Lies, damn lies, and polyamory

Almost two years ago, I wrote about a date I went on with a woman who wouldn’t fuck me because, at the time, T and I were in an explicit, open, honest period of “don’t ask/don’t tell,” and this didn’t meet this woman’s and her husband’s requirements for “ethical behavior and integrity.” She was prepared to violate her and her husband’s high ethical standards to kiss me, it turned out. Just not to fuck me.

The other night, I was out with a woman I met through Ashley Madison. She asked me if I had a problem fucking her what with how she has a boyfriend and all. I told her my answer to that question, and I’ll share it here:

I have absolutely no ethical issues with fucking you if you’re in a committed relationship. As far as I’m concerned you are responsible for managing your ethical obligations to others, and I’m not responsible either for enforcing them, or for judging them. Relationships are complicated. I’m not in yours. There are all sorts of reasons why people have sex with people other than their primary partners. Some of those reasons are reprehensible, some are damn near laudable. And if I’m not you, I just don’t feel like I can even begin to have a meaningful opinion about the ethical implications of your decisions. So I don’t.

None of the women I messed around with in my CPOS years had any obligation to my wife. They weren’t deceiving her, wronging her – I was. There’s no gender solidarity obligation for me to help you police your girlfriend’s or wife’s fidelity. Your girlfriend or wife isn’t obligated to help my wife police mine. A friend of mine recently received a phone call from the wife of a man she had been fucking, calling her a “whore” and all sorts of other things. When we’re jealous, we sometimes turn our rage not at the rightful object of our wrath (the one who’s betrayed us) but at someone else.

Which leads to what concerns I do have, though, about fucking you if your boyfriend or husband isn’t in on the secret.

If I don’t know the dude, my concerns aren’t about ethics. (If I do know him, I won’t get involved unless he’s ok with it. Not because I don’t approve of whatever your relationship to what’s happening is, but because I don’t want to have to lie.) My concerns are about bodily and reputational harm (to me) and, to a lesser extent, drama. I’d just as soon not get one of those phone calls my friend got.

When your boyfriend finds my number in your phone, when he finds the nasty pictures you’ve sent me, how’s he going to react? Will he see things as I do? Will he know, appreciate, value, for example, that you’ve had a profile on Ashley Madison for how long now? That I’m one of many, just the latest in your string of adulterous fucks? Or will he fly into a jealous rage and blame me for stealing you, for “alienating your affections,” as they still say – and make actionable – in at least seven states?

These are the risks I contemplate when I think about your lips wrapped around my cock, your thighs squeezing my head, your ass in my hands, your nipples in my mouth, your cunt receiving my pounding.

This won’t be enough to deter me, by the way (at least not in your case, Angela). But this is my concern, not an ethical one.

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