The Ethical Slut Read Free Page B

you wish to resculpt, that’s fine too. We do not believe that successfully recovering sex addicts have to be monogamous unless they want to be.
“EASY”
    Is there, we wonder, some virtue in being difficult?
Myths about Sluts
    One of the challenges facing the ethical slut is our culture’s insistence that, simply because “everybody knows” something, it must obviously be true. We urge you to regard with great skepticism any sentence that begins “Everybody knows that …” or “Common sense tells us that …” or “It’s common knowledge that …” Often, these phrases are signposts for cultural belief systems that may be antisexual, monogamy-centrist, and/or codependent. Questioning “what everybody does” can be difficult and disorienting, but we have found it to be rewarding: questioning is the first step toward generating a new paradigm, your own paradigm of how you ought to be.
    Cultural belief systems can be very deeply rooted in literature, law, and archetypes, which means that shaking them from your own personal ethos can be difficult. But the first step in exploring them is, of course, recognizing them. Here, then, are some of the pervasive mythsthat we have heard all our lives and have come to understand are most often untrue and destructive to our relationships and our lives.
MYTH #1: LONG-TERM MONOGAMOUS
RELATIONSHIPS ARE THE ONLY REAL RELATIONSHIPS
    Lifetime monogamy as an ideal is a relatively new concept in human history and makes us unique among primates. There is nothing that can be achieved within a long-term monogamous relationship that cannot be achieved without one. Business partnership, deep attachment, stable parenting, personal growth, care and companionship in old age are all well within the abilities of the slut.
    People who believe this myth may feel that something is wrong with them if they aren’t in a committed twosome—if they prefer to remain free agents, if they discover themselves loving more than one person at a time, if they have tried one or more traditional relationships that didn’t work out. Instead of questioning the myth, they question themselves: Am I incomplete? Where is my other half? The myth teaches them that they are not good enough in and of themselves. Often people develop a very unrealistic view of couplehood—Mr. or Ms. Right will automatically solve all their problems, fill all the gaps, make their lives complete.
    A subset of this myth is the belief that if you’re really in love, you will automatically lose all interest in others; thus, if you’re having sexual or romantic feelings toward anyone but your partner, you’re not really in love. This belief has cost many people a great deal of happiness through the centuries yet is untrue to the point of absurdity: a ring around the finger does not cause a nerve block to the genitals.
    And, we must ask, if monogamy is the only acceptable option, the only true form of love, than are these agreements genuinely consensual? We have many friends who have chosen to be monogamous, and we applaud them. But how many people in our society consciously make that choice?
MYTH #2: ROMANTIC LOVE IS THE ONLY REAL LOVE
    Look at the lyrics of popular songs, or read some classical poetry: the phrases we choose to describe romantic love don’t really sound all thatpleasant. Crazy in love, love hurts, obsession, heartbreak … these are all descriptions of mental or physical illness.
    The thing that gets called romantic love in this culture seems to be a heady cocktail of lust and adrenaline, sparked by uncertainty, insecurity, perhaps even anger or danger. The chills up the spine that we recognize as passion are, in fact, the same physical phenomenon as hair rising up on a cat’s back and are caused by the fight-or-flight response.
    This kind of love can be thrilling and overwhelming and sometimes a hell of a lot of fun, but it is not the only “real” kind of love, nor is it always a good basis for an ongoing