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.

I wish too..

that I could be better at trusting our love.

Today.

I can't think about the past for now, and since writing last week I have wondered why I am even writing about what has been and gone. It will likely be I do go back to it every now and then as I try to understand where I am now as I hope to have learnt from all that has happened in the last few years. But it is today that I want to write about today.

It was today that I woke at 4am unable to get back to sleep. I wasn't anxious but just slowly rolling thoughts over in my mind, some of which were heavy, some of which I couldn't roll over enough to be able to settle back down.

He has met someone new, and I really want to try and be graceful in my reception of it. It has only been a week and I have chatted with her quite a few times both online and on the telephone, and I like her a lot. That helps, in fact that excites me too as ahead in the future I can sense some wonderful possibilities for experiences we may share together.

When I became a part of all this, he was already married, he was already deeply involved with Her, and I have also always known that he would like to be a Disciplinarian to other girls. In fact even in the 3 years we have been involved he and I have Disciplined a few other girls together, and of course his contact with them has not always included me. I love how being able to provide girls with loving Discipline gives him such energy, it connects him most fully to who he is and he soars when he is there.

So yes, I am okay with it, I mostly thrive on him thriving - isn't that what happens in a loving relationship? You bathe and play and baske in each other's joyful moments, and often whether I am present or not, just him sharing his experiences is a very arousing thing between us.

Why then yesterday did I react as I did to him talking with J ( the new girl ) on the telephone. It was only for an hour but it was amazing the different feelings and reactions I had in that short space of time.

The first 10 minutes I was fine, I got on with my work, and then I started imagining the intimacy between them if he was directing her to spank herself over the telephone. Those kind of thoughts seem to breed, quickly, rapidly into larger thoughts and images. Then I remembered how his wife must have felt the first time she knew he was visiting me to Discipline me, how it must have been for her sitting there that day at work, what I  ( we both ) had asked of her to try and accept knowing that it was something she struggled with. I thought of her anguish and I thought how completely unreasonable and unfair it was of me to be feeling as I was feeling when I had expected so much more of someone else. That quietened my thoughts down for a while.

Then the tears started to trickle down my face, turning to sobs, quite wrenching ones that felt really rooted in a deep sadness, so I tried to write.

This is what I wrote.

I wish for someone who can't take their hands off me.

I wish for someone whose face beams when they see me.

I wish for someone who wants to scoop me up in their arms and tell me how precious I am.

I wish for someone who will go out of their way for me.

I wish for someone who never gets bored of me.

I wish for someone who delights in my company.

I wish for someone to look at me and feel contentment.

I wish for someone even when they are excited to meet new people is still as excited to be with me.

I wish for someone to look at me like I am the best thing that ever happened to them.

Reading them again now makes me feel lots of things, both ashamed because I worry that I sound childish or demanding or unrealistic, but also sad because sometimes I know I can feel I'm unlovable and reading through that list feels that by staying in this situation I am in danger of perpetuating those feelings quite readily.

By the end of the hour I had calmed myself right down through just concentrating on my breath and really trying to understand what I was most worried about. I deal with him being intimate with 2 other women all of the time, so what felt different about this?

And really it was just his time. Wondering how on earth with 3 of us already to keep happy he would manage with a fourth. Often my ration of him doesn't feel enough, and I feel terrible that I sound ungrateful for saying that, I just cherish our time together and I know I will find it hard if our time is shortened even further because we all need to make room for someone else.

I was imagining it almost like a bed, with the four of us laying in it, in the order in which we came to be there, Him, his wife, Her and then me, and suddenly we need to make room for someone else. Making room means shuffling, negotiating, finding new ways of fitting in the bed, squabbling a little over the duvet, and also making sure that the duvet stays intact, that we all are looked after by it, and kept warm by it.

I want to try so hard to be a willing and graceful person in making room in the bed, and in helping to make sure that the duvet is shared. I really hope I can be.

About Her.

I know this post will come in parts.

Even now there is still pain when I think of her. Actually pain is too strong and raw a word to use now that time has passed, I just feel sadness, sometimes it is a hum, sometimes it engulfs me and pulls me right down with a thud.

We met towards the end of 2003, in a brief work meeting, but it wasn't until the January of the next year that we came to know one another. That is the time that I always feel I first met her.

A week away for a work residential and she was leading it. Quietly leading it in her clever and humble way. 

I was late, and she came over to me, crouched down at the chair where I was sitting, and said a few words. She was dressed in a navy woolen jumper and jeans, and those few words touched me more than words usually do.

Sometimes I think that is one of those past moments that I DO romanticise - was it really that meaningful? Was it anything more than her saying some words that showed an empathy and thoughtfulness that impressed me to think I was going to like this woman. But something about that moment has always stayed with me, the detail in which I have remembered it, the depth that those words sunk. Maybe it was my soul knowing that in that moment I had met someone that was going to be powerfully consequential in my life. I believe everyone we meet adds something to our experience of life, even someone that we meet only once, but with her that day, I think I knew that the reason our paths had crossed was to have a lot of bearing on this one of my lives.

As I write this I notice I'm starting to feel a little uncomfortable as it sounds like I was falling in love with her, even then. I have struggled so much to try and understand and define what my feelings were for her, because it has never felt it fits in to any existing box for love that I know. I didn't feel for her as I did for my girlfriend of 8 years, I didn't ever feel I wanted to ravish her or be ravished by her, sometimes I didn't even feel very comfortable around her. And yet there was always something. A quiet knowing, a strong sense of wanting to protect her, a thrill at being in the presence of someone who was starting to understand me. There was a gentleness between us, an intrigue, an affection, a fondness, sometimes I think I was in awe, and sometimes I think she may even have been in awe of me.

Crossing that line.

We met outside WHSmith's at Waterloo Station. I remember it so well. It was a warm and sticky Monday early evening, and as I saw him walking over to where I was standing, we both beamed.

This isn't one of those past moments that I'm trying to add a rosy tinge too, I am not even trying to romanticise that moment. It wasn't romantic, it was just memorable. We hadn't seen one another for maybe 6 weeks, and smiling, hugging and saying hello felt good.

I think it has as much poignancy as a moment as the first time I ever met her. Maybe because something was new, it felt significant.

Sitting in the wine bar across from the station we drank red wine. At that time I could never have guessed how 3 years later my drinking a glass of wine could sometimes have such blush making consequences. 

We were talking about the book The Ethical Slut, something that she had spoken about to me the year before, and all three of us had read it ( well, all four of us ). At that time I'd read it out of curiosity, knowing that polyamory was something that I'd been imagining for a long time, just not knowing it was called that.

And that was when he said it.

" If I was in a poly relationship then I'd love you to be one of my partners. "

Not a gushing line, not even an especially well articulated line given his skill with language, but the first time that words of a different nature had been verbalised between us. 

For months we had sat there in our professional work sessions, one hour a week, both knowing there was more to be said, both knowing that more WAS being said, just not between us.

She had told me about their fantasies, not in any detail, but enough for me to know that my presence in them at times, had brought them both great enjoyment. As these conversations between she and I developed a little more and I came to understand more of what they shared between them, my mind did wander. 

There was an occasion when he and I were sat at his kitchen table, working, and I felt suddenly gripped by a vision of him having me bent over it, knickers pulled down, skirt flapped up and his cock fucking my bottom.

I think I left his that day confused.

We danced in those meetings, enjoying being on the surface but being tickled by what we both felt was bubbling below.

And with her it wasn't feeling like so much of a dance. What was bubbling below felt dangerous. I was both compelled by her and full of uncertainty. 

I don't think I responded when he said those words to me. I'm sure I will have smiled and I'm sure he knew that it was something I'd imagined, but at that time she was always in my thoughts too.

The Morning After The Night Before.

On the 22nd September 2008 it will be 3 years.

Three years that feel as though I have lived my life only for them, 3 years that have filled me with more vitality than I'd ever imagined, and with growing pains that I continue to learn from and try to understand.

I'd been in Paris for the weekend, alone, because the night before we were due to go she had let me down, again. And then I'd flown straight to Amsterdam for a days work on the Monday. It had been a strange time in Paris, wandering the streets, someone who mostly loves my own company, and yet my own company felt harder that weekend because it was disappointed, discouraged, and prickly with confusion about she and I.

Traveling from City Airport that Monday to meet him, I was dressed smartly from my working day. A high waisted pencil skirt and a fitted navy blouse, heels, and my hair glossy and long, and I was excited, so I think that was probably glowing around and about me.

It's not like I loved him then. I didn't. I don't think I really knew what I felt, other than being in his company was both comforting and thrilling. I felt alive because I felt I brought him alive too. We enjoyed being in one another's company, we smiled a lot, our conversation was warm and animated, and most of all, he was interested in me, he listened, he cared.

If I had to try now and think back to what it was that we gave one another then, he was curious about me, I felt he was engaged by me, he questioned me, he intuitively knew how to peel back my layers. I think he was glad to find my openness, my acceptance and my support. He could share with me parts of who he was and knew that I'd be fine with them. And it was fun. Isn't is always fun and life affirming discovering someone new, reveling in one another's thoughts and desires and interests.

But I still didn't think that anything was ever really going to happen.