Mya's search for balance

I don't do any scheduled nights with any of my partners, this is just not how we roll. Both my guys are work-a-holics, so I tend to let them tell me their availability, compare it with mine, and we keep it pretty flexible. Asking them to have regular date nights would probably be pretty stressful for them, As work is first priority, and I am cool with that.

I also went through something similar Mya, where I had to say, is this really important to me, or am I still seeing them regularly anyway? Like you I appreciate them more ;)
 
Interesting thoughts, Mya. Funny how writing can help! I like this
I might not always get what I want, but I might be getting something I actually need instead.
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Had some ideas which are a bit out-of-date now re: date nights since you seem to have stepped past that, but I will share anyway.

If regular time becomes a concern, I wonder if it would work for you to keep track of the time you do spend with Hank, and then check in with yourself every month or couple of months to look back and see whether you were effectively getting a 'date night' per week? If you consciously push the review cycle out to longer than a week it could stop you going, "oh no, I haven't had a date this week".

I know it doesn't feel the same as a day that's mutually set aside for each other. But I guess, given the mismatch in what a 'date night' means for you and Hank, making it official would not have the effect you really want anyway. As you've said, for him it would not be an expression of wanting to be with you. It would be a concession that he would grow to resent somewhat?

Ideally this wouldn't be about time anyway, more about actual satisfaction. If you are happy with the relationship, then it doesn't matter how much time you did spend together (in the theory, anyway!) But then again, time together is one of the main ingredients of a relationship, as well as being symbolic.

Anyway, sounds like this is a non-issue now! If it comes up again, hope you find a way through that feels ok for you both.

Buying a house together is exciting! Best of luck with those plans, if they progress.

And re: mental health issues, yes, it can be hard as a partner depending on what's going on. I really feel for you both.
 
Wow, thank you so much for the comments, Nadya, starlight1 and fuchka! They really gave me some food for thought. :)

Nadya said:
Thanks for sharing these thoughts, Mya! I need to think about my relationship with CJ in the light of your experience. We have not had designated date nights in my polycule, and sometimes it stresses me out because scheduled date nights have been in my mind "the right way to do poly". It just does not fit in our life at all. We have little by little found our way of living a poly life and it definitely is not "one size fits all". With Mark I easily find time for being together - he actually needs more together-time than me. CJ is more introverted and needs a lot of personal space and is not often in the mood of spending time with me. But, when we do have our time together, it is very enjoyable.
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This is so validating! I often feel like there's something wrong with me because Hank doesn't feel like spending time with me as often as I'd like. It's so good to read that other people deal with similar mismatches as well, and their relationship still works. :)

starlight1 said:
I don't do any scheduled nights with any of my partners, this is just not how we roll. Both my guys are work-a-holics, so I tend to let them tell me their availability, compare it with mine, and we keep it pretty flexible. Asking them to have regular date nights would probably be pretty stressful for them, As work is first priority, and I am cool with that.

I also went through something similar Mya, where I had to say, is this really important to me, or am I still seeing them regularly anyway? Like you I appreciate them more ;)
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This makes a lot of sense. :) Thanks for sharing your perspective!

fuchka said:
Had some ideas which are a bit out-of-date now re: date nights since you seem to have stepped past that, but I will share anyway.

If regular time becomes a concern, I wonder if it would work for you to keep track of the time you do spend with Hank, and then check in with yourself every month or couple of months to look back and see whether you were effectively getting a 'date night' per week? If you consciously push the review cycle out to longer than a week it could stop you going, "oh no, I haven't had a date this week".

I know it doesn't feel the same as a day that's mutually set aside for each other. But I guess, given the mismatch in what a 'date night' means for you and Hank, making it official would not have the effect you really want anyway. As you've said, for him it would not be an expression of wanting to be with you. It would be a concession that he would grow to resent somewhat?

Ideally this wouldn't be about time anyway, more about actual satisfaction. If you are happy with the relationship, then it doesn't matter how much time you did spend together (in the theory, anyway!) But then again, time together is one of the main ingredients of a relationship, as well as being symbolic.

Anyway, sounds like this is a non-issue now! If it comes up again, hope you find a way through that feels ok for you both.

Buying a house together is exciting! Best of luck with those plans, if they progress.

And re: mental health issues, yes, it can be hard as a partner depending on what's going on. I really feel for you both.
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That is a really good idea, fuchka! Thanks for that. :) Even though I feel like I've moved forward somewhat, I still think I might do the thing you suggested. It's always better to perceive the situation like it really it is instead of holding on to your feeling of something being wrong when it's not even necessarily so.
 
OK, so I want to tell you about a new person. :eek:

Well, he isn't new in my life per se. We've known each other for a long time and we have a lot of mutual (poly) friends. But for the last few times when we've met at events and such we've had some really good and personal conversations. I think I developed a crush on him about a month ago after one especially good conversation we had. Then we had a few more of those really good talks, and I started to like him even more. So, we met again in a weekend-long event recently where I told him how I feel, he said he feels the same way and we ended up having sex. I feel a strong connection forming. :) We talked about me going to visit him when we both have time. He doesn't live in my city, but he's not too far from it either. He visits my city quite often anyway, so I don't think the distance will be a problem. And one thing I learned that makes me super happy: he has a high sex drive. :cool: This has been a problem in so many of my recent relationships that it feels great to get to know someone who I feel a connection with and who also seems to want sex often and with whom I seem to be sexually compatible with. I'm going to call him Ash from now on. :)
 
Me and Ash have now made plans to meet up in a couple of weeks. I'm going to his city, will spend the night there and the next day we're both coming back to my city where we're going to see a performance with a group of people. He had already bought a ticket for that and had one spare, so it worked out quite nicely. :) So that's all good. We've messaged each other pretty much daily, but not like all the time, maybe 1-3 messages a day. I like it. I like him.

But I feel scared. I'm scared of starting something new after all these break-ups I've gone through recently. I'm excited but at the same time I'm scared of being excited because my brain tells me "look what happened last time you got excited". :(

I also feel a bit ashamed. I realise that even for a poly person I date a lot. Many monogamous people are already scandalised when I tell them I live with my two partners, but wait until you tell them that you're dating four people. I often get comments about that from poly people too. That has happened a few times at a party or something where all or some of my partners have been present, and somebody realises I'm dating these three or four people, and then they get all "how do you do it", "where do you find them" etc., like these people are collectibles or something. That bugs me because it's about individual people, not about numbers. Some people don't have a lot of time for me, so even if I am dating them, it's not taking a huge amount of time away from other things, but I still value that connection and want to keep it going. But since I don't use hierarchical language, maybe some people think I see all of them equal amounts of time, which is not true. The time I spend with each person varies a lot, but is always based on my connection with that person and other things both of us have going on at the time. But yeah, I do sometimes feel like my friends can't possibly keep up with all my relationship related news and that makes me feel ashamed. Like I owe it to them to keep it simple or something.
 
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Mya said:
But yeah, I do sometimes feel like my friends can't possibly keep up with all my relationship related news and that makes me feel ashamed. Like I owe it to them to keep it simple or something.
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I kind of feel this way about my user signature here, haha. But there is such a cast of characters parading through my blog that otherwise no one would ever be able to keep it straight. I wish there were an editable sticky I could put at the front. :p
 
Mya said:
I also feel a bit ashamed. I realise that even for a poly person I date a lot. Many monogamous people are already scandalised when I tell them I live with my two partners, but wait until you tell them that you're dating four people. I often get comments about that from poly people too. That has happened a few times at a party or something where all or some of my partners have been present, and somebody realises I'm dating these three or four people, and then they get all "how do you do it", "where do you find them" etc., like these people are collectibles or something.
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Regardless of what your explanations are, the appearance of dating many people creates different impressions in others. Some might view how you date with envy that you get to sample so many 'flavors' of people. Others with private disdain for being appearing to be so casual in your intimate connections. No different than how married monogamous people appear boring to some and admirable to others, right? We each see what we want to see in what others do with their lives. In the end life is too short to worry over such impressions.
 
Reverie said:
I kind of feel this way about my user signature here, haha. But there is such a cast of characters parading through my blog that otherwise no one would ever be able to keep it straight. I wish there were an editable sticky I could put at the front. :p
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I know what you mean. For a while I had my exes in the signature too, but I just couldn't keep them there reminding me of this exact thing - that I've dated a lot. But I never really think that when I see other people's signatures, I just think it's handy when there are explanations to all the names they might mention in their writings.
 
monkeystyle said:
Regardless of what your explanations are, the appearance of dating many people creates different impressions in others. Some might view how you date with envy that you get to sample so many 'flavors' of people. Others with private disdain for being appearing to be so casual in your intimate connections. No different than how married monogamous people appear boring to some and admirable to others, right? We each see what we want to see in what others do with their lives. In the end life is too short to worry over such impressions.
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You're right, monkeystyle. It's good to keep these kinds of things in mind. Thanks for the reminder. :)
 
I found it more uncomfortable when my number of sexual partners were higher than the men's previous sexual partners I was with.....:rolleyes:
That's recently been the case and makes me feel a bit slutty (and proudly owning it!)...
It's ok to have dated and/or slept with whomever. Wear it proudly scarlet.
 
starlight1 said:
I found it more uncomfortable when my number of sexual partners were higher than the men's previous sexual partners I was with.....:rolleyes:
That's recently been the case and makes me feel a bit slutty (and proudly owning it!)...
It's ok to have dated and/or slept with whomever. Wear it proudly scarlet.
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Thanks starlight1! I will try to keep reminding myself of that. It's always good to hear from people in similar situations. :)
 
Me and Hank had a handfasting ceremony last weekend. :) <3 It was part of a group thing where many other people got handfasted too, and it was partly a spur of the moment thing. In the end it came from commitment conversations we've been having for a long time, but feeling like there are several things about marriage that we don't particularly like, biggest of them being lifting one person above others. Handfasting is great because you can do it with more than one person. Now felt like the right moment for me and Hank to do it. The weekend event where this happened was such a great example of how our relationship works, that I felt like I wanted to do this with him now that we had the opportunity and many of our friends and loved ones were present as well, including Yvonne and Ash. Since there were many people doing the ceremony, I wanted to keep it brief. This is what I said to him:

"I promise to support you in your times of need as much as I possibly can. I also promise to support your individual growth, self-expression, experiences and adventures, with or without me, whatever they may be."

We both wanted to keep it realistic and only commit to something we felt we could really do. So we didn't want to talk about the rest of our lives or anything like that. I felt really good and fluffy after the ceremony, and like I've promised something tangible, something that doesn't mean I'm now tied to this person no matter what. Which is what we both wanted. Stability of togetherness and the freedom to be apart. :)
 
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Congratulations, Mya and Hank! Sounds like you had the perfect ceremony :)
 
I came back from my visit to Ash's city yesterday. It was really lovely. He's super sweet and we have many things in common. :) But he is also very very busy. And since one of the things we have in common is that we both do a lot and date a lot, I'm worried how we're going to see each other in the future. Time will tell I guess. We've made it clear to each other that we do want to see each other again, but it's impossible to decide on a date at this point. So I'll wait and see if Ash can actually find time for me. Let's hope so!
 
My ex-husband JJ visited me for a weekend. We live in different countries, so it's always great to see him since we don't get to see each other that often. We still keep in contact though, and I think of him as a good friend nowadays. I'm super glad we've managed to stay in touch. :)

Rory has been on sick leave for several weeks now. He rarely leaves the house. And when he does, it's mostly to go somewhere with me. Me and rory spend a lot of time together, and when Hank is home, all three of us spend time together as well. I have spent very little time alone with Hank during this time (as in, much less than before). I think it's because when rory worked, he needed to recharge alone from the mandatory social interaction that he got from work, but now me and Hank make up most of his social life, so he needs that interaction and can recharge from that when me and Hank are working. This has changed our home dynamic a lot - and I don't how I feel about it. It's really hard for me to be the one who wants to spend less time with someone, because that almost never happens, so I have had very little practice in expressing that. I recently asked Hank if we could have a date night soon because we really haven't spent much time alone recently. He agreed, so we'll probably have a date night next week.

I have talked about this to rory a little. I've said that there are times when I wish that I could spend more time alone with Hank. But I feel it's tricky to ask that in a situation when the three of us are hanging out, because it would be like excluding someone from the current company. Also, I'm never sure if that's what Hank wants. He might prefer spending time as a group and not feel like spending time alone with me at that point. And rory knows this, he knows I struggle with not getting enough time with Hank, even in our previous situation. But he also knows that I want more alone time with Hank than Hank does with me. So I think that his default thought is that Hank doesn't want to be alone with me. There have been a few times when Hank has effectively asked for alone time with me by asking me to have a bath with him. That's when rory knows that both me and Hank want alone time with each other. But all other times are now by default group times if we're all home.

Basically this becomes a problem with mine and Hank's dynamic that we've had for a long time now. The dynamic is that most of the time I don't ask him to hang out with me spontaneously. He comes to me when he wants and most of the time I say yes. But now there's very little room for this to happen. Before it was him coming to my room when I was on my own and asking me to hang out. Easy. Now it's him coming to my room and rory being there most of the time, so asking me to hang out becomes less easy, because it would mean making me choose between the two of them.

We've lived together for a year and a half now. I know I had it too easy for too long. :p
 
I met a new person at an event about three weeks ago. Let's call him Ben. We hit it off and had sex pretty quickly. He said he'd like to hang out some time when we're back in our city (the event was in another city). I said I'd like that. So me and Ben met exactly a week after me and Ash hooked up for the first time and agreed that we want to start seeing each other. Yesterday Ben came over to my place for a sleepover.

We had a lot of fun in bed. :) But I'm not sure how compatible we'd be for a relationship. And that's good because I also don't have a lot of time to give to a fifth person anyway. He also said that he can't promise to see me often because of his situation, so I think we're on the same page, more or less. We talked about seeing each other maybe once a month or so. I think that sounds pretty good. Occasional fun times, but nothing too involved or serious. There are a few things about him that remind me of my ex Ray, which makes me suspicious of our compatibility. But if it's going to be a casual thing anyway, it probably doesn't matter as much. Ben also seems to be quite interested in Hank. They also met at the same event and kissed at one point. From what he's said I'm pretty sure Ben would like to have a threesome with me and Hank. But I'm not sure if Hank would be up for it. I need to ask him about it, who knows. I would quite like it. :cool:
 
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When I asked Hank what he thought about Ben, the first thing he said was that Ben reminds him of Ray. Oh my. Hank liked Ray in the beginning but started to dislike him more and more with time. That same thing kinda happened to me too with Ray, but with me at least there was sex to keep me happy, and some private conversations that Ray obviously wasn't having with Hank. But there definitely were some things in Ray that bugged me more and more with time. So now I'm even more unsure of Ben than I was before. Hmm, I guess I'll have to see what happens in a month or so when we're seeing each other again.

I had a great date night with Yvonne last weekend, followed by a day spent with her and her two partners and one metamour, Hank, rory, and a friend of Yvonne's. That was probably the biggest poly network I've had present in the same place at the same time ever. :p Ash was originally planning to attend too (him and Yvonne are friends as well), but he wasn't feeling well, so didn't come in the end. I really like both of Yvonne's partners, they are great metamours to have. :) And Yvonne's metamour is also great. Seemed like rory and Hank got along with everyone too. So yay! This makes me really happy, everyone getting along. :)
 
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