{"id":54280,"date":"2012-03-10T15:00:17","date_gmt":"2012-03-10T20:00:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/?p=54280"},"modified":"2012-03-09T15:41:14","modified_gmt":"2012-03-09T20:41:14","slug":"the-other-l-word","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/polyamory\/the-other-l-word\/","title":{"rendered":"The Other L-Word"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Maria Padhila<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cOh, be quiet! This isn\u2019t about you!\u201d My girlfriend was laughing as she said it, but she had a point, all right.<\/p>\n

\"Poly
Poly Paradise at Burning Man. Photo by Eric.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Chris has been seeing someone, and the word \u201clove\u201d has apparently been spoken. I think it\u2019s too soon, I\u2019m worried he\u2019s going to hurt her feelings, I don\u2019t really know her very well, I know she knows all about me, I know he\u2019s told her he\u2019s not a one-woman person, but I don\u2019t really know if she\u2019s truly down with all this, I know she\u2019s straight, I know she\u2019s not interested in knowing me much better, and I\u2019m not really sure she\u2019s not actually totally monogamous and secretly hoping he\u2019ll change his ways, and this was not the scenario I\u2019d envisioned. <\/p>\n

I\u2019ve already called him a son of a bitch, at high noon on the street in Capitol Hill, and that was before I was halfway into the prosecco and grapefruit juice. And I can\u2019t stop laughing — mostly at myself.<\/p>\n

Other than that, it\u2019s a perfect day — almost spring, sunny, and we\u2019re lined up at the bar, me, Chris, my girlfriend, her boyfriend, and we’re about to watch the bartender set fire to some Greek cheese. What could be finer?<\/p>\n

We all want to hear about Chris\u2019 romance, so I try to stop talking for a minute, even though it\u2019s what I do best, snarky fast-talking. I am a very clever Gemini\/Libra, debating myself for hours, aren\u2019t I? Aren\u2019t I the smartest one in the love room? Everything I do and say is colored by my competitiveness on the field of love, the flaw in myself I have to face down in this, and I\u2019m very amused at myself, and grateful that my friends can be at least a little amused as well. <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\u201cSaying \u2018love\u2019 is just being open to a possibility,\u201d my girlfriend says. \u201cIt\u2019s just opening a door.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is someone who sings along with Arthur Lee<\/a>: \u201cI could be in love with almost everyone\u2026\u201d and means it. She, like me, is old enough to enjoy whatever comes our way in that field of love, and smart enough to take it in the moment and not take it too seriously. But a young woman like that, oh dear. I don\u2019t want him to hurt her feelings. I\u2019ve been that age, and as vulnerable as I imagine she is. Am I that vulnerable now? I press at it as I would a sore muscle. Does it hurt? Does it worry me? Am I bothered that Chris can apparently do this so easily? <\/p>\n

\u201cShe\u2019s younger!\u201d I tell my girlfriend, and we both laugh again. It\u2019s a little sweet, this wishing I were younger, more beautiful. That\u2019s why we laugh, and it\u2019s what our lovers don\u2019t understand when they reassure us that oh, you\u2019re wonderful, I like older women, I love who you are, you\u2019re hotter than most women half your age, etc. Of course it\u2019s great to hear — I have an ego, for god\u2019s sake. But I also have a grasp of reality. A good part of my pleasure these days comes from knowing much of this isn\u2019t going to last. Being resigned to the fade. It can make every moment crisp as autumn. It brings its own kind of vulnerability and fragility. It\u2019s part of the reason my girlfriend and her slightly younger boyfriend had spent the earlier part of the day on the flying trapeze. You have to jump; you have to try. It\u2019s a good place to be. We\u2019re fortunate, and aware enough to know it.<\/p>\n

What I have learned to do is to re-frame the picture, to will a sort of magic and shift my perspective, and everything is suddenly exactly the way that pleases me. My greatest frustrations and disappointments stem from the areas that appear — remember, that\u2019s appear, only — intractable. Finances, politics, chronic health conditions, working for the Man — these things don\u2019t want to budge, but perhaps I\u2019ll develop the alchemical skills to transform even these. The older I get the more I see that I have really very little to lose, and my pride is the smallest thing of all. Every expectation, every ‘should’ I can drop, makes me lighter. Perhaps I started all this to hasten this process of letting go.<\/p>\n

If I can let go of my loves, what most people hold most tightly to, do I win the polyamory Olympics? There\u2019s competitiveness again. I\u2019ll never let go of my capacity to laugh at myself. Take everything, but you\u2019ll have to pry my cold, dead fingers off that one. I look at my hand on the stem of the cold wineglass. Not cold or dead, but undeniably old.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know if Chris realizes how I like to think of his hands on someone more youthful. I don\u2019t hear it spoken of too much in polyamory circles, this kind of pang, this brush of heartbreak and how oddly good it feels. People will talk about their favorite whip or their violet wand, but give me the slash to the heart to get my endorphin rush, I suppose.<\/p>\n

The first day I met Chris, he told me — among many things — that he used to be a player. Now, sober for many years and in a very different place in life, he says he doesn\u2019t need that, but the spark is still there. I hope and believe that he\u2019s an honest player, because I know he\u2019s still got that about him. When he said it that day, the words were barely out of his mouth when I burst out: \u201cI wish I were a player! I always wanted to be a Lothario! If I had been a handsome man, I would have — cut a swath!\u201d <\/p>\n

This is pure truth. To be able to seduce, awaken, please and leave — with peace and nothing but regret that the way it was will never be possible again — that\u2019s my ideal, I believe. Of course I want to hold Chris forever, in some sense, just as I hope to grow old with Isaac. But knowing that everything changes is its own kind of pleasure. <\/p>\n

There have been a very few people I\u2019ve been close to whom I\u2019ve realized I didn\u2019t much like. There have been a few I didn\u2019t love — and they were people who loved me. I never said I loved them, because I would have taken that seriously back then. I should have dropped them, said goodbye, I suppose. I don\u2019t get the feeling they\u2019ve held it against me. They might have re-written the scenes to suit them — I was a clinger and they wanted to be free; or they had only thought they loved me until X came along and they realized what real love is. All these stories, this architecture we construct of love. It gives us places to shelter, to hide, to pleasure in, but will any of it survive us?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Maria Padhila \u201cOh, be quiet! This isn\u2019t about you!\u201d My girlfriend was laughing as she said it, but she had a point, all right. Chris has been seeing someone, and the word \u201clove\u201d has apparently been spoken. I think it\u2019s too soon, I\u2019m worried he\u2019s going to hurt her feelings, I don\u2019t really know … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7221,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":""},"categories":[207],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54280"}],"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\/7221"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54280"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54280\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}