Radical Honesty?

I have been thinking about honesty and radical honesty the past couple of days. I haven't read the book, although I have poked around on the website. I recommend looking at the FAQ page. My other information about it comes from Tristan Taormino's Opening Up (pages 42-45), which admittedly is a biased perspective as Tristan isn't a big fan of the practice.

After looking through the website, though, and reflecting on Tristan's take on it, I don't think I am a fan of radical honesty. Honesty, yes. Radical honesty, no. What is the difference?

To me, honesty is about being open with my feelings with myself and the people in my life. It means being clear about my intentions, motivations, desires, and needs. It means owning my feelings. It means owning my mistakes and making a commitment to doing better, as best I can. It means asking questions. It means answering questions. It means keeping the lines of communication open as much as possible. It also means taking other people's feelings into consideration, and framing your honest communication in ways that take other people into account. It means recognizing that what I say has an impact on others. While I can't be responsible for how others react and feel about my communication, I can understand that what I say and how I say it has real consequences for the listener.

Radical honesty, from my limited understanding, is about being honest at the expense of anyone else's feelings. My feelings and ideas and opinions become the most important thing when practicing radical honesty. I understand the need to be honest in order to alleviate discomfort around something that you previously were being dishonest about. I think being in tune with your mind and body is really important. I know that if I feel guilty (feeling like my behavior and ideals of myself are in discordance) or uncomfortable with something, I have a serious need to disclose whatever it is I am keeping in. Being honest can be a serious release, and build trust. However, I think this also needs to be balanced with kindness, compassion, and consideration. Spouting off simply to release your own feelings is not appropriate in my mind. I also definitely understand the value in not maintaining a persona simply because you are scared to be your real self. I think the Radical Honesty take on this aspect, on being an authentic and real person, is a valuable one.

I really do think that context is important. I think that the people and personalities involved are important. I think that keeping kindness and compassion as core elements of honesty and communication is key. I am also really unsure that radical honesty is the way to build relationships in a healthy and sustainable way.

TRISTAN TAORMINO!!!

Oh. Em. GEE.
J and I had the privilege of seeing Tristan Taormino speak tonight on open relationships. She workshopped the most common challenges in open relationships, discussed ways to address those challenges, and took questions. Afterwards? Ice cream and book signing. And I told her I presented to a Human Sexuality class using her book (Opening Up) as a guide! It was so fantastic!!

Here is the gist of what she talked about:
Common Challenge #1: Not a real "yes." Meaning, you or a partner agrees to something, whether that be your relationship or a rule/agreement, but you or a partner doesn't truly mean the "yes." Solution? Informed consent. Get all of the information you can, know yourself, honor yourself, honor your partner(s), and make an informed and honest decision.
Common Challenge #2: New Relationship Energy (NRE). She says that the solution is as follows: Acknowledgment of the NRE on the part of all partners, patience on the part of the existing partner(s), compassion on the part of all partners, and channeling NRE into existing relationships.
Common Challenge #3: Time. Time in finite, unlike love or lust. She said that it is the number one challenge she hears about, even above jealousy. Solutions? Organization, making and keeping a schedule... and Google Calendar. She is convinced that a poly person working at Google came up with the app :-) Also, she discussed that time often has emotional baggage associated with it for many people- that is has significance in some way. And so this also means that if a conflict is arising over time, it can sometimes be managed by addressing underlying fears or insecurities associated with time.
Common Challenge #4: Miscommunication and misunderstanding. Solutions include a variety of things most of aspire to do well: communicating clearly, being honest with ourselves and our partners, communicating boundaries, and trusting our partners. She describes honesty as "Telling everything you know," which I liked.
She said that it is critical to distinguish a challenging situation between a miscommunication or misunderstanding and the next challenge, agreement violation, because this will inform partners' reactions and ability to manage the situation and move forward.
Common Challenge #5: Agreement Violation. Sometimes an agreement violation occurs because an agreement is not working. Sometimes it is because a partner never intended to honor the agreement. Sometimes it is because a partner constantly wants to push the boundaries. Agreement violations can be extremely challenging and difficult to work through. One of her solutions is renegotiation, but that depends on a lot of factors. A relationship and situation needs to be amenable to renegotiation. 
Common Challenge #6: Jealousy. Tristan believes that jealousy is both an innate and learned emotion, so while it is something that we will probably always have to acknowledge and manage, we can unlearn a lot of what culture has taught us. She walked us through the constellation of negative emotions that make us feel jealousy:
-Envy: she describes envy as thinking the "grass is always greener"- that our partner's other partners are always "more" something or "better" than us in some or many ways. Solutions: self-awareness, self-examination, and giving yourself a reality check. You are awesome, too!! And people are people: no one is Super Man or Wonder Women.
-Competitiveness: We are taught that we are always competing to be number one. This is detrimental to learning and engaging in a "both/and/poly/open" relationship style, where ideally and hopefully no one is competing for anything. Solution: recognize that "It's not about you." Recognize your self-worth. Reality check!
-Possessiveness: Recognize you can never and never will own, colonize, possess your partner(s). Tied to this idea are the concepts of scarcity versus abundance mindsets. There is an abundance of love, attention, support, etc in the world, and your partner engaging in these things with other partners does not mean there is less for you. You don't own your partner(s) and they don't own you.
-Feeling excluded: My personal most noticeable emotion during a jealous time (and apparently pretty relevant to Tristan's personal experience as well). Solution: plan your own social events, and schedule to see others, when your partner is busy with someone else. This one is so simple to manage, given you have an adequate social network and support system that can distract you when your partner is with another partner.
-Obsessiveness: The spiraling out of control from other negative emotions. Stalking partner's partners online. Thinking the situation is 20 steps further along than it actually is. Solution: get a friend to talk you down. Reality check.
-Insecurity: She believe that most jealousy experiences are related to insecurity, and the final issue (fear). Solutions include: asking your partner(s) for reassurance, getting support from friends and/or a therapist
-Fear: We all have basic, base fears. Fear of abandonment, of being alone, of not finding someone else who will love us, etc. We need to address these fears, and become comfortable with our worst-case scenarios. Follow your fear to your absolute worst-case scenario and get comfortable with it. Most likely, it won't ever happen. 
Common Challenge #7: Change... she actually ran out of time and didn't talk about this one unfortunately!!
Common Challenge #8: Love. Solution: Love. <3


Alright. So....
My absolute most worthwhile moment from tonight was this revelation: Someone asked about compersion, and what would she say to someone who thinks that only true poly people experience compersion (if you don't remember, compersion is often thought about as the opposite of jealousy- many poly people describe as feeling joy for their partners when their partners experience joy). Her answer brought me confidence, happiness, and peace with where J and I are at in our relationship: Compersion can be your goal, it can be your ideal vision of yourself. But not all people experience it. And that is okay. If you experience tolerance and respect for your partner and their experiences, and your relationship is working for you, then that is great. Having a relationship marked by tolerance and respect is miles ahead of other couples who would scream and tear their hair out if they knew their partner wanted to sleep with or fall in love with someone else. I had felt many times over the past year that if I wasn't able to truly feel joy and happiness that J was sleeping with someone else, then there was something wrong with me, that our relationship wasn't yet "successful," and that as a result I didn't feel comfortable coming out to people who are not as familiar with open relationships for fear of being pointed as another "failure." But thank god. I now feel completely successful and comfortable with where I am, and we are, at. I don't have to feel joy and happiness and a floating sensation when J comes home from playing with someone. I can feel acceptance and respect. And that is fine. Our relationship is working, we are both satisfied, and we love each other.

So, tonight was amazing. And now we have plans to go Tristan's US premier of her Feminist Pornography show- I am so excited!! There will definitely be a blog post on that to come...

Safer Sex

The authors of The Ethical Slut (Easton and Liszt) maintain that the phrase “safer sex” has been around for a while, but I have only encountered “safe sex” in my sexuality education. The difference of “safer” versus “safe” makes a lot of sense to me now (I also encountered this subtle difference when reading Opening Up—see post below; J also has his own thoughts on the use of the two phrases). Sex is never 100% “safe”: there are always emotional, psychological, and mental consequences of sex, positive or negative. We can do what we can to mitigate negative consequences through healthy coping mechanisms- journaling, talking with friends or trusted figures in our lives, talking with partners, seeking professional help, etc. We can build on positive consequences, too (give me more of THAT please!). Most of us (i.e. not those without access) also have a lot of control in using physical barriers to mitigate the physical consequences of sex, which are the consequences most of us are familiar with—STIs (sexually transmitted infections), unwanted pregnancy, etc.

Sex, I think, is supposed to be a positive experience. It is a way for people to show caring, respect, and interest in a healthy and natural way. We don’t want negative consequences with sex to be the norm!

J and I have pretty strict rules about our safer sex practices. For one, we are constantly communicating about how our encounters go, to make sure that negative feelings aren’t cropping up and being repressed. We need to talk about potential and real negative feelings so we can address them and make sure that our experiences are as wonderful as possible. We also get tested for STIs every six months and make sure to have hard copies of our test results to share with potential partners. We expect the same of our other partners, and are unlikely to play with people who don’t get tested regularly, who can’t show us paperwork, or who do have an STI(s). It can be an initially difficult and disappointing decision to make: aw, darn! She is really cute! He made me laugh all night! But that is also the beauty of having these unabashedly open and honest relationships with other people: we trust others to be honest with us and respect our boundaries around safer sex, and we still gain awesome sexy friends! Both J and I highly value our mental and physical health. Sex would not be a positive experience if we had to lay wide awake at night wondering and agonizing over if we contracted an STI or had put ourselves or someone else at risk for an unwanted pregnancy.

One difficult thing J and I have encountered is our inability to find specific information about the transmission, risk levels, and ways to avoid contact with various STIs. We both have a basic understanding of many STIs, but without the guidance of a close family member in the women’s health field and medical school, we may have made different choices about playing with partners who have STIs.

Information about safer sex should be easy to understand and accessible—and not just to those of us who are over 18 and have family members in medical school. There should also be resources available to those who experience the historical and systemic counterparts of human sexuality—sexism, homophobia, rape, patriarchy. Everyone should feel empowered to protect themselves and have the ability to seek help from violent situations. Everyone’s body is worthy of respect and dignity. No one deserves his or her physical and emotional space to be infringed upon without explicit permission. Counseling, birth control, and access for these sorts of services (including financial access) should be available to everyone, regardless of age, ability level, gender, sexual orientation, religion, ethnicity, or race.

Sex should and can be a naturally safe way to express love, respect, caring, trust, and friendship. Keeping it safe and positive through respecting your boundaries and others’ boundaries is AWESOME! :-D

Opening Up, by Tristan Taormino

Tristan Taormino's Opening Up is amazing. It is practical, realistic, and amazingly helpful in thinking about all of the different issues that can arise from opening up your relationship. It was so helpful for me to read, and to use all of the different questions she poses in chapter eleven, Designing Your Open Relationship, to aid J and I in discussing what we want.

The first part of her book offers a brief history of open relationships, as well as debunks a number of myths surrounding open relationships. She has a series of questions to ask yourself about why you might want an open relationship, and offers explanations for why some people choose open relationships over monogamy. She also moves through the characteristics that make an open relationship a health relationship: consent, self-awareness, communication, honesty, setting and respecting boundaries, trust, fidelity, and commitment. The idea of fidelity for both J and I was really interesting, because it has such a connotation with cheating in monogamous relationships. But Tristan's idea about fidelity basically relates to honoring your commitments and keeping your promises. This version of fidelity fits with any relationship style, monogamous or nonmonogamous.

The second part of her book guides us through the main "forms" or "kinds" of open relationships. She discusses partnered nonmonogamy, swinging, polyamory, polyfidelity, and combinations of poly/mono and mono/nonmono relationships. For me, it was really helpful to see the broad characteristics of these kinds of open relationships, and it was also helpful to realize that it doesn't matter so much what the relationship is labeled; it is more important that both partners are happy with what the relationship is doing for them. I am not sure what I would call what J and I are "doing." It definitely started out as a swinging relationship, but after talking through all of the questions that Tristan poses, it could be something else.

The third section of Opening Up was my favorite I think. The who, what, when, and where checklists that she includes in chapter eleven were extremely helpful for me in knowing what kinds of questions to ask myself and to ask J. We were able to think of situations and our hypothetical reactions and feelings, and proactively address them. Tristan also has chapters on jealousy and other intense feelings (including insecurity, envy, feelings of loss, etc), compersion (which is generally thought of in the open relationship world as the opposite of jealousy- taking pleasure in your partner's pleasure), common challenges in open relationships, changes that can arise from having an open relationship, coming out or not to friends and family, raising children in open families, safer sex, and legal issues. My favorite chapters were those on designing your open relationship, jealousy, compersion, and coming out. The chapter on common challenges was thought-provoking for me. She discusses how to deal with New Relationship Energy (or NRE), time management, miscommunication, and agreement violations. This was an important chapter for me, because the time aspect of opening up has definitely been a concern for me. I also really enjoy her way of discussing safer sex. As someone who hopes to go into the field of sexuality education, I really appreciate that she says "safer sex" practices. Sex can be emotionally, psychologically, and mentally challenging, and is not always emotionally or psychologically "safe." Therefore, it is important to have good communication and honesty, while also using methods to prevent STIs and pregnancy if needed.

One of my favorite things about this book is the representation of the breadth of open relationships. Tristan includes anecdotes, opinions, rules and boundaries, and other quotes from the 126 people she interviewed for her book. While some (in fact, many) of the relationship styles represented were ones that I would shy away from for various reasons, it was very important to me to see that an open relationship is not "one" thing. There is not cookie-cutter mold for how to be in an open relationship. It takes clear communication, a reliance on being able to say what you need and want, an ability to truly respect and trust your partner, and an ability to be flexible to change for both yourself and your partner.

It can be horribly difficult to move through feelings of jealousy and insecurity, and fear of losing one's partner. I should know, since I just spent the entire day yesterday doing just that. And I don't mean to say that I am done with that process!! Being raised to believe that "the one" Prince Charming will complete you takes a while to undo, and even though the process of undoing that socialization can be challenging and heart-wrenching, it is totally worth it. I don't think that I would be satisfied going back to monogamy. I can see going back to monogamy for natural life reasons (death in the family, new job, moving to a new place, etc); having time to just be with my primary partner, J, during those times seems natural and expected. But I don't think we will ever be like we were before we started this process. And I wouldn't want to be.

I am now reading The Ethical Slut, a fairly popular and well-known title, and I am excited to finish it and write a post on my reactions to that book as well!

My last comment: Pick up Tristan Taormino's Opening Up if you are even interested in what an open relationship could be like for you!!

2-3 Month Recap (By K)

J and I began our search for a non-monogamous experience by going to a local swingers club, one that had excellent reviews online. It seemed like a very social and low pressure way to introduce ourselves to the scene. As it so happened, we met a fantastic couple our very first night there, and have grown quite close with them over the past two and a half months. We have all grown together through the experiences we have had, and are constantly evolving together through honest conversations, struggles creating and maintaining boundaries, challenges in being honest with ourselves and with each other, and moments of joy and friendship. We have definitely enjoyed getting to know each other inside and outside of the bedroom, and have found a deep friendship that surpasses, probably for many swingers, the stereotypical “swinging” relationship.

We have also experimented with a more casual swinging encounter, and it was just as much fun as our experiences with our more serious couple, just in different ways. There was no drama, jealousy, or insecurity issues on the part of anyone, and after everything was done, that was it. We might see them again, and we might not. We learned that we like knowing our play partners, but it is not necessary for us to know them deeply.

Now, we are beginning to explore other forms of open relationships, and I (K) just started reading Opening Up by Tristan Taormino. It has been a fascinating read so far, and has definitely opened my eyes to other potential ways for J and I to negotiate our newfound open relationship.  From partnered nonmonogamy, to swinging, polyamory, solo-polyamory, polyfidelity, and mixed relationships of these various orientations, I have begun to see the many ways that we can love others and develop meaningful relationships with others, leaving behind the confining and stunting feelings of jealousy, insecurity, dishonesty, and possessiveness. While I do not know what our relationship will look like two months from now, or five years from now, I know that we will still love each other, maintaining our trust in each other and respect for one another as a priority.