More Change - Tables Turned. Pt. I
7.13.14
Seems like the changes have it lately.
Not all pleasant, not all unpleasant. This is a land I've been in very little up til now.
I've moved back home, to my homecity from the high desert mountains a day away. Am glad about it. Started a new day gig; it's going to prove to be perfect with its flexibility and relaxed guidelines.
Also got a perfect, tiny place – will move in later this coming week. It's also, ironically, a block and a half from Z's place.
So. The skinny:
After all my reading, thinking, talking, blogging, soapboxing, etc, it has been ME who's currently having more hangups and issues with trying the poly thing than Z is currently having. I try not to compare, but I must admit that I can often be so competitive that it's better for me ultimately not to play. (NOT that I think of or am treating our situation/s or circumstances as a game – just sayin'.)
His crush – whom I'll call Crush – is in a delicate home situation herself, not knowing, it seems, whether she's staying or going. She and I are acquaintances, and she's cool; I do not know her well; we aren't close. No big deal. I don't yet know if that fact has been boon or bane to the degree of pos/negitivity of my emotions regarding her/them. She's beautiful; she and Z have good chemistry together, and they do have common interests. They and another friend are going camping out of state here in a couple weeks. It'll be good for me, I have to say, to have him out of town, and them together out of town, now that I'm back home.
A good lady friend of mine for about 5 years now, whom I'll call Pixie because she is TINY, gorgeous, a mother, VERY aware and centered, both a professional and an artist, free as the wind, and obviously bi-curious, has expressed interest in having a threesome with Z and myself – something the two of them say they've never tried but want to. I was part of one once, but I was drunk (that says enough) and participating for some of the wrong reasons, all the while not even sure that's what I wanted to be doing.
I was out with J on the particular night that I got a text from Pixie saying that Z had said I was down to do 3, and was I truly? Well...I was drunk. And I can be a huge pleaser. And have a lot of ego tied up in shit, which never fails to fuck things up. So, I texted her back and was like, “oh yeah, blah blah blah, but I want to get with you first and check things out, etc etc.” And when I woke up hungover the next morning, I was like, WTF....
I've never been turned on by a woman. Ever. I have been turned on by the
thought of woman-on-woman, but my own needs and tendencies for arousal run in the overwhelmingly male, sometimes father-figure vein. I love a man, I want a man, I need a man to get sexually/emotionally satisfied (I don't know at this point how to separate that sexual/emotional link. Should I even bother trying? Am currently exploring these questions and more.)
I wondered if Pixie didn't feel some chemistry at times. We've made out a few times, and sometimes it's been really fun. Sometimes it's been kind of a putting-on-a-show thing; others it was for me this “wow, she's hot and attracted to me” thing, a big ego-boost.
There's always been fear, ego, and childlike need inextricably linked, alongside the more mature aspects of self, inside the envelope of my attractions, my sexuality, my lovemaking. This is something that I'm being forced to face and decide what I want to do with at this point. Is it fine with me; should I go ahead with my comfort zone and close down to what I have decided thus far by gut-check that I do not want? Or, if I can detect even a shred of fear in my lockdown reaction, should I turn INTO that reaction, break it open, check it out thoroughly, face it, move into it, study it, try it out for myself? See if it's simply something I haven't wanted up to now because I was afraid of something about it, or something about myself, or...?
If so much of what I want truly IS just outside my comfort zone; maybe the time has come to stay just on the line and pushing it. 'Course, I've been in the place where I'm pushing toward what I truly DON'T want, for the sake of someone else, and that's fucking miserable. I kinda hafta be vigilant about my guts, my motivation/s, my own feelings, and where the line is between pushing hard for me and what I want and pushing that line for someone else (to please).
Anyway. I freaked out some a couple days after that night of drunk-texting. I had these overwhelmingly insecure and small thoughts, feelings, huge anxiety. Suspicions that Pixie and Z simply wanted to hook up with each other and didn't want to make me feel excluded (which is kind in its own way, I suppose, but hey – nobody wants to be that guy in the bed who suddenly realizes they were simply the vehicle to the other two hooking up); that perhaps things had gone on behind my back up to this point and the co-suggestion of a 3some was kind of a band-aid. I REALLY had this breakdown moment when I imagined the point that the two of them were fucking – suddenly looking deep into each others' eyes, totally lost in each other, possibly discovering infatuating feelings and for each other, the sex being mind-blowing for the two of them – and lil ol' me sitting to the side, watching all this go down, fading from existence.
'Twas heavy shit for my lil ol head and heart to deal with. I 'fess – I cried some. I was terrified.
And more weirdness: I've been realizing for the past couple months how much Z has actually grown on me. Maybe I'm truly no more instinctively or romantically attracted to him than I ever was – he's no gentle, tethering father-type, and there are other little things – but I can sometimes read his friggin mind, and he mine. There are some really good things about us. I've never wanted to lose those.
But...I've wanted to clean out the shit between us – most of it has been MY shit, about & around me. Now is the opportune time; it's here & it's happening.
Z's always been more emotionally independent than I have. I crave and need; I wrap my life and myself around someone. He did too, with me, and with his ex, but I think neither of us wants to feel or be so much that way now. I know I've needed a foundation under me that no one could disturb for a long time.
I talked to Pixie a couple days after all that drunk-texting I'd done and told her that I had to take the 3some off the table; that there was a good chance I wouldn't be able to hold myself and my “shit” together in the aftermath and I could really fuck some shit up between any or all of us that way. I don't want to ruin any of what is good right now. I also told her that if the two of them wanted to hook up, go ahead – I'd deal with my feelings, and they shouldn't cater to my insecurities. I've been the one talking all this mad shit for so long, it was (is) time for me to walk my talk. (At very least, find out if that's what I really DO want, now that the opportunity has been fucking
giftwrapped and set in my waiting lap. Geez.)
Tables turned. Now it's ME freaking out about the poly shit, about other people being involved in a relationship I only kind of wanted, and Z seems to be level and enjoying it. Well, part of it is that he's got some NRE going on, and also a little infatuation with a friend of ours, while I'm working with a) my relationship with him, and b) an old, tender, broken-in love with J, which is low on the chemical-cocktail ingredients at this point. I don't mind any of this, but I have to keep things in perspective, too.
Back to the thing with Pix. So then I had a couple of days of COMPLETE rollercoaster emotions, and at the end of day two, I started to loosen up. My Absolute No turned into realizations that Pixie has always been loving and kind and straight up with me about anything we've talked about. It turned into a Maybe. Then that Maybe fluctuated to a Tentative Okay when I realized I was thinking of and treating myself like I was a complete idiot, an unnecessary person, an expendable third party, etc, instead of the capable and intelligent and attractive (just subjective facts here, not Absolute Truths or egoism) human woman that I am. If neither Pix nor Z saw or wanted anything in me that they liked, neither of them would ever have acted like they did in the first place. (Hey, I'm wanted and loved around here too, dammit.) Yeah. There was some reeeeal insecurity going on inside this mind & body.
Then that Tentative Okay turned into a Suuuure once I realized how much fear was stopping me from just TRYING this. Yes, what I foresaw – Z and Pix totally tapping into each other on all levels and me watching from the sidelines, fading away unwanted –
could totally happen. That's also the Movie In My Mind, and it tends to jump to either my best- or worst-case (subjective) scenario.
Another realization slowly bubbled to the front of my consciousness, one that I never would've been able to see or believe six months ago:
There's so much more to my life than this sex and relationship stuff.
