Poly Means Many: Loss

Poly Means Many: There are many aspects of polyamory. Each month seven bloggers - ALBJ, Delightfully Queer, An Open Book, More Than Nuclear, Rarely Wears Lipstick, The Boy With The Inked Skin and myself - will write about their views on one of them. This month: Loss

It's better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. Your loss, my gain. We often talk about love, loss and power in the same sentence, in the same love song. About the act of losing love in the same way as losing a game, through lack of skill or failure, or perhaps like losing something on the train, by accident or carelessness. A loss is a diminishing of our own power, of our own capability. Something that we had but no longer. Something to grieve over. Equally, loss can also be powerful, we can be set free by it. We lost our inhibitions, we had nothing to lose but our chains. We got rid of the unnecessary, the unwanted and the undesirable. More so, we can use loss to damage people. We can tell them to get lost, we can make them a loser. To put themselves so far away from where we are that they are the ones who have become untethered. We are the centre, the gravity well, the reality that they no longer have access to. We can lose, we can become lost, we can lose other people and we can make other lost. Loss has power.

There are all kinds of ways of viewing loss and that's the framework that I want to keep in mind for the rest of this piece. I've written on my own personal, major poly break-up a few years ago, and how it felt to lose a dominant, to be lost by my dominant and to know that he still had someone else, his primary partner, whilst I was left alone. Time has eased a lot of the hurt, but I still remember it very well. The rawness of it, the pain and the sense of extraordinary unfairness, abandonment and anxiety that I had done something wrong, that I had been deemed "less". A second choice. There was anger at how happy they must be compared to how unhappy I was (I have no idea whether this was true or not, but reality wasn't my strong suit at the time). I also couldn't help but make comparisons. I suppose it's similar to being left for someone else, except more complicated. I was in the position where I was encouraged to be, but never felt especially friendly towards The Photgrapher's partner, I can only imagine what it might be like if I had actually been friends with her. As well as losing my lover, I would have also lost a friend.

Breaking-up is rarely pretty or easy, but there's a particular challenge when relationships contain more than two people because they don't often break into neat, individual pieces. There will be someone left out, and that can cause additional hurt. Add in the weight of responsibility, obligation and service that can be part of a D/s established relationship, plus any sort of play dynamic such as pet and owner, slave and mistress and it becomes even more painful when these things are stripped away.

There is, as I have often mentioned, something of a clash between the needs of a poly relationship and the needs of a BDSM relationship. I'm sure there are some people for whom it works, but for me the all encompassing nature of dominance and submission can sit badly with having multiple partners. You cannot be a servant of two masters, it diminishes the power of both of them. It was a problem I faced with Mr Smith and sadly, we never came to a workable ongoing resolution. Equally as a dominant you cannot promise to protect and to support a submissive when you have another partner.

This clash has been the cause of most of my break-ups. And the tension between BDSM and poly has been the ongoing theme within this series I've tried to unpick. Words like "only", "best", "most precious" and "mine" become very difficult in a poly context. But they are words of power. And words of power are useful to perverts. We put people in places where they are ours, whole and entire. Yet these words are meaningless, or worse, become promises you cannot deliver when reality sets in, when it become obvious that they are not the only one, not the best. Lies you tell yourself and your partner that will come back to haunt you. There will, and there always are in poly relationships, time when someone has to come first. As a dominant, that is my submissive. If I have two submissives then I need to make a choice and that's where I have a problem.

My poly has its limits, but those limits protect me from situations that have hurt me in the past, so they are lessons well learnt. There are ways around it and they involve hierarchy, roles and planning. The format of "trainer" has worked well for me as a temporary dominant role. It allows me to care deeply and to be taken seriously, to be unique and powerful, but also to give the other person space to see others. The thing I did with them was the only time they did that. It was special to us.

You need careful, ongoing, thoughtful communication to make it work. If there's one word that could be written, stick of rock like, throughout our Poly Means Many posts, I suspect it would be the C word. There is no point having an image of what the relationship looks like unless you tell other people about it, and certainly communication breakdown is often cited as the place where poly relationships come unstuck. It makes sense, the more people involved, the more difficult good and open communication can be. Everyone has their own opinion, and desires, for what a relationship should be, and everyone is clear in their own minds. But perhaps not in others. The same goes for what happens afterwards.

And the aftermath is worth thinking about, perhaps even before you start the relationship if you can. A friend of mine has the wonderful attitude of enjoying relationships for what they are, and accepting that at some point they will end. I have a more fairytale outlook, and like the handsome prince I expect to capture my beloved, slay the dragon and be happy ever after. Loss doesn't come into it. So it's probably all the worse when it does.
I
There are things we can do to manage or mitigate loss. We can avoid situations which are likely to cause harm or trouble, which is a wise thing to do no matter what the context. The difficulty is in putting common sense before desire and knowing what works. Experience helps. But you neeed to make mistakes to get experienced. After a few years I now know much more about what I am capable of doing within a relationship and what I cannot do. I can also talk about these requirements without being embarrassed or trying to appear "better" or able to give more than I can. For example Ganymede and I have agreed that we will have periodic play partners but certainly for the foreseeable future we are unlikely to become a threesome or moresome with anyone else. There wouldn't be a lot of room for another person and to offer that without being able to deliver would be unfair. No matter how much I might like the idea of a cute "companion" for him so they could share the duties in serving me.

There's a balance to it all, and nothing exists in a vacuum. This is especially true of relationships in the BDSM and poly community. We are small groups of people with particular tastes and predilections. The chances of us knowing a former lover of a friend on the scene are high: people talk, people bitch and people gossip. Especially within close communities or friendship groups. Word gets around. Everyone knows who is connected to who and often how and why they broke up. Or at least has one person's perspective on it. And that can be difficult and upsetting for everyone, in what is already a difficult and upsetting situation. Short of putting each person in the original relationship, and their partners and their partners' partners in isolation for six months (which in some groups might mean putting everyone in a different city and turning off the internet) it's hard to avoid. The repercussions of one break-up can have a knock-on effect on a lot of things, especially where several people have a relationship link that goes beyond friendship and these things can get quite complicated over time as people fall in and out of relationships.

I still hold a strong connection and love for Mannequin and we've been through quite a few other partners in the time we have known each other. For a period of time she belonged to someone else. When she first started to date him, she was very much mine but over time it was clear she wanted to explore the nascent relationship with him. I wanted her to be happy and there were things he could give her I could not. I missed her, and I felt the loss keenly, as well as felt some sense of inadequacy (rightly or wrongly, these days I'm coming firmly down on wrongly). I wasn't angry at either of them. I was happy they were happy. But I was also sad, and I missed what she and I had.

My primary feeling was dominance and to me that's about control, protection and enabling your submissive to experience wonderful things. He didn't "take" her from me, we were all clear on that, I gave her to him. We had a series of very good conversations about it which enabled me to keep my control, and my protectiveness and the knowledge that she was and would experiencing amazing things and he would look after her in my place. But I still missed her. I had still lost a large part of what we had. Now that relationship with him is over and ended badly with the net result that I'm reasonably angry over the whole thing.

I also have a mirror to that original loss because her hurt, her loss is in some ways also my hurt and my loss. I feel empathy for her because of what I went through, but also because not only is she my friend, I still have the strong sense that she is mine. What I wanted for her did not happen and I am sorry I could not protect her from it, which sounds ridiculous because she is an adult and makes her own decisions, but all the same: I wanted her to be happy.

The sense of dominance does not go away just because your submissive is now technically no longer yours, just as the sense of love does not go away when your partner leaves you for someone else. Feelings don't belong to the person you invested them in, they are yours, they live in your heart, your head, your stomach. If I've learnt anything about relationships it's this: your feelings are your own.

It's your loss. As they say.

Poly Means Many: Non-lovers

Poly Means Many: There are many aspects of polyamory. Each month seven bloggers - ALBJ, Delightfully Queer, An Open Book, More Than Nuclear, Rarely Wears Lipstick, The Boy With The Inked Skin and myself - will write about their views on one of them. This month: Non-lovers.

An interesting topic this month, and one that can often cause the most questions and confusions. How do we define, relate and spend time with other people in our lives who are not our partners? Seems stupidly simple, but as with many non-standard lifestyles polyamory offers the double edged "opportunity" to reassess and rethink how you conduct almost every single relationship in your life. Here's an example. You are out at a party, you meet someone and you click. Now, if you are in a monogamous relationship that would be the end of that, the person could potentially become a friend, but unless you were a cheating scumbag (and regardless of whether you have one partner or one hundred, no-one likes a cheating scumbag) you wouldn't kiss them, ask them on a date, fuck them.

When your relationship is open, these possibilities are open too. Which means that you need to have rules about how you handle these possibilities, and those rules start to be the defining characteristics of your relationship. Different people have different kinds of polyamory. There is no one true way. All I can do, and all any of us on this project are doing, is offering our own perspectives. We're basically making our relationships up as we go along. Hopefully we'll get it mostly right. A side effect of this is that you also start to unpick - and this is a massive, ongoing and often very fraught process - all the terrible lies that are taught to you about what happiness should look like, what a "healthy" relationship is, how you (as a man, as a woman, as a queer person, as a straight person) should behave, should live.

Now, obviously Ganymede and I are in a D/s relationship so even if we were monogamous our relationship would be governed by very overt rules so this isn't a strange situation for us. We have rules that define how we - he and I - operate - but we also have rules for how we interact with others which reflect that. For example, all potential lovers, flings and play partners for Ganymede must be pre-approved by myself. There are levels which cover all kinds of potential social interactions and are based on what is important to me - he can kiss who he likes, whether it's a stranger or one of his ex partners. And there are levels for different situations when we're at a private sex party he will likely be free to fuck whoever he chooses as long as he acquits himself well (which he will, of course). At a BDSM event it would be more formal, more protocol driven.

Most kinky people I know have some kind of sexual or play relationship with others outwith their main relationship. We are no different. Partners from our past, friends we enjoy playing with whenever we are in a club or party together. Then there is the future. Although we are very much a bonded pair, there will be people who will come in and out of our lives. Or rather, there will be people who will be different things to us during the time we know them. I have partners who I have loved, fucked and who have been deep and significant parts of my life. Some of them I will never see again, some of them I see every other week for coffee and cocktails. Learning how to deal with that and to accept that process is difficult, especially when things are never truly "finished" in the world of open relationships.

You develop words and phrases that define different people in your lives: friends, lovers, play-partners, girlfriends and boyfriends, pets, fuck-buddies (though personally I hate that term along with the dreadfully dismissive Friends With Benefits).

A lot of this boils down to how you define your relationships. For me, it's about the physical and emotional connection - the intimacy - I have with people. There will always be a distinction between friends and lovers. For others, the friendship is the basis of everything - there are friends that they have sex with, or kinky sex with, and friends who they don't. I'm not saying that my lovers are never my friends - I hope that they are - but in my mind they are different. Not different bad or different good, but a different sort of relationship. It comes down to definitions and what feels right in your own mind, your own body, your own heart.

Poly Means Many: What is love?

Poly Means Many: There are many aspects of polyamory. Each month six bloggers - Amanda Jones, An Open Book, One Sub's Mission, More Than Nuclear, Post Modern Sleaze, and Rarely Wears Lipstick - will write about their views on one of them. This month: Love.

I've written on love in general before, as a Valentine's post for the Gender and Sex social. This time, it's personal: I can theorise on love for a very long time, I can theorise on a lot of things for a very long tme, but let's get down to the practicalities this time. I am actually in love, which changes your perspective on things and instead of wanting to throw half-bricks at endorphin glowing couples walking hand-in-hand on the street I'm actually more likely to be one of them. Being in love is amazing, it makes you feel indestructable, special and very happy, who wouldn't want to feel like that?

It can also be a very dangerous and challenging emotion, making you say and do things you might not otherwise do because of the intensity of your feelings for another person. Perhaps this is doubly true of relationships that are non-conventional, such as open relationships and BDSM relationships. I'm inclined to say this is partly because you add more feelings when you add more people or more "stuff" (if we can broadly categorise S&M play as "stuff" for the moment and you are prepared to forgive me).

I also think that we are less socially prepared for them, generally people do not grow up in a world where such relationships are considered normal, so we have less space and freedom in our day-to-day conversations to discuss them and work through and feelings. It's unlikely, for example, that I might be able to casually say in conversation to people who did not know me, that I was feeling a bit sad that a playdate was cancelled because my partner and I were looking forward to it. All kinds of inferrences would have been drawn, including the idea that my relationship with Ganymede must be failing or somehow not working in order for us to be looking outside for some "spice", but most telling of all is the idea that we could not possibly be in love if we were fucking other people.

The love you have for a partner, a lover, a boyfriend, a girlfriend is enshrined as singular, whole and all-encompassing within commonly held principles. Take marriage - they are the one who you "foresake others" for. There is no space within this to add other people, so any emotional connection you might have for someone else, in a romantic, sexual sense, is seen as something which is taken away from the (presumably) finite pile of love that you have for your partner. Because love is a measurable resource, of course, and it needs to be hoarded like gold, rather than it being capable of expanding to fill whatever room you can create for it. We know, we absolutely know that you can love lots of friends, and lots of family members, and lots of cats. We also know (more or less, depending on where you are in the world, and, sadly, whether you are a man or a woman) that you can have sex with lots of people and, assuming you are a decent human being, remain on good terms. Where we come terribly, awfully, unstuck as a society is the idea that you could do both at once.

Part of the problem is the idea where putting specific bits of yourself into someone else and wriggling about was inherently an act of love? At its most basic, fucking is a kind of physical intimacy and pleasure, which can make everyone feel good, if done well, and shitty if done wrong. Just because I fuck you, doesn't mean I love you. I can do both, but I don't have to. BDSM opens up a very large palette of colours that constitute "fucking". When Ganymede sticks his cock in Blush, at my behest, I am fucking her. He is my submissive, my slave and therefore my tool.

The types of feelings you have towards people can affect the type of play you are able to enjoy.
The connection between owner and slave is very powerful, and whilst many D/s relationships are also loving relationships some of them are explicity not. Just as I can fuck someone and not love them, I can also dominate someone and not love them. In fact, there are situations where being in love with someone can actually make it more difficult to deliver very intense, very hard scenes - particularly those involving extremes of emotional or physical cruelty. I know many perverts for whom certain types of play can only be done to strangers or friendly partners.

BDSM adds further complexity (or interest) when it comes to loving more than one person. That sense of wholeness and complete isolation from everyone else which is conferred upon typical monomogamous relationships is intensified in owner/slave relationships. More than being the only one for each other, one partner is explicity, overtly and entirely owned by the other. Everything is done at the, and for the, pleasure of the dominant partner. There is a difficulty then, between being that special and wonderful owned thing (for the submissive) or the all-powerful benefactor (for the dominant) when other people are involved.

There is are some logic problems to be overcome in building open, many-partnered D/s relationships. Often these are resolved through hierarchy, planning and protocol. A master holds the key for many slaves, for example, or a slave is sent for training by a specific mistress, a pervert who switches may be the dominant for one person and the submissive of another. There are lots and lots of permeutations. But these only describe the theories for how something can be done and look great on paper - especially within the pages of exciteable books written by people with no real knowledge - yet they do not always match up to reality.

People have feelings and desires and expectations. They also have lives which are not always, entirely, centered around their sexual practices. They need to go to work, to the shops, perhaps to look after their children. Real life relationships are not easily expressed by a diagram. All kinds of emotions will surface, not least jealousy, which we've already discussed, but many sorts of feelings which perhaps could not have been anticipated.

The sensation of feeling entirely owned or owning someone can often be destroyed or made very difficult when the reality is different. I struggled when I was dating people who had other partners with whom they had a stronger connection. I would often feel that our play was less important or less valuable, or that it was a game - something which was only done when we were together. Another good example is a friend of mine who hated the idea of being part of a hareem set-up for her dominant: she would feel one-of-many and abandonned, less special. A sentiment I can certainly empathise with.

A lot of it is to do with assumptions, and BDSM is rife with assumptions, just like any kind of human interaction. The idea that a submissive "should be" happy with another partner within their relationship purely because their dominant likes them, for example. They might well put up with it, out of love or service to their dominant, but they may never actually enjoy it and be happy within that relationship. Regardless of whether they might like to, or whether it would be "easier". This is an all-too-common problem within V relationships especially, whereby one partner is seeing t is impossible to make someone be happy about something - emotions are not as easily commanded as people.

This is not to say that BDSM and open relationships are not compatible, merely that they are not always easy bedfellows, and that the negotiations and discussions involved should always include the possibility that they will not work out. I know some very successful BDSM group set-ups and the leather family for example, can offer the best of both worlds - a supportive and loving (in all kinds of sense of the word) group which also provides training for all things kink. One of the nice things about leather family set-ups is that they are often dynamic, they assume that people will grow and change, that submissives may become dominant, that dominants may desire to submit. Because BDSM, and love, now I come to think of it, is something which offers you the potential to learn so much about yourself and your interactions with others, it is absurd to think that you will not be changed by the experience. When people change they often find that the environments they are in do not match what they now need so relationships which provide for this, and which even anticipate this, can give a really strong, positive framework for everyone involved.

Poly Means Many: Domestic arrangements

Poly Means Many: There are many aspects of polyamory. Each month six bloggers - Amanda Jones, An Open Book, One Sub's Mission, More Than Nuclear, Post Modern Sleaze, and Rarely Wears Lipstick - will write about their views on one of them. This month: Domestic arrangements.

"But how does it work, do you kiss and cuddle as well as the other stuff?"

Dinner with a friend of mine who is starting to explore the world of BDSM and we're getting into the real nuts and bolts of daily D/s life. So this month I'm going to write about how a power exchange works life and how this works in a poly context.

Ganymede recently pointed out an old post of mine on the subject of "what I want" in which I talk about Total Power Exchange, which is a form of D/s. There's a good article on it here, but in a nutshell, this is how we live. More or less. I make the rules and he lives by them. That's all very easy to say, but how does it work, and how does it work with other people? Let's start with some myth busting, as I'm in the mood, and as we go along that might help explain how it all works.

Normality rules OK. D/s relationships, and poly relationships, are a lot like other relationships. They are loving, caring and, for those in them, "normal". Ganymede and I do not spend our entire life in tight fitting black latex, with him permanently on his knees and me looking serious whilst holding a bullwhip. This is roughly the equivlant of assuming that vanilla couples in 2012 dress, talk and behave like characters from The Good Life. at all times. It's dated and it's hugely stereotyped. We do all the things that other couples do. We hold hands, we kiss, we joke about our kink, ourselves, our lives, we do silly things, we snuggle up on the sofa, we go to the cinema and we do the shopping.

Let's play Master and servant. All relationships have roles: modes of behaviour and a general "who does what" when you are together. This happens whether you realise it or not and once things get settled then they become standard. D/s relationships have roles, but they are very conscious ones, we decide, often in a very detailed fashion, who is going to do what and how. But most of the "what" is exactly the same kinds of things that any domestic set up needs, except with a thread of kink through them. For example, I do the cooking. I love to cook, so it makes me happy, and I like to provide for my submissive. I control what he eats, how much and when. I control what goes into him. I also take care of him, making sure he eats well.

Because we have these roles, it means that adding other people into the mix is actually relatively easy in terms of people for play. We have played with Blush, for example, several times. Coming from the kink scene and knowing her in advance really helped make those dates work. We know what we are to each other and what to expect from each other. We're very much still in a dating phase, which leads us on to the final point.

What's love got to do with it? I want to make it very clear: Ganymede and I love each other very much. We look out for each other, we want to make each other happy. The way in which we express this love is mostly the same, but crucially different from what you might term "traditional relationships." We do not believe that "love" is the same as "monogamy", and we certainly don't believe that if one or the other (or both) of us wants to have sex with someone else that points to a critical flaw in our relationship. Bodies are bodies. Bodies are fun. We like playing with bodies.

Feelings for others are a different thing entirely. And that's where you have to start thinking ethically, and considering your impact on other people. We are not in a place to add someone else into our relationship in a romantic, emotional, ongoing sense. We're not ready. We don't know if we will ever be ready because we've only been together for a few months and are just getting a handle on who "we" are. We're still very new to each other and are enjoying spending time with "just us". We have so much to learn about who we are and how we work that adding other people into the mix beyond friends and play partners would be madness. Our experiences of poly have been different. We've both been in open relationships, of different kinds and I've been part of a poly V, which had limited success. It's something we have only briefly touched upon and whilst we certainly haven't closed it down as a possibility, it's something that would need to be negotiated within the context of our D/s relationship.

What I have learnt is that there are so many different types of relationships, and no hard and fast rules for what a relationship should and shouldn't look like. There is no "one true way" of loving someone, or some people, no way of living that is the gold standard beyond what works for you, as long as everyone is honest, open and happy. And that nothing is set in stone. Things change, people change. Life moves on and you learn as you go along. I know when I first wrote about what I wanted, many years ago, the idea of a TPE relationship was terrifying in terms of what I perceived as a huge weight of responsibility for someone else. I'm actually finding it very easy, to the point of being the most simple and pleasurable to manage relationship I've had. What this says to me is that how I thought TPE would work - one person, constantly issuing orders and planning everything, is not in fact, how it works for us. I imagine that any poly situation would be the same. We would find something that suited us, and others involved, and come to our own arrangements.

Poly Means Many: Needs and Wants

Poly Means Many: There are many aspects of polyamory. Each month six bloggers - Amanda Jones, An Open Book, One Sub's Mission, Polyamorous Parenting, Post Modern Sleaze, and Rarely Wears Lipstick - will write about their views on one of them. This month: Needs and Wants.

A well-timed post, given that Ganymede and I have just gone through what an old school kinkster might call "the negotiation phase". Other people might blanch at the level of organisation, bullet points, formalised writing and spreadsheets which are involved in kick-starting a D/s relationship with me. It's a tribute to the (sickening, sickening) level of fit between him and myself that all of this has been reassuring rather than terrifying, powerfully protective instead of creepy and detailed instead of obsessive. We've both been in and out of those "are we, aren't we?" relationships where little clarity was offered and both felt insecure and anxious as a result.

I'm going to sidetrack to a bit of kinky history, just for background. There are old-school ways of forming BDSM relationships, including specific types of collars and collaring processes, such as a "collar of consideration" or "training collar" where someone is given a specific collar by a dominant, usually more workmanlike and less pretty than a "real" collar. This tentative, patient movement towards a D/s relationship is a reflection of previous, formal and hierarchical arrangements where the outward appearance was often very considered and ran according to particular group protocols. I've even heard tell of BDSM subcultures where all dominants must spend a certain number of years as a submissive, regardless of their actual sexual desires in this area, in order to learn what it feels like. As a switch, I approve of this idea, if not of the actual method. Kinksters, like all nerds, have rules about what is and isn't the correct way of behaving. It creates a system where one didn't exists and therefore helps us assert our authority and our right to live the way we want to.

Over time, we have become (slowly) more accepted and (slowly) less closeted and (rapidly) more on the internet, we've become a little more relaxed about these formalities. Or perhaps we've just moved to other, electronic formats. The processes of forming BDSM relationships have changed and the idea that a particular specific set of things must be done in order to be "doing it right" has been, correctly, eroded. However, there are still stages and points in time, as well as tools, which are incredibly valuable to kinksters and I hope will never fall by the wayside.

Lets start with negotiations. It's a great fallacy of BDSM that the dominant decides everything and the submissive has no input. Needs and wants is not, in my experience, a written-in-stone tablet that the dominant presents to the submissive. Perhaps some people do that. I don't. There are some very good negotiation spreadsheets around which are useful for all kinds of kinky encounters. They give long lists of BDSM activities, from physical play to emotional and much more, with space for notes, for colouring in red, amber or green or for detailing whether you want to try something, want to be made to try it, are nervous about it or will stab someone in the eye if they even suggest it. After a few text based exchanges I sent one of these over to Ganymede and we now have a shared document which is a wonderful "what shall I do to you tonight?" menu for me.

In our negotiations, I sent over some very specific points which outline the type of relationship I want, some notes about how I view consent, the kinds of things I like doing and my own personal "wash and care" instructions, a few notes on how to take care of me. Regular feeding, sleeping and fucking are required, along with the ability to make gin and tonic and to only serve me decent coffee. Even if you do like having hot drinks spat in your face countermanding the latter is not encouraged.

I asked him for similar thoughts and then we looked into specifics, or picked out any areas of difference or points that needed expanding upon. We tried to cover as many potential situations as possible. As a dominant I work with rules and protocols to manage our relationship, so that we both know what is expected of each other. The less I can get away with the better, because I don't like having lots of things to remember and I like being able to react based on how we are both feeling at the time. However, there are some rules that need to be agreed upon. The way you decide you are going to approach other people is something that should be tackled as early on in the discussions as possible. Starting with the question: "do you want to be open or non-monogamous?"

For us, it was simple. We have no other partners. We are both very keen on a firm D/s commitment and we are non-monogamous in terms of sexual appetite. We're also open to the possibilities that alternative relationship set-ups might give us in the future, but are conscious of being new to each other. I am keen to keep ourselves to ourselves for a little while on an emotional level, certainly. We know that we are keen to fuck and to play with others, and have already made inroads in arranging this, we also know that another boy would be a good play addition. We're also both very happy spending an afternoon in a sunny coffee shop in Soho deciding who from the passers-by we would corrupt, and how.

For BDSM, the type of D/s relationship can vary massively, and it's good to work that out early too. Not every dominant matches every submissive - far from it. There's a terrible assumption in some circles that just because I like rope, for example, I will like being tied up by anyone. Just like the assumption by well-meaning parents or friends that because a particular chap shares certain interests with me, we would be a lovely couple. So, alongside the obvious things of how you want to spend time together, the sorts of exciting sex and kink you can have, you also need to think about what the power exchange might look and feel like.

One of the best ways I've ever heard of describing a D/s relationship was through the use of avatars to elucidate the type of person you want to be. For me, my dominance is styled around being a "trainer" - I develop submissives into something even better. I'm caring, but firm and I use a lot of small, ongoing behaviour modifications to refine my darlings. I'm also a "Daddy" figure, authoritarian but proud of my charges and loving. When I'm in darker, filthier moods I'm also a "groomer" and a "torturer" I coax and force them into doing all kinds of things. My wants in this is to be a powerful figure within their life who provides support, stability and is served or attended to in turn.

For Ganymede, we are using words like "toy", "object", "pet", "slave" and "boy" - all his words, naturally. From those I'm able to pick up on what he is interested in, the specific sorts of control and ownership that turns him on and makes him happy.

After you've done the negotiations, you create the contract. A solid D/s contract can be many things. At its most basic it gives both (or all, though in this case we are two) parties the opportunity to highlight what they want from the relationship. Needs and wants. What you are looking for, what you can give, what you can't give. This covers a lot of things, time spent with each other, who you want to be for each other, future plans, sexual preferences. BDSM codifies a lot of these in the form of a contract, and some people do indeed write up and sign documents.

My contract is simple, it's designed to be "always on" so not matter what else happens, this basic statement covers who and what we mean to each other. It's also flexible in terms of what it could potentially include, easy to understand and, importantly positive.

You are mine: you will serve and obey me; I will train and look after you
It starts when you accept, it ends when we decide it ends
We will make each other's lives better

The email thread includes all the negotiation emails we've sent backwards and forwards, with the requirement that certain key points are replied to with an agreement or acceptance. One of the reason why I like contracts is the sense of rigor and permanence, which a casual pillow-talk conversation does not, no matter how sleepy and seductive. Things get forgotten, or if half-murmured whilst fucking can be cast as in-the-moment cries of passion, signifying nothing.

The final thing I want to touch on, briefly, is collars. These, or other pieces of significant jewellery, "seal the deal" in many ways. Signs and symbols are important to all kinds of human interactions, and contracts can sometimes seem like words or pixels. A physical reminder of what you have agreed, of what you mean to each other is very potent. The gift, in and of itself, is powerful, it is an endowment, a very solid reflection of what has been agreed. A collar need not be a collar. Ganymede now has a fetching silver chain coiled around his neck. Discrete, but of a solid weave. Given once all the agreements have been made, and representative of them. A little light touch of me upon his neck, glistening in the sun.

Whether or not you are kinky, the important thing about all of this is that genuine, honest conversations have been had and decisions have been made. Together. To my mind, the best relationships are ones in which this negotiation process is never finished, where the conversations about who we are and where we can go continue forever, always learning and always exploring.

I've had situations where it has not been quite so simple, not quite so neat as I'm making out. Either because the conversation never really happened, such as with The Photographer where there was no negotiation, the situation was a done deal and my inexperience didn't prepare me for what was actually being said. That has led me to perhaps be more careful, more clear in my own dealings with people. No bad thing. I've been in situations where I've tried to have conversations and felt ignored or given lip service, where the desire for what I offered was greater than the actual ability to deliver it. I know that my reliance on email can cause confusion for people who are not used to thinking strategically or tactically about relationships, sex and emotions. And situations where the requirement to make time to even have the conversation in the first place was a battle, where documentation was ignored or the entire process caused upset - a failure on all sides.

I've learnt a lot. About myself, about people I have loved and lost. Not everyone will be keen to have these kinds of conversations, not everyone will want to be in a D/s or an open or polyamorous situation. Part of the point of outlining needs and wants is that you are clear in yourself what you want and can explain it to others. The perfect goal is that everyone gets what they want, but an outcome you should steel yourself for is that you do not get what you want but that people are not misled or hurt by the process.

Sounds business-like and transactional? Well, yes. A bit of business nouse goes a long way in creating a bedrock you can benefit from. It doesn't mean that you have to then set up weekly, minuted board meetings for your relationship - although if one party was interested in wearing a pencil skirt and taking dictation that could work for everyone's benefit. What it does give you is a written document - in our case, series of emails and a googledoc spreadsheet - that you have both created together which defines and outlines the edges of your relationship.

Where you go from there, is up to you. But at least things are a lot clearer.

Poly Means Many: Green eyed monster

Poly Means Many: There are many aspects of polyamory. Each month six bloggers - Amanda Jones, An Open Book, One Sub's Mission, Polyamorous Parenting, Post Modern Sleaze, and Rarely Wears Lipstick - will write about their views on one of them. This month: jealousy.

Jealousy. It's the black sheep of the "relationship emotions" family. Being labelled as a "jealous person" creates all kinds of dreadful associations. It's often viewed as the antithesis of being open, in the binary that has jealousy bad and openness good - often without really having any kind of framework for what kind of jealousy might be bad and what kind of openness might be good. Therein lies the rub.

I'm going to wave the controversy flag and say that jealousy can sometimes be a good thing, here's how, bear with me. Jealousy is the flip-side of caring. If I didn't care about you, about being with you, about the time we spend together or touching you - then I don't get jealous when you touch someone else. You are not relevant to my feelings. Give jealousy a little tweak and you get protectiveness, guardianship, control, even. All, in the right hands and in the right way positive dominant feelings. I feel a lot of those things about the submissives I have had the honour and pleasure of offering my patronage to - a little flash of jealousy every now and then is an expression of my passion, my drive, my ownership of them.

It's what I do about it that measures me as a dominant and as a person..

I can feel a bit of jealousy and not act on it, or even say anything. I have self-control, after all. If it goes on for a while or if it is getting to me, I can talk to you about my jealousy (and it is my jealousy after all, it lives in my head, my heart - I am jealous about my jealousy), we can discuss why and work around it. The jealousy is a reaction, a response to a stimulus. It highlights something that needs addressing. It is a warning and should not be ignored. Acknowledging jealousy and choosing how to deal with the cause, whether internal or external - together - is a way forward. Ignoring the jealousy, blaming the jealousy, getting angry or upset about it is no way at all.

When you have a relationship with someone you come to have expectations of each other. Often within D/s these are codified, there are things that one partner does for another, rules to be followed, a structure. Most relationships will have levels of expectations, although they might not be overtly stated. Social convention is often a big, unconscious, influence on these expectations - that there are certain things which are and which are not "right" within a relationship. Cheating is one of them, and the assumption of monogamy is problematic for people who are not. The fact that jealousy exists within multiple-relationships is often used as an indicator that those relationships are bad or unproductive. But that's a very reductive way of viewing some extremely complex feelings.

For me, this video hits the nail on the head when thinking about jealousy, as well as being very funny. It's actually about sibling rivalry, but the ideas hold true for multiple-partner relationships and highlights many things that can be done to counter jealousy - expectation management, proper conversations, empathy.

The D/s jealousy connection gets especially interesting and when we deliberately create jealousy. Dominants and submissives love playing with powerful feelings: we create scenes that embroil us in worlds of headfucks, intense psychological connections. Our games of power and control revel in and relish the strange fruits of supposed "negative" feelings like shame, guilt, hate, anger, humiliation, abandonment... So many to pick from!

Cuckolding is a great example. Here, the point is about inspiring lust using jealousy as an emotional vehicle for submission. It's nice to layer your scenes. In a cuckolding scene the bottom (cuckold) is forced to view their partner being attended to - often in a replica of a way they either really want to do or are unable to accomplish themselves. This can be wrapped up in humiliation play by throwing in references to how the bull (the guest star, brought in as the replacement lover) is better in some way or another. All of this combines to give the cuckold that sense of emotional "smallness" and subservience. A bit of voyeurism and physical restraint are often thrown in for good measure: perhaps the cuckold is tied to the bed and forced to watch, or only included for certain service purposes such as oral sex before and after. The bull eventually departs and the cuckold returns to their partner, meek, aroused and very grateful to be back. One of my idealised fantasy relationships is an mFm partnership with a cuckold/bull pairing - a toppier switch and more submissive one. It's currently high on my masturbation imagery list.

Cuckolding, aside from being fun in and of itself, can also be cathartic where genuine fears and concerns of infidelity or insecurity exist. Crucially it only works if jealousy exists, even in potentia, otherwise it's plain ol' voyeurism, which is wonderful, but not the same thing. I don't think it's possible to actually cuckold a non-jealous partner. The physical longing might be there, but the emotional edge, that crunchy insider knowledge where you feel you have really "got" someone hook, line and sinker, would be missing.

When we play with jealousy - or any emotion, for that matter - we have to be even more careful how we handle aspects of genuine jealousy within our relationships. It's like the difference between slapping someone in the face because it's something you both enjoy and it's hot, and slapping someone in the face because you just lost your temper and lashed out. The two can look exactly the same, but they are poles apart. So it is with feelings.

Our green-eyed games must be ordered in such a way that we feel safe to explore, rather than considering our relationship at risk. If done well, you can experience extraordinary levels of intimacy and thrill. If you don't think you can do it well, don't do it at all, this is not a game to dabble in. It cuts to the core of many of our most private feelings and sense of self-worth. I had a very challenging time when a partner was playing games of jealousy at the same time as I was experiencing genuine jealousy and the two became very confused in my mind because we never really handled the real jealousy in any sensible fashion - it was always my jealousy therefore my fault and my problem, I was wrong-headed and needed to change my world-view. I was made to feel bad and guilty both within scenes and without.

For me, this is where the hurt / comfort aspect of domination comes into play. If you both choose to play a jealousy based theme you must ensure that the emotional after-care you give to your partner brings them back from those dark and difficult mental spaces. They must be re-enveloped in the safety and security of your relationship, to be able to clearly distinguish the play from the reality. Consent, as ever, is king.

Poly Means Many: Explain yourself

Poly Means Many: There are many aspects of polyamory. Each month six bloggers - Amanda Jones, An Open Book, One Sub's Mission, Polyamorous Parenting, Post Modern Sleaze, and Rarely Wears Lipstick - will write about their views on one of them. This month: explaining poly to other people.

I'm currently single, which means I'm going on a lot of dates - I think I worked out that last year I'd gone on over fifty, resulting in only two second dates. This is a tribute to my own particular specific tastes as much as anything else, more on that later, but what it does mean is that I'm developing a very good line in a particular sort of sales patter, specifically on how I want my relationships to be. Generally speaking I don't mind, and even quite enjoy the whole "explaining myself" thing. Especially on a first date. After all, it's really important to be able to tell a prospective lover what it is you want - if you can't articulate, how can you both work out whether you might, well, work out?

Currently I'm going with: "Hi, I'm electronic doll, I'm bisexual, kinky and non-monogamous" followed by a big grin. Reactions vary, if I'm honest. Some people have needed further elaboration, which is fair enough. And it's mostly around what people think I mean when I say those words.

There's a lot that I don't mean.

I don't mean "I will fuck anything" because frankly, nothing could be further from the truth. For all that I write a detailed kinky sex blog, I haven't actually had a lot of sexual partners (it's around twenty, or so, if you are interested). I don't do one-night stands and I don't fuck around a huge amount. I have very exacting standards for what I find "sexy". I'm a specialist, you see. I only find a few people sexually attractive and I like really, really specific types of sex, which means it takes a lot of time for me to find the right person - or people.

Kinky sex is also more disposed towards things that don't look like sex but we perverts enjoy them just as much, if not more - flogging, bondage and so on. It's all "sex" to me. And I want all of it. But only the good stuff, and I would rather not have sex than have any old sex, which means less sexual partners. On a really practical point, I also have a very high sex drive, so when I find someone, I tend to fuck them a lot. Which makes them tired. Which makes it very useful, and pleasurable, for me to have other people to have sex with. Sex is like any other activity. You wouldn't only ever go to the cinema with one person, or go for a meal with only one person, or go to the same supermarket, so why would you only ever fuck one person?

This is the point in the conversation where I generally take a deep breath, and check whether my date is still awake, looking at me with horror, or drooling with their tongue on the floor. No-one has actually run away yet, but I suspect that's because of car crash fascination or "what will she say next?" rather than anything else. So, assuming they are still interested in what I am saying, I try and summarise: I think it's very unlikely I will want to only have sex with one person for the rest of my life.

This often leads us on to the second incorrect assumption which is that "non-monogamy" means "I can't commit and can't settle down". I'm actually really looking forward to falling in love and building a life with the love of my life. Now, here's the rub. That might be one person, it might be several. Together, one after the other, or all separate. I can't predict the future or what's around the corner and I don't want to be closed to those opportunities, either. But when they come along I want to be able to grab them with both hands and love them with all my heart. In my mind's eye, I imagine that I will have one main partner, and either as a pair or separately we will have lovers who come and go through our lives. I am not stating that this is exactly how it must be and nothing will sway me, merely that this is the kind of future I can see myself being happy in, so it's the example I use to explain myself.

This does cause confusion, no matter how clear I try to be. And I do understand the confusion. There's a lot to take in, if the universe has hitherto consisted of monogamous, heterosexual, vanilla pairings. "Exotic" relationships are often the stuff of film and fantasy: crazy sex fuelled hedonism of the rock and roll variety which is not a very realistic example of how people might live their lives. Throw in the kink and the bisexuality and people can sometimes think I will only ever be satisfied with an high-octane orgy on the hour, every hour. I do my best not to come across as some kind of sexual revolutionary, but as someone who wants a normal, but different, life. I don't always succeed. It can be difficult to explain "non-monogamy" as normal. Because for many people, it just isn't. Communicating an entire world over a cup of coffee on a first date can be a bit of a challenge.

There's also a lot of responsibility in being the first person who explains all of this. Because then you become, in part, responsible for how this person perceives this new universe of relationship possibilities. Over time, I've learnt to become very specific with the words I use, partly because I love words dearly and like to make sure they are put in the right places, and partly because I appreciate that what I'm saying is new to lots of people and I don't want to give them the impression that I'm speaking for every person who has ever had a "non-traditional" relationship. I can only ever talk about what I want, what I've enjoyed, what has worked for me.

So, for example, I don't describe myself as "polyamorous". I use "non-monogamous" specifically because I enjoy having more than one ongoing, sexual partner (when the opportunity presents itself), but I've never yet had an extended relationship with more than one person for anything more than a few months. In other words, I've never been in love with more than one person at a time, so I don't feel I can really call myself "polyamorous". I've loved several people at once, certainly and I've been fucking several people at once, and been dominant or submissive to more than one person. So I'm absolutely non-monogamous. These days I use the phrase "lovers", because it's a nice romantic word and I'm a romantic at heart. It's an easy word to get your brain around, and I think it sounds positive, caring and sexy in a genuine way, rather than "partners" which can sound as if you are in business together. I never, ever use "fuck buddies", because I don't like relationships that are "friends with benefits", I want relationships, sex and romance.

Following these, often lengthy, often with diagrams, explanations, reactions have varied. I've had people who are happy to have "found" other people who think the same way they do, relieved that they aren't the only ones, I've had surprise from people who genuinely didn't know this was a real thing outside of films and books, I've had friends think I was doing it to be cool or to be different. I've had people worry I'd get hurt. I've had people be angry or upset with me for still not wanting to sleep with them despite obviously being a slut. I've had people who got what I was saying but didn't think it was for them. My favourite was from a friend who merely said "gosh, that's quite, um, bohemian of you."

To finish, I'll give you two concrete examples of "explaining myself." My most recent two encounters, with Ten and Technophile, have resulted in break ups or whatever you have when you break up before you've really started dating. In this case, it wasn't about the sex, or the kinky sex, or the group sex. It was about how the relationship might function. So, the important bit, really.

Neither of them felt as if they would be able to "cope" with what they considered such non-traditional set ups. They were simply outside of their comfort zone. The idea of having a threesome, especially with another girl, was exciting. But the idea of my having a girlfriend, who might come and stay regularly, was strange. Still exciting, but I could tell they weren't sure whether I was being serious (I was) and if I was, how on earth it might work. The idea of my having another boyfriend was mind-blowing and triggered all kinds of negative responses. In the end, both of them decided that I wasn't the one for them, in part because of how I wanted to live my life. Neither of them were willing to give it a go so I can't comment on whether I am extremely good at explaining and it is entirely the opposite of what they wanted out of life, or I'm a bit rubbish at explaining and they would like it if they tried it. Mind you, I do keep telling straight boys that this is also true of sucking cock for my viewing pleasure, and they don't seem keen on that either.

Perhaps it's the way I say it, or the way I leer when I'm saying it?

Fundamentally, however you explain yourself, the reality of living relationships is always a little different to the writing on the box. I know from my own experience that some multiple-relationship set ups have worked better for me than others. Frankly, some monogamous relationships have worked better for me than others. The main factor that has divided the good from the bad has been about the content of the relationship, not the set-up in and of itself. It's been about the people. The expectations we've had of each other, our ability to deliver those and the way we have communicated our hopes and dreams. Not how many of us there were, or how we were living at the time.

But those are all topics for another month.