ClueChick: real clues from a real chick

Let's say you're a casual sex god(dess) and you have people lined up out the door for a chance to get you into bed. Or, perhaps more realistically, just that you have a couple of people who you fuck around with or a regular person and a couple of fuckbuddies. Or, you're polyamorous and have a steady partner but you also like to get some on the side (I'm not blogging on polyamory, so if you're not up on what it is, just fucking google it.) What do you tell your lovers about one another?

There are a couple of schools of thought on this: There's the, "It's casual so no one has to know anything," option. In this take on things, you basically tell people only what you think they need to know and you don't volunteer anything else. Personally, I suck at this, because I hate trying to figure out what people need to know, and I'm basically an open-book kind of person. (You may have noticed.) It doesn't occur to me not to talk about one lover with the next, especially if someone asks a question like, "So, how's the internet sex scene going for you?"

Another option, therefore, is the, "Everyone knows everything," approach. This is easy as pie, because you don't have to worry, "Did I tell Joe about Ed, or is it going to be weird for me to talk about that fun thing we did that I'd like to try again?" On the other hand, it turns out some people don't want to know everything that you're doing with other partners.

Because I'm lazy, and I hate making decisions for other people, my way of handling the question of what to tell my lovers about each other is to ask them: "Will it weird you out if I talk about my other lovers with you?" I explain that my natural inclination is to be totally open about it, that it doesn't strike me as weird when they talk about their other lovers, and that, in fact, I probably want to know, either for safer sex reasons or for my own lascivious imagination. (Picturing my lover fucking someone else is almost as good as an actual threesome! Okay, maybe not that good, but I like it, anyway.)

If someone doesn't want to hear about my other encounters, that's fine, and I can generally rein myself in, but the job then falls to him not to ask me any questions that might elicit information he doesn't want. My theory on questions is that once you ask them, you're going to get a straight up answer, like it or not. So don't ask a question if you don't want the answer.

I don't think there's a hard-and-fast rule about what you reveal or not, but you need to figure out for yourself what you think. If you're picking up people on the internet, you can probably assume you're not the only one they're seeing. Think about what you want to know, and what you're willing to share with them. Be clear about both of these things, and if you change your mind later, be clear about that, too.