Cali Girl

[ThatGirlInGray]

Hello from CA!

I found this forum last night and stayed up WAAAAY too late reading. Instead of San Francisco or somewhere comparable, I live in a more conservative area of CA. In my reading last night I had this enormous feeling of "There ARE other people like me! I'm NOT THAT WEIRD!!" It'll sound cheesy, but I swear I felt like I had come home! Everything I read was so articulate and compassionate even when disagreeing and that is NOT common on other message boards I've tried.

So, a little bit about me: I'm mid-30's, have two kids and have been married to my husband for 11 years (together for 14 years). We've had some type of open relationship or another pretty much since the beginning. We met in college and became engaged before he went off to the UK for a semester and discussed before he left how, yes, he was coming home to me no matter what, but he didn't want me to miss out on having fun my senior year and I didn't want him to miss out on experiences as he traveled. Just please be smart and safe about it.

Things evolved through the years, with LOTS of communication regarding boundaries, but we never considered ourselves poly because we didn't enter into relationships beyond friendships with other people. Nor did we consider ourselves swingers because we didn't have penetrative sex with other people. So we just quietly lived our lives and played with our friends (or made new friends through playing) and didn't worry about WHAT we were. We were us.

Fast-forward to today, and things have changed. The friends we had seem stuck in their 20's, and we have 2 kids which restricts our play-time. Though I never intended to have a serious relationship other than my husband, it happened. Things with a play partner progressed to the point that I've been calling him my boyfriend for about a year and a few months ago things got REALLY serious and it's been decided that he's moving out to CA in June.

He's the one who introduced me to the term "poly-amorous". I always knew it was possible to love more than one person at a time, I just didn't know there was a word for it. And since he'll be meeting new people when he comes out here, he'd like to make an effort to meet like-minded people so he doesn't end up in the same situation he's leaving, having friends he can't be himself around. So he's the impetus behind me finding poly groups in my area, reading "Polyamorous Misanthrope", and just generally learning more about the poly community.

Wow, that was a lot for a "little bit about me". So for the tl;dr crowd, here's the nutshell: Bi female, mid-30's, married to a mono husband, committed to a poly male partner ("boyfriend" just doesn't seem like the appropriate term!). With 2 kids. One of whom just woke up from his nap. Gotta go!

[NovemberRain]

Welcome! I've only barely arrived here myself. I've been enjoying your posts a lot.

[Lokibb]

Hello... Im too new here and enjoyed your post alot. I look forward to hearing more from you soon.
Blessings Lisa

[ThatGirlInGray]

Thank you both! There seems to be a fair number of new people- I wonder if there's always that many new people coming in or if there's something about the holiday season that leads to he influx.

[ThatGuyInBlack]

I just registered to see what horrible, awful things you were going to tell people about me. :P

[ThatGirlInGray]

You don't have to register to read. Monochrome did a bunch of reading last night without ever registering. You only have to register to post.

[ThatGuyInBlack]

I have to post to defend myself, love :P

[ThatGirlInGray]

Yes dear. Because of the two of us, I'M the one who is harder on you, rather than it being self-inflicted most of the time. Right.

[ThatGuyInBlack]

Um.. I..! You!

Aw, why couldn't I have fallen for someone dumber than me?!

[ThatGirlInGray]

Can I just say I love that we hijacked my own Intro thread?? *grin*