Free love

For kinksters into free love

Can you be a feminist and practise free love?

For kinksters into free love

Originally, the 60s concept of 'free love' centred around the idea that monogamy was unnatural (especially for men) and that everyone should be free to act out their fantasies. This was a great idea, but it came with some drawbacks: for one thing it wasn't a feminist movement in the way we'd expect now, and for another it was mostly put to bed by the AIDS crisis.

That's not to say that free love is dead - far from it! Swingers, polyamorists and non-monogamous folk of all types are still upholding the best of the principles of the original 1960s trailblazers - it's just that now we're doing it with more feminist ideals, awareness to sex-positivity and a much better understanding of safer sex.

What is free love?

It is the practice of having sexual relationships out of choice and without being restricted by long term relationships and marriage. Free love can be between any number of people, not just within a couple.

Did free love only exist in the 60’s?

No, the ‘summer of love’ in 1967 was seen as the height of the sexual revolution but the idea has existed before that and continues today. It has far more of a feminist outlook and a lot of the problematic ideas associated with movement of the 60’s have now been removed.

Can you practice safe free love?

The main idea is to enjoy sex without guilt or feeling bound to monogamy. This is as popular belief of swingers, those in open relationships and polyamorists. It’s essential to follow safe sex practices and to be regularly tested for STIs but anyone having any sexual relationship should do these things anyway.

Can you be a feminist and practise free love?

Yes! Although in the 60’s much of the movement was controlled and directed by men, there is no need for that to be the case now.

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Swing into swinging!

Swinging is another form of non-monogamy, though one that looks at the question from a very different perspective to polyamory. Swingers tend to be in serious, stable, primary relationships and have occasional sex with other people who are also in those relationships; the primary couple is considered the most important thing of all, and the theory behind the extra-marital sexual relationships is that they're 'a bit of fun' without too much romance or a lot of intense emotions. Of course, in practice swingers often form wonderfully intense bonds with their other partners; human connection is what it's all about, after all!

For kinksters into polyamory

Polyamory, which translated means 'many loves', is a kind of open relationship in which people have more than one partner at a time. For many, these relationships are serious and ongoing, with a whole lot of love in them - after all, love is not a finite resource. It's not that people who consider themselves polyamorous don't feel jealousy or conflict, but that they choose to deal with those emotions in different ways - by dealing with them rather than by stamping out the cause of them. While many kinky people and fetishists are also polyamorous, polyamory isn't a fetish; it's a lifestyle choice and a relationship orientation.

Get the best out of a threesome

Probably the single topic most often raised in the magazine's agony column is threesomes. Whether they're your hottest fantasy, your weekly reality or something that you reckon would turn you right off, they're big news - and they certainly have plenty of fans! The trick to finding a threesome is not to force it - these things happen naturally, and you're unlikely to be able to engineer a situation with a stranger or online that works out to your satisfaction. The trick to enjoying one, on the other hand, is to make sure everyone's feeling included and to try and spend roughly as much time 'giving' as you spend 'getting'. This is a good rule of thumb no matter what kind of sex you're having, but when there's more than one other person involved it can be hugely beneficial to give it some conscious thought!