Why Do Reid And Allison Like Open Relationships? 
Reid: Hello Facebook! It’s Reid from https://reidaboutsex.com/ and I’m just trying to wipe the lip balm off the camera.
Allison: So that we don’t have the Barbara Walters special
Reid: Oh yeah. We could go for the Barbara Walter special effects
Allison: which soothe that on my fine line
Reid: which is the…the so, Allison’s driving. This is Facebook live so the video is reversed. Allison’s driving, I am wearing my seatbelt. I’m putting it properly. And then I will make sure Allison’s in the picture but Allison is not going to look at the camera ‘coz Allison’s driving.
Allison: True.
Reid: And we’re including you in a conversation because it’s just like we were talking while Allison was driving anyway. While you say hello, say hi from where you’re saying hi from. We are driving towards Lake Tahoe.
Allison: No.
Reid: Wait, no?
Allison: It’s not where we’re going.
Reid: We’re going…we’re going in the different direction than that. Where we…
Allison: We’re going to Yosemite and we’re going to
Reid: We’re going to Yosemite which is another famous place.
Allison: Not near Lake Tahoe but near on
Reid: Not near the Lake Tahoe
Allison: But we’re going to drive through Sonora.
Reid: We’re going to drive through Sonora so if you’re in Sonora, get your friends out on the road side, wave to us as we go by.
Allison: You’re….want to be three thousand people who lived in Sonora.
Reid: in Sonora. We’re driving to the Soul Play festival and we’re going to be teaching a bunch of different things. I’ll be leading a consent panel, I’ll be teaching energetic sex for pragmatists and Allison and I will be leading a conversation called Poly Curious 101 and so when I asked Allison what she want to talk about today, Allison said “well, let’s talk about why we like being in an open relationship.” And this is also a heads up that I don’t know what the cellphone signal or Wi-Fi is going to be like up there so this…we might not have a video tomorrow or Friday
Allison: Saturday
Reid: Saturday and Sunday
Allison: Yeah.
Reid: So I probably won’t Facebook live until Sunday afternoon or evening so just to know that.
Allison: So, so get in folks.
Reid: So get in. Get your…get your fix get your Allison Moon fix now because I know that you’re all starting to tune in now just to see Allison. I get…I get the comments, I get the messages everybody loves Allison and that….that no one no one really cares about me
Allison: Oh, whatever.
Reid: anymore. ‘Coz Allison’s…I would pick Allison over me and [Inaudible 00:02:27].
Allison: Oh stop.
Reid: So why do you want to why do you like being in an open relationship honey?
Allison: Personally?
Reid: Yeah and we’ve been together for 10 years now just in case you’re just getting to know us now.
Allison: Yeah and I’ve…I mean I’ve been in open relationships before with Reid….before Reid. I hadn’t really been in a successful monogamous relationship at all and when I say isn’t successful I mean I cheated on them or they cheated on me, so that’s how I kinda define a not successful monogamous relationship. So, I like being in open relationship for a couple of different reasons: one, is that my sensual, sexual and social preference is with women. I am queer and my…I have a strong preference for women. I’m like Kinsey four and a half or five.
Reid: This is where I make a…while this makes why I don’t get blowjobs from you. Thanks so much for the sense.
Allison: And if my parents are watching
Reid: Yeah.
Allison: This is the time not to watch.
Reid: Yeah.
Allison: So, I like a…so because of that, it means that my relationship with you doesn’t have to completely exclude that very significant part of my life. So I can still have romantic sensual and sexual relationships with women without it being unethical and in a way that feels like it honors the entirety of my sexual self. This isn’t to say that there can’t be bisexual and queer people who are monogamous ‘coz
Reid: Yeah.
Allison: they’re certainly are.
Reid: I was going to ask about that.
Allison: I think for me it just would be out of integrity for me to feel like I had to forego those kinds of relationships with women for the rest of my relationship with you.
Reid: Well and…and because it’s Pride Month, happy Pride Month everyone.
Allison: Yeah.
Reid: And because I have some…some peers and friends who do a lot of activism or just education around Bi invisibility, there is an interesting thing about you know bisexual people kind of being invisible in a certain way but then there’s this weird even more invisible – the bisexual monogamous person who is like well, if you’re bisexual, how can you be monogamous and you can totally be monogamous and bisexual and so I just want to give a shout out to…to all my Bi pips and
Allison: Bimanogs
Reid: And my bimanogs, bimonogs yeah okay. Monogs….bamogs…bamogs?
Allison: No.
Reid: sounds’ Swedish. Okay. So, other reasons.
Allison: So that was the main reason. The other reason is that I…for me like sex is important in general I think, for me
Reid: Yeah it is.
Allison: but I also find that the freedom of not wondering if this is crossing some sort of line. The freedom to feel like I can take any relationship that comes to me on its own terms and honor that relationship and honor the potential of that relationship if I want to, without having to worry that it’s going to suddenly mean now I have to either trade in my current model for a different one but rather I get to have the experience of “oh, you’re a sexy wonderful person let’s explore what this means” and I can still have my…my strong solid partnership with you. And so I think that there is this level of I mean I…I think this come from like monogamous being the default in our society such that many people are just never taught to talk about what monogamy means.
Reid: Like we’re not taught to get deconstructed.
Allison: Well, we’re not even taught to ask how to have that conversation with somebody. So it’s like oh, now you’re dating and then now, this time I’m if that person is still dating another person you’re like “hey, that’s violating our relationship.” And it’s like well, you never had the conversation about let’s stop dating other people maybe or you never had the relationship about what or a conversation about what constitutes cheating, right? So some people think that looking at porn is cheating, some people think that only sex is cheating, some people think that emotional affairs are just as significant as sexual affairs but so few people talk about that so you don’t often don’t know that there’s a boundary with
Reid: Yeah.
Allison: your partner until you cross it.
Reid: Yeah. I would I would touch upon?
Allison: Yeah.
Reid: I would recommend or invite people to consider rather than using the word monogamy, use the word fidelity because you…you because cheating has a very limited definition too in certain ways.
Allison: Yeah but so with this fidelity
Reid: Well
Allison: like I feel like I’m…I’m fid….I’m fidelitas with you but we don’t
Reid: can I finish my thought?
Allison: Yes.
Reid: Wow. Wow. You saw here folks.
Allison: I’m caffeinated
Reid: Somebody makes a gift of that and spread it around the internet. I just got Allis plained. Allis plained ladies and gentlemen….it’s her thing but usually it’s true. Usually, I need a I needed to go splainin until you see. I got some splainin for Reid, so the fidelity piece, the reason I say it is there’s so many cultural ideas or stigmas around monogamy you know being kind of this or that and every….everyone has their own can have their own ideas about it, right? But fidelity, you can be like fidelity exists in in open relationships, it exists in poly relationships, it exists in swingers, it exists in kink and it exists in monogamy and so I like using the….that when I’m coaching people, I talk about “well…well, what is fidelity?” And I like focusing on that rather than what is cheating for you because cheating again is…is kind of a negative thing.
Allison: Yeah
Reid: But sometimes you arrive at the positive by discussing the negative first and so like you and I laugh about the cheating to us is actually Allison watching a Netflix show that we’re watching together without me and not telling me. Like it’s when…when we were watching Luke Cage, you needed to watch Luke Cage without me
Allison: Yeah
Reid: because I was on the road and then we talked about it and it was like you got a Luke Cage Hall Pass and then I didn’t feel cheated on
Allison: Right
Reid: because we communicated it but if I mean I would really be hurt if I found out that you were watching like you watched an entire rest of a season of something like I would be pissed.
Allison: Well like you thought when I was watching Bob’s Burgers that I was watching Archer because
Reid: Yeah.
Allison: it’s the same [Inaudible 00:09:11]
Reid: ‘Coz we watch Archer together and then I heard from across the….the loft the Archer voice ‘coz I didn’t know he voiced Bob in Bob’s Burgers and I literally started getting livid… livid and I’m like “what are you doing?” And you knew exactly what happened and you just started giggling and I’m like “why are you laughing? This is serious.” And you’re like “it’s Bob’s Burgers you moron.” And I was like “oh, sorry.”
Allison: I didn’t call you moron.
Reid: No but you should’ve. It was really funny. But that was really funny. So…so again like fidelity when I’m coaching people it’s a…it’s a little bit about like “well, what’s sacred to you? Is it nicknames?” Then this goes down and like you can just kind of stuff gets talked about in polyamory circles too, it’s like what are those things that are sacred that make you feel special in your relationship? So you know I call you boo and Bubba as nicknames.
Allison: We have
Reid: I think I got Bubba from your mom.
Allison: Yeah.
Reid: Right?
Allison: You did.
Reid: And…and so like every once in a while, I’ll…I’ll say boo to like another lover and I and I’m like “uh, uh wrong word.” Because that’s my word for you.
Allison: Yeah
Reid: Now you don’t need to feel need it to be sacred
Allison: Well some of
Reid: well to me it’s sacred.
Allison: we are all animal noises too
Reid: Yeah we have little
Allison: there are many times when you accidentally use the wrong animal noises with people and it was just like
Reid: Yeah we have a little animal noise too that we do like barks and yips and things and…and again yeah like those…they feel it feels weird, it feels off.
Allison: Yeah.
Reid: Now, whether you feel cheated on or not is…is a conversation you know from your perspective but like I feel like when I use my animal noises appropriately or I use the wrong nickname for somebody else that I use only for you like for me it feels off and weird. Whereas you know who you stick your hands in or who you strap it on for is kind of none of my business in a certain way because it just doesn’t bother me. And….and again like you’re going to have….you viewers, you’re going to have your own internal settings as to what you need, what feels sacred to you, how sex occurs to you like we’re not sitting here saying there’s a right way and an only way to do these things. You’re allowed to have the ways that work for you and…and do you have the words to be able to communicate those to the people that you’re having you know even casual relationships to as well. And now we’re looking for a bank
Allison: Yeah it’s actually right there. It’s perfect, yeah.
Reid: Oh, cool. So what else do you want to say and I will wrap this up
Allison: What….what do you like being
Reid: ‘coz we have to go to the bank
Allison: in open relationships?
Reid: Well, I like being an open relationship because I like having sex with lots of people. So…so it it’s the best way for me to have an integrity and integrous experience and you know one of my life mantras is leave the campsite better than you found it and so that has a lot to do with honesty and transparency and doing the work to make sure that the people I am having even if I’m just having anonymous sex with, that that I’m picking people for whom my sexual self-expression and my emotional self-expression is a good fit.
So if I want to be healthy in my and honest in my sexual self-expression with many people, I have to be in an open relationship like that’s the only way that I’ve been able to figure out that it makes the math work and the emotional math and so now I’m kind of getting into dating your species like me picking people for whom my sexual and emotional self-expression is a good fit like you’re my species. So I like being in an open relationship with you because you you’re you and….and a handful of other people that are really close to me or…or have been close to me because you can be a good fit and still not stay together like that’s a whole other video topic at some point like you know it’s okay to not stay together. Relationships aren’t about duration, it’s about depth and honesty and being true to each other and sometimes that means you’re going in different directions and you need to not stay together but I like the…the complexities of open relationships are easy for me and I like them to be as drama air quotes free as possible and by drama free I mean, that things are a good fit and yes sometimes there’s a lot of work in our relationship but there’s a lot of work in relationships. Period. So and you’re really good fit for me and I and I am fucking inspired by you and who you are as a person. I like your brain a lot and that we’re very compatible sexually and….and your politics turn me on.
Now I’m going to shut this off and make out.
Allison: Yeah, and so I think that’s all to say you know obviously we’d….and this is something we talked about in our workshops which is, if non-monogamy is a valid choice, so is monogamy as long as it’s a choice. Just like heterosexuality feels very compulsory in our society to a degree that it actually makes a lot of people feel unseen, unsafe and unappreciated by society, same thing with monogamy, some people because monogamy is the default so often people just don’t think about what kind of relationship that they want because they’re kind of assumed that like oh, crap… once we get married this is this is it or once we decide we’re in a relationship, there….there is no other choice. So really it’s just a matter of making an informed choice that feels like it’s the right for you and your partner or partners and the relationship and that’s all that really matters. Some people just don’t want to be non-monogamous and please if you don’t want to be, please don’t be.
Reid: Yeah.
Allison: That sounds horrible.
Reid: That’s a lot of work and also like for me like I was really good at monogamy and it’s a lot more work for me because it’s not it’s not really who I am and it doesn’t…I mean it’s…it’s okay but it doesn’t make me ecstatically happy and when I tried to be monogamous with people who really were monogamous, I made them miserable eventually because I was fighting against the thing that was natural for them and a good fit for them and so when I started dating people who were non-monogamous and good fits for me because there’s lots of different kinds of non-monogamy, my life got easier and people loved me more for being me and then when I started dating people who were really slutty, people who were slutty didn’t have a problem with me being slutty in the ways that I was slutty. And….and then you and I have talked about before like you and I were we met in a slutty phase and then you’re like slut light and now you may be even less slutty air quotes whatever, everyone gets to self-defined what that means but in all these other ways we’re still a really great fit so why would I leave you? ‘Coz you
Allison: Yeah.
Reid: also let me be me. So we’re good.
Allison: Yeah and we teach a whole workshop called Slut-Slut like navigating disparate sexual desire in relationships.
Reid: Yes. Alright, this is long enough…enough. We have to go to the bank and there’s Starbucks right there and we love you. So leave some….some hearts on your way out, leave some comments and then maybe we’ll be able to Facebook live from Soul Play
Allison: We will not be.
Reid: but maybe not. I’m going to try…I’m going to try but if we don’t, if we can’t then I’ll see you Sunday or Monday
Allison: Yeah
Reid: and have a good weekend everybody. Look at all these hearts
Allison: Oh
Reid: Alright, enough….enough and all that hearts. Oh my god, look at all those hearts. Alright, bye!
Allison: Bye!