I’ve made a huge mistake

Dammit. When will I learn?  It wasn’t the dogwalker who shared my old blog with my daughter. It was her actual mother.

Honestly that was my first thought. The first wife, mother of my stepdaughters has many many many times hurt the kids to try to get at me or my ex-hubby. My daughter had contacted me after I wrote about her father marrying the dog walker and said the dog walker had shared the blog with her, but that wasn’t true.  She was protecting her mother, I guess.

Anyway.. I was dead wrong and flew off the handle and blamed the dog walker for shit she didn’t do. Evidently she also has a moral compass and wouldn’t ever do that to my daughter or to my ex, her new husband. She was evidently blind-sided too.

It does not escape my notice that if I were less reactive and hadn’t just believed everything and blamed the dog walker all willy nilly that I wouldn’t have this situation of eating crow. I’m adding that to the list of my wrongs and things to work on.. or rather moving it up the list I guess. It was already on the list.

Fucking emotions! Do you see why it’d be great to be a nice logical vulcan?

Heart and Brain by 9buz at 9buz.com.

Starting the NEW blog

 

Some years ago we started asking ourselves questions. Does monogamy actually work for us? What does it mean if we want to touch other people? Have sex with other people? Have relationships or even love for more than one person?  Would having an orgasm with someone somehow erase what I have with this other person? Would it really?

Could I have sex with others?  Could people I care about have sex with others and we’d still be us?  What if I loved more than one person? At the time I was married, and swinging appealed to me. I had wanted to be a swinger pretty much since I’d learned about what it was. My husband at the time and I discussed it. He was interested at first, but quickly realized he would rather have relationships with others, and we learned about and became poly. And well.. I’m not going to lie. For a lot of reasons, not all of them polyamory, my marriage exploded.

But I was here and I was still poly. I had the capacity and interest in relationships with more than one person at a time. And over the years I had these polyamorous relationships. The most people I was ever dating at once was four, and I do not recommend it. It’s exhausting and basically I was always disappointing somebody.

I read and read and blogged and blogged and lived and talked and tried, and found that hierarchies weren’t for me. I didn’t like primaries and secondaries and never did. Even my husband and I when we first opened up felt that this wouldn’t work for us.  This doesn’t mean that my existing relationships and long term loves don’t have priority with me or that they don’t matter. I am very into honoring commitments and the investment of love and time and experience.  But I liked anyone I dated to be a whole person and to not be arbitrarily forever limited, no matter what, because someone met someone first. This is long and hard to explain. We’ll come back to it.

So.. I’ve been polyamorous for 5 years. And over the years I’ve had occasion to explore, my sexuality, life and all kinds of things. I’ve discovered I’m still interested in swinging and joined a club. I’ve also discovered I’m kinky, and explored that a little bit too. And over time I just kinda discovered that I didnt’ need and didn’t fit super neatly into any tiny box.

Like most humans, I’m complicated. I’m guessing so are you.

So finding myself at need to create a new blog for a variety of reasons I thought about the next chapter. What did I want to write? It wasn’t going to be just a blog on polyamory. And it wasn’t a blog just on swinging. Or a blog even just on dating.

Love, Sex and Relationships have always interested me and are fodder for an infinite stream of thought. It’s also a stream for profound connection and I’ve made so many friends here on this journey of ethical non-monogamy, of honest open relating. And it occurred to me this new little blog could be something else.

I could have blogs on all of these open sex and love and relationships, and could invite a friend to contribute here and there too. We could have interviews and podcasts and links. In non-monogamy, in so many ways we are all defining for ourselves what any of these words and labels mean, and how they fit us, if at all.  And we’re the architects of the connections we are creating. And that’s beautiful but it’s scary and difficult too. And I learn a lot from my friends, and hope you do too.

There’s a weird thing that happens when we start asking ourselves all of these questions. We find and create the love and sex and relationships we crave, and we walk off of the path that doing things the way we were told to creates.  I have found the blogger community so informative and supportive. Starting this new broader blog, I hope that continues.

However you got here and whatever brings you, welcome. I hope to hear from you in comments or emails or on facebook or twitter or any of the other places.

I’m so excited at this next chapter. Here’s to open love and sex and relationships. Here’s to new blogs.

– Thanks for reading!

Holly

The problem with writing

The problem with writing is that there is the thing you think you wrote. You had these thoughts and you wanted to share them or part of them or say something about them, so you put them into words. And you think these words mean this. And you write them. You string together sentences and paragraphs to express the stuff you were thinking or feeling. But you may or may not have actually written what you were thinking.  You might have picked a bad word or wrote it in a rush or been thoughtless.

Then there is the reader. They read what you wrote. They take in those words and process them. They maybe read the words there and may get what those words mean to you. Maybe not.  Maybe they think a certain thing themselves and that comes into play.

It’s a really imprecise thing and to be super honest it’s hard to do right. If you make sure sure sure you never say anything that could ever ruffle anyone then you aren’t really saying anything. You certainly can’t talk about feelings or experiences, love, sex, dating, death, money, or really anything important and expect not to ruffle anyone.  But you can have some standards and make some efforts not to be a dick.

I have totally failed at this and it’s shitty.

Unpublished

cyanideandhappiness.com

I’ve written a bunch of blogs this week and not published a one of them.  One is a rant about things and it just isn’t right, and frankly it’s boring to have this general rant.  I wasn’t even able to get the gist of it right in person when I talked about it.  Another is a long and rambling thing about processing fear that I’m pretty sure nobody cares about and I think I’ve already written anyway.  And one is a gushy ballad of a thing about this incredible sexual experience.  But I didn’t publish it, because really.. how many times can I write about that?

Sometimes writing is difficult.

Sometimes Writing is Hard

It’s hard to be a kitten.

Sometimes writing is hard.  I wrote this long thing last night about laying it all out there when you meet someone, and included all this stuff and realized it could be said like this.

I met a guy on OK Cupid and after some discussion we agreed to meet and both talked a little about what we are open to.  I worried for a second that he might not like this or that about what I am open to and what I want and then remembered something.  If this guy is a good fit for me to date, he’ll be attracted to the things I am.  If who I am upsets him or whatever, well.. that’s good information.  He asked to share the email with his wife, which gave me a little pause for a second till I realized that if this guy’s wife had some issue with me or anything I am, that’s good information, and if he and his wife end up being a little too in each other’s business and I’d be dating  committee (something I would hate) that’s good information too.  And as it turns out I needn’t have worried.  He just really liked what I’d said and thought it was a nice way to say things he and his wife had discussed and wanted to share it with her rather than try to say it again in his words.  Every once in a great while I get afraid to lay it all out there.  I know there can be consequences for doing so, but if I’m hoping to find love or friendship with people who are into ME.. then being me does make a lot of sense.

There.  I just saved anyone who’d read it about a page and a half.

Heh.

And as a bonus, I just took that picture of my kitten, Nani.  It was too good and appropriate to the topic not to share.

Lucky 700!

Last week we hit 700 subscribers to this blog.  Holy guacamole.

I have been away on training, and still am (but am ecstatically on my way home), so I haven’t yet told you and celebrated.  But here we are.. 700!  Damn that feels like a lot.  I’m telling you, and I say this with every milestone, but I never imagined.  Blogs are a tricky business and it’s wonderful is ANYONE reads them.

I’m planning some cool things though and I hope it’ll make it worth it.  I’m planning a more regular podcast, a piece Quinky Girl and I are working on together that will have some great research and some personal interest, and a blog series on some topics.  It’s exciting.  Again, I’d be thrilled to do things just for myself, but it’s wonderful that people actually read them or seem to like them.  It’s such an honor to be helpful here and there and/or to entertain or give you weirdos like me out there the proof that you aren’t alone.  I love that I’m not alone and thank you for that.  And for you non-weirdos.. or weirdos of different stripes, thank you too!

You guys rock.

Life on the Swingset!

I’m in!!!  They are letting me submit contributions!

I have long been a fan of “Life on the Swingset”, the podcast.  It led me to “Pedestrian Polyamory” the podcast and to abiding crushes on pretty much the entire cast of both podcasts.  Talking with other open/poly/swinger folks it seems I am not alone in this.  After a while I checked out their website, and I’m a fan of that too.  It has great blogs and info.

I think when I first opened up I was so hungry for information about how to navigate all of this heady adventure, and so amazed to find that there was a broad community out there figuring this stuff out too.  I also enjoyed Dan Savage’s “Savage Lovecast” and Minx’s “Polyamory Weekly”, and Sex Nerd Sandra’s podcast.  I love learning and I often go on jags when I discover great new things to learn.  I read “Sex at Dawn”, “SM 101”, “Opening Up” and “The Ethical Slut”.  I read websites and scoured the net.

I started this blog during this phase, needing a place to talk about all the things that were happening because the only open people I knew were the people I was dating.  Over time I found community with local meet ups and munches and slowly came out everywhere but at work.

Anyway.. long story summed up, I became a fan-girl of some of the people blogging and writing and podcasting about all of this stuff and I’m insanely honored to say that I’ll be submitting posts to contribute to Life on the Swingset’s blog community.  I’m writing my bio and my first post.  I can’t believe it.  I am very excited.  I think I’ve read the email from Miko the Techogeisha something like 90 times.  I can’t believe she said she and Cooper are already familiar with this blog.  Wow.  Wow.  Wow.  I shouldn’t be surprised.. I mean.. they are people.  They are people like me who are figuring this stuff out too.  Part of what I love about the people I so admire in this community is that by and large they all seem to be still learning too.  They have a lot to share, and part of that is their own journeys with this stuff and the ways they learn and change over time.  This little old blog has a wider reach that I understand sometimes.

I’m 3 people shy of 600 subscribers.  And I am constantly in awe of this.  I know by blog standards this is still relatively small, but I am deeply deeply humbled.  I hope I can contribute something useful and I hope I can add to the community of voices out here.  It’s like anything though, right?  I’m not a learned pro.  What I can add that is really valuable and really unique to me is my experiences.  I’ll try not to state tooooo many opinions though I will share some.  I’ll try to share experiences as I can, and I’ll try not to embarrass anyone but me.  It took a few days to inform my little murder.  We’re submitting to Life on the Swingset!!!  Booya!

Looking Forward

I have done a fair bit of thinking about the idea of policing what I write… and you know… the problem with if it’s done not in moderation is that is that then this becomes a completely useless blog.  It’s not an outlet for me, and the people who do get something out of it get nothing and even then I could likely say some innocuous thing that will upset SOMEONE.  Someone won’t like to read about kink or someone will think it bad of me to talk about sex or think the idea of multiple relationships in the first place is offensive.  I CAN’T please everyone, even if I try.  I can work to be considerate and to learn, but I’m not sure that writing so that I never offend anyone is a good goal.

I can of course try to be careful not to communicate by blog.  I can talk to people the are affected before anything goes in here.  I can avoid details sharing info that isn’t mine to share.  I can talk about me and my life.  I can ask permission to talk about people.  I can give warnings at the beginning of potentially upsetting posts to people who would like not to read certain things and I’m willing to be careful not to write too much about some topics.  I totally can police myself, but I think I also need to do that in moderation or what’s the fucking point?  Why would I write a blog at all?  I can be careful, but to a certain degree it’s impossible to write anything remotely useful and at the same time say anything.

So here goes.  I’m gonna talk about sexy plans and gush on a little in happiness.  Be advised.

I can't write that

I haven’t written a blog in something like 5 days.  It’s not that I’m not thinking things or that I don’t have anything to say.  It’s that I don’t have anything right now that I *can* say.  My little anonymous blog isn’t so anonymous.  Quinky Girl and I were talking about how sometimes you have to be careful what you say.  It’s a lesson I’ve learned painfully more than once.  I’ve said things I didn’t think were a big deal that were to others, thoughtlessly hurting people.  I’ve had people totally misunderstand the things I said or hear in them their own fears and insecurities.  I’ve just written some things poorly.  I’ve used my blog as a way to release tensions.. letting them out and letting them go and having them boomerang.  Very early on I tried to be funny and was hurtful, very hurtful, to a truly good human being.  I don’t get a say in how my words are interpreted and I likely don’t always know all the effects they have.  

I trust people to be adults and to police themselves by and large.  It’s a love, sex and relationship blog and if adults would be upset or angry or disapproving of any of the things I have to say about my love, my sex, or my relationship, I hope that they will move on.  I don’t read things that upset me.  But here’s the thing.  I have no way of knowing or guaranteeing that people will police themselves.  I can say that people chose this then, to upset themselves reading a silly blog, but the thing is that feelings can have real consequences.    So, I feel kinda crippled at the moment to talk much about what I’m thinking.  I care about ALL of the pieces in this big moving puzzle. 

I can tell you that generally I think things with me are good.  As for my love, my sex, and my relationships, I feel… tremendous.  Wonderful things are happening and I really like where I am and where I’m going.  I want to go on and on about that, but I feel like it’s a bad idea.  I’m worried about other things in the lives of those I love, but there isn’t much I can do about them directly so I’m trying to be supportive.  Patience isn’t my strong suit, but I’m proud that I have more than enough right now.  I tend to take on the emotions of others at times and I’m not right now, and I’m proud of that too.  

I think I’m going to do a post answering a bunch of questions I’ve gathered and I’ve decided to interview The Murder to do it.  That’ll buy me time to figure out what to say about other things.  I have kinky adventures coming up, and I promise I’ll find more to say.  Good lord… I can’t be shut up that easily.  🙂 

Face Time

Yeah.. that’s my face.  Big step.  🙂