I'll add some more information about the sleeping arrangement. I did some thinking after I posted and realised that I actually had a feeling that I wanted to sleep with Alec, and that the biggest motivation for it wasn't so much the fairness issue but the fact that I would have a longer night's sleep because he goes to bed a few hours earlier. I was feeling really tired, so more sleep was a good thing. Yesterday wasn't as intense emotionally, so today I'm feeling less tired. Also, right now I'm at home alone. I'll need to do some studying soon, but it's still good.
I wanted to write something about the (negative) emotions and the work we face. I'll focus on the three of us, since I have the most knowledge of our situations, Mya can add about JJ if she wishes to.
As Mya said, the positions are quite different for all four of us. She wrote about the fact that she feels like she's "sacrificing" (for the lack of a better term) time from JJ when she's here, particularly if we're not spending the time here as "effectively" as possible. Rationally she doesn't think that, but the emotions are different. There have also been some worries about the future. She can write more about her side of things if she feels like it.
For me, most emotions relate to "being enough", that is, meeting the needs of both of my partners when the both of them are here. I do think I'm pretty good at taking both of them into account. What I need to work on is being concious of my own needs, making boundaries, and not letting others
or myself violate them. Particularly the first part; I often don't realise I need something until it becomes a bigger issue than it needs to be. Earlier I also wrote about wanting everybody to have a good time, but that anxiety has passed altogether. I think it will still come up from time to time (might be more again when all four of us hang out), but for now it doesn't look like too big an issue.
The feelings that poly brings up for Alec, and which he has expressed to me, have been pretty similar from the beginning: the issues are the same, but there is definitely progress in terms of the intensity, and it seems also in terms of frequency (that is, it seems he has negative feelings for a smaller proportion of time than before, but I think that can be assessed better when more time has passed, and it's hard for me to tell because obviously I don't know all that goes on in his head). Mostly Alec's negative feelings relate to self-esteem. Low self-esteem is something that has been an issue for him for the whole seven-and-a-half years of my relationship with him, but in which there has also been huge improvement during that time. Obviously it's a very long time, but he is a
completely different person from who he was in the beginning. Anyway, there still remains work to be done, and poly is good at bringing these things to the surface. Sometimes he has fears that I'll prefer Mya, but these he can rationally see as unrealistic himself, so it doesn't seem like it's too hard for him to get over them with a bit of reassurance. More often it's just that he feels like he's "too much" when we spend time as a group, whether it's the three or the four of us. This feeling is pretty frequent, I'd say it surfaces about every other or every third day at some point, but it usually doesn't last for the whole day but maybe for a couple of hours. I think the only thing that'll make changes in this is him working on his self-esteem, and also possibly time.
It makes Alec both happy and sad to see me in NRE with Mya: on one hand he's genuinely happy for me, and feels compersion for my happiness, on the other, he feels sad that he and I can't have that. Also, Alec has said before that it feels weird to sleep alone when I'm home, and he misses me a bit. But he hasn't mentioned those things very much this time (more when Mya visited us in the summer), so it actually may have subsided a little (otherwise I think he would've mentioned it more). And there's still a bit of poly-related oddness for him, which is about the fact that, as he says, "he doesn't want to make Mya feel bad by hugging/kissing me in front of her". This resulted in him avoiding my attempts to touch him, which lead to me feeling bad. However, we had a discussion about this a few days ago: first, I assured him that (as far as I know) Mya doesn't feel bad in a situation like that, and, secondly, I explained to him that even if she does it's not "him making her feel bad" but her own feelings which she needs to work through and not something he should try to avoid. To this he responded that he'll make an attempt to hug me even if it feels strange to him. And yesterday we did hug quite a many times during a few hours while Mya was in the same room, so there were instant steps on that front.
Wow. There's quite a bit, when you start to write stuff down (and I may have forgotten something). What I'm glad about is that all four of us, as far as I can tell, do their best to own their own feelings. Also, I'm really happy about all the communication that's happening. I think many of the issues are such that time will in itself make them easier, like the NRE effects, and everything that requires getting used to (that is,
everything). Poly is quite difficult in that it brings up a lot of emotional issues, which may be big or small, and to the solving of which there are no guarantees. I guess you just have to remember that a lot of people have gone through similar things (and worse), be patient, and have trust in each person's motivation and ability to work through their own issues. There comes some fear of uncertainty with that, but there's also so much to gain, and so much to enjoy during the ride, and the knowledge that whatever the end will be, it will be for the best for everybody.