Having sex in a way that’s fun, fair, and ethical
Image: Nicolagiordano
So you want to be a decent human being in bed.
Sexual ethics and etiquette in polyamorous relationships are, when you get down to it, really not so different than in monogamous relationships, except there are more than two people involved.
We all know (I hope!) that we should never make assumptions about access to another person’s body in ne on one sex, but sometimes, people forget that when they go into a group sex situation. Don’t do that. Don’t assume that just because you’re part of the group, that means anything goes. Negotiate. Ask before you touch.
Many years ago, in my mid-20s, I had a threesome involving my first wife and my girlfriend. My girlfriend (who was pansexual) assumed that she could play with my wife...who was straight. Please don’t do that.
Gotcha. No touching without permission. What else?
Sex is not a great place to spring things on people by surprise
I’ve had surprise threesomes twice in my life: once when I lost my virginity, and then again, years later, when I came home and found my wife in bed with a friend of hers. In the latter, she dragged me down into the bed with her, started pulling my clothes off, and surprise! I ended up having sex with someone I’d never discussed having sex with, and didn’t really have any particular desire to have sex with. It...wasn’t a great experience, but my ex-wife had gone through so much trouble to make it happen I didn’t feel I could say no.
I talk about that experience in a lot more detail in a blog post called Some Thoughts on Bad Sex. The tl;dr: You may have the best of intentions, you may think you’re doing something wonderful for your lover, but seriously, setting up a threesome you haven’t negotiated and then springing it on your lover mmmmaybe isn’t the best thing you can do.
People aren’t props. People aren’t sex toys, or objects you use to play out your fantasies. In fact, that might deserve a subhead of its own:
Remember that people are people. Treat them as people, not things.
Threesomes often happen between two people who are part of an established couple and one person who isn’t, or between a couple that’s been together for a while and a new person. When that happens, and you’re part of the established couple, it can be entirely too easy to forget that the third party is a person, not a sex toy, not an adjunct to your sex life, not an object to fit into your fantasy.
I know that I repeat this idea quite a lot on this site, but I think it’s vital. People are not things. To quote Sir Terry Pratchet, “Evil begins when you begin to treat people as things.”
What does that mean?
In practical terms, it means you remember that other people’s desires, limits, boundaries, likes, dislikes, hopes, and experiences are just as important as your own. Those people sharing the bed (or the floor or the kitchen table—you do you!) are people, just as fully realized as you are.
Your body, your rules. Their bodies, their rules.
Doing everything you can to ensure that all the people involved have an awesome experience goes a long way toward having an awesome experience yourself. And it also means that if everyone has fun, they might want to play again.
Sexual autonomy belongs to everyone
I am deeply suspicious of, and would urge caution around, anyone who makes sex, love, or support contingent on sex with some other person you would not choose to have sex with yourself.
For example, some couples on polyamorous relationships call themselves a “package deal,” and will tell you that sex or a relationship with one of them requires that you have sex or a relationship with both of them.
This kind of control is coercive at best, and abusive at worst. Beware anyone who tells you that you should or must have sex with someone else, and be especially cautious of requirements that dating them means you must date someone else. Even if that works for you now, and you find yourself freely attracted to and interested in both of them, what happens if things change? If you break up with one of them, will you lose both relationships? That kind of situation is inherently coercive, for exactly the same reasons that veto is inherently coercive.
It’s your body. At the end of the day, you and you alone decide who you will or won’t have sex with.
No means no...
We all understand, or I think we should understand, the basic idea that sex is only okay when it’s consensual. If you want to have sex, but the person you fancy doesn’t, you don’t have sex. Only if both of you say yes is it okay to have sex.
But "you can’t have sex unless the other person says yes” does not mean “get the other person to say yes and you’re golden.” The object of consent is to have sex only with people who fully and enthusiastically want to. It’s not a ticky-box on a form: “Oh, I need to get them to say the word ‘yes’ before we move on to the nookie, so now my job is to try to figure out a way to make them say that word.”
If they say no, that’s it. The end. You do not respond by trying to work out a strategy to cajole, convince, persuade, pressure, wheedle, beg, plead, or coerce them into changing the no into a yes, you accept that the answer is no.
This applies, by the way, to a soft ‘no’ as well. Everyone understands that a soft no is still a no when it isn’t about sex; we only forget (or pretend to forget) when we really really want a bit of the old in-out. ‘Maybe’ is not yes. ‘Well, I don’t know’ is not yes. ‘I’d love to, but...’ is not yes.
...and yes means yes.
The flip side of accepting other people’s ‘no’ is accepting your own ‘yes.’
It might come to pass that you say yes to someone or some activity—wholly, fully, enthusiastically, from a place of sound mind and body—and ten later come to feel that the person you said yes to or the thing you agreed to do wasn’t for you. It happens.
But central to the idea of consent is the notion that others must be able to trust your ‘yes.’ If no means no and yes also means no, then there can be no meaningful consent.
Again, I would hope this should be obvious, but sometimes it’s not.
There is a difference between consent and outcome. You might enthusiastically agree to something, and later decide that you didn’t like the way it turned out. It’s important to accept that you said yes, or else your yes cannot ever be trusted.