greenearthal
New member
Who has any interesting stories about the first time you met a significant other's other significant other?
Tell it to us please.
Tell it to us please.
Once upon a time there was this guy who was about the biggest mama's boy ever. For the sake of the story we'll call him "me" (sometimes referred to as "I"). By "mama's boy" I don't mean to suggest that I had all of the traits stereotypically associated with mama's boys, but rather, that I had about as close and healthy a relationship with my mother as one can imagine.
My mother and I had great communication and learned a lot from one another. My mother spent a tremendous amount of time with me during my formative years and taught me a great many things at a very early age and all of that was a wonderful foundation upon which I could develop great skills and pursue my interests, and I basically sailed through my early life making mostly good decisions and reaping the resultant rewards.
On occasion --directly attributable, I think, to my status as a human being-- I would make bad decisions. An example of such a decision would be the time when I, at age 14, decided never to cry again. My grandfather had just passed away and I had a bit of a cry, and my aggressively analytical mind worked it out that: crying was not enjoyable and not a necessary part of the human condition and I really didn't need to bother about spending any time engaged in such an activity.
I fell out of practice with crying such that I couldn't cry to save my life. For 16 years the only water my eyes produced was on occasion when I was extremely sleepy, no amount of sadness or desire to cry yielded anything.
At age 30 my mother passed away. This shattered my universe and turned me inside out but still did not produce any instant tears. Nearly a month later at her memorial service something that a dear friend of mine said breached the carefully constructed wall I had erected and one of my eyes surrendered one tear and reminded me what it was like to feel human for a minute. I tried to cry more. I seriously needed to cry so I tried to go with it. But one tear was the best I could do at the time. But it was in that moment that I realized that the decision I had made at 14 was doing me much more harm than good.
After my mom passed away circumstances were such that I was actually able to spend the next year secluded in my home without anyone really bothering me. This time away did me a world of good, but no crying was done during this time.
After nearly a year, being a virtual shut in hermit type began to feel a bit ridiculous and I decided to go in the complete opposite direction from there. This period of time coincided with one of my least favorite people being elected president of my country and starting, what I deemed to be, pointless wars in the middle east. So I got out of my house and became an "activist" and cavorted with other activists and attended protests where we all voiced our anger about the direction our country was being pushed.
At one such protest I met H. I guess an important story element that I should quickly insert is that at this point I had decided that women --as a gender-- were almost completely useless and, while curiously entertaining to look at, they could not be relied upon to act or communicate with any "real humanity". At least here in this country. I had, in all honesty, resolved to save up some money and go seeking my one and only overseas. And so that was the mindset I was in when I met H.
H was, and still is, an amazingly beautiful person. Talking to her I quickly and clearly came to understand that she knew a lot more about "real humanity" than I do. She knew a great deal more about a great many things and I was pretty much in awe of her. I was more attracted to her than I had ever been to anyone in my entire life and so I was very, very eager to be in a relationship with her and make our pact of exclusivity and raise a family and all of that. None of it could happen soon enough to satisfy me.
So, trying to take it step by step, I became very encouraged by the fact that she seemed to be interested in starting a relationship with me. I moved on to step two and began inquiring toward our pact of exclusivity but she did not think that her other boyfriend would approve of that idea. And she had no desire to start a family with anyone. And all of this left me rather devastated.
I had absolutely no interest in any romantic involvement with a polyamorous person. Yet, there were still all of these great things that she knew about the world and about humanity that I desperately needed to know. And so I was very eager to remain friends with her. We pursued a friendship. A loving friendship. That turned into a relationship despite the adamant objections being raised by my brain.
I quietly hoped that she might be going through some sort of a phase. And that she might soon just grow out of it and give monogamy a try. But she was very much in love with her other boyfriend and was in fact hoping to move to a far off city to be with him. Over even more strenuous objections from my brain I invited her to move in with me to save up money to move to the far away city. Sure, I half hoped that she might change her mind, but I also just loved her in such a way that I wanted for her to have whatever was going to help her on her journey. And if moving to a far away city and being polyamorous forever was what she needed for happiness I was cincerely willing to help her to get there.
The boyfriend in the far away city thought that was a fine idea, only he suggested that he would like to visit here so that he could meet me first.
WHAT? That made no sense at all. Why would a person want to come here and meet me, when I would just stab such a person in the eye with shiny shards of glass?? I became aware of the fact that I had jealousy issues. Jealousy issues that... were somewhat extreme in nature.
Against further objections from my brain I agreed to this visitation and meeting. As the day drew nearer I was overcome by dread and irrational loathing. I had hopes that he would somehow be an observably evil manipulator who had maliciously tricked her into this polyamory thing. Or that there would some collection of detestable traits that would help me to say "Fine, if she chooses to be with such a person, more power to them."
And so the time came when we were all to meet and hang out together. She was a nervous wreck. I was a powder keg of simmering emotions. He seemed pretty cool about the whole thing. I could not detect any evil within him. In fact he seemed like a really cool guy. As we chatted over dinner, finding out all kinds of things we had in common, I began to realize that it was very important that I not stab him in the eye with sharp objects. His personhood was very vexing for me. Then we came back to my house and chatted a bit more and then they left together and went back to her place.
And then I cried. And cried. And cried. I had no idea what I was crying about but I was completely out of control with the crying. Looking back on it I suppose I was probably crying because I was in love with such a wonderful person who was in love with another completely wonderful person and this filled me with confusion and fear and at the time I just wished the world would stop rather than forcing me to understand that this was reality and reality could be like this. On the one hand I felt like a very lonely motherless child who was going to be alone again but now pining away for other boyfriend's wonderful girlfriend. On the other hand I felt like --relative to my year of seclusion-- I had lots of wonderful people in my life, one of whom was about to move in with me and take me on an adventure to who knows where.
Yeah, fear.
Fear is a pretty strong one as emotions go.
... I didn't expect to gain a family member, but that's what I got.