If it’s not a Fuck Yes! then it’s a Fuck No!

Enthusiastic consent is the name of the game when it comes to sex, but it should also be the name of the game when it comes to serious relationships.

For the record: my boyfriend broke up with me yesterday.

I wrote a pretty angry blog post (which I’ve since set to private) that was kind of petty and self aggrandizing. I needed to get it out, but I didn’t need to put it on display.

But in reading back through it, I realized the one thread that ran through everything in regards to our individual conduct in the relationship: For the past month of our relationship, I felt like I wasn’t getting any Fuck Yes!es from him anymore.

And so my brain started interpreting everything as Fuck No!

And as I tried desperately to articulate this feeling to him, he just refused to say or do the things he used to in order to indicate that he was still saying Fuck Yes! to our relationship.

We almost broke up a few weeks ago after I’d brought up that I was hurt that he didn’t seem to make as much time for me when he was in town anymore. He disagreed.

And yesterday, I brought up the subject again, because I was hurt that he was once again in town for multiple days and had made a last-minute half-assed effort (So, not a Fuck Yes!) to see me for a few hours Saturday night.  And hadn’t made any effort since. And would he make some time for me on his next trip without me having to guilt him into it next time…

And he said I was guilting him into it now, and that he couldn’t be who I wanted him to be and that he was done.

… and I wasn’t surprised.

Because he had basically been broadcasting “Fuck No!” to me for the past month.

And the delicious irony of the whole thing?

The title of this post is one of the most memorable phrases that he said to me when we first started dating. It made me think “Wow, this guy GETS it!”

I just wish he’d been able to be honest with me about when he went from saying Fuck Yes! to Fuck No!

It would’ve saved us a lot of time. And it would’ve saved me a lot of tears.

 

In closing, I must say… while I’m still reeling, and crying a bit, and keep having mild panic attacks (which my husband has been supporting me through, and who has been really awesome throughout this and said Fuck Yes! to pizza and funny “True Facts about Animals” videos tonight)… my brain is also relieved that I’m no longer in a relationship with a person who keeps telling me “Fuck No!” over and over and over again by *never* saying “Fuck Yes!”

Never settle for less than a “Fuck Yes!”

On Hierarchy: People Are Not Secondary

Early on in my poly dating, I didn’t realize it, but I naturally drifted toward a non-hierarchical model of polyamory. It wasn’t planned that way, it just made sense to me on how you treat human beings.

Others that I have met on my journey are not so great at that.

I’m sure many of the folks who read this blog are familiar with the Secondary Bill of Rights, and when I read through them the first time, I was like “well, duh… these are just common sense.”

Going back and reading through them again the other day, I realized one of the main reasons a relationship I had pretty early on didn’t work out – and it was because the guy I was dating was treating me as a secondary human being. I would *always* come second to his relationship with his primary partner. Plans were constantly being canceled because his partner’s plans had fallen through and he didn’t want them to be alone.

Looking back on my own relationships, I try not to smile in smug satisfaction that I’ve avoided most of the couple privilege pitfalls, for the most part. And not just with my own partners, but with my husband’s partners as well.

Don’t get me wrong – I’m not perfect. But I’ve avoided using my position as “wife” to arbitrarily control how much time and what type of interactions my husband has with his other partners. Sure – early on I was much more cautious about what type of things I was comfortable with, but I was testing soft boundaries all the time, and allowed myself to experience scary shit because I knew it was important.

Do my opinions and suggestions and thoughts carry a lot more weight with my husband than his new partner’s opinions do? You bet your ass they do. But the same can be said of his best friend of 15 years. It’s about how well we know one another, and everything we’ve been through and experienced. The fact that I’ve known my husband longer than his new partners just means that I’m a more trusted adviser – not that I have some arbitrary position of power to dictate his personal life. And yeah, we share financial obligations and chores and mundane shit, so anything that impacts our shared resources will involve my input.

My husband HAS canceled plans with others when I’m having a particularly heinous day – but it was never at my urging, and has happened maybe once or twice. And in those situations, it was always a decision weighed BY HIM on what actually took priority in that moment – not based on the arbitrary fact that I’m “primary” and thus my needs, no matter how small, take precedent over others. Even if in some small selfish way I wanted to make him drop everything, I resisted, because couple privilege is intoxicating, and letting it seep in has a damaging impact on your partner’s ability to grow new relationships.

When entering into a relationship with someone, there are always considerations to be made.

If I were to date a single father, I would understand that the needs of his children outweigh my own. In those instances, I would tread carefully in dating them.

If I were to date someone with a demanding work schedule (like this emergency medicine resident I’ll be seeing soon), then I would understand that the demands of his job would take priority in a lot of cases, and I will tread carefully in dating him.

If I were to date someone who was the primary caregiver for their partner, or a parent, I would understand that the needs of those people who depend on him would supersede my own in many cases.

But if I’m dating someone who is in a long-term relationship, with no children, and nothing beyond the normal obligations of work and maintaining a healthy relationship with their other partner(s), it would not be my assumption that every need, whim and desire of their “primary” would automatically invalidate my own very basic needs. And if that were to be the case, then I would expect it be the responsibility of that individual to disclose that information so that I can make the best decision for myself, which is namely: run the fuck away.

I am not a pretty, shiny thing to be picked up and played with when it is convenient for you, only to be put away and forgotten about until you wander by again and remember I exist.

I should not be made to feel guilty for wanting to spend time with you.
I should not have to beg for your time.
I should not have to constantly reschedule dates because your partner’s plans fell through.
I should not feel as if my time is deemed less valuable than yours.

In turn, I will do everything in my power to make sure you *never* feel like a secondary human being, either.

What Does Poly Have to Do With Vidya Games?

Apologies for the lapse in posting – I’ve been sick and hopped up on cold medicine, and coherency has not been my forte as of late.

Should have a few posts in the chamber this week, though! Enjoy!

_ _ _

I would consider myself poly-flexible. I didn’t come to it naturally, but it always made intellectual sense to me.

I was thinking about it the other day, and it dawned on me that my approach to poly in my life almost exactly mirrors my approach to creating characters in video games.

Let’s use World of Warcraft as the model here.

When I first started playing WoW, I had no idea what I was doing! I created a Mage and just screwed around and learned the game. I didn’t bother trying anything else, and I wasn’t even interested! I had limited video gaming time, and I was going to invest that time developing this one character to be the best it could be!

Years went by before a situation arose where playing a Mage was not in the best interest of what was trying to be accomplished (such as needing an additional healer for a raiding guild, etc.). So I still maintained my Mage, and she was still my main, and she was AWESOME and burning up the DPS charts, and she was just an extension of myself – but I began developing my Priest!

That Priest was a lot of fun, but every time I got an achievement while playing her (and was super excited about the achievement!), I was somewhat disappointed that my Mage was missing out on that achievement, too.

Sometimes an expansion would come out that was absolutely brutal for Mages, either in terms of solo questing, or raiding DPS, and I’d create other characters just to try them out and level them to max level.

But there my Mage was, always calling to me. Reminding me of those early days of exploration. She’s who taught me the game, through trial and error and dumb newbie mistakes. And every time a new expansion came out, she was the first character to make it to max level and get the cool gear.

I would then seek to level other characters, but I just never invested as much enthusiasm with them. I’d get them all to max level (by the most recent expansion I couldn’t even do that, because I’d gotten 8 different classes to max level during the previous expansion, and I was BURNED OUT!) They’d always lag slightly behind my main, except in extremely lucky loot drop scenarios sometimes my Priest would come out ahead for a while (she seems to be my home away from home).

Some people talk about managing to switch main characters later on in the game – they’d played a Warlock for years or something and then during one expansion they tried out Paladin tanking and fell in love and abandoned their beloved Warlock. That always made me sad. Regardless whether the expansion was ruthless with nerfs – my Mage would still be what I consider my main character, even to this day.

If I were to go out and buy the newest expansion and fire up the game again, Ajatara the Draenei Mage would be waiting there for me, and I would be so happy to relearn the game all over again with her.

My poly life seems to mirror this. I enjoy meeting new people (creating new characters) and developing relationships (leveling them), but my husband has been there through so much, and taught me so much that he has become synonymous with how I live my life (my main). And it sounds hierarchical, and it sounds like no one could ever be him – and I think for me, that’s true. It’s not on purpose. I’m not LIMITING other people or my relationships with them – this is just how my brain naturally works. I hitched my wagon to my husband, and we’ve built our life together, and I want to keep our life together until one of us kicks it.

Ajatara can’t do everything, though. She can’t heal. She can’t tank. And I like doing those other things, too.

And seriously – I absolutely LOVE playing my Priest (She’s a red-headed human named Hymnpossible, because puns within cartoon references are the BEST). She’s always the second character I level to max after a new expansion hits. I would never abandon her or leave her unleveled during an expansion, and I play her almost as much as Ajatara. But she’s not Ajatara. She does different, awesome things, and provides a different experience, but Ajatara is like my home.

(I’d say my boyfriend is totally my Priest)

(And my current FWB would be my Paladin, because wrecking faces is just FUN)

Right, wrong, or indifferent, that’s how my brain chooses to allocate my attention and time resources, whether we’re talking romantic relationships or video games.

 

 

 

Also…For the Alliance! 😉

We Did the Mash – We Did the Poly Mash

I was working in my lab, late one night…

This turned out to be a long one – Bear with me, because the context matters.

_ _ _

Ah, boundary stretching – we meet again.

Today was not my best day in recent memory. I’ve been feeling under the weather, and it was confirmed that I have ye olde tonsillitis, which is a common consequence I come across as a smoker. Smoking sucks; I’m working on it.

What I’ve learned today, and what I continue to learn, is that boundary stretching experiences rarely take place in lab conditions. There are so many confounding variables in any given situation, that things are just not going to go as you plan or expect.

This all comes back to that expectations and idealism that I’ve gone over a lot in my previous posts. It’s my biggest sin, every time.

So, today was the first time that I agreed to leave the house without any actual plans so that my husband and a partner could specifically have alone/sexy times.

The original plan was that they would be seeing each other between 4pm and 6pm and that I would be home at 6pm after “festivities” had ended. He even set an alarm for 5:40pm to make sure that things were wrapped up by 6. Our definition of “wrapped up” was never clearly communicated, and you’ll see where that ended up taking us as the story progresses. In case you can’t tell already – things did not work out as I expected.

At a little after 3, hubby gets a text that his new partner is on her way, so I hustle to gather up my coat and purse and get out of the house before she arrives. (We have not met yet, and springing me on her when she’s first arriving to initiate sexy times would be uncool).

So already we’re off to a rough start – I was not planning on leaving until shortly before 4, and here I was leaving a little after 3. Hubby still wants to enjoy their time until she has to leave (which is 6). Sooo, instead of finding distractions and things to do for 2 hours, it’s now for about 3 hours.

First stop for me was the Patient First, as over the past two days, my left tonsil had become exceptionally swollen, and I knew it was tonsillitis, as I’ve been down this road before. So, I get to the Patient First, and it looks like this is totally going to eat up a ton of time! Not bad!

Nope. I was out of there in just shy of an hour.

At this point, I’d started feeling very lethargic and significantly more “sick” than I was previously – I had a slight fever when they took my temperature. This made the prospect of staying out and finding more things to do really annoying – but I knew that hubby and new lady have limited time, and I didn’t want to intrude, even though all I wanted to do at that moment was nap.

Okay… so… what to do now?

Second stop became an oil change! That should eat up some time. I thought to myself “I bet there’s a long line with people gearing up their cars for holiday travel!” I got there, and it seemed to be the case, with a full garage already and 3 cars ahead of me! Woohoo!

Yeah, I was in and out of there in 45 minutes…

So at this point, I still had an hour left to kill.

I headed to the WaWa right next door to the oil change place, grabbed a coffee and sat in my car staring at the clock for a while.

And for almost all of this, I was chain smoking cigarettes like crazy. My car smells hideous right now.

I drove back toward the house around 5:15, and decided to stop at the Royal Farms nearby the house. I gassed up my Prius (which didn’t take long), and then I sat in the Royal Farms parking lot listening to Podcasts, drinking my WaWa coffee and staring at the clock some more. (You may note here that I did not get gas at the WaWa, and that it was really weird for me to stop at one gas station and then shortly thereafter another… but I really was just trying to come up with things to do as I headed toward the house – don’t judge me).

It was about 5:30 at this point.

I started to play Farm Heroes Saga. That eats up another 15 minutes.

Checked Facebook. Texted boyfriend back and forth.

5:59pm.

At 6:00pm on the nose, I figured I would have heard from my husband giving the all clear, so I text him an “Are you decent?”

He then tells me that he is, and then asks me if I’d like to meet his new lady.

I mention that I’m exhausted and just went to the urgent care and am just not in the best state to meet. I’m getting upset at this point, because I was SOOOO ready to be home. There was no actual discussion about meeting her prior to this. Plus, in our initial conversations I said that I really didn’t want things to run over the 6 o’clock mark.

He understands and says she needs to gather her stuff to leave, and he’d text me the all clear.

10 minutes go by, and I get a text that’s likely meant to be light-hearted but pissed me off about how she’s just chatting away and he’s trying to nudge her toward the door.

At this point, I’m so over this waiting game and angrily text “Fuck Dude, I’ve been sitting in this Royal Farms parking lot for almost an hour!”.

He gets the hint, and about 5 minutes later he gives the all clear.

I am in a terrible mood when I get home. He’s in the shower, and I just crawl into bed, super upset and exhausted.

He comes out of the shower and doesn’t understand why I’m upset. Initially I do not want to talk, but he lays down in the bed and just continues talking to me and asking ridiculous nonsensical questions until I get to the point where I’m cooled down enough to explain why I’m so upset.

What it boils down to is that I thought we’d agreed to specific things, and then it felt like none of them were adhered to. The time frame was shot to hell on both ends. There was no discussion of meeting and I expected to be home at 6 with her having already left.

In reality, the only thing that was really dumb was that my husband brought up the possibility of meeting me to his new lady at around 5:30pm, and she said that would be alright, and he forgot to close the loop because he assumed I’d be okay with it. He had forgotten that I felt awful and just wanted to take a nap (which I’d texted to him while at the Patient First). He got caught up in conversation after asking her, and forgot to get the other person involved in this meeting (me) on board. If he’d asked me around 5:30, I might have made the effort, but when he asked me at 6, when I was expecting to be at home, I was not in any mood because I’d already felt like the boundaries of what we’d agreed to were violated.

After about an hour of conversation and discussion, I started to feel less awful – at least about the situation (I still feel sick).

As I write this, I feel stupid for being so upset. I definitely overreacted (though I didn’t yell or threaten or anything – I mostly just whined). I’m not generally on my best behavior when I’m feeling sick, and I spent the last 2 hours of my “trip” wanting nothing more than to take a nap, but being unable to do so because I was exiled from my home. And then when the moment arrived that I was supposed to be free to go home… it was snatched away from me, and I had to wait an additional 20 minutes. Which is an eternity when you feel like hot garbage.

Boundary stretching experiences are not guaranteed to occur under the best case scenario or circumstances. Just like experiments outside of the lab, you are likely to come across a lot of confounding variables that may taint your view of the boundary, but really have nothing to do with it. But coming across those variables is extremely valuable if you take the time to separate them from the actual experiment.

I think this whole thing would have been absolutely fine if I hadn’t felt so sick and shitty. And if my husband hadn’t have been so dumb and forgotten to ask me if I was in any state to meet his new lady. But that probably also wouldn’t have been so upsetting if I hadn’t been desperate to get home and curl up in bed due to being ill.

So… at the end of the day, what I learned is: Don’t try to stretch your fucking boundaries when you’re a whiney sick baby.

Just kidding (sort of).

The real lesson is that taking the time to separate the incidental shittiness from the broader experiment is key in stretching your boundaries in a healthy way. I could very easily assume that this is a hard boundary for me if I were to forget to remove the confounding variables of my illness and my husband’s forgetfulness.

Don’t give in to the idea that a bad experience is bad and should never be attempted again because of the boundary stretching – look closer and see if it’s not something else entirely.

And Streeeeeeetch

“Necessity is the mother of invention,” they say.

In Poly, I think a similar phrase would be “Logistics are the mother of boundary stretching.”

My husband recently started dating a new lady, and he seems pretty excited about where things are headed. The issue that they have is that she works evening hours (she’s in the service industry and pretty much works 7 days a week), and also has 2 kids at home. This doesn’t leave them a lot of options in terms of spending alone-time together, and not just for sexy times.

I have a hard boundary of no sex with others in the house if the other spouse is home. I’m pretty much an anti-voyeur, and the logistics of our home, and also my husband’s sex-style, would make it impossible to avoid hearing or seeing things I have no desire to see or hear. My husband doesn’t really care about me having sex with others if he’s in the house, but we’re applying the boundary fairly here.

I’ve had a lot of what I call “that probably is gonna make me uncomfortable but I’m willing to work on it” boundaries as well. A lot of them have fallen by the wayside as logistics have proven them unfeasible. There were always icky and uncomfortable feelings at first, but they faded after some hugs and mild reassurances that my world was not burning. These boundaries are generally things that aren’t a big deal, in the grand scheme, but have either surprised me or that I’ve had to untangle in my mind from “exclusivity” thoughts. So, a girlfriend leaving changes of clothing and personal care items in the downstairs bedroom and bathroom was a startling discovery, which I finally became okay with as it just made logistical sense.

Last night was another boundary stretching experience that I’m having icky, uncomfortable feelings about, but that will probably become a bit more commonplace. It becoming commonplace is the part that worries me, but I’ll get to the specifics in a moment.

I want to be a good wife and I want to continue to improve and stretch my boundaries that aren’t hard boundaries, and I want to make my husband’s dating life as hassle-free as possible. We’re not all so lucky to have someone else’s place to go for alone time, of the sexy or non-sexy variety. And asking our partners to shell out for hotel rooms (which apparently his new lady can’t even get into because she’s a germophobe) is also financially ridiculous.

So, on to the specifics.

Last night, my husband was meeting up with his new lady for dinner. So, before he was planning to go out, he came to me with a potential situation. “If things are going really well, and we want to continue hanging out for a while, is it okay if we come back to the house? And is it also okay if she crashes here and I sleep downstairs in the bed with her? No sex, of course.”

I figured this would come up eventually. I did my best to push down my icky feelings. This would be the first time (besides an unfortunate incident back in February involving our respective others being stuck at our house) that my husband and I would be in the same house, but my husband would be sleeping beside someone else. This time would be different from the events back in February, because I would be sleeping alone.

I said it would be okay, and while I had my reservations, I knew that due to the logistics of this new relationship, in the interest of not placing arbitrary boundaries or restrictions, some things were going to have to give. I have no specific objections to this arrangement, really. I think I’ve identified where my fears are based, and I’ll go into that shortly.

So, I passed out around 10:30pm. I feel bad about that, because I was texting with my boyfriend and just kinda… BAM, passed out. I think the icky feelings just got me exhausted, and so sleep was the best option.

I shot bolt-awake at 4:30am and looked over to see my husband’s side of the bed empty. My heart dropped a bit, and I checked my phone. There was a sweet “I love you” text from my boyfriend at around 11pm. There were also two texts from my husband, one from 11:45 and one from a little after midnight. The first was an “I don’t know what the plan is yet,” and the second was “We’re headed home together.” So this confirmed that my husband was sleeping in the room downstairs with his new lady.

Okay, deep breaths. Icky feelings coming back. Not sure what they’re based on, but there they are. I sat on the bed for a bit before putting on my robe and going to have a cigarette. My mind was racing. I realized I was going to have to go downstairs and pass by the bedroom because I’d put my laundry in the dryer before heading up to bed. “Dear God, I hope that bedroom door is closed.”

Luckily, it was. I got my laundry. Nobody woke up.

I was running through my thoughts the entire morning, as I mechanically brushed my teeth and took a shower and sorted my laundry and got dressed. I think I finally pin-pointed the source of my icky feelings while driving into work at 6:00am. After writing all of this down, I think I’ll actually be able to concentrate on work today.

Because my husband and I are non-sexual, I cling to things that I consider intimate. Some of the things that used to help solidify our relationship (for me) as more than friends or roommates have one by one been slowly falling away over the past 10 months, because they don’t really make sense in a poly relationship. I consider sleeping in the same bed regularly an intimate act, at least in terms of cementing that we’re not just roommates or friends. So while I have no issue with us having overnights with others, it’s hard for me to “give that up” when I know he’s at home, but he’s choosing to engage in that particular intimate act with someone else. And I know that he doesn’t view it in the same light as I do. I mean, I think he *kind of* gets it, though, because he does realize that it would be weird to bring a new lady home and then make her crash alone. It’s kind of weird for me to have my husband at home and not have him sleeping next to me. Similar concept, really.

My main fear is that this becomes a frequent arrangement. That because of the logistics of their relationship, I will be sleeping by myself at home more often, knowing that my husband is downstairs with his new lady. I fear that this act of intimacy will be one more thing that just falls away, and it’s becoming more of a struggle to identify other things that raise our relationship beyond friends and roommates.

I love my husband so much, and I make that choice every day. But it’s hard for me to feel close to him when even basic intimacies continue to erode. I don’t think there’s really anything to be done in this particular situation. I’m not freaking out, and I’m not going to snap this back to a hard boundary. The boundary has been stretched, and I have survived in tact. I’m just going to need an extra hug or kiss when I get home from work today, and I’ll ask him to tell me that he loves me, because I need to reconnect and recognize that there is still at least that type of intimacy between us.

I’m growing, and growth can hurt. I just really don’t like these moments where I feel like my growth in Poly is actually moving my husband and I further away from each other.

Wheelin’ and Idealin’

This post falls under both the depression and poly categories, because one of the big things I have to contend with is tempering my expectations and being okay if things don’t go down exactly as I would have hoped.

In my ideal world, I would see everyone I love in a one-on- one time capacity, as well as normal group activity capacity, as much as I could ever want! In reality, things don’t often work out that way.

My boyfriend works a crazy job. Sometimes he’s out of state for a week or more. Sometimes he’s in town for 22 hours before having to head back out – and he doesn’t really even know this until the night before he has to head out again. And he’s been honest and upfront about this from the beginning.

So, from the get-go, we’re talking about limited time seeing each other. Add on top of this that he obviously has other things he needs to do and other people he wants to see. And when you’re a person who’s not sure how long you’re actually going to be in town, you’re going to tend to try to get in as much time with as many people that you haven’t seen in a while as possible.

My current struggle is really the tendency for my depression to take over and entirely reject the non-ideal scenario of group activity because I’d prefer some one-on-one time. This is obviously compounded by the newness of the relationship, as well as the general lack of seeing each other. Aaaand there’s also the mild social anxiety of hanging out with a lot of people I don’t know, who my “anchor” is very interested in catching up with, thus making them a somewhat less reliable anchor.

If you’re unfamiliar with what an “anchor” is in this scenario, it would be the person that you know who makes social situations less anxiety-inducing because you can look at them or signal to them and they can give you a little bit of reassurance that everything is cool. A lot of people with mild social anxiety are able to function in large crowds of strangers if they’ve got a reliable anchor.

This then feeds into my depression, because it’s quite a burden on someone else to make them your anchor like that, particularly if you’re going into a situation where they want to interact with a lot of other people, and thus shouldn’t feel obligated to constantly be reassuring you throughout the evening that everything is cool. I mean, let’s be real here – I’m a grown ass woman. I should be able to handle interacting with people I don’t know. All of that makes sense on an intellectual level, but I can already feel my heart beating faster, and tears behind my eyes threatening to pop through just thinking about it.

And get this: There’s no guarantee that a group thing is even going to happen!

So here I am fretting, as usual, about how I’m going to react to varying situations that may not even happen.

I thrived in a monogamous relationship, let me tell you. The routine, the comfort, the reliable anchor, the balance of alone and group time. I can’t even remember a time during those 5 years of monogamous marriage where I ever felt even REMOTELY the amount of anxiety that I have over the past 10 months. Routine is a godsend for someone with depression and anxiety.

Poly is not really known for its routine. But it has brought many wonderful things into my life – including actual semi-regular sex (kind of). It’s brought amazing people into my life who love me and care for me and make me laugh and who make time for me when they can. But good Lord does it make you work on your insecurities. I have insecurities that I had completely forgotten about since my early 20’s.

So, I continue on my road to improvement in both my relationships and, more importantly, myself.

“No one can be your everything” is something that is at the core of ethical nonmonogamy, and it shouldn’t be taken as a negative, like that everyone is shitty or something. What it really means to me is that all relationships you choose (very important word) to engage in are valuable, even if they’re not what one might consider “ideal”.

Now, this isn’t to say that some relationships aren’t entirely untenable based on actual compatibility issues – but if someone is meeting your basic relationship needs, and you have no other MAJOR issues, there’s no reason to throw that baby out with the bathwater just because they don’t have sex the way you might want them to, or don’t high five you as much as you’d like, or whatever part of your individual self that might not be embraced or stimulated by this single other human being.

I think I can adapt that to my current issue and say that not all situations are going to be ideal or satisfy all of my needs at once. There’s no reason for me to completely reject a less than ideal scenario and opt for NO needs being met when I should view it as an opportunity to get at least some of my needs met. Time with those I love is time with those I love. (There are limits to this – like, I’m not going to attend an orgy with either my husband or boyfriend just to get some time with them – that’s where my need to NOT watch them fucking other people overrides my need to see either of them.)

Now if I can just get my head and emotions in agreement on this one that would be… ideal.

(Not So) Great Expectations

One of the most appealing things about monogamy, and conversely one of the most common stumbling blocks for anyone who is transitioning from a monogamous to a polyamorous relationship, is the idea of expectations – particularly unspoken expectations that are often taken for granted.

We live in a mono-normative culture. We have very distinct scripts about what makes a successful monogamous relationship, and because everyone is raised in this culture, we can usually be pretty sure that the people we are entering monogamous relationships with understand “the rules”. It’s easy to be on auto-pilot in these types of relationships – and I admit that for much of my life I was definitely following the script – though I think I did it with a little more deliberate intent than many.

When it comes to polyamory, though, there’s no one “official” script. There are as many ways to do polyamory as there are individuals, because everyone’s brand is going to be a little bit different, based on who they are, who they’re with, who they’re with is with, etc. and on down the line.

This is where auto-pilot becomes the enemy. This is where unspoken expectations become your downfall.

When I first started on my poly journey back in January with my husband, I thought that things would stay pretty much the same between us, and we would just then be occasionally going out on dates and spending time with others. That is not what ended up happening, and I was extremely hurt and scared. I took a cavalier attitude, and I DEFINITELY would have saved myself a lot of grief if I had been more deliberate. But you don’t know what you don’t know, and I was so steeped in the expectations of marriage that I couldn’t possibly think anything would change dramatically for me! I didn’t lay down specific expectations or boundaries, and in the first few months, there were a lot of discovery moments.

Most of these discovery moments centered around things that I had come to accept as steadfast “givens”, but the reality is, they were all just a consequence of the monogamous circumstance. So while, in my husband’s mind, the only real given in our monogamous relationship was that we were not having sexual/emotional relationships with other people, I had all these other things that I thought were constants.

I’d like to say that I had a eureka! moment about this, and that I stopped having any expectations, and that my current mode is one of deliberate negotiation and that I don’t take ANYTHING for granted anymore – but Rome wasn’t built in a day.

Now, what I will say is that I’m VERY deliberate in the relationships that I begin with others. This freaks out individuals who are new to poly in particular, because many of them are still in the auto-pilot “this is how a relationship should look, and there’s no need to talk about it” stage. But I know from some rather painful experiences, now, that these “awkward” conversations need to happen early, and they need to happen often. If someone is uncomfortable or says “Let’s just see where this goes”, that throws up a pretty big red flag for me that things are likely not going to go well, and the other party is going to end up with a lot of unfulfilled expectations because they refuse to talk about them. In turn, I end up being hurt because there’s no dialogue, and therefore I can’t properly express my desires, boundaries and expectations, either.

With my husband, I am constantly having to rework how I view our relationship. I was deep in the identity of being his wife. Not in any weird subservient way, but in the way that a large part of who I was involved him. That’s all well and good in a traditional monogamous sense, because you don’t often end up in situations where that identity is challenged. But when you’re hanging out with your husband and his girlfriend one day, and you start to feel like a third wheel and you can’t quite figure out why, you start to recognize that maybe that’s not the best way to view yourself.

I’m still pretty bad about being deliberate with my husband. A lot of that has to do with the fact that we live together, and I can pretty much guarantee these days that I’m going to see him more often than not. But that’s just me getting complacent again – but the familiar pang of sadness when he makes other plans and asks me if it’s alright is not something I want to live with for the rest of my life, so I’m going to have to get to the root of my expectations and complacency.

Having been raised in this scripted culture, it’s hard not to slip back into the comfort of routine and unstated expectations. It’s so much easier to just let things keep going the way they’re going, never really thinking about the things that might upset the apple cart until they happen. But if I keep going down that path, I’m setting myself up for constant disappointment and sadness, and it’s not going to get me to a place where I’m actually happy that my husband is finding people he connects with and/or loves. I’ll be too busy focusing on the fact that we “never do anything together anymore”, and ignoring the fact that he doesn’t need as much reassurance or quality time as I do to feel loved, and so the onus is on ME to make the plans.

Have I mentioned that I’m a terrible planner?

If you’re setting out on the polyamorous journey, be prepared for a lot of long, awkward, NECESSARY conversations. Be prepared for a lot of introspective moments where you realize you’re hurt, but that no one actually did anything wrong – you were still just playing out the old script, forgetting that the damn thing has been edited to hell since your last dress rehearsal.

But seriously – NEVER stop talking and communicating and clearly stating your needs, desires and expectations. The second you stop doing that, you’ve set yourself up for a lot of unnecessary pain – and for what? To avoid conversations you don’t think you need to have? Believe me – you NEED to have them, no matter how silly you think some of them are (like negotiating chores based on whether or not someone is going out on a date, or telling your partner to stop playing Fallout 4 for a couple hours to spend some time with you because you miss them).

Not that I have any experience with that last one… *cough*

Droppin’ (L) Bombs

So, I had a pretty fantastic Saturday; I’m not going to lie.

The biggest development to come out of Saturday was exchanging “I love you” with my boyfriend for the first time.

When he first said it (holy crap, he said it first!), I wasn’t really shocked, but it took me a moment to process. To be fair, he did warn me beforehand that what he was about to say might be scary.

But the thing is – I wasn’t scared. Which most people might think is weird, because we’ve only known each other for 3 weeks, and have only been “official” for 2 weeks.

Many people, upon hearing this, might think that this is puppy love, and pure NRE, and we’re careening down a crazy path where we don’t even know each other yet, and it’s TOO SOON, and OMG YOU GUYS ARE CRAAAAAZY!

But that’s not how this feels at all, and the only people I know of who would understand are my husband, myself and my boyfriend. I don’t feel drunk or high with love – I feel warm and safe and surrounded by it. It’s how I felt when I started dating my husband all those years ago.

I’ve been with people I was basically addicted to, and the word love never even entered the picture. And I’ve also been with people where we were happy and comfortable for a year, but the word love never entered into the picture, either. I honestly do not take the expression of being in love lightly. I love my friends, I love my family, and I’ll tell them often – but when I say I love my husband or I love my boyfriend, I mean that I am IN love with them.

Because of this, I was a bit hesitant when I first spoke the words aloud. I don’t think I ever really mentioned my general reluctance to speak those words. It’s not because I have a hard time committing, or that I don’t have love in my heart – but because those words represent a promise, and I always hesitate before making a promise for the first time.

“I love you” is a promise, in my mind, of extra consideration, cooperation, and compromise. It’s a promise that our relationship is important and strong enough to commit to working it out if things get rough. But it’s also, for me, an acknowledgement that our relationship really shouldn’t get rough, because the consideration, cooperation and compromise should prevent large issues from arising. It’s how my relationship with my husband has been ridiculously easy for so long.

I worry that my initial reluctance might register for him as me not being sure. But I’m absolutely sure that I love him, and I’m happy I made that promise to him.

And so, for the first time in my life, I am in love with two men. And they are both in love with me. And it feels amazing and also a little scary – because love brings about a special kind of vulnerability.

Totally worth it!

Along Came Poly

I figured I’d give a little background and current context for my poly relationship(s).

When I was in college, I met an “older man” who identified as poly (I was 21 and he was 34). He was married and he was pretty cool, and so I decided to enter into a secondary-type relationship that was more of a friends with benefits type deal. This suited me fine at the time because I had no deep emotional investment and didn’t really have to deal with any particular feelings of jealousy. I also had no desire to ride ye olde relationship escalator with him.

Eventually I met another a guy, who was monogamous, and I broke things off with Mr. Poly. He was a little upset about it, but I was searching for my relationship escalator guy and most of them are monogamous.

I’ll point out here that I’d consider myself poly-flexible in nature. I’m perfectly happy in either a monogamous relationship or a poly relationship because the pros and cons of each, for me, are about equal. Whatever relationship model works best for everyone to be happy is fine by me.

Anyway – relationship with monogamous guy failed, eventually. Mismatched priorities, long distance, other crazy shit, etc.

So after that failed spectacularly, I wasn’t looking for anything serious. A few months went by with various casual relationships, including a very volatile FWB situation that I should’ve bailed on much earlier (but that’s a story for another time). Eventually, I stumbled across a man on OKCupid who was poly, engaged and who lived an hour and a half away. I figured “Why not? I can do the secondary thing again, and he seems cool.”

That turned out NOT to be the case, as it didn’t take me long to develop some ridiculously deep feelings for him. And at a certain point I realized I was going to have to tell him that I wasn’t able to continue the relationship as it was – I either needed the relationship to be monogamous, or I was going to have to move along before things got more serious. I was honestly expecting us to go our separate ways, because he identified as “naturally” poly (whereas I identify as learned poly).

Luckily (for me, as you’ll see), around that time, his friends had finally started to clue him in on the fact that they had tried for over a year but could not stand his fiancee. Further, if he went through with marrying her, they would likely continue to distance themselves. He was rightfully pissed that no one had told him they felt this way – including his best friend of 15 years! They were also simultaneously saying how much they liked me, and were a huge fan of having me around. I’m not sure if that was just in contrast to his fiancee, but I’d like to think that there was some realistic understanding of how well I meshed with the group.

After much consideration, he broke off his engagement. We continued dating.

Things after that were pretty much a whirlwind. About 2 months after he broke off his engagement, I lost my job (on his birthday), and moved in with him. A month after that, I proposed. 10 months after that, we got married.

We’ve been married for 5 and a half years now, and were monogamous for almost 5 of them, and I can say that throughout that time, I’ve never been more happy and content and less annoyed by any single human being ever. Many couples fight and bicker and argue – but we just don’t. We trade playful insults if the other person isn’t living up to their adult responsibilities, but there’s no malice or resentment there. Before we opened up in January of this year, the biggest disagreement or “argument” we ever had concerned EGGS. Not even kidding.

Our opening up got off to a rocky start. I don’t want to go into those details just yet – I think that deserves its own post or two – but I realize now that I should have gone to a poly-friendly counselor around that time to help me make sense of what I was feeling. After some distance and reflection, I believe that a lot of what I was feeling was not actually caused by the opening up process, but by the mental illness that my meta possessed, which has a tendency to confuse and wreak havoc on the emotions of the neurotypical people around them (Borderline Personality Disorder). My husband was not really affected in the same way, because he’s not actually neurotypical (a little bit on the spectrum).

Anyway – long months of weirdness and ups and downs has led me to where I am today: I have my amazing husband, and I now have my amazing boyfriend.

I feel like I won the lottery for a second time. AND, I met him on OKCupid, too. (Way to go, OKCupid. You’re crushing it!)

The boyfriend and I are not in the “I love you” stage yet – but I feel it building toward that. I honestly haven’t felt this kind of deep connection since I met my husband over 6 years ago.

In contrast, I had a brief, yet passionate, relationship with my best friend when my relationship first opened up in January. Looking back, that seemed more chemical and fanciful. It was meaningful, and one of the more exciting and fulfilling relationships of my life up to that point – but it burned brightly at both ends, and was ultimately doomed by the monogamous nature of my best friend.

This relationship I’m building with my boyfriend seems more permanent. It’s still amazingly exciting, and the NRE is definitely there, and there’s giddiness, but there’s this undercurrent of intense connection that cannot be accurately described.

I’m going to steal from Twilight here (don’t judge me), but my best friend was more like a drug to me, and my boyfriend is like the sun.

With my husband and my boyfriend in my life, it looks like I’m a regular Tatooine over here.