WTF is a Polyamorous Orientation?

Like many nerds who grew up in the 80s, I adored Star Wars.  Space battles, lasers, light sword-wielding mystics, villians with crazy lightning hands.  Whole blocks of dialog and reams of esoterica filled my brain.

So imagine my horror when I sat in a theater in Guam in the summer of 1999, watching George Lucas gutting my childhood.  He had already scarred me with the revised version of the trilogy a few years earlier.

I could deal with Greedo shooting first.  I didn't even mind all the background junk that only served to clutter the screen.  I could even barely stomach the creepy racist caricatures.  But midi-fucking-clorians?  He had reduced an energy that bound the universe together and locked light and dark into an eternal struggle down to being a blood-born parasite.  

The lesson here is that searching for a biological component can result in losing the magic and annoying people with needless technobabble.  This silly lesson might apply, though, to the ongoing quest in polyamory for legitimacy through inescapable biology.

But what's the harm in thinking it's biological?  If we make this argument, then can't we finally move toward getting some legal recognition, if not full protections?

Maybe.  But then, if the argument isn't sound, then the whole community looks like a pack of immature nerd swingers using wishful thinking to unsuccessfully justify their actions, like a bunch of furries getting naked in a convention hotel room.

Let's engage in a little thought exercise.  We're poly, as I'm sure you'd know if you read the previous posts or somehow knew how much time we spend on Reddit's /r/polyamory forum.  What I'll bet you didn't know is that we were born this way.  At least, that's the starting assumption of this exercise.

My wife and I were born poly.  Likely from poly parents who themselves had poly parents.  Maybe it's a recessive gene.  Really really recessive.

So that orientation that we both experience takes the form of us both seeking out or at least being open to multiple loves.  But that's where we start to differ as well.

Girl is interested in good looking guys who want to talk about history and pop culture.  And being good lovers doesn't hurt.  There's no limit.  That whole poly infinity symbol with a heart.

Boy is different.  He wants guy third for a polyfidelitous triad.  Sure he's poly, but poly is just more than one right?  That's in the word itself.  He conjectures that mankind evolved in small socioromantic groups for the purpose of resource collection and collectively raising offspring.  He's just building that small close-knit group.

Girl isn't really onboard with Boy's plan.  Her view of her polyamory orientation is about being open to love, not closing yourself off from it.  She points out that boy's social model has no historical support.  She, on the other hand, knows that monogamy in the animal kingdom is rare.  Human monogamy is something people try to force, but that most people will be tempted throughout their lives and putting a yoke and that and saying we can only consort within this little household group is just as contrived as monogamy.

But if polyamory is an orientation, it necessarily must be oriented to something and go beyond simply being the relationship model you want to build.

So what is polyamory as an orientation?  Most would say it's ethical non-monogamy wherein people build serious, loving relationships with multiple people.  That's why it's not swinging or a garden variety open relationship or old fashioned cheating.  It's different exactly because it's ethical and about really loving the partners.  Strip those things away and it just falls back to being swinging or cheating.  So if it's an orientation, it's one defined by ethics and love.  Both of those have to be in the mix for it to be polyamory.

One of the more problematic analogies for poly is that people can love multiple people, just like loving all of one's children or both their parents.  Ignoring the fact that familial love is not the same as romantic love, it also strips loving multiple people away as the defining trait of poly because everyone is now poly.  A distinct orientation can't be something that everyone does.  Therefore, loving multiple people can't be a defining characteristic of being oriented poly.

That leaves us with the ethics angle as the only unique element to poly.  We can put aside the fact that orientations based solely on ethics are not really a thing, but we have to examine the number of people who come to polyamory through infidelity and people in the community who talk about never being able to be faithful in relationships prior to finding poly.  That means that they can't be ethically oriented.  They were driven by being with other people, not by being honest about it.

Once you start to define it, the orientation model goes out the window.  So we're left with the "But I've always felt poly," argument.

"Most of my relationships had something missing." That's true for most.  In our lives, the vast majority of people will have more relationships that don't work out than relationships that last the rest of their lives.

I just feel it.  How is that not religious thinking?  It reduces polyamory as orientation to faith with less supporting evidence.  The Catholics at least have their saints and their relics.  I believe in something that is not in any way proven because of a conviction I hold.  I cannot see God but I know he loves me.  I know I'm poly because I want to be with multiple people.  My friend does it, but he's a player.  We're different because of something I cannot quantify or qualify.  It simply is so in my heart.

None of this is to say that polyamorous people don't exist.  It's just that, like The Force, it's best not to make up a biological component to give it depth it doesn't need.  Poly as an orientation is a tautological sinkhole.  Also, fuck you, George Lucas.  Han definitely shot first!

30 Day Sex Challenge!

So becoming casual Redditors has obviously got the boy and I thinking a lot more about sexual culture and sex in general, probably because we tend to lurk in forums related to sex, like /r/polyamory, /r/DeadBedrooms, /r/nofap, even /r/adultery.  They're all fascinating.  DeadBedrooms in particular - a subreddit for support and advice when one person wants a lot more sex than their partner.

I actually ended up finding Dead Bedrooms (DB) a few months ago, when we were going through a bit of a slowdown in our sex life.  When we got together, nearly 9 years ago, our relationship was focused on sex from the beginning.  The boy was actively trying to sleep with 50 girls in a year (we met in January - he didn't get too far into that experiment) and I was just out of a 6 year long monogamous relationship.  From our second date, when we fucked for the first time, it was clear we had incredible sexual chemistry.  The fact that he has an over 8-inch dick didn't hurt, either.  We eventually fell in love with each other for reasons beyond sex, but our salacious beginnings meant that for us, even a relatively moderate drop in libido from either one of us can cause panic.

Of course, in a long term relationship, sex is not going to be as frequently desired as it was when you first got together.  We both occasionally found ourselves going through periods where we were desiring sex significantly less and with the exception of when we were living apart so the boy could finish his degree, he's also had a very punishing work schedule for the entire time we've been together, with him alternating between 12 hour day and night shifts every few weeks.  Not ideal.  We've also grown older together, which can obviously dampen libido to some degree.  At times the boy's chronic pain condition has made things difficult, and I have minor health issues that can make sex off-putting as well.

That said, things never got that dire, at least, not compared to anyone who posts in DB.  We consider going a week without sex to indicate a major problem, and we've rarely gone longer than that for any reason other than physical separation - like when I was in California for a month last year.  But when I found DB, we weren't having sex more than twice a week, sometimes less, and I wasn't feeling desired or like the boy was putting a lot of effort in.  I even wrote a post I intended to publish there, but deleted it instead.  The next day things turned around and our sex life has improved majorly in the months since then.

We started averaging 3-5 times a week, which is about as much as we tend to crave under normal circumstances.  We were feeling pretty pleased with ourselves, but I think there's always room for improvement, and there's always time for SCIENCE!  So I suggested that we do something we'd talked about before - have sex every day for a month.  He was game, so here we are.

It's Day 6, and if you wanna know how things are going, one good indicator is that my vagina is sore as hell.  In a good way, of course!  It's been amazing and we're not even a week in yet.  We find ourselves often having sex more than once a day which used to be a rare event. We've revealed fantasies and kinks to each other that we'd never talked about.  We're talking honestly together about our sex life in a natural, unforced way.  We're doings things we've never done for each other before, like writing naughty stories.  Basically, we're having a ton of fun . There's an extra spring in both of our steps.  Our libidos are way, way up.  Last night, having drinks with friends, the boy couldn't keep his hands off me.  He's acting like he used to act in the first few months we got together, and it's great.  It's like we're in our 20s again!

I should explain our "rules" for the experiment.  We're trying to have sex at least once a day for 30 out of 31 days, so this gives us one "day off" although obviously we're going to try to avoid using it.  "Sex" is being defined as us being intimate together with the intention for at least one person to orgasm, although it still counts even if orgasm doesn't happen.  That takes a lot of the pressure off.  I think 30 days of having PIV sex with the requirement that we both orgasm would involve way too much pressure and end up being fairly unsexy.   We haven't talked about it, but I think it's implicit that if anything really serious comes up - an emergency, or serious illness, and the experiment can be called off without guilt or bad feelings.

But that's it, really.  But it's amazing how quickly it gets you in a different frame of mind.  I've sometimes complained about how I often give the boy "freebie" orgasms via blowjobs without expecting anything from him but I never get that myself - well, that's changed!  I'm getting a lot more erotic attention with less expectation of reciprocating which I think is freeing for him as well.  I also just find myself saying "yes" instead of putting it off til later like I often do.

For example, this morning I'd been up for a few hours and was browsing the Internet happily with my coffee.  The boy had just woken up, and as is typical, had a giant erection.  (His morning wood is incredibly impressive).  He came up to me and started fondling me and made me aware of his state.  I hadn't showered, hadn't even brushed my teeth, wasn't feeling particularly horny - so normally I would have brushed him off.  But...we're doing a sex challenge, so I know we have to do it at some point in the day, so why NOT now?  I brushed my teeth, and we proceeded to have fantastic sex, with a clitoral orgasm and two g-spot orgasms from me (including the supposedly mythical simultaneous orgasm for us!)

If we're having this much fun 6 days in, what awaits us for the rest of the month?  Well, I'll keep you updated.  Suffice it to say, I've got my groove back, and we might actually be motivated to take advantage of the fact that we're a happily married kinky couple in an open relationship.

Don't worry though, despite improved mood, we're still going to snark the hell out of people on the Internet.  That's another one of our kinks.

What In The Fuck Is NoFap?

If you spend a decent amount of time in Internet culture, particularly Internet sex culture, you may have heard of NoFap. What started as a weird subforum within Reddit (yes, clearly, The Boy and I have recently started finally reading Reddit, with equal parts enthusiasm and horror) has become a semi (see what I did there) major movement, warranting a bit of attention in the sex-positive blogopshere and even a mention on the Savage Lovecast.

It's also creepy, puritanical, and dangerous.

I, as a lady, wanted to write about it, because I feel I can be a bit more fair to the underlying reasons behind NoFap than my husband, who understandably has proclaimed you can pry masturbation from his cold, dead hands.  Literally.

I am somewhat sympathetic, as a lady who enjoys having sex primarily with men, to some of the issues and frustrations that have given rise to NoFap culture.  But first, I guess I should explain what it is.

NoFap.com describes itself as a movement for self-improvement, but it's really a movement about men not masturbating.  Potentially for a "short" period of time - like a week - but most advocates of NoFap see never masturbating ever again as the ideal goal.

Let that sink in.  This is a modern Internet movement in the year 2014 that advocates men abstaining from masturbation.  Those of us in Western countries enjoy the most sexually liberated society in all of recorded history, yet there are people who believe that masturbating is not a good idea.  And they haven't used a TARDIS to travel with Dr. Kellogg from 1890.

To be fair, I actually do worry that we have now an entire generation of young men whose entire experience of sex is based on the infinite availability and variety of Internet porn, and that the outcome of this is unique in human history, and has the potential to be very damaging.  I am not anti-porn, but I recognize porn as an inherently attractive reward system, vis a vis masturbation and orgasm, as something that can give young men in particular (although young women are certainly not immune) a false sense of reality and expectation when it comes to partnered sex.

In clearer terms, wanking to a hidden Playboy or even a lingerie catalog in stolen moments is not the same as having a series of devices that you can access at almost all times that show literally any kind of sex act that can be imagined.  A host of studies have shown that most men who use porn heavily will increasingly resort to more and more "extreme" porn to get off for the sake of variety.  Older guys raised pre-unlimited streaming porn seem somewhat better able to withstand the onslaught and regulate themselves, but what about the teenagers and young men whose entire introduction to sex has been through this entirely unregulated access to porn?  How does that affect their sexual development and their ability to connect with flesh and blood partners?

According to the NoFap advocates, very, very poorly.  And I believe them.  The anecdotal landscape of sex and relationship forums are littered with tales of men who prefer masturbating to pornography to having sex with their partners.  And the fact that some men themselves believe they are suffering due to this phenomenon seems to be reason alone to take it seriously.

But I still have a difficult time doing so.  For starters, NoFap advocates seem to see abstinence from masturbation as more than just a way to improve their sex lives in a relationship.  It's viewed as a panacea to fix all their problems, from decreased energy to issues with masculinity.  They claim that not masturbating gives them super powers - and they're only half joking.  NoFap is full of tales of men who report greater self-confidence, athleticism, and happier relationships when abstaining from masturbation.  Of course, they don't realize that actively trying to improve oneself will often result in...self-improvement.  No, it had to be the masturbation holding them back all these years, not just regular ol' laziness.

There's also the fact that NoFap tends to attract "Red Pillers" - men from the most infamous of Reddit subforums who are basically anti-feminists, pick up artists, and all-around misogynists.  The level of misogyny present in NoFap also isn't surprising given that the formal founders of the movement are practicing conservative Catholics.  In short, NoFap is advocating some very old, outdated ideas about sexuality wrapped up in a hip new Internet package.

And it's becoming quite successful.  NoFap is gaining members by the thousands each month, due in part to the fact that NoFappers tend to proselytize for their cult on virtually every relationship and sex subreddit, as well as outside the Reddit community.  Their message of a better, more confident, more "alpha" life is very appealing to young men who feel unfulfilled and have some lingering shame about their sexuality.

That's why it's dangerous, and deserves a critical response.  And besides, we pick on the Polys way too much here.  Polyamorists can be annoying and give advice that's destructive to relationships, but to my mind any potential harm caused by Poly is a drop in the bucket compared to how NoFap is fucking with the emotional and physical health of men.

Reddit, Solved: Butt toy goes where?

The aptly named buttstuff42 asked: 

"Alright so my boyfriend was kinda drunk and he opened up about all the fetishes and stuff he likes. I have had a very vanilla sex career so far so I have absolutely no idea about any of the stuff he was talking about. He said he really likes "butt play" with "butt toys", he also wants to give me a rim job pretty badly. What is a butt toy, and how should I properly prepare myself for that? Same with anal. I bought nipple clamps, a vibrator and some handcuffs and don't really know what to do with those either."

Very simple.  "Butt toy" is a toy made out of butts.  

Pro-tip nipple clamps should not be used in the butt by any less that a seasoned "butt professional".  Consult your local yellowpages.

Reddit, Solved: You've got two dicks? Poly's got more...

So over on Reddit's Ask Me Anything, there's a gentleman who took questions for over 5 hours about the fact that he has two fully functional penises. It turns out that he does with those two members what every one imagines they would do with two working cocks.  He fucks.  Lots and lots.  He's bisexual and in a polyamorous relationship with a man and a woman.  Yes, he fucks them both at once, DPs, cums on the faces of a huge number of straight men who apparently happily take a shot to the face when it's coming from a pair of very nice cocks attached to the same guy.  To paraphrase the cinema masterpiece, "Predator", he's a goddamn sexual tyrannosaurus.

Still, despite all the love from Redditors on AMA, over one /r/polyamory, he was viewed being less than a bedroom Audie Murphy.

Vanbone said: "While I'm happy that he's found solid relationships for himself, I really hope he doesn't somehow become a posterboy for poly relationships. It would not do much to normalize the poly relationship style."

We here at SoT share your concerns, Mr. Bone.  For years the poly community has been working to craft its public image, building political networks and honing a media message that resonates as much with middle America as it does with the coastal set.  

Hell, as card carrying members of the bisexual cosa nostra, we're as troubled as you are.  Reading that AMA, people are liable to think that we are sexually voracious deviants.  That would be terrible.  (Though for people who think we are, please contact us through the blog)  

But you shouldn't fear.  Anyone who familiar with the frustratingly vocal internet branch of the poly family knows that it's as sexually adventurous as a Billy Graham sermon.  This is the crux of one of the key problems with selling poly to the masses.  You see, reading the AMA about the guy with two dicks, people gay and straight, poly and mono, could see guy having a lot of fun and enjoying life and his body.  People seemed genuinely excited to imagine what life would be like in his shoes.  

Reading polys on the internet repeat that it's not all about the sex, all while instituting relationship anarchy that inevitably breaks down into tears and drama is the opposite. Polys on the web don't sell a fantasy of love and sex.  It's like a car company running ads that just showed scenes of horrific car accidents. Yay, cars!  

Reddit, Solved: A wittol bit of a math problem

travisangelini posted this:

"Hello, I have been in a relationship with my beautiful wife for about a year and a half. We have a beautiful 1 year old daughter and I am in a tough spot. I have "emotionally cheated" (I know its the same as cheating now.) I am taking 100% accountability for my actions and have really learned through counseling and self healing."

Hello, Travis.  While we're glad to see that you're trying to confront the issues in your personal relationship, we here at Sex Or Television would like to talk to you about your relationship with math and human reproduction, two areas that are often mutually exclusive.  Just ask people in the math department at your local university.  Go on, we'll wait.

So you and your wife have had a relationship for a year and a half.  Okay, you might have gotten married a bit quickly, but that's far from the only issue on the table.  The real puzzler is that you have a one year old daughter, or more accurately, your wife has a one year old daughter.  

You see, Travis, it takes nine months from conception for a tiny human to appear.  Even if you and your wife conceived a child on the first date, that doesn't exactly add up, especially since you don't exactly come across as a first date fuck.  Or a third date fuck.  What we're saying is that you're not exactly a hot date, and that's already taking into account that you're as far from a math geek as is possible. Maybe alcohol.