Road To Progress

The talk this weekend went pretty well. I’m not sure that we covered everything but we covered a lot. Chane started the talk as well.

I was proud of myself in that I listened to him and resisted the tendency to interrupt the way I can at times.

I was proud of him in that he listened to me and did make an effort to see things from my POV.

We will just have to wait and see how long and to what extent we are able to go with this. I’m feeling good about it at the moment.

He loves me and I love him. But the fact that we are not the only two involved is not going to go away.

The Talk Is Scheduled For This Weekend

That talk I wrote about a few months ago is supposed to happen this weekend.

I have been so very close to ending things with Chane because he just can not seem to do this. As I’ve stated, both here and to him, I feel this is essential to me and to the health of our relationship.

I’m nervous about how things are going to go. I hope he has thought of all the answers to the questions. I will do my best not to add questions to those I’ve already posed. I may have to ask questions to clarify his answers or to make sure I am understanding what he is saying.

I’ve debated and debated whether I am asking too much of him. And I’ve worried that it is unreasonable for me to ask this. It may be too much for him to cope with but I do not feel that it is an unreasonable request. It may be that he and I just can not come to a meeting of the minds and our relationship styles and personalities just do not mesh. Not something that is either his fault or mine.

It will just boil down to the fact that love is not always enough.

As much as I hope the outcome is more positive than this, I am preparing myself for the worst. I don’t believe, or want, the worst to be the outcome but I feel I have to be prepared to end things if there isn’t a better choice.

I really hope that things work out for us. I hope this is a healing talk.

Life is Giving Me Writer’s Block?

I’ve go quite a few  issues going on in my life right now that all could use a post on my part…writing about things helps me see them a bit better.

However, I can not seem to get anything down in writing. Not that these things are not constantly on my mind but I just can’t get them all out. Maybe because there are several. Maybe because they overlap. I think the biggest thing is the health issues. They keep be constantly tired and my brain doesn’t seem to function as well.

The health issues are serious and have to the potential to be very serious. I have an issue that makes it highly possible that I may never get to see my grandson again. Also, I am going through very serious issues with Chane at the moment. It isn’t clear if we will be able to work through these or not. They truly may boil down to conflicts between our most basic personalities. The health issues interfere a bit in how I react an respond. They do not change the fact that we’ve been struggling with this for a long while now. It’s just reached a deal breaker.

I hope this small post will help get past a writer’s block so to speak. That it opens up my ability to get things out. Bare with me please.

To My Mother by Edgar Allan Poe

To My Mother

 
Because I feel that, in the Heavens above,
The angels, whispering to one another,
Can find, among their burning terms of love,
None so devotional as that of “Mother,”
Therefore by that dear name I long have called you—
You who are more than mother unto me,
And fill my heart of hearts, where Death installed you,
In setting my Virginia’s spirit free.
My mother—my own mother, who died early,
Was but the mother of myself; but you
Are mother to the one I loved so dearly,
And thus are dearer than the mother I knew
by that infinity with which my wife
Was dearer to my soul than its soul-life.

by Edgar Allan Poe, addressed to his mother-in-law

I Love You

“I Love You!” by Carl Sandburg

"I love you,"
said a great mother.
"I love you for what you are
knowing so well what you are.
And I love you more yet, child,
deeper yet than ever, child,
for what you are going to be,
knowing so well you are going far,
knowing your great works are ahead,
ahead and beyond,
yonder and far over yet.'

Grandmothers

GRANDMOTHERS

Grandmothers are mothers who are grand,                                                     
Restoring the sense that our most precious things
Are those that do not change much over time.
No love of childhood is more sublime,
Demanding little, giving much on demand,
More inclined than most to grant the wings
On which we fly off to enchanted lands.
Though grandmothers must sometimes serve as mothers,
Helping out, or maybe taking over, 
Each has all the patience wisdom brings,
Remembering our passions more than others,
Singing childish songs we long remember.

Mothers

“Being a full-time mother is one of the highest salaried jobs…since the payment is pure love.”—Mildred B. Vermont

“A suburban mother’s role is to deliver children obstetrically once, and by car forever after.”—Peter De Vries

“All that I am or ever hope to be, I owe to my angel Mother.”—Abraham Lincoln

“Mother is the name for god on the lips and hearts of all children”—Brandon Lee

“Mother love is the fuel that enables a normal human being to do the impossible.”—Marion C. Garretty

“We never know the love of a parent until we become parents ourselves.”—Henry Ward Beecher

“You don’t really understand human nature unless you know why a child on a merry-go-round will wave at his parents every time around—and why his parents will always wave back.”—William D. Tammeus

“All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That’s his.”—Oscar Wilde

“It would seem that something which means poverty, disorder and violence every single day should be avoided entirely, but the desire to beget children is a natural urge.”—Phyllis Diller

“When you are a mother, you are never really alone in your thoughts. A mother always has to think twice, once for herself and once for her child.”–Sophia Loren

“A man loves his sweetheart the most, his wife the best, but his mother the longest.”—Irish Proverb

Mother’s Day Poems

I have a few Mother’s Day poems and quotes I’ve come across and thought I would share them during the rest of the week.

ODE TO MOTHERS by Kristen F. McKendall

Mothers cannot do it all
But surely do they try.

Mothers hear the angel's call,
To comfort all who cry.

Mothers for themselves may fall,
For others they will fly.

Mothers bear the weight of all,
For their children, they would die.

A mother's gift extends beyond
All bounds of time and space.

Her lovingness and nurturing
Make Earth a peaceful place.

What Is Monogamy?

I follow the blog of a very thought provoking man and with this post he set my mind to thinking. Well mostly in the comments section with this question of his to another reader “Not that I’m trying to pick a fight with you but I am curious; You stated you believe Swing and Poly are different. Yet you and your partner, who you are in a poly relationship with, go to a Swing club. By default doesn’t that show an overlap, even a small one, between Swing and Poly?”

In response to that I wrote in a comment of mine “PP, while she may be poly and she swings with her SO, why does that make the two related or a like? How is swinging with a poly partner truly different than swinging with a mono partner? I’m not being confrontational here but more curious.”

To which PP asked me this “Your comment confused me pretty good though. You said “How is swinging with a poly partner truly different than swinging with a mono partner?” Most common definitions for Monogamy include sex with only one partner and/or marriage to one person during a period of time. Given that definition, how can you swing with a mono partner? By default if you were Monogamous then decided to Swing wouldn’t your relationship then be defined as something other than Monogamous because you have more than one sexual partner?”

I tired to state my reasoning in a short amount of space with this…”My husband and I had been monogamous for 20+ years when we started swinging. And until I read about a year after we started that swinging was considered a form of ethical non-monogamy I wouldn’t have even thought along those lines. But even then I did not really consider us “non-monogamous”. Sure we had sex with others but that didn’t really count as not being monogamous in my mind I suppose. (Because I can separate sex and love? Most likely.)

Now, enter emotions into the equation. A whole different story for me. While I found it easy to share my husband sexually, I did NOT find it easy to share him emotionally. That is where the concept of non-monogamy probably first entered the equation for me.”

I guess my thoughts and beliefs at the time were that swinging really didn’t define monogamy for us. We had sex with others but we did it together. While we didn’t keep a sexual act for just us…as in we wouldn’t do something with a sex partner but would only do that one thing with each other…we did reserve love for each other. Sure, if we saw someone for sex more than once the possibility for a friendship would generally be there, but friendship and romantic love are so different.  We showed our monogamy with our love not with sex.

I’m becoming aware on different levels that most people do not separate the two things…love and sex…when considering monogamy.

Until love for others entered the equation, I (I’m more than fairly certain that Dirk felt the same but these are MY opinions I share here) basically still considered us to be monogamous. So we were swinging as a monogamous couple.

If I were to swing again, either with just Dirk or with just Chane or in any other combination, I would now consider myself to be swinging as a poly individual involved in two poly relationships. While polyamory is a different mindset by far that monogamy, I don’t see swinging as a monogamous person different than swinging as a polyamorous person.

I see where the two camps, swinging and poly, overlap at times. I know people that are part of both camps (myself included) and people that do not want to enter the other camp at all. I can understand that mentality since I’ve been on the far end of the swinging camp that I didn’t want getting close to the middle much less the other end of the spectrum.

The term my fellow blogger has coined for what we were practicing while swinging is “Emotional Monogamy”. I believe that describes it exactly. Dirk and I have ridden the rode of total monogamy, to emotional monogamy, to polyamory. It has at times been a long and complicated journey but even through it all we’ve grown and opened our mind to things we would never have considered. We will never think the same as we did before.

I noticed on my friend’s blog that he also has a term call Accidental Monogamy which he defines as “The result of you and your SO not having any other partners for a while. You plan more and more time together and at some point realize you have been seeing only each other for a significant amount of time. Not something that happens on purpose, but instead happens naturally.”

I’ve heard some people comment that in this situation these individuals are not poly. IMO, that isn’t the case. I’ve said before that I believe poly is a state of mind more than something that has to be practiced all the time. Does the fact that the individuals are only in one relationship each at the moment mean they no longer believe in poly or want to be poly or that they would turn now turn down an opportunity to see someone else if they had one? IMO (as that’s all this blog is really about), that isn’t the case. If you’re happy at the moment, then great! Not everyone can say that.

I’m asked at times if I would live monogamously again. Sure, I could do that. I was happy while I did so. But, because I believe in polyamory now, would I really be able to call myself a monogamous person? Or a poly person living monogamously?