How did I get here & Where am I going?

I owned one, it don't do shit but light up and beep haha

Did you take it back and tell them it was defective?

The Queen of derailment has hit your thread II, I'm sorry (well not really I enjoy derailment).:p
 
Please give a rundown of the rules and how the sport is played.
 
and if you miss the pool you have to drink the beer?
 
Hi ho, Hi ho, it’s camping we will go…..

I haven’t been updating the blog much lately, but frankly I’m no longer sure what I need to be putting up here.


Things have been humming along pretty good for a while. Life has not been without its challenges, but that’s to be expected. I think life at home has been pretty awesome. My wife and her gf continue to do well, and for the most part I try to keep my nose out of my metamore’s affairs, and my wife’s. It’s their relationship, and their deal. I’d like to blame it on being all growed up or something and being completely secure in my insecurities or some such non-sense. However I doubt it. If there was something seriously amiss, I’m sure I’d let my wife know about it if she wanted to hear it or not. But for now, I think it’s just a case of my wife being happy with the relationship, and the fact that I have a high level of respect for my metamore, and upmost confidence that she has my wife’s best interests at heart. So really, what do I have to worry about?


As for my gf...things aren’t perfect there either, but they’re not in total disarray either. I’m not overly keen to expose issues while they’re still in resolution...that’s not really the way I process. Suffice to say that we’ve continued to have our ups and downs, and at some point I’ll make sure to post what I learned about the importance of doing check-ins, whether you think they’re needed or not. There is definitely some work to be done, and mostly I’ve been waiting until she has the time and energy to join me in working on them. In the meantime, I’ve been leaving her time to sort out other parts of her life, like her primary relationship, etc. Since I’ve been broken for most of the last 3 months, it’s not like it’s been an issue to do so. I think this is likely to change soon as there’s starting to be some general relationship as well as poly specific things to work on as we carry on forward.


I have no other prospects at the moment, not anyone that I could realistically consider pursuing. It’s not that there aren’t some attractive ladies around the local community or even the city in general. There are. But my life is keeping me pretty busy, so even if they reciprocated interest, and even if they had a compatible vision of poly, I just have no idea where I would find the time.
At one time that probably would have bothered me...particularly before my gf came along. I’d be all over OKC or whatever all the time, looking, determined to find someone new, and to make something happen. I think I’d try to have an email or two out awaiting response (which isn’t hard since responses are few and far between) just so that there was the possibility of meeting someone new. That’s not the case right now...I’ll occasionally browse OKC just because, but I’m not looking for anyone, or anything in particular. I wouldn’t say that at the moment that all my needs are suddenly being met...at least no more or less so than they would have been by my wife exclusively in our mono days. (Although I’ve been informed recently that apparently “we never DID monogamy well”) It doesn’t bother me anymore. I’m not convinced it should.

It’s an interesting case in contrast I suppose. I’ve seen those in the community who are continually seeking new partners, no matter how many they’re juggling. There are those with a seemingly insatiable appetite for physical intimacy, and some have very casual or laissez faire approaches to sex and partners. And of course it’s been occasionally a hot topic of conversation at times...conversations are fun.
I started my interest in the opposite sex early, far earlier than I should have. I never went through an “ew girl cooties” stage (although I played the part at the appropriate age to avoid suspicion). Despite my white knight syndrome and gentleman’s manners, I always admired the ladies men. By that count, I should have grown up to be a stereotypical man-whore. (My complete lack of game notwithstanding).
But apparently monogamy isn’t the only thing I didn’t do well. When I got an FWB, I married her. When I had the chance to play fast and loose, I stayed faithful. I finally have a chance to have many many gf’s, and I’m not even looking for a 2nd. WTF is wrong with me?

In this whole voyage of poly there has been a lot of self-discovery, and I think it’s partially responsible for the new sense of calm that presides over my affairs as of late. I think when my wife and I started this journey, I was still stuck on the ideal, thinking it was the person I should become, romantically indiscriminate, and ready to jump on any willing person with a skirt. But just because it’s an ideal, doesn’t mean it was the right ideal for me. I wonder if this was a factor in why no matter how much I shopped online, I could never find contentment. I wonder if the impetus to drive towards a mismatched ideal is what caused some of the friction with my wife...who generally knows me better than I do, and who knows better than to let me be something I’m not.

I may still harbour some admiration for those who can let themselves be casual about their liaisons, and for those with the stamina to claim back to back 6 hour marathon sex sessions with 17 different partners over 5 days without sleep, whether it’s true or not. (I may sell lube, but even I can’t afford the quantities to avoid blisters on all the pink parts with that timeline) However, I know that I’m not a laissez faire Casanova, or a sexual stevedore.

I’m just me, and that’s just fine with me. I know that my poly includes relationships that go beyond casual. I know that I only have so much time and energy that I must make the number of relationships in my life finite such that they can each be given the attention due to them. I am a man, and I have my limits. The women who love me do so because I am true to myself, and to them. And so I find myself quite content, and far more relaxed, in my personal life.


I have been turning my attention a little more to the community lately. Here and locally. I’ve been waiting for the results (as many have) of the BC reference case, and find myself wondering what the next step will be, regardless of the decision. And I’m caught between wanting to find a way to make a contribution to propelling the community forward to a place of greater acceptance or at least tolerance by the general public, and having to remain somewhat closeted. And at the same time I’ve been watching a couple different communities experience the growing pains as people go through the exercise of reconciling their own vision of poly with others around them. I worry about the foundations as I hear cracking and snapping of people try to figure out what norms if any do or should exist around poly, either in relationships, the larger community, or as an advocacy movement in the legal & political realm. I worry about the strength of character of people at the extreme ends of various spectrums as they pull others towards them in a polarizing tug of war, and find myself hoping that there’s enough numbers in the community at large for the middle to hold.


Such is my state of mind tonight, on the eve of Polycamp NW, as I carry on dropping in on other people’s poly. Having just come from our local camp a few weeks ago, I’ll be very interested to see more of how they roll in WA. I’ll be looking forward to making some new friends, and cooking some marshmallows. And as always, I sit back and take comfort that after all the arguments about semantics and definitions are done, there’s still lots of room in poly for me, and the way I roll.


After all, my poly isn’t necessarily your poly...and it doesn’t need to be.
 
Ahhhhh, love your writing, II. Hope things get sorted out with the gf, and you can continue having a boring poly life. Turns out that isn't a bad thing. ;)
 
I for one enjoy the boring poly life :) (my loves aren't boring though...my life is just pretty drama free)
 
This doesn’t sound good... - Bubblegum Crisis (1 of 3)

So apparently things aren’t cruising along as smoothly in some areas as I might have thought. Despite my thoughts that my gf K and I were in a positive place where we could start working on reconnecting and a few relatively minor things, we seem to have hit a rough patch instead. It’s thrown the entire relationship into the realm of uncertainty and doubt...not really where I wanted to be.


My gf are each others secondary’s, having a primary of her own, NN. They’re both fairly new to poly in it being their first attempts. The hierarchical nature of our relationship, and the priority given to primary partners was agreed upon from the outset of our relationship...as was the probability that our relationship was likely to be perishable, mostly due to the possibility that one of us would eventually have to move across the country.


I’ll try to spare most of the back story (like this blog wasn’t long enough already eh?) and I’m going to try to avoid details that aren’t really mine to share. Cross fingers and pray time I guess.



Apparently the relationship with my gf has been on the back burner for a while. While we had talked or got together for dates from time to time, as much as the schedule would allow, our physical relationship hit a series of challenges that required some time away from intimacy to figure out. While it’s not the end all be all of the relationship by any means, I do consider it an important part of a healthy relationship.

I suppose this might be where larger problems started, and where they continue to stem from. I discovered something about my jealousy & envy responses recently, in that I do not suffer from them most of the time with regards to my wife, and not with my gf where it concerned NN. Where I did start to get apprehensive, or uncomfortable about my responses was where K started talking about other guys that were around, particularly where it sounded like they might become emotionally or physically involved with her. I initially figured it was just my own shit that was mine to deal with, but now I’m less sure about that. It comes down to security and satisfaction. Security comes from the trust that the relationship will remain, and satisfaction in needs being met by the relationship, in terms of possibly emotionally, sexually, temporally. If something seems to be missing, then an apparent replacement by another partner threatens to fulfill the need for the partner, but not for me. If my needs weren’t being met, then another prospect lurking around seemed to trigger a jealous response for me. It’s not a comfortable place, it leads to me feeling selfish for wanting something from someone else, and not really kosher in the poly world, and it wasn’t who I wanted to be.

Her primary wouldn’t trigger anything, because I already knew I’d take second seat, so it was never unexpected. My wife rarely if ever triggers anything because I’m extremely secure in that relationship, and after 15 years, we have some highly developed mechanisms which allow us to adjust for needs which require attention...and when it does manifest it’s usually not another lover, but some other extra curricular activity that causes it.


At any rate, K always struck me as a bit of a free spirit, not content to be confined. The way she runs her relationships I figured out early on that if she wanted other partners or experiences, they would happen eventually, and probably quickly, regardless of if I was prepared for it. I didn’t want to restrict her, but there was going to be a tricky balance between her need to explore, and my need to know what was going on, and possibly the needs of metamores and the rest of the tribe/polycule/cluster, whatever.



So much for the setup. Hierarchical secondary’s, limited shelf life, intimacy, or lack thereof, security/trust, jealousy response, free spirit. I wouldn’t say things were coming apart, but they certainly weren’t getting better when I finally got to talking to K shortly after our anniversary to try and get at what was going on. It was a good lesson in having check-ins whether you think they’re needed or not. By that time our dates been regularly pre-empted, she had found other priorities to spend time at, mostly socially entertaining diversions, and there were other little things like suddenly not seeing details on the calendar. It seemed like she was trying to push me away...a suspicion that she confirmed when I finally asked her about it.

The “why” was still unanswered though. We still loved each other, and she didn’t seem to want to break up with me. She seemed to have concerns about the ideal relationship we had spoken of before, and didn’t have the energy to put into trying to make that happen at the moment, and then said something about her feeling it would be better for me if I went away...and forcing me to leave was easier for her. I really consider this whole kind of line of thinking a severe logic fail, and told her that she wasn’t getting rid of me that easily. After all, I have a bad habit of not giving up on people. At the time, it seemed to be the right answer, judging from her response.

At the time she needed some time and space to work on other priorities, like her primary relationship, and I was also somewhat indisposed, so I told her I’d give her some time to work on things, with a fixed end date to come back to working on us. I could be patient, and let her work on her stuff, and NN, but I didn’t want to leave it open to become a permanent hiatus, and if I wasn’t going to give up her, I didn’t want her giving up on me either. Knowing what would end up triggering me, I asked her not to be starting up other entanglements while this was going on. It wasn’t intended to limit her, or as a boundary or rule. I wanted her to know that I was ok with giving her space to work on her primary, but that using that time and space to find new people would be hurtful to me, since if she had energy for them, she should have enough for us! She agreed it was a fair request.



And then life happened. Time marched on and it was time to check in again, but as happens from time to time there was the unexpected. When I saw K a few weeks back, she was on her way home for a family emergency. But it seemed on the surface at least that we were in a better place overall, and that on her return we should be able to start working on us again. What was planned, and what actually happened wasn’t exactly similar.


The family emergency and my time away on vacation kept us apart a little longer than expected. When I got home I received an email from K about what had been going on while I was away. There were two things of note...there was another crisis, this time with a new friend that was taking her attention, and that she had been physical with two new people since we had last talked in person. I couldn’t fault her honesty in letting me know, but I was still hurt at the apparent lack of consideration, and it was plainly said that basically if I was upset, that was my problem, because she had her reasons. Suddenly a bunch of things were thrown into sharp relief as I flashed back to number of things over the previous weeks and months.

(To be Continued)
 
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Holy smokes, a lot of this sounds familiar.

Minus the fact, of seeing other men. My interest was in that person, right to the bitter end.

It is good she told you about her other intimacies, but I can`t comprehend her other physical interactions being solely your problem.

This stuff is never easy to sort out. to know when to keep trying, or know when to quit. Sorry to see you are going through this, it is not fun.

Like TP said,...*hugs*
 
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