I love my parents

After many, many months of meaning to do it, I finally can out to my parents as poly.  Well, I didn’t use the word poly, but described, in a letter, my open marriage with C and my growing relationship with E.  I sent it by e-mail, and then promptly went to do volunteer work to keep me from worrying too much.

At the end of my volunteer shift, I got this e-mail from my mom.

I have no problem with this not am I shocked. I see it as a way to maybe have a grandchild.  C should not worry about what we would think.  If it is ok with her, ok with you ,you are practicing safe sex, (i.e. no STD’s) and it enhances your marriage and your happiness go for it.  You can discuss this with either one of us.  We would not have a problem. I’d just talk to dad.   He will be glad you are happy!!

Invite him over for Sunday dinner- we would like to meet someone who is important to you.

So I think the most amusing part of all of this, aside from my parents being awesome and non-judgemental and cool, is Mom immediately thinking of her potential future grand babies.  (Of course, she’s not as bad as C’s mom, who’s been asking about babies since we first moved in together when C was 19, so both too young for babies and LACKING IN SPERM.)

Dad was totally cool with it, too.  And when I told E that I’d told my folks and he’d been invited to dinner, he said he’d need to pick out his bow tie (I think because bow ties are cool).  Because he is also awesome.

So much worry is gone now.  No more giving half truths or outright lies to the parents about where I’m going, no more trying to find a place out of earshot to have phone conversations.  And C is not longer worrying about what will happen when my parents find out.

Happiness!

❤

18 months

Tomorrow marks a year and a half of this crazy relationship thing with E.  It’s not the sort of thing he’ll remember, and I wouldn’t expect him to.  But I mark it for my own memories, and take a moment to pause an reflect on what I have learned in the past year and a half because I have known him.

I can say the things that matter – hard things, scary things, true things – and the world will not collapse.  Even when I say them knowing they will hurt someone I love.

I can ask for what I want, and I can live with the consequences whether I get it or not.

I can have the kind of sexual connection I dreamed of as a teen, and the friendly, loving relationship I want as an adult, and they can be the same thing.

Domesticity is not a prerequisite for a deep, meaningful relationship.

I can support someone and love them deeply without having to carry their burdens for them.

Boys ARE different, and a little odd, but that can be a wonderful thing.

I am loved, beyond expectations, and by so many.

Not poly after all?

I would consider myself and my relationships polyamorous.  Others, however, apparently would not.  They would say that I am improperly defining the word and thus diluting its power.

Alan at Poly in the Media writes:

We risk losing our defining word, one that refers to something different: the radical subset of non-monogamy that’s open to good heart connections all around among three or more people. Even if those connections are merely good will and caring behavior among friendly acquaintances.

The problem is this:  While C and E fall in the “good heart connections all around” category, W and I most definitely do not.  We’ve never met, and she is still looking for an exclusive relationship with E (which he doesn’t really want, but I think he’s afraid that actually telling her that will lead her to end things).  While I am more than open to having a “friendly acquaintanceship” with her, she is not.   So I guess that makes this NOT POLY.

Why, then, do I want to claim the poly label?  Because it is truly the best fit both for my relationship and for me individually.  I suppose I could grab the “openly non-monogamous,” but that implies more sex and less relationship than I currently enjoy and strive to maintain.  And poly by the above definition is what I want to have.  It’s just not exactly what I have at the moment.

What’s a girl to do? I work very hard to have the most open, connected, mutually-caring relationships I can.  But it is not appropriate for me to dictate the terms of someone else’s relationships.  That would not be in the spirit of poly at all.  Therefore, I cannot control how my metamour interacts with me under the terms of a relationship I am not part of.  Strict poly ethics would say that, if I cannot have friendly, open relations with my partner’s partner, I should call it off.  That that is not poly at best, cheating at worst, and cheating is not to be tolerated.  I don’t like it and would like it to be different, but I am not about to throw away a relationship that is good in most every other way for the sake of strict adherence to a definition.

Poly ethics are like any ethics. (I’ve been reading a variety of ethical writings for class recently.)  Too much righteousness is obnoxious and unrealistic.  The world is full of imperfect people, imperfect relationships.  If it didn’t, there would be no need for ethics in the first place.  Intent has to count for something in a world of openness and freedom, because in such a world, a person can choose not to interact.

Greenly Thoughts

I started a new blog this morning for the less personal side of my world.  Well, less personal in that I’m publicizing on FB and other such things.  Publicly-consumable, I suppose.  This site is still the home for my journeys in unconventional relationships, emotional upheaval, etc.  The stuff I don’t want my grandma seeing.   😀

But for musings on nature, education, religion, etc., greenlythoughts.wordpress.com is the place to go.

I think I need to tell him

that I want to have his babies.  Not right now, cause I’m still in school and C is still unemployed and we’re still living with my folks….  But maybe in the next year or so.

This isn’t a whim, or a new thought.  It’s one I’ve had for over a year, and vaguely since before I actually met him (when I was still actively trying with frozen sperm and wondering where I could find fresh).  And it’s grown from him ticking the sperm donor checklist almost perfectly, to really thinking he’d be someone I’d want to have around to help raise the kid.  He’d be a great dad.

One of the things he seems to like most about his relationship with W is that she has kids.  He likes being a dad.  He’s managed not to produce any offspring of his own thus far, and doesn’t think he ever will, so being with someone with kids gets him an instant family.

I don’t know.  Maybe it’s manipulative of me.  But if it’s family he wants, I think I owe it to him to let him know that W isn’t his only option.  I am afraid that it might change our relationship in some unexpected way, but I think I’d want all that information when contemplating whether or not to stay with someone.

Normal life doesn’t prepare you for this…

E texted me a few days ago at 12:30 AM from his vacation with W.  (He pretty much never texts after, say, 10.)  Seems some previously simmering issues came to a head, and they are “taking a break.”*  Now, this vacation is a plane ride away from here, and they weren’t coming back till today, and for various reasons, neither of them could leave early.  So I’m not exactly sure how you “take a break” from your relationship while on a vacation with the person, but there it is.

But now I’m trying to figure out how to be supportive of him while he deals with the potential ending of what was a really important relationship to him but which was always threatening to me.  (She was never really OK with him having other relationships.)

And there’s also the reality that, if they don’t get back together, I will be his only relationship for the first time.  I’m not gonna lie, it’s kind of an exciting possibility for me.  I’ve wished for more of his time for as long as we’ve been together.  (Part of the limit of time was due to my schedule and circumstance, but a large part of it was due to his commitments to W.)  Basically, this may be a chance for us to renegotiate our relationship.  Or, truthfully, negotiate it in the first place, as we’ve never truly outlined what we are and what we expect from each other.

But all that means I’m not in the least committed to him staying with W, and I’m not fully comfortable with that.  Most of me wants him to make the decision that’s best for him, but there’s a petty little part that really wants that decision to to be to stay split from W.

I’ll be seeing him tomorrow.  We’ll see how it goes.

 

*I had to have a friend explain the concept of “taking a break” from a relationship.  She said it was breaking up when you’re too much of a coward to actually call it off.  This sounds about right.

Adorable…

E called while I was out with C and a friend.  We chatted for a few minutes about his work, the (lack of) contents of his fridge, traded I-love-yous, and said good bye.   After I hung up, I got twin “aww” looks from C and my friend.

E and I have only recently reached the I-Love-you stage, just since right before I left for the summer. (Love me, put up with me running away for 2 months a year to play in the woods.)  It’s been interesting to see how our emotional involvement has increased over the past couple months, even with very limited contact.  Absence makes the heart grow fonder and all that, I suppose.  It gave us both a chance to see how different life is without each other, and he’s been very open about how I am a very needed positive factor in his life.  And I rather feel the same way.  It’s all rather…sweet.  We’ve reached that point.  I like it.

When C and I got home, my conversation with E came up.  She pulled me into a hug and said it was adorable.  And that she liked that I was happy.  She was genuinely pleased.  It made me love her even more (if that’s possible).

It is a good life I have.

Never thought I’d be dealing with this issue, what with being married to a woman and all…

But there is a slight chance I could be pregnant.  It could be just stress on top of a slightly odd cycle this month.  And I’m still in my normal range.  If I hadn’t spent the better part of the past 4 years tracking my cycles in hopes of getting pregnant, I probably wouldn’t even notice.  But this cycle has been really, really not normal for me.  Spotting started about a week after ovulation and has kept up since.  I’m at the very top of my normal LP range.  I’ve been super tired and generally feeling just a bit off.

I let on about this to C, without getting into all the specifics.  She was not upset, really, but a bit concerned.  Which is reasonable.  And I’m trying not to make too big a deal of it in my head.  The problem is, I want it to be true.  I want this child, if it is.  It’s not exactly how I would have chosen to have it come about.  And there would be much fall out to deal with from lots of angles.

If I’m not really bleeding by the time E comes over on Thursday, I think I may have to tell him.  Which I’m not looking forward to, because while I feel morally obligated to let him know I may be pregnant, I don’t want him being all stressed over something that may turn out to be nothing.

Ugh.

Does Not Compute

I’m all nervous energy tonight and I don’t know why.  I’m seeing him in a little over an hour, and for the past three I’ve barely been able to concentrate.  Why?  I don’t know.  Maybe because it’s spring again I’m reliving the eager excitement of last year, when everything was so new and thrilling?

You’d think 10 months in, I wouldn’t still turn into a puddle of lust-addled goo at the thought of him.  And yet, here I am.

There is a reason I’m still with him, despite his poor treatment of me at times, despite the pain of being the more emotionally invested party, despite the looming cloud that comes with knowing the end will come but not knowing when.  Logically, I should have thrown the towel in months ago, cut my losses and not looked back.  But he fried all my logic circuits long ago and my reptile brain knows what it wants.

Also:

This: http://www.afreesociety.org/critique-of-pure-relationships/