Can a leopard change her spots?

Holden and I have a policy between us that whenever either of us has an important conversation with someone either of use sees as a potential lover, we share it with each other.  In the case of online chats, with permission from the other person involved, we let each other read the logs of the conversations.  This has worked really well in combating my tendency to let my imagination run away with me when issues of jealousy come up, and it also brings us closer to each other because we’re sharing the experience rather than just having him tell me about it later. 

This works great except when I have a ton of things to do and don’t get around to keeping up on the logs he has for me.  This week has been one of those weeks and a few days had gone by with some conversations Holden wanted to share with me, but my schedule didn’t allow me the time to read through them.

When I finally did, though, I was surprised.  I guess I’d been so caught up in my excitement over the feelings that were developing between Alex and me that I didn’t notice that Holden and Alex were into each other too.  Things started out pretty casually in the chat logs, but after a couple of days they both started getting more and more sexually flirtatious and clearly they were very good at pushing each other’s buttons.  It was clear that they were much closer in terms of how their minds worked in attraction to someone and they seemed equally matched in how quickly they wanted to deepen their relationship. Holden was really excited about this new development and I could tell Alex was really into it too.  But what worried me was that it seemed that none of us had talked to Kyle about how he was feeling about Alex having such a flirtatious friendship with Holden and me. 

A couple of times, Holden had asked Alex how Kyle was feeling about our friendship being so flirtatious and she had indicated that he was fine with it.  It has never been unusual for her to be flirty with friends, much like Holden, and Kyle never felt threatened as long as things only went so far.  This seemed ok, but some of the chat logs did start to push that line of what I guessed would be considered acceptable to Kyle.  I asked Holden if he would have said some of those things to Alex in Kyle’s presence and he admitted that he probably would not have. 

We talked about how as new as this all felt to Holden, it was even newer and more challenging to Alex and Kyle.  Even with the limited experience we have, it’s our responsibility to make sure that we’re helping Alex and Kyle adopt some of the standards of communication and consideration that we’ve developed for ourselves.  Alex had said a few times that she was struggling with boundaries, trying to figure out where to set them, thinking about existing boundaries and how those were being challenged, and so on.  Naturally with such a strong emotional reaction she was feeling a pull to test those boundaries pretty quickly.  Holden, finally seeing the opportunity to develop the kind of relationship he’s wanted for so long, was almost going too fast with things too. 

Despite Kyle’s previous understanding with Alex regarding her flirtation, I sensed this was starting to go beyond that and I encouraged Holden to ask Alex to talk to Kyle again and ask him if he was comfortable with things happening as they were. 

I was pretty freaked out when I saw how quickly things had gotten to the level of intimacy they had with Alex and Holden.  By the end of this week, though, I felt much better knowing that even if boundaries had been crossed a bit already, and that was a mistake, that with good communication and support all around, we could work this out to be a healthy relationship for everyone. 

-Grace

Wow what a fun night I had last night!

Alex and Kyle invited me and Holden over to their house for dinner.  Alex and I made plans to do an hour or so of yoga upstairs while Holden and Kyle talked about all the geeky things they have in common.  Alex has a lovely yoga studio in her attic.  It’s really a multi-use room, but for us it’s our yoga studio when we want it to be.  We popped in a DVD of some beginner yoga warm-ups and soon we were sharing the relaxing breathing and stretching together. 

I couldn’t help but watch her body when she moved.  I tried not to be too obvious about it.  But I’m definitely finding myself growing more attracted to her the more time we spend together.  I’m really playing it cool for now though because we’re such new friends to them.  I don’t want to freak them out by expressing my interest in the possibility of a deeper relationship so soon.  As comfortable as we are around each other, I still want to make sure our friendship is solid before shaking anything up with complications. 

After our yoga DVD finished we came downstairs feeling very blissful.  A little wine with dinner made us giggly and the conversation around the dinner table was so lively and bubbly that my face hurt by the end of dinner from smiling and laughing with everybody. 

We had long since finished eating our meal, our plates satisfyingly empty, when Kyle suggested we move into the living room to be more comfortable.  Alex brought her laptop over to the couch and plopped down next to me to show me some of the pictures we’d talked about at dinner.  I was happy with how comfortable she felt sitting so close to me.  I leaned in a little bit as we browsed through the photos.  It was so nice to be close to her.  I kept glancing at Kyle to make sure he wasn’t bothered and specifically avoided looking at Holden because I knew he’d smirk at me for being so cuddly with a girl.  (He’s been encouraging me not to be so shy and the smirk would be completely harmless, but still, I was flustered enough as it was!)  I snuck a glance or two at Alex’s face while she explained the photos.  She seemed mostly comfortable but I could tell she was also a little nervous and excited by how close we were. 

Being next to her made me a little sleepy.  She was warm and the wine had started to go to my head.  Before long it was time to go home and go to bed.  We all hugged each other and said goodnight and as I dozed a little in the car on the way home, Holden reached his hand over and squeezed my knee.  I looked up to see him smiling devilishly.

“You like her, don’t you.”

“Uh huh…”

“I think she likes you too.”

“Uh huh…”

At this point, I don’t quite know what to do next.  But I’m not worried.  It’ll come to me.

Well, shoot.  I was excited to get back to work this week because it turns out Alex uses Gtalk during work and so do I, though I have to be discrete.  I got to talk to her a few times during my breaks and it’s been great!  But yesterday one of my coworkers decided to be a pain in the ass and start keeping tabs on me.  No more internet for me on my breaks.  Better play it safe for a while.  The good news is that during our little chats we figured out that we’re both into yoga and we’re making plans to attend yoga class together.  I’m a pretty new beginner and she sounds a bit more advanced, but it’ll be fun to have the challenge. 

-Grace

Alex and Kyle have been spending more and more time hanging out with me and Holden and it’s been so much fun.  I’m still not sure where they stand as a couple on the whole polyamory thing, but it sure has been fun playing around with Alex and being flirtatious.  Everybody’s in on the joke, it seems, and Alex and I have so much fun pretending to seduce each other and making funny propositions to our spouses. 

The other night night at a bar with several of our friends, I tried this pear flavored cider that turned out to be really good.  I passed the bottle around to Holden and then to Alex, who said it tasted like a Jolly Rancher.  “Mmm!  Now I taste like a Jolly Rancher too!” I announced, and I saw the look on Alex’s face change just a little.  Her normally playful eyes got just a little more honed in on me and I felt more than just played around with.  I started to think she really was attracted to me. 

I gotta say, this is making me really eager for a chance to get to know her better and figure out whether this is really an attraction or just some fun flirtation.

So, remember a few weeks back I talked about telling a couple of new friends about Holden and me exploring polyamory? We’ve been getting closer and closer to the pair from this post. Their names are Alex and Kyle. Alex is female, by the way.

Alex and Kyle are married and have a really great relationship. They’re really quite adorable and we have so much in common with them we sometimes find ourselves staying up way too late just talking and talking about every random topic that comes to us. It’s the stuff really good friendships are made of.

During one of our long evening chats Alex mentioned that she’s bixsexual. That’s when I mentioned that I have interest in women too but have never experienced anything romantic with a woman. We just sort of left it at that for the time, but there were definitely some exchanged glances and some little flirtations that passed between me and Alex.

I’m not reading too much into this yet. I mean, I know they’re okay with having poly friends, but I have no idea whether they’re open to having poly relationships themselves, or even what their level of understanding of poly is. But I’m definitely intrigued by this Alex person.

And of course, I start second-guessing myself. Maybe I’m misreading her body language. Maybe she’s just flirty with everybody. I’ve been wrong about this kind of thing before. But something about her tells me that I can probably find out what’s really going on eventually. Even if it’s nothing more than friendship, I’m really excited to have a pair of new friends I can truly be open and honest with.

-Grace

Holden and I have been looking for ways to meet more poly people where we live. Actually, we’re hoping to meet ANY poly people here. This is a really big point of concern, though, because we’ve been completely closeted about this so far, except to a few close friends. My big fear is that someone out there will recognize the picture and discover our secret! I have a very large, very Catholic extended family and if one of them found out that my husband and I are polyamorous, word would spread along the networks of my family like a hot fuse to a bomb and things would get ugly real fast.

Holden, of course, sees a much less scary world out there as far as what could happen if someone does recognize a picture of one of us. I argued that even though my family is now his family, he still doesn’t have as much to lose in this situation if this gets found out. After all, they’ve accepted that he’s not Catholic and isn’t particularly religious, but in their minds I’m still the good Catholic girl I was brought up to be.

On the other hand, Cunning Minx said in one of her podcasts a couple weeks ago that you’re never going to meet anybody if you keep hiding behind the Internet.

So Holden and I have decided that he may use one photo of himself, his real self, on one online account. If someone out there does recognize him and ask, we’ll probably be able to explain it away as “someone stole that photo of him.” Or something.

I decided I’m not ready to put a photo of me up online because for one thing, I don’t use it that often. I feel like I’ll have better luck meeting poly friendly people if I make an effort to go to events, meet new people, and expand my circle of friends. It comes more naturally to me than it does to Holden, so we’ll each pursue our own avenues of meeting people and hopefully cover more ground that way.

-Grace

We went to a party with the new couple we’ve been hanging out with.  They were the only two people we knew, but it was a small party so we quickly got a feel for how this crowd would feel about topics like polyamory.  It was funny how we got around to the topic this time.  See, Holden likes to flirt with girls and when he knows he’s among friends who are comfortable with that, he really has fun with it.  So Holden was being his flirtatious self and one guy at the party asked me if it bothered me to have girls flirting back with Holden.  I explained to him that no, in fact, I find it a compliment.  “I know that Holden wouldn’t do anything that I would find offensive, and that if he did, that I could go to him any time and tell him so.  Honestly, it doesn’t bother me because we have such good communication.  If I felt like he was going to run off and sleep with some girl behind my back, then that would be different, but I know that Holden and I are strong in our relationship and that’s what comes first for him, always.”  I could tell it took him a little effort to process that, but he accepted it and we moved on.

A little later, I found out that one of the people at the party is a neopagan, so I asked him if there are many people in the pagan community around here who are polyamorous, since my husband and I are poly and are interested in meeting some other poly people around here.  He said that he’s always noticed the overlap between the two communities.  I asked him if someone like me, who is interested in learning more about neopaganism but doesn’t necessarily want to be initiated, wanted to attend a meeting to observe and meet people, if that would be welcomed in the local communities.  He gave me some good advice about which groups he’d had good experiences with and which ones might be a little more cliquish.

Another good friend of the couple that invited us got along really well with Holden and he has since kept in touch with her and mentioned that we’re poly.  She wasn’t quite sure exactly what that entails but when we’ve had conversations since about what we think about relationships and love, she’s either whole-heartedly agreed with us, or at least respected our opinions and shared her own.

This has been a great experience so far.  I guess I was fearing that I’d come across more closed-minded people than I have, and maybe that’s still in store for me down the road, but I feel really good about the level of comfort Holden and I have gained in talking about poly with people we trust.  I’d love to hear more about other people’s experiences of the first time they explained to someone that they’re poly.

-Grace

As our circle of friends is growing, we’re finding new opportunities for growth.

A friend of mine introduced me to another couple she knows who she felt we’d have a lot in common with.  She’s got a great eye for that kind of thing because ever since we met we’ve been getting to be closer and closer as friends.  We really do have a lot in common, but our life experiences have been so different that we never seem to run out of things to talk about.

One day we were hanging out with this couple and one of them mentioned “our polyamorous friend…”  Holden and I shot each other a glance and I interjected, “Oh, it’s funny you mention that because we’re actually polyamorous too.”  Their response couldn’t be more easygoing.  “Oh really?  Cool.”  And the conversation went on from there.  Ah, yes, I’m going to like these friends very much.

More coming soon about finding opportunities to talk about poly and how that goes for us.

-Grace

Ever since Holden and I have been talking about how and when to bring up poly with our friends, there have been little instances of poly-related chat coming up left and right! It’s like once we opened ourselves up to the possibility of talking about it, the universe decided to throw some opportunities our way.

To recap an earlier post, Holden and I decided that we’d feel okay about letting most of our friends know that we’re poly if the topic seems relevant to the conversation. There are a couple of friends we don’t know as well yet, but for the most part, as long as it feels comfortable, we’re not putting any restrictions on each other as far as whether or not to discuss poly as a general topic we’re interested in and as something we identify with.

Just a day or so after we talked about that, we went to lunch with a couple of people Holden had hung out with a few times and I had met once or twice. We spent the whole lunch hour talking about various mundane things, and for some reason Holden had to get back to work before the rest of us did. I stayed with our two friends and somehow the conversation drifted really naturally to polyamory. Because I didn’t know these people as well as Holden did I didn’t feel comfortable acknowledging that we are poly, but I did feel comfortable joining in the conversation and expressing my opinions openly. That may not seem like such a big deal to some people, but to me, it’s a whole new experience to tell the real truth about my opinions and not just stick with what won’t get me in trouble. That’s been Holden’s experience for years, so I guess he sort of takes it for granted anymore, but since I’m moderately new in developing my opinions about these relationship topics, it felt like a huge change in how I communicate with friends. We talked about how a certain college one of them attended had some polyamorous people who would get triple or quad style dorm rooms so they could all live together. It’s a pretty progressive liberal arts college, I guess.

(This topic made me interested in exploring the polyamorous community on college campuses and I’m curious about how other colleges handle the question of polyamory when it comes to student housing.)

When I brought up how I think that monogamy is great as long as it’s a conscious choice and not just what you default to because there’s not supposed to be anything else, they both agreed with me, and I was surprised at how much they both had thought about the idea before we’d spoken. They both identified to me that they’re not polyamorous, but that they can understand why some people would want to be. It was such a nice refreshing conversation to have. What an unexpected surprise! I felt pretty good about it, and after having talked to Holden about it, I now know that had he been there, he would have felt comfortable enough with them to let them know that we are actually polyamorous. Like I said before, I don’t know them as well as he does, so I held off this time, but if it comes up again, I’ll be happy to talk about it.

I’ve got to get going for now, but stay tuned for more posts about this. The world seems to be blossoming before me with new opportunities! I love spring!

-Grace

Holden and I have been talking a lot lately about letting new friends know that we are poly. A good number of our friends from where we used to live know that we’ve been edging our way into polyamory, but now we live in a new city and have a new circle of friends and only one of them knows explicitly that we’re poly.

The first part of our discussion has been which friends are we comfortable telling? Can we trust them not to talk about it in a way that would cause trouble for us? Do we know that they’re accepting and open minded enough to not reject us if they don’t agree with our lifestyle? And would it change anything about our friendship if they knew?

We’ve sort of gone through our group of friends one by one and considered them according to these questions. In almost all of the cases we’ve come to the conclusion that we’re ok with them knowing. A couple of people we’ve decided we either don’t know them well enough yet or there’s some concern holding us back from being fully open with them. All of these are pretty new friendships, though, and I have a feeling that over time all those concerns will work themselves out or simply go away.

Another big question is how do we tell them? We’ve discussed a couple of options.

One option is to make it one of those “I want to tell you this thing and it might be uncomfortable, but I’m just going to come out and say it” kind of things. That didn’t seem too appealing. First of all, we want to bring it to them in a way that doesn’t automatically make them think we’re interested in them and want to start a relationship with them. That’s not the case with any of these friends yet, and besides, that wouldn’t be how we’d do that anyway. Plus, that approach seems to make it out to be a bigger deal than I think they’ll think it is, and definitely than we think it is as regards our friendship.

Another option is to casually bring it up in conversation. This may prove tricky since topics like this don’t come up very often when we’re hanging out. However, it’s not outside the realm of possibilities so we’ll keep that open as an option for the future.

So I guess we’ve concluded that we want to tell our new friends as it becomes comfortable to do so. Chances are it won’t be as scary as we fear, but you’ll hear about it here either way.