Saynine

Selfish

I am a selfish individual.

It is true. I am very good at providing an appearance of a very self-confident and strong person, but there is someone who has to see another side of me. Someone who is always there at my darkest hour and loves me in spite of my many failings. Someone who I have taken so much from, and gotten so good at taking from that I fail to even recognize how much I take.

This is not a post looking for condolence or congratulations, and will likely be the most rambling and possibly incoherent essay I have ever posted to these pages. It is a confession and self-realization that is spilling out of me as I think it. Of course even that is selfish by it’s nature.

I present to the world what I think will benefit me the most. That which I think will support my domly persona, and some sort of master of polyamory. Of course it is easy to pontificate about polyamory and compersion when things are working out exactly how you hope, when every scenario fits your expectations.

But how impressive is it to fold like a house of cards when things do not fit your expectations? How absolutely selfish is it to spill your darkest thoughts and insecurities on the one who has traveled the very hardest road with you, all in the name of open communication? I have infected the very happiness that I so boldly and publicly claimed to want for this amazing person with the creeping doubt, created with vile words that I can never take back. Is there any more selfish act than to take and take, to use to prop my own fragile ego, then when they find some exquisite joy, taint it with thoughts that should never be shared.

I have asked her to be proud of me when there is little to take pride in myself. To smile and tell the world how lucky she is when It is I who have always been the beneficiary of her patience.

The simple truth is sometimes we have a responsibility to put on a happy fucking face and support the one who has supported us. But takers like myself see only as far as our own needs. I know this sounds morose, but I have done much I am not proud of.

There is a part of me that wonders if even posting this is a continuation of a pattern. Am I seeking absolution and hoping that she will read this and tell me that it is ok, that my behavior is not as bad as I now see it to be? There is another part of me that hopes that maybe in her busy life she will not even read this. it will just slip by unnoticed.

The most important question I can ask now is how do I change my patterns. How can I be the partner and friend that she has always been to me? I don’t have all the answers but I do know that I pledge to myself to be someone who she can be proud of. Not a pride to be spoken to the world, but the kind of private pride that makes your heart swell. Someone with whom she can always look forward to sharing her fears and insecurities. I have made a private list of goals that no one including her will ever see. This is a list of ways that I can break old habits and be what I have so longed lead others to believe I am. To look at myself in the mirror and not see a selfish man staring back at me.

If you do find this. If you happen upon this. Know that I will always fall down, but it is for you that I will pick myself up. I love you.

Tags: Confidence, Introspection, Polyamory, Selfish

I’m Here, I’m Queer???

I have lately given much thought to labels and how we choose and use them. I have for sometime used the label “Pansexual”. I use this to indicate that my sexual appetite is not limited by gender barriers. I am in fact sexually greedy and find I have desires and the will to have sexual contact with just about any gender configuration imaginable.  I intentionally avoid “Bi-Sexual” as the binary term irritates me and also seems to indicate a sort of switching back and forth. At least to me.

Lately there has been a word, no an idea that has been bouncing around my head. Queer! Wow, what a loaded word. A word I am drawn to but yet cannot decide if it fits.

I am not going to get into the etymology and origins of the word. I am only concerned with it’s current usage as a word of empowerment.

I am going to think aloud a bit and invite you as I so often have to take a front row seat to the bizarre thought process that is me.

My first question; Am I Worthy? On the one hand I am not only a greedy fucker, but I so completely support the politics that is the Queer movement, that I am almost certainly a part of it. But make no mistake. My current state of being is the result of a personal epiphany in my early twenties and a slow evolution since then. It is not easy to say this, but previous to the above stated revelation, I was a sexual bigot. I make no excuses but I was raised in an environment of Racial, Religious, and Sexual Hate. For reasons I have not yet discerned I was able to completely refuse to accept the first two, yet embraced the third. One theory is that it was a way to externalize a reaction to being sexualized by a male relative at a young age, but even that smells like an excuse, so I reject it. What is true is I accept responsibility for my attitudes and have spent the rest of my life trying to correct them.

Next question; How can I be Queer and look and act so appropriate for my gender? OK, maybe a bit of a silly question, but think about it. How many “Queer” Uber-Butch Cis-Males do you know? On the other hand, I have spent my entire life setting myself aside from the crowd appearance and action wise. In Xtian School I refused to sing hymns or kneel and pray. Not that either of these would have been hard to at least fake, but I made conscious choices to set myself apart in every way I could. In my teens I had both of my ears pierced in multiple locations. Now for this to have full impact you need to know that I am as old as dirt and this was before George Michael made this look at least remotely popular. And until my growing forehead made it just silly looking I had hair to my waist for decades.  And now long after such things are sensible, I have started wearing gauged earrings.  Of course none of these things makes me even remotely Queer, but do speak to a lifelong desire to set myself outside the crowd.

In the end the biggest question is one that I find the hardest to address; Do other Queers want me using their word, their empowerment, their symbol of struggle? This is an odd position to find myself in. Caring what others think, but I do. As someone who has married into the Native American community I am painfully familiar with how a people that are proud, yet steeped in struggle can have their culture and symbols of power appropriated by those who neither understand nor deserve these things. In using the title Queer would I be no better than a New-age Shamanist with a dreamcatcher hanging from my car mirror, telling folks that my great grandmother was a Cherokee Princess? This one Is the greatest hang-up.

In the balance I am quite aware that it does not matter what I call myself. But yet this is the itch on my brain these days.

Tags: Bi-Sexual, Gender, Journey, Pansexual, queer, Questions, Sex

The One About the Breakup.

This is the blog post I didn’t want to write. I knew it needed to be written but there were so many reasons to not write it. You see, it is about a breakup, and as in most breakups there is more than one person involved, but unlike many there is also more than two. I cannot speak for the other parties I can only speak for how I was impacted and how I observed it impact someone I love dearly.

Early last year Jewelgen and I were sailing along in our journey of discovery of both Kink and Polyamory. We had a beautiful relationship developing with Ice Empress and had been enjoying playing together and separately with other partners. We had for sometime considered ourselves San Francisco kinksters even though we live 50 miles away. Most of the fun we could find was in SF, we had found a great munch there and we had never been able to connect with local folks.

Then we finally pushed ourselves to go to a local munch and immediately made connections. Some friends, some play partners. However there was one person in particular who stood out. She was a very shy submissive woman who identified as a single slave. I will call her Aliah but this is not her name. She was well known in the local community and had been involved in the kink world for many years.

Aliah first approached us about carpooling to a class in SF and a friendship between the three of us quickly developed. After a few months of the friendship blossoming, Aliah approached us with a very interesting proposal. She wanted us to consider allowing her to be “In Service” to us. WE asked her to explain what this would mean. She defined this as Slavery but in a format that would fit our busy lives and would not have the level of commitment on our part as collaring her as a slave. The idea appealed to us on several levels. First we are primarily parents and do not integrate our kinky or poly life into our children’s life, so a 24/7 situation was not possible.  Second even though we did not have a kinky or sexual attraction to her, her primary kink was service and the services she suggested were things that appealed to us.

We did have some concerns however. Aliah had mentioned on several occasions that she did not see her self as “poly” and her hope was to some day meet a Master who was Monogamous as well. We made it clear to her that not only were we very poly, and had no intention of changing that, but there was someone in our life that would come above anyone else, Ice Empress. I was also involved in a secondary relationship at the time. We explained clearly that if either of these things were unbearable at that point or in the future that she was free to walk away. She agreed.

Things started very well and her attentions were amazing. Aliah would chauffer us to munches and kinky events and look after our every need. She introduced us to friends who had long histories of leadership in the kink community and we became even closer. We shared trials and triumphs like you do with someone you care about and with whom you share a relationship. Troubles cropped up and we were very proud of how our communication skills lead to apparent resolutions. Unfortunately more often than not the problems centered on insecurities and jealousy, however we forged on.

In the meantime we became even closer to some of Aliah friends and one in particular with whom Aliah had a murky past, but with who she was “only friends”, grew close to Jewelgen. “Calvin” cared for Aliah deeply as a brother would but it was clear he had a very serious interest in Jewelgen and a great friendship was developing as well as a potential for some very hot play.

As the summer wore on we had several talks with Aliah regarding her behavior and jealousy and each time it seamed progress was made. It concerned me when I ended my secondary relationship and she seemed overjoyed but I let it go.

But as Fall approached two events occured that appeared to be Catalyst for bad behavior. Ice Empress came to visit us and our relationship with her gelled, and plans for Ice Empress moving here became solidified. This occurred during the Folsom Street fair which is an event that I for one look forward to all year. Aliah’s behavior at Folsom was intolerable and when we returned home and had our sad farewells with Ice Empress we let Aliah know. The second event was the consummation of the developing play relationship with Jewelgen and Calvin, which was also clearly a very good friendship in the making. The three of us – Jewelgen, Myself, and Calvin – had all spoken at length to Aliah about this and she had wholeheartedly encouraged it, at least in words and appearance. However her reaction after the day they first played made it clear that she was not “OK” with the situation.

Jewelgen and I started to realize that this situation with Aliah was most likely doomed but we wanted to give her another chance when suddenly Jewelgen and I were struck with a horrendous personal tragedy. We let Aliah know that we would be unavailable for some time and did not know when that would change but that we greatly appreciated her support. We stayed in semi-regular contact with her but had sequestered ourselves in our home. After several weeks when the situation had mostly resolved we contacted Aliah about spending some time together but the reception we received was cold. Jewelgen and I spoke and we knew that time had come to end our service relationship with Aliah. We asked her to meet us at a neutral location and it was obvious that she not only knew why we were meeting but that she desired an end as well.

After some conversation it was decided that we were friends to begin with and that an end had been called at a good time so it would be wonderful if we could still be friends.

We may have been naive but we truly hoped that we could continue to be friends with Aliah and move forward. A few weeks later we attended a play party hosted by f a friend of Aliah. We had received our invitation some time earlier and we had no reason to think we were not still welcome. We soon discovered otherwise. Our reception at the party was mostly very cold. It even appeared that Calvin was giving us the cold shoulder but we chalked it up to other things he was involved in that night.

The truth became evident quickly though. Invitations we had been promised to several play parties never materialized and Calvin snubbed not just me but quite hurtfully Jewelgen. That is not to say that al the local folks were rude, in fact we received much encouragement and support from many local folks, but the degree of snubbing from people we had come to regard as friends was shocking. The poor treatment of me caught me by surprise but the treatment of Jewelgen caught me with anger, the sort of white hot anger that few people have witnessed in me and escaped unscathed. However Jewelgen appealed to me to let it go, and I respected her wishes. I was angry at Aliah for what was clearly a campaign to malign us, but even more so I was angry at both Aliah and Calvin for hurting the one person in the world that meant the most to me, Jewelgen.

I have avoided writing this post for quite some time. I did not want to smear anyone and it seemed better to just sit on it. But it has grown like a boil and festered to the point that it has blocked my ability to write about anything else.

It is still not my intention to create animosity towards Aliah but to highlight something that we simply had not considered.  You see if this was simply a Vanilla relationship ending we could change things in our life so we could simply avoid the other party. However the Kink community is small and it is not possible to stay active while avoiding someone you shared something with. This did not occur to us at the beginning but I assure you we are well aware of now.

Spring has come and Jewelgen and I are emerging from our shell. We are making plans to become more active again and we revel in the excitement of Ice Empress’ arrival later in the year. We have learned some valuable lessons and I hope they have not jaded us too unnecessarily, but I can assure that we will look long and hard before inviting anyone besides the three of us to enter so closely into our lives again.

Tags: Breakup, Compersion, Jealousy, Journey, Monogamy, Polyamory, Service, Slave

What About the Children

The countdown has begun. August is when @Ice_Empress is slated to make the move across the country to be with us. She will leave her home, job and family behind to start a life living near @Jewelgen and me. We could not bemore excited. We have all known for a long time that we have a future together, however it is very complicated to not only combine our lives to an extent , but for one person to uproot and start life again so far from home. Not the least of these complications is children.

Our situations with our children are very different yet they are a huge part of all of our lives. @Ice_Empress’ children are reaching adulthood and leaving home. She has been out to them and open with them about her lifestyle and joining us. They have been supportive, but she can’t help but wonder if their support is all about seeing Mom happy and not considering how it will affect them. But that is certainly the nature of good mothers. To always wonder if their children will be OK.

@Jewelgen and I, on the other hand have an entirely different situation. While my oldest daughter is grown and lives on her own, our two younger children are teens and live at home. None of our kids know about our lifestyle whether it be kinky or poly. This has prompted much discussion between the two of us. How much to tell each of them and when.

Each of our Kids are individuals and each will require different handling, They know our friend is moving out from Florida and that we are close to her but that is the extent of it. I would prefer to come out to our daughters and explain about @Ice_empress. My oldest and I have gone through a lot together a long time ago and we have a special bond. She would not want many details but would understand, I believe. Our youngest daughter is 14, she is a free thinker and came out to us about her bi-sexuality over a year ago. I believe she will understand the most and will be accepting of us and our lover. The wildcard is our son, he is 16 and most likely will want a “don’t ask don’t tell” sort of arrangement. It is my thinking that preparing them for her arrival is the best way. I think no matter how careful we are, they are perceptive and will realize something is afoot.

@Jewelgen has a different idea and I have decided to defer this decision to her. She is their mother and rarely has wrong instincts about her children. It is her thought to let our kids get to know @Ice_Empress without the extra baggage of our relationship then once they know and love her as we know they will, introduce the full picture to them. Her thinking is that they may put up a wall to her in the mistaken belief that she is a threat to our relationship.

The simple fact is none of us do anything in a vacuum. Everything we do affects those around us. When we decided to alter the path of our relationship we never thought we would meet someone who would join us on our journey. Yet here we are nearly a year after a meeting with a wonderful woman that happened because of some flirting and the persistence of a certain Dom, deciding how our decisions will affect our children.

Tags: Children, Compersion, Family, Journey, Poly, Polyamory

Compersion, It’s What’s For Dinner

I sit here this morning watching the love of my life get ready for a breakfast date. She is getting ready to go have a meal with a friend, but it is more than that. She will be negotiating the next play date she will have with him. She will laugh at his jokes and touch him lightly on the arm, she will kiss him to greet him and make sure he has the view he has come to love, and when she catches him looking it will make her smile and feel sexy and desirable.

I sit here happy. I am happy that she will get to experience the rush of having someone treat her like a Queen. I am happy she will enjoy his company and conversation. But most of all I am happy that she knows I am happy for her.

When we first started exploring Polyamory I wondered if I would ever be able to bear knowing that someone else was making her feel good. Could I overcome jealousy enough to tolerate her being thrilled by the touch of another person? What I discovered with time was so much more than I expected. Not only could I tolerate it, but I could enjoy it, revel in it, and receive satisfaction from it.

What was this emotion I would feel when I would see her light up from someone else’s attention?

In the 1970’s and through the very early nineties there was a social experiment in San Francisco called the Kerista Commune. My understanding is that many social issues were tested; however the most interesting to me was Polyamory. The folks at Kerista coined a word; Compersion. The act of taking pleasure from knowing someone you love is receiving pleasure from another.

This is not cuckolding. In fact it is quite the opposite. Part of what makes this aspect of Poly so easy for me is knowing that it takes nothing away from me. That is right, I lose nothing. Jewelgen will not treat me with any less regard than before. She will return from her date genuinely happy to see me and with every bit as much desire as before.

We are brought up to believe that Love is an economy of subtraction. That if the person who loves me loves another love will be taken from me. This is not that case in a relationship that uses constant communication. In The Ethical Slut there was an illustration that really drove this home for Jewelgen and I. As a parent you do not love your first child any less when another is born. Your love is not a cup that can be drained when giving to more than one. This really put the idea of compersion in perspective for us.

Applying this to our D/s desires in making playdates was a whole new test of the idea of compersion to me. Jewelgen and I had been co-topping a submissive couple for a while and I had adjusted to the idea of her playing solo . . .  As a Domme. While Jewelgen and I are equals in every way for the partnership that is our marriage, but in Play our roles are me Dominating her. The idea of someone else Dominating her made me very uneasy.  We were playing the “What if” game on the way to San Francisco for a munch one weekend and Jewelgen broached the subject of her being dominated by someone else. I told her right away that this made me very uneasy and for now I would not be OK with it. Jewelgen said she understood and did not mention it again.

Over the next few days I did what I often do and ruminated over the conversation. I became more and more uncomfortable with my answer, and I knew why but I could not get past the idea of her submitting to another male and that bothered me even more. Why was it OK in my mind for her to submit to a female and not a male? This tormented me, I do not like feeling that I have old thoughts of sexual distinction between genders. However at that point I could not get past it and I trusted that Jewelgen was OK with my decision.

I was thinking over the state of our journey one day about a month later and could not escape the nagging feeling that I needed to work through my block against Jewelgen playing with a dominant male. So I broke it down. I worked through it like I usually do difficult things. I created a scenario in my head and played it like a movie, trying to fill in every detail as explicitly as possible and then looking for bad reactions on my part. It may sound odd but it can be a very effective way for me to find the root of negative feelings. I soon came to the conclusion that it was not the idea of her submitting to someone that bothered me, but the feeling of helplessness if something went badly for her. I have long enjoyed the position of protector, over my wife and children, and anyone else that would accept that from me. Jewelgen would be in a vulnerable situation that I could not control. That was it; I would be giving up control for her to look after herself. As soon as I realized this and accepted that she was very capable for looking after her own well being I was able to put my concerns to rest.

I told Jewelgen that I no longer had a problem with her submitting to a male partner and immediately I was filled with a delight that she would be able to experience this with someone else.

Tags: Compersion, Dominant, Poly, Polyamory