Authenticity

Most people, tend to agree that living authentically matters,  but the trouble with living authentically, is that it’s hard.  It’s really hard.

They don’t teach how to live authentically when you’re anyone but the family behind the white picket fence.  When you’re that family, the one behind the white picket fence with 2.5 kids, a dog, and a standard two parent household.  Living authentically for those families( god bless them!) is easy, well comparatively, I’m sure they have their gripes too.   Actually, I know they do.

But for me, not so cut and dry.

I can’t introduce my family to my partners without a serious conversation that I don’t want to have.  If they meet Partner A, and know we’re dating, then at some point in the future they might meet Partner B – my family will ask “What happened to partner A?  When did you break up?”  Being honest means coming out, and being dishonest, while it’s in some ways the easier option, it’s an absolute disservice to my relationship with Partner A.  We didn’t break up.  He still loves me, and I still love him, but I also love Partner B.   I don’t know how to live authentically, well that’s a lie.  I know what it would take.  But I don’t know if I can do what it’d take, or if it’d be worth the trouble.

My family is amazing and they’d love me no matter what,  but do I want to have the conversation about my dating preferences with my family? Would it be worth it?

I wouldn’t change my polyness for anything.  I love dating and living like this.  I love how it fits me and to be honest, I couldn’t imagine doing it any other way and most of the time, I wouldn’t change a thing.  But this, is  a circumstance in which I would change it.

Ahhh okcupid.

Him:hi

Me:hey

Him:so i see your very sexually open im wanting a fwb situation tonight would you be open for some good fun

Me:well…that isn’t really what I’m looking for

Him:what are you looking ofr

Me:I’m poly, I’m looking for poly people.

Him:well im poly just single right now

Me:your questions say otherwise.

Me:according to your questions you aren’t interested in open relationships.

Him:i am into open relationships, i have never had one yet

Him:so its something i cant say im into i havent triend it , however im open to it

Me:So thats why when you answered “would you consider having an open relationship?” you said “No” and added a comment “see other people, thats ackward”

Him:that was a while back, i kinda got turned on to the idea

Man, I believe him.  Don’t you?  He surely has no reason to lie.

Discontentment

Sometimes, in relationships, you have this aching discomfort when you aren’t getting what you need from them.  And sometimes, that’s ok.  

It’s ok to sit with that feeling.  Think on it.  Evaluate it.  Ask yourself if you’re overreacting, if it will go away on it’s own when your partner deals with X important thing, is it even their fault and if not, can they even fix it?  Would hearing “I love you.” and a date night make it all better?  Is it something that you should be fixing for yourself?

And if it does come to telling your partner “I’m feeling X and I need Y from you.” Make sure that you figure out the best way to do that without making them feel like it’s all their fault.

 

 

Conservatives shifting their aim to polyamory

Conservatives shifting their aim to polyamory

Bring it.

Confession:  Captain was supposed to be a one night stand.  A one night stand I wasn’t even sure I wanted and was talked into by a friend.

Last night he took me home from a party with another one of his partners. 

I was thinking about how he went from the one night stand I was not sure about to an important staple in my life.   And I honestly, don’t know when it happened, nor do I really know why.  Sometimes the universe gets it right.

My secondary.

I wrote earlier about my secondary and how much I love them and I’ve just been thinking a lot about them recently and I think that our arrangement might be…strange, even for people in our lifestyle.  I’ve been seeing my secondary since April, almost 8 months.  Jesus christ.  Welp, here is to us.  He is my current longest running sexual partner and I’m like 95% sure I’m his.

He’s important to me, and one of the things about him is that he’s really good at reading people, like scary good.  If he says something isn’t right, something isn’t right.  What I was thinking about was, when/if he meets potential primary partners of mine, if he were to pull me aside and tell me that he wasn’t right for any reason, I’d say OK and my relationship with this potential primary would almost certainly be over.

Because for Captain to tell me this means that he is 110% sure that this guy has something fundamentally, imminently wrong with him and he is bad, bad news.  This information would not be shared lightly.  So when I was pondering if it was weird or not that my secondary has so much power over my primary and it might be weird in the big picture polyamory, I don’t think it’s weird for Captain and I.  Because like The Captain, I’m also scary good at reading people and know that if it came to telling him that I was concerned about one of his new relationships, he’d listen and he’d appreciate what I was saying and go from there. 

Weird or not, we are us and we’ll keep being us until it stops working.

 

The Gift of Being Second.

I’ve been sort of struggling recently with being second, or rather my lack of a primary right now.  See I haven’t written about this too much, but I do have my poly tendencies, for better or for worse.  And this writing just really made me think.  It sort of exemplifies why I’m poly, I think.

I’ve been absent a primary partner for a couple months now and I’d be lying if I said I’ve handled it with grace the whole time.  I love being someones primary.  Someone who will drop everything for you because you need them or you need them to do something for you is amazing feeling and it’s really irreplaceable.  But really most people will have a primary, most people will have that amazing, irreplaceable partner. But the secondary relationships, they’re where the magic happens.

I show up to my secondary’s apartment, or he shows up to mine and nine times out of ten, we make dinner, curl up on the couch and watch tv til bedtime and then we go have sex and sleep and in the morning we part ways with a hug or a kiss or both.  We don’t usually talk about our shitty bosses, the fact that some guy or girl dumped us this week, or the fight we had with our primaries/other secondaries.  If we do, then we’re both in the same boat and it’s a pretty short conversation that consists of “You know what, me too.”  And god, I wouldn’t trade that for anything.  We both have relatively abnormal love lives, and the singular commonality over our non mainstream love lives.  There is nothing else like it.  I am his, and he is mine, at least for the night and it’s perfect.  I wouldn’t have it any other way.  I hope to god he feels the same.

If you can skip the jealousy, the secondary relationship is so much easier in many ways.  We don’t have commitments to each other about kids, pets, or how to pay the bills.  We don’t fight about the cost of his new car, or how I forgot to do the dishes before I left for work. Our relationship is just easy.  But being easier doesn’t make it less important or disposable.   Our relationship, while being easy, is just as complicated as every other relationship. It has layers, and complexities all it’s own and challenges to work through.

You’re second, true, but you are not last, and you sure as hell aren’t a consolation prize.

Here is to being  second, to the unique ride of being second.  I wouldn’t trade it for anything.