Ideals vs. Realities

[BaggagePatrol]

Sage advice Scott - haven't watched the video yet, but will try to! I'm a pretty prudent financial manager, and buying an investment plan is part of my 10 year financial plan. I'm 33, and just about have my first mortgage paid off (8.3 years to go). We'll largely be buying this second home with cash, and the combined mortgage payments on both properties will be less than the accelerated payments we're making on our current mortgage.

I think it's important to structure joint finances so that one person can pay all of the bills/mortgages comfortably - this enables a lot of freedom in life - if someone can't work due to health problems/wants to take a break and go back to school, etc, the other person has them covered, plus it means that the secondary income puts you at an enormous financial advantage. It can be used to accelerate mortgage payments, pay off a vehicle purchase rapidly (we cleared an 8 year truck payment in 1 year, 5 months, for example) or save for the future (RRSPs, a new roof, etc) and for paying cash for consumer goods/house renos.

We also have zero consumer debt. This is a mighty big deal, as it means that we're beholden to no one except our mortgage payment and bills. I've even taken the possibility of rising interest rates into consideration (they went up to 20% in the '80's and many people lost everything). We don't buy things that we can't afford, simple as that.

[Scott]

Originally Posted by BaggagePatrol

Sage advice Scott - haven't watched the video yet, but will try to!

Ok. It's um.. the beginning seems to be pretty light but then it gets pretty heavy. If you choose to stop it after a few minutes, I'll understand.. the house thing is at the beginning, so you may still walk away with something.

Originally Posted by BaggagePatrol

I'm a pretty prudent financial manager, and buying an investment plan is part of my 10 year financial plan. I'm 33, and just about have my first mortgage paid off (8.3 years to go). We'll largely be buying this second home with cash, and the combined mortgage payments on both properties will be less than the accelerated payments we're making on our current mortgage.

Ok.

Originally Posted by BaggagePatrol

I think it's important to structure joint finances so that one person can pay all of the bills/mortgages comfortably - this enables a lot of freedom in life - if someone can't work due to health problems/wants to take a break and go back to school, etc, the other person has them covered, plus it means that the secondary income puts you at an enormous financial advantage. It can be used to accelerate mortgage payments, pay off a vehicle purchase rapidly (we cleared an 8 year truck payment in 1 year, 5 months, for example) or save for the future (RRSPs, a new roof, etc) and for paying cash for consumer goods/house renos.

We also have zero consumer debt. This is a mighty big deal, as it means that we're beholden to no one except our mortgage payment and bills. I've even taken the possibility of rising interest rates into consideration (they went up to 20% in the '80's and many people lost everything). We don't buy things that we can't afford, simple as that.

I think they may rise a lot more soon.. I don't believe everything the following group says (I think the entitlement programs that should be reformed are the "too big to fail" bailing out of the banks) but... well, it's 7 minutes long.. up to you if you'd like to see it...
http://youtu.be/2N8gJSMoOJc

Basically, if you can get a fixed interest mortgage, I'd jump on it.

[BaggagePatrol]

Men. Mortgage rates. I prefer them both fixed. LOL! Naughty. But seriously - I would never be in an open variable, and I'm a big blend & extender when it comes to mortgages as well, rather than refinancing with lower rates. Am excited for this next step in our portfolio - real estate, precious metals - things that exist in the real world are the best investments. And a house is skookum because you can LIVE in your investment. We have a back-up contingency plan of being able to rent out two/three bedrooms of our five bedroom home comfortably as well (have done this before to save up for a new furnace, etc without it affecting the quality of our life).

Good financial management is easier than good relationship management at times, but it's all the same principles. Communicate, do your research, talk, think about what you want, manifest your desires prudently and with consciousness.

[BaggagePatrol]

Had incredibly vivid dreams about my XGF last night. I was trying to pick her up, and I kept choosing the wrong place to find her; old places of mine that she had never been to, then finding where she should be and her not being there. I never actually did end up finding her, but I was looking for her for hours in my dream, and woke up really missing her. It was so real, and I just felt such a profound sense of loss when I woke up.

It all went so sideways that I think it's taken me until now to properly be able to start looking at my feelings. There was so much insecurity and upset, so much mistrust and anxiety that I was no longer able to discern which emotions to trust, and which emotions to tuck in the "crazy box". I started doing something that I haven't really ever done before - making decisions from an emotional standpoint instead of a logical one, and most of those emotions could be dissected down to the root of fear. Great place to be making decisions from right? Right? SO WRONG. I behaved like a lunatic, largely. Yes, for protection, yes, I had my reasons with E's bad choices, yes I needed space, yes she was a bad communicator. But woah. I miss her right now.

I think about those months that we shared; the effortless enjoyment that the three of us shared. Hanging out, playing games, drinking Scotch and talking endlessly. The fun of going out for dinner, getting a swanky hotel, going for a walk, going out to a pub, all in a threesome/triad of friendship, attraction and ever burgeoning love. I think of my continued blossoming of my sexual attraction and experiences with women, and how good I was at getting her off & driving her wild - something equally surprising to both of us with our relative inexperience (I was her first real female sexual experience, she was my third, but my first really great one).

I guess I'm really just feeling a profound sense of loss today, which isn't something that I've allowed myself to feel until now. So much damage control that I wasn't comfortable admitting how much it meant to me to have her in my life. So much damage control that I don't think I really started realizing how much I pulled back, and how quickly when faced with so many problems in such rapid succession.

It's not regret exactly. I try to avoid language that pulls me into the past and negates the ability to learn, grow and assimilate "mistakes" into my realm of self-knowledge and breadth of experience, and regret is one of those words that seems to do that. It's just a feeling that things might have, could have, should have been different if only I had known better. Maybe that's regret. Fuck. I don't know. Perhaps the biggest lesson that I took away from all of this is that I truly didn't know what to do. That's humbling for me - I pride myself on my ability to make (usually very good) decisions, and this whole situation truly threw me for a loop.

I look back and think to myself - how could I have done things differently? Should I have ever attempted to have a poly-fi triad with E in the first place, or were we not ready as people/a couple? Was it ever something that truly could have worked? Where and when did my fear really get its hooks into me - what triggered it, how could I have managed it better, how could we as a group avoided the pitfalls that threw us into chaos as a group? Le fuckity, that's a whole lotta soul searching to do for me. I don't want to become a navel gazer about the whole experience, that doesn't help anyone, but I do want to have time to reflect and grow from it before I go galloping wildly into a new affair.

Today I'm having more lunatic thoughts. Real winners.... like.... Is it possible that she'd ever want to give it another try? Is this really done? Why would I want that, given how fucked up everything got? Am I just feeling nostalgic today, ignoring the simplicity of the fact that it's long over? How naive am I to even think that she hasn't moved on in her own life, found new partners, and is long over the two fuckwads that we were to her in our upset and confusion? What IS this feeling that I'm having exactly - the one that almost had me writing her a long letter this morning.... the one that has made the idea of going out to see her flit through my mind. I burned bridges carefully and systematically when we had the big blow up - I deleted all her numbers, her emails, so that I couldn't turn around and call her, email her, fuck it all up again when the tides turned inside of me. Didn't want to waffle and drag her around by her heart while I did so. I had already done that once, and it was not healthy. Didn't want to do it again.

It's been a couple of months though. And I do miss her. Miss her a lot. Wonder if she misses me to.

Feelin' like an asshole. That's a good place to start for personal growth I suppose, but a bad feeling when I just want to get all John Cusack and go play a song on a boombox outside of her apartment. Asshole move right there. Le ugh.

[BaggagePatrol]

I sway to and fro in this new breeze of emotions, gently rocking before finding equilibrium. It's different than the gales and stormy weather of months past; this is measured, calm and gentle. There is no urgency, no wildness or fear of falling. This is quiet.

I messaged my XGF yesterday, told her that I had dreamed of her, and was missing her. She said she had been thinking of me too, but that it wasn't any kind of coincidence, as she thought about us all the time. I wonder in what sense, but don't know if I even want to ask at this point.

I just know that in this quiet, and in this calm, something interesting is happening inside of me. I never want to know how life will unfold; that beautiful mystery that happens every day as you get to glimpse a little bit more of your story as it opens up to allow you to step into the moments that will become memories. Impulsiveness tells me to go see her, ask her to meet with me, talk, hash, deal. But I'm not interested in impulsiveness; have already behaved like a lunatic, and am not interested in doing that again.

I dissect my fear with scientific clarity and peer into the creepy crevasses of my insecurity and paranoia. I look into my heart, and all that's really there is love. I don't think I was expecting that, and I truly wonder what it will look like as I move forward.

Offer was accepted, removing subjects this week and our year long project of bringing our dead cottage back to life begins. Almost at our second anniversary of being married (together for 5/12 total now) and here we are about to get into another huge project - first came opening up the second branch of my business, then came opening up our relationship with our XGF (well, there were two other openings before that, but nothing too serious), now comes renovations and hopefully restitution for some of what went wrong with our lady.

I do love my life, confusing and topsy turvy as it gets. I am grateful.

7am board meeting, movers and shakers, another meeting after, payroll, now deep in the work for the rest of the day. Life coaching tonight, walking the dogs, making dinner. Life is busy and good.

[BaggagePatrol]

Have been emailing with the XGF, and we're going to be meeting up before she heads back to her home city for the summer (is here for school). I ache with hope that it's a step forwards instead of a step backwards.

I've come to a lot of self realizations over the past week or so, in this comfortable emotional space that I've re-found after such a tumultuous beginning to the year. Done a lot of self inventory and reflecting, taking a lot of responsibility and really integrating the things that I've learned about myself from this whole experience.

In my every day life I am ridiculously logical, and this serves me well; I'm productive and efficient, my business is always evolving, I'm always pushing both myself and others to be our very best. The tendencies to be really organized and productive give my life a structure and rhythm that makes it successful. In general I have this really positive feeling about life. I feel excited, satisfied, motivated and ready for the future, very in love and passionate about what I do - in some ways, it's not that different than NRE when I jump into a new project/problem. I tackle problems with a "can do" attitude, and rapidly move towards solutions without thinking twice about it - it's a great quality.... except for when you try to apply it to emotions and people.

Here are these tendencies to grabbing onto good feelings/ideas and running with them. Of forcing life open to manifest the crazy ideas that I have, and more often than not, succeeding - fundraising ideas, business ideas, community ideas - I'm the kind of person that will find out who the heads are at, say, a television station. I will present to them in a unique way, and secure filming and free air time for local community initiatives that I believe in. I don't follow normal channels, and I'm not afraid of life saying no to me - when it does, I just find another way to manifest the idea that I have in my head - say, write an article for a paper and mail it in, and watch the same organization get publicity that way. It's shocking how rarely I get said no to, and it makes me really believe in my own ability to make a difference and follow my heart.

In relationships, things are totally different, but because I get similar feelings (NRE is kind of similar to how in love I feel with life a lot of the time) in them, I start behaving as I would in life. I start moving things forward, start trying to manifest what I want, and because I'm enthusiastic and it's fun I can successfully drag people along with me as I trailblaze ahead with my ideals.

This is not healthy. This has landed me in fuckloads of trouble in my life, and destroyed a lot of relationships as I hack my way through time like a woman on a mission. I seem to be unable to allow things to unfold at a reasonable pace, and then when the inevitable clarity following NRE happens, I realize that I have totally overstepped all internal boundaries in myself.

Truth telling. It's the only way to grow. The only way to expel darkness inside of yourself is to shine light on it. I think about things like: having a friend in need move in with me, throwing caution to the wind, and then the ensuing unhappiness that developed from us having totally different lifestyles/levels of tidiness/routines and having to try to live in the same space. I think about getting married when I was younger - moving through the steps with rapidity and ending up a year into my marriage to a man who was totally unsuitable to me.

And so now, I guess I need to go back to square one inside of myself. To develop boundaries, and really get clear about pacing in relationships. To find a new way of being, whether it's with the XGF, or a new GF, or a quad, or whatever. If my pacing is off, then I stand to repeat this pattern again and again.

I think about E. and I, and how different my approach to relationship was with him, and how wonderful it has been because of that. It's not that we've had this idealistic bond; we've scrapped it up like gladiators, and gone head to head more times that I could bother keeping track of. But I've had boundaries right from the beginning - vowed that I wasn't going to make the same mistakes that I had in the past, and I didn't. I did things differently, and that gives me a lot of faith that I can spill this new way of being into secondary relationship and friendships, which is where I have been relatively boundary-less in the past.

There is so much power in being able to see your own patterns. Allows you to blow them up and create something new. And I'm so ready for that growth.

It's not that I hold myself accountable for more than my one third share of responsibility for why our relationship went so sideways. It's that I know that things are going to be different for me in the future.

Last night E. and I are talking before bed - touching on what it would be like to date someone else again. We've talked about boundaries here and there in the past, and it hasn't gone all that well. Last night I found out why. E. seems to have a fundamental belief inside of him that there should be no boundaries in life. What the hell am I supposed to do with that? If he's only going to agree to boundaries to make me happy, and doesn't see the importance of having boundaries in relationships/life at large, then how the hell are we ever going to be successful in poly together?

I partly call bullshit on this though. I think it's been a cop out over the years, remnants of being a member of the vanguard, and all of that. It's held him back in his life; to not believe in society's rules means that you can never master them and hold success in your hands. I'm a political l'il monkey too, but I see the wisdom in, say, keeping my money in a bank (something he largely hadn't done before meeting me, for example).

In the same breath, I know that in order for us to be succeed in poly, we will have to believe in some kind of a structure, or some level of boundaries as a unit. I'm unwilling to move forward with him again until I know that he has done whatever work he needs to do to get clear about this; will not go through what I went through with our XGF again (him transgressing boundaries at will because he didn't see the point in them, etc.)

It makes a lot of sense to me though, and does help me have a great deal of compassion for him. How hellish it must be to not be able to respect boundaries in other people! To agree that you won't do X, as X will hurt your loved one, and then doing X anyways and having your relationship explode in your face. Doesn't sound like much fun for me.

Sometimes it's so hard to leave behind outdated ways of being that no longer serve you. I have faith in us, but know what I will, and won't tolerate moving forward, that's for sure.

It's still such a touchy topic for me though, as the wounds are just healing up nicely. To go from a conversation of "What are your internal boundaries?" to "My ideal is to have no boundaries at all." when I'm so fuckin' gunshy was NOT good for me, and I was pretty upset and stopped the conversation. Oh more processing and work, how are you? It's not jealousy that interferes with my ability to be poly with E., it's the knowledge that he doesn't respect any boundaries that we agree upon on a fundamental level. More. Work. Needed.

[opalescent]

Well, maybe he doesn't have to like or want boundaries for himself. Maybe all he has to be able to do is to respect the boundaries you agree upon as a couple. What some find is that as people respect their boundaries, demonstrate trustworthiness, then the need for those boundaries evaporates, leaving no boundaries. Ironically the most straightforward honest way to no boundaries is by respecting boundaries mutually agreed upon, and then evolving past the need for those boundaries.

[nycindie]

I think it might be an issue of reframing.

Of course he has boundaries - I'm sure he doesn't go around hitting people in the head with a hammer and whatnot. But the kinds of boundaries he does respect, he probably doesn't think of as BOUNDARIES. He might have an association with that word, and other words like rules, structure, etc., that he feels he must resist and rebel against. For some reason, he finds being required to obey some sort of orders from outside himself as offensive, unnecessary, or what-have-you.

But that doesn't mean he never plays by the rules, he has just reframed the rules and boundaries he does accept as something other than rules and boundaries, or something that is more beneficial to him than not working within those boundaries. The trick will be to find what elements he respects and a way to reframe the boundaries you need as something more palatable to him.

[BaggagePatrol]

Bon Iver is crooning to me, and I am overcome with melancholy and restlessness. I should do a workout video, or go howl at the moon to get this itchy need outside of my body, but instead I sit playin' DrawSomething on my phone and thinking of my XGF.

We've been facebookin', arranging to meet up after a business trip to a nearby city that E. and I are making on Fri/Sat. For us to find her amongst the buildings and racing cars and settle our bodies somewhere, collectively for the first time in months. To see her face, trace the familiar lines of her eyes with mine (although she won't look into mine - never has been able to, really - I intimidate her and she loved me. Bad combo.) Hundreds of thousands of words hanging in the air between us, ready to be snatched out by our lungs and given to each other in our next breath. Scared. Anxious. She fb's me and states her curiousity over why we want to see her.

Why do I want to see you, raven haired lover of mine? Why? After so many months of total agony, of being pushed beyond the limits that I knew were in my heart, elastic band about to snap and make me bleed. After E. has worked so hard to tear you out of his heart like a plantar wart rooted deep in a heel - a part of him, but foreign just the same. Here we all are, moving on with our lives. Busy with school, with work, with buying a cabin and organizing and making this world more tangible for each of us.

Because of time. Because of investment. Because of love. We have invested so much time, love and energy into each other, and when it went sideways we panicked - each in our own way, scrambling back into the darkness that we came out of, trying to claw our way past each other into a safer space where we could hear the beating of our individual hearts again. Into the quiet of loneliness and solitude, of breaking hearts and routines. But I gave you everything that I had, and saw all goodness inside of you - thousands of dollars, breaths, moments all passed in the river of our story underneath our shakin' feet.

So here I am wondering. Wondering if "done" means "over" or if it was just a cry for separation for awhile to get clear. To get clear about maybe coming back into each other's lives.

This ain't no highschool romance, no matter how much it smacks of drama and shitty boundaries. It's a love affair that is rare and golden in its simplicity, before everything got so fucked up. The unbelievable sex, the cadence of all that we did together. And so, I want to revisit. Want to sit in the same room, and see what is there with us. Will it be regret? Relief that we ended things? Lust? Sadness? Friendship? I have no idea.

but I want to sit with you. Sit next to you and find out. Sit next to you & E and feel my chest to see what's there. Don't want to have a memory of the last time I saw you being shattering words tossed around like breakin' glass in a lonely bar with saggin' couches. Not when there was so much beauty, Egyptian Cotton sheets and champagne, your first multiple orgasms, the way I cried when I watched the beauty of the two of you making love in that crisp hotel room where we shocked that woman in the morning after my husband ordered us coffee and you waited for me in bed naked as I ushered her and the tray into the room. The way we all held hands walking down the boulevard laughing, clear blue water of my childhood haunts lapping at the sand in the background. The creases around your eyes when you laughed at my surprise when you offered to drop me off and pick me up from a concert, taking me home to crawl into E's warmth and our cackles as we pseudo-assaulted him. You showing me your place, shy and quiet inside, your beautiful blanket from your Chief on the wall, eagle feather proud and elegant above your bathroom door. How my sister loved you, my parents embraced you into their home, knowing full well who you were with their hippie roots and quiet love for me. The crystal decanter glittering on its silver tray with rare scotch that I kept full for you, bought for you, brought across the border for you, wrapped for you. Nights of watching you serve; lingerie and snacks and art and brunches and a thousand kisses rolled into each glance.

I want to see you because no matter how fucked up things got, there is a part of us that will never be apart. I want to honour that inside of each of us. And see. And see what we all see.

Loving and losing in life means that I'm prepared. Prepared for nothing to be there but anger, disappointment, sadness, resentment or any other chex mix of fucked up feelings, spicy and crunchy in their differences and pairings. I'm prepared for the love to blast through us like ice, and leave us numb with wanting. I'm prepared to hate you for all of the pain that you brought into my life, for to hate you for throwing me away again in a moment in a bar with saggy couches.... again. I'm prepared to cry. To talk. To fight. I'm prepared for you to come back to our hotel room and fuck us and yell at us and get drunk and leave in the middle of the night. Life teaches me time and time again that no matter what you expect, or work yourself up for, it will unfold in ways you never imagined. And so I prepared for surprise or same with the same clear heart.

All I know is that I want to see you.

[Fiona]

Oh, such loveliness and longing in your words! I don't have anything to add, really, not now. But thank you for sharing your stories. Perhaps someday I'll be brave enough to do the same.