Ari's Blog - Beginning

unicorn hunting

No wonder unicorns are soo hard to find
 

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Wow 10 years.

I once posted saying that a lot of what gets posted on forums is hardship. Seems to me I am a bandwagoner..

Don't have the energy for details right now but my quad disolved (exploded) over the last 9 months leaving me questioning too much.

Good to see some familiar faces ... Not even sure if this place is active anymore.

And heck I am still a mod.. I would have thought I would be fired by now haha
 
Welcome back Ari. There should be some names you recognise :) It's still an active forum although has ebbs and flows. Saturdays are a little quieter than most.
 
Having re-read my blog .. so my parallels to what has occured recently.

An immediate need to turtle and shut down
"Our" desire to be friends
"My" fear it's a smokescreen and I will lose her completely
There are kids involved now, so even more complexity
Feelings of failure
Feelings of shame
Feeling like poly just can't work for me

It's funny how many of these things are on rinse and repeat for me. Even saw the warning signs ... I knew it was coming and spiralled which likely pushed it over the edge.

Other feelings too. 10 years down the tubes.

Also feelings of resentment to my wife. Heck resentment to myself for not being stronger.

10 years ago we met and fell in love with a wonderful couple. Total of 4 kids, 3 kids together, caring, loving extended family unit. With problems of course. There was a balance.

My wife battling resentment and distrust. Anger issues bubbling up and causing stress. When I travelled and not there to mitigate, it was downright explosive..

This ended in a split to protect some of the kids. Not from the physical but from the yelling, emotional. My kid.. my wife.. my choices last fall through until now. I was keeping a balance trying to maintain two relationships. Even though the bod had disolved. That lack of balance.. the choices I made caused a last collapse.

Choices... What choices either groupings of choice and I lose a piece of my soul. Either group of choice and I deal with massive separation. Either choice causes imbalance.

Other parts to the story too.. quad-fi was likely was wrong choice. I should have tried harder.

I... Dropped a lot of my poly friends and had no support.. no external people to balance me out.

What do I want..
What do I need..

How do I be friends with someone who completes my soul?
 
Welcome back, Ari. I'm sorry your relationships have shifted and it's painful. I hope blogging here helps.
 
Welcome back, Ari. I'm sorry your relationships have shifted and it's painful. I hope blogging here helps.
Thanks Mags. I hope so too, but oddly, I feel a lack of words. I can't seem to verbalize whats happened or where it will take me or where i should be.

Part time co-parenting adds complexity to a terrible situation. I am and always have been the cut and run type. I can't maintain friendship posts breakup, at least not traditionally.

Now I am not sure I have a choice. Kids involved ... and honestly I cant see her not in my life. Even if it is limited to friendship.

How do I look at her with the shame I feel
How do I maintain friendship as she dates again

Anyways, my brain is going in a lot of different directions, and my heart is going in the opposite way, in a lot of different directions. There is no right path... There is no path without pain..
 
Sorry you are going through this Ariakas. I can't tell exactly what's going on, just that the quad has broken up, and that the pain you are going through is clear and articulate.
 
Thanks, ya, I was struggling to be articulate with the overall challenge. I also wasn't thinking of divulging details since I am not digging for solutions. There are no solutions to our split. At this point the core "challenge" is me.

Also as mentioned above, my brain and heart are going in a million different directions.

Can I, and how can I be friends with my now ex?
I absolutely need to buck up and be cordial so we can co-parent
At 46, a quick look at poly it seems to have gotten YOUNG... so what does my poly world look like. Is it even a thing moving forward? 9 years of polyfi... (ironically 9 years to the day yesterday.. yay anniversaries)

I took quite a bit of time on my flight home to log and think. Some my base challenges were a loss of future. We had plans, trips, etc that were "ours" as a group. And those are gone.

I also lost a bit of "what do I want" in the middle of so many relationships. So I took time to re-evaluate that.

In the end I have some lists I can build off of

What do I want from my future (tactical list like "I want to be friends with my ex")
  • Friends with my ex
  • More poly friends
  • Reconnect with old friends
  • Co-parenting
  • more time in mountains
  • if I can find mountain biking poly folk, I might be in heaven
  • quality time with family

A general list of things or dreams I want - not sure why I categorized this differently but I did. These are things that were honestly next to impossible to achieve at times with 4 kids, 4 adults, full time jobs and travel for work... I have no idea how people pull this shit together in bigger polycules.
  • Make more time for sex
  • for kink
  • Partners... swinging/open/poly... I dont know, what am I ... haha
  • fitness
  • healthfullness
  • love

Things I need to do to achieve those dreams and goals
  • poly counselling
  • A good babysitter
  • heal myself
  • heal friendships
  • travel more

I also did what I call a dream mapping, taking each individual dream that we had as a group/family, and aligned them with new dreams for me, or my smaller family. So instead of looking back on all of the pain with regret and shame, I can look forward to bigger dreams and goals

Lastly I listed my happy places. The places where, no matter the memories, they are overridden by happiness.

I am a list person, and organized and hope that this can keep me progressing to a better place in regards to the breakup.

I have been told again (if you read previous messages from sour girl) you can see reference to me playing superman. This breakup resulted in the same response. I take too much on, take too much responsibility, take on too much weight, so everything that goes wrong creates a feeling of failure and guilt. I am not sure if I can get over the hurt I took part in causing, but since I cant fix it, I need to figure out a way past it.

I am a fixed, I am sure others here are too... but sometimes its unfixable.

Maybe tomorrow will suck again, but for today, its a bit brighter.
 
Sounds like you are getting started on the process of picking up the pieces. Sort of like if a window got smashed, the first thing you would have to do is pick up the broken glass. Not an easy thing to do, but you feel a little better as it starts getting done. I am glad you are feeling at least a bit of temporary relief.
 
Been a busy couple of weeks. Lots of riding (mountain biking) and getting my kid to and from camp. I have hung out with the "family" a bit, this means I have spent some time with my ex. Life in general has been busy.

Its difficult to not be terse when with her, I naturally want to speak with affection, but can't.
Affection which comes naturally to me, has no home in this relationship.

Friendship is tough, friendship for me, and I have described this in the past, is fleeting. Maybe a decade in Whistler broke my friendship gauge, but friends aren't people I spend a lot of "personal" time with. "Friends" slide in and out of my life quicker than I can ride a mountain bike.

Friendship with my ex, she wants time, she wants to talk.. she wants things that I dont do with friends haha... So weird..

In the end, I am not sure if I miss her, or miss the relationship. I enjoyed spending time with her, but do I miss being in that specific relationship. Do I just miss the sex... Knowing what I miss might help me understand what I want in the future.

I also have this gap, this what if... what does my future look like. Poly, less poly, more swing. its hard for me to gauge my next steps. I have always been enm first, poly second. Poly was a happy/unhappy accident.

Seeing a counsellor will hopefully help me find answers to my many questions. Or at least point me in the right direction. I hate the unknown...
 
It kind of sounds like swing might be best for you ... swing, or something between swing and poly. FWB, perhaps. Your counselor will help you determine that.
 
It hurts when you're not living life, you're just enduring it. I'm having a bit of that today myself, so I definitely sympathize.
 
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