Passing Ships

Yesterday was good. Yesterday helped.

Yesterday the wife and I spent time together. Real time. Affectionate time. We addressed the fact that there hasn’t been a feeling of intimacy between us lately. She confessed that she’s been scared; that she’s not good enough, that I’ll want someone else, that she won’t be enough. She admitted that these fears have made her closed off and distant.

And I listened. And I comforted her, and we embraced. And things became better.

But better doesn’t mean solved. We didn’t discuss mono v. poly, although there were allusions to the schism. When I comforted her, I was honest at all times; that I love her, that I want to commit my life to her, that more than anything want us to be together and in love for the rest of our lives. All of this was true, and all of this was what she needed to hear.

But I don’t know if she thinks that this means I’m “done” with looking into poly. That this was just some notion that occurred to me and I entertained it for a short while as a hypothetical. This is far from the case. And last night was not the proper time to delve into all of this. And right now isn’t either. After some extended strain and distance- both physical and emotional- what we both need right now is closeness and togetherness. Simplicity in each other.

So there will be a time for these important conversations. And we will have a lot to talk about, a lot to process, and plenty to reflect upon. But for now, let’s just enjoy what we have, where we are with each other.

Tonight, with our re-won closeness and connection, the wife shared with me something that is right out of the heart of one of my prior posts here on this blog. And I did my best to echo back her sentiments and share some of mine, but I couldn’t, I wouldn’t, allow myself to tell her everything about what she was saying, how much I had thought over this exact same thing. How we are so, so similar, so right for each other. As long as we can work through the divide, through our difference in relationship needs.

Someday her and I will talk about all of this. And I’ll show her that blog post specifically. Show her that it was written weeks before she turned her mind to it, yet it was something we both shared unwittingly. And I will hope that small examples like this will help reassure her doubts and fears that my love for her is no less real, no less meaningful, than it always has been for her. Change doesn’t mean that she is less in my life, just that my life has room for more as well.

The Moment Where I Maybe Come Unhinged

A confusing, disappointing morning several days back has really put me into a tailspin mentally.

I’m never going to be normal, I’m never going to feel and think what mainstream society says or expects I should. Which I don’t actually care about (for me), but I do care in the sense that it will matter to my potential partners. If they feel the same as the larger society, than that means I’ll be abnormal to them as well. I’m not going to feel complete in a storybook romance.

Just because I feel loved, doesn’t mean I have all the love I need. Just because I have someone to love, doesn’t mean my heart is full. I can be poly, monogamous, and happy at the same time, but there is an upper bound, a limit to that happiness. Monogamy in our relationship  does not cause me unhappiness, but it does leave me feeling wanting.

Now I realize and know about what it is I don’t have in my life, what I am missing for me. And it makes me a little sad, I am already mourning things I think will never happen for me. It’s just not enough.

None of us get do overs in life. I have so many damn things I truly wish I could do over, entire years I want to change, but I can’t. And now I don’t want to spend my future years beating myself up and agonizing over the past years I can never change. I want to look ahead, to build a fuller and happier life, and I want to do that openly and honestly, with you by my side.

I don’t have a bonding off-switch. Many (most?) people search and strive for a partner, and once they have it, that need to search goes away, or goes quiet. Not for me. When I am in a romantic relationship, that doesn’t complete or satisfy me in the way I guess it does most people. I still feel the want to connect with others, I still get an amazing, life-affirming rush when I catch a woman’s attention or make her laugh in that true way. I still have desires. I still want new experiences and continually growing connections and love.

The sort of love that society promotes feels very zero-sum to me. And that’s kind of how our relationship has been structured too. Not that I want it to be, but that’s how it feels. Before, this was 100% on me, bottled up. Now it’s 50/50, with me having shared my thoughts and now keeping quiet and not pushing the issue, and you going about figuring out how you feel and working through it. But I don’t want it to become 100% the other way, that it’s something you agree to for me but secretly and silently it kills you and eats away at you. So I guess we remain at the 50/50 with no changes for the foreseeable future.

And for many, many, many years I had made myself believe that all of these feelings were wrong, that I was wrong. And so I pushed them down, pushed them away, told myself that it was wrong and inappropriate to want the things that I wanted. That I was the problem.

Now? I don’t want to be the problem anymore. I don’t want to be wrong. Instead of living a life where I have to constrain myself and chastise myself, I just don’t want to do that anymore. So I want to choose to be honest. I want to choose to listen to myself. And I want to find a way in life where I can do that.

Wow, I have more to rant, more on my mind, more that has been on my mind for a long time, but I don’t want this one post to become an insane man’s manifesto. So I’ll cut it here for today, and I’ll keep thinking on the rest.

Quid Pro Quo

Well, this weekend sure didn’t go as expected. The wife has been out of town on and off for awhile for family, and the weekend was shaping up to be a quiet, dull, and somewhat restful weekend.

But then, as I was running errands and sitting down to lunch Saturday, my wife texted me and let me know that she was having a really difficult time. As we texted back and forth, and I ate my lunch quickly, in my head I was already cataloging what I needed to grab from home for me and the dog so that we could get in the car and be there for her.

As I got to the house, she stated that she didn’t want me to have to drive all the way (7-8 hours each direction), especially when we’re traveling to the same place next weekend for a wedding. I told her that it wasn’t even a question, that pup and I are already on our way, and we’ll be there as soon as we can.

Over the past few months I’ve been going to therapy, and in working on myself I’ve also counterintuitively become better with others. This past week my Amazon order of the poly guide book More Than Two came in and I’ve also been devouring that in my quiet evenings while I’ve had the house to myself.

Yes, I want a poly relationship, it’s what feels like the best vision of my happiness, but I also know that this is scary and perhaps a bridge too far for my wife. As More Than Two has done a great job explaining, most fears or restrictions in a relationship actually have a much more fundamental issue to them, different than the item being discussed.

With my wife’s trepidation, I can guess that some of it stems from a concern that she will no longer be important to me, that I won’t support her in the way she needs. What I want to get across to her is that she isn’t going anywhere, she’s not losing my heart, my affection, or my love. She is still the first woman I fell in love with, my partner through thick and thin, and the woman I married.

I didn’t get in the car today hoping that if I do this for her, maybe she’ll feel obliged to me; that she owes me. I got in the car because I knew she needed me. I got in the car because I wanted to do whatever I could to support her, even if it was a temporary burden on me. Our relationship isn’t about who owes who, it’s about how can we build a happy, healthy, loving, and supportive life for each other, together.

Yes, if someday I also have a girlfriend in addition to our marriage, it’s true that I’ll owe my time in an additional way. And that sometimes my attention will be elsewhere. But that doesn’t mean she will be pushed out or won’t be important.

In all honesty, with the yearning I have for new experiences, for NRE, for additional connections, I think having these things will make me happier to be around, with more energy, more passion, and more excitement that I can share with everyone. Not only that, but she’d have a special place that no one else could, because she was the one that chose to love me and to trust me enough to put her faith in me and agree to open up what we had previously agreed was a monogamous relationship.

So no, please understand that I didn’t do this today to get anything from you. I did this because I love you. I have, and I always will.

Arrrrgh

To clarify, the title isn’t an extortion of frustration or anger. Rather, it’s me yelling out as a way to steel myself, to push myself, to confront the challenges in front of me. Like a weightlifter, I’m yelling out as a way to push myself to just do it, take on the challenge.

I’m already picturing the conversation with my wife. So I finally came forward that I think I’m poly. I’m pretty sure this is how I feel, how I’ve felt for a long time. But then, for reasons we both agreed to, unspoken and not, we’ve back burnered the discussion and let the matter rest.

But now, eventually, it’ll be time to pick the conversation back up. And I can imagine her asking me “Is this really what you want?” And I think that she wants me to be able to answer resolutely, yes, this is indeed what I want. And that I can tell her that with confidence and conviction.

But I’m legitimately terrified. I’m terrified of saying yes, and what that will mean. I’m terrified of how deeply that may hurt her. I’m terrified of all that that one word might cost me of what I already have.

So if this is so hard and so scary, then why do it?
Because I might not have a choice otherwise. This might be who I actually am.

I think that someday I might actually get to the place that I say yes, this is what I want. Yes, I need this to truly be happy. Yes, I know that I am risking everything by saying yes.

I want her to know, to truly know, that I will always be there for her, that none of this is to replace her or that she is failing in some way. That she will always have a place in my heart, a central place, a supremely important place. But I’m finding that my heart has a need larger than any one relationship. And that’s just the reality of who I am.

So do I push our relationship off of a cliff?  Because once this declaration is out there, this concrete statement of need, there’s no pulling it back. The relationship as it was ends. One way or another, it ends. Hopefully it ends in a way that builds a newer and more honest relationship between her and I. But that’s but one possibility. It ends, no matter what. And it might not end well.

So now the question is really about is it if, or when? If I tell her this, that yes, this is what I need. Or when I tell her.

Look out below…

Adults Only

Something the wife and I have talked about many times (as most long-term couples do), is about the future and the potential of having kids.

From the beginning, we always agreed that we wouldn’t want more than 2 if it’s up to us, and that perhaps we might count our blessings and stop with one happy and healthy child. But it was always a talk for the future, never anything imminent that we wanted soon.

And that’s still our status quo. In the past year or so the language has shifted to “if” and not “when” as it comes to children, as we recognize that we still haven’t decided if it’s right for us, and even if we do want it, we know other couples that have struggled to conceive. But it’s still something we communicate about.

I feel certain though that once we have kids, if we choose to, anything that we haven’t already explored will be off the table. And I don’t want to expect or hope that maybe we could try new things after parenthood begins, because one, I don’t believe that would happen, and two, that would be unfair to our child.

If we have a child, our focus about changing our lifestyle needs to be about building a supportive and loving family system for the child, not worrying as much about ourselves. So I don’t want to enter a delusion for a decade or two or and have this unrealistic expectation hanging over us for years and years and years about when will this happen? We do we want to try something?

I know that expanding/opening our relationship can be fraught with peril and pain at times, and that’s likely not something we’d want to expose our family with children to. But this also isn’t a hostage situation, that I absolutely will not agree to children until we explore poly. I just feel very aware that this is a part of who I am and how I feel, and that if kids come first that precludes poly, so if that’s the direction we go down (with kids) then I will be very aware that I am agreeing to a number of other decisions and finalities as well. And if I say that it’s what I want too and I’m on board with her, then I have to be when I say that. And I’ll have to mean it.