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.