joreth | Entries tagged with advice

I have been meaning to write up a semi-permanent article about Con Hacks for so long that I didn't realize that I hadn't actually done it yet. So here's my first draft:

Remember the 1-2-5 rule: Every single day get 1 shower, 2 full and balanced meals, and a minimum of 5 hours of sleep.

Have a con pack that contains the following:
- Phone, charging cable, power block, & battery backup if possible
- ID, room key, & con badge (if not on a lanyard)
- Painkillers, cough drops, & daily meds
- You Met Me cards (business cards with appropriate contact info for the convention)
- Actual pen & paper
- Sewing kit & makeup touchup kit for costplayers & costumers
- Safety pins & superglue
- Snacks & water
- Paper conference program (if available)
- Earbuds
- Earplugs
- Reading glasses (even if not needed - they make great magnifiers)
- Travel size tissues
- Travel size wet wipes
- Travel size hand sanitizer
- Mask
- Non-electric busy-maker like dead-tree book or knitting

Have a spare pair of "comfy shoes" to change into.

Pack or buy con food for the hotel room, some of which is to be eaten in the room and some to pack in above "con pack":
- Mixed nuts
- Peanut butter
- Honey and/or non-refrigerated jam / jelly
- Tortillas (they travel better than bread)
- Bananas
- Canned chicken salad or tuna
- Fruit leather
- Honey sticks
- Cheese in wax (like Babybel)
- Granola and/or protein bars
- Dried seaweed
- 100 calorie or "snack size" bags of chips
- Individual cups of guac and hummus (if there is a fridge or consistent cooler available)
- Individual cups of cereal
- Individual cartons of shelf-stable milk
- Breakfast pastries
- Mini candy ("Halloween-size")
- Bottled water
- Coffee grounds / tea / roasted cacao grounds, scoop, & tea bags or coffee filters
- Drink sweetener

Food assuming some method of heat such as room microwave or travel slow cooker:
- Microwave bags of seasoned rice
- Canned chicken
- Canned soup
- Frozen meals if there is a freezer in the room
- Hard-boiled eggs if there is a fridge in the room or pre-scrambled eggs in a squeeze bottle if bringing an electric burner/hob
- Meal-prepped breakfast burritos if there is time to prepare them before con & a freezer in the room

Kitchen gadgets (pick and choose according to needs, finances, & travel restrictions):
- Electric travel kettle
- HotLogic Mini
- Electric induction burner / "dorm" hob
- Mini CrockPot
- "Dorm" size microwave
- Electric cooler

Travel pillows and blankets, personal pillowcase

Towel

I, personally, find that I only need 2 kitchen gadgets: an electric kettle (mine looks like the white one top-left) -

and the HotLogic Mini -

The HotLogicMini is a soft-sided lunch-box style "slow cooker" that uses a low-temperature hot plate inside an insulated bag to heat food. It is safe to use with most containers (although I would be cautious when heating up restaurant leftovers in styrafoam containers) and even safe enough to touch without burning (but it will be hot so don't grab the plate and hold on). I have accidentally left plastic forks inside when heating, and most of the time they're fine. Occasionally they warp a little but are still usable. It is safe to travel with and can be checked or carry-on. It can be purchased with a standard wall plug or a car plug, so make sure you read the listing carefully when purchasing to get the correct plug.

Anything that has "microwave cooking instructions" can be cooked in the HotLogic, usually right in its own package without any de-packaging faffing about - just stick the whole container right inside! I will put a whole can of soup inside and eat it straight out of the can like "campfire beans". I also put a whole bag of microwave rice and a tin of canned chicken in the HotLogic together, then I drain the chicken and add it directly to the bag of rice for a wide variety of chicken-and-rice meals. Be careful, though, packages, especially metal ones, can be very hot and will need to be opened carefully because of the pressure build-up from heating.

The HotLogic is a slow cooker, so you will need somewhere to plug it in for a couple of hours (1-2 depending on if the food is frozen / raw or room-temp and cooked first). Unless you stay inside one track room all day (as I do when I'm working), this may be best to leave in your hotel room, assuming you're staying on-site.

The good news is, though, that because it's such low-temp cooking, you can leave your food in there heating all day long and it'll be fine. I once started my food heating in the morning but then at lunch time found out that management was feeding us. So I ate the free catering and forgot about my lunch until it was time to go home, leaving it heating for like 8 or 10 hours. I just put it back in the freezer overnight and reheated it the next day and it was fine. So plug in your meal before you go downstairs in the morning and pop back into your room whenever you're hungry later for a hot meal.

I have literally not had to buy my lunch at work since buying one of these more than a decade ago and I have started using it at DragonCon for the last 3 or 4 years and I love it. Many of my coworkers have them or similar items now because they are so convenient. I seriously ought to become a distributor for them or get a commission or something because of how many video techs I have talked into buying one. If I ever thought about it, I would have a box of these and a box of screen pullers to sell at every gig I work.

The electric kettle is very important for anyone who likes hot drinks. Hotel coffee pots are notoriously unsanitary, and if you like anything other than coffee, using water heated by a coffee pot (especially the k-cup type) adds a bitter coffee tinge to whatever your drinking. You can even make coffee using "homemade tea bags" out of coffee filters and steeping your grounds in your hot water like tea bags. The longer you let it steep, the stronger the drink will be. Some kettles have batteries or USB cords or act as thermoses so you can bring your kettle around with you like a large water bottle and drink down on the con floor.

For food, while your specific dietary needs may vary, if you just follow the Food Pyramid you should be able to eat a healthy diet that is suitable for a weekend or a week at con even without access to a full kitchen and from-scratch meal prep. You want a good source of protein every day, complex sugars and carbs, healthy fats, and a source of vitamins and minerals that isn't solely a daily multivitamin. I car-camped for 2 weeks with the above diet and was fine. Oh, and minimize the caffeine use. I know, fandom cons are extended parties and everyone wants to be awake for the whole thing, but seriously, keep the caffeine to the bare minimum, especially later in the day.

Plan for at least one hot meal per day (hot food seems to be important for emotional and mental health, and going without for too many days can negatively impact your mood and immune resistance abilities) and have ready access to a variety of "grazing" food throughout the day, that includes just a bit of "indulgent" food, again for mood and emotional / mental health.

To sum up -

I carry a small, lightweight, easy for me to carry all day, mini-backpack with my daily essentials and a few "just in case" items that I have found to be very helpful at conferences. I make the investment to carry or wear comfortable shoes. I practice good hygiene including bathing, deodorants, good tooth care, and good sleep practices such as plenty of sleep hours and bringing my own pillows / pillow cases and towels. And I get 1 hot meal and around 1200-1800 calories per day and some kind of food that makes me happy with the diet above (I do not need more than 1200 per day).

Drink water, buy a HotLogic if you can afford it, wear good shoes even if it doesn't work for the outfit, shower, brush your teeth, and get sleep.

Also, this video was made 12 years ago so there are a couple of points that are out of date, but it's still pretty applicable:

Watch on YouTube

Q. What can make even a poly person jealous?

A. The same things that make non-poly people jealous. Because, here’s a secret … you ready?

Poly people are people.

That’s right, we’re just regular old human beings like everyone else. We are not emotionless sociopaths, we are not aliens, we are not relationship wizards. We’re just people. We have all the same emotions as you do, and we fuck up our relationships just like you do.

The only real difference is that we have a culture that prioritizes curiosity, authenticity, and autonomy. That doesn’t mean that individual monogamous people don’t prioritize those things and it doesn’t mean that individual poly people are necessarily *good* at those things. It means that we like to *say* that those things are important to us.

So we are pressured, from our culture and from our own internal sense of morality, to respect our partners’ right to make choices about their own bodies and emotions, and we are pressured to constantly inquire within ourselves about what the signal light on our dashboards is trying to tell us, and then to solve the actual problem.

Because that’s what jealousy is - it’s a signal light telling you that something is wrong. That’s all. Sometimes that signal is trying to tell you that you’re in a relationship with someone who is not respecting *your* autonomy, or your boundaries, or whatever. Sometimes that signal light is trying to tell you that you have unresolved issues to deal with that aren’t your partners’ fault.

Some people don’t like signal lights. They’re annoying. So they put a post-it note over their dashboard and try to pretend like the light isn’t on at all. That’s the culture that most people come from, including most poly people. It’s the culture that tells us that if you see a signal light, if you feel jealousy, you need to make the thing that’s lighting up your dashboard go dark - you need to stop the activity that’s making you feel jealous. Doesn’t matter *why* you feel jealous, just stop the feeling whatever the cost. Take out that light.

Poly culture tells us to pop the fucking hood and get your hands dirty trying to figure out why the damn light is on in the first place, and then fix. the. problem.

Unfortunately for us poly people, none of us are born mechanics. We’re all learning this shit as we go too. So our signal lights go on for the same reasons everyone else’s do. We all got the shitty factory programming.

But *some* of us stop the car, get underneath it, and shine flashlights around until we find the problem. Some monogamous people do that too. Because we’re all just people.

I keep getting asked about costume storage, and I'm rewriting the same answer over and over again in costume and cosplay groups, so I decided it was past time that I made an actual blog entry about this.

I have a lot of costumes. I mean, I have A LOT of costumes. And a lot of dance clothing. And dress-up clothes. And work clothes. Let's face it ... I just have a lot of clothing in general. When I still lived in an actual dwelling, I had a 2 bedroom apartment so that I could use my entire second bedroom as a walk-in closet. I don't mean that I wanted 2 bedrooms so that I could use both closets, I mean that the whole bedroom was one giant fucking wardrobe.

After moving into an RV, I needed some kind of long-term storage option for all my clothes. After a handful of years and some trial and error, I finally came up with a system that I really like. I'm very excited about my new storage system.

I found that 28 quart "under bed storage" bins have roughly the same volume as cardboard file boxes (also called "letter boxes" and "banker boxes"), which is what I was using to store everything in before (because they were uniform in size and shape and both big enough to be useful but small enough to carry and limit the contents for weight control).

Plus, because they're longer and flatter, I can put clothing in it with fewer folds, leaving them on hangers and in garment bags and just sort of "accordion-folding" them into the plastic bin. And the plastic holds up better than the cardboard. Also, I color-coded the bin lids. My costumes are all in white bins, my regular clothing is in silver lids, and my "not one costume, but a bunch of the same item" stuff like petticoats and corsets are in green bins.

The picture is a little bit outdated - this was taken before I added several more costumes and before I really nailed down the color coding, so it's not very consistent in this picture, but it got more consistent later on.

I have one bin per costume (or one costume per bin) with all of its bits including accessories and shoes (other than those costume elements I reuse in multiple costumes, like my petticoats). Each costume gets a checklist for all the items that belong to the costume, with the line items that are stored in that bin checked off and the "shared" items not checked off so that I know to look for them in another bin.

These checkists are in a plastic sheet protector and I use wipe-off markers to write on the plastic over the paper when I check something off for an event or to make notes, so I can just wipe it all off afterwards and still have a clean checklist.

And THEN, I have every single individual clothing item and element recorded in a free, online database that includes its location.

When I go to a con, I can just pick up the bin for the costume I want to take, check the checklist to see if there are bits located elsewhere, and I take the whole bin. If I am flying instead of driving, I take the garment bag containing the costume out of the bin and pack just the garment bag with the costume.

I made a template version of my database so that anyone else can use it. All you have to do is create a free Airtable profile, then click the link that takes you to my template, and "copy" that database into your own profile. From your profile, you can edit the database however you want.

I highly recommend this method or something similar. For my non-costume clothing that needs to be stored, I put all clothing items of similar type (i.e. "club tops", "work shirts", "suits & slacks", "pants", etc.) into these bins, tight-rolling them the way that flight attendants pack their clothing (tutorials can be found on YouTube for this very efficient and compact folding method). These items are similarly catalogued into my database so I can find them later. It's truly a space-saver that also protects my clothing from pests and the elements. It's also super useful for moving.

If you're looking for a better storage method of clothing and soft-goods, I recommend buying a bunch of under-bed storage bins and if you want to get really organized about it, some sheet protectors for checklists, some chalkboard labels for the outside of the bin, and some different color lids to color code. Then check out my wardrobe database template for boss-level organization.

I was given a compliment that was definitely intended as a compliment and that I'm taking as a compliment and that, even though it includes a comparison, was definitely not intended to insult the person it was comparing, but nevertheless the compliment shouldn't actually need to exist and I'm using as a metaphor for a larger conversation on gender.

I have decided that there is actually a partner dance that I don't like: country swing. There are no patterns for the feet, it's literally a dance all about how fast and how frequently the lead can spin his partner (because gender norms). Now, dance involves the body so a dance style that doesn't focus on memorized step patterns can still be a legitimate dance style. But this is a dance style that is all about sequences of tricks with no concern for steps or musicality and relies on the strength of the lead to make the follow go where she is supposed to go.

And don't get me wrong but the really good country swing dancers do use step patterns and have musicality and the follows do as much work as the leads. But that's not the social dance experience. Usually it's a dude spinning the fuck out of some thin, young woman with no regard to how well it matches the music that's playing or whether she even knows how to do what he's making her do. Brute force will spin her and stop her without dropping her whether she knows what to do or not.

So, there was a guy at the wedding I went to recently who claimed to be able to two-step and swing dance. My sister grabbed him for a two-step and he was all over the place with her - no control, no musicality, just "slow-slow-quick-quick-spin-slow-slow-quick-quick-spin-spin-another spin-slow-slow-quick-quick".

When they sat down, he said that he was really rusty with the two-step and that he was better with swing. I would rather have danced a two-step with him, but since he said he was better at swing, I asked him to swing dance with me. So we got up and did a country swing exactly as described above - spin, spin, spin, who the fuck cares about beats and music?

I was told later that the dance with my sister looked pretty out of control and my mom was worried that he was actually going to hurt my sister, but she was amazed at how well I kept up with him. And I kind of downplayed it because 1) my sister was never as into partner dancing as she was into line dancing; 2) she hasn't danced in a while and I try to keep up with my dancing; and 3) I know exactly what "country swing" is and I know how to handle guys who dance like that.

So I've been feeling a little pleased that I impressed people by dancing with someone who had very little control and making it look like we were less out-of-control than we really were, mainly because *I* kept control of *me*. And it's legitimately not an insult to my sister, because he was the lead, so all problems were his fault. She's not even a poorer dancer than I am, necessarily, he was just that bad of a lead. I am, after all, a better follow than a dancer.

Here's the metaphor part: Too many cishet dudes are allowed to move through life like these country boys move across the dance floor - full tilt, without regard for their surroundings, who is around them, how they impact others on the floor, how out of control they are, dominating their partner, and with no regard to the mood of the music. And I have spent a lifetime developing the coping skills for how to keep my own feet underneath me when one of these guys swoops by and spins me around. And that's a compliment because it is, indeed, a skill that I've worked hard at and I am a good dancer (and "dancer") because of it.

BUT I SHOULD NEVER HAVE NEEDED THAT SKILL IN THE FIRST PLACE.

I should not ever be complimented for how well I can compensate for men's failings and flailings. Because men should not be allowed to stomp all over the floor and through life the way they do. But so many of them do so, that we just gave it its own dance style name and genre and said "yep, that's legit, that's how you do that!"

And we have done the social equivalent of tolerating and accepting men who do that in life.

Country swing is actually a really fun style to both watch and dance, *when done well*. But what *I* (and competition judges) think counts as "done well" and what social dancers think counts as "done well" are two very different things. It is, and should be, a legitimate style. But the way it's executed on a social floor is just fucking dangerous. It may be athletic, but it's not artistic, and it's not considerate. It's performative without being connective.

So don't be one of these country swing dudes. Pay attention to how you move through life, how you impact those around you, the space you take up, whether your partner is (or is able to) contribute equally to your partnership or are you just flinging them around with you, and for fuck's sake at least try to learn something about musicality because musicality is just emotional connection manifest physically. With a little math.

www.quora.com/How-would-you-react-if-your-husband-requested-a-threesome-with-the-third-partner-being-a-male-for-cis-couples/answer/Joreth-Innkeeper

Q. How would you react if your husband requested a threesome with the third partner being a male (for cis couples)?

A. Well, since he knows that’s one of my fetishes and we’ve had quite a few already, it would be more surprising if he *stopped* suggesting MFM threesomes. For us, it would be the same as any other sexual request or suggestion he would make. If it were a newer partner, though, I would be surprised and highly enthusiastic. It’s hard to find straight cismen who have gotten over their homophobia enough to have at least the same amount of willingness for an MFM threesome that they seem to expect women to have for FMF threesomes.

But I suspect from your question that you are implying a suggestion of bisexuality, assuming that the husband in question is requesting an MFM threesome so that *he* could have direct sexual contact with the other man.

Since I tend to date straight cismen (much to my own annoyance), I would be absolutely thrilled if any of my cismen partners were to start exploring bisexuality, especially if they were willing to include me in part of the process, since I have the same thing for hot gay man sex that many straight men have for hot lesbian sex.

Unfortunately for me and my fetishes, two people in a threesome or other group sex encounter do not need to have direct sexual contact during the encounter in order to have the encounter at all. Most of my threesomes tend to involve two people of the same gender teaming up to pleasure (or torture, depending on the kinks involved) the one person of another gender, since I’m straight and my partners tend to be straight.

So having my spouse suggest a threesome with another man, and assuming by the implication of the question that this would include some male bisexuality explorations, I would first ask him what he managed to do in order to unflip that switch in his head that makes him regrettably but undeniably straight, and then I’d start planning with him who and how and when and where.

There have been a lot of rumblings in my various communities about the lack of accessibility for basically everyone other than straight white educated cismen. One popular option that a lot of people are choosing to take these days (and I wholeheartedly support them) is to look at the speaker lineup, and if they are the only POC or woman or disabled person or whatever on the lineup, then to decline the invitation to speak.

Another option is to do the same thing as a guest. A third / fourth option is to do the same thing *as* straight, white, cismen and to do it publicly as a way to give up your seat for someone who is not (especially if your "seat" is on a panel or podium discussing accessibility issues).

As I said, I support this choice completely. However, the consequence of all POC and women and disabled people et. al. refusing to participate is that these events *remain* white, straight, male, and able-bodied.

So, if we are a member of an underrepresented demographic, and we get invited (or accepted) to speak at an event where the speaker lineup has less diversity than we'd like, and we have the spoons or the matches or the hit points for it, and our lecture topics work this way, I'd like to propose doing more of this in addition to our boycotts.

Give our lectures and workshops and panels in ways that absolutely do not benefit the people who are not us but that do benefit the people we are trying to make these events more accessible for.

This will not be applicable to everyone who speaks. It's most easily demonstrated with something like hearing loss because accommodating people with hearing difficulties tends to be *inconvenient* for people who can hear, whereas many other forms of accommodation benefit everyone or most people even those who do not *need* the accommodation.

One of the things that I do is, in my Simple Steps workshop, where we take dancing exercises and learn how to apply them as actual communication tools, we deliberately arrange this hands-on workshop so that men have to touch other men. Everyone other than straight cismen is socialized to allow some form of physical contact (often whether it's wanted or not), but straight cismen get to indulge in their homophobia because of the homophobic culture.

So we do not accommodate them. They are forced out of their comfort zone in our workshop.

Obviously, this has limitations. People who have mental health issues regarding physical contact will find our workshop difficult for them. We made a choice to focus on this one issue, and the nature of the workshop is to be hands-on and interactive. But the same goes for the ASL speaker in the original meme here - people who have eyesight problems would have had difficulty in his lecture too.

Another thing that I do is I make many of the events I host to be either child-friendly or low-cost / free (or both) because poverty is one of my pet SJ issues. I am not a fan of children. But I make as many of my events child-friendly because I know how expensive child-care is and how difficult it can be to participate in a community when everything costs money and time and there are children at home. Children running around an event is inconvenient to many adults. But without childcare options, poor people (and mostly women) are left out.

I will be considering some of my more popular lectures and workshops to see if I can adapt them to make them less convenient for various target audiences, to illustrate this point. If there is a way to make your lectures more accommodating to the people you are representing while simultaneously making it less accommodating to the non-representative audience, please consider this act of civil rebellion in lieu of just not participating at all.

If we want separate spaces, that's one thing, but if we're asking for more inclusivity, some of us have to be the ones to barge through the door. Otherwise, the room will remain monochrome because we've all decided that forcing the door open is too much effort.

No photo description available.

Event Organizer: We're sorry, there won't be interpreters at the event where you are presenting about Deaf things, sign language, and interpreting.

Me: No problem, I'll present in ASL without interpretation. Hearing people will have to get by.

EO: Ummm ...

I presented for 25 minutes, and opened with a couple of slides in written English that explained the situation. Told them to stay, so that they could "learn a lesson they didn't come here for." They all did.

www.quora.com/Is-there-a-difference-between-a-dominant-and-a-true-dominant-in-a-D-s-relationship/answer/Joreth-Innkeeper

Q. Is there a difference between a dominant and a true dominant in a D/s relationship?

A. Yes, a "true dominant" is someone who doesn’t have a fucking clue what BDSM is all about and is using the language and the culture of kink to hide behind and excuse just being an asshole.

Everyone else understands that we all have a variety of tendencies and preferences and kinks and interests, and when someone's tendencies lead mostly towards the collection of behaviours and interests that are generally categorized under the heading "dominant", they can take on that identity label if they so choose.

But anyone who tries to gatekeep what a "true dominant" is, or calls themselves that, is anything but.

www.quora.com/Is-there-commitment-in-a-polyamorous-relationship/answer/Joreth-Innkeeper

Q. Is there commitment in a polyamorous relationship?

A. I always find it weird and disturbing that people seem to think that sexual exclusivity is the ONLY thing people can commit to, when it's is CLEARLY not the only thing that they commit to in their own relationships.

If you have any question at all about how polyamorous people commit to each other without sexual exclusivity, I have to wonder what your monogamous relationships look like. Did your wedding vows consist entirely of "I promise to never let anyone else see or touch my genitals" and nothing else? Does your relationship not have any sort of promises or agreements or desires to be there for each other, support each other, encourage each other, through sickness and in health, richer or poorer, good times and bad?

Can you honestly not think of a single thing that people can commit to each other that doesn't have to do with sex?

I've written an entire page detailing all the kinds of things that I commit to in my relationships. It's true, some of them may not be the kinds of things that you would commit to, maybe haven’t even thought about it, or maybe you choose to commit to other things that I don't. I’m not saying that every single person commits to exactly the same things as every other person.

I'm saying that the notion that sexually non-exclusive people can’t be "committed" to each other because of that lack of sexual exclusivity is either a shocking lack of imagination on your part or you are being disingenuous.

Because if I turn the question around to you, and ask you what could you possibly commit to that isn't sexual exclusivity, I know that you will have some answers of things that you commit to in your relationships that don't involve your genitals. So you KNOW there are other things to commit to.

You’re just not applying them to us. But we're people too, and our relationships are every bit as real as yours.

www.TheInnBetween.net/polycommitments.html

www.quora.com/What-can-I-do-if-my-wife-teaches-my-daughter-piano-but-I-want-her-to-do-gymnastics/answer/Joreth-Innkeeper

Q. What can I do if my wife teaches my daughter piano but I want her to do gymnastics?

A. What does your daughter want?

She’s a human being. Her desires for her body, time, emotions, etc. are the only ones that matter here. If you’re funding her activities, you can technically be allowed to place limitations on them based on what you're willing to pay for, but as for encouraging her what TO do (as opposed to what not to do)? That’s all her.

Your interest in your daughter pursuing gymnastics is completely irrelevant. So is your wife’s interest in teaching her piano.

Find out what YOUR DAUGHTER wants to do and stop treating her like an extension of yourself that you get to force into doing whatever it is you’d rather be doing but, for whatever reason, aren’t doing yourself.

If she wants to learn piano, then that’s what she should learn. If she wants to do gymnastics, then that’s what she should do. If she wants to do both, then find a way to allow her to do both If she wants to do neither, then suck it up and treat her like the human person she is, and encourage her in her endeavors like a responsible, loving parent.

She is not your doll, to dress up in the profession and hobby you want her to do. She is a person. She gets to make the decisions about how she spends her time and what she puts her body through.

Honestly, these parents who think their children are extensions of themselves instead of human beings in their own right! This is how you get adult children who stop talking to their parents.

Respect her autonomy. She’ll be a much more loving daughter if you respect her.

I do not believe in "converting" people to polyamory, or any other relationship style or sexuality for that matter. I don't believe it can be done and I believe that attempting to do so is inherently coercive. I believe people have the right to choose whatever relationship style or sexual behaviour they want, no matter what it is or why they choose it, with the exception of anything that violates other people's agency (sorry, you don't have the right to choose to force young boys to give you blowjobs behind the alter just because you're their priest, you just don't).

You can *introduce* people to new things, but I don't think you can *convert* them to something they're not or don't have their own internal motivation to try and become. And I would rather not have these people being pushed into my communities because they flail around and smack up everyone who gets near them. If you don't want to try it, then don't. Please, don't. Stay out of my communities unless you actually want to be there.

www.quora.com/How-can-I-convince-my-husband-to-let-me-sleep-with-other-men-He-has-slept-with-many-women-before-our-marriage-and-I-am-jealous-that-I-did-not-have-that-experience/answer/Joreth-Innkeeper

Q. How can I convince my husband to let me sleep with other men? He has slept with many women before our marriage and I am jealous that I did not have that experience.

A. You can't "convince" him. At worst, that would be coercion. You can lay out your desires and your reasons for them, and then you can A) accept his decision to not consent to an open marriage, B) accept his acceptance of an open marriage, C) cheat, or D) leave.

You have to decide, ultimately, what is more important to you - having other sexual experiences or remaining married. When you know what your answer to that question is, then you will know how to proceed with talking to your husband about deconstructing and reconstructing your marriage into an open one ("Opening Up" A Relationship Doesn't Work, Try This Method Instead - https://joreth.dreamwidth.org/375573.html)

If your marriage is more important, then be prepared for him to say that he does not want an open marriage and you will have to give up your fantasy. If the sexual encounters are more important, then be prepared for him to say that he does not want an open marriage and you will have to divorce him if you want to remain an ethical person.

You are allowed to have your desires. But he is also allowed to only consent to the kind of relationships that he wants to have. Once you know where the line in the sand is drawn, you can share that information with him so that he can make an informed decision about what kind of relationship he will engage in with you.

Just be careful not to make it an ultimatum (Can Polyamorous Hierarchies Be Ethical pt. 2 - Influence & Control - https://joreth.dreamwidth.org/349226.html). This shouldn't be a way to control the outcome of the discussion. You shouldn't go into it thinking "you better let me have other sexual partners or else I will divorce you!" That's punitive. If you are relying on the threat of divorce to get your way, that's coercion.

But if his "no" is an equally acceptable answer to his "yes", then saying "honey, I love you, but this is a thing I really need to do for myself, and if you don't want to share this journey with me, I'll understand, but I do have to travel this path one way or another and I hope I can share it with you" is not an act of coercion, it's an act of love and acceptance and of giving him the information he needs to make a decision. He might not feel that way in the moment, though. Sometimes it's hard to see the difference.

There are tons of books and forums and websites everywhere that can help people wrap their brains around open relationships. I'm sure others will share those resources in the comments. You can try giving him those resources and see if that helps. My favorite is the book More Than Two (www.MoreThanTwo.com).

But ultimately, you cannot "convince" someone to have an open relationship. Dragging a partner into any kind of relationship they don't want grudgingly makes things much worse. That goes in both directions, btw. You staying in a monogamous relationship grudgingly will make everything worse for you both too. Should you decide that your marriage is ultimately more important than having extramarital sexual relationships, make sure you own that choice. Make that choice *yours*, not something he forced you into. Don't frame it as "he won't let me have sex with other men", frame it as a choice you made to be with him. Otherwise, you might end up losing the marriage anyway.

First, look at all the worst case scenarios - you have other lovers and get divorced, you stay with him and feel resentful, you cheat and damage your integrity, his trust, and possibly get divorced anyway, etc. - and decide which worst case scenario is the one you are most willing to risk. Then come to your husband with that in mind. Lay it all out for him, including the consequences for what happens if he doesn't give his consent, so that he can make an informed decision.

And then live with your choices.

www.quora.com/What-is-the-safest-most-discreet-way-to-find-a-suitable-man-for-my-wife-to-have-sex-with-We-are-new-to-this-type-of-open-relationship/answer/Joreth-Innkeeper

Q. What is the safest, most discreet way to find a suitable man for my wife to have sex with? We are new to this type of open relationship.

A. For the love of whatever you find holy, don't "find a suitable man for [your] wife". She is an adult woman. She has her own preferences, desires, opinions, needs, wants, and boundaries. And since it's her body and her experiences that'll be involved here, none of those things have anything at all to do with you.

I know, I know, "but she's my wife! What happens to her affects me!" Sorry, but in this case, it has nothing to do with you. She is the sole arbiter of her. Only she should have any say at all in what she does with her body, mind, emotions, and time. If she loves you, she'll take into consideration how her actions with another affect you, but ultimately, this is something that is happening *to her*. It's something that *she* is experiencing, not you. You are not relevant in this equation.

Therefore, you should not insert yourself into this experience for her - not to "find a suitable man" for her, not to control or dictate the encounter, not for anything. This is all about her, not you. Stay the fuck out of it.

As for "safe" and "discreet", several online dating apps are adequate for people looking for hookups. Your wife (and her alone) can create a profile sharing what she (and only she) is looking for, and she can be a grown up and do her own homework on vetting potential partners.
She chose you, didn't she? Either she is capable of finding her own partners that are good enough for her, or she isn't. If she isn't, that says something about you. If she is, then let her go about her business and trust that she loves you enough to take care of her relationship with you.

Relevant:

You Can't Be Trusted - https://joreth.dreamwidth.org/294586.html

Before We Open Up, Let's Discuss Some Boundaries - https://joreth.dreamwidth.org/359151.html

It's Not All About You - https://joreth.dreamwidth.org/313759.html

Don't I Get A Say In Their Relationship? - https://joreth.dreamwidth.org/311860.html

But We NEED Rules To Keep People From Lying To Us! - https://joreth.dreamwidth.org/310810.html

What Kind Of Partner Will You Be When Your Partner Wants To Do Something Scary? - https://joreth.dreamwidth.org/371654.html

How do you bring a healthy third person into an existing marriage? - https://joreth.dreamwidth.org/368069.html

It Is Never OK To Restrict Someone Else Even If They "Agree" To It - https://joreth.dreamwidth.org/363349.html

On Autonomy And Agreements And "Boundaries" In Poly Relationships - https://joreth.dreamwidth.org/359626.html

I Love You, Just Don't Disrupt Anything - https://joreth.dreamwidth.org/275094.html

www.quora.com/Wives-would-you-be-upset-if-you-are-overseas-and-your-husband-hangs-out-with-a-gold-digging-female-friend/answer/Joreth-Innkeeper

Q. Wives, would you be upset if you are overseas and your husband hangs out with a gold digging female friend?

A.

I am not overseas but I am literally about as far away from my spouse as I can possibly get without crossing an ocean or international borders. We live on opposite coasts and also on opposite north/south borders.

I do not police who my spouse hangs out with. He's a grownup, he can manage his own friendships. Nobody can do anything to him that he doesn't permit (short of actual robbery or violence). I have nothing to fear from any other person. Should my spouse do something with another person that makes me upset, that would be his fault, not hers, because he is responsible for his own actions.

I do not make assumptions about the motivations of other people. This question implies the assumption that said "female friend" is not just interested in securing economic stability, but that she is planning on doing so at the expense of my spouse. That's a whole lot of unspoken assumptions right there.

Should any woman attempt to manipulate my spouse into some kind of con for the purpose of getting his money, I probably wouldn't do anything about it but laugh at her. My spouse is broke. Of the two of us, I'm the one with the money, and even I live below the poverty line. Plus, we have a pre-nup and our finances are separate and we maintain separate households. He might get swindled, but my finances won't be touched. And then he might learn a lesson about being too trusting too soon.

I do not throw other women under the bus. Other women are not my enemy. The term "gold digger" was deliberately and consciously subverted by a wealthy patriarchal class who was offended at the idea of women achieving any socioeconomic power of their own: https://nationalpost.com/life/relationships/in-defence-of-the-gold-digger-and-the-fight-for-class-economic-and-gender-equality & http://skepchick.org/2013/10/in-defense-of-the-gold-digger/

tl;dr - No I would not be upset if my spouse was hanging around with anyone, let alone a woman who prioritizes her economic stability. Good partner selection solves an awful lot of problems before they ever come up, and treating people as individual agents rather than children, dependents, servants, or things solve most of the other problems.

www.quora.com/What-is-a-common-sign-that-a-marriage-relationship-is-heading-for-a-breakup-which-many-people-often-neglect-or-dont-know/answer/Joreth-Innkeeper

Q. What is a common sign that a marriage/relationship is heading for a breakup, which many people often neglect or don't know?

A. Dr. John Gottman and his team of relationship researchers have identified what they call the Four Horsemen of the Relationship Apocalypse. When these 4 traits appear in a romantic relationship, Dr. Gottman can predict the demise of said relationship with a ridiculously high degree of accuracy (most reports are over 90% accuracy). So if your relationship has these 4 things, it's probably doomed.

The Four Horsemen: Criticism, Contempt, Defensiveness, and Stonewalling - https://www.gottman.com/blog/the-four-horsemen-recognizing-criticism-contempt-defensiveness-and-stonewalling/

2 things that most people don't know is that 1) just having conflict in a relationship or feeling anger is NOT, by itself, a sign that a relationship is heading for a breakup - people have arguments and conflict and feel anger and that's just the nature of interacting with other people in intimate settings, so just having arguments doesn't mean that the relationship is unhealthy or about to end, but that 2) there is a ratio of how *often* or how *much* conflict or unhappiness a relationship can withstand and it's much lower than most people think.

In a relationship, Gottman and other researchers also discovered that there should be a ratio of "negative interactions" to "positive interactions" overall in a relationship that is 1:5. That means that for every bit of ";negative interactions", there should be 5 bits of "positive interactions". Lots of people think that they should stay in relationships until the happiness ratio tips over to where you are unhappy more than half of the time. That's not true.

The Magic Relationship Ratio, According to Science - https://www.gottman.com/blog/the-magic-relationship-ratio-according-science/

So, the predictors of the ending of a romantic relationship are criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling. Anger is not among the predictors. If you have these criteria in your relationship more often than 1:5 compared to positive interactions, the relationship is probably on its way out.

www.quora.com/Should-I-be-offended-that-my-friend-of-about-8-months-didn-t-tell-me-that-she-s-a-lesbian-Do-I-bring-it-up-or-wait-for-her-to-tell-me/answer/Joreth-Innkeeper

Q. Should I be offended that my friend (of about 8 months) didn’t tell me that she’s a lesbian? Do I bring it up, or wait for her to tell me?

A. She didn’t tell you because:

A) It’s none of your business
B) Straight people don’t announce their straightness to their friends, so why should gay people?
C) She might have thought it was obvious that she didn’t need to make an announcement.
D) She didn’t know you well enough yet to know if you were safe enough to come out to.

In any case, who she chooses to love or who she is attracted to has nothing to do with you and is all about her, so you getting offended at how she handles her sexuality is pretty selfish and self-centered of you.

Let it go. Stop making her sexuality all about you. If you’re not going to be up in their genitals, what they choose to do with them isn’t your business. Even your friends don’t have to tell you anything about themselves that they don’t want to.

www.quora.com/Are-you-in-an-open-relationship-If-so-what-is-the-most-challenging-part-for-you/answer/Joreth-Innkeeper

Q. Are you in an open relationship? If so, what is the most challenging part for you?

A. Having to constantly answer questions about how “difficult” my relationships are, or people wondering how I deal with jealousy or scheduling … basically dealing with other people thinking that I’m doing anything at all different in my relationships than they’re doing.

I have relationships, just like everyone else. Some of them are effortless, some of them take work, some of them are totally wrong for me, some of them are bliss, pretty much all of them are some combination of the above, just like everyone else.

The only difference is that I have more than one romantic relationship at a time. Everyone has more than one relationship at a time - you all have parents, siblings, friends, coworkers, in-laws, relatives, exes, co-parents, etc. You all have to manage and juggle multiple important people in your lives. Those relationships are all different from each other, even when they have similarities.

We are having all the same relationships and they feel the same way to all of us. I’m just overlapping my romantic ones, that’s all. There’s nothing more or less challenging about my multiple romantic relationships than about any of my other relationships or about other people’s relationships.

www.quora.com/How-do-I-keep-from-falling-in-love-with-my-fwb/answer/Joreth-Innkeeper

Q. How do you handle a casual sex relationship without developing feelings?

A. You don't. You can't control your feelings. Your feelings will do what they will. When I have casual sex, it's *because I don't have a strong emotional connection*, not the other way around. I don't get into a sexual relationship and then try to keep my emotions casual. I have a low emotional connection to someone with a high sexual connection, so I structure the relationship to be a casual sex one because *those ARE my feelings for them*.

Some people just seem to be wired to have their emotional connections and their sexual attractions linked in some way - either having sex causes an emotional attachment or they can't have sexual attraction without that emotional connection first (see: demisexual).

I am not one of those people. I can have sex with or without emotional attachment and I can have emotional attachment with or without sex. If I start a relationship under one premise and then discover that my feelings about the relationship fall under another premise, I discuss with my partner what our options are. If they are open to renegotiating the relationship to match, then great!

If not, I decide if it's possible for me to just have my feelings while in a relationship that doesn't match. My feelings are my own. They are not the responsibility of the other person to manage, and I do not have to act upon them. I can have whatever feelings I have, I can feel them, experience them, lean into them, and my behaviour is whatever I believe is most appropriate for the situation.

I have had romantic feelings for a number of people who did not return my feelings, so we maintained a platonic friendship for a long time. I did not pressure them to get into a different sort of relationship with me, I did not remind them of my feelings for them (thereby making them uncomfortable), I did not behave in any way other than platonically, I did not pine away for them, I did not plot or scheme to use our friendship as a vehicle to steer, convince, or "trick" them into another kind of relationship, I just felt what I felt, and I appreciated the friendship for being what it was.

Sometimes I have romantic feelings for a casual sex partner that are not compatible with remaining in a casual sex relationship, for some reason. Wanting something different from them makes what I *do* have with them feel hollow or inappropriate. When that happens, I have to end the casual relationship for my own well-being. I do not stay in a casual relationship hoping that, if I just stick around long enough and am good enough in bed, he'll eventually come around and give me the kind of relationship I'm really hoping for.

You can't control your feelings, you can only control your behaviour. You can't stop yourself from "catching" feelings, if that's just what your feelings want to be. You can reduce exposure to certain activities that might encourage emotional bonding, such as not having any in-depth conversations, not going out in public together in ways that feel like "a date", meeting at neutral locations, not meeting their parents or friends, etc.

But if your feelings are going to develop through sexual activity, there's nothing you can do about that. Have a conversation with them to see if they'd be amenable to a more emotionally intimate relationship with you if that happens.

If they are not, you choose - continue to have a sexual relationship without a reciprocal emotional attachment from them and enjoy it for what it is without pressuring, cajoling, convincing, coercing, or hoping for something "more"; or end the sexual relationship if you are not happy having one with them where they don't reciprocate your emotional attachment.

But the best way to minimize the odds of developing an emotional attachment to a casual sex partner is to not get into casual sex relationships when you have an emotional attachment to them in the first place. Get into casual sex relationships *because the feelings you have for them are casual sex feelings*. Those are legitimate feelings to have for a person.

It's not a "lack" of feelings, it's a particular type of feeling. You may still catch teh feelingz, but, for most of us, if we're capable of having that particular kind of feeling in the first place, we are less likely to be the sorts of people who develop emotional connections just because we're having sex with someone. Our sexual-attachment-without-emotional-connection-feelings are real, valid, legitimate feelings in their own right.

People who tend to develop emotional attachment through sexual relationships tend not to really feel that low-emotional-attachment-high-sexual-connection in the first place, so they are always fighting the development of what's more natural for them to feel. I don't have to fight that because I am already feeling the feelings that are appropriate for the relationship style that I'm in.

So, have the feelings first (or at least, recognize the potential of what your feelings might want to become), and then structure the relationship to accommodate. Have casual sex relationships *because you have casual sex feelings*. Trying to structure the relationship first and then force your feelings to fit the structure is often a recipe for disaster.

www.quora.com/When-doesn-t-a-pre-nup-work/answer/Joreth-Innkeeper

Q. When doesn't a pre-nup work?
Joreth Innkeeper, is currently writing a book with her ex on how to break up

A. Times when a pre-nup doesn't work:

When you don't have one / haven't signed one / don't use a proper pre-nup form, etc

When you don't disclose or include something so that it's not accounted for in the contract and/or it can be contested in court because it wasn't disclosed or included.

When you focus only on tangible or liquid assets and then you start a business with your spouse but don't include any exit strategies on how to divide up the business in case of divorce.

When you're talking about things with emotional value, sentimental value, or intangible things like the well-being of the participants.

When it's clearly one-sided and a judge rules that it's not a fair protection of both parties and is therefore null.

When it's signed under duress or false pretenses or otherwise one or more signer is not eligible by law to sign a legal contract.

When it's not valid in the region or jurisdiction under which you are trying to enact it.

Since I am not a lawyer, do not take anything I've said as legal advice. I may be wrong, and I am certainly not familiar with contract law in any region I haven’t tried to engage in contracts under.

GET A PRENUP. GET A PRENUP. GET A PRENUP. GET A PRENUP.

I can’t stress that enough. I don’t care how much in love you are or how pure of heart you both are, if you are going to entangle yourself legally with another person, get your exit strategy down on paper in the most legal way possible, and do it while y’all still like each other so that it’s written as fair as possible.

No one has ever walked down the aisle and thought “I bet this person whom I love dearly with all my heart and am choosing today to commit to for the rest of my life will probably turn out to be a raging douchebag and someday try to leave me penniless.” Every single person in divorce court, at one time, thought the person they are now squaring off across the table with was a decent human being.

If you turn out to be right, and your spouse is a decent human being, then this is just a piece of paper that probably does nothing more than spark a conversation between the two of you about entangled finances, turning some implicit assumptions into an explicit discussion about expectations and intentions. Yay!

If you turn out to be wrong, this document could save your ass, or even your life. And you don’t want to wait until after you discover that you were wrong to also discover that you have no safety net.

By the way, there is also such a thing as a “post-nup”, although that’s not what it’s called (it’s not technically called a “pre-nup” either, but most people know what you’re talking about when you say that). It’s basically the exact same thing as a prenup except all the verb tenses reflect the fact that the marriage has already happened.

Like a will, the very last document signed is the one that rules in the courts. It is to your benefit to revisit your prenup after the wedding periodically and update it as a post-nup with however your assets have changed over time.

And if you got married without a prenup, you can still get a post-nup. Just like responsible adults have hard conversations about wills and what to do with assets in case of death, you should have this conversation with your partners in case of separation too.

This doesn’t have to be framed as “so, I’ve been thinking about divorcing you, and I thought we should hammer out the details early.” Nobody says “so, I’ve been thinking about intentionally dying in the next few years and I thought we should work out how to handle my arrangements now.”

Just be a grown-up and sit down to discuss worst-case scenarios with your partner - you know, that person who you pledged yourself to supposedly because they were your “best friend”? If you can’t have these kinds of hard conversations with your life partner, your helpmeet, your “best friend”, your soulmate, well … perhaps you shouldn’t have chosen this one to marry and these documents are more necessary than you think.

www.quora.com/What-is-a-tactful-way-to-respond-to-my-step-mother-in-law-when-she-pesters-my-husband-and-I-about-having-kids-when-we-told-her-we-do-not-want-any-children/answer/Joreth-Innkeeper

Q. What is a tactful way to respond to my step mother-in-law when she pesters my husband and I about having kids when we told her we do not want any children?

A. The original question asked for "tactful" responses. Trust me, for me, this IS "tactful".

"I'm concerned about why you’re asking me this. Are you getting everything you need at home?"

"I actually like being happy."

"Sweetie, I couldn't keep my goldfish alive as a kid, what makes you think I should be in charge of a child?"

"I'd rather spend my money on beer" - you could go with a totally frivolous item meant to show you as totally unsuitable like "beer" or "drugs", or you could go for high-ticket items that show how expensive children are like "a new house" or "a dream vacation"

"The world is overpopulated already."

"I just found out I'm infertile, but thanks for bringing up such a painful and private subject."

"The cat would get jealous."

"I love my husband as a person, but frankly, I'm not passing on my genes unless they merge with Jason Momoa [insert celebrity hottie here]."

"I need to be the only one in the house who has temper tantrums and cries for no reason."

"After the last 'incident', the courts warned me to stay away from children if I value my freedom."

"I'm an atheist / feminist, I don't birth children, I eat them." (full disclosure - I’m both, this is a joke) (this also works for "pagan")

"I don't know why women need to have children to be seen as complete human beings." ~ Marissa Tomei

"Childhood was heartbreaking enough." ~ Chelsea Handler

"We thought we might try renting one first, to make sure we don't kill it before having our own."

When are you going to have children? -

"I'll let you know when I change my mind. In the meantime, I'm sure there are more important things in your own life that you could be thinking about."

"When you learn to mind your own business."

"Why? Are you finally sick of talking about yours?"

"What answer could I give you so that you'll stop asking?"

"I'm sorry, what did you say? Oh, I thought you said something else that's completely none of your business."

"Only God knows, and He hasn't told me yet."

"As soon as I figure out how. Got any suggestions?"

"I already have one - your step-son."

"Tomorrow."

"Can I get back to you? How soon do you need to know?"

"Did you know that 1 in 6 couples, who desperately want to have a child, struggle with infertility? I'm not going to tell you if I'm one of those people, but maybe you'll think about how hurtful your question might be to someone who is."

"You know, that's a really personal question you shouldn't ask everyone. Some people have a hard time getting pregnant, and questions like that could really make them feel bad about their situation."

"We're waiting to see how yours turn out before we decide."

"As soon as their value goes up to an acceptable level on the black market."

"Oh, soon I hope! I found this great recipe for roasted babies that I've been dying to try out!"

"I'm waiting to meet Mr. Right." (especially funny since you're talking to your husband's parents)

"When I can be sure of doing a better job of teaching manners than your parents."

www.quora.com/How-do-I-decrease-jealousy-to-a-minimum-when-in-an-open-relationschip/answer/Joreth-Innkeeper

Q. How do you personally deal with jealousy in your open relationship?

A. The same way I deal with any negative emotion - by introspecting and talking it out until I find the root cause, and then I address the root cause.

Honestly, it’s like people think jealousy is some magical mystery compulsion that comes over people from out of nowhere and totally takes them over like a brain-eating parasite or something.

Jealousy is just an emotion. So is anger. So is sadness. It’s not magic, it’s not a curse, it’s not a parasite or a disease, it’s just an emotion. We have emotions, we deal with them. Monogamy never prevented anyone from feeling jealousy either, I just don’t try to control my partners when I feel something negative. I look at it head-on and actually solve the problem.

-But I'm just being honest!- That's right. You are JUST being honest. You are not being compassionate, or considerate, or thoughtful, or loving, or polite, or even pleasant. Just. Honest. There are times when someone has to deliver an unpleasant truth. There may even be times when that person is the -just being honest- fanatic. But so much more often, unvarnished honesty is unnecessary, unkind, and unwarranted, and a little thought put into the delivery of the message would go such a long way toward making it valuable and constructive feedback rather than a shattering blow. Most people who insist on being -brutally honest- enjoy the brutality much more than the honesty.

This is the problem I have with the Radical Truthers. Much like NVC, I tend to only see it being used by people who want to be assholes and pass off responsibility for how their behaviour affects other people's feelings.

You can be truthful AND kind.

But if you're going to be truthful without being kind, at least be honest *about that*. I am quite often not kind. But I'm not going to defend myself by blaming the other person's hurt feelings on "but I'm just being honest!" No, I am trying to make people feel consequences for their actions, so I will say things intended to be *felt* because that's my point.

But when it comes to interpersonal relationships - those connections that I value among people I want to keep in my life such as friends, partners, and family, there is no need to "just be honest". I can be both honest and kind.

That doesn't mean that it will never hurt, even if I'm trying to be kind. It means that I am delivering my honesty with compassion and understanding of the impact of my words and I'm not saying "truth" just to say the truth. I'm taking responsibility for the effect I'm having on the people around me.

Honesty is not a virtue. Courage is a virtue. "Just being honest" is not being courageous. Being compassionate, considerate, and thoughtful is being courageous. Take the Path of Greatest Courage and don't hide behind "just being honest". Honesty, by itself, is not enough.

Everyone gets this shit wrong. Personality Type Systems are extremely limited and narrow in scope, but within their very limited range, can be very useful. People just keep wanting to widen their applicability, and that's when they turn to shit. These are not newspaper horoscopes, putting you in boxes and telling you how to run your life. They're merely a set of language that *you* decide which describes you, that can help you understand yourself and others *in narrow ranges* that you can use to better communicate with people who you want to understand and who you want to understand you.

ttps://www.quora.com/How-should-one-view-their-Myers-Briggs-type-Would-it-be-wise-to-base-your-relationships-and-employment-on-what-it-says/answer/Joreth-Innkeeper

Q. How should one view their Myers–Briggs type? Would it be wise to base your relationships and employment on what it says?
Joreth Innkeeper, teaches workshops on Type Systems like MBTI & 5LL

A. MBTI is, at best, a communication tool. It should not be used to make any kind of decisions for anything. It can be used to explain to another person how you work, so that they know what to expect from you, and to then offer you some shorthand to reference these points later.

For instance, I am an INTJ. One of the characteristics of this category is that I really like having my plans on the calendar and scheduled, and I get very uncomfortable and anxious when the plan is changed.

My former sweetie, who works with the actual institution that controls the MBTI (not one of these knock-offs that just make up online quizzes based on some workshop they once took on MBTI), introduced me to the “hit and run” method.

This is when we have plans, and suddenly something comes up that has to change the plans, like if we were going away for a weekend vacation and on Friday morning his boss tells him that he will have to stay late instead of leaving after lunch for our trip. So then he would have to call me and tell me that the plans have changed.

For someone of his type (ENTP) to be dating someone of my type, we often had scheduling challenges because I prefer more structure and he is very spontaneous and can more easily roll with change. So this might be mildly irksome to him to have his boss delay his vacation plans, but to me it would be a huge deal. I would have a lot of strong, negative emotions about it when he would be over it already.

So, he would call me up, say “sorry, sweetie, plans have changed, we have to leave tonight instead of this afternoon, oops, gotta go bye!” and let me stew by myself. Then my own processes would kick in and I would get back to planning a contingency and backup plans, which alleviates my anxiety about the change. By the time he would call me back in an hour or so, I would feel better because I “solved the problem” by creating a new plan. He would ask how I’m doing, and I could say “OK, here’s what we’re gonna do…” and lay out the new plan.

I would be happy because now I have a new plan, he would be happy because he doesn’t have to plan anything, and even though things wouldn’t be our ideal, we would have solved the issue.

If he had stayed on the phone with me, he would have had to listen to me get upset at the change in plans, and the anxiety of “what are we going to do now?” He would have wanted to try and reassure me or console me and try to tell me to relax, to just roll with it, everything will work itself out.

For someone with my type, telling me to just relax and not worry, to just let things work themselves out, would be the wrong thing to say. But to someone with his type, it would have made *him* feel better if the situation was reversed. So he would have been upset because I was upset, and then I would have gotten upset because he wasn’t helping me figure out a plan and he was making things worse by dismissing my concerns.

The “hit and run” worked a lot better for us. Once we realized that our conflict was a product of our personality types, we could come up with a solution. And then later, I had some terminology to explain to both him and to other people how to solve this problem with me in the future.

When I started dating other people, I could tell them “I am an INTJ, which means I feel this way about scheduling and change and plans and organizing.” They could tell me how they feel about those topics, and then if they happened to also be one of the categories that likes spontaneity, I could say “OK, then, if this situation comes up between us, the hit-and-run method is the best way to deal with me.”

Then, later, when I am faced with a plan change and I start freaking out about it, if the new person is just standing there looking lost at me, wondering what to do, I can remind them “I’m just being INTJ right now, remember how this goes?” and they can say “Oh, right, we talked about this - the hit-and-run, OK then, I’ll leave you to your planning and not take your freaking out about this as personal or as something that I need to fix for you”.

Knowing the processes going on behind the behaviour and the emotions helps two people communicate with each other and helps them to find solutions that work for their particular dynamic. MBTI is one system among many that offers language and a structure to facilitate that communication and solution-finding process.

But it is absolutely not meant to help you make decisions. MBTI is not a set of boxes that we all fit into. It’s more like a spectrum of handed-ness. If you were to draw 2 lines from left to right, one line on top of the other, and put 0 on one side and 100 on the other, and then place an x somewhere on the top line for how often you use your right hand, and another x on the bottom line for how often you use your left hand, you could use those two lines to determine if you were right handed or left handed.

Handedness is a category. People are either right or left handed (let’s leave out ambidextrousness for now). But that doesn’t mean that they don’t use both hands on occasion. And it doesn’t even mean that there is a spectrum with left handed use on one side and right handed use on the other. You have an individual spectrum for each hand. The one that gets used the most is your dominant hand, but if you added up the amount you use each hand, you would get more than 100% because the amount you use each hand overlaps.

Same thing with types. You are not in an either/or box. You are on a spectrum of each individual trait where you use some more than others, or where some come more easily to you than others. You will still use the others a little bit, and you can learn to use the others the way you can learn to use your off-hand if you want to.

In addition to that, our experiences throughout life teach us skills in those traits that are not our dominant traits. Many of those experiences come very early in life, so it can be difficult to tell if your skill with those traits are “natural” or “learned”. Scheduling, for example - our society encourages good scheduling skills from our very early days in primary or elementary school.

Many people learn how to schedule well, whether it’s “natural” for them or not. That same partner I was talking about above has diabetes, so as a young child, he learned how to schedule his day around his eating needs, to prevent any diabetic complications. Yet scheduling is not “natural” to him and not something that he likes doing. But he’s very good at it … when he wants to be.

So you can’t make decisions based on your category because there are too many things that can influence individual people - life experiences, deliberate training, where on the spectrums they fall, etc.

DO NOT use MBTI to make decisions about who to date or what kind of job to take. I can’t stress this enough.

DO NOT MAKE DECISIONS BASED ON MBTI.

Use MBTI for its intended use - as a communication tool to better understand yourself and the people you are relating to such as partners, family, coworkers, etc.

Look, I get it ... the shoe industry and in particular *women's* shoe industry is bullshit. I could go on a rant for days about the history of shoes, of women's shoes, the patriarchy, and the predatory fashion industry. And, on top of that, both "comfortable" and "attractive" are subjective. No matter what any individual person says about any individual shoe, there will be someone who disagrees on either it's comfort or its style or both.

So I am going to share some shoes that *I* find both attractive and comfortable, and within what *I* consider a "reasonable" price range. Any, all, or none of this may apply to you, but if you're looking for feminine style shoes that are not painful to wear and won't break your bank, here is one place from where you can begin your own investigation. I've shared several of these options before, but I'm revisiting the topic.

I just finished documenting all of my shoes for my Wardrobe Database and I thought y'all could benefit from my having pictures to reference. Let's start with shoes as close to "typical feminine shoes" as possible - dance shoes.

Dance shoes are, for all intents and purposes, regular dressy shoes, but with 2 very important differences: construction and sole. Dance shoes are constructed slightly differently to accommodate the unique stresses that dancing puts on shoes. Usually this means "higher quality", but it definitely means "more durable" and sometimes "longer lasting", depending on how you wear them. I have a whole page about the quality and purpose of dance shoe construction located at https://sites.google.com/site/orlandoballroomdance/FAQ/danceshoes.

The other issue is the sole. With dance shoes, you have to pay attention to what the soles are made of. If they’re hard leather or vegan plastic/resin type stuff, you can wear them anywhere but if they have suede on the bottom, they can only be worn on hardwood floors. I try to buy my dance shoes with leather or vegan soles, and if necessary, I can take my shoes into any cobbler (shoe repair place) and ask to have leather put on. I just have to be clear and make sure they understand that I do not want suede (also called "chromed").

So, with that in mind, dance shoes tend to be way more comfortable than comparable dress shoes. I would put them in the "expensive" category, but people who typically buy designer shoes might classify them as "mid-range" at around $80-$200. All of mine have been in the $80-$120 range. But they last for years and I treat them like sporting equipment - if you want to play the sport, you need to invest in quality safety gear.

In addition to that, there are places where you can pick a base style, and then custom choose the strap style, fabric options, and heel height, and if you get the vegan soles you can wear them on any surface including outdoors. What makes this so important is that heel height and strap style. I grew up in the '80s, in the era of the slender, delicate, stiletto heel pump.

So I really like the look of the delicate pumps with skinny heels, but I really don't like wearing *tall* heels. Being able to specify a short (like, 1.5-inch) heel in a slender flare has been terrific for someone with my aesthetic taste but preference for flatter shoes. I used one of these vendors for my wedding shoes. I found a base model of shoe on the website that had the look I was going for and then I picked the heel height and style, all the fabrics and where to put them, and I also added an extra strap (the base model only comes with one, either an ankle strap or a criss-cross strap and I requested both).

I requested a fabric sample before ordering any shoes and I matched everything to my wedding dress. Despite being different fabrics (the dress is made of stretch performance fabric and these are all satins), these shoes are a nearly perfect match and I couldn't be happier with them.

The brand of shoe is Very Fine Dance Shoes, and you can get stock, other customer's custom designs, or design you own direct from www.veryfineshoes.com/customladiesdanceshoes or from one of several retailers that sell them.

They're as comfortable as any dance shoe, which means that they're still heels but they're made for hard wear with padding and properly constructed soles and shanks. They're not going to feel like sneakers because they're not sneakers, but if I'm going to wear dress shoes, those made for dancing are about as comfortable as they get, with one exception...

These are the most comfortable pair of dress shoes I own. They're Crocs and I have them in black and oat (kind of a light khaki / tan). Even when I have hard leather soles on my dance shoes that allow me to wear them off the floor, I still bring these shoes to change into afterwards. Because no matter how comfortable the dance shoes are, dancing for 4 hours in heels is still hard. When I put these on, I add another several hours worth of walking to my evening while still looking dressed up. Honestly, the only reason I don't wear only these for dressing up is because they're open-toe and I prefer the closed-toe look. That, and I rarely get dressed up if I'm not dancing.

It looks like Crocs has discontinued this model and changed to a criss-cross strap over the toes (which I love) and is about to discontinue that model too. They have other styles of shoes, but you might be able to get these from another retailer that still carries some old stock. The model I have is called the Leigh and the criss-cross version is the Leigh II.

I've probably had them for more than a decade now, and since I don't wear them very often because I don't dress up often, they still look brand new and I expect to continue wearing them for years more.

These are also Crocs, and also a model that has been discontinued. I know most people would never have thought to hear anyone say this, but keep an eye on Crocs for not-ugly comfortable shoes. They sell more than clogs. These are a simple red wedge with a black patent leather-like toe cap.

Like the Leigh Wedges, they are made from the same Crocs materials and have the same comfortable Crocs sole. They have other wedges available on their website, so keep checking back to see the new models, as they frequently rotate new designs in.

I would put Crocs in the mid-range price category, with shoes usually costing between $25 and $60, plus you can often find sales or clearance items. Once something gets discontinued, though, the third-party retails jack the price up because they become hard to find.

Another place to look for shoes that may be both stylish and comfortable is the recent trend of "foldable" ballet flats. I got these from Payless when they announced they were going out of business and put everything on clearance. I also bought the same pair in this really smart grey flannel-looking fabric with a black toe cap that goes amazingly with my grey suit pencil skirt.

Payless opened back up again as an online-only store, and I'm pretty sure these are available online. Because they're this "foldable" style, meaning that they are intended for you to fold them literally in half and stuff them in a purse, they're not constructed with the same high quality materials as traditional shoes. They might be using high quality materials, but they are of a different type.

They are soft and flexible all over, so there is virtually no arch support or padding. These feel, to me, almost like going barefoot, with no shock absorption whatsoever. This may or may not count as "comfortable" for you. I put foam insoles in mine.

Also, because they are made and stored "folded", you'll notice the shoes are curled up. I would not have thought that I would feel any curling once they were on my feet - that my feet were more solidly straight and would out-compete the tension in the shoes. But I do start to notice a slight pressure on my feet to turn up at the toes over time. Fortunately, they're also easily slipped on and off.

And finally, if someone is fortunate enough to wear an adult woman's size 6 or smaller (sometimes up to an 8), you can also get dressy children's shoes because they go up to a size 4, which is a 6 in Women's. Walmart carries kids shoes up to size 6, which is an 8 in women's.

I got these adorable little white pearl dress shoes at Payless that look every bit like adult heels except they have a child's low heel. As in - they're not *flats*, they're *heels*, just with a very low heel. I had to take a seam ripper to remove some goofy leather flower things on top, but given the price and the heel, it was worth it.

I don't have a picture of them yet, but you can see them in this video of me performing in them: www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmgiGlDIuJw

Watch on YouTube

Kids shoes don't come with fancy arch supports and memory foam padding or whatever, so I still have to add insoles, but the low heel instantly makes them more comfortable than adult heels just for that alone. I wish they made kids shoes in all adult sizes. I mean, what adult wouldn't want low-heeled dress shoes or canvas sneakers with Thor on them or pastel pink & blue boots or something? Kids have some pretty awesome shoes and lots of us are just big kids.

So, there you have it - a few ideas on where to get comfortable (or less UNcomfortable) feminine dress shoes, that will not be applicable to everyone for either aesthetic preferences, finances, or size constraints.

My challenge to all the men out there: Take this workout course:

Watch on YouTube

I am not affiliated with this course or this company in any way. But as a dancer, I can recognize the value of an exercise routine built around the core strengthening exercise that's being used as the base exercise in this course. Here's the thing - men in general don't do a lot of exercises unless they are motivated to build muscle; men in general do not dance; men in general do not know how to do isolation movements; men in general do not work on their flexibility; men in general do not know how to loosen their hip muscles and end up being very rigid, causing joint pain later in life.

The reason why men in general don't do these things is because they have become associated with women and femininity. I can't tell you how many conversations I've had where men think that they all walk differently than women because of biology. While it's true that there are some "average" differences between the genders such as pelvic size and placement, our walks are largely learned, not inherited.

Here's something that a lot of my partners have been shocked to learn when the subject came up - you know that walk, the one on the runways and the one that women just do that men supposedly find so sexy? That walk was learned. We *learned* how to do it. We practiced it. Which is why some of us women do that walk and others don't - they didn't practice it. That is not a "natural" walk. It's what we learned how to do because it was prioritized. When I was a child, I wanted to be a model, so I spent hours walking up and down the hall practicing this walk. Men can do that walk too. But, like us, men have to *learn* how to do it.

A friend posted a male belly dancer video to my timeline - that's another thing that "men" seem to think that they just can't do, that it's inherently a female thing, that their bodies are just not meant to do that. And, like the walk, that's bullshit - people who practice it can do it and people who don't practice it can't. Your individual ability to do those movements is a combination of your *individual* biology (not your gender biology) and all the physical choices you have made over your entire life, conscious or otherwise, that led to today. If you did not spend your life practicing isolation movements, you will have difficulty moving like a belly dancer.

But it's never too late to start trying.

Watch on YouTube

Learning this particular motion, learning how to isolate your muscle groups, building core strength, improving your cardio, and improving rhythm are also all incredibly helpful techniques for improving your skill in sex. Just FYI. I don't care how good you think you are in bed, you can always get better. And as a straight woman who has sex with men, let me tell you - your lack of ability to isolate your core muscle groups have been noticed and is holding you back.

So, I challenge every man on my friend's list to take this course. Not for weight loss, although you will probably experience some of that. But because you have all been told a pack of lies about who you are as people that has led to a physiology that is less flexible, less strong, with less mobility and poorer health FOR NO FUCKING GOOD REASON.

Dance, core strength, muscle isolation, flexibility, and a robust cardiovascular system are about as masculine as it gets. They're about strength. They're about confidence. They're about control. They're about power. And they're attractive to a lot of straight women. That's everything that you've been told that heteromasculinity is about, and yet y'all avoid doing the very things that would accomplish these goals.

I don't even care if you "don't like dancing" or "have two left feet". You never have to get good at this, and you don't have to come to love it. I challenge everyone to complete one month-long challenge using this core exercise as its base. If you like it, great, stick with it and see what else they have to offer. If you don't, find another exercise to challenge yourself with at the end of the month.

www.quora.com/Why-should-you-learn-ballroom-dance-or-any-dance-and-is-there-any-benefit/answer/Joreth-Innkeeper

Q. Why should you learn ballroom dance or any dance and is there any benefit?

A.

Dance is a great form of exercise that includes both cardio and flexibility work.
Dance is a great form of social activity to meet new people and build friendships and community.
Social partner dancing has been shown to decrease or relieve the symptoms of some forms of dementia and to also reduce the onset of dementia (https://blogs.biomedcentral.com/bmcseriesblog/2016/04/04/keep-dancing-turns-good-brain/).
Partner dancing increases your awareness of the space you take up and your effect on those around you, so it can help build empathy skills.
Partner dancing improves non-verbal communication skills, which help in other areas of life such as romantic relationships, work relationships, familial relationships, customer service, etc. (I teach a workshop where I teach non-dancers certain dance exercises that will teach them non-verbal communication skills to improve relationship communication with no dancing even required!)
Social dancing offers clear guidelines for social etiquette, that can help improve self-confidence or relieve social anxiety, and can offer a framework for social etiquette in other contexts.
Social dancing builds self-esteem as skill improves and as the dancer practices the social etiquette of asking for dances and dealing with rejection. It builds emotional resiliency.
Dance brings awareness to the physical body, which can help with self-esteem, and with awareness of the body that can lead to better detection of problems and better self-care.
Dancing can be a safe outlet for physically expressing and processing strong emotion.
A regular dance regime or schedule can provide a sense of structure while combining physical activity and artistic or creative expression, all of which are extremely valuable tools for children and young adults for building and maintaining healthy self-esteem and productive patterns that can be applied in other areas of life, and for people in any life stage who may be experiencing emotional upheaval, loss, change, or feeling unsettled or adrift through changing life circumstances, or who just might need or want an anchor or a steady point in their life.
Partner dance is also great for mitigating the effects of touch-starvation, which a lot of people, straight men in particular, are brought up with very few outlets for non-sexual touch once we reach adulthood. This is a wonderful way to get some of the physical touch that we seem to need as human beings.

www.quora.com/What-should-I-do-if-my-best-friend-and-I-like-the-same-guy/answer/Joreth-Innkeeper

Q. What would you do when you and your best friend like the same person?

A. The same thing that I do when anyone and I like the same person - find out what the other person wants. Their input is kinda important here, and really the deciding factor. If the other person likes us both, then we both date him. If he only likes one of us, then he dates one of us. If he isn’t interested in either of us, then neither of us date him.

His consent makes any potential conflict pretty much irrelevant. It doesn’t matter how much I like someone, they have to want to be with me in order for me to be with them. If they don’t want to be with me, then no amount of my feelings for them will change that fact (short of overriding their agency). His relationships with other people are not my business to control or dictate. He can have relationships with whomever he wants and manage them however he wants.

If what he wants or how he does the things that he does conflicts with my value system, resulting in a loss of respect for him, then I can choose to remove myself from the situation. If what he wants or how he does the things that he does infringes or imposes (negatively) in any way on the well-being of my body, mind, emotions, finances, or anything else that belongs to me, I can choose to remove myself from the situation.

But him just liking someone else? Him dating someone else? Him being romantic or sexual with someone else? None of that has anything to do with me, so if I and my best friend happen to like the same guy, well, there’s nothing TO be done about that. I do what I do with the people who consent to doing those things with me, my friends do what they do with the people who consent to doing those things with them.

It’s like asking me “what do you do when you and your friend both like the same restaurant?” Uh, we both eat there whenever we feel like eating there (sometimes together, most of the time apart) as long as the restaurant is open and catering to our business. Whether my friend likes that restaurant or not has nothing to do with what I do about liking the restaurant, except if my friend doesn’t like it, I probably won’t invite them to eat there with me.

I actually find that a lot of my friends’ exes or current partners make good dating partners for me too. Not always, but often. As I like to say, polyamorous people come with references! If my friend likes someone, then at the very least, he’s probably a pretty decent human being, and then I get the bonus of having metamours that I already know I like and get along with.

Of course, we don’t always have the same taste in partners. I’m straight, for instance, and most of my friends are bi or pan. And just because someone is a decent human being, it doesn’t necessarily translate to romantic or sexual interest. A lot of my friends’ other partners are great people to be around, but I’m not interested in dating them. That’s OK too.

The point is, who my friends are interested in is irrelevant to how I handle being interested in someone myself. The person I’m interested in has the deciding vote in what happens there - without his consent, it’s a non-starter. With his consent, we can negotiate the kind of relationship we want to have with each other, and whether anyone else is interested in him has fuck-all to do with what he and I negotiate between ourselves. That’s between them.

www.quora.com/What-are-some-unspoken-rules-of-the-dance-floor/answer/Joreth-Innkeeper

Q. What are some unspoken rules of the dance floor?

A. There aren’t really any “unspoken” rules, there are etiquette guidelines that most people are willing to talk about if anyone brings it up, and some guidelines that are explicitly talked about in classes. Which are which, however, depends on where you are. Some instructors remember to talk about floor etiquette and some don’t.

Basic etiquette includes things like:

paying attention to the amount of space you’re taking up and how your presence affects other people,

yielding the floor to avoid collisions,

inviting people to dance with you without pressuring them,

accepting rejection gracefully,

offering rejection gracefully,

not hogging anyone’s attention by dancing several songs in a row with them and allowing them to dance with others or not dance if they choose not to,

no food or drinks on the dance floor,

not smoking near the floor (or indoors, depending on local laws),

good hygiene,

proper shoes and attire to protect the floor, yourself, and other dancers,

matching dance style and skill to your partner, particularly the more advanced dancers simplifying down to match less advanced partners and paying attention to differences in body size and shape and ability,

thanking your partner for the dance at the end of the song and the person who did the asking ought to escort the other back to where you found them, or if partner-changing is happening quickly, at least acknowledge the goodbye with a nod, handshake, hug, high five, etc.

Follow the line-of-dance and/or spot dancing rules, especially when there are a mix of dance styles happening at the same time.

There may be others, but they all boil down to courtesy and accountability. Be courteous to those around you and be accountable for your actions.

www.quora.com/How-can-you-describe-the-different-types-of-ballroom-dances/answer/Joreth-Innkeeper

Q. Which dances are considered "ballroom dancing"?

A. That depends on who you ask. You have to clarify if you mean dances that are accepted under the International Ballroom Dancing competition standards, or the American Smooth / Rhythm Dance competition standards, or the kinds of dances are taught in ballroom studios, or any social partner dancing?

Very generally speaking, “ballroom” refers to a collection of partner dances that include smooth style European dances, Latin dances, and rhythm dances, some of which can be danced socially, and some of which really are only danced in choreography because there are too many times when the contact necessary for communication of the next step does not exist (such as side-by-side moves, or moves at a distance).

In addition to this, there are often several distinct dance communities in any given region in the US. The “ballroom” community might do all (or a large number of) the dances, but there is also a separate community for each of the swing dances (usually lindy hop, which sometimes includes balboa and blues, west coast swing, and shag as their own communities), a separate community for Argentine Tango, and a separate community for salsa (which sometimes includes bachata and occasionally kizomba), and the country western dances (which can include two-step and one-step, as well as country-swing, country cha cha, square dancing, and line dancing, although sometimes square dancing is its own community all by itself) - all of which might do a slightly different version of those dances from the same styles danced in the ballroom community.

I recently started keeping a running tally of all the partner dances that are currently danced somewhere in the US, and so far I’ve come up with 34 specific styles (if I lump the 3 main Shags under one heading), but this is a work in progress as I keep adding dances as I am made aware of them:

www.facebook.com/notes/joreth-innkeeper/all-the-partner-dances/1612515565470846/

For more info, you can read about different kinds of dances here:

Music & Videos - Orlando Ballroom Dance Party Portal - https://sites.google.com/site/orlandoballroomdance/resources/music-videos

Ballroom dance - Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballroom_dance

www.quora.com/Whats-it-like-to-be-in-an-open-relationship/answer/Joreth-Innkeeper

Q. Have you ever been in or seen an open relationship that worked?

A. These are always such weird questions. Even though the divorce rate for monogamy is around 50% (for first marriages, it’s way higher for second and third marriages) and basically 100% for every relationship prior to the marriage, and even though abuse runs rampant in monogamous relationships, and we all know and have all been in relationships that ended and that the people came away with regretting ever getting into, nobody asks “have you ever been in or seen a closed or monogamous relationship that worked?”

And, as someone else already pointed out, you have to define what you mean by “worked”. Some people think that the only marker for a “successful” relationship is if somebody dies. Personally, I think that’s rather gruesome, but some people seem to think that one person outliving the other, no matter how happy or unhappy the people were before death claimed one of them, makes a relationship “successful”.

I’m of the camp that thinks any relationship that makes the participants feel content or satisfied with the relationship for the majority of the time together and/or accomplishes the goals they set out together, is a successful relationship, no matter how long it lasted. As the saying goes - sometimes people come together for a reason or a season in addition to those that happen for a lifetime.

If I have a relationship with someone and we have certain goals or purposes for our relationship, and we accomplish them and then go our separate ways, happy with the outcome, that relationship would be successful to me. If I have a relationship with someone that lasts only for a short time, and life then takes us in different directions, but we were happy and satisfied with our relationship while we were in it and content with the way that it ended even if we are also saddened by the separation, that would also count as a successful relationship to me.

By those measures, I’d say about half of my relationships since I started having polyamorous relationships have been successful, including the relationship I have with my spouse, who I’ve been with for over 14 years now (and in an openly poly relationship from the beginning). One of my former romantic partners has transitioned to a platonic friend and business partner and we are writing a book together on how to break up ethically. I’d say my relationship with him is one of my greater successes, as we’ve managed to find a way to make our relationship work for us through a bunch of different life stages and different needs from each other in ways that we are both happy with.

I’d say that’s also a pretty average track record for all of the poly relationships of all the people I’ve known in all my years as a community organizer in the poly community (which means I’ve known a TON of poly people). Considering poly people have the potential to have more partners than monogamists do (unless someone is a *very* active serial monogamist) since we can overlap them, having a 50% or better success rate is pretty good.

However, since most monogamous people I know consider the mere act of ending a relationship to make it a failure, I’d say that, of all the monogamous people I’ve ever known (and since this is mostly still a monogamous society, I have also known a TON of mono people), the vast, vast, vast majority of monogamous relationships I’ve ever seen have not worked (using their own definition for “worked” or “worked out” or “successful”). 50% success vs. way more than 50% failure might imply that open relationships are probably more successful than monogamous ones.

The truth is, that all relationships work or don’t work because of the people in them, not because of the structure. Some people are compatible together, many people aren’t, some people are compatible only in certain kinds of relationships (while many of those kinds of relationships are prohibited by the culture around them so they often don’t even get to try the one where they might actually “work” out), and some people are compatible together for a while and then less compatible as they grow and change over the course of their lives.

It’s never the structure of the relationship that makes it “work” or not “work”. It’s the people in the relationship.

www.quora.com/Why-has-it-become-common-for-married-people-not-to-wear-their-wedding-rings/answer/Joreth-Innkeeper

There are an awful lot of assumptions buried in this question.

Q. Why has it become common for married people not to wear their wedding rings?

A. It was not common in the US for wedding rings to be worn by men until the 20th century, so it had kind of a similar effect as branding livestock - it said that the woman belonged to someone, but the man (because same-sex marriage did not exist at the time) had no such corresponding mark of connection or ownership.

So it was only “common” for some people to wear rings, and it was only common for other people to wear rings for a short span of time in our nation’s history. Wedding rings being common is a relatively modern practice, however they continue to be common today. While it may be more noticeable now that some people do not wear their rings, and there may indeed be an increase in that number from previous generations, it is still more common for married people to wear a wedding ring than not.

But reasons why someone would not wear a wedding ring can include:

Historically, the wedding ring was connected to the exchange of valuables at the moment of the wedding rather than a symbol of eternal love and devotion. Wedding rings are an archaic tradition used to mark humans as being “taken” or “owned” by someone else through this exchange of wealth. Some people choose not to be marked as such or to engage in archaic practices that are not relevant to their modern lives.
The modern version of wedding and engagement rings were a deliberate propaganda campaign by the jewelry industry to sell more products, said jewelry industry contributing to war and slavery in their goal to obtain more product to sell, and some people are conscientious objectors.
Jewelry is often inconvenient or even dangerous in certain lives.
Jewelry is a very personal expression of the self and a wedding ring may not match the aesthetic that a person is going for.
Some people just don’t like things on their hands.
Some religions discourage the display of wealth and jewelry. Methodist teaching says that people should not be "adorned with gold, or pearls, or costly apparel" (John Wesley, “The General Rules of the Methodist Church”). Mennonites do not wear jewelry, including wedding rings, as part of their practice of “plain dress”. Certain branches of Quakers have a “testimony of simplicity” and therefore do not wear jewelry and keep to “plain dress”.

I don’t wear my wedding ring because jewelry is dangerous in my job (#3). I work with heavy machinery and anything that can’t easily tear away, such as metal around fingers, necks, and through ears and noses, could get caught in something and rip said body parts off. My cousin’s fiance lost his ring finger a week out from the wedding (no idea why he was wearing his ring early) and had to go through the ceremony with a bandage on his hand and she put the ring on his right hand instead of his left. I play piano. I’d prefer to keep all my fingers, thank you.

As such, I have not worn rings in many, many years, so when I do put on a ring for an aesthetic look for dressing up or for a costume, it feels uncomfortable and gets in my way, much like long fingernails feel on people who do not wear their nails long normally (#5).

I object to the diamond industry, which is wrapped up in the jewelry industry in general, so I do not participate in displays of wealth and jewelry with materials associated with the diamond slave trade, the various gold rushes, or with the De Beers corporation and their capitalistic campaign to artificially create a market for themselves through their manipulation of the market (#2) with deceptive advertising. Diamonds and gold are symbolic of that campaign and the horrific atrocities committed to obtain precious stones and materials for jewelry for rich people. This could technically leave other materials and stones available to me for use as wedding rings or other jewelry, but I have other reasons for eschewing them in general.

I do not like being treated like someone’s wife (#1). I prefer to be treated like an individual human being. I have noticed that the way that strangers treat me changes based what they think my jewelry says about me. As a teenager and young woman, I used to wear a wedding ring deliberately to avoid getting hit on in public spaces.

As an older adult, even though I am still getting hit on, I find that not being hit on just because I have signaled that I belong to someone else is more offensive. My “no” should be more impactful than “there is a man out there somewhere who owns me and would not approve of you making moves on his woman”, so I would rather reject advances on my own than let the implication of some other man’s disapproval do the rejecting for me.

Aside from advances, I am treated more respectfully and with more deference when people find out that I am married (or when they think I am, such as when I used to wear a ring and was not married). Again, I would prefer to earn that respect just because I am a person and deserve respect, than because I have met the social obligation of tying my fate to someone else.

So a side effect of not wearing a ring due to danger, comfort, and personal aesthetic (the actual reasons why I do not wear a ring) is that I get to challenge people’s assumptions and demand respect based on who I am, not my connection to someone else. Some days I don’t want to put forth the effort of dealing with that challenge, so I might wear the ring to avoid it. But mostly I see this as an opportunity for change rather than a drawback. I consider it a feature, not a bug.

www.quora.com/How-would-you-feel-if-the-girl-you-are-dating-is-asking-for-a-STD-free-medical-certificate-before-getting-intimate/answer/Joreth-Innkeeper

The phrasing of these kinds of questions always sounds like a "gotcha" question, where people are actually quite offended at the thing they're asking about and they're looking for validation that they are right to be offended. I hope I piss these people off with my answers.

Q. How would you feel if the girl you are dating is asking for a STD-free medical certificate before getting intimate?

A. Well, if she used the phrase “STD-free medical certificate”, I’d probably have a conversation with her about slut shaming and sexual stigmas. 1) They don’t issue “certificates”, they merely tell you if your tests are either “negative” or “non-reactive” (depending on the test) or not, and most of the time you can request a print-out of the test results; and 2) you are not “free” or “clean” or “clear” of STDs, you merely did not react positively to one particular type of test for however many STDs you got tested for.

(as an aside, telling your doctor you want to be tested for “everything” does not actually get you tested for “everything” - it may get you tested for everything *that this doctor feels is appropriate to test for*, which is not the same thing at all. They almost always leave out HSV, for example. So always specify which STDs you want to be tested for and which *tests* for each STD you want them to use, as many of the STDs have several different tests that all show slightly different things and have their own pros and cons).

That being said, however, should someone I was interested in ask to exchange test results before engaging in higher-risk activity, I’d say “well, of course, that’s my general policy as well. I try to get tested once a year, depending on my finances and whether or not my relationship status or risk profile has changed in the last 12 months, and right before a new partner just so that I have the latest possible results to share. These are the things I get tested for and these are the specific versions of the tests for these things that I use. Should I engage in any higher-risk activities without exchanging test results first (which doesn’t happen often, but does occasionally depending on circumstances), then I will get tested again 3 months later. What does your testing procedure look like? And what is your gmail account where I can share a Google doc of my entire sexual history and scans of my latest tests?”

www.quora.com/Would-you-be-offended-if-someone-wanted-to-have-sex-with-you-but-not-date-have-a-relationship-with-you/answer/Joreth-Innkeeper

Q. Would you be offended if someone wanted to have sex with you but not date/have a relationship with you?

A. Seeing as how I frequently proposition people for the same, I wouldn’t be offended at the *desire* at all. I might be offended at the *way* it was asked or offered. I find it completely inoffensive to acknowledge that two people may be incompatible for a romantic relationship and yet still have some sexual attraction to each other. If that’s the spirit in which the proposition is made, I wouldn’t be offended at all.

But if he looked *down* on me, if he didn’t think I was *worthy* of a romantic relationship, if he felt ashamed of being connected to me, if he was concerned about what other people might think of our relationship, if he saw me as a challenge to be won, if he was interested in me merely as a living masturbatory aid and an interchangeable body and it wasn’t personal to me at all, if he was dismissive of me, if he felt entitled to sex with me, if he felt I owed him sex for any reason, if he felt he was doing me a favor by offering sex, if he did not respect my consent and continued to pursue me after a rejection … if he felt any number of things that wasn’t just a sincere and genuine attraction to me as a person in a sexual role - *that* would probably be offensive to me.

All kinds of relationships have value, including sex-only without emotional connection or intertwined commitments. Not everyone needs to *like* every kind of relationship, but they all have value.

www.quora.com/Straight-women-can-you-imagine-yourself-taking-part-in-an-FMF-threesome-Those-who-had-one-did-you-enjoy-it/answer/Joreth-Innkeeper

Q. Straight women, can you imagine yourself taking part in an FMF threesome? Those who had one, did you enjoy it?

A. I have on many occasions. I enjoyed pretty much all of them, although several of them caused me to regret doing them after the fact based on how the other people behaved afterwards. Being in a threesome does not necessarily mean that you have to have direct sexual contact with both other people. Sometimes it can mean “ganging up” on one of the other people, or “tag-teaming” them. That’s how I have FMF threesomes while being straight.

Also, I’m not afraid of accidental contact with the other woman. We might not be directly sexual with each other, but it helps if we don’t mind it when we just happen to touch each other simply due to proximity, and we can also enjoy non-sexual touching such as hand-holding, hugging, cuddling, etc.

But being straight and in group sex situations with people of the same gender is, for me, best when we look at it as being on the “same team”, where we are there to support each other and have fun together with someone we both happen to like. It can be a lot of fun to scheme and plot with another woman about how to sexually tease, “torture”, and please someone we both love, or at least are both attracted to. It can be a bonding experience if the threesome is with people with whom I have some kind of emotional connection in addition to the sexual attraction.

It can also be a minefield if one or both of the other people don’t have their own emotional ducks in a row, so to speak. If they get into a threesome for the wrong reasons (the only good reason is “because I think it sounds fun and I like the other people involved”), if anyone harbors any resentment or negative feelings about it (other than regular anxiety that may come with a first-time sexual experience of any sort), or if anyone has such insecurities that they feel the need to script out the encounter or dictate what *other people* can and can’t do with their bodies or they try to avoid or suppress any emotions.

Some of the threesomes that I regretted were ones where at least one of the other people had some kind of insecurity that prompted them to either restrict me and the third person from engaging in particular activities, or to *require* us to engage in particular activities. Other regrettable threesomes involved one or more people doing it to “please” someone else or because they were afraid they would lose a partner if they didn’t.

And yet other regrettable threesomes involved one or more people who felt that a threesome was necessary for group cohesion. Meaning that the two of us women were both involved with the man but she and I were friends, and one or both of them felt that we had to have group sex in order to maintain the friendly bond between us, as if having private one-on-one sex would harm the group in some way.

These guidelines for what I have found makes for happy and successful threesomes and what tends to make for regrettable threesomes apply no matter what the genders of the 3 people are (I have had a lot of MFM threesomes too) and they also apply to group sex of people more than 3 (I have had quite a few foursomes and orgies as well).

www.quora.com/What-dance-steps-can-you-name-off-the-top-of-your-head-How-many-of-them-can-you-actually-do/answer/Joreth-Innkeeper

Q. What dance steps can you name off the top of your head? How many of them can you actually do?

A. This reminds me of that scene in My Cousin Vinny where Marisa Tomei is on the stand and the prosecuting attorney is challenging her to tell him the correct ignition timing for a particular car and she keeps saying that she can’t answer the question and the attorney reacts as though he caught her in a lie, that she doesn’t actually know enough about cars to be an expert witness. So the judge finally interrupts and says “WHY is it a trick question?” and she goes on to explain that the car he’s demanding to know about doesn’t exist so she can’t give the correct ignition timing for it.

What do you mean by “dance steps”? And in what style of dance? This question isn’t really asking for a thing that exists without some kind of clarification.

At last count, I could name 34 specific partner dance styles,

I have at least tried 23 partner dance styles and 3 choreographed dance styles, not counting line dances (I haven’t the foggiest how many of those I have tried) and I can do 15 of them with some proficiency. Each of those partner dances has a “basic” step, but each of those “basic” steps are totally different from each other. So, do I know 1 step or 23 steps if we’re just counting the basic step?

In all of the partner dances, they have so many steps that I don’t think all of them have been categorized. You may be able to find a list of specific patterns allowed in competition for each of those partner dances, maybe, but a lot of patterns are not allowed in competition, are “street” variations, or are made up on the spot by individual dancers. And most of those don’t have names to them. Or have different names from different people.

Now, even if we just take the 15 partner dances I can do with some proficiency, I couldn’t possibly be able to list off all the individual patterns I can do in each of those 15 styles. I have no idea how many patterns (or steps) I know. I’m a follow, which means that my dance partner comes up with the step that we’re about to do and non-verbally communicates to me what I’m supposed to do. So, basically, I know as many patterns in each partner dance style as all of my dance partners ever in my history of dancing and in my future know how to communicate to me how to do.

That’s a lot of steps.

Then we move to the 3 choreographed dance styles that I know - Bollywood, Jazz, and Tap. Each of those styles also has their own repertoire of steps, some of which are catalogued and some of which are made up on the spot or are regional variations.

Again, I couldn’t even begin to list how many of those steps I know. I have probably forgotten more steps than I could remember just sitting here thinking of them (and I probably never learned their names), but if someone does one of the steps and I try to copy it, I’ll probably remember it.

Next we get to the types of “steps” that get randomly thrown into social freestyle dancing where a dancer could dance the entire song just doing that one step (twist, mashed potato, the jerk, etc.) or they could be mixed and matched in a collaboration of freestyle dance moves at a nightclub or dance event. I currently specialize in 1950s-1960s dances and solo charleston, and I spent many years as a goth dancer in goth and industrial nightclubs. Once again, there are so many steps for each style of dance, many of which were never categorized officially or named and some of which are just made up on the spot, and most of which were borrowed from and built on other dance styles, that I couldn’t even start counting them all.

(Goth dance “steps” are particularly fun and are often given satirical names like “Kick The Smurf” and “Change The Lightbulb” and “Start The Lawnmower” and “Pick Up The Dollar Bill On The Ground” and “Pluck The Apple From The Tree And Admire It” and “Stuck In My Coffin”.)

And then there are the line dances! Most country and urban line dances have a tendency to reuse the same handful of steps just in different combinations - things like the grapevine, the jazz square, the charleston, stomps, kicks, heel-toes, ball changes, etc. Pretty much all of these steps exist in one or more of the other styles of dance, such as jazz, ballet, tap, and even some partner dances like cha cha, country two-step, and more. So there is probably a heavy overlap between what steps I know in line dancing and what steps I know in other dances.

But since there is no over-reaching Catalogue Of All Dance Steps somewhere, and many steps are made up on the spot, there’s no way for me to know all of the steps that I know. For a lot of steps, I don’t know that I know it until I do it, and then I can think “oh, right, this is THAT step!” Most of the steps or patterns that I have learned, I was not taught the name of that step, just how to do it.

So the closest I can come to answering this question is by saying that I know 24 partner dance *styles*, 15 of which I know with some degree of proficiency, 3 choreographed styles, 1 of which I know with some degree of proficiency, and so many line dances that I never even bothered to keep track.

If I had to guess, I probably know at least a dozen specific patterns or variations (dance “steps”) for each of the dances I know with some degree of proficiency and at least 3 patterns or “steps” for each of the dances I have at least tried. There is some overlap. Add that to the freestyle dance “steps” and the line dance steps, if I just estimate or round my numbers and say, maybe that I know about 10 specific steps for every style of dance I know (partner and choreographed) with about 1/3 overlap plus the freestyle solo dance steps, I would hazard a guess that I probably know more than 2 or 3 hundred individual patterns or “steps”.

Now, if I was a choreographer or a Gold level competition dancer, I would probably know an order of magnitude more.

www.quora.com/What-are-the-simplest-things-you-had-to-explain-an-adult/answer/Joreth-Innkeeper

Q. What is the most surprising thing you've had to explain to an adult?

A. I find it very surprising that I have to explain to adults that my body belongs to me and nobody else. And not only my body, but my time, my emotions, my money, my labor, and my attention. For some reason, a lot of people seem to think that I owe them things that belong to me, or that they get to have a say in what I do with the things that belong to me.

Some people seem to think that their dearly held desires for my things are at any way equal to my own dearly held desires for my things, and that what I want to do with my things somehow affects them even when it doesn’t, just because they happen to have strong feelings about my things.

And also that the things that happen *to my body* and *in my body* are also things that only I should have any control over. If I can prevent you from harvesting my organs even as a corpse, and if I can refuse to give you my organs even if it would save your life *even as a corpse*, then anything else I do with my own body even if it involves someone else’s life is my own business too.

And no, not even my spouse owns these things. Even he does not get a say in what I do with the things that are mine.

Another thing I was surprised to have to explain to an adult was that women don’t get “crotch rot” from living on a submarine. Yes, seriously.

You see, his CO explained to him that women can’t live on submarines in the Navy because they get “crotch rot” *specifically from being underwater* and it’s too expensive to keep resurfacing to get them proper medical treatment (and, by implication, men don’t get this because it literally has to do with vaginas being under water, they don’t have medical personnel or equipment onboard, and that subs never have to surface for men’s health issues, with or without this dearth of medical treatment capabilities).

I was also surprised to explain to an adult that the people who utilize the county health services facility for things like STD testing and counseling are not all homeless, diseased, drug addicts (not that those people deserve to go without medical treatment either). That this is an affordable medical service and all kinds of people utilize it because that’s what it’s there for.

Another surprising thing to explain to an adult was that two people speaking Spanish in public in his vicinity was not an offense committed against him, nor is it “rude” because they might be speaking about him without him being able to tell. I had to explain to him that we were talking about those same two people behind *their* backs, so if merely talking about people “behind their backs” was rude, he was equally as guilty.

But besides that, people have every right to privacy in a conversation, even in public. We may or may not be able to hear or understand what they’re saying, but we don’t have a right to insert ourselves into the conversation just because they happen to be *in* public, when they are not addressing us or the public.

Also that people do not always have the luxury of learning to fluently speak another language before moving to the country. And that you have no idea if they live here or are visiting, and lots of tourists (especially in Florida, where we live) do not bother to learn an entire language before vacationing. And also maybe they *are* learning the language, but he just happened to cross paths with them at a point early in their education.

I am frequently surprised at how often I have to explain that monogamy doesn’t prevent people from feeling jealousy, so there’s no reason to be biased against non-monogamy on the basis that the people might feel jealous in non-monogamous relationships.

I am often outright shocked at having to explain to grown adults that just because it’s a woman doing it to a man, hitting one’s partner, threatening them with knives, throwing things at them, *and attempting to run them over with their own trucks* are all examples of physical abuse. I’m actually losing count at how often I have to say, specifically, that attempted vehicular homicide is abuse. Property damage is abuse. Controlling your social circle and isolating you from external support is abuse. Name calling is abuse. All the things that men do to women that is abusive is still abusive when women do it to men or when any gender does it to any other gender.

I can’t believe, in this day and age, that I still have to explain to grown adults that evolution really happened, that “just a theory” is nonsense and then I have to explain what “theory” actually means, that vaccines do not cause autism but lack of vaccines do cause mass death, that the planet is really round(ish), that magic sugar water will not cure anything, that the fad diet du jour or “miracle food” is not going to help you lose weight or get healthy *except inasmuch as generally eating better and eating fewer calories than you burn does anyway*, that you can’t “boost your immune system” and even if you could you wouldn’t want to because that’s what allergies and rheumatoid arthritis are … I could go on and on and on for literally years about the kinds of bullshit that I regularly have to explain to adults (I know, because I have been going on for years about this bullshit). I still find it surprising though.

I am disappointingly, heart-brokenly surprised every time I have to explain empathy to adults. When I have to explain that we shouldn’t do a thing simply because it hurts other people, and especially when I have to explain I don’t need the threat of eternal damnation to prevent me from doing things that hurt other people because I have empathy and I just don’t want to hurt people, I feel deeply sad and surprised at the same time.

Basically, there are a lot of things that I am surprised that I have to explain to adults about.

[Edit] Because apparently people can’t quite get past this part, I’m going to clarify. The asshole with the crotch rot story is not talking about any legitimate medical condition. He was very specific that vaginas *rot* under water and in a pressurized cabin, and that the treatment for this “condition” could not be taken care of with the medical supplies and personnel aboard a submarine, so the sub would have to surface regularly to get people with vaginas to proper medical treatment.

Because people with other sets of genitals also get things like jock itch and bacteria infections, and these things can happen to other body parts too, and if humidity or pressure was a contributing factor to it happening in a vagina, it would also happen to other body parts. As pointed out in some of the comments [on the original post], foot fungal infections are quite common and pretty much anyone who could serve on a military sub has feet.

This asshole also never served on a sub himself, nor was he affiliated with any medical training. He was a ground-pounder who got dishonorably discharged. He is not smart enough to be anything other than cannon fodder. We’ve had many other arguments about many other topics. It’s astounding the complete lack of basic knowledge this fucker had. I’m honestly surprised he can tie his shoes in the morning.

www.quora.com/Have-you-ever-invited-another-person-into-your-marriage-If-so-what-was-the-outcome/answer/Joreth-Innkeeper

Q. Have you ever invited another person into your marriage? If so, what was the outcome?

A. No, because it’s not possible.

People seem to think that they can build a house (a relationship) with someone, get it just the way they like it, then decide that they want it a little bit bigger, and merely add on a rumpus room to the back with no extra muss or fuss so that the house is mostly unchanged, just a little bit bigger and with little inconvenience to those who already lived there.

That’s not how this works. That’s not how any of this works.

Each relationship is its own thing, and requires nurturing in order to thrive. Even when 3 or more people are all romantically involved with each other, it’s not the same house just with more rooms. It’s more houses, perhaps all on the same property but sometimes not even that.

The more successful open relationships (and I define success by the happiness and satisfaction of the participants both during and after a relationship, not the longevity) operate on principles of individuality and respect for agency. Only when people who are partnered can see themselves as whole people, not halves of a whole, not partial people, not a relationship construct, are those people capable of having dynamic, vibrant, healthy, nuanced, 3-dimensional relationships with other people.

The people you get involved with deserve to be involved with a whole person, not a construct. They are not “joining your marriage”, they are relating to *you*, a human being, and anyone else they are getting involved with as well. That’s multiple relationships to maintain, not one giant relationship blob that just gets larger and subsumes everyone in its path.

I was polyamorous before I met my now-spouse. We got into a relationship as poly people and the relationship was polyamorous from the start. He and I have always had other partners and we had other partners when we started dating. Since we are both straight, the odds of us both dating the same person are almost nil.

However, one of his other girlfriends and I have a queerplatonic relationship that basically looks like a romantic relationship in all respects except for the sex. She was not “invited into our marriage”. He met her years ago at a kink convention that he and I and his other girlfriend attended. They hit it off. They began dating. She and I knew of each other through online poly communities, but after they started dating, we became very close and will remain “family” even if one or both of us ends our relationship with our mutual partner.

She is not a part of “our marriage”. She has her own relationship with him and her own relationship with me. Same as all of his other partners and he does the same with my other partners. Most of the metamours and metametamours (a metamour is one’s partner’s other partner) know each other and have friendships or other kinds of independent relationships with each other, so we have a large family dynamic together.

But each dyad, each partnership is its own relationship. And that’s the only way that each relationship can remain healthy.

Read these articles:

The Most Skipped Step[s] When "Opening A Relationship" + 1 - https://joreth.dreamwidth.org/376186.html
Triads Are Advanced Polyamory Not The Beginner Starter Poly Package for Just Opening Up n00bs - https://joreth.dreamwidth.org/390353.html
You Cannot "Add Someone To Your Relationship". Stop Saying That - https://joreth.dreamwidth.org/364636.html
"Opening Up" A Relationship Doesn't Work, Try This Method Instead - https://joreth.dreamwidth.org/375573.html
Honey, Let's Add On A New Girlfriend To Our Existing Relationship! - https://joreth.dreamwidth.org/334953.html
How Impact Bias Affects Polyamory, Poly n00bs, And Couples Wanting To "Open Up" - https://joreth.dreamwidth.org/384668.html
How do you bring a healthy third person into an existing marriage? - https://joreth.dreamwidth.org/368069.html

www.quora.com/What-can-I-do-if-I-would-like-for-my-wife-to-have-an-orgasm-but-she-doesnt-care-if-she-does-or-not/answer/Joreth-Innkeeper

Q. What can I do if I would like for my wife to have an orgasm but she doesn't care if she does or not?

A. Let it go. It’s her body, her orgasm, so her desire to have one or not is the only one that matters.

Stop making her orgasms about you and what you want. If she’s ever going to have one, it won’t be while feeling pressured to have one just to make you feel better about giving her one.

I’m going to say this again: stop making her orgasms about you and what you want.

It’s so frustrating being a straight woman when so many men want to make my pleasure all about them. Take some lessons from lesbian sex - it’s not all about the orgasm. If you make sex all about the orgasm, you’re missing out on about 99% of the fun of sex.

It’s not about you.
It’s not about the orgasm.
It’s not about the penetration.

Just let her enjoy sex the way she wants to enjoy it, if you care about her experience at all. She doesn’t need to experience sex in the same way that you do for it to be a pleasurable experience for her. And she definitely doesn’t need for her ability to orgasm or not to become some kind of statement about you.

3 Ways Men Wanting to 'Focus On Her Pleasure' During Sex Can Still Be Sexist - Everyday Feminism - https://everydayfeminism.com/2015/12/focusing-on-her-pleasure/

Guys, You Can Learn A Lot From Lesbian Sex - https://www.bolde.com/guys-you-can-learn-a-lot-lesbian-sex/

www.quora.com/Is-it-ok-for-your-spouse-to-go-out-all-night-and-not-let-you-know-what-they-are-doing-or-that-theyre-ok-Do-you-expect-a-courtesy-call-if-theyre-going-to-be-home-at-4-am-or-are-they-grown-and-can-do-whatever-whenever/answer/Joreth-Innkeeper

Q. Is it ok for your spouse to go out all night and not let you know what they are doing or that they're ok? Do you expect a courtesy call if they're going to be home at 4 am or are they grown and can do whatever, whenever, without any concern for you?

A. Since my spouse lives 5,000 miles away, I would find it very odd indeed if he gave me a courtesy call to let me know that he would be home at 4 AM.

Aside from that, though, I think the question is loaded. When I have lived with partners, I do not expect a call telling me what their plans are. They are grown adults and can make their own choices.

I would not say this is “without any concern” though.

If, for some reason, I had an *expectation* that they would be home at a certain time, then I would expect a courtesy call because that’s what courtesy is. If a live-in partner told me that they would be home for dinner and I was making dinner for the both of us, I would be both irritated and concerned for their safety if they did not come home reasonably close to the time they said they would.

If my partner has a regular and predictable schedule, and they failed to come home at a time that it would be reasonable to assume or expect that they would be home, I would probably be concerned for their safety.

If my platonic friend promised to meet me for coffee one day and didn’t show up, I would be concerned about the friend. If my sister said she would call me tonight to talk about our plans to give our parents an anniversary gift, and she didn’t call me, I would probably be concerned about her. If my coworker was supposed to have a business meeting with me and didn’t show up, I would probably be concerned about them.

If I have an expectation about the whereabouts of another person, the first thing I would do is examine if that expectation is reasonable. If that expectation is reasonable (i.e. they *said* they would be there and they’re not), then I would be concerned. But I do not generally expect people to keep me notified of their movements and behaviours unless those impacted me directly. My partners’ schedules are not mine to keep. Their time belongs to them. That’s part of what makes them autonomous human beings.

I eat my meals when I want to eat. I go to bed when I want to sleep. I wake up when I need to wake up. None of those things require a partner’s presence. My partners can come and go as they please, providing they are meeting their obligations and are considerate of how their actions affect other people.

Which is the expectation I would have of *anyone* I was dating and living with, dating and not living with, or living with and not dating. When I moved back in with my parents after college, my sister playing loud music in the room next door when I was trying to sleep was inconsiderate. It didn’t matter that she was my sister, we were sharing space. If a partner did the same thing, he would be equally inconsiderate.

And, likewise, I did not keep my sister’s schedule and had no idea what she was doing or where she was unless it was relevant for me to know. We often talked to each other about our lives outside of home, just because we love each other and sharing is a form of intimacy, but I had no *expectation* of knowing her schedule. We just talked to each other because that’s what people do when they like each other.

A partner would be no different. If my sister was supposed to be home for dinner so that she could wash the dishes, I would have been very irritated for her to not show up and do her chores. Same with live-in partner. But while she was out? Whatever, she’s capable of making her own decisions about how to live her life. Same as my partners.

It’s not without *concern*, it’s without *expectation* and with respect for their autonomy. Their time and their lives and their decisions belong to them. How those things impact *me* is when it becomes reasonable for me to have a say in them, insofar as the impact that I will allow. My partners can stay out all night if they want, but if I come home to make dinner for us and they keep not showing up, that’s wasting my time and efforts, so I can choose not to keep coming home and making dinner if they’re not going to respect my time and efforts.

If my expectations continue to mismatch with the reality of their behaviour, then *I* am the one with a choice to make - either adjust my expectations to match or leave the relationship to find someone who is a better match.

So, yeah, my partners can go out all night and not let me know ahead of time what their plans are. But it’s not without concern, it’s just without expectation.

https://www.quora.com/What-should-an-orphan-girl-do-to-get-married/answer/Joreth-Innkeeper

Q. What should an orphan girl do to get married?

A. Are you asking how a person without living parents goes about finding a romantic partner who will eventually become a legal spouse? Or are you asking how to conduct a wedding ceremony without living parents to fulfill some of the traditional roles like the father walking the bride down the aisle or the father-daughter dance? Because those are two very different questions.

A person without living parents goes about finding a romantic partner in the same way that everyone else does - they meet people, eventually falls in love with one (or a few) of them, decides that legal marriage is the right step, and then gets married. There is nothing about parents necessary for any step in that process.

Some cultures do set up marriages through the parents as brokers. The parents find the appropriate spousal applicants, a choice is made (either by the prospective bride and groom or by the two sets of parents), and then the parents arrange for the wedding. In that case, when there are no parents to make these arrangements, the process is going to be much more difficult for a person without living parents to find a spouse.

For that scenario, I can’t offer any advice because I am not part of a culture that encourages this process, so I don’t know what the acceptable alternatives would be for them, because each culture that has this practice might have different protocols for choosing alternatives. Perhaps some elderly neighbors would step in as the parents? Maybe there are organizations that perform this service for a fee? I don’t know.

As for how to have a wedding ceremony when there are people missing from certain key roles, well, there are tons of alternate wedding ceremonies out there. Unless you are just absolutely dead-set on having a traditional wedding where those roles are mandatory, in which case, again, I can’t help you with that. You have to be willing to be flexible if you want to participate in a tradition when you are not in a traditional situation.

My parents are living, and yet I did not have any traditional parental roles in my wedding. My father did not walk me down the aisle, we did not have a father-daughter dance, my spouse’s parents didn’t attend at all so he didn’t have a mother-son dance, my father didn’t give me away, they didn’t even pay for the wedding.

We designed our own ceremony that followed the *pattern* of a generic American Christian wedding ceremony, but that actually subverted all of the traditional elements.

In our “unity ritual”, we performed a ritual that emphasized our individuality and interdependence rather than our joining into one. In our family ritual, we acknowledged the importance of our other partners and family members as part of the whole and including them in our marriage, rather than talking about the family we would be creating with each other.

We did not have an aisle at all and the groom not only saw me and the dress before the ceremony, we got ready in the same room. The entire wedding party (including the bride and groom) mingled with the guests before the ceremony, and when the wedding music started, we just all met up on the stage from wherever we were standing, rather than walking down any aisles. We also did not have a groom’s side and a bride’s side. We had our bridesmates and groomsmates standing interwoven with each other in a semi-circle behind us, with us facing the audience (so they could hear), and our officiates standing below and between us and the audience. Also, we had mixed genders in our respective wedding parties.

We kept the ring exchange, because Franklin likes wearing rings, but we have an understanding that I will not wear mine regularly because I don’t like wearing rings in my dangerous, manual labor job. We kept the first dance because the thing that started this whole ball rolling was my passion for dance and Franklin recently discovering his, so dancing together was an important symbol for us.

We didn’t have a cake cutting (I made mini cupcakes), we didn’t have a bouquet toss or garter toss, we didn’t have rice (but I did provide bubbles), we didn’t have a bachelor party (we had a pre-wedding party that everyone attended together, no gender segregation) … we didn’t have most of what makes an American Christian wedding a “wedding”.

And yet, it still looked like a wedding.

I have the entire thing detailed at http://bit.ly/SquiggleWeddingCon - the ceremony, the food, the music, the dress, all the pictures, everything.

Your wedding can be however you want it to be. If you want it to *look* traditional but make some changes like not having parental participation, you can do that. If you want to go out of your way and make it look totally different, you can do that too. It’s your wedding. It’s supposed to symbolize the people getting married - who they are together and the life they are building together. So make your wedding ceremony reflect that. If that means that someone doesn’t have living parents, then that’s how the ceremony will look.

www.quora.com/I-m-having-casual-sex-with-my-ex-We-only-talk-to-meet-There-s-still-feelings-from-both-sides-and-I-sometimes-want-to-text-just-to-chat-but-I-don-t-do-it-We-are-not-compatible-to-be-togheter-but-I-can-t-doing-this-Is/answer/Joreth-Innkeeper

Q. I’m having “casual sex” with my ex.We only talk to meet. There’s still feelings from both sides and I sometimes want to text just to chat, but I don’t do it. We are not compatible to be togheter but I can’t doing this. Is this normal? What to do?

A. I’m not too worried about what’s “normal”. I prefer to pay more attention to what makes me happy. I find that not being concerned with what’s “normal” actually contributes to my happiness in general. One of the things that makes me happy is finding the right relationship structure for the people involved. There are plenty of people who are more compatible with me as casual sex partners but who don’t make very good long term romantic partners. And vice versa.

Sometimes it takes us a couple of different tries at finding out which structure fits us best. And sometimes certain structures work best for us *at that point in time* but not at others.

If you are not happy with a casual sex relationship with your ex, then this relationship isn’t working for you and that’s OK. You don’t have to have casual sex, and you don’t have to have it with any particular person. But there’s nothing “abnormal” or wrong with people who tried a romantic relationship, discovered that they weren’t compatible in that way, and who then try a casual sex relationship with each other afterwards.

A not very popular opinion that I hold is that everyone needs to take some “cool off” time after the end of a relationship before they try to transition to something else. After ending a romantic relationship with your ex, you ought to go no-contact with them for a period of time. This gives your brain a chance to “reset” itself regarding your feelings for them and to break old habits.

If, after having the chance to mourn the end of your relationship and start out fresh, you meet up again and discover that you have some sexual chemistry where a casual sex relationship would be appropriate for both of you, then great! Have fun!

But, chances are, if you’re not happy in this casual sex relationship, then you probably jumped into it too soon after the breakup when your brain hasn’t had a chance to grieve and move on. So now you’re confused and experience mixed emotions and holding onto something that is over because the old habits are conflicting with the new structure.

I’d recommend not talking to your ex for a set time limit. Don’t ghost them - that’s cruel. But say that you need time to process your breakup so that your old romantic feelings can stop interfering with your new post-breakup relationship, and that you’ll call them in a few months. Then take some time and really go through that breakup. Then you can call them up again with a clear head if you’re still interested in some other kind of relationship with them.

Explaining the difference is still very difficult for me. It's very much a "I know the feeling when I feel it" kind of thing. This is just how the difference manifests *to me*.

www.quora.com/Whats-the-difference-between-a-romantic-relationship-without-sex-and-a-best-friend-How-are-the-feelings-different/answer/Joreth-Innkeeper

Q. What's the difference between a romantic relationship without sex and a best friend? How are the feelings different?

A. For me, the difference is intention.

In a friendship, everything is taken on an as-is basis. We are friends, until we aren’t. We hang out together, unless we don’t. Although there might be *hope* for continuity and longevity, there is no *expectation* of such. I go for long stretches of time not talking to my friends, and when we get together again, it’s as if no time as passed. We just pick up where we left off.

This works for me in both platonic friendships and FWB type friendships.

But, for me, *romance* includes the intention of continuity and longevity. We have more of a commitment to actively working on the ongoing-ness of the relationship, whatever the structure of that relationship might be. It’s less of a default of being together and more of an active participation in being together, with explicit plans and intentions to continue things or work on things or being together.

It’s a very subtle difference, and not something that outside observers are likely to be able to see. But from within a relationship, it *feels* very different to the participants.

There is not a difference in the *potential* level of emotional intimacy. Each of my friends and partners has their own unique amount of emotional intimacy, because that intimacy is made up of the two of us in that relationship.

So, a "best friend" and an LTR partner might have a comparable amount of emotional intimacy. But it will be different kinds of intimacy because the two *people* are two different people but not because the two relationships are different relationship categories.

Because of the nature of each intimate connection being unique, sure, there are friends with lower amounts of intimacy than romantic partners. But they're not lower in intimacy because they're *friends*, they're lower in intimacy because that's just how that relationship worked out.

I suppose that, because of the nature of my romantic relationships having *intention* of continuity and longevity, that sort of by default, I do have an expectation of emotional intimacy there. I don't have those intentions with friendships, so I don't have an expectation of the amount of emotional intimacy, so my friendships can range all over the map.

Same with sexual relationships - just because we're having sex, I don't expect there to be emotional intimacy by default, so my sexual relationships range from no intimacy to all the intimacy. But I also tend to be more descriptive than prescriptive, so it's not so much "I have decided that we will be romantic partners, therefore I now have expectations of emotional intimacy".

It's more like "I noticed that this relationship really wants to be emotionally intimate and I would like to be intentional about our continuity and longevity, which would make this a romantic relationship for me".

Some of my non-romantic friendships have that same level of emotional intimacy, but I don't feel the pull to make things intentional. That's what makes them not romantic to me.

And then, just to make things even muddier, I do have some platonic, non-romantic relationships with some degree of intention, and those relationships get categorized in my head as "non-romantic family". Those are even harder for me to tease out and explain why they're different, though. I think it has to do with the specific things that I feel intentional about.

I am frequently appalled at why people marry. This is why I am basically opposed to legal marriage entirely, even now that I am legally married.

www.quora.com/He-and-I-have-been-together-for-2-yrs-I-want-to-get-married-I-want-to-have-his-name-and-the-respect-that-society-gives-to-the-wife-Instead-he-thinks-of-it-as-a-government-conspiracy-and-gives-me-the-divorce-rate/answer/Joreth-Innkeeper

Q. He and I have been together for 2 yrs. I want to get married. I want to have his name and the respect that society gives to the “wife”. Instead, he thinks of it as a government conspiracy and gives me the “divorce rate” argument. What can I do?

A. You two clearly have diametrically opposed worldviews. Even if you manage to convince him to marry you, your marriage is probably doomed. Mutually exclusive worldviews do not lend themselves well for long-term compatibility.

Incidentally, you do not have to legally marry and let the government into your bedroom in order to obtain many of the same things that marriage can afford. If the “respect” of a society that doesn’t think you are worth anything unless you are attached to a man is important to you, you can arrange your relationship to resemble a legal marriage without the legality (assuming your partner is willing to participate).

Nobody demands to see a marriage license when you introduce yourself as Mrs. No banks require a marriage license to purchase property together or open joint accounts together. If, at this point, you don’t know that babies can be born outside of wedlock, I don’t know what to tell you.

Personally, I don’t believe that anyone should get legally married unless their intention is to become legally entangled in exactly the ways in which a legal marriage entangles them. If you want something other than those legal benefits and responsibilities, there are other ways to get those things. You can even have the big party and white dress without the legal license, if you really want it.

Tying yourself to another person, ostensibly for life, just to get the “respect” of a bunch of strangers who wouldn’t know the difference if you weren’t legally tied anyway, is probably the worst reason to get married*, IMO. Followed by getting married to “lock them down” into a commitment. Marriages are easier to break than getting out of a shared mortgage these days.

If what you’re looking for is some societal respect, you’re probably going about it the wrong way. But that aside, your partner clearly does not share your views on how important that respect is or how to get it. All that convincing him to marry you will do is increase the odds of a divorce in your future.

At least if you stay unmarried, when you inevitably break up, you won’t be a divorcee, you’ll just have a paranoid ex-boyfriend in your past instead of an ex-husband.

*Excepting same-sex marriages … sort of. The reason why queer people fought so hard for the right to marry, as opposed to “different but equal” (which they weren’t) civil unions, was partly because of this exact “respect” argument.

As long as same-sex marriages were illegal, same sex partners could not pass themselves off as “married” and get the same respect, because the people who don’t respect them knew that their “marriage” could not be legal and therefore they did not consider their marriages valid. So they fought for the social recognition of their unions as part of a larger issue of validating and legitimizing their existence and their relationships, which, in turn, was part of a larger issue addressing the inequity and discrimination of an entire class of people based on who they love.

However, if it is generally known that two people are *able* to get married, then it is possible to just pass themselves off as married without the state-issued license and they will receive that societal “respect” because nobody actually checks for licenses when people say that they’re married, as long as they believe that those people have the ability to get married.

So, for an entire class of people to demand social “respect” through being allowed to access certain legal benefits that were previously only available to one class of people, that is a different situation than an individual person wishing to tie themselves to another individual person in order to get “respect” for the association. And that is what I meant by it being the worst reason to get married.

Fighting for class equality is not in the same camp as individuals using their romantic relationships to force those other individual people around them to “respect” them.

https://www.quora.com/My-wife-has-changed-since-marrying-me-She-isnt-as-laid-back-and-free-spirited-as-she-used-to-be-The-same-thing-happened-with-my-ex-wife-too-which-led-to-our-divorce-Why-do-they-get-bitter-after-marriage/answer/Joreth-Innkeeper

Q. My wife has changed since marrying her. she isn't as laid back and free spirited as she used to be. The same thing happened with my ex-wife too which lead to our divorce. Why do they get bitter after marriage?

A. As they say, “if all of your exes are crazy, the thing they have in common is you”. Lots of other commenters are pointing this out.

First, losing one’s free-spiritedness is not “bitter”. As someone else said, the opposite of laid back is not bitter. So one does not follow from the other. If they’re both “bitter”, then something serious is going on. But if they’re just not as fun as they used to be, then it’s probably your problem for expecting them to perform their personalities for your entertainment.

Either way, the problem points to something you’re doing that results in your partners ending up unhappy, which is point number two.

Third, women, in general, are still expected to be the Household Managers, even when their hetero relationships are more or less “equal” in other respects. When a man gets home from work, he might have to take out the trash or wash the dishes after dinner, but his job is essentially over when he clocks out. When women get home from work, they start their second job.

Even when *chores* are split evenly, women are still expected to be the manager. Men “help out around the house”. Men often say “if you want me to do something, just ask”. We shouldn’t have to ask. As an adult living in the house, you ought to know that the trash needs taking out and the dishes need washing and the kids need to be fed and the floor needs vacuuming and, and, and.

Project Management is a full time, highly paid job. But a lot of women are expected to do it for free, and without notice, when they get home while a lot of men are given all the credit for “helping out”. So a lot of women who, as single women with only themselves to care for, get married and have children and end up losing their “laid back” and “free-spirited” natures because shit has to get done and nobody else will do it unless they take the reins and make them do it. The household needs to be managed. It’s really difficult to be “laid back” and “free spirited” when there is shit that need to get done, especially when the people you’re responsible for overseeing don’t realize that you have a legitimate job as the overseer.

I’m a freelancer in an industry where crews are hired to perform job duties for a particular contract, and when the contract ends, we go on to find other contracts. Many of us who have been working in the industry for a while know each other and we often find ourselves on crews of the same people over and over again. Between regular contact and our industry’s traditions of networking for gigs, many of us are friends outside of work.

Because of this, we can often find ourselves working on a crew one day where our friend Joe was hired as the crew chief. And perhaps the next week, Emily got hired as the crew chief for this other gig and Joe has to work under Emily’s supervision when Emily was working for Joe just a week ago.

Some people who are new to the industry find it difficult sometimes to work for their friends. They go from being buddies who drink and smoke pot together, to now their buddy is “in charge” and making demands of them and they can’t respond to their buddy like he’s their buddy. Yesterday, he was their buddy. Tomorrow, he’ll be their buddy again. But today, he’s the boss.

When people get married, and someone ends up taking on the Project Manager role for the Household Manager, they are no longer that carefree, laid-back, free-spirit you went on dates with. Now they’re in a managerial role, and possibly a role they didn’t ask for and might not even want. And here you are wondering where your date buddy went, now that she’s been promoted to Project Manager and there is shit that needs to get done.

You will probably find that your wives are better able to act more laid-back and free-spirited if they had a little less management responsibilities on their plate. I know that I’m usually too tired for a spontaneous decision to get dressed up and go out dancing all night when I’ve put in 12 hours at work only to come home and find the house a mess and someone waiting for me to ask them to make dinner.

And I find that a lot of my last-minute “let’s just get in the car and drive and see where we end up and spend the weekend there!” plans to explore and adventure get scrapped when I have a grown-up job and a mortgage to pay and kids with homework that need to be done and dentist visits to schedule and swim meets to attend.

The ability to be “laid back” and “free-spirited” is directly negatively correlated with how many responsibilities need one’s attention and how many other people require attention to those responsibilities for their survival.

If you want your wife to feel more “laid back” and “free spirited”, then you could start by taking some of the responsibilities off her plate.

The Invisible Workload That Drags Women Down - “To truly be free, we need to free women’s minds. Of course, someone will always have to remember to buy toilet paper, but if that work were shared, women’s extra burdens would be lifted. Only then will women have as much lightness of mind as men.”

Women Aren't Nags—We're Just Fed Up - “that I was the manager of the household, and that being manager was a lot of thankless work. Delegating work to other people, i.e. telling him to do something he should instinctively know to do, is exhausting. … Even having a conversation about the imbalance of emotional labor becomes emotional labor.”

Why I Don't "Help" My Wife - “When you make a mess, you shouldn't expect your wife to clean it up. It's your job to clean up your own messes. You both live there, you're not “helping” her with anything because it's your home.”

www.quora.com/Can-you-choose-to-be-LGBT-Why/answer/Joreth-Innkeeper/comment/85632057

In a quora question about whether we could "choose" to be LGBTQ, I responded that I *wish* it was a choice because men basically suck and I'd love to not be attracted to them anymore, but I just am and I'm simply not attracted to not-men.

So some douchenozzle comes out and mansplains to me in a reply about me being fed up with the shit that men do.

Because of course he does. Because #LewisLaw

Apparently I just have to learn how to find people with common interests. Because that's NEVER FUCKING OCCURRED TO ME EVER IN MY LIFE (says the person who literally gives that answer to everyone asking how to find other polys) AND I'M NOT ACTUALLY TALKING ABOUT A BIGGER ISSUE.

Ernie Dunbar: It's worth noting that everyone has this problem.

The problem is finding someone who's compatible with you. It's no wonder that everyone thinks there's only one person in the whole world that fits just right, because when dating, we never narrow it down beyond “singles” before starting the search.

Personally, I've found a great deal of success by hanging out with people who have common interests. So long as there's a sufficient number of people open to a relationship in that group, you'll find what you're looking for just by narrowing the field down a bit first.

Joreth Innkeeper: Are you serious? You think my big problem is that I can’t find anyone who shares my *hobbies*?! And that I’m *alone* because of it?

I’m married. I’m polyamorous. I’m a community organizer. My own relationship network is about 50 people. I already know how to make friends and “hang out with people who have common interests”.

I’m not talking about compatibility. I’m talking about gender issues, sexism, misogyny, and feminism. And mansplaining like this is part of why I’m fed up with men and wish I could just chuck the lot of you out the airlock.

Here’s a newsflash for you … men who share my interests CAN ALSO BE ASSHOLES. It’s fucking easy to find people with common interests. It’s not easy to find men who aren’t mansplaining, privilege-denying, entitled jerkoffs and I’m too fucking tired to keep doing the emotional labor, the Relationship Maintenance labor, the Household Management labor and All The Intersectional SJ Educational labor every time I meet a guy who happens to share my interests in movies and music.

www.quora.com/How-do-you-ask-a-guy-to-sleep-with-you/answer/Joreth-Innkeeper

Q. How do you tell a guy you just want to hook up with him?

A. Here’s what I said to the last guy I hooked up with:

“Hey there, I know we’re not compatible for dating in a relationship, but would you be interested in a hookup?”

Here’s what I said to the guy I hooked up with before that:

“So, we’re both getting out of long-term relationships and not interested in getting back into another one right now. What do you think about hooking up then?”

Here’s how I hit on a celebrity that I met when I worked for him once and a friend of mine who knew him said he would probably be open to me propositioning him:

“I hope you don’t mind, but [mutual friend] said you would be open to hearing about a fantasy I had about you…”

He said “Oh, yeah, tell me all about it!”

[I told him all about it]

He said “wanna make that a reality the next time I come to town?”

I said “yes”.

Now I keep an eye out for whenever his show is going to be in town, and if he doesn’t message me first asking to hookup, I message him to see if he wants to see me while he’s in town. So I basically ask him for a hookup about once a year (or he asks me for one).

Here’s how I asked another guy for a hookup:

“I’m kinda crushing on you right now. Interested in a little fun tonight, no strings attached?”

Basically, I find it’s usually most successful to just come out and tell someone that I’m attracted to them and interested in casual sex. But the real key to this working for me is by not having any expectations of their reciprocation. This means that, when I tell someone I’m interested, I don’t have any agenda. I’m not trying to “talk them into it”, I’m just passing along information. They can do with that information what they will. If they’re also interested in me, great, we’ll hookup. If they’re not interested in me, great, now I know where we stand and I let it go and we can go on being friends or coworkers or whatever we were before I propositioned them.

Getting all weird about it, asking in soft language to protect myself just in case they say no, not handling rejection, making them responsible for my expectations, trying to talk them into it - all that kind of stuff is what makes things awkward and uncomfortable and all the things that people fear when they fear rejection.

So I just put my interest out there, and if they return the interest then it’s cool and if they don’t then it’s still cool and I move on.

I can’t reasonably expect to get what I want if I don’t ask for what I want. So I ask for what I want. Some of the time, I get what I want. A lot of the time I don’t, but that’s life and I move on.

https://www.quora.com/What-does-committed-relationship-mean-in-terms-of-polyamory/answer/Joreth-Innkeeper

Q. What does "committed relationship" mean in terms of polyamory?

A. There is an atheist saying: “I contend that we are both atheists, I just believe in one fewer god than you”. It means that everyone lacks belief in gods, so when you ask what it’s like to not believe in *your* gods, it’s much like what it’s like when you don’t believe in other gods.

Commitment in polyamory is much the same thing. Everyone commits to a variety of things in their relationships. Polys just don’t commit to sexual exclusivity. Otherwise, we commit to many of the same things. When you took your wedding vows (or when people do, if you, reader, personally haven’t gotten married), there were all kinds of commitments in those vows, and I’d wager that none of them were “I promise never to let my genitals touch anyone else’s genitals”.

For instance, these are my wedding vows. I’d bet some of them sound pretty similar to a lot of your monogamous wedding vows:

I commit myself to you
As your spouse
To learn and grow with,
To explore and adventure with,
To build and create with,
To support you and respect you
In everything as an equal partner,
In the foreknowledge of joy and pain,
Strength and weariness,
Direction and doubt,
For as long as the love shall last.
We exchange these rings
To symbolize our connection to one another.
They represent a commitment
To honor and respect one another
And to recognize
The agency and essential humanity of each of us.

See? Nothing in there about genitals or sex. All we did, really, was leave out the parts about forsaking all others and the part about forever, but the rest is pretty similar to monogamous vows.

A friend of mine once said that being poly is kind of like being vegetarian, where people find out that she doesn’t eat meat, so they ask “OMG what do you even eat then?!” as if the absence of meat means that, literally, the majority of foodstuffs on the planet don’t exist. There’s so much more to eat besides beef, chicken, lettuce and Wonder bread, and if you thought about it, you’d realize that you eat a lot of the same things that vegetarians do too, they just don’t eat meat.

Because polys have to think a little more deliberately about the kinds of things we commit to, since there isn’t really a social template to follow and we can’t just do things by default, some of us probably have come up with some commitments that monogamous people don’t make. I’m not saying we’re *identical* to monogamy only without sexual exclusivity.

In fact, I’d even bet that *monogamists* aren’t identical to each other and y’all make some commitments amongst yourselves that are unique, or at least not common or that not everyone else makes too.

I’m also childfree by choice and solo poly, which means that in addition to not being sexually exclusive, I also don’t make commitments to things like co-parenting or cohabiting. So, I’m sure that some of my personal commitments are things that other people don’t make in their relationships. But they’re still normal sorts of things to commit to that even mono relationships could benefit from.

And a lot of them are things that a lot of people do commit to, but so much of monogamy is by default and by implicit assumption. So, if pressed, a lot of people could probably admit to some of them being values they also hold, they just never really thought about it or said it out loud like a vow.

I have so many things that I commit to in relationships, that I wrote a whole page on my website that I managed to get more than 20 blog pieces out of when I broke it down by each commitment that I make in my relationships:

www.TheInnBetween.net/polycommitments.html

The full explanation of each point is on that page. The bullet list is:

I am committed to respecting my partners' autonomy, agency, and personal sovereignty - that is, respecting their right to make informed, un-coerced decisions and to be responsible for their own decisions, their right to act according to their own free will, and their right to own their body and control what happens to it.
I am committed to respecting my partners’ right to make their own life choices.
I am committed to doing my best to practice flexibility and compassion with regards to the paths my partners may take in life.
I am committed to respecting the roles that other people play in my partners’ lives.
I am committed to allowing my metamour relationships to find their own structure and direction without forcing them into a predetermined shape.
I am committed to considering my metamours as "family" regardless of the structure or emotional closeness of our individual metamour relationships and to treat them accordingly.
I am committed to working through problems with my partners starting with the assumption that we love and cherish each other and are therefore really on the same side.
I am committed to supporting my partners in being the best version of themselves that they can be.
I am committed to taking care of myself so that I can be the best partner I can be.
I am committed to protecting the safety of myself and my partners through informed consent and risk-benefit analysis of behaviour, prioritizing evidence-based reason above emotional justification.
I am committed to addressing issues early in order to prevent them from becoming too big to handle.
I am committed to prioritizing situations, not partners, because all my partners are a priority.
I am committed to including my partners on the higher ring of priorities in my life (partners / work / pets / family emergencies / etc.) and to not passing them over in favor of other events or people too often.
I am committed to accepting assistance from my partners when needed, and sometimes just when it would be nice.
I am committed to limiting my actions and words which have the intent or goal of harming my partners, although I acknowledge that some decisions I may make for the benefit of myself or my relationships may result in hurt as a consequence, unintentional or not.
I am committed to be as clear about my expectations as possible, both with myself and with my partners.
I am committed to choosing the Path of Greatest Courage by always being honest with myself and my partners while simultaneously allowing compassion to dictate the delivery of my honesty.
I am committed to prioritizing the happiness of the individuals over the longevity of the group if / when those two values are in conflict.
I am committed to discussing harm reduction plans and contingency plans for when bad things happen, because I understand that we can’t always prevent them from happening.
I am committed to allowing the relationship to find its own structure and direction without forcing it into a predetermined shape and to considering alternate structures and directions before automatically resorting to breaking up when situations and priorities change.
I am committed to becoming a friendly ex should a breakup occur and the situation is such that it would not be harmful to remain in contact, with the understanding that “friendly ex” is a statement on my own actions, not the structure of the post-breakup relationship.
I am committed to choosing partners who share my values so that they also make similar commitments to themselves, to me and our relationship, and by extension, my other partners (their metamours).
I am committed to not expecting anyone to live up to the Perfect Poly standard, including myself.
I am committed to allowing myself and my partners the forgiveness and the freedom to be flawed, to have bad days, and to occasionally fail to live up to expectations or commitments, providing that the bad times do not outnumber the good times in either frequency or emotional weight and the commitment to prioritizing individual happiness over longevity still holds.

Honestly, the frequency with which monogamous people ask polys incredulously about what we could possibly commit to if sexual exclusivity is off the table kinda makes *me* want to question *them* about the kinds of things *they* commit to, since they can’t seem to come up with what else we might commit to on their own.

“But what do you commit to if not sexual exclusivity?”

“Wait a minute, what do *you* commit to? Is sexual exclusivity really the only possible relationship commitment you can come up with? Is that really the only part of your relationship that makes it stand out as something special? That elevates this relationship above all others? Is this really the only difference between your marriage and all your other relationships? That you have sex with just this one person? What happens if one of you gets sick and you can’t have sex with them anymore? Is that the only thing holding your relationship together? If you can’t have sex, does your relationship fall apart because you have no other commitments to each other? What do YOU commit to besides sexual exclusivity?”

www.quora.com/For-women-would-you-move-into-a-house-with-a-couple-that-share-a-3rd-female-and-that-would-make-you-the-4th-female-All-share-a-bed-and-have-sex-with-each-other-Why-or-why-not/answer/Joreth-Innkeeper

Q. For women, would you move into a house with a couple that share a 3rd female and that would make you the 4th female? All share a bed and have sex with each other. Why or why not?

A.

I could not live with people who “share” other human beings like they’re a milkshake to be shared on a date. I could not trust them to treat *me* as a human being, because they have clearly shown they are willing to dehumanize people for their own gratification.
I could not live with people who call women “females”. There’s a whole body of literature on what’s wrong with that term.
I could not live with people who assume that cohabiting automatically means “would make you the 4th female”. The question assumes that “move into a house” necessarily implies a polyfidelitious arrangement. I’m not sure what kind of houses y’all have been living in, but I’ve had a number of roommates and housemates, some of whom were also romantically involved with each other, and never was simply “move into a house” defined as “would make you the 4th female”. In order for that to happen, there would have to be an invitation to join their polyfidelitious relationship, not just live under their roof.
I am straight. I am not sexually attracted to women.
I have autonomy. To require me to have sex with anyone, even if they were the gender of my orientation, is coercive. Even when I do enter into a romantic and sexual relationship, I still retain the ability to give and revoke consent at any time. Sex is never a *requirement*. If, at any time, someone is required to have sex with anyone in order to maintain their housing, that is deeply coercive indeed. Certainly I would never get into a relationship with someone where sex with *other people* is required in order to maintain the relationships I want. That’s really fucked up.
Even though I do enjoy group sex, I do not enjoy it all the time. Every relationship needs to be nurtured on its own, which means that each of the 4 people in that house needs to be able to explore their individual relationships with each other person independently and each of those relationships needs to be able to grow in whatever ways that relationship wants to grow. Forcing all of the relationships to be the “same” is also coercive and codependent. So even assuming my orientation matched *and* I was interested in a sexual relationship with each person, I still wouldn’t join a group that expected group sex all the time.

I was actually in a relationship that did that in a defacto way. It was quite toxic and insidious. They never said that group sex was expected or required, but they all insisted on spending so much group time together that nobody ever really got any alone-time with each other, and every time someone had sex without the others present, somebody would have some kind of emotional crisis about being “left out” or “abandoned” and it took weeks of tears and arguments to make everyone feel better again. It was so bad that I eventually lost interest in sex completely because it was a minefield.
I have several sleep disorders. I do not co-sleep well. I always have my own bedroom for my own health and sanity.

In short, there is absolutely nothing about that scenario that is appealing and everything about it is a red flag for an abusive situation. And I say this as someone who has a spouse that is a straight man who has (at least) 2 other partners where the 4 of us get together and have some kind of kinky group sex.

The difference is that there is no cohabitation, no expectations or requirements of co-sleeping, definitely no coercion where everyone is required to all have sex together (the 3 of us women are not actually in direct sexual relationships with each other, we are just all in a relationship with him), and none of us are treated as objects to be “shared”. We all respect each other’s autonomy and see each other as human beings, not “female” animals, sex objects, need fulfillment machines, nannies, bang-maids, harem members, or possessions.

Every word in this question drips with entitlement, assumptions, misogyny, and co-dependence. I wouldn’t enter into a scenario like this if I was homeless and desperately needed a place to stay for survival.

https://www.quora.com/Would-you-ever-consider-a-new-relationship-with-someone-who-previously-dumped-you/answer/Joreth-Innkeeper

Q. Would you ever consider a new relationship with someone who previously dumped you?

A. I have considered it. I have given second chances. I have gotten into several relationships with people who dumped me previously. I have regretted every single instance of this. Without exception.

Every time the second chance ends, I get bitter and say “no second chances ever again! If we break up, it’s for a reason!” And then someone comes along and, for some reason, I justify to myself that this one is different because of whatever specific circumstances. It’s never the exact same thing twice, but that’s because everyone I date is a different person. The relationship itself was different. The breakup was different. The reasons for the breakup was different. I wanted different things back then than I do this time. Whatever, it’s always “different”.

And not once have I ever been correct.

Not only have I never once been correct, but I regretted the second chance to the point of actually wishing I could undo the entire thing. I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life, but for the most part, I’ve learned things from those mistakes that make me who I am today. If I were handed a magic telephone booth and told I could go back in time to change whatever I wanted about my own life, most of those things I wouldn’t actually change.

These second chances? Yeah, I’d change them. I’d erase the whole fucking thing. I’d get rid of all the good times that went along with them. I’d delete any lessons I supposedly learned from them. I’d get rid of the whole second chance for each and every one of them.

So here I am, still stinging from my most recent poor “second chance”, still angry about it, telling everyone about how I keep saying that I don’t do second chances and that each time I do is somehow an “exception” to the rule, knowing that I will probably find some other “exception” to justify doing it again in the future. And that I’ll write another blog post or social media post or advice column or whatever, telling people that second chances are bullshit and I don’t like to do them.

I am, apparently, an incurable optimist hiding in the skin of a cynic. I ought to listen to the cynic more often.

www.quora.com/Couples-who-have-stayed-in-nontraditional-long-term-relationships-swingers-poly-etc-How-do-you-feel-about-your-relationship-now-What-would-you-tell-young-couples-who-choose-that-lifestyle/answer/Joreth-Innkeeper

Q. Couples who have stayed in nontraditional long term relationships (swingers, poly, etc.) How do you feel about your relationship now? What would you tell young couples who choose that lifestyle?

A. I feel content, satisfied, excited, loved, aroused, humbled, and inspired by my relationships now. Notice that I used the plural there. Because I’m polyamorous, I have more than one relationship.

I am not a couple. I am not half of a couple. I am a whole and complete person who also has partnerships with other whole and complete people. I have my own identity, my own agency, my own autonomy, as do my partners. Because we are whole and complete people, we are *able* to enter into mutually satisfying and fulfilling partnerships of equals and we are able to design the kind of relationships that make us happy. One cannot have ethical relationships with half-entities or incomplete people.

As Jessica said, if you’re starting out as a couple, you’re already doomed. I would tell all new “couples” that they need to first disentangle themselves and find their identities that they have subsumed into their relationship before trying to engage with other people, regardless of the style of non-monogamy or non-traditional relationship they’re interested in.

Everyone you get into any kind of relationship with deserves to be in a relationship with a whole and complete person, not a relationship construct.

Rediscover your identity. Take back your autonomy. Become whole and complete people who are in a partnership with each other. And *then* try something different.

The Most Skipped Step[s] When "Opening A Relationship" + 1

I would also tell people in couples that it is not possible to “open up” an existing relationship. All relationships are between individual people. You have to deconstruct your relationship first and then reconstruct it as a new, “open” version (whatever version that means for you) where two individual people are now in a relationship that accommodates whatever non-traditional format you’re pursuing.

You might have to literally break up first and then get back together with a renegotiated relationship structure. Practice saying that: “we are not ‘opening up’, we have deconstructed and are reconstructing a totally new relationship that is open to X”.

"Opening Up" A Relationship Doesn't Work, Try This Method Instead

And then basically read everything I write under my Couple Privilege and Unicorn Hunter tags on my blog (which, to be fair, has some strong overlap):

Entries tagged with unicorn hunting
Entries tagged with couple privilege

Mostly I tell young people not to try polyamory. It’s not really something that you can just “try”, like test driving a car. The car has no feelings about your inexperienced handling of it and subsequent return to the dealership. These are real people you’re “experimenting” with, and we don’t like being people’s chemistry experiments. We’re usually the ones who get blown up in the lab when you make a mistake and then decide that open relationships aren’t for you and you go back to your comfortable, safe, monogamous couple.

While nobody knows for sure what they want if they haven’t done it before (and people are notoriously bad at predicting what will make them happy), I would rather not see anyone “try” open relationships. I would rather see people taking a really good, long, hard look at themselves, really considering all the options, and deciding that this is something they feel, down in their very soul, that they need to be doing right now.

They don’t have to decide for sure that they definitely *are* poly, or whatever. They don’t have to decide ahead of time what their relationship structure will look like (in fact, please don’t do this either). They don’t have to make a choice that they will be forced to stick with for the rest of their lives. They just have to decide that they will be jumping, all-in, when they make that leap, that this is a decision they are wholeheartedly embracing, regardless of the outcome.

They can have some wibbles, some concerns, some doubts, some fears. Courage is not the absence of fear. It’s acknowledging the fear and then doing it anyway. But when “couples”, or people go into open relationships and leave a “back door” open for themselves, that makes the people they are asking to entrust them with their hearts (or their bodies) disposable. That’s a Sword of Damocles hanging over their heads. That’s not fair, or ethical, for anyone.

If you can hear the cautionary tales and people like me saying that this is not a decision to make lightly, that you are responsible for how your actions affect those you get involved with, and you think about the type of relationships you’re attempting to have and you still really want them and feel like this is the right path for you to be on, then great.

But if you’re doing it because someone you love wants to and it’s the only way to keep them, if you think it might be “fun” to “try something new” or “spice up your relationship”, or you think that maybe you could be willing to explore something as long as there is a safety net for you to fall back on … don’t. Just … don’t.

And one last thing - listen to the community. New couples have a tendency to come up with an idea and then relentlessly pursue it, while the veterans in that relationship style tell them there are better ways, and the new couples get mad at the community for being “mean” nor “not accepting” or “intolerant”.

Look, you’re not the first one to try this. You’re also not a special snowflake who can somehow make all the same mistakes that thousands of people before you made but will come out of it with different outcomes. The veterans are telling you things that often they wish they had known before starting out. We’ve learned the hard way so that you don’t have to. If the whole community is telling you that you’re “doing it wrong”, or you feel that everyone is against you, it’s probably something that *you’re* doing, not everyone else.

You’re going to have to learn some humility here and learn to listen to hard things from people who have been there, done that, wore out the t-shirt. There is a *reason* why communities develop community wisdom or trends for how things are done. You don’t need to burn your hand on the candle flame (or worse, burn someone else’s hand because you wanted to play with fire) - we learned a long time ago that fire is hot and how to play with it safely. Listen to us and you’ll decrease the chances of anyone getting seriously burned.

www.quora.com/Polyamorous-people-If-you-could-marry-all-or-several-of-your-partners-would-you/answer/Joreth-Innkeeper

Q. Polyamorous people: If you could marry all (or several of) your partners, would you?

A. No, I want the government to get out of the business of regulating my sex and love life entirely, not give it more avenues to stick its nose in who I’m fucking.

I want for all the rights and responsibilities that a government can offer to be made available to anyone and everyone who is otherwise eligible to enter into any kind of legal contract. Want to assign someone federal inheritance rights that can’t be contested by family? Done. Want to assign two people as the beneficiary of your social security benefits? Done.

I want for there to be a small collection of “package deals” where a bunch of these rights and responsibilities are all bundled together, according to how popular it is for people to want to bundle them together, and everything else is a “pick and choose” and “build your own contract” sort of a thing, and then anyone who can legally enter into contracts can do so.

Just like anyone who can legally enter into contracts can enter into corporate structures. Nowhere do we restrict who can enter into a corporation or legal entity based on who that person is having sex with, and nowhere can we nullify a corporation or legal entity based on a government official evaluating the validity of the participants “love” for each other.

I want these contracts to be regulated by civil contract law, not criminal law. And I want them to have absolutely nothing to do with anyone’s genitals or anyone’s emotions. Nobody has grounds to sue the other person for economic benefits just because the other person’s genitals touched someone else (however, passing along a serious infection because one person was not notified about non-monogamous activity to give informed consent should still be actionable, perhaps under criminal law as a violation of bodily autonomy).

Nobody’s immigration status gets validated based on whether or not a federal agent “believes” that they have “true love” for their sponsor. Did each person uphold the economic responsibilities outlined in the contract? If yes, then it’s good. If not, then the contract spells out the consequences that are relevant to the responsibilities that were broken.

So, no, I would not *want* to marry everyone if it were legal to do so. However, if that were the only option available to me to obtain certain legal or economic benefits because society finally recognized the validity of multi-adult romantic relationships but still privileged romantic relationships over other relationships, then I might consider it if it was more important for me to obtain those benefits than to go without. I may conscientiously object to the structure of the system, but if that’s the only way I can survive, then I’ll take what’s available.

Q. Is it necessary that the dance lift was performed by a male partner? My girlfriend offers me to dance too, but I never played sports, unlike her.

A. First of all, partner dancing has nothing to do with lifts. People go their entire lives as partner dancers without ever doing a single lift, especially if they are social dancers. If your girlfriend wants to dance with you, you don’t have to know lifts to do it.

In fact, you **won’t** learn lifts for a very long time, because they’re dangerous and require skill. Lifts are not for beginners. The first thing you’re going to learn is just where to put your feet on which beat and where to put your hands. And you’re going to do a LOT of that, for a very long time, even if you want to eventually learn lifts.

Partner dancing does have a history of very strict gender roles. But fortunately, we live in an era where we can challenge those roles, and the dance world has been challenging them for ages now.

Anyone can lift anyone in dancing, just like anyone can take either the lead or follow role. Do the roles that you want to do.

Although I will point out that having once played sports is not relevant to who does the lifts. Proper lifts are all about leverage, momentum, and balance, not necessarily brute strength and definitely not about the kinds of movements that other sports use. There are a few moves that require brute strength, but most lifts use leverage more than anything else.

Watch on YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfUcmYcZ4pw

Watch on YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOe9r2RlE4c

A lift is not about a strong person throwing a small person around. Both people are using core strength to do a lift. The lifted person is engaging all of their own strength and flexibility too.

Watch on YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3AH7W1YFTY

Dance is a partnership between two equal and complimentary partners, even when staying within traditional gender roles. The follow still has to come to this partnership as an equal and perform their role. In lifts, that’s as much athleticism as the person being their base, sometimes more.
If you want to be the person being lifted because you think your girlfriend is more athletic than you, you’re in for a big surprise. As the person being lifted, you have to have musicality, timing, flexibility, and strength in the legs, arms, and core.

Being lifted isn’t just about being small, and it’s definitely not about being weak. Check out YouTube videos on core exercises for dance lifts - you’ll see nothing but workouts for 6-pack abs because being lifted requires an enormous amount of core strength. Honestly, the leads (or bases) have the easier part of the job in lifts.

So, by all means, go out there and learn lifts! Be the person who is lifted if you want! Just know that A) once you start taking lessons, you will not get to the lifts for a very long time and B) if you still choose to be the person being lifted, that will require a great deal of athleticism that C) has nothing at all to do with other sports so skills in other sports will not help you here.

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Joreth

The Inn Between

Page Summary

Con Hacks: Tips & Tricks For Attending Conventions & Conferences
What Can Make Even A #Poly Person Jealous? #polyamory #polyamorous
Costume & Wardrobe Storage Solutions For Everyone
Country Swing Dancing And The Systemic Obliviousness Of Men - A Compliment Becomes A Metaphor
But, Ladies, A Threesome With 2 Dudes?!
Malicious Compliance & Public Speaking
What Is A "True Dominant"?
Is There Commitment In A Polyamorous Relationship?
How Can I Make My Child Do My Hobby And Not My Spouse's Hobby?
How Can I Convince Him To Let Me...
How To Find A Discreet, Suitable Man For My Wife
Your Hubby Hangs Out With A Gold Digger?!
What Are Signs A Relationship Is Ending That People Don't Know?
Help, My Friend Did Not Out Herself To Me!
What's The Most Challenging Part Of Open Relationships For You?
How To Not Catch Teh Feelz In Casual Sex
When Doesn't A Pre-Nup Work?
Stop Asking Me About Having Children
How Do You Deal With Jealousy In Your Open Relationship?
But I'm Just Being Honest!
MBTI - What Is It Good For?
You Do Not Have To Sacrifice Style And Comfort In Shoes
I Challenge All The Men To Do This Core Strength Challenge
What Is The Benefit To Learning Dance?
What If You And Your Best Friend Like The Same Person?
Dance Floor Etiquette
Which Dances Are Ballroom Dances?
Have You Ever Seen An Open Relationships Work?
Why Do Married People Not Wear Wedding Rings?
What If They Asked For An STD Test Before Sex?
Is Casual Sex Offensive?
Can Straight Women Be In A FMF Threesome?
How Many Dance Steps Can You Do?
Surprising Things I Have Had To Explain To Adults
Have You Ever Invited Another Person Into Your Marriage?
How Do I Make My Wife Care About Her Own Orgasm?
Is Your Partner A Grownup Or Do You Just Not Care About Them?
How Should An Orphan Get Married?
What If I Want More Than Casual Sex With My Ex?
What's The Difference Between Non-Sexual Relationships & Platonic Friends?
How Can I Make Him Marry Me For Social Respect?
Why Do Women Get Bitter After Marriage?
Mansplainers Mansplain Feminism & Dating Advice To Me
How Do You Tell A Guy You Just Want To Hook Up With Him?
What Does Commitment Mean In Polyamory?
Would You Be The 4th Female?
Do You Give Second Chances?
How Do You Feel About Your Non-Traditional Relationships Now?
Would Polyamorous People Marry Multiple Partners?
Can Guys Be Lifted In Dancing?

August 2024

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