Doing the next right thing isn’t a kink or a fetish. It isn’t something that can be yucked or yummed. It frequently sucks and isn’t at all what you want to do. You’ll rarely regret doing it, nor have a bad night’s sleep because of it. You also tend to hurt fewer people.

I write this post with the full weight and authority of an internet blogger. Which is to say effectively none. This is what Kate and I have landed on that works for us. There’s no doctorates or library of scholarly tomes to our names, we’re not trying to sell you anything either. We’re just two lost souls, swimming in a fishbowl, year after year. I’m sure our sobriety and Buddhist paths color our stance on this.

If someone you engage sexually with in the ENM / CNM / whatever open sexual lifestyle arena is married and their spouse isn’t aware, yes, that’s on them. It’s also on you.

The ethical part of ENM, for us, means everyone involved in a given relationship, AND THEIR PARTNERS are 100% informed and up speed about what’s going on, and have given their informed consent for it to happen. If this isn’t the case, you’ve joined the throng in the above meme.

Put another way, (and this is 100% for the amusement of Sifu) If I start a relationship, sexual or otherwise, with a married woman, her husband must be aware and ok with it. Of course, Kate has to be on board as well.

Engaging ethically with sexual partners is the most direct route to where you want to get to and how you want to feel in the lifestyle. It’s the most efficiant, and the least likely to cause problems for anyone, especially you and your partner (s).

Sure, there may be no secrets in your primary relationship, does the spouse of your unicorn or bull have the same level of respect? To think it’s not your business is a cop out.

The lifestyle only works when it’s in the sunshine and free from the shadows of deceit. From the shadows comes the “get you damn hands off my man” energy. The quickest way to change that, and have it enter the ENM spaces that we all share, is to not be ethical in your interactions with others.

I’m pretty sure at some point in this wandering blog I’ve mentioned our first Valentines Day together was spent at a different 12 step meeting, one that focused on sex. Here’s how we got there, and I feel like we’ve shared this story as well, tho maybe not in this context. Kindof along those lines, I’ve discovered that doing something like this blog is kindof a built in bullshit / truth detector. As much as we’ve put out of the last year, (probably 100K+ words) there’s a zero percent chance we could keep it all straight if we were making it up as we go.

Anyway…The long and short of it was I saw a notification pop up on Kate’s iPad from a guy I knew saying he’d be over in a couple hours….or maybe at noon, I don’t remember exactly. Well, seeing that, I opened the messages up and read their texts. Back then it was a double whammy for me; she was talking with another guy, and that she was doing it in the shade.

This was lifelong pattern for Kate. As we unpacked it and both came to the conclusion that the connection we had was rare and precious, we saw what the problem was. It was being in the shade, the sneaking around part. This was how we as a couple came to the realization she just doesn’t have a monogamous bone in her body.

Some folks have wondered about how our dynamic is fair, how it seems like I do all the headspace work, and all Kate does is fuck other people. Nothing could be further from the truth. A big chunk of the work Kate has done, and continues to do, stems from this. This is where the ethical part of our dynamic sprung from.

I don’t know that you need to go thru a near relationship extinction level event to realize how important being ethical is, but it doesn’t hurt.

We’ve learned (well, after I got called out on it TBH) to be more respectful of idintifying ourselves as members of specific 12 step programs. If you’re struggling with a sex related issue and would like more specifics, please email us at Sam.kate.enm@gmail.com and we’ll share less generally.

Casa Da Sam and Kate is in a fairly rural spot; an hour or more drive to lifestyle meets and events is 100% the norm.

Last year a guy reached out on one of the sites, he was only 10–15 minutes away. Decent enough looking guy, he ticked the boxes Kate was looking for. They started talking, things were looking up; we were both excited about it. Well, he was married, and not willing to let his wife know what was going on. He was wanting to cheat. Kate put an end to it. Wasn’t at all what we wanted, but the energy was too off.

We’ve had a similar experience with another guy recently, but with a different twist.

He and his wife are in a DADT (Don’t Ask Don’t Tell) relationship. Well, he told. As it happened, his wife wasn’t ok with the budding relationship he was developing with Kate and I. He called it off. Neither of us were a fan of this, but respected it and have left him be.

As always, thanks for reading and be kind to yourself and others!!!

Sam & Kate