The Best Life Yet

Rider is snoozing peacefully beside me, and I just had to sneak back on to brag about him. He really is just the best boyfriend in the world. What other man would pick me up from the bus station, after my having spent three days off fucking his best friend, greeting me with a homemade burrito and a can of cold beer, which we sat in the parking lot and consumed.

AND THEN, when we got home (after detouring at a friend's birthday party), he pleasured me until my head nearly exploded, then gave me foot and calf rubs. For real, I think I must have died and been reincarnated as a queen.

I was so very happy to see his face. As much fun as I have with my other sweeties, nothing compares to the perfection I feel when I am gazing upon him, touching him, kissing him. I was having such fun kissing him that I nearly wanted to eat his face. The roots of his hair have grown out so far that the strawberry blonde is super-visible right now. Something about glimpsing his natural coloring makes me love him even more. Sweet, pale ginger love.
 
Tonight, Rider and I head back up to College Town to stay with Sam for five days, with a brief side-jaunt on Saturday to visit brewpubs with Kelly and her roommate. Her roommate is one of Rider's friends from high school, which is how she and Rider know each other. I've heard a lot about him and am looking forward to finally meeting him.

I'm also looking forward to getting cuddly with Rider and Sam. I probably won't have sex with Sam on this trip (unless we have a threesome), because I can't very well do to Rider what I objected to him doing to me. If Rider suggests it or nudges me in that direction, I will certainly go for it, but otherwise, I think this will be a pretty chaste trip. I do hope that now that Sam has gotten kind of used to hooking up with me, that he won't be feeling the same strain if he overhears Rider and me. I don't think he will—I am pretty sure he still thinks of me as "Rider's"—but I will try to take the temperature of his feelings throughout the visit.

There is so much to do before we go! I am trying to fit a full work-day in, plus I have to move my pet rabbits over to Rider's house for his neighbor to watch, plus I have to clean all my animals' litter boxes, plus I have to drop some stuff in the mail, and deal with the dishwasher repair man, and pack, and rendezvous with my friend who is procuring me some provisions for the trip, and—if there be time—perhaps even do some laundry. Then once Rider is off of work, he and I have to take my laptop to the repair shop (I'm getting my busted keyboard fixed while on this vacation), load all of our music equipment into his car, and somehow grab a meal at some point. Eeeek! This is what I get for only ever being in town for three-day stretches anymore, it seems.

I do feel a bit guilty about leaving my cat alone. My roommate, Anna, is going to feed her while I am gone, but my cat has a bit of a cold right now, and I feel bad about leaving her mostly alone while she is sick. She's never been sick before, and it's tempting to just want to curl up in bed with her and pet her until she's well. But this trip has been planned for months and months, and I doubt my presence would really do much in the way of helping her recover.

The thing where I work with Rider to handle his Google Calendar is working out well so far. We've planned our anniversary trip for the end of February, a weekend beach getaway someplace warm. We've figured out what the week schedule is going to be like for Claire's birthday in March. There was a bit of back-and-forth on that one, because Claire usually gets Thursday, we've agreed to do "birthday weekends" all weekend, and her actual birthday is on a Monday. I asked Rider if I could have Thursday that week, since she'd be getting the following four days, and he seemed stressed about it at first, but then just asked Claire about it. She balked a little for a moment, but when he explained to her that otherwise he wouldn't see me for five days, she relented. It seems that, slowly but surely, she is learning how to have some empathy for me.

Speaking of Claire, Rider gave me a bit more detailed backstory there when he and I were chatting over some beers last night. I'd already known the basic arc of the story, but he got into specifics that I hadn't remembered hearing before. I knew that they'd been together from 2007–2009, broken up messily, and not spoken to one another for some time, then eventually had started hanging out as friends and gotten back together. What he told me last night was that they'd started hanging out as friends again in early 2012; at that point, Rider was being monogamous with someone else, and a few months after his relationship with that person (with whom he was madly in love) ended, he and Claire started having sex again. That would have been around Memorial Day of 2013.

At that point, Rider still considered himself to be single, not poly, and he had two other casual things that started up around the same time. He hit a speed bump when he brought a date to an event Claire had arranged for his birthday, and they'd talked about it and Claire had suggested that they do a DADT poly thing. This was around the time that I met him and started becoming his platonic friend, and the rest is history. It was interesting to hear his story of how his life was in the months just leading up to our meeting. I want to know his entire story—all his details.

In other news, three days after Rider and I get back from College Town, I will be setting off to see Jake again. I miss the fuck out of him. After that, it will be over two months until we see each other again. I'm not looking forward to that, but I must say that I have to scrape some money together for a car before I can justify dropping any more cash on plane tickets for a while. I suppose I've gone up there a bunch—after next month, it'll be three times in a row—so he'll owe me some visits for a while.

And Moss cashed in his airline miles to get me to his city for his 40th at the end of March. I tried to pitch in for that, but he insisted that it was a gift. I'm taking three days off of work (unpaid, as usual), so I guess that counts for something.

And speaking of work, today I answered a knock at the door to discover the UPS man with a box for me from my bosses. Inside was a fancy name-brand purse that looks officially 500 times more grown up than anything else in the world that I own. How ridiculous is it that I immediately considered selling it on eBay and using the money toward travel? I won't, of course, but this is why I can't have nice things. And also a testament to how dangerous it is to be polysaturated with mostly out of town people. :p
 
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As I was reflecting on having almost 7 months here in my blog history, I just noticed that someone voted on my thread for the first time and thinks it's terrible! :eek: Not sure when that happened—I'd not really noticed the ratings much before—but it makes me feel kinda sad. I read some of the other blogs on here quite regularly, and I sort of felt a sense of community with these people that I've never met before, even if I rarely comment because I don't want to gum up their blogs. It's always a bummer to get an unsolicited dis. Hopefully I'm not violating some sort of community norm with the content of my posts...anyone care to enlighten me?
 
I don't know how commonly people use the rating feature (I don't). I'm sure some people use it for something other than actual ratings - for instance, how closely a situation resembles their own. Ignore it,:rolleyes:.

PS. Can't reflect too many opinions because I just added a 5star rating and now it average a whole star higher.
 
Aw, some people voted for me more positively. Thanks, peeps. You're right, Jane, I shouldn't worry too much about it. I just wasn't sure if I was somehow "doing it wrong." Good to know that's not the case.

My New Year's trip with Rider to see Sam...where should I begin? At the beginning, I suppose. It started off with some irritation, because I was supposed to drop my computer off for repair on our way out of town Tuesday, but they didn't have time for me! I was beyond frustrated, because I'd planned for my computer being out of service to coincide with my vacation days. Luckily, it's more of a minor problem than something dire, and I can continue to tolerate it indefinitely, but it did really suck. The drive itself, however, went very well, and we made amazing time, only three and a half hours.

We met Sam at his local pub, and he was already a few beers in and visibly drunk. Tipsy and with his guard down, he kept looking at me like he loves me. I wanted to pounce on him. Rider and Sam bromanced over tall cans, their friendship seeming not at all shaken by my interlude with Sam the previous week. We stayed at the bar for only a single drink before returning to Sam's house for a couple more, then turning in, Rider and I in the guest room. Sam had to work for a few hours in the morning, so we made it a fairly early night.

Rider and I slept in a little, had sex, then headed out for breakfast and to run some errands. Sam was home by noon, so we returned and began work on their traditional yearly sculpture. For several years now, they have made a wood sculpture to be burned in the bonfire, using a different technique each year. Last year's, I think, involved some sort of wire armature and smaller sticks. This year, we used a chainsaw to carve a large chunk of wood into the desired shape. It was an act of true teamwork, with Sam and I providing most of the brainstorming, and Rider and Sam providing most of the heavy-duty saw work.

Once the sculpture was completed and the sun had gone down, the three of us returned inside and took a little substance/cuddle break. We piled onto a small mattress together, with me between the boys, and just vibed with one another. I was holding each of their hands, and I felt like we three were a conduit into another dimension. It was warm and perfect and glorious. After a time, we realized it was getting to the point where people would start arriving soon, so we readied ourselves and the surroundings for the party.

The party was pretty good. It was mostly friends of Sam's tenant who lives in his guest house—younger than us by a good bit, for the most part. Sam was flirting with a cute girl, and I was rooting for him, but a friend of his swooped in and lured her away. I felt sad for Sam. He later told me that he and that friend are in competition over that girl as a matter of course. We all got pretty drunk, and once it was pretty late, Rider and I made the mistake of smoking some pot, which doesn't agree with either of us. We spent what little remained of the night holed up in the guest room cowering together, with me fighting the spins. But at least it stopped us from getting any drunker, so we were not hung over the next day. We woke up in the morning and had yummy sex.

New Year's Day, poor Sam was in a bad way, hoarking like crazy. Rider and I picked up some Chinese food for all of us, and we pretty much spent most of the day watching movies and being lazy.

Friday, Sam had to work, so Rider and I were going to go shopping and then meet Sam out at happy hour. The problem was that I'd accidentally left Rider's headlights on while running errands on Wednesday, so his battery was as dead as could be. Eventually Sam came to the rescue and put Rider's car on a charger, and I rode in the hatchback of the two-seater to happy hour, reminiscent of teenage days when there were always more friends than seatbelts.

We had a few margaritas, then returned to Sam's for more partying. We tore it up pretty good that night, just the three of us. Rider wanted to push Sam into a threesome, but I could tell that Sam wasn't feeling it, so we settled for topless massages. I feel so fiercely protective of Sam lately, not wanting to push him into anything that would make him feel uncomfortable. I love him! I told them that night that I love them both, and Sam, in his subdued, of-little-words way, said, "Back atcha." Which is probably as close as ILY as I'm getting from him for some time. I'll take it. LOL

(continued...)
 
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(...continued from previous)

The next day, on very little sleep, we headed out to meet Kelly and her roommate. I spearheaded the charge, as the boys were dragging their feet. We met them at the brewpub around noon, and things were going OK. Rider, Kelly, and roommate were speaking in inside jokes in a way that I found a bit irritating and boring, and Sam looked bored to tears, but I was feeling pretty good still.

We hopped to another bar, then to another. The third place was super smoky inside (ugh, indoor smoking!), especially on the second level, so Sam wanted to go outside and get some fresh air, then sit at a table near the entrance. Not wanting him to feel lonely, I joined him, leaving Rider, Kelly, and roommate upstairs. This is where things started to get weird.

Sam wanted to go for some coffee and a walk, so I went upstairs to tell Rider where we were headed. He said OK, and that we'd meet up in a bit. Sam and I went to get the coffee, then walked around the downtown area. He's not much for PDA, but he held my hand for a little while. I kind of wanted to find a bench and make out a bit, but no go. I started to really miss Rider, and time passed, and more time passed, and I hadn't heard from him. After a while, I texted him. His response showed no sign of wanting to meet back up, and I felt a bit sad at that. I pushed the meetup a little bit, and we reconvened.

After we met back up with them, Rider and Kelly were being quite amorous, all leaning close and clutching hands and making eyes. Rider did hold my hand for a little while, too, but seemed to lose interest in it after a time. I felt really strange, like I was in a limbo place where I didn't want to pour too much affection on Sam (since it's not really his thing), but also feeling terribly imbalanced like I was a fifth wheel along on Rider and Kelly's date or something. Not to mention the presence of the roommate, whom I didn't know and therefore made me a bit shy. It seemed to me like it was Rider's job to balance the social situation, since he was the person we all had in common, but he wasn't doing it because he was wrapped up in Kelly.

I put on my brave, cheerful face, not wanting to ruin anyone's good time, and hoping that no one there knew me well enough to see that I wasn't really having one. I started making more frequent trips to the bathroom just to be alone, taking longer and longer times each time.

Eventually, Rider must have seen some look in my eye, because he asked how I was doing, and I admitted to feeling anxious. He asked if it was anything he was doing, and at first I said no, but I just can't make myself lie to him, so I immediately confessed yes. We went away to talk for a little while—not a drama-filled thing like being dragged off by the arm or anything, but a quiet slipping out into a courtyard.

I explained that I felt a weird imbalance, like he was kind of ignoring me in favor of her, and he expressed shock. He said he'd thought that I kind of wanted him to leave me alone, so I could engage more with Sam, but that was totally not the case. He said that he thought that when we went off for our walk, there was an unspoken understanding there that we were each "giving each other space" to be with our other dates. Which wasn't the case at all—I'd only gone on the walk with Sam because I felt bad that the smoke was bothering him and didn't want him to be abandoned. I told Rider that if that had been what I wanted, space, then I'd have been explicit about it.

Rider asked what he could do, and the only thing I could think of at the moment was to balance things out a little bit more. Give me love too! And so he did, but my mood was already off and soured. I still put my best face on, though. As the night wore on, Kelly started flirting with Sam, too. That didn't really upset me, but it did leave me feeling a little adrift, since he'd kind of been the raft of familiarity I'd been clinging to in the sea of weird feelings. I started drinking more heavily to dull the sensation (never a good idea).

Things started to get fuzzy. Food was eaten, shots were taken, everyone was smiling, including me. I wasn't sure if my smile was a Black Hole Sun smile, stretched too taut across my skull and masking a wild-eyed darkness. I remember Sam telling me that I was going to pass out in the car, and my denying it. I don't remember saying our goodbyes, and I did indeed pass out in the car.

I came to when we pulled into the driveway. The hour nap had made me suddenly sober. Rider wanted to play music, so he and I did. Sam wanted to go to bed, so he did. Rider and I wound down our jam session and talked. He wanted to have sex, but I was so emotionally exhausted from the weird day and the series of hangovers and the lack of sleep and (let's face it) a little PMS that when I kissed him, I felt nothing. His lips felt on mine like the soft rubber of an inanimate object. We went to sleep.

I woke only a few hours later, squinched all the way to the far side of the mattress and curled up into a little ball. I lay there for a long time, thinking about things. I want Rider to be free. I want him to do the things that make him happy—the things he wants to do. So why did it bother me that he was paying more attention to Kelly than to me? He sees me all the time, and he was seeing her for only those 12 hours in a month.

Why do I have to feel like things in a moment are "fair" or "balanced"? His affections are not Skittles to be divided by a mother amongst her children, and I am not a five-year-old who should squabble if my sibling gets one more. And after all, things got better, not worse, with our weekly time-sharing, when we decided to say "fuck balance" and just do what comes naturally to us.

I uncurled a bit and went back to sleep, waking again in an hour.

So what was I afraid of? What was I losing over that 12 hours? The comfort of interacting with him, because he was otherwise distracted. The feeling of being important to him, because something right before my face was taking precedence. The security of knowing where I stood in a social situation, because usually I have him to guide me when I am among "his people" and when I do not, it feels like sink or swim.

But why choose to focus on those things that I lose? Why not instead focus on what I gain? A partnership without a need to control. The reflected glow of his happiness when he is taking advantage of every moment as he sees fit. The realization that all balance and all control is illusory anyway, and chasing it leads only to frustration.

I sighed, some of the tension leaving me, and cuddled into Rider, falling back to sleep again for four more hours.

When we woke, I was filled with so much love for him, and I felt so sorry and like such an ass for intruding on his good time with my bad feelings. Granted, it was only when he asked, and I did manage to hide it from everyone else, but I did inject a modicum of stress into his otherwise good night. I don't want to be that: the one who brings the stress. I want to bring peace and happiness and light, all the time. I apologized to him, and he looked at me like I was insane.

He was telling me that I have every right to feel the way that I felt, and that he should have done a better job of keeping things in balance, and that he will make sure he will do so in the future. I argued back that he should do whatever he wants to, and I reiterated my apology. We debated back and forth on whether feelings can be "wrong" and on the concept of balance, with him taking "my" side (that is, the side of the tortured creature I'd been the night before) and my arguing for his freedom. It was almost comical. In the end, we kissed and fucked and felt a million times better.

At one point, Rider told me that Kelly'd said to him that she thought that if her roommate hadn't been there, then "we'd all have been making out." Um, nope. But at least that means that she didn't catch on to my stress. When I told Rider that that's not going to happen, because I'm still not attracted to her, he asked why. I paused, and then explained to him that I thought it would be terribly rude for me to be discussing with him what I found unattractive about her. He said he just wanted to ask "in case it was something that could be remedied." Like, what does that even mean? I'd say something that I thought wasn't hot about her, and he'd suggest to her to change it? SMH, boys sometimes, I swear.

We didn't get out of bed until 4 pm, and thankfully, neither did Sam. I made a good breakfast that we ate around sunset, and we flopped out in front of nature shows and jazz documentaries until it was time to drive home. As Rider was packing his suitcase in the other room, I kissed Sam and told him that I would miss him. He said, "I'll miss you too. I'll miss both of you. You're lucky, because you only have one person to miss—I have two!"

Rider and I had a good drive home. It went quickly, and we shot the shit pretty much the entire time. We came back to my place to keep my cat company, and we had some really great sex. Tonight he's with Claire to make up for not having seen her for about a week. It's odd to miss him so much after having literally more than a week with him. I discussed it with him via IM and he said it's like an addiction: the more of me he sees, the more he wants. I feel the same way, and I suppose that's why people cohabitate.
 
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Maybe your feelings stemmed from the Xmas fallout with Claire. This was suppose to be the make up trip. Maybe it was the unknown of Sam you and Ryder being intimate. You seem to have gotten a "high" from that interaction, then it being so different. It could be a lot of things. But, isn't it okay to say I am having not good feelings for what could be multiple reasons. You went there saying you didn't know how you would feel. You do not have to take care of being fair to Ryder all the time. He is an adult, albeit a male (sometimes clueless regimens mines). You get to own the feelings of feeling a third wheel on there date. There is a difference between going with the flow and him blowing past a boundary. Possibly that has more to do with it. My point is don't beat your self up speak your feelings and allow him to be an adult with a mind to say no.
 
I haven't posted in a while, but only because I've been SO insanely busy. Rider and I had been back from visiting Sam for only four days before I was scheduled to visit Jake in Hometown, and then I was back from that for less than three days before I had to leave again on business. I got back from my business trip late Friday night, and this is the first chance I've had since then to read and write for pleasure.

My days with Rider leading up to my Hometown trip were good. Other than Monday night, which he spent reuniting with Claire, we spent each night together. I had him come over to my place Sunday, Tuesday, and Wednesday nights, because I was determined to keep my cat company.

Thursday night, I flew to Hometown to meet Jake. He paid for my cab from the airport to the bar where he was drinking with some coworkers. When I showed up, they were all obviously tanked. The coworkers had stuck around because they wanted to meet me, which I found sweet. They seemed really nice. After they left, Jake and I went back to his place. He picked some ivy and a twig of evergreen shrub with red berries, to give to me like a flower. This is an ongoing thing with him. I am beginning to have sort of a shrine in my room filled with his dried plant offerings.

We got back to his place, and I was determined to catch up, booze-wise. It's never fun to be the sober one when the other person is really drunk and repeating himself. I had a few glasses of box wine in quick succession, and somehow blacked out that fast. We apparently had sex, but I remembered nothing of it. Jake said it was good, and that he'd had trouble getting it up because he'd been so drunk, but that I was "diligent." Sounds like me, haha.

What I do remember about that night was standing in his kitchen talking to him while he fixed some food. I was drinking the box wine, and he was telling me about how he and his local girlfriend had broken up. Apparently, I was inadvertently the cause of it. I felt a bit guilty, even though I knew I hadn't done anything wrong. I'd acted only in accordance with what he'd told me. He explained to me that, in the end, she'd wanted something closer to a swinging arrangement—emotional monogamy paired with sexual freedom—and she wasn't happy when he fell for me. He'd told me months ago that they'd been having problems, but I hadn't realized that his relationship with me was at the root of them. Turns out it was. She started trying to get him to stop seeing me, but he said no, and so they broke up. Yet another case of my weird metamour curse...how many has it been now? Too many.

He started talking about how he thinks he is done with open relationships. He wants a life partner: someone to live with, someone to travel with, someone to grow old with. And he is having bad luck finding that in poly. He's been trying it since 2009, and he has repeatedly had the experience that women say they are OK with it, but when it comes time that he actually wants to become involved with someone else, they get jealous and start acting out, eventually to the demise of the relationship.

I got a little sad, because I realized that if he is done with poly and openness, then when he finds the next awesome person, the one who is willing to commit to him in that way, he and I will have to segue back into just friendship again. But I understand his desire to have that closeness with someone, and also his frustration at not being able to find it so far within a poly framework. When I voiced this all to him, he immediately said he didn't want to stop seeing me. So I began to suspect that maybe he wished I could be that person to him. But I can't. Because I am poly, and I would never shut down my other relationships to be with him. If he is looking for monogamy, he is barking up the wrong tree.

In any case, if it must end, at least it will not be soon. He graduates with his Master's in May, and he doesn't even know where he will be going after that. It seems unlikely that he will meet and settle down with someone in the next few months, with that in mind. And he is coming to visit me during his spring break in March.

We had a lovely time that weekend. We always drink too much when we are together, though. I can't keep up with him. The other two nights, I passed out in my boots. I told him it is probably a good thing we don't live closer together, because my liver would give out and I would die. He claims that we would slow down in that case because we would not be in "vacation mode." Perhaps. He is a terrible influence when it comes to these things. I am too old to be getting blackout drunk three nights in a row—I am not 22 anymore! We promised each other that in March, there will be less booze and more sex!

Every time we visit, I fall more deeply in love with him. I am completely smitten at this point. Just looking into his eyes or holding his hand jolts me with electricity. We have the craziest combination of history and newness. It was incredibly difficult to leave Hometown this time. I miss his eyes, his voice, his perfectly-equally-sized-to-mine hands. His kisses. Oh, my god, his kisses. The way he always picks plants for me and surprises me with downtown-vendor roses when he comes back inside from his smoke breaks.

The last day I was there, Sunday, I was finally able to bring him to orgasm. It was a lot of work, but when it happened, it was so insanely hot. So at least now we have each had one together. We're working on the sex thing, bit by bit. I've never before experienced that—where there is such intense love and passion, but the sex is so difficult. I think we'll get there; how could we not?

Eight more weeks until I am kissing him again.

Rider picked me up from the airport. I was in bad shape. I had a three-days'-worth hangover, and I barely felt human. My brain cells were all sodden and shaken, and the cold, dry weather had caused a breakout of psoriasis on my hand. We went for diner food then came home and had sex. I was too exhausted to come. Rider dropped off into peaceful sleep, but I had trouble sleeping, which is usually never a problem for me. My body was having trouble regulating its temperature—one minute freezing, the next minute sweating to soak the sheets. When I did sporadically drop off to sleep, I had terrible nightmares and weird lucid dreams that turned into hallucinations when I'd half-rouse. Nasty stuff. I felt like maybe I was catching a cold, but it never materialized. I called in late to work and slept until about 1:30 p.m.

The next day, I felt a lot better. Got a lot of work done and felt very motivated. I chatted with Sam trying to decide when he'd next come visit, since it's his turn to come see us. We were aiming for the last weekend of the month, but Sam was very disappointed that Rider could not get out of seeing Claire any weekend to spend with him. Sam doesn't care very much for Claire, and Claire prefers to spend her time with Rider one on one, not with Rider's friends tagging along. Sam did not sound appeased by the idea that he'd be able to spend that night (that Rider and Claire are together) with me. Which, I don't blame him, since a four-hour drive to see his best friend for only 24 hours instead of a whole weekend is kind of lame. But Rider couldn't get out of it because he's flying out to meet me on a business trip the following weekend and not seeing her. It was kind of a debacle of a conversation. Rider came over that night and made up for my lack of orgasm the previous night (and all weekend). We had another brief interlude the following evening, but I had to get to sleep early because I was leaving on a business trip at 6:00 a.m., so I sent him home to sleep.

continued...
 
...continued.

The business trip was a pain in the ass, and the hotel was way shittier than usual, but I impressed my boss, which is always good. I videochatted with Rider on Wednesday, and we got into talking about a bunch of serious shit, including how protective I feel of Sam and his feelings, and how I am starting to feel pressure to make a decision about whether to move to Opposite Coast at the end of the year. I cried at the idea of having to leave Rider behind, because I really don't think he wants to go. I really don't. But I feel like in order to be close to Oona again, and in order to advance professionally, I might have to go. But I feel like to leave Rider would be the most foolish thing I could ever do for my personal life. He's my "one." Of many, but still my "one." How could I ever leave him? In the end, we decided to set up a budget together to save without making a true plan about what to do, so that if circumstances align, and if the decision to move is the right one, we can do that. And if not, hey, at least we'll have saved some cash.

I was supposed to videochat with Moss on Thursday, but I was too tired and fell asleep right after dinner. I got back Friday night, late due to a delayed flight, and Rider and I played music. He greeted me at the airport with roses. I think Jake and his proliferation of green gifts has rubbed off on Rider. It's cute. Rider had never gotten me flowers before Jake started doing it.

We went for diner food that night, then played some music. I need to start running again, because my cheeks are starting to look chipmunk-y, as they do when I begin gaining weight. Of course, my lovers swear that I am perfect, but I have my own standards to live up to, and they do not include chipmunk-y cheeks and the beginnings of a small double chin, haha. Now that I have two whole weeks ahead of me without going out of town, I will start. I'm going to plan a route out today and go on my first run tomorrow. Cheaper than the gym, but hopefully just as effective.

Yesterday, Rider and I slept in very late, on purpose. We both needed to catch up. We had big plans to play more music before attending a friend's birthday dinner, but they were thwarted by the need to take Rider's elderly pet to the vet. I offered to drive, and Rider was crying on the way there, fearing that the vet would say it was time to put him down. The creature came home with antibiotics, but all of our "us time" was spoiled by that. I'm glad he's OK though.

The birthday dinner was mildly pleasant. We were supposed to attend the BBQ of Rider's hairdresser-crush after that, but Rider's car broke down as we went to leave the birthday dinner. He had a really bad day yesterday! He called a tow, and I called Allie to come rescue us. She and I had plans to do Girls' Night Out, and it was getting late. The tow took forever to come, so Rider insisted that Allie and I proceed with our plans and leave him there, saying that Claire would pick him up. I overheard him on the phone with Claire, and it was a strange feeling, hearing him call someone else "baby." I don't tend to reuse terms of endearment concurrently (I can't imagine calling any of my lovers "baby" but him), so it just felt weird as hell to hear him do it, like I was suddenly very un-special, a cog in the machine. I didn't say anything about it though; I just processed it and moved along. It wasn't out of trying to hide anything from him, per se. I just knew that I needed to deal with it on my own, without making him feel weird, and especially at that moment when so much else had been going wrong.

Girls' Night Out with Allie and my other friend was a hit. We had a great time. I kissed them both, but tenderly, not in a passion-filled makey-outey kind of way. They are both good kissers. Before my other friend arrived, Allie and I had a big chunk of time where we were shooting the shit, and Allie was asking me about poly and about Claire. Allie knew Claire before she knew me, though she's never known her well, and she seemed puzzled that Claire wants literally nothing to do with me. Allie said that when she (Allie) and I started hanging out, Claire was weird to her for a while, ignoring her at mutual friends' gatherings, like it was some high-school shit. But Allie is a really nice person, and she was persistent about maintaining their friendship (superficial though it is), and eventually Claire warmed up to her again.

That bugs me though—the idea that Claire would freeze out mutual friends merely for being my friend. Obviously it only makes herself look bad, but I really wish my metamours did not so often react negatively to me and my sphere of influence.

Rider also told me at some point that he was hiding from Claire how much time he and I spend together. He had originally said that she'd be happy with her two days, independent of what kind of time he spends with me, but that he'd let slip to her that there was a period where he hadn't spend a single night in over two weeks in his own bed, and she'd gotten weird about it. So since then, he's been keeping things on the down-low. I guess that's fine, since I'm still getting what I want, but their poor communication continues to mystify me. I would never want to be with someone with whom I could not be completely frank about how I spent my time. At this point, I am just telling myself that it's none of my business.

I was reflecting on poly the other day, and saying it out loud to Rider after I'd thought about it a while. For months and months, I was mostly "poly in theory." I knew that I loved Rider, and I had my budding connections with others (including my at-a-distance rekindling with Moss), but I didn't know for SURE how it would work for me when I finally seriously fell for someone else—when one of my connections became more than just a crush and into head-over-heels territory. That was unlikely to ever happen with Moss again, since I'd been there once before with him, and our connection was so historical and mellow, having been married before and knowing each other for eight years.

But I am officially and totally smitten with Jake now and...it works. It just works. It was so hard to leave Hometown, knowing I wouldn't see him again for two months, and loving him so much. But when I got back, I still loved Rider just as intensely, if not even more so. My love for Jake takes absolutely nothing away from my love for Rider. I love them each so much, and they seem to add to each other rather than take away from each other. Jake reminds me to bring Rider's favorite beer home that he can't get where we live. Rider is inspired by Jake to bring me flowers and has offered to let Jake stay at his place when he visits if his pet allergies overcome him.

So things are good. Weird, but good. I know that everything is going to change somehow, and soon. I am staring down the barrel of the Opposite Coast question, and Rider is slogging through the mud of that decision with me. Jake is about to graduate and move who-knows-where, plus thinking about ending poly life. Claire is tenuously balanced upon satisfaction-through-deceit. Rider is falling harder and harder for Kelly and is going to visit her when I visit Moss at the end of March. Moss made his New Year's resolution to get more serious about dating locally, and who knows what kind of demands that's going to place on him. Sam's family members have started friending me on social media, and I have no idea what or how much they know. Everything is so delicately balanced, and the tiniest shift could send my entire world spiraling into chaos. But for now, happiness. And peace.
 
I've been having some weird feelings recently in relation to Rider and Kelly. I suppose it's some kind of jealousy, but I don't really understand it, so I've come here to write it out, because sometimes that helps me figure things out. I am not used to experiencing jealousy, so I just feel kind of boggled and clueless: where is its logic?

The thing that I am feeling feels like an aversion to certain thoughts when the combination of the two of them crosses my mind. It makes me all heart-racey, and not in a good way. If the thoughts creep past when I am on the edge of sleep, either at night just before dropping off, or in the morning when just waking up, I am INSTANTLY wide awake and filled with adrenaline. It can't be good for the heart.

It's weird, because I almost never get those feelings in relation to Claire, but something about Kelly tweaks me. At the same time, I want to be her friend (to the degree that such a thing is possible when she lives five hours away), and she seems to want to be mine. Because I can't seem to understand my feelings yet or put them into a narrative, perhaps I will just start with bullet points, some of which are sure to be irrelevant:

Things that make me feel the bad feeling:

  • knowing how much Rider talks to her via IM all day while he is at work
  • suspecting that his talking to her that much is why he has been talking to me less (which is silly because I've often thought I *need* to talk to him less so that I can get more done)
  • when he says things in strong anticipation of their visit (e.g., when he says that having set a date for their visit is starting to make him "Kelly-crazy")
  • seeing on his YouTube channel that he has made her a playlist (he's made me so many playlists that I've come to feel like this is "our thing," in a way)

Things that make me feel a mild annoyance/bitterness related to the bad feeling, but don't actually cause the heart racing:

  • how Rider "likes" every silly thing she puts up on her Facebook page, even when it is something stupid/lame—as though everything she puts up is an invitation for him to interact.
  • when Rider and I are watching a show and we are disagreeing over whether an actress is attractive, and we discover that the defining feature that the actress has that we disagree over is one that Kelly has very strongly (I find it repulsive, and he finds it irresistible), and he goes on and on about how hot it is.

The bad feeling feels like fear. So what am I afraid of?:

  • ???
  • ???????
  • Things between Rider and me not being "special"? But what does that even mean? Does something need to be completely unique to have meaning? Of course not.

Things that I am definitely NOT afraid of:

  • Rider preferring Kelly over me overall.
  • Rider leaving me. (This will never happen. If anything, I am in danger of leaving him when it comes to a question of whether I need to move.)

Things about Kelly that I admire:

  • She is a very driven person and has accomplished much at a young age.
    [ *] She will have completed her PhD at 25, whereas I entered grad school at 27 and decided to leave with a terminal master's at 29. I can't imagine what it's like to know what you want so young and pursue it so doggedly.
    [ *] She has a bodybuilding hobby that she works toward with great dedication.
  • She has pretty eyes.
  • She does not seem intimidated by anyone and integrates herself easily into groups of people who are much older and have more life experience.
  • She seems friendly and like she wants to get to know me, instead of wanting nothing to do with me and shutting me out like Claire does.

Things about Kelly that I find less than pleasing:

  • I do not find her attractive to look at (body type, facial features, etc.).
  • I find it annoying that she gets blatantly sexually aggressive to people (so far witnessed with Rider and Sam) when intoxicated.

Random things about Rider and Kelly that make them well-suited for each other:

  • They both had a pre-existing involvement in kinky things, with a lot of overlap of specific things that they both like.
  • They both root rabidly for the same sports team.
  • There is some degree of overlap in the music they both like.
  • They grew up in the same state, and so their "home culture" is bound to be similar.
  • They are both looking for something fleeting and casual, not trying to be life partners to each other.

Random things about Rider and Kelly that make them ill-suited for each other:

  • They live five hours apart and will likely be living even farther apart after Kelly graduates.
  • They have a 13-year age gap that has led Rider to remark that they are at very different places in their lives.
  • I have heard Kelly mention that she is as yet undecided whether she eventually will want children, whereas Rider is certain that he does not.

Ways in which I feel like I am a hypocrite and/or making zero logical sense when I let things about them bother me:

  • I openly squee over my connections to Jake and to Sam, so why should it bother me if Rider does the same over Kelly?
  • The fact that Rider has someone else to talk to throughout the day really does help me get more work done.
  • The fact that I want Rider to be happy, but then evidence of his happiness is rubbing me the wrong way rather than pleasing me? This is new. It used to be the opposite.

(continued...)
 
(...continued from previous)

I started to really know that something was wrong with me last night. I was sitting in Rider's living room getting some work done, and he was in his bedroom playing guitar along to YouTube videos. Since his stereo was hooked up to his computer, I could hear the IM noise go off, and hear him stop playing and tap out a response, then resume his playing. I became more and more irked, sure that it was HER he was typing to, and wanting it NOT to be.

But why? Why have that mean thought? It's not like I was actively spending time with him—I was busy with other obligations. Why should I care if he's devoting that time to someone else? It's exactly the sort of nonsense behavior that I've silently judged others for. I am not generally mean or cruel or controlling by nature, so why have mean, cruel, controlling thoughts. I truly want other people to have whatever makes them happy. So where did that little shard of viciousness come from? I must look deep inside myself and dig it out.

As I've listed here, Kelly is mostly a lovely person. I can think of more things that I like about her, by far, than things that I dislike. At the same time, I do not feel threatened by her. I don't think that Rider would leave me for her. And I don't feel insecure beside her—despite her stronger ambition, I feel like I have enough of my own awesomeness going on to balance it out, plus I think that I am objectively better looking. (Sorry, but the blog is the place for truth!) So this thing has nothing really to do with Kelly at all.

So if not dislike of her, and if not insecurity by comparison, what then?

Reading these lists, I guess what I see is that I have some sense of loss over feeling special or wanting to feel like what he and I have/do is unique. I think maybe I have confused "Rider-in-love things" with "Reverie-and-Rider things"; the gazillions of IMs (we are currently tallied at over 80k), the playlists, the breathless desperation to see one another—I am used to those things being "ours," but maybe he just does that with everyone. Having never experienced "Rider-love" before, I had the wrong idea that what we'd been doing was unique. I never went through this with Claire, I guess because their situation was pre-existing, and I never got to see it at its "playlists and a million IMs" stage. So I thought I was immune to the jealousy and sense of loss.

I had a feeling like what Rider and I have trumps everything—that it existed in a little bubble of privilege. And now that bubble has burst, and I am rocketing back toward the earth. THAT is where the adrenaline is coming from: I've been unwittingly skydiving from the heights of complacent love and security down into the reality that those things that lifted me there were not some special wings unfolded only for me, but "business as usual."

But in thinking about it this way, I am going about it all wrong. Fine, maybe these things that we do are not "Rider-and-Reverie things." Maybe there is no such thing as "Rider-and-Reverie things." Maybe there are only Rider things, and Reverie things, and we share these things with each other, the way you'd share a blanket. It's not "giving" because there is no transference of possession. I don't come to own his blanket because I've slept under it. It's "sharing" all the way. Just because he has done something with/for me does not make it part mine. It is still his, but I have gotten to enjoy it for a time.

When I consider this—the importance I've placed on things being "ours"—I wonder why. I think maybe it is a holdover from being in mostly monogamous relationships historically. Especially when things became long-term and things like living together started to happen, there was always an emphasis on "ours," as though to solidify coupledom, the couple has to stake claims on things: "our favorite restaurant"; "our song." I think that until now, I've never stopped to question that sort of thing. I saw it so much growing up, both in adult role models and in popular culture, that I just assumed it was part of the package of being in relationships. How much we assume if we never stop to consider!

The other aspect of this whole thing—the overwhelming desire to be "special"—well, it just sounds so utterly childish when I type it out that way. But as I try to pick it apart and consider it, it's too easy for the pendulum to swing all the way in the opposite direction to nihilism: no one is special and nothing has meaning—the whole Fight Club "you're not a beautiful and unique snowflake" thing. Perhaps if I reframe the whole idea:

I might not be "special," if special means the unique recipient of a set of words/actions/activities from/with a particular person. But I probably am pretty special if special means that I am part of a subset of humanity willing to consider and pick apart my emotions to get to the bottom of the negativity and there find calm and quiet. And a smaller subset still: one of those willing be brave enough to communicate that process to those closest to me in a carefully thought out, un-marred by the heat of the moment manner, free of blame or controlling requests.

I feel better now. Thanks, blog. And thanks, readers, for putting up with my fragmented, probably barely followable stream of consciousness.
 
Dear Rider,

Where do I begin?

I guess the first thing I should start with is a set of words of reassurance. I know that this shifting of the winds is making you uneasy, and perhaps even frightened. I am sorry for that. I want to reassure you that I still love you, deeply, and I am not planning on breaking up with you as a result of this soul searching.

That said, I don’t know what I am going to do as a result of it. Probably absolutely nothing, for the time being.

As I have tried to explain, the thing that I feel is like a child who has just discovered the non-existence of Santa Claus. What I imagine it feels like to a former believer who has discovered the non-existence of god. Or what it must feel like to be ignorant of science, therefore holding a belief that mankind is important, then discovering the scale of the universe and our own insignificance.

And, of course, I am better off for this knowledge, as in all of the above cases.

Love is not really magic. It is never fated, nor promised continuance. The relationship that I happen to be in at any given time (or my favored one, if I am in multiple) comes with no special privilege just by virtue of being mine, no matter how convincing life may be in its laying of trappings suggesting that I am the star of my own story. Love is a cocktail of chemical impulses that weave themselves into a narrative that our culture constructs for us, which our upbringing then hones. We translate this narrative into our own set of habits based on what we enjoy and what has worked for us before in our efforts to secure partners. Love is a science.

And just like a science, it doesn’t bend to the whims and wishes of those who would experiment with it. It is what it is. Whatever that is.

I think I have been guilty of too much magical thinking, even as I told myself all along that magical thinking is bullshit. And yet it is something that I have always done.

With you, everything felt different. You are truly my friend, and we are completely honest with each other. This closeness—this laying bare—left me less guarded than I have ever been in my life. Completely unguarded, in fact. I looked into your eyes while clothed and halfway across the room and felt greater desire than I’ve felt for most people during the hottest, heaviest makeout sessions. You seduced me, perhaps accidentally, with your very you-ness, no games, no pretense, no attempts to clean the house before I came over or to straighten out your all-day bed-head hair. I fell for you like a ton of bricks before our lips ever touched. It was a completely unique experience for me.

Because of that, the fantasy-spinning faeries were harder at work in my mind than ever before: Maybe there is such a thing as a “one.” It somehow feels like we were “supposed” to meet. I could look at you and just feel “happily ever after” as though it were being promised to me in invisible ink on the air between us. My hopeful heart was dreaming up all kinds of shenanigans and wishes that I would look at you and smirk and not say (that I still won’t say, so superstitious am I about them that, even not believing, I won’t ruin them in the minuscule shred of a chance that they will come true). Great, big dreams based on a tiny chunk of time.

I’ve always told you that love is what I do. It’s what I’m good at. I pour myself over people like so much warm honey and start reaching toward the point where we can construct a magic cloud-castle built of shared plans, goals, hopes, dreams. I make the dreaming delicious. Even as a poly person, I’ve always wanted more than anything to find one more-than-everything-else: someone who found me special enough to build along with me—someone who would share everything with me, and I with them, and we’d stand back-to-back against the world, letting no one else all the way in.

And I’d build a mythology; love is my religion: this is the sacred hallowed ground where we first kissed—my foot can never step there with another’s. These are the magic words that I’ll never say to another—they cast a spell that keeps us together and protected from all the bad in the world. These are the tiny rituals that we complete, acts of love and service and soul-cement that keep the bricks of our cloud fortress strong. And inside of it we dwell, two-nearly-as-one. Others can visit, but no one knows our spells and codes, so no one can unravel us.

But life doesn’t work that way. In poly, those hallowed grounds consecrated by one kiss work just as easily to enchant another. Magic words and names are simple nouns and verbs, put as well to the purpose of comforting, seducing, placating, pleasing another as well as they work on each other. The rituals we create based on activities, places, songs—these can cement other walls built on other hills, suburban cottages on culs-de-sac that are shaped the same and have the same black driveways, even if they are painted a different color. Call this one terracotta. A terracotta cottage, shaped just like all the others. No Victorian cloud fortress, no castle, no turrets. It’s a different kind of boring than monogamy, but it’s still boring. For someone who won “most unique” in high school and who takes pride in finding some way to rise above the herd, it’s a rude awakening to find it impossible to stand out.

It’s not even just that poly sucks. All poly does is make it easier to see. Poly sucks, because nothing is sacred and who wants to have the same-looking bungalow as everyone else in the neighborhood? The cloud castle becomes far less beautiful when the architect puts ten of them on the same block—it’s a caricature of a dream house. But monogamy sucks too, probably more, because humans are not naturally monogamous, and trading your own freedom for control of someone else is a load of horseshit. To breed resentment and over-comfort within the stale confines of only two seems doomed from the start. The cloud castle becomes the cloud prison. And then, needless to say, loneliness and celibacy suck.

So basically, all the permutations of ways of living kind of suck, and romance and magic are dead. Yes, shocking that I am just now figuring this out. Choosing poly is choosing the lesser of the evils, but the knowledge of the suck-itude is going to take some getting used to. I feel like I am teetering between throwing a crying titty-baby tantrum about the whole thing, or going totally the other way and turning into a bitter cynic. How to strike a balance between the tender and the tough that leaves me still adult, but still human? How do I deal with the feeling that I may have squeed my last?

The good news, at least, is that the jealousy is gone. I am pining over the loss of my innocence and the death of romance, but I no longer give a rat’s ass about the particulars of who does what with whom. About that, I have near-total peace. Everyone should do exactly what makes them happy, because they are the only person who can make them happy. If you’re happy, then I’m happy that you’re happy, because I love you, and I’m glad you’ve found that for yourself. Me, I’m not sure what will make me happy. For too long, too much of it was staked on my erroneous notions of love. Now I have to figure the rest of it out. Love, those sweet chemical sensations of bliss, might factor into it, but can no longer be the largest component. I was once “made of love.” Now I’m made chiefly of confusion and pensiveness.

I do know that I still value your presence—your words, your cuddles, and whatever other types of affection we might share. It still brings me pleasure to be close to you. I don’t expect that to change. I expect that when I settle down a bit emotionally, I will probably resume having a libido. I don’t know what its strength will be like, because for me, desire is often (not always, but often) tied to those strange domestic cloud-castle fantasies, and if they are dead, I just have to see what rises from the ashes. I do love you, and I want to be with you. I’m just working on figuring out again what all those words mean.

Love,
Reverie
 
Sounds rough. I hope you feel more like your old self soon.

I've always been fairly cynical about romantic love. Never dreamed big dreams about love ever.

I find as I age that I'm losing some of that. I'm still cynical about romantic love but I'm less cynical about other types of love. The love I share with friends, with my dog, with my partner. The hugs, time spent together, sharing hopes and dreams with others. These I value now. I value that stuff so much that I've built a life that allows me to spend more time nurturing those things than many people are able to.

To me, it doesn't in any way suck to be single and celibate. I did that for years while being utterly happy. To me, it also doesn't suck to be monogamous. I value different ways of loving and so don't want to be finding my spare time and energy sucked into dealing with additional partners or the needs of metamours. If things change for me in the future - if I find I have more spare time or more interest in romantic love then I suspect that I would find that poly didn't suck either.

There are other ways to love, other ways to dream. Sometimes loss of innocence isn't a terrible thing.

I live a life of unimaginable wealth. I can buy more food than I need to eat, food of breathtaking variety. I can walk outside whenever I want. I can drive myself to visit friends. I have good relationships in my life. This is wealth far beyond the dreams of many in the world. So life doesn't suck at all.

I very much hope that you find your balance and your joy again soon. Sending you good wishes.

IP
 
Thanks to everyone who sent kind words, either here on the thread or via PM. Things are a lot better now than they were a few days ago. I got a reply email from Rider that scared the shit out of me, taking me from sort of a weepy, half-numb bitterness into a state of utter terror. It included this paragraph:

"When I take time to consider the bigger picture, I think that I can see many ways in which our relationship has been flawed so far. It may make sense to dial this back and try to be more realistic about what it is, and what our expectations may be, and how those expectations may change going forward. We may want to consider how attached we have been and how attached we want to be to each other in the future."

And I realized, upon reading it, that becoming less attached to Rider was about the worst possible thing I could think of. I totally freaked out, which included crying softly in an arcade (embarrassing!), and he reassured me that he was actually only reflecting back to me what he thought I needed to hear—he was equally as freaked out and had thought that maybe what he needed to do to keep me was to pull back some. It wasn't that he actually wanted to be less close to me.

And then I confessed the last secret in all the world that I had from him, which is that I'd been biding my time until we'd been together for a full year before bringing up the topic of marriage, because I'd thought for a long time after my divorce from Moss that I never wanted to be married again, but my closeness to Rider had changed my mind. I was convinced that it was crazy, though, because we hadn't yet been together for a full year, and things are impossibly complicated (not to mention a bit unstable right now), so I was repeatedly forcing myself to NOT say it whenever it popped to mind. I'd even started strategizing a plan for how I might eventually ask him: to have a piece of jewelry commissioned and then dress him up like a girl (that's something we're into) and present it to him, totally reversing our gender roles. But I was so determined not to say anything to him about it, at least, not for a while longer.

And he was kind of blown out of the water by that—would it mean that I'd want to stop being poly? (No. Open marriages are a thing, and I'm still not capable of monogamy.) Well, what would it mean then? (I just want us to be a totally unshakeable team, determined to be together no matter what life throws at us. I want social recognition of that fact. I think that what I feel for him is so deep that "boyfriend" or even "lover" doesn't adequately describe it. He feels like family.)

He said that all of that was the most romantic thing he'd ever heard, and that even the way that I talked about doing it (the gender-bendy thing) just proved to him how well I understand him. I expressed my shame at thinking such wild things so early, and told him that I'd been planning to hold out until at least after a year, and he reminded me that we're almost there anyway—less than a month to go until our anniversary—so I hadn't done that poorly a job.

And I said that we didn't have to keep talking about it now; if it was crazy BEFORE, it's even crazier now that things have been so weird this week. I was just exhausted from keeping it a secret and I got to relieve myself of that burden when I needed a way to explain to him exactly HOW attached I really was to him, and how attached I wanted to be. And we both dropped a few tears, and clutched each other's hands and have been flying high and super-close ever since.

So...some combination of love and fear and honesty and tears took the bitterness away. And the jealousy didn't even come back. I have no idea how it worked, but it did. Maybe there is some magic left after all.
 
Rider and I are now even better than we were before the whole strange rollercoaster of jealousy/withdrawing/confessing/recovery. We've hung out for the past four days straight, and we talked more about the whole marriage-in-a-year-or-two thing to clarify some points, and he said that he feels the exact same way that I do—so, I guess we have the same views on attachment, commitment, and timeline. We've been having insanely delicious sex, some of it quite adventurous, some of it uncomplicated but still mind-blowing. I don't know HOW it always happens that we are closer than ever after we hit a snag and then overcome it, but it has happened consistently.

Sam is coming to visit us this weekend, and he will probably spend the second night that he is in town with only me, since Rider is scheduled for QT with Claire that night. I have not had a man other than Rider in my new apartment and my new bed, so that should be interesting. My bed is a bit bigger than Sam's, so there is plenty of space for him to not have to be touched while he sleeps. I have evil plans afoot to bring Allie out with us on Friday, and try to incite some Rider-Reverie-Sam-Allie action. I won't push too hard for it—I never like to force Sam out of his comfort zone—but I know that Rider and Allie are both up for it, and I'll drop it as an option to Sam, if he's interested. :)

My main project this week has been trying to buy a car. I crashed my car of 14 years back in September, and I've been relying on a combination of bicycle/taxi/foot/Rider for the past five months. I finally have the cash on hand to get a cheap beater car (which is what I had been driving in the first place!), and I want to make sure I get one before Jake comes down in mid-March. We're supposed to take a little overnight roadtrip to a popular vacation spot, and I'd rather not have to rent a car, if I can avoid it. I want my time with him to be devoid of worry about pickup and dropoff times.

Sam is one of those handy fellows who knows a great deal about cars, especially the older Honda variety that most interest me. (Coincidentally, Rider, Sam, and I are all brand-loyal to older Hondas with manual transmissions and hatchbacks.) He has been helping me shop, and he even offered that if he finds a suitable car near him (four hours away from me), he'd just buy it for me and I can pay him back when I see him. That he'd go through all that trouble for me—shopping, emailing flaky Craigslist people, haggling, fronting me the money, etc.—makes me feel so warm and fuzzy. He's such a good guy. One of the perks of poly is definitely having a network of people with a wide variety of strengths to whom I am so close that they'd do almost anything for me. I hope to be able to return such favors in kind.

Big news on the Oona front is that she finally admits to being in love! She's been seeing this guy, Toby, since roughly mid-September, and I had a good feeling about him from the start. They'd been platonic friends for a while, and he kind of grew on her, and they started dating. She'd been super-skeptical about whether it would turn into anything—he's not her usual "type" and she is super-picky—but over time, he's proven himself worthy to her. They had the monogamy talk last weekend (though Oona is still allowed girls), and exchanged ILYs, and I'm really super happy for her. I haven't heard her be this happy about anyone in EONS. No, really, it's been so many years. I knew she loved him before she admitted it, and it's just plain adorable.

Of course, the exclusivity clause means that she won't get to play with Rider anymore, but that's a tiny drawback amidst a lot of good. One funny thing is that Toby and Rider have a lot in common: they are birthday twins (Rider is one year older), they are both musicians, they both went to Catholic high schools, and they are both of very pale Northern European heritage, but they both dye their hair so you can't tell at a glance. It's almost like Oona went and got herself an Opposite-Coast-version of Rider. Totally adorable.

One good thing that came out of the recent turmoil that is poly-related is my realization of how strong the rest of my network is. When things seemed upside-down and shaky with Rider, Oona, Moss, and Jake were all very solidly there for me, reassuring me that I am loved, and rooting for everything to turn out OK. I had a long, tearful phone conversation with Oona, a beer-fueled ranty videochat with Moss, and a series of very long IMs with Jake—all were right there for me in my time of need. And when things were resolved, they were all genuinely happy for me. I have surrounded myself with such wonderful people.

Tonight, Rider and I have plans to cook dinner together (he wants to learn my stir-fry recipe), play music, and then he wants to return all the kinky sexual favors I lavished upon him last night. I have been such a pervert this week. Yesterday, I requested my first dick pic ever! Rider said no one had ever requested that of him before. But it is such a fine dick that I really wanted one. Oh, ovulation week; it makes me so pervy.

And I am soooo looking forward to this weekend with Rider, Sam, and Allie! Words cannot even describe my excitement.
 
...One of the perks of poly is definitely having a network of people with a wide variety of strengths to whom I am so close that they'd do almost anything for me. I hope to be able to return such favors in kind.... I have surrounded myself with such wonderful people.

This.

Between my partners, my few close friends, and my family - anytime someone needs help - bam, there it is. Need a brake job? check. Need a babysitter? check. Need to borrow a truck? a roto-tiller? check. Need a new roof on the cabin? check. Need a dozen people show up to help you move? check. Someone to watch your dog? or take them to the vet? check. A cuddle, a hug, a shoulder to cry on? check.
 
So THIS happened:

http://www.polyamory.com/forum/showthread.php?t=73374

Other things of note:

On Thursday, Rider and Claire had their first threesome, with a girl they know from their friends' weekly dinner party slash jam session. Rider was pretty stoked about it, even though he said that he didn't find the other girl particularly physically attractive; he was just happy to have finally had that experience with Claire, after they'd been talking about it for a while. It was apparently all Claire's idea, and Rider kind of "took one for the team" but then Claire was a little weird about it in the morning.

My Friday night schemes for getting with Rider, Allie, and Sam at the same time fell through, because Allie had to cancel to be present at the birth of her best friend's child. Rider, Sam, and I went bar-hopping, then just hung out. Toward the end of the night, Sam laid his head in my lap for a while, and it was very sweet.

Saturday morning, I ended up finally buying a car, with the guidance of Sam and Rider. It seems like a good car for being an old beater (just how I like 'em!) and the only thing that I can find really wrong with it is that sometimes the AC/heat fan blows, and sometimes it doesn't. I think that should be a pretty cheap fix.

Saturday night was Rider's night with Claire, so I had a proper date night with Sam. I cooked for both of the boys before we went our separate ways, then Sam and I went downtown to walk around and have some drinks. We later came back to my place and had fantastic sex. Ugh, he is so hot.

We had a really intense conversation while we were out, just sitting in his van, in which Sam was telling me that Rider has a history of choosing difficult women, and Sam can almost never see what Rider sees in them. With Claire, especially, Sam is perplexed because he doesn't even find her aesthetically pleasing, which was how he'd been able to explain away some of the earlier women. He said that, even more than just being indiscriminate (which is something that I myself get irritated with sometimes), Rider seems to actually seek out women with personality traits that Sam finds annoying. Over their 20+ years of friendship, he's learned to just kind of shake his head and accept it. All I can say about that is that I guess I'm really glad I get the stamp of approval!

Sunday, Sam and I went thrifting, and I found some really cool shirts, then we shopped for the SuperbOwl party and started with all the prep while we waited for Claire to drop Rider off.

The party was great, briefly discussed in the above-linked thread, despite the drama. After cooking, I got a bit of cuddle time with the boys, which was nice. At the end of the night, Rider and I had great sex, then Rider and I stayed up discussing the Claire situation. He is really pretty fed up with her. Even though the party was great, he was pretty pissed because he'd turned people away who wanted to be there, citing overcrowding, and then Claire and her friends didn't come, meaning that it was actually on the small side. You don't mess with Rider's football parties without consequences, haha.

Rider and Claire are supposed to hang out and go to a several-night music event Tuesday through Thursday this week. I am leaving for a business trip early Wednesday, and Rider is meeting me up there Friday afternoon; we're going to have a little mini-vacation. I hope that Rider's spending time with Claire will clarify his feelings about where he wants their relationship to go. If he does decide to stay with her, I am sending her that letter so she can think on it over the weekend that she has all to herself while we are out of town. I am tired of her bullshit and I want us to just be able to act like grown people. Rider is tired of having to exclude one or the other of us from his important events: parties, music shows, birthdays, holidays. Something will be changing very soon, but I do not know which way things will go.
 
I suppose that I have a lot to report, although I was trying to wait until I had even more to report (which statement you'll understand soon enough).

Monday night last week, Rider ended up coming down with the cold that Sam brought to town. Luckily, I escaped it, despite having not been shy about swapping germs with Sam. I made Rider hot toddies and warm food with lots of healing veggies, and we made it a lazy night in, going to sleep early.

Tuesday night last week, Rider and Claire were supposed to attend the first night of a multi-night musical event, but Rider was still feeling too under the weather and wanted to rest up for our trip the following weekend, so he and Claire stayed in. They had a long talk about the events of the previous weekend, and Rider decided to try to work things out with her, provided she work on her extreme separatist policy. She agreed that she would, in time, which was not exactly what Rider wanted to hear, but things were tenuously peaceful.

Wednesday morning, I left super-early for the work conference in the city where Rider would be meeting me on Friday. Rider and I did a lot of IMing while I was en route, and he told me about how the previous night with Claire had gone. We both agreed that the letter I'd been planning to write and send her might be the thing she needed to warm her heart to me and realize how much I'd been looking out for her behind the scenes, therefore I was no threat to her. I spent that night after work carefully reworking several drafts of it, to make sure that I used the most diplomatic language possible. Rider spent that night in playing video games with Claire and continuing to recover from his cold rather than go out to see music.

Thursday, Rider looked over my letter to her and said that he didn't see anything in it that anyone could find offensive—all of it was true and all carefully worded—so he gave his blessing for me to send it off as a last-ditch hope to speed Claire's progress along in being more comfortable with me.

Well, that backfired.

Apparently, as soon as she read it, she started giving him a bunch of shit. She got into the booze pretty hard, and by the time he got to her house to talk her down, she was bawling and too deep into the bottle to be much of a conversationalist. She accused me of trying to drive a wedge between them (exactly the opposite of what I'd tried to do) because I mentioned times when I'd looked out for her when he'd been thoughtless. The way she took it was "nyah-nyah-nyah, his first instinct was to be a shitty boyfriend to you!" when what I'd meant was "look, we can look out for each other and be more teammates than rivals!" Neither Rider nor I had anticipated that interpretation of malicious intent. At some point, Claire brought up the idea of them taking a break, but then seemed uncertain about it as the night wore on.

He left her house relatively early, to try to make sure that he was in bed to catch the plane to meet me at the conference city, so he had to leave her a crying mess, but he said that there wasn't much he could have done, given how drunk she was. He got home and hopped on videochat with me, and we went over all the ways things had gone wrong. I was really peeved that my attempt to do something good had backfired so spectacularly, especially when I'd put so much thought into being as inoffensive as humanly possible. We ended up videochatting way longer than we should have, and it got pretty late. He at least got 7 hours of sleep, but I only got about 4. Once we get started talking, it can seem almost impossible to stop.

Friday was my last day of the conference, and it was slow, so Rider and I IMed during close to his entire flight. He said he'd been thinking about it, and he really felt like maybe the two of them taking a break would be the best thing after all; he'd brought it up Sunday, she'd brought it up independently Thursday, and now here he was thinking it again. But he wasn't going to spend our weekend getaway thinking too much about it. He intended to have fun and cut loose, and then make a decision after he'd had some space from her for a few days.

We had a FANTASTIC weekend. It was the first time we'd ever traveled anywhere as a "getaway," i.e., not crashing at someone's house or sharing a hotel room with friends. There was so much delicious food and delicious drinks, and luckily, we were in a city that is much cheaper than our own. We had lots of glorious hotel sex, frolicked in the snow, took touristy tours, and snapped about a million photographs. We met up with a couple of friends of his from WAY BACK—from early college days—a married couple whose ceremony Rider had actually performed in 2010. I really, really liked them! The wife and I got along like long-lost pals, the most I've clicked with a new person in a long time. By the end of the night, we'd create a whole slew of new inside jokes. Rider told me that when I got up to go to the bathroom, they'd told him how much they approved of me.

Sunday night, it was time to fly home and return to reality. We got back home, tended to the pets, had more great sex, then crashed out. Rider's cold had morphed into a sinus infection, so we committed to taking it easy the next few days.

Monday, while Rider was at work, I was chatting with him, and he said he still wasn't ready to deal with the Claire thing—he felt too ill, and he had too much soul-searching left to do. I filled a prescription for him so he could start to feel better, and we made it another lazy night. Besides his being ill, I had the most wicked menstrual cramps I've had in a really long time. We lazed about and went to sleep super-early.

Today, Rider told me that he'd made his decision: he was going to tell Claire that he wanted to take a break. He has thought about it, and he needs to be in a more transparent kind of poly relationship than she is currently comfortable with. He wants only partners who are willing to occasionally be in the same room together. If that lies outside her boundaries, then they are currently incompatible in that way, and they need to walk away until such time when something changes.

He did tell me that before, when she'd been the one talking about initiating a break, she'd said she still wanted to spend Valentine's and her birthday with him. And he also said that they won't completely stop hanging out, because he tries to maintain friendships with people. What it will basically mean is that instead of having a set schedule with her, they'll call each other up sporadically when they want to hang out.

He was supposed to have that conversation with her tonight, and he stopped by my place for a bit of pre-stressful-conversation cuddling and charging up. But when she met him at his house, it turned out that she'd ended up getting too tipsy out at happy hour with her GBF, and he didn't want a replay of last week's tearful, drunken lack of sensible conversation. He wanted to discuss the topic with her when she was in a lucid frame of mind. So, they are just hanging out tonight, no serious conversation. He said she's being nice, at least.

I offered to give him tomorrow for a "re-do" if he wants, and if she's free. He's expressed that he's eager to have the conversation over with, and I understand that. Usually we always hang out on Wednesdays, but I can only imagine the stress he's under; plus, once the conversation is over, there will be no shortage of "makeup" days, if they won't have steady days anymore.

I will admit that I, too, am looking forward to a potential end to the drama. But maybe it's only the beginning of it? There's no telling, really. Everything is always so "wait and see." I'm kind of emotionally exhausted on the entire situation. I have not been thrilled about the fact that Claire never made one peep directly back at me in response to my letter, despite it having been almost a week, and despite how polite and heartfelt my letter to her was. Even if she thought the absolute worst, it seems like she could have at least engaged me directly to tell me so. There is no situation where I would flat-out refuse to respond to someone who wrote me a complex, personal letter, free of accusation or abusive language. It seems so childish to not at least say "this is not something that I am willing to discuss right now."

In other news, I think I have a new girl-crush: Candace, a casual friend of Rider's whom I met out at a concert in early November. I've had some interesting interactions with her on Facebook in recent months, and I just think she is so cute. Apparently, she is at least open to the idea of poly, as she has been in poly relationships before. She's also age-appropriate for me, at 29. I'm not 100% sure she's bi, but I'm hopeful. Who knows where, if anywhere, it will go. I don't run into her out much, but the next time I do, I intend to flirt a little. Rider has had a crush on her for a while, too, but I have no idea whether she has ever liked him. That doesn't matter so much to me; at this point, I'm interested in her independently. Rider has crushes on EVERYONE, and mine are passing rare.

And now, I am very tired, so I am going to sleep. Hopefully, I will have word from Rider tomorrow about whether I will be seeing him.
 
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