One of the biggest challenges to poly people is that most of the folks they used to be friends with, really, are not very excited about it. Many people will say oh my god, cheating, how could you? There’s an enormous amount of prejudice when people open their relationships, still. And so if people don’t have some sort of community, it’s going to be really isolating, and they’ll have no one to talk to when things get difficult. And paying someone like me is only part of the solution.

 

AK: Right, it’s a community learning process. It’s not about just one couple, or one person, figuring it all out.

 

DE: Yeah! And we have, also, to think this extends outside the couple of course, if there is a couple, because who are they going to play with? If a couple opens their relationship, is there someone else out there who is experienced and has knowledge about common problems one may run across? You can’t get it all from books! Somebody asked me once about an article I had published in an academic anthology in Europe, for footnotes. I said, well, I didn’t learn this in a library! There weren’t other books then; we learned from each other. When we published The Ethical Slut there was one other book.

 

AK: And now there’s the Internet. That’s changed things, I’m sure, with the resources available and the opportunities to meet other people, this community building we’ve been discussing? 

 

DE: Well, the Internet has opened up people’s thinking enormously, and I think that people actually under-value the sexual part of the Internet. It’s become such a place for people to have conversations. There are a lot of issues going on now regarding Internet anonymity, and indeed in financial transactions that’s a problem, but in the sexual world it opens people up.