The Best Life Yet

I'm sitting on Moss's couch (the same couch we bought together as fiancés back in the day, though he plans to replace it soon) and drinking coffee and a mimosa while he packs the truck up for camping. I asked if I could help, and he had me wash a few dishes, but with that task done, there's nothing left for me to do.

Before we head out of town, we're going to stop into a hospice where my grandmother is visiting my great uncle. It's pure coincidence that my grandmother and I are on Opposite Coast at the same time. My dad's side of the family is originally from here, but my great uncle is the only one who remains. I haven't seen my grandmother since I was living here and she came to visit him the last time, probably 2011 or 2012. She's really getting up there in the years, but her mind remains sharp. I'm happy to get to see her, even if briefly. A while back, she moved to a state that not many of us visit, to live with one of her youngest daughters. She seems happy there, but it is terribly inconvenient to visit. I know that the way of things means that she probably doesn't have that many years left (she's in her 80s), so this brief chance encounter means a lot to me. Moss knows her from when we were married, so I think he's interested in seeing her all these years later too.

Man, yesterday was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. The travel from my town to opposite coast had a connection that was way far out of the way, the layover was almost four hours, the wifi at the airport cost money and was terrible, my laptop charger gave up the ghost halfway through the trip, and when it was finally time for my plane to land, the weather was too bad, so after two passes, the pilot diverted us to a town about an hour and forty minutes away so he could fuel up. But the airport in my destination closes early, so we couldn't come back at all! Moss ended up driving to the airport I'd been diverted to and picking me up. By the time we got back to his house, it was past three in the morning. I was exhausted and promptly passed out, not taking more than a few sips of the vacation-celebration beer he'd offered me.

Added to that was my deep envy at the good time Rider was having up in Football Town with Kelly. I wanted him—them—to have a good time, but it was so hard to keep my spirits up when thing after thing was going wrong for me, and he'd woken up next to her, made music and did day-drinking with her in the afternoon, then gone out for sushi and gotten a bottle of wine and a hotel room. Meanwhile, I had the tension headache from hell, the flight attendants wouldn't let anyone pee, my electronics were running out of juice, and I had no ETA on when my nightmare would be over. It was an exercise in reaching for positive thinking, to be sure. Instead of pouting, I wrote Rider a five-page letter about how awesome he is and how I hope he's having fun and how proud I am of him for all of the positive changes he's been making over the past six months.

This morning, I woke up next to Moss, but I was still so distracted by thoughts of Rider. It felt a bit unfair. I didn't want to voice any of those thoughts, because Moss tends to low self-esteem, and I didn't want to hurt him. I had to try really hard to stay in the moment and focus on him. We had sex, and it was pretty good—even with as infrequent as our visits are, and how much time had passed before we became involved again, we still have an old, familiar rhythm that gets us both there. His eyes still are a warm, comforting home for me. But it's more comfort than thrill.

It makes me feel kind of weird and sad: I love Moss for a million reasons, and I love Jake for a million reasons, but my encounters with each of them are still color-muted compared to my encounters with Rider. I just have to let go of expectations and let my connections to each person just be what they are.

I'm totally enjoying myself with Moss so far, don't get me wrong, but it's lurking under the shadow of missing Rider. Maybe it's still just NRE with Rider, since it's been only 13 months. I guess I'll have to just wait and see. Will report back on the rest of the trip when I'm back into town, or maybe once my new charger arrives and I have a moment to myself on Monday.
 
So many things to sort through! The past few days have been a dizzying blur of different emotions, some good, some bad, some neutral. I'm going to try to write it out here to get everything into sense-making mode. Writing generally helps.

Saturday, Moss and I headed out on our camping trip. It was about three hours to our first destination, and we were having a really good time. I missed Rider, but it was getting easier to stay in the moment and just enjoy where I was and who I was with. We got nachos for lunch and talked about music on the drive and smiled a lot. Then we got to the town closest to our wilderness camping area, and we stopped to fill the cooler with groceries.

While we were in the store, Rider sent me a picture of himself. He had a cat on his shoulders, and his hair was styled much different than it usually is. I immediately recognized the cat as Kelly's cat from Facebook pictures, and I asked him what was up with the 'do. He said he'd fallen asleep and Kelly had braided his hair on one side. I was immediately swept away in a flood of jealousy and dark emotion that I am not very used to. It's usually MY cat that is walking all over him. And *I* know so well the quiet intimacy of fiddling with his hair while he sleeps and of making him pretty. I-me-mine-grrrrr.

All of those feelings from two and a half months ago of feeling not special came roaring back. I'd dealt with them really well back then, and I hadn't felt much of anything in the way of negativity since, but I guess that maybe my feeling complacent in it and turning my back on it had allowed it to sneak up again. My mood must have shifted visibly, because as Moss and I returned to the truck to put our supplies away, he asked me what had happened. I paused for a second, tempted to not let him know what it was, because I felt bad that my emotions related to someone else were dampening my good time with him. It was only a moment, though, before I took a deep breath and decided to be brave: out with the truth!

He was a bit puzzled about the whole thing, so I had to break it down into pretty bite-sized pieces: it's about feeling replaced in a moment or not special, like I am interchangeable, and like it doesn't matter in that moment who is "filling that slot" for Rider if they're doing the same things that I do with him. And it hits me rarely, but when it hits me, it's like someone has dropped a brick on one side of my internal scales, and I have to add, pebble by pebble, enough good thoughts on the other side to eventually balance it out to the point where it swings evenly again. I explained that the emotion washes over me in a big, irrational wave, but that it's my logical, rational side that balances me back out again, telling myself that each person is different, and that just like Moss is irreplaceable in my life—I could never have the exact experiences with him that I have with anyone else, even if I'm doing the same actions—I am irreplaceable in Rider's life. And even when things get difficult, I am committed to poly and to letting Rider have his freedom, and I love having mine, in turn.

Moss isn't exactly poly. He's not exactly not-poly either. He's enough of a hermit that he'd be saturated if he got love, affection, and sex two to four times a month, and he's expressed kind of indifference about how many people that would come from; he'd be just as happy with one sporadic partner as with four even-more-sporadic partners. Not identifying as poly, he hasn't done any reading or research about it, and I think it is slightly confusing to him why I want to keep doing it even though there are hurdles to overcome. I think I explained it well enough, though. He said that my explanation made sense to him. And my mood improved again after about half an hour.

Our trip was really fun. The four-wheel drive of Moss's truck allowed us to go so many cool places that we would never have otherwise seen. He knows the area and the terrain really well, because he's been camping there with his brother(s) a lot, and one of his brothers used to do biological surveys there.

The second night that we camped, we got into some really deep discussions, and one of the topics that came up was whether he'd still love me if I got married again, but to someone who wasn't him. He seemed a bit shocked that I was considering it, but he said that he would, and he would be happy for me if it's what made me happy. We also talked about the likelihood that he will end up finding a local, monogamous connection with someone, at which time our relationship will segue back into friendship again.

I definitely see both my connection to Moss and my connection to Jake as lifelong connections that will naturally wax and wane from lovers to romantic friends to platonic friends and back through the cycles, depending on what we are involved with elsewhere in our lives. It was good to realize that Moss already sees this—it wouldn't be my breaking his heart if things naturally shift to a less-intense level. Thinking about it this way, I no longer feel guilty, or even sad. I feel really mellow and peaceful about it, with no sense of loss. We never have to try to be something that we're not to each other, and we never have to feel like we can't be what we are. It's actually beautiful.

Monday, I woke feeling extremely homesick and missing Rider. He'd returned from his visit with Kelly on Sunday night, and knowing that he was home and I wasn't there with him made me a bit glum. I was also kind of hung over, as over the course of my deep conversations with Moss, we'd consumed quite a few beverages. The bouncing of the truck over various off-road paths made my stomach feel uncertain. I also allowed myself to get too hungry, to the point of getting hangry, and my phone screen was having technical difficulties. Overall, I was having a difficult day. Luckily, that was the day that we returned to Moss's house.

I was so happy to get back to civilization. Wi-fi! Shower! Soft furniture! Moss and I both posted up to our computers for about an hour; he returned myriad birthday messages, and I chatted with Rider. Rider was very tired from his eventful weekend. He always returns from Football Town totally exhausted. My mood was markedly improved after chatting with him a bit.

Moss and I had plans to meet up with a female friend (sometimes with benefits) of mine for dinner and drinks, and we did that. The food and company were good. My friend and Moss had a lot in common, and they bonded over their similar taste in movies and podcasts. She has a fiancé, but she is an adult performer and they also just started swinging, so she's very sex-positive and approving of the whole poly thing. I had a moment of wondering if the two of them might hook up at some point. It kind of makes sense, but it kind of doesn't. I'd be happy if they did, though. She's amazing in bed, and Moss could use a little lovin'. I never, ever get jealous in relation to Moss. Only to Rider and I think once to Sam.

(continued...)
 
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Yesterday, I woke feeling oddly anxious—too anxious for sex. I felt a little bad, because out of the four days I was with Moss, we only had sex twice. I felt too out of sorts Monday and yesterday. I apologized to him, and he said it was fine, that we're not machines that can just perform on demand. That seemed a very reasonable outlook to me. I'm lucky to have him in my life. He took me to the airport, and I re-read parts of More Than Two on the plane. I was still feeling a bit strange about my reaction to Rider's picture, and I wanted to re-apply tools to work through it.

Going through the book was a good choice. It basically addressed everything I was feeling, up to and including the shame I was feeling that I had negative emotions at all. I want so badly to be a "good poly person," and even though it's pretty rare that I ever feel jealous or have other negative reactions to situations, it makes me feel bad that it happens at all. The book also helped me to find the courage to tell Rider everything. It's so tempting to want to hide my negative emotions, out of a desire to not burden anyone else, and to appear more perfect. Usually, it's my instinct to tell Rider everything, but when it comes to feeling jealous or envious, I want to dig a hole and bury it instead.

Because of all of this, last night, when Rider picked me up from the airport at 1 a.m., I still had a lot weighing on my mind. I didn't feel gleeful to see him, the way that I usually do. On his end, he was still tuckered out from the weekend, which was a really big disappointment to me. I'd been hoping we could have a good, serious reconnection chat and then some good, hot reconnection sex. I was frustrated that the weekend, which was the thing that had destabilized me emotionally in the first place, was still affecting things to the point that it was delaying the resolution. I felt a bit alienated from him, like I was looking at a stranger; the energy was all disconnected.

When we got back to my place, we did our three minutes and then got into bed. He told me that I seemed to have an air of sadness about me. I was torn between either biting my tongue until he had gotten a chance to get some more sleep, or just spilling it all out. In the end, I chose the spill, but I trod lightly because I knew he was tired. I told him about how much I missed him, and about how the photo had affected me, and I made sure to be very clear to him that I didn't want him to change any of the things he was doing, I just wanted him to know how I'd felt. (This because we historically have that issue of him mistaking my confessing my feelings as a call to action. I made the mistake of providing this disclaimer in the middle rather than at the beginning, as I usually try to do.)

For the most part, he took it well. There was a moment where he seemed frustrated, and he said, "You just need to relax! Other people like to do some of the things that you like to do too, and I liked to do those things before I met you." And I felt a little hurt by that. Like, I know that I need to relax. That's the whole point of me talking about it at all. I recognize that the feeling is irrational, and telling me "to relax" when I come to him with it seems tantamount to telling someone who's trying really hard to win a race that they just need to run faster. Well, duh, I'm trying! I decided not to get hung up on that part last night, though, since we were both so tired. I wasn't trying to pick a fight. And I did feel a lot better for unburdening myself at all. We kissed and cuddled a bit, and he fell asleep really fast. I had trouble falling asleep, so I meditated on some things, and finally slept deeply and restfully.

(continued again...)
 
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This morning, I woke up feeling a lot better. Talking to him last night and then cuddling him all night repaired me and made me stronger. I felt prepared to get on IM and thank him for listening to me, and to bring up the part that bothered me about what he said, and take ownership of the fact that I probably should have given the no-actions-only-feelings disclaimer at the beginning, so he didn't get frustrated. He thanked me for talking with him about what was bothering me, and said that it would be helpful if I could come up with a similar disclaimer that he could use with me, to help me handle my irrational feelings the way that I help him handle his.

I thought about it, and I decided that it would help if I could tell him, the moment that something hits me, "This makes me feel weird, but I'm glad you're [having fun / getting a new experience / etc.]," and that would be his cue to come up with something reassuring to tell me about how special or important I am to him. That way he gets to keep doing what he's doing, and he knows he has my blessing, but he also knows exactly what I'm feeling and is given the opportunity to help me before it brews into something nasty. We both agreed that it was a good solution.

After we got to that point, I felt a lot better—very happy, in fact. I don't ever want to stick my head in the sand and not know things. And I never want him to censor his behavior to protect me from bad feelings. I want there to be next to nothing that we don't tell each other. I don't want, like, play-by-play of sex, but I think it's important to know what kinds of things he does with other people, and who he does them with, and how much he liked them (on a scale of dismal to mind-blowing), etc. I want to know if he learns new things or a new technique for an existing thing that we can use to enrich our own life together. I want to know his inner landscape in terms of how things are progressing emotionally with other people.

I recognize that sometimes knowing these things will cause me to have twinges of jealousy or envy, or to get feelings of fear, because I am human and still rather inexperienced at poly, but I think that it's important to face those things head-on and to build myself up strong enough to withstand—and even welcome—the whole truth. I'm pretty good about it already, I think. That was my first spasm of feeling jealous in over two months, and it has passed pretty quickly. On the whole, I'm not a very jealous person, thankfully. But there is always room for improvement!

In thinking about it after the processing, I've identified these things...

Things related to jealousy:

  • Feeling ashamed about feeling jealous
  • Not wanting to "burden" my partners with my negative emotions
  • Feeling like I don't want to be a stressful/tedious person for my partners, especially in contrast with the low-maintenance, fun, casual relationships they may have with others

Fears related to jealousy:

  • Fear of not being "special"; irrational fear—I know I'm special to my partner. This one is not a new one, but it's the main one at work here.
  • Fear that if someone is doing something with my partner, and they are "better" at it than I am, then my partner might be wishing he were with them instead when he does it with me; not necessarily an irrational fear, in that it is actually possible—I've experienced it myself—but it is something that just needs to be gotten over. Thinking of other people and momentarily wishing you were with them when you are with someone else is kind of unavoidable when you have more than one partner, especially in NRE, and especially when you have one partner that you are more attached to than others. I haven't felt it while with Rider yet, but I felt it when I was with Moss this weekend, thinking of Rider. And it's also evil, because OF COURSE you want people to think of you when they're not with you! Knowing that you're missed and that people are thinking of you when you're not around is a pleasant sensation. So it's a really weird, doubly hypocritical fear. I guess that, at its heart, it's probably some sort of self-worth issue that I need to work on, something related to needing too much to be the focus of a lover's attentions because I'm not doing enough of a good job of paying attention to myself.

So, WHEW! Some things worked on. Some other things identified that still need to be worked on internally. Lots of good communication (even despite a snag) all around. I still have yet to get the "whole story" about Rider's weekend, and to give him mine—that's coming tonight—so I'm sure there is still going to be a little boat-rocking in my immediate future. And for a while after this set of trips that we just took, we're going to focus mostly on adventuring together and just being together, and building a solid foundation as a dyad to shore up our security with each other. I'll be seeing Jake again in Hometown when I go to visit my mom in June, and Rider will be joining me for the second weekend of that, but until then, we won't be spending any significant amount of time apart, so we'll have plenty of time to integrate what we learn this week before we have to put it into practice again.

Rider and I were talking today about how being together and being poly has made both of us grow in leaps and bounds compared to what previous relationships have done. We're both identifying flaws in ourselves and helping to identify flaws in each other that we then put in the work to fix, and strategize ways to support each other in the fixing process.

And it seems like my shaky part: the knee-jerk negative reaction to not feeling special and to not having the focus, and his shaky part: the knee-jerk negative reaction when someone expresses feelings, thinking that they want him to change/fix something...those two shaky parts seem almost perfectly designed to stab at each other if we're not careful. It's too easy for him to take my difficult-to-confess-in-the-first-place confessions as a command for him to stop something. And it's too easy for his frustration in those moments to make me feel even less special and less focused upon, because it can feel like, surely, if he were paying attention to me and "got" me, he'd provide reassurance instead of pulling away in frustration. The REALLY COOL thing about that is that we kind of need each other to help fix it. And our level of love and communication makes it possible to do so in a cooperative, nurturing environment, for the most part, rather than in a hostile, damage-wreaking one.

I came up with a summary of it all today: I think true love is when the good parts are excellent and feel like home, and the tough parts are actually just what you really needed in order to grow—individually and together.

(Finally actually the end of the world's longest post!)
 
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After that tumultuous and emotion-ridden post, I had a really good night with Rider last night. We went to see a movie at the independent theater in a neighboring city, and on the 40-minute car ride there, he gave me the total rundown of the trip. I was unfazed by the story, though I was a little high strung and nervous the whole time, bracing myself for a gut-punch that didn't come.

The one moment I had of feeling a bit of dissonance was when Rider and I were talking about where his relationship with Kelly is headed, and he said he's just going to keep it to a sex-friends type of thing, nothing serious, by virtue of the distance, her age, and the fact that she's moving even farther away next year when she finishes her internship or post-doc or whatever it is that she's doing after she graduates this May. (He did tell me at some point what it is she's doing, but it was a while ago, and I forgot.) He then went on to explain that of the three locations she's considering for her career, one is halfway around the world, while the other two are on Opposite Coast, and that if she ends up on Opposite Coast, he could see himself visiting her "a couple times a year."

Now, I just got back from Opposite Coast, and I can tell you that a person of our station in life doesn't go visit someone that far away "a couple times a year" unless it's more than friendship. It's not just the cost of the tickets; it's the fact that it takes two full days of travel round trip, as well. He said she'd buy him the tickets if she gets a really good job, but that doesn't account for the time off of work, which he usually hoards to spend with Sam. In this case, it wasn't even the jealousy mentioned in the previous post that made me feel weird—it was that he was saying two things that seemingly contradicted each other. If he wants her as a long-distance actual girlfriend, go ahead, but at least say so! And then....

Then I remembered who I was talking to. Rider is NOTORIOUSLY bad at planning and scheduling and logistics. It probably didn't even cross his mind how much of an investment of all sorts of time and money it takes to cross the country, even if someone else buys your ticket. (Ask me how I know—Moss bought mine for last weekend!) He wasn't lying to me or minimizing or holding two separate beliefs in his mind at the same time. He just honestly hadn't thought about it other than "FRIEND, SEX, TRAVEL"! I tested this hypothesis by mentioning the travel-days-spent thing, and I could hear it dawning on him. Haha, yep. I was so right—none of that was anywhere in his mind.

That kicked off a long conversation about MY long-distance connections, and how I seem to have found myself between either bankrupting myself (through plane tickets, missed work, and dining out) or letting the connections wane through lack of face-time. Obviously, from what I've written here, I've chosen the waning, as bankruptcy seems unwise. And Rider mentioned that he used to say that he'd NEVER date long-distance, and that a catch-phrase of his had been "think globally, date locally." I'd had much the same view for myself.

I think both of us had fallen prey to kind of a "kid in the candy store" effect as we dove into poly headfirst, and we suddenly wanted to snap up all the hot people everywhere we went, now that we had the freedom. This is fine if you interact with them ONLY when you already happen to be in their town—a very casual thing—but when you start planning trips just to see them, and it disrupts the normal state of your schedule, your finances, etc., then it can be a problem.

This is something that's been slowly sinking in for me over the past 4–6 weeks, and lesson learned, for me, at this point. I'm going to see Moss ONLY when I already have a trip planned to Opposite Coast to see Oona. I'm going to see Jake ONLY when I am in Hometown to visit family. It's a bit different with Sam, because he's a four-hour car ride away, but for the most part, I'm going to see him only when Rider and I have a trip planned to see him as Rider normally would, or I'll see him when he comes here.

The movie was really good, and afterward, we stopped at our friend Henry's house, since we were in town. We hung out there for about an hour, conversing, then it started to get late, so we headed back to Rider's. On the car ride back, Rider was asking me about my relationship with Moss, and what it felt like to have reconnected with someone significant from so far back in my past. I explained it to him, and after I was done talking, he said that my explanation had made him have an epiphany that what I was describing was pretty much the same thing that had happened to him with Claire when they'd reconnected: there was a comfort and a camaraderie there, but no real "spark," and sex had been an outgrowth of affection more than anything actually libidinous. He said he felt less weird about the ending looking at it through that light.

He then asked me whether I thought it was that way with everyone once they'd been involved a long time, whether continuously or on and off. I told him that I didn't THINK so. I've often, in all kinds of places online, read about people who manage to keep the spark going for a long time—even if I've never been in that circumstance myself. My longest relationship was about four years, and the spark went away after I realized that he'd been compulsively lying to me for our entire relationship. All my other LTRs ended when the NRE wore off and I realized that I was with people with actually really unhealthy qualities that were often borderline-abusive situations. The NRE had just blinded me to my peril until it wore off, which was usually around the two-year mark. This is the first time I've been in an LTR with someone that people in general (Oona included) actually LIKE, so I don't believe that I'm making the same mistake this time. Rider has a heart of gold. He then told me that in his 7-year relationship (his longest), things never died down, sex-wise. So I'm not sure why he was asking me what I believed, when he has proof that things can stay hot that long!

We intended to eat a late dinner, but pretty much the minute we got in the door, we were too busy touching each other to bother. While Rider rubbed my feet, I asked him the opposite question: what had it been like to fuck someone new one-on-one for the first time since being with me? I'd expected more of a concept-related answer, like I'd given him about Moss, but he instead just told me that it had exceeded his expectations, and that he'd like to do it again sometime, but not soon enough that he wants to start planning it now. None of that made me feel jealous. I swear, it's less sexual jealousy that I feel, and more the activity-related stuff (though the activity-related stuff wouldn't affect me if sex weren't in the mix, so I guess it's tangentially related). So, I did not need to call on my coping strategy at all yesterday, and I felt fine.

After the foot rub, Rider and I had earth-shaking sex. Some combination of ovulation week, being apart for a week, my not having had an orgasm since Saturday, and perhaps a bit of "reclaiming" each other...my eyes were practically rolling back into my head the entire time, and I had two of the most explosive orgasms in recent memory. We didn't do anything other than "normal stuff," but it was all SO GOOD. Afterwards, we went pretty promptly to sleep, and I slept like the dead.

This morning, I got a message from Moss saying that the day that I'd left his house, he'd gotten an email from the next woman he'd seriously dated after me, wanting to reconnect. He'd had a date with her last night that went really well, and they'd ended up spending the night together. He'd always presented her in stories as being "crazy but great in bed," but he said after last night, he thinks that maybe he was the crazy one all along, it just took some hindsight and perspective to see it. Honestly, I am not surprised, since he dated her in the aftermath of our divorce AND his being kinda crazy and unmedicated was part of what made me divorce him in the first place. So maybe it was just a case of "right place but wrong time" for them, and they are going to get back together.

It's pretty crazily coincidental to me that less than 36 hours after I told him I was thinking about marriage to Rider and we'd discussed the possibility of our relationship segueing back to platonic, the only girl he's really cared for since me just kind of falls out of the sky and into his lap. I'm happy for him if it works out, though. He deserves someone with whom he has the kind of passion that he said he had with her—a kind of passion that he and I never really had past the first few months (and the kind of passion that I have with Rider). Everything in its right place and all.

Tonight, Rider and I are going out to gay-bar karaoke with some friends of his, and then tomorrow night, we FINALLY, FINALLY, FINALLY have a date with Allie! I've been waiting for this for MONTHS now. I'm so excited to see her, and I will report back soon! :)
 
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I wish I were as open as you when it came to writing about sex, Reverie. I love reading your libidinal updates, and don't feel at all embarrassed when I read them, but when I try to imagine posting about my own sex life, I start blushing immediately. Funny how that works.
 
I wish I were as open as you when it came to writing about sex, Reverie. I love reading your libidinal updates, and don't feel at all embarrassed when I read them, but when I try to imagine posting about my own sex life, I start blushing immediately. Funny how that works.

Haha, well, I'll throw another tidbit in there for you, then: this morning, I woke up with HICKEYS for the first time since high school! Totally accidentally—we just got carried away. HICKEYS! What am I, 16 again? Hehehe
 
Haha, well, I'll throw another tidbit in there for you, then: this morning, I woke up with HICKEYS for the first time since high school! Totally accidentally—we just got carried away. HICKEYS! What am I, 16 again? Hehehe

Omg... I'm so glad I work in an understanding place because of this! When Boy and I first got together, it was AWFUL. Then when Hubby sees them, he goes nuts (both a turn-on and a "needing to mark his territory" kind of vibe). They've gotten better over the last year, but I still have some from time to time.


Kind of exciting and embarrassing, right?! :D
 
Omg... I'm so glad I work in an understanding place because of this! When Boy and I first got together, it was AWFUL. Then when Hubby sees them, he goes nuts (both a turn-on and a "needing to mark his territory" kind of vibe). They've gotten better over the last year, but I still have some from time to time.


Kind of exciting and embarrassing, right?! :D

Rider apologized for them, and I told him not to be sorry—I'd rather wear makeup on my neck for every day of my life than forgo being kissed like that anymore. SUCH a turn-on while it's happening. And then the marks are kind of like a little reminder that I smirk at for a moment before covering them.

We ended up not doing karaoke last night after all. His friends wanted to jam out on the deck at the brewery, so that's what they did. I sang along to a couple of songs. I barely drank anything since it's a weeknight, and it was funny to watch many of them get drunker and drunker, to a point where the most musically talented guy actually almost fell off his chair. And yet, he could still play fine!

I was insanely horny all day from remembering the previous day, so Rider and I were doing a lot of intense staring and grabbing (mostly nonsexual) parts of each other all night, and when we got back to my place, we practically burned the place down. Figuratively, not literally. It was really, really intense and awesome, though.

It seems like more of the same today. I woke up next to him, running my hands all over him and not wanting to stop, but he had to leave for work. We have our date with Allie confirmed for tonight (woo-hoo!), so that will be super-fun. I often don't reach orgasm in threesomes; feeling like someone is watching me other than the person I'm actually having sex with makes me feel...not SHY exactly, since I don't MIND, but I have some kind of hangup where I can't entirely let go enough to get there. It's the same way when a partner wants to watch me masturbate. I can put on a little show, but I have to finish from partner actions. So I have no real expectations for getting off tonight. I'm sure to have fun, though. It turns me on so much to watch them together.

OK, back to work for me. I have a lot to get done before I can go out tonight! :D :D :D
 
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I had THE most fabulous weekend! With all the chaos of the past couple of months, it was great to finally have a normal weekend with Rider. I hadn't had one of those since...well...looking back, it was seriously the end of January. From going out of town for work and pleasure, to fighting with Rider in February, to my friend's attempted suicide and the Claire-birthday and Claire-breakup in March...yep, it's been since January. This weekend made up for all of that.

Friday night, we had a date with Allie. She showed up with TWO surprises for me: a 22 oz of my favorite beer, which is a limited edition from the brewery where she works, and you can't get it anywhere else, AND a small ceramic figurine of a skeleton dressed up as a bunny, which is right up my cute/creepy alley. We took her out for a beer, then we came back to my place and mixed cocktails and made out and cuddled. We then had some really fun sex, wherein Allie and I tied Rider up and tortured him pleasantly for a little while, and then we set him free so he could fuck us. Good stuff!

She was able to spend the night and have brunch with us the next day, and afterward, we put on a little private performance of our songs for her, before she had to go home and spend some time with her animals. She is just so much fun and so very sweet! I can't wait to see her again, hopefully soon. I can't believe she brought me presents, and it wasn't even my birthday or anything!

After she left, Rider and I had some great sex and took a long nap, then woke up and went to the grocery store so that I could make a kick-ass curry. After dinner, we played music until my hands felt shredded, and I had to tell him we needed to stop if I wanted to save some for the next day. We had sex again and went to sleep.

Sunday, Rider made me a very tasty breakfast, and we did a bit more spring cleaning on his place. We spent most of the remainder of the day drinking and working on music, culminating in doing a hilarious screamy-metal version of one of our songs. It was relatively early when we decided that we'd done too much day-drinking and wanted to go to bed. We put a TV show on to watch, but ended up getting distracted by sex. Every single moment of that weekend was a good one. The only slight tinge of negativity came from Rider's irritation at the suspected bug problem.

He had suspected that his neighbors might have brought bedbugs to his building, as he has been waking up with bites on the nights he sleeps over there. I have not, but I had previously suspected myself immune (or at least not allergic) to the little bastards, due to other occasions where bed-mates woke up with bites and I did not. So last night, I had committed to helping him with the problem, and we went out and shopped for a bunch of supplies. We basically tore his box spring apart and found not bedbugs at all, but TERMITES!

The internet mostly says that termites don't bite, but the few anecdotes I found described Rider's bites perfectly: a huge, itching, stinging welt with a blister in the center. Bedbug bites don't usually leave blisters. So tonight, I guess, we're going to cover his box spring in a mattress bag and hope it keeps all the bitey termites inside? We found enough of them free-roaming (on the lampshade, in the kitchen, etc.) that I don't know whether this will actually work, but it is worth a try.

I was very poly-proud of myself this weekend, because I did something brave. There was a big party that an old friend of Rider's who lives three hours away had been planning, but he kept moving the date around. For a while, it looked like I would be able to go with Rider. Then, it looked like I would be unable to go, because some friends of mine were supposed to come to town on the weekend he settled on. The city the event would be in is closer to Kelly's town than it is to ours, and so I was thinking that maybe if I couldn't go with Rider, he'd want to bring Kelly as his date to the party and hang out with her that weekend. So I brought it up and told him that I would be cool with it if he did that.

This was a small act of bravery due to my recently pangs of jealousy. I just got to thinking about it, and I was thinking that if it would make him happy to see her again sooner than he thought he would, then he should know that I am on board with that happiness. I thought it would help to reassure him that even though I had a few moments of difficulty, I really do want him to have whatever he wants out of life. So I'd taken a deep breath and suggested it.

His response had been to look thoughtful, then say that he hadn't thought of that at all, and that he didn't think he'd want to bring Kelly to that particular party. It's going to be a bunch of old and important friends of his, and he's not really into the idea of introducing her to all of them like that. The friend who is having the party had already met her briefly, that night back in December when we all went to a concert in that city, but I guess a party situation with a bunch of people is different. He said that if I can't come as his date, then he'd probably just go dateless and carpool with some local friends. So all that bravery for nothing! I was still proud of myself for mustering it up, though. And as it turned out, my friends can't come to visit that weekend after all, so I am indeed free to attend the party.

Overall, the situation with Kelly is good. She occasionally posts friendly little things to my Facebook wall, even though we don't really talk directly. I appreciate her gestures, and I respond in kind. It's a completely different situation than the one with Claire was in many ways: Rider considers his thing with Kelly to be less serious, Kelly actually makes attempts to be friendly with me, and I occasionally feel mildly jealous of Kelly (and I pretty much never did with Claire). It's basically a dynamic that has nothing in common with the other one other than Rider is the hinge.

I find it utterly fascinating that the more poly experience I have, the clearer it becomes to me that poly relationships are super unique and super fluid depending on the people that are added to and subtracted from any particular polyship. It's kind of like pouring several colors of paint into a single bowl: they form unique hues in the places where they blend together, two or three or more at a time, and the swirls and contours of the borders take the shapes and paths of wherever the relationship's physics allow things to naturally flow. And we pour more or less of a particular person/color depending on what we want our bowl to look like, or how much of that person/color is available to us.

In two days, Rider and I are heading off on a mini-roadtrip to see Sam! I'm really excited about it, because we haven't been to College Town since New Year's. I love-love-love it there, and I love getting to hang out with Sam. We had an IM chat a couple of days ago, and he sent me a little blowing-kiss emoticon, which is WAY more forward than he usually is. I was as squee as can be. I don't think my relationship with him will ever be much more than a spur off of the side of my relationship with Rider, but it brings so much joy to me when I get some small gesture of affection from him. Both dudes have Friday off of work, and while I don't, I can work from anywhere, so I suppose I'll be on my laptop while they drink beer and play music. Rider has promised to use Sam's equipment to show me how to change my own oil in my car, too. DIY FTW! I'm so stoked!
 
Just one more little thought on here about a stress that has been occupying my mind (not exactly poly-related, but I figured if I dumped it here, I could stop thinking about it for a while):

It hit me last week that I am halfway through my lease on this two-bedroom apartment with Anna. She got engaged recently and will probably be moving in with her fiancé when the lease is up. The rent goes up by $25 if I renew the lease, and it never goes month-to-month like many places do, so I'd have to commit to another year in five months when the notification is required by.

Rider is iffy on moving in together, because he is getting a FANTASTIC deal on his current one-bedroom that he's been in for six years, and rents are such that right now, he wouldn't save much money (and would lose personal space) to go in with me on a two-bedroom. His one-bedroom is so small that there would be next to no space for my clothes, etc., on top of what he already owns if I were to move in there with him. Rents are also such that to get a studio with a kitchen, I'd be paying at least 15% more than what I'm paying now, and I'm pretty freaking broke paying what I'm paying now.

Add to that that no decision has been made surrounding the move to Opposite Coast, and I feel SO trapped. None of my living situation options seem good. Of the ones I have control over, more or less:

1. Stay in my current apartment, commit to another year, the rent is raised, and I have to find a new mystery roommate, if I even can. Perhaps gamble on Craigslist.

2. Move into an efficiency by myself and basically live on rice and beans in a crock pot indefinitely.

3. Move to Opposite Coast and make more money (but how much more? and with a higher cost of living?) and leave Rider here rather than trying to make him decide.​

Of the ones that involve Rider, and are ultimately his choice, so they throw a wild card into the equation that I can't depend on (and really, this is all my problem, not his, so I don't EXPECT him to decide in my favor, though he talks sometimes like he'd like to):

1. Move in with Rider to a tiny one bedroom and save money, but have access to only a tiny amount of my stuff with the rest in storage.

2. Move into a two-bedroom with Rider (either this same one or another one if we can find a cheaper one), but feel guilty that he is making a sacrifice for me of leaving his home of six years, mostly to my financial benefit (more or less neutral to his), plus he loses personal space.

3. Move with Rider to Opposite Coast, dependent on his finding a job.​

It seems like even over a year into living independently from some kind of partner, I am still struggling with being able to solidly provide for myself. If I decide to stay here, I think I need to start job hunting in earnest, but then I feel like I am pulling the rug out from under my company. It is really hard to be poor and maintain a one-income household, even if that household consists of only a single room, one human, and three small pets. Sometimes it's enough to make me want to crawl under a rock and never come out—to see the benefits of posting up in a cardboard box in some alley somewhere and letting the elements take their toll. I'm willing to bet that's just PMS speaking, but it is really depressing.

Aaaand now I am going to try not to think about that all for a while. I really don't need to have any decision made FOR REAL FOR REAL until August or so. There is literally nothing I can do between now and then except try to save money and keep my ear to the ground for people who might be looking for roommates in the fall. So, I will push this topic completely out of my mind as of RIGHT NOW, and revisit it on August 1. And then I'll have that entire month to make decisions and deal with nuts and bolts. Until then, be calm, be zen.

Edited to add: WOW! Typing this out is the first time I've ever thought about distinction between "shit that is coming that I should worry about because doing so helps me to prepare for it in a concrete and helpful manner" and "shit that is coming that I shouldn't worry about because there is nothing doing so can help with at this time." I feel like I just leveled up somehow. Thanks, blog!
 
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A brief update:

Had a videochat with Moss last night, and, apparently, he's been spending a LOT of time with that old girlfriend of his. He told me he bought a fishbowl of condoms from Amazon, LOL!

Had a phone convo with Oona, and she's still incredibly happy with Toby. She voiced something that I've thought a bunch of times since I've been with Rider: fear that he's just so awesome that, as luck would have it, he'll get hit by a bus or something. She lamented how sad it is that both of us would have that thought when we are finally with someone fantastic—that it is too good, so "fate" would have to take it away from us now that we're finally happy.

Had more amazing sex with Rider last night. Alllllmost was able to come from a position that I usually can't! I think next time I try, I probably will be able to. There are indeed benefits to being able to go without barriers; for me, one of those is being able to get closer to orgasm in more positions. I get a little thrill just remembering. We have big plans to dress him up pretty for me tonight after we do music practice.

The bug situation is still a mystery. Our entomologist friend swears that termites won't bite, but the CO2 trap is still not turning up any bed bugs. Rider wrapped his box spring in a mattress bag and duct-taped it up last night, to keep the termites in, but he said today he still noticed two more bites (though these were smaller than the others, so maybe they were something else).

Sam ended up not being able to get the day off of work on Friday after all, but Rider and I are still going up there Thursday night, so that we can see Sam as soon as he gets off of work. We have a margarita happy hour tradition every time we go up there. Rider will probably work on some of his own music while Sam and I work on our regular job stuff.

My epiphany from yesterday has made me feel a lot calmer and in possession of more inner peace. I'm kicking the stress-can down the road for four months, and I'll bet that, by then, the solution will be clear to me (not to mention the rents perhaps being lower, since they appear to be sliding a bit).

Overall: happy, peaceful, satisfied, sane.
 
Are you sure they are termites? I've never heard of them biting people. Termites are extremely difficult to get rid of; he needs to hire an exterminator and throw old the boxspring and mattress, pronto.

I'm pretty sure that what we actually saw are termites, because I sent pictures to a friend who is an actual entomologist and really good at identifying bugs from pictures (and who also doesn't think they are what's biting Rider). And they look just like the termite pictures on Google Images. Also, they were burrowing into the wood of the box spring. He rents an apartment, so I suppose the termites would be his landlord's problem, at least in a financial sense.

If it's not the termites that are biting him, he must have some sort of dual infestation occurring: termites and also whatever's biting. Which is not terribly surprising, since I have also seen that apartment go through a cockroach infestation, a fruit fly infestation, a weird gnat problem, and an ant problem. His landlord is a jerk about fixing problems, so he usually gets the roach traps, ant baits, fly tape, etc. by himself. I suppose he should still tell the landlord about the termites, though. He's kind of afraid that any termite fumigation would make the place uninhabitable for his pet rabbit, but it seems like a bad idea not to mention a potentially structure-damaging problem to the landlord.
 
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One more other small update that I didn't think to add before but that probably belongs here:

Saturday and also yesterday, the topic of the ending of Rider and Claire's relationship came up in conversation. Saturday was because Allie hadn't known about the end of the relationship (it wasn't a very public breakup), and it had been mentioned in passing in reference to how Rider would sometimes watch Claire's dog "while they were dating." So Rider told her that they'd broken up, and talked about how he is occasionally sad, but for the most part, he is a lot happier. Allie has been friends with Claire for longer than she has been friends with me, and she said that she'd noticed that though she hadn't seen Claire in person in a while, Claire had seemed happier and more social in her Facebook postings, so it seems like it was a good change for everyone.

Rider brought it up again yesterday, saying that the more time passed, the more he realized how much things have improved in his life since the breakup, and how much they continue to improve, even though once in a while he has a pang of sadness around the issue.

I know there were people on these boards who were uncertain about whether his breakup with her was morally right or the right thing for everyone involved, or even whether it was something that had more to do with me than with a dysfunctional state of affairs between the two of them. I think that the fact that even SHE appears to mutual friends to be happier and in a better place answers that question decisively. I think that truly, each of us benefited. And I know that from Rider's own mouth, the newest incarnation of their relationship had been something that he had fallen into kind of by default, and despite his love for her, it had needed to end for a long time—he'd just been afraid to look that eventuality in the face.

I'm really glad that she's doing well. I never wished her ill, and I hope that she continues to find more happiness and more enjoyment in life. I even hope, for Rider's sake, that one day the two of them will be able to be friends. So that's the update on that chapter of the story, for anyone who may have been wondering.
 
Are there any pets in the vicinity? A flea infestation can cross apartments.

I ended up worrying myself over potential bedbugs (after seeing raised red marks on myself), tore the room apart, only to find that it was some sort of weird, unexplained rash (allergic reaction) to something on the sheets. Hasn't been back since. Maybe if he changed laundry detergents, it could explain the "bites"?
 
Are there any pets in the vicinity? A flea infestation can cross apartments.

I ended up worrying myself over potential bedbugs (after seeing raised red marks on myself), tore the room apart, only to find that it was some sort of weird, unexplained rash (allergic reaction) to something on the sheets. Hasn't been back since. Maybe if he changed laundry detergents, it could explain the "bites"?

There are indeed pets, but Rider has had a flea trap active on the floor for some time to lure the tiny gnats that will congregate around his rabbit's water bowl occasionally. It catches the gnats, the odd ant, and, most recently, termites, but I've never seen a flea in it. He hasn't changed any kind of soap or detergent lately either, so it's not that. They're definitely bites of some kind.

This morning, the CO2 trap still had no bed bugs, but it had a termite in it (that probably crawled in there by accident), and also three little flying-looking creatures that seemed to be some type of midge. I know that midges bite (I've been attacked by them at the beach in the state I went to college), and it seems online that they can, indeed, infest houses, so maybe it's a midge infestation and Rider's just really allergic to them. They either don't bite me, or the bites don't bother me at all. It's so mysterious! The possibility of midges is our best lead right now.

Last night was mostly spent working late and trying to lift Rider's spirits. He's been getting a bunch of tough projects at work that have been stressing him out, plus the mystery bug bites are killing him with itching, plus the mystery itself of what they are and what to do about it is driving him insane, and added to that, he was trying to troubleshoot some of his sound-recording programs on his computer that were acting weird last night, and wasn't able to fix that problem either. He worked on that problem while I sat on his couch and worked late on some stuff from my job. By the time I was done and he decided to give up on the program, he was in a real funk.

To cheer him up, I took him out for burritos, but even that didn't do much to improve his mood. We tried working on music, but he kept making mistakes and was visibly frustrated. We were sitting on the couch talking about what musical equipment needed to be packed for our trip, and he looked overwhelmed to the point of nearly panicking. I told him that we didn't have to go, if it was too much for him right now, and he looked just as forlorn at the idea of not going. Finally, I suggested a shot of whiskey to fortify ourselves so we could get the packing going, then promised him a milkshake, unwinding in front of the TV, and sex as a reward. That worked!

We took a shot, packed the car (as we are leaving straight after work today), and then I made a milkshake for him. We stretched out in front of an episode of one of our favorite shows, then retired to my house for our three minutes, some hott playtime, and crashing the fuck out. We both slept like the dead. He seemed in much better spirits this morning.

In about five more hours, we'll be taking off to College Town to see Sam! I still have to pack my own clothes and toiletries, and to stop by his place to feed the animals for the last time before the pet-sitter takes over tomorrow, but other than that, everything is done. Almost time for the fun part!
 
Last night was mostly spent working late and trying to lift Rider's spirits . . . the mystery bug bites are killing him with itching, plus the mystery itself of what they are and what to do about it is driving him insane . . .

To cheer him up, I took him out for burritos, but even that didn't do much to improve his mood.
Well, I think it's obvious what he needs to do - move out! That landlord sounds like an asshole who doesn't care. There has got to be a better place he can afford. Why put up with all kinds of insects and outright lack of response? Eww. Either move, or withhold rent and file a formal complaint until the situation is remedied.
 
Well, I think it's obvious what he needs to do - move out! That landlord sounds like an asshole who doesn't care. There has got to be a better place he can afford. Why put up with all kinds of insects and outright lack of response? Eww. Either move, or withhold rent and file a formal complaint until the situation is remedied.

That would, indeed, be the logical solution. I highly doubt it's going to happen, though, unless he decides he wants to live with me when my lease is up and my roommate moves out. He is very, very attached to that apartment, in no small part because the landlord (neglectful jerk though he may be) hasn't raised the rent in six years, so Rider is now renting a one-bedroom for less than you can find a studio these days. He and I make almost exactly the same amount of money, and it is really, really tough to find something in our area that one can afford on our salary and live alone. So it's stay there, or shack up. And he's still undecided on the shacking up thing. I think he's dead set, for now, on making insect traps from YouTube tutorials, LOL.

In other news, I am typing this from Sam's couch in lovely College Town. Rider is out back in the guest house working on music, and Sam is off at his job. I'm mostly working on my job, too, but taking a break to type this. Last night's drive was unremarkable, other that the fact that it went by super quickly. Time always flies when I am with Rider, even if it is a long car ride. We basically had a three-and-a-half hour conversation about everything and nothing.

He talked for a while more about his breakup with Claire and how he feels kind of silly with some hindsight that he thought it would work out a second time around when it didn't the first time. He said it was a "perfect storm" of his being lonely and vulnerable (he'd just been through a heart-wrenching breakup when a lover had moved away, and a beloved pet had just passed), plus her being familiar and comfortable and still in love with him. He said he feels guilty because neither time that he'd dated her had he felt like it would be a lifelong thing—there wasn't enough substance to it, and he didn't see her as someone he would like to marry or otherwise commit to. And he knows that she thought of him as the love of her life, but he just had never felt the same way. I told him not to be too hard on himself, that it was a learning experience for all involved. Now he knows better than to settle for connections that are less than compelling, and he knows not to settle into a place where he lets others build expectations around him when he doesn't want the same thing.

When we arrived, Sam was very happy to see us and greeted us both with giant hugs. I'd known that I missed him, but I hadn't known how much until I was actually in his arms. It felt so warm and safe and right. We sat around the kitchen counter (breakfast bar? peninsula? not sure the right word for that, but it's a counter that juts out...) sipping beer and chatting. I was at the end, and one of the guys was on either side, and it was so nice to be able to look from one to the other.

As usual, I started out slowly with my affection to Sam, just lightly touching him as I walked past, and such. We always have to kind of ease back into each other. By the end of the night, I was holding his hand and kind of giving him a mini-massage. I'm never sure exactly how things will go with him, and it's sometimes difficult to figure out how to divide my attention between him and Rider. I think I did a good job of it, though; I certainly have plenty of love for both of them.

My sexual connection with Sam is stronger than with any of my other long-distance lovers, and I can feel it crackling just beneath the surface when we are next to each other. I'm not sure if or how much I'll be able to play with him this weekend. There's no one here to distract Rider, and the one time that Rider has mentioned feeling weird was the night that I went to Sam's room for a while and fooled around with him and accidentally fell asleep until morning. I definitely, definitely do not want to make Rider uncomfortable, so we'll have to see how it all plays out. Rider has expressed openness to some group action, but I'm not sure how Sam feels about that, and also, I'm supposed to start my period any day now (grumble).

Rider and I will be going to the Mexican restaurant later to meet Sam after work and fulfill our tradition of getting tipsy on $3 margaritas. Then we're going to make some music! I love playing music with those guys. We have alllll weekend to do more of the same. It will fly by, because it always does. Every time we come here, I wish we could stay forever, close to Sam, in the thick of all this nature, playing music and cooking family-style meals and cuddling up to watch movies.

It occurred to me recently that I actually talk to Sam more than Rider does between visits these days. I guess that's not very surprising, since they have a typical guy best-friendship that is not characterized by the kind of weekly contact and open-book communication that female best-friendships (including mine with Oona) often have. Sam and I actually set this trip up and invited Rider, in a way, which is really odd, because usually in the past, it's been Rider inviting me. I guess it makes sense, since I've spent more time in the past six months with Sam than Rider has, with my visiting him for Christmas and with Rider taking a night out for Claire the last time that Sam visited.
 
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He's kind of afraid that any termite fumigation would make the place uninhabitable for his pet rabbit,

OMG I love bunny people (hence my username)! I've had pet (indoor) rabbits for the last 17 years or so, they are awesome pets. My oldest lived to be 16!
 
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