polysingleish

All Good Things Must Come To An End

MelC 5 Comments

Love is not about losing freedom; it’s about sharing freedom with a partner who’s as talented a liberationist as you
~ Rob Brezsny’s Free Will Astrology

This post has been hard for me to write. Indeed, it’s been hard for me to write anything for Polysingleish of late — a combination of focusing my writing energy elsewhere, and also feeling like I didn’t have more to contribute here.

I started this blog because I didn’t have anyone to guide me when I began my journey in consensual non-monogamy. There was no guide for being polyamorous while in a primary relationship with one’s own self.

Naturally, I stumbled. I messed up. I slowly figured out (sometimes through trial and error) what it meant to be polyamorous without a primary and without being on the relationship escalator.

This blog has been around for over 8 years now— and over the course of those 8 years, my words have landed with thousands of other folks who have been exploring relationships in a similar way. It has been an incredible honor, and so very humbling to receive feedback — from both friends and strangers alike — who say I’ve articulated something that they’ve always felt but thought they were alone in their experience.

I want to stay in integrity with all of you who have read and followed this blog through the years, and offer you a reflective summary of what this journey has been, and share with you the important ways my relationship landscape has shifted.

“I’m in a primary relationship with my self and having an orgy with the universe.”

Before I had the language to define myself as Solo Polyamorous, this was how I would explain myself and my relationship desires to others. In 2012 — as I transitioned from living in a quiet, hippy-centric community on coastal British Columbia into the busy, poly-friendly city of Vancouver — I began blossoming into my Self in a way I never had before. 

I’d married in my early 20s, and had so little dating experience prior to that. My marriage had been characterised by accommodation and compromise (mostly on my part) which I grew to resent. Through 7 years of marriage I lost touch with my own self, with the things that brought me joy, and the sense of play that had lifted me out of depression in my teens. Being a foreigner to Canada, introverted, and socially awkward, I had struggled to make friendships with people I shared values with. I had something of a community that helped me patch up a hole in my social fabric, but it didn’t totally fit who I was or who I aspired to grow into being.

Ending my marriage marked a new chapter, a coming back to my own self, and the possibilities of being able to explore and embody all the aspects of myself I’d kept locked away — through a childhood with a narcissistic, emotionally incestous and co-dependant homophobic mother, and through seven years of compromising my needs and dissocating from my desires within my marriage. I’d always dreamt of having multiple partners (so much so, it was a feature in my make believe stories as a kid). I knew I wanted to explore my sexuality with women. I had desires to unlock the kinkster within me. I yearned for connections that felt transcendental whilst simultaneously supportive, nourishing, and most of all where I could be fully myself.

My entry into the world of polyamory was bumpy. After early experiences of falling back into the temptations of Disney fantasies of romance, and feeling confounded by what was then a very couple-centric environment within the Vancouver Polyamory community (where almost everyone asked me if I had a primary partner), I said fuck it, I’m my OWN primary partner. 

I started engaging with myself based on that: taking my self out on dates, doing things for my Self that I had longed for a partner to do, etc. This was such a radical idea in my mind. And my goodness, it was exciting.  My commitment was to be firmly polysingleish for two years, and then re-assess.

I had many intense experiences during those two years. Looking back at it now, I see the younger me who was struggling: struggling with the loss of her relationship with her mother, struggling (still) to find a community who felt in alignment with her values, struggling to make a living in a city where the cost of living was twice what she’d been used to. That younger me took a long time to feel at ease in her relationships, but she had some incredible learning experiences along the way.

I remember the first time a partner asked for my consent for something sexual. I’d never been asked about my consent before. I remember nervously dating women for the first time. I remember the feeling of parts of my mind I’d never used before awakening, and the excitement that kept me up till 4am writing blog posts about my experiences.

I also remember when I felt things were not quite right. The overwhelm of attention that the ‘shiny new thing’ (as one partner referred to me) in a community receives. The fawn-responses that I gave to that attention because I didn’t know how else to engage with it, and so dearly did I want to belong in this polyamorous community that I was fearful of putting up boundaries, especially when it was community leaders who were taking an interest in me.

My own Monogamy Hangover would take over more than once. 

In 2014, when that time to re-assess came along, I was in a space in my life where I felt so empowered. I had loving partners, I had incredible friendships, I was growing community through the Solo Polyamory group, and I was feeling seen, heard, and understood at a deep level for the first time in my life. I re-committed to remaining Solo, whilst diving in to loving, long term partnerships. At one point I had three incredible concurrent relationships. Between these three partnerships in my life, I felt like I’d found something of a centre to my life as a solo polyamorist. I felt confident in my sexuality, and in my Self. But shortly thereafter, I went through a series of experiences that left me overwhelmed, unable to cope, and struggling.

Dancing with Demons: Tackling Trauma 

If you’ve never experienced trauma, then please consider yourself fortunate and privileged. Relational trauma is one of the hardest of all: human beings are relational creatures who need connection (albeit in differing degrees) as part of their physical and mental health. When you’ve had the experience of harm coming from an intimate connection, it does a number on your ability to trust and feel safe in future connections. 

As time rolled on — after being bullied by a former partner, stalked by one metamor, assaulted by another, screamed at in public spaces repeatedly by yet another meta, and feeling the withdrawal from partners who didn’t know how to engage with my resulting trauma — my enthusiasm for exploring new intimate connections began to dim.

I shifted my focus. Embracing the principles of Relationship Anarchy that I had already found so much resonance with, I began focussing on my platonic relationships as being the primary source of security and stability in my life. In my journey of recovery from trauma, it proved invaluable to nurture my friendships and community connections as the web through which my safety needs could be met. Along with growing a stronger community, I began going to therapy, and gradually felt myself regain the confidence to step back into intimate relationships — albeit much more mindfully than before, and with a craving for more simplicity and less drama.

One of the most important pieces of the journey of this past decade has been an unrelenting self-questioning. Why? My inquisitive mind has asked why of everything: of monogamy, of polyamory, of polynormativity, of solo polyamory, of sex, swinging, kink, everything. I ask myself why in my own relationships. Why am I drawn to this person? Do I feel comfortable with them because they are familiar, and does familiar mean healthy? Is my nervous system truly at ease with this partner, and if not, why not?

I often follow up with another question: what else is possible? And it is the pondering of this question over the past few years that has led my inner landscape and understanding of my needs and desires to shift. 

For the past four years I’ve taught classes on the Monogamy Hangover and run workshops on how to disentangle from the trappings of patriarchal monogamy. I’ve come to see that the Monogamy Hangover is all about the ways we seek out safety, security, and stability: it’s not the only strategy that can offer that to us, but it’s the one many of us are most familiar with, and so, we will keep returning to it until we find a BETTER strategy, one that makes the Monogamy Hangover obsolete. Every time I teach this, I find myself sitting down to question what aspects of the unconscious story and programming show up in my world still. 

As I write this, I’m 38 years old, and the shifts in my life over the past decade have been profound. The lessons in autonomy, agency, and independence that Solo Polyamory have taught me have assisted me in finding my own radical path in life, and have supported me as I step into being the bohemian and rebel I have always aspired to be. I learned how to be secure and loving with my own company, and have done so much healing for my own soul.

But along the way, I found something was missing for me: a grounded and secure place to come home to, emotionally. 

For all the incredible partners I have had, I never found my desire for an emotional home was fully reciprocated. For some, they didn’t have the capacity to meet me with what I was desiring in our relationship. For others, they had already found that with someone else, and struggled to realise that their polyamory was more about sexual non monogamy than it was about emotional non monogamy. 

I also began to realise that the ways I had pursued my sexual freedom had left me with deep wounds, and as much as I had been able to heal and integrate that past, I was now holding back in relationships because I didn’t want to re-awaken sexual traumas, nor did I want to slip back into a space where I was traumatised through erotic experiences. The slutty singleish saga of my early 30s had lost its deep appeal, and I was struggling to enjoy even my solo polyamorous connections, which began to feel either too brief, too shallow, or too far away. 

I was stuck, repeating the same pattern and expecting different results.

I returned to critical examination of my relationship desires and actions, digging deep into the questions of: what do I want, why do I want it, and where do I want to be in 5-10 years?

When I first asked myself those questions five years ago, I was clear: I wanted to live in a home with good friends, and enjoy loving relationships with multiple partners. Well, I got there. And, I wasn’t happy with it. I was agitated, anxious, stressed. I’d done all this healing work on myself, and about relationships, and yet something was missing.

Much to my surprise, I found a longing awake in me for something different than the Solo Polyamory path I’d been pursuing, and for two years I’ve held that longing gently in my awareness, allowing myself to be curious about it. 

What would it mean to let go of this relationship path that has become so interwoven with my personal identity? What aspects would I want to maintain, and what specifically was it about SoPo that hadn’t been serving me in my journey to joyful relating?

The possibility of a life-partner, an anchor partnership based on co-creation and commitment to mutual healing work, has always been present in my mind. Indeed, in one old blog post I wrote that such a partnership might be the only thing that could pull me into a more nested dynamic, and away from my solo-ness.  

Finding ‘The One’

Will I find “the one”? Oh goodness, I found ‘the one’ long ago: she’s me! But what I find I’m now seeking is a partnership that allows me to feel a little less alone in my self-primaryship. A partnership that doesn’t detract from, but rather, enhances that self relationship. 

I’m not looking for a monogamous, escalator romance. This isn’t the ending of a journey or the arrival at some kind of ‘inevitable’ dyadic partnership destination. This is a continuation of a bohemian, radical upending of mono-normative, hetero-normative, and yes, even poly-normative thinking. 

As a Relationship Anarchist I’ve held that labels should be descriptive rather than prescriptive. And the path I’m now on might no longer resemble solo polyamory. I am now absolutely, consciously, into creating an interweaving life partnership with someone… or someones. 

But I’m not leaving behind that primary-ship with my Self. I’m not letting go of the agency that says ‘I’m allowed to change my mind, and live on my own terms.’ Indeed, if not for my journey as a solo polyamorist, I don’t think that I would have arrived at this place, and I don’t think I’d have the same understanding of just what it means to make bold changes to preserve one’s own right to do what you need to do for the greater wellbeing of your soul.  

I don’t think this is an inevitable path for people practicing Solo Polyamory. And I worry that, having had such a place in the public eye of solo polyamory, the changes in my relationship landscape might be seen to invalidate the solo polyamorist’s path. So let me be clear: there is profound healing work that needs to be done outside of enmeshed relationship. We are so many generations thick in trauma from enforced monogamy and all the trappings it brings (including gendered oppression, and more) that I do believe every individual would benefit from spending some of their time in the realms of Solo Polyamory. What might, perhaps, be inevitable, is that each person in their journey may need to find their own way of balancing the tension between self-intimacy and intimacy with others, as a crucial piece of finding secure attachment and somatic ease within themselves.

Almost ten years since I started this blog, and the conversation in polyamory has shifted. We’re just starting to undo the couple-centric and monogamy hangover thinking that has directed most consensual non-monogamy till now. We’re starting to talk about having a trauma-informed approach to polyamory. And, we’re beginning to collectively realise the real significance of supporting a healthy relationship with one’s self as being paramount. 

I take pride in having played a role in that shift. And even though my own relationship style has changed through the years, I maintain that primary-with-my-self attitude, and work to cultivate self-intimacy daily.

This is the last post I intend to make here on Polysingleish.

It has been quite the ride, and I am grateful for everyone who’s taken the time to witness it.

But my own personal journey is not over. Rather, it’s a new adventure that is beginning. One where I get to explore just how profound this self love can become when building conscious and transformative relationships with others. You can keep following my work over at Radical Relating, via my mailing list, and also on Facebook and Instagram. And, I promise you I’ll keep doing everything I can to offer validation to, and create spaces for those solo and singleish folks within the polyamorous communities, and within the world at large.

With all my love,

“Remember that self love is also revolutionary and world-changing. We cannot fight for others when we are fighting a war inside ourselves. Compassion is reflexive, a power that we first bestow on ourselves, and then give away through our actions — to people, to our planet. When we recognise that truth, that is when we let love become our legacy”

~Amanda Gorman.

Lessons to Our Younger Selves- Polysingleish Interviews Louisa Leontiades

MelC Leave a comment

A freelance writer originally from the UK, Louisa lives in an open relationship with her partners and two children in Sweden. She writes full-time on her blog, Postmodern Woman, and is chairwoman of the National Polyamory Association. She also writes for Huffington Post, Salon, Nerve, Jezebel and the Guardian. She lives a life that makes for a lot of stories. The memoir of her first polyamorous relationship is due for international release through Thorntree Press in April 2015.
I have to say, my brief conversation with Louisa is one of the most inspiring that I’ve had with any other poly writers- I’ve always loved her fearless approach to writing about poly and non-monogamy, plus she’s been a big fan of this blog! I’m excited that her two-part memoir is being published soon!

 

“I was obsessed by someone I didn’t know. Someone I’d never met. And someone who was turning me on eight hundred miles away. More than my husband in the next room did. It was earth shattering. Mind blowing. Amazing but also horrifying. But no matter how horrified I was at the person I’d become, I couldn’t stop it. This was what I wanted. Me without the structure of society. Without the rigours of religion. Without the criticisms of my parents and in blatant disregard to my so-called decent upbringing. Which then sailed clean out of the window.”
~ From “The Husband Swap”

 

Writing about polyamory

Mel: Louisa, you are one of the most prominent writers on poly and non monogamy in Europe. You have your own blog and you write for Huffington Post in the UK, and you are working on a new book. I’m curious- what was the impetus for you to put yourself out publicly, as you (no pseudonyms) writing about non monogamy?

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Louisa Leontiades, polyamorous writer

Louisa: I think it’s the same reason I write about anything at all. And I’ve been writing for years. It’s a Pandora’s Box effect.

I think that I’m like many women, who have had their voices suppressed for a long time and have acted like the “Good Girl”. We build a sense of identity tied up with expectation, and then we come to a mid life crisis. Mine came fairly early, when I was about 18. And I’m not able to speak publicly terribly well, but I am able to write, and in writing I found the third eye for me to be able to analyse events from a different perspective. So “The Husband Swap” was something I wrote when our relationship was breaking up while I was a financial analyst in a very large telecommunications firm.

Back then I felt that I couldn’t function because I had had my voice repressed, and then I repressed it myself for so long. Therapy was one way of offloading, but that didn’t work for me. So I had to do something with all this pain, express it and re-frame it, I had to rewrite the narrative, and that was how “The Husband Swap” came into being. And- it probably played a part in me losing my job, something I don’t regret at all.

It stayed on my hard-drive for years, and of course now I look back and I think “Oh my god you were such a victim!” But nevertheless my voice was and is still valid. It was the story of me then.

It helped enormously, the power of writing and finding my voice. And once I started, it didn’t stop. I used to journal, but there’s something about writing in the public eye. It has to do with your self esteem and sense of self. You really have to face your demons. You have a choice to go back into your hole and keep repressing, or come out and say “Yes! This is what’s right for me!”

Mel: I can really relate to what you are saying with the evolution from journaling to writing in the public eye. There’s a level of accountability that comes into place.

What role do you feel that writing has played in the evolution of the way you relate in your relationships?

Louisa: There’s a thing called emotional blindness, alexithymia. Scientists don’t really know how it comes about, but it’s an inability to identify your own emotions. It can mean that you aren’t able to empathise with others, or you don’t know what’s going on inside of yourself.

In polyamory, issues around consent are a big deal, and in my case I think that not only did I let my boundaries be trampled on, I didn’t even know my boundaries enough to express them because I didn’t feel my own emotions, and  I didn’t have the structures to identify what was wrong.

Writing gave shape to my emotions, and it’s why I think there are so many great writers in polyamory- but not many of them talk as much about emotions or emotional pain as I do. The reason for that is because I sharpened my emotions, I practice feeling so that I really know where I want to put my boundaries so I can step up and say “This is not okay for me.” It used to take me years to figure out if I’m not okay with something. Now it takes around a few days; sometimes I can immediately recognise because I have a tiny little twinge, that’s like the tip of the iceberg that lets me know there’s something deeper going on. That’s something that writing has done for me.

 

Being out in Europe 

Mel: So, you’re based in Europe. It’s been years since I have been in Europe; all my poly experience has been in this progressive pebble of Vancouver, where I can throw a pebble and hit someone who is poly. My understanding is that in Europe there’s a lot of awareness about relationship anarchy, but not so much about polyamory. What’s your experience with that been like?

Louisa: I’ve experienced polyamory in Italy, England, and Sweden. I found they had very different flavors.

In Italy the poly movement was embryonic back in 2007 when we lived there. The non monogamy of the day was cheating, it was highly accepted, even though it wasn’t talked about. The idea that you would be honest poses this great risk to undermine the society’s structure.

Unsurprisingly,we didn’t find much in Italy, so we joined the groups in the UK, which intersected almost entirely at that time with the LGBT community. In the beginning I had no interest in becoming alternative. I was a financial analyst. I was very mainstream.

When we went to England we went to Poly Day and Open Con, we signed up for workshops. I felt a little lonely cos I wasn’t as brilliantly out there as many of these people. I had been hiding behind my suits. Then in the evening something strange happened- the heterosexual mainstream people started showing up. All of the people we met in the evening were ALL in the closet about polyamory. Because they had been doing the regular day job, they didn’t invest in the activism or activities of these events.

I totally understand the difficulty for people in coming out, but I find it extraordinarily difficult to lie even by association. They were protecting themselves, but I wasn’t attracted to a life in the closet.

So in Italy there was no one, in England there were plenty of people but we weren’t of a similar context. In England it is much more controversial. It’s a very difficult society to come out in, unless you are alternative and you’ve already made that step to be out somehow.

Then I got to Sweden and I discovered to my great delight Sweden doesn’t like seeing anything as out of the ordinary- even if it is! Whatever you get up to its “Oh, that’s what they are doing, okay”. Sweden comes at it from a liberal background, and they seem to have bypassed a lot of the hierarchical polyamory scene and have moved to more of a non-hierarchical/relationship anarchy idea. Being out here, it’s quite interesting to compare my mother’s reaction to my partners’ parents who were “Oh you’re not getting a divorce there’s four of you, that’s nice.” Whereas my mother was “Please keep it in the bedroom”.

My other partner, who is from Iceland, his parents were like “Well, there’s many ways to build a family aren’t there?” And then they invited us in for a glass of wine. They were very cool.

Mel: That’s amazing. I’ve heard diverse reactions from people in Canada. This is a mixed bag of cultures- there’s a strong Victorian English mentality that has stayed alive, that whole “what happens in the bedroom should stay in the bedroom.” Within the alternative communities it is so much easier. Being part of the BurningMan/Raver/Festival culture it is simpler to be out. I can be with a group of friends and there can be a lot of relationship styles happening, and there’s no judgement there. It’s interesting being in communities where there is freedom to explore relationships for yourself.

Louisa: I’ve lost quite a few friends, and they aren’t bad people, they are very lovely people- but they can’t take it, they can’t take who I am because it seems I am an affront to everything they stand for, and it’s terrifying

Mel: It’s so far out of the box that it challenges people. I think when we get challenged on one thing in our tiny box of how we see the world it calls into question everything else how we see the world and that’s a scary place to go

Louisa: I don’t know if I’m a big enough person to hold the door open if they change their mind. I want to be. But you know what they say, love might be infinite but time is not!

 

Polyamory Memoirs

Mel: You’re working on your book and getting ready for publication- tell me more! What do you want to give to the world through the book?

Louisa: There are two things that are going to happen with this book. It’s an expression of pain – one of my boyfriend compares it to the painting The Scream. It didn’t end well so it’s kind of a perfect book that could be picked up by hollywood because the happy-ever-after seems to, ostensibly be, monogamy. But my objective at the time of writing it was not to laud polyamory, it was a medium of self expression.

When I see people making the same mistakes again and again, and people more experienced in the poly community calling them out on that- I think, sure I agree with all of that, but it’s a process. And without the screaming you can’t get to that wiser, healthier, happier place. So I hope that it shows some people they aren’t alone, this shit happens and you can still come out the other side and laugh. The steps thru pain can lead to joy and they often do.

But for those who don’t have willing ears to hear it they will see this tale as a testimony to the dangers of polyamory. And that’s not something I ever intended. I’m still active in the community, still practicing moving forward.

So at the same time I wondered if I could write a companion piece- Lessons to My Younger Self- and so I’ve written that! Both books are with the publisher now! There’s The Husband Swap, and Lessons to my Younger Self. So you get a fuller perspective.

When I was writing ‘Lessons’ I thought “Bloody hell, look what enormous pain you inflicted. All this time you thought you knew what you were doing!”
One of the things I have learned is that I am responsible for my own life experience. I have a choice- accept it, don’t accept it, reframe it, or not: these are my life lessons. And of course, in any interaction out of four people, there will be a lesson out of it.

It was very hard to write. I definitely shed a few tears

Mel: That’s incredibly valuable. There’s a tendency in what’s been written about poly to gloss over the difficult bits and glamorize it. Whereas in my own experience is that it’s been the best self development tool I’ve had. There’s so much value in that introspection going back and asking what lessons did I learn from those experiences. That seems to be something that’s been missing in the ‘poly-sphere’ of writing- connecting in with the difficult aspects, the shadow side of polyamory.

Louisa: And I’ll go back to it in seven years and find new lessons! The Husband Swap, I know I’ll get push back from the media, because books like More Than Two or Love Without Limits or Ethical Slut, they are destined for a community that is already attuned to some of the issues. But this is a memoir, and, if it does well it will make a splash in the poly community and I’m happy about that. But- it might also make a splash elsewhere and- I’m gearing myself up for that.

 

Vulnerability and living outside the box

living outside the box

living outside the box

Mel: It takes a lot of courage and strength, and confidence in one’s self, to be that publicly vulnerable, knowing you have no control over how it’s going to land with the greater community of the world. I really admire that you are doing this. It’s trailblazing.

Louisa: Thank you.

I had help, you know. I was adopted- things never seemed quite right in my world. I was playing this two-point-four children family white picket fence thing, but it wasn’t true. It was a source of displacement in my life, and gave me this feeling that this life wasn’t real. I had a narcissistic mother, and that narcissism- that was also not quite right for me. The world told me how a mother should be, and she wasn’t that. And, I came from a foreign background, my father was Greek American, and so my name wasn’t right. I just didn’t fit in.

But if you fit in, there’s no impetus to find yourself or find the path. I mean, where is your discomfort? At a certain point, maybe even those who fit in start to feel caged by what is expected of them. So we all have these sources in different ways to kick us out. I think I had a lot of them at an early age. It kicked me out pretty early into finding myself. And as you find yourself, you have to develop courage, layer by layer, every time you take a step to find yourself. I feel I’m incredibly lucky for every tool that has been given to me in my life, to be able to be in this place right now.

 

“As time moves on new perspective casts light on the experience. Personal development and analysis has allowed you to see some of the lessons learned… emotionally processing after all is often what we polyamorists do best. To understand the reasons why your relationship crumbled so that you can avoid some of the pitfalls in future. And to demonstrate that the hardest of lessons can result in the most amazing gifts.”
~ From “Lessons To My Younger Self”

 

To read more of Louisa’s writings, and to follow updates on the publication of her books, check out her blog at Post Modern Woman!

Present and Playful

MelC 12 Comments

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As the words singleish and polysingleish begin to squeeze their way into the poly lexicon (hurrah! I am an inventor of words!) I feel compelled to offer a refinement of how I define being ‘singleish’, and why I chose to name this blog ‘Polysingleish’.

It is very simple.

I am singleish. I do not have, nor do I currently seek, a primary partner.

I am also polyamorous. I form multiple, open, honest, very loving relationships, with full knowledge of all those I am involved with.

Some of my relationships develop with longevity, and this sometimes confuses people with the way I describe myself as singleish. Despite the longevity these relationships have, I don’t view them as primary partners. I love the idea that right now, there’s these two beautiful beings- whose long established friendship has lent the longevity to our intimate and loving connections-  who will remain in my life through the years. But I have no intention of ‘shacking up’.

Many people have commented to me about my relationship with Orion. Someone even asked me the other day if he was my Primary. I smiled.

There’s a strength to our connection that arises from the bond of our friendship and our common outlooks on life, love, and spirituality. Like me, Orion considers himself singleish. He actually might be more singleish than I am, and maybe one day my gentle nudging will see him publish some of what he has written about his philosophical take on this whole poly and singleish thing. Orion and I are both equally present with one another, whilst being unattached to the notion that this connection has to forge itself into a recognizable thing. It is a very powerful and ever evolving dynamic.

Everything in my relationships, as in my life, moves with a certain degree of fluidity and zen-like detachment. I’ve heard some people say this kind of every changing lifestyle must be crazy, yet I find it liberating because of what it challenges me to do.

I really have no choice but to be present to the moment. Allowing each moment to be so engaging that my mind cannot possibly dwell anywhere else.

What I desperately never want to do is stagnate or have things stay the same. Static relationships or connections do nothing for me.

Every day I develop a deeper understanding about how this Joy comes about through having no expectations. This ‘being present’ thing isn’t some new age mumbo jumbo. It isn’t about detaching myself from anything. It’s about bringing myself to be so overwhelmingly present to what I am experiencing right here, in this NOW, that nothing else but this moment matters. It’s about giving my heart- as well as my mind- permission to be fully engaged. To just feel whatever I am feeling and stay playful.

My only ‘struggle’ is how to define myself to the general public and world at large. I have no automatic ‘plus one’ for social or business things. I can refer to Emma as ‘my girlfriend’ and people can innocently assume it is just a platonic thing- after all, she is a married woman! I can walk into a party in the arms of one man, and leave in the arms of another. I can be on a date and still be flirting with someone I bump into. Inevitably, when someone starts asking me about my dating life, I can’t really hold back about it. I’m open and honest about it, and I’ve had more than a few raised eyebrows. It is kind of awesome, really, that I have yet to have any hugely negative responses from coworkers or new friends.

So, here I am. Poly. Singleish. Present. Playful.
Me.