intention

All posts tagged intention

Insecurity

Posted by Tim on December 5, 2013
Posted in: polyamory. Tagged: , , , , , . 1 Comment

I don’t feel insecure that often in my relationships. I think it’s a testament to being able to communicate with my partners, and know that I can have that dialogue with them if I need to.  Sometimes insecure feelings rumble in the background of my emotions, but I’m usually able to hunt it down and address whatever the problem is in a reasonable order.

But every once in a while it reaches a critical mass, and it is totally overwhelming.  It can feel like the supports that hold me up are crumbling beneath me.  It’s terrifying and strange, and I don’t handle it that well.

Of course, it is usually a symptom that I haven’t been honest about my feelings, or that I have hidden instead of addressing smaller problems that I’ve encountered. But in the moment, the overwhelming panic and worry and hurt inundates me.  It clouds my ability to process through those feelings, exacerbating what would otherwise be a bit of work and communication and reflection.  It keeps me from hearing what my partners are saying, and  instead I’m laying my own feelings on top of their words.

It is so easy in retrospect to pick apart what was actually going on.  Once the clouds clear, the answers pop right up.  And it’s easy to feel dumb at that point too.  There are so many ways to be unfair to ourselves.  I instead try to learn from my mistakes, and prepare myself for the next time those feelings wash over me.

But there is a valuable lesson in all of those moments.  Because I have been in the midst of those feelings myself, I know what it is like when my partners are in their own insecure places.  I know that, while I may not be able to do anything to help process those feelings, the one thing that I can always do is be empathetic and supportive.  It is so hard to struggle with those feelings, and just being able to be present and witness their feelings them and talk and cuddle and hold my partners in that moment is all the more important because of my own insecurities.

I think it’s wonderful that we can learn from our own insecure moments, and then use that knowledge to help each other.  We can be so deep in those feelings, but we can still have each other.

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Biting My Tongue

Posted by Tim on July 18, 2013
Posted in: polyamory. Tagged: , , , , , . 2 Comments

I’m spending the next few days with my family, back in the area where I grew up, far far away from Chicago. Just me on this trip: no wife, no partner, no girlfriend. Just me and a car and a bunch of people to visit. I’m glad that I was able to make the trip. Being many hundreds of miles away from them all means that I don’t get to spend the time with them that I would like, and being able to take a week and really get quality time with them is something that I really value.

Except that I’m not out to them as polyamorous. And I can’t come out to them on this trip because of boundaries with my wife, and not wanting to drop a bomb on folk when they’re still dealing with family deaths. So I am constantly self-editing.

I know that last sentence sounds a bit hyperbolic. I really wish that was the case. I thought it would be an interesting thought experiment to keep track of the number of times I had to keep myself from saying something poly in conversation. But it happened at such a frantic pace that I was unable to keep up after only a few hours.

I have a cousin that I am really close with, and I was able to wedge in a lunch with her yesterday. We were just kind of small talk chatting for a while, and she was asking me what was new, what I had been up to lately, what I’ve done since I’m not working full-time at the moment. Each of these three questions was just a fucking minefield.

  • What’s new? Pride weekend was great! Poly barbecue! Jamie had everyone over to her house for the parade! My wife started dating a friend of mine! I finally did some poly activism stuff that I had put off! One of my wife’s friends might have a crush on me, and that’s kind of making me feel weird! I’ve helped my friend work through the first time she’s meeting her boyfriend’s girlfriend!
  • What have I been up to lately? Jamie and I went to Summerfest in Milwaukee, and I saw a bunch of her friends that I met last year! My birthday party was great! All of the people I was seeing were there! It wasn’t weird at all! Jamie totally integrated with a chunk of my friends! We were already out, so we didn’t have to freak out the squares at all!
  • What am I doing in my free time? I go to my girlfriend’s house and take a nap sometimes! My writing has taken a new and interesting turn into the world of poly blogging! I helped my girlfriend’s ex-girlfriend move a bunch of stuff!

I had to navigate my way around each one of these little flags in the ground, lest I accidentally say something weird. And it really sucked. In order to work out some of that frustration (and lay a good foundation for coming out later), I chucked my poly shaman under the bus during a conversation about babies, and started talking about issues in abstract. And when I got to her response of “I could never do that, I’m too jealous”, I dropped the topic and moved on from there.

It hasn’t been so bad with my parents just yet, but I expect there will be plenty of opportunity in the next few days for me to feel differently. And I’m going to go visit with a bunch more of my family today, where conversation will inevitably come back to relationships and babies and feelings, and I’ll be sitting on this big secret the whole time.

The last time I was here, my aunt said to me that she really appreciated the relationship we had where she felt that “we can tell each other anything”. I do feel that way about how we interact. I do want to tell her everything. I want to take the time to sit and explain it all in the most compassionate and vulnerable way that I can. I’m looking forward to the day I do that with my whole heart. I hope she won’t be mad at me for keeping this part of me from her for so long. I hope she gets it then.

I logged in here to type out my feelings from the last few days, and sitting in my reader was this article about coming out. When I’m sitting around self-editing later today, I am going to think about the points that she raises in that entry. What will I say to them when I do come out to them? How will I respond to their questions? How can I do it in such a way where they will feel like I’m understanding them, and their questions, and their feelings? I’m going to be doing a lot of thinking on that today.

Freaking Out the Squares

Posted by Tim on July 1, 2013
Posted in: polyamory. Tagged: , , , , , . Leave a comment

It was pride weekend here in Chicago, so there was a lot of socializing going on for me.  Specifically, Caroline and her husband had a poly barbeque on Saturday night, and Jamie had a bunch of people over for the parade (she lives right off of the parade route).  I think that I am just now getting out of the cloud of booze and sun exposure from this weekend, and returning to something close to a normal state.

At Caroline’s barbeque, there was a point where I met some people who I hadn’t met before.  Forgetting that this was blatantly advertised as a poly event, I checked in with her to make sure that it was cool to be out with her friends.  In the end, we discovered that I had actually met these folks before, so it wasn’t even as big of a deal as I had initially thought.

And then at the parade, there were again some folks that I hadn’t met before, so I checked in before I stated making some social faux pas in mixed company.  I don’t want to go about making people uncomfortable about interactions without some polite communication about where folks are at.  I don’t want to make my friends go on some long explanation of what is going on with their weirdo friends, or inadvertently out them to people they wouldn’t want to be out to.  Now, granted, this was at the pride parade, so there is already a level of acceptance built in there.  But I want to be nice to everyone, and let them work their way into poly issues if they would like.

Except this is kind of a lie.  Because there is totally a part of me that wants to throw polyamory around and maybe freak some monogamous people out.  I believe in advocacy and awareness, and what better way to raise awareness than to be out and loud and let people take away from that what they will.  And I want to be the person doing it, because I believe in these ideals so much that I want to be the loudmouth.  I’m happy to be the one up front.  I felt this all the more at pride, where it was about owning the way that you are and the way that you feel, and it felt really antithetical to have to couch my identity where there were a ton of people out on the street doing exactly the opposite.

But I don’t want to cause strife, and I don’t want to be a jerk about this all the time.  So I do try to walk the line in-between.  I’m super happy to talk about poly ideas and stories with folks once I know that they’re open to the idea.  And maybe I’ll try to push those boundaries and hope that the people I’m talking to are thinking about these ideas in a way that they might not have done before.  But out of respect for my friends, I’m happy to use a bit of tact before I start running my yap.

I think there’s always going to be a part of me that is going to out and loud and try to be a voice for awareness.  I hope that at some point that part of me won’t need to feel this way, because there won’t be so many folks to freak out.  For now, I’ll guess I’ll keep walking that line and let that part of me out once in a while.

Polyhacking

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

I’ve been mulling over this article on less wrong for the last few hours.

Trying to inhale all of the additional context around this article has been kind of difficult, especially since I’m trying to do it while I’m sitting at my desk at work.  But the idea of working to overcome logical fallacies certainly appeals to me, the bit by bit breakdown was interesting.

The one little point that stuck with me (and is addressed in the comments section of the article) is that it could be construed that being poly is somehow more advanced, or at least a makes a lot more sense, than being monogamous.  I do believe that argument is self-aggrandizing faff at best, and individual preferences should be respected.  The important part is the critical evaluation of preconceptions, and this piece has that in spades.

Poly is: Introspection

Posted by Tim on March 18, 2013
Posted in: polyis. Tagged: , , . Leave a comment

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

It’s so easy to look at polyamory and boil it all down to sex, and then maybe love and relationships. That’s certainly what it can look like from the outside when there’s no additional context. The media has a habit of treating poly folk with an air of scandal and sensationalism, revolving around how sexy poly lives are. Intolerant folks point to that aspect of poly, and build cases based on their moral code. And I think for some people this base definition is the extent of their understanding, or perhaps the limit to how they want to understand.

I know that among the poly folk that I know, there is an emphasis on the communication. It’s the only way to make relationships work. It is how we work through problems with each other. It is what keeps us sane when our feelings get the best of us. I think that is really important too, and I work on my communication as much as I can.

But for me, the first thing I think of is introspection. More than any other relationship, more than any other conversation, poly has forced me to look inside myself, and that has meant the most to me.

Poly has forced me to truly evaluate where my feelings are coming from. If I’m feeling jealous or envious or upset or frustrated, the first place for me to look is at myself, and try to determine what those factors are that are making me feel that way. Is there something that I want or need for myself that I am not getting? Do I feel like I am shorted or mistreated in some way? Is there something in my past that is keeping me from being truly in my relationships? Is there something that I need to talk about, not because I need to, but because I want to?

I have to ask myself these questions, even when I don’t want to. How can I have a reasonable conversation with my partner if I don’t understand where my side of the conversation is coming from? How can I reasonably expect them to give me what I need if I can’t tell them what it is I need? These answers can only come from inside myself, and I am the only one that can go in there and get them. And it also gives me the framework to ask these questions of my partners. Because I know what doing that looks like for myself, I can talk from a position of knowledge of how that process works for me.

I’m writing this like I am some kind of maven that has figured all of this out. I haven’t, not even close. There is always more work to do, and more dark corners to investigate. But I do know that this inward evaluation is critically important. I am a heather, more self-actualized person for taking the time to figure myself out, regardless of the number of relationships I have.

Poly pushes me to do the work. There is something important to be said for that.

Where to begin…

Posted by Tim on March 10, 2013
Posted in: polyamory. Tagged: , , . Leave a comment

Chicago. City of Big Shoulders. The Windy City. The Second City. The Poly City?

There are thousands of us here, living our own lives and our own forms of polyamory. Some of us are out and proud about it, others of us are trying to figure out what it means, and some of us are just dipping our toes in for the first time. Some of us have experience going back decades or more, and some of us are just doing our first google searches. We are lucky to live in this city, to have this community, and I want to celebrate that. All of that.

One of my favorite topic of discussion in these moments is how we got where we were, what we felt, how we struggled, and how we changed. It was a true connection with people who understood what I was going through, and wanted the same kinds of things that I wanted in life. It was emotional and empowering, and I was so happy to have that little bit of light shining in for a moment.

And then the next day I would head back off to work, or back into the slog of real life, and that light would fade until the next time. I felt like I was contracting back into myself. I didn’t want to just be in that container. I longed for those communications to continue and grow. I wanted a way to connect with that community, without all of us being in that room together. I wanted a way to be able to communicate our stories, to share the experiences we were having, and have that be a part of a growing record.

So I started this site. I asked my friends if they would like to write. I asked folks if they would want to do interviews. I plan on reaching out to as many poly folks in Chicago as I can. I don’t know where this is all going to end up, but I do know where it starts. And here we are.

I know this kind of sharing isn’t for everyone. Some of us (including me) have to be a little hidden about ourselves and who we really are. We have a lot at stake. Society doesn’t seem to be ready for us to be out yet. We have judgmental families, coworkers, neighbors, friends. Putting ourselves fully out there can sometimes lead to consequences we can’t see. I know people who have been rejected by their families, spurned by their loved ones, pestered by their neighbors. Friends of mine have received death threats for being open and talking to the media. I wish I was making that up.

But my desire to share and grow with this community is too much for me to sit back. I want to be able to engage with folks. I want to put myself in a position to be an activist. I want to be a resource for others. I want to reach out and be an advocate and try to educate.

So, a first step, made with some confidence. It will take us a while to get rolling here with any real kind of momentum. But I look forward to a day where I can look back on writing this, and know that it was the start of something really amazing.