The Ethical Slut, Third Edition: A Practical Guide to Polyamory, Open Relationships, and Other Freedoms in Sex and Love

The older version of this book has some very dated terminology, but the newer versions are updated very well and has very good writing. Definitely recommend as a read even if you don’t want to have open relationships.

Very well written and full of useful information for any relationship you may have with someone. The authors are kind and humorous and the anecdotal stories illustrate their points well. They stress the importance of taking care of yourself, communicating effectively and nurturing relationships with your friends, partners, lovers. It was refreshing that they did not try to categorize the relationships between people since relationships are tricky, complicated amorphous things. It's clear that both authors have a lot of experience with being ethical (and maybe sometimes not so ethical) sluts. As someone who is starting to explore polyamory, the ideas in this book have been tremendously helpful - especially the parts about owning your feelings, communicating and the transitory nature of relationships. They also include some helpful resources on how to get started, finding groups, breaking up, how to deal with children and how to be a single slut. This book has been amazingly helpful, not just for lovers but for any relationship!

I love this book, we have it as mandatory reading for anyone new to our "family", whether they're just passing through, or joining for the long term. It's funny, light hearted, intuitive, and a fast read. I call it the "quick n dirty" for poly :) This is the 3rd copy I've bought, as ours keep going missing (which is fine with us, better that people read it and keep it!!)

I've seen so many failed marriages due to infidelity that recently I began to wonder what I was in for if I ever took that big step. After all, I didn't seem any better than the couples I knew, and certainly I'd been attracted to many different people, both male and female. Thats when I found this book.This is a great read for people with feelings like mine...it gives a great account of the guidelines you need if you ever choose to enter into polyamory. Several good points are emphasized: love and sex are not necessarily the same, one may be an expression of the other but they CAN be completely separate. Love, sex and pleasure are not limited qualities people have...you can love someone else and make love to them without depriving your "primary" partner of the same feelings and actions. Drawbacks are also discussed, including time constraints, jealousy, respecting privacy and property of all your lovers, and coming out to your kids about your relationship (most actually think its pretty cool because there's always someone to talk to).I read this book aloud with my girlfriend because we had always been curious about poly-type relationships. We asked ourselves many questions, and when we finally attended our first party, we were able to talk more afterwards and decided we loved it...and yet we could still be committed to each other! And we're still going strong...thanks to this and other wonderful resources that provided a basis for us to try new things!

Like other reviewers, I've bought many copies of this and give or loan them out to friends, lovers, and people I'm interested in. Rather than duplicate other reviews in their glowing general praise (which would be easy), I'll go a step further and strongly suggest getting this book not because it will help you find multiple lovers or because it's a good read, or because it's full of helpful advice on relationships in general, but rather because without the advice and insight in this book polyamory is *really* hard to pull off. This book gives you many of the lessons you might not learn otherwise except by having dismal relationship failures and painful breakups. (These may still come anyway, but The Ethical Slut will help you avoid them, and cope if they happen). I can't recommend this highly enough. However, I would add the slight caveat that the somewhat hedonistic approach of Easton & Liszt can be balanced out fairly well by a follow-up reading of Anapol's Polyamory: The New 'Love Without Limits'. Anapol's work is not as "fun", and gets tediously naggy along "spirituality" lines that are very hippyish and and full of newage, but the message she conveys include a lot of responsibility and cooperation memes that are not as prevalent in Easton & Liszt's book. The two-book combo is really a must.