Is life supposed to be this surreal?

I feel I'm having an issue with NRE right now. I'm sure that every word of this post is basically me trying to create a problem where none really exists, but I can't help but be slightly worried about it all the same.

I constantly have to ask myself if I'm being unfaithful to my wife for not giving her equal consideration in everything I do. I know that sounds like a vague and nonsensical statement, but I find myself feeling guilty because of the effect NRE is having... I find that Freckles plays a much more central place in my mind for the time being. I'm thinking about her most of my day.

This isn't to say that I ignore Curls. Quite the opposite... I think that I'm spending more time with her and giving her more attention to compensate for my own guilty imaginings.

I've decided I'm just being ridiculous about it. There is enough real shit in life to worry about without wondering if I'm somehow committing 'thought crimes' against my wife... :p
 
A day in our life...

The alarm went off three times, Curls hit snooze the first two times and then finally gets up to go take a shower. I slept in the middle last night. Freckles and I got caught up on the three past episodes of Game of Thrones before going to sleep about three hours before, I am only peripherally aware of Curls waking up, Freckles is dead to the world.

I fall back asleep, waking only slightly when Curls comes in to tell us she's headed to work. We both rise to a muddy form of consciousness to tell her okay, we give kisses and the two of us are asleep again before she has even reached the bottom of the stairs.

The alarm goes off again an hour later. Both of us wake up this time. I'm laying in bed with my arm around Freckles. It's been unseasonably cold and we left the window open, the bedroom is downright frigid. We are snuggled together and she's the one that faces the harsh reality first.... "Who is getting up?" We decide to play rock-paper-scissors for it. She loses... so she gets up and out of bed to wake the kids up and get them out the door and onto the school bus. The kids are remarkably self-sustaining in doing this task, so it's not more than a half hour later before I wake up and blink up at her blearily a few times as she gets undressed again and slips back into bed beside me. She grabs my arm and pulls it over her.

We are back to the exact same position we were in forty five minutes ago when the alarm went off.

Normally we wake up about noon, but my cell phone went off around 11am as work called me. I dealt with the issue and put my phone back on the nightstand. I decided that it was as good a time as any to get up and tried, but Freckles made an unintelligible noise of protest before muttering "too early." I didn't need that much convincing, I snuggled with her some more and drowsed for another hour. We ended up spending almost an hour and a half in bed after our normal wakeup time. Neither of us has anything pressing to do, so we just chatted for a little while. Chatting led to some kissing. Kissing led to a little unexpected fooling around.

We finally got up and took a shower together before she went to go run some errands in town and I went outside and mowed the lawn. At least it was warming up fast. I took advantage of the weather and went to the hardware store and bought about fifteen bags of mulch, I started putting that down in the flowerbeds, I was still working on that when Freckles got back. She went inside and started working on something for school. She picked up something for me to make for dinner while she was at the grocery store. This isn't unusual... I'm the only one that isn't a horrible cook.

I was still working outside when the kids got home from school and went in. Freckles usually helps with homework when they get home and that's what's happening when I come back inside and go upstairs to take another shower after working all afternoon in the yard. I'm taking this shower when Curls walks in, home from work and gets in the shower with me. I take a moment to reflect on the fact that I've taken two showers with different women five hours apart today. Rock.

After we are done I go downstairs to start working on dinner. I am already dressed for work, which is where I'm going as soon as dinner is over, unfortunately. No getting to sleep at a triad tonight. I make fried chicken and mashed potatoes, then start getting my shoes on. The three of us run upstairs to the bedroom and exchange hugs and kisses and I love yous before I head to work. Freckles isn't quite comfortable yet with PDAs in front of the kids. Its a work in progress. I then say goodnight to the kids and head to work.

I don't see Curls the next morning. She is already on her way to work as I get home. I go upstairs and get undressed, then get in bed with Freckles after I get the kids out the door to school. We end up snuggling in the same position as the night before.

Such is life, but it's a life I love. I couldn't imagine one without the two wonderful women I have in it.
 
We got a call at three in the morning yesterday. Freckles' younger sister attempted suicide. She spent the morning crying. First about her sister, then it transitioned into crying as Curls and I booked her a flight to California to go be there with her mom. She told her that it was too much money and she didn't need to do this. In a strange role reversal, it was Curls (not a sentimental person by any means) that gave Freckles a big hug and told her that she's family, and that we loved her.

She called at 6pm last night to let us know she was on the ground in Los Angeles. Her sister is going to be okay, at least physically. Right now, the two of them and their mom is going to sort out what's going on. In the meantime, we are texting back and forth pretty much whenever we are awake. She's telling me that she's okay, and that she's not stressing over this. She's lying. I know her too well for that. Freckles has always been good at putting on a facade and pretending she has everything under control even when she knows she doesn't. I'm pretty sure this is a byproduct of her having to take care of her little sister when their mom isn't exactly the most functional human being in the world. She took care of her continuously while she was in high school... but then she came here to go to college. I'm just hoping she's not going to start blaming herself for this, though at least on some level I'm sure she's going to.

A huge part of me is wishing we could have just thrown caution to the wind and flown there as a family. I hate her suffering through this without us.
 
Last edited:
Yikes, how awful. :( I can totally get you wanting to be there as a family in a situation like that. My thoughts are with you all.
 
Thank you Amanita, we really appreciate it!

Skyped with Freckles for a little bit today. Her sister is being released from the hospital in the morning. The pills she took are likely going to give her life-long liver problems, but she's alive and dealing with a psychologist now. Freckles has a return flight booked for next Wednesday. We told her that we are more than happy to change the date if she finds she needs to stay longer.
 
We went to pick up Freckles at the airport today. Does anyone else remember the good ol' days when you just went right up to the arrival gate and you could stand there and watch the plane pulling up to the terminal and then stand at the end of the jetway and wait for your loved one to come off the plane? I really miss those days, the same way that I miss being able to walk someone right up to the plane and then stand there and watch as the plane flies away. 9/11 ended that for all of us.

So we didn't get to meet her at the gate. Curls and I went to the airport and waited there for her (Curls having taken the day off work... something she hasn't done in a very long time.) The texting started back and forth as soon as she was on the ground. You know... I don't think I realized how much of a place Freckles has made in our hearts until she was gone this last week. My heart skipped a beat when I saw that text message. "I'm home! Just touched down. Where are we meeting?" I texted back that we would meet by the luggage carousel. And so we stood there for about five minutes until the first people from the flight started trickling in. Curls and I were just standing there holding hands as Freckles came out from the door. I couldn't help but smile... It was Freckles in her typical casual/comfortable attire... a hoodie, leggings, earbuds dangling down over her shoulders, hair up in a sloppy but functional ponytail.

She actually squealed and started running as soon as she saw us. We all ended up in a three-way hug and she kissed each of us in a manner that was right on the edge of publicly acceptable. We got a lot of looks, I have no doubt. But you know what? For the first time ever, I didn't give a flying fuck. I don't care what anyone there thought about anything... I was just so crazily happy to have her back home.

We spent all the rest of the day together, and had a blast. Kids were happy to see her home. We were much more touchy-feely than we have ever been, I think because of the week apart. It's made me realize it's time to figure out how to better explain our situation to the two younger girls. We finally put kids to bed and went upstairs. Fooled around a little bit. Curls went to bed because she has work tomorrow.

Freckles and I are now sitting in front of the tv with our laptops and watching Game of Thrones. They say that absence makes the heart grow fonder... I don't know if that's true. But this last week has made me see how much Freckles has integrated into our lives. I couldn't even imagine a life without her anymore, she has become an irreplaceable part of us.
 
Soooo... I'm teaching Freckles to drive.

It has just never been an issue for her before. She has always been able to rely on her parents for transportation, and when she moved to where we are now, everything she required was on or right around the college campus. But we have been coming to realize that since she moved into our house, it's not always convenient for us to drive her to campus for class, or for us to come get her when it interferes with work, etc. The most obvious solution is that she needs to get her driver's license so she can do this stuff without needing one of us to get her to and from.

At least this is what I thought when the issue first started becoming noticeable. And even now, it seems like it was a perfectly reasonable assumption to make.

But holy crap...

One of the things I love about Freckles is that she's every bit as neurotic as I am. This has its good sides and its bad sides. The good side is that we generally know what the other is thinking and how we are going to react to almost any situation.... which is to say almost always in the total opposite way nearly everyone else in the world is going to react. The downside is that learning something new, especially something that involves moving around a ton and a half of metal around on the road while other people are doing the same... this makes that neurotic side a little bit less cute and pleasant :)

We drove for two hours today, at the end of which both of us were quivering heaps of raw nerves. She screamed at least four times and I'm pretty sure my fingers have left permanent indentations into the dashboard. We drove over two curbs, went a full block going the wrong way on a one way street, and would have run a red light if I wasn't shouting something unintelligible that sounded to my ears like "Stopstopstopstop a-whugga-wa-ah-whugga-whugga".

Freckles epiphany from today? When something bad is happening in front of you, squinting your eyes shut and hoping it all works out in the end is probably not the best course of action. Ever.

Her driver's test is scheduled two weeks from now. Hell yeah, we will be ready. :/
 
I haven't posted in forever! I feel the need to do so, though. This forum always seems to be a magnet for all the things that have gone wrong in poly people's lives, it's only fair that the success stories are documented as well. :)

Things are going fantastically for us. Our triad is coming up pretty close to our first year together, and while there have been minor bumps in the road, it has all gone pretty well.

We took a Disney cruise right at the end of summer. We spent five days in the Carribbean and then two more at Disney World afterward. It was an absolutely amazing time. The kids had their own room and the three of us had a second one. We didn't feel at all guilty that we took the really good room :) We got a fairly good sized suite with a balcony. The kids were having so much fun that they were barely even aware we existed most of the time.

A few weeks before that we finally had our talk with Oldest. She already knew too much to not just come clean about everything. We explained to her what polyamory meant and how all three of us love each other. She really was impassive to most of the discussion. She asked if Freckles and I were going to get married, and wasn't that illegal? I explained to her that not just Freckles and I, but also Curls and Freckles would all like to be married to each other, but that's not really possible... at least not in the eyes of the legal system. We explained that we HAD talked about it as a 'what if' scenario and that if things worked out well between us then we WOULD like to be married someday, even if its done in a totally non-legal ceremony. She rather frankly asked my wife if her and freckles... you know, "do stuff" together in bed too. They affirmed that fact and we explained all three of us are equals.

Up to this point, neither of our other kids really know what our relationship means. We still do not speak to Curls' parents. We still don't particularly have any interest in doing so. We have come out to my parents. Both of them are cautiously amicable to our lifestyle. My stepmother is kind of cool towards Freckles, but my dad and her are practically best buddies, always joking around and talking when we are over at their house. My sister turned out to be a huge issue that I wasn't expecting! While she is only very, very casually Christian, she decided to take up a self-righteous issue with our lifestyle and won't speak to us. I'm not terribly broken hearted.... her and I have always butted heads. I can deal just fine with her exile.

I'm still working nights... though the end is in sight. I work for a retail "big box" store as an assistant store manager, though I have technically been promoted. A new store is being built about 50 minutes away, and I've already been named as its store manager. Though I make decent money now, this is going to nearly double my income after bonuses and such are factored in. I shudder when I remember back to when Curls and I first started out being terrifyingly broke. The transmission went out on her car last month, cost 2200 to fix... back then, that would have destroyed us. It's easy to take it for granted when you can just pull out your checkbook and write it without a second thought.

The weather is finally breaking a little bit. Freckles is out for her morning 3 mile run for the first time in weeks. She carries a little extra weight on her and is always extraordinarily self-conscious about it.... despite me constantly telling her that she's beautiful. So starting today she's back on her healthy diet and exercise kick.

Curls is also great. She has always wrestled with spiritual issues about swinging and poly... she comes from a very religious family. She finally tossed that burden off a few months ago, effectively backing away from Christian philosophies. I'm very proud of her.
 
Back
Top