Relationships

Once, in a blogging life long ago, when picking a theme and writing about it through the alphabet was a thing, I began to write about the ABC's of relationships: A is for Acquaintance, B is for Best friend, C is for Co-worker, and so on.

I've been doing a lot of compartmentalizing lately. I have to in order to make sense of all that's going on inside and around me. Intellectually, I understand polyamory and open relationships, but it's far more difficult to get my emotions to line up with what I understand. Compartmentalizing helps me look at all the parts for what they are to see if I can make them fit together because, at any one time, several paradoxical things are true and addressing each one, independently and honestly, is the only way, I know, to make this all work. I can identify what works and what doesn't then, make adjustments.

My husband is my best friend and life partner, he's my rock and safe space. He always understands me. He likes my ideas and is always up to coming along for the ride. He positions himself as a support and runs with me. I literally couldn't do life without him.

My boyfriend is my romance and passion. He fills me with romantic love and, that, through a pattern of challenge that leads to compromise. We're all fits and fevers, ups and downs, and deep wells of emotion and their expressions. I literally couldn't feel those depths without him. 

I wish I could say that I had it all figured out before starting the journey, and while I did have some stuff figured out - as much as I could with where I was at when we started - the truth is, there is a lot of figuring that happens, for all of us, as we go along. 

A point of disconnect between the boyfriend and I comes at exclusivity with each other. And, a point of reckoning within me has been dealing honestly with how I'm wired. I am not monogamous. I can do it, I did it faithfully for 16 years with my husband, but it takes a lot of personal control. And, I did it for my husband first, because I'd never want to hurt him or be hurt by him through a breech of trust, but also because it is a part of the practice of our faith to be monogamous. When we discovered that it wouldn't hurt us, emotionally, to be nonmonogamous, we opened up, departing from the confines of our faith.

The boyfriend, in our romance, feels rather monogamous toward me. And, I feel it for him most of the time too, but there are things to be reckoned there.

First, we are never going to be truly monogamous. He will always be sharing me with at least my husband. We've never been and never will be, truly, exclusive.

Second, when we have these tough conversations, in his emotions, he's expressed frustration with my desire for others. It sometimes comes out as judgment, "I don't want anyone else" like as if I don't love him as much because I do. I had to work this out within myself. The truth is, if I'm to feel bad about wanting others, then I have to let him go. If I'm to feel bad about my nonmonogamous tendencies, then monogamy is "right", non is "wrong", and he's gotta go. I had to remember that it's how I'm wired and it's OK that I'm wired that way. It might not be OK for us as a couple but it's OK that it's in me. And, I will not feel shame about it because, it's what makes it possible for me to be with him.

While on a recent get-away, we had the opportunity to meet another Libra woman. I laughed as she spoke openly of the things she had discovered of herself through astrology. Everything she said of herself has been expressed by me to the boyfriend over the course of our relationship. There really is something to astrology. Including the fact that this younger woman is aware of her nonmonogamous wiring. When we departed her company, I asked the Boyfriend if it helped to hear another person, another Libra, reflect what I am. When I say, "It's not a failing on your part, you are satisfying and fulfilling" did it help him to hear that there are others wired, by nature, the way I am?

Third, the issue of trust. The truth is, the Boyfriend understands more than he might know. What's in me is also in him. He has a best sort of friend and life partner but, also, needs what we have together. He has spent at least half of their marriage looking for what we share in various outlets, but never wanting to lose her in the process. He's just done it, until recently, unaware of the root to his behavior and out of the inability to be honest about it because what's in him hurts her. The habit of seeking his needs in secrecy and lies, has not been overcome as yet. I am still a secret and a lie. And, the pattern of seeking his own for unhealthy reasons has, recently, cropped up between us. 

We both know what's in the other, what the other is capable of, but our intense passion for the other causes us to want on hold tightly. Too tightly. It's fear based. We don't want to lose each other and we want to dwell deeply in our relationship.

However, that other thing still resides in both of us and given that we'll never be able to be each other's one-and-only, it's beginning to feel silly to me to require each other to be "exclusive". The truth is, he always has to share me and I always have to hold him loosely because I will lose him some day. I am not his life partner. I'm his love, his romance, and he is mine. It is what it is, and it's deeply fulfilling and beautiful to us both for what it is, but that's all it can be. 

I don't want to live in fear. I don't want to worry about the secret expression of the other side of what's in him. And, I'm beginning to feel like it's healthy to remove from us the possible need to keep secrets and tell lies because we're requiring something of each other that we don't really need to require. If the last, almost, year and a half has taught me anything, it's that we love and enjoy each other. We want to be together, even when it's impossibly hard, even when it hurts like hell. We don't want to lose each other. So, and I say this often, "Let's not lose each other." Do we have to hold so tightly when we already know that we want each other, go through hell for each other, work hard to maintain our relationship, and love each other so passionately? 

We've both proven to the other that we want us and are "in" this. So, I've begun to, intellectually, practice a polyamorous concept known as "compersion".

"Keristans originally defined compersion as 'the opposite of jealousy, positive feelings about a partner's other intimacies.'" - Opening Up, pg 173

I started the process of letting go, not of the Boyfriend or what we share, but of the need to possess him exclusively. I've found that when I think of him enjoying intimacy with others, I can have happy feelings for him. Why would I need to be insecure about that when I know he loves and wants me? Why would I feel jealous of him enjoying someone else sexually, when I know he really enjoys me that way and not only that way, but in a way that others don't get to have him. He comes to me with his day and his woes. He cries in my arms. We enjoy many nonsexual activities together. We're good friends as well as lovers.

The fear, of course, is what if he finds someone else he loves more and we diminish. That could happen, but we've both spent the last year and a half observing that we both love and don't want to lose each other, and we love and don't want to lose our life partners. Unfortunately, he has to lose his. Not because he doesn't love her - he loves her very much - but because of what's in him and what she can't handle. It's a fucking tragedy. I don't want to be her. I want to keep him and us and let us both be free to enjoy others.

I want to remove the need to keep a secret and tell a lie. Go enjoy others and keep loving me, and I'll do the same for you - because we want to, not because we're leashing each other and living in constant fear of loss. I feel like that creates a lot of unnecessary drama and anxiety for us. What are we afraid of? We love and want each other! If, after going through the fucking hell of watching him try to fix his marriage, if not being able to let him go through that isn't enough to prove my commitment, I don't know what is. If enjoying others can throw us off each other then we're not as in love as we think we are and we're just holding on out of fear. I don't want to live like that. We've already proven we don't want to lose each other even through really, really, hard things. I don't trust that he is in full knowledge of and control of what is in him, because it hasn't been overcome in what are tangible ways I can point to, but I absolutely trust his love for me and his desire to keep us. 

I sent the Libra an encouraging and affirming message, having reflected on a part of our conversation when she addressed the perception of laziness in Libras. We're known to not be the most consistent and fiercest of workers ... at jobs. That's because people - connections and relationships - are a Libra's work. 

I sent the Boyfriend the song All of Me by: John Legend last night because it's what I feel for him and about us. We are that intensely in love - period. We sink under the depths and touch something exclusively intimate in each other. I don't have what we share with anyone - I never have and I doubt I ever will again. 

So, H is for Husband.

B is for Boyfriend.

C is for Children.

P is for Parents.

S is for Sister.

F is for Friends.

... and, O could be for Others. 

I have many relationships and they each get my all for what they are. Those relationships, those people I love, are my work and purpose in this world.

#Libra