About four years ago, at a pagan festival, I attended a workshop given by Raven Kaldera<\/a>, author of (among other books) Pagan Polyamory: Becoming a Tribe of Hearts<\/em>. It was the first time I\u2019d tried to learn anything \u201cformally\u201d about polyamory, and I was pretty nervous, feeling, I suppose, similar to how someone first exploring paganism might at any other workshop that weekend. The nervousness dissipated quickly, and for the same reasons — just as all the witches look pretty normal, so did the small group of polyamorists: normal, funny, interesting.<\/p>\n One of Kaldera\u2019s tribe was talking about his feelings when one of his partners tried to meet new people.<\/p>\n \u201cIt can be so frustrating, seeing someone you love get turned down by someone they\u2019re interested in,\u201d he was saying. \u201cYou just want to shake them and say: \u2018What\u2019s wrong with you? Can\u2019t you see how great this person is? You\u2019re such a fool!’\u201d <\/p>\n I remember this because it touched my heart. It\u2019s the way you feel about a friend who is out in date world again, with all its dullness and uncertainties and rising hopes and casual slapdowns. But feeling this way about a lover?<\/p>\n Years later, I\u2019m sitting outside my boyfriend\u2019s apartment on a surprise spring day in mid-February. He\u2019s talking about his plan to invite the barista at the coffee shop (local, fair, non-chain) he goes to nearly every day to an open mic he\u2019s been attending almost every week. They\u2019ve been flirting for months, but still.<\/p>\n I\u2019m testing feeling what he might be feeling. \u201cI never think about how hard it must be, as a man, to approach someone, to move it up a level,\u201d I say. <\/p>\n \u201cYeah\u2026 there\u2019s that point, when you\u2019re out, and maybe you put your arm around her. Will it work? Is it really what you\u2019ve both been thinking about?\u201d<\/p>\n I put myself in that place. It\u2019s been almost a year since Chris and I fell in love. And before that, almost 20 years since that first touch with my husband, Issac. It\u2019s so wonderful and strange to make that shift. It changes the energy, the future, the air around you both. So seldom did it ever feel wrong, on my part — I know pretty strongly who I want to invite in and who I don\u2019t, and I\u2019m good at walling off people I don\u2019t want that close. How could anyone not want that feeling as often as possible?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n That\u2019s why I\u2019m pleased that my boyfriend is dating. We\u2019ve all looked around at the local polyamory groups and events, and while those attract a lot of interesting people, there hasn\u2019t been anyone any of the three of us are interested in \u201cin that way,\u201d to use the middle-school terminology.<\/p>\n A few evenings later, I drop my daughter, Tobi, off at her dance class and give Chris a quick call before going for a run. I\u2019m sitting in my car in the dance studio parking lot, stretching my legs against the dash, as we talk about when we might see each other in the next few weeks. He tells me he\u2019ll be at the open mike tomorrow night, that Katie said she\u2019d go with him. I\u2019m thinking high-fives and cheers, but I don\u2019t want to be an embarrassment. This is not someone who should have any difficulty finding a date and more, whenever he wants one. He is brilliant, handsome, spiritual, can cook organic meals, understands tantric sex, and can fix your car or your sink. But the women of the DMV (District of Columbia, Maryland, Virginia) can be a hardened lot, looking to a man\u2019s job, his plastic, his car, his shoes, god only knows what these women are thinking — but most of them rarely open their hearts to a single man over 40 who doesn\u2019t have a professional title. \u201cFools,\u201d I think. \u201cCan\u2019t you see how great this person is?\u201d<\/p>\n My husband has a job many envy, but despite the fact that we met while in the same profession, and the field gives us a lot to talk about, his job has very little to do with why I love him. His mind, appearance, talents and so forth are all equal in degree but entirely different in expression from those of my boyfriend. I love him for the way he walks, the radiance around him that comes from being a beloved youngest child, his odd humor, and simply because I do, and have, and always will. And I\u2019ll leave it at that for today. Comparison is dangerous territory for polyamorists, and I\u2019m not exploring it this early in the game. A while back we had a conversation when he wondered if it would be hard for him to date. No way, I said. My friends all love him, because he really listens to women — he asks questions, he remembers, and none of it is pretense — he\u2019s utterly transparent and genuinely interested. A triple Virgo, with a big planetary pileup in the 1st house: What you see is what you get.<\/p>\n As I run the dark streets through the 30-degree air, swaddled in two layers of fleece and an increasingly sweaty inner layer of cotton, fighting a runny nose and a glute cramp, I pull at the different threads of feelings, to distract myself. She\u2019s a strawberry blonde. My favorite. I\u2019d like to go on a date with a strawberry blonde woman myself, dammit. They\u2019ll be at an open mic while I\u2019ll likely be going to the grocery store and folding laundry. Jealousy? No, more like FOMO — Fear Of Missing Out<\/a>. Part of what pushed me into active polyamory was just that — I am getting old, and I want everything I can get out of life. It drove me to run miles, to try to learn to spin from a silk rope, to do more I won\u2019t say here and now. I don\u2019t want to miss anything. <\/p>\n I hope Chris will tell me about his date. I\u2019m so curious. But I won\u2019t pry. <\/p>\n I get home, feed my daughter and get her to finish her homework, fix dinner for myself and a plate for Issac. She\u2019s getting ready for bed and I\u2019m eating when he gets home, a little early. He finished putting her to bed and comes up to eat; I sit with him with a cup of tea and we talk. We have talked more, and more deeply, since I have begun seeing Chris than we have since we were first dating. In early parenthood, we could go weeks without having the kind of conversation we now have routinely. He\u2019s having his salad when I tell him I need to do some work tonight, and after that, there are some things I want to write about.<\/p>\n \u201cChris asked out this hot woman, and they\u2019re going out tomorrow night. It\u2019s so strange. Mostly I\u2019m just wondering how and when he\u2019ll say he\u2019s got a girlfriend. I tell him he can throw me under the bus if he needs to — if he meets someone he really loves who can\u2019t get with this, he needs to do what he needs to do.\u201d<\/p>\n Coming out poly. That\u2019s a hell of a lot scarier than putting your arm around someone. And it\u2019s the real reason I fear he\u2019ll be rejected. While some men actually like a sexually freer woman, very few woman want a sexually open man. Why cast yourself in with a man who is always, as they see it, cheating on you? Who is never really ‘yours’? <\/p>\n That\u2019s the real fear — not fear of my missing out on fun. Fear of tying either of these men into a halfway existence, where they don\u2019t really get what they want. I know what I want is more love, in more ways, and I\u2019m happy. But can I believe they are? With all my faults? At my age? I\u2019m not even very pretty.<\/p>\n But it\u2019s one date, after all. It takes a lot of time to meet the right person — and even more time and trial and error and confusion before you meet the right people.<\/p>\n \u201cI still have all the usual thoughts one does. She\u2019s younger than me by at least 20 years. But for some reason, none of this is bothering me. I keep testing it to see if it hurts, like pulling off the Band-Aid, but it doesn\u2019t.\u201d It actually makes me extremely excited to think of Chris with another woman, pleasing her, making her want him. Part of it — only part, but I have to admit it\u2019s there — is that with his handsomeness and sexual confidence, he functions as a proxy for me, bringing off the kind of seductions I\u2019d like to but can\u2019t. Yet. I feel like I\u2019m getting closer to doing so, the older I get, oddly enough.<\/p>\n But I don\u2019t want to talk about sex now, at the table. I\u2019m still bundled in layers of running fleece, my sweaty hair covered by an old watch cap. \u201cDoes this mean I completely lack self-esteem? Or that I don\u2019t really care?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI have an opinion about that,\u201d he says, putting down his fork. <\/p>\n \u201cI want to hear it.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t want to insult you.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cUh-oh. No, go ahead.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIn most ways, that\u2019s true, about having low self-esteem. I mean especially as an artist — you never think what you do is good enough, you\u2019re hyper-sensitive to criticism. But emotionally and romantically, you\u2019re like the mirror image. Your self-esteem in that way is very high.<\/p>\n \u201cBut at the same time, I think you\u2019re being pretty cavalier. You\u2019re not really seeing how much this might hurt you. What\u2019s strange for me is that I never want to see you hurt or in any kind of pain, ever. But if you ended this relationship, well, I wouldn\u2019t be happy, but it\u2019s not like it would be a bad thing for me if you stopped seeing him. But it would be bad for me to see you have any kind of heartbreak. And then, it\u2019s not like that\u2019s part of you that\u2019s going to change — who\u2019s to say you won\u2019t meet someone else? So it wouldn\u2019t be that good for me.\u201d He goes back to eating his salad, then stops again, and says: \u201cI need to ask you something.\u201d<\/p>\n I brace myself. \u201cGo ahead.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cBetween you and Tobi, you\u2019ve got like six pairs of boots right next to the door. It\u2019s a very small geographical area. You\u2019re waaaayyyy over the limit for shoes by the door. I\u2019m calling it. You have to take some of them up to your rooms.\u201d<\/p>\n He\u2019s so demanding. Damn.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" (Note, I just saw that comments were off — I turned them on, you may now comment on this piece. In fact, please do! xef) By Maria Padhila About four years ago, at a pagan festival, I attended a workshop given by Raven Kaldera, author of (among other books) Pagan Polyamory: Becoming a Tribe of … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":191,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":""},"categories":[1,207],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39417"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/191"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39417"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39417\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39417"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39417"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39417"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/05\/325_burnman_bliss_86381.jpg?resize=325%2C222&ssl=1\" "\\"325_burnman_bliss_8638\\"")
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