The Best Life Yet

The crab trap had only one one-clawed crab in it, so we just let it go. It was standing on its side like someone had pulled it out of the water and put it back down wrong, and our friend's mom, whose house it was, said her daughter had pulled it out of the water to look at it. She probably didn't know the correct way to put it back. Oh, well. Nothing lost, technically. Maybe we'll try again over the weekend. It was for the better, anyway, as I'd let myself get too hungry and could barely make it to Taco Bell on our way home without feeling like I was going to die.

Here I was just yesterday saying that Moss seemed mostly happy in his (re)new mono relationship, and then last night while I was working on music with Rider, Moss messaged me saying, "Well, that lasted seven weeks." I told him that I'm here if he wants to talk about it, but he hasn't really said much yet. I've been sending him cute cat pics to cheer him up. I knew he was really wanting to see where that relationship went, so it has to be a disappointment for the answer to be "nowhere." I don't know which of them ended it, but either way, I'm a little sad for him. Does this mean we will resume the romantic part of our relationship again? Probably not, for the moment. I wouldn't rule it out forever, but I'm content just being his friend and being there for him at this time.

Rider and I had fun working on music. He's feeling a lot better. He was good enough for regular sex last night, which was nice. In between his being sick this week and my bleeding last week, it had been a little while.

I made my first therapy appointment today. It's in about two weeks. I've only ever gone to a counselor twice before, both school counselors: once when I was having severe motivation issues at university, and the other time was when Moss and I tried to take advantage of the on-campus marriage counseling while I was in grad school, and he ended up not being able to continue because it was too far away from his job to take that much time off during the day. I know I have a handful of issues (serious procrastination problems, that weird desire to feel "special," a very un-adult reaction to being left out of fun, and, apparently, I can now add to the list panic attacks when discussing needle marks on my partner—plus, Oona's postulation that I am addicted to and easily blinded by love), but I don't feel like any of these things are out of control or things that I couldn't apply my own strategies to solving in time. Still, if I can pay someone to expedite the process, and if it will make Oona happy, I am willing to give it a try. Who knows, maybe I will feel a marked improvement of some sort. I have no idea of what to expect, which is probably a good thing. I am all about self-improvement, and why not take advantage of all the resources available to me?

Tonight, Rider and I have plans to go out for a beer or two to kick off Rider's four-day weekend. I still have to work tomorrow, so I'm going to take it pretty easy, but I'm happy to go along with him to celebrate his mini-staycation. Sam couldn't get tomorrow off of work, but he does get to leave an hour early, so he'll be here at some point in the evening, depending on traffic.
 
The long weekend was good, if somewhat exhausting.

Thursday night, Rider and I just grabbed a beer out, then went back to his place to have sex and play music. That night was relatively relaxing.

Friday I worked from Rider's couch while he watched TV. Eventually, we felt sleepy and took a nap, and Sam arrived just a short time after we woke up. It was really good to see him! As it turned out, another friend of Rider's was also in town, visiting from Opposite Coast. We ended up all going out together and staying out until after dawn. The Opposite Coast friend bailed sometime between sunrise and breakfast. Rider and I crashed in his room after breakfast and Sam stayed out on the futon.

Saturday, we all woke up super late. Rider and I were up briefly for a quickie around 1 p.m., but then we went back to sleep and I stayed that way until almost 5. When I woke up, the boys had been up for a bit and were lazing about in their underwear. I flopped down between the two of them and cuddled them a bit. It's always so satisfying to cuddle them both at the same time. We worked up the gumption to go out to the tiki bar for happy hour, since Sam wanted to go. After the bar, we went home and I made a stir fry, and we watched movies for a while.

Eventually, we decided that we wanted to go out to the late-night fetish party and meet up with some friends. We got all decked out in our kinky attire and went to the party and had a lot of fun. Rider, being Mr. Popular, was circulating and chatting up crushes, and I didn't see all that much of him. Sam, in Rider's absence, was being a lot more affectionate with me than usual, grabbing me and kissing me. Sometimes he'd sneak off to smoke pot with random people, and I wouldn't go with because I'm not really into that.

Occasionally, I'd slip away to do a circuit and check out who else was around. I ended up meeting a really cute goth guy, Beckett. We were talking in a group of people (but not to each other) and our eyes met and just locked, lingering for way too long. Then the group changed up and we all drifted apart, but each time we'd pass each other as the crowd shifted and everyone walked around, our eyes would meet again, and the same thing would happen: total magnetism. Eventually, he passed me in the crowd and lightly grabbed my wrist while walking by, then let go. I kept walking in the opposite direction, but my heart was pounding.

Eventually, I decided to go find him on purpose. I took three turns around the party before finding him and sneaking up to him while he was having a conversation, so that when he turned, I was just right there staring at him all on-purpose creepy-like. We started talking, and it turned out that he was a bandmate of my former kind-of-annoying fuckbuddy, Caleb. Hmm. Well, double-dipping from the same band is allowed, right? I confessed to him that I'd hooked up with Caleb, so that he heard it from me instead of from him. I also explained that I'm poly and have a serious boyfriend, and he seemed initially unfazed.

We traded FB info because he was about to leave soon, and as I took out my phone, he saw my wallpaper was Rider, and was like, "THAT'S your boyfriend?!" And when I confirmed, he was like, "Oh, that's Rider, of course I know who he is. Everyone knows him." And he said he knew him from around but always got the impression that Rider didn't really want to be friends with him or even remember him. I told him that I'm sure that it wasn't anything personal; Rider just meets so many people and has kind of a poor memory and is often drinking while out.

When I talked to Rider about it later, he thought for a minute and was like, "Ohhh, Beckett, yeah, I know who he is. No, I don't have anything against him; our paths just don't cross very often." And he said it was really cool that I'd felt a connection, since he knows it's pretty rare for me. Seriously, though, that wrist-grabbing move. Le sigh!

Eventually, Rider and Sam and I settled into a quiet corner in the outside area of the event with our music buddies, and people had brought guitars, and we messed around with some music. It was a little funny to be doing that with people around making out and getting spanked and stuff. My life sometimes tips into the realm of the bizarre, but I like it that way.

We played music until it was well into daylight and the staff was nudging us out so they could sweep. We went back to Rider's place and stayed up for a little longer, chatting and trying to get into sleep mode. Eventually, we all went to sleep.

Sunday, we again woke late, and we had an ultimate lazy day. Rider fixed us breakfast sandwiches, and we watched stuff and cuddled on the futon literally all day. Rider only got up to run to the store, and I only got up to go feed my pets. Sam made nachos at some point. We had procured some chemical fun at the event the night before, so we were deciding whether to take it in or go out again. We finally decided on staying in, and we spent the entire rest of the night cuddling on the futon all together in a pile. Those boys. <3

Monday, I was super zapped from the weekend of hard partying. While the boys went out and did some thrifting and eating of Mexican food, I just stayed in and read the forum. As much as I love being with the two of them, I am introverted enough that all the large-scale socializing followed by basically spending all the downtime in a one-bedroom apartment with two other people—I needed my recharge in a big way. They were gone for about three hours, which worked out well. By the time they were back, I had rested up and rehydrated, and I was ready to go back out with them. Sam wanted to check out one more place he hadn't seen yet before he hit the road back home, so we went out to a cool little beer bar. I greatly enjoy sitting between them at a table and stroking both of their arms.

While we were out, we ran into Molly again, the woman Rider and I had hooked up with last summer. She'd actually been hanging with us at Rider's birthday last year, and had met Sam that night and drunkenly decided she loved him. I think they only vaguely remembered each other though. We chatted with her for a bit and then left her to her friends and went back to Rider's and watched a movie. I cuddled Sam pretty hard and was suddenly regretting that I'd turned down Rider's offer to make some time alone for us. Being so close to him and his being about to leave made me keenly aware that it has been months since we've actually had sex. Rider and I will be visiting him for his birthday next month, so maybe then.

While we were out, Sam was talking about how he's really starting to want an actual girlfriend. I know that if that happens, it's probably the axe for my getting to be affectionate with him. I have to get while the getting is good! I know he leans mono, as do most girls, and he deserves to have happiness with someone local to him. I will very much miss his affection when that happens, though. I'll totally be stoked for him at the same time.

Seeing Molly made Rider eager for us to hook up with her again. I'd go there, for sure. She's nice enough, and I find her mildly attractive. I told him I would be down for that pretty much anytime. It somehow kicked off a whole conversation about how I'm way pickier than he is about sex partners. He is decently picky when it comes to actual relationships, but for sex partners, he doesn't care if someone is super-young, or if they are even a nice person—he says he can still manage to have fun in the situation no matter what.

For me, I think, sex is more of an investment, and it's more of a gamble whether or not I am even going to get off, and I am invested in not accidentally having sex with jerks ever again, which means I have to take some time to figure that out. It makes me super picky. For sure, the best sex that I have is with people that I love, and it drops off downhill pretty steeply from there, to the point where unless someone is just SMOKING hot to where I can focus really hard on aesthetics, a lot of times I can't even get off if I don't feel a real connection to someone. It makes one-night-stands useless, fuck-buddy-ships of questionable utility, and the sex in more casual relationships pale in comparison to serious relationships to a ridiculous degree.

But we'll see. Maybe I will find actual connection with Beckett to the point where an occasional hookup will be hot. He certainly has an electricity to him, and he's pretty like a girl. So far, our IM conversation is going well. He seems intelligent and thoughtful. And I definitely want to kiss him so far. Taking it as it comes...
 
Last edited:
Oh, wow. So shit just got real.

Last Thursday, I got an offer from a friend of mine to take over her position at the job she was leaving for a better opportunity. It would have paid almost twice what my current job pays, with a great benefits package. I have been stalling to think about it, for several reasons:

1) I feel a sense of loyalty to my current job, even if it does not pay very well.

2) My current job does good in the world, whereas the new opportunity is devoted to a frivolous industry.

3) The new opportunity is in the next town over, which would mean an hour (at least) commute each way, whereas I currently work from home.

4) The new opportunity is in a much more corporate environment, which would mean waking up at a much earlier hour, having to change my entire look, and having to buy a whole new wardrobe. Even when I worked on location for my current company, I had a lot of flexibility in how I looked (they didn't bat an eye over pink bits of hair, for example).

5) Eek! Something new to deal with!

But I was, indeed, considering it because (as I have mentioned here many times) finances are the bane of my existence. I am really poor, and have been all my life. I figured I needed to get in touch by the end of the week, since that's when my friend left her job.

Then, last night, my current boss gets on IM with me and asks me what it would take to get me to move to Opposite Coast to work on location IN OCTOBER when my lease is up. That's so soon! Rider and I had been talking about my moving in with him in his current place in October to save money so that the two of us could move to Opposite Coast together maybe in the spring. I explained that to my boss, and I also explained that I'd had an offer here that was nearly double what I make, but that I was feeling pretty certain that I wanted to stay with the company. In return, he said it would, of course, come with an increase in pay, and that he could also help out with the move to get me there.

I was so stressed out! On the one hand, being offered a moving package in addition to the raise I'd been expecting (and it sounding like the raise would probably be more than I'd originally BEEN expecting) in order to get to go live in the city my best friend lives in, at least six months earlier than the original plan—OK, that could be awesome! On the other hand, it kind of puts a crunch on me to put a crunch on Rider about the move, which I'd been trying not to do.

So, I messaged Rider, and I copy/pasted my entire conversation with my boss into the chat window, expecting him to be as stressed as I was, since I know how he reacts to feeling pressured. Instead...

Rider was so sweet and reassuring and telling me not to worry or stress out—we'll find a way to make it work, and he wants to be with me, and we'll do whatever it takes. He immediately started tossing out options like refinancing his debt and deferring his student loans for a few months, if we'll need to scrape by with him being unemployed for a while there—a prospect he'd previously been terrified of. We made a plan to brainstorm a budget and decide what to tell my boss about a desired moving package. My boss and I have a conversation scheduled for later this week.

I knew from the way Rider had been talking over the past few weeks that he was leaning hard toward Opposite Coast with me; he'd even sounded disappointed when I'd considered taking the local opportunity. But I had no idea that he'd be so totally on board as to allay MY stress about it and start strategizing immediately.

Every day, that man shows me more and more how much he loves me, from bringing me surprises to coming up with compromises to make on things that I'm uncomfortable with, and now this. And every day, I love him more. When I look at him, he is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. Oona giggles and calls it "love goggles," but I'm dead serious when I say that, to me, no more beautiful person exists. Now I kind of understand how people stay attracted to each other through the ages—love makes people appear MORE beautiful as time wears on, not less. It just keeps getting stronger and more powerful. <3 <3 <3
 
UPDATE:

My boss got back to me faster than expected, with an offer for a $15k/year raise, W-2 status so my taxes don't screw me anymore, insurance, paid vacation (!!!), a moving package (to be determined), and timing flexibility so that I can move as late as January if needed (to help get Rider set up).

I'm not going to be rich, by any means, but I'M FINALLY NOT GOING TO BE POOR! After growing up so poor that we lived in a homeless shelter for a time, then in a ghetto where I witnessed a stabbing, always on free lunches and scholarships and student loans on my way to a master's degree, budgeting and scraping by. After four years of putting in time with this company as an intern, then a low-paid 1099. I have made it! And the love of my life is coming with me to live in a gorgeous city where my best friend lives!

I have everything my little heart could ever desire.
 
Congratulations, Reverie!!! :)
 
Thanks, y'all! I am super stoked about the upcoming move/raise/etc. :)

A bit of unpleasantness: it looks like that for Rider and me, our slutty ways have finally caught up with us. I just got back from the doctor because I was having some weird spotting, and it turns out that I have either bacterial vaginosis or trichomoniasis (the test doesn't say which). BV is not always sexually transmitted, but it can be, and trichomoniasis almost always is. I'm suspecting it's the trich, because I recently self-treated with boric acid for a yeast infection, and I know boric acid is supposed to kill BV.

Rider's the only guy that I go unprotected with (I have with Jake and Sam in the past a few times, but not for a long while), and I am the only person he goes unprotected with—this is our safety agreement—so we must have contracted it during one of our threesomes, since it can be spread from girl-to-girl. I haven't been with any girls alone in eons.

We informed Kelly, and she's getting tested today. We informed Allie, and I haven't heard back from her yet. We also informed Jake, since he was the last guy other than Rider that I did go unprotected with, just in case it went back that far. He said he'd get tested too, but that one of his partners, with whom he is regularly unprotected, just got the full gauntlet of being tested for everything and was negative, so he's probably in the clear.

As Rider said, "Well, I guess we can now check 'contracted an STD' off of those online purity tests."

It's not a big deal, really—we just have to take some antibiotics that mean that we can't drink on our trip out of town this weekend—but it did set me back $85 for the copay and medicine. Rider asked me what I wanted his protocol with Kelly to be next weekend, depending on how her test came back, and I told him that the doctor gave me enough extra pills for him to do a dose after she leaves, so he can still do whatever he wants.

#polyproblems #slutlife #sigh
 
Hi Reverie,

I just wanted to say that I love your blog and have been reading since I joined up a couple of months ago :)

I also wanted to offer up hugs after your recent std test/diagnosis.
I went through something similar about a year ago. Droid decided to get tested as he hadn't been tested in some time. His test came back positive for chlamydia. He decided to tell me at 5pm on a Saturday evening when I had no access to getting tested or treated until Monday evening and on the eve of Nerdist leaving for an overseas trip. I was angry, scared and felt dirty. :(
I finally got tested on the Monday and sure enough I had it as well. Luckily it was simple dose of antibiotics and we were back to being 100% clear. Nerdist got tested when he returned from his trip and luckily had dodged it somehow.
I'm still fluid bonded with both Nerdist and Droid, it just means that we are A LOT more careful about who else we sleep with, safer sex with other people and more regular testing as we had all gotten a bit complacent.
 
RedSonja said:
Hi Reverie,

I just wanted to say that I love your blog and have been reading since I joined up a couple of months ago :)

I also wanted to offer up hugs after your recent std test/diagnosis.
Click to expand...

Thank you!

RedSonja said:
I'm still fluid bonded with both Nerdist and Droid, it just means that we are A LOT more careful about who else we sleep with, safer sex with other people and more regular testing as we had all gotten a bit complacent.
Click to expand...

Yeah, it ended up not being a huge deal for us. Kelly went to go get tested, but the doctor told her the test was way more expensive than just giving her the medication if she thought there was a chance she had it, so she took it, and we will never know if she is where it came from, not that it matters much. Allie said she'd just been to her annual exam two weeks ago, and they'd looked at everything under a microscope "just to be on the safe side," and we hadn't been with her in that span, so she's fine.

We've decided to be even more discriminating than we previously have been, and we have agreed to be a bit more vigilant when we have threesomes, paying close attention to what goes where and in what order. I also bought a microscope so I can see if I have trich or BV after new encounters in the future without wasting a copay if I don't (it only requires a low level of magnification, and I was always decent with a microscope in college). The diagnosis hasn't stopped us from having fantastic protected sex with each other every day since we found out; protected because the doctor said to wait five days for unprotected for the antibiotics to take effect, lest we reinfect each other. We'll go back to unprotected on Tuesday.

As for everything else, it is all going well.

Over the weekend, Rider and I went to a party about three hours away at the house of one of his old friends, a really nice guy. Rider and I didn't drink at all because we were on antibiotics, and it was both amusing and annoying to interact with a party full of very drunk people whilst stone-cold sober. Because Rider is ordained to perform marriages and has conducted several ceremonies, a couple of our drunk friends began pestering him to "party-marry" a couple of our other drunk friends, defining "party-marriage" as a marriage that lasts the duration of the party.

That concept spread like wildfire, ending up with about half of the party-goers getting party-married, including the original drunk friend prevailing upon Rider to let her do the honors of party-marrying us. Rider was very cute, getting down on one knee and party-proposing to me, then dipping me backward for a theatrical kiss once the slurred pronouncement was made. It was especially funny because no one at that party knows yet that we are unofficially engaged. We plan to make it official and public once the ring is done being made. A photo that someone posted on Facebook of the kiss sealing the party-marriage got more "likes" than any other photo I've ever been tagged in. I think the world is ready, haha.

The day after the party (yesterday), Rider and I spent some time exploring the city we were visiting. He'd lived there for a while before, and so he knew of some good places to eat. There was a really cool coffee shop, so we tucked ourselves into a little alcove there and whispered dirty things to each other. We also got a strip of photo booth pictures taken because Rider was saying that he wanted a picture of me to tape to his guitar. We drove home and caught up on our backlog of television shows and then had fantastic sex.

I'm actively dreading my trip to Hometown on Friday. Call me selfish, but visiting my family is not super-fun on a normal visit, and this visit is going to be even more tedious because I am going to be spending so much of it planning my sister's baby shower. I'm happy for my sister that she's happy—I really am!—but I am not much of a baby person AT ALL, and my mom and sister are anti-alcohol and super-religious, and so it's probably just going to be me and my mom and my sister's best friend, who I don't really know well at all, sitting around sipping coffee and brainstorming ways to do cheap food and make this thing fun. It would be a lot more tolerable if champagne were involved, and if my mother hadn't tossed out the idea of an utterly appalling game where you taste candy bars that have been melted to look like baby shit in a diaper. WTF?!?!? Since when is coprophilia part of motherhood? I have to suck it up with a smile, though, since I already know that they think I'm the self-centered one for moving so far away and not having very much to do with them once they got all born-again and teetotal and (in my mind) insane.

So between being cooped up in my mom's house all weekend (and everything that entails) and missing Rider like crazy, I know I'm not really in for the best time. Thankfully, Rider will at least be setting aside 30–40 minutes to IM with me each day over the weekend. It's not the sexy videochat we'd originally planned before the scheduling debacle, but it's something. Rider was trying to talk me out of dreading going, but then through communication we realized that he had no idea what going there was actually going to be like for me, and he said he'd probably dread it if he were me, too. He said he's going to miss me too, "despite having lined up the best possible distraction" and I made a sideways face at that, feeling like he was being a bit thoughtless and rubbing it in that he got to stay here and have fun with Kelly visiting all weekend, while I paint a happy face on and suffer through family obligations.

Oh, man, WHILE I was drafting this, another glitch. I will put that in the next post...
 
Reverie said:
It would be a lot more tolerable if champagne were involved, and if my mother hadn't tossed out the idea of an utterly appalling game where you taste candy bars that have been melted to look like baby shit in a diaper. WTF?!?!? Since when is coprophilia part of motherhood?
Click to expand...

UGH, that game is the WORST. So offensive. The funny thing is that the more "genteel" the people throwing the shower, the more likely they are to include that nasty game, in my experience. The first time I saw it was at a really fancy shower on Park Avenue in NYC for a college friend of mine. She and all of her relatives were from Greenwich, CT, and they were dressed to the nines in designer outfits. But when that game got started, they were all so giddy about it. Ew.
 
thirteenth said:
UGH, that game is the WORST. So offensive. The funny thing is that the more "genteel" the people throwing the shower, the more likely they are to include that nasty game, in my experience.
Click to expand...

Hehe, my family is anything but genteel, so word of it must have trickled down to the lower classes by now. Super gross.

My glitch yesterday was Rider's scheduling deficiency again. Originally, the plan was for he and I to have sexy videochats all weekend while I was in Hometown, but he had frakked that up when he invited Kelly down for the weekend, forgetting that he'd offered me that time to try to cheer me up while I endured being trapped in my mom's house. While we'd been processing and trying to work out a solution (we settled on 30–40-minute IM conversations instead), he'd tried to make me feel better by reminding me it would only affect Friday and Saturday, and we'd at least have Sunday and whatever weeknights I was free.

Well, apparently, Kelly offered to stay Sunday night too, leaving Monday morning as he left for work. Rider, forgetting that he'd dangled Sunday as consolation for me, jumped at the opportunity to have her over for another night. I just found this out yesterday, after being perfectly happy with the solution we had already come up with and looking forward to Sunday as our chance to reconnect, albeit online, after his weekend with her. I felt forgotten, tossed aside, and disappointed. Logically, I understand that having the physical presence of someone he sees rarely is more appealing to him than having the videochat presence of someone he sees all the time, but that doesn't change the fact that being forgotten and tossed aside hurts. I was very sad and angry, my hands shaking so much that when I tried to type something, it came out almost 100% typos.

Since he had forgotten (and I really do believe him that he did; I don't think it was a "lapse for convenience"), he was not at all expecting there to be a hornet's nest when he told me that, so my being upset put him on the defensive, and he acted out of character, suddenly pitting her and me against each other in his phrasing, saying, "I get to see this girl like once a month if I'm lucky, for a few days. And I'm still carving time out of that so that we can chat. Because I know that you need that time. I tried to book her visit so that it DIDN'T take time away from you when you're here, remember? Then I'm taking a day off from work and flying there to be with you for a full weekend. I'm not going to make 30 minutes a day for her when I come to Hometown to adventure with you."

It just felt like...like he was saying he was doing all of these things FOR MY SAKE ONLY, not because he wanted to. Like they were some kind of sacrifice on his part—a sacrifice that I never asked for. My understanding of our situation up until that point was that we were both excited about the portion of the trip we'd be spending together, and we were both excited about talking to each other while I was away—that we were participating in everything that we did together with equal enthusiasm. His words made me feel like I am whatever the IM/travel version of a pity fuck is. It also seemed like he was trying to make me feel like a jerk for being upset at being forgotten. Like, "I give you all of this time, and you still want MORE?!"

But the thing is, it's not even mostly about the time. If it were just that, if he'd come to me renegotiating the thing we'd agreed on, I'd not have been thrilled, but I wouldn't have been upset either. It was about the being forgotten and having something that I looked forward to tossed away without my being consulted about it. There was also some hurt that being forgotten meant he hadn't been looking forward to it as much as I was. That can't be helped; people feel what they feel, and different people are going to have different levels of excitement about the same thing. But it still sucks.

We ended up talking about all of this for even longer than the freaking videochat on Sunday would have lasted. I laughed out loud at the fact that we were spending otherwise good time IN PERSON dealing with the aftermath of a virtual hangout scheduling issue. I still don't know whether or not that is absurd. Like, on the one hand, we really do need to sort out this blank spot he has where scheduling things are concerned, so it's not like it was time WASTED, exactly. But at the same time, when the topic at hand was an hour of sexy videochat and we spend two hours talking about it when we could have been having two hours of actual sex, that just seems stupid. Where to draw the line where we are still addressing issues as they arise but not letting them be an excessive time-suck? I just don't know.

(continued...)
 
Last edited:
(...continued from previous)

We racked our brains for solutions on Rider's scheduling thing. OK, I'll start recording EVERY LITTLE THING on the Google Calendar, not just in-person events. OK, he'll try to set a bell up in his head to ring anytime someone mentions a day of the week or a numerical date, so that he brings it straight to me and I add it to our shared calendar. Scheduling on steroids. And for my part, I will try not to take it so personally when he forgets me. It's really hard, though. We ended up being so exhausted, and I had to still get some work done, so I worked while he watched wrestling, and then he fell asleep, so we didn't even have sex. It's the only night this week that was supposed to be our all-QT time, since we have social events scheduled for the next three nights, and then I leave town Friday. I still have to pack for nine days and to clean my room and do laundry, and a variety of other life-administrative tasks.

We did totally reconcile, though. He's since apologized for his uncharacteristic outburst, saying that it mostly stemmed from his own feeling stupid about having completely forgotten something (completely, as in, having no recollection that it had even happened, even after I quoted our conversation in detail and described the location we were in). And he maintains that he is, indeed, excited about exploring Hometown with me. His cuddles and love and the way he looks at me shook a lot of the hardness from my heart—the little scales it was growing to try to protect itself.

I feel so emotionally exhausted, though. I'm really glad I have that therapy appointment tomorrow morning, because lately, I have been feeling way crazier than I am used to feeling. Never before have I experienced such intense highs and lows, or at least, not as an adult. I've historically been the calm, temperate, even-keeled person out of most of the people I've known. Oona has always said that she comes to me when she needs practical solutions and dispassionate logic, and to her other friends when she needs someone to understand her intense emotions. I'm not usually quick to anger, nor hatred; I'm not generally jealous or petty; I strive for diplomacy and to bring light and pleasantness to people's lives.

But lately, I feel like I am on some sort of emotional roller coaster. Over the span of a week, I can go from elation to devastation to fury to exhaustion. When things are good, they're the best they've ever been in any situation ever. When things are even a little bad, it feels like the end of the world, and I lie in bed wishing for my heart to just stop so that I could stop feeling feelings without traumatizing people by committing suicide. That sounds like dramatic overkill, but it is a real thought that happens in my mind. And over what? Having a scheduled videochat forgotten? Seeing bruises on my partner? It's all so petty and insane. But the feelings are real.

I try to pinpoint when it started, but I can't. It's pretty recent, though. And the really fucked up thing is that the rest of the time, the times I am not feeling terrible, I feel GREAT! Wonderful things are happening for me in every area of my life. I spend at least 85-90% of my days walking on air, feeling that all is finally right in the world. My career is moving along. Rider does everything he can think of to treat me like gold (scheduling deficiency aside). In seven months, I'll be living in the same city as my best friend again. I do not have any outstanding health concerns other than maybe wanting to lose about ten pounds for aesthetics. I have a whole circle of friends and family and pets who love me and who want to hang out with me more than I even have time for them all. But the smallest thing can strike me down and put me so low and make me, even just momentarily, want to give all that up just not to feel. I know it doesn't make any sense. Maybe the therapist will help. Maybe Oona is right that I have some sort of "love addiction"—maybe it's what makes a tiny blip in my romantic life feel like the end of my entire world while it's happening.

I definitely have some sort of issue around "losing" something that I was counting on. In the case of the videochat, especially, my not getting it when I was expecting it + the reason I'm not getting it is that the other people involved want to go off and have fun without me makes me really upset. It's the combination of the disappointment of losing + the hurt of being forgotten + knowing that other people will benefit from this thing that I do not get. It's almost like if it sucked for everyone else as much as it sucked for me, it would suck less for me—the suckage would be more evenly distributed. But other people benefiting from something that sucks for me makes me feel worse. It should probably make me feel better, since at least SOMEBODY is having a good time. But it doesn't.

One way I tried thinking about it last night was like this:

Rider gets his extra night with Kelly. I lose only an hour or so of videochat. For us as a team, this is a net gain. And we are a team. "Taking one for the team" here, which I am so willing to do for him sexually, for the most part, should not be so difficult to do when it comes to other sacrifices. Taking one for the team will strengthen the team. It's like taking medicine that will keep our relationship healthy. It can be so bitter going down, but it will result in increased longevity and allow us to breathe easier, eventually. The more time he gets with other people, especially when I am not around, the more fulfilling his life will feel to him, therefore the happier he will be, and the happier he is, the better it is for everyone.

If I can get my heart around that (I've already got my head around it), that handles the "losing" and "other people benefiting" aspects of the thing; hopefully the "scheduling on steroids" handles the being forgotten aspect of it. I wish there was just a switch I could flip inside myself to make all the feelings of suckage just go away. I guess that's why I wish for a stopped heart.

I understand that scheduling bullshit is part of poly. And I am incapable of monogamy, so poly, it is. (I've tried and failed at monogamy enough times that I would be a fool to try again; I always, always fall for someone else eventually.) If I can't change that scheduling bullshit exists, I need to figure out how to change my reaction to it, lest I end up completely insane or completely alone. The Achilles heels in all my past relationships have always been control-freakage on my partners' end and a wandering eye on my end. These things are non-issues in my current relationship, because Rider is anything but a control freak, and my eye is allowed to wander. In this one, it's all his scheduling debacles and my having trouble dealing with my icky emotions. Trade-offs...better I gamble on the situation that I don't know how to work than to gamble on the one I know doesn't work.
 
Last edited:
I have a blindingly simple solution to the rider reverie schedule problem. I feel so sympathetic towards him because I am female and still totally and completely forget things. Like completely..
Ok so idea. Google calendar, on phones, you sync calendars. He set alerts for mutual things, if he forgets or doesn't put it in, you can send him email alerts. Google calendar can be used on pc or Mac, and any type of phone. Also it is colour coded and can be set multiple timers, plus reoccurring events etc. very useful!! Now he just has to remember his phone....you can also read each other schedules and or set them to private or just certain people to view. Google calendar plus poly = best thing since sliced bread!
Edited to add just read second post. So forget all previous message. Lol you reached the same conclusion before I got to you all ;)
 
Last edited:
starlight1 said:
I have a blindingly simple solution to the rider reverie schedule problem. I feel so sympathetic towards him because I am female and still totally and completely forget things. Like completely..
Ok so idea. Google calendar, on phones, you sync calendars. He set alerts for mutual things, if he forgets or doesn't put it in, you can send him email alerts. Google calendar can be used on pc or Mac, and any type of phone. Also it is colour coded and can be set multiple timers, plus reoccurring events etc. very useful!! Now he just has to remember his phone....you can also read each other schedules and or set them to private or just certain people to view. Google calendar plus poly = best thing since sliced bread!
Edited to add just read second post. So forget all previous message. Lol you reached the same conclusion before I got to you all ;)
Click to expand...

Yeah, I wish it were as simple as him adding it to GCal himself. I created a shared one for us months and months ago, but he can never seem to remember to check it or to bring himself to enter stuff in it. I am the go-between of him and our schedule: he brings stuff to me in conversation, I enter it, and then he asks me (if he remembers) if such and such day is free. It's (obviously) not a perfect solution (as evidenced by these debacles), but I think if we both beef up our effort at it, it can be at least serviceable. It's a problem that we MUST solve, because it's the most irritating thing in our relationship, and neither of us want to break up or stop being poly.
 
Hey, it's my blogiversary! Because of that, I decided to skim back through my archives and look at where I was throughout 2014. What I discovered kind of solved a little mystery for me...

So, I started out on this poly journey with a super-positive outlook, feeling very hopeful and chipper and with very few problems. But then a pattern started to emerge: every time Rider would involve me in a scheduling snafu, I'd react a little more intensely.

- Early on, he had lunch with Claire on a day he'd said he'd have lunch with me.
- In October, he took a day from me that I'd been looking forward to and gave it to Claire.
- On Halloween, he tried to re-route us to another event instead of the one I'd wanted to go to, once he found out that Claire wanted to go to the same thing with her friends.
- In early December, Rider started to add Kelly into the mix, despite just having had big blowouts with both me and Claire, and not realizing that further straining his schedule would make things worse instead of better.
- Then, of course, the Christmas debacle.
- And the forgetting (twice) the videochats with me because of Kelly's visits.

I started off at the first occasion being a little perturbed, but letting it roll off my back. As time wore on, with each fuck-up, I got more and more agitated. When I was pondering why I was feeling so insane lately, I think that this is why: it's a pattern of the same mistake over and over again, and so it compounds with each occasion, never mind the severity of the particular issue at hand. I know I get a lot from Rider, and I know he does his best, but I think that, deep down, knowing that my plans with him are never out of the line of forgetfulness fuels a deep sense of insecurity in me. That insecurity may also be the root of the other times I've felt jealous, since it's not normally in my nature to be jealous; it's a very new thing.

When someone tells you that you are very important to them, but then they don't seem to place the same level of care into keeping plans that you do, it's easy to feel less than actually important. Intellectually, I know that I am important to him, and that he loves me, but on an underlying emotional level, the hurt of being overlooked and forgotten has built up to a point where I don't really feel like I can trust him to not do it again. And so there's a part of me living inside of me that is cowering and scared of the next time it will happen again. That fear and insecurity is probably not totally reasonable—after all, he's not doing it on purpose, and he shows me that I am important to him in lots of other ways, but it does exist on some level, and I think it's mucking things up.

So, hopefully, if we do manage to solve the scheduling issue, we'll manage to put out all sorts of other fires of ickiness as well.

In other news, I went to my first therapy appointment today. I had originally called ahead and asked whether the therapist was poly-friendly, and I had gotten the reply that she didn't really have experience in that area, but that she was generally open-minded. However, after speaking with me for a while, she said that she wasn't sure that she was the best person to help me. I had come to her telling her that Oona and some of my own experiences had suggested that perhaps I had an unhealthy relationship with relationships, and so she wanted to know what my current relationship was like. When I explained it to her, she was indeed open-minded, in that she did not appear to pass any judgment on me, but she said that if she was going to guide me on my behavior in relationships, she wanted to make sure that she didn't "take [me] anywhere [I didn't] want to go." She was really only familiar with guiding people through healthier monogamous patterns, and she was worried that if poly is what I want, she couldn't help me much.

She did, however, recommend two books for me to read: Adult Children of Alcoholics and Codependent No More. These were just based on what we did discuss about my family background and my past relationships. She also said that she'd put a call out on her listserv for other local professionals who might be able to better help me. Hopefully, she finds some (and also hopefully they are on my insurance).

Another crazy thing that happened is that I had an allergic reaction last night to one of the antibiotics I was taking. When I went to the doctor on Friday, in addition to the BV-or-trich diagnosis I'd gotten, they told me that I also had a low-grade UTI, and had prescribed me a different antibiotic for that. What I didn't realize when I started taking it was that it was a different brand name for an antibiotic I've known since 2006 that I am allergic to. I had TOLD THEM that when I went in, so I guess they didn't know either (???), which, it seems like it should be their job to know that sort of thing.

I'd had a headache I couldn't shake for about 24 hours, and then I started feeling feverish and almost hallucinating, like I would look at my arms and not be able to tell what color they were. I had hot and cold flashes and a terrible taste in my mouth and my urine turned a weird almost-brownish color. I could also almost not stay upright or awake, not even able to cross the room to turn off the light, even though I felt extremely light-sensitive and could not look at my computer either. It was awful. I've never before felt so not in command of my body.

After about two hours, my fever broke, and I was sweating like crazy. I was finally able to look at my computer again, so I looked up my symptoms and discovered that they were indeed indicative of an allergic reaction to the medication—and allergic reactions to that medication can sometimes be fatal. I let Rider know what was going on, and he brought me some Gatorade and took me to his house, telling me he'd take me to the hospital if I needed to go. I told him I was starting to feel better instead of worse, and I discontinued the medication. Since then, I've been getting mostly steadily better, with some small recurrence of tingly/fever feelings here and there. I feel almost 100% normal now, nearly 24 hours since my last dose. I am still waiting for the doctor's office to call me back and let me know if they will give me a new prescription to finish. I hope so, because I don't want the UTI to come back again in stronger force. Seems like they ought to, since they are the ones who should have known better.

With all of that happening, needless to say, Rider and I did not end up having sex last night, either. So much for our plan to "stock me up on sex" before I left for Hometown. Tonight will contain a friend's birthday dinner, then a mess of chores that we need to get done. Hopefully there will be time for sex after, provided I keep feeling well.

This whole week has been kind of royally screwed so far. I am looking forward to next Thursday night, when Rider joins me in Hometown. I can get through a week of almost anything...
 
I currently have a LOT to think about. I am sitting in bed at my mom's house, and Rider is having Kelly over to visit, and I was feeling jealous feelings on the plane, so I re-read the chapter on jealousy in More Than Two, which usually calms me. This time, it didn't. I read it and re-read it, impatiently, thinking, "OK, I know all that stuff. Where is the part that will help me?" Because it was all about fear and about insecurity, and, working through the questions, I realized that I was not fearing abandonment, and I wasn't feeling insecure. I was feeling plain old possessive and greedy.

So greedy.

Like so greedy that an infinite amount of the thing that I wanted wouldn't be enough, so long as some were left for anyone else. It was the darkest and nastiest of my own demons that I have ever confronted. And there was no chapter for that. In the book, they said they'd "get to possessiveness and territoriality later," but when I did a search in my Kindle, that was the only place that mentioned them. So the book couldn't help me. And the internet so far has been of little help, especially with the notion that the problem is getting WORSE with time and exposure instead of better.

And I have no idea why I feel this way.

My logic tells me one thing, but my inner tantrum-throwing three-year-old (to use a phrase they do in the book) is the greediest creature in the universe right now. Greedier than a dragon guarding its hoard. Greedier than Gollum with his "precious." And, like Gollum, this greed will waste me away if I don't figure out what's wrong with me. I have found the most beautiful treasure in all the universe, and the more I come to value it (more every day!) the more I forget what it was like to know how to let go of it. My hands curl around it as though with rigor mortis. What is becoming of me? How can I be DEvolving as a person, and so suddenly?

I never used to be like this. Not at all. I'm the person who always gives the other person the less-burnt piece of quiche or the bigger slice of pie. I let people in on the freeway. I volunteer at a rabbit rescue when I have time. I literally gave my raincoat to a homeless man a few months ago, when he seemed to need it more than I do. And I love watching lovers pleasure others.

I frown on greed in others. Corporations, wringing every last cent that they can when they already have so much. Gluttonous parents who snarf down their children's hard-earned Halloween candy once the kids have gone to bed. Gas-guzzling vehicles that take up too much space on the streets and make it hard for anyone else to see or move around them. The guy at the party who drinks up all of everyone else's booze but brought no bottle himself. The partner who is so jealous of their partner's time that they don't even allow them to have friends. Despicable, the lot of them.

And me, too.

I made a promise to Rider that I would tell him whenever something made me feel jealous or weird. But I broke that promise. And I broke it with good intentions: I didn't want him to feel bad. But the truth is that I almost never don't feel weird anymore. And I didn't want to poison our relationship by that being all I ever talked about. So instead, I poisoned it by not talking about it enough.

I want to understand myself and fix myself and learn.

I know that I can't have everything that I want all of the time. I know that I am not more deserving of the things that I want than other people are. But the greedy beast inside of me is lately insatiable. It has begun to affect my health—the last time I went to the doctor, my blood pressure was borderline high, after tending to low most of my life. Looking out the airplane window at the beautiful pink waning moon rising from below, I knew—I just knew—that Rider was talking to Kelly about maybe going to the nude beach tonight...the beach we've been talking about getting to but hadn't made it. The beach we would have gone to on Tuesday if I hadn't gotten so sick from the medication. The beach he wrote to me about in a naughty letter he sent me just yesterday. The beach I won't be able to see until I return in ten days. And I was right, as it turned out; they'd had that exact conversation. Looking out at that beautiful moon and somehow just knowing that almost gave me diarrhea on the plane, I had such a strong physical response to it. Seriously. I saw something beautiful, and my greedy thoughts, instead of admiring it, immediately went to ways to give me diarrhea.

After feeling like I was on a trajectory of health and growth from the ages of 28 onward, after feeling like I was getting healthier by the month since I turned 33, it would appear that I have quite suddenly completely lost my mind. The question is this: how, if at all, do I get it back?

It completely baffles me why the more secure my relationship becomes—the bigger plans we lay, the closer I get to "having it all," the more nice things that are done for me—the more out of control my emotions become. Is it just that I've never seen anything this beautiful before and so I'm self-sabotaging somehow? What could make me want ALL OF IT ALL THE TIME, when I'm not normally like that?

I didn't post any of this in the advice area, because I am really in too delicate an emotional state to get lambasted right now and I already know that what I am feeling is not healthy. Sometimes I feel like going into those areas of the forum recognizing that you have a problem and being willing to learn is not enough—people seem to jump at the chance to tear struggling folk a new asshole sometimes. I'm struggling hard, but with a dogged determination to come out on the other side. But this thing is so big that it is like a wall that I've plowed into face-first.

So if anyone who reads this blog and has been there or know someone who has been—if anyone has any advice on what the fuck I can do to slay this demon inside myself that I am up against for the very first time, and which seems to be growing literally with each passing day, I am all ears. Therapy, the obvious course of action, I am already attempting, once I find a compatible therapist. Other than recognizing that I am probably insane and trying to get help for it, what can I do to work on myself so that I don't inadvertently destroy my relationship with my newfound greed? I can see where I want to go, but not how to get there. Almost everything I have seen is related to fear or insecurity, but I don't feel afraid or insecure. Just ridiculously, shamefully greedy. It's completely unbecoming, and it's eating me alive. This is boss-fight-level shit.
 
Last edited:
Thinking about the self-sabotage line a little longer, I am finding it awfully convenient of my brain to start this shit up when things are going so well.

It's like whenever I was in a mono relationship, I'd get to a point where I realized I wanted other partners and had no qualms about sharing my partner, and I would start looking to poly as the greener grass. And now that I'm finally in a truly long-term poly relationship, I've gotten to a point where I have trouble kindling interest in other partners and am getting jealous more often—not that I want monogamy, because I'm still happy that we play with particular other people, but that old familiar mono mindset that I found tedious in previous relationships is starting to sound comforting and easier than what I'm currently doing in a way that I would have found absurd a few months ago. Instead of doing "grass is greener" with humans, I'm doing it with love-styles!

So maybe some part of me is just determined for me not to be happy. Well, dammit, I'm going to find a way around that. I just don't know what it is yet...for now, I'm going to repeat the mantra "my mind is playing tricks on me," and continue my search for a therapist.
 
Reverie said:
Thinking about the self-sabotage line a little longer, I am finding it awfully convenient of my brain to start this shit up when things are going so well.
Click to expand...

Reverie, since you invited responses in your last post, I just want to mention that all of this might not be sabotage or can't-be-happy driven, but an aspect of yourself that can peek out from the dark precisely because you are in a good place. I had been happily married for 15 years when some pretty scary stuff bubbled up for me, stuff that I thought I'd long ago dealt with and wrapped up with a bow, stuff that I only had the wherewithal to deal with because I was so secure. Sounds to me like you're not sabotaging your happiness so much as you're in a stable place and able to allow some difficult, recessed thought patterns to arise and be dealt with in your usual thoughtful way.
 
Hi, Reverie. First, I just wanted to say how brave I think it is that you posted that! I probably have no useful advice as I've been struggling with some jealousy issues myself. But, this is what's helping me:

First, I've stopped trying to control the feelings. I can dissect them and study them all I want. Read up on jealousy, work worksheets, etc. In the end though, I find it most useful to acknowledge them and just... sit with them. For me, they pass easier when I'm not so fixated on them. Like you, I've examined them closely and know what's driving them... and what's driving the feelings behind them. The other thing that helps is taking care of me. When I'm not getting enough sleep and exercise, my mental state weakens and I'm more likely to feel jealous, insecure, and/or anxious. It's the whole HALT (hungry, angry, lonely, tired) thing.

Feeling jealous, even greedy doesn't make us a bad person, Reverie. They're just normal human feelings that everyone experiences at some point in their lives. Maybe stop judging yourself so harshly? Instead of focusing on trying to control the feelings, maybe just try treating yourself kindly when you have them?
 
Reverie said:
It's like whenever I was in a mono relationship, I'd get to a point where I realized I wanted other partners and had no qualms about sharing my partner, and I would start looking to poly as the greener grass. And now that I'm finally in a truly long-term poly relationship, I've gotten to a point where I have trouble kindling interest in other partners and am getting jealous more often—not that I want monogamy, because I'm still happy that we play with particular other people, but that old familiar mono mindset that I found tedious in previous relationships is starting to sound comforting and easier than what I'm currently doing in a way that I would have found absurd a few months ago. Instead of doing "grass is greener" with humans, I'm doing it with love-styles!
Click to expand...

Forgot to add that I can totally relate to this! I've had these thoughts of late, too. Monogamy is easier because it's more accepted in society and our social structure is built around it so it makes sense that I'd be idealizing it. I think it's easier to fall into the trap of comfort and known in a monogamous relationship. And, sometimes, the level of communication and self-work, etc, that's required to make poly work well feels like, well, work :) And my lazy self wants to just have a vacation from all the work so it thinks being monogamous would be easier, lol. But, the me that spent years in an unhappy, bad marriage, knows that's not true. All relationships are work. The other thing driving that feeling for me is that I live in a conservative area... until we can move in a couple years, we aren't completely out. And that's hard .
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top