Making a move in this week’s Savage Love

I’m a 28-year-old pan-curious married guy from the Midwest about to move to San Francisco. I’ve been with my wife for 10 years (married four), and we’ve started to explore being monogamish. I am also reexploring my bi attractions. I’ve been thinking a lot about the opportunities for reinvention that our cross-country move might provide. My wife is GGG and fully supportive, but I still feel apprehensive about getting back out there. I’d like to believe that I am not a complete fool at being charming when it comes to dating, but after 10 years of monogamy, I am worried that my sex knowledge is the sex that works for my wife and me. And there’s the fact that I am very new to guys, with just one short-term M/M relationship and one terrible hookup under my belt. Any tips for bolstering one’s confidence and making new sexual encounters as fun and non-awkward as possible? Is there a resource for dating, hookups, culture? I know the basics of safe-sex practices, but I know little of clubs, kink parties, Growlr/Tinder, etc. I want to slut it up in San Francisco, but I don’t know where to start.
Newbie (New Bi?) Slut

“My first piece of advice for anyone opening up their relationship is to take things slow,” said Polly Superstar, cofounder and hostess of Kinky Salon, a pansexual, pan-kink, pan-everything party/space/institution in San Francisco. “Why jump off a cliff when you can take the stairs? However supportive his wife is of his new adventures, it’s likely to bring up some unexpected emotions, so just take it one step at a time, communicate clearly, and be patient with each other.”

And while your feelings and your wife’s feelings are paramount—you are each other’s primary partners, in poly parlance—the other people you hook up with have limbic systems of their own. Too many people stroll into their first sex club or kink party expecting to find a room full of human fleshlights at their disposal and are shocked to find a room full of other human beings with desires, preferences, and limits of their own. So taking it one step at a time, communicating clearly, and being patient isn’t just for you and your wife—it’s for anyone you play with, NNBS, even if you may never see them again.

As for messing around with men…

“After 10 years of monogamy with a woman, it’s not surprising he’s apprehensive about having sex with men,” said Superstar. “That’s totally normal! But I don’t believe that sexual confidence with new partners is the key to great hookups. There are a gazillion books out there teaching people techniques for self-confidence, but most of them just teach you how to be an asshole. He should just be himself and be real. Accepting that new sexual encounters can be awkward is the first step in making them less so.”

Superstar took the words right out of my mouth: Acknowledging and embracing the awkwardness is the only way to get past it. You know how a drunk never seems drunker than when he’s trying to pretend he’s not drunk? Pretending you aren’t feeling awkward when you are makes you seem more awkward. So practice saying, “I’m new at this, I’m a little nervous, and I’m feeling a little awkward.” Good people—people you might want to mess around with—will make an effort to put you at ease. Shitty people—people you wouldn’t want to mess around with—will do you the favor of wandering off.

But whether you want to explore with men or women, NNBS, Superstar—who has something of a bias—recommends sex parties. “They’re a great place to explore because there’s no commitment,” said Superstar. “You can meet someone, make out, fool around for a bit, and if you’re not feeling it, you can go do something else. Obviously I would recommend my event, Kinky Salon, for a newbie bi guy. We are queer-friendly and a great place to meet people. He could even bring his wife along. It’s a lot safer and more community-driven than the anonymity of a bathhouse, and there are more opportunities to flirt, make out, and socialize, which are nice baby steps to take.”

To learn more about Kinky Salon—which now hosts parties in London, Copenhagen, Berlin, New York, Portland, and New Orleans—go to kinkysalon.com. Polly Superstar is the author of the new memoir Polly: Sex Culture Revolutionary. Follow her on Twitter @pollysuperstar.

That wouldn’t be possible, PISS, as I have no plans to urinate while I am in Minneapolis.

It sounds like you and the wife had different ideas about what your open relationship would look like. What you were doing with your former coworker sounds like poly-style openness—you had an ongoing emotional and sexual relationship—while what your wife is doing with her best friend, her best friend’s husband, the neighbor, and her coworker sounds more like fuck-whoever-you-want openness.

Reading between the lines, OPEN, it seems that what really bothers you about your wife’s explorations—“sleeping with everyone in the neighborhood”—is the potential for gossip. Not everyone in an open relationship is comfortable being out about it; some people who aren’t sexually monogamous nevertheless wish to be socially monogamous, i.e., perceived to be monogamous, because they fear being judged or even discriminated against. Or perhaps the issue is this: If people know your wife is sleeping around but don’t know about the open relationship, you may look like a foolish and fooled husband. Those are legitimate concerns, and your wife needs to take your feelings into consideration, and you two need to reopen negotiations. The best compromise may be for your wife to dial it back—fewer partners, more discretion—while simultaneously shifting to a DADT arrangement or, as you put it, ending your agreement to share info about your outside partners.