Poly Nirvana

~Pride~

“What’s the Pride Festival about anyway?” she asks, this chestnut-haired, spitfire of a daughter, from the back seat of the car. ”It’s about being proud of who you are”, I say, “no matter what. It’s about being proud of how you look, and the things you like, and the things you do. It’s about being proud of who you love.”

Charlotte is quiet, so I explain to this small girl that she will be seeing a lot of new people, and probably some interesting things. We devise a subtle code, if she wants me to take notice of anything or anyone particularly unusual.

I grew up in an extremely religious, uber-conservative family. My conditioning began at birth, and only in the last few years do I feel that I have completely let go of some of those ingrained judgements that were laid on top of me by my parents and my religious culture, and that were then perpetuated by myself, in my adulthood. I thought I was open-minded and non-judgemental, but in reality, I was simply tolerant. Polite. I saw those with a same-sex orientation as worthy of my compassion, though I’m not sure for what. Their plight? Their confusion? Their sin?

As we wandered the booths and navigated the crowd, my daughter, at age seven, didn’t see sexual orientation. She didn’t see confusion. She saw people. All sorts of people. And her squeal of delight when she saw a young man wearing a pair of earth toned butterfly wings, holding the hand of another man, was a simple display of pleasure. He was proud of his wings. And she was fascinated. She still talks of the man in the beautiful wings. How pretty they were, and how happy he was. How proud he was of who he is.

I heard through the family grapevine, that my mother could not understand why I would “expose” my children to “people like that”.

Sigh.

Because I want to do better by my children than you did with me, Mom. Because by telling me that it isn’t okay for “those” people to be who they are, you are also saying that it isn’t okay for ME to be who I am.

And who I am, is good. And I’ll be damned, if I feel “sorry” for anyone who lives a true life, and knows who they are. It has taken me a lifetime to be the person I want to be for my children. I want them to see the butterfly wings, and the happy humans, and I want them to be proud of who they themselves are. I want them to be proud of how they look, and the things they do.

And I want them to be proud of who they love.

~Comfort~

I was puttering around the kitchen, making coffee, listening to Special Man Friend having a conversation with one of my kidlets. It was a rare long overnight date, and we were lazy and I was happy. I felt hot tears behind my eyes, and I busied my self with getting out the coffee cups and suppressing those tears. For the first time in five years, I missed living day to day with another adult human being. Someone I enjoy. Someone I love.

The logistics of my relationship are such that while I am utterly convinced that I am important and vital to SMF, his daily life, his household, his finances, and his family, are entwined with Meta’s daily life. Sometimes it is lonely, to be so much of the time, on my own. Ironically, I think SMF and I would be horrible “nesting partners”, as I heard it described recently. I have no desire to combine my finances with someone, or have another adult attempt to parent my children. On the other hand, it gets old, being the date night girlfriend. I know he doesn’t see me this way. But that doesn’t stop me from yearning for a little more of real life time. Grocery shopping, errands, naps. If I’m seeing him once or twice a week, I don’t want to waste my valuable time with him on a nap! The same goes for movies. SMF loves movies. I tend to get restless and bored, however, my main reason for not wanting to spend two hours of date night sitting in a dark theater is purely selfish. I want the human interaction. I want his attention and I want to give him mine.

I stumbled into this poly relationship. Now that I’m here, I’m constantly learning what works and doesn’t work. I’m still thrown by these moments that creep up, things I miss that I didn’t even realize were important to me. Things like making coffee for a man I love and then taking a lazy nap with him. I think these slow and comfortable things will come to me. Maybe not with SMF, but with someone, someday.

~Guests~

I get so much feedback from positive polyamorous people, and I would love to invite anyone to submit writings to be posted here at Poly Nirvana. You get credit, and Poly Nirvana gets a collection of thoughts on poly ideas and concepts to pass on to others!

Email me: BraveGoddessProject@gmail.com and I’ll let you know if and when your piece will be posted.

Best,
~Ginger

~Encounter~

I went on a date. A first date. This was a big thing. I absolutely hate first dates. I feel scrutinized, awkward, and nervous. My palms sweat and I can’t think of anything smart or witty enough to say. Generally I just feel like I want to throw up.

This boy contacted me on OkCupid. He was polite and respectful. (More importantly, he wrote in complete sentences, punctuation included.) His profile was brief and neutral. I decided to take a chance and I agreed to dinner, near my house, knowing next to nothing about him.

I should have backed out when he offered to cancel dinner so that we could “skip to the friends with benefits” part. Sigh.

But no. Off to dinner I went.

Let’s just say that when he actually said the words, “I’m going to go home and whack off thinking about you”, I was cured of first date anxiety forever. I have lived through the worst first date I can imagine. And I can’t stop laughing about it.

He offered to pay for dinner. I let him. He walked my to my car, and I shook his hand, from three feet away. I expected that to be the end of it. But apparently he thought it went well, and I had a “Good night beautiful, I can’t wait to see you again” text before I got home.

*facepalm*

~Blogging~

I love blogs. I love hearing what other people have to say. What they think, how they feel.

I’m not quite sure how I feel about blogging though. I want to write. I need to write. I’m at this point where I think I can say just about anything. But I worry about the layout, and the widgets. I look at the stats and wonder why on earth I can get 972 hits in one day and ZERO on another. What is that about?

So I’ve decided just to write. I will lament about poly, I will over-analyze my relationship, I will pick apart my childhood. Because this is really about me. And it’s for me. So stats be damned. This is my tiny speck of the interwebs, and it’s all mine.

~Madly~

I wish I could say I am poly on purpose. But the truth is, I fell into it. Stumbled over it. And almost two years later, I’m still trying to find my footing. Granted, I knew that Mister was married, I had read about and researched polyamory before we ever even met face to face. But I think, honestly, that if there hadn’t been a palpable chemistry between us on that very first date, I would have gone home and continued floating along in my monogamous mainstream thinking.

So I suppose I’m poly by circumstance. I’m poly because I would do anything to be with this man. I take him for what he is, and part of that is the fact that he has another significant, committed relationship.

However.

I haven’t really had to deal with a “new” girlfriend. He has Meta, and he has me. Wife and girlfriend. He’s had a date here or there, and he’s even had friendly sex on occasion, and those things were new and uncomfortable to me, especially the idea of him having sex with others. I don’t think twice about him enjoying Meta in bed. (Alright, maybe I’ve thought about it, but it hasn’t been a struggle at all to share him. With her.) I imagine what it would feel like, if he fell in love with someone new. I imagine it, and then I stop thinking about it as soon as I can…

And what about myself? I am open to an additional relationship but I am hesitant to divide my attention. I still carry the idea that it would somehow be disloyal to him.

I think I’d be fairly well suited to polyfidelity, or a small closed group of partners. I like stability, sameness, security. It takes a long time for me to be vulnerable to another person, and I value the few people I let into the crazy that is my true self. Mister loves first dates. I hate first dates. I even hated our first date. How do I reconcile that his feelings for me and commitment to me, are unrelated (in his mind) to his enjoyment of flirting, pursuing, and connecting with other women?

This is the big poly question, isn’t it.

I am far from the poster child for polyamorous relationships. And yet, here I am, twenty-two months later, madly in love, deeply committed, and constantly learning how to love and accept myself while loving and accepting him. I don’t have all the answers. I may not have any of the answers. But I’m still here.

Rock on.

~Progress~

People who know me laugh when I say that I’m shy.

Apparently I fake being outgoing incredibly well.

After some thought, and acceptance of How I Am, vs Who I Should Be (according to who? Society? The media? The image in my head of how a grown-up lady is supposed to act and feel?) I have come to the following conclusion:

I am an introvert.

When I’m feeling good, emotionally, physically, whatever, I can push through the anxiety and navigate new people. I can be in a crowd, I can make the small talk. I may even find it pleasant to be in a social situation.

But it’s never, ever, easy. People scare me. New people, casual acquaintances, old friends… they all pretty much scare me. Or annoy me. Or bore me. .

So this past weekend, as I headed up into the mountains for a big group camping trip, with people I was fairly familiar with, I was nervous. Even apprehensive. I had verbalized to Mister, my self-defined functioning parameters. 1) Practice my small talk. 2) Withdraw if I needed to, and not feel guilty or “less-than” if I needed some quiet alone time. It was important for me to say these things out loud, not just for myself, but for him as well. He is an extrovert who loves talking to people. We have had issues in the past, wherein he has interpreted my quiet presence at the fringes of a group conversation, as being unengaged, uninterested, anti-social, even sulky. And for a long time, I tried to be what I thought he wanted me to be, and I felt like a failure most of the time.

But now I’m free. A free, happy, self-proclaimed introvert. Granted, I may be an extrovert-leaning introvert, but as with anything, things are rarely black and white, but rather a sliding scale of gray. I had a good weekend. I went in without expectation. And I had a good time! I talked, and visited, and rolled with whatever came my way, and when I needed to recharge, I withdrew, for an hour here or there, to my quiet loft room with the polka-dot sheets and the stripey quilt. (Yes, it was cabin camping, complete with my coffee maker and real bathrooms. So, maybe not exactly camping per se, but it was in the mountains. I had to drive on a long and winding dirt road to get there, and there was no cell service. That’s camping according to Ginger.)

I like me. I like who I am. I see room for improvement, but that will come.

~Stuck~

I can’t write. I am frozen, because my self-edit button is constantly on. I’m not quite anonymous here, and I’m constantly wondering who I know, knows that this is me. I know my guy does, which means my Metamour does. So when I want to say something like, “I’m pretty sure my boyfriend’s wife wishes I would just go away,” I know she will likely see that. As will he.

What I would like to say is this: I think she actively dislikes me. I worry sometimes that Mister will tire of trying to move between the two of us, and our two years together will lose out to their fifteen years. I need more sex. I want more attention. People scare me. Men scare me. First dates terrify me. There are people who look at me and think I have some kind of secret poly knowledge, and the truth is, I know next to nothing. It’s a miracle I haven’t fucked this relationship up yet. Sometimes I wonder how much longer I can continue, regardless of the fact that I love this man, through and through. I can feel it in my bones, this connection to him. And still, polyamory is so fucking hard, I just want to run somewhere that I don’t have to SHARE! Some glorious island where I don’t have to communicate and self-reflect, or feel compersion. (Meh. Compersion.)

And you know what else? I love me a little kink, and I’m not getting it. What’s a girl to do?

The end.

~Dating~

Dating makes me feel like the junior high wallflower, tongue-tied and awkward and sick to my stomach. I’m a little bit of an extrovert-leaning introvert. (If that makes any sense.) I’d rather be home alone than have to sit on a first date and wonder what this stranger thinks of me… And I’d really rather be with my beloved, sitting in comfortable silence, than making small talk with someone I don’t know.

And yet, I know I have to meet people and feel them out…before I get comfortable being with them, and feeling them up. 🙂

Then you add in the social oddity of being non-traditional in my relationship orientation, and I really get overwhelmed. I want to date. I want to find new friends, and make new connections. I would love to fall in love again, and again. But that means I have to date. Ugh.

~Chemistry~

Well.

It’s been a week for the books. And it’s only Wednesday.

I have been worried, stressed, and preoccupied with my relationship with my Mister.

I have been tearful, exhausted, and irritable. I have been impatient with my kidlets, and downright annoyed with my teenagers.

A sweet friend told me on Monday night, that she thought I should go on an anti-depressant for thirty days, and then re-evaluate where I stand within my relationship.

“I’m already on an anti-depressant,” I said.

She was visibly surprised. We sat in silence.

I must be a hot mess.

And here I thought I was holding everything together. Holding myself together. And it turns out, that I’m flying apart into a thousand tiny pieces and I don’t know how to save myself, apparently, from myself.

Last night at work my supervisor further validated the Hot Mess Theory. I was written up for well, pretty much not doing my job.

I cannot buy into the entire reprimand. My skills are solid. My patients like me. I give good care. However. I am exhausted and irritable and I have been foolish to think that those things were not bleeding over into my professional life. I feel hurt and tired and sad and defensive.

Seven years on nights…it’s enough.

On a good note, I saw Mister yesterday for a quick visit, and while there were tears and general gnashing of teeth, I left feeling calmer than I had been in a while. There is no doubt that he loves me and wants what is best for me. But how can I ask for what I need, if I myself cannot figure that out?

In PolyLand, I am a secondary partner to him. He has a wife, a child, home, a career. I see him twice a week, generally, and overnights are rare.

I am madly in love with him. But I am still lonely.

I don’t think an anti-depressant can fix that.