Hello from a seasoned newbie

[indigo]

Hey all-

First a warm hello and thank you to all the people who have carefully and thoughtfully crafted responses to the heartfelt questions posed all over this site. I absolutely love feeling like in this one place I don't have to explain myself or my life.

But I'll explain my life anyway

I'm 36, married to a terrific guy for 16 years, have two medium sized kids and a pretty terrific life. We met when we were 17 and 19, and on our first date he haltingly confessed he had a girlfriend; no worries, I told him...see me on Friday's and her on Saturday's and all will be well. He tells me now that he should have known then what he was in for.
We've done monogamy and it worked when our little ones were tiny, those years it's just all hands on deck. But when the pressure eased and they grew our relationship grew too, and we both opened to the possibility of having other people in our lives. Of course it sounds so easy in hindsight but there were missteps, hurt feelings, and incidents of poor communication along the way as we laid ground rules and reinvented the wheel. I so wish we had had the benefit of this community then!
What is new for us is a desire to be open to others about our choices (except our kids) and we are now navigating when and how much to tell which people. I love being 'out'! I love not having to edit my words or my try to remember who I told friends I was with last weekend??? The tangled webs we weave became heavy and frankly I'm happy to be shed of the,, but this new openness also means being exposed to judgment and worse! The assumption that 'open' is synonymous with 'indiscriminate.'

Now I'm just rambling...I'll post my questions to another thread.

Mason Marie

[LovingRadiance]

Welcome to the forum, happy perusing!