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Timeline of insanity.
Three years ago today my favorite dance partner, terpsichoros took me to my first DHP. I went because I heard it was wild and exciting. There was also this other boy going and I wanted to flirt with him a lot. Tom and I had very tentatively opened our relationship in December though sex wasn’t permitted with anyone until January. I was on a mad hunt for new people because the near celibacy of the previous year and some were just too much for me. At this DHP I ended up sandwiched between the boy I was crushing on and the strange host of the party. I never did figure out what made him go for me so hard that night.
I went out on first dates with the host of that party and the boy I was crushing on within a week. 🙂 The other boy was an intermittent part of my life for about a year in a very casual way. But uhm… the host, that would be Noah, didn’t end up being casual. At that time he had a primary and I had a primary and I had a lot of rules governing how much contact I got to have without outside people and there were time restrictions on how quickly anything could happen. Which means that on my first date (2/26) with Noah I told him that there would be no sex. Given what a pushy tramp he is he still was very pushy and forward sexually and that pushiness very nearly made it so that he didn’t get a second date. But I spent time with him, often going to the gym with him, and talking over the next few weeks. About a month later we finally had sex and it was ok. 🙂
We got closer and more emotionally intimate. He became the first and only person to ever ask me, “What happened to you?” He is still the only person to ever care that way for me. He wants to see me. We dated until late November. During this period I was the one insisting that I was still just a secondary. He was very enamored of the idea of my being a co-primary with the other girl he was involved with. I had the sneaky suspicion this wasn’t actually ok with her at all and later it was discovered that I was basically right. I broke up with him because I would not be “co-primary” and I didn’t want to come second behind her. I wanted to be the Most Important Person to someone and as long as I was so obsessed with Noah and enraptured with him I couldn’t look for that. It never entered into my head to ask him to change the nature of his relationship with the other girl. That would not have been ok in my head.
So I dumped him, hard. It wasn’t pretty for either of us. It didn’t take long (maybe a month or so) and even though I was pretty certain that a Relationship wouldn’t work I just couldn’t stay out of his bed. Ok, maybe the sex was better than ok. 🙂 But I tried to keep distance there. Then I made a nine month mistake commonly referred to by short hand as “Puppy.” During that period I managed to stay out of Noah’s bed through sheer force of will and desperation to find something that might work somewhere else. Noah was still very much my best friend. His relationship with the other girl went away with much drama. He dated other people, some for short periods some for longer. He started dating a very nice, gentle girl while I was early on in my mistake. I thought he was happy. I was trying so hard to be happy.
Then, by a year after breaking up with him, I was single again and stopping to look at my life and what I wanted. I was still spending time with my wonderful best friend. I was still pretty completely obsessed with him. I dreamed about him. I thought about him all the time. I kept my mouth shut. I didn’t want to ruin his happy relationship with the new girl, I had broken up with him and I didn’t deserve him anymore. Though I did have active plans to ask him to knock me up when I was 26/27 because I couldn’t imagine a better co-parent.
But in March, two days before the second anniversary of the first time we had sex, he came over to have dinner and hang out. We did that often without it turning into anything other than friendship. This time he told me that he wanted me more than anything, that he wanted to marry me and spend forever with me, and even though he believed I would say no–he had to ask or he wouldn’t be able to forgive himself. I sat there in stunned shock for a couple minutes trying to find words. He believed this meant I was trying to figure out how to break it to him gently that I didn’t want him and started stammering out how he knows it won’t work and I don’t want him and… I told him to shut up and launched myself at him and told him yes. Yes, I would marry him. Yes, I want him. We did kiss, but very specifically on both our parts we kept all clothing on. He uhhh was still with the other girl. We talked about how much it was going to hurt her and I was very sad there was no way that I could see for all of us to be happy. I wasn’t going to give up on him again though, not for anything.
He broke up with her. It was uncomfortable and hard. I really have nothing negative to say about how she responded at all–there would have been no better way for her to be. Noah and I started trying to figure out how we fit together without any one else being between us. It was actually a slow warm up. Even though we were sort of technically engaged already we tried to not be instantly together all the time or enmeshed. We only saw one another a couple times a week for a few months. We didn’t advertise how seriously we were taking the relationship for a while. I told him that it was important to me that he not just be exchanging one full time girl for another full time girl. We had to be seperate for a while before we could be together. That sort of worked. The warm up was slow-ish (I’m honest) and good. We started making plans for the future.
One thing we talked about a lot was selling this house and renting for a while so that we could build up a more significant deposit on a better house. Eventually this plan was vetoed for a variety of reasons, but not before his then housemate moved out. It was June by then (whoo hoo, three whole months later) and I was experiencing plagues and pestilence in my apartment. (The flooding from the upstairs toilet and the bug infestations were just Not Funny.) Given that he needed to have some help with his mortgage it looked like he might have to get a new housemate. But… my apartment was sucking… So given that I would be moving in sometime in the near future anyway I just moved in then. Then I ran off to the east coast on vacation and started proceedings for the gorgeous ring that is mine.
We spent the summer trying to figure out how/if poly was going to work for us. Yeah, most of what we figured out is that poly is a fucking headache. We were also talking about the ominous cloud of wedding planning hanging over our heads. Then I got sick. And people were sweet and wonderful and tried to be helpful in convincing me that going to a doctor would be a good idea. In this process they told me that some of my symptoms could potentially indicate a very serious illness that could kill me. While in the midst of freaking out at the idea that I could die I looked over at Noah one night before going to bed and said, “If it turns out I am dying, can we go get married this weekend so that at least I get to be married to you before that happens?” He agreed. So I went to the doctor–uhm yeah… not dying. I’ll be fine. Well don’t I feel silly. So I came home all sheepish and told Noah that I wasn’t dying. He was happy about this. I sat there and fussed and dawdled as I worked my way up to saying, “So uhm, would you be interested in getting married this weekend anyway?”
This was on Thursday before Labor Day weekend. We found a lovely B&B up in Tahoe, booked a room for the weekend and drove up on Friday. We bought a pretty dress and lovely gold rings on the way (my “real” ring still hadn’t arrived). We had a lovely night enjoying our last night of sin before we became all legally sanctioned. The wedding was small (us and the minister) and quick. We said our own vows and I had moments of terror–oh god, what if I am FUCKING UP?!!!! But I stomped that voice out ruthlessly. We went back to the B&B and had a lovely dinner and enjoyed our wedding pint of Haggen Das vanilla ice cream–it’s all about priorities. 🙂 We drank port and enjoyed one another very much.
By late September neither of us were dating anyone else. The poly headache just kind of… was shelved. We fell more and more deeply into enjoying one another and figuring out the rocky bits of how to deal with one another (I may be harder than average to handle, but Noah has his moments too). Meeting his family over Thanksgiving was an experience I will never forget, or need to repeat.
We had a lovely fun Christmas season with some really hot people, but have been really cheerfully monogamous for the past couple months. Given that breeding is in the pretty near future it looks like monogamy will continue to be the mode for the forseeable future. Yeah, we are crazy enough to want to breed and to do it soon.
Do I know this relationship will work out? No. I’m really hoping. I believe that a lot of what makes relationships work is wanting to make them work and I think we both have a very high level of investment in making this work. I love him. I like him. I think this has at least as much potential as any other relationship and more than a good many. So I’m hoping.
Thank you terpsichoros. I owe you more than I can ever repay. You gave me dancing, which I love, and you introduced me to my future. Did you have any idea what you were doing? 🙂
Blatant (and perhaps childish) request for ego stroking
I’m having one of those “I don’t much like me” days and I am about to start doing something I really don’t want to do. So as I am heading in to this I would like to request that, if you feel motivated to do so–don’t worry about it if you don’t–please tell me something I have actually done that you respect and/or love me for. None of this nebulous, “You’re great!” stuff. I know people mean well… but really it always feels so non committal as to mean nothing.
Thank you for listening. 🙂
Being grateful
I believe it is important to notice the good stuff that happens lest you take it for granted. So here I go.
Angela–you have become a wonderful mom and I am grateful you are in my life. Thank you for bringing me a present.
Miss Jenny–thank you for remembering my birthday and restating my status as the Princess. I’m grateful.
Miss Sara–thank you for remembering my birthday and giving me permission to be demanding. I have a hard time thinking it is ok.
Noah–thank you for going to bed early with me and tolerating my mood swings.
Spot–thank you for trying so hard to be considerate of me and the attention you have been giving has been great.
Deborah and Anthony–thank you for including me in your important day. I appreciated it far more than you know.
That’s just a little bit of the goodness in my life in the past week. Yay.
Have I mentioned that I’m tired? But after last night I know that 8:30 is a wee bit too early to go to sleep.
I love my Debbie
She talks at about 300 words per minute. She often moves at the same basic speed. And when she is busy talking in a bizarre mix of Chinese (Mandarin) and English it is even more spastic.
She is one of my oldest and dearest friends. She is wonderful. A bigger pain in the ass I have never met–she outstrips japlady any day of the week and twice on Sunday for driving me crazy. It’s great. And she blows through town once or twice a year and expects me to drop any and everything I am doing to see her, and I always do.
Right now she is deciding which of my boys she is going to borrow tonight. I think she is the only female I have ever met who is on par for my sexual voracity and openness. We compare numbers and lists of boys the way some of my friends compare book titles. It’s fun. I have given her dozens of recommendations on each boy. We are waiting until they get home before she actually decides which she is going to borrow tonight. How often does one get to do something like this? Hell, I’m secretly hoping we find out the capacity of our bed. She’s a lot of fun. 🙂
Edit about 20 minutes later: more reason to love Debbie.
“You know what? Why bother picking one? Why don’t we all just swing?”
YAY!!!!
If you try sometime
You just might find you get what you need.
What do I need?
I need to be loved and appreciated for all the various contradictions that make up me. I need to be encouraged to feel no shame for the thoughts, desires, and actions in my life. I need to be loved for my voracious and overwhelming appetites. I need to be allowed to go off and come back and have safety in knowing that there will be a place/person to come back to. I need to not be told that my behavior is ok when it is directed at someone else and not ok when it is directed at you. I need to be listened to and spoken to. I need to be allowed to make mistakes without being told that I am bad for them. I need hugs and kisses without expectation that I have to put out. I need to be asked to put out. I need for it to be understood that it hurts me deeply that I essentially don’t have a bio family, and sometimes I can’t listen to suggestions about how I should fix the situation–there isn’t an easy way to fix it and saying there is demeans me and how much I have struggled to come to terms with my family.
I … I need love. I need to be valued.
I need to thank God for giving me what I need. I am so very grateful for my life and the people in it. I think I am the luckiest girl ever. I have been found.
Appreciation
I’ve said it many times before and I’m sure I will say it millions of times in the future.
I love my friends. I am so very grateful for the people in my life who love me and support me. I don’t treat my friends as well as I should, and I don’t honestly know if I ever will be able to be as good to them as they deserve, but I try to figure out ways to let them know that I appreciate them.
Specifically in the last few days: Chris and Andrew, thank you for picking up the phone. Thank you for your advice. I will try to follow it.
Appreciation.
On my friends-list I noticed that someone offered to express appreciation of people wanted it. I decided that doing that smack of consent and forget that noise. 😉
So here we go, in brief: some measure of appreciation for everyone on my friends-list. lotsa names