes to be the one who's done wrong. So it's always tempting to go into a defensive mode and blame, so you don't have to take the rap for whatever you did wrong. But that’s not constructive because once the blame has been placed, what happens next? There's no place to go from there.

How can we try and unlearn this behaviour? 

There are ways of making conflicts less painful and damaging. They mostly have to do with not lashing out or going into defensive modes. Conflict tends to breed adrenaline and when you're adrenalized, you're not very smart. 

So we suggest setting some time aside to have the argument rather than just racing into it with your heart pounding. ​​When you find yourself falling into that angry, defensive place, that's a good time to end the argument for now. Schedule another time to talk about it, because once people go into that rage mode nothing good is gonna happen from there. For all intents and purposes, the argument is over at that moment anyway – at that point, it's about hurting or blaming the other person, not about solving a problem.

Should you set aside time to talk about your relationship even if nothing has come up? 

Yes, I think it should be something you set time aside to do. And it may be that what will work well in any given relationship is to have a fixed time like once a week to go over the big sort of existential question of the relationship. I talked to one couple who send their son to bed and have what they call the ‘News of the Week in Review’, which was their time to talk about all manner of questions. I think that's admirable, that's a really good relationship strategy. Because if you don't talk about things fairly frequently, they're gonna build up – that's a long-time habit of mine that I'm trying to break now. 

How should you approach jealousy? 

In the earlier days of poly, it was pretty common to pretend that successful poly never involves jealousy. Of course it involves jealousy! As the parent of two children, I can tell you jealousy is built in. The difference between poly people and monogamous people in regards to jealousy is when a monogamous person feels jealous, they react to it by attempting to change their partner's behaviour. Whereas in poly, when we feel jealous, we try to work on it inside ourselves. We may ask for some accommodation while we figure things out or if we need help with feeling more secure, we can ask for help. But we try to work on ourselves. 

If you feel jealous and your reaction is to ask your partner to change their behaviours, you're never going to get any better at feeling jealous, you're never going to conquer your own fears. One of the things you learn real fast in poly is what it is you don't like about yourself. Because when you're feeling jealous, in my experience, it nearly always goes back to personal insecurities about yourself.

Can you give me an example?

In my last long-term, poly relationship, I noticed that when I had the hardest time with jealousy was when my partner was dating someone younger or thinner than me. Can you guess what I don't like about myself? I'm not going to get younger. And, let's face it, I'm probably not going to get thinner. So it’s on me to figure out how to get better at owning those things and loving myself and feeling secure in myself. Because asking him to change his behaviour so I don't have to look at the things I don't want is not a good strategy. 

What is something that you can do if your partner is experiencing jealousy? 

‘What can I do to help?’ is a good thing to ask. You’re letting them know that you're still on their side and you’ve not abandoned them emotionally because they're having a tough time. Some of the things that help people who are having jealousy issues might be some reassurance, it might be a commitment to some personal time together on a regular basis. Usually if you're feeling jealous in a relationship, it's because there's something you're afraid you're going to lose. So, figure out what that is and start to find out how you might be able to get it in some other way than asking your partner to change their behaviour.

What do you do when you feel jealous?

My usual strategy for feeling upset about anything is physical exercise. My favourite thing to do is to find the filthiest, grimy, crowded corner of my house and throw boxes around and reorganise everything. I get filthy and so sore that I can't move for a day or two, and then I feel better.

What are some mistakes that people make when they’re opening a relationship?

The biggest mistake I see is assuming that the first time there's a disagreement it isn't working, the relationship is over and ‘bye’. There will be conflict, there will be difficult moments. You should make an emotional commitment to doing your best to stay present during those – not stomping off in a huff and losing something that's good because you got angry once. Make a commitment to talking those moments through as calmly as you can, try to come up with some ways of making them easier in the future.

You can follow Janet Hardy  on Twitter. 

Written by  Simon Doherty