OnceAndFuture
Member
Ah, I was hoping for all to go well with Kristof too. The nosy side of me wants to know too what happened, but the pragmatic side of me says that if you felt something wasn't right about him, you should trust your instinct.
The Best Life Yet
- Thread starter Reverie
- Start date
Reverie
Active member
Well, I sent him the letter. I'm just waiting for his reply. I suppose I'll just go ahead and toss it out there:
He said he was going to vote for Trump because Trump is the perfectly evil candidate from the right. He hopes that, if Trump is elected, the ensuing bad times would enlighten people who leaned in that direction that they were wrong, therefore finally bringing about the revolution that would result in uprising against the ruling class.
I'm pretty sure that's not the way it works.
My letter was a (quite long) explanation of why I feel the way that I do, and that I hope that we can still be friends even if ideological differences prevent us from being lovers.
OnceAndFuture
Member
Hmmm, so a "some men just want to watch the world burn" view of liberalism. Or, alternatively, "we have to sink the ship to save it". Either way I can't help but feel it's neither a mature nor helpful point of view, and I suppose I understand your concern. As they say, bugger.
Reverie
Active member
My biggest thing is...I can't let someone who, if they had their way, would elect the party who wants to control women's vaginas into power...anywhere near mine. 
And that is not even going into all the ways that the environment and minorities would suffer, in this, the age of climate change, police violence, and immigration debate.
I don't intend to get political on this blog for very long, but suffice it to say that I believe too much is currently at stake for people to be cavalier and not think through the implications of their choices. And, I mean, if they want to be like that, they can have at it, but I don't have to sleep with them.
And that is not even going into all the ways that the environment and minorities would suffer, in this, the age of climate change, police violence, and immigration debate.
I don't intend to get political on this blog for very long, but suffice it to say that I believe too much is currently at stake for people to be cavalier and not think through the implications of their choices. And, I mean, if they want to be like that, they can have at it, but I don't have to sleep with them.
Reverie
Active member
So...what ended up happening as a result of the letter was that he sent me a very sweet and thoughtful reply, explaining that he understands my position and he'd love to explain it to me further, and, of course, he's more than happy to be just friends if that's what I want.
See.
Like 99% of him is completely sweet and reasonable. I dunno WTF is up with that little sliver, but I do know that a tiny sliver of glass is enough to pain my whole body to the point of distraction, and a tiny sliver of a person can be enough to pain my soul.
See.
Like 99% of him is completely sweet and reasonable. I dunno WTF is up with that little sliver, but I do know that a tiny sliver of glass is enough to pain my whole body to the point of distraction, and a tiny sliver of a person can be enough to pain my soul.
GirlFromTexlahoma
New member
I'm just glad you got to see all the different sides of him so quickly... Maybe you'll agree to disagree, maybe you'll decide you're better as casual friends, at least you'll know the full story.
I knew my ex was ... More conservative than me. But pretty much everyone in Texas is more conservative than me I dated him for six months before learning he donated shitloads of money to MIKE HUCKABEE
And this is why I now disregard the "don't talk about politics or religion on the first date" advice
I knew my ex was ... More conservative than me. But pretty much everyone in Texas is more conservative than me
I dated him for six months before learning he donated shitloads of money to MIKE HUCKABEE And this is why I now disregard the "don't talk about politics or religion on the first date" advice
Reverie
Active member
And this is why I now disregard the "don't talk about politics or religion on the first date" advice
Yes, I agree. Maybe not the FIRST date, unless it happens to come up organically—I try not to push any particular conversational agenda right at first—but definitely one of the early ones. In my opinion, the whole point of dating is discover whether you have fun together and are compatible, and you can't discern incompatibilities if you never discuss hot-button issues!
Reverie
Active member
I have my first date with Sparrow scheduled for Sunday. Sparrow is actually more proactive about contacting me than either of my other OKC people were that I was thinking had romantic potential. That would bode well, except...
OK, so...
Sparrow is genderqueer. Which is fine. And I asked Sparrow a while back about pronouns, and received the reply "mx/xe/xem/xyr/xyrs/xemself." Which, at the time, I was a little confused about, but I looked up how to pronounce those things (apparently, initial /z/ sound), and I felt a bit better. But...
I cannot for the life of me seem to implement these things. I can say singular "them" just fine. And I can carefully use Sparrow's name, or avoid pronouns altogether (as I have been doing in this post), but I feel like it is nearly impossible for me to refer to Sparrow as "xe" (/ze/) in conversation. It's like my brain is broken, and when I try, I accidentally say "he" later in the conversation, possibly because Sparrow "appears" more toward male than female.
And I feel terrible about it! But it's no easy matter to just replace a pronoun with a brand new term. Pronouns are linguistically considered a closed class; it's not like adding a verb or a noun, which are word classes that get new vocabulary added to them practically every day. It's closer to how prepositions or conjunctions work—for some reason, something to do with how language works in our brains, it's harder to add to those categories.
So to prevent from disrupting the fluency of my speech, yet continue to respect Sparrow's preference for gender-neutral language, I keep saying "they/them" when I'm, say, talking to Rider about...xem. To do otherwise feels like I am faking some sort of over-the-top French accent or something.
I'm a bit nervous about how this will all go down when the date actually happens. I feel like for the sake of transparency, I should probably admit at some point that I'm struggling with this. But when? And will xe find it offensive?
Do I even have a right to try to date someone whose pronouns I can't get right? Especially when (and I am loath to admit it), I feel a mild degree of resentment toward xem before even meeting, just for picking "difficult, new" pronouns instead of just "they/them"?
Sparrow seems amazing in a lot of ways, not least of which is that xe is the one of my OKC people who has most consistently reached out to me and invited me to things, rather than being passive and waiting for me to make all the moves and plans. (Of course, after Kristof, I'm gunshy about being any kind of hopeful until after the third date, LOL. But still.) So I need to get through this whole pronoun thing.
To work through it, I consulted one of my former classmates in grad school who is also genderqueer (and prefers "they/them"), and they said this:
"Yeah. It's just a matter of practice, I'm afraid. For what it's worth, I see creating new pronouns when singular 'they' exists as needlessly prescriptivist, BUT, on the other hand, people's identities are important to them, soooo...it really is just something we'll all have to get used to."
They then advised me to try practicing using xyr preferred pronouns for at least six weeks before bringing it up as something I'm having trouble with (if I am still indeed having trouble at that point). And look at me, I'm practicing. But it's SO HARD.
I guess not as hard as going through the world genderqueer. I fear I sound like the gender-version of those grumpy old people who bitch about having to press 1 for English because THEIR life was a tiny bit easier when the country was less diverse.
Speaking of grumpy. Man, I am just having an all-around no-good day.
I had to get my new driver's license today and the place messed up my paperwork, adding an extra hour on to the process. There was a long line at the Fed Ex office when I was trying to pick up the package with my new SIM card for my new phone carrier. The online ordering system kept spitting out errors when I was trying to order food. And then this, when I went to try to port my number over to the new carrier:
And yes, I'm PMSing. But it really does feel like the entire world has dog-piled on me this week. I feel like it's been pretty objectively terrible.
At least last night Rider and I played music with our drummer friend. And tonight Rider is out watching a musical hero perform. And tomorrow night we have that double date with Oona and Toby. And Sunday I get to meet Sparrow.
Complaints aside, it's really cool that my life is so filled with longtime connections that twice in one week I was able to call on the expertise of friends to help me better understand things I am not that knowledgeable about (Jake with the politics thing, and my grad school friend with the pronouns thing). I really feel the value of community and network right now, and I hope that sometimes I am as useful to the people in my life as they often are to me.
I'm totally useless tonight though. Irritable. Frustrated. Too much work left to do. Guess I'll pour a glass of wine, eat a chocolate, and try to unwind a bit. When Rider gets home, he's going to be so high on concert vibes that I don't want to Debbie Downer him out of it.
OK, so...
Sparrow is genderqueer. Which is fine. And I asked Sparrow a while back about pronouns, and received the reply "mx/xe/xem/xyr/xyrs/xemself." Which, at the time, I was a little confused about, but I looked up how to pronounce those things (apparently, initial /z/ sound), and I felt a bit better. But...
I cannot for the life of me seem to implement these things. I can say singular "them" just fine. And I can carefully use Sparrow's name, or avoid pronouns altogether (as I have been doing in this post), but I feel like it is nearly impossible for me to refer to Sparrow as "xe" (/ze/) in conversation. It's like my brain is broken, and when I try, I accidentally say "he" later in the conversation, possibly because Sparrow "appears" more toward male than female.
And I feel terrible about it! But it's no easy matter to just replace a pronoun with a brand new term. Pronouns are linguistically considered a closed class; it's not like adding a verb or a noun, which are word classes that get new vocabulary added to them practically every day. It's closer to how prepositions or conjunctions work—for some reason, something to do with how language works in our brains, it's harder to add to those categories.
So to prevent from disrupting the fluency of my speech, yet continue to respect Sparrow's preference for gender-neutral language, I keep saying "they/them" when I'm, say, talking to Rider about...xem. To do otherwise feels like I am faking some sort of over-the-top French accent or something.
I'm a bit nervous about how this will all go down when the date actually happens. I feel like for the sake of transparency, I should probably admit at some point that I'm struggling with this. But when? And will xe find it offensive?
Do I even have a right to try to date someone whose pronouns I can't get right? Especially when (and I am loath to admit it), I feel a mild degree of resentment toward xem before even meeting, just for picking "difficult, new" pronouns instead of just "they/them"?
Sparrow seems amazing in a lot of ways, not least of which is that xe is the one of my OKC people who has most consistently reached out to me and invited me to things, rather than being passive and waiting for me to make all the moves and plans. (Of course, after Kristof, I'm gunshy about being any kind of hopeful until after the third date, LOL. But still.) So I need to get through this whole pronoun thing.
To work through it, I consulted one of my former classmates in grad school who is also genderqueer (and prefers "they/them"), and they said this:
"Yeah. It's just a matter of practice, I'm afraid. For what it's worth, I see creating new pronouns when singular 'they' exists as needlessly prescriptivist, BUT, on the other hand, people's identities are important to them, soooo...it really is just something we'll all have to get used to."
They then advised me to try practicing using xyr preferred pronouns for at least six weeks before bringing it up as something I'm having trouble with (if I am still indeed having trouble at that point). And look at me, I'm practicing. But it's SO HARD.
I guess not as hard as going through the world genderqueer. I fear I sound like the gender-version of those grumpy old people who bitch about having to press 1 for English because THEIR life was a tiny bit easier when the country was less diverse.
Speaking of grumpy. Man, I am just having an all-around no-good day.
I had to get my new driver's license today and the place messed up my paperwork, adding an extra hour on to the process. There was a long line at the Fed Ex office when I was trying to pick up the package with my new SIM card for my new phone carrier. The online ordering system kept spitting out errors when I was trying to order food. And then this, when I went to try to port my number over to the new carrier:
- Rep #1 at new carrier tells me I need to unlock phone to activate SIM and port number over, which should only take 30 minutes but in rare cases may take up to 48 hours. I try to unlock it online, but my unlock request is denied. I call old carrier.
- Rep #1 at old carrier tells me that to unlock phone, I need to get out of my contract and terminate my account. I knew I'd have to pay a fee, but figured that it would happen after I got the number ported and that old carrier would just bill me. Apparently not. OK, then. I tell them to go ahead and terminate it and I'll pay it on my bill. Rep tells me that my phone unlock should now be taken care of. I wait, and new service never materializes. So I IM with new carrier.
- Rep #2 at new carrier tells me, oh, well, actually, the number still needs to be active and valid to port. Since terminating my account deactivated my number, it can't port. She tells me to contact the new carrier again when my number is valid again. So I get back in touch with old carrier to figure out WTF to do.
- Rep #2 at old carrier tells me, well, since your account was deactivated, we can reinstate it, but we'll need to re-run a credit check and it will be a few minutes. Then I can set up your phone to be unlocked, since it doesn't look like Rep #1 ever actually did that despite deactivating the account.. 30 minutes later, she tells me I should be good to go, but she'll call back tomorrow to make sure everything is going well.
- Rep #2 at old carrier calls me back a few minutes after hanging up, realizing that I need to pay my full balance due before they can unlock it. So I do, and enter the unlock request.
- Unlock request is denied. Again. Some kind of error code about account information mismatch. So I get on IM with old carrier again.
- Rep #3 at old carrier says that this is a pretty common error, but he needs to submit a ticket with the unlock team, which can take "up to 48 hours to resolve." It comes out later in the chat that he actually means "two business days"...which on a Friday night means about four days. Before my unlock ticket is even resolved. Which means another up-to-48-hours after that before I get my new service.
And yes, I'm PMSing. But it really does feel like the entire world has dog-piled on me this week. I feel like it's been pretty objectively terrible.
At least last night Rider and I played music with our drummer friend. And tonight Rider is out watching a musical hero perform. And tomorrow night we have that double date with Oona and Toby. And Sunday I get to meet Sparrow.
Complaints aside, it's really cool that my life is so filled with longtime connections that twice in one week I was able to call on the expertise of friends to help me better understand things I am not that knowledgeable about (Jake with the politics thing, and my grad school friend with the pronouns thing). I really feel the value of community and network right now, and I hope that sometimes I am as useful to the people in my life as they often are to me.
I'm totally useless tonight though. Irritable. Frustrated. Too much work left to do. Guess I'll pour a glass of wine, eat a chocolate, and try to unwind a bit. When Rider gets home, he's going to be so high on concert vibes that I don't want to Debbie Downer him out of it.
Reverie
Active member
I miss my Former Coast rarely seen LDR beaux. I've really been missing Jake and Sam so much the past couple of weeks. Maybe I will get to see Sam soon, if he flies out to visit.
Dating new people calls into sharp relief exactly how easy I feel about both of them. Yes, there is a sexual disconnect with Jake, but there is so much love and right-up-to-the-edge-of-sex passion, and we never have an awkward moment. Yes, Sam is shy and we don't match 100% in sex styles, but cuddling up with him and especially cuddling between him and Rider is so comforting, so easy, so nice. And, anyway, for me, the sex isn't the important part. It's the love, the warmth, and the tingling of "sex could happen" without sex actually having to happen.
And I know each of them. I've known Jake for 20 years, since we were both basically children. And I've known Sam for only two years (almost to the day, actually—on Monday!) but I have seen so far into his past via his friendship with Rider that it feels like I've known him forever.
These new people are so alien to me. Maybe one day I'll know them too—that's how it always starts—but the uncertainty, the possibility of land mines or douchiness or awkwardness or lack of attraction or existence of attraction but lack of common sense...
I guess maybe it's that, before poly, I was a serial monogamist. I'd date one person till I fell in love with the next person, and jump right into that relationship. I didn't get much of the "dating experience" that people who spend time single get. And since I've been with Rider, I've had phases of OKC that come and go, but they never result in anything of substance.
Dating is weird and I miss my sexy cuddle boys.
Dating new people calls into sharp relief exactly how easy I feel about both of them. Yes, there is a sexual disconnect with Jake, but there is so much love and right-up-to-the-edge-of-sex passion, and we never have an awkward moment. Yes, Sam is shy and we don't match 100% in sex styles, but cuddling up with him and especially cuddling between him and Rider is so comforting, so easy, so nice. And, anyway, for me, the sex isn't the important part. It's the love, the warmth, and the tingling of "sex could happen" without sex actually having to happen.
And I know each of them. I've known Jake for 20 years, since we were both basically children. And I've known Sam for only two years (almost to the day, actually—on Monday!) but I have seen so far into his past via his friendship with Rider that it feels like I've known him forever.
These new people are so alien to me. Maybe one day I'll know them too—that's how it always starts—but the uncertainty, the possibility of land mines or douchiness or awkwardness or lack of attraction or existence of attraction but lack of common sense...
I guess maybe it's that, before poly, I was a serial monogamist. I'd date one person till I fell in love with the next person, and jump right into that relationship. I didn't get much of the "dating experience" that people who spend time single get. And since I've been with Rider, I've had phases of OKC that come and go, but they never result in anything of substance.
Dating is weird and I miss my sexy cuddle boys.
Reverie
Active member
Well, Sparrow was really nice, but there wasn't a whole lot of attraction there, sadly. I had fun, but I was also feeling pretty terrible because I'd started to come down with UTI symptoms and had forgotten to take my cranberry pills in the morning before leaving.
Plus, Rider and I had gotten pretty drunk with Oona and Toby the previous night, which is I think what brought the symptoms on. If ever I have something like that percolating in there, the dehydration always brings it on.
So I cut my hangout with Sparrow rather short. We went to the museum till it closed, and then went out for chain Mexican and then xe had invited me to a dance thing but I just wasn't feeling up to it, so I went home.
On top of the UTI symptoms, I was having menstrual cramps that were coming and going. It seems that this is going to be another weird cycle where I start cramping and spotting early but take forever to actually begin bleeding for real. I swear there's something to do with the pheromones of having gotten excited about a new person that throws my cycle out of whack. It happened when I first met Rider and Beckett too.
Rider and I walked up to the health food store so I could get some of that super-potent but disgusting 100% cranberry juice, and then I just spent the rest of the night watching TV with him and getting some work done on my laptop. And then this morning, I woke up with neck and back pain and anxiety on top of everything else. Ugh.
On the poly front, Rider has started up this online flirtation with someone from his past. The story is kind of strange in that they liked each other and were hanging out for like a week once upon a time...20 years ago. But he found out that she was 15 and he was 20. She had tried to kiss him and he said they couldn't because she was too young, and her feelings were hurt. And then they never hung out again.
He'd actually mentioned her to me once or twice a long time ago, when we've played our teasing "time travel" game where I tell him all the ways I'd have blown his mind if we'd met when we were younger. And he explained that our five-year age difference would have been creepy to him back then, and trotted her story out as evidence.
But somehow last week or so she found him on Facebook and sent him a friend request and they have been talking ever since, and she has confessed that she has a crush on him again after their recent conversations.
He sent me a picture of her, and she's very pretty. But I don't know if this will be any kind of real "thing" because she still lives in College Town where they met back in the day (the same place where Sam lives, which is now on the other side of the continent from us), and she has two kids, which I assume would make it difficult for her to make the money for plane tickets appear.
I suppose I should be feeling compersion, since if nothing else he appears to be enjoying their chats, but instead I just feel...kind of wary. She's been commenting on stuff on Facebook in a way that seems like she's trying to artificially inflate how well she knew Rider and Sam and the house that they lived in (saying stuff like "I remember that [house] well"), when I know from how Rider talked about it before that she was very much a minor footnote at the time and that they really didn't let her hang around the house much since she was underage at the time. Also, I'm not sure how legit her situation currently is with the father of her kids. She says they are "just co-parenting" now but who knows. The whole situation seems a bit strange and has faint alarm bells tingling for me.
I'm torn between trying to stick to my own "best practice" policy of trying to always assume the best about people until they have proven to no longer be worthy of that assumption, and trusting my intuition when something seems weird or "off." Sometimes my intuition has been wrong, or I have just read or interpreted a situation wrong (like with not trusting Elise, for example, or trusting Desiree when she turned out to be a nightmare). But a lot of times it has been correct about people, even if it only came out in the long term. I guess I will just keep my mouth shut and take a "time will tell" stance for now.
So...this past week has been a real mixed bag. On the one hand, I had a fantastic time with Rider all day Saturday, and with Rider, Oona, and Toby Saturday night. On the other hand, I have been dealing with hell with my phone company, suffering poor health in like three different dimensions, feeling overworked and overstressed, bummed that all of my week's dates turned out to be disappointments, and tentatively wary of Rider's new flirtation. I would like to just crawl back into my hole now and not come out for a while. I know things will look up—they always do eventually—but I want to hibernate until then!
Plus, Rider and I had gotten pretty drunk with Oona and Toby the previous night, which is I think what brought the symptoms on. If ever I have something like that percolating in there, the dehydration always brings it on.
So I cut my hangout with Sparrow rather short. We went to the museum till it closed, and then went out for chain Mexican and then xe had invited me to a dance thing but I just wasn't feeling up to it, so I went home.
On top of the UTI symptoms, I was having menstrual cramps that were coming and going. It seems that this is going to be another weird cycle where I start cramping and spotting early but take forever to actually begin bleeding for real. I swear there's something to do with the pheromones of having gotten excited about a new person that throws my cycle out of whack. It happened when I first met Rider and Beckett too.
Rider and I walked up to the health food store so I could get some of that super-potent but disgusting 100% cranberry juice, and then I just spent the rest of the night watching TV with him and getting some work done on my laptop. And then this morning, I woke up with neck and back pain and anxiety on top of everything else. Ugh.
On the poly front, Rider has started up this online flirtation with someone from his past. The story is kind of strange in that they liked each other and were hanging out for like a week once upon a time...20 years ago. But he found out that she was 15 and he was 20. She had tried to kiss him and he said they couldn't because she was too young, and her feelings were hurt. And then they never hung out again.
He'd actually mentioned her to me once or twice a long time ago, when we've played our teasing "time travel" game where I tell him all the ways I'd have blown his mind if we'd met when we were younger. And he explained that our five-year age difference would have been creepy to him back then, and trotted her story out as evidence.
But somehow last week or so she found him on Facebook and sent him a friend request and they have been talking ever since, and she has confessed that she has a crush on him again after their recent conversations.
He sent me a picture of her, and she's very pretty. But I don't know if this will be any kind of real "thing" because she still lives in College Town where they met back in the day (the same place where Sam lives, which is now on the other side of the continent from us), and she has two kids, which I assume would make it difficult for her to make the money for plane tickets appear.
I suppose I should be feeling compersion, since if nothing else he appears to be enjoying their chats, but instead I just feel...kind of wary. She's been commenting on stuff on Facebook in a way that seems like she's trying to artificially inflate how well she knew Rider and Sam and the house that they lived in (saying stuff like "I remember that [house] well"), when I know from how Rider talked about it before that she was very much a minor footnote at the time and that they really didn't let her hang around the house much since she was underage at the time. Also, I'm not sure how legit her situation currently is with the father of her kids. She says they are "just co-parenting" now but who knows. The whole situation seems a bit strange and has faint alarm bells tingling for me.
I'm torn between trying to stick to my own "best practice" policy of trying to always assume the best about people until they have proven to no longer be worthy of that assumption, and trusting my intuition when something seems weird or "off." Sometimes my intuition has been wrong, or I have just read or interpreted a situation wrong (like with not trusting Elise, for example, or trusting Desiree when she turned out to be a nightmare). But a lot of times it has been correct about people, even if it only came out in the long term. I guess I will just keep my mouth shut and take a "time will tell" stance for now.
So...this past week has been a real mixed bag. On the one hand, I had a fantastic time with Rider all day Saturday, and with Rider, Oona, and Toby Saturday night. On the other hand, I have been dealing with hell with my phone company, suffering poor health in like three different dimensions, feeling overworked and overstressed, bummed that all of my week's dates turned out to be disappointments, and tentatively wary of Rider's new flirtation. I would like to just crawl back into my hole now and not come out for a while. I know things will look up—they always do eventually—but I want to hibernate until then!
dancepants
New member
Not sure if this is wanted or helpful, but when people's pronouns are difficult for me, I practice talking about them aloud to friends over and over until my brain just accepts it. When I misspeak, I apologize, correct and move on.
Reverie
Active member
Thanks! Definitely wanted and helpful, and also in line with what I've been trying to do. It's good to have as many perspectives and tips on this stuff as possible.
Reverie
Active member
The cranberry juice/tablets and rest were not enough, so I'm currently waiting in urgent care for some antibiotics. Sigh. I've been so good about getting up to pee right after sex every time, but sometimes I still get them. Yesterday I thought I was kicking it, but it was worse again when I woke up this morning.
At least the back and neck pain from yesterday are gone. I am beginning to suspect it is the buckwheat pillow that Oona gave me that doesn't agree with me.
Last night when I was still feeling better, I set up the chicken wire intended to prevent the more evil of my two rabbits from getting under my bed and wreaking havoc. I thought maybe I'd be able to do it on my own, but I ended up needing Rider's help. It's really tough stuff to work with, and I ended up covered in scratches. At one point, I looked up after really struggling with a piece, and Rider was holding on to his end with one hand and texting with the other, and I felt really cross about it—here I was shredding and contorting myself and he couldn't be bothered to give the project his full attention.
Trying to give him the benefit of the doubt, figuring maybe someone was blowing his phone up and it was important, I asked him: "Someone blowing you up?" He shot me a glance that seemed equal parts guilt and irritation and said that he'd been trying to chat online while he was at work with Rita, the long-distance crush-girl, but she hadn't been around all day and now she was. My irritation increased because a) he'd promised to help me with this if I needed it and b) the chicken wire had been his idea in the first place—I'd never worked with the stuff before, and he had, so I had no idea what I was doing. And now instead of giving his attention to what was in front of him, he would rather be distracted by texts. Determined not to pick a fight when we had our bedroom torn apart, I just said "oh," and finished my task.
By the time we got everything done, we were both super grumpy and we flopped down onto the bed. I had planned to get some work done but was no longer in the mood. I wanted to let go of my irritation and reconnect with him (especially since he'd cooked me dinner and I felt shitty about being cross with him), so I lay my head on him and we chatted back and forth for a while. Eventually he put some music on and we relaxed and both became less grumpy. Chatting and cuddling turned to caressing and sexy touches and we both started sighing with desire. I couldn't really accept much because of my UTI, so I went down on him. We had the bright light still on (usually we switch to dimmer, colored bulbs), so that was fun and different.
Afterward we lay around giggling and talking some more, making jokes and discussing music and before we knew it, hours had passed and it was close to our real bedtime. We decided just to go to sleep early and Rider made me promise to cuddle him extra good, so I did. All the bad feelings were gone, washed away by the sexytimes and laughter.
But when I woke up this morning feeling much worse physically, I lay there for a while being anxious again. I worried about money and about having to take time from work to go to the doctor and about whether I just need to learn to accept that part of who Rider is is that he gets tunnel vision when he's interested in someone and what his regular priorities would normally be get all shaken up.
I worried about my weight and having a hard time finding time to exercise and thinking of how much easier it is to lose pounds when I'm not drinking so maybe I'll quit again like I did over the fall.
I worried about basically everything I could think of until I remembered that meditation is supposed to help, so I spent the last 20 minutes before my alarm lying flat and trying to focus on my breathing. And it helped some. And now I'm here, in an urgent care waiting room wondering how everything can go from seeming totally beautiful to totally grinding and precarious so fast that it can give me whiplash. I am just going to "keep doing me" and hope for the best.
At least the back and neck pain from yesterday are gone. I am beginning to suspect it is the buckwheat pillow that Oona gave me that doesn't agree with me.
Last night when I was still feeling better, I set up the chicken wire intended to prevent the more evil of my two rabbits from getting under my bed and wreaking havoc. I thought maybe I'd be able to do it on my own, but I ended up needing Rider's help. It's really tough stuff to work with, and I ended up covered in scratches. At one point, I looked up after really struggling with a piece, and Rider was holding on to his end with one hand and texting with the other, and I felt really cross about it—here I was shredding and contorting myself and he couldn't be bothered to give the project his full attention.
Trying to give him the benefit of the doubt, figuring maybe someone was blowing his phone up and it was important, I asked him: "Someone blowing you up?" He shot me a glance that seemed equal parts guilt and irritation and said that he'd been trying to chat online while he was at work with Rita, the long-distance crush-girl, but she hadn't been around all day and now she was. My irritation increased because a) he'd promised to help me with this if I needed it and b) the chicken wire had been his idea in the first place—I'd never worked with the stuff before, and he had, so I had no idea what I was doing. And now instead of giving his attention to what was in front of him, he would rather be distracted by texts. Determined not to pick a fight when we had our bedroom torn apart, I just said "oh," and finished my task.
By the time we got everything done, we were both super grumpy and we flopped down onto the bed. I had planned to get some work done but was no longer in the mood. I wanted to let go of my irritation and reconnect with him (especially since he'd cooked me dinner and I felt shitty about being cross with him), so I lay my head on him and we chatted back and forth for a while. Eventually he put some music on and we relaxed and both became less grumpy. Chatting and cuddling turned to caressing and sexy touches and we both started sighing with desire. I couldn't really accept much because of my UTI, so I went down on him. We had the bright light still on (usually we switch to dimmer, colored bulbs), so that was fun and different.
Afterward we lay around giggling and talking some more, making jokes and discussing music and before we knew it, hours had passed and it was close to our real bedtime. We decided just to go to sleep early and Rider made me promise to cuddle him extra good, so I did. All the bad feelings were gone, washed away by the sexytimes and laughter.
But when I woke up this morning feeling much worse physically, I lay there for a while being anxious again. I worried about money and about having to take time from work to go to the doctor and about whether I just need to learn to accept that part of who Rider is is that he gets tunnel vision when he's interested in someone and what his regular priorities would normally be get all shaken up.
I worried about my weight and having a hard time finding time to exercise and thinking of how much easier it is to lose pounds when I'm not drinking so maybe I'll quit again like I did over the fall.
I worried about basically everything I could think of until I remembered that meditation is supposed to help, so I spent the last 20 minutes before my alarm lying flat and trying to focus on my breathing. And it helped some. And now I'm here, in an urgent care waiting room wondering how everything can go from seeming totally beautiful to totally grinding and precarious so fast that it can give me whiplash. I am just going to "keep doing me" and hope for the best.
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Reverie
Active member
Oh, that wonderful poly skill called "communication."
So I knew that after waking up this morning stressing, I needed to pick my brain apart and let Rider know what was on my mind. The problem was (as it often is) that I really didn't 100% know what it boiled down to.
So instead of getting as much work done as I should have been doing, I spent a large chunk of this afternoon writing out, and editing, and rewriting what my thoughts were and where they were coming from.
When I got to the bottom of things, it was these two:
1) I still have a deep-down fear that if Rider becomes involved with someone else, he will no longer be reliable in the way that he usually is. This is my own baggage based on events from our past that I have forgiven him for, but they are still coloring my emotions.
2) I am, at best, deeply envious that he seems to have no trouble at all finding people who he has mutual attraction to and rapport with, who will spend all the live-long day chatting with him, and, at worst, I am becoming slightly resentful of the historical imbalance there. I literally have not had a connection like that once in the more-than-two years we've been together. This problem is not easily solved, because there are three factors involved: he is more extraverted than I am, has more free time than I do, and is attracted to a broader range of people than I am. He likes to characterize it as "balanced" because more people are attracted to me than they are to him, and I am attracted to fewer people than he is, but, over time, it has definitely washed out in his favor.
So when we both got home today, we discussed it all. He explained that the reason he had stopped to take her text was that right before I'd called him into the room, he'd started a conversation with her about what her relationship status was, and he felt like he owed her a "something came up; I'll be on later" since he had initiated the conversation.
He also explained that he doesn't have that "must talk all day" thing with her that he had with Kelly. He thinks he may actually be trying to hook her up with Sam, despite having a crush on her himself. He said that if we have a chance to go back to College Town and visit Sam, maybe he might try to see her, but he isn't planning to buy any plane tickets or anything like that.
I felt a lot better after that; the text thing was actually him letting her know that he had to attend to something with me, rather than him interrupting the chore we were working on to engage with her. He actually was living up to "being reliable" in that moment—the very opposite of the thing that I'd feared. That really helped.
I had given him the caveat about #2 that this wasn't something I expected him to solve, since it seems unsolvable at the moment, so he didn't get all stressed out or spin his wheels like he has done in the past when I've been upset about similar things. Instead, we just discussed it for a while.
I explained that, for me, my favorite parts about poly have been the honesty it encourages between the two of us, and the cuddle piles we've been in with other people. There is little better than being curled up in a heap with kisses and love to go all around.
My least favorite parts about it have been...pretty much everything else: the weirdness of the energy between us when one or the other of us gets back from visiting another partner; the tunnel vision he seems to get when he's pursuing someone; how imbalanced it always feels since he engages with people more easily than I do—it can make me feel so left out! But I'm still committed to figuring it out. I'm more committed to poly than I ever was to monogamy, and they both have their troubles.
I explained that really I only went out with all of those people at first recently because I'd already told them I would; by the time we actually got here, I was kind of dreading it. I'm happy to have all of those people as possible friends, but I don't feel that romance is on the table with any of them right now. I am still so all about Rider that I kind of don't have space for anyone else. I get fleeting crushes and twinges, but it's so weird how little real power over me they have.
On his end, he said that he really isn't interested in starting something up outside of our dyad right now because he already feels like he doesn't see me enough and he wants to explore our new city more with me without having to take another person's schedule into consideration. He said that his needs are more than met with me—more met than they ever have been—and while he doesn't want to stop having hypothetical freedom or "being poly," for now he's fine with it being just us.
He said that he doesn't know what to do about the historical imbalance thing; he suspects that, over time, the pendulum will swing all around: sometimes it'll be imbalanced in his favor, and sometimes in mine, and sometimes it'll be perfectly balanced, and sometimes it won't even apply because we'll just be focusing on each other. I told him that he doesn't need to "do anything"; just understand that it's been hard for me that the first almost-two years of our relationship have had him seeing one or two other people in an engaged-daily, consistent fashion, while I have had only sporadic or fleeting connections. It makes it hard to see what the rewards are when I feel like there is more cost than benefit to me.
He understood and validated my feelings, and gave me a big hug. And I felt a lot better. He also said we can talk about this again in a few days, if I want, when I am less hormonal and not sick. He thanked me for coming to him with my feelings, and that he loves that I can and will tell him anything.
I apologized for sitting on it for a day, but I explained that I needed that time to collect and work through my thoughts and feelings.
And now we are totally good. I don't feel a single iota of relationship stress anymore, even though I still don't know what the future holds. I told Rider that whenever I get stressed in our relationship, I instinctively go looking for that place inside myself that doesn't give a damn—that place where I can go where I can care less about a person in order to care less about the way they are affecting me. In all my other past relationships, I have found that place, and it's been the beginning of the end. But with him, I go looking for it and never find it. Instead I find a little cave where I sit with myself and decide what I need to tell him so that we can make things right again. And then I do.
This, my friends, is what poly is good for. Because I'll be damned if any of my mono relationships were ever this frank and willing to examine every corner of possible trouble. It's still super odd to me that doing poly right makes me feel more mono than ever, but I guess I'll take it.
So I knew that after waking up this morning stressing, I needed to pick my brain apart and let Rider know what was on my mind. The problem was (as it often is) that I really didn't 100% know what it boiled down to.
So instead of getting as much work done as I should have been doing, I spent a large chunk of this afternoon writing out, and editing, and rewriting what my thoughts were and where they were coming from.
When I got to the bottom of things, it was these two:
1) I still have a deep-down fear that if Rider becomes involved with someone else, he will no longer be reliable in the way that he usually is. This is my own baggage based on events from our past that I have forgiven him for, but they are still coloring my emotions.
2) I am, at best, deeply envious that he seems to have no trouble at all finding people who he has mutual attraction to and rapport with, who will spend all the live-long day chatting with him, and, at worst, I am becoming slightly resentful of the historical imbalance there. I literally have not had a connection like that once in the more-than-two years we've been together. This problem is not easily solved, because there are three factors involved: he is more extraverted than I am, has more free time than I do, and is attracted to a broader range of people than I am. He likes to characterize it as "balanced" because more people are attracted to me than they are to him, and I am attracted to fewer people than he is, but, over time, it has definitely washed out in his favor.
So when we both got home today, we discussed it all. He explained that the reason he had stopped to take her text was that right before I'd called him into the room, he'd started a conversation with her about what her relationship status was, and he felt like he owed her a "something came up; I'll be on later" since he had initiated the conversation.
He also explained that he doesn't have that "must talk all day" thing with her that he had with Kelly. He thinks he may actually be trying to hook her up with Sam, despite having a crush on her himself. He said that if we have a chance to go back to College Town and visit Sam, maybe he might try to see her, but he isn't planning to buy any plane tickets or anything like that.
I felt a lot better after that; the text thing was actually him letting her know that he had to attend to something with me, rather than him interrupting the chore we were working on to engage with her. He actually was living up to "being reliable" in that moment—the very opposite of the thing that I'd feared. That really helped.
I had given him the caveat about #2 that this wasn't something I expected him to solve, since it seems unsolvable at the moment, so he didn't get all stressed out or spin his wheels like he has done in the past when I've been upset about similar things. Instead, we just discussed it for a while.
I explained that, for me, my favorite parts about poly have been the honesty it encourages between the two of us, and the cuddle piles we've been in with other people. There is little better than being curled up in a heap with kisses and love to go all around.
My least favorite parts about it have been...pretty much everything else: the weirdness of the energy between us when one or the other of us gets back from visiting another partner; the tunnel vision he seems to get when he's pursuing someone; how imbalanced it always feels since he engages with people more easily than I do—it can make me feel so left out! But I'm still committed to figuring it out. I'm more committed to poly than I ever was to monogamy, and they both have their troubles.
I explained that really I only went out with all of those people at first recently because I'd already told them I would; by the time we actually got here, I was kind of dreading it. I'm happy to have all of those people as possible friends, but I don't feel that romance is on the table with any of them right now. I am still so all about Rider that I kind of don't have space for anyone else. I get fleeting crushes and twinges, but it's so weird how little real power over me they have.
On his end, he said that he really isn't interested in starting something up outside of our dyad right now because he already feels like he doesn't see me enough and he wants to explore our new city more with me without having to take another person's schedule into consideration. He said that his needs are more than met with me—more met than they ever have been—and while he doesn't want to stop having hypothetical freedom or "being poly," for now he's fine with it being just us.
He said that he doesn't know what to do about the historical imbalance thing; he suspects that, over time, the pendulum will swing all around: sometimes it'll be imbalanced in his favor, and sometimes in mine, and sometimes it'll be perfectly balanced, and sometimes it won't even apply because we'll just be focusing on each other. I told him that he doesn't need to "do anything"; just understand that it's been hard for me that the first almost-two years of our relationship have had him seeing one or two other people in an engaged-daily, consistent fashion, while I have had only sporadic or fleeting connections. It makes it hard to see what the rewards are when I feel like there is more cost than benefit to me.
He understood and validated my feelings, and gave me a big hug. And I felt a lot better. He also said we can talk about this again in a few days, if I want, when I am less hormonal and not sick. He thanked me for coming to him with my feelings, and that he loves that I can and will tell him anything.
I apologized for sitting on it for a day, but I explained that I needed that time to collect and work through my thoughts and feelings.
And now we are totally good. I don't feel a single iota of relationship stress anymore, even though I still don't know what the future holds. I told Rider that whenever I get stressed in our relationship, I instinctively go looking for that place inside myself that doesn't give a damn—that place where I can go where I can care less about a person in order to care less about the way they are affecting me. In all my other past relationships, I have found that place, and it's been the beginning of the end. But with him, I go looking for it and never find it. Instead I find a little cave where I sit with myself and decide what I need to tell him so that we can make things right again. And then I do.
This, my friends, is what poly is good for. Because I'll be damned if any of my mono relationships were ever this frank and willing to examine every corner of possible trouble. It's still super odd to me that doing poly right makes me feel more mono than ever, but I guess I'll take it.
Oh, this has SO been a thing with me and TheKnight recently - while on the one hand I have a closer / more significant partner right now, most of the people I've been involved with in the past couple years have NOT been chatters / texters and I so very much miss the thousands of texts HipsterBoy and I used to send. I've been channeling a lot of that energy into FB and other forums like this, but it's really not the same thing at all. (On the other hand, it's a good exercise in learning to be more present...)
Reverie
Active member
For me, it's like...not even that there have been people I've been seeing and they have not been chatters or texters. It's more like all of my connections have been so loose and/or long distance and/or so fleeting that there hasn't been anyone very steady at all.
Which, in theory, is fine with me, because I am fulfilled with Rider when things are "just us." But I feel a pinch of envy when he DOES have a particular someone or someones and I don't. And it might be different if sometimes he had them and I didn't, and sometimes I had them and he didn't, and sometimes we had them at the same time. But it's usually him that manages to build those tight, close connections to people because he is very outgoing and tends to like "the chase," so he purposely reaches out and pokes people to incite communication, and he gets into these spirals of superconnectivity with the ones who are responsive to that approach.
One of those people, once upon a time, was me, back when he and I were just beginning to build a friendship. We would spend hours on IM, trading music and jokes and getting to know each other. He would reach out, and I would respond in kind.
But I'm not a "chaser"; I tend to respond to other people how they respond to me; if they are super chatty, I'll be super chatty back. If they only message me once every few days, I might message them slightly more often than that, but I never want to be annoying, and anyway, I'm distracted with the rest of my extremely busy and largely fulfilling life.
I guess that since Rider prefers to literally be social 24/7, he has a gap in his life when I am busy with my extra work or travel or need for a little alone time that, hypothetically, another person could fill. But the thing is...it seems like with ethical poly, it's impossible to just plug someone into those gappy spots and not expect them to ooze onto everything else.
Hypothetically, it wouldn't take anything at all away from me if he were to find someone who was 100% cool with only fitting in where he had gaps in his schedule where my professional life makes me busier than him. But it doesn't really work that way. Feelings will grow and then that person will (understandably) want access to him when it is convenient for THEM, not just when it is convenient for US. And that will take something away from the too-little time that we already have together.
I'm happy when I think about "someone who could pay attention to him when I can't" but I'm sad when I think about "someone who will take/want/need his attention when I want/need it." People are not puzzle pieces. Feelings aren't bound by conventions of convenience. But neither of us wants to sacrifice time we could have together, nor do we want to treat another person like a puzzle piece. It's not anyone else's fault that I have a currently demanding career that managed to afford us our move here, and will get us some amazing places later, but requires me to pay the piper now as a result. I signed up for that. Rider chose to sign up for that with me. But it would be totally understandable if no one else wants to sign up for that with us. Which is why I think we are still hanging out in this functionally monogamous place, at least until we finally get to a place where we get enough time just together.
Rider says that one solution to that would be if we were both dating someone we both like. Which, sure, as a casual thing, if we happen to luck into it...but to turn it into a romantic relationship, or to go out purposefully in search of it...that comes dangerously close to unicorn-hunting territory. Even individual chemistry and personality compatibility aside (which are big things to leave aside), neither of us is purely 50/50 bisexual—we both romantically skew closer to straight—so the existing person who would be opposite sex to the new person would likely get more entangled, and the other existing person would end up feeling more left out. I have no desire to drag someone into that predictable field of landmines. When I explained that to him, he said, "Oh, it makes a lot of sense when you explain it that way."
Tangentially related: I was listening to an old interview with Kathy Labriola, and I wanted to park my takeaways from it here. It's a lot of paraphrasing her, along with insertion of some of my own interpretations and understandings of what she said.
In the discussion that we had last night, I admitted to him that my fear that he will no longer be reliable may be irrational now, but it definitely used to be rational 12–18 months ago, and I think it's just going to take time for my heart to catch up to my brain on that. That's OK. It's something I'm working on. And he's helping me by trying hard to actually be reliable. It's funny that I happened to hear that interview today that sort of backed me up on that.
Reverie
Active member
Never freaking mind. Back to being unreliable. Telling me he missed me all day and can't wait to see me when he gets home, but then being distracted on text at the beginning of the couple of hours we were supposed to be hanging out and getting QT before I had to do work, sending little hearts and shit. Thus resulting in processing-fest and very little actual work done.
And the worst part? Not even realizing it was a direct contradiction of the conversation we'd had 24 hours prior until I pointed it out.
How hard is it to just, like, be together when we're together? When I've had to do work every night so far this week and this is our tiny window of time?
He said he felt bad about it and felt embarrassed that he has "this blind spot" that allows him to not even realize he's being inconsiderate when he likes someone else.
I just...
When it comes to any of his other friends, on whom he doesn't have a crush, he is always polite and acknowledges that his phone goes off and excuses himself for a second if it's something he needs to attend to. With chicks he likes, it's always obvious distraction, waiting till I turn my head for a second, then taptaptap.
And if I've been with him and I've been waiting all day for a text from someone I've been interested in, I'll be like "Excuse me, it's [Beckett/Kristof/whoever] and I've been waiting to hear back about [XYZ]," and I answer concisely and go back to my in-the-meatspace companion.
Why can he not just communicate to me that he wants some space to have a conversation with someone, and I'll be like, "Cool, well, I have to work in a little bit. Did you want to take care of it then, or is it important that you attend to it now? Because if it's super important now, maybe I'll work now and we can hang out more later?"
Instead, he's just running our time together through with little threads of distraction. And it IS distraction, because all of the rest of the time that we have been together, he values our time, and can read me, and is enjoying our face time. But when he's firing up a new interest, he suddenly "forgets" things he said the day before, or seems to be waiting for that little moment when he can sneak something by.
It makes me feel like a person who is speaking when the other person is not listening but instead waiting for their turn to talk—their mind is clearly somewhere else and not really connecting or focusing. I know he loves me. I know no one else is a threat to me.
What IS a threat is how it makes me feel toward him. I feel really disrespected when we have just come off a long, processing-type conversation the night before, and *I* feel like we're all resolved and reconnected, and *he* is saying today (and I quote):
"I can't wait to se you tonight" (which he said more than once) and "Big hug and kiss when you get home" (which, to be fair, did happen) and "It makes sense that it will take time and continued demonstration of positive actions to fix that. I feel like we're on course."
And then LITERALLY THE VERY NEXT HOUR that we are in each other's presence, it's surreptitious, sly-smiling taptaptap. How is that "demonstration of positive actions"? No.
I am at a loss to understand how this person who is almost always so very good to me, so demonstrative of being deeply in love with me, and so compatible with me in so many ways...just turns oblivious and distracted the minute a pretty girl admits she has a crush on him. It drives me insane. It's like living with two different people: one who is a totally amazing partner who would do almost anything for me, and one who would rather be getting an instantaneous thrill out of a flirtatious text than pay any attention to just about anything other than that.
I just want to feel...cherished. Like the moment we're in is the one that's most important to him. Even if he might make other people feel that way if he's ever with them. I don't want to feel like he's just sitting there next to me passing time while he waits for the next little hit of proto-NRE to come over the airwaves.
I want him to live the life that he wants. I don't want him to miss out on experiences that he wants to have. But I also want—for me—to have the uninterrupted unwind time that I need with the person I love the most after a brutal day at work and a series of super-long work days, being sick, etc.
I want a partner who I can count on to be present with me, and who will be my teammate and my rock when I most need it. Most of the time, that's totally him. But not always. And not right now. Women, somehow, literally turn him into a different person, and one that I wouldn't put up with if this was what he was like all the time.
I go through this spiral in my head where I think about how, ugh, poly sucks. But also how, ugh, monogamy sucks. How I'd be better off alone because then I would feel neither the restrictive chafe of monogamy, nor the terrible ache of the ebb and flow of seeming more and then less important to someone I love so much. But our life together is so good in so many ways that the highs always seem to overcome the lows. And I would miss him as though my very heart would be dead.
It's not fear of being alone; alone, I could do fine (I couldn't always say that, but it's true of me now). It's fear of...totally sacrificing the most beautiful love I've ever known, when my beef with it in the first place is that I occasionally have to suffer through sacrificing a piece of it.
I know it's unrealistic to expect that introducing new people in our lives won't cause a jarring and rebalancing of the scales. When I went out on my recent dates, Rider had to figure out what to do with himself and was pretty disgruntled the times when he could find nothing. If he had to go out with someone, I could deal with it in kind—there's always something for me to be doing. It's not that. It's the looking forward to a particular chunk of time together and seeing it shot through with that distracted state. At least, right now, it is.
I dunno. Total bummer, dude.
And the worst part? Not even realizing it was a direct contradiction of the conversation we'd had 24 hours prior until I pointed it out.
How hard is it to just, like, be together when we're together? When I've had to do work every night so far this week and this is our tiny window of time?
He said he felt bad about it and felt embarrassed that he has "this blind spot" that allows him to not even realize he's being inconsiderate when he likes someone else.
I just...
When it comes to any of his other friends, on whom he doesn't have a crush, he is always polite and acknowledges that his phone goes off and excuses himself for a second if it's something he needs to attend to. With chicks he likes, it's always obvious distraction, waiting till I turn my head for a second, then taptaptap.
And if I've been with him and I've been waiting all day for a text from someone I've been interested in, I'll be like "Excuse me, it's [Beckett/Kristof/whoever] and I've been waiting to hear back about [XYZ]," and I answer concisely and go back to my in-the-meatspace companion.
Why can he not just communicate to me that he wants some space to have a conversation with someone, and I'll be like, "Cool, well, I have to work in a little bit. Did you want to take care of it then, or is it important that you attend to it now? Because if it's super important now, maybe I'll work now and we can hang out more later?"
Instead, he's just running our time together through with little threads of distraction. And it IS distraction, because all of the rest of the time that we have been together, he values our time, and can read me, and is enjoying our face time. But when he's firing up a new interest, he suddenly "forgets" things he said the day before, or seems to be waiting for that little moment when he can sneak something by.
It makes me feel like a person who is speaking when the other person is not listening but instead waiting for their turn to talk—their mind is clearly somewhere else and not really connecting or focusing. I know he loves me. I know no one else is a threat to me.
What IS a threat is how it makes me feel toward him. I feel really disrespected when we have just come off a long, processing-type conversation the night before, and *I* feel like we're all resolved and reconnected, and *he* is saying today (and I quote):
"I can't wait to se you tonight" (which he said more than once) and "Big hug and kiss when you get home" (which, to be fair, did happen) and "It makes sense that it will take time and continued demonstration of positive actions to fix that. I feel like we're on course."
And then LITERALLY THE VERY NEXT HOUR that we are in each other's presence, it's surreptitious, sly-smiling taptaptap. How is that "demonstration of positive actions"? No.
I am at a loss to understand how this person who is almost always so very good to me, so demonstrative of being deeply in love with me, and so compatible with me in so many ways...just turns oblivious and distracted the minute a pretty girl admits she has a crush on him. It drives me insane. It's like living with two different people: one who is a totally amazing partner who would do almost anything for me, and one who would rather be getting an instantaneous thrill out of a flirtatious text than pay any attention to just about anything other than that.
I just want to feel...cherished. Like the moment we're in is the one that's most important to him. Even if he might make other people feel that way if he's ever with them. I don't want to feel like he's just sitting there next to me passing time while he waits for the next little hit of proto-NRE to come over the airwaves.
I want him to live the life that he wants. I don't want him to miss out on experiences that he wants to have. But I also want—for me—to have the uninterrupted unwind time that I need with the person I love the most after a brutal day at work and a series of super-long work days, being sick, etc.
I want a partner who I can count on to be present with me, and who will be my teammate and my rock when I most need it. Most of the time, that's totally him. But not always. And not right now. Women, somehow, literally turn him into a different person, and one that I wouldn't put up with if this was what he was like all the time.
I go through this spiral in my head where I think about how, ugh, poly sucks. But also how, ugh, monogamy sucks. How I'd be better off alone because then I would feel neither the restrictive chafe of monogamy, nor the terrible ache of the ebb and flow of seeming more and then less important to someone I love so much. But our life together is so good in so many ways that the highs always seem to overcome the lows. And I would miss him as though my very heart would be dead.
It's not fear of being alone; alone, I could do fine (I couldn't always say that, but it's true of me now). It's fear of...totally sacrificing the most beautiful love I've ever known, when my beef with it in the first place is that I occasionally have to suffer through sacrificing a piece of it.
I know it's unrealistic to expect that introducing new people in our lives won't cause a jarring and rebalancing of the scales. When I went out on my recent dates, Rider had to figure out what to do with himself and was pretty disgruntled the times when he could find nothing. If he had to go out with someone, I could deal with it in kind—there's always something for me to be doing. It's not that. It's the looking forward to a particular chunk of time together and seeing it shot through with that distracted state. At least, right now, it is.
I dunno. Total bummer, dude.
Have you said some of that to Rider? You say you've discussed it with him, but have you phrased it the way you did here? Like, "I've noticed when you have a new interest, you sometimes get distracted when we're together. That hurts me. I love that usually when we're together, you're completely focused on me, and I'd like that to be the case even when you have someone new on your mind. Could you maybe shut off your phone or leave it in the other room when it's my time with you?"
You've read about NRE on this forum. That's pretty much what's causing Rider to behave differently with a new interest than he does at other times. The "new, shiny, can't wait to talk to them again!" thing.
To be honest, if it were me, I would print out the post you have here and show it to him. Maybe seeing it written out will get through to him.
You've read about NRE on this forum. That's pretty much what's causing Rider to behave differently with a new interest than he does at other times. The "new, shiny, can't wait to talk to them again!" thing.
To be honest, if it were me, I would print out the post you have here and show it to him. Maybe seeing it written out will get through to him.
Reverie
Active member
I have used basically those exact words with him. I did last night, which is when he said that he felt embarrassed about it. But the fucked up thing is that I had already talked to him before about it back when he was starting things up with Kelly, and I just feel like he should have remembered. He was like, "well, that was a long time ago, so I guess I just needed to be reminded." But...that in itself is kinda hurtful: that you have to be reminded to not be a jerk to your partner? Ugh.
He said he'd make an effort to redirect his thoughts and be more present during our time. Which, I guess, doing a better thing in the future is all he can do at this point now that he's already tripped the Hypervigilant Sleepless Anxiety Beast within me. All he had to do this time was to keep it cool and not let "new thing" run roughshod over me and over common sense like it did last time, and I was all poised to begin to relax and trust him. But no.
I get that it's NRE. I know that's a thing. BUT HOW CAN IT MAKE HIM SO STUPID?
I've had it too, pretty bad with Beckett, and I basically had a conversation with Rider about it where I volunteered the information that I barely ever hear from Beckett, and he never responds to more than two or three texts at a time, so if I hear from him, I will excuse myself, text for those five minutes while I can catch him, and then return to being present. And that's exactly what I did.
Rule #1 in life: Don't be a dick.
And then, of course, I get the guilt spiral about "ruining our night" by getting upset. He was so exhausted after our conversation that he said he just wanted to go lie down for a few minutes and then slept for nine hours, only briefly waking up to get some water and have another conversation with me since I was lying awake and anxious all night.
So we totally didn't have sex like we usually do every night and like I finally could since I was on the antibiotics for the UTI and feeling better. I'd been getting him off every night, but nothing for me, and last night was to be the first time in days for me. Alas.
It's a bad start because already I feel the resentment rising. Resentment that the influence of this other person is having a weird effect on the person I love, which is having a terrible (anxious, crying, sleepless, sexless) effect on me. I don't want it to get to the point where it did with Kelly where I was jealous and hateful and felt greedy all the time because my lizard brain associated "presence/existence of Kelly" with "bad things happen to me."
I tried everything I could think of to sleep last night—every position, meditation, masturbation, cuddling, not touching, even writing a meditative gospel-sounding song quietly to myself! But my heart still beat like a jackhammer, and on the few occasions I'd drop into sleep, I'd immediately start having very unsubtle nightmares about stuff like Rider going to a party without me and starting a triad there with two women and then never having time for me anymore.
Rationally, I know that being distracted by text messages when we're supposed to be hanging out is a tiny, relatively insignificant thing. He should be able to apologize, do better in the future, and have it not affect me so intensely. But the inner part of me that harbors the terror that he's going to start being thoughtless of me again as a matter of course won't shut up.
Rationally, I know that he loves me very much, and that in most circumstances he would do almost anything for me. But it does not make me feel loved to feel like he'd rather be somewhere else or doing something else or talking to someone else.
I know he wants to spend his life with me. We're supposed to get married. But what kind of life will it be if it's peppered with this the whole way through? And how can I trust that it won't be when he says one thing and then does another?
I'm toying with the idea of not writing here for a while. This is where I process, but to be completely honest, I think I'm out of processing juice right now. I have too much going on in my life. Too many demands on my time (mostly work) and too many things that need getting done—I haven't even fully settled into a routine here yet. The absolute last thing that I need is night after night of poly processing bullshit that leaves me emotionally exhausted but unable to sleep when I need to be on top of my game.
I am thinking about just re-shifting the focus of my life from my home life to my work life. Which would mean that instead of getting my work done as quickly as possible so that I can make time with Rider, and apologizing to him for having to bring my work home sometimes, I will let him know that work is now my default setting and if he wants time with me, he will have to ask for it and we'll schedule it like we do everything else.
That way, hopefully, the time that we spend together is time that we actually want to spend together, and not just "all available time that I'm not working." There will be clear delineations, and within those lines, hopefully he can make an effort to keep our time sacred. He can do whatever he wants with the rest of the time. I'll be hiding in the bedroom with my laptop too busy to give a fuck.
I don't know. I just hate feeling this way.
breathemusic
Active member
Not to devalue your feelings or anything... but this stuff that you're mentioning right here seems to indicate that you realize that you're having a REALLY strong reaction to something that isn't necessarily proportional to that reaction. I agree that if this is an issue for you guys, he needs to work on it. But behaviors are not always so easily corrected by just being told once and then remembering to never do that again. We form habits that have to be broken over time with work. It sounds like Rider wants to fix this, but that might require the patience of bearing with him while he's reminded multiple times about his behavior until he forms a new habit of NOT doing those things. Your stress and exhaustion from all of the working and being sick might also just be contributing to how intense your reaction is to all of this.
Again, I'm not saying that he was in the right, only suggesting that it might not be that unreasonable for it to actually take a big, repeated effort on his part to change.
You guys have such an amazing relationship in so many other ways. I'm always inspired when reading your blog and thinking that you guys are an amazing example of how poly relationships can work really well. This thing seems like it should be a pebble in the road vs. a boulder.
I do hope that he's able to work on things and that you both feel better about it!