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

An Absolutely Beautiful Mess, Part Two

 

After the snuggle-fog wore off a little, I started to wonder whether The Good Boy had ever been in a poly situation in the first place. Maybe I’ve just been bingeing Inventing Anna too hard, but I’m not sure which parts of this story are real, especially the shifting, slippery feelings. Is this just how young millennials cheat? Still, I’ll try to take him at face value for now, the story is fraught enough without anxiety-embellishments.

When we got home from the street art walk, we got into bed to warm up our frozen limbs and he…checked his phone. I want to be a Sweet Ma’am and not a scold, and this might be a generational thing. Except, it’s not. Most of my co-adventurers, partnered or not, have been able to stay present with me for all-or-most of a date. Even the ones with Apple Watches. (Which are handy (ha) if we need to change the music and it’s one of those rare occasions when his music is playing!) There are both some rotten and some sweet exceptions, and this one is kind of both.

First Poly Partner had asked him earlier to come over, since he’d ended up getting the night off. He’d said no, but without telling her we had a (rescheduled) date. He felt guilty for saying no and I felt hurt and kind of horrified he hadn’t told her where he was. (I HATE typing this part because it seems like the most dealbreakery part of the story, I don’t know where trust would come from again.) They had a few more text-back-and-forths before he coughed up the information.

Annoyed as I was, I felt tenderly toward them both, so I went into (gentle, I think) How to Poly 101 teaching mode.

To wildly paraphrase Rumi, somewhere between fuckboy and new-at-poly is a field, and we kind of got stuck there.

But also! He’s 29! Squarely in the prime fuckboy timeframe! Should I have let him go already, to run and play and figure out how to be a person with other twenty-somethings? Has he already made that choice for me? I feel naïve and a million years old, all at once.

If The Good Boy was supposed to be in a poly relationship, he was in a very pre-coming-out part of the process, and that was hard for me to take. As generous as he was being (SO GENEROUS) with the faceless pictures, he wouldn’t let me post regular pictures of us on my regular Instagram. He even made FPP hide pictures of her other boyfriend from his friends.

“I don’t know how to explain this.” He kept saying.

I know I shouldn’t take his learning curve or his shame personally. Most of the time I know that the hiding and obfuscating weren’t (necessarily) because I was too fat or too old or too kinky. I felt so sure that he liked me in a similar way to the way I liked him—under the skittishness I felt some kind of a…faith. A seedling of wholeheartedness just very tentatively approaching sunlight. Maybe it was just my own faith. Maybe it was the D/s vibes and a glitter-tornado of chemistry.

I got the ropes ready and tried to help him shift gears, tried to keep myself from emotionally (and maybe also physically) fleeing. Maybe I should have sent him on his way but this was my night, dammit. I hadn’t done anything to wreck it, I didn’t deserve to lose him to his own mess.

I tied a square knot between the dear, dear magenta ropes and placed them around his neck like a scarf. I took a deep breath and started to tie. As I wound the ropes around his jittery, half-here frame, the ropes wound us back together, at least for a little while.

Supersweet Election Love Story: Part Five

After Mr. Makeout Music realized he was unavailable, I told him a little bit about my poly background, about why it hadn’t felt weird to have to schedule time or to have another woman in the picture. I wasn’t telling him this as a way to argue his decision but just to share my perspective and think aloud about where the heck I am in relation to poly, anyway.

            “If it were just you and me, it might be different, but I get really jealous…” Etc, the standard straight monogamous guy speech, I know it well and respect it, but I didn’t have the heart to tell him it’ll never be just him and somebody, it so very rarely is.

And I’ll pause here to realize that whether it’s a poly situation or just a family already in progress, “just you and me” is not what I want. Good to acknowledge.

We sat on stone steps on a secluded corner of campus, talking through a brisk and bright afternoon. I had to interrupt the very important conversation to Instagram a tree with sunshine lighting up every leaf.

We sat there for three hours, getting progressively more chilly and talking about all the things you can’t really get into at work—our families, his military history, my teacher/divorce meltdown, our imperfect and sometimes-intersecting paths to relative social awakeness.

But the topic that made him lose almost all of his nervous and relax into a curious smile, was confessing to him my various forms of sluttiness. His eyes lit up in a decidedly not-vanilla way as he asked me about Nude Years Eve and what BDSM relationships are like. I got his porn search terms out of him and told him my own. (Still lots-of-guys-one-girl; my time on lesbian island still hangs heavy.) He really wants to read my book, and he’s really not going to until we work in separate places. (It should come as no surprise to longtime readers that he’s got his firefighter’s exam coming up this weekend. Then he’ll know how to restrain AND carry people.)

There’s something about him that makes me lose all my filters (he has suggested that it’s my open heart) so I even told him that I’d had fantasies of dominating him that I’d already been sort of dominating him without meaning to. He said “I guess I’m so good at following directions that I didn’t notice.”

“Yes. You. Are.” I said in my best bossy/slutty voice.

Though he was still very clear about not being ready for things, he was sweetly curious and didn’t seem at all horrified. When I told him that the man for me would have to learn all his knots, he said “Oh, so it’s like scouts?” and I giggled for a long silly time.

Friends, it WAS chilly. After a little while of freezing and wishing I had socks on, I asked if I could sit closer just for warmth, and he said “I know what you really want.” And pulled my into one of my top ten favorite snuggles of all time. He put his arms around me and I lay my head on his knee.

“What are we going to do to make the world better, Ms. _________?”

I sighed a deep dreamy sigh and said “This is a good start.”

I felt as sunny and golden as the pretty fall trees. The horror and fraughtness and drama of the election fell away and I felt as warm and cared for as I ever have by a man.

            I asked where his nervousness was on a scale of one to ten (I was at zero.) He said he was at a four, but that was the world, not me. Then I confessed something I’d been thinking about hard for weeks, especially as I’d fretted about voter suppression dangers on Election Day:

“You know you have a permanent human shield now, right?”

“Thanks,” he said, and I know it was a weird and maybe wrong thing to say, but I’m glad I told him. The world had just gotten so much scarier for both of us and I wanted to fight and scrape and elbow to keep him safe. I wanted to give him my whole body, my life. I wanted to be the sacrifice, to bleed in the dirt in hopes that things might be healed so that he and his family could walk around safe.

That’s love, I guess, and hopefully it isn’t too colonizing, but whatever it was it was way too much to be thinking about a thing that wasn’t even going to be a thing. Our not-date was almost over, the glow was about to leave us, and I never wanted to move from that spot. He traced his fingers over my shoulder, I felt his beard graze my hair, and I felt at once strong and all the way broken open.

“I’m just gonna be near you as much as I can.” I said, and I think maybe that’s what broke the spell.

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.

Poly Conference as Benchmark: Very Good Progress

When I first attended the Big Poly Conference the year before last, it was almost like research as an outsider. I found many different kinds of comfort and acceptance (especially in my first nudist experience) but by the end of the day I was hurting and crying in the cuddle party, being comforted by the facilitator (who is, incidentally, now Showtime famous) and feeling like I should never be near such nice people, like I was just to rotten inside for all this togetherness. I cried my heart out all the way home that night, consoled by Sweetie in that toxic way we had, half-knowing that my relationship was part of where the rottenness was coming from.

Then last year I attended with much more experience and a few more good connections, spent the day mostly catching up with friends and being proud to find out where the big party was being held. That was the night I first really connected with the Sweethearts, Mr. Shiny Eyes, and the Recurring Character. Because Sweetie was staying in the hotel with me (though not attending the conference) I still felt separate from the poly folks and strangely protective of her, like I couldn’t give all the way in to everything that was going on around me.

This year, I shared a room with my favorite snuggle-couple, the Sweethearts, whom I’m still learning, of course, but thoroughly and emphatically enjoyed in both pants-off and pants-on ways. They feel like home to me, a physical and spiritual comfort to be near whether we were mid-scene or not.

As with last year, I spent a good amount of time catching up with the Lady of the House, who decided that wherever we are together talking is actually the nude beach--it’s exactly that sunny, embracing, and free.

I got to devour Mr. Shiny Eyes for lunch and have some emotional breakthroughs with him during postsex cuddles. (I’ll elaborate on all this as the week goes on…)

And yes, I did know where the party was, but I chose instead to curl up in a comforter and enjoy the warmth of my own company.

For all of the happiness, there was grief, too. I miss having someone to whom I could confess everything and be (until the next condemning fight, at least) absolved. And since last year’s party was all about Sweetie’s ropes, I missed the heck out of those too: I love that we were able to create such beautiful rope-magic even as we were falling apart. I miss the home of her even as I rejoice in finding and founding new person-homes.

This was also the weekend in which I finally admitted to myself that I believe in Tantric energy—I’ve experienced it enough times, I might as well. The first time I tried Tantric breath (at that same sobby conference cuddle party) I experienced it as stabby, almost debilitating pain, a grief-cramp that didn’t go away until I cried it out. This time, just after I left the Sacred Sex Puja, I felt such a warm, sunshiny glow move through me, and keep moving. Though I’m still facing some roadblocks and daunting obstacles, on some fundamental level I’ve come unstuck. There’s so much more work to be done, but sometimes I feel my body, mind, and heart giving me time and space to relax into the flow of whatever comes next.

Roadblock #4: Misdirected Anger

Don’t get me wrong, friends. I’ve seen some real jackassery in the past couple of years, and some of the outrage I’ve expressed has been proportional. But there were times when someone fucked up at about a 3 and I got upset at a 10, making it hard to have any perspective or move on with any kind of grace, often leaking friendships and potential friendships in the wake of the panic and hurt.

Part of the reason that guys’ messups end up being so devastating is that often I interpret them as containing some information about me. When Mr. Sweetheart forgot that it was our phone date night, I felt like the message was that I was inherently forgettable, not that he was just maybe a little silly and overbooked that week. When The Man acted like I wasn’t there, it activated a deep-seated fear that I might not exist, that he treated me like nothing because I actually was nothing. To fight that fear, I had to fight him, but that got me exactly the opposite of what I wanted. That’s part of the reason I’m trying to excavate and acknowledge those fears—it’s no one’s job but mine to soothe and fix them.

I think another reason I’ve made guys into enemies is out of some crackpot subconscious attempt to stay close to Sweetie, a way to let her keep saving me. We could snuggle up together and bemoan whoever was breaking my heart that week, and it kept me from having to actually go ahead and open up. I’ve tended to blame her introversion and monogamy for our isolation, but I was fighting off expansion too. I didn’t want to lose her to what I really wanted, so I made what I wanted into the enemy.

Like anyone who lashes out, I’ve often done it out of a sense of helplessness. For most of my life, I’ve seen myself as someone who is made automatically powerless by men, who has to always fight to get that power back. That’s just a false impression brought about by the tropes of trauma, and I’m doing my best to train myself out of it.

But I think a lot of the misdirected anger came from frustration—it was hard to live without male companionship all those years—I’m angry that I’m almost 39 and just now learning to let go and enjoy PIV sex in the grown-up way that I want to. I’m very sad that it took me this long to make friends with the penis, and now I have this ravenous urge to make up for lost time that just hasn’t translated into real life.

I am angry at Sweetie for all of the shame that came out of our mismatch, all of the times she called me a slut or a stupid cunt or a whore, all of the times she contemptuously spat out “Just because I don’t want to fuck anyone else…” or “Just because I don’t have a penis…” She said “fuck” and “penis” in the same tone of voice she might also use to say “George W. Bush.” I’m angry at her for reinforcing my fear that I’m a bad feminist for wanting to submit, and I’m angry at her for crying over recreational bruises or hot blog posts. The things I most love about myself, or most want to love, were the things that made her miserable and bitter.

I am so angry with myself for refusing to admit what I really wanted, for keeping us in a no-win situation for so long. I’m angry about the nonsense I’ve put up with in the hopes that the right boyfriend might take the pressure off and save the marriage—I’m so glad if that factor is never a part of my dating life again.

When we made the decision to divorce, about 80% of the anger just evaporated. I started to feel embarrassed about all of the times I’ve lashed out, and I made a mental apology list. I’ve been unblocking and refriending people and doling out apologies, and each one is a humbling relief. It feels good to come out and say hey, I was an asshole, but I’m committed to being less of one.

About a year ago, Sweetie and I had a terrible fight during which she locked the door and refused to let me leave. When I finally got past her and out the door, I sat in the car and called my mom to ask her to help me get a divorce. Mom talked me out of it, telling me that even if I had a different partner, I’d never be better, that the fights were a part of me I couldn’t change. (Never mind that no one else had ever locked me in an apartment or called me a cunt.) I am excited and inspired to start proving my mother wrong, to heal myself and then find partners who can disagree and express unhappiness without being terrifying, to stop going through the world always a little bit scared. I believe I can be better.

Fantasies of Lesbian Monogamy, Dreams of Men

I’ve been thinking a lot about those Fatal Attraction references that The Man made about me. I’ve never seen the movie, but I think maybe I identify more with the Michael Douglas character than with Glenn Close. I remember from somewhere (probably from an old episode of Siskel and Ebert) that (after focus groups demanded it) the story ends with the married couple safely back in bed, having vanquished the hostile outside force. In other words, the movie is an advertisement for monogamy, a cautionary tale that only nightmares lay outside the marriage bed.

(As a side note, I think that a lot of the couple-centric problems that outside partners run into (wall-building, rule-making, hierarchy, and a general atmosphere of fear) stem from the fact that the bunny-boiler trope is so pervasive that even honest attempts at non-monogamy evoke traces of her.)

Now that The Man and the Scary Party are behind me, it’s very tempting to wish that I could use the scariness of the experience to fortify myself for a life of monogamy—after all, Sweetie has nearly all of the things that I need in a partner, plus so much more: she is chivalrous, brave, smart, deeply loving, and as the icing on the cake, fantastic with knots. For the foreseeable future, until I learn how to actually listen to my intuition and treat myself as somebody valuable even in the midst of man-smell, I am only with her.

And yet, every morning this week, I’ve had the same dream: kissing a man. A real one, not the goth-boys-who-did-not-grow-up-to-be-goth-men than I’ve been drawn to lately. He is decisive, clear, desirous, and hot. Maybe he’s my own animus, or maybe he is real. Or both.

Likewise, when I look up porn (at least there’s not so much anhedonia this time), it’s always of the many-men-one-woman variety. There is the simple fact that I lovelovelove penises, even if my relationship with those who have them tends to be fraught.

Before the now-long-past thing with Bill, I believed in something simple. I thought I could find someone, make out, synch our calendars, fall in love. I thought that if I was open enough, my missing person would appear. It never occurred to me that I would be asked and tempted to give up my autonomy, my dignity, my voice. I don’t know what to make of this year, how much of it I’ll keep and how much I’ll shed, easy as deleting my Fet profile.

I still don’t know if what I want (two real, deep relationships, one with Sweetie and one with a man) is a real possibility or a dream to be let go. My need to be loved by a man is so warped by compromise and taboo that it seems like just a huge risk, but a life without it seems very sad. There aren’t any answers for it now, just a quiet, simplified life and a hope that someday soon I’ll feel well enough to socialize, that someday soon I’ll be on solid ground.

Die Antwoord Ex Machina and Other Spanky Queer Fun

I finally got in a whole bunch of quality time with Sweetie last weekend, yay! Saturday night was a complicated adventure I ended up being really proud of. It started with an awesome gig—I was reading poems and smut at a benefit for my friend’s top surgery. In the dressing room, a six-and-a-half foot radical faerie let me borrow from her amazing glitter palette to outline my eyes and draw a cute pink heart on my check. The host surprised me with birthday cake and everybody sang—I really think it’s been one of the best birthdays ever.

Sweetie and I had a play party date afterwards. I was apologetic about having to leave early to go get my ass beat, but they were very understanding. I told my radical faerie friend I’d like to just follow her around, and she thought that was just fine.

Sweetie and I ran into some trickiness on the way to the party, though—she’d stayed in the room while I read about my scene with MisterHazel Eyes, and she was a little shell shocked. She’s not a voyeur, and hearing it just made her feel competitive and grumpy. I was frustrated that I had to stop and feel guilty after I’d just had such a good experience. Plus, we were going to the venue where I first played publicly with Fireguy, so there was a worry that I might run into him. And I was still missing MHE a whole bunch—it’s only been a few weeks.

In the end, though, we were able to comfort each other and our need to play together trumped our respective worries. I think there’s no reason she should have to read the posts that aren’t about her, especially since I’ve got so many nice voyeurs like yourselves to help fill my showoffy needs. Thanks thanks thanks! XOXOXOXO.

This party was crowded—there wasn’t a lot of furniture to go around, which means we got to see some amazing floor play. The scene next to us, wherein the guy was holding his girl down and showing her crotch to the room, alternately slapping her face and furiously rubbing her clit over her hot pink underwear--I found them very inspiring. Same goes for the woman with the amazing ponytail who was wrapped in a glittery pink blanket and getting flogged with silver tinsel strands for a nice take on aftercare. You could see why I’d need a blindfold to concentrate on what was happening to me…

Sweetie found a nice well-lit spot along the wall and spread out a shiny scarf for me to stand on. I took off my heels and Sweetie pulled of my low-cut pink nightie. I’d asked at the door “Could you elucidate the nipple policy?” and they said they have to be covered so I had on my Hello Kitty tape. (Most of the other girls were not following the nipple policy, by the way. So much to see!) I was wearing my lacy pink lucky underwear and I worried for a second about being too fat, but then ropes started happening and I felt better.

She started with these pretty pink handcuffs:

She tried to pull my arms behind my head and secure them there with a rope around my waist, but that only lasted for a second—I couldn’t figure out where to put my head. I was getting distracted so she put on my nice soft blindfold. I am really starting to fall in love with being blindfolded, even though it was a limit just a few months ago.

By the time she got me into a good harness, a St. Andrew’s cross had opened up. She tied the handcuffs to the top and tied my ankles to the bottom of the cross so that I had to stand with my legs apart—she was excited that she’s finally mastered the Somerville bowline, but I couldn’t quite high-five her. The green ropes she used on my ankles glowed in the blacklight. Once I was settled in, she started on the spanks. I was kind of exhausted already, so I didn’t think it would take long. She used her hands and our little pink kooshlike flogger. When she pulled my hair, I realized why I’m not loud with her during scenes the way I am in the bedroom: she makes my insides go silent. As she pulled at the back of my hair, just a little more painfully than I expected, there was no noise or words that could’ve expressed the relief that I felt.

The best part of the play party came when this song came on:

 I was standing around in my harness, winding up the restraint ropes to put them away. I Fink U Freeky came on and I danced around a little—I lost self-consciousness in a new way and just danced there in my undies and ropes, filling up with giggly well-being.

I stuck my ass out and she thwacked it in time to the music. She was sitting in a tall chair and I bent all the way into downward dog with my (wet, obviously) crotch on her knee and she played my ass like a drum. I laughed and laughed—I don’t think I’ve ever felt more myself.

I wore my ropes all through aftercare, and I didn’t want to take them off after that either, so I wore them home under my dress.

The Lessons of Mister Hazel Eyes

I’m still really sad that Mister Hazel Eyes disappeared, but I guess I know that in some ways, it’s probably for the best. I’m taking a month away from (non-Sweetie) body adventures partly because I need to make space for heartbreak, and partly because my student teaching semester begins next week. I feel like I’ve listed some of these things before, but here’s what I learned from him:

1. I have abandonment issues. I hope to outgrow them someday, mostly by noticing that people often do stick around, but in the meantime, I think the best I can do is avoid men who trigger said issues as much as I can, and talk it over when the feelings come up. I can’t trace the abandonment fear to anything besides the fact that I took men away from myself for so long. My body’s sometimes like “Is it gonna be ten days or ten years?” I’ll do my best to comfort it.
2. I need to slow down and allow for the other partner’s pace. I’m not sure if I sabotaged us or if we were simply a bad match, but I wish I would’ve given him a little more time to catch up to me, emotionally. I get attached fast and I need to be okay with that, but I also need to give people more time and space to feel what they end up feeling.
3. Poly guys only. I think that this is an okay preference to have. I want metamours, not rivals, and it’s hard not to feel competitive with someone who will likely be my replacement. There’s nothing inherently wrong with being a stopgap, but I don’t want to do it again.
4. If facebook is telling me things before he is, it won’t work. It will, in fact, make me feel like a crazy person and also like I am twelve.
5. Asking for what I need is wonderful and good, but basic respect needs to go without saying. If someone is too careless or incompatible, asking for what I need can feel like harpytown, population me. It feels awful, and it’s cruel to the person who’s getting harped on, too. On a related note: no more guys with too South Parky of a sense of humor.
6. It’s okay to prefer good communication. I felt superneedy for wanting him to make plans proactively, to respond to texts within a day or so, but really, that’s just the bare minimum.
7. Snuggle me, snuggle my complications. He made me feel bad for who I am, for coming with a full calendar, with other partners, with a list of knots and a suitcase of rope. I felt like a burden because of all my facets, even though I love those things about myself.
8. Jealousy is not going to kill me. It just sometimes’ll feel like it might. It’s another thing I have to practice. At least I didn’t run away this time.
9. I want something long term, so I will do my best to choose guys who are more likely to be long term, who feel secure, adult, and good at planning.
10. That being said, as you might have noticed from the recurring theme of nineties music, there’s a teenage aspect of me who is turned on by a certain kind of guy: filthy/affectionate, boyish, detached. I would like to find a way to entertain that aspect of myself in a more sustainable way. I never thought of myself as an ageplay girl, but I think I might like to play 17 sometimes. I’ll put that on the list of things to try after my kitten break.

Things Go Haywire But a Good Scene Anyway, Part One

After I ran into the Mayor of Kittentown on the beach the weekend before last, I got seriously concerned about dating someone who is not poly. I’m not usually a jealous person, but when monogamous ladies become involved, an icky side of me comes out and I don’t know how to stop it. I haven’t quite regained confidence since that day at the beach, and I’m kind of turning things into a train wreck.

As soon as I realized I had these concerns, I was sure to schedule some extra talking time with Mister Hazel Eyes before our play party date last Saturday. Before that happened, though, facebook happened. I wasn’t even clicking on him, I swear! Just, a picture of him popped up in my newsfeed, looking all cozy with a pretty, earthy girl at some kind of formal event, maybe a wedding. I clicked on his page to check for a status change, and there was another pretty girl all over his wall. We hadn’t gotten to the point of exchanging dance card info yet, so I texted him to ask.  It turns out he is seeing a Nice Girl, and she was neither of the ladies pictured.

I told him that I was scared and that we’d talk, but I spent the rest of Friday intermittently crying. I know it isn’t a competition, but I just couldn’t figure out how to compete with this woman. I feel like because I’m not available all the time, I’ll just never be good enough. I feel so guilty sometimes because I don’t have my whole self to offer, even though (other than timewise) I do have my whole self to offer. I can love lots of people 100% but sometimes guys just don’t understand that.

By Saturday, I felt a little better. I just wanted to make sure that we got some stuff ironed out. I needed to tell him that I had some feelings for him, we needed to go over our dance cards together, and we had to somehow meet in the middle about communication—he is not a good texter/planner, and that’s actually the thing that seems insurmountable. I don’t need someone to be in touch ever minute, I just like little conversational touches that let me know what the plans are and when I might hear back. It’s hard to explain without feeling superneedy, but most people just text in my preferred way naturally.

All that, plus negotiating a scene—maybe a lot of pressure for two folks who are brand-new together.

Mister Hazel Eyes had a flat tire on the way over to get me and complained that it had been “More than he wanted to spend to go out tonight” so he seemed a little begrudging about dinner. I had sympathy about car trouble, but I felt a little hurt and not-date-like at the mention of money—it made me feel a little like a burden, which was a hard feeling to shake.

Anyway, I told him about my facebook fuss and how I’d unsubscribed—it’s a lot easier to ask someone what’s going on than to extrapolate from incomplete online info. He went over who the various girls are, and I hated feeling like he had to explain himself to me. Does he? I don’t know.

I told him about Mr. Popular and the other guy in my maybe pile, and he said he’d try not to be jealous—I said I feel fine about jealousy, except when it makes people go away. He told me about Nice Girl, who is brand new. I couldn’t stop myself from asking:

“So when (Nice Girl) wants to go steady, what happens to me?”

“I don’t know, how do these things usually work?”

“Well, in my happy magical dreamland, she knows about me, and we share, and everything works out great. What usually happens is that the monogamous girl wins and I go away.”

I told him how much our concert date meant, and that I was having real feelings for him. He said it meant a lot to him too, just being there with me. I said I was scared and then said one of the worst poly no-no things I’ve ever said:

“(Nice Girl) is probably easygoing, I’m sure she doesn’t need this much care.”

I am really not a fan of myself in a lot of this story. Please know that I know what I was doing wrong.

We lapsed into a worried silence and Badfinger’s “No Matter What” came on, which made me laugh because it was so ironic and sad. I turned it up anyway and made him pull over in a parking lot overlooking the river and kiss me until the song was over. It sure didn’t feel like a no matter what. It felt like the beginning of another long goodbye.

Next: Somehow we make it to rope class.