I feel pretty

I was painting my nails a sweet, delicate pink, one night and tweeting that I was going to pamper myself with a face mask and a bubble bath when someone made the comment that I could be so girly sometimes. The comment brought me up short because I realized that I had spent much of my life trying hard to not be perceived as “girly” and that this had obviously changed.

Now—I am quite aware of the fact that a man can enjoy the color pink, face masks, and bubble baths—this is not an exploration of gender preferences, but of the associations I made as a young girl and my reaction to those associations.

Disclaimer over.

The face mask and bubble bath part of this has no real meaning to me, but pink most definitely does. There was a time when I would have rather gone outside in a garbage bag than let someone see me wearing pink or, god forbid, anything with flowers, lace, or little sparklies.

Well, I stand by that last one to this day—I do not BeDazzle™.

I think that a large part of this was a reaction to my older sister. She was the girly-girl who was always in full make-up—oh-so pretty and ready to be seen. I knew from a very early age that I would not be pretty in the same way that she is pretty, so my response was to rebel against that and show that I didn’t care by being cool and edgy instead. In my experience very few people, including myself, are as cool and edgy as they think they are, but I still tried and flirted with punk, and goth, and finally settled into a whole wardrobe of black, grey, and earth tones. A few colors made it in—a bit of blue, the occasional green, but no pink, never pink.

This didn’t begin to change until my late twenties— I blame it on BDSM.

Some people get involved with this lifestyle and dive headlong into black leather and latex, both of which I love—but I found that my inner submissive liked to be girly, and she really liked pink. Allowing her to indulge was a safe place for me to let that side of myself out without embarrassment. Slowly, as I became more comfortable with myself, and my submission, and the many, many aspects of my personality, it started to come out more—the girly-girl went public.

Now, at 40, I have no issue wearing pink. Chances are you will never see me in some frilly little number that looks like it just came from a cotillion—I am still very choosy about my floral patterns, and lace only makes it to the dungeon where it is used to barely cover my sexy bra and panties—but at least now my fashion choices are based on taste, and style (and apparently general level of sluttiness) and not a misguided sense of rebellion or denial.

Sexy Bitch

I have body issues. I don’t have a problem saying that. I have lost a great deal of weight and things just got a bit weird because my body stopped being my own in some ways. I don’t mind talking about this—it is just a fact of my life at the moment—but people tend to take this talk as me being critical of myself, or they think that I do not think that I am attractive.

They are wrong on both counts.

I talk plainly and I do not have a lot of filters, so if this is an issue in my life right now I will talk about it, especially when it is relevant to the conversation. I am not critical of my body—it is what it is right now and it will change and that is that. I get annoyed when it doesn’t go where I want it to go, but I am still quite happy with the fact that the weight is gone.

As far as seeing myself as attractive—I guess it is true, I don’t really—attractive is too mild a word. I am a sexy bitch. I know this. I radiate energy, and joy, and love, and warmth, and confidence, and sex, and I am beautiful. I don't have a problem saying that either :-)

That doesn’t mean that my self-esteem can’t take a blow or two once in awhile, or that sensitivities don’t arise—I am still human. But at the end of the day—always—I really do love myself.

NRE is a hell of a drug

New relationship energy is frickin' amazing, and it is always frickin' amazing regardless of whether or not the relationship fully materializes. For the people experiencing it, it is a time of possibilities, and raging hormones, and the thrill of the unknown--but for the partners of those people it can be scary, and dangerous. NRE is the quickest way to uncover insecurities and make someone aware of just how jealous they really are.

I discovered this for myself several years ago when my then lover (now husband) started playing with another woman. In my defense, he and I were also very new, and I did not have firm footing yet--but the reality is that I was just plain jealous, and I am not sure that would have been different if she had come along further in our relationship. I was jealous because I worried that he would like her more than me, that he would want her more than me, that he would leave me for her, or, actually, that he would just leave me for the possibility of all the NREs out there. I was not happy about the NRE, and I tried foolishly to somehow control it, to keep my relationship is some kind of safe little box.

Of course this failed--as it should--but it did give me an opportunity to explore my feelings, and at the end of that exploration, this is what I learned:

I have no control over the NRE my partner experiences. Once the relationship is opened up, it is totally out of my hands. I know that my partner is going to feel passion for another person, and that passion might very well make me feel for a moment as if he doesn't have the same passion for me. There is a chance that I will feel left behind, that my jealousy will surface, that any new relationship he gets involved in will send me on a bit of an emotional roller coaster.

The thing is, though, that I WANT this NRE to happen--otherwise why explore non-monogamy at all? But wanting it, and being ready to deal with it, are apparently two very different things.

I had to realize that the new passion IS different, but not necessarily better or deeper than the passion he feels for me. He is with me for a reason, and that reason isn't going to change just because an emotional attachment is formed outside of our relationship, and certainly not because of a new toy. He is going to experience NRE--he will be giddy, and silly, and emotionally wrapped-up with this new person for awhile, but he will also want to share those emotions with me. He will want to know that he has my blessing, and he will want to bring that energy home. I need to welcome it and give him a safe place to explore, because that is exactly what I want from him.

Bondage vs. restraint

I like bondage. Okay, I love bondage—ropes, chain, ace bandages, pantyhose, leather body bag, scarves—whatever. There are times when I just want to be tied-up and teased, tortured, beaten and fucked while a top has his, or her, sadistically wicked way with me, because giving up control and being tied-up by someone who knows well how to please me, and enjoys using me to please them in return, is just plain hot.

But there are other times when I just want--no, I need, to be restrained. It just isn’t the same thing.

Bondage is about control, yes, but it is also about sex, and fun, and the top/bottom connection—restraint is ALL about control and bringing that control to a chaotic mind that is in desperate need of centering.

I am not a person who needs order in all things. I seem to exist in a constant state of chaos (which I suspect I create in order to stave off boredom). The problem with this is that successfully balancing chaos is difficult for even the most focused of minds, so I am pretty much screwed.

Most of the time I do okay—the barbarians may be at the gate but their constant pounding is more background music to the soundtrack of my life than full-blown musical score—but every once in awhile they come crashing through and it takes something beyond me to beat them back down.

This something can take several forms—a hike up the steepest hill I can find, dancing for hours—but nothing compares to the havoc-calming, chaos-controlling release of being completely bound by a person I trust and being able to focus long enough to tame the hamsters that have invaded my brain.

When I am in that space I am protected, but more than that I have permission—to let go, to not take care of anything, to not be anything or anyone but that woman in that moment, to just be.

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.

OPEN revelations

My OPEN group met tonight at my house and several things became clear to me:

1. I enjoy being the center of attention.

2. I adore being part of a cuddle puddle, especially when, as was the case tonight, that cuddle puddle  involves the man I am in love with and two men that I crush on :-)

3. The people in my group represent an amazing cross-section of non-monogamy and contain a great deal of knowledge.

4. Trying to explain/defend non-monogamy to a monogamous person just makes my commitment to a non-monogamous lifestyle stronger.

Okay, to be fair, none of these things is really a surprise--but they occur me again tonight as I am sitting here and thinking about the meeting :-)

State of the Union

When I started this blog, I was in a power-exchange relationship with a man who had another full-time partner. From there I moved onto a triad without power-exchange, and an on-again, off-again relationship with my best friend. I then enjoyed some time as a single poly person—all of which is well documented throughout this site.

When I stopped writing the blog, I was just starting a new relationship after several months of emotional reboot and evaluation of what I want, both in kink and non-monogamy. I didn't make a conscious decision to stop, I just found myself writing less and less as my life got busier and more complicated with major life changes and travels near and far. 

So, now I am ready to write again--and this is where my non-monogamous life stands:

I am now living with my love—the new relationship mentioned above, the man with whom I want to build a life filled with adventure, and sensuality, and Doctor Who. He has a play partner/lover in another state, and I have a former lover who recently became a current lover, also in another state. His situation is somewhat regular, I have no idea what mine will be—my guess is good friends who get together once a year or so to spend time together. We also have a few casual non-sex partners that allow us to explore other types of play. This all sounds much more simplistic than it actually is, of course, but we are now in a very good place. 

I am looking forward to exploring just how we got here. 

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!