Posts tagged Polyamory

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.