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