emotional system consciously may require changing some old habits and can feel very shaky, sort of like learning to ride a bicycle. Weird, embarrassing … you’ll probably fall down a few times, but if you pick yourself up and keep going, eventually you get the feel of it. And once you get your balance, you’ll never forget.
Relationship Boundaries
Relationships also have boundaries. The agreements that free-loving singles, couples, and families make with respect for each other’s feelings constitute the boundaries of their relationship. In an opensexual community, it is important to deal with each relationship within its own boundaries. For example, you figure out your limits with your partner before you go to the sex party, you don’t use your mistress to diss your wife, and decisions are made with input from everybody affected by them and not behind anybody’s back.
Communities based on sex and intimacy work best when everybody has respect for everybody’s relationships, which includes not only lovers but also children and families of origin and neighbors and exes and so on. Such communities can evolve into highly connected family systems when everyone is conscious of and caring about boundaries.
Be willing to learn from your mistakes. Boundaries can get tricky at times, so we hope you give yourself lots of slack to explore. Expect to learn by trial and error, and expect to make plenty of errors. Forgive yourself for anything that doesn’t work out the way you hoped it would. Remember, you can’t learn from your errors if you always have to be right!
DUMPING
One place where people often get confused is differentiating between the honest sharing of feelings and dumping. Dumping means using others as your garbage pit, spewing your problematic stuff all over them and leaving it there. Dumping usually carries the expectation that the dumpee will do something about the problem, even if it’s simply to take on the burden of worrying so that the dumper can stop. Usually you can avoid dumping by making it totally clear that your need to share your emotional state carries no obligation for your listener: “I don’t like your having a date with Paula tonight,” followed by a heavy and pregnant silence, carries an entirely different weight than “I’m feeling insecure about your date with Paula tonight, but I want you to go ahead and have it. Are you okay with listening to some of my fears? Can we talk a bit about ways that I might be able to feel a little safer?”
PROJECTION
Another trick to watch out for is projection. No, not the kind you find at the movies on Saturday night! Projection is when you use another person as a screen to run your movie on. You see your fantasy and miss the real person. You imagine you know this person’s thoughts,when in fact you are thinking about your fears. Maybe you imagine that they will respond the same way your parents did—“I know you’ll reject me if I don’t make a lot of money,” “You’ll never respect me if I show you my sadness.” Every one of us learned our expectations of how people will react to us from our parents. Or you might be projecting your expectations, projections that your lovers—who are not mind readers—can never live up to: “You’re supposed to take care of me!” “Whaddaya mean, you’re not horny? I’m horny!”
When you make a commitment to own your own stuff, you can stop projecting and see the people you love clearly, in all their glory. When you find yourself thinking blameful thoughts about your partner, you might ask yourself: “What do I own here?” What you see inside might be something like “Wow, I sound just like my father when he was angry,” or “I feel the way I did when I was eight and used to hide in the closet when I was upset.” Then you might go to your lover and share how whatever was going on woke up some old tapes of yours, and you can brainstorm what you want to do about that. When you work together to
Relationship Boundaries
Relationships also have boundaries. The agreements that free-loving singles, couples, and families make with respect for each other’s feelings constitute the boundaries of their relationship. In an opensexual community, it is important to deal with each relationship within its own boundaries. For example, you figure out your limits with your partner before you go to the sex party, you don’t use your mistress to diss your wife, and decisions are made with input from everybody affected by them and not behind anybody’s back.
Communities based on sex and intimacy work best when everybody has respect for everybody’s relationships, which includes not only lovers but also children and families of origin and neighbors and exes and so on. Such communities can evolve into highly connected family systems when everyone is conscious of and caring about boundaries.
Be willing to learn from your mistakes. Boundaries can get tricky at times, so we hope you give yourself lots of slack to explore. Expect to learn by trial and error, and expect to make plenty of errors. Forgive yourself for anything that doesn’t work out the way you hoped it would. Remember, you can’t learn from your errors if you always have to be right!
DUMPING
One place where people often get confused is differentiating between the honest sharing of feelings and dumping. Dumping means using others as your garbage pit, spewing your problematic stuff all over them and leaving it there. Dumping usually carries the expectation that the dumpee will do something about the problem, even if it’s simply to take on the burden of worrying so that the dumper can stop. Usually you can avoid dumping by making it totally clear that your need to share your emotional state carries no obligation for your listener: “I don’t like your having a date with Paula tonight,” followed by a heavy and pregnant silence, carries an entirely different weight than “I’m feeling insecure about your date with Paula tonight, but I want you to go ahead and have it. Are you okay with listening to some of my fears? Can we talk a bit about ways that I might be able to feel a little safer?”
PROJECTION
Another trick to watch out for is projection. No, not the kind you find at the movies on Saturday night! Projection is when you use another person as a screen to run your movie on. You see your fantasy and miss the real person. You imagine you know this person’s thoughts,when in fact you are thinking about your fears. Maybe you imagine that they will respond the same way your parents did—“I know you’ll reject me if I don’t make a lot of money,” “You’ll never respect me if I show you my sadness.” Every one of us learned our expectations of how people will react to us from our parents. Or you might be projecting your expectations, projections that your lovers—who are not mind readers—can never live up to: “You’re supposed to take care of me!” “Whaddaya mean, you’re not horny? I’m horny!”
When you make a commitment to own your own stuff, you can stop projecting and see the people you love clearly, in all their glory. When you find yourself thinking blameful thoughts about your partner, you might ask yourself: “What do I own here?” What you see inside might be something like “Wow, I sound just like my father when he was angry,” or “I feel the way I did when I was eight and used to hide in the closet when I was upset.” Then you might go to your lover and share how whatever was going on woke up some old tapes of yours, and you can brainstorm what you want to do about that. When you work together to
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