Goldilocks

Goldilocks painting by Jasmine Beckett-Griffith

I’ve said many times I wish I were the ever-graceful and unaffected Grace Kelly.  I’m not particularly emotional at the moment, but it’s a thing with me that I get embarrassed of my emotion.  Wait, no.  I get embarrassed of my *messy* emotions.

I’m perfectly happy that I feel boundless love.  I am tickled that a great number of things delight me. I’m passionate.  I love deeply.  I’m fiercely loyal.  I’m tenacious and determined and empathetic.  I can go there with a friend.  I can take a lover there.  All of these emotions I adore.

But it’s the messy stuff.  I’m ashamed I have insecurities.  I’m embarrassed when I cry.  I can’t stand being irrational or out of sorts or brooding.  I despise that I burn over offenses and that I have to address and let go of things when others seem perfectly capable of stuffing them down forever.  I hate my messy emotions.

I was talking about this with Quinky Girl.  She is a human who gets twinges, but by and large she is unaffected by some things that make me rail.  I deeply envy that.  I would be the same way if I could and I can’t.  I HATE to talk about the little things that bother me.  But if I don’t they become big things and come out sideways.  I hate that too.  Other polys say “Oh I didn’t need to talk about that.  I just let it go”.  And I feel much much worse.  It’s like they are jabbing me right in my eye with that.  I’d prefer not to have awkward moments but I can’t be any other way.  I don’t wanna make shit weird.  I don’t wanna have a little chat.  I hate confrontation and awkwardness.  I wanna just flip my hand, brush my hair off my shoulder and say “I never did mind the little things”.  But I simply don’t work that way.

I Admit I'm a Bad Poly Sometimes

Alright.  I admit it.

I just read a blog post by Ginger at Poly Nirvana, called Pout.  It’s here.

She’s talking about her “less than perfect” poly feelings as her love is dating and with this other new girl.  She was sort of sharing and admonishing herself and owning up to her stuff.  That’s always kinda rad.  I am a huge believer that what comes from the heart reaches the heart, and such honest sharing is so useful.  When we pour that stuff out people can relate to it.  It’s human.  And of course, it got me thinking.

tiny home in a clearing made of stone and wood

It’s not a pressing matter this second, but I’ve been working on preparing for Traveler to find and date and be with others again.  As far as I know he’s not madly searching for new connections, but I know he’s open to the idea and I think he’d like it.  We talked about it a couple of times and I flipped out about it…twice, sadly.  (I despise that by the way).  Traveler has always been unflinchingly supportive of my dating and sexy exploits and whatever.  He trusts me and supports me, and it’s beautiful.  I want to give him that.  Sometimes I do give him that.  He’s so beautiful, so kind, so sweet and passionate and loving, and he has a special gift for loving that honestly I don’t think it would be right to jealously guard it.  I love him loving his wife and I used to love him loving Peaches.  And it’s a precious thing, to love someone so much that their happiness fills you with joy.  He talks about Quinky Girl sometimes and I just overflow.  He SHOULD have that and she should too.  It’s beautiful.  I love that my love for him includes that.  I love that my love for her does too.  It feels very right.  I feel the same about Cleveland and his wife.  I love my men in part because they are good men that know how to love.

But wives don’t scare me in the same way.

Stop Kicking The Teeth

a fish jumps into a new bowl with reeds

***edited for being insanely long***

I am a girl who finishes things.  I wasn’t always.  I was flighty and flaky and a little unreliable.  I was mercurial, changing, watery.  I made promises and couldn’t keep them.  I changed my mind.  I went another direction.  I moved and tried this and abandoned it for that.  I had a million jobs.  I took on hobbies and then all but abandoned them.  I was a construction worker, waitress, flower shop clerk, retail, business sales, green house, marketer, home health aid, gas station worker, video clerk, secretary, data entry person, a temp.

Trouble is.. I hurt people.  I broke hearts.  I didn’t do the things I wanted to do and said I’d do.  I changed that about me and I discovered I was tenacious.  I joined the Army and you don’t just leave the Army.  I was somehow sent to an Army school I didn’t actually qualify for.  So I ended up ill-prepared at a school that graduated 30% of it’s enrollees.  EVERYONE there was more qualified.  Most of them had degrees, and a few had more than one.  Maybe some of the others were fuck-ups too, but they were all more qualified, and 60% of us would end up picking another career from a pool of careers the Army needed when we failed.

Some people gave up.  I’d never failed anything because I’d been smart enough to fluff through.  I had never actually tried hard at anything and here I was doing my damn-est and ending up barely making it.  I mean I was SCRAMBLING and studying every night, learning how to study.  I almost failed all of the written tests and aced the practicals and ended up eeking by.  That I barely made it when smarter and more educated people left every month was ONLY because I cared way too much.  Smart people gave up and picked other careers.  I was the gummy stuff stuck to the bottom of the pot and that was simply not an option.

a fish jumps from a crowded bowl to a larger bowl with only one fish in it

I dug in my heels and I found out that I was pretty good at digging in my heels.  I discovered a tenacity.  I studied my ass off for that year of Army school and got help and graduated exactly center of my class.  I was never so proud of average.  And something changed in me.  I was a person who finished things.  I was a person that stuck.

For a Limited Time!

Time is precious for all of us.  There are just so many hours in a day.  It flies when we have fun.  There is a poly saying that love may be limitless, but time and attention are not.  A bunch of sayings about time and they’re so true.  I got the nicest gift of time this weekend.

Friday I went to Peach’s house to help her pack and was fed a good dinner instead.  Everything just started so late so we’re helping Tuesday instead. It was a nice way to spend time after a stressful week.  While there, she made the joke that her friend was coming over to meet Traveler.  It was a joke.  Her friend was coming over to help and put faces with the names.  The friend was lovely and smart and funny and genuine and just obviously good people.  I liked her a lot.  I bristled unnecessarily at the joke about her dating Traveler though.  I felt possessive and my possessiveness didn’t sit well with me.  I hate the idea of Traveler getting a 4th girlfriend.  (He has a wife and 2 girlfriends).  To be clear.. I do not think this person wants to date Traveler.  She was only being friendly.  But it made me bristle and I didn’t like that about myself. 

Blogging 101

I hurt someone I love very much with this blog and my thoughtless writing.  I shared personal information about her and hurt her.  I shared parts of private conversations and painted her in a bad light.  It was not malicious or intentional, but it was hurtful and wrong and worst of all.. public.  I told myself I was okay and not sharing confidences because she had said I could write anything I wanted about her in my blog and that she was never going to read it, and the things I shared I shared after she’d told another person… but that’s bullshit.  That’s all bullshit.  It’s total and utter bullshit.

Her telling her close person things is not license for me to tell the blogisphere because “now it is out”.  That was really thoughtless and ridiculous.  I should absolutely have known better.  Some things are private. I know that may sound ridiculous on a blog of this nature.  I talk about private conversations and sex and love and feelings and all kinds of private stuff here all the time.  BUT.. that’s okay when it is MY PRIVATE INFO, not when it is someone else’s.  Also, the people in my life that I talk about okayed me talking about love and sex and relationships, not every aspect of their lives.

OK.. but I share private info about my partner’s sex lives and conversations and feelings here too.  I asked them for permission and received it before I shared stuff here, but that’s not a blanket okay.  Just because someone knows I have a blog about love and sex and relationships and ok’ed me talking about a dating situation they had doesn’t mean that they are now okay with me sharing absolutely everything about them.  It’s one thing for me to choose to talk about what I am feeling or doing and entirely another to talk about others.  MY INFO IS MINE TO SHARE AND THEIRS ISN’T.

I was writing a blog about feeling relieved and a blog about some hurt feelings I had.  I could have talked about both of those things without sharing details about others.  I could have sent them to her and had her okay if she wanted to share the things I shared.  I could have called her and talked about the posts before posting.  I could have done any number of things that would have been better. 

I made it hard for her to feel okay about going to certain things because there may be a person there who has read the blog and could know who she is.  I hurt her feelings and broke her trust.  I embarrassed her and betrayed her.  I did not do it on purpose, but the damage is still the same and still bad.  The part that compounds this is that I did it on a public blog.  And worse, this is not the first time I’ve wrestled with the whole public blog thing.

In the end, with my stuff I chose to accept the things that I was putting out there and to keep being honest even if I found it embarrassing or upsetting later.  But the thing is that I am the one writing it.  She isn’t choosing what is put here and was the victim of my sharing.  She didn’t decide she wanted to share that to get it off of her chest or in hopes that it would be useful or part of a story she is telling.  She didn’t get the choice that I did.  She told her friend things in private and her friend chose what things to say and said them with her own hurt feelings entwined.  That’s shitty.  That’s really shitty.  I like to think I’m not an asshole, but I was here. 

I don’t know yet how I am going to address this or make amends moving forward. I think it’s pretty clear I’ve ruined our friendship and that I’ve lost that.  I’m not sure I’ll even get the opportunity to make peace there or to make direct amends.  What I mean is that I’m not sure what to do about this fucking blog.  It’s important to me and I love writing it.  I love the damn thing, but it’s clear I need to have a much better way to avoid hurting others or I need to kill it because it’s costing me people I love.

Of course one thing would be to not post anything I wasn’t okay with absolutely all parties reading, whether they read the blog or not.  Obviously I should do that and will if I write more.  Another might be asking if people would like to okay any blogs they are mentioned in before I post them.  Obviously I also need to be much more vague about others and maybe not post blogs with a lot of feeling until after a cooling off period.. maybe a day or two?  I don’t know.  If I keep writing this, and honestly I do want to, I need to learn a lot more about how to protect others and how to avoid anything remotely like this ever happening again. 

This has cost me dearly.  Things I said were not as clear as I’d like them to be and that’s the trouble with writing.  I didn’t think enough. I know the blog isn’t really that anonymous, especially since we’ve been to polycamp.  I think at a minimum I need to radically change a few things about others and privacy and this blog.  I also need to talk to the people in my life and have a very clear and much better understanding about what is and is not okay to share here. 

The absolute worst part of all of this is that I hurt someone I care about.  I made things hard for them and they don’t need any more hard things right now.  Even if I get a change to apologize, and even though I’m retooling the blog and deleting ANYTHING like that, I can’t take it back or change that it happened or undo it.  It’s out there.  I guess this one I’m definitely sharing as a warning and as an explanation.  I want to promise I’ll kill this blog, but that’s bullshit drama too.  I love this blog and want to keep it.  I have to find a way to keep it that doesn’t damage those around me though or I’m not going to be able to justify its existence.

Reading Between The Lines

cyanide and happiness

I recently got a text from a friend that they’d meant to send to someone else. It was a not very nice thing about me. They had never said this to me. I said “wow. ouch”. They responded “It makes me sound like a bitch, but I love her. I just think it’s post trip annoyance”. I said “No. Ouch because you are talking to me. Great. Thanks”. They had confessed that they were trying to manipulate situations and that they had all these unresolved feelings with their partner and that they’d been upset with me about that.

They finally realized they were talking to me.

Young Girls are Whack

I was talking to an old friend yesterday.  He recently had a problem where a 20 year old girl he was “dating” turned out to be very unsavory.  He’s in his 40’s.  She’s hot.  He was surprised she was a train wreck. 

May/December Romance

I’ll admit there are some very young very hot girls who want relationships or friends with benefits with middle aged men, but honestly.. they’re usually very damaged.  There are exceptions of course, but they are usually for men who are very very rich or look like Matthew McConaughey and that most normal 20 year old’s don’t date most normal 40’somethings.

Um.. yes please. 🙂

When I told him this, he became increasingly upset.  He could not or would not see that I was not saying he is poor or not good looking.  He was incensed.  I didn’t think I was saying anything particularly hurtful and apologized and tried to explain.  The more I tried, the more upset he became.  He began insulting me and listing my flaws, defending himself.  I held it together for a while and then lost my temper.  I called him an infant.  He has a habit of being defensive and pushing people out of his life, despite the fact that he’s an intelligent, caring, sweet, funny, kind, good looking guy. 

I was concerned for him.  This girl was a train wreck of epic proportions.  She was a pill/meth/drug addict and was like.. days sober when they met and began “dating”.  He knew that she’d done crazy things in the past but thought she was good because “She’s sober now”.  Um.. sober for days?  And she was actually admittedly still smoking pot.  She has a twitter account and was posting shit about doing this guy and that guy and doing meth, and around the time my old friend had sex with her, she posted that she was “throwing up cum next to 7-11.  I’m so classy”.  That was almost exactly at the same time my friend had unprotected sex with her. 

“What?” he said, “I couldn’t have known.  I asked her if she was regularly screened and was clean.  She said she was.”  Right.  But she’d have sex with a guy she’s known for like a week with no condom?  She’s a paragon of sexual safety, as is my friend.  Not surprisingly she gave him Chlamydia.  (I hope that’s all she gave him).  When he finally reached her about it she admitted that she knew and “was going to tell him” but he was an asshole.  She insulted him.  He was nervous about her because of her crazy twitter and irate phone call and changed the locks on his house. 

So with him on day one of antibiotics, I thought it might be a nice time to ask him if it might be wise to rethink this whole dating-20-year-old-women thing.  He blinked a lot and seemed sincerely confused.  “No.  What do you mean? Why would you say that?”.  “Um.. because the kind of 20 year old who would date a man of your age isn’t going to be a very quality person, on average”.  This one was tweeting all kinds of unsafe and crazy things, gave him clap, lied about her testing, insulted him, and scared him.  Really, he’s surprised? 

Bono with two very young girls.

The crazy part is he’s a cool guy.   He can actually get really decent women if he raised the bar a little.  Instead of hearing me though, he became more and more unreasonable and ended the friendship, convinced I was “twisting the knife”.  Sigh.

His girlfriend was trying to tell him the same thing but he just WILL NOT hear it, and he’s a very smart guy.  Sigh. 

Eh..it’s not always a good idea to be a messenger or hold a mirror to someone.  I didn’t take his insults and lashing out to heart and I’m not very upset that he withdrew his friendship, but I am a little flabbergasted and sad.  What are you going to do?

Uh oh. Resigned.

I’m laying on the bed in my play space, and I’m realizing I’m really doing this.  I’m separating from my husband.  I’ve talked to a couple of people today and oddly I’m sad and it sucks, but I’m kinda.. resigned.  I’m not crying or upset.  I’ll be honest that I don’t know if this will stick.  We said we’d just take a break and I’m staying here at my play space in the city.

I’m just honestly.. ready.  I’m tired of the months of maltreatment.  I’m tired of the mean comments and the jabs and the judgements.  Fuck you’s and explosions, often over NOTHING.  Whatever. 

The Hope of Fools

I just had a really chill date with my hubby.  It wasn’t all that intimate and the poor thing spent a good deal of time dealing with work blowups, but at least there were no Hubby-PolyChick blowups?  Can I get an amen?

He nixed our plans to go to Portland tody, saying (rightfully) that we should try to make more progress on our bills.  I get it, but I can’t say I’m not disappointed.  I was really liking the idea of a few days to have fun and reconnect, and it’s Portland, not the lunar landing.  Meh.. we’ll get there, hopefully before I lose my use-or-lose leave.  I’m trying.. really trying not to get resentful.

The Process

I distracted myself royally last night, playing hours and hours of WoW.  I did such a good job of it I stepped on the feelings of Great Date inadvertently in fact.  Thank God Great Date texted me this morning and brought it to my attention.  He also made a little amends for punishing me with silence, and that really helped.  I love stuff like that.. when you can just talk about what’s up and unravel it.  It’s hard sometimes and I feel foolish afterwards voicing my feelings or asking for what I want or need (and he did too) but it is a healthy thing to just be clear and honest and be willing to negotiate and see the others viewpoint.

Last night after all the WoW’ing, Traveler asked if I wanted to talk on the phone.  I did.  I’m really coming to appreciate his level headed ability to listen and see others perspectives.  I keep trying to make poly friends and keep having trouble doing so because the only people that seem to want to really talk or hang out have ulterior motives.    (so not true.. but it feels that way some times)

Traveler helped me ask questions of myself and break it down.  I’m still working on it a little, but it kinda boils down to this.  My head is totally on board with where things are, but my heart is taking time to adjust.  I crave stability in my relationships.  I like to know where I stand and where you stand.  I welcome this change, but it is a change and it’s left me feeling unbalanced.  In order for them to get that close in only 6 months he’s had to pour a lot of time and attention and feeling into that and it’s left little for anything else, including work and school and his daughters and me.  It’s natural that she’s all shiny and new, and she would never ask for that and he doesn’t mean to do that, but it’s what has happened.  I just need a little time  to adjust and a little help not feeling so neglected.  And to be honest.. that’s not bad or wrong.  I’ve put a lot of time and attention into my relationships too.  We SHOULD nurture our new connections.  But we need to be careful to nurture our established connections too.  I’m not sure I’ll ask anything of him exactly, but maybe allowances as I adjust.  The truth is his relationships should progress as he and his partners see fit.  It’s not my relationship and I don’t have a say in what speed it travels at, but it’s also ok if I have feelings about that.