ClueChick: real clues from a real chick

One of my handsome and inquisitive readers asks:

What do your friends think?

Before I started my adventures on Craig's List, I was much more tame than I am, now. I tended to be involved in longer-term relationships with a lot of emotional content. About a year ago, I ended a big deal relationship, and I knew I wasn't going to want to be involved in a serious way with anyone for a while, where "a while" has yet to be determined. A couple of months after that breakup, though, I had my first one night stand, totally on the spur of the moment, and it turned out to be a lot of fun. I'd always thought that casual sex wasn't for me, but it turned out that I could enjoy it quite a bit. Thus was born a new phase in my relationship life, yadda yadda.

Most of my friends are (or were, at least) sluttier than I, so, for the most part, they've been extremely supportive about the whole thing, while simultaneously being quite amused. (I, by the way, use "slutty" as a positive descriptor.) I've gotten a lot of good advice from my friends, as well as the occasional, "Are you sure this is a good idea?" when I start to get a little too crazy.

In one case, a friend turns out to have disapproved so much that we're no longer friends. We never got to talk about it, so I don't know if it's that she disapproves of casual sex (despite having had a lot of it herself, but in her younger years) or of me (the previously rather pure friend) having it. I wouldn't have chosen for the friendship to go that way, but I definitely take a love me, accept my choices stance in my friendships.

I like it when my friends call me on my shit, or challenge me to think more critically about something I'm doing or how I'm doing it, but it's also important to me that they a) generally accept my choices and b) can live with it when I don't take their advice. That's true in any number of facets of my life, the ensluttification included.