OnceAndFuture
Member
For most of my life, I have studied early modern history. The people whose lives I studied were long dead. All that they left behind was what they had written down. My job was to make sense of their lives, great or small. Untangling their pasts became my life's work, and in many cases I wrote the final chapter of the story of someone I could never meet.
Since I decided to reapproach polyamory, I've gotten to read a number of the blogs here and I've learned a lot. This blog will be a little different, I think. I will be writing the final chapter of one story and hopefully the first chapter of the next, to be specific, the final chapter of five-years-ago me, and the first chapter of my life now.
Five years ago, my wife (The Signal) and I had our first and, to date, last polyamorous relationship. It didn't go well. It was polyamory in the way a car crash is driving. The short story is that The Signal and I were dating K, who was married to E. The longer, truer story is that the six months we dated Kate were filled with lies, deceit, cheating, emotional manipulation, tears, and heartbreak-- and yet, during the very brief breaks in those clouds, the most brilliant and pure love any of the three of us ever experienced. Our relationship was the only time during the eleven years The Signal and I have been together that we considered separating, but, in a real sense, that relationship also kept us together.
The day we told K goodbye, we talked about what would happen next. After we agreed that if our marriage could survive that, it could survive anything, and that we were going to stay together, I asked The Signal what she wanted to do next. "Ask me in five years," she said. I thought she was kidding. We decided for our own sanity that we were going to forget K and forget extramarital activity. K's name came up sporadically over the years, and once in a while we talked about swinging or friends with benefits, never taking it very seriously, or even thinking about doing something about it.
Two years ago I was offered a job over a thousand miles away. The Signal and I felt our marriage was strong enough to survive being apart for what would probably be three years apart. It was, but I wasn't. I fell into a severe depression and my latent bipolar disorder flared into life. I moved back six months ago to take a lower-paying job and essentially save my life. My therapist back then had told me moving back to my state would be the biggest shock our marriage had known. I was too scared to tell her it would only be the second-biggest. It has been hard, but The Signal has been understanding. We realized early on that there were many things in my past which we would need to dig through, and about a month ago we were finally ready to tackle our poly past, which we hadn't seriously discussed in years.
She asked me if I still wanted to see other women. I said that honestly I wasn't sure. During my time away, I'd had the opportunity to do that and I completely rejected it. She said that she had thought about things for a long time and had concluded that she would be OK with it now. That surprised me a lot and I asked her to clarify. "Well, say you were on one of your business trips. If you met someone in the hotel bar, you could take her back to your room." I said, "Well, that might be nice, but you know that is not really my style." "Well, then, maybe you could go on a date with someone, then take her back to your room." "Like a sort of relationship? A small relationship?" "Maybe, yeah." I told her, "Well, that opportunity is open to you too." She said she would not be interested in someone in her main social group, but maybe a potential friend of a potential friend. Maybe a theoretical woman she meets at a yet-to-be-thrown party. That might be nice.
Then, a couple weeks ago, she said somewhat against the run of conversation, "If you don't find anyone, maybe I could find someone for you. There's more than enough of you to go around." I asked if she had anyone in mind. She laughed. Not sure what she meant by that, and I wasn't yet ready to pry. What I did ask her was, "You're really OK with this again?" Yes, she was.
The purpose of this blog is two-fold. Firstly, it is to help The Signal and me to get ready for whatever happens next. We had been totally unprepared for our relationship with K. We didn't even know the words metamour and secondary and NRE. We weren't ready for anything. We were an easy mark for an experienced person like K, who not only had been in several poly relationships, but also held herself out as some kind of relationship counselor.
It was easy for Kate to lie right to our faces. The Signal and I were trying to follow the rules of a game K wasn't even playing. K lied about even the most basic particulars of our relationship. I told K that my greatest fear was being cheated on and she repaid that by cheating on us. The Signal told K her greatest fear was someone claiming to love her when that person didn't, and Kate did exactly that. We cannot go blindly into a situation like that again.
Secondly, it is to help me figure out what I want, and maybe what The Signal wants. For my part, I have been unlucky in love. There is a part of me that wants to experience what I have never been able to, and another part of me that wants to rediscover what K and I fleetingly had. To a large extent, part of my love for K was that I was able to bring a joy into her life she had never experienced, and I want to do that for another. For The Signal's part, she would like to feel truly loved by someone else, to not be lied to again, to feel wanted and beautiful in a way that I alone cannot make her feel.
I hope this will all become clearer as this blog goes on, that this tiny life will make sense.
Since I decided to reapproach polyamory, I've gotten to read a number of the blogs here and I've learned a lot. This blog will be a little different, I think. I will be writing the final chapter of one story and hopefully the first chapter of the next, to be specific, the final chapter of five-years-ago me, and the first chapter of my life now.
Five years ago, my wife (The Signal) and I had our first and, to date, last polyamorous relationship. It didn't go well. It was polyamory in the way a car crash is driving. The short story is that The Signal and I were dating K, who was married to E. The longer, truer story is that the six months we dated Kate were filled with lies, deceit, cheating, emotional manipulation, tears, and heartbreak-- and yet, during the very brief breaks in those clouds, the most brilliant and pure love any of the three of us ever experienced. Our relationship was the only time during the eleven years The Signal and I have been together that we considered separating, but, in a real sense, that relationship also kept us together.
The day we told K goodbye, we talked about what would happen next. After we agreed that if our marriage could survive that, it could survive anything, and that we were going to stay together, I asked The Signal what she wanted to do next. "Ask me in five years," she said. I thought she was kidding. We decided for our own sanity that we were going to forget K and forget extramarital activity. K's name came up sporadically over the years, and once in a while we talked about swinging or friends with benefits, never taking it very seriously, or even thinking about doing something about it.
Two years ago I was offered a job over a thousand miles away. The Signal and I felt our marriage was strong enough to survive being apart for what would probably be three years apart. It was, but I wasn't. I fell into a severe depression and my latent bipolar disorder flared into life. I moved back six months ago to take a lower-paying job and essentially save my life. My therapist back then had told me moving back to my state would be the biggest shock our marriage had known. I was too scared to tell her it would only be the second-biggest. It has been hard, but The Signal has been understanding. We realized early on that there were many things in my past which we would need to dig through, and about a month ago we were finally ready to tackle our poly past, which we hadn't seriously discussed in years.
She asked me if I still wanted to see other women. I said that honestly I wasn't sure. During my time away, I'd had the opportunity to do that and I completely rejected it. She said that she had thought about things for a long time and had concluded that she would be OK with it now. That surprised me a lot and I asked her to clarify. "Well, say you were on one of your business trips. If you met someone in the hotel bar, you could take her back to your room." I said, "Well, that might be nice, but you know that is not really my style." "Well, then, maybe you could go on a date with someone, then take her back to your room." "Like a sort of relationship? A small relationship?" "Maybe, yeah." I told her, "Well, that opportunity is open to you too." She said she would not be interested in someone in her main social group, but maybe a potential friend of a potential friend. Maybe a theoretical woman she meets at a yet-to-be-thrown party. That might be nice.
Then, a couple weeks ago, she said somewhat against the run of conversation, "If you don't find anyone, maybe I could find someone for you. There's more than enough of you to go around." I asked if she had anyone in mind. She laughed. Not sure what she meant by that, and I wasn't yet ready to pry. What I did ask her was, "You're really OK with this again?" Yes, she was.
The purpose of this blog is two-fold. Firstly, it is to help The Signal and me to get ready for whatever happens next. We had been totally unprepared for our relationship with K. We didn't even know the words metamour and secondary and NRE. We weren't ready for anything. We were an easy mark for an experienced person like K, who not only had been in several poly relationships, but also held herself out as some kind of relationship counselor.
It was easy for Kate to lie right to our faces. The Signal and I were trying to follow the rules of a game K wasn't even playing. K lied about even the most basic particulars of our relationship. I told K that my greatest fear was being cheated on and she repaid that by cheating on us. The Signal told K her greatest fear was someone claiming to love her when that person didn't, and Kate did exactly that. We cannot go blindly into a situation like that again.
Secondly, it is to help me figure out what I want, and maybe what The Signal wants. For my part, I have been unlucky in love. There is a part of me that wants to experience what I have never been able to, and another part of me that wants to rediscover what K and I fleetingly had. To a large extent, part of my love for K was that I was able to bring a joy into her life she had never experienced, and I want to do that for another. For The Signal's part, she would like to feel truly loved by someone else, to not be lied to again, to feel wanted and beautiful in a way that I alone cannot make her feel.
I hope this will all become clearer as this blog goes on, that this tiny life will make sense.