The Best Life Yet

[Reverie]

Short version because busy:

Friday chastity thing went really well. It was pretty much the hottest thing ever, and we were really into it. We met Candace out for a drink after. She kissed me once, and petted Rider on his leg. We also met her for brunch the next day.

I liked the chastity thing so much that, last night, in the spirit of upping the ante, I asked Rider if he wanted to make it so that that was one thing we kept exclusive: that I be the only key-holder. I thought that would make it hot and sexy and taboo that it might cross his mind to want to do it with other people, but then be totally beholden to me. I thought that would be part of the fun mind-fuckery of the game and that he might delight in the submission of it.

Yeah, no.

He basically freaked out. He admitted that it would, indeed, make it hotter, but he said that he couldn't do that because he wanted to play the game with Kelly too, that it's something she's really into, and that if it was really important that something be exclusive to me, he could "give me" something else. He furrowed his brow, squirming about "hating to disappoint me" and started putting out his argument energy, making me feel like we were fighting. He expressed worry that his saying no to me would sour me on the chastity concept forever—that I'd do a "sour grapes" thing and not want to do it anymore if he didn't say yes. He poked and prodded at my motives: was I trying to keep Kelly from it out of jealousy?

I was completely befuddled. I had no idea that this was such a land mine for him. Where I thought I was suggesting a way to make a sexy game even sexier, by adding elements of restraint and taboo to it, it triggered his "torn between two partners' desires" buttons and his fear of being controlled outside of the bedroom. A day later, we have worked through it all, but man, it was a lot of work getting to the bottom of it.

I had to explain to him that I wasn't asking for it because I didn't want him to have it with her or with anyone else; I had just thought it would make things more fun. Yes, it was disappointing that he might choose the cumulative hotness of doing it with other people over the amped hotness with only me that the extra layer of the game would add, but disappointment is an inevitable part of life, and especially an inevitable part of poly. There are going to be conflicts of interest that are impossible to avoid when you have multiple partners, and it is no one's fault. His only responsibility is to make the decision—he is not responsible for the feelings of the other people. That is their job. There will be disappointments, but as long as he stays true to HIMSELF, it's everyone else's job to handle their disappointments like mature adults. It's not his job to make sure that they don't ever feel that way.

I told him that learning how to say definitive no is an important skill ALSO because it makes yes more valuable. If I know he can say no to me when he doesn't want to do something I ask him for, then I can place a lot of faith in his yes.

He told me that other people he'd been with in the past were more interested in being soothed than hearing the real truth, and that always caused problems. I told him that I am not "other people." I am not afraid to suffer surface cuts and bruises to get to the real him and the real us. It is fear of the truth that is a spear to the belly and will eventually kill.

He has promised to work on his fear of disappointing, and on his knee-jerk spinning out whenever there is a conflict in desires between two partners. I told him that he should feel welcome to ask for a delay in answering if he needs time to think about something.

I think that when people say that relationships are work, this is the healthy version of what they mean. There is work for each of us to do on ourselves, and it is interacting with another person so closely that brings to light those things that need to be worked on. It takes patience and forgiveness and determination to get to the bottom of things that sometimes don't want to be discovered because they are longstanding defense mechanisms. I have known for a long time that Rider has an over-eagerness to please, and that he lets it fuzzy his own convictions. Maybe now we are finally making some progress on it.

 

[starlight1]

I have finally finished reading the whole blog, whew, I just wanted to chime in on possible highlighting problem with Rider. He was in a rather unhealthy situation with Claire fora really long time, a lot of the odd reactions you talk about, and buttons, are very similar to my own experiences in relationships, that when you finally get in a good one it can be very difficult in a tense moment to remember this person is on your side and not out to get you or undermine you. After years of mind fuckery with Claire, just be aware that a lot of it is desensitising and removing those triggers so he feels safe each time he wants to express himself and free will. Luckily with you it seems he doesn't have that problem quite intensely or as often as he did elsewhere, but it's still there. Hugs to you both as you work through it.

 

[starlight1]

also huge congratulations on your engagement, somehow in reading all your posts I missed the Most important one of all!!!

Congrats!!

 

[Reverie]

I have finally finished reading the whole blog, whew,

OMG, you read the WHOLE THING? I am seriously impressed with your tenacity!

I just wanted to chime in on possible highlighting problem with Rider. He was in a rather unhealthy situation with Claire for a really long time, a lot of the odd reactions you talk about, and buttons, are very similar to my own experiences in relationships, that when you finally get in a good one it can be very difficult in a tense moment to remember this person is on your side and not out to get you or undermine you.

I read this ^^ to him and he said that it was very insightful. He has told me more than once that most of his previous relationships were somewhat adversarial, where he felt like there was always a tit-for-tat going on and when someone fucked up, it was held over them.

also huge congratulations on your engagement, somehow in reading all your posts I missed the Most important one of all!!! Congrats!!

Thank you! I sized him yesterday and ordered the ring just a few minutes ago. I am super-duper excited, and so is he. I've never known anyone before who has been so stoked about being with me. He really, really loves me!

To follow up on yesterday's post, as it turned out, we were not, in fact, finished with hashing through everything after all. When he came over to my house to pick me up, we talked about the whole thing some more, and I found myself getting more and more anxious as I tried to explain the whole thing to him.

We covered whether he would be OK with me exploring that layer of chastity (the exclusivity part of it) with someone else, if I end up having an unquenchable desire to see what that is like. He would, but he seemed disappointed that there was something that he "couldn't" give me. I reminded him that it was his choice, and that it may never even come to pass, but part of the cool thing about poly is that if he is unwilling to do something with me, I can try to get that desire met elsewhere. He was pushing and pushing me to define and describe what I thought was different about the "only key-holder" concept that made it hotter, and I tried and tried, but he was not fully understanding. Finally, he admitted that he DID see a perceptible difference, it was just a 1% thing that he didn't understand why it was a big deal. And I told him that it's not a BIG deal, but it still might be something that I want to explore with someone at some point.

Then we got back into the disappointment stuff. He phrased something in such a way that made me wary that he was STILL focusing more on external stuff rather than what he actually wanted, like he hadn't really soaked in our previous conversation. He said something like that 1% "wasn't worth the pain in the ass" and I asked him what pain in the ass, and he said of disappointing Kelly. This really worried me, because it made me feel like...if he views these things as a push and pull between his partners' disappointments, allowing them to unduly influence him, then he finds himself in a situation much like he was with me and Claire, where he is constantly putting out fires on one side or on the other without standing up for what he wants. That creates an unstable situation and opens ME up to being affected by other people's manipulations of him (not saying that manipulations are happening right now, but as a future concern). I am not going to be in that situation twice, and I told him as much.

There are going to be situations in which SOMEONE will be disappointed. That's life. Maybe it's a conflict between special occasions, or one partner wants him to cut his hair while the other prefers it long, or he has a limited number of days off and a long list of things he wants to do with multiple partners...poly has many positives, but the increased number of opportunities for disappointment is definitely one of its very real drawbacks. We have both chosen to be in this situation, and now we must learn to handle it like people who know the risks going in. If he makes decisions based on who (of a selection of partners) will be more disappointed, that sets him up to always give a squeaky wheel the grease, which encourages melodrama.

So, his triggers are the pressure and the fear of disappointment and being pulled in multiple directions. And, wouldn't you know it, my realizing that these are deep-seated issues that he is working on but nowhere near perfect at set off one of MY OWN triggers, which is that I get really touchy and insecure when things feel unstable. I get this fear of being hurt (accidentally) by his sloppy boundaries. And when I feel insecure and unstable, I start to get really nervous about "wildcard" situations in which I don't know what will happen. And so I started getting really apprehensive again about Kelly's visit, after having worked my way to a point of actually being excited about it and looking forward to it at the end of last week.

Not that anything had changed on HER end of things. More like it's easy to tolerate a potentially uncomfortable situation when things are operating flawlessly between Rider and me, but it's WAY scarier to do when we are working through some shit. And I felt like I was running out of time to deal with my part of it and get to a place where I felt good and solid again. The pressure was exhausting, and it was pressure I was putting on myself, out of fear of being fearful; it was truly me fearing fear itself.

I got so exhausted from talking and explaining and thinking and digging and feeling, that after dinner last night, I was basically a zombie. Part of it was food coma, but part of it was just that I was pouring every last iota of my energy into figuring out what was wrong (on both of our ends) and how we could fix it, and fast. I lay immobile on the couch, while Rider rubbed my feet, then we moved to the bed and he cuddled me while I drifted in and out of half-sleep. I finally perked back up after a couple of hours, but by then it was so late that we had time for only sex before sleep. The sex was good and caused a little more reconnection, but I still felt "off."

Today, we IMed about it some more, and I told him that we had identified his end of things, now I just had to work on my end, which was how deeply I let all of this affect me yesterday, rather than just letting it go. I apologized for casting a shadow over his week, and I told him that I would work on it on my own and come to him with my conclusions.

He said, "You just measured my ring size last night. Nothing is going to dampen my mood this week." And I just melted. Here I had been thinking the same thing but the opposite: that it was kind of sad that a shadow had been lurking over the day that we did that. And he set me straight instantly in that moment; I had been thinking about it all wrong. I took all of the emotion that I'd been feeling over the past two days and poured it out into happy tears. And then I felt a million times better.

I think I mentioned before that it kind of seems like our personal "issues" are designed to poke at each other. It's really weird, but I think it is part of why we grow so fast together: we are confronted with our really scary things, but in a safe and supportive environment where we can work through and solve them without fear of being abandoned for having them.

And I'm particularly committed to personal growth. It's kind of a double-edged sword that I am so tenacious about figuring shit like that out. On the one hand, it's important to figure it out and not just sweep it under the rug to fester and rear its head again. On the other hand, I even get sick of myself in my tenacity and single-mindedness about solving it. Sometimes I worry for a moment that he will tire of the No Fun work involved in my making sure that every AFOG gets some G and not just a bandaid.

But then when I mention that to him, he tells me that it's a gift to have someone in his life who always sticks it out with him, and who helps him figure out the core of whatever problem comes up. He said, "A partner who helps you grow is a rare thing, so I appreciate it. Most people are lucky if they meet one person like that in their whole lifetime. It's some real work, but in the end, it's always worth it." His having that attitude is one of the things that makes him perfect for me.

And I am back to feeling happy and balanced, and mildly excited about Kelly's visit rather than mildly apprehensive about it. And I am super-duper excited about what the future will hold for Rider and me in the long term.

In the short term, we have so many plans this week: tacos tonight for Cinco de Mayo (yes, I know it's not a real holiday, but tacos); tickets to our favorite band tomorrow night; jamming with friends on Thursday; then Kelly arrives on Friday. I'm sure it will fly by and before we know it, we'll have another comfortable day of rest together. <3

 

[Reverie]

Tonight.

Here I am. The first night ever that Rider has had a "new" (i.e., post-me) partner in town, in his house and in his bed, a situation that, for the sake of his freedom, I needed to remove myself from. A one-night banishment.

And you know what? I'm OK. Like, kind of overly drunk on the happy hour cocktails we all consumed together, and that will make it impossible for me to expound more until I am sober...but...I actually really like Kelly.

If I do say so myself, I have managed a healthy state of non-obsessive neutral. OK, all right, that's not the same as compersion...but...HEY, I AM SHARING MY PARTNER HAPPILY AND NOT BEING A DICK.

Yes, I get a little tweak when she is at the bar between us and he can (and does) caress her leg and not mine. But. Dude. He is committing the rest of his life to me. One second of a thigh-rub will not change his mind.

Allie canceled on me, but Pablo should be meeting me any second now for booty call / hangout. Have all the fun, and I will report back.

 

[Reverie]

Sunshine. Birdsong. Warm air. All coming through my bedroom window. I am a lucky creature who has a tiny yard just outside of the back door off of my bedroom. When I lie in bed and look out the window, I see lush, green plants and patches of blue sky. My beloved cat sits on the windowsill, swiveling her ears to track the birds.

I am pretty brutally hung over. When I left Rider's last night, I took my half-bottle of wine with me and also poured three cocktails' worth of bourbon into a little bottle to take away. Pablo and I consumed all of that last night.

He has a very Jake-like issue with fucking. This is the second time that I have offered, and he has been up for it, but not "up for it," if you know what I mean. It's whatever, because I was probably too drunk to come anyway. I believe the Dead Kennedys wrote a song about that. We put a horror movie on and went to sleep.

Poor Pablo seems to be hypersensitive to the effects of alcohol. He gets headaches easily. I woke up early, needing to pee, and fetched him some water and ibuprofen. He has a 40-minute drive in the bright sunshine back to his town, and then he has to work. He works as an emergency dispatcher. I feel kind of bad for my part in impairing him for his job, but he didn't mention that he had to work today until he was well into our evening, so really, I hadn't known.

Rider messaged me this morning, having just seen my message about having Pablo over. He just said "Cool, hope you had fun. See you soon." I will be meeting him and Kelly for happy hour drinks in about five hours. I need to shape myself up. When visitors are in town, it seems it's a never-ending orgy of booze. Rider is 6'4" and while Kelly is slightly shorter than I am, her main hobby is body-building, so they are both able to take down more alcohol than I can and remain human. I need to make sure that I don't keep pace with them, lest I regret tomorrow morning as much as I do this morning.

I am just so "shrug, whatever" about sex with other people. Or not-sex, as the situation was last night. I'm definitely not monogamous and have never been naturally so at any point in my life, but somehow, right now, I really can't seem to muster any oomph for anyone other than Rider. Part of it is that he is absolutely phenomenal in bed, and while I *know* I shouldn't be comparing people, it's just so stark a difference that I can't help it. I am spoiled and perhaps ruined forever. Or maybe just until my typical 2.5–3-year burst of NRE wears off. Only time will tell on that one.

I should probably do an update of everything else. Not much has changed. Directly after my last post, Rider surprised me with wine and flowers. He's such a good guy. He'd surprised me with chocolate just a few days prior; wine, flowers, and chocolate: the womanly trifecta.

We've had a mostly good week. There was a bit of processing that happened on Thursday, because he rubbed me the wrong way by doing too much phone stuff while we were hanging out. I have a "thing" about that. In my relationships with Moss (the first time, when we were married) and my most recent ex, we developed bad habits of sticking our faces in technology too much and kind of taking each other for granted. After my last relationship ended, I swore to myself that I would not stumble down that slippery slope again. So when I'd noticed over recent weeks that Rider was more text-y than usual while we were hanging out, it had started to irk me.

There were a few times in particular that bothered me. In one, I had been cooking us dinner, and he'd been messaging someone, and I asked him a question and he was so zoned in to the phone that he didn't hear me. I let it go at the time without mentioning it, but I did have a flash of thinking that if I was actively working on something to benefit both of us—him too!—he should be willing to be present in the moment with me. In another, we were naked in bed, and he'd asked me something that I didn't know the answer to, so I grabbed my phone to Google it for him. I don't remember exactly what it was, but it was related to some plans we were making: the hours of a place, or where it was, or something like that. It took me just a couple seconds to answer his question, and after I had, I looked over at him and saw that he was messaging Kelly. I got very cross for a moment; naked in bed with me seems like the last time in the entire world that he should be diverting his attention to other people. Yes, I'd grabbed my own phone, but it was to answer HIS question! It still related to the topic at hand, and wasn't a diversion of energy from "us." Again, I let it go, because I didn't want to make a stink over something so small.

But Thursday, he had come over to pick me up to go out. I'd told him that I still had some work left to do, and so he lay in the bed next to me while I finished it on my laptop. He dozed in and out, and then I was done after about half an hour. I closed my laptop triumphantly and announced that I was finished, and looked to him so that we could get up and go. He was engrossed in his phone and seemed not even to notice. As it turned out, he was messaging the people we were about to meet, which is perfectly acceptable, but in the moment, the other occasions came flooding back to me, and I decided it was time to say something.

He said that he hadn't noticed an uptick in phone usage while we were together and seemed surprised that I'd said something. There was a brief moment where he seemed kind of cross about it, with a slightly hostile tone in his voice when he said "Well. Maybe it's because we're together all the time now." Which seemed to me to be logically fallacious. I knew that the "now" that he was referring to was "since he and Claire broke up," so I asked him if he'd gotten that messaging done on "her" time then, if it was suddenly about not having the time to do it that he'd once had. He thought about it for a second, and admitted that I was right: it wasn't that there was less time to do it in now that I was also getting the time that had previously been hers.

So because of that, it seemed like sort of a "taking for granted" thing. Since he sees me all the time now, he places less value on the time we have together being "quality," and so is more likely to allow technological intrusions. It irritates me to no end the ever-creeping taking for granted that seems to happen in all relationships. It's like once someone realizes that you're in it for good, that you love them and don't want to leave them, then things seem less special to them and they stop paying attention so much. Rider is not especially guilty of this (notice the flowers and wine mentioned above), but the phone creep seems like the first symptom of a thing that historically has tended to grow much larger over time.

I might be one of the few people who actually never does take for granted. I might get SPOILED and that might fuck with my expectations of how much of someone I "get," but I cherish every moment that I have with someone that I care about. Maybe it comes from experiencing a lot of loss (deaths of people I loved) early in life, but I really do the cherishing and staying in the moment thing really well. I tend to revere the life that pulses through my lovers, to watch them as they sleep, in awe of the beauty that they are. It is not dulled by familiarity or security, or at least it has never been yet.

So the attitude of "she's here all the time; it doesn't matter if I'm mentally present the entire time" grates on me. It makes me understand why people play head games, even if I am not willing to ever play them myself. So I talked to him about it.

I wasn't even really sure what I was asking for. Do I think it's totally unreasonable for him to ever be on his phone while we are together? No, of course not. If we're making plans with someone, of course we must be communicating with them. Or when one or the other of us leaves the room to use the bathroom or take a shower, sure, check your phone and respond to the odd message while you're peeing or undressing. Or scroll through your Facebook feed for a moment, to see what is happening in the greater world, because that is often the source of fun conversation topics, but share with the person you're hanging out with the interesting things that you read. Or if it's really important to have an extended conversation with someone outside of work hours while we are together, schedule it or something and I will happily give you alone time to handle it. I have no desire to run anyone's life and tell them that they CAN'T do something. But it just seems like common courtesy to engage with the person you are with and not allow on-demand electronic diversion. And he's usually SO GOOD about politeness and courtesy: opening car doors, knee-jerk "please" and "thank you," overly apologizing, even. It's just weird and out of character that he would do something rude without even realizing it. He's agreed to try to be more aware in the moment that he's doing it.

So, yeah. That discussion happened. Having it made me realize something, which also needs more backstory.

(continued...)

 

[Reverie]

(...continued from previous)

So like last week, Rider was folding laundry, and I was doing the aforementioned scrolling through the Facebook feed looking for something interesting. It was a Thursday night, and Thursday recently has been the night that we go out with our music friends and do a public jam session. They call it "Thursday Night Throwdown" or "TNT" for short. This is something that Rider used to do with Claire, but has been taking me since they broke up. So earlier that day, I'd asked Rider if there was a TNT that night, and he'd said no. But as I was scrolling through my feed, I saw that the people that we usually hang out with were indeed posting about that very thing. Thinking that they had changed their minds or something, I said something about it to Rider, in case he wanted to go. He got a very strange look on his face, and then told me something.

Apparently, the girl half of the main couple who organizes the thing had been upset that Claire didn't want to go anymore since Rider was bringing me. For a while, we'd kind of been alternating with her so that one week she'd go, then another week we'd go, etc. But going at all was making Claire sad and nostalgic, so she didn't want to go anymore knowing that I was going in her off weeks. So the girl kind of threw a fit about it and browbeat Claire into attending one final time. Which was that Thursday. So it's not that there was no TNT, it's only that we "couldn't" go. But Rider had originally presented it to me differently. He basically lied as a shortcut because he didn't feel like explaining everything—deception for the purpose of laziness. This was definitely NOT OK.

I came down on him pretty hard about it. It wasn't just that one occasion that had me going, either. Over the previous few weeks, it had come out that he'd glossed over, minimized, or otherwise deceived me when it came to two other Claire-related things as well. They were from the past, but I had just learned about them. One was the thing where it came out that his main reason for not wanting to move to Opposite Coast with me had actually had to do with Claire and not employment. And the other thing had to do with minimizing her actual reaction to the Christmas thing, where she had been gloaty and full of schadenfreude that I was hurting (which, if known at the time, would have confirmed a suspicion I had about her).

So this third, more recent thing seemed the latest in a string of deceptions that Rider had committed for the purpose of making his life run more smoothly in relation to me and Claire. I was really upset. I impressed on him the importance of always being honest. It's not always going to be convenient, and we MAY end up having a drawn out discussion about it, but our relationship, ESPECIALLY a poly one, is not going to work out if we cower from communication. I know that he has a good, sweet heart, and I don't think he would ever lie to me out of mailce, but goddamn if he isn't super conflict avoidant and lazy sometimes.

So, anyway, between that and the phone thing, I realized that *I* need to be less conflict avoidant too. I need to speak up in the moment when something bothers me; otherwise I risk getting in these "three strike" situations where I let something go the first and the second times, not wanting to make a stink about it, but then by the time the third time rolls around, I have a small stack of things to bitch about. I shouldn't do that—waiting for a pattern to establish itself before I speak up. I usually just have this super laid-back attitude of "eh, it's a small thing, let it go" because I don't want to be a shrew or disrupt the good energy already happening, but a small irritation can quickly become a big irritation if it happens often enough.

Both of these things were fairly small hiccups in our otherwise placid life, but it seemed important to mention them here to highlight the importance of communication in our daily lives. I am definitely a person who believes that communication and transparency are cornerstones of relationships, but even as vigilant as I try to be about it, I am still guilty of holding things in sometimes. I really, really want this relationship to work over the long term, so it is incredibly important to me to nip things in the bud when they seem like bad or unhealthy habits, before they have a chance to really take root and cause problems. I am not going to be perfect, and Rider is not going to be perfect—that's life!—but we can both try to be more aware of our own shortcomings and work to become better people.

(...continued)

 

[Reverie]

Ha, well, I thought it was going to be continued, but somehow in my copy/pasting my too-long post into new windows, I accidentally deleted the last part, which was an update of how the rest of the week went. I haven't the gumption to recreate it right now, so I will do that later, along with my update on the rest of the weekend with Kelly. Suspense!

 

[JaneQSmythe]

..If I do say so myself, I have managed a healthy state of non-obsessive neutral. OK, all right, that's not the same as compersion...but...HEY, I AM SHARING MY PARTNER HAPPILY AND NOT BEING A DICK...

THIS is awesome! I remember my trepidation when Dude started dating. I wrote about it in my blog. I was actually very worried that I would have a negative emotional response. (Like I did early on in my relationship with MrS - which set us back quite a bit.) I didn't freak out! (SUCH a relief!)

From my standpoint "neutral" is a WIN (as is a "push" in blackjack). Compersion is a nice ideal but I don't know that it is possible in every case and certainly takes being a place of security and confident self-esteem, and, I suspect, experience/practice. For me, personally, I think compersion requires that I like/respect a metamour on their own merit - not just because they are with my partner. With Lotus and Dude or MrS it is easy - I love her, she loves me, I love them - I know (to the bottom of my heart) that NONE of us is trying to hurt the others - which makes it easier to revel in their happiness.

 

[Reverie]

THIS is awesome! I remember my trepidation when Dude started dating. I wrote about it in my blog. I was actually very worried that I would have a negative emotional response. (Like I did early on in my relationship with MrS - which set us back quite a bit.) I didn't freak out! (SUCH a relief!)

As it turns out, there did end up being a little bit of negative emotional response, but nothing out of hand. Overall, I would call the weekend a net positive.

That first day, she and I hung out together, waiting for him to get off of work. He eventually joined us at happy hour, and we had beverages at two places before stopping off at the store for home supplies for the rest of the weekend. As mentioned in my previous post, I got a little twinge at the second bar when Kelly positioned herself between Rider and me, and so he could put affection on her and none on me. It was probably either motiveless or just her wanting to be near both of us, but it was a little tough on me.

(I say wanting to be near both of us because she's dropped into conversation a couple of times now to me over IM that she has "dated couples" before, so maybe she's trying to set up a triad? Still not sure after all weekend...)

I left at the agreed upon time, and I returned on Saturday afternoon. Saturday afternoon was instantly a bit strange for me. I walked into his house, and there was a massive amount of visual evidence of the debaucherous evening they'd had: toy boxes, lingerie tags and lingerie strewn about, needle wrappers from their surface piercing, panties next to the bathtub, fancy shoes, food wrappers from snacking, empty cocktail glasses, etc. Rider and I had cleaned the apartment pretty thoroughly before her arrival, and it is not an exaggeration to say that literally every horizontal surface in every room of the apartment was covered with pervy party detritus. There wasn't even space for me to set my purse down.

They'd known what time I was coming over to then go out for drinks, and yet they were still in their loungewear, so I had to stand around rather nervously surveying the scene while they got dressed, guzzled water, and chattered back and forth. They were speaking in so much inside-joke language that I was understanding every fifth sentence, it seemed. I'm not used to being an outsider in Rider's presence at all, so it was really kind of uncomfortable for me. I brave-faced my way through it, but I couldn't wait to get out and into a more neutral space, and it felt like it was taking forever.

Once we finally got into my car and headed to the restaurant where we would be doing happy hour, I breathed a bit easier. But I noticed that Kelly kept dropping their new inside jokes into the conversation in a way that was either just totally socially inept or possibly purposefully exclusive. I still haven't decided. It grated on me, but once I realized that "this is how it is right now and I just need to deal with it," I was able to let it roll off of me for the most part.

The first restaurant was fine. Rider took the middle seat, and other than the still-abundant inside-joke thing, hanging out went smoothly. We went to the second place, and again, things were mostly fine. This place has cushy couches to sit on and Rider sat between us, and we were making up jokes and laughing. Kelly and I had a couple of fun jinxes that showed me that to some degree, she and I do think alike. When Rider got up to go the bathroom, Kelly stole his seat so that she was in the middle again. Still not sure if it was because she wanted to be closer to me or to be "hogging" him, but it was a scene that played out a few times: an opportunity would open up, and she'd place herself between us. Still, I didn't let it bother me other than noting it, and noting that when she got up to use the bathroom, Rider slid back next to me again.

I did have one sickening jolt when they were talking about their needle play, and I bravely peeked into Rider's shirt to see what mark it might have left. Very visible bruises on his milk-white skin. It's really weird to see marks left on him by someone, since he is usually anti-that, and he later told me that she'd reassured him that the marks wouldn't be much, but she'd been wrong. I had some sort of primal visceral response to seeing them, but I covered it up well, and the conversation just kind of moved on.

Then we went back to Rider's for dinner. The plan that Kelly and I had devised was that we would put makeup on Rider and make him wear only an apron while he cooked dinner and she and I braided each other's hair. That part went really well. She and I, when paying attention to each other, interacted very smoothly, with giggles and pleasantries.

After dinner, we went out exploring the nightlife. We went to a couple of bars and had a good time. We ran into a previous hookup of ours, Molly, and sat and had a drink with her for a minute. The rest of the evening went well. We all got along, and we went back to my place so we could tie Rider up. I had fun dressing up with Kelly and tandem-torturing Rider with her. We actually make a really good team. Having sex with her was brief and not terrible, even though I am not attracted to her. She is a good kisser, and she tastes nice. After we untied Rider, we were about to fulfill a longstanding fantasy of his that he'd never actually told me about until after it happened: two girls double-teaming him with strap-ons. It was not planned; I just saw that we had two at our disposal, and it kind of made sense.

(continued...)

 

[Reverie]

(...continued from previous)

We went to sleep super late, and woke up too early, because Kelly is a morning person and was hungry, so we were heading back to Rider's place so that I could cook everyone burritos.

I had a bit of roommate drama on my way out. I wanted to clean up our party stuff so that it wasn't in her way, and I'd put all the dishes in the dishwasher and wiped the counters down and was sweeping the floor because I'd broken a glass the night before and even though I cleaned most of it up, I'd wanted to make sure all the glass was up now that I had daylight, and to mop away the most obvious splash marks that remained on the floor. Anna, my roommate, scolded me in front of my friends for how I was doing a poor job with the floor. I hadn't intended for it to be a final job, just to make it passable until Kelly left and I had time to go back and do a better job of it. I offered to do it better right then, and she told me not to, to go hang out with my friends and deal with it later. So I did, but then she sent me passive-aggressive text messages about how she'd done it herself—some sort of a martyr thing. And this after she'd left the entire apartment a mess for a month and a half while working on crafts for her boyfriend's party! I leave a mess for not even a whole day, and she's on the warpath, snapping at me. It makes no sense.

Anyway, so we got back to Rider's, and I made everyone burritos, and we all flopped out on his futon watching cartoons and nature shows all day. Kelly and I cuddled Rider, and he looked so happy. In that moment, I felt inklings of true compersion: seeing him so happy cuddled up with both of us, and knowing that she was part of the reason that he was happy. It was nice.

As she prepared her things to leave, things took a turn for the worse again. Rider mentioned that she would come to visit him over the weekend while I was in Hometown with my family for a week next month. Which directly conflicted with some plans that we had made. A couple of weeks ago, I was feeling glum about that upcoming trip and having to be away from him for so long: a week without seeing him, and a week without sex with him. He had told me that we would make it more bearable by sexy videochatting with me every night that I was gone, if I wanted to. I had told him that I would probably be busy some weeknights, but that the weekend nights would be open. So we'd made plans to do that every weekend night. It hadn't even been my idea, but his, and here he was snatching it away from me to give the time to someone else right in front of my face. I felt so panicked!

Instead of doing my usual put-it-off thing, I spoke up in the moment, and reminded me that we had "the videochat plans" and how would that work if she was there, knowing that he would know that it meant sex stuff, and that if she was there, he'd probably be saving that for her. He met my eye and I think realized that he'd fucked up, and we were both like, let's talk about this later. I was determined to not let it show that I felt completely destroyed, because I didn't think that it was fair to Kelly to cast a pall on the last moments of her visit. I did the happy face and the goodbye, and almost as soon as Rider and I got back into his house, I couldn't take the pressure anymore and had to talk about it.

He, in his trademark terribleness with scheduling, had made these plans with her and forgotten to tell me about it. And then had forgotten for an instant that he'd made the plans with her, and made plans to videochat with me. In the moment, he was confirming with her while forgetting that he'd made plans with me—what a debacle!

We had a very long series of talks about this, in which he offered to take the trip back from her and reschedule it, and I had to weigh whether rescheduling it would make things better or shittier. I decided shittier, because we have only a couple of weekends of downtime (no travel, no visitors) planned between now and the end of July, and the idea of "converting" one of those into another weekend like this past one (which, while a net positive, was still emotionally exhausting for me) just sounded like a way less desirable thing than giving up two nights of sexy videochats. Plus, if he took that away from her after offering it to her, then it was probably going to make her feel the way that I felt when something was taken from me, and I didn't want her to hurt too.

It was a complicated thing for me to weigh, because I am often the one to bend and sacrifice when a decision has to be made, and I had to factor in all of the missing that would be happening during that trip, plus the weird disappointment of losing something that I had been really looking forward to. But, yeah, in the end, I decided that I would rather lose my videochats than have a different weekend "eaten."

So, yeah, I was all over the place this weekend. From happy-friendly to neutral to gut-stabbed to compersion to mildly annoyed to enjoying teamwork with Kelly to panicked—a true emotional roller coaster. The highs were pretty high, especially knowing how happy Rider was, but the lows were pretty damned low, too. One thing I know is that it is really important that we figure out how to fix that planning issue. My keeping track of the calendar has helped to some degree, but I can't put stuff on the calendar if Rider forgets to tell me about it. And I would really prefer to never, ever again feel that feeling that I felt in that moment, if I can help it—that panicked, "rug pulled out from under me" feeling of my much-anticipated plans being forgotten and tossed aside for someone else. It was horrible. I'm still not sure what sort of thing we can do to fix Rider's calendar-broken brain.

But after talking and working things out, and seeing that Rider was WILLING to change the plans back to the ones he made with me, I felt a lot better. He kept telling me that I am the most important thing to him, and that he admits that he fucked up, but that he's willing to change things around to make it right. I think that knowing that he is willing to do that might make it less painful if he does do the calendar screw-up kind of thing again—if it's something that is really important to me, he will just make it right for me. Knowing that, I think I feel like I am somewhat inoculated against it being so painful if it happens in the future. So maybe no matter what, it will never feel as bad as it did yesterday. I told him that as long as he tries his hardest and is willing to make it right, I will always forgive him his mistakes. Love should be forgiving instead of fearful. <3

 

[Reverie]

Rider and I had a super long and rather philosophical poly-related conversation today that I thought might belong here and that people who are or have been in a position similar to mine might find it helpful. I got his permission to reproduce his end of the conversation, and I have broken it up into two posts. I tried really hard to color-code it so that it was easy to see who was saying what, but it kept not working very well, so I will use quote tags instead. Rider is in the quote boxes:

I talked to Kelly about sorry for weirdness right before she left, because I wasn't sure how much of that she picked up on, and I didn't want her to think there were any weird hard feelings toward her.

How did the conversation go? She seemed to just roll with it at the time.

It was fine. She said she'd picked up on it and felt guilty for a while, and she'd talked to you about it. I explained sort of what had happened, and explained that we'd worked it out OK. She said she was happy that we are good at working things out.

She brought it up yesterday and said she didn't want to cause you to be upset in any way. She had been through some awkward stuff previously in poly and threesome situations.

Yeah, she'd told me about that a bunch. A couple weeks ago.

I likewise explained to her that we had since worked it out, and I explained to her that it was oversight on my part that caused the confusion. I told her that I'd like to have her visit when you're out of town, and that you and I had agreed to a 30-40 minute FB chat each day. She said that the FB chat sounded completely reasonable. Anyway, thank you for doing damage control on that one. I super appreciate how awesome you are.

I just didn't want her to think there were hard feelings or that I was over here stewing over losing something. Or that I thought it was her fault. She's an innocent bystander for that particular thing.

Yep. Also, I'm really glad that you and I are so good at figuring things out. I had explained it to her, but I still appreciate that she can hear it from you. I think that means more.

I told her this:

This first-long-term-poly-relationship thing has been an incredibly rewarding roller coaster of high highs and low lows and Rider and I learning lots and lots of shit about ourselves and each other. I don't think we could pull it off if we were not both smart, easy-going, relatively good communicators, and totally dedicated to making the relationship and the commitment to poly work.

And she seemed to be pleased by that. I figured that it might be helpful for me to express that even though it isn't always easy (and it won't be), we're committed to poly and I won't just be trying to shove her out of the way if things get uncomfortable for a bit.

I love you so much.

I love you too.

As the Minx on the poly podcast says, though, I still reserve the right to freak out at any time.

Of course. I also reserve this right.

Humans are complicated.

Yes. Relationships are messy.

So many people come to poly having been monogamous for years and having built this steady, long-term foundation that they can trust not to crumble out from under their feet (monogamous as a couple, I mean).

When Dan Savage talks about opening relationships, he suggests that people stay together for about four years before worrying about opening it.** But he has no words at all for the people who were "additions" from the beginning and who never get that time to build. So I harvest from many resources my own ideas of what making it work will entail. There are so many more resources based on an "original couple" opening things after years of monogamy. Even though there are probably lots of people in my situation.

I'm sure that sort of thing is way more common: people turning to poly instead of breaking up about 4 years in. Our thing is less common, but it still happens.

I don't think I ever mentioned this to you, but at one point I called the Savage Lovecast hotline and specifically asked about this. The call was obviously never used.

You asked about starting open as an addition instead of being from a 4 year monogamous situation?

I said, "OK, so you recommend waiting for four years to open a monogamous relationship to make sure you have a stable foundation and that you know each other really well and your commitment is strong...but what if you're the person who was added and the relationship was never monogamous? What is your suggestion for that situation, to build stability and make it likelier to last over the long term, even as new people are added?" And I got no answer. So I started figuring it all out on my own.

Sure. It's too complicated a question to answer in a concise way. Probably why it never got answered. We're figuring it out, though.

Yeah, Dan has often admitted that sometimes his lack of answer is that he just doesn't know.

That's a perfectly reasonable answer.

Because it's like...in monogamous relationships, when they start out, generally there is a solid chunk of time there at the beginning where the people kind of bundle up together and totally exist in their own world, building a "culture of them" in a way. I remember mentioning that to you last year—how it was weird for me not to travel through that stage with you.

And just when I'd gotten used to how things were with Claire, you started adding Kelly in as something that you wanted to make larger almost instantly, which as I explained at the time, was temporally impossible. And then as things ramped down with Claire, they started ramping up with Kelly.

And it became clear to me that this is an ebb and flow that I need to get used to and that it's going to be different every time (because as previously mentioned, different humans and different circumstances). And that constant ebb and flow and state of always-gonna-be-differentness means that it will never just be a settled and peaceful known quantity that is without some modicum of pitfalls and drama.

Which isn't NECESSARILY a bad thing, but it is an idea that takes getting used to, even as it's progressed over the past year and a half. At least feeling all of the things all of the time means I know I am alive and will not get bored. People jump out of airplanes to simulate the feeling of being about to die, and they do it on purpose because they want to be alive. If people seek out uncomfortable physical feelings to shock them out of the mundanity of everyday life, there is surely value in accepting a lifestyle that regularly brings uncomfortable emotional feelings that are then relieved through working things out, much as the skydiver must be relieved when the parachute opens. #tuesdayafternoonpolyphilosophy #coffeethoughts #souldigging

I think that, with this lifestyle, we can't help but keep things constantly interesting. Part of that is through chaos, and it does include some situations that are going to be sometimes difficult or awkward, but confronting those realities and surviving them allows us to grow together and as individuals. Dealing with the hard stuff in an honest and direct way makes us stronger.

(continued...)

** WHOA. I was just now listening to TODAY'S episode, and he reiterates this very same thing. That is one hell of a coincidence.

 

[Reverie]

(…continued from previous)

I was thinking about it, and I think that part of the reason I'm burned out on other people right now might be that a lot of that chaos and working through it uses up a lot of my emotional resources.

You mean burned out in the sense of you trying to date other people? Or not trying, in this case?

Yeah, exactly. Like when I was telling you the other night that my losing interest in my other connections coincided with the really rough patch that you and I were having right around Valentine's. I kind of pondered on that a bit.

Hmm. I don't want to drain your energy. If dating is something that you want to actively do, you should be doing it.

I didn't mean it like that. It's really NOT something that I want to do right now. I have zero interest in it.

OK. But is that because of a burnout that I'm causing directly (or indirectly)?

Where that zero interest comes from is not super important. I guess, to better explain, because I don't want you to feel bad:

So say I have 100 emotion points to spend...

And at any given time, because I love you so much, I am spending more than half—say 75%—on the love I feel for you and on my regular daily emotions that everyone has during their day, the little frustrations and joys that come from various places like work and pets, etc. When I am not dealing with poly-adjustment stuff, I might have that remaining 25% to spend on a secondary* partner.

But when I AM dealing with poly-adjustment stuff, I spend a lot of points turned inward, working through stuff and balancing my scales. Or verbally processing with you. Since YOU don't really have much adjustment to do most of the time, unless you are schedule-stressed, you still have most of your own "free" points to spend on whomever.

If you have an energy meter that goes up to 100, do you feel like maybe having a secondary partner could expand that meter? Like getting an extra life heart in Zelda? Because I know love isn't actually a commodity that runs out. It only grows.

I'm not talking about LOVE. I'm talking about emotional energy.

In this sense, we're talking about energy? OK, yeah, that does have a cap to it. Do you feel like that could be expanded or reallocated somehow, in a way that would be beneficial?

I am not sure. My logic suggests that whenever we eventually get into a groove with something and get used to "this is how it's going to be for a while" then the processing energy and time will be decreased, and my points will be freed up to be distributed elsewhere. And when they get chaotic again, the points will be taken again.

I want you to be able to do what you want to do. If I'm getting in the way of that, even indirectly, I don't want to.

If there's never any "this is how it's going to be for a while," then I might end up more-or-less functionally monogamous. The thing about it, though, is that if my points are used up, then I don't really WANT things to be different for me. Like right now, I have zero desire for others, but I also have zero negative feeling about having zero desire for others. So I am indeed doing what I want to do. I don't want others for the sake of having others, just for the sake of it itself, you know? If I don't want a thing, I don't miss wanting it.

OK, that distinction is important to me. I don't want to feel like I'm creating some sort of virtual roadblock from you getting what you want. If you want a thing, I want to actively help you get it; at the very least, I want to get out of your way so that you can go get it, in some case where I can't actively help you.

It's like if I'm not in the mood for a grilled cheese sandwich because I ate a lot for breakfast, I'm not sitting there thinking about how I wish I wanted the grilled cheese sandwich. My stomach is already processing its maximum load.

OK. I like a food analogy.

If you always have more energy left over than I do, coupled with your being attracted to a wider variety of people, you will probably always be dating more than I do, I think I am coming to realize. Not "definitely" but "probably" with the situation as I am coming to understand it.

I don't want to be a drain on you, ever. I want to lift you up.

Maybe I explained it poorly, even still. It's not that you are a drain on me. It's that poly flux in itself uses many emotional resources. It would be that way with anyone, but it so happens that I (willingly, joyfully!) give you a lot more of my resources than I probably would most people. You fill enough of my "slots" that I *CAN* devote those kind of resources to you without needing to reserve those points for other people.

OK, love. I just want to make sure that I'm not causing you grief ever. I love you.

No one can ever make sure of not causing other people grief. To love is to grieve sometimes. To feel love deeply is to let grief in more deeply. I accept that. In poly, I think it can be a more "active" variety of grief, rather than the "passive" grief of monogamy (missed opportunity, second guessing, all the stuff we talked about the other night), but love is impossible without grief. I'm sure I have caused you grief (or if not already, I will eventually). I will minimize that happening to the best of my ability, but I do not want to say "ever," because if I could never cause you grief, it would mean you were indifferent to me.

(I am apparently on a philosophical bender today.)

I agree with that. To love is to open yourself up to getting hurt, and to accept that it is going to happen eventually. To love deeply is to potentially get hurt deeply at some point. In my experience, it's almost always worth it, though.

I like when you get on an introspective bender.

I think it is an interesting and vaguely Buddhist concept to embrace a bit of suffering for oneself, especially when it is for the greater good of not controlling the lives of the people you care about. And I think it teaches lessons about not allowing yourself to think of yourself as a martyr for "enduring" it, and also about learning your own boundaries of what is acceptable.

Small hurts like knowing that you have to be left out of the fun or can't have the special delight of being "first" or "only" at something are things to breathe through in a zen manner. Medium hurts like the recent scheduling debacle are things to try to prevent, but to ultimately accept as a part of life because everyone makes mistakes. Large hurts like a betrayal, or someone knowingly (instead of mistakenly) overwriting plans, or abuse are where you learn to set boundaries so as not to be walked on, and place hard limits on them not being repeated or there will be consequences. It's all very educational.

Facing a bit of discomfort for the greater good of yourself and those you care about is just the mature thing to do, I think. Some people never get there.

I think dealing with that discomfort in a zen way is where the Buddhist part comes in. Dealing with potentially uncomfortable things in a zen way is a learned skill, or, if you're very lucky, it's an inherent skill. We're all working on it. I'm good at most of it. The scheduling stuff and the push-and-pull still get to me sometimes.

I'm getting better at understanding my shortcomings all the time, though. It's amazing how much we grow when we work together on things.

It's undeniable that, at least for me, my growth happens more easily when I have a sounding board. I think a lot when I am alone, but it is very abstract, and putting it out in the world in a way that will make sense to others distills it so that I can understand it better myself. I've almost always had my keenest epiphanies while writing or speaking.

And I feel that, especially for you, having the incisive perspective of someone like me who thinks about these things a lot and can figure out the right questions to ask you to make you think about things is a helpful thing for you. It's kind of like we are each other's therapy.

It's incredibly helpful. I've grown so much in a short amount of time just by journeying with you through life.

Me too. It's crazy how even the hard stuff turns out mostly good for us.

* I know the term "secondary" is loaded on here, but I do not mean it in an inferior sense. More like in the sense that I do not feel like I could devote as much time and energy to another person as I devote to Rider, because I want to be with him so much of the time, so secondary in terms of if you looked at a spreadsheet organized by time spent, they would be on the second line. Part of the reason I'm NOT interested in dating others romantically right now (as opposed to FWB hookups) is that I know I do not have the resources for it and don't want to place anyone in a role of inferiority or never-prioritized. Hopefully this explanation makes that clear in the context of this forum; it's something that Rider already understands.

 

[Reverie]

In addition to the conversation excerpts I posted earlier, I just wanted to say that the past 48 hours or so—since Rider and I came up with the workable solution of the FB chats while I am gone—have been 48 pretty seriously awesome hours.

Sunday night after we talked for hours and hours, we went to bed and had such simple yet explosively amazing sex. Last night, we did yoga, ate a tasty dinner cobbled together out of the leftovers from the past week, and watched a documentary that we had both been wanting to see. While we were watching it, we just kept kissing and kissing. The kisses had a depth and power to them that made them rival our very first kiss.

It wasn't the hyper-electric-excitement feeling of the first kiss, but instead, a monumentally deep loving feeling that reached places of me that have never been reached before. He tasted like heaven and I could just feel the love pulsing through both of us with each kiss. It was something I have never really felt before—pretty close to indescribable. It made me so hungry for more and more of them that every time there was a break in the action onscreen, we were at it again. I talked to him about it today, and he felt it too. It seemed like we were literally "making love," creating more and more love between us, but with our mouths only rather than in the usual euphemistic sense. Later, we took that passion to the bedroom and had a really good time. I don't know exactly what happened there, but I am certainly not going to complain.

And then today, we had that long chat that I posted here, sharing thoughts and reflecting on poly things. We connect so well on so many levels. Every time we come through a storm, we have a deepened connection. Every time it deepens, I can't imagine what even deeper feels like, and then it happens again, and I find out. I do still think I have some NRE for him, but whatever this is is way beyond what I've ever experienced with other people. Even as the flashy lightning of novelty fades, something else, some deeper and more abiding, more sustaining current grows—an electricity that calmly powers a growing civilization instead of sizzling ephemerally across the sky.

 

[Reverie]

Taking stock of my other connection, plus a summary and update:

Sam

Sam is Rider's best friend, and has been since they were both recently 18. My connection to him will always be an offshoot of my connection with Rider, and Sam tends mono, so if/when he ever finds a local gf, I will probably have to stop being cuddly and sexual with him. Recently, we have been more cuddly than sexual, because he tends to only want to be sexual with me when we are totally alone (i.e., Rider is asleep or with one of his other partners).

The last time we were in bed together was the last time he visited here, for the Superb Owl party, when Rider spent the night with Claire. Since then, Rider and I have visited him once, and I kissed and cuddled a little on him, but spent every night of the visit in the guest bed with Rider, and no nights in Sam's bed. I talk to him over IM every once in awhile, and I deeply miss him when we haven't seen each other for a long time. I have a good chemistry with him, better than with most people. He'll be coming to visit next weekend. Maybe if Rider passes out early, we'll have sex. Or maybe not. Our connection is friendly and fluid, and is what it is in whatever moment. I'd never call us "dating" but I definitely love him.

Jake

Jake and I have already had the "if nothing else, we'll always be friends" conversation the last time he visited, because I can't afford to visit as frequently as I tried to last year. We haven't been speaking much at all over IM lately, but I will be spending a night or two with him while I am in Hometown next month visiting family. We were never quite able to get the sexual connection together, though I find him extraordinarily aesthetically pleasing and intellectually brilliant. It's a shame that sex and money keep us apart, but it is what it is. We've known each other for 20 years, so it's not like we're going to stop knowing each other just because we couldn't get a real relationship together. I suspect that he may have fallen for someone local, based on some of his recent FB posts, but he's always been a little reticent about sharing specifics. I don't mind because, since he's so far away, it doesn't affect me at all. I have a feeling that my June trip might kind of be our last hurrah, and I feel pretty neutral about it.

Allie

Rider and I almost always see Allie together. She dates around a lot and has a really busy family and social life, not to mention working two jobs, so our time with her is pretty rare. She is a FWB with emphasis on the F part—a true and caring friend, but who also loves a good sexy romp with us. She's our sweetest and most regular threesome partner.

Oona

Oona is my bestie for lyf—my friend since I was 18 years old. Considering herself a "fake-bi" or "boobiesexual" or "pillow princess" for most of her adult life, she's really experienced an uptick in her actual interest in girls lately, even sexting me a few weeks ago. If she didn't live all the way across the continent from me, we'd probably be hooking up a lot more now than we have historically. If she remains in this trend and I do indeed move to Opposite Coast, things could get very interesting. She has historically been mono or mono-with-occasional-lite-girl-permissions, but just recently, she was talking to me about how even though she's really into the guy she's been dating for the past 8 months, she thinks she might not want to settle into having sex with only one guy forever, and she has asked me for future guidance on working her way through maybe trying an open relationship and through jealousy issues, etc. She has also had sex with Rider, in a threesome with me, and enjoyed it, so it would be a fun thing to be able to pursue with her on a semi-regular basis if we all lived in the same city again.

Pablo

Another FWB, Pablo is someone who I think is cute, but I do not have an awful lot of chemistry for him, and zero romantic interest. He's been fun to make out with on occasion, and his bisexuality and Rider's anomalous attraction to him still makes him an interesting partner to throw into the mix sexually. The main basis for our connection is friendship, though, for all involved.

Candace

The ever-elusive Candace is a waning girl-crush of mine. I was really hot for her for a while, but her reticence and shyness is making the crushiness fade. Rider has had a crush on her forever. Mine is more recent. I think she's smoking hot and really funny, and she's told me that she thinks I'm hot and would like to make out with me, but she's really slippery to pin down to hang out, and she acts really shy when I show interest, and I am just not really down for a goose chase at this point. If it happens, it happens, but I'm not going to throw myself at her.

Laura

Laura is a newer hookup-type interest. A super-sexual hippie painter chick, she's not someone who I could ever date, but if she's down for a fling, so am I. We kissed a bunch at a party a few weeks ago, and I would definitely do that again.

Summary and Update

The cool thing about poly is that I don't really HAVE TO chase or label or expect or stress over anything with these other connections. I have Rider, and he fills my entire heart, but like a color fill in Photoshop, I can layer the colors of the others over certain areas to make a watercolor blend of different hues and shades. I don't need to be "in love with" or "dating" multiple people to make me poly. I am poly because I always have been at heart, and because I value the freedom to add those other colors to my palette, and because I value my partners' freedom to do the same.

Even if I might be functionally sexually monogamous for weeks or even months on end, even if I currently don't have more than one concurrently running romance—it doesn't make me any less poly. I don't need to force desire and connection to exist in places that it doesn't. That's a mistake I made early on, when I thought that to "balance" Rider's having another local partner, I "needed" to find one. But I don't. It'll happen. Or it won't. Either way, I have everything that I need to make me happy right now, and I have it within my love for myself. And within my love for Rider. And within the sense of freedom that if something does come along, I can embrace it.

Kelly and I had a long conversation last night about, of all things, periods and birth control. I think she's to some degree as lonely for female companionship as she is for male companionship. She has several times now expressed a keen loneliness in not having very many people she connects with in her town, and a feeling of having outgrown the place even though she won't graduate for another year. I'm willing to try to be a friend to her. We might have to work on some of the things that peeved me a little when we were all three hanging out, but when I talk to her one on one, everything is fine. She's even going to take me to the airport when she arrives on that day next month when she is coming to visit and I am leaving for Hometown.

Rider brought me chocolate last night because I was crampy, and I rewarded him very well later. He's been thinking about me non-stop all day, sending me playlists and little heart icons and flirting with me publicly on FB threads. A lot of people have been "awww"ing at us. The topic of getting married comes up in our conversation occasionally, now that we have truly decided on it and the ring is ordered and everything. Last night, we were scheming ways to get more lingerie even though we are poor, and I suggested that instead of people getting us gifts, we should suggest that they give us Victoria's Secret gift cards. And he chimed in with "and money for a honeymoon." And I've been teasing him that he won't be my girlfriend anymore, but my wifey, and he loves it. It's really adorable. In a great many of the relationships that I've seen, including when I was gearing up for my first marriage, it seems like the guy is only tolerant of the idea or vaguely embarrassed by or uncomfortable with it, not jubilant about it. Rider is definitely jubilant. It makes me feel so loved and so lucky.

 

[Reverie]

Anyone who doesn't haunt the Relationships Corner and is interested in keeping up with my story may want to read this thread, which is about lasting marks from needle play triggering me.

Most of the responses that I've been getting over there have been pretty helpful and supportive, giving me practical ideas to work with. I'm going to keep updating it as responses roll in. This whole thing is not really a Very Big Issue in the scheme of things, but it is something that I am dealing with and, I suppose, can expect to be dealing with sporadically in the future.

I am looking forward to the day when I go back and read through this blog and smirk ruefully about how I was all wound up over this little bit of nothing.

 

[Reverie]

Two things related to slowly resolving the needle issue that didn't seem appropriate for the thread—more blog-like:

1) Rider and I took a nap yesterday evening, since we'd stayed up so late processing the night before. While we slept, I had a dream that he and I were in a bed in a room that was not a bedroom, but some sort of central nexus room that had a lot of doors to other rooms that branched off of it. We were going to have sex, but there seemed the very real possibility that someone else could decide to walk through at any moment, so I felt very nervous and very exposed.

I didn't even feel like me. I was thinking that I was someone else—someone who didn't know him very well. And he, too, seemed like someone else. I thought maybe that he was a player or someone else's boyfriend, and that I shouldn't be having sex with him, but I was going to do it anyway. Very out of character for me, but in the dream, I didn’t feel like me. But then as we moved together, kissing, and he took my boots off for me, I began to remember who we were.

I realized that I was me, and that I know him quite well for the two years we’ve known each other, and that he is a good guy—not a bad guy, not a player, not someone else’s monogamous boyfriend that I was helping to cheat in a moment of weakness. He was Rider, my love, my heart, and we were poly, and everything was OK. And I had this sense of falling back into myself, of things clicking into place, of knowing and trusting him, of safety and comfort, and no matter who might walk into that room, I belonged there, so it was OK.

When I woke up, I lay there for a long time without opening my eyes. I was thinking about a thought that I’d had when Rider and I first embarked on our poly relationship: that he’s so amazing and such a great lover that it seems a shame that most people won’t get to experience that—any woman who does is a lucky one, and it’s a boon to the world that he is in a poly relationship rather than tied down in some monogamous situation. It was a true thought, when I’d had it, and it was filled with compersion for everyone in the world. At some point, I’d become a little more fearful—fearful that giving to someone else would have the net effect of taking from me—and I don’t know why, but something in the dream resolved that. I spent the rest of the evening feeling much calmer than I had the previous day or so.

2) I had another dream after we went to bed for good that night where Rider was playing basketball in a wedding dress outside, then he came in to talk to me as I was chopping some vegetables. “Listen!” he exclaimed. “They’re playing ‘Snakes in My Head’ on the radio!” And I listened and heard a melody without words. The melody stayed with me when I woke up, and I turned it into a real song:

Don’t know what to do
‘cause I just help but lose
with these snakes in my head.

Slithering and biting,
making things seem frightening—
monsters beneath my bed.

Giving while I’m taking,
trembling and shaking,
calming down and rinse, repeat.

If I could build a callus
or shelve this petty malice,
would I still smell like defeat?

Go away, you stupid snakes.
I’ve got better things to do.
Go away, make sure to take
your misplaced venom with you.

Giving me a headache,
giving me a heartache,
when there’s nothing wrong.

I can turn the lights off.
I can take the night off,
spend it with a song.

But blindfolds and darkness
can’t hide that I’m artless,
asking you to stab your back.

What we put behind us
just waits to rewind us,
giving me a heart attack.

Go away, you stupid snakes.
I’ve got better things to do.
Go away, make sure to take
your misplaced venom with you.

Go away, you stupid snakes.
I really want this one to last.
Go away, your omen’s fake.
The time for fear has passed.

This is the second time that a dream has “given” me a song. It always seems like a little piece of magic when it happens. Also, oddly, we did end up playing with basketballs that night, at an Arcade Night event. I didn’t consciously know basketballs would be there, but dream me did, I guess.

 

[Reverie]

Holy crap. Last night was a weird one for the history books. I am not even sure how to feel about it all. What a clusterfuck, LOL.

It started out with Rider and I going out to see a band that is his favorite local band and that I also really like. They've repeatedly asked me if I want to go-go dance for them, because I always get people going in the crowd, but I never want to commit to it. They're a really good band, though—dark surf rock with some horror-movie flair.

Rider had invited Desiree to come out with us. She had asked us for a ride, so we'd swung by her friend's house to pick her up, but her friend wasn't ready yet, and they told us they'd just cab it and meet us there. They were both obviously wasted already, sloshing drinks all over the driveway.

We got to the venue, and we ran into the really cute 23-year-old woman I kissed at that party a few weeks ago. She's moving out of state next weekend (actually to a place only 45 minutes from where I grew up), so this weekend was kind of her going away celebration. I hugged her a bunch and made plans to do happy hour with her later this week.

So many people that Rider knows were at the show. I joked with him that it was a who's who of people he's slept with or wants to. Desiree and her friend eventually showed up, and I left Rider to talking to them a bunch while I chatted with my young friends about moving and locations and stuff. Desiree beckoned me into the bathroom, so I went in there with her and her friend, and it turned out they were doing cocaine, but I don't do that, so I declined.

Everything was fun and fine, and it was starting to get late. Desiree had finally moved into her own place, and I told Rider that I wouldn't be offended if he wanted to go home with her, knowing that he's had a crush on her for five years. I could cab it home and pass out and we could reconvene in the morning. He said no, though. He said it would happen eventually, but that he really just wanted to go home and cuddle with me. Awww, heart-warming. So far, so good.

Then Desiree mentioned that she has some mushrooms at her house, and invites us back to eat them. That's a rare offer, and it was a Saturday night, so we figured why the hell not. We went back to her house, which was in a state of emptiness and unpacking still. We ate the mushrooms and sipped on beer. Desiree is really into music, so Rider and I played our songs for her. Rider was trying to help her set up her stereo, but they were missing some kind of cable they needed. As they left the room to go dig through some boxes in her bedroom, Rider handed me her guitar to mess around with.

This is where things got weird.

So, I am left-handed. I learned how to play guitar right-handed when I was 12, but I hit a wall with it and quit at 16, which is more than half my lifetime ago. I still remember some chords, but no full songs, and I am very awkward and clumsy with it. I figured it didn't matter, and was just noodling around with it while they were in the other room, passing time and actually having fun.

When they came out of the room, Desiree started in on me about how terrible I sounded. This was completely surprising to me, because up until that moment, she'd always been really, really nice to me. I am at the best of times awkward and flustered if people talk shit to me, and the mushrooms made it worse, so I started explaining that I am left-handed and trying to play right handed, and that it's been 17 years since I've really played, etc.

It started the strangest dynamic of her bullying the crap out of me, and then trying to play it off like she was joking. She was ridiculing me in front of Rider for being sweet and awkward and not being able to take a joke. No one has bullied me like that in almost ten years, and I really didn't know how to react. I stood up to her at one point and called her out, and then she pretended like she didn't know what I was talking about. I checked with Rider, and he confirmed that I was not crazy—she was indeed being dickish and antagonistic toward me. We left and went home. I was very highly stressed out, feeling like I'd just escaped some sort of spider's den.

And I was so, so, so thankful that Rider witnessed it and saw what I was seeing. When I first pulled him aside and mentioned it to him, I was worried that he would think that I was just trying to drive him away from someone that he liked, especially with some of the comments from this board on my mind about people thinking that I am trying to do that in general. When I told him that, he scoffed and reminded me that I'd been trying to tell him to go home with her earlier in the night. And he confirmed that all of the weirdness and bad behavior was on her part.

It was so very strange, for someone to go from being perfectly nice and friendly for months to suddenly being a very cruel bully. I am still mystified by it. I was proud of myself for trying to stand up to her, though, even if I did back down and slink away after a while.

He's not sure if he even wants to be her friend anymore—friends don't bully friends' significant others. I just want to stay as far the fuck away from her as possible. She is a very bad kind of crazy that masquerades as normal right up until something flips. Rider said he's really glad that he discovered that before he actually did end up spending the night with her or getting more heavily involved. Sheesh, what is with people?

After that whole debacle, though, I feel so happy to have Rider, and to know that he always has my back and is willing to look at things from my angle and look out for me. Even if everyone else in the world is shitty, as long as we have each other, I will feel safe and OK.

 

[Reverie]

So Desiree messaged Rider asking if they were still friends. He said that he would still be her friend IF she would give me a sincere apology for her behavior the other night. She did send me an apology, and she sounded sincere enough (and kind of appalled at herself), but I am still never going to trust her again. If that's what happens when she is intoxicated (and I know that she's intoxicated often), I really don't want to be around her. I responded to her message thanking her for the apology and saying that I really didn't know what else to say right now, but that I did want to let her know that I received it.

And I really DIDN'T know what to say. She was asking for my forgiveness, but I'm not sure about forgiving someone whom I don't really know all that well, with whom I don't HAVE TO hang out, and who was totally cruel to me without the least provocation other than her own intoxicated mental state. It doesn't seem important to me that I forgive her or try to be her friend. Not that I'm going to hold an active grudge or be hostile to her if I see her out somewhere, but moving past weirdness between us doesn't seem worth my mental and emotional energy at this time.

Rider told me that he doesn't want to make an effort to hang out with her anymore, but that he'd be friendly if they ran into each other while out. He'd been actively trying to hang out with her for weeks and weeks, and he's definitely done doing that. I feel bad for him, for his longstanding crush to turn out to come to nothing, but at the same time, it makes me feel good to know that he can make the (what I view as) wise choice not to get more deeply involved with someone who is clearly unstable. He said that no one is pretty while being a jerk, and she was being a total jerk that night for no reason.

Other than that one strange two- or three-hour episode, the rest of the weekend was good. Friday night, we double dated with a lesbian couple that we are friends with. We got Italian food and went to an all-you-can-play arcade night. We had a ton of fun!

Saturday daytime, we got tested and also put a crab trap in the water to check the following day. It was our first use of this trap, and indeed, we had a very large crab yesterday afternoon when we checked it. I am mostly vegetarian, but I make occasional exceptions for crab because it has always been my absolute favorite. I cooked the crab, roasted some corn, and made some sautéed green vegetables. It was a very tasty dinner, and we were both very stoked that we caught something. We put the trap back in the water since there was still bait left in it, and I will check it tomorrow.

Friday afternoon, I kind of got into it with Oona a little bit, because she was questioning my plans to give Rider a ring. She thinks that five years after my divorce is too soon to be considering marriage again, and that a year and a half into my current relationship is too soon to be getting engaged—even though we are planning a long engagement and not to be married until 2017, around the three-year mark. She believes that I am rushing, and says that I get serious about people too soon.

With all due respect to her, my best friend, whose job it is to be the devil's advocate, I think that what will eventually be seven years between marriages (2010 to 2017) is PLENTY of time, especially for people who will be 35 and 40 at the time, and who are far more compatible with each other than with anyone else that each of us has ever dated. If things go south between now and then, we can always just break off the engagement. Neither of us wants a big wedding (the long engagement is mostly going to be to save for the honeymoon, we've decided), so if it doesn't work out, we can just split that fund and go our separate ways, no harm, no foul.

She initially fought my starting a relationship with Rider in the first place, and now she loves him, so I think that just bears out my idea that she wants me to be more conservative in my love life than is really necessary. I understand that she doesn't want to see me hurt or carrying the stigma of a second divorce, but I feel quite certain about our love being able to last the ages. Even when I was thinking about breaking up with him, I felt like it would only be temporary, and that we'd eventually sort our situations out and end up back together.

When I originally got divorced, I didn't think I ever wanted to get married again. Meeting Rider changed my mind. I felt like I knew within the space of a few months that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with him, but I forced myself to wait until we'd been together for a year before I allowed myself to seriously consider it and start discussing it, because I didn't want to do anything hasty under the obsessive influence of massive NRE. My certainty has only increased with time, and I feel like a long engagement further lowers the chances that I am doing anything rash. I know Oona will come around eventually.

I asked her if she'd feel better about the whole thing if I were seeing a therapist between now and August, when the ring will be finished. I know that for some time, it has bothered her that I have a history of dating controlling jerks. She, herself, has admitted that Rider is different, and she has expressed relief that I have sworn off douchebags now that I have real experience with a kind, good-hearted person. But I thought that maybe if I were willing to share my history with a therapist and get additional insight into it, that might set her mind at ease. She said she'd feel better, but she still wouldn't be completely on board with the idea unless I waited until 2017 to do the "official" engagement. The thing that I have learned, however, is that I can't live my life on what other people think is an appropriate timeline.

I have to live for me, and to do what *I* think feels right. Oona has been right before and has been able to do a lot of "I told you so" much earlier in my life, but these past few years, I have had a sense of self-possession that I once lacked, and if I'd followed some of her more recent advice, I'd be a lot less happy than I am right now, I think.

I talked to Rider about the conflict, and he said that, for him, there is no question in the matter. One of his best friends (actually the couple we went to the baby shower for a few weeks ago) met and proposed to his now-wife within eight months because he was just so certain, and Rider said that he feels a parallel there with us:

"They knew pretty much from the start and were just waiting long enough so that it wasn't too weird or whatever, but they both knew all along. I feel that way about you. This is the first time I've felt like I could even consider marriage with someone, and specifically in this case, I don't have any sort of qualms about it. You're fucking perfect for me.

Like they say, when you meet that person, you just know. You don't have to second guess yourself. I didn't understand that until now. But now I understand why people say that. Of course, it doesn't mean that everything is going to be easy, because anything worthwhile is going to take work. Probably a lot of work. But if it's for you, and for us, I know I'm totally willing to do that work."

And, yeah, when he said that, I was totally happy-crying by the end of it. It feels so good to be loved so much.

I figured that the therapy can't possibly HURT, though, even still. And it might help me iron out poly bumps when they come my way. I have an inquiry in right now to my insurance company; I think they treat visits to the psychologist as a regular "specialist visit," which means that they will cost me $65 apiece. That will be a belt-tightening sort of cost, but if I make it only twice a month or so, I think I can still scrape by. Plus, it will be good to definitively know whether I'm crazy or not.

 

[Reverie]

Things are going well. Rider and I spent Monday night turning "Snakes in My Head" into a real song, with music and everything. It's not quite done, but it's getting there. If we ever get some of our songs uploaded as MP3s on the internet, I'll find some way to link it here without exposing the IRL identity of everyone in my stories. I use pseudonyms, of course, but I'm so candid about sex in this blog that I would feel strange leaving easily traceable info in the public area. It's not a huge deal for me if my own identity is known—I'm not a super-private person—but I don't feel ethical about making that decision for everyone else in my sphere.

Just before bed on Monday, Rider started feeling a bit ill, with a scratchy throat. When he woke up yesterday morning, it had morphed into a full-blown cold that had him flat on his back. He took the day off of work, and I made him tom kha soup and fruit smoothies to soothe his throat and get some vitamins into him.

After spending most of the day tending to him, I went out to meet my platonic friend Georgia for dinner. She's my ex's sister-in-law, who decided to "keep me" when we broke up. We always have a blast, splitting a bottle of wine and nibbling cheese at a tapas place. She likes to pick my brain about poly, since she's one of those "will never understand it because I'm too jealous" people. As we always do, we had a long talk about everything: friends, marriage, her kids, poly, sex, etc. Afterward, we went to the sex shop a few doors down, because she needed a new vibe. I succumbed to an impulse buy: a glass toy to surprise Rider with. It was reasonably priced for glass. I usually can't afford to spend money on such things, instead taking advantage of Rider's already-huge toy collection, but he doesn't have anything glass, so I thought it was worth the little splurge. I'll make up for it elsewhere in my budget.

Speaking of budget, I'm all clear on the insurance front for therapy. I currently am waiting for replies from two doctors on whether or not they have experience with or are willing to work with poly people. I purposely picked doctors with gay/bi/trans issues listed as specialties on their listings, with the thought that it might mean that they are more open minded. I laughed out loud when I pictured myself discussing the needle marks issue with a run-of-the-mill doctor. Hopefully doctors with a lot of experience working with the gay community have more exposure to kink and non-monogamy. At least, it seemed a good starting strategy to me.

I did let Georgia know about my plans to give Rider a ring, so I am slowly leaking it to trustworthy IRL people. I also told her about Oona's reaction, and Georgia's first response was to question whether Oona might be jealous. I don't think so, but I guess if she were, I could see why: my getting married twice before she gets married once, and she's a few years older than me. I really don't think that's it, though. I really think she's just worried about me.

Georgia thinks that I should just do whatever seems right FOR ME—she's one of those "sometimes you just know" people, having moved herself and her child in with her now-husband after knowing each other for only four months. And after eight years, they still love each other very much and are mostly very happy, though not without their rough spots (which, to my knowledge, have mostly been caused by troubled-child and blended-family issues, rather than anything between the two of them). Georgia has met Rider, and likes him, and she's all happy for me and telling me to go for it. She's especially tickled by the gender bending stuff I was telling her that I'm planning for the proposal. She loves a good juicy detail, haha.

After Georgia and I parted, I came home and videochatted with Moss for the first time in a while, and had a phone convo with Oona. Moss is settling in to his mono life quite happily, for the most part. He told me that the reason he'd inquired about the dates for my business trip a few weeks ago was because he'd been "in a mood" and considering coming with me after all. I told him he's still welcome to come along platonically, but that I don't want it to be a revenge move if his girlfriend has pissed him of, which is what "in a mood" sounded like to me. Oona is also doing pretty well—happy in her relationship, no drama at her job in a while, struggling with a few minor health issues, but nothing serious. It was good to catch up with them, because we'd all been so busy the past few weeks that we hadn't done much of that.

Then I went back over to Rider's and started to watch a show, but I fell asleep halfway through, sleepy from wine. We went back to my place and tried out that new toy—lots of fun! It turns out that Sudafed isn't ALWAYS a boner-killer for Rider, only sometimes.

I was chatting with Jake a bit today. He's been super busy but says he misses me, and we made some tentative plans for which days I will see him while I am in Hometown. He shared some funny dating anecdotes with me and says he has a bunch more to relay in person. I am beginning to feel eager to see him, now that it's only a few weeks away. The long-distance thing is so like that for me, an ebb and flow dependent on how recently I've seen the person and how soon I will be seeing them. This will probably be the last time that we see each other until at least the fall, unless he comes to visit me again. I think I'm planning to go back up there near my birthday in the fall. Either that, or for winter holidays. We'll see.

Tonight, Rider and I are going to check our crab trap again, then go play some music, and—HOPEFULLY!—eat a crab dinner. And maybe play with our new toy. This weekend, we're looking forward to Sam coming into town for the long weekend. I cannot wait to cuddle up to him and to spend three days straight with my two favorite dudes.