19

Sex and laundry

Love's mysteries in souls do grow,

But yet the body is his book.

john donne

In the introduction, we said the first question most people ask when they hear about polyamory is "Who does the laundry?" That was naughty of us. The first question people usually ask is "Who sleeps with whom?" The question about laundry usually comes much later.

People in poly relationships are probably not having as much sex as you think. Polyamory, with its emphasis on intimate romantic relationships, isn't really about sex. Poly people don't necessarily have high sex drives, aren't necessarily kinky, aren't necessarily into group sex, and may not be interested in casual sex. Many poly people hold traditional views about sex. Indeed, as we've mentioned, polyamory is often attractive to asexual people, since it allows close, intimate relationships without the pressure (or guilt) of being a partner's only sexual outlet.

Having said that, sex is part of most romantic relationships, and poly relationships involve special considerations about sex. So it's a good idea to be fully up to speed about the physical and emotional risks (and special joys) that come with it. In this chapter, we address considerations other than sexual health and the risks of sexually transmitted infections (STIs), which are discussed in the next chapter.

Defining sex

Before we talk about polyamory and sex, we have to clear up a minor detail: What is sex? Traditional heterosexual relationships give us a narrow definition: Sex is a penis entering a vagina (short form: PIV sex). Other sexual activities tend to be minimized or dismissed, as happened when a certain U.S. president sparked a national discussion over whether oral sex "counts." In gay and lesbian relationships the definition might get a little more complicated, but still tends to revolve around who does what with which genitals. A surprisingly large percentage of people will call themselves "virgins" even after they engage in oral or anal sex, which raises interesting and unfortunate implications for emotional and sexual health.

In polyamory, just as there's no single model for a romantic relationship, there's no single model for a sexual relationship. Partners in poly relationships may never engage in conventional penis-in-vagina sex (if they have bodies that permit that; not all poly people are heterosexual or cisgender!).* They may or may not expect that unbarriered sex (for instance, without a condom) will ever become part of the relationship. Poly relationships may involve a wide range of sexual activities, without including conventional sexual intercourse (or even genital contact) at all.

Defining sex is more than a word game. It matters for the agreements that people negotiate with each other. It affects sexual health boundaries. It influences what people may wish to be notified about, and what parts of a person's sexual past might need to be disclosed. In negotiations about sexual boundaries, therefore, everyone needs to be on the same page about what constitutes "sex."

* Cisgender refers to a person whose experience of gender identity matches the gender that was assigned to them at birth.

franklin's Story While I was visiting an out-of-town sweetie, I met a lovely young woman, Amelia. She and I quickly became friends. At one point during my visit, the partner I was visiting wanted to spend some time with one of her other boyfriends, so the two of them spent the night together. Amelia and I shared a bed that night, as there was only one other bedroom in the house where we were staying.

Amelia and I were not lovers, but during the course of the evening, she asked (in charming fashion) if I would object to her masturbating. I didn't mind at all, though I didn't participate in any way.

It would not have occurred to me (or my partners) to think of that night I spent with Amelia as sex, or of her as anything other than a nonsexual partner. But many people would consider the night we spent together to be a sexual activity, and one that would need to be disclosed to other partners. Certainly many monogamous people would consider this to be a violation of their relationship agreements.

This isn't an everyday sort of occurrence, but it does show how the definition of "sex" can be slippery, and how activities one person doesn't consider sexual, another might. pinstripe

There is tremendous potential for hurt or resentment when our definitions of "sex" are misaligned. Sexual boundaries are among the most personal and intimate ones, with the potential to cause grave damage if crossed. Different kinds of sexual activity also involve different levels of physical risk. Mismatched definitions of "sex" create fuzziness around risk boundaries. We're better off overanalyzing how we define sex than not to be analyzing it enough. So we need to be able to discuss sex and sexual acts openly with our partners, without fear or shame. Unfortunately, most of us have not grown up accustomed to doing that, so it can be hard. The anxiety of talking openly about sex, though, pales beside the anxiety of having sexual boundaries stepped on, even inadvertently.

Two keys to having low-stress conversations about sex are being direct and asking questions. Listen and ask questions about how your partners define sex. Coded language and euphemisms only muddy things and create embarrassment. Here are some questions to open the discussion. Do you consider kissing sex? How about making out? Erotic massage? Clothed or unclothed fondling? Oral sex? Anal sex? Mutual masturbation? Same-room masturbation? Text or cybersex? Sharing sexual fantasies? Phone sex? What kinds of activities do you want to know about? At what point do you consider someone a sexual partner? If you ask about a prospective partner's sexual past, do you and she have similar ideas about what makes someone a lover?

Sex and vulnerability

Sexual risk is not always physical. We usually become emotionally attached and vulnerable to our lovers. As people who have explored cybersex can attest, physical touch is not necessarily a prerequisite for emotional vulnerability.

franklin's Story Sex has always been strongly linked to emotional intimacy for me. I tend to get attached to my lovers, even if that's not my intention. Many years ago, I was traveling abroad to visit one of my partners. She and her other partners and their other partners and I all traveled to a remote castle in France, where we stayed for about a week.

While we were there, I met a lovely woman—a member of the extended poly network, linked to my partner through one of her partners. She and I connected quickly. I am normally cautious about extending physical intimacy to people, because I know I tend to get attached to my lovers whether I plan to or not. In this case, I extended more intimacy more quickly than I normally do.

Later we had a disagreement about something that should have been inconsequential. She said some things that should not have been able to hurt me, but did—because I had already let her in. I had permitted her too far inside my own boundaries, because we had been physically intimate, and that made the things she said far more wounding than they needed to be. pinstripe

Some people can engage their bodies without engaging their hearts. Whether you can do this can be hard to predict, though. Whenever we let someone physically close, we've let them through a layer of our boundaries; Franklin has met several people, mostly former swingers, who once believed they could have sex entirely detached from intimacy, then found themselves getting unexpectedly attached to a casual lover. Nobody is immune to emotional vulnerability through physical vulnerability.

Sex and emotional boundaries

The boundaries that come up most often around sex involve STI risk, and we'll talk about those in a bit. But people have emotional boundaries around sex that need attention too. If you have a partner who has, or is considering, another lover, do you want to know what sexual activities might happen, or is that something you don't care about? When do you want to know that someone may become a new sexual partner? Some people like to be informed well in advance. For other people, if they're told sex might be a possibility during an upcoming date, that's enough.

How do you want to be informed? Do you want an in-person discussion with your partner before she takes a new lover, or would a text message do saying "Hey, having a wonderful time, think we might end up in bed"? Is it enough just to be told the next day? You will need to communicate these preferences clearly. Because people have different ideas about what is "sex," miscommunication can happen with surprising ease.

AMY's Story Franklin's partner Amy was in a poly relationship that included an agreement about informing her current partner, Stephan, before she had sex with a new partner. She and Stephan did not agree on what this meant—though at first they did not know this.

Amy went on a third date with an old, close friend. A decade previously, the two of them had danced around the idea of a relationship, and now, they were discovering that their chemistry was stronger than ever. Back at her place they engaged in some heavy petting, but did not have intercourse.

Stephan believed Amy had violated their agreement, even though no intercourse had happened. To him, Amy had broken their agreement by failing to notify him that sex might have been possible, even though Amy believed that no sex had taken place. Because of this incident, Stephan decided Amy couldn't be trusted to honor agreements, so he wanted her to agree to restrictions on when and how she would see other people. Their relationship ended as a result of this conflict. pinstripe

Good boundaries around sex must also be made knowing that everyone has a right to privacy about the details of their intimacy. There's no hard and fast line that clearly separates one person's right to be informed from another's right to privacy; setting these boundaries requires compassion and negotiation. Certainly, you have the right to know about your partner's sexual activities with other people in general terms, but at the same time, the details of intimate acts are things that your partner and his partner can reasonably expect to keep to themselves if they don't want to share them.

Approaches to unbarriered sex

In poly relationships, often people have a select few partners, or perhaps one partner, with whom they will have unbarriered sex, and they use various forms of protection with others. For some folks, unbarriered sex is an intimate form of bonding.

Some people assume that certain kinds of relationships, such as marriage, come with an unspoken understanding that the partners will dispense with condoms and other barriers. But unspoken assumptions should never substitute for explicit negotiation. Polyamory means examining all of our assumptions about sex. If a married couple wants unbarriered sex, that may be awesome, but it's not necessarily right for everyone or every circumstance.

Another tacit assumption is that partners who have chosen unprotected sex will have unprotected sex forever. Poly people have even (of course) made up a term to describe the decision to have unprotected sex: fluid bonding. The word bond implies, to many, a promise that this will be ongoing.

Not all poly people use the term fluid bonding; many prefer to simply talk about using barriers or not, specifically to divest the idea of unbarriered sex from the emotional overtones that the term fluid bonding carries. They prefer to view unbarriered sex as a risk-management decision and, like all agreements, as something that can be renegotiated if necessary. Other people are deeply invested in fluid bonding and consider it an important part of intimacy.

EVE's Story When I started seeing Ray, I was fluid-bonded with Peter. Ray and I were tested for STIs at the beginning of our relationship, and again six months in. I had recently had the HPV vaccine, and Ray was using condoms as a birth control method with his wife. So after the second set of tests, Ray, Peter and I sat down and agreed that Ray and I would have unbarriered sex. We agreed that we would inform each other when we had a new sexual partner, and that none of us would have unbarriered sex with anyone outside our trio without first discussing it with the others.

About six months later, Ray had unbarriered sex with a friend at a party. He called me the next day and told me. I said we would have to begin using barriers for another three months, until he could be tested again, and then we would need to discuss whether we wanted to fluid-bond again. I was hurt, because I valued the ability to have unbarriered sex with Ray, and I felt he had casually tossed that away. But I saw the issue as a risk-management problem that we could work through.

Peter, on the other hand—whom I told a week later (before I'd had an opportunity to have sex with either him or Ray)—considered Ray's decision a serious betrayal, especially because Ray had not taken the effort to tell Peter personally. Peter had a much more serious view of the "bond" element of a fluid bond than Ray or I had understood. But more than that, the broken agreement became a flashpoint for anger that had long been simmering for many other, unrelated reasons. pinstripe

Eve, Ray and Peter ran into difficulty because unbarriered sex meant different things to each of them, with differing levels of emotional significance, and because they weren't all in agreement about protocols for disclosure regarding what might lead to resuming use of barriers.

When you're considering unbarriered sex with a partner, you want to be clear about your approach and expectations: whether you are making a risk-management decision that's open to future negotiation, whether the step you are taking has emotional significance for you, and whether you expect the agreement to be temporary or permanent. Perhaps most important is to agree in advance on what protocols you will follow when someone makes a mistake—because they will—or breaks an agreement.

When unbarriered sex has emotional significance

A common poly arrangement is for partners who have chosen to have unprotected sex with each other to pass rules prohibiting unprotected sex with others. Sometimes this is actually an attempt to control emotional intimacy. We aren't suggesting this is always true, but it's something to be aware of when discussing sexual boundaries. A conversation about safer sex shouldn't become a covert way to try to control your partner's emotional connection with others.

An agreement within a group to keep a barrier wall to the outside world, but not among one another, is called a "condom compact." This agreement has a poor reputation among poly people—because of the guilt, sense of betrayal and drama all around if one person breaks it. Having so much emotional weight hanging over the situation creates a big incentive for the violator not to tell the others, poisoning honesty and potentially exposing the whole group to STIs when they thought they were safe.

Instead, the approach both of us take is that any of our partners are free to have whatever kind of sex they want with whomever they want, provided they are honest about it. We then take charge of our own precautions. We communicate our sexual health boundaries, and our partners who value being able to have unprotected sex with us respect those boundaries. Should a partner choose not to, then we may choose to use barriers with that partner. This arrangement protects the right of all the people involved to make choices about their own bodies and level of risk, and to take responsibility for their own protection.

That sounds perfectly rational, but sex is rarely entirely rational. It's okay for unbarriered sex to be connected with feelings of intimacy. Being open to fluid bonding is sometimes a sign that a relationship has grown to the point where the intimacy is worth whatever risks might be associated with forgoing barriers.

Because fluid bonding is emotionally significant, it's useful to talk about an "exit strategy" with someone you're thinking about having unbarriered sex with. Under what circumstances will you continue having unbarriered sex, and under what circumstances will you go back to using barriers? What does having unbarriered sex mean to each of you—not just in practical terms like risk levels, but emotionally? If you choose to stop having unbarriered sex, what will that mean for your intimacy? What measures are you willing to take to protect being fluid-bonded? Often it can feel like a punishment if a partner decides to resume barrier use. Knowing the answers to these questions in advance can help avoid hurt feelings if the exit strategy is invoked.

Not everyone wants or values unprotected sex. Many people, especially people who identify as solo poly, prefer to maintain safer-sex practices with all their partners. This way, they can protect themselves without relying on their partners to inform them of changes to their sexual status, and they feel more free to make their own choices about sexual activity and sexual health.

Pregnancy, the other risk

Conversations about safer sex usually revolve around mitigating the risk of sexually transmitted infections (STIs), and it's surprising how many polyamorous people don't talk about pregnancy. It is a fact of nature often unacknowledged that when fertile heterosexual people have PIV sex, pregnancy sometimes results. Even, occasionally, when using contraception. It pays to talk about pregnancy risks and contingencies. What happens if someone accidentally becomes pregnant? By whom? Consider each possible combination. What are your expectations and contingencies concerning pregnancy and child-rearing?

In monogamous relationships, when one person says to another, "Honey, I think I might be pregnant," that usually starts a discussion. In poly relationships, "I think I might be pregnant" sometimes leads to incredulity, as if basic biology doesn't apply to polyamory. Especially, it seems, in hierarchical relationships with a secondary partner. Rather than being a statistically malleable consequence of a penis entering a vagina, pregnancy is sometimes treated as a betrayal, or a violation of the rules, or occasionally even an act of malice. Don't do this.

Talk beforehand about what you'll do about an unplanned pregnancy. There are a lot of divergent options. Will you abort? We've seen people in primary/secondary hierarchies start with the premise that if one of the primary partners gets pregnant, the other primary partner will be assumed to be the father, and they will raise the child accordingly. We've seen live-in relationships whose members have decided that in the event of pregnancy, all the men will have parenting duties. In other relationships, the woman will get a paternity test to determine the biological father.

Some poly partners who don't live together discuss raising the child in separate households with joint custody. Others say in the event of pregnancy, they will move in together. Be careful, though; in prescriptive primary/secondary relationships, this agreement can collide with rules that prohibit cohabitating with secondary partners! Any prescriptive hierarchy needs to have groundwork in place in the event of an unplanned pregnancy.

The contingency plans had better be more robust than "I won't let this happen." For if slippery bits are touching, it's always a possibility. If you use two birth control methods together, such as an IUD (one of the most effective methods) and condoms, the risk becomes very tiny. But very tiny is not zero. A friend of Franklin's once got pregnant—with triplets!—even though she was using an IUD and her boyfriend was using condoms. It happens. "I promise it won't" is about as realistic as promising it won't rain on your birthday.

Something not to try to legislate in advance is that any future partner will be required to have an abortion or won't be permitted to have an abortion. We don't believe a woman can be forced to carry to term or terminate a pregnancy. We also realize that this is an emotionally charged topic that many people have strong feelings about. If you don't agree with us, talk to any new partner about your expectations before tab A enters slot B.

No matter what discussions you have, you're probably going to feel some pretty strong emotions if pregnancy occurs. That's normal. Pregnancy is a big deal and likely to be disruptive for everyone. Talk about it before it happens. Give yourselves time to process your feelings, then talk some more. Please don't postpone the discussion until too late. For more about these issues, how to have these conversations, and how to prepare to start a poly family with kids, see Jessica Burde's book The Polyamory on Purpose Guide to Poly and Pregnancy, listed in the resources.

Nonsexual romantic relationships

We tend to assume that sex is part of any romantic relationship, but some asexual people want intimate relationships without sex. Demisexuals want little. It's also very common for sexual desire to decline (or disappear) in long-term relationships. As with every element of polyamory, sex should not be assumed: it requires negotiation. Emotional closeness, support, love, touch and cuddling can all exist independent of sex. For many asexual people, polyamory offers an opportunity for romantic relationships without feeling obligated to provide for a partner's sexual needs.

Not desiring sex does not mean being frigid, cold or distant. Nonsexual relationships can be physically affectionate and warm. Romantic relationships without sex are not "merely" friendships. They can and do include passionate emotional intimacy, living together, shared goals and dreams, and lifelong plans.

Every comedian's repertoire has jokes about sexless married couples. They're not terribly funny, but they're sure to get a laugh. The loss of excitement in the familiar scares poly newbies and veterans alike. "What if my partner finds someone who she's hotter for than boring old me? How can I compete with all the frantic sex of a new relationship?" The answer is, you probably can't. This is normal, and it's not about you. So stop worrying. The newness of the new person will wear off too.

According to the U.S. National Health and Social Life Survey, about 15 percent of all married men and women reported having sex never or just a few times in the past year. We would all benefit from letting go of the idea that a relationship "has to" involve sex, or that there's a right amount of sex that romantic partners "should" have, and instead allowing relationships to be what they are, without pressure or expectation.

Sharing sex

Not everyone is into group sex, and not all poly relationships include it. In fact, popular perceptions (and the Showtime Polyamory series) aside, group sex is more the exception than the norm among poly people. For those to whom it appeals, though, it can be great fun and great bonding, and the possibility of group sex with multiple people you love can be one of the big perks of polyamory.

If you've never had group sex before, it can trigger unexpected responses. You might imagine that you can avoid jealousy by controlling what your partner does with the other people, but sex tends to be a dynamic, messy, complicated business, and you won't be able to script the entire encounter. You can, however, establish general guidelines and boundaries in advance. For example, you might want to require barriers (and define what that means) all around, or take certain activities off the table. These kinds of boundaries usually work best when they're kept general (common ones are things like "No penetration" or "No male-male genital contact"), with an expectation of talk and negotiation throughout the encounter. With that in mind, make sure that in your first experience with group sex—or anyone's first experience together—judgment and communication are not overly impaired by alcohol or other substances.

This should go without saying, but everyone should have input about what goes on. Going into group sex thinking that it's all about you, or perhaps all about one couple, rather than a shared experience for everyone, is likely to lead to trouble. Don't do it if you feel bullied or pressured, and don't bully or pressure others into it. This, too, should go without saying.

It is normal for unexpected feelings to happen. When they do, step back, take a deep breath, and remember that your emotions don't have to be in the driver's seat. If you feel an unexpected negative emotion, say so calmly and clearly. Be willing to set boundaries, without having a temper tantrum. If something isn't working for someone else, change what you're doing—even if it's something you were really into. Remember, it's only by playing nicely that you get to play again!

It's better to end feeling that there is more you wanted to do than that you went too far. You might discover that group sex isn't for you. That's okay. Being poly doesn't mean you have to like threesomes or orgies. If you do, though, polyamory can offer the chance for all sorts of fun. For those who like it, group sex is a rewarding, amazing, intimate bonding experience. It isn't the exclusive domain of people who are bisexual or pansexual. A shared sexual experience does not have to involve every combination of people, unless all want it to. (For example, Franklin is straight; when he has group sex involving other men, he does not have sexual contact with them.) It can be two (or more) people focusing on one (or more) person in rotation…and boy, is it fun to be the one in the middle!

It can involve trading off attention, where one person alternates back and forth between two or more lovers. It's nice, and very connecting, when the person who's doing the alternating maintains contact with all of her lovers, even if it's just a hand resting on one person's shoulder while her attention is focused on another. As one poly fan of group sex says, "Group lovemaking can turn into an amazing thing, awash with amplifying feedback waves of different feelings going in complex directions that aren't really predictable. Getting good at surfing those waves, and sculpting them into something grand among your dearest lovers—there's just nothing like it."

Expectations of group sex

Some people try to mandate group sex, creating rules that if one member of an established couple takes a new partner, she is not allowed to have sex with the new person unless the other member of the couple is there—watching, if not involved. This is often meant to prevent sexual jealousy by keeping sexual access available to everyone. This looks good on paper but doesn't work well in practice, because usually jealousy isn't about allocation of resources; it's about insecurity, self-doubt, and feelings of unworthiness or fear. It's possible to be in the middle of a threesome and still feel sexual jealousy. Simply having sexual access to your partner's lover doesn't make jealousy go away. And to assume that if someone likes one person she should be sexually available to that person's partner comes across as very, very creepy. Which is part of why couples who take this approach find it so difficult to find partners.

BRUCE's Story Many years ago, Bruce and his wife, Megan, decided to try polyamory. Since they didn't have experience with it, they thought dating together would be a good way to avoid jealousy. After years of searching, they finally hit the jackpot: an attractive, sexually alluring bisexual woman, Alicia, who agreed to date both of them.

The celebration didn't last long. Even though Bruce and Megan were both having sex with Alicia at the same time, jealousy still flared up whenever she seemed to be enjoying attention from one of them more than the other, or if she seemed to be paying more attention to one than the other. Even the normal ebb and flow of attention was enough to create jealousy.

At first they tried making rules that restricted her even more. The jealousy problems got worse. Before long, it became almost impossible for any two of them to pay attention to each other without the third person feeling jealous, even when all three were together. Needless to say, the relationship didn't survive. pinstripe

Some people are happy to date and/or have sex with a couple. Such folks are thin on the ground, though, and even if a couple finds one, they may be surprised to discover feelings of jealousy and threat. As we have said many times, attempting to regulate the form a relationship may take is no substitute for dealing with things like insecurity and low self-confidence, and dealing with these things benefits any relationship, regardless of its form.

Questions to Ask Yourself

When you have multiple sex partners, everyone needs to be clear with regard to sexual boundaries and expectations. Here are some questions to help get you there: