The thrill of the chase

The thrill of the chase is only a thrill when it’s a little reciprocal. This comes up over and over again.

Men send out messages on dating sites by the dozen and get few replies, usually. You wonder if “they” will call. Does she want to hang out again? Is it too soon to ask him if he’d like to spend the night? You’re in love with them and hope they don’t just like you a bunch.

I joined a swinger club and it has a facebook group.  In the group a woman commented today that she doesn’t know if this is the experience of other single women, but she is tired of being “picked last”, and she doesn’t appreciate being someone’s booty call when some other date or the wife cancelled. She explained that she wants to sleep with people that want to sleep with her and it feels crummy to be choice number 4.

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

I don't know, man

I’m tired of dating. I’m sick of the banter that dies and the thrill of meeting someone new. I don’t want to meet someone new. I want to curl up with someone that knows and loves me. Could I somehow just find them?

It’s made harder because things are so damn amazing with Traveler. I like meeting people, but I really like spending time with him. I wish the other things could be so easy and work so well, but they can’t, because we haven’t known and loved each other for years.

I want to know all the little spots that make them gasp. I want to have our perfect kisses, the ones that melt us and that we’ve learned over time. I want our routines and our habits and the little things we do and are to each other. I want to fall asleep so fast with them too, moments after we came, when we are curled together, sweaty and sated, only to wake up some time later to turn out the lights or the music or cover us both up.  I want to grab our water for our nightstands while they make sure the door is locked. I want to grin like idiots playing candy crush and laughing our asses off in bed. I want to fast forward to the part where it works and the relationship is good.

I want to already be a part of each other’s lives. I don’t want to wonder if they want to see me. I don’t want all the stupid complications of making plans at first, or the nervousness or the wondering. I don’t want to have great online chats and then meet and realize there is no way we ever want to kiss each other. I don’t want the best faces forward and the feeling that I’m sitting across from someone and we are both already thinking… “back to the drawing board”. Hell. I’d rather put on my pajamas and watch a chick flick with my cats sometimes. And so I do. The Boss is really funny, by the way.

I still for the life of me can’t figure out if this guy likes me or is just being nice when he’s not busy.  I like hanging out with him and would probably be happy either way, but I’m not sure if I should stop trying to make plans with him outside of the club if really he’d rather just be fucking. God I hate dating sometimes.

Making Time

Poly people are busy, yo.  Heh.  Like you didn’t know that.  Sometimes things become a colorful mess on Google Calendar, and then what do you do?

Poly people are even busier when they are in grad school and when they are working nearly 60 hours a week and when they are doing renovations.  I’m sure that holds for “when they are parents” and “When they are care taking for loved ones” and a host of other things.

La Petit Mort Ballet via Tumbler

My poor Traveler has had to work like a mad man.  He was out of town.   Then on our date when he got home he fell asleep at 830pm.  We went to dinner and came home and he passed out.. just like that.  A quickie before renovations and the big game. The SuperBowl we all got to spend together, a few hours with Quinky Girl for him, and he had to work till 1030 and we snuggled and slept.  Then our next date he had to take off work for something Quinky needed for the renovation and he had to work all night to make it up.  Then again, he got off early for reno and had to work all night on our date.  Basically I’ve fed him, burped him, and put him to bed on every date we’ve had for two weeks.  (Okay.. minus the burping). Then finally a Saturday night, but we spent it at Quinky Girl’s boyfriend’s party and again.. asleep.  Thank god we love getting all wrapped up and snuggly in our sleep!

Let’s not even mention that two of those working and sleep dates I was working on deadlines too or that the working dates generally started about 2 hours before bed.  Poor Traveler was EXHAUSTED and just fraught.  I tried to soothe him and make it as nice as possible.  What can you do?  Sometimes life is crazy.  The only time we were alone and he wasn’t working we spent doing demo, and that was an amazing godsend.  It felt good to connect with him.

La Petit Mort Texas Ballet

Slaughtering the Goat

from blogs.discovermagazine.com

I had plans to have hot sexy times today with the new guy, Diesel.  He got back from Alaska early and asked if I could meet up Wednesday.  I actually could have, but I had just started my period that day.  I love period sex.  Don’t get me wrong.  But.. this would be like the 3rd time we’ve slept together and the first day of my period.

Girls, is it just me or is that the worst time?

I like period sex actually and know many women who do.  I’m more sensitive at that time and everything feels so much more.. more.  BUT… I also squirt and occasionally gush when I cum.  And Diesel makes me GUSH.  It’s a little insane.  I drink glasses and glasses of water during our sessions so far and I gush oodles and oodles of times.  He seems to like marathon sessions.  (which I love.  I love great one-timers too).  

Standard Operating Procedure

When I was in the Army we had these written manuals for almost everything.  They were called SOP’s or Standard Operating Procedures.  They are the things that explain how everything runs.  Writing an SOP means asking yourself about all kinds of conditions and practices and really defining what you know and what you’ve learned to be the best way to do things.  You often revise them, especially if you learn something.  And I realized I have an SOP of sorts for dating.  I’m not new at this anymore and I’ve worked out a few things for me.

It’s not that I think people would ever need to jump through hoops to date me.  It’s that I’ve just asked myself a lot of questions and I have found some answers now.  Part of that is being an adult for a while.  Part of that is being poly for a while.  Part of that is bitter experience and part of it is reading other’s wisdom, talking to people about what works for them, and thinking about things.  I’ve published 578 blog posts.  I’ve also written 48 drafts that I kept and trashed 3 blogs and made about 10 blog posts private.  That in no way makes me an expert on bupkiss, but it does mean I’ve been thinking.

Where I'm Standing

I’m in the last week of my first quarter of grad school and I’ll warn you that I don’t have the bandwidth to edit this much, and probably shouldn’t even write it.  School is owning my reading and writing these days.  But I need to put stuff somewhere and get to bed.

I’ve felt wrung out much of the last few weeks, looking at the injustices and evil of things and learning so much about all the stuff I didn’t know and knowing I’ll never stop learning.  We got it wrong.

And I’m stressed and tired and a little too emotional because I don’t have the reserves now that I did.  It’s easy to boil over and sob in my car because I promised myself in the coffee shop that I’d cry about this stuff later.

And I thought it’d be nice to look a teeny bit at finding a friend for sexy fun times.  This was a HUGE error in judgement.  I woke up my OkCupid profile and my AFF and whatever else and met a sea of sickness.  Misogyny and entitlement and waves of bullshit meet you if you admit you’d maybe like a lower stress sexy fun friendship with someone.  No matter what I actually say there is a SEA of dudes that evidently see this as an open invite to cut and paste whatever horror they like to send women, complete with the 57000 dick pics they all have laying around for unsolicited viewing.  And they’re mad because this isn’t working.  “Why are those bitches on the internet who say they wanna fuck being such cunts about it?  They write articles about the terrible oppression of men dating online.

A Million Years Ago

From Shrek- The Far Far Away Sign

A million years ago….

1. I kissed you in the vacant lot and ran home breathless.
2. I broke your heart because I wasn’t ready.
3. I thought this was what relationships were and I didn’t know this was rare and special.  We danced all night.  We made love and when I called it that I didn’t giggle.  We said shit like “soulmates” and “forever” and I didn’t doubt for a second they were real.  Nobody had ever loved like we loved.  We sang songs to each other.  We took baths together and sat there until we were pruny.  You fucked her.  And you lied.  I felt worse about the lie because it meant we weren’t what I thought we were.  I walked away hurt and insecure.  I spent a decade feeling the image of you in an Indian blanket in our cold apartment, silent, as I dropped the key into your lap.
4. I got her note. She was gone.  She needed to be with him.  She had a family back home. Wouldn’t I please understand?
5. I fucked him at some party, the entire time wondering if the pool table took quarters… “mmmmhmm.. yes.. oh baby”.. does that pool table take quarters?  What is the mechanism to drop the balls if it doesn’t take quarters?
6. I wondered if she’d ever love me back.
7. I wanted to break it off but his dad had just died.  So I cheated. A lot. I felt more and more sick and when I broke up with him I thought I was doing him a favor.
8. I couldn’t sleep with him because it would have been too real.
9. She played with me next to my bed and I thought she liked me, but we never talked again.
10. I liked him and he liked her and she liked someone else.
11. He was a lot worse than I thought.  He was a lot worse.  He left a scar on my back from the event that changed my life.  He committed suicide years later, after hurting a lot more girls, and eventually going to prison.  He got out and killed himself.  I felt relieved that he wouldn’t hurt more girls and ashamed I’d been silent and hurt those girls.
12. I waited a long time to touch him because I wanted to do things differently and when I finally touched him it just didn’t work and we couldn’t make it work so I broke his heart.
13. He was my friend.  He was deeply honest and really flawed and fucked like a demon.  We talked about EVERYTHING with utter and complete honesty that wasn’t brutal because we bore no brutality.  It was the most comfortable I’d ever been with my body in his pure love of it.  You’re supposed to learn to love your body but I loved mine because he did.  We kept the lines really straight and loved each other for years, around and in between all the others, coming home.  We’ll never be lovers again, but I still consider him a friend.
14. He left me for groupies and I met the women he’d cheated on me with when her boyfriend was cheating with me and I didn’t know it.  She and I were great friends for years.
15. I loved him for his letters and got swept up in them and the things he created in them.  It was too late when I’d realized my mistake and I spent a long time trying to stick to my mistake.  When I could no longer be faithful and couldn’t be unfaithful, I left.  I like seeing his happy pics on Facebook.
16. I never thought it would happen again, but it did.  I met him at Starbucks.  We shared a humor and a passion and loved each other through a million challenges and rewards.  We wrote love poems and songs and gave each other gifts of 100 kisses on post-its and notes hidden in lunches and suitcases and pockets.  For years I knew great love and great passion.  He was my best friend and I was his.  And we grew and grew and grew.  I wish I made him dinner more.  I’ve only learned that these past few years and I wish I’d learned it with him.  Some of the greatest and the worst days of my life were spent with him, and the love we had carried us through them.  With the end I wondered if I’d imagined it, but my box of letters tells me I didn’t. The passion never died until finally, that last year it did.  He told me she was too much and there was nothing left.  He wrote a poem based on a speaker we’d heard together when we were first dating, and redid it at times over the years to delight me. He used it again with the next women, which did not delight me. I don’t understand what happened really.  I make up theories and live with them and discard them because I’ll never know why.  I’m trying to accept that but it sits uneasily without ever having had my closure.  I read the things he said, to me, and later to others, the lies. He was intentionally cruel and admitted it.  And I’ll never understand.  That is not the man I loved. He replaced me and then replaced her.  He lied a lot to them too, and I’ll never understand it.  This is not the man I loved.  He is not the person I loved for so long and so well.
17. In the midst of all of that I fell for him.  He seemed sweet and honest and clear, a relief in troubled times.  I loved his dazzling mind and the force of his love.  I fell hard and had a hard time letting go when the mask fell.  But I did.
18. I fell for him so slowly and so well, my love sneaking in on quiet cat feet.  It took a long long time to know him and I’ll always be learning.  His kisses stayed dizzying, and his arms became home.  I love our adventures and our quiet nights and that we can get lost in each other doing absolutely nothing.  And then he told her he’d leave me if she asked him to.  I’m still not totally sure why it changed either, but suddenly all the things we were talking about for our future were different.  All of the little plans we were playing with were off the table.  He didn’t want what he said he wanted anymore.  Or he wanted it differently.  I wondered if I got this love wrong, if it wasn’t what it seemed.  I didn’t get it wrong.  It’s just complicated to live with all of our commitments and honor and complexities of life and history and it’s hard to navigate for women with a past.  There are a lot of moving parts.  It’s beautiful and hard sometimes, but he’s worth it.  Eventually it came that he would not trade me for the wishes of anyone on Earth, and I know it in my marrow.  He’s part of the family I’m making.  I sometimes miss the surety of when I was a girl, or think maybe other ways might be easier.  But then reality reminds me that relationships are always complicated.  Grown up love is complex and beautiful and long-awaited and deep… if you’re lucky.

I’m lucky.

Shrek and Fiona ride off into the sunset. From the movie Shrek and found at http://basementrejects.com/

 

Really? Really?

Ugh.  Dating is the fucking worst sometimes, isn’t it?

I am feeling disheartened.  I really am.

I talked with this guy last night and had all this clicking all over the place.  He is smart and interesting and a good conversationalist.  I put out feelers for a nice casual friend for some adventures.

We talked late.  We talked so late I was late on a paper.  He just seemed.. kinda great.

So today we talked about meeting for a drink.  He was willing to come by my house and I made sure that he understood meeting by my apartment would not mean that there would be any sex, and that I hoped we’d have a drink and talk.

Hours of conversation.. all that talking about all kinds of things last night and this morning and then he cools.  He isn’t so into meeting.  I ask him about it and he says he’d rather not meet for a drink, and asks to meet at my place or his.  I say we don’t have to meet for a drink.  A coffee or a walk or a yogurt or something are fine.

More foot dragging.  Talk about it again and he explains that if I’m uncomfortable we can meet in public, but he’s met people from online before without the meet and greet and it was fun for all and not all about the sex.

I tell him I understand that not everyone does things the way I do, but I would like to meet and just talk without expectation.  When I have met people from online I had oodles of sexy talk with, often the click isn’t there and for me sometimes that is because I feel like there is an obligation or expectation and it’s just better for me and sexier to meet without expectation and let things take their course.

He was rather petulant about it, and we thanked each other for the time.  Just like that.

So odd.  Why would you talk to a woman for hours and hours and then refuse to meet her for a drink if she would not promise sex immediately?   Wouldn’t it have just been smart to go, have a drink, chit chat and end the meeting with a kiss and maybe plans to play next time?  In the best case scenario you meet just for a drink, hit it off and end up together that night, right?  So weird.

What the fuck dating world?

I think I’m going to take up knitting or something instead or join a cribbage league or something.

You and I both know I’ll change my mind.  But right now I’m thinking.. fuck dating.  What a bunch of bullshit.

 

Dating isn't for Sissies..

As Quinky Girl and I begin to date anew, and as I read posts on the board for people dating on OKC, I find again that dating isn’t for sissies.

from onlinedatingmagazine.com

Guys talk about sending out messages by the boat-full and hearing silence.  Women are beaten by messages demanding things, insulting, cat-fishing, and basically just yelling “LOOK AT MY DICK!  LET ME PUT IT PLACES!!!”

Everyone is asking, “Does it really have to be this hard?”.  I see that time and again in the craigslist postings and the Adult Friend Finder profiles and the OKC profiles and messages.  Women make laundry lists of rules trying to weed out the obnoxious shit we get and men sound a little panicked that nobody seems to want to engage them, much less ride them.

Then you meet someone interesting.