All Over the Place

Prof and I have been all over the place. Geographically. Emotionally. Relationally. It is pretty damn cool.

The hard part about being all over the place is we haven't been here writing. The cliche that we ethical sluts have to be excellent time managers is true. You've heard this from me before here in the blog. But we will triumph over the time crunch! Prof and I have too much fun sharing our perspectives here with you to let it fall off the radar. And, indeed, we have evolved so much since we started this entertaining little diversion, if anything we want to share more here for our own reflection. If you enjoy in the meantime, all the better!

So geographically we have been indulging in travel that takes us to hotbeds of sexiness in the most literal way possible. With two upcoming trips to Desire, presenting at the Open SF conference and catching up with hotties at places like Trapeze, there is no shortage of fun to be had. The beautiful thing is Prof and I get to do all of this together. In our day-to-day dynamic vanilla lives (which we love every minute of!), we unfortunately are drawn apart often by circumstance. It is a choice we make everyday to embrace our lives as they are, but also to maximize our opportunities to have fun together.

So a trip to the Trap or your local club is awesome for each of you, I'm sure. For us, it takes on a whole other dimension, not necessarily an urgency, but a chance to both be at a place where we can let go of the world for awhile and just be. You may identify with this too. It is a demonstration of our commitment to each other that our relationship comes first.

As bizarre as that may sound to the non-swing set, the time when we can let our hair down together in the midst and company of 'our people' is when we feel the most at ease. When we can embrace our nature and cut loose together, Prof and I connect in the deepest way. The fact that we are flirting with other people, building other relationships, sometimes being intimate with other people and enjoying the compersion of the whole process openly helps us feel whole.

Which brings me to the fact that emotionally we have been all over the place. As we evolve and experience deeper and deeper immersion into the ethically non-monogamous world, it is getting harder and harder to keep up the vanilla facade. I'll speak for myself here: After six plus years of an awesome, beautiful, fulfilling open relationship, feigning vanilla seems more and more obsolete. I'm tired of telling most of the story.

I'm moving closer and closer to being ready to tell it all. (Much to the relief of all those friends we have who are out and have led the way for us.) Of course, I want to do it on our terms in our time frame in consideration of those around us that we love who deserve to hear it from us first. But as I recently texted to Prof: "We have nothing to hide." Our relationship kicks ass. We love each other deeply. We have other partners. And it is awesome and complex and simply how we roll.

I remember having a conversation with Prof when we were about nine months into our open relationship and saying, "When we have been doing this for two years it will be easy to say to friends and family, 'This is just how our relationship works. You've known us this whole time. We are no different. Take it or leave it.'"

And it has been more than six years now. Six years. As exhilarated as our relationship and our other relationships make me, the experience of not sharing that with those we are closest to has worn me down. As it should, really. Everyone deserves to be who they truly are with everyone they love.

With our evolution and maturity of understanding of what energizes us about our open relationship, now relationally we are all over the place. We have some amazing couple friends we have been close to for over five years and have continued spending lovely time with them. We continue to party with a fantastically fun cast of characters with whom we text and flirt and dance and flirt some more. We also enjoy and get an erotic charge from just having them in our lives. We have a network of geographically remote friends that enrich our lives that we look forward to seeing when schedules and travel allow.

And now Prof and I have both begun, almost by accident, to embrace the experience of having erotically-charged friendships individually while still keeping each other informed. The process we moved through to land at this place has contributed a richness to our already incredible relationship that is impossible to describe. It is mindbending to discover that we hadn't summited the mountaintop. And likely we still haven't, which thrills me.

Thanks for following us all over the place. You are truly excellent company. We look forward to sharing the next leg of the journey too.

Deep Thoughts From Vanilla Exile

Whoa! Serious vanilla overdose!

So Prof and I have worked in a little bit of fun here and there, including the new experience of Prof attending a party with another sexy friend while I was out of town. (More on that forthcoming.) Other than that, it has been all vanilla all the time. Oh, wait, there was one sexy night of a bit of exhibitionism, and although lovely, it was quite short-lived.

Okay, so maybe not all vanilla all the time, but certainly a drastic downshift from our regular social calendar.

As we have moved through this vanilla phase, I’ve realized just how busy an ethical non-monogamist’s life actually is. Even though we haven’t had the time to actively date, we are still building and maintaining relationships that mean something to us. Some are long-time friends we miss. Some are new budding relationships that have fantastic promise. And some are just fun messages from brand new hotties we haven’t met yet, but would love to find the time to meet.

Despite the fact that we haven’t been dating, we are still trying to keep up with all of these sexies and treat them all with respect and devote the time they deserve. And, you know what? It is a challenge. Now, don’t take this as whining. It is simply an observation. We so enjoy cultivating fascinating and hot relationships, but having to take this time to step back from the frantic fun provides some perspective.

There is indeed validity in the monogamists questioning how in the world we swing/open/poly types make it work! And add in families, professional work, hobbies and the other minutiae that occupy our time and it is crazy. In a world where half of the couples can’t even keep their primary relationships together, who the hell are we to have awesome primary relationships and go trolling for more?!

People debate the concept of ethical non-monogamy being a choice we make. Ahh well, when it comes down to it, Prof and I know it is simply how we are built. Individual people and discrete couples can decide for themselves how they roll. And we are all different, even within the swing/open/poly community everyone does it their own way. There are some, perhaps many, who know that they could easily choose to be monogamous. That’s cool. Whatever works for you…seriously awesome. Among other things, it will leave you with a lot more time on your hands to reappropriate.

What Prof and I have realized is that is not us. We are ethical non-monogamists inside and out. Could we choose to change our behavior and remain monogamous? Sure. Absolutely. We are strong-minded people. The difference is, if we did that, we would not truly be authentically ourselves. We would be trying to be people that we are not.

So here we are, in the midst of trying to cultivate and maintain rewarding, authentic and often sexy relationships, and it feels frenzied and sometimes we disappoint. But we do our best while being authentically who we are in all our imperfect, open-relationshippy glory.

We could certainly choose monogamy, but we choose to be ourselves totally and completely…our doing-the-best-we-can, ethically-nonmonogamous, ridiculously busy selves.

And it feels right.

Are You Connected?

Ginger and I just returned from our pilgrimage to Desire. Reentry to normal life can be a jolt. The issue of wearing clothes is obvious, though there is not much sexy about naked New Englanders milling about outside during the cold spring months. Other differences are more subtle. Paying attention to these helps us create a "new normal"—that is, if we hold on and refuse to fall back to our old patterns.

I travel extensively for work. For me, travel is often an issue of energy conservation—I try to get from point A to point B with as much left in the tank as possible. Getting ready for a week at Desire required even more time on the road, right up to and including the day before the trip. Ginger and I talked sporadically over this time. We didn’t have much sex. Other than the concern that she may spontaneously combust without a regular release of erotic energy, we trust the ebb and flow knowing full well that these disruptions aren’t a sign of something wrong between us.

On the flight down to Cancun, I defaulted to my normal work mode paying scarce attention to the sexy woman next to me. I could blame it on the airplane WiFi. I could say I had to make sure everything was alright back at the office before heading out of town. There are lots of things I could tell myself, but in reality, it was a choice.

Fast forwarding past all the juicy details of our amazing trip (more forthcoming, we promise), Ginger and I didn’t stop talking with one another on the way home and all evening. We relived experiences. We made plans. We laughed. We cried. It was better than Cats.

The opportunities to invest our energy are endless. This is even more true as we become more connected virtually—not even the airplane is a reprieve from the outside world if you fork over the 10 bucks for a WiFi connection. The question is this: are these productive connections? Do they invigorate and refresh you with energy? Or are they sucking you dry? Where we connect is a choice. We may not be able to extricate ourselves immediately from non-productive choices, but my guess there are some immediate steps that move you in the right direction. I know there are for me.

For starters, where there is a hot woman sitting next to me on the plane, I commit to flirt and build the erotic connection—not with an expectation to “get laid” but instead in pure enjoyment of how that energy itself makes me happy. That should help the next million miles go by much more enjoyably.

Connecting with Ginger is—I don’t know how else to say this—it is an experience. She is a force of nature in all the best ways. Intelligent. Thoughtful. Focused. And sexually, she can overwhelm before even getting revved up fully. We always bring our A-game together. I ask myself: Do I really have to unplug from all the energy she brings to my life?

Vacations are often described as “recharging your batteries”. The problem is, these proverbial batteries are too easy to get depleted. How long does the vacation bump usually last? A day? The first hour back in the office? Batteries are, by definition, a disconnection.

I’m no longer going on battery. I’m staying connected—albeit, with a very long cord at times, but connected nonetheless.