Options. A Personal Expedition Through the Sexual Frontier Book

Probing, sensitive, funny, startling - at moments shocking - Options challenges us to throw away our preconceived attitudes toward love and sex and marriage, and to look at ourselves and our relationships in a totally new way. Based on interviews with men and woman experimenting with non-monogamous relationships, mostly married people, many found they were still subject to very strong jealousies, at least about some forms of non-exclusiveness. The author spent four years travelling America researching her book and participated in a number of open relationships, triads etc. and also attended and enjoyed swinging parties and group-sex. "Guts are good, heads are bad," she writes. "You may never start a sentence with 'I think' ... If you begin with 'I feel' you can get away with atrocities." Group-sex enthusiasts seem to spend so much time and energy in pouty encounters that Seligson comes to feel like an anthropologist listening to aborigines debate the possible function of an eggbeater. Still, she may have tarried too long among the Californian swingers. At one point she wonders: "How do I even know if I'm having a successful sex life?" Though most of the book depicts surfer-stewardess relationships among muddled narcissists, Seligson concludes that the "valiant gropings" of her subjects are truly heroic. She cannot join the free spirits herself, as much as she enjoys the sex, because demon jealousy still haunts her. But, she says, "I'll be rooting and cheering for them. From the sidelines." An Ethical Slut before her time!Read More