Poly Nirvana

Dear Emotion,

Our relationship just isn’t working for me anymore. I have put in hours and hours of effort and understanding with you. I have listened and pondered and reflected. I have absorbed; integrated. I have tried sitting with you, embracing you, being in the moment with you.

I have also wasted my time arguing, reasoning and debating with you. You are so hard to get along with! It doesn’t matter what my brain says, you always scream louder. You are impossible! I mean really, I try to be reasonable and thoughtful with you and all of a sudden I’m blindsided by jealousy. For no good reason that I can find. I mean, what IS that? Tell me, how is that even constructive?

I think it’s time we admitted we just aren’t good together. I am exhausted trying to make peace with you. I am done. I’m better suited to Logic and Reason. The universe makes sense that way. I don’t want to see you any more. Thank you for all the good times, but I can’t live with the uncertainty of what each new day brings with you. We are through.

~Ginger

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Dear Ginger,

Fine. See how long you last without me. You’re no picnic either.

Sincerely,
EMOTION

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Dearest Emotion,

I miss you. This is harder than I thought, being without you. Maybe we should try again.

~Ginger

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Ginger,

No. You were right. We don't work. I've moved on. I hope Logic and Reason are everything you ever wanted.

EMOTION

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Darling Emotion,

Please. I adore you. I can't be without you anymore. Logic and Reason are not what I thought they would be without you. Emotion, Sweetheart, you are special, and life is dull and flat without you. I'm sorry I was so difficult, always wishing you were something else. I thought I knew what I wanted, but I was so wrong. I want you, and everything you come with. I want the happiness and the sadness; the joy, the insecurity and the fear. I want all of you, even the woeful insecurity and anger. I will gratefully take the jealousy and the fear back. For even in those moments, I am exquisitely reminded who I am, and what is important to me. I take you as you are, for everything you offer me. Please don’t leave me. I need you.

Always,
~G

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Ginger, beloved,

I miss you too. I miss your cool reserve, and the face you make when you are over-analyzing me. I love you and the way you have of letting me be with you completely, even if I make you feel weird. I will make an effort to listen to Logic and Reason more, but I make no promises. You will have to accept me for everything I lay on the table for you. I’m not trying to hurt you. I simply am what I am.

Call me, my love. 🙂

Yours forever,
EMOTION

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“The reason you hang out with those alternative people”, she says, “is because they condone your bad behavior. Like drug addicts, who make each other feel like what they’re doing is alright. Good, even.”

Silence.

A million thoughts dart behind my eyes. And then, as she continues to speak, her words fade, and I settle into one single emotion.

Anger.

How dare you call my adult, consensual, loving relationship bad behavior. You would rather see me, I don’t know, miserable and repressed in an abusive marriage? Oh wait, I did that already. I am not here to fulfill the roles and labels that you or anyone else has put on me from the time I was born. Wholesome. And pure. Because good girls don’t.

Well fuck that, because good girls fucking DO.

Good girls are kind and loving. Good girls take responsibility for their happiness and work goddamn hard to hold on to it. Good girls get to have fun, have friends, and have orgasms, all in abundance. Good girls make their own choices and admit their mistakes. Good girls fucking DO.

My mad love is not your choice. It is mine. And “those alternative people” let me own that decision, regardless of whether or not they quite get it. I spent almost forty years letting “those mainstream people” dictate my role within my gender, my family, my career, and my place in greater society. So fuck that.

But what I say, instead, is this: “I am happy. Leave it alone now.”

The silence comes again, and my anger quiets into a slow resignation. She does not get it. She is as socially conditioned as I have been and has not had that shift in consciousness that I am now constantly aware of in myself.

I’ve stepped through the proverbial looking glass. I just miss her.

for h.

It’s been about 36 hours since I posted my very first entries on my very first blog.

I have had 1,223 visits, as of right now.

Granted, at least fifteen of those visits were me, just admiring how pretty the layout was, and marveling over the fact that other people could see what I was writing. Sixteen times, if you count showing it off to the special man-friend. (I’m much too old to say boyfriend. It’s just embarrassing.)

So here’s to having something to say, and a pretty new blog to say it on.

Best,
~Ginger

“Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.”

~Ralph Waldo Emerson

I am writing this as a journal entry. It is for me, about me, to me. I am only one girl with a small voice who is not in any position to preach to any choir or present herself as an expert on anything except her very own thoughts, her secret fears, and her fantastic desires.

I am new to poly. To everything. Some days I feel as if I’m even new to the concept of happiness. This is a sentimental thought that I embrace, because I have finally, finally come into my own enough to venture out into the world and find what makes me happy. And once I find my happy place, I will fight to protect it, to nurture it, to guard it.

Poly speaks to me. In it’s ideal form, with open communication, honesty and transparency…it seems a glorious alternative to some of the perils of monogamy. I have read the books, scoped the message boards, talked with friends who have the experience. I am a smart and logical woman and it just makes sense to me; for me. I didn’t come to this easily.

I am in a relationship that is both exquisitely gratifying, and downright hard. There are days I look around and wonder how I got here. My guy has a beautiful wife who works hard to love and support him in his relationship with me. I find many of my struggles often are internal. There can be a lot of fear in a poly relationship. For example, in the beginning I was afraid of being vetoed, and while my relationship with him was developing and growing in the early months, I held that anxiety that it would be taken away and I had no way to control that. That fear also fed into my feelings of being temporary; disposable…mainly because I felt she would always be his priority. Now we’ve settled into a place where I don’t necessarily feel ~second place~. It isn’t about loving more, it’s about loving differently. They have ten plus years together, and I love that he is so deeply committed to her. Knowing he loves her so ferociously makes me feel even more secure in his love for me.

Although I’m open to other relationships for myself as well, I have not crossed paths with another kindred who sparks my interest. It’s hard enough to find ONE good person who fits well with me within a relationship. I suppose that’s the challenge for many. I can be open to polyamory until the cows come home, but actually living it seems out of reach, considering the perils of a dating pool that has left me uninspired, and often home alone. (Of course that may just be because I’m too smart and sassy for my own good. I tend to have little patience for men who don’t let me be myself.) I know I would love to have more: more time, more attention, more sex (yes, please), more love. My Mister gives me every bit he has, and I am happy and cared for and loved with an unconditional acceptance which is new to me. To entertain the idea that I could find another relationship as fulfilling and deeply satisfying as this one feels unrealistic, and the thought of actually maintaining two such relationships side by side, seems another impossible fairy tale.

The irony for me is that in becoming comfortable and content within the parameters of a solid polyamorous relationship, I also find myself, at present, functionally monogamous. I have found something good and wonderful and if the stars align and I happen to find another positive and healthy relationship to add to my life, I will be a lucky girl. If not, I will consider myself blessed and fortunate to have found ONE who loves me for me (and in spite of me.)

The end. ❤

“When you love someone, you do not love them all the time, in exactly the same way, from moment to moment. It is an impossibility. It is even a lie to pretend to. And yet this is exactly what most of us demand. We have so little faith in the ebb and flow of life, of love, of relationships. We leap at the flow of the tide and resist in terror its ebb. We are afraid it will never return. We insist on permanency, on duration, on continuity…The only real security is not in owning or possessing, not in demanding or expecting, not in hoping, even. Security in a relationship lies neither in looking back to what was in nostalgia, nor forward to what it might be in dread or anticipation, but living in the present relationship and accepting it as it is now. Relationships must be like islands, one must accept them for what they are here and now, within their limits – islands, surrounded and interrupted by the sea, and continually visited and abandoned by the tides.”

~Anne Morrow Lindbergh
Gifts From The Sea