Hi everyone,
I'm going to try to make this brief, but... yeah, it won't be.
I've been aware of the rough basics of what the poly life is all about for awhile, but I've been slightly nudged to be here from an unlikely source.
So, me.
I'm 42, Canadian, separated after 20 years of a monogamous relationship (15 of it married) and a father of two boys.
The relationship is a painful thing for me. The shortest way to explain it is that we loved each other, but she had severe issues with body image and how she looked, and though at the start I had been confident that she would see that I loved HER and that that would somehow fix things, it obviously in hindsight was the idea of a very young man with idealistic ideas about the world and was doomed.
Flash forward 20 years, and from her perspective she never could get past her issues and from my end, I ended up with half of my life in a relationship with virtually no physically intimacy of any kind. At some point, I had tuned out the world, tbh, because for someone like me, a lack of personal physical connection is, over time, a soul killer.
But I woke up to what had happened, and pulled the plug on things. We actually function very well now as co parents and things are fine in that regard. I'd say we are both happier now.
But I've been adrift because so much of my life went dormant.
I started reaching out to old friends and have been fighting to get my sense of life back. Yesterday I had a text chat with my very first gf from when we were teenagers. I told her everything that had happened in my life, and she suggested that the answer to my future was poly.
I'll explain.
The two of us, when we had been together, were teens and were way too immature for the feelings we felt, but we both had a sense of a relationship's power as being one where joy comes from providing joy to the other person... we had both felt that you get more out of seeing the other happy then in getting something specific back, and that holds true for little day to day things all of the way up to the physical aspect. Needless to say, the relationship was great while it lasted, lol. But we went our separate ways as life demanded we must.
She told me about how she had gone on to basically live a poly lifestyle before the term had really even taken hold in popular lingo, and she's been living as such for much of the last 20 years with various partners and has found it to be the answer to her way of seeing how humans should interact...
Her blunt message to me was that there is no one she knows who is more equipped right to their core to be poly, and she suggested that I should find a site like this one and at least... read up.
So that's why I am here, basically.
I've got issues to deal with... while I understand the concept and I do think she is right that it would work for me, I am guaranteed to suffer from fear... I would have enough trouble going to a traditional mono singles night... for the life of me, at this time, I can't even fathom how a single man my age with kids etc walks into a place where people are already in various forms of relationships... I don't get how that works, especially how it works without people thinking that you are some schmoe trying to get a quick bit of action, which would be the complete opposite of why I was there. How do poly people trust a newcomer to not be a douchenozzle?
I know I have a tremendous amount of light to share with... someone, or someone-s... but the mechanics of how to find people and to even understand the cues of how to tell if they would be interested in knowing you in ANY fashion are beyond my comprehension, tbh.
My other issue is I live in a place called the Kootenays in British Columbia, and it is a small place in mountains with small populations. I can't believe that there would even BE a big poly presence here, unless maybe in Nelson, a city nearby.
And lastly, I'm still healing internally from the realization that through my own inaction and... emotional slumber I guess? I wasted years of my life, and to an extent my ex's as well (plus of course her end of things but that's not important here). So I'm still tying to regain confidence in my life choices...
But I trust my old friend more than almost anyone in the world, and she's adamant that I should at least... like I said, read up.
So anyway, that's me. Thanks, I'll be around reading and learning
I'm going to try to make this brief, but... yeah, it won't be.
I've been aware of the rough basics of what the poly life is all about for awhile, but I've been slightly nudged to be here from an unlikely source.
So, me.
I'm 42, Canadian, separated after 20 years of a monogamous relationship (15 of it married) and a father of two boys.
The relationship is a painful thing for me. The shortest way to explain it is that we loved each other, but she had severe issues with body image and how she looked, and though at the start I had been confident that she would see that I loved HER and that that would somehow fix things, it obviously in hindsight was the idea of a very young man with idealistic ideas about the world and was doomed.
Flash forward 20 years, and from her perspective she never could get past her issues and from my end, I ended up with half of my life in a relationship with virtually no physically intimacy of any kind. At some point, I had tuned out the world, tbh, because for someone like me, a lack of personal physical connection is, over time, a soul killer.
But I woke up to what had happened, and pulled the plug on things. We actually function very well now as co parents and things are fine in that regard. I'd say we are both happier now.
But I've been adrift because so much of my life went dormant.
I started reaching out to old friends and have been fighting to get my sense of life back. Yesterday I had a text chat with my very first gf from when we were teenagers. I told her everything that had happened in my life, and she suggested that the answer to my future was poly.
I'll explain.
The two of us, when we had been together, were teens and were way too immature for the feelings we felt, but we both had a sense of a relationship's power as being one where joy comes from providing joy to the other person... we had both felt that you get more out of seeing the other happy then in getting something specific back, and that holds true for little day to day things all of the way up to the physical aspect. Needless to say, the relationship was great while it lasted, lol. But we went our separate ways as life demanded we must.
She told me about how she had gone on to basically live a poly lifestyle before the term had really even taken hold in popular lingo, and she's been living as such for much of the last 20 years with various partners and has found it to be the answer to her way of seeing how humans should interact...
Her blunt message to me was that there is no one she knows who is more equipped right to their core to be poly, and she suggested that I should find a site like this one and at least... read up.
So that's why I am here, basically.
I've got issues to deal with... while I understand the concept and I do think she is right that it would work for me, I am guaranteed to suffer from fear... I would have enough trouble going to a traditional mono singles night... for the life of me, at this time, I can't even fathom how a single man my age with kids etc walks into a place where people are already in various forms of relationships... I don't get how that works, especially how it works without people thinking that you are some schmoe trying to get a quick bit of action, which would be the complete opposite of why I was there. How do poly people trust a newcomer to not be a douchenozzle?
I know I have a tremendous amount of light to share with... someone, or someone-s... but the mechanics of how to find people and to even understand the cues of how to tell if they would be interested in knowing you in ANY fashion are beyond my comprehension, tbh.
My other issue is I live in a place called the Kootenays in British Columbia, and it is a small place in mountains with small populations. I can't believe that there would even BE a big poly presence here, unless maybe in Nelson, a city nearby.
And lastly, I'm still healing internally from the realization that through my own inaction and... emotional slumber I guess? I wasted years of my life, and to an extent my ex's as well (plus of course her end of things but that's not important here). So I'm still tying to regain confidence in my life choices...
But I trust my old friend more than almost anyone in the world, and she's adamant that I should at least... like I said, read up.
So anyway, that's me. Thanks, I'll be around reading and learning