Free The Ethical Slut by Dossie Easton

relationship outside of the primary, or a number of lovers that don’t get ranked in any hierarchy. Relationships vary in how close or distant they are emotionally and physically, and in how much contact is involved. Some may be short-term, while others may last for years or even a lifetime; some may involve getting together twice a week, others twice a year.
    Couples new to nonmonogamy tend to spend a lot of energy defining their boundaries. They usually focus more at first on what they
don’t
want their partner to do—the activities that make them feel, for some reason, unsafe or downright terrified—than on their actual desires. Setting these limits is, for many couples, a necessary first step out into the disorienting world of sluthood. However, as couples become more sophisticated at operating the boundaries of their relationship, they tend to focus more on what they
would
enjoy, and then strategize about how they can make it safe. How to create and follow this learning curve will be covered in more detail in chapter 16 , “Opening an Existing Relationship.”
    One woman of our acquaintance has a lifetime lifestyle of having two primary partners, one of each gender, with her other partners and her primaries’ other partners forming a huge network. Her relationships historically have lasted many years, through raising children and grandchildren, and her exes are still active members of her extended family.
    In some open relationships, each partner seeks out other partners pretty much separately, often making agreements about who gets to cruise which club when, or taking care to avoid running into each other on the Internet or in personal ads. They may talk about their adventures with each other and occasionally introduce play partners to their live-in lovers.
    Others seek out a close match with another couple so they can play, either as a foursome or by switching partners, with people they have met and chosen together. Many polyamorous couples make a fine lifestyle out of seeking relationships with couples who are most like them, who share their values and boundaries. Such pairings of pairscan become lifelong attachments and generate both hot sex and true family interconnectedness.
More Than Two
    People can make commitments to each other in numbers greater than two. The level of commitment may vary, as when an existing couple makes a commitment to a third partner, or even a fourth. Relationships that add, and inevitably also subtract, members over time tend to form very complex structures, with new configurations of family roles that they generally invent by trial and error. Individuals in groups that come together as a threesome or foursome may find their roles within the family developing, growing, and changing over time: the person who feels like the “mother” of the group this year might well transition to “kid” or “dad” over time, or with each different partner.
    Triads allow three partners of one or both genders to form a family unit. Some people grow into triadic or quadratic families as they attain deepening involvement with one or more members who started as outside lovers. Others actively seek members for group marriages, to fulfill their ideal of the kind of family they want to live in. We have heard of people who identify as “trisexual” because they are so strongly attuned to the idea of living and loving as part of a threesome.
    Balancing triads can be challenging, as in any ménage à trois there are actually three couples, A & B, B & C, and C & A, and each of these relationships will be different. In a triad, as with the siblings of a family, all the relationships will not be at the same level at the same time; we’ve heard of lengthy arguments over which member of a triad should ride in the back seat of the car. If you get hung up on forcing these relationships to be exactly the same, you may hear yourself starting to sound like a small child screaming about why your sister got the