One truth.

Sadness and longing seem to have come hand in hand with understanding over the last weeks.

I've all kinds of fantasies with men and with women - mostly they sit in 3 areas.

The first is me, the woman who wants to yield to the power of a man's energy. To be held down, to be ravaged, to feel my wildness contained beautifully, to submit, to have all choice taken away from me, to be fucked, hard. To be broken and then masterfully brought back to life, to be in receipt of delicious and burning pain, to be smothered by him and then lifted by him, to be utterly compelled and captivated by someone, and to crave for them and have those cravings shudderingly met.

Then there is me, the well-disciplined girl. The girl who sometimes wants guidance and needs a regular firm hand. The girl who blushes at the mention of a smacked bottom, who finds embarrassment touches something deep inside that needs a playful and poignant stir. The girl who is delighting in rules for the very first time in her life because she equates rules with care and obedience and she only wants to be obedient because she is so full of respect for the man that is holding her accountable. She is discovering being a girl again, being tender and being exploratory and having her hand held as she does so. She doesn't need to always be in control anymore, she can be shy and curious and sometimes scared and show all of what was on the inside, on the outside now.

Then there is the woman who enjoys adventure. Who has always had an open mind and a loving heart. Who was kissing girls and boys from far too young an age. Who was having kissing and fondling parties in her bedroom at primary school, who was caught kissing girls in her gym class and would enjoy watching boys touching themselves. Fast forward from 11 to 18 when everything went a little bit wrong, and she was back and experiencing sharing a bed with an older couple, having her bottom fucked, making love to a woman for the first time, holidaying in Lesvos, then settling down to an 8 year monogomous relationship with a girl. And now, she's found a whole other world where all the parts of her that were wanting to be explored have suddenly been able to burst forth and find expression. She's travelled alone to a few swingers nights, they weren't for her, then to a few BDSM nights, they weren't for her either, but she still travels to new places looking for kinky, erotic, masochistic, connecting, loving, honest experiences . She is learning that she enjoys administering a sore bottom too...enjoys the feeling of a man wriggling with a hard cock against her lap, watching his bottom turning crimson and trailing her nails over his sore cheeks. And Disciplining girls too, being a mentor, and also finding that her open and loving heart can find other ways to have relationships, where polyamory and compersion are things that she is learning about all of the time.

And then, there is this quiet voice, it is still me, but it is me right down at the very depths of who I am. Slowly this voice has come to understand what she wants to say, what it is that is at the core of all of these things, she whispers, because this is the sadness and the longing she spoke of at the beginning of this post, what she really wants, what she has been desiring since she was as young as maybe 11 or 12, is to be "owned" by a couple. That is her dream. That is my dream. And it has been sad to come to realise that probably that dream is never going to come true.

Picking things back up.

It has been a long time since I visited here. And in my life often a month can feel like a year with all the many things that happen, how things unfold.

I think I mostly come here to rest, to be fully me. 

So much has happened between he and I in these last weeks. The new girl that arrived in our metaphorical bed has been and although she hasn't gone, he did make the decision a few weeks ago that he couldn't possibly be that role in another woman's life. So they are just friends. She and I are friends too. I like her a lot :)

But me, now, here. Who am I really, how honest am I being with myself. What is it that I really want.....

I am 32 years old. I'm a woman who is really very proud to be a woman. I am a woman who has always been drawn to women, to their minds, to their bodies, to their ways of being. My attic flat is adorned with paintings and photographs and canvases and sketches of women, naked, dead, poised, dream-like, wild, strong, natural and feminine.

Am I the woman that I wanted to be?

Can I really hold my head up high and feel proud of the way I am living my life right now?

I have a new Mentor in my professional life. I've never had a mentor before and so I feel very lucky. She is an older woman, 60, and someone whom I look at and admire. She looked at me last night after an evening of work and wine with a group of 8 other women and told me that if there was one thing she wanted to do it was to help me be more confident. Apparently I apologise before I speak, every time before I go to say something I say sorry.

What is it that I am apologising for?

Is it that actually I am just very very sorry, endlessly sorry, for all the time that I remain staying in this relationship...sorry to both of the other women, sorry to all the people in my life that watch me continue do this, and maybe even sorry to myself.

I'd like to be a woman that I can feel more proud of.

The Brutal Truth.

I am saying this after 2 hours of thinking, it has been a restless night and at 4 am I could no longer try and sleep away from these echoes.

More and more I am aware of sensations in my body that talk to me.

I can't dwell here as I write this as it feels like I am committing something to this page that I barely want to be truthful about to myself.

A fellow blogger and very generous wise Woman "greenwoman" has written several posts recently that have touched me quite deeply. ( here and here ) As I've read them I've known that there were many things within her words that I needed to notice and feel and quietly tuck away inside me to turn over when I was ready.

Right now, here in the early light of Monday morning, I have turned over her words that are etched on beautiful smoothed dove-grey pebbles, and the under side of each pebble is now glinting at me, and the words that I need to say are this.

I know that the full expression of who I am, and all I can be, will never be found within the love between he and I. His love for me ( it feels wrong to quantify love ) so maybe I will say his time and energy and the restrictions on our relationship mean that I will never get all that I desire. 

Saying those words is just me starting to get a feel for them. I don't feel ready yet to commit to what that really means.

Spontaneity

I woke today with an anxious tummy. That feeling when you open your eyes to a world that is familiar and all of a sudden you remember that something has changed.

Touchingly within seconds of me waking I received a text from him saying how beautiful the weather was in Cornwall, asking me how I was and saying that he was thinking a lot about me.

I replied that I was glad that the weather was beautiful and that I hoped it stayed that way for the rest of the week that he was there.

How could I possibly let him know how I was feeling by a single text message, and I also didn't want to, not when he is there with his wife. I intrude on their life enough when he is home.

I came back from the Dossie Easton's polyamory workshop later today feeling no less resolved about anything. Mostly on my mind right now is the idea of spontaneity.

It feels like to keep everyone happy in our current situation, he is constantly having to learn about each of our needs and responses and almost have rehearsed and tailored ways to keep each of us satisfied. I can almost visualise the checklist he must draw up for each of us every day... " She needs this , this and that at these moments".... and those little reassurances and check-ins are lovely, but they really are not what I want my relationship to be centered around. 

It is those spontaneous bursts of energy and connection that create the most alive feelings, and we do share those, of course we do. But my worry is that with another person now here that is another checklist he has to draw up, another piece of his time that takes away from his ability and energy to be spontaneous. 

And the overall feeling I had from the workshop today was just how TIRED I am of so much introspection. Yes, all of the strategies and tips and ways of negotiating through these polyamory relationships are useful, and I do still believe in so much of the values that polyamory supports, and yet I feel that it does require a certain level of continuous investigation of feelings, dwelling, talking, thinking that there was a part of me that wished to shout out across the room " If we spend all of our time working out better ways to be in these relationships we are going to miss out on a whole world out there and all of the ways in which it needs us to be more participatory in it, rather than just participants in our own small worlds. "

I think I am just tired.

Tears.

He has called and text me but I just don't want to reply. I am not doing this to be childish but because I need to try and protect myself. 

When he goes away I have to close a little bit of myself down because the loop of our relationship looses its immediacy, and especially when I have all of these feelings of hurt and anger and uncertainty, closing down from him makes it all feel more bearable.

His contact is like a knocking at the door I have erected, and it lets my vulnerability seep back in. 

If I was to say anything to him right now in my reply it would be " be with her now, it is your week away together " and I think rather than being glad and grateful for his contact I even feel cross with him that he isn't honouring that with her.

But the tears.

They came just now when I lay down on my bed, feeling a warmth and inquisition spreading between my thighs after doing some blog reading. As I cupped myself gently through my knickers and closed my eyes, I willed myself not to think of him, to try and imagine anyone but him and anything but what we have done. I tried so hard to keep the pleasure held inside me by asking myself over and over ..what would you most like to do, what is my body craving for, what do I most desire..and still he was there, right there.

So instead I just cried.

I don't want my submission, my most needed and loved and craved desires to be held captured by him.

Something for me to remember.

Sometimes the choices we make are energising, and other times become draining.

Empty.

This morning I have woken up and I still feel angry. 

I don't like feeling angry, I never really do and I especially don't like this feeling when he has just gone away for a week.

Something snapped in me last night, something that felt it has the possibility to elevate me right up off this mucky floor and into a nicer place. 

He says that he feels like a fly in a jar and that I suffocate him, that is quite hard to hear because there is some truth in that. My behaviour and reactions to some things lately has been something I'm not proud of, things that I know I need to work on, and get better at.

Yet I am angry because going back to the bed metaphor, I believe I would be feeling a little differently had I been asked if I minded moving over to create more room. Instead I feel I've just been shoved over.

Tomorrow Dossie Easton is running a poly workshop on jealousy and I am thinking I might go along, keep trying to find hooks that can help me to stay propped up in this long enough to see a new horizon. Yet what snapped last night was regardless of whether I am doing this or he is doing that, and however much I try and learn and grow and get better at all of this I am just not sure anymore that this is what I want. Maybe J coming into this has been a blessing because the stark reality holding my focus this morning is that I just don't think I want to be one of 4 women.

I am in London, he is down by the sea in the South West with his wife, and all of those things that would normally connect us, the sending each other love, the thought of a cuddle at bedtimes, my rules and discipline, my little rituals, they are all sat like empty jars on a shelf, hollow, it all feels quite meaningless right now.