A Place To Start

TroubledTigress

New member
So, I was just over in introductions, and introducing myself and realized that I was writing -a lot-. Much more then would be polite to ask someone to read for an introduction and really, I know most people might dislike how much I posted already. Oh well, that is honestly the shortened version.

Anyways, when I realized how much I was typing up, I remembered the blog section I had looked through when exploring the site and before joining. So I decided, why not post a more in-depth thing here?! Not waste those words I had already blathered on with, and perhaps type some more while I wait to see if my girlfriend can get online tonight.

To re-hash a little bit of my introduction; I'm 27, Canadian, newly realized pansexual and new to practicing polyamory. I'm married to my husband of 7 and 1/2 years and been with my girlfriend for 4 days. That, is how new I am to polyamory. To expand on that, I'm also an almost cat lady with 3 cats who are my kids, and a gamer, a geek, an artist, writer, nymphomaniac, and dreamer.

So for those who may be curious about my journey and how I got here, I will write it out for you and hopefully you find it to be an interesting read. But it does start a long way back I think. I'm a rather self-analytical and reflective person, so I often see connections. On with the story;

Previously I identified as bisexual, but after a few conversations with a very dear person to me, who has had problems feeling comfortable in their skin, that the label doesn't really fit all of who I am. I've known of pansexuality for awhile, academically but never had any experience with it growing up. Heck, growing up, I had very little experience with bisexuality and the other sexuality beyond hetero. So anyways, I identified based more on the basic ideas.

But as I have told my dearest friend, I don't care about gender. He, she, and everything else, they are merely identifiers. What matters, is the person and the person is what I am attracted to and matters above all.

What does this have to do with polyamory? Well keep reading :p

Seth, as I'll call my husband here, I met in high school in Gr. 9 and we dated for a short time. However, we were both at points in our lives that it was just not going to work out and broke up. He because he didn't think he could be a boyfriend to anyone, and I, was battling depression as I am still to this day. But we stayed friends over the years. I dated more guys, explored my sexual nature and had a couple flings with girls and was even engaged for a year. Nothing overly kinky or bizarre, just a lot of sex with my boyfriends and perhaps a little boundary pushing.

At 18, Seth moved out onto his own and I pretty much kidnapped him from day one. Hung out with him all the time I could, because well to be frank, my fiance was almost never around and I was on my own and lonely. Nothing happened at first however. No, it only came when my fiance one day, out of the blue tells me, he wanted permission to sleep with whoever, whenever he wanted. Now, at the time, I am certain I had not ever heard of polyamory. Polygamy through history most likely, but nothing like polyamory and like most people without concept of it I completely balked. Had he mentioned polyamory and explained the idea to me, I might have been more receptive, but... I don't believe he even knew of it. I was not remotely open to this idea however. Open relationship, notoriously meaning to sleep around- at least to my mind at the time from having seen how it worked. And to this day I'm certain he meant nothing like polyamory.

I was brought up in a very dysfunctional environment to give some background to this. Mother and father divorced early due to my father's cheating ways, and as of right now my father is on his fourth marriage. And I am one of 7 kids, 3 biological to my father, 1 adopted and the other 3 step. I'll sum it up to say, this was not a healthy environment either. And beyond suffering from depression, I have suffered from abandonment issues and jealousy issues due to being forgotten (literally) by my father many times for his 'new' families.

So I said no. I was firm in this. No. But he didn't drop the issue. I don't even remember how many times he brought up and me, being me, the person who wants to please the ones they love even at the cost of themselves was eventually coerced into saying yes. Of course I stipulated that if he was going to be allowed to do so, I was allowed the same freedom so we would be on equal footing. He was fine with this, but I still was not.

Now I suppose this was hypocritical of me to do, because if I'm completely honest, I cheated on him a couple times before this ever happened. He never found out til I told him much later. I don't believe it was evidence of being wired for poly either, because, as much as it doesn't excuse me the times I cheated on him were times to fulfill my loneliness and pain. By this time in our relationship, things had become abusive and frankly, he had tried to kill me a couple times by trying to strangle me when in a rage. He claimed them all to be accidents, and slipped hands, but when your feet leave the ground, that is no accident. Still I should have gotten out of the relationship instead of cheating, but that loneliness was a problem I couldn't deal with at the time.

Though when I sort of cheated on my ex, with that fiance, that might have been a hint of it since they asked if I could date them both and I agreed to it for awhile. But I felt it unfair to them and eventually chose one.

Anyways, Seth who I was hanging out with all the time by this point was a saviour to me. He supported me and was there for me when I needed him most, and well since we had dated in high school, I'd always been attracted to him. So with the newfound freedom of an open relationship, I had what was intended to be a one night stand with him. Since he's my husband now you can see how well that turned out XD

The fiance got jealous of our time together eventually and told me to choose. Well, you can tell who I chose.

For the next 8 years, (as we dated for a year before getting married) we've been married. For about half of that I didn't really even consider anyone else, prolly because of being so wrapped up in him. Perhaps it's co-dependent, but he is my best friend, my family and a lot more. We still have had friends and the like but we are both not socially adept and both have been essentially abandoned by family.

I have always, always felt terrible for the cheating that I did. Despite the reasons they were done under, I hated the fact I hurt the people I cared for. I really did. And so I did my best to squash any further feelings that ever developed for someone else. As proposed by monogamy and raising, once married you need to be utterly faithful to that one person. If there are problems, fix it or get divorced if they can't be fixed. And feelings for someone else, was a sign of problems.

Maybe I would have recognized a lot sooner that there were some of my needs not being met if I hadn't been so worried about being like my father and being a serial cheater. I always feared being like him the moment I had ever done my own cheating.

However, as it goes, preoccupied with trying to make things work and make sure that I was a good person by the standards of a monogamous society, I didn't see the reason why I still looked.

I didn't ever actually cheat on my husband, mostly because despite there being certain needs he cannot meet, one thing he does is being a listener. He's not good at advice or even really giving my of an opinion most of the time, but if there's anything, he's not overly judgemental and only gets cranky at listening to me when he's trying to sleep and I need to keep talking. And I told him every time that I had an attraction to someone, with the hopes that perhaps if I did something bad, he wouldn't be surprised and hurt as much. Maybe surprisingly, he never really had huge issues with it.

First came the guy from our work place, who looked a lot like my husband (amusing side fact, turns out the guy was the brother of a childhood friend of one of my stepbrothers XD) and who was interesting and incredibly smart. We talked about many things! And I eventually became attracted to him. Now that I think about it, I guess he would have been polyamorous, but very specifically because when I confessed to him my feelings he told me he would possibly have dated me had I been a male, because he already had a girlfriend he really cared for. (he was bisexual) End of that really.

Next was another from the same place, but that was a short lived attraction because he left the workplace and never heard from again and nothing was ever talked about beyond casual stuff.

After that was an old friend of my hubby's who was well, still a virgin and who I thought a good friend at the time. I'd known him for a while, and even had messed around with a tiny bit before, but that's another story. Nothing really happened there because I felt too guilty when it came close to it.

And then our next roommate. He was recently out of a relationship, also intelligent, shared a lot of similar interests and a nice guy at heart. It was after a dream I realized the attraction I had to him, but I kept that mostly to myself because, well I didn't want to screw up a friendship.

After that, years went by without anyone striking a fancy in me, mainly because my disabilities were really starting to catch up with me and we did a big move. And I slowly stopped being able to go out and be as active due to increasing pain. Of course this made me become more and more attracted to the online world. Not that I wasn't already one who spent a lot of time online, but it became my refuge, a place to be someone without pain and with friends.

Continued below due to text limit....
 
It was about this time that my sex life with my husband started deteriorating for various reasons including health problems. I started feeling worse and worse about myself, convinced that it had to be my fault that it was happening. My weight gain and everything had to be why, he was losing interest. And our other problems started coming out as well, possibly compounded because of the fact that there was so little attention in the bedroom.

Though I did later find out that he had been lying for a couple years about how attractive he thought I was, because he didn't want to hurt my feelings, the lack of physical intimacy showed it had been taking place of some other things over the years.

During the time of figuring this out however, I found myself going more towards things that I hadn't before. As an online rper, this means I roleplay characters, much like writing a story with more then one person in the story. And as a nympho, I crave sexual and sensual stimulation. I ended up finding a community that sort of combined the two. Now I have been rping stories for a long time that included sexual encounters, they can be very good and certainly arousing but they were not things that I necessarily sought out. At least until I reached that point of needing something to replace the physical intimacy and in a way I found it at the site that I gravitated to.

However, that only worked for a time. The flaws and problems in my marriage were still there, the needs that went unfulfilled still weren't as the activities of my online life didn't replace the need to feel cared for and wanted. The entire time I tried also to solve things in my marriage, talk to my husband, explore solutions and do what we can on the limited budget we have available.

Unfortunately, tho my husband still loves me and always assured me that he did, I just didn't feel it. Part of this is because while my husband is a good person, kind and caring, he's emotionally... muted. It takes a lot for him to feel any emotion in larger quantities. And expressing that even then is just not how he is. I didn't really realize that for a time since physical intimacy can create an emotional one.

I'm not sure if it was because of those problems and trying to find a way to feel a connection again, or because the relationship I developed with him lead to genuine feelings, but I started to have deep feelings for a friend I became incredibly close to that I made on that site. I suspect there was some of both in the mix, but this person is a very strict believer in a proper monogamous lifestyle and ended up feeling conflicted for feelings he developed for me since I am married. I actually did not know of this for a long while and it lead to a lot of emotional turmoil.

Honestly for a while, I was in a very dark place. My marriage felt like it was crumbling around me, divorce had been brought up several times because my husband felt like he could not do well enough by me, and all of this only served to aggravate my depression. I reached perhaps an all new low that I barely managed to control. However, no matter what was going on, whenever I asked myself, 'Do I still love him?' the answer was a resounding yes. Even when I wondered if he still loved me, if he cared for me, I still loved him deeply and still do. That's part of why I fell so deep.

Throughout all of this, I ended up meeting more individuals from this site. None I really felt much for beyond that of friendship, but they've become wonderful supportive friends from all walks of life. And it was through one of these friends I really started learning about polyamory.

Him and his wife have always been polyamorous, just not actively. But recently he developed feelings for another woman, and of course, his wife who encouraged such a thing was fine with it. During the developing of figuring things out and such, he shared with me the steps and feelings and such that went along with it.

During a good portion of the later turmoil, I had also met another individual, someone sweet and kind and passionate. Someone who I had an immediate attraction towards, but I tried to limit it only to friendship and the playtime that occurred online, was kept as a separate idea. We developed a deep bond as this person and I spoke everyday, shared our pains and thoughts, ideas and ideals and found that although we come from situations that could be considered so vastly different we're very alike in so many ways. She did not hide the fact she was happy to speak to me, her passion was tangible even through text and I felt I didn't have to limit the love and caring that I have for those I care for. So used to the fact that it is socially unacceptable to be outwardly affectionate in large amounts, always told it was wrong to be expressive and so much more, she not only accepted it but encouraged it in me. I have to say, I have not felt so much like -myself- as I do now in so many years, only one person that I associate with today can remember the person I was back then. She also saved me from that darkness. I don't know where I would be today if it wasn't for her.

Anyways, a situation lead me to realizing that I love her. As a friend, as deeply as one would family. I'm not entirely sure that I would say I'm in love with her, but I'm not afraid to explore that possibility. And with that realization, made my already growing curiousity about polyamory fully spark into a need to know. Was it possible I cared for her romantically and my husband at the same time? Is it possible and not wrong? So I started reading more and more about it and seeing that yes, it's not only possible that for some people it can be so very right... I decided to speak to my husband.

Now, some might think all of our problems would leave him and I on bad terms. Quite the contrary, rather. Despite the arguments and fights that occurred because of seeking something that didn't seem to be there, we didn't ever come close to hating each other. And always, always I will tell him what is on my mind.

Prior to this we had, had a couple discussions about me going and having sex with other guys due to the lack of sex in our relationship, his idea, but I need an emotional bond -first- before I can find myself sexually attracted to another. He was also not entirely certain of the idea. But because of that it might not be a surprise that talking to him about polyamory brought up no negative feelings for him.

He didn't exactly feel one way or the other, but there was nothing negative and after some prodding and trying to find the right questions to make sure that he was alright, truly alright with me exploring polyamory, he gave me his blessing to pursue a relationship with Angel, as I'll call her here.

Angel's not exactly overly experienced in relationships in general, but after a long talk with her as well and telling her about polyamory, and making sure that she did not have any problems with it... I sort of confessed my feelings to her.

Well I more so told her I had feelings for someone, flailed around like an lunatic while trying to tell her it was -her- (hey I hadn't done anything like that in over 8 years!) and apparently generated a hell of a lot of cute, before she guessed that it was herself.

Not only open-minded, she's a really smart woman~

Anyways, after getting over the giddiness of confessing, and her -very- positive reaction to the idea I liked her, (She apparently liked me for awhile but didn't say anything due to the fact I'm married. Go figure.) I made sure to tell her that while, I find myself very intrigued by polyamory that I am very new to it and that my husband was alright for it, -for now-, that I would of course have to respect his wishes if he could not handle it in the end. And that as long as that was something she could deal with, that I wanted her to be my girlfriend.

She said yes. :D

Now, I don't know if my husband is mainly ok with this because she is female, or that she is long distance, (As mentioned before, I'm Canadian. Angel is American.) but so far he has not had a problem. There's been more detailed discussion on the fact that yes, I do fully intend on trying to see her in person, and more... which he has no problem with and he says he is happy for me. He's also spoken to her, and so far they get along. They're both fairly easygoing so it's not difficult, but I'm glad so far.

Angel and I have agreed to be exclusive so far, not to say that I don't encourage the idea that she might find someone else also. But that's something to be talked about if she decides it's something she wants to do. So far, her and I are basking in the wonder of our new relationship.

I haven't been -this- happy in a very long time. I haven't been my old playful and energetic self in years but lately I feel like that person again. I feel wonderful^^

I know there's a chance this might be a phase for me, and perhaps I'm just being optimistic.... but I honestly believe I have found the right path for myself. With reading people's stories and all the information I have found online, and even writing this out... it's how I've come to see things I had missed before.

Of course I'm trying to be careful and not run too fast to embrace this, not wanting to stumble over my own feet in the course of things and stumbling in avoidable ways, however, I do have to say my excitement is hard to contain.

My husband and I are spending more time together, when Angel isn't online, I hug him more and tell him I love him more. And it's honestly, so nice, not to hate myself so much anymore.
 
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