Taking a step out into the light.

Holden and I have taken the process of coming out as poly to our friends very slowly and carefully. It took me a long time to dispel my fear of being out. A lot of that fear had to do with my own personal confidence in the poly lifestyle and how ready I felt to discuss it in a positive way. When things were hard for me with poly, even though I was fully dedicated to sticking with it and working with Holden through all of the problems, I didn’t really want to discuss it with new people. I didn’t want my tone of voice or reticence about certain topics to make it seem like I was being dragged along or victimized in all this. That’s on top of the very real fear of word getting back to my tight-knit traditional Catholic family whom I love very deeply and need to hide this from in order to keep that connection. (It’s something Holden and I have discussed at length and that we agree is a sad but necessary sacrifice.)

But I’ve got my confidence back and I’ve spent the time between then and now thinking deeply about the relationships I have with these friends and how close and trusting we are of each other. There is definitely a list of “approved” and “not approved” people between Holden and myself that we review with each other every so often.

We are not the only ones involved in this decision, though. While Holden’s girlfriend’s husband is not ready to be out and understandably wants control of that aspect of his life, we have an arrangement that lets me and Holden be honest with our friends, but maintains that boundary. Holden and I may out ourselves and speak honestly about Holden being involved with someone, but the specifics about who he’s involved with have to stay hidden. That way we can out ourselves and not out the other couple without their permission.

Such was the case at a social gathering this weekend. The conversation turned to relationship issues and as I looked around I noticed that the people we were with who didn’t already know about us were on the approved list Holden and I had discussed.  We just hadn’t gotten around to bringing it up with them yet.  Just for clarity’s sake, Holden and I have a sort of “need to know” attitude about this with our friends. If it comes up and is relevant to whatever is going on, then that’s a time to mention that we’re poly. If circumstances called for it, a “sit down, lets talk about something” kind of discussion could happen but that didn’t seem terribly likely.

Anyway, as the discussion progressed, I felt really comfortable at that moment allowing ourselves to be included in the conversation as people with open marriage experience. This comfort was made easier by the fact that two other people there had already either identified themselves openly as polyamorous or as having friends who are. That combined with the comfort level I felt with the rest of the people involved made it pretty easy to get an okay from Holden and give him my okay that we could be fully honest with this group.

It felt great to talk openly about our philosophy and what open marriage is like. Our friends had a couple of questions, as we expected, but the whole experience was super comfortable and while I still felt a little nervous, it felt very liberating as well.  Most importantly, I felt really loved and accepted by my friends. That was the best feeling of all.

According to the agreed-upon process, Holden notified the other couple the next morning of who we’d come out to and under what circumstances. And overall I feel good about it. I’m still having to take a few deep breaths to calm myself, but that’s to be expected with any big step out of a comfort zone.

And now I’m off to bask in the memory of that love and acceptance.

-Grace

How to heal?

Sorry I’ve been away so long!  To tell the honest truth I’ve been going through some hard times that have been too hard to blog about directly.  I am still trying to heal.  Right now I’m kind of failing at healing.

I don’t have what it takes to write everything that’s happened out right now so I’ll cut to the chase.

I’m looking for responses from my readers (if I have any left) about how you heal.  What have you done in the past that has helped you heal?  Let’s start a discussion here about strategies, advice, tips, and tricks that help you get over it and move on after you’ve been hurt really badly.

Eventually I’ll work myself up to filling you in about what happened. Here’s the micro version:  Holden and I are still together and still surprisingly strong.  His relationship of about a year is also still intact. The woman he’s dating thought she wanted to start something with me too.  She changed her mind. I got hurt. I’m trying to heal.

There’s so much more to it than that, but in the meantime, I’m looking forward to some more interaction here.  It’s been too long.

Peace,

Grace

A picture’s worth a thousand words, especially on the Internet.

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

Yay for poly in group settings!

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

Love my new friends!

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

Speak of the devil?

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

Coming out?

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.

Guest Blogger: Holden – “Dear Abby: Please get a clue!”

Fair warning. I’m writing this while still somewhat angry about it.

Waiting for my lunch to warm up today I made the mistake of picking up the local newspaper. I read a lot of news but I tend to stay away from the mainstream US media as I find most of it fairly worthless. Unfortunately a free paper on a table was a little too enticing to pass up while waiting 5 minutes for my food to finish. After reading a few local stories I came across a small section and my eyes caught the words: “love, husband, and another”. Curious, it took a few more moments before I realized I’d been drawn to a question in “Dear Abby:”

Dear Abby: I have been married six years and have recently fallen in love with another man. But I still love my husband. Is it possible to be in love with two people at the same time?

Abby says: It is possible to love more than one person because you love them for different reasons. However, when someone is in love he or she is usually completely focused on that one love object. So, the answer is no.

…right, because we only love one child or one parent/sibling/relative… at a time because we can only focus on “one love object”. That makes perfect sense. Not to mention the “different reasons” bit. Sorry little johnny, but you’re too much like your older brother for mommy to love you. If only you’d been a little more different she’d have other reasons to love you, but she can’t possibly love the same thing about two of her kids… that’s ridiculous!

I honestly wanted to scream. Here is an advise columnist who is touted as a “relationship expert” but apparently she’s never heard of polyamory.

And worse. Here is a woman, probably hurting over what she perceives to be a fault in herself (Cinderella only needed one prince charming after all… at least that’s all the story Disney gave us), asking a hard question, looking for advise and guidance, fed the fairytale line. And unfortunately she’ll probably take it to heart, instead of examining the issues of honesty, trust, communication and commitment that are already apparently involved.

In the end I think what upset me the most was the probability that Abby HAS heard of poly but instead of taking time and professional attitude of setting aside her own prejudices and examining it, she simply pretends it doesn’t exist and advises people from inside her projected world bubble. …and the fact that she’s getting paid to do it.

-Holden

Poly baby steps

I had a really nice talk with Josie today. If you’ll remember, Josie is a friend of both Holden and me. She’s one of the people Holden has kind of hoped for a relationship with, but he’s also perfectly happy just keeping things the way they are with her. What’s unique about our friendship with Josie is that she is one of the few girls I really feel comfortable bringing into our relationship as a more romantic partner for Holden.

After I wrote my last blog post, in which I expressed that I’m ready to have the conversation about asking Josie to join our relationship should the subject come up, I realized how passive that attitude was. I decided it wasn’t right to expect Holden to initiate everything. I talked with Holden about the idea that I’d like to talk to Josie and just let her know that if she felt attracted to Holden and wanted to have a deeper relationship with him, that I would support that and welcome her into our relationship. Holden was surprised that I wanted to take the lead in this, but naturally he was excited that I felt so comfortable and positive about it.

I didn’t go into the conversation expecting her to actually want to start a relationship with Holden, and I know that’s not what Holden’s going for right now either, but my goal was just to get across to Josie that I think of her as a special kind of friend; one that I’d welcome as an extended part of our committed relationship.

Maybe from the outside this seems like a silly sort of statement of the obvious or that it shouldn’t be such a big deal to talk about this kind of thing with a friend, but it is for me. This is the first time I’ve ever approached a friend and told her that I’d in essence be willing to share my husband with her in a romantic way. There is a potential for this to be a huge risk. I mean, what if Josie totally freaked out about it and decided not to be friends with either of us anymore? That’s a pretty big risk since she’s such a close friend to both of us. Fortunately, both Holden and I have talked with Josie about poly before, in general terms. She has expressed to both of us that she can appreciate how it works for some people. She’s really open about talking about poly in general terms and has been interested in understanding our thoughts and feelings about it. Because of her attitude about poly and her openness in talking about other important aspects of life, I felt pretty confident that she would not freak out so badly as to end the friendship or anything. I figured at the worst she might change how she interacts with Holden and me. I worried a little that she might be less comfortable for a while, that she might withdraw a bit or just feel some awkwardness knowing we’d thought about her in that way.

I got a chance to talk to Josie online today.  Everything went beautifully!  We were talking about poly in general terms and then I took the opportunity to tell her that she is someone I’d be comfortable with Holden having a poly relationship with.  I let her know that I don’t expect anything and I know that things aren’t there right now, but that if they were, I’d be ok with it.

Her response was to tell me she was honored that I think of her that way.  She let me know that I needn’t have worried about her getting scared and running away from our friendship, that she’s not going anywhere.

It was a really nice, affirming conversation.  And as far as I can tell, nothing has changed about our friendship or her friendship with Holden, except that we all know how much we value each other’s friendship and love.

This was probably the best possible outcome for the conversation and I’m feeling really good about things.  I told Holden about my conversation with Josie and he was surprised by my candor and super happy that I felt comfortable enough with Josie to have the conversation.

It was a baby step in some ways, but when I think of it in terms of this being the first person I’ve approached about the idea of sharing a poly relationship, it feels kind of big.

“A Very Nice Weekend” from Grace’s Perspective

It was, in fact, a VERY nice weekend! I am feeling a renewed sense of strength in my relationship with Holden, in Holden’s commitment to do this right, and in my own ability to navigate my emotions. I guess I’ll dive right in to the post.

First of all, remember how I talked earlier about the sort of two levels of friendship in my life? Well, Josie is one of those who’s in the closer set, the ones I trust most and would most likely feel most comfortable inviting into our relationship. The two of them had always had a flirtatious relationship and unlike with other girls, it never bothered me as much with Josie because of what good friends she and I were. She showed me through her actions and in her willingness to be open in discussions that she was genuinely a good friend and also that she wasn’t interested in coming between me and Holden, but rather wanted both of us as parts of her life. If she was sexually attracted to Holden, she never turned that into jealousy of me or acted like I was some kind of threat. Because of her already positive temperament, it didn’t bother me as much that Holden was attracted to her and enjoyed flirting with her.

Before Josie arrived, I talked with Holden about what he hoped for in his relationship with her. He told me that as much as he likes her and as fun and rewarding as it could be to start something more romantic from their friendship, it’s probably not possible due to the current circumstances and he was perfectly fine with that. He didn’t want to pursue anything he knew she wouldn’t be able to commit to. On the other hand, he was looking forward to being able to flirt with her openly.

As good as I felt about Josie and as hopeful I was that this time the communication between me and Holden beforehand would result in a better experience with this visit, I was still a little anxious about things. Even though I knew Holden wasn’t planning to pursue anything more than a flirtatious friendship, I also knew that he could be impulsive and I worried that he might get carried away once they were “in the moment” so to speak. It sounds silly looking back on it now, but I really feared the idea that things would heat up between them while I wasn’t around and I’d be the last to know. Putting my faith in open communication again, I talked with Holden about this. Specifically, I wanted to be with him when he went to pick her up. Some little part of my insecurity drilled away in my brain about things like, “It’s been a long time since they’ve seen each other. They’ll be so happy to see each other that they’ll hug a little longer than usual and maybe that moment will spark some deeper emotion in them and he’ll have her in his arms anyway so he might just lean down and kiss her impulsively! Then there’s the long drive back to our house during which they’d have time to talk about their longing for each other and they’d even have time to square up their story to me to keep me from knowing that they’d gone too far!”

Did I mention that my insecure inner voice is straight out of a Victorian novel? For some reason my insecurity always wants to use words like “betrayal” and “forsaken” and “impropriety.” Completely annoying.

As it worked out I was able to be there to pick her up and we had a really nice happy car ride back home. Then we had a really nice happy dinner together. Then I realized that this trip was unlikely to become anything but really nice and happy! Josie was here to see ME after all too, so it wasn’t like the two of them would want to be sneaking off alone anywhere to “pick up where they’d left off.” There wasn’t anything left off to pick up! If anything was going to happen, I was going to be involved from the start, and that felt great.

There was even a moment that might have been my first glimpse of what compersion might feel like. I’m still not sure I’d call what I felt compersion exactly, but it was more a certain level of comfort and trust that surprised me at the time and sort of left me in a daze afterward, but a nice daze.

Holden and Josie and I had come back from some excursion somewhere, probably out to eat, and we had lit the fireplace. The three of us are all ticklish and of course, as always happens at one point or another with us, someone started a tickle fight. In the past, my feelings had been hurt when Holden would have tickle fights with other girls, but not include me. Later I found out that it wasn’t him that was excluding me, but the other girl. This time, though, Josie and I teamed up against Holden and he didn’t have a chance!

When none of us could breathe, we all collapsed onto the couch, Holden in the middle, and Josie and I on either side of him. I didn’t even notice it at first, but both Josie and I had our heads on Holden’s shoulders and he had a hand on each of our shoulders. When I noticed, I glanced up to Holden’s face and he smiled at me, kissed me on the forehead, and squeezed my shoulder. I turned my eyes down toward Josie, who was dreamily watching the fireplace. I was most surprised by the absense of certain emotions, not necessarily the presence of anything new. I always knew that Josie and Holden had affectionate feelings for each other, both as really good friends, and also with some attraction between them. But when I expected to feel jealous and threatened and panicky, I looked to those parts of my psyche, and they were empty! Just… nothing there. The lack of fear was actually really disorienting! I wasn’t quite sure what to do with the void at first. I looked around, took it all in, and started creating new thoughts and feelings to go there. I didn’t worry too much at the time about thinking it through and defining things. I didn’t really have words to describe what I was feeling (and still don’t) but it was more or less just a feeling of “This is ok. This is not scary like I thought it would be. There she is and here I am. I feel love from Holden and I feel friendly affection and sisterhood from Josie. I feel respect from Josie. I don’t feel competition. I feel joy in a shared moment.” The rush of new feelings really knocked me off balance in a way I never expected. It was like the rush of a roller coaster leaving you breathless and wobbly legged as you step out of the seat.

I will admit there was one moment of paranoia that crept in sometime during the weekend. It turned out to be absolutely silly and that’s how I dispelled it for myself, but I’ll describe it for you anyway. At the very least you’ll probably get a laugh out of it.

I went into the bathroom to take a shower and I could hear Holden and Josie laughing and talking through the door. I took a 20 minute shower and when I was done, I couldn’t hear them through the door anymore. I wondered, “What could they be doing that’s so quiet?” Immediately, that stupid jealous voice that knots my stomach up chimed in with, “What if they’re kissing?! What if they’re spread out on the bed touching each other?!” I was embarrassed for myself over even HAVING these thoughts, much less acting on them, but there I was, my ear to the inside of the bathroom door, certain I was going to hear little moans of pleasure or the soft smack of a surreptitious kiss. Then I mentally whacked myself for going all “Victorian” again, took a deep breath while donning my bathrobe, and stepped out into the hallway to see Josie in the bedroom by herself, reading a newspaper online. Holden wasn’t even in the room! In fact, he was in the kitchen making lunch or something for all of us! Another mental whack upside the head, and I was back to feeling fine.

So the whole visit was really warm and fuzzy. Holden and I went to bed each night super happy to be alone with each other and just revel in the closeness we felt with each other at how well everything was going. We were both really sad to see Josie go back home.

A few days later Holden brought up an idea to me. He asked how I would feel about having a poly relationship that didn’t include sex. He described it as having greater affection between partners, showing love with cuddles and kisses and perhaps touching and fondling and pleasure, but not going as far as actually going to bed together. Of course, that was what I had in mind as perhaps the second stage of a poly relationship as I’d see it anyway, so I told him that would probably be cool, as long as all our other requirements come with it: open communication, concern for all people’s feelings, a commitment to go only as far as everyone’s comfortable with, etc. He didn’t say specifically whether he meant that to be about Josie, but from what we both know about her and about other particular restrictions that would have to be considered, it was more or less understood that it probably applied to her. We didn’t have time to go into it further at that time, but I can honestly say that at this moment, I would be ready to have that discussion with Josie.

I’m not sure where all this is going to go, but I’m ready for the discussion if it comes up, and that feels like a huge tiny step.