It’s Complicated

It’s always complicated. Isn’t it?

What is this thing between us? How many millions of ways do we ask this? Does he like me? What does she want? What is happening here? There really aren’t enough words and there are far too many.

 

• friends with benefits
• husband
• friend
• metamours
• lovers
• vixen
• stag
• cuckold
• Dom
• ex
• boyfriend
• unicorn
• fuck buddy
• paramour
• sister wife
• beau
• fiance
• significant other
• bull
• cuckquean
• partner
• primary
• side chick
• play partner
• protector
• swing circle
• knight
• special friend
• anchor
• secondary
• great love
• main squeeze
• baby daddy
• sugar daddy
• Dom Daddy
• baby mama
• boytoy
• little
• my little secret
• beard

Just scratching the surface really.

 

 

Coming Out Sideways

If you don’t deal with feelings they don’t come out the regular way and instead burst a hole to the side, creating a lot more wreckage.

I’ve heard people say they never get jealous and you know.. I don’t usually like to be so harsh.. but fuck you and your self righteous bullshit. I know, I know. I’ll probably get emails or messages about how “no.. I am a special and unique human being and I never get jealous. I might be insecure at times, or something far less stigmatized than jealousy, but I don’t get jealous”.

The people I have really known who say things like this tend to have a jealousy problem. It’s like people saying they hate drama. Drama creators are usually the people you hear vocally spewing about hating all these people with all this drama. They whip everyone around them into drama filled scenes and then moan about the drama, never owning that they draw it to themselves. You can’t stop being a drama llama if you think the drama is always everyone else. I know that I am the maker of most of the drama in my life, either directly or indirectly playing my part, and that’s the first stop toward unraveling drama.

Jealousy is much the same. I don’t care how evolved you are. You will feel jealous at times and if you own it, understand it and will look at it, you won’t stomp over the tender hearts of all in your midst as you passively aggressively exert your desire for control and relief from your jealousy.

We can plan out too, and think how okay things are, only to find these ugly little surprises. All of a sudden we’ll have this thought, or this fear, and that is okay if we can deal with it directly and maturely.

Most of the time I really love watching Traveler fuck a woman we are with. I love seeing his passion from another side. I love knowing how she feels. I love watching their pleasure. It’s hot. But of course I’ve had little moments. I will have more I am sure. Once when it happened I realized it was me pulling away and got back in there and helped. What is NOT okay would be bursting into tears and slamming the door as I storm out in an emotional explosion. It’s okay if later I need to curl up and ask for extra kisses or need to talk about my feelings with my partner or a friend.

In poly I see it often as people display their jealousy by getting territorial or reactive and emotional or withdrawn. Sometimes it involves a lot of insecurity, and sometimes people hide from their jealousy and say they are just a little insecure for a moment.  They do little meddling things to fuck with each other. They keep score. They try to exert control in the other relationship. They get petty. They try to make sure they are given better or best or more. They try to limit others, or sabotage even. I have seen it over and over. It’s corrosive when ignored and even more so when denied, and for what? Foolish pride?

Jealousy is not inherently bad. It can be used as a healthy signal for self-examination and a sign that there is a need to be met. I hate the bad rep jealousy gets because it isn’t all bad and it can be a really helpful and healthy reminder.

But I’m telling you… jealousy is a dirty bomb when allowed to explode. Get it out, or it’s coming out sideways.  Just sayin’

 

Disgruntled

Okay.. you guys have heard me bitch about this a million times, so I’ll TRY to keep this brief.

Sometimes things in open relationships chap my ass. I’m not the only one who gets a chapped ass, which I understand. The live in partner gets an ass chapping about all of their time being chore time. And the person with people pulling on their time gets a chapped ass because where is there “me time”, and how can they possibly please everyone? And the person at the disadvantage gets a chapped ass because they have to have all these little unfairnesses and the disadvantage sucks after a while. It’s life. The world is full of ways to get butt hurt. But dammit.. my ass is chapped now, so let’s look at a way to be a little less chappy, eh?

1. Don’t put shit on the calendar for other people without asking them. You don’t own your partners and they are managing their own time, hopefully. (Exception.. if you have children and the children need their parents, then it’s perfectly normal to put that right on the calendar without asking and tell your co-parent what you scheduled so they are aware.)
2. Don’t have to have the most. Especially don’t have to have the most all the time. I’m not saying you can’t HAVE the most.. but don’t HAVE TO HAVE the most all the time. It’s sucks.
3. Other people are humans and are worthwhile and just as important as you. We might all have different kinds of relationships and different responsibilities and levels of commitment, and things might not be “fair”, but all the humans in these systems matter and should have consideration.
4. Don’t cancel on one person for another. I mean it. Really really really try to NEVER cancel on a partner, especially for another.
5. Don’t eat into your partner’s time with their other plans. Save your talks and snuggles and fights and catching up for your days. A quick message or text isn’t a huge deal, but let them have their time if they have time with others. Don’t make them leave later so you can catch up or leave their plans early if you don’t actually really and truly need them.Everyone’s time is important.
6. Don’t lie. It comes out a lot and is hurtful in all situations, but when your commitment is trust, rather than sexual fidelity, and you break that, it’s damaging and hurtful to a higher degree. Don’t lie.
7. Keep your agreements. If they don’t work for some reason then talk about that, but if you have an agreement, honor it until you change it with whoever you have the agreement with.  Seriously.. things change and are different in the moment sometimes and you need to renegotiate. But until you do renegotiate, keep your agreements.
8. Be in the moment, enjoying the person you are with. Don’t be at a club having sex with one person with your head on a swivel for what else there is. Don’t be all cagey to make plans in case better things come up later. Don’t make people your fall back positions. People aren’t filler. Even if you are only with a person for a very specific casual sex act and will never see them again, honor the time you have together and BE THERE.

That’s good enough for the moment I guess… but what would you add? Any good ways to avoid chapping asses?

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

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.

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/

 

Pleading

It’s strangely hard sometimes to find a good lover.  The emphasis here is on *good*.

I’ve had a little string on failed to launch associations and some incredible luck that made it not sting very much.

Traveler and I are still playing with our friend Yarn Hooker, and we had a little State of the Union the other night that left me very very grateful.  We’ve all been playing a while now and had what I would call amazing fun sexy times.  But I like her and I had this worry come up.  It makes me crazy when married poly guys want to date me and say they are poly but have these primary structures making anything like an actual relationship pretty hard.  I like casual sex and play friends and I like dating and being open to love.  What I don’t like is people wanting all the benefits of being a boyfriend with none of the commitment.  I won’t get on that soap box right now, but suffice it to say I’m about sick to fucking death of it.

So, then.. am I being an asshole with Yarn Hooker?  She’s a smart, beautiful, sexy, talented woman.  I like her.  Traveler likes her.  She seems to like us.  Things are going swimmingly.  But.. but.. are they?  I started to wonder.  So I asked.

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.

One Legged Man- Ass Kicking

colors are loaded into a palm of a hand for Holi

Holy fuck-balls people.  I overbooked myself.  My loves are overbooked.  My calendar looks like a sidewalk after an Indian Holi celebration (where they throw all the colors).  Traveler and I haven’t had a regular weekend date in a month.  And I’m not even getting the short end of the stick!  He and Quinky Girl are in a similar boat for the most part.

But seriously.  We haven’t had anything like dinner, an evening, and breakfast in a month.  We spent some time together on Sunday and it was the first day we’ve had in a long long time where we were just together, and even that we spent it working.  It was so fucking nice just to sit on a couch with him.

We’re seeing each other, sometimes 3 days a week.  But it’s including a lot of parties, Burning Man events, yard work, potlucks, group things and all-together-get-togethers.  If we didn’t all eat breakfast together sometimes neither Quinky or I would eat a breakfast with him each week.  Often we are cramming a bagel in our mouths as we hit the road.  It’s crazy.  

What to ask Traveler?

Traveler and I will finally record a podcast we planned long ago. The podcast is coming back retooled!

What would you like to ask Traveler? He will reserve the right not to answer anything he doesn’t want to, so feel free to ask anything at all.

That’s right! Traveler finally speaks. Help me know what to ask him.

If it helps bring up questions… He has been open for 14 or so years, and in love with two women for 3 years, and previously for a couple of years. He’s had three open loving committed relations at a time. He is friendly with the men his wife and I date. He’s very rarely jealous. And he’s hardly ever sick at sea. (Kidding)

Also, interestingly, both his wife and I are poly bloggers, and he does not identify as poly though he and Quinkygirl are very much in love and together nearly 15 years and he says he’s madly in love with me and we’ve been together 2 years and 8 months. His wife and girlfriend are very very close and love each other. He’s incredibly loving, great in bed, and a deeply good confidant. Curious? Ask stuff!