Sexual freedom is not actually freedom TO (do xyz).
We are always sexually free TO do whatever we want.
That's why there's cheating, and why monogamy cannot prevent cheating, why in fact monogamy is what creates cheating.
Monogamy is the context of promises and agreements which has us categorize some sex as right and some sex as wrong, or "cheating."
Without this construct, we have the sex we have with the people we have sex with.
Sexual freedom is freedom FROM.
Freedom from meaningmaking.
Freedom from abstraction and evaluation and analysis.
Freedom from judgment.
Freedom from the impulse to hide my sex, my sexuality, my nudity, my desires.
Freedom from unpleasant consequences for sharing and showing what and who and how I am, what and who interests me, how I want to connect with others.
In this freedom from, people's questions about my sex life make little sense to me.
They come from the premise that I am largely executing freedoms TO, aka the idea that I'm having lots of sex with lots of people, whatever those acts and numbers are to THEM.
Sure, I'm free TO do that. But that doesn't mean I do. You're free to do that too. It doesn't mean you do. Being free to do something is an option, not an impetus.
In fact, being and feeling trapped is often what people are choosing when they're free to choose anything. They just don't see it that way. Much of my work is showing this to individuals who are ready to see it.
The questions people ask me about my sex life and my romance reveal that they are not free FROM certain ideas about sex, its meaning, its consequences, the consequences of sharing information about it, etc. They ask questions that I have no answers to because I am free FROM these constructs. I can't answer, because I am not within the construct where the question even makes sense.
"How do your lovers feel about you having sex with other people?" Is a good example of this.
I am free from the idea that it is anyone's business who anyone else is having sex with, and free from the idea that it's my business to hear about the feelings someone has when they stray from their own business.
I am free from the idea that feelings are about circumstances. What they feel when they hear about me having sex with someone else is a result of the thoughts they think about it and the cocktail of experience within them at any given moment, NOT about the fact of me having sex with someone else.
They don't feel anything about MY actions, they feel things about whatever their internal world makes of that information. This is why lying is even possible. I can tell someone false information, and their experience is made of believing the information is true. If that fact didn't happen, then how could the experience they have of believing it happened be about that fact? How did my lover feel, after I had sex with someone else, before I told them about it? That's how they truly feel about me having sex with someone else.
I am free from meddling within the feelings of others, free from the idea that a feeling could be wrong or evidence of something going wrong, free from the idea that feelings are to be fixed or cured, free from the idea that certain feelings "shouldn't be."
I am free from the idea that it is my job to know or caretake the feelings of another. I am free from the idea that it is possible for me to know how another person feels—I can know what they tell me, how that translates within me, but that's already at least two abstractions away from the sensations they experience in their bodies.
I am also free from close relationships with people who are not free from these ideas. I am free from judgment and unpleasant consequences when I share information about my sex life, or even if I were to be seen in it or caught in the act, because those I relate with are free from patterns of getting in someone else's business. I am free from consequences because those I relate closely with are free from the sanctimony and righteousness of leveraging consequences on someone they love.
I am free from the idea that I should exercise my freedom to have sex with someone simply because there's attraction there. I am free from my own reactivity to intense desire, and therefore able to reserve myself to only invest sexual energy with those who are free from these patterns and beliefs.
I am sexually free because I am free from the bullshit society programs into us about sex.
We are all sexually free to do whatever we want. But when we exercise sexual freedom TO without sexual freedom FROM, it's a bad time all around.