|
|
Over on the Good Vibrations Magazine, I received a comment from a woman whose husband travels a lot. The two of them have a non-monogamous relationship and she’s had some difficulty finding casual partners:
I wanted to address your concept of having casual sex in a positive fashion, and how difficult that seems to be, especially for men. It’s a paradox…most men seem to choose casual sex because they don’t want to have to deal with “relationship” stuff, but if you’re sleeping with someone on a regular basis, you’re having a relationship, albeit one that leads to the bedroom and not the altar. It’s much more difficult to have casual sex than a committed relationship: it takes honesty, openness, integrity and an extremely high degree
Continue reading Having Trouble Finding Casual Sex
via Franklin Veaux
I’m not convinced that this accurately describes all of the ways that people are non-monogamous, but it definitely captures many of the complexities and the relationships between different structures.
I especially like his explanation for making this chart:
I’ve been told, many times, that the word “polyamory” is not really necessary, as it’s simply a synonym for “open relationship” or “swinging” (or, depending on the person talking to me, “cheating”). This idea seems to assume that there’s really only one kind of non-monogamy, which is kind of silly.
There’s a bit more at his site. Check it out.
CNN posted an article today called “The Downside of ‘Friends with Benefits,’” which is another example of someone writing about sex without taking a look at their own assumptions about sex, relationships, and how people work.
The focus of the article is the increase of STIs and the claim that having more than one partner at the same time (“concurrency” if you want to get technical) increases one’s risk for sexually transmitted infections. I can buy that- if you’re exposed to more people (everything else being equal), you’re at a higher risk, just like you’re at a higher risk for the flu if you’re around lots of people than if you stay home.
According to the article The Contexts of Sexual Involvement And Concurrent
Continue reading Love, Romance, Fidelity, and FWBs
Via Tristan Taormino
Are you in a romantic relationship? Do you have other sexual partners? The University of Michigan is conducting an online survey and they want to ask you about your experiences. It’s a very quick survey, so take a few minutes and help some researchers out. Feel free to pass the link along to anyone who might want to participate, too!
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/J3FJ2NN
One of the challenges that sexologists, educators, and therapists face is the lack of credible, reliable, and well-designed research on sexuality. As much as that’s true for more common forms of sexual expression, it’s even more so for sexual practices that are less common. BDSM and open relationships are the target of a lot of negative assumptions, even though the research that we do have shows that they are not inherently problematic or signs of deeper issues.
I’m on the advisory board of the Community-Academic Consortium for Research on Alternative Sexualities and our 3rd annual conference will be happening on Thursday 9/23/10 in San Francisco. It’s going to be an amazing day, with presentations on current research and clinical practices as they pertain
Continue reading Save the Date! 3rd Alternative Sexualities Conference 9/23/10
One of the most common challenges people face when seeking psychotherapy or other mental health/emotional support is the concern that a therapist will judge them or shame them for their sexual fantasies, desires, and expression. Unfortunately, this often keeps people from finding a therapist or it keeps them from opening up and being honest about what’s going on. Both of those are major barriers.
For a few years, I co-taught a class on sexuality for people studying to become therapists (my co-teacher was a therapist, so she dealt with the clinical issues while I handled the sexuality issues) and one of the things that we always talked about was the fact that many clients are hesitant to bring up sexuality concerns. Unfortunately, many therapists
Continue reading What Psychology Professionals Need to Know About Polyamory
I received a link in my in-box today to an article in the Boston Globe about polyamory. It’s a good read and I highly recommend it. The writer includes a nice overview of some of the common problems poly folks face, including jealousy, managing new relationship energy, the lack of legal protection for partners, and such. It’s also really great that the article discusses things like the sexual double standard that many people have around folks with multiple partners. Men with more than one partner don’t face the slut label that women do, and it’s wonderful to see that mentioned in a mainstream news magazine. I’m also glad that there was some discussion around poly folks being in the closet, for all of these
Continue reading Polyamory in the News
Newsweek just posted a pretty good article about polyamory and I have to say- it makes a nice change. Unlike many of the mainstream articles I’ve seen on the topic, they did a good job of describing the relationships and the concepts of polyamory in ways that reflect how poly folks actually live.
Of course, it is the mainstream media, so I’m not surprised that there’s some stuff that annoys me. Such as this snippet:
Terisa, 41, is at the center of this particular polyamorous cluster. A filmmaker and actress, she is well-spoken, slender and attractive, with dark, shoulder-length hair, porcelain skin—and a powerful need for attention. Twelve years ago, she started dating Scott, a writer and classical-album merchant. A couple years later, Scott introduced
Continue reading a pretty good article on polyamory
I’m sure you’ve seen all the speed dating events out there in the world, but if you haven’t, here’s how they work. For a short time (2-5 minutes), you chat with your “speed date.” If you like the person, you generally mark that on a card provided by the organizer. If both people indicate a wish to continue the conversation, you’re given each other’s contact info and you can take it from there. It’s a fun way to meet lots of people, although you don’t get much chance to get beyond first impressions.
Ever since I first heard about speed dating, I noticed that the events are mostly for heterosexual folks and I wondered if anyone was going to try to create something similar for
Continue reading poly speed dating
I was reading an article recently about how William Marston, the creator of Wonder Woman, was polyamorous. Given that he and his wife were married some time around 1915, this got me thinking about how we often talk about sex at different points in history.
See, I’ve noticed how often people say things like “back in the Victorian era, people didn’t do that.” Or “it wasn’t until the sexual revolution in the 1970′s that people did that.” And I’m struck by how inaccurate those statements are.
There isn’t a point in history during which everyone restricted themselves to just one way of having sex. People have always had orgies, had sex with someone of their own gender, been in polyamorous relationships (or other forms of
Continue reading you never know
|
|
% Category: 
