19 Days

I am 19 days away from reuniting with JB. 19 days, by which time it will have been 5 months apart. Five terrible months where, as my aunt recently said, "life lost it's colour".

Being apart is not so much difficult as it is terribly dull. I occasionally feel the desire to go out dancing, but more times than not I can't think that it would be at all interesting without him. I've lazily daydreamed about going out to pick someone up to get the energy in my body dealt with, but more than that I crave a night alone with JB. There's some change that's happened here, I was sure you weren't supposed to find your partner this attractive. This consistently arousing after 18 months. But I do.

I've moved into a new phase of my sexuality. I've spent 5 months alone, so have well and truly used the time to get reacquainted with myself and with what I find arousing. My fantasies now involve bareback sex, impregnation risk and definitely, definitely JB. I have no real explanation for this, other than perhaps I've decided that I want to surrender my body to him, not in a possessive way (that couldn't be further from reality) but in a way that pays homage to the union between partners. In the way that recognises the love that passes between people who want to have children together. I love him, and I want to have children with him. More to the point, I want to practice getting pregnant with him!

It's a weird sensation. I wish he would get here!

Keep it in your fucking pants lady!

JB and I have been apart for reasons beyond our control for six weeks now.

I am dying for some sex and it's making me go a little crazy. Sex dreams non stop and I just want to go out, get drunk and go home with someone. Not for the romantic part, but for the fucking human contact part.

But I won't do that, because that's not the promise I've made. I've got to keep this promise, I just have to.

I'd forgotten how vital it makes me feel to be regularly fucked. I feel as though I'm sleepwalking without it.

A 1920's love, wrapped in white gold and diamonds

I was a very lucky girl who got a very lovely engagement ring. It's also very distinctive, but if a pictured didn't give me a way entirely I show you a photograph.

The process of buying a ring was strange, uncomfortable, fraught. Different expectations of cost, different stages of readiness. JB had no idea how much rings cost, and his initial reluctance left me feeling that my expectations were way over the top. Ouchy hurty heart, and embarrassed tears.

But we managed to get through it - JB realised some of his hesitation was to do with his in-between-jobs status (now thankfully remedied), and he wanted to make me happy. So with a slightly awkward heart we set off down the high street to find a ring.

What a ring we found. It's Art Deco, octagonal, and diamond. I never expected the diamond part, always assuming more of a modest sapphire or coloured gemstone. I'd feel terrible about confessing that anywhere else in my life, apart from these anonymous online pages, showing my materialistic side, that part of me that is judgemental, aspirational, conceited and proud. But there you go, I suppose we all have parts of our personality that we'd rather not show to the ones we love. I love my ring, and it was never a certainty that I would get something valuable - I grew up poor, and so perhaps I put more stock in valuable things than someone raised in a better off family might do.

But putting the mercenary details to one side, I keep finding myself utterly transfixed by the sparkles now permanently attached to my left hand. The design I find fascinating, and the glittering nature of real diamonds is blowing my tiny mind. This is mine. I get to have this. 

The weight felt strange on my hand for weeks. It didn't look right in the store. The name fiancee felt heavy, awkward and uncomfortable. I couldn't believe it was all happening. But it did. JB loved the ring, which made me love it more, abad now with the bright clear diamond on my most symbolic finger I can't imagine myself with anything else. My finger is in the cast of a phalangeal Great Gatsby.

I'd never truly considered how symbolic an engagement ring was. Our love is something valuable, something special that you would never normally have. This relationship is the start of building your wealth with someone else - and I don't really mean that in the financial sense. My riches are easy dinners at home with the cats. My bank account is full with Sunday morning fucking and Friday evening cuddles. I'm dripping with the diamonds of kisses. And so is JB.

But I just get to wear the sparkling reminder on my finger.

Arrival Party

I've returned to my home country for the year as I finish studies and sort out visas for the UK.

JB came out a few months ago for a few weeks visit. What heaven it was. My father and I waited for what seemed like an age at the airport, anxiously keeping an eye on the arrivals board, while ducking in and out of convenience stores to keep ourselves occupied with the odd magazine cover scan. 

The passengers finally came...not him...not him...not him. Him. I shit you not when I say it was as though my favourite actor was strolling towards me. It was like greeting a movie star. Body filled with adrenaline and the sheer disbelief that this moment has actually happened. 

He wheeled his suitcase behind him and his now-unneccessary woollen coat flapped as he strode. A warm embrace. A shocked conversation in the car, and suddenly we're alone, together, at last. In the house that is now our home for nine weeks. 

It's late, and we make our way to our new bed. My old bed from my uni days. It's seen some shit, let me tell you. But all of a sudden it's our bed, previous memories overridden by the sheer delight in being back together. We know it's going to be a bit weird. It was always weird before when he would come home from travelling. But we're not prepared for how wonderful it is, how shockingly lovely it is to touch each other, to feel ourselves inside and around each other, for the first time in months. 

I weep as he fills me. I didn't know how much my body missed him.

There's just that little voice...

That says "I wasn't finished yet!"

That little voice that says "it's not going to work, you know, you just like sleeping around too much"

You're a cheater

You were never polyamorous

You won't be faithful

A day will come when you will falter.

When the thrill of the risk is too great to avoid

You will hurt him

You're not ready

You're not ready


Maybe that's what they mean when they say marriage is a big decision. It's a choice that you make to ignore that little voice who seems to have guided you (relatively) well in the past. That false friend.

I have anxiety about getting married, even to JB who is one of the most delightful creatures on the planet. I worry that we disagree too much on too many vital things, that I'm too soft on him or that I'm too harsh. That he's too stubborn but also too flexible. I'm worried that I won't be able to keep the promise I've decided to make to him.

Growing up, truly growing up and leaving childhood and adolescence behind has been the process of realising my dreams won't come true just because I dream them. Sacrifices have to be made to get the life that I want, and even then it won't be the kind of life you see in magazines. Once I thought I wanted that, but now I know I want a huge, messy, gloriously obese life full of love, with all the messiness that brings. That means choosing a life partner that wants to join you on that ride. He ain't perfect, but hey, neither am I.

But still there's that little voice! I find him shockingly rude.

Here's The Thing

JB asked me to marry him on a Friday night, after we'd been to the pub with some friends. I'd made a lemon cake to take with us the next day to a theatre show in a forest with his mother and sister.

As we ate the cake together, JB said "oh my god this cake is amazing. Will you marry me?" I assumed it was in jest until he said "actually, yeah. Will you marry me?" my only possible response being a mouth-full-of-cake "are you serious?".

Evidently he was. I accepted. I'm a polyamorous person who has just committed to a monogamous marriage. Holy fucking shit. JB and I have only been together a year. But it feels so right. He seems like the kind of partner I could spend the rest of my life with. FUCK! How did this even become a thing?

I am so happy to be marrying him. I don't know what will happen. I don't know how I will apply polyamory to my future life. I just don't know. But I have this belief that poly was never really about the sex or the romance. It was about the love, and I feel that I can get that love through platonic friendships. We'll see, obviously, but I am prepared to take that risk. Let's see how we go!

Our Nights In

With JB, there's no rushing. No pressure to see the latest gallery opening or to spend half a soggy evening in line to a new bar. 

Maybe it's because he's a near-decade older than me, but the story of our relationship is much more about cosy evenings in getting gently sozzled on wine and doing a puzzle. Just like this evening. I can't imagine anything I'd rather be doing. 

Here we are now

So...long time no see!

It's been a crazy old time, but now, I have to say I'm in one of the best and scariest times of my life. 

I ended things with T. In August last year, I said goodbye to my lover and friends of five years. Hardest thing I have ever done. He was at his sister's house, and as I walked away I saw him standing alone in the kitchen looking at the ceiling. It was dreadful, and I try not to think about it too often because that guilt and pain of saying it is still there, under the surface. Three weeks later we had a picnic for our five year anniversary, and I sobbed in front of him. 

The reason for all of this was that I had fallen hard for JB, and we had spent five months trying to work out whether being together was what we actually wanted. It was a tough decision. He had so many barriers, and had reconciled himself to a single life. He didn't want to be polyamorous, which was a big deal for me, as it meant that I would have to say goodbye to T. I wasn't sure if that was what I wanted at all. To be truthful I couldn't really imagine a life without T in it. 

But I wasn't happy with T, it's true. Our sex life was all over the place and I found it hard to get over the resentment I had developed over the last years. So I made the choice to end things with Thomas and go into a monogamous relationship with JB. Huge fucking change.

I am still with JB now, it's been almost a year. I know I made the right decision and I feel like this is sustainable. In hindsight it would have been good for me to have a break in between relationships, to get my head straight and take care of myself. But JB and I had already been seeing each other at the point that T and I split up, so it made sort of sense to just go on the way we were going. 

I am so happy now. There will be more adventures to come I dare say, so expect more!

S

I Left T

I ended the romantic relationship.

I've been walking on sunshine for the last month with JB, but something is not right anymore. I don't know what it is. I think it's me. I think I miss TK, and I feel like I made a mistake.

I remind myself that I wasn't happy when we were together. I remind myself that the sex wasn't so great anymore, and I avoided it. I remember getting cross with him and the drudge of dragging him up again from his terrible moods.

But I think that was all worth it. I think. I'm not sure. I'm not sure of anything. He was a constant, and now he is not. I've made my bed, and now I have to lie in it.

JB is so wonderful. He's kind, he's good looking, the sex is amazing. He's not T, but that's ok, I genuine love JB of his own accord and I'm grateful of his love in return. But fuck if this ain't half hard. I've never broken up with someone I still loved before.

My cousin is a neuroscientist and he said that the brain can take months, or even years to kill off the emotional pathways in our brain. He said it takes time to make new pathways, and develop new associations about who and what is familiar, and what represents love. I hope he's right, and this struggle is just part of that.

I’m a silly cunt sometimes

I’ve fallen for my housemate. I’m a total idiot, and should have known better. He’s called JB, he’s lovely, and had I met him in a different life, who knows? It could have been different.

The night I came to look at the house was so much fun. I wasn’t exactly sure how to find it, but I knew he was at home waiting for me, and in the quickly darkening evening I could see him sitting on the sofa  playing on an ipad and drinking red wine. All the signs were good that this was going to be somewhere I’d be happy living.

I can hear his voice so clearly, welcoming me. “Hello”. He was excited and nervous - we’d met once before at a mutual friend’s birthday party, and as we all left, JB and I danced to the train station. I found him on facebook, and found his art blog. He remembers me as his first following. We seemed to be quietly noteworthy in each others’ lives.

He showed me the house. A study (yay), with room for my sewing machine. filled with books. Heaven. A lobby, beautifully decorated to exactly my taste. A lovely bathroom and a new kitchen, just put in. He showed me the room, it was great. We went to the kitchen, and he gave me the key. It was that easy. He poured me some wine.

We chatted. We talked our way through three bottles of wine, and I was having a great time. We agreed on so many things, and agreed at how stupid those who didn’t agree with us were. I told him I was polyamorous. We watched Youtube clips and laughed together on the sofa. We let our bodies touch. I don’t really remember saying this (although definitely not out of the realm of possibility) but apparently I said “so is fucking part of the deal?”. Ugh

So we kissed, we really made out. He took me upstairs, I ripped his (and my own) clothes off. We touched, I sucked his cock. I remember a hazy and not very enjoyable 69 (those things scare me - too much chance for a nose up the bum) and then him not being able to keep it up. I remember waking up a lot, and feeling very thirsty. It was a little weird.

A few days later I came to show my four year old nephew the house. JB thanked me for being cool. I felt cool. I like fucking people and although it wasn’t my most successful drunken fuck, I had enjoyed myself. I moved in.

We started a weird friendship, a slight romance. We enjoyed each other so much, and began to fool around most weekends. I was fine - I was really ok with it all, and JB was so clear that a real relationship between us wasn’t really an option.

I ignored him. I wondered what it would be like if we were together. I thought if I pretended hard enough, he’d change his mind. He kept saying how excellent I was, and I thought that meant he wanted to be with me, and was coming around to the idea.

He wasn’t. I know that categorically, after starting to cry when we agreed we should probably stop the kissing, the fucking and the cuddling up to watch TV, I confessed I was upset because I loved him. Accidentally loved him. He was (is?) shocked, and as gently as possible told me that I would never make it into his heart.

I’m retreating now, trying to get some distance without being mean (although my lesser self wants him to be as hurt as I feel), but I don’t like it. I don’t like it at all.

I want him.