Poly Chicago

A shameful admission: it took me way too long to start keeping track of my dating life on a calendar. I am notoriously bad at keeping track of events, making sure there are no conflicts, and making sure everyone knows what is going on. My wife had to sit me down and explain to me that I had to update the calendar if I expected her to be okay with my dating. I’m much better at keeping the calendar up to date now, although I could definitely improve.

I do a lot of freelance work lately, so my schedule is often crowded with little one-off jobs here or there. I’m happy to have the work (any more importantly, the money), but having an inconsistent work schedule was causing problems. Specifically, it was infringing on my dating life.

I ran into this a bunch of times with Jamie. We would schedule a night together, but I would forget that I had a work thing to attend to early the next morning. Or I had to pick up someone from the airport. Or whatever else happens in the early hours. And she was feeling shorted because I would schedule and then need to change plans at the last-minute to accommodate my prior work commitments.

After the third or fourth time through this wringer, she said to me, “You know, if you put your work stuff in the calendar, then you would remember.”

“But calendars are for dating,” I replied, offhandedly.

Of course she laughed at me. Some glitch in my brain had totally put “calendar” solidly in the poly world. The idea that I could use it to keep track of stuff outside of poly had never actually occurred to me. Needing her to correct this glitch was embarrassing.

Now I keep work events in the calendar too. And planning dates works much better this way.