Even buttons can be divisive things. Did you know that? I didn't know that.
Last night, Jon, Lora, and I all went out to a bar together. It was a bit of a distance from where we live. We met there after work, and took the bus home, so that we could all drink & not worry about driving.
While on the bus, I noticed that Jon had a big piece of thread on his shirt. He was wearing one of those shirts with a little placket with three buttons on it, like a polo shirt. The top button was undone. The thread was by the second button. As I was picking the thread away, the second button came undone. I made a joke something like "woo, look at you, showing more skin". I meant to do the second button back up, but as I was fussing with it, the bus hit a bump & I stopped touching Jon's shirt to hold on to the strap with both hands.
Lora also laughed when I made the comment about Jon showing more skin. When I stopped trying to rebutton the second button to hold on, she reached out and unbuttoned the third button. When Jon went to do it back up, Lora said "That's not fair, you have to have one button unbuttoned by both of us". She seemed to be...mostly joking. It didn't turn into a fight, though she got kind of pouty when he kept the third button rebuttoned.
Am I really way too sensitive and attuned to these things? Or is it actually strange to turn something as innocent as unbuttoning a button into some kind of...competition? Joke about making sure everything is totally fair? I don't even know what to call it. But I don't understand this need to turn literally every, single, little thing into a demand for fairness. Or a comparison.
During this same bus ride, Jon noticed that I had a teeny little bit of sleepy eye gunk close to my hairline at my temple, like I'd rubbed my eyes and accidentally left a flake of it there. So he reached out to pick it off of me. When I saw his hand coming close to me face, I automatically closed my eyes and held still. We both will do things like rub away a bit of sleepy gunk or flick away a loose eyelash for each other.
This turned into a conversation Lora started about how when Jon and Lora first started dating, he'd flinch away from her every time she tried to do it to him. It apparently took something like a year for him to stop flinching, which she was teasing him about.
I'm trying to figure out how to say what I'm feeling. When the three of us are together, it seems like most conversations started by Lora either involve a comparison of the way Jon does things with me versus the way Jon does things with her, or an outright checking of the "fairness" of everything that is going on. I'm sitting here running through what it's like when the three of us are together, and the number of times that Lora immediately insists on having/being treated like/getting the exact same thing that I'm having/being treated like/getting. There are a lot of little moments of "If Jon is holding my hand, Lora has to be holding Jon's other hand" or if we're sitting "If Jon has one hand on my leg, Lora will pick up his other hand and put it on her leg".
If Jon is holding hands with Lora first, or has a hand on her leg first, it doesn't occur to me to make sure I'm doing the same. There have been times when Jon and Lora were say, holding hands on the couch, and I was sitting on the other side of him, so I hooked my leg over his leg, because I felt like touching him, but it was less a "Jon and Lora are touching, so Jon and I must be touching" motivation and more of a "I feel like touching Jon" motivation.
There have been plenty of times when they've been touching and I didn't feel like touching Jon for whatever (innocuous) reason, so we weren't and it was fine to me.
A lot of these little behaviors are part of what cause me to question if Lora is really comfortable being poly. Jon is my first poly partner that I have a serious romantic relationship with. I've had a lot of experience with loving FWB-type relationships, and my other major poly relationship was a non-romantic partnership, so I don't have a lot to go on in terms of personal experience with a metamour in a romantic equals kind of relationship.
There have been times when I've noticed that Jon has a bit of something stuck to his face (like a fuzzie in his stubble) and I've reached out to pick it out. A lot of the time, when that happens, then Lora fusses with his face for a moment. It's like...if I fuss with his face and fix something, then the world is unbalanced unless she does it too.
I just realized that part of what makes me feel uneasy about this is that to me, it implies a level of watchfulness and judgement from Lora that feels very unpleasant. It wouldn't occur to me, if/when Lora picks a fuzzy off of Jon's face, that I need to do it too. It just wouldn't even remotely be a concept that I'd be aware of. I think the only thing that I think when I see something like that happening is "Oh, there is Lora noticing that Jon had something on his face and is getting it off". Full stop. No further thought.
Is my noticing and being bothered by these kinds of things being extraordinarily sensitive or judgmental myself? When things like these things happen, I wonder if I'm reading into them too much, or blowing something out of proportion. But also, when they happen, I get this weird, churny feeling in my gut, like they're a symptom of bigger insecurities and issues on Lora's side.
What say you?
Last night, Jon, Lora, and I all went out to a bar together. It was a bit of a distance from where we live. We met there after work, and took the bus home, so that we could all drink & not worry about driving.
While on the bus, I noticed that Jon had a big piece of thread on his shirt. He was wearing one of those shirts with a little placket with three buttons on it, like a polo shirt. The top button was undone. The thread was by the second button. As I was picking the thread away, the second button came undone. I made a joke something like "woo, look at you, showing more skin". I meant to do the second button back up, but as I was fussing with it, the bus hit a bump & I stopped touching Jon's shirt to hold on to the strap with both hands.
Lora also laughed when I made the comment about Jon showing more skin. When I stopped trying to rebutton the second button to hold on, she reached out and unbuttoned the third button. When Jon went to do it back up, Lora said "That's not fair, you have to have one button unbuttoned by both of us". She seemed to be...mostly joking. It didn't turn into a fight, though she got kind of pouty when he kept the third button rebuttoned.
Am I really way too sensitive and attuned to these things? Or is it actually strange to turn something as innocent as unbuttoning a button into some kind of...competition? Joke about making sure everything is totally fair? I don't even know what to call it. But I don't understand this need to turn literally every, single, little thing into a demand for fairness. Or a comparison.
During this same bus ride, Jon noticed that I had a teeny little bit of sleepy eye gunk close to my hairline at my temple, like I'd rubbed my eyes and accidentally left a flake of it there. So he reached out to pick it off of me. When I saw his hand coming close to me face, I automatically closed my eyes and held still. We both will do things like rub away a bit of sleepy gunk or flick away a loose eyelash for each other.
This turned into a conversation Lora started about how when Jon and Lora first started dating, he'd flinch away from her every time she tried to do it to him. It apparently took something like a year for him to stop flinching, which she was teasing him about.
I'm trying to figure out how to say what I'm feeling. When the three of us are together, it seems like most conversations started by Lora either involve a comparison of the way Jon does things with me versus the way Jon does things with her, or an outright checking of the "fairness" of everything that is going on. I'm sitting here running through what it's like when the three of us are together, and the number of times that Lora immediately insists on having/being treated like/getting the exact same thing that I'm having/being treated like/getting. There are a lot of little moments of "If Jon is holding my hand, Lora has to be holding Jon's other hand" or if we're sitting "If Jon has one hand on my leg, Lora will pick up his other hand and put it on her leg".
If Jon is holding hands with Lora first, or has a hand on her leg first, it doesn't occur to me to make sure I'm doing the same. There have been times when Jon and Lora were say, holding hands on the couch, and I was sitting on the other side of him, so I hooked my leg over his leg, because I felt like touching him, but it was less a "Jon and Lora are touching, so Jon and I must be touching" motivation and more of a "I feel like touching Jon" motivation.
There have been plenty of times when they've been touching and I didn't feel like touching Jon for whatever (innocuous) reason, so we weren't and it was fine to me.
A lot of these little behaviors are part of what cause me to question if Lora is really comfortable being poly. Jon is my first poly partner that I have a serious romantic relationship with. I've had a lot of experience with loving FWB-type relationships, and my other major poly relationship was a non-romantic partnership, so I don't have a lot to go on in terms of personal experience with a metamour in a romantic equals kind of relationship.
There have been times when I've noticed that Jon has a bit of something stuck to his face (like a fuzzie in his stubble) and I've reached out to pick it out. A lot of the time, when that happens, then Lora fusses with his face for a moment. It's like...if I fuss with his face and fix something, then the world is unbalanced unless she does it too.
I just realized that part of what makes me feel uneasy about this is that to me, it implies a level of watchfulness and judgement from Lora that feels very unpleasant. It wouldn't occur to me, if/when Lora picks a fuzzy off of Jon's face, that I need to do it too. It just wouldn't even remotely be a concept that I'd be aware of. I think the only thing that I think when I see something like that happening is "Oh, there is Lora noticing that Jon had something on his face and is getting it off". Full stop. No further thought.
Is my noticing and being bothered by these kinds of things being extraordinarily sensitive or judgmental myself? When things like these things happen, I wonder if I'm reading into them too much, or blowing something out of proportion. But also, when they happen, I get this weird, churny feeling in my gut, like they're a symptom of bigger insecurities and issues on Lora's side.
What say you?