I’ve been dealing with some health issues, so I haven’t posted in a while. Because of said health issues, my dating life has been pretty much on hold. But I’m getting better and I’m ready to get out there again.
I went to a get together with some poly people the other night. They were talking about how they’re polysaturated and they are dating so many people.
I wish I had that problem.
Sometimes I think I don’t even want a primary relationship because I can’t rely on anyone.
Except myself. I can rely on myself.
For the most part.
Right now, I feel like the best thing for me to do is focus on the other things in my life besides my relationship. Obviously relationships are important, but I have let lots of things go by the wayside. And I have been too focused on my relationship being the only thing that makes me happy in life. And that is really bad. Unfortunately I do it a lot.
So I’m focusing on things like friends, career, exercise, and my pets. Not my partner. Because I don’t even know if he is a partner to me anymore. Boyfriend yes. But partner?
And I’m going on dates, and feeling good about the fact that I’m getting dates. I’m focusing on having a solid base of other things in life that make me happy besides my relationship. It doesn’t define me and it’s not my identity. It’s just a relationship for Christ’s sake, right?
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I also have to wonder about something…These polycules, these poly molecules that are formed between people…How can they get so big? How do people meet so many people that they start dating? Not everyone can be that compatible with everyone they meet, so how do they do it? And how do people meet others they want to be polyfidelitous with? I’ve read about big groups who live together and date only each other and no one outside, and I have to wonder how they met all those people. Either I’m doing something wrong or I’m just not as social/horny as everyone else…
Things are better. I don’t know what happened. But there has been a shift. Mostly in my thinking, I guess. And I’ve been “downgrading” my partner in my head. By that I mean I haven’t contacted him much and have waited for him to contact me. I have just accepted the fact that our relationship is changing, I guess.
Something I’ve been thinking about is how little we talk about polyamory being hard. Actually, we talk about it a lot, but it’s when we’re out of the moment of being frustrated or angry or jealous. We talk about it like we’re disconnected from it. It happened yesterday, so it’s not as frustrating anymore right now, and I can talk about it in hindsight. And we laugh about it and we express our frustrations, but in a very detached way. We don’t say, “I’m having a hard time and this polyamory stuff sucks for me right now and I want to crawl in a hole and die.” Instead, we say, “I was feeling this and that and thinking this and that, and here’s what I did and ha ha, it’s over now, moving on.”
We talk about polyamory in such a positive light, all the time, and we should, because it’s a great thing and for many of us has really opened our lives to better things. More lovers, more love, an abundance of relationships. But we don’t always hear the ugly stories, especially while they’re happening. I feel like hearing more of those would actually help some of us to feel more understood. Someone is going through this, too, it’s not just me.
It seems to me that there is some sort of poly PC going on. Poly political correctness. And I don’t know if it should always be that way.
My partner and I had a long talk, and I realized it all boils down to the fact that I have stronger feelings for him than he does for me. Basically. Now I’m wondering if there’s some way to distance myself from the deep feelings I have for him, and from him in general, to get my sanity back. To “downgrade” those feelings if you will. I have been talking to some other poly folks about this, and have come to some interesting conclusions.
Not that these answer my questions. They just bring up more questions. And I know polyamory is all about self exploration, but it’s really tiring.
Right now I have the desire to just not talk to him as much. To not send him text messages, to not be the first one to contact him when we’re both online, and to not initiate any get togethers with him. I keep getting to this point in between, and I’m not sure what it accomplishes, but it does kind of make me feel better somehow. Or maybe it’s just me being childish and ignoring him so he’ll have to give me attention if he wants to see me or talk to me. That’s probably most of it.
I’d like to go back to why I wanted to be poly in the first place. There has been a lot going on inside my head and I need to straighten it out. Maybe this will help me.
I originally decided to pursue polyamory because I am bisexual, and I thought if I wanted to be sexual with women, I couldn’t be with a male who said I wasn’t allowed to have sex with them, and vice versa. I was also watching Big Love, that TV show about fundamentalists Mormons, and thought the idea of raising a family with multiple people was a really nice one, not to mention “sister wives” who help you raise your kids in addition to their own. I’m not a Mormon and never will be, and I don’t think I could do polygamy. But the idea makes sense to me. Poly makes so much sense to me in theory, it’s the practice that is so frustrating.
The idea for me originally started with me wanting to be able to date women while dating a man. Or being able to date men while dating a woman. I always had the “primary” idea in my head it seems, with the option of it being open. I had thought about whether I would want to have a primary person in my life who was female, and whether I could have a serious relationship with a female for a long period of time, and I usually came to the conclusion that I really saw myself with a man, but that I’d like to have the option to date females because there’s a sexual component there that a man cannot fulfill. So I guess from the beginning that has been the thought in my mind.
Then I started thinking, “well, maybe I could have more than one partner on an equal level, none of that hierarchy crap, no primary or anything.” But that didn’t feel right for me either, because I don’t think I could truly get rid of all hierarchy. So it’s back to the primary but open relationship idea.
I started dating someone and we connected because of shared interests but also the idea that we would want to grow old with someone while keeping our options open. This was right in line with what I had been thinking all along and I was really glad to meet someone who had the same idea. So of course I started thinking that maybe this person could be that “primary” for me while keeping things open.
So we dated for a couple of months, then he started dating someone else, and I flipped out.
We broke up for a month because I just couldn’t handle it. For one thing, it had happened so soon after we started dating that I felt like I wasn’t being valued and that our relationship had had time to grow, which makes me think that he and I had had very different ideas of what we wanted our relationship to be from the beginning. I wasn’t really interested in pursuing other people, I was more interested in letting the relationship be open if someone else were to come along. Whereas he has always wanted to pursue other people pretty much constantly. He even said that he didn’t know who would be his primary, that he might date one person and meet someone else and find they’re more primary material for him. (And now I’m having a moment of clarity that from the beginning, we’ve always had different ideas of what our relationship was.)
When we got back together, he started dating someone else fairly soon afterwards, but it didn’t go anywhere. They had one date and then things ended, and I didn’t freak out like I had the first time.
Now he is dating someone else again and there’s the possibility of it going at least until the fall when she goes elsewhere for school. And the old feelings of resentment, jealousy, and anger have been coming up again. And maybe this all stems from the fact that we have had such different ideas of what we wanted our relationship to be. Maybe I always was just another person to date and screw. Someone he has an emotional connection with, yes. But not someone who he could see himself being with for an indefinite amount of time and really committing to. Besides, he doesn’t know if he wants that anyway.
This has helped. I have a little more clarity on why this is feeling so rotten.
The Trials and Tribulations of Miss Poly 