Uncomfortable Slut: The Dark Side of Polyamory
One of the major qualities of the therapeutic age is that banal traits acquire new, often compound, names. A person that likes sweet nothings and tender glances is a demisexual. A person that likes biting and spanking is a sadomasochist. And a person that lives in an eternal adolescence of the mind and body, pontificating in /r/atheism-style on the liberation of their spunk and soul, and the additive infinities of love and pleasure, and why they aren’t technically cheating, and people aren’t naturally monogamous, and “actually, the bonobos,” and “I don’t want Mom’s white picket fence….”
That’s no longer the asshole giving you gonorrhea at a dimly lit party—that is a polyamorist. And they’re better than you.
Why? Because they’re right and you’re wrong. While writing this article, I committed to reading The Ethical Slut: A Practical Guide to Polyamory, Open Relationships & Other Adventures, the 1997 self-help Bible of polyamory well-fingered by denizens of feminist bookstores. Scrolling through an archive.org html on a long, hot weekend, I made my way through chapters like “Slutstyles” and “Jealousy Chapter” and “Group Sex, Public Sex, Orgies.” I got inured to terms like “primary” (read: partner/spouse) and “fluid bonding” (having unprotected sex exclusively with your primary).
It was hard not to walk away a “proud slut.” Much like, as my middle school debate teacher explained, anyone would choose crispy, warm apple pie over slimy, cold pudding, anyone would choose “fun,” “hot,” “loving” polyamory over “abusive,” “possessive,” “controlling” monogamy. In the introduction, the authors explain why they chose “slutdom.” Author Dossie Easton shares an autobiographical portrait of monogamy that is, naturally, both fair and exhaustive: “bruised and pregnant,” she left the abusive father of her child, who beat her and screamed “you slut” when another man looked at her. After she left, he sent her suicide threats, threatened murder, and even tried to set their house, along with ex-wife and child, on fire.
No one wants fires! So no monogamy. So what happens next? Well, as the authors explain to us, we need to unlearn the “starvation economy” schema, one which originates in sibling rivalry and convinces us that fucking five other people might impact your “primary” partner—i.e. your husband or wife.
Here’s how you go from the starvation economy to ethical slutdom:
“Our belief is that the human capacity for sex and love and intimacy is far greater than most people think, possibly infinite, and that having a lot of satisfying connections simply makes it possible for you to have a lot more. Imagine what it would feel like to live in an abundance of sex and love, to feel that you had all of both that you could possibly want, free of any feelings of deprivation or neediness. Imagine how strong you would feel if you got to exercise your "love muscles" that much, and how much love you would have to give!”
Is the love muscle the…? Anyway. What a fantastic system! If one lover was great, how about ten? You’ll simply have ten times as much love! And once you have “an abundance” of sex and love, you will never feel needy again (assuming your ten lovers and you, as the authors advise, “keep a fairly detailed datebook or computerized calendar” of your discreet encounters).
And while we’re cleaning house, remember that polyamory is absolutely anti-hierarchical. “We avoid ranking,” the authors tell us, because “hierarchies produce victims at the top as well as the bottom.” That said, you must remember to establish specific rules with your primary, secondaries, and so forth. Much as partnership agreements in the business world dictate the rights and remedies of the contractors, and shape their interactions with third parties, these elaborate agreements will ensure your primary partners of their safe and special status.
And that safe and special status is important. Because remember: having other lovers has nothing to do with your primary partner. That’s why jealousy is bad, the authors explain in an audaciously, almost insouciantly, brief chapter.
But since, they explain, it’s “without a doubt, a very common experience in our culture,” what are you supposed to do about jealousy? Well, uh—and I’m not making their suggestions up—bubble baths, “your favorite teddy bear,” crying, “pound[ing] on a pillow,” playing with crayons, “talk[ing] obsessively on the ’Net,” writing “FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK I HATE THIS! in bright red ink,” masturbation, distracting yourself with videos while your husband or wife is on a “hot date.” Also, the “poor baby” method—get a friend to agree to just say “poor baby” to you on the phone while your primary’s shtupping a secondary.
And just ask your primary to reassure you that you have nothing to worry about. They aren’t going to replace you. Let them play around, give them a wide leash, and don’t worry a bit: they’ll always come back to you, because they love you, and always will.
Except, wait—the book explains that we need to be polyamorous because you can’t “choose” not to fall in love. And, we’re polyamorous because we don’t hierarchize people, we see the value in all of them. We don’t cut off our hearts.
So it sounds like your primary isn’t really safe. Either the secondary’s relegated to true secondary status (she’s a goomah, side bitch, mistress), or the primary’s always on trial period, always at risk of losing their seat. Always being compared to everyone else in the world.
In practice, both are often happening, with brutal rules for secondaries and brutal insecurities for primaries. I knew one polycule (network of people in non-monogamous relationships) where the rule was that the man couldn’t cuddle with the “secondary” girlfriend after sex: “no aftercare.” (The Ethical Slut often refers to “no sleepover” rules.) I knew one guy who went “open relationship” while visiting Thailand with the bros. I knew one performance artist (she masturbates while playing piano) who pressured her mortified boyfriend into letting her have an affair with a mediocre filmmaker. Turns out, “polyamory” is often a way of cheating without technically lying—an ultimatum with a nice, progressive sheen.
The thing is, a lot of what the polyamorous people say has some truth to it. It’s true, as they say, that Mr. or Ms. Right isn’t going to “fill all the gaps”: s/he won’t fix everything or make your life complete. But that’s not because you aren’t having sex with enough people; it’s because spiritual satisfaction comes from within. Everything whole and valuable about you, ultimately, occurs between your two ears and with your higher power. But rather than cultivating the soul, polyamory translates everyone into stuff on a grocery store shelf, compared to some idealized shopping list. Polyamory is consumerism disguised as spiritual evolution.
In fact, polyamory actually devalues people. The monogamous triumph isn’t to actually think that one person has every beautiful quality in the world. It’s to give up on looking for “qualities” and see the holiness in one person. To sacrifice the search for the hottest thing, the coolest thing, the sexiest thing, because you know that search never ends. Every person, in a holy and loving gaze, can be perfect. Can be enough. But to see that, you need to stop looking.
It’s insane to say you feel the full appreciation and acceptance of another person, but you also need other lovers. One doesn’t simply add up the love and sex in their life—having multiple lovers does change things, obviously, has a negative marginal utility, like that fifth slice of pizza that makes you sick, and everyone intuitively knows that, especially the ethical slut that’s scrawling “FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK” in a journal.
Until you admit the other reason for polyamory: you’re still getting notches on your belt. You’re still using sex for ego. That’s why the book frequently refers to the “art” of flirting: the ethical slut still loves the conquest. She loves the game.
So she can’t quit.
And that’s totally normal. It’s the default state, at least for secular people: to view sex as a competitive, Houellebecqian feudal realm. And in the land of romantic dodecahedrons, your fiefdom can grow ever larger. But is that really better? Is it even more natural? Because if polyamory is more natural, then why does it require Fortune 500-company levels of negotiation?
Reading The Ethical Slut was like reading an anthropology of Martians. Within its solipsistic world, polyamory seems like the only logical, if still a little cringey, choice. But the book requires you to suspend everything you recognize as human. You’re supposed to believe that sexual relationships aren’t really different from friendship. According to the book, “We like to think that all sensual stimulation is sexual, from a shared emotion to a shared orgasm.”
But that’s bullshit. We all know sex is different, and if it weren’t, you wouldn’t have to draft multilateral treaties to have polyamory. It’s good to have friends. It’s good to have multiple confidantes. But people aren’t just fungible widgets in a factory. You don’t just lump them in a shopping bag until your heart is full. Not with lovers.
Instead, lovers are like Le Petit Prince’s rose. In Antoine Saint-Exupéry’s store, the prince spends years tending to a rose on his asteroid, watering her, building shelters between her and the cold. But he grows tired of her demands and leaves. On Earth, he discovers rows and rows of rose bushes, and at first is furious: his rose hadn’t been the only one! He’d wasted his time! But soon, he realizes that though there might be millions of roses in the universe, his rose was special simply because she was his rose.
It’s good to question our norms, of course, and it’s true that love is challenging for almost everyone, monogamous or not. And it’s true that no one can “find everything” in one person. But the polyamorous should push a little deeper, and realize that they won’t find everything in two or three or ten other people, either. The answer is to stop searching for “everything” and to water, care for, and love your one rose in the universe.
Editor’s Note: This piece is part of our series of “whitepills”—essays on how to be a good person, how to live a good life, and how to do good in an upside-down world.
Follow The Personality Girl on Twitter.
