Dear Ribbons: Does Jealousy Mean I Have to Give Up This Hottie?!

 

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Dear Ribbons,

What do I do about jealousy? My newish play partner is a total hottie. Half of me is genuinely happy for them and just feels like they should have everything they want in this life and just have people tell them they’re cute all day, and half of me is like oh my god, they really do have so many lovers. And I know if I continue down the casual sex road, many people I sleep with are gonna 100% be sleeping with other people.

Do I have to give up my popular hottie?

Love,

Aspiring Compersionist

Dear Aspiring,

First, the bad news: jealousy isn’t just for casual cuties! It crops up in all relationships! Just like all the other emotions, we have to learn to welcome and listen to jealousy, because fighting it and trying to get rid of it will only make it stronger. I am so bad at this! Some of the relationship moments I’m most ashamed of have come from jealousy, but I think I’m getting better with time and practice—you can too!

Let’s open up The Artist’s Way and remind ourselves what Julia Cameron has to say:

 

I’ve carried the phrase “Jealousy is a map” with me for twenty years, but that last line is hitting home in a new way this morning! “When you learn to harness its fierce energy on your behalf, jealousy is part of the fuel toward a greener and more verdant future.”

I think that’s so true! Though I will forever relish being petty about Mrs. Shy One’s 475,000 year birthday week, I have to admit it inspired me to expand my own! For almost a month, I celebrated in new and old ways, making quality time with old friends, new friends, and one only-around-for-a-week-but-very-charming-and-beautiful-friend! Jealousy map for the win!

But come on, let’s be honest, jealousy fucking SUCKS! I don’t understand why it make me feel like I’m gonna DIE sometimes! It seems really maladaptive for jealousy to inspire such fight or flight when there’s no real danger!

But sometimes, too, when there is real danger! I can think of at least one time when jealous flight tried to save me from a WHOLE lot of horror. How can we even tell the difference!?

This is all complicated by the fact that, I think, the poly community has a tendency towards emotional perfectionism. I think we like to see ourselves as constantly benevolent, generous, and communal, somehow above the less-cute human relationship pitfalls. As much as we give lip-service to “processing” jealousy, I think it’s way easier sometimes to perform uncomplicated compersion, even to the point of self-erasure.

So here’s the frame I think would work best, Aspiring:

1.     Jealousy can help us articulate desires we may not have even known existed! Yay!

2.     Jealousy feels terrible. It feels bad to feel it! Yuck!

3.     Jealousy can sometimes guide us away from situations where a potential partner doesn’t have the time or bandwidth we need. But it doesn’t necessarily mean that! Take your time, follow your intuition, use your judgement.

4.     Find partners who are open to talking about jealousy! In fact, let’s all talk about it more! I would love to learn to view jealousy not as a failure or a taboo, but as a natural part of connection.

I hate to keep coming back to The Guest House, but make jealousy some tea and let it in. It’s exhausting to keep trying to hold the door closed.

Expansively,

Pretty Ribbons

Roadblock #9: Not The Pretty Sister

I’ve known I had to write this one for a while, but I’ve put it off because I’ve had more fun things to write about and also because it’s one of the worst things about me and I am so ashamed. It’s so annoying to me that something from childhood could still be such a motivation at 39. But here we are, fresh off a sleepless night of wondering why the hell I can’t catch up to my friend’s accomplishments and why I never made the cut with her boyfriend.

We’ve already been over the fact that I wrecked my mom’s life simply by being born, and that I was blamed for all of the family’s problems simply because my birth instigated the family’s existence. My brother had his own set of issues and traumas, but not my sister. She had an entirely different childhood than we did. Where we ran the gamut from tolerated to berated, she was the one who was always praised. She was cute as a button and never did any of her chores, but she didn’t complain about it either, so she was held up as an example: “Just be easygoing like your sister and you won’t keep getting into trouble.” My sister has walked through the world her whole life knowing she is loved and lovable, and I’m still pissed that I never learned to feel that.

My sister knew from almost the time she WAS a baby what she wanted to do with her life—she wanted to be a mother. She went very quickly from carrying around her baby dolls to carrying around whatever small children happened to be near. There was never any 1990’s style Douglas Couplandy angst for her, she just always knew what to do. She met her husband in college and was pregnant before they got married. Now she has five children, two of them autistic, and I have never seen her express any moment of self-doubt or any emotion more negative than mild exasperation. She sure is making up for those years of not doing her chores- she hosts every holiday and her husband has never washed a dish.

I never regretted any part of my adult life until this year when I found myself 39 and freaking the fuck out about the fact that I somehow need to find a husband. I’ve been so angry with myself lately about how I’ve mismanaged my life. When I graduated from high school, I felt (even after a life of mostly straight A-s) like I was too stupid to go to college or do any demanding job, so (aside from a very brief trip to photography school) most of my early 20s were spent waitressing and working retail, doing neither thing well. I made art, I hung out in coffeeshops, it was the Nineties. Slacking was okay. Art school and graduating from college seem like they should be accomplishments, as should 10 years as mostly a full-time poet, but it all just seems like such a waste, especially since Sweetie paid for it all and it’s part of why we’re now so trapped.

Just like I feel ashamed of being so behind my friends sexually, I feel awful about not having known what to do with my life sooner. I wish, like my sister, I’d just known.

Having not-the-pretty-sister syndrome has never been helpful in friendships or dating, and especially not in poly. My response to feeling competed-with my whole life has  always just been to take myself out of the equation—there’s no way I could deserve it as much as the other girl does (or girls do), so if she wanted it, it was hers. I think I was trying to teach myself out of that reflex by struggling to stay on Steampunk Guy’s radar, and in that light, interrupting him while he was chatting up that girl at the party that time seems like kind of a victory. Still bad form, though.

When jealousy comes, it never feels like the urge to take something from the other girl. It’s always the wish that I not have to walk through the world as myself anymore, unlovable and ugly. Since I can’t be her, I want to be nothing. It’s a deep-seated urge to erase myself because I “know” that nothing was made for me here, there’s no place for me in this world, certainly no family. The more I’ve managed to prove that idea wrong, the harder the fear is to fight, the more I feel like I should let go of everything I love, like, or might want, because the person it really belongs to will be along shortly to claim it.

No wonder the big deal guy of this story is someone whose body is often angled away like he’s just about to leave. The thing-that-happens-sometimes. The unpredictability, the rare praise that shines on you sometimes like All Summer in a Day, the this-could-never-be-mine-ness is the only thing that felt real sometimes, the only thing, paradoxically, that really felt mine. Not-having. Yearning. Starving until I am ready to accept way less than I deserve. These are my worst habits and addictions, and I want to quit.

I can’t actually imagine a guy who’s mine, much as I want him. I believe, all the way deep in my bones, that it’s a thing I’m not capable of. I don’t know what’ll change that, except paragraphs and therapy, but I’m ready to stop being convinced that I’m less than other women, because I deserve every good thing for myself.

My Dinner With Jealousy

Even though it’s a moot point after he turned out to be such a jerk, the dinner where I met The Man’s wife still haunts me, like a test I didn’t pass. Sweetie called it self-sabotage then, and I’m still not 100% sure that it wasn’t.

The Man and The Wife asked us to dinner after my first (very happy) scene with him, and I was delighted. Here was a guy on the up-and-up, inviting me into his life. We exchanged our spouses’ phone numbers and it really felt like we were all on the way to a real something.

But as the time neared, I felt dread and sadness. As we got ready for the dinner, I chose a dress, blew out my hair, put on lipstick, all the while saying to Sweetie “I don’t want to do this.” We let them know we were on our way and he did his nice manly thing of telling us where the parking was good near the restaurant they’d chosen.

Now, I knew The Wife wasn’t easygoing, just from the way that he’d characterized her—nearly every time he picked me up for something, they were in the middle of a phone-snit of some kind. So that could have been a reason I was feeling dread. There was also the fact that she did have veto power, so if I failed to impress her, that would be it for me and him. I was thisclose to my dreams coming true, as long as I didn’t fuck up this dinner. In retrospect, there was no way that I could have fucked it up—all I had to do was be myself. Which is, I guess, what happened.

When Sweetie and I got to the restaurant, only The Man was waiting for us. “(The Wife) is off pouting somewhere, I’ll go get her.” he said and inside I was like Whaaaaaaat? How do I deal with this? I went to the restroom and breathed and fixed my face and hoped for the best. When I came out, they were all seated at the table together waiting for me. I wanted to ask her what the pouting had been about—that really threw me off.

When I saw them together, my dread got so, so much worse. He looked at her and smiled, put her arm around her, rubbed her leg the way he’d lovingly rubbed mine the week before. Here’s where I feel like I failed every poly test, because instead of enjoying the love he clearly felt for her, I felt stabbed in the stomach. I couldn’t feel my connection to him and everything in me said RUN. I made a very good try at disappearing into the wall, and when it turned out someone had run to the store for wine, I literally jumped at the chance.

Nothing like this had ever happened to me mid-relationship! I’ve only ever felt jealousy like that when I knew something was already over. I’ve adored many a partner’s spouse and happily played with wives upstairs. Before we got to the day of this dinner, I’d been so excited about having The Wife as a new friend. I was so, so disappointed in my feelings at that moment.

But in a nice, simple world without judgment and guilt, I’d say, I just didn’t like her. I didn’t like THEM. They were nasty to each other, George-and-Marthaing their way through dinner. She said that she doesn’t play with women because she respects them too much, she can only look down on men that way. (Um, huh?) He complained about her asshole ex and his huge schlong. (I do believe that is the first time I’ve ever typed that word.)

Conversationally, The Wife was like a pitbull, especially on the topic of the horror-themed play party she was planning. I said I thought that really wouldn’t be for me, but she really, REALLY wanted to convince me, to the point where I yes, almost started to cry.

When everyone was all “WHAT’S WRONG?” I admitted to being really nervous that she wouldn’t like me, and said that I really couldn’t figure out how to be. (It’s worth noting that I was a bottom sitting at a table trying to figure out how to please three tops. At the time Sweetie joked that she would just have to be in charge of me next time.) The Man reached across the table and held my hand, but I still couldn’t feel anything of the connection we’d had before. Sweetie tried to soothe me too, but I knew it was over, I knew I’d been this close to my dream and wrecked it.

Toward the end of the dinner, I asked if I could take a little walk with The Man, just to touch base, and it was a whole awkward mess convincing The Wife not to come along. (Sweetie, of course, was ready to give us the five minutes of space that I felt like we needed.)

We did go for a little walk. He said he knew that the jealousy just meant I liked him, and I thanked him for being one of the few guys I’d been with who were okay with emotion. That’s when he made the first of a series of weird references to stalking: “Well, as long as you don’t show up at my work, or (The Wife’s) work.” (WTF? How did it go from nervous-at-dinner to stalkertime? I never so much as overtexted the dude.)

Nonetheless, he said that what was between us was still real, that it wasn’t just scene chemistry, and I wanted to believe him. He kissed me goodnight and everything, but I couldn’t shake the idea that it was over. I stayed up all night feeling really, really lost, but Sweetie convinced me that it was okay, that I should keep giving him a chance.

A couple of days later, we had a date at my house—I couldn’t wait to put on my cute cupcake apron and make him dinner. He was an hour late, but I wasn’t upset about that because the busses around here can be glacial sometimes. But as he sat at the table texting with The Wife for about 20 minutes, eating the dinner I’d cooked for him, I started to feel hurt and I said so.

“Well, do you just want me to leave? Because I won’t be talked to this way.” (Doms always say they’ll keep that kind of nonsense to scenes, but I’ve noticed it tends to creep in.)

Of course I didn’t want him to leave; I just thought it was something we could talk about.

“I’m helping her with something. I would do the same for you as long as I wasn’t with (The Wife) or friends.”

I failed to see the hierarchy in that statement and we went to the couch to snuggle. About an hour in, his wife texted to say this “I’m bored, tell me what you’re doing.” By then I was too happily riled up to mind the boundary-breaking, so I was like sure, tell her! He sent her a picture of our happy faces with the caption “Naked stuff.”

By the end of the night, I’d let him downplay my concerns about ignoring me during dinner with “Oh, I know you’re bratty sometimes.” Ugh. The things I’ll apparently put up with when someone smells good!

So I wonder still if the jealousy at the dinner was my intuition telling me it just wouldn’t work, that he only really did have eyes for her, or at least that he and I were not on the same page. I still don’t know. It felt like once he knew I was jealous once, I never had a chance to carve out any space for myself—any objection to her constant presence was characterized as possessiveness. The last day, he made a reference to Fatal Attraction! Why bring me into your marriage if you were so afraid I’d destroy it, if you were so afraid of ME?

I honestly don’t know what comes next. Probably a lot of time and paragraphs, maybe some casual scenes and a lot of healing rope time with Sweetie. For all that he let me down, I do miss him so much, and I’m sad about losing the chance to know her too—I still keep thinking that if I’d just been stronger, more openhearted…

When he blamed my “emotional problems” for the trouble between us, I knew it was bullshit, just a story he was telling himself for when the venue owners called, but I still want to be a better, stronger me the next time a chance for connection comes along.

Two Songs for a Good Beach Re-do

It might have just been the beach endorphins, but I was really glad to run into the Mayor of Kittentown and Monogamous Girl at the beach yesterday. You wouldn’t think so, after last time, but it was really illuminating.

They were coming down the path as I was leaving, which meant that we helpfully all had clothes on. He looked so handsome and she looked beautiful—they were glowing with health and happiness. In my version of reality, I would have happily pounced on both of them, but what really happened was, I felt a teensy little glimmer of compersion.

MG and I shook hands bravely. MKT told me about a baby horseshoe crab they’d seen. It reminded me of my nature-y endeavors with Sweetie, so how could I not be charmed? A few moments of chitchat and it was over, and I felt a great sense of accomplishment on getting past that initial awkward. (Though, knowing both of us, I’m sure there’s more awkward to come.) I texted him a *high five* when I got back to cell phone range.

I have to begrudgingly admit that my little jealous breakdown on the beach a few weeks ago is probably a good thing in the long run. It was another (like the millionth) reminder that he was a bigger deal to me than I thought, that I have to stop trying to be casual girl when what I really want is long term relationships. (Just like Rory Gilmore!) More importantly, it pushed me past Mister Hazel Eyes a little faster than I might have gone, and I’m starting to see that as a good thing.

Being ready for (or at least preferring) someone with the possibility for a long term relationship is a healthy and honest thing for me. I am grateful that MHE is behind me if it makes me more open to what comes next. It is time to start believing in love and doing what it takes to get there.

Here are some nicely bittersweet songs from the drive home:

Things Go Haywire But Still a Good Scene, Part Five

Finishing up this story, I think I understand what it’s about. This was the first time I really had to confront my own jealousy in any way other than running away. It scared me to death and I acted in so many ways that I’d go back and change if I could. I felt an emptiness, a desperation for him that I am so ashamed of.

I don’t know how to manage jealousy and my fear of abandonment, but I know that I will have to learn. I know that I feel those things a lot less with some partners than with others, but sticking to mensch-y poly guys is not going to protect me from my insecurities forever. I feel like I need to be so much stronger and I am just not growing fast enough.

Right now I’m kind of overwhelmed with grief at messing it up with MHE. I don’t feel very hopeful that I’ll be able to find a guy who strikes the right notes the way he sometimes did. And this hurts so badly that I’m not sure if I should look.

What happened after the gorgeous scene was, he fell asleep. I know that seems sweet, it IS sweet, but I felt like he didn’t want to be with me. I sat down on the floor with my head in his lap, hoping to feel some kind of closeness, but the music was getting worse and worse and I really wanted to be someplace private.

We packed up our stuff and went out to the car. The rain was drizzling down as we sat there and cuddled a bit, him whispering to me that I was beautiful, it should have felt romantic, but I just wanted him to take me home and put me in bed, to fall asleep in his arms and know that he cared for me. I just couldn’t feel it. We felt so exposed, so placeless. I hoped that if I turned him on a little more, he’d change his mind about not taking me home, but groping in the parking lot outside the play party seemed unethical so I made us stop. He stared driving me home.

I did. Not. Want. To. Go. Home. I wanted to him to want to be close to me, I felt like he was just trying to get rid of me. Granted, I wasn’t really in a position to take him home either.

I was bitchy in the car on the way home. I tried to explain about what aftercare meant to me, but it sounded stupid and hollow. I knew it wasn’t about BDSM. It was a simple craving to be close to someone I’d gotten attached to, to prove to myself that he wasn’t lying about who was at home, to prove to myself that I could be anything to a man besides a toy. I honestly don’t know if I can. Maybe it’s just not me. Maybe I am, as I feared at the beginning of this project, simply not lovable to men.

Of course I didn’t say all that in the car. Despite this storyline, I am actually not crazy. I said just enough to feel like I’d totally fucked up, like I’d been a horrible bitch. When he pulled up outside my house I said, “Really? This is the choice that you’re making?”

And he just looked so tired, so defeated, it just broke my heart. Why am I always so hard on people? Why did I have to keep harping on him? I started out trying to just ask for what I need, but I sniped myself out of the chance of ever getting what I need, even SOME of what I need. No, he’s not perfect, but neither am I. Why couldn’t I just have given us space to get used to each other?  I apologized for fucking things up. We held each other in the car and kissed, took a little nap right there. My heart just ached for him, he was so tired.

Next time, he promised, he’d be ready for me. He’d do a better job of taking care of me. (Though clearly I’m the one who needs to do a better job at that.)

“I always do this.” He said, “I always hurt the ones I love.” As usual, I got the sense that that “love” was not about me.

The next day, we exchanged kind texts with a whiff of the breaking-it-off-note about them. I’ve been hoping all week that they weren’t breakup texts, but I offered him a lunch visit and he hasn’t responded. It’s settling in that he probably really is gone. In a few days, I’ll say goodbye, block his facebook page, and cry my heart out.

Maybe it WAS a bad match. I really don’t act that way with everyone. Maybe he really was being dishonest and I just picked up on something with my actual intuition. But I just can’t shake the anger at myself, the sense that I should have given him more leeway, should have just let him like me the way he did, not the way that I thought he should. What could we have been if I’d just given us more space, could’ve shaken my distrust, if I could have just grown the fuck up and been able to handle things better?

Most of the things I regret with past partners involves being too hard on them, not giving them the space to be imperfect. Sweetie says it’s okay sometimes if someone just isn’t enough, that I deserved for him to meet me halfway, and I know she’s right. But right now I just feel like a failure. I wish I could have a chance to start over and give things time to work out, to not feel so scared and urgent and graspy. I’ve really lost faith in myself for now, and it’s going to take me some time to recover. See you in a few weeks, Kitten Calendar. Wish me healing and strength and luck.

Things Go Haywire But Still a Good Scene, Part Three

As I sit down to write this, I’m in a state of worry—will I ever know how to see a relationship with a man through any lens other than abandonment? Why does my brain equate “I like him.” with “He is going to go away and never come back.” and also “I am not good enough.” Mister Hazel Eyes might have been a doofus on our date, but that doesn’t change the fears that I have to learn my way out of. Are my abandonment issues and distrust things I can overcome, or will they keep me from ever realizing a true and lasting connection with a man? I guess all I can do to find out is go forward.

After rope class, we sat off to the side on the padded benches where people usually congregate and talk. Sweetie spanked me in the same place just a few months ago, in our first public scene. There were a few couples over there, but MHE and I were in our own little bubble of conversation. He felt so good there next to me but I still felt uneasy. I told him I was having trouble believing that he didn’t actually belong to someone else. I know that sounds weird coming from someone who is married and dating, but I just kept suspecting that he was being unscrupulous, especially after he said not to leave bite marks—he said he was worried his mom might see them, he said. I said that sounded like bullshit, and he pointed to Nice Girl as well—“Well she should know about me because I AM A PERSON.” I said and he said he’d told her about me. I didn’t believe that either. “You seem really…married. Are you worried that Betty Draper will see?”

We wrestled away the tension of it—I pushed and pulled against his arms, and he said “You can start trying any time.” He was delightfully strong. I shoved him against the wall and kissed him and he held me and I struggled—perfect. We got up to look at some of the other scenes going on—some neat suspension work—and he took that opportunity to wrestle me up against the bar and bite my ass. There’s a glee that comes up in me when a guy’s trying to hold me down, a thrill of recognition, a fruition. In those moments, I am so excited and grateful to be alive.

Then it was—hooray!—time to go over his knee. This was what I’d been waiting for, there’s nothing so comforting as being sprawled across his lap, elbows on the bench, cute shoes in the air like a pinup. His hands wove into my hair and pulled—that’s where the real magic started. He pulled up my pajama bottoms so that my butt cheeks were exposed. I was conscious of the couples nearby, and I liked knowing they could see my ass, see me being so vulnerable to him.

“You’re such a fucking good girl, do you know that? I fucking adore you.”

After a few more spankings and affirmations of my adorableness, he pulled me up to his face and kissed me. I asked if he wanted to take my top off and held up my arms. After he pulled my shirt off sweetly, I leaned back so that he could take a look at me, Hello Kitty nipple tape and all. He looked happy. He buried his head in my chest and I held him there, right where I’d been wanting him.

We took a break to go get drinks, and he went a little bit back to douchetown—he told me red wine’s for pussies, even said it in a lispy voice, which I promptly called out as homophobic, with a “HMPH! Straight guys, I swear.”

“Okay,” he said, “Okay.” Kinda like he was choking back an argument.

I liked the feeling of walking to the bar near-naked with him—I felt like a whore to him, like something he’d just purchased. It was a dark, sad feeling, connecting me to all of the ways that women have been owned in both good and terrible ways. I felt empowered, anonymous, and chosen. It was a strange kinship with the ladies of the world, a darkly feminine moment, and I feel a little ashamed of it.

Next: Tied to a kneeler with very helpful ropes.

Ohno Jealousy at the Beach

There are so many things I love about this new life I’m creating, but I’m kinda feeling nostalgic for the days when exes probably wouldn’t see me naked again. Yesterday I ran into my ex-FWB, the Mayor of Kittentown, at the nude beach. I just flat-out ran out of knowing what to do. I saw him bobbing around in the waves and was just going to avoid him since I was having a fragile day, but he came over, wearing nothing but sea-salt and a pained expression. I’m sure mine was equally pained.

I gave him a lean-way-over-so-our-hips-don’t touch hug, it was all I could think of to do, and he kind of acted like I was hitting on him. He was all “Well, (Monogamous Girl) is here, so…”

And I said “Okay, we’re going this way now.” and dragged Sweetie off down the beach. We were only a little way down when I just started to cry. I stood there with my feet in the waves, naked in the cloudy sun but feeling as far away as I’ve ever felt from my inner Bettie Page, crying so hard that I worried I was ruining the beach for everyone. Sweetie felt so good and soft, holding me and trying not to cry herself.

And then the jealousy rolled in, angry, ugly, rip-her-face-off jealousy, which made no sense, because what had she ever done to me? She’s just a better match! But I seriously wanted to pee on their picnic blanket. I wanted to tell her that he’d told me they had no spark together. Of course I didn’t do those things, just left them alone. I know that you all know this, but this jealousy stuff is AWFUL, how does anybody every get through it?

The worst part was how UGLY I felt. I even had that high school feeling of “Better not let them see me eating, it’ll just remind them how fat I am.” I took deep breaths and asked my body for help coming back into myself, and I eventually did, mostly.

I DON’T KNOW IF I CAN DO THIS. I don’t know if I can keep letting guys into my life, knowing how quickly and easily they can just be gone. Mister Hazel Eyes isn’t poly (yet) and it’s hard not to imagine him ending up in the arms of some more available sweetheart some day soon. The dumped-for monogamy thing just kills me, just seems insurmountable.

I wondered all day on the beach if I should break it off with Mister Hazel Eyes because the pain of MKT is so acute. Sweetie, wise person that she is, says it doesn’t make sense to break it off with someone I like just because he might break up with me someday. I know she’s right. I know that there are all kinds of combinations of people who stay together in all sorts of circumstances. There’s no reason not to keep giving him a chance. I have to somehow find the other side of my abandonment fears and stop putting them where they don’t belong. Somehow.

But I really don’t know if I am cut out for this. I’m scared and I don’t know what to do. The Mayor of Kittentown sent apologetic texts all last evening; he says he hopes we can all be friends someday. Maybe next summer, who knows?

Sweetie couldn’t have been more supportive, of course, but right now it feels like everybody’s disappearing, and I just have to let it feel like that for a while.

Rejection is Not an Assessment or a Humiliation…Right?

As a poet, I should be better-prepared to be rejected. Over the years, I have received hundreds of rejection slips for hundreds of poems, manuscripts, etc, and only very rarely did I feel that they had any bearing on the quality of my work. If only I could have that same confidence about myself!

Though it’s been mostly a very happy week over here, I’ve been laying awake with very jealous, hurty feelings about the Mayor of Kittentown. It’s isn’t so much that he belongs to her now; it’s that he officially no longer belongs to me. I’m bothered by the difference between being able to belong to multiple people and only belonging to one—instead of just having a different heart, I worry that I might have a deficient one. I think childlike thoughts like “How could he just throw me away?” in spite of the fact that I broke up with him about two and a half times. I knew we weren’t going to fall in love, I always encouraged him to keep looking (which looks, in retrospect, like its own kind of cruelty…) but the loss of our physical friendship is hitting me hard, it’s breaking my heart, making me feel a little bit dismantled.

Rejection bogs me down. For whatever reason, his rejection seems to negate everything good that he made me believe about myself: that I could trust a man, that I could have a happy bisexual life, that I’m can be beautiful and sexy to men. Somehow it feels like he took those things away just by not wanting me anymore, that I need him (and Bill, and Fireguy) just to have those hot feeling back, but I understand intellectually that that’s just not true.

These men so far, things have gone so wrong with them that I feel as if I have failed a series of entrance exams, that I failed to qualify for their gender. Losing each of them has been so exquisitely painful that it’s hard to feel connected to the good things that have happened, to all the real progress that I’ve made.

I tend to mistake rejection for facts: Bill said he couldn’t have a serious relationship with a poly woman, so I felt unlovable. Fireguy didn’t like being written about, so I thought the project itself made me unlovable. MKT’s simpler (?) idea of love makes me feel like I’m too hopelessly, messily complicated for men.

And I AM complicated, but that doesn’t mean that there won’t be a guy who’ll love me for it—I believe those are called, uh,  polyamorous guys—who’ll be willing to share his life with me. Two of the men in the previous paragraph identified as monogamous, and the other was a heartbroken mess, so I don’t think I can make any generalizations about them, other than 1. Duh, date poly guys and 2. Don’t be a rebound redhead.

I would love to have back all of the good physical lessons I got from them, to not have the hot self-discoveries cancelled out by the fact that they’re gone. Not too long ago, in a Poly Weekly episode about minimizing scene drama, either Minx or her guest said something like “Just because someone disagrees with you doesn’t make you less awesome.” I would LIKE to think that just because someone doesn’t want to fuck me and/or fall in love with me doesn’t make me any less lovable and/or hot.” No one can turn back time and take away those experiences—no one can take any of it away.

Of course this goes back to the heart of this project—learning to approve of myself so that I don’t have to wear myself down trying to gain approval from others, except in fun ways, of course. I started this quest for my inner Bettie Page because I wanted her confidence, the way the looks boldly into the camera, the way she returns the gaze. She is not going to shrink timidly into nothingness when the lens turns away from her, and neither am I.

Dear Divine Whatever,

Please help me to collect and feel whatever good they’ve all given me so far, to take it in as fuel to bravely move forward, believing in every glance and touch and step, having faith in whatever radiates out of me at my proudest, most joyful moments.

(To which I can imagine the Divine Whatever saying: “Good girl. So pretty.”)

Some Fears I Would Like to Grow Out Of

Yesterday I was having breakfast with a friend who is in the process of transitioning from female to male. I was telling him about my recent dating adventures and subsequent fears. He told me that a lot of the fears I have about men, he has about being a man—they’re things he was worried about turning into. That really made it hit home that my fears are prejudices—no one should have to be scared to become a man because of stereotypes, and I shouldn’t be afraid to date them, either.

I work in an afterschool program with elementary students who are very dogmatic about gender. At least once a week, I give them a rousing speech about how limiting gender generalizations are. I’m a social justice-y egalitarian-minded girl and I’m ashamed to be walking around with my own terrible generalizations. Part of the reason I started this project was to learn my way out of my terrible ideas about men, so maybe listing and debunking some of those fears will help.

1. Doll-phobia.  Most of the fears are me-specific. For example, I don’t think that guys want every woman to be a sex-doll, I’m just afraid that my emotions are so ugly and crazy that men will only want to enjoy my body as separate from my personality. As with all of these fears, I’m not sure why I don’t apply them to women—Sweetie seems perfectly fine with my mess of a personality, just as I adore hers. Also, I have lots of platonic guy friends, so I guess that this fear only applies to men who are attracted to me. Which brings me to:

2. Attraction feels like aggression. Whenever a guy is attracted to me, especially in the toppish way that I crave, it feels very dangerous. I guess I have a hard time thinking that guys are capable of feeling genuine affection towards me, so the pursuit I’m craving feel scary and I worry that it is just a way to hurt me. This is a terrible thing to think about people. I always wished I could have gotten to know Bill separate from this idea, but maybe I sought him out because he proved the fear—I’ll never know, because I never really knew him.

3. I’ve always worried that I’m missing some essential quality that would make me appealing to men. I’ve always felt like other women just had some secret that I wasn’t let in on.

As much as I enjoy being a bottom, one of the qualities that I worry about being without is compliance. I’ve been really shocked and hurt by the way that men have tried to control me outside of scene situations. Not ALL of them, of course—the Mayor of Kittentown was a loyal reader and was super supportive of all of my other endeavors as well. He never displayed jealousy, but instead, like Sweetie, seemed to genuinely root for my other adventures to be fruitful. He never made me feel like I had to change or hold anything back. I also have so many wonderful and generous guy friends who have supported me every step of the way. I guess this fear is also top-specific, but I know that the right top would not expect me to be compliant outside of scenes.

4. I’m-Not-the-Pretty-Sister Syndrome: I am afraid that there will always be a woman that he loves better, and that means that I’m afraid that I can’t ever have a relationship with a guy who truly belongs to me. That is a dangerous fear for a polyamorous woman to have—feeling like I’m always going to be less-than is going to be a nightmare if I end up in a constellation. I think the key to this is to make myself start dating only guys who are emotionally available, whether they are in other relationships are not. When I feel loved, validated, and free, I don’t feel competitive.

5. I’m afraid that my size makes me unlovable and untoppable (again, by men). When I first started thinking about dating men, I had strong fantasies about being taken, especially just being shoved into a wall and kissed. But I had this idea that because I am so big and bossy I could never feel what it’s like to be pursued, for someone to want me enough to take the initiative and the lead.

When I was in middle school, my drama teacher told me I was too tall to ever be the leading lady, and I certainly have watched men respond more positively to smaller women.

When I first joined FetLife and started going to play parties, I started to see the reality that men like all different shapes and sizes of women, and that every woman can be a hot showoff sex goddess the way that I want to be. I started to feel that for myself.

Yet somehow, I still get the idea, that guys see me as less than other women because of my size, maybe not les fuckable, but less datable. I was convinced that Bill wouldn’t go out in public with me because he thought I was too fat, and I never had the courage to ask him.

Society does seem to teach us to value fat people less than skinny people, big women less than little. Being not-skinny does come with all kind of stereotypes and assumptions.

One of the worst of these, and one I have to fight myself from thinking, is that a fat girl better fuck anybody who asks, because we’re lucky to be asked at all. That’s part of what makes it difficult for me to wait for the right person/people to come along, even though I want to feel like I deserve the right connections.

6. The other night at the poetry reading, a guy read a story that suggested that the plain woman had to give up the idea of finding a guy she’s attracted to, or she would deserve whatever heartbreak she gets. I’ve felt guilty these past months because physical attraction is important to me, not the only thing that’s important, but still.

7. And I am very worried that I am too ugly for a man. I don’t have a pretty little face; it’s very pronounced and expressive. Remember MySpace profile pics? I never could master the slack, dreamy, passive look we were all supposed to have in those, any more than I can stop myself from smiling in photos where I’m being submissive—nor should I ever have to!

I know that men are not shallow automatons who choose whatever face and body type they are told to. I see all different looks and bodies on women who are in happy relationships with guys. Again, these fears are mostly me-specific.

I hope that by naming some of the fears, I can start to move past them. They seem pretty stupid when I write them all down. I would love to let guys in to prove the fears wrong and start moving towards real connections. I want to stop selling guys so short, give them time to get to know me, and let myself get to know them. Like Sweetie always says, I have a lot of dreams.

Date Update and Reason a Million Why Sweetie is Awesome

So last night was may date with V. First of all, I think I need to change my favorite date spot—it’s where I met Bill and it’s not fair to keep comparing all the other first dates to that one. I am so vexed to find myself still having mentionitis about him-blurgh!

V’s not a romantic match, kind of seems a little young for me even though he’s older. He looks like who I thought my type was before I actually started dating guys, a cute bespectacled hipsterish guy in a striped hoodie-adorable. I’m considering him as an addition to the playpal roster because he’s an excellent brainstormer. When I told him that I’m shy about approaching people at parties he said “well, that wouldn’t matter if you have a partner who ISN’T shy.” He offered to go and get me some more people to play with—so helpful!

When I told Sweetie about this helpful offer, she surprised me by tearing up a little. She said she felt a little sad that she doesn’t have the urge to do that for me. She knew how happy it would make me and felt jealous that she wouldn’t be the one giving me that happiness. Things like this make me love her so much—that she wants to gave me every happiness even in ways she doesn’t want to. I don’t want her to want to do those things. I like her exactly the way she is and I feel like she’s pushed her boundaries enough. That’s what I told her and it did make her feel better. I love her so much. The gold star above is for her perfect telling-me-she-felt-bad and my good listening. Go us.

Back to V: I’m not sure how much time I want to devote to people who are fun but not romantic, but on the other hand, the only way I know to get to the missing Romantic Guy is to have more adventures. So I guess we’ll see what happens.