An Absolutely Beautiful Mess: Part Four

 

The most important part of the story: Lying still first thing with him sleeping on my shoulder, breath hitting my collarbone in sweet, soothing rhythm.

But also, two things that turned the next few days into a hurricane of anxiety:

1.     My period, which had only been gone for four stupid days, came back after some particularly transcendent sex. (Nice to meet you, Reverse Cowgirl, I love you forever.) Though he didn’t have any particular reaction about it, the Rogue Period’s return set off a series of alarm bells and triggers that I’m still trying to parse a week and a half later.

2.     WAY worse: First Poly Partner broke up with The Good Boy via text while I was halfheartedly writing my morning pages. I gave him space to call or process or freak, but I couldn’t figure out how to help. I also couldn’t figure out how to not be the asshole who’s pissed at how much our time got interrupted, not mad at him or her, just crabby at the circumstances and still trying (and succeeding, I think) to stay sweet.

I’d planned to make brunch, but the vibe was completely unbrunchlike. I don’t know how my neurotic, hurt caretaking and his kinetic grief could have even lived in the same universe as brunch.

My heart was broken for him and them and a little bit by them too. I have so much new empathy for BFF-Formerly-Sweetie who had NO END of happy days interrupted by heartbreak and why-doesn’t-he-text and metamour pains. (Later, after The Good Boy had gone home, I called to apologize to her and she said shush.)

The Good Boy and I held each other for a good long time before I sent him off into the beautiful snow. My heart physically hurts while I’m typing this. He didn’t feel able to make plans with me, and I was jangled by both the calendar upset and by my currently broken body clock. A couple of days later, we decided to take a pause, and that’s where we are now.

I’m so lonesome for him. In my head I’m so sure he’ll fall for somebody else or decide to be monogamous or just forget me. In my heart, which is wiser, I’m grateful that the universe (or just the internet) put us together for at least this little while. Love will help me untie him from me, if that’s what he decides he needs, but I’d rather bind him close.

 

 

Supersweet Election Love Story: Part Two

I spent a lot of time angsting about whether Mr. Makeout Music was really available or not. I knew he lived with the mother of his four-year-old son, but he referred to her as his “son’s mom” and not his girlfriend. I have a pretty good instinct for signals, though, because when, after a not-insignificant amount of fretting and some crying about whether he was taken or not, I finally found out through good old fashioned facebook that he was, officially at least, single. I was optimistic in believing that his son’s mom might be a complication, but that with my poly skills I could treat her kindly and handle it.

Besides, he was just ALWAYS there. As the flirting between us seemed to ramp up and I started to let my heart open, I knew I wanted to try with him. After a Saturday where he spent an hour in my library office talking about all of the Deep Topics and distracting me from my data entry, I knew I wanted to get to know him outside of work. On the way out of work that day, I told him to check his facebook and answer honestly, and I asked him if he’d like to hang out outside work sometime, but that if he preferred just to be work pals, that would be okay too. (Lying.) He wrote back that he would really like to hang out, but when I asked about when, he said he didn’t have a lot of free time so he would have to let me know. I guess maybe I should have left it at that, but he was seriously ALWAYS THERE.

I stopped feeling self-contained and happily spinstery and started to get lonely for him when he wasn’t in the children’s department. I felt restless. I still happily went about my work days, but when I he wasn’t with me, I was looking for him. There were days when I felt almost paralyzingly self-conscious trying to look right if he should walk by. It was alternately exhausting and exhilarating.  I was either completely bereft of swagger or it increased tenfold, depending on the day.

The Sunday before last, we were supposed to have our first time hanging out alone. It was my idea for us to go to the record store and then on a Pokemén walk, and I was so excited, but he had to cancel, I assumed for kid reasons. I didn’t want to wait another week to get clear on his intentions, so I texted to ask if we were attracted to each other or if we were just flirty friends. He wrote back that he was attracted to me, that he’d never met anyone like me. He said I gave him the feels. We made plans for makeout music the following weekend. I must have read through those texts twenty times—we really liked each other! It really might happen!

Sigh. I’m so glad I got to feel that hope, that it’s still in me, but I’m achey thinking of how it really went so I’ll stop here for now.

Really Irksome Gold Star

Oh everybody, I haz a sad. Today the Cutest Boy at the Party told me some stuff going on his relationship that showed me they’re not ready to welcome another person, maybe not even a playpal, definitely not a me. So I told him I’m backing away until things are more situated.

He said that he might be okay for a play partner situation before too long, but I had to admit that my heart was leaning toward something deeper with him. For whatever reason, I don’t really care that much about BDSM when it comes to him, I mostly just want to make out and roll around like happy kittens.

That might see like too much to know after a good cuddle and a week of good texts, but in my defense, they were really good texts, with a lot of “good girl” and “I’m proud of you” and such (Okay maybe it’s a little bit of a BDSM feeling…) plus the still-way-too-surprising feeling of being treated like a person he actually wants to know. I really have to get a little more used to that.

Also, it wasn’t just a snuggle. He was giving me aftercare on behalf of, like, ten people in a scene that was cathartic and transformative on so many levels. Of course it’s a little hard to have perspective about him, of course I got feelings. I probably need a little time just to fully realize what happened to me, just to let it sink in, take it to heart.

I miss him already and I HATE doing the stupid right thing, but I can’t put that much energy into somebody who is, for the most part, unavailable. I can’t invest so much imagination in another guy I can’t have. I want the “good girls” to be for real and the cuddles to be sincere and the other partners to be ready to welcome me with open arms.

I told him to give me a few weeks to try and find perspective and I hope I will. I’ve added him to the growing category of Hope it Comes Back Around and I feel proud, but lonely.

A Girl-Crush, A Wall of Grief, and Gold Star Breakup

This’ll be a long post, but I appreciate the way the three things fit together so here goes.

Way back in May when I met Steampunk Guy and Steampunk Girl, I hit on them both but I kind of backpedaled, so there was confusion all around and awkwardness between me and her. When he asked me about it the day after our first couch-date, I gave my standard not-usually-attracted-to-non-Sweetie-girls-but-I-wouldn’t-rule-it-out answer.

But when (a little over a week ago) the day finally came for our first metamour coffee, I thought back to my intentions that first night and realized that my first thought on seeing them was “I want these two to do stuff to me.”

We were meeting right after I’d just had a job interview, so I was feeling all competent and happy. I changed into my favorite blue dress in a café bathroom and felt glowy as I drove out to the suburbs. She’s chosen a coffee shop on a little Christmas village of a street near where they live. When I saw her, there was just no question as to whether I’d been hitting on them both. She’sjustsopretty. She’d come right from work and was wearing a vintage white wrap dress with cap sleeves and pearls. She had on pretty white sandals with wedge heels. I imagine we looked like an adorable pair of ladies.

She took charge, which was helpful since I’d wondered how a submissive and a bottom would fare. She bought me a perfect iced latte and even though it was eight million degrees out, I was glad to stroll down the street with her.

I felt like I bonded with her immediately. We talked and talked and talked. She made me feel superwelcome in their life, even suggesting adding me to one of their Google calendars. (Swoon, I know. I just couldn’t picture him actually doing that.) Even though he’d made it clear that I was just borrowing him from her, she made me feel like we were actually sharing, smoothing over the things about him that don’t always make sense, finding lots of things in common about what else we’re looking for. We’re both really strong women who like to stay that way until it’s time to submit, and out in the world that presents us both the same vexations sometimes. I told her I’d love to be her wing girl when it’s time for dom-hunting.

And here’s where it gets really swoony: She was amenable to the three of us doing snuggly things. That just made my heart giggle. I felt my inner unicorn wanting to come out and romp around, and why shouldn’t it? Without the weird half-monogamy I’d been arbitrarily giving Sweetie, a whole new set of possibilities opened up, and I was giddy with the release.

After I hugged her goodbye and texted him a high five, I drove back into the city inspired as all getout. My smutty imagination and my friend-making heart were all fizzy with hopes and dreams and scenes.

But. She’d reiterated their semi-rule about not dating people who are midbreakup, and I did feel that hanging over me. That was a particularly optimistic day in divorcetown, but what if they decided it was too big of a risk? And trying to make my divorce seem adorable all the time seemed like a recipe for disaster. I couldn’t stand the idea of them joining the overlarge pile of friendships wrecked by my mismanaged love life—I want that to happen exactly no more times.

Then Sweetie and I took our trip up to my mom’s and my sister’s. We didn’t acknowledge it at first, but it would be our last trip together for a long while. It was kind of okay. We played with my niece and nephews, chatted with the family, set off bittersweet fireworks. I felt numb-to-anxious most of the time, and when I hugged my baby nephew, my recently-admitted family urge twisted up an ache in my belly.

But it was alright until it was almost time to leave. I was doing one of my favorite things in the world, playing Mario Kart with the kids (I play as Peach, obviously.) when I started to get a really bad headache. I went out to the porch to get away from the game, and while I was out there I checked my phone, and it was dead. I get really attached to things, even gadgets, and I hadn’t backed up my numbers or my favorite texts, so the broken phone just went ahead and opened up the grief floodgates.

I didn’t quite escape crying in front of the kids, but we got out of there and once we were driving away, the sobs came hard and fast and ugly. I realized that my family would never be the same, and I felt like such a bad person and a failure for breaking up the marriage.

With pauses for friend and job search stuff, the sobs came hard from Sunday to Wednesday. I felt like I was gonna die.

In retrospect it seems crazy that in that state I was trying to make plans with Steampunk Guy, but we did have a whole bunch to talk about. I kinda felt like he was already gone, but you know I’m generally open to goodbye sex. But because of where I am on his list of priorities, his plan-making style takes a lot of self-confidence to deal with. I’d generally find out the day before if he could fit me in, and that worked fine for the little spate when I was working 60-hour weeks and having four partners, but it wasn’t working now. In the process of trying to convince him to include me more, I realized I was negotiating for a thing that had already passed.

If I really had seen him as a treat, it would have worked, but once I realized I liked Steampunk Girl too, I wanted real relationships with both of them. I knew he didn’t have room for that, and I was in no state to navigate it anyway.

I’d hoped to have the conversation in person, but it was weighing on me so I wrote him a bye-for-now love letter. He wrote back kindly and understandingly. Being a reader and a listener, he’d noticed the difference between what I want and what he has to offer. Although I was feeling sad about having to let go of him/them for now, reading his replies made me feel like I’d unlost him, like the warmth of the connection between us was still real. I hope it comes around again, lord knows I’d still love to climb all over the two of them, maybe someday when I’m all happy and settled in. But for now I’m really proud that I put the friendships first and did what I needed to do to take care of myself. There’s a lot of power in admitting what I want and I’m glad that they both helped me see it so clearly.

“We are being awesome at this breakup.” I typed, “Two gold stars.”

“Two gold stars and a pony sticker. High five :)”

I told him he could go ahead and make that a sparkly unicorn sticker and that’s the story of my first breakup that ever ended in a high five. Compared to that mess of a breakup with The Man, this feels like a miracle, it feels like I’ve come so far. Thanks for getting me here, pals. I'm sad we're not snuggling, but I’ll be so happy to see you around town.

Oh no no no, Mr. 93%

What's the most dealbreakery word a date could use? Okay, there are a few, but the worst is...

DISCREET. Ugh.

He was so in. He looked like a pinup of a dom-tall, big, very warm energy. I already knew he was a big music nerd. Plus! He brought me the above cupcakes!

Unfortunately, when he started talking about his wife (WHOM! He hadn't mentioned at all in either of his profiles or in two weeks of conversation!) he said that he was very discreet with her about his other relationships. I didn't want to jump to conclusions so I asked him what that meant. He said she doesn't know anything about the girls he dates, not even their names. They basically have a "don't ask don't tell" policy.  So I would never get to meet her or anyone else in his family.

So I had to turn him down. It's not that I necessarily have to be besties with the partners of those I date, though that would be preferable. Having metamours is almost as big a part of the dream as having a boyfriend is. Without having at least some chance to be part of the family, I think the relationship would feel isolating to me.

Even though I'm feeling a little discouraged at the moment, I guess I just have to keep looking for my poly guy, and hope not to waste too many more Sunday afternoons on guys who should have put the dreaded word in their profiles.Grrr! Argh.