Exploring Open Relationships: Part Two

When I was first exploring more casual relationships, this was also the first time that I was seeing/dating men in the Pagan community. I immediately ran into the social complexities of that. I had just finished the leadership program at Diana’s Grove, and I was realizing how very, very quickly a bad breakup could lead to disharmony. I think I managed to keep on good terms with most of those guys, but I recognized that the whole prospect was fraught with peril.

*** Note: This series of articles goes into me exploring what relationships mean to me, and what I want out of relationship. As I tend to, I write this from a pretty open/vulnerable place, but it might be TMI for some folks. Thus, you’ve been warned. ***

Heck, I realized there was even a challenge just by connecting to Pagans on an online dating site. Imagine; I’ve been talking to a Pagan guy for a while via an online dating site, and then I realize I’m not interested in him romantically…and then I run into him at a local Pagan event. That leads to awkwardness at the very least, if not worse. If we’re both just attendees that’s one thing, but when I was in the position of running events and leading workshops and rituals, the potential for complicated group dynamics increased. Or, if it turned out that they were the leader of a Pagan group I was thinking of working with.

Hurt feelings over romantic rejection have fueled more than a few Pagan conflicts. And, on the flip side, I was becoming more concerned that my position as a leader/teacher/ritualist would cause a power dynamic. How could I know whether someone was genuinely interested, or whether they were just attracted to the “glamour” as it were? You can see where this all starts to get complicated, and that’s before any actual dates/relationship have happened.

I faced this scenario with a number of the men I briefly became lovers with: We went out, maybe had sex, and I realized that we weren’t really compatible. In some cases I liked them as friends, but not romantically, but didn’t want to hurt their feelings…and yet, I certainly couldn’t keep having sex with them just to not hurt their feelings. And in our society, we are trained to take it as a personal affront when someone “friendzones” us. I mean, I know I’ve struggled to have better boundaries around the fact that some men just aren’t going to be attracted to me, and that’s not a judgment against me, it doesn’t mean I’m bad or not attractive, it’s just that people have preferences. Chemistry is a factor. You can’t “make” someone be attracted.

So frequently, I wish I could simply say, “I’m just not that attracted to you,” or, “The way you have sex isn’t really compatible with what I need,” or whatever the issue happens to be, and have that be ok.

During this time period, I also hooked up with a guy who turned out to be not polyamorous, but a cheater. He had told me he was poly before we got together. I discovered that he was, in fact, a cheater while he was driving 6 hours to Chicago. He was going to be in town for something and we decided to get together again so he was going to stay at my place. While he was on the road, his girlfriend instant messaged me in a panic; she’d logged onto his computer and found my information. I talked to her for about 5 hours and discovered that he was a chronic cheater. When he arrived, I told him he could sleep on the couch.

Here’s the rub. He and I had met on an online dating site but we’d first met in person after he attended a Pagan event I helped to organize. And his girlfriend identified as Pagan as well. She was absolutely enraged and in tears and she said, “I’ve heard so much good about this Diana’s Grove place, I’ve always wanted to go, but to find out that one of their leaders would cheat like this, I never want to go there ever.” I sat listening to her pain for hours, and it took that long for her to understand that I was in the dark on this. That I had thought he was polyamorous because that’s what he told me.

Hopefully you can see the impact of one little thing; one date, one time having sex, one relationship, can have huge ripple effects. You make a mistake, or someone takes offense at something, and people get hurt.

After that span of months I was really unsure what to do about relationships. And I was really longing for the simplicity and stability of a monogamous relationship again. Dating is a lot of work for an introvert! It takes time to vet people, to get to know them, to meet them, to discover if there’s chemistry…and for me, having sex for the first time is fraught with peril; without diving into TMI land, I have a few issues that make sex with someone for the first time a little difficult. And, because I know that, I have some anxiety around it, which makes that even worse.

When I’m considering having sex with someone, I first engage in a lot of transparent communication about what works for me, and what doesn’t. I can’t even tell you how many men have told me, “It’s all good, we’ll do whatever you need,” or “Yeah, that sounds hot, that’s cool,” and then in actual practice, they were quite disgruntled to do anything different from their usual.

I will say that this particular time period in my life did at least give me the skills to get better at weeding people out based on their behavior either via email, instant messenger, or phone chats. “Baby, you’ve never been with me before” is a big old red flag that is now almost a sure-fire way to get me to say “No, I won’t go out with you. Bye.”

Thus, when I met Mark, it was all too easy for me to fall into a relationship with him. He was a motivated community organizer that shared a fair percentage of my geekdom. I did resist it at first, and we talked a lot about the impacts of dating within the community, particularly at the leadership level. He seemed reasonable and grounded, at the time, so I fell for that. Of course, what I didn’t realize at the time is that he was cheating on his wife with me; he’d said their relationship was over. I’m upset that I’ve been fooled by that more than once.

I’ll fast forward through most of that, but I’ll touch on this point: When he cheated on me for the first time a year after we started dating, it was with a woman that I actually liked rather a lot. She had been polyamorous for a long time, and she had been shocked when she found out that he was cheating and that he wasn’t actually in a poly relationship. I invited her over to confront Mark, and the three of us talked things through like adults. I’m sad that I didn’t get the chance to know her better. In a different time, in a different place, I’d have been happy to be her “metamor.” That’s a word I learned that night–the lover of your lover.

I think that might have been the first time I ever seriously thought that I could have a friendship connection with someone that my partner was dating. I’d always thought that, in that scenario, I’d automatically feel antagonistic, and I didn’t. (Because it’s tangentially of interest, fastforwarding in time again, I’ve become friends with a number of the women Mark’s been in relationships with, whether women he cheated on me with, or women he dated after me.)

Mark agreed to go to therapy, and I began considering the notion of what it would look like to be in an open relationship. I was clear that I wasn’t ok with opening up our relationship until he could get a hand on his compulsive cheating, but I also recognized that I just didn’t have enough libido to keep up with him.

And of course–those of you who have been through this particular excruciating phase of a post-cheating relationship will probably resonate a lot with this. The problem with trying to rebuild after cheating is that sex can rebuild intimacy…but I was dealing with depression and I had almost no libido at all. I couldn’t keep up with him before the cheating, and after, I had even less desire for sex.

If you’ve read my Pagans and Predators series, you’ve read a fair amount about the latter stages of my relationship with Mark. More cheating, more betrayal. The thing was, I’d have been mostly ok with him dating other women if I genuinely thought that he’d still come home to me, but I could never trust that.

The other concern I had came from my own experience dating within the Pagan community, and watching other Poly people navigating that. I think there’s a math algorithm there–the more Pagans you date, the more likely you are to run into a community-destroying breakup catastrophe.

I’ve also found that Polyamory/Swinging/open relationships in general are also a compounded risk because if the relationship between two people doesn’t go well (or end well), each person’s other partner or partners sometimes get involved in the fallout.

I trusted my judgment, but I didn’t trust Mark’s. And, that’s for pretty obvious reasons at this point.

More than that, I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do. When I was married and we opened up our relationship, I didn’t ever date anyone. When I’m already in a relationship, I just don’t have the desire to go out and date people; meeting new people is tiring and exhausting. I’m an introvert, not an extrovert. Extroverts tend to thrive on meeting new people, they love the newness of it. For me, that’s work. And even if I end up liking that person, it’s still work. Because then the relationship has to be maintained.

And, let me be totally honest here: One of the biggest complaints I’ve faced in my long-term relationships is that I don’t pay enough emotional attention to my partner.

I face this weird paradox; men fall for me and they are in love with my passion and my creativity. They love my artwork, my writing, my event planning; they love the spark and fire and what I throw into that work. And they want me to turn that love and focus onto them.

I’ll be honest again: I’ve never felt that way for anyone I’ve been with.

I’ve had feelings of deep friendship with men I’ve been with, deep friendship love. But not hot, fiery, “I’m in love with you” oxytocin-rush kind of feelings. I’ve come close a few times, I’ve started to have some feelings with specific people, but I’ve never been in love with anyone I’ve been with.

In the past I’ve joked that I can’t really be polyamorous because I just don’t have time for more people. “My work is my primary relationship,” I’ve said. And in the past years, that really has become true in so many ways. And yet, I also don’t seem to be “present” enough when I’m in a monogamous relationship for my partner to be satisfied with the time I can give them. This has left me with a lot of confusion about what to do about relationships.

Part 3 coming tomorrow!

Filed under: Personal Growth Tagged: cheating, dating, open relationships, Paganism, poly, polyamorous, polyamory, relationships, sex, swingers, swinging

Exploring Open Relationships: Part Two

When I was first exploring more casual relationships, this was also the first time that I was seeing/dating men in the Pagan community. I immediately ran into the social complexities of that. I had just finished the leadership program at Diana’s Grove, and I was realizing how very, very quickly a bad breakup could lead to disharmony. I think I managed to keep on good terms with most of those guys, but I recognized that the whole prospect was fraught with peril.

*** Note: This series of articles goes into me exploring what relationships mean to me, and what I want out of relationship. As I tend to, I write this from a pretty open/vulnerable place, but it might be TMI for some folks. Thus, you’ve been warned. ***

Heck, I realized there was even a challenge just by connecting to Pagans on an online dating site. Imagine; I’ve been talking to a Pagan guy for a while via an online dating site, and then I realize I’m not interested in him romantically…and then I run into him at a local Pagan event. That leads to awkwardness at the very least, if not worse. If we’re both just attendees that’s one thing, but when I was in the position of running events and leading workshops and rituals, the potential for complicated group dynamics increased. Or, if it turned out that they were the leader of a Pagan group I was thinking of working with.

Hurt feelings over romantic rejection have fueled more than a few Pagan conflicts. And, on the flip side, I was becoming more concerned that my position as a leader/teacher/ritualist would cause a power dynamic. How could I know whether someone was genuinely interested, or whether they were just attracted to the “glamour” as it were? You can see where this all starts to get complicated, and that’s before any actual dates/relationship have happened.

I faced this scenario with a number of the men I briefly became lovers with: We went out, maybe had sex, and I realized that we weren’t really compatible. In some cases I liked them as friends, but not romantically, but didn’t want to hurt their feelings…and yet, I certainly couldn’t keep having sex with them just to not hurt their feelings. And in our society, we are trained to take it as a personal affront when someone “friendzones” us. I mean, I know I’ve struggled to have better boundaries around the fact that some men just aren’t going to be attracted to me, and that’s not a judgment against me, it doesn’t mean I’m bad or not attractive, it’s just that people have preferences. Chemistry is a factor. You can’t “make” someone be attracted.

So frequently, I wish I could simply say, “I’m just not that attracted to you,” or, “The way you have sex isn’t really compatible with what I need,” or whatever the issue happens to be, and have that be ok.

During this time period, I also hooked up with a guy who turned out to be not polyamorous, but a cheater. He had told me he was poly before we got together. I discovered that he was, in fact, a cheater while he was driving 6 hours to Chicago. He was going to be in town for something and we decided to get together again so he was going to stay at my place. While he was on the road, his girlfriend instant messaged me in a panic; she’d logged onto his computer and found my information. I talked to her for about 5 hours and discovered that he was a chronic cheater. When he arrived, I told him he could sleep on the couch.

Here’s the rub. He and I had met on an online dating site but we’d first met in person after he attended a Pagan event I helped to organize. And his girlfriend identified as Pagan as well. She was absolutely enraged and in tears and she said, “I’ve heard so much good about this Diana’s Grove place, I’ve always wanted to go, but to find out that one of their leaders would cheat like this, I never want to go there ever.” I sat listening to her pain for hours, and it took that long for her to understand that I was in the dark on this. That I had thought he was polyamorous because that’s what he told me.

Hopefully you can see the impact of one little thing; one date, one time having sex, one relationship, can have huge ripple effects. You make a mistake, or someone takes offense at something, and people get hurt.

After that span of months I was really unsure what to do about relationships. And I was really longing for the simplicity and stability of a monogamous relationship again. Dating is a lot of work for an introvert! It takes time to vet people, to get to know them, to meet them, to discover if there’s chemistry…and for me, having sex for the first time is fraught with peril; without diving into TMI land, I have a few issues that make sex with someone for the first time a little difficult. And, because I know that, I have some anxiety around it, which makes that even worse.

When I’m considering having sex with someone, I first engage in a lot of transparent communication about what works for me, and what doesn’t. I can’t even tell you how many men have told me, “It’s all good, we’ll do whatever you need,” or “Yeah, that sounds hot, that’s cool,” and then in actual practice, they were quite disgruntled to do anything different from their usual.

I will say that this particular time period in my life did at least give me the skills to get better at weeding people out based on their behavior either via email, instant messenger, or phone chats. “Baby, you’ve never been with me before” is a big old red flag that is now almost a sure-fire way to get me to say “No, I won’t go out with you. Bye.”

Thus, when I met Mark, it was all too easy for me to fall into a relationship with him. He was a motivated community organizer that shared a fair percentage of my geekdom. I did resist it at first, and we talked a lot about the impacts of dating within the community, particularly at the leadership level. He seemed reasonable and grounded, at the time, so I fell for that. Of course, what I didn’t realize at the time is that he was cheating on his wife with me; he’d said their relationship was over. I’m upset that I’ve been fooled by that more than once.

I’ll fast forward through most of that, but I’ll touch on this point: When he cheated on me for the first time a year after we started dating, it was with a woman that I actually liked rather a lot. She had been polyamorous for a long time, and she had been shocked when she found out that he was cheating and that he wasn’t actually in a poly relationship. I invited her over to confront Mark, and the three of us talked things through like adults. I’m sad that I didn’t get the chance to know her better. In a different time, in a different place, I’d have been happy to be her “metamor.” That’s a word I learned that night–the lover of your lover.

I think that might have been the first time I ever seriously thought that I could have a friendship connection with someone that my partner was dating. I’d always thought that, in that scenario, I’d automatically feel antagonistic, and I didn’t. (Because it’s tangentially of interest, fastforwarding in time again, I’ve become friends with a number of the women Mark’s been in relationships with, whether women he cheated on me with, or women he dated after me.)

Mark agreed to go to therapy, and I began considering the notion of what it would look like to be in an open relationship. I was clear that I wasn’t ok with opening up our relationship until he could get a hand on his compulsive cheating, but I also recognized that I just didn’t have enough libido to keep up with him.

And of course–those of you who have been through this particular excruciating phase of a post-cheating relationship will probably resonate a lot with this. The problem with trying to rebuild after cheating is that sex can rebuild intimacy…but I was dealing with depression and I had almost no libido at all. I couldn’t keep up with him before the cheating, and after, I had even less desire for sex.

If you’ve read my Pagans and Predators series, you’ve read a fair amount about the latter stages of my relationship with Mark. More cheating, more betrayal. The thing was, I’d have been mostly ok with him dating other women if I genuinely thought that he’d still come home to me, but I could never trust that.

The other concern I had came from my own experience dating within the Pagan community, and watching other Poly people navigating that. I think there’s a math algorithm there–the more Pagans you date, the more likely you are to run into a community-destroying breakup catastrophe.

I’ve also found that Polyamory/Swinging/open relationships in general are also a compounded risk because if the relationship between two people doesn’t go well (or end well), each person’s other partner or partners sometimes get involved in the fallout.

I trusted my judgment, but I didn’t trust Mark’s. And, that’s for pretty obvious reasons at this point.

More than that, I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do. When I was married and we opened up our relationship, I didn’t ever date anyone. When I’m already in a relationship, I just don’t have the desire to go out and date people; meeting new people is tiring and exhausting. I’m an introvert, not an extrovert. Extroverts tend to thrive on meeting new people, they love the newness of it. For me, that’s work. And even if I end up liking that person, it’s still work. Because then the relationship has to be maintained.

And, let me be totally honest here: One of the biggest complaints I’ve faced in my long-term relationships is that I don’t pay enough emotional attention to my partner.

I face this weird paradox; men fall for me and they are in love with my passion and my creativity. They love my artwork, my writing, my event planning; they love the spark and fire and what I throw into that work. And they want me to turn that love and focus onto them.

I’ll be honest again: I’ve never felt that way for anyone I’ve been with.

I’ve had feelings of deep friendship with men I’ve been with, deep friendship love. But not hot, fiery, “I’m in love with you” oxytocin-rush kind of feelings. I’ve come close a few times, I’ve started to have some feelings with specific people, but I’ve never been in love with anyone I’ve been with.

In the past I’ve joked that I can’t really be polyamorous because I just don’t have time for more people. “My work is my primary relationship,” I’ve said. And in the past years, that really has become true in so many ways. And yet, I also don’t seem to be “present” enough when I’m in a monogamous relationship for my partner to be satisfied with the time I can give them. This has left me with a lot of confusion about what to do about relationships.

Part 3 coming tomorrow!

Filed under: Personal Growth Tagged: cheating, dating, open relationships, Paganism, poly, polyamorous, polyamory, relationships, sex, swingers, swinging

Exploring Open Relationships: Part One

I’ve always considered myself monogamous, even when I’ve been in open relationships in the past. All I ever really wanted, growing up, was to find my soulmate and be with him forever. For a while in my late-teens/early twenties, I was anti-marriage, but then, I was sort of finding my footing as a feminist and I was looking at marriage solely as an institution of the patriarchy. I suppose that didn’t really last long as I got married in my early twenties; the call to settle down with one person was the stronger call.

*** Note: This series of articles goes into me exploring what relationships mean to me, and what I want out of relationship. As I tend to, I write this from a pretty open/vulnerable place, but it might be a bit TMI for some folks on the inner workings of my experience of romantic relationships. Thus, you’ve been warned. ***

Ever since my (fairly catastrophic) relationship with my ex, Mark, I’ve pretty much been in open relationships. As I’m committed to the process of personal growth and of “know thyself,” I thought I’d share a few of my thoughts on this, since it’s definitely changed who I am and who I think I am as a person.

In the past, what I ended up doing was dating someone that I sort of liked but wasn’t in love with, and then I got comfortable with them and we sort of went monogamous by default. And, I wasn’t totally happy, I wasn’t in love, but it was nice to not be alone. In those relationships I know that I’ve thought, “I’m not in love, but I like them a lot. Maybe I’ll love them more in time. Maybe my attraction will grow.” It’s rare for me to find someone I click with to begin with (and rarer still for me to actually be physically attracted to someone) so I frequently experience the fear of relationship scarcity. Scarcity/Loneliness go hand in hand for me. “I’ll never find anyone I like, I’ll never find anyone that gets me” is one of the tapes that my brain likes to put on repeat whenever I’m not in a relationship.

So I’ve stuck with a few relationships long past their expiration date in part because of that fear of loneliness. And that’s not fair to me, or to my partners.

Since my really bad breakup at the end of 2011, I’ve resolved that I’m not going to get into a monogamous relationship with someone unless I’m falling in love, or at least, the realistic potential for that. For the past years:

1. I’ve been living in a very conservative area of Wisconsin, and
2. Most men aren’t really satisfied with the minimal amount of time I can commit to dating,

That’s left me primarily dating men who are in open relationships (either married or in a primary relationship). I have an online dating profile, and I’d say that 90% of the messages I get (that are from actual people with compatible interests) are from men in open relationships.

This has worked out well for me in many ways. My focus is on my writing and artwork, and I sometimes vanish for days at a time when working on a project. I check my calendar sometimes and realize that weeks have gone by since I’ve seen another human being in the flesh. For that matter, I’m sometimes on the road traveling and teaching for days or weeks at a time. When I’m with someone who’s already in a relationship, they already have a daily routine, they don’t have a huge amount of time to spend with me. Their family and primary relationship(s) are their priority.

I might see them once or twice a month, and that’s about all the social time I can spare if I’m going to keep my focus on my work. Men who are looking for more from me are going to get frustrated, so these days I work hard to communicate up front what I’m able to offer to a relationship.

Only once in the past 4 years have I dated anyone where I considered it a monogamous relationship. We met online, we really clicked, we spent the better part of a week together, and then he started to “ghost” on me. It was long distance, and I went to see him about a month later, and then he withdrew even further. After multiple queries on my part for more communication, he broke things off. I was just starting to have some feelings for him. I think he had an expectation of who I was from when we met online, and I somehow didn’t fulfill that expectation…and in retrospect, he and I wouldn’t have worked out anyways. I’m glad I gave things a shot with him, but that experience was rough for me because it just reinforced my “I’ll never find anyone who gets me” tape.

When I got married in my early twenties, I thought, “I’ll be in this relationship for the rest of my life.” I wasn’t in love, but my husband and I got along well. I thought, “I suppose this is as good as it gets.”

I always feel a bit awkward writing or speaking about this because there are a number of men in my life that I’m still friends with, and I don’t want to hurt their feelings. It’s not like they, themselves, were “bad,” this is more of a case of being incompatible, or just lack of chemistry. We humans take offense to, or hear as critique, things connected to how our partners felt about us in relationships. It’s not any man’s fault that I didn’t fall in love with them any more than it’s any man’s fault that they aren’t attracted to me; nor is it my fault I’m not attracted. Chemistry is what it is. So, as you read my perspective on these relationships, understand that I’m talking about my own processes, thoughts, and feelings (or lack thereof). 

I met my ex husband when I had just turned twenty, and I had just been with my first boyfriend a few months before that. I wasn’t in love with him either, but he was a nice guy and a good friend. I’d fallen in love before that, but that guy wasn’t interested in me that way, and (I’ll spare you the angst) I went into a depression spiral and gave up on true love. In hindsight, I understand that it’s not his fault he didn’t love me; like I said, chemistry is what it is. 

It took me most of my twenties to deal with my body image issues, so I was still fairly well sucked into the whole “Nobody wants to be with the fat chick with acne.” So when my husband fell for me, I went with the flow. I didn’t believe in true love and soulmates any longer, and I suppose I thought some version of, “Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.” In fact, I recall some people in my life telling me this when I expressed that I wasn’t sure about getting married to him. “Don’t lose this guy, he’s good for you,” people told me. What I think they meant was, “You’re fat and not that attractive, and you found a guy that likes you, don’t screw this up and end up a spinster.

That fear of loneliness is a real kicker.

They meant well, I know they did, but I got married when I probably shouldn’t have. He wanted me to be in love with him, and I wasn’t. I liked him. We were fantastic roommates. We were both fiction writers and Ren Faire/Fantasy nerds, so that worked out. Sex was ok at first. But, I had no passion for him.

We got married when I was 23, and hindsight being 20/20…if I knew then what I know now, I’d have saved us both some pain and just stayed friends with him instead of caving to his desire to get married.

Opening Our Marriage

How he and I came to be in an open relationship is that he finally came out to me about some particular fetishes he was interested in. I had always known he had some fetishes and kinks I didn’t share; we’d tried out a little BDSM and role play early on, but most of that didn’t really work for me. I’m too kinky for your totally vanilla person, and I’m waaaay too vanilla for anyone heavily into fetish.

When my husband finally admitted to needing some heavy-duty fetish stuff, this was way out of my league. We opened up our relationship so that he could go explore that.

It was easy for me to open up our relationship. I wasn’t in love with him, so I wasn’t really jealous. That may sound harsh or strange, but when I look back at my younger self that sums it up. I loved him as a friend and I wanted him to be happy, but him spending time with other people didn’t really emotionally impact me much.

I didn’t take advantage of our open relationship, though. At the time, I was something around 330 or so pounds; that’s the heaviest I’ve ever been in my life, and my husband was far heavier than me. And whether it was his weight, or the fact that he was finally exploring his sexual interests, sex stopped working for us. But I was so overweight (and introverted, and busy) that I didn’t really feel comfortable trying to date anyone. Truthfully, I wouldn’t have even known how, I’d never really dated anyone to begin with.

In my late twenties, I did finally develop a crush on someone I met at a Pagan gathering. I knew that I’d never have a long-term relationship with that person, but I was interested in exploring things with him, and that’s the first time I ever actively pursued anyone.

I’ll fast forward through the massive life changes here–I broke up with my husband. The combination of actually having feelings for someone new and realizing that I was even capable of feeling that kind of passion and attraction, as well as discovering what I really wanted to be doing with my life (building Pagan community) as well as everything else that had built up over the years…I finally was in the headspace where I could end things. At the time my husband angry but later he thanked me. And I’m truly glad he’s happy; last I talked to him he had a boyfriend who was into the same fetishes and they were moving in together.

As for the guy I had a crush on–I tried being one of his polyamorous romantic interests, but that didn’t really work out either. He and I ended up as friends, though I had to nurse a broken heart to get to that place.

I then ended up in another relationship after someone introduced me to the Wonderful World of Online Dating. I’d intended to keep that as an open relationship so that I didn’t get stuck in the trap I had been in with my marriage, but he didn’t want to be in an open relationship so I (once again) caved. And that relationship dissolved after less than two years. I freely admit that I stayed in that relationship as long as I did because it was the first time I had ever had sex with someone where things were really good.

When that relationship ended, I went through a period of time I refer to as “borking my way through the Zodiac.” I didn’t make it all the way around the wheel, but I did instead discover a few things. One is that totally casual sex does not work for me. I can do friends with benefits, with a focus on the friends part. I’m too much of a sapiosexual. I need to know someone, connect with them. I had this theory that if I could just meet my sexual needs and not need to deal with the complexities of relationships, I’d be better off.

I disproved this theory for myself fairly quickly.

Part 2 will be posted soon!

 

 

Filed under: Personal Growth Tagged: ethics, open relationships, Pagan, poly, polyamorous, polyamory, relationships, sex, swingers, swinging

Exploring Open Relationships: Part One

I’ve always considered myself monogamous, even when I’ve been in open relationships in the past. All I ever really wanted, growing up, was to find my soulmate and be with him forever. For a while in my late-teens/early twenties, I was anti-marriage, but then, I was sort of finding my footing as a feminist and I was looking at marriage solely as an institution of the patriarchy. I suppose that didn’t really last long as I got married in my early twenties; the call to settle down with one person was the stronger call.

*** Note: This series of articles goes into me exploring what relationships mean to me, and what I want out of relationship. As I tend to, I write this from a pretty open/vulnerable place, but it might be a bit TMI for some folks on the inner workings of my experience of romantic relationships. Thus, you’ve been warned. ***

Ever since my (fairly catastrophic) relationship with my ex, Mark, I’ve pretty much been in open relationships. As I’m committed to the process of personal growth and of “know thyself,” I thought I’d share a few of my thoughts on this, since it’s definitely changed who I am and who I think I am as a person.

In the past, what I ended up doing was dating someone that I sort of liked but wasn’t in love with, and then I got comfortable with them and we sort of went monogamous by default. And, I wasn’t totally happy, I wasn’t in love, but it was nice to not be alone. In those relationships I know that I’ve thought, “I’m not in love, but I like them a lot. Maybe I’ll love them more in time. Maybe my attraction will grow.” It’s rare for me to find someone I click with to begin with (and rarer still for me to actually be physically attracted to someone) so I frequently experience the fear of relationship scarcity. Scarcity/Loneliness go hand in hand for me. “I’ll never find anyone I like, I’ll never find anyone that gets me” is one of the tapes that my brain likes to put on repeat whenever I’m not in a relationship.

So I’ve stuck with a few relationships long past their expiration date in part because of that fear of loneliness. And that’s not fair to me, or to my partners.

Since my really bad breakup at the end of 2011, I’ve resolved that I’m not going to get into a monogamous relationship with someone unless I’m falling in love, or at least, the realistic potential for that. For the past years:

1. I’ve been living in a very conservative area of Wisconsin, and
2. Most men aren’t really satisfied with the minimal amount of time I can commit to dating,

That’s left me primarily dating men who are in open relationships (either married or in a primary relationship). I have an online dating profile, and I’d say that 90% of the messages I get (that are from actual people with compatible interests) are from men in open relationships.

This has worked out well for me in many ways. My focus is on my writing and artwork, and I sometimes vanish for days at a time when working on a project. I check my calendar sometimes and realize that weeks have gone by since I’ve seen another human being in the flesh. For that matter, I’m sometimes on the road traveling and teaching for days or weeks at a time. When I’m with someone who’s already in a relationship, they already have a daily routine, they don’t have a huge amount of time to spend with me. Their family and primary relationship(s) are their priority.

I might see them once or twice a month, and that’s about all the social time I can spare if I’m going to keep my focus on my work. Men who are looking for more from me are going to get frustrated, so these days I work hard to communicate up front what I’m able to offer to a relationship.

Only once in the past 4 years have I dated anyone where I considered it a monogamous relationship. We met online, we really clicked, we spent the better part of a week together, and then he started to “ghost” on me. It was long distance, and I went to see him about a month later, and then he withdrew even further. After multiple queries on my part for more communication, he broke things off. I was just starting to have some feelings for him. I think he had an expectation of who I was from when we met online, and I somehow didn’t fulfill that expectation…and in retrospect, he and I wouldn’t have worked out anyways. I’m glad I gave things a shot with him, but that experience was rough for me because it just reinforced my “I’ll never find anyone who gets me” tape.

When I got married in my early twenties, I thought, “I’ll be in this relationship for the rest of my life.” I wasn’t in love, but my husband and I got along well. I thought, “I suppose this is as good as it gets.”

I always feel a bit awkward writing or speaking about this because there are a number of men in my life that I’m still friends with, and I don’t want to hurt their feelings. It’s not like they, themselves, were “bad,” this is more of a case of being incompatible, or just lack of chemistry. We humans take offense to, or hear as critique, things connected to how our partners felt about us in relationships. It’s not any man’s fault that I didn’t fall in love with them any more than it’s any man’s fault that they aren’t attracted to me; nor is it my fault I’m not attracted. Chemistry is what it is. So, as you read my perspective on these relationships, understand that I’m talking about my own processes, thoughts, and feelings (or lack thereof). 

I met my ex husband when I had just turned twenty, and I had just been with my first boyfriend a few months before that. I wasn’t in love with him either, but he was a nice guy and a good friend. I’d fallen in love before that, but that guy wasn’t interested in me that way, and (I’ll spare you the angst) I went into a depression spiral and gave up on true love. In hindsight, I understand that it’s not his fault he didn’t love me; like I said, chemistry is what it is. 

It took me most of my twenties to deal with my body image issues, so I was still fairly well sucked into the whole “Nobody wants to be with the fat chick with acne.” So when my husband fell for me, I went with the flow. I didn’t believe in true love and soulmates any longer, and I suppose I thought some version of, “Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.” In fact, I recall some people in my life telling me this when I expressed that I wasn’t sure about getting married to him. “Don’t lose this guy, he’s good for you,” people told me. What I think they meant was, “You’re fat and not that attractive, and you found a guy that likes you, don’t screw this up and end up a spinster.

That fear of loneliness is a real kicker.

They meant well, I know they did, but I got married when I probably shouldn’t have. He wanted me to be in love with him, and I wasn’t. I liked him. We were fantastic roommates. We were both fiction writers and Ren Faire/Fantasy nerds, so that worked out. Sex was ok at first. But, I had no passion for him.

We got married when I was 23, and hindsight being 20/20…if I knew then what I know now, I’d have saved us both some pain and just stayed friends with him instead of caving to his desire to get married.

Opening Our Marriage

How he and I came to be in an open relationship is that he finally came out to me about some particular fetishes he was interested in. I had always known he had some fetishes and kinks I didn’t share; we’d tried out a little BDSM and role play early on, but most of that didn’t really work for me. I’m too kinky for your totally vanilla person, and I’m waaaay too vanilla for anyone heavily into fetish.

When my husband finally admitted to needing some heavy-duty fetish stuff, this was way out of my league. We opened up our relationship so that he could go explore that.

It was easy for me to open up our relationship. I wasn’t in love with him, so I wasn’t really jealous. That may sound harsh or strange, but when I look back at my younger self that sums it up. I loved him as a friend and I wanted him to be happy, but him spending time with other people didn’t really emotionally impact me much.

I didn’t take advantage of our open relationship, though. At the time, I was something around 330 or so pounds; that’s the heaviest I’ve ever been in my life, and my husband was far heavier than me. And whether it was his weight, or the fact that he was finally exploring his sexual interests, sex stopped working for us. But I was so overweight (and introverted, and busy) that I didn’t really feel comfortable trying to date anyone. Truthfully, I wouldn’t have even known how, I’d never really dated anyone to begin with.

In my late twenties, I did finally develop a crush on someone I met at a Pagan gathering. I knew that I’d never have a long-term relationship with that person, but I was interested in exploring things with him, and that’s the first time I ever actively pursued anyone.

I’ll fast forward through the massive life changes here–I broke up with my husband. The combination of actually having feelings for someone new and realizing that I was even capable of feeling that kind of passion and attraction, as well as discovering what I really wanted to be doing with my life (building Pagan community) as well as everything else that had built up over the years…I finally was in the headspace where I could end things. At the time my husband angry but later he thanked me. And I’m truly glad he’s happy; last I talked to him he had a boyfriend who was into the same fetishes and they were moving in together.

As for the guy I had a crush on–I tried being one of his polyamorous romantic interests, but that didn’t really work out either. He and I ended up as friends, though I had to nurse a broken heart to get to that place.

I then ended up in another relationship after someone introduced me to the Wonderful World of Online Dating. I’d intended to keep that as an open relationship so that I didn’t get stuck in the trap I had been in with my marriage, but he didn’t want to be in an open relationship so I (once again) caved. And that relationship dissolved after less than two years. I freely admit that I stayed in that relationship as long as I did because it was the first time I had ever had sex with someone where things were really good.

When that relationship ended, I went through a period of time I refer to as “borking my way through the Zodiac.” I didn’t make it all the way around the wheel, but I did instead discover a few things. One is that totally casual sex does not work for me. I can do friends with benefits, with a focus on the friends part. I’m too much of a sapiosexual. I need to know someone, connect with them. I had this theory that if I could just meet my sexual needs and not need to deal with the complexities of relationships, I’d be better off.

I disproved this theory for myself fairly quickly.

Part 2 will be posted soon!

 

 

Filed under: Personal Growth Tagged: ethics, open relationships, Pagan, poly, polyamorous, polyamory, relationships, sex, swingers, swinging