Looking in from outside the circle.

I was recently invited to be in a polyamorous relationship.   I said no, I feel like maybe the response came as a shock to the individual. 

There are a few very interesting thoughts that passed through my mind when this “Opportunity” presented itself.   Before I get into those, let me give you some background. 

A few years ago, before I wandered up into the mountains, I was fairly seriously involved someone I can only describe as the Ying to my Yang, to say we had our differences was obvious.  It was very much a classic Notebook tale.  Except neither of us wrote letters every day, nor built the other a house in the blind faith that someday we would come back together.  Yeah, it was nothing like that.   There is always an end to each great tale, ours ended with a conversation around being in an open relationship. Let me list off some of the reasons why an open relationship doesn’t work for me.

1. We did not have a strong enough relationship to support one. (We didn’t know how to talk)
2. I’m insecure
3. I believe that open relationships are a stop on relationship cycle before single. 

So that’s that.

Fast forward a few years, and I have met a few more folks, and have gone out with a few more people as a single person.  I’ve learned some more about myself and confirmed the old truths. 

1. I’m not wired for casual sex (might be why an open relationship has no appeal)
2. I am a hopeless romantic, which is tough in a hook up culture
3. It’s easier to be alone, than unhappy.

Now, you have an idea of where my head is at with respect to dating, sex, relationships, etc. Pretty conservative I would say, I’ve never denied that. 

Now, I feel it is important to explain the differences between polyamory and an open relationship. 

Polyamory, is when one or more person in the relationship wants to love more than one person at the same time, both emotionally and physically.   These relationships can get very complicated, sometimes, there are three people, sometimes there are twenty.  Sometimes, all members are polyamorous with multiple people.  The web gets quite woven.  It really just sounds like a big orgy, one person at a time.  One of the observations someone pointed out is that it is not uncommon for the person who declares themselves as polyamorous in the relationship is territorial and doesn’t wish for their partners to be unfaithful.  Hardly seems like a “What’s good for the goose, is good for the gander” type of situation to me at all. So, where does that leave the other parties.  Sitting around waiting for some love and attention on the terms of the polyamorous person?  Hmmmm, yeah, if I’m going to sit around and wait by the phone for your love, I’ll just download tinder and wait for someone to match with, and i’ll message them.  They’ll talk to me on their terms as well. 

An Open relationship is one where a couple who are together decide as a couple that it is okay for one or both to partake in physical relationships with other people outside of the confines of their relationship.  Or within it as a threesome, etc.   These types of arrangements aren’t terribly uncommon.  The folks in these relationships do cause for some clutter when it comes to swiping on apps.  I have found in a number of cases the people involved in these types of relationships sometimes hide their relationship status so that it doesn’t prevent them from attracting sexual partners.   That crosses over into morals and ethics, which is a realm I don’t feel i’m exactly qualified to venture into. Considering I’ve cooked rodents in the mountains and served them to guests.

Coming back to the offer of polyamory just recently, there has been someone who has been occupying my time for the better part of a few months.  We have expressed feelings for each other.  We have shared intimate secrets with each other.  We have an intense emotional connection.  Well, that’s how I felt until the other day.   

This person which I expected knew where I was at with all of the things above, decided that they wanted to invite me to be in a polyamorous relationship with them and others one of them being their ex.  They stated that the felt they can not bind themselves to just one person, and this was the best they could offer me.  

Well, frankly, what would have been a better offer would have been, “Hey, lets be friends, because I can’t offer you what you want. I want to be free to love who I love, and I know you wouldn’t want to be a part of that, because as a person that knows who you are, and has been listening to your views for how long, I was actually paying attention…” as opposed to “I can’t bind myself to only one person, and I have my ex back in my life, and I don’t want to choose between anyone, because it tears me up, so you should come play sister-wives with us…..”

I don’t know if this person gave a lot of thought to what responses they would get.  I also wonder if they did present everything in this way in a classic effort to push the people away more easily and without it seeming like it was their fault.

“I didn’t push you away, you didn’t want what I offered…..” is quite possibly the rationale for this person.  

So, my response was very carefully thought out.  I knew this conversation was coming and had a week to prepare myself for it.   I should have just responded, “No Thanks” and called it a day, but I felt that they put some effort into their explanation to me, and I should return the effort. So, I simply told them I knew how I felt about things and that this wouldn’t work for me, I also made it very clear that I don’t think there would ever be a possibility of any type of intimate relationship together.  We would never be a couple, even if they changed their priorities as this would always be some form of want for them and I would never feel comfortable binding them to me. 

So, I’m looking for some boring assed person, who will sit around and knit with me, while watching Netflix, or whatever.  Someone who will tell me when I smell bad. Someone who will laugh as they ask “are you okay?” when something stupid happens to me and my pride is hurt more than anything else. Monogamy is non negotiable, I don’t like sharing the goods.  There’s a pile of people out there that will give you exactly what you’re looking for.  I’m very aware of what I can offer. 

#StillSingle

It's all coming back to me now.....

When you can’t think of anything to talk about, but you want to just fall off the face of the planet for a while and be alone.  Yeah, that’s partly what I’m feeling right now. 

I’ve got so many things distracting me lately, but none of it is enough to actually distract me from being hurt, disappointed, or impatient.  The beautiful person that you know you want to be a part of your life, has said all of the right things to make you feel like its heading in the direction you want it to go.  You’re optimistic, and you even have the conversation about what the reality of them being a part of your life looks like.  All really real shit… Then, radio silence?  What the fuck?  

So you try to pry in and figure out what that’s about, and you get some back pedal story about the way they feel and how they’re worried about breaking your heart and theirs.  Maybe, just maybe they know what they’re talking about, but you suspect it’s more likely they didn’t know what the impact of what they were saying would have and once they started thinking about it they either got scared or something better came along.  

It all hurts the same, regardless of the cause.  So who’s to blame?  You, for believing and having faith?  Them, for not knowing what they wanted, or for being distracted by the next thing that came along?  Or is it really faultless?  Seems hard to not blame someone when it all feels so shitty, so you try to talk your way around it.  The crap about emotion is that logic and reasoning have no place here.  You don’t get to talk your way out of emotional pain, you just have to go through it until you adjust and it dulls. 

So, where do you go from here, it seems that the more open you are the more it hurts, the less open you are the more likely you will be to miss the boat. It feels like you can’t win.  So, the solution.  Distraction.  You buy a house and you fix it up, you start a project, you do things that are interesting and you see if they make you feel like you’re doing something productive with yourself. 

Keep doing what you love, and making the love, your faith will pay off.  This is the process.  You have no other way to learn but to go through this. 

Where the fuck did you come from?

Ever meet someone and think to yourself; “Holy FUCK! this person is the best thing since Microwave Popcorn in a Pop-up Bowl!!!!”

There’s this strange phenomena that occurs whenever I am feeling lonely, and I meet anyone that can form a sentence using adverbs and adjectives without hash tagging them. This phenomena is what I refer to as “Falling off the mother fucking cliff”  why do I call it that?  Go fall off a cliff, and it won’t take long before you too realize just how helpless it is to fight what is happening to you.  No matter what you try to do, you can’t stop falling. (Just like that Alicia Keys song.) So, resolve yourself to the fact that you fell off the cliff and accept that you are now falling.  If you can’t resolve yourself to falling, you’re just going to come off as a lunatic. (Kind of like Tyler Duerden in Fightclub as he fights himself in the parking lot.)  So… there is some advice for people out there that have found themselves falling off the cliff, and it is really simple.  

So, back to my falling off the mother fucking cliff.  Imagine this, in the midst of moving basecamp, just as I was getting some of the finer details set in place and figuring, yes I’m good, I can do this, then in struts a hiker dressed to the nines in the latest hiking technology with all the gear you thought you would want to have.  They’re there, standing in the middle of your solitude and looking down on you as though they’re just as surprised to see you as you are them.   Now, keeping in mind, I’ve been in various parts of the bush since the fall.  I don’t get a lot of interaction with people.  Usually when I do, it’s in a controlled and coordinated manner.  Having someone take the reins and walk into my world where I have no control was a bit off putting.  I was unsure if what was happening was real. 

Then, we spoke, for hours actually.  It seemed like there would never be anything we couldn’t talk about.  Maybe it was the loneliness and the isolation that did it, and that human interaction felt so good at this moment.  I don’t know.  What I do know is that somehow I lost my footing and fell off that mother fucking cliff.  Now, not sure if you’ve been hiking ever or not, but the objective is to follow a trail, or plan and get home before dark.  So, like all great things, they must come to an end.  I wanted nothing more than for this hiker to stay with me all night, but really, I had just moved my base camp and wasn’t exactly set up to accommodate anyone but myself at this point. Really, what am I supposed to say?  “Hey, wanna stick around, I have a great pot of beans and chilli to make, and we can roll up into one sleeping bag for the night…. what do ya say?”

I know many that would scoff me for not trying, but alas, that is not my style.  I pointed the hiker in the direction of my blog, wished them well on their way, and gave them some of my earlier jerky that I had made.  (It was made from squirrels, and I wasn’t really a fan.)

So, since the hiker disappeared over the summit and returned to where people shower more than once a fortnight, I’m not sure if they will remember me or not.  Now, I’m up in this wilderness until spring melt, that is what I planned, and promised myself.  I am going no where until then.  When I had this encounter, my basecamp had just been moved and much of it was still packed up…. It would be very very easy to get out of here and follow them down the face.  Who knows if the hiker even cared about me or if they were just afraid of becoming my “Mountain Wife” and said what they needed to say to get out of here.  Needless to say, here I sit thinking about them returning to me, to spend the rest of the winter with me collecting nuts, trapping critters, and roaming the lands like cro-magnon hunter gatherers, grunting and hunting. 

It’s been 4 days since they left the basecamp, I expect they made it home and have returned to their normal programming.  I’m a bit too far out to expect to see them terribly soon, but I have made instructions to the steno pool monitoring blog comments that they are to make every attempt to send them back out this way after I get some more stores sent out so I can offer a proper reception.  That is what is referred to as falling of a mother fucking cliff.  It’s irrational processing of thoughts and playing out a storyline faster that it actually plays out so that you can determine if there is a point in continuing. It’s a fantastic little place where you wonder why the heck you do what you do.

So, when you fall off the cliff, because you can’t get back onto it, the best approach is to leave your body, and let your brain take over where the irrational is playing in, only then will you see the truth in what the situation is.  I’ve fallen off the cliff as a result of people being nice…. that’s the mind fuck that is referred to as wishful thinking.  The only thing worse than falling off the cliff, is for both of you to do it simultaneously.  That’s when real damage is done.