Can a leopard change her spots?

A couple months ago, I got a blood test for herpes at Planned Parenthood.  I don’t remember what specific test it was, but they told me it tests for the antibodies of both HSV1 and HSV2.  Both came back negative for me.

Considering how that one “outbreak” I had was, what do you think this means for me?

-Grace

The last three or four months have been really hard for me and Holden, despite there being some really exciting things going on for us. We’ve both started new jobs in a new city. We’ve adjusted to living in my mom’s house while waiting for everything to come through on a house of our own. We’ve gone house hunting, come up with a budget for fixing up a run down house, and found what seems to be the house of our dreams. All of that has been exciting but also challenging, taxing us mentally and emotionally. It all involves quite a bit of risk and I think most people would agree that when taking a risk, it’s good to have a strong foundation in your relationship with your spouse so you can help each other through the scary parts. In the midst of all this excitement and necessary turmoil, however, there has been additional turmoil accompanying what some might call a potential polyamorous relationship that went sour and took everyone down with it.

I may have written here previously about a friend of Holden’s who reminded me eerily of a girl who had brought about much damage to our relationship in the past. I think I expressed my trepidation about her and Holden’s deepening affection for her. I’m not in a frame of mind to write about all the details right now, but to sum up: Holden told her he liked her and might possibly be interested in seeing if something more could develop between them in the future. She and I never really hit it off very well, but I tried to get to know her better, hoping to see what Holden saw in her. I did not, though he kept insisting there was more good to her than I was seeing. I saw mostly bad. But I gave the friendship a chance. We took a weekend trip to visit her and some of our other friends. I knew Holden had wanted to see her very badly because he’d been helping her deal with a lot of family, social, and financial issues. I also knew that there would probably be a level of affection between them that had not been manifest before, and I talked to Holden about how I feared this might make me uncomfortable and he promised to do his best to check in with me and make sure I was doing ok. We saw most of the other friends we traveled there to see, but we spent the lion’s share of our time with her. Because of a misunderstanding and a failure to communicate while out at a club dancing, she became infuriated with Holden and myself and has been giving Holden the silent treatment off and on for two months since. I’d say she was giving me the silent treatment too, except she never really talked to me that much to begin with. But I suppose her not responding to my email asking her to talk to me about what she was upset about was signal enough that she specifically intended NOT to talk to me.

For two months and some change, Holden and I have battled over this. I felt that because of her previous risky sexual behavior, her love of acting impulsively, and the way she completely blew off the amount of sacrifice and patience Holden had offered her during our trip she was not a good person for him to start a relationship with. Not to mention the fact that she would barely carry on a conversation with me, and often threw up defensive behavior whenever I was around. With Holden and my understanding of how a poly relationship in our lives would work (open communication among ALL those involved, not just between dedicated partners), this was a big hurdle to be overcome. He agreed with me on all these points, and repeatedly insisted that as things were with her at that time he could not start a more serious relationship with her.

But his analysis of her behavior was very open-ended. He wanted to allow room for a friendship and for his ability to help her grow into a person capable of handling the level of communication and responsibility a truly poly relationship would require. I saw this as him wanting to “fix” what was wrong with her so she would be an acceptable partner, and I flipped out over it.

All this battling went on during the period of silence imposed by this girl. When she did finally step up to communicate with Holden, her tone was full of venom, both at me for what she had perceived as my rude behavior toward her (even though I had made an effort to get closer to her that weekend), and at him for not having put me in my place for said behavior. What makes this all the more ironic is that Holden and I had both felt like she had taken our visit for granted and had treated US rudely, though we’d held our tongues about it, he out of sympathy for her stressful situation (and also out of affection for her), and I in an effort to keep the peace and not spoil the time she was spending with her mother, who had recently been diagnosed with cancer.

Her attack took me by surprise. She used words like “beast” and “rabid” and “rude” to describe me to Holden, while admonishing him for being weak and encouraging him to “grow a pair.” And apparently this all stemmed from the fact that Holden and I had danced as a couple in the nightclub. The way she lashed out felt almost bizarre in its flailing attempt to wound Holden over what she had perceived as his lack of attention toward her feelings. Nevermind the fact that he’d spent two and a half hours talking with her the night before, had breakfast with her that morning, went shoe shopping with her that afternoon, and waited for her for three hours to show up at the night club.

I thought that this surely would have to be the last straw. Surely this is not the way a friend treats another friend, much less a (potential) lover. Holden set to work responding to her accusations. He spent the better part of a day composing his thoughts and drafting a response that exhibited self control, but was still biting in all the right ways.

He ended it by telling her he was in serious doubt over whether or not they could still be friends. But again, it was open-ended, nothing final, nothing closed. It still left that possibility for her to win her way back into his good graces.

I was satisfied with how he defended me in the email, and I was pleased at how he had stuck up for himself in light of her accusations meant to emasculate him. But his unwillingness to write her off as a friend after how she had treated him irked me. I couldn’t understand how he could open himself up to be kicked around by her yet again, for this had not been the first time they had had a falling out over her self-centered way of being inconsiderate.

Unfortunately, all this was in the midst of my stress associated with securing a mortgage, interviewing contractors, haggling with insurance agents, and dealing with settling into our new jobs. That kind of hectic life is so draining that we never really got a chance to come to our own closure over the whole thing with this girl. I was just kind of hoping to put that on the back burner until a few of these high stress things had been settled and I could have that segment of my brain back to process this kind of discussion.

Because we hadn’t had a chance to talk about that or about other poly and relationship type things, it came as a complete shock to me when this evening I came home from working a 10 hour day to the news that Holden had been speaking with another female friend of ours (this one I like much better) and had told her that he liked her a lot and would like to see if something more could develop from their friendship. Now, under normal circumstances, sans house, jobs, contractors, and overtime, I would have been perfectly fine with the idea of exploring what could come of a relationship with this person. I genuinely like her a lot and while we’re not as close as I’d like us to be, she definitely holds a lot more respect in my book. However, I was NOT READY for Holden to embark on a journey of exploration which I was supposed to be a part of (at his insistence) in the midst of dealing with all this other stuff AND so soon after things had gotten so ugly with the other girl. Because we hadn’t really gotten to talk about things between managing chaos, he didn’t realize that I had been more wounded by the attack on my character than I had let on. He had mentioned this new girl to me months ago before things really got rolling with the other girl, and so he assumed since I was cool with it then I would be cool with it now. But what he didn’t take into account was how much this experience of being chewed up and spit out by a potential partner of his had shaken me up. My confidence in him had been damaged, my confidence in myself had been severely dented, and with all the crazy things going on in our lives, I had not been able to slow down long enough to deal with any of it.

So tonight we had it out. I’d like to say that after discussing everything we’re both on the same page and ready to get back to tackling our mutually hectic life, but we’re not. I think we’re closer to it than we were before we talked, and tomorrow’s daylight will surely give things a more comprehensible perspective. But right now, as I sit across the room from him, I am hurting. I am frustrated, worn out, desperate for a break in the madness so I can just get my head together and think. My self confidence over how well I can spring back from a blow is waning. I feel weak and defeated for allowing the mean things that girl said about me to affect how I feel about myself, even though I know I didn’t act the way she says I did. I was hoping for a rest from relationship challenges at least for the time it takes to close on the house and sign the paperwork (which would have been just under a week at the most.) But no. The gods of chaos dictate that I am to deal with this at THEIR whim, and what fun would it be for them if I only had to deal with one crisis, one challenge, one test of faith at a time?

Holden is walking around the house very carefully. Occasionally he tries to catch my eye. If he does, he offers me a weak smile. He feels bad, guilty, sorry for putting me through this, for not having seen what I couldn’t show him in the first place. At this very moment, and quite possibly for the rest of the night, I am not yet done feeling hurt and angry. I don’t think I feel up to sharing with him the too small bed we occupy while staying at my mother’s house. I don’t really feel like going to the trouble of finding a sheet and blanket to spread out on the couch tonight either. While my aching head is longing to rest on his shoulder and cry myself to sleep, my arms are twitching with my pent up desire to punch him repeatedly. I’m fighting the urge to punish him, but for what? For being himself? For expressing love for a friend? No, that’s not even the point. I just need a break, I need to breathe.