Change in all the areas of my life...

Spent a long time writing a message yesterday to someone on this site about the nature of security (hint: it's an illusion), and it made me think of this article I ran across a while back. It stuck in my head because the author uses the same "kintsugi" analogy I do for what being poly has done to me.

What no one tells you is that polyamory breaks you *open.* Everything you do after you have experienced this will be a conscious choice, an effort, an intention. You will be in charge of you – for the first time in your entire life. And it will be fucking terrifying…and then it will be amazing…and then it will be terrifying again. You will grow a thick skin and yet, you will know how to take your beating heart out of your chest and offer it to someone else with the best of intentions and tell them to “hurt you please.” (from https://seekingmybalance.wordpress.com/2017/03/29/what-no-one-tells-you-about-polyamory/)

For me, I think that's the essence of this - it's not exactly about NRE, certainly not just about sex - it's about *intentionally creating a life* that makes me happy.
 
Oh my god. That's amazing. Can I quote to my blog, too??
 
Of course - go read the whole link, it's wonderful, as are several of her(?) other pieces.
 
One of our band's new songs is actually based on that concept/pottery, only we titled it the other name: "Kintsukuroi" :)
 
So in a development that shocks approximately no one except the two of us, the "benefits" portion of MartialArtist and I's friendship got reinstated the other night. (Like, seriously, both Knight and Artist were like "of course you did" when I told them, in different ways. OK, fine, I'm apparently predictable...)

The thing is though, I wasn't 100% sure that that would happen until it did, despite wearing the cute underwear. I was not 100% sure I was ok with a purely FWB situation - as it absolutely is, that was one of the many things we talked about. I didn't want to feel like "just a hookup", and there was something about our dynamic in text that I couldn't quite tell whether we were really actually friends or whether I was just a person that he could talk into sending naked pictures. (I like taking them, he likes getting them, it's a good combination, but sometimes I hit some internalized slut-shaming.)

When we met up in person, though (I hadn't seen him in over a year, and when I did it was at a kink con that I was at with AnotherArtist and TheKnight and was during MA's mostly-mono period), now that sex was on the table the chemistry was very much still there. (There's something very cute and sexy about someone trying really hard not to be overfamiliar in touching you (because in theory if we're not fucking it's not QUITE appropriate for his hands to be on my legs, right) and yet having a hard time resisting. But I am, admittedly, quite the attention junkie. And he more or less said all the right things (and I think meant them) about our friendship so that sex just seemed a logical part of it, rather than the aim.

The actual sex was very good but not earth shattering , truth be told - he's quite talented and there were some interesting dynamics between us I'd rather like to explore at some point, but it was also 2 in the morning and 3 drinks in (we didn't get to the bar until 10 because he had to drive from 3-hour-away-city after work, and then we talked for hours) which doesn't do good things for anyone.

(Seriously, how does this even work in hookup culture? are people just having terrible sex all the time?)


Anyway, the *last* time we had a relationship was while I was rebounding from HipsterBoy, who managed to be rather critical of the idea of someone he wasn't even sleeping anymore with having an FWB. (WTF?) And as AnotherArtist put it, I picked up a bit of Pavlovian expectations of reactions on that one, to the point I was literally dreading telling AnotherArtist either that I was going out with MartialArtist or, after the fact, that I had slept with him.

(OK, if I had thought I'd be referring to both of them in the same sentence this much I'd have come up with a better nickname for one of them, but for the sake of continuity I suppose I'm stuck now).

So that was Friday night/morning. Well, except for the part that TheKnight was awake when I came to bed after MartialArtist left. The interesting thing is that if I'm just FWB with someone, and I've asked permission, I don't mind sharing details of the sex I had. I don't do that if I have sex with people I have a romantic connection with, anymore, as I've gotten to the point where it feels like a betrayal somehow - like I'm breaking the bubble of the intimacy between us. With an FWB though, sex is just something we did, telling about it doesn't feel any different emotionally than telling about the drink I had at the bar... and TheKnight has a bit of a hotwife/cuckold streak so he likes it when I sleep with people I'm willing to tell him about. So I didn't get to sleep until 4. Wow.

Saturday was a party with a bunch of my closest friends that Knight and I put together for one's graduation... was wonderful from the sense of "I am with my family again", less wonderful because Knight got a bit overinebriated and I had to drive us home. Bah. But truthfully I'm not that annoyed at him - he doesn't get to spend that much time with his two best friends, and he should, and if he let go a little much, well, that happens.

And then last night I spent the evening with Artist and I'm still in bliss this morning. Not only was he amazingly cool with being told about what happened with MartialArtist - like, not just "yeah that's cool" but we talked for a while about the dynamics and such and I got absolutely no *hint* of disapproval. Not that I got any disapproval from TheKnight, either, clearly - but then he's a happy slut and I've always been more conflicted about it, and I just *expect* bad reactions. Same thing was true back when I was sleeping with Tattooed - I expected Sunshine and DinoActivist to be critical, and they *weren't*. Fucking society and the monogamy hangover - you would think I would have managed to internalize the idea that "sex for fun is really ok" instead of something sordid, by now, but that hasn't entirely happened.

Anyway, I'm just so... very... *ridiculously* head over heels for Artist these days, in ways I don't even understand - the intellectual mesh, the emotional connection, the way he can just decide I'm going to have an orgasm now and I *do* (yes really), the way I can't stop touching him and even found myself licking the salt off his skin because we had had such passionate/hot/sweaty sex (and I'm a priss! I don't DO sweaty!)... we had this conversation about how we didn't really ever have just chill out time, and that might be an interesting thing about going away for a weekend together, but I'm not sure I can turn the intensity down even with more than 12 consecutive hours together. It's already sometimes hard to even sleep with him because I can't stop touching/being touched...
 
"monogamy hangover"

I love that! lol

And yay for great sex!! :D
 
They say you shouldn't go looking for poly relationships to find something missing in an existing relationship. Obviously, they're right.

They don't tell you want to do when you find that thing you're missing with someone else and instead of making you feel better, it just makes you feel worse about it being missing elsewhere.

Fucking NRE. (Or is it that AnotherArtist is in love with me, and TheKnight has fallen out? there's a traitorous voice in my head that wonders and fears... I don't want that, I keep fighting that, I make things worse by fearing it...)

Almost exactly a year later, and I could have written this today. Isn't that just the definition of "stuck in a moment"?

And yet compare the two days since my last real post...Tues evening drinking and talking to Knight after a wretched day with MiniMe, who is in a "testing boundaries" phase... was actually quite bonding and lovely until he got tired...and I couldn't deal with him wanting to go to bed without, well, *taking* me to bed ::ahem::. And given that I was both tipsy AND in day-before-sharkweek-hormonal-low... all hell broke loose between us. FML why do I *do* this? I just... thought, that given we had had a busy weekend and had sort of gone to bed early/tired Monday, and since I had plans out on Wednesday and he had them on Thurs and Friday, that it'd be obvious to him as well as me that if he wanted intimacy, it would have to be on Tuesday.

And yet compare that with Wednesday night with Artist.. Went to a show - Kings of Leon (who I like but don't loooooove but I got really cheap tickets and figured "why not"). Which translates to romantic dancing under the stars, not bothering to drink because beers were $16 each (wt actual f) and we were drunk on each other and maybe a bit second hand high from everyone around us with pot, and back to his house where we can, as usual, barely stop touching each other to sleep even though it's damn near 2 in the morning (the second day in a row, for both of us, though his was work instead of fighting with his partner) and we both have to work early the next day. And with every tiny gentle kiss on my forehead or the tip of my nose (he's schmoopy and adorable sometimes) I know it's love and yet he never ever tells me, it's just not who he is.

If I wake up with Artist, we spend 20-30 minutes kissing and cuddling before getting up - wake up with the Knight and I'm lucky to get a kiss or perhaps a perfunctory moment where he cuddles me while trying to go back to sleep - which makes me feel like he'd rather be sleeping. And yeah, that's sometimes true, and sometimes ok, but does it have to be all the time?

How the hell is it that Artist makes me feel so unequivocally cherished even though he's never actually said he loves me? And the Knight makes me feel so alternately invisible and loved in equal measures?

The problem is that he feels just as unloved. I don't seek out spending time with him, or suggest plans (per him, anyway) - I think I do, but I admit I'm not as enthusiastic about it as I am to make plans with Artist because I *know* that Artist and I have fun and connect... and yet when I make them with Knight, I know it will be *good*, but I'm 90% sure I will end the evening feeling dissatisfied with whatever connection we DID manage to make. He's not going to spend the evening touching me, it may or may not feel right when he does, the sex will be a solid 7-8/10 instead of the face-melting 9-10/10 or even 11+/10 (bonus points for creativity or multiple sessions), and when we're done he's gonna end up going to sleep, or barely cuddling me - not an hour of cuddling and kisses and sleepy conversation and maybe throw in an extra orgasm or two, just because.

What is an "I need this in my life" need and what is "I need this in every relationship" need? I really can't tell...
 
Last edited:
I had some thoughts about this, but they were so heavily laden with talk about my own experiences and relationships, that I decided not to put them in your blog, but in my own. (Too much of that feels like hijacking your narrative with my own ridiculous walls of text, which I'd rather not.)

But I want you to know I sympathize with the questions you are asking of yourself and of life. I don't have answers, but I feel ya.
 
Hi Icesong,

You said it before. It's polyamoryville. And it is at once beautiful and sucks big time.

I'm reading a book on (monogamous) relationships at the moment. It claims that (monogamous) couples who start the day with rituals and end with rituals stay close together. A wake up kiss, a wake up a hug, a wake up routine. A going-to-sleep routine. The routine can be anything. The book claims these two routines - one at the start of the day and one at the end can significantly improve a couple's relationship. It explains this by saying we go to sleep tired and wake up fresh, and in between whilst asleep we like to feel safe and secure. The book claims the day can be full of crap but if your partner can wake up and vitalise you, and be there when you end the day to sleep, you start to feel like a team. The book calls it the take-off and landing of your personal life, with you as an aeroplane and your partner being there for you as the landing strip every time you need to land safely.

I don't know if it's based on any real science, or whether the book's claims suffer from a cause-effect fallacy, but thought to share it with you in case you think it might help.

Good luck. You're one of the few people who have a previously monogamous long term relationship that has survived the transition to polyamory. I'm sure your son will be grateful for this in the future.

Hang in there. Your life is still beautiful,
Shaya.
 
I write a lot here about the problems between Knight and I - and sometimes I think I need to balance that more with how well we actually do work. There are several things that make Knight and I work as well as we do - and please realize that you are seeing the absolute worst of us here, in anonymity land. (Shaya has a point about focusing on the positive).

Part of what makes us work is personality - I am the emotional one, Knight is much more... solid, and controlled. He grounds me and stabilizes me in a lot of ways, so it's not really surprising that that doesn't lead to a volatile/passionate sort of relationship. He's not one to ever make rash or impulsive decisions, in fact he doesn't *like* being passionate because he doesn't like the person he is then. (I think I've alluded to him saying or doing things he doesn't really mean if we fight too much or he's too angry, it's actually something he tries astonishingly hard to avoid.) So as long as we have good days in between the bad ones - and we do, even if they aren't necessarily passionate in that NRE way - I think that us being in each others' lives in SOME way is one of our top priorities. It's unclear, sometimes, whether that will be as lovers or just as platonic life partners - but I'm at the very least intellectually relationship-anarchist enough to believe that platonic life partners is a reasonable outcome even if lovers doesn't work out forever (though the transition, if that's what's happening, is emotionally difficult for me).

And, too, that solidity is why I don't think Knight craves that level of passionate experience I do - sex is fun for him, not his primary love language. I suspect he feels more loved by the fact that we spent the day cleaning the house together yesterday than he would feel after a 24 hour sex/cuddle marathon. I mean, honestly I've discussed this, obliquely, with other lovers of his (Sunshine, once, in a rather odd conversation; and Pink!Girl once complained to me after they broke up - I think that that was part of why she was so against him having any OTHER lovers outside that quad) - intense passion is not necessarily something he sustains. Not that he doesn't have sexual relationships with his others - I know perhaps a bit too much about what he and Joan were up to the other night, here - but the... flavor is, I think, very different than what I seek out.

I mean, we're coming up on almost 20 years now - in August! - and what has never changed between us is that we prioritize each other in almost everything. Might not manage to always do the *best* thing for each other, clearly. And that doesn't mean that on a practical level our other partners may not get prioritized sometimes, or our own needs won't get prioritized over our partners. But there are only a very few times, ever, where I see one of us having prioritized our own needs in a way that was *actively harmful* to the other person - mostly, honestly, during the Pink!Girl/HipsterBoy days where we were still figuring this out (and I was the guiltiest of the two of us, truthfully).

But at the same time, neither of us feel trapped by the relationship - we agreed forever ago that if it turned out that we made better friends than life partners, we'd let each other go - and that gives us a much more honest place to speak our needs from. "If you love it let it go", and all that. There's truth there.
 
This last weekend... wow. Just wow. It was pretty much everything I could wish from it (ok, with one exception, which will be obvious, but worked out well).

I've written for the past few years about going to a kink con, and every year it's a life changing thing. Sounds crazy for an event that's devoted to hedonism, except this particular one is far more about radical queerness and living 100% in your skin, and something about being in that environment for a weekend resets me, makes me able to be more vulnerable and yet stronger.

Knight and Artist and I joke about the poly dominos and that how they fall ends up determining where we all sleep, both when we're home and in this case when we travel together. (The three of us drove to the con together, nominally splitting a room.) In this case, Knight's partner Joan ended up with a room to herself because her husband decided to stay with his GF, so Knight stayed with Joan and Artist and I mostly got the room to ourselves. Just as well, as Joan was on staff so her schedule - and thus Knight's - was a bit more packed than mine.

Daytime Friday was fine - a few classes, a LOT of shopping (it's like kink Christmas!), flirting with a really cute GQ person and accidentally getting cockblocked (perhaps not the right word?) by Artist - just as well since the person plays harder than I usually do. I got a liquid nitrogen brand at the "sample these kinks" evening event, along with a short, intense "thuddy" scene and a few porcupine quills, and I had a bit of a cigar at the femme cigar social (I was still hoping to top a scene with a woman by the end of the event, but didn't make any connections). Then the play space opened for real, and since Artist and I had a number of new things to play with, including one I had bought because it reminded me of his favorite toy to use on me, well... needless to say I found myself on a cross Very Soon. I don't know if it was the bit of nicotine, the environment (I don't play in public often) or what, but I hit subspace fast and yet more verbal than usual... which led to me challenging Artist to send me even higher. He did. When he finally took me down I was staggering like I was drunk and couldn't even brain enough to put my clothes back on.

After cuddling long enough for me to be only endorphin-tipsy rather than endorphin-wasted, we wandered up to get a late evening pizza snack and talk to Knight and a few other people for a bit before deciding to go back to the room, leaving Knight to find his own fun. And this is where things got difficult for a bit. At some point, Artist's wife had gotten upset at some issue and had been texting him about it during the day, which I hadn't really noticed. But she was still really upset and texting him at 12:30 at night. Sooooo he left me in the room and stepped out to the hallway to call her. And didn't come back for quite a while. I had started out ok with this, but by 30 minutes in I was feeling very abandoned, endorphin crashing *hard*, and flashing back to shit that had happened during the HipsterBoy days. So I texted Knight, who hadn't found any trouble to get into yet, and he came and hung out with me for a bit while waiting for Joan to get off of staff duty and/or Artist to come back. (Shining armor indeed, no?) Eventually Artist came back in, looking really upset, and I was half afraid we were going to end up cutting off our trip early.

Apparently, though, the fight had been his fault (or he saw it as such) and he came back thinking I'd be really upset at him too, and so he was beating himself up about that pretty badly, which actually somewhat diffused my anger before I even had a chance to say anything. And then...

We're cuddled up in bed, talking, and he was saying something about how bad he felt, kind of blah blah blah stream of consciousness, and then his sentence ended "... and I really hate hurting the people I love."

If this had been a movie with a voiceover, there'd have been a record scratch. As it was, there was this moment that stretched between us, neither of us daring to breath as we realized what was just said, as neither of us had ever put what we felt for each other in words before. As it turns out, he had been just as afraid that he'd mess something up by telling me as I had been, and we were both ecstatically happy to finally be able to say it.

(In other words, no more blog posts that are the equivalent of me plucking daisies while chanting "he loves me, he loves me not". :D)

And the next day? despite my lack of game, my desire to have a scene with me as the Top came true after all, when Artist confessed he was curious. And he even had fun, so we'll see whether I get to try again with him some other time. ::purr::

That, of course, happened after the scene where Artist and Knight co-topped me with hot wax. The fun part about both of them playing with me at once is that I can usually tell who is doing what even when blindfolded, their personalities come through in the way they touch me. And Knight was in a particularly aggressive mood, having just been involved in a mostly-sadistic / non-sexual rope scene with a random woman at the event who had asked him to play.

I think the weekend was good for him too, in ways that will help us - he did a lot of topping, he's gotten so much more confident about that, so maybe (once he gets back from the work trip he's on for the next few days) we'll be able to move further down the path we've been talking about.

Oh, right, that. We've been talking about, for the past few weeks, trying to consciously create more of a D/s dynamic between the two of us. It's a way to force us into the erotic mindset that so often gets lost in our life, and force us out of the kind of boring sex we've been having lately. With any luck, we may have a bit of the effect Spork has described...

I think part of that is that D/s seems to force people who have become apathetic to one another, who take each other for granted, to PAY ATTENTION. The slave must suddenly be mindful of rules and protocols, for instance, and the Master must be aware of compliance and be prepared to administer discipline. If the slave is feeling ignored, they might "brat" or become deliberately naughty or disobedient, and get attention in the form of punishment. Suddenly there is this increased awareness of your partner's activity in the relationship. Add in there rituals that foster connection, too. If there is anything left worth "saving"...and of course if the people involved have it in them to get enjoyment from BDSM activities...there's potential there to sort of reboot the old marriage in a different format, one, perhaps, that works better for those involved.

It's either this or maybe we'll end up completely platonic. Or maybe we'll end up with like sex once a month as it works out to be now; I'm not really thrilled with either option as I really want my *life* to have more erotic energy. I know that's a lot to ask given I have a 5 year old. But still. The way he touched me during that scene? I have hope.

Side note? going from giggly NRE touching all weekend to home alone today/tonight/tomorrow is kind of hell.
 
Sounds like a great time at the con! I go to mine, Thunder in the Mountains, next month. I CAN'T WAIT.

Yeah, for the reason you quoted me above, and others, I am realizing I'm pretty content with where Zen and I are with our loosely defined dynamic. It's not all the way into D/s or M/s territory, though we play around with that sometimes. We are a devoted Sadomasochistic couple. He is usually in the Top/Sadist role, though he often says, "I am here to serve you." He takes happiness from doing what he does and from knowing that I love and need it. He would never be the kind of partner who would ignore me or deny me play just to be perverse, which I know some Sadists who are more into being Dominants do. Well. Except for the John Denver incident, but that was just funny...

I think though, that I could see a time down the line where it could be enjoyable and useful to bring more D/s and protocol into our thing. Like, if we live together a few years and my kids are grown and moved out, and it's just the two of us...especially if we find ourselves in too much of a routine or rut in life. I almost want to hold off and deliberately save some of those things for later in our relationship when they could do significant good.
 
I was in such a ridiculously and utterly fabulous mood yesterday - I had such a very very very good weekend.

It didn't start off auspiciously, to be honest. Thursday I had a rough day with my son, so Knight and I ended up staying up really late talking and drinking and then having sex (that part was good) so I was a bit tired on Friday. Which led to me drinking a bit too much wine and eating popcorn for dinner on Friday night while watching a movie with MiniMe and Knight... which in turn led to me being needy and wanting sex or at least connection from a Knight who was too tired for it and getting into a huge fight about it. Mea Culpa. In my defense I at least cut it off at the point at which we were talking past each other again and slept in the 2nd bedroom. Meh.

Saturday got better though. I at least had a realization about exactly what Knight said to me that was so very awful, and expressed it - basically he blamed my higher sex drive than his on a lack of self-esteem, and while I admit my need for attention can sometimes be based on that, I don't think it was a fair assessment overall. So we talked about that and he at least acknowledged he was being unfair. Then we dropped MiniMe off at Knight's mom's house and went to a shibari workshop! I don't _love_ rope, truthfully, but I do like Knight's reaction to it and the better he is at it the more fun it is for me. (Unfortunately timing meant we could only do the first of the two workshops the teacher was doing this weekend, one on a technical point of rope rather than "rope for sex" which was Sunday and sounded MUCH hotter. Anyway.)

We had dinner at a lovely French restaurant on impulse (I ate my weight in charcuterie, like you do) and then went back for the (slightly disappointing) play party after the class, deciding to go home and play rather than do anything at the venue. But... then I got tied up and lots of lovely impact play and sex and yay! Also some bruises which proved to be funny later.

Slept till 9am (blissssssss!) on Sunday, pick up kiddo, take him to the playground for a bit in an attempt to tire him out before heading to a friend's birthday brunch (fail, but he was at least relatively charming about it), leave that early and head to the movie theatre to see My Neighbor Totoro in a special showing with both Knight and Artist. Which on the one hand was awesome but on the other it was kind of hard to keep the small person interested when they accidentally showed the subtitled version for 20 minutes instead of the dubbed one. Grr. But overall it was good, even if MiniMe was getting bored by the end. Knight left to help a friend of Joan's move, Artist hung out with us for a while (and got roped into playing PS4 and building legos) and then went home to finish a work project before our scheduled date.

Later, I took him out to an AMAZING tapas place for his birthday (one of my favorite restaurants and he had never been!), we watched the sunset from a rooftop patio, went home and had crazily good sex (I seriously don't even have words for how good we are together), there was a massage in there and so much talking and cuddling and every time I think about how he sounds when he says he loves me I just can't stop smiling. (Waking up to more cuddles and sex and showering together didn't hurt either.)

I'm so completely over the moon for both of these men, I just can't even describe it. And it's scary, a bit - I mean, even MiniMe *adores* Artist - I mean, he decided that he wanted to sit in HIS lap for some large portion of the movie, much to the surprise of all of us. And while I'm thrilled that MiniMe *does* like Artist - he could just as easily be jealous of the time I spend away from home with him - it's still scary from a "what if this doesn't work in the long run?" point of view. But I suppose that's true of any relationship, poly or friendship or whatever.
 
That said, I am beginning to think I really need to cut down on drinking, especially the "let's randomly have a few drinks" with Knight. Somehow it just always ends up with us being shitty at each other, mostly because I end up being uninhibited enough to bring up issues but not quite together enough to discuss them well.

I don't understand how I can love someone so much and yet we can be so toxic to each other at the same time.
 
Home alone tonight, working late while Knight is at Joan's house - well, with MiniMe so not really alone (though he's long asleep). It was a rough kid day - I had a project with a suddenly-moved-up deadline, he was in a combative mood. Blah.

I'm not having a glass of wine while writing this, though, which has got to be worth something, right? Though there's something strangely contrary about the fact that I want one being a reason I shouldn't have one.

Need to find a better way to get happy brain chemicals other than sex and booze. Not that sex would be such a bad thing, and yeah, I could go take care of that myself to some degree (not as good, of course, but still.)

On the other hand, I don't even know if sex is really want I want to be using as a brain chemistry crutch. I mean, hell, that's exactly what Knight said to me that was so hurtful last week, right? That I'm only happy when I'm being flirted with or fucked?
 
Your stuff about what Knight said and your drives and desires reminds me a bit of the reading about Tao that I've done, at Zen's behest. There is stuff in there about how this ancient Chinese philosophy that had been all but obliterated in later and more patriarchal social upheavals and cultural eras, promoted the idea that a woman may need more than one man to satisfy her needs. That women have by nature far greater capacity for sexual energy (ying) compared to men whose yang can be easily depleted if readily expended. I guess this is a philosophy arising from the observation that a man is often exhausted after sex, and women can potentially orgasm more and recover more quickly.

There is nothing wrong with having a robust sex drive and a lot of desire. It can be difficult when partners are not in good alignment in this area and it can be hard to work out solutions that respect the needs of all involved, unfortunately. Be careful with the concept that wanting a lot of sex for any reason is in any way wrong of you. I don't think it is.

And after all, getting high from sex, sensation, play...our own natural chemicals and processes...is so much healthier than what millions of people turn to, such as drugs for instance.
 
There was certainly an idea in medieval European thought that women were more sexual than men as well (though it was certainly not considered a good thing).
 
Happy birthday to me?

Yay for 36, I suppose. Officially not in the cool demographic anymore, ha, although there are certainly enough sexy forty-something women that I'm not that worried really.

Kind of a low key day, really, though things have been somewhat busy for the past few days so I suppose that's ok. I've been going back and forth between happy and melancholy all day though.

More talking, this time sober, between Knight and I last week about the theoretical D/s thing that I really think at this point just isn't going to happen. He thinks we can do part time - something more than a scene, less than 24 hours - but what I actually wanted was more like... not TPE, but a certain amount of ritualized/erotic power exchange all the time. I agreed to try the part time thing if he actually wants to though, although of course it hasn't happened since.

At least we did some rope after going out on Friday, which was ... fun, if still not really what I was looking for. (I knew it wouldn't be going into it as it was an experimental tie that was part physical therapy for me. But anyway.)

Saturday was utterly brilliant - date day with Artist and we decided to stay in and cook things and play with kink, and knowing this both of us spent the afternoon in ridiculously turned on mode, spurred on by a few strategic texts here and there. By the time he got to his place with the groceries for dinner, we barely said hello before our clothes were off. (Honestly if we're planning on cooking I pick recipes that don't take that long because I know us and, well...) eventually we get around to cooking dinner and even that I s wonderful - I love to cook, he's good at helping and not getting in my way which is astonishing given how much I'm being groped, and somehow we always have more things to talk about - see Esther Perel on wanting a lover who is still a mystery to you no matter how much you love them, and he is. And then the kink we had planned for... for someone who wasn't a sadist, barely a top two years ago... I was flying. Again. Barely manage to quit touching him to sleep, end up having sex two more times (before and after coffee!) before I go home... I know I can't stay like this forever but so much of me wants to...

(We also have an entire weekend away planned at the end of the month. It's going to be amazing. )

Sunday was a bit lost to sub drop, Monday was ... eh. Kiddo starting to get sick, Knight was off work so around which is nice, but he was just cranky much of the day and went to bed early so... yeah. And while he got up early with the kid, let me sleep in, and made me coffee before going to get groceries and such for dinner, he's still asleep now and I'm not. And Artist got me flowers and told me how sexy and smart and beautiful I was, and how lucky he was to have me, and Knight ... said happy birthday. And MartialArtist and even _Tattooed_ (yeah, there's a blast from the past) sent me sexy birthday texts. (Clearly Tattooed is just going for the booty call here but I sort of needed to hear I was sexy today, so there's that...)

And Knight sits there and tells me he doesn't know how to hit on me. Because... I don't know why, really. I know his love language is acts of service, I know and yet I want to be touched and it's not in him to even think of me that way, not for more than when we're having sex, and I don't know how to deal with this. We talk and we talk and we talk and it doesn't matter because nothing changes - maybe a few extra bits of sex but I cant stop wanting him to _want_, and he's not a person that DOES want, and there's nowhere to meet in between.

I'd talk to him tomorrow but now we have a friend riding down to vacation with us so never mind that. And vacation will be a lovely idyll with chosen family but I would bet money I have sex maybe once the whole trip.
 
Well, a happy birthday to you, Icesong. And as always, thank you for your insight and for sharing. I know you don't do it just for us, but your story has given me a lot of personal growth.

Thank you. And happy birthday.
Shaya.
 
...neither of us feel trapped by the relationship - we agreed forever ago that if it turned out that we made better friends than life partners, we'd let each other go - and that gives us a much more honest place to speak our needs from. "If you love it let it go", and all that. There's truth there.

Why must my philosophy and my heart say such very different things? rationally... intellectually... I want to do this but emotionally I _can't_, I can't I can't I can't. At least not like *this*. As much as I want to be able to say "oh, we can be life partners and work out whether we're lovers separately", it's not working. I can't sit here and never know which Knight I'm going to interact with, not when I'm hoping for my lover and all I ever *get* is life partner - and not a life partner who really seems to want to be anything more that, sometimes.

Side note: someone should have taken me up on that damn bet from that last post. I mean, the vacation was great. I love my friends so very much. But Knight caught a cold for the first day or two and we ate and drank and hung out with people too much and the gorgeous old house we rented had bedrooms which all connected which made it a little weird and and and... nada. I barely got kissed the whole time I was gone. And I got to sit there and watch the other couple there be cuddly - and I know their relationship is terribly complicated and not entirely what it looks from appearances... but fuck I can't watch them be cuddly and wait and wait and wait for the same.

So of course we end up fighting again - what ELSE does one do while stuck in the car? and this just isn't urgent for him - he's mostly happy with our life. We agree we need to drink less and eat better and lose weight (him far more than me, though perhaps I'd be more motivated if I didn't have maaaany people telling me how sexy I am, everyone except Knight seems to want to get in my bed. Maybe I should just go do that instead of caring so much about this.)

I don't know how you're supposed to live with someone who's supposed to be your lover and doesn't seem to care whether they touch you. I don't know how to pretend that's ok even though fighting about it is just making it worse. And he says I should seduce him but then I feel like I'm just manipulating him, it's not something he actually wants. That idea feels worse than just being ignored.
 
Back
Top