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All posts for the month May, 2013

Compersion: Who Needs It?

Posted by Tim on May 25, 2013
Posted in: polyamory. Tagged: , , . Leave a comment

Last night my wife got home from a date all happy. She hadn’t been out with this person in a while, and things went really well. I was happy for her, but I tried to stay out of her way.

We date really differently. I have these big relationships and big feelings. She tends to just like to date folks sometimes and hang out and have fun. I’m happy to drone on about my relationships for anyone who will listen. She tends to keep details to herself, and be rather private about her feelings and her situations. This last bit extends even to me sometimes. She tends to tell me the facts of a situation, but then not want to talk about it much otherwise. And this is okay; we talked about all of this in the beginning. Her privacy is really important to her, and I understand that, even if it means that I miss out on the compersion that I might get.

So I did ask her about her date last night, but I didn’t really ask about it in any great detail. I figured if there was something she wanted to share, she would tell me about it eventually.

About ten minutes after she got home, once I had resumed doing whatever I had done before, she sat with me and said that she felt like she wasn’t giving me something that she thought I needed. She said that maybe she was shorting me on compersion, and that she would be willing to share more if that was something that I needed.

I had worked within the boundary for so long that this brought up an interesting question for me: Is compersion something that I need?  I really hadn’t thought of it as something to look for and claim, but rather something that would be nice to have if it happened.

I don’t know.  What do you think?  Is compersion a need for you?

My Poly Story: Triggers & the Normalizing Process

Posted by Caroline on May 21, 2013
Posted in: my poly story, polyamory. Tagged: , , , . 3 Comments

Tomorrow, my wife and I will celebrate our ninth wedding anniversary.  NINE YEARS!  Would it be cliche to say it doesn’t feel like it’s been that long? (Absolutely, but I’m going to say it anyway.)  It doesn’t feel like it’s been that long.

Now for the moment of brutal honesty: when she started dating her first girlfriend in our new poly “married and dating” life, there were moments–brief, emotional moments–when I thought we weren’t going to make it to nine.  (She, of course, never had a doubt, but then again she wasn’t the one getting triggered by anything and everything at all moments of the day.)

You see, when we first decided to open our marriage, she immediately jumped onto OKCupid and got started.  I was a bit busier at the time, so I was about four days behind her on the OKC bandwagon.  Before I could even make my profile, she had (I kid you not) messaged ONE woman, gotten a very positive reply, had started chatting with her multiple times a day, and set up a date.  By the end of the week, they had met and she was smitten.  By the end of a few weeks, they were in full-blown NRE–messaging and texting all hours of the day, meeting up five times a week, all-consuming preoccupation and inability to talk about anything else–and me?  My brain went into full-time nonstop trigger mode.

You learn a lot about yourself and your relationship when you see a partner in NRE.  Every trigger you feel has an insecurity or fear or dysfunction behind it, and I felt them ALL.  She had a kid too, so they would get together for a play date and I would get jealous.  They would spend time together during the day while I was at work–boom! Another trigger. She was a perfume lover.  I’d smell it on my wife–trigger! On our son–trigger!  On the couch–trigger! Something spontaneous happened–trigger!  Something planned happened–trigger!  They were getting together four or five times a week, and it was like I couldn’t breathe from one date to the next.  Each one taking things a step further, making them more enraptured with each other, and making me sicker to my stomach with the fears and insecurities that lay behind those triggers.

I write about this now because if I have one piece of advice for any person or couple entering poly from a long history of monogamy it is this: get thee some mentors.  Some shamans, as Peter put it.  (Peter was on of my first poly shamans, come to think of it.)  Join a community, find other poly folks and pick their brains (trust me, most of us are used to it and really want to help because we’ve been in your shoes).

The best decision my wife and I ever made (aside from having a child and learning how to bake our own bread) was go to see a couple’s councilor who had previous experience with polyamorous relationships.  She truly was a mentor more than anything.  She had all the vocabulary, knew of many other people who had been through the same thing, and was able to put everything into perspective.  Because she knew what polyamory was already, we never had to go through the steps of educating her (or trying to defend our decision to open our marriage), and she already knew that what we needed was just to normalize things.  I think most of the advice I give to other people is taken straight from her mouth.

I remember those first months of being poly were like being in a different country with a different language without an interpreter.  Thankfully, our therapist and our new friends in the poly community taught us the native tongue so we could call the new country our home.  The normalizing process is not easy, but we were taught we needed to have patience and give our brains time to adjust.

Here are just a few tidbits from those first few months that helped us out, in case others out there are looking for it:

  • Sleep.  A full-night sleep is the best thing you can give your brain to help process things.  Let it do the work for you.  It can’t do it without deep sleep.
  • NRE is powerful, but it’s not an endurance athlete.  Enjoy it while it’s there, but it will run its course.  It is dangerous to put too much stock in it–when it has passed (and after you get into your first fight) is when you truly learn how lasting the relationship will be.  Partners on both sides of the emotion could do with some reminding of this.  This too shall pass.
  • Emotions are always valid, but they are not always correct.  Emotions and triggers need to be given respect, but just because you have a knee-jerk jealous reaction doesn’t mean that your partner did anything wrong or that your worst fears are coming true or that you made a giant mistake.  Focus on what that emotion is truly telling you if you want to stop feeling it.
  • Agree to boundaries that help each other through triggers, and know that they can be renegotiated after a trial period or after the need has passed.  We instituted a “just us on the weekends” rule when I was at the height of my triggers to give me some time and space to reconnect with my wife and not have to worry about other partners.  It got tweaked drastically, but we still ask for reconnection time on an as needed basis and understand the importance if we need reconnection time with other partners as well.  We had a “no sex in our bed” rule that quickly got tossed when we realized we didn’t care one bit.  I’m afraid that my partners still have to shower after being with anyone who smells strongly of perfume.

Anyone else want to add a tidbit to that list?

Poly Is: Decoy Granola Bars

Posted by Tim on May 12, 2013
Posted in: polyis. Tagged: , , . Leave a comment

This is the sixth in a series of entries about the little parts of polyamory, from individual perspectives.

I was nervous about meeting my wife’s girlfriend for the first time. Because I thought that their relationship was the begging of the end of my marriage.

In nearly all of my relationships, both mono and poly, same-sex attraction has been an element. I have been dumped on a number of occasions for women. A big part of my college triad flying into bits was that they wanted to change the relationship to be just about them. Everyone that I’m seeing now is on the bisexual spectrum somewhere.

I went through a year of my life where I thought I had this weird power to turn women into lesbians by hugging them. This is completely fucking ridiculous of course, and has to do with the people I am attracted to instead of anything I was or was not doing. But it can be disconcerting to have a long streak of crushes come out of the closet at the mere hint of feeling attracted to them.

So when my wife told me about her girlfriend, I was totally triggered by their relationship. I know that popular culture says that I was supposed to be really into the idea of my wife dating another woman, but to me it was full of spookiness and ethereal threats.

I took it into therapy, and hacked at it from a bunch of different angles for more than a month. I talked about it with my girlfriend, who was patient enough to hold my hand while I talked it out and cried it out on her. I talked to friends of mine about what was going on, and the ones that knew my old shit nodded and smiled and tried to get me out of my old pattern. And it took me about a month before I felt I had processed my patterns enough that I was okay meeting her.

Of course it was awesome, because she’s really great. I like spending time with her. I like when she is over at the house. I like the happiness that it brings to my wife, and how that makes our relationship better. It was my first true encounter with compersion with my wife, and I loved it.

But my wife’s girlfriend has a small problem. She likes to raid our kitchen. If she’s hungry and someone is around and awake, she’ll totally ask if it is okay to have some food. But if there is no one awake in the house when she’s hungry, she totally goes and raids the pantry. And she was eating all of our good granola bars.

crappy granola bars!Instead of having a conversation about eating the good granola bars (like they probably should have), my wife went out and bought some generic granola bars, and left them in plain sight. And her girlfriend totally went for them, leaving the expensive ones safe in the cupboard. Everyone was happy.

I was telling this story the other night to a bunch of friends. I love to tell it because I find it hilarious the way that my wife conducted that small little sliver of their relationship. But I’ve been thinking about it over the last few days, and I realized that the telling of that story is the way that I frame conversations about their relationship, and how I got through those insecurities and triggers.

Because before I even get to tell people about the granola bars, I’m talking about my feelings, my worries, and my way of approaching them. The granola bar story becomes a decoy of its own, and it provides a cover for me to be able to talk about my insecurity and the corresponding compersion. Sometimes I need to remember that I put in the work, and ended up with this really nice part of my life that I wouldn’t have had otherwise. It is also a structure for me to be more open with others, and get their comments, and hear their stories. And that allows me to learn from them, so that the next time I find myself triggered and insecure, I have more information to work from.

I’m happy to do the work. But sometimes I need a decoy.

Sicky

Posted by Tim on May 6, 2013
Posted in: polyamory. Tagged: , . Leave a comment

My wife has been sick for the last week. She was running a high fever for a few days, and had a hard time eating. I did what I could to help take care of her, but she was still pretty miserable. I went to the doctor with her, ran and get her prescriptions, got her as many slurpees as she wanted, and made sure that she was as comfortable as I could make her.  Today is still a little touchy, but she is on the mend now.

All of this meant a lot of canceling dates and shuffling things around. I had to cancel my overnights away from home, and the time that I did have was a quick run out here and there. But it was super important to me to be able to support my wife while she was sick, even if it meant doing a lot of crochet and wishing I could see my other partners too.

This isn’t the first time something like this has happened. This time last year, my girlfriend fell and broke her arm. I canceled the date that I had that night, and ran over to the ER to be with her. I even dealt with the nurse who was confused by my wedding ring and thought we were married. My girlfriend needed surgery, and was in a cast for six weeks afterward. During that time I was over at her apartment constantly, taking care of things around her house, and making sure she was okay. My wife pushed me out the door to help her, and that was a great support that I needed then. Jamie helped too, taking her to the appointment to have the cast cut off. I’m sure that she would have survived without us, but I know that we were incredibly helpful to her when she needed help.

I love that all of my partners know that I would be there for them when they were ill, or needed me in a really intense way. And I know that they would support me when I’m sick, or when I’m off helping another one of them out too. It’s a giant network of love and support, and it is wonderful.

Tanks a Lot: Floating and Answers

Posted by Tim on May 3, 2013
Posted in: chicago. Tagged: , , , . 1 Comment

While I don’t consider myself all that much of a spiritual person (and certainly not on any religious scale), I do meditate. I started doing it more than fifteen years ago, in an attempt to get my brain to slow down and actually pay attention to what it was doing. When I started, I didn’t actually think that it was going to do anything for me. I assumed that it would need some kind of spiritual belief to plug into in order to work. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that my preconceptions was wrong. It’s been the most important and most powerful brain hack that I’ve encountered.

I do manage to keep up my practice somewhat, I’m not great about it. This was much more of a problem when I was working an overbearing corporate job. I wasn’t in a position where I could consistently block out time for myself. There were times when it felt like I didn’t even have time to eat or sleep, let alone sit in the quiet and let my brain wind itself out.

On my wife’s recommendation, I went to Spacetime Tanks in Lincoln Park for the first time in 2005. Her thought was that taking an intentional hour out of my day when I could find it, with an enforced removal and unplugging from work, was really something I needed. I thought that a sensory deprivation tank was a bit of an extreme way of unplugging, but I thought it was certainly worth a try. And the first time I went, it was nice enough. I liked that I had to stay focused and had to keep track of my own thoughts, since it was pretty much the only thing in there.

But that second time something happened. I heard a noise that sounded like someone dragging a mental garbage can down an alley. It wasn’t super loud, but it was really present and distracting. I actually asked one of the people working there if it was possible that, through the metal box and the earplugs, if somehow I was hearing something from outside.

On the third trip, I figured out what it was. It was the sound of my jaw muscles as I clenched my teeth while in the tank. And once I figured that out, and actually checked to make sure I was trying to fully relax and check into that moment, that was when floating became something more important than just meditating.

I always come out of the tank with one more answer than I went in with. I can be completely out of practice in the tank, but I will always get one insight, one interesting thought, one little moment of brilliance. It might not be an answer that I needed when I went in, or even an answer to a question that I knew I was asking, but it is an answer to something.

I was in there on Wednesday, after what had been a considerable break. I knew that I was rusty, but I was excited to go back and have that time for myself. I realized that I owe it to myself to go, but also to my partners as well. If I want my relationships to be the best they can, I need to be at my best. If I want to be able to communicate what I’m feeling, then I should have a really clear idea of what my feelings are. If I want to be really stable and centered so I can be present in those relationships, I’d better be doing the work to get stable and centered.

I need that kind of intention and introspection in my life. I’m glad that I have this place I can go and do it well.