Flux

In the last few months, I have become increasingly aware of the people in my life who are busy discovering totally new aspects of their sexuality or indulging in areas that are either different from that they present to the kink world or different from the part of their personality that I know so well. Straight men exploring bisexuality, tops enjoying a good whipping, bottoms happily and confidently directing their slaves, women enjoying masculinity as they define it, and men enjoying their femininity in the same way.

Hooray!

I have been doing what-it-is-that-we-do for what seems like a very long time, and in that time I have had my perceptions and pre-conceived notions challenged a number of times. Each time I have been deeply grateful that it happened--because every time it opened up this life, my life, in so many ways.

The first time I realized how nuanced BDSM can be, I was tied to a double cross in a hotel somewhere near LaGuardia in the late 90s and there was a man across from me making a lot of noise as he enjoyed a good flogging. I tuned the guy out until my own scene was finished, then I looked up and made eye contact and was startled to discover it was a man whose dominance/sadism had me totally awestruck earlier in the evening. Mind-fricking-blown.

Since that eye-opening moment, I have been through a few of my own gender/orientation bending changes as I have gone from straight to bisexual to pansexual, from submissive to switch to bottom to fairly meh about the whole power-exchange thing, and from neutral to masculine to feminine to who gives a fuck?

So--a couple of decades from that first encounter--I enter into a relationship with a heterosexual, non-power-exchange man, we move in together, we decide to get married, we plan our lives together, and he becomes a man whose status on the kink spectrum is constantly in flux.

Again—hooray!

I want him to experience all that he wants to experience, even when what he wants scares me. I love the feel of his energy as it reacts to new stimuli and the ways in which his world becomes larger as he discovers long-hidden parts of his nature.

I want, no, I need to be the person who gives him the freedom to explore, who encourages him, who provides safety and a soft place to land when his new vulnerability leads to pain.

And I need exactly the same thing from him, and from every one of my partners.

I need the freedom to be constantly in flux.

Home

I have lived many places. I went to 17 different schools in 4 states (not including college), and as an adult have lived in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Colorado, New Jersey, California and Germany--and, in a few months I will be moving back to AZ with Danny. Because of this, I have a somewhat complicated relationship with the notion of "Home" in that it has to be both fluid enough and solid enough to satisfy me.

I have found this with Danny.

The fluid part is fairly easy--it is satisfied by his openness to new places and new adventures (though he himself has never lived anywhere but where we are now). He understands that home is not a place, but a state of mind.

The solid part is somewhat trickier, but much more important.

I love having the freedom to explore, to enjoy multiple relationships, to go out into the world and take my chances academically, professionally, and emotionally--but this only really works if I have a soft place to land and a strong home-base. I am capable of creating this base myself, and have done so for most of my life (I am not really good at the whole relying on others thing), but having someone who is part of that base, who strengthens it, who encourages my exploration by letting me know that I have that safe, loving, supportive, empowering space to come home to is pretty amazing. So amazing that I am still getting used to it--and I am really just starting to understand that it is real. That this is home.

Non-monogamy reboot

This was how it should be. Yes, I know that no one should say "should" but fuck being politically, or kink, correct. The first time I played with G felt exactly how non-monogamy should.

I had just come out of a relationship with an engaged couple--the course of which never did run smooth. We had some very good times, but I basically spent four months trying to keep her happy so that we could continue to have good times. Eventually, she realized that she could not handle the idea that he also loved me, and so she exercised her veto power on the whole relationship, and that was that.

The relationship before that one involved a lot of miscommunication, and periods where the existing female partner of my lover thought that I wanted her gone, that I wanted to take her place and destroy their relationship. So, again, me trying to keep people happy in an effort to make things run smoothly.

So I was understandably nervous when I was facing the prospect of play with a married man, even though I knew and liked his wife, and she seemed completely cool with our flirting.

On our first "date," I met them at a local dungeon--I think there was a presenter that night, but I only think that because I have a memory of he and I sitting on the hard chairs holding hands. I have no actual memory of anyone standing at the front of the room and talking. The rest of the evening was spent with the three of us on the sofa in the social area watching porn. There was a lot of cuddling, and a lot of giggling, but no play. It was lovely.

I spent the night at their house--in the guest room--and the next day we went on a hike with a group from SMART. During the hike, she went ahead and left  us to wander through the woods alone, then, in the car on the way back to thier house, she informed us that she would be going out for a few hours and that the house was ours to enjoy.

I was a wee bit floored.

Here was a woman who was totally secure in her relationship--who understood, and really felt, compersion. She made me feel comfortable and in no way guilty about spending time with her husband. I admit that I had started to get jaded about non-monogamy, and its long-term realistic prospects. That weekend re-affirmed my desire to live a non-monogamous life.

I'm back...

It has been a year since I posted on this blog, and in that year I have been through a ridiculous number of poly pitfalls and successes that I am finally ready to write about.

The focus of the year has been on single poly people falling in love. Sounds great, right? It is, it is amazingly awesome and wonderful, but there is so damn much that I didn't know and never counted on! In the next few months I will write about jealousy and compersion, about safe-sex and, more realistically, risk-aware sex, and about building a strong relationship when non-monogamy seems to be kicking your ass.

I hope it will be informative, and helpful--I know it will be for me, because I don't know yet what I will write, and I don't know to what emotional places it will take me. What I do know is that it has been too long since I took pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard), and that Literary Wench has a lot to say!

Sigh

I run a discussion group which meets once a month to discuss ethical non-monogamy, and I have been thinking lately about what that actually means, and how hard it is to live up to sometimes. This was brought on by a temptation that I faced recently which would have been unethical in several different ways—none of which mattered in the moment. I would have gone ahead and fucked the person I wanted to fuck if we had been in any kind of position to make it happen, and in the weeks since this meeting I have had to fight every single day to keep myself from putting us in that position.

A large part of me can’t but feel hypocritical, but I keep trying to remind myself that I am human and more than capable of making mistakes.

I also have to keep reminding myself that no matter how much I want this person, and no matter how amazing the sex would be and feel, to be non-ethical would feel much worse.

But—if we find ourselves in that position again, I, well, I just don’t know.