HappyComeLucky

You will have noticed that I am a lot happier in my life nowadays. I have written here about some of it. I have had lots of thoughts to share but haven’t managed to blog them yet. It’s complicated as to why that is. One thing is that I haven’t found my new voice so the words don’t quite flow. Another reason is that I tend to self-censor. Lots of people have for more experience with being poly than me and I am not sure where my words fit.

Anyway, today I am silencing my self-censoring procrastination and avoidance and putting some things down in words.

The first thing I need to challenge myself about my personal narrative is the idea that I am only recently poly. I am not. I didn’t have the vocabulary for it before but I was poly from being a teenager. Of course, back then, in the dark days before the internet, I was just doing my thing and loving freely. I didnt have people who I could talk to about relationships etc, so I didn’t analyse it. Myself and the people who knew thought of it as a ‘being young’s thing and ‘being free while you can’. Hence falling in with the assumption that all of that stopped when I settled down. And it did. I settled down in the most thoroughly settled down way that you can. Two decades of default monogamy. Two decades of closing the blinds on the idea that there could be anything more. Two decades of focus in on my family, to the point that I forgot that other people may see me.

I don’t regret it. I am who I am because of all of my life and there was a lot of happiness in those years.

I use the term ‘default monogamy’ because that’s what it was. Looking back, my poly heart hadn’t changed. I just poured all of my attention and decisions in a different direction.

And then, that relationship fell apart and I saw people again. I felt actively poly but unskilled in how to talk about it and very unskilled in knowing what I wanted, what I needed and what should have been non-negotiable. It was easy for me to think that although I wanted to see other people, I would be OK not doing so. After all, I had two decades of evidence that I could do it. What could possibly go wrong?

Guess what? Once you really recognise that a part of you is intrinsic, muting it is not good for you. It diminishes you. You’re no longer in full definition. Combine that with a childhood of being trained not to be the problem, not to need and not to cause a fuss, and I was a perfect recipe for the person who would back down every time there was a negative response to me trying to bring my desires up. I used the guilt of being the cause of the problem to wedge the door on that part of me closed again.

Why am I telling you all this? I’m telling you because things have changed.

One of the biggest change that still makes me go wow is the openness and happiness of my partners. It’s not long ago that I thought that being able to sit and talk with one partner about what I have done or am planning to do with another and for their eyes to light up with mine was something that only happens to others and not to me. Knowing that they really mean it when they send me wishes for a really fun time is amazing. Having one of them set me very ambitious edging targets to ensure that I am the best sort of horny when I arrive at another’s feels like a definite investment in my pleasure (and that of the person I am seeing).

I know that for many, all of this will seem a bit obvious but for me, as someone who needs explicit encouragement to overcome the messages from the past that I am a problem for pursuing pleasure, this explicit positivity and encouragement means the world to me.

So here I am, in a new world where I feel that I belong. Loved-up, happy, busy me.

Time for me to go and get ready for a very important evening for me.