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.

Home Again

Traveler and I just got home from a week away, and what a week!  I think I fell even more in love with him.

We spent a week together in Vancouver Island in British Columbia.  It was wonderful. We hiked and walked and ate great meals and did sea kayaking.  We had morning and afternoon and evening kisses and snuggles and hot passionate sex. We had connected sex and sweet sex and close gasping, can’t stop kissing, locked eyes, grasping, aching, delicious sex.  Almost four years in and I fall fall fall.  God yes.  We’ve never spent a week together before, just us, and it was glorious.

We talked and talked and joked and laughed and kissed and snuggled and just had the best time.  It was easy and fun.

And honestly it was hard to come home.  We daydreamed about the cafe we’d open in Hawaii or the bed and breakfast we’d run like the one we stayed in.  We dreamed about the vacation home we’d build together and the little country house we’d live in.  It’s idle dreams that we both know won’t happen.  We love Quinky, and our jobs and our friends, and our lives.  But there was something special about this dreaming o me.  It’s special because it isn’t real.  It won’t hurt anyone or change our lives. It’s just the admission that in a perfect world made of magic we’d get to be together like this all the time.  It’s only the admission that this love is a great love too.

Comfort

I’ve been tired, so tired my love.  My mind is weary.  I felt like I’d drown in this and needed those few hours to dig in the dirt with you and to make my body ache.  I needed to quiet my mind and rest in the labor.  I needed our breath, and the sounds of us working, and the little smiles and dirty kisses and the sun that was there even if it was cloudy.  I needed to rest, but my mind won’t ease now.  There is too much to do and to think about and I’m thinking deadlines deadlines deadlines.  So I needed to just work with you.  I needed the comfort and ease of the way we work together.

I’ve felt a little distant from you love.  I’ve felt far away and too deep in my head with all of this work.  I’ve needed to linger and spend time looking at each other, but it’s time we don’t have.  Thank you for your little touches while we worked side by side later on the couch.  I needed those little smiles.  I needed those pets.  Soon love.  Soon.

Thank you for fantasizing with me a little afterward, for giving my mind something to chew on that wasn’t academic.  Thank you for knowing how to please me so well, for your warm skin and your soft kisses.  Oh, when you call be beautiful or pull me to you.  Oh when you trace my curves.  Oh god I was so tired but I could not stop touching you and being touched by you.  I love you I love you I love you on my breath and in my heart and my head.  I fell asleep sated and tired and ready for blissful sleep, such comfort.

image from alligator-sunglasses.com

And thank you for not being able to get out of bed. Dozing in and out of sleep with you curled to me…. heaven.  Why can’t I ever stop touching you? Craving your touch?  So many little kisses.  Everywhere.  Your taste.  Your smile.  Your scent.  On my lips and in my breath and in my heart.  I love you I love you I love you.  The warm comfort of you lingers.

I’m so tired, love.  But we’re almost there.  You’re such a comfort.

Harder and Harder

It gets harder and harder to be without you for a day or a few days or a week.  Some funny thing will happen in my day, or I’ll want to tell you something.  Sometimes I send a text but usually I don’t.  I know your time with them is important and precious, just as your time with me is.  We try not to intrude on your time with each other, and so usually I wait.  I’ll see you tomorrow or the day after that, and I’ll tell you all the funny things and the news then.  But I miss her too, so sometimes I text her, not every time I want to or every time I miss her either, because her attention needs to be with you too.

It gets harder to not have you here and I know it’s harder on you, missing that home when you are here and this home when you are there.  Nobody tells you when you’re entering poly how much time you’ll spend missing people.  But they also don’t tell you that it’s a little easier when you think of this family you have made being happy.

When I think of you being loved as you should be… when I think of you happy and cared for and cherished, the ache is less.  I’m happier then, thinking of you happy and loved.  But I still kinda wish there were a few more of you to go around.

True Colors

I can’t believe how corny this is, but I just listened to True Colors by Cindy Lauper a bunch of times in a row.  There’s life just being life really, the things of loving and working and sleeplessness and school, but it’s just that it’s the end of a day where I worked 12 hours to turn in my big paper.  I just miss my dad.

Fuck, I miss my dad.  I miss the way he loved Cindy Lauper.  He loved her so much.  Here he was, this 40 year old Dad and he was just so tickled by a song my friends and I listened to.  He’d laugh and smile and smack his leg.  “Oh man!  Look at that Holly!  Look look look! Is that a chandelier on her head?”.  It’s funny to watch the video again.  He just got such a kick out of her.  But her song said something too.

You with the sad eyes
Don’t be discouraged
Oh I realize
Its hard to take courage
In a world full of people
You can lose sight of it all
And the darkness inside you
Can make you feel so small

Sometimes you just need home.  Sometimes you get lost and your cheeks hurt from salt and you are so bone wearyingly tired.  I end up longing for memories of a grandmother I didn’t have.  I miss my dad, playing guitar and singing like Bob Dylan, only somehow more screechy.  I miss my dad playing Cindy Lauper’s records and the way he was sad and comforted by her song. I think when you loose someone it’s just that time wears off the edges of the thing so it cuts less, but every now and then you find a burr.  I miss him like it was yesterday.  And everyone misses the people that they lost in this unique and lonely way.

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

Poly Benefit #397. Many Hands

Many hands make lighter work.

this is similar to what we ended up with (minus the rad brick) -image from lssu.edu

Traveler has begun a gigantic renovation project and Jonah (Quinky Girl’s other partner) and I helped.  We demolished his 1960’s bathroom from his 1917 house.  There was basically a room built into a room, so we took down paneling, sheetrock, studs, plywood, plaster and lathe.  Actually it looks like there were two renovations to that area of the house over time.  You know those bathrooms Greta Garbow must have had in some movie, all marble and golden fixtures, hollywood glamour?  Yeah.  We took out the 60’s plastic version of that.  Formica with veins and flecks and swirls and fake brass frills on a bathroom that at some point had eaten a hallway and what seems to have been a closet with a window. (We can’t figure it out!)  They wanted that 3 feet of kitchen and a luxurious bathroom from this century.  It’s step one.

I felt giddy to be included.

FINALLY.. something I’m good at that I could do for them.  They’ve taught me about wine and Traveler has taught me to ski and play WOW and helped me make furniture.  Quinky has taught me a lot of life and love stuff and inspired me to learn to cook with her crazy skills and encouragement.

This is part of what we did today.  Image found at wanderleur.com

I have a lot of skills and I am always appreciated, but this was kinda special to me.  Long long ago I did demolitions for a living.  I had one unsettling moment for them when about 40 pounds of plaster came down in a shot, but I was a huge help.  And I loved it.  I loved it because I love them and I love being useful to them.  The plumbers are coming and I helped make them ready.  We all worked really really hard and we all contributed.

But here’s a little secret part.  I love it because I love feeling included.  My family was doing a big project and they needed my help.  We built something. I helped them make home better.  I love it when we’re all together at times like that and when we sit afterwards sipping lovely champagne that is extra good in our parched and tired throats and the sore muscles we have earned.  Seriously.. next time you kick the shit outta some long and aching task, sit and survey your labors with bubbles.

I love it too because I love how well Traveler and I work together, working on our own parts and coming together, flowing in and out of our lone tasks and those we collaborate on.  We troubleshot together, taking each other’s suggestions and jumping to one another’s aid, and got a very large amount of work done.  They’re ready for the plumber now.  I love that we work well together.  I love that we all made it happen.  It thrills me to have this with Traveler and me. It’s not like it’s some thing that only exists with us, but it doesn’t have to be.  I just like that it exists with us.  I like how much we love working together.  It makes me feel… secure.  It’s a thing partners do.  I won’t have his last name and I may never know his family.  But I helped to make his home.  And that makes me really happy.

It’s a thing partners do.

And we’re partners.  We’re actually really good partners.

 

Difficult to Love

I have to admit that all my reading and writing has belonged to grad school, but I’m here and I’m thinking of you.  I do a lot of thinking these days.  I can’t stop thinking about this tonight.  I talked to a friend going through a break up from a terrible man, and this kept running in my head.

<p><a href=”https://vimeo.com/38766162″>Warsan Shire – &quot;For Women Who Are Difficult To Love&quot;</a> from <a href=”https://vimeo.com/movingonworks”>MovingOn</a&gt; on <a href=”https://vimeo.com”>Vimeo</a&gt;.</p>

You are a horse running alone
and he tries to tame you
compares you to an impossible highway
to a burning house
says you are blinding him
that he could never leave you
forget you
want anything but you
you dizzy him, you are unbearable
every woman before or after you
is doused in your name
you fill his mouth
his teeth ache with memory of taste
his body just a long shadow seeking yours
but you are always too intense
frightening in the way you want him
unashamed and sacrificial
he tells you that no man can live up to the one who
lives in your head
and you tried to change didn’t you?

closed your mouth more
tried to be softer
prettier
less volatile, less awake
but even when sleeping you could feel
him traveling away from you in his dreams
so what did you want to do love
split his head open?
you can’t make homes out of human beings
someone should have already told you that
and if he wants to leave
then let him leave
you are terrifying
and strange and beautiful
something not everyone knows how to love.

It doesn’t directly relate to my life right now, but I feel it. I have spent my entire life trying to be smaller and easier and simpler and less of a pain.  I can remember, one of my first memories and one of the few of my mother in early childhood, she was suddenly there and her face was evil red and she grabbed my arm and yanked me up by it.  I had been laughing at something.  I found something hysterical.  I have no memory of what it was.  Maybe it was a cartoon or a game I was playing with a doll.  I had been laughing in the sunbeam streaming in the living room window and then suddenly her red angry face was inches from mine as she yelled at me to stop it, that my laughter was too much and would I please just shut up.  And suddenly I was crying wracking silent sobs.  I felt so ashamed and I could see this was making her madder.  I knew I needed to just shut up but I was overwhelmed with tears.  She looked at me like I was a disgusting vile thing and dropped me and walked away.

Another time, playing with friends, we were playing house and I was the mama and my two friends were my kids.  They made me a drawing and brought it to me and I got so overcome in my fake mama role with the joy of their present and their love of me that I rushed to hug them and kiss them.  So charged was I with the intensity of wanting to love on my pretend children, I knocked my friend over and kissed her face over and over again until she shoved me off of her and stood up, infuriated.  “What is WRONG with you!  Jesus.  Holly.  You are too much”.  They both shot me a look and walked out of my room and out of house and away.

My best friend’s birthday party.  I excitedly watched her opening her presents and was thrilled that I had bought the most presents for her and wrapped them all individually in the years of Christmas wrapped paper and home made wrapping I’d decorated.  After a couple of presents people were looking at me funny.  What happened?  What was wrong?  Melissa got up and asked me to go talk.  “That’s so embarrassing.  Why did you do that?  Do you want people to think we are lesbians?  Damn it, Holly.  Too much.

I felt sometimes like everyone had a book about how to be that I didn’t.  I thought for a long time that my mother had left because I was so infuriating.  I thought my father was depressed so much when I was a child because I was a shitty daughter.  He told me he hadn’t been able to meet anyone because of me.  I think he meant being a single father made dating hard, but I heard “because you are defective nobody wants to be your step-mother”.

I tried to be simpler and easier and to care less about everything.  I was a disaster with the first guys I dated and I got hurt.  It happens.  I’ve learned and learned and learned and learned and it’s been HARD work.

But I know I’m still a little difficult to love.  And maybe that’s okay.  Maybe I *am* a little difficult to love, and maybe there will be people, as there have been and are people who are up to the task.  I am a lot, but sometimes people want a lot.  Maybe you are a bit much too, and maybe there are people in your life or in your future that are looking for something a bit much.

 

The Cats Will Eat Me…

I really dislike my brain sometimes.  I woke up this morning with my brain churning a little.  I noticed it and realized what was happening.  Every now and then I start spinning about something.  I used to see Great Date do this, and it’s how I finally realized I did it too.

Sometimes it’s fear.  Sometimes I feel a little afraid and my mind casts about to understand my fear.  The house is not on fire.  The cats are okay.  Maybe I had a nightmare I don’t remember.  I don’t know, but my mind is an unkind place.  I cast doubts around about my worth.. my friendships.  I chew on the edge of my relationships.  I pull up reasons I should be afraid or sad or that things could be bad.  I pull up real and imagined evidence for how I suck.  I tell myself mean things.  I am the voice in the dark.

I’ve learned over time that this is just me petting a worry stone.  I can spin up elaborate bad things, and I know it.  I’m cherry picking the little rotten things to make problems that don’t exist.  I’m fine.  I’m more than fine.  I’m happy.  I’m here in my quiet apartment with my sweet kitties.  I live in a neighborhood I love.  I live in a city I love.  I have a family that I love that loves me.  I’m making the best choices I can and I’ll be ok. My relationship(s) are good.

And I learned to pull out the anti-venom for poisonous thoughts.