polyamorous

September 29, 2022

The Soundtrack of my Life – 34 – Chicago

After a 3 day stay in Chicago we are back on the road heading to Akron. This little road trip of mine was concocted to celebrate the one we took for the hubs’s second opinion at the Mayo Clinic. It was also a defiant choice because he told me previously that he wanted our Alaskan cruise to be his last trip. I can’t have that. Not yet. He has since recanted his statement. Instead he has corrected it to be “no more road trips. Only cruises.”

That’s fine, punkin. Whatever you want.

Other than the title of the song, this doesn’t make me think of Chicago in the slightest. I thought it was a good choice seeing as how we had just been there. Expect the forthcoming songs to be similar in nature. What’s fun with my future choices is that they do in fact remind me of moments in my life.

The first time I ever heard this song, and immediately became obsessed with it, was from the opening credits of the Netflix show “The Politician.” It may have aired in 2019 but I didn’t get around to watching it until the first Covid lockdown. It had been a special request watch from the bf since it had his crush, Ben Platt. My interest in a Ryan Murphy program was minimal at best. So, I had kept pushing it off until we were faced with copious amounts of time and nothing to fill it with.

Covid truly changed my life. As I’m sure it did for everyone. But it feels like for me it changed everything significantly moreso. For the better.

Up until lockdown, the interaction between my husband (Charlie) and my bf (Josh) ranged from non-existent to limited. For the first 2 years of Josh’s and my relationship it had been very, very separate. Per the bf’s request and just the newness of polyamory for all of us. When everything closed and we couldn’t go anywhere, we were forced together.

We all started watching tv together in silence. It was awkward at first. Josh didn’t know how to act around Charlie and vice versa. It took some time to reroute old habits to where they began to have their own rapport.

My two relationships are very different in how they function. My husband is not very affectionate, we are more mentally intimate (conversations/debates/discussion.) Physical intimacy is just not who Charlie is. A peck on the lips every once in awhile satisfies his needs.

The boyfriend on the other hand… he’s attached to the hip. He has to be touching me. And I don’t say that as a complaint, it’s just how it is. I appreciate both forms because they suit me. I am someone who is happy when my partner is. So trying to find a balance with the two was a challenge.

This song brings back those first few months of mixing the two lives. If you compared how they are now to then, night and day. We’ve done many trips together. We’ve shared a bed (in a non-sexual way for you nosey betches) and we’ve all gotten comfortable around each other hanging in our hot tub in the buff. Again, nothing sexual.

I have to recognize how much the bf gave in the beginning. This was not initially the situation he wanted. There were other boundaries in place that kept everything separate. I imagine to keep himself from being hurt by seeing me with the husband. He was making himself fit for me. Either he has grown accustomed to it and appreciates the relationship for what it is or he’s tricking himself. I hope it’s the latter. I constantly worry that I have somehow manipulated him into this relationship. I do not want that at all. My number one goal is ALWAYS consent. And when I have brought up these same concerns to him he has always affirmed that I have not. He is here of his own choice.

Unfortunately the bf is not with us on this trip. A month off is entirely too long for him. He will however be meeting us midway through, for the weekend, and at the end. And I’ll be happy to have my whole family together again.

February 4, 2022

The Soundtrack of My Life – 5 – Falling In

If you don’t know by now, the husband and I are polyamorous. We have been for about 4 years now. While it was shaky at first we learned and grew through communication. If you’re ever going to attempt such an endeavor you have to have an open dialogue, heart, and mind. Without these it will end in failure. Guaranteed. Everyone needs to be on the same page.

When we first started it wasn’t that way. We “opened up” our relationship just to shut it down again. The husband says we never did and I explicitly remember when I said “fine. we’ll go back to how it was.” We were on an overpass merging from I-5 toward Half-Moon Bay. Regardless of what I remember transpiring, he started seeing someone in secret. When I learned of this relationship I decided I was going to see another gentleman too.

Josh messaged me for the first time as I sat in the hallway outside of my, soon to start, speech class. We hit it off instantly, talking about Harry Potter and Pokémon. After I made an off-hand Harry Potter reference/joke he commented “why do you have to be married?” I responded with my then go-to explanation of: it was open but wasn’t and who knew what was going to happen.

We chatted for a couple days and at the end of my next speech class I agreed to meet him in the student parking lot for a chat. He was(is) so handsome. Just my type. Scruffy with brown eyes. Without hesitation, we decided to meet up on the day of our next class.

I had intended it to be a once and done hook-up, as I like to do. However that is not what happened.

On a really stormy, rainy day I agreed to see “Black Panther” with him. (Side note: most of the more pivotal moments of my recent life have been met with some extreme weather. It’s odd.) After the movie I asked if he wanted to go with me to a friend’s house to hang out. He agreed and we went to visit my then girl-besty.

On the drive over there I called to let her know what was up and I made a point to say “This dude wants more but it’s not going to happen.” Oh, how foolish I was.

He was conflicted about dating someone already married. He wanted the usual things: monogamy, marriage, and kids. Those are difficult to achieve when the person you’re dating cannot offer them. However, on a trip to visit a friend of his in North Carolina, we agreed to date. This was of course, after St. Patrick’s Day when the husband and I had outed ourselves to the other about the guys we had been seeing on the side.

Four years later and Josh is still around. So much for “not going to happen.”

And I don’t know what I would do without him.

It’s weird. We are very similar in SO many ways, but yet so opposite. We’re both named Joshua (obvs). Our birthday is two days apart, we’re both Scorpios. We are both giant nerds. And we were both raised in very religious homes. Where our similarities depart is where I ditched most of my faith at 17, he doubled down and went on mission trips in Africa and later worked for a religious non-profit. At one point he was engaged to a woman, or had intended to… I forget the specific details. Either way… he was living the hetero fantasy.

When we started talking he had only been out for a year. That’s still crazy to me.

The song I chose was one I shared with him, while sitting in his car chatting; in the same school parking lot where I had met him to make sure he wasn’t crazy. He is, but he fooled me that day. So, kudos to him.

I was so hung-up on his religious past that every time a Lifehouse song came on my “Mumford and Sons” Pandora station I would think of him. This one truly spoke to me because it was right as I was falling for this dude. That’s kind of the problem with dating people and not just banging them. Well, I guess that isn’t entirely true considering…

Since then he has spent holidays with my in-laws and gone on cross country trips with Charlie, Charlie’s boyfriend (Tony), and I. We are this weird little family compiled of lost souls. And to think, it all started from a random conversation on Grindr.

September 22, 2020

Poly-Cogitate

By most socially accepted standards my relationship is unique. My husband and I have an open marriage. I have a boyfriend and he has had his collection of boys on the side. It was agreed upon at a time when our marriage was on the rocks, but after one night drinking at a Palm Springs bar, our relationship actually has never been stronger. I think it’s because with having an open relationship, we have to be honest and vulnerable. We have to share whenever something is bothering us and rigorously set boundaries of where we will allow ourselves/the relationship to go. It’s the biggest game of trial and error and (so far) has worked.

With my husband’s ALS diagnosis, it has made things even more complex than before. Exclusively for me.

When I was first dealing with the initial shock I went through this weird range of emotions. I was overwhelmed with guilt that I was basically replacing my dying husband with another before he was even gone. Then I shot off on a mental tangent that my in-laws would look at me as though I was brushing my husband aside or that I didn’t care for him as much as I should. The worst of all of them was that I thought my boyfriend wanted him to die so he could “finally have me.” All of this was thought up and manufactured in my head. There was nothing that anyone had done or said for these to be legitimate.

Regardless, I couldn’t shake them and these lingered like a cloud of gnats at the back of my mind.

I have since moved past it all because of communication. It was through that that I was reminded that when we agreed on all of this there wasn’t a terminal diagnosis. (Maybe our marriage, but that’s been recovered.) So, I can’t get caught up in these negative thoughts when they don’t apply and don’t exist.

I felt my guilt and shame because I was driven to do more for him. Be there. Do whatever I can. With the way it is, there is nothing dictating that I can’t.

I felt even more remorse toward my boyfriend because he was unfairly getting the brunt of my anger (about my husband dying) for absolutely no reason at all. It was unreasonable of me to even think he felt that way, and since we’ve talked I know he doesn’t. He’s even gone as far to say that he will help me care for him when it gets the most difficult. Again, offering way more of himself than he should. I never expected that kind of reaction.

Again, the key to all of this working is honest communication. The only hold out is, usually, me. I am so quick to share every detail of my personal life, but there are certain truths that I can’t be open about. Maybe it’s my need to still have “secrets.” It’s just stupid for me to even attempt at being emotionally guarded when I’m wounded, because I have THE WORST poker face. Anyone who is within my orbit will immediately know something is absolutely bothering me, no matter how I empathically remark to the contrary.

October 12, 2018

Tales of Pink-Eye and Cancer

My this has been one hell of a week.

It began on Monday where I made an eye appointment because my eyes were red, itching, and would not stop crying. I was certain when I made the appointment with the optometrist that it was probably pink-eye. The doctor however looked at my eyes and deemed it allergies. I was skeptical because I have had allergies my whole life and never had I experienced JUST a reaction in my eyes, but as he was the “professional” I gave him the benefit of the doubt.

The following day, Tuesday, I finally had scheduled a CT scan that I had kept putting off because I had no time to do it. My work schedule has been (and is) hectic, so I never had the time but I figured that since I was so panicked about the blood in my underwear (coming from somewhere it should not ever if you’re a dude) I should make the appointment and follow through.

I went for my exam and during the procedure while they were injecting the dye into my vein it collapsed and instead of coursing through my body, probably, about half of it went into my right bicep. So for a couple days I had a bulging arm, much like popeye. After the procedure I felt silly going because I hadn’t had any further symptoms from the initial shock (aka blood.)

By Wednesday, the “allergies” only got worse and so I made a very quick follow up appointment. While rushing to that I get a call from my doctor. They had gotten back the results of my CT scan and it showed that my spleen and my prostate were enlarged and I was being referred out to a urologist for further examination.

After that lovely phone call, the optometrist (now a plucky, quirky young woman) told me I did in fact have viral pink-eye, the super contagious kind. This was after touching my eye with her bare hands (Smart) and swabbing my eyes with a giant q-tip. The cotton swab must have been just for fun because she did nothing with it and never mentioned it was being sent anywhere for testing. Her answer for my diagnosis was “good luck” and a referral to another optometrist.

Later that same day I got a call from the Comprehensive Blood and CANCER Center. They were following up because I was referred to them by my general practitioner (GP). They needed info to get the ball rolling, one piece of which was my blood work I had done the week prior.

The following day they called again to schedule a consultation for November where I (imagine) will be told I have prostate cancer.

To be fair, I don’t know this to be my prognosis. I am making a giant assumption but all the signs point to that and just like my certainty of having pink-eye I am certain that this is the case.

A few things come to mind, one of which (if there is one) god has a sense of humor. Prostate cancer is slow but trying to cure can result in sexual complications. I won’t die from this cancer, it will just kill any semblance of ever having sex again without the aid of a pump (hard pass).

I found out about a year ago that my uncle had been diagnosed with prostate cancer and instead of doing anything about it he let it sit and it has now spread to his bones. At the time I didn’t understand how one could do that. “It’s such an easy fix.” Sitting in the same position I can see where one would refuse to do anything, as that is the road I will most likely take.

The boyfriend, upon hearing my decision, was quiet. He didn’t really have any response. The husband however was annoyed and told me that my decision was bull shit and I was going to do whatever it took. While I respect his opinion more than likely I won’t be doing anything. What worth do I have if I can’t have sex? I know that’s such a petty thing to think but the psychology behind never having another erection is staggering. I remember a statistic about the army spending thousands on viagra, and I get it. For a very brief time I couldn’t get an erection and maintain it and it is a huge mind fuck for one to endure. (At least it was for me.)

As of right now, this is all just theory. I don’t have solid facts to determine anything or if what I assume to be reality is in fact true. The most comforting thing I do have is that I have two men who have repeatedly told me that they will be there for me and that is what’s getting me through, between my sudden outburst of tears (though those could just be from the pink-eye.)