Mya's search for balance

I'm considering my living options at the moment. As much as I like living with Dahlia and Eddie, there is something about them being a couple and me being the third wheel that sometimes feels a bit off. I mean, it works really well between the three of us, I have almost no complaints about anything practical. But maybe if I lived on my own, I would feel more...Independent? Free? I don't know. I'm also considering traveling around for a few months after I've quit my current job and my new situation has gotten off the ground. My last day in my job is at the end of November, and after that I'm free to work from almost anywhere because I will be freelancing, and I will only need my laptop and an internet connection to work. :)
 
I don't know what to do about Marco. We have a great time together and the sex is phenomenal. We keep in touch every few days, but we're not each others' primary emotional support. He lives with his partner and gets tired easily, so there is an upper limit on how often we can see each other. We used to see each other every three weeks or so, but lately it's turned into once a week. It's started to feel like we're properly dating and not just casually seeing each other. Last night he even suggested collaborating on a project! My feelings have started to deepen bit by bit. I don't think I'm in love at this point, but I definitely like him a lot. It's starting to feel...scary. I'm afraid of letting go and falling in love with him. I don't want to fall in love with him. I don't want to commit to him. I don't want to make long-term plans with him. I don't want him to be a big reason for me to stay in this country. But there's a part of me that wants all of those things, the same part that also has these feelings of liking and lust for him. I feel like I'm at a crossroads. If I choose to let go and feel whatever, the desire to do all those commitment things will follow, knowing myself. The other choice is to pull away now while I still can, when I'm not in too deep. Scale it back to only seeing each other every three weeks. Not collaborating on a project.

I don't know.
 
Mya said:
Today I got messages from two people that I've slept with once. (...) I have a feeling that both of these people are possibly expecting things from me. And I'm planning on doing whatever I feel comfortable doing with them, which might very well include sex. But I also have this feeling inside that I might not want to continue sleeping around for much longer. Like, these might be my last casual (as in non-continuous) encounters for a while. I feel my desire for sex outside a relationship fading little by little. I can definitely see it coming back at some point, and it probably will, but right now I feel like I'm merely doing it because I'm used to it.
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Both of these visits happened, the second one just left this morning. I had sex with both of them, and it confirmed my suspicion. I need to stop having casual sex, at least for now, because my body just isn't on board anymore. I'm not responding like I used to. Interestingly in between those two encounters I also had a date with Marco and I could definitely see the difference in how I reacted. Like I know now that it must be about the connection I have with each person instead of external circumstances (like where I am in my cycle etc.) because each encounter was so close to another time-wise. I'm just...changing. It's weird.
 
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I finally have a fourth date with Olivia tomorrow! We haven't been able to see each other in a few weeks because she's been ill and then traveling. But now she's healthy and back in town again, so I get to see her. :) Based on our texting, I'd say we're both really excited to see each other. Interestingly, while we were texting about the date, our mutual friend who introduced us in the first place, Yvonne, texted both of us and another friend. Yvonne is traveling with her husband and kid and invited us all to visit them in another country in November. That sounds absolutely amazing, and I really want to go. I think Olivia wants to go too, based on her response to the group chat. So now we're in a funny spot of possibly planning a group trip with friends while also being in the beginning stages of dating. I have no idea how that will go! :p

This weekend I'm also meeting Marco's live-in partner for the first time. We've been dating for about 5 months now, so I guess it's time. The only thing that makes me nervous about it is that it feels like a relationship step. It feels like me and Marco are entwining our lives just a tiny bit more. Which in turn feels scary. But I do want to meet her and I'm sure she wants to meet me too. I think it'll be fine.
 
Dahlia and Eddie broke up last night. :( They still want to continue living together though. We'll see how that goes. I'm prepared for both outcomes: either it works like it did with me and Dahlia, or it doesn't like with Hank and Dahlia. Only time will tell.
 
I had a fantastic fourth date with Olivia a few days ago. We went to a lovely little restaurant and a had a drink afterwards. We talked about a lot of stuff, including kink. I had no idea before, but apparently our mutual friend Yvonne had kind of recommended me to Olivia after hearing about her kinky inclinations. Kind of like "if you like that, you should definitely date Mya". :p It's good to have friends who've got your back. :D

At one point during dinner our waiter tried to hit on Olivia! It was pretty hilarious to see her reaction, but it was also annoying that he'd do that, probably assuming me and Olivia were just friends. I have a feeling he wouldn't have done that if I was a man. Heteronormativity :rolleyes:

At the end of the night we kissed for the first time, which was super lovely. I can't wait to see her again!
 
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Mya said:
So now we're in a funny spot of possibly planning a group trip with friends while also being in the beginning stages of dating. I have no idea how that will go! :p
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This is turning out to be more difficult than I thought. My best friend Maxine is also coming along to this trip and when I saw her yesterday, we looked at flights and I texted with Olivia to see if she wanted to coordinate flights with us. Turns out all three of us are going to be flying there and back on slightly different times, but so that our visits overlap significantly. So now I'm flying there on the same flight with Maxine, but coming back on the same flight with Olivia, most likely. But this has been tricky to navigate. If Olivia was only friend of a friend, like she was previously, there would be no problem. But now I feel like this, us coordinating flights and such, suddenly feels like a relationship step. Even though it probably shouldn't. Basically I'm now worried that she thinks I'm moving too fast by asking her to commit to the same flight as me after only 4 dates. That's probably not what she's thinking, but I can't help but feel a bit anxious about that.

Basically, I dislike this phase of dating when you feel really vulnerable and unsure of everything regarding what the other person thinks and what they want and where all this is going.
 
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After a bit of back and forth it turned out that Olivia prefers flying separately, so we're now not coordinating our flights after all. Which is probably good, who knows what we think about each other in a month and a half. :D So maybe it is actually good to separate this trip from our dating.
 
Today I feel incredibly sad. I have a lot of feelings about a lot of things and nobody to help me carry these things. I've had some amazing chats with friends recently, and they have made me feel better, but I don't have anyone who has that role in my life who could just...hold me. Who I could plan life with and ground myself with. Marco offered his help today via text, but he'll be away for the next week, so I don't really know what to ask of him because the thing that I want is for him to physically be here for me, and he can't do that. I haven't seen him in two and a half weeks now and it'll be another week before I get to, so it will be almost a month all in all. That's been surprisingly hard. We've had these kinds of gaps before, but that was when I was still with Jasmin. Now Marco is the closest thing I have to a partner, but yet he's so far from what I want. I mean, not as a person necessarily, but as in what kind of role he's able to fulfill in my life.

Things with Olivia are still going very slowly. I was a bit taken aback by her unwillingness to travel back home with me from the friend trip. I'm still not sure why that is her preference, I think I might need to ask because if I don't, I'll just take it personally. Maybe it's not about me at all. Then again if it is, that's also good to know. She also doesn't seem to be that into texting. I mean, she will reply if I text her first, and usually pretty quickly as well, but she doesn't tend to text me first. These two things make me feel a bit insecure in terms of how much she likes me, but I'm trying not to read too much into it.

In general I just feel lonely, and I desperately need physical closeness with someone who actually cares about me and who I also care about.
 
I've never been in this situation before, but I can now say for myself that it sucks to be a secondary to someone I have feelings for without a primary of my own. :( The closer I feel to Marco the sadder I get because I know we'll never share big life things. When I had a life partner of my own, I wasn't so sad about it because I did have someone to do those things with. Now that I don't, I feel like Marco's nesting partner gets the big things and I get crumbs. I don't like this feeling at all, I don't like comparing and feeling competitive. But it just feels so imbalanced. It felt just right when I was with Jasmin. But that's the thing with poly, you never know what kind of situation you end up in because things change. You don't always get what you signed up for.

In other news, Dahlia got a job offer from another country, and although she hasn't made up her mind for definite, it seems pretty likely that she'll take it. That means that we wouldn't renew our current lease after it ends at the end of November. So now I have all these different plans going around in my head. There are so many paths I could take. And I don't know what to choose. The biggest problem is my dating life. I feel like neither relationship is committed enough to warrant my staying in the country, but I also have feelings for both of them and would like to continue seeing them and figuring out where these things are going. I'm sure I'll figure something out, but damn I have to take into account so many things.
 
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I've been thinking about what it means to say "I love you" to someone. There are people who think you should just say it if you feel it. To everyone you feel that way about. I'm not sure I agree. It would be lovely to live in a world where you could just say it without it meaning anything else. But I think that phrase comes with cultural baggage. When you say it, it's often interpreted to mean a larger concept than just having that feeling. I think it often comes with the assumption of some sort of commitment. Not a heavy commitment, but like... If you love me, surely you'll want to stay in my life, right? And that one does apply to friends too. There are only two friends who I say "I love you" to, even though I care about many more people than that. But these two are friends who I feel committed to, who I believe will be in my life for a long time, if not forever. So lately I've become more conscious of the fact that saying "I love you" to a person will most likely change the relationship in some way.

I'm thinking this because my feelings for Marco are deepening, but I don't think it's love yet. But then again, maybe I'm not letting myself feel love for him because I think that would lead to more heartbreak. And then also, even if I start loving him, maybe I should still not say it to him. Because it opens the door to something. It means something, and I'm not sure I want to go where "I love you" suggests we should go. Does that make any sense? I would love to get comments about this, if anyone has any thoughts.
 
I've had a very interesting two days. I had a date with Marco two days ago and one with Olivia yesterday. Both dates were kind of important in the narrative of these relationships.

With Marco, this was the first time we saw each other in almost a month, and that made some feelings come up for me. We had our first pretty serious talk, maybe even "the talk". I needed clarity, definitions, goals, setting expectations. We both talked about not wanting to over-commit. But I find that it gets harder the more my feelings develop. We agreed to define this as a poly relationship and calling each other partners. I then proceeded to ask what does partner mean to him, since there's no universal definition and it can mean different things to different people, especially in poly circles. He said that he wants to continue seeing me and being a part of my life, and for us to support each other when we need it. That sounds good enough for me. :) We also set a goal of trying to make time to see each other once a week, even if sometimes it's only a couple of hours in the evening after something else. This was the good part. But when we were talking about all of this, it also came up that he finds these kinds of talks difficult and does not enjoy them. There was a time a couple of months ago when he said he really likes how easy our relationship is. I mean, I like that too, but deeper/emotional topics need to also be discussed, and that doesn't feel hard to me. I actually usually enjoy them because that's when you get deeper into the thoughts and feelings of the other person and you both get to share sides of yourself that the other person didn't know yet. It's connecting, it's vulnerable, it's bonding and it's what drives my desire to date people. Well, that and sex. :p So it was a bit disappointing to hear that he doesn't enjoy these talks. He said that he tends to default into being a bit of a loner and has to put conscious effort into relationships if he wants to maintain them. This makes me worry that I'll end up always bringing stuff up and him only talking about feelings with me if I start, and that I'll end up doing a lot of the emotional labour to keep this relationship going. We'll see how this goes, but I'm not filled with confidence. He said that he wants me to feel happy and loved, and that he worries he will disappoint me. Well, now I worry about that too. I've been in this type of relationship before, many times in fact. So I was kind of hoping that Marco would be different. I'm still hoping that things will turn out better than I fear. But at least I know what to pay attention to and to break it off in time if I see a pattern that I don't want to continue.

I had a great date with Olivia yesterday. I brought up her not wanting to travel back from the friend trip with me, and we worked that out. She had really good reasons for her decision, and she also apologised for not communicating well aroung the subject earlier (she had reasons for that too). I got a bit emotional during that conversation, as in my eyes welled up a bit, and Olivia asked if I was okay. At that point I told her that crying (or at least almost crying) is my response to a lot of different emotions and it happens really easily. It doesn't mean that something super serious has happened, I just cry really easily. Then she asked what were the crying-triggering emotions in the conversation we just had. I was absolutely delighted by that question! I said that it was partly relief (her reason for not traveling with me was not because she doesn't like me) and partly embarassment (it's embarassing to bring up such a small thing and risk coming across as insecure). I loved how well we communicated about that whole thing and that she asked me about my feelings. <3 Good signs! And then we made out a lot, held hands and she suggested having sex soon. Eeee! I'm looking forward to that a lot. :)
 
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I had a wonderful date night with Marco yesterday. :) Good chats, amazing sex yet again, and just being close to each other the whole night. He really seems to adore my body, which feels great. I think Marco might be the best lover I've ever had. And I've had quite a few. It's not that the others have been bad, most of them have been really good for me actually, but Marco is just over the top amazing. He jokes that he's addicted to my orgasms, always wanting to give me one more. That's an addiction I can support. :D And it's very clear that he gets a lot of pleasure out of pleasuring me. He never seems to get tired of it, it's always me who has to ask him to stop when I just can't take any more. We also have a delicious D/s dynamic. He's such a good sub, and our desires match well in that area. I don't want this to end just yet. It probably will at some point, but I want to enjoy it for as long as I can.

I've been thinking about poly and what I want out of my dating life a lot lately. And I've come to some conclusions:
1) I only want to have sex with people I have a connection with (for now at least), so no more random hook-ups. Only people I'm dating or friends who I have sexual feelings for (there are only a few people in this category, some of them might never go there, some of them might).
2) I don't want to start dating anyone new at the moment. This might change if things don't work out with Olivia because I know that Marco can only give me a limited amount of relationship experiences. But if me and Marco break up while me and Olivia are still going strong, I think that's it for me, I'll just be with her romantically. I'll still want an open relationship though, just to leave space for those rare friends I have sexual feelings for and other surprising situations.

So somehow I've found myself in a poly situation again even though there's a part of me that doesn't want to be poly anymore. But I'm in too deep with Marco now to leave him just for that reason. If there's another reason later on to leave, I'll leave, but now it would mainly be the poly thing. Dating Olivia feels refreshing since she's not dating anyone else and isn't planning on doing so either. I feel like me and her could have a chance to build something great together. Something a bit more stable and a bit more exclusive than my previous relationships. But man, trying to be somewhere in the middle of full-on poly and full-on mono is hard!
 
I've almost said 'I love you' to Marco twice now. No matter how much I rationalise about should I love him or should I say so if I do, I think in the end the feeling will just come and the words will just flow out of my mouth and I can't stop them. One of these days I just can't help myself. This is all very scary for a few reasons:

1) He has a nesting partner, so while that is the case, he can't give me what I ultimately want out of a relationship.
2) Because he finds talking about deep stuff difficult, we might not be super compatible. Although that still remains to be seen when more deep stuff comes up with time and I see how he handles those situations.
3) He is a man. I haven't loved a man in a long time. I thought I couldn't do that anymore. It feels difficult to have these feelings for a man, I'm afraid I'm opening myself up for the kind of hurt that men in my past have caused. Which is unfair of course, but that is how I'm feeling.
4) As long as I'm with him, I need to be okay with poly. I'm becoming increasingly disinterested in poly, so this is also a big thing.

But at the same time, when I'm with him I just feel so good. I don't want to give up that feeling.
 
I had a birthday party last week. For the most part it was really nice. :) I only invited my closest people because I wanted a chill, intimate evening. I invited both Marco and Olivia, and this would have been the first time they would have met, except Olivia didn't come. She cancelled on the day. I said that's okay and asked if she was feeling alright. She only replied to me the next day that she wasn't feeling well physically. But for the actual evening of the party I was left wondering if she just didn't want to come. That made me feel quite bad. She also cancelled meeting up this week, so the next time we'll see each other will be on the friend trip! It will be so strange, seeing each other there next, after this cluster of cancellations. I honestly don't know if she was genuinely not feeling well or if she just felt too nervous to meet Marco and/or my friends, or some other emotional reason. It was just so weird that she didn't reply on the night, I feel like it means something.

Otherwise the evening went well and Marco was liked by everyone. Marco also said to me "your friends are great" when we were alone after people had left. So that was really nice. :) And then me and Marco had birthday sex and I went to sleep feeling so happy to have him in my life. :eek:
 
I mentioned earlier that the only people I want to have sex with at the moment are people I'm dating and a few friends who I have sexual feelings for. About that second category... There are only 3 people on that list really, and 2 of them are a couple. Last night was the birthday party of one of the people in that couple. And things happened, surprising things. Apparently they both like me and are attracted to me. :eek: :eek: I had no idea the feeling was mutual. I've been crushing on them for ages but haven't really made moves because their level of relationship openness has changed over the years, so I haven't wanted to risk it, not knowing at any possible make-a-move-point where they are with it. But clearly they are now at a point where they can both make out with me and have intense three-way cuddling and dancing at least. :cool: The possibility of a threesome is definitely on the table now, I talked about it with each of them. I think they need to still talk about it between themselves before anything more happens, but one of them mentioned that they've talked about me in that context before, so it wouldn't be out of the blue. Oh man, I'm so giddy now. :eek:
 
I'm back from the friend trip and it was... weird. Olivia had cancelled on me twice just before the trip, so I was feeling quite insecure about us. On the trip we basically behaved like acquaintances who had never been on dates with each other. It felt super strange and made me feel even more insecure about Olivia wanting to date me. I messaged her today and said I felt a weird vibe between us and asked if we could talk about it. She said she'll be busy for the next couple of weeks, so we could talk it out via messages since she won't have time to meet up face to face. So I told her in a message a couple of things that had made me feel insecure and that contributed to me feeling weird on our trip. I partly regret that message, or the way I phrased things. It was too much. I was too vulnerable, too exposed with my feelings. I should have been more careful. She responded by saying that she likes me and has had a good time on our dates, but now based on my message she thinks I'm more invested in this than she is and she doesn't know how to proceed. And the truth is, I think she's right. I am more invested than her. That's why those things make me so insecure, because there's so much at stake from my part. And I kinda hate myself for being this way, since this keeps happening. I keep being more invested than the other person. I'm too much too soon. Why won't I learn?? So now we're having this very strained text conversation where I try to say something that's honest but less clingy than the first message, and I try to apologise but also not apologise too much because that's been at the core of my dating life, apologising for everything I am. Inside I'm panicking a little that she doesn't want to date me anymore, and that's probably showing in my messages to a degree. I keep digging a hole for myself and I keep making the situation worse. I have royally fucked up. I'm surprised if she ever wants to go on another date with me ever again. :(
 
My anxiety has been through the roof the last couple of days. There are so many things happening at the same time that I can't seem to cope. I need to find a new place to live, I'm changing jobs going from an employee to a freelancer and I also have a hobby thing that I need to spend time on because it's a group effort. Everything is happening right now and needs to be done in the next few weeks. I think that's partly why I was feeling so anxious about the Olivia thing, it's just adding to my stress levels at the moment when I don't know where we are or where we're going. Interestingly when I had "the talk" with Marco recently, he recognised in the moment that I need stability and clarity in life right now when everything else is moving and changing. And he wanted to give me that. He has been really good with it as well, helping as much as he can while also having a busy life himself. His support has been really valuable.

When it comes to Olivia, I've realised that if she can't handle me telling her things that made me feel insecure about us, maybe she wouldn't be able to be with me in general. I'm an emotional person who tries to be honest with those emotions, and I need a partner who can actually take that on. I need to have conversations about emotions. Also, I do get invested pretty early on if I feel like the relationship has long-term potential. Maybe instead of beating myself up about it I should just try to find people who are similar. I'm sure there are others like me in the world. I'm so tired of trying to play it cool and keeping it casual for a long time before we get anywhere.
 
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