Being Satisfied

I had a rough day yesterday. I was very disappointed in Chane for not ensuring we saw each other. Our quad anniversary was this week and also one of the few nights a month I get to see him…due to schedules and being limited to one car at the time, I didn’t get to see him for either of those things. Therefore, I was missing him quite a bit.

Yesterday, after I mentioned that I miss him, he suggested I come to the city he was shopping with Arwen and his mother in. Now, this was suggested ONLY after I mentioned missing him and at a time it was not feasible for me to go. Otherwise, I’d have gone in a heartbeat. I mentioned it would have been nice to have know about this on Friday. He said he hadn’t thought about it then. I HATE when he makes me feel I am forcing him to see me and he has to come up with something. It hurt that he hadn’t even thought about seeing me, especially considering the days during the week that had been special or normal visiting days.

Like I said yesterday, I spend quite a bit of time on my own these days. And of the four of us, I am the only one that does that.

I was upset over these events and talked with Dirk about it. I told him that I wanted to find someone who actually wanted to spend time with me and I wasn’t an afterthought with (not talking about him but Chane). He in turn got upset with me. Told me that, even though I’ve said I could live monogamously again with him, when I say these things he doubts I can do that. I could be happy with just him if we closed our marriage. My point is that it is NOT currently closed. So, why shouldn’t I want to be with someone who makes an effort to be with me? Someone to whom I do not always come last. What is wrong with that since our marriage isn’t closed? Am I allowed to only have a relationship with this one man other than my husband? Is it his old pattern of double standards? Because his relationship with Arwen only the restrictions of his making. If he wanted to spend more time with her he could (other than the problem with his schedule). She could be more important in his life if he wanted.

And I absolutely hate to cry because of all this shit.

Collector Mentalilty

I belong to a couple of poly forums and this topic was brought up on one of them.  The act of constantly seeking out new relationships is what I got was being referred to in this post.

Although I am currently in a poly-fidelious relationship it isn’t that I identify as polyfi. It’s because the majority requested such and at the time I had not reason to object. Working through changing your mentality from monogamous to polyamorous was more than enough on my plate at the time. And I just didn’t have time for anyone else even if I had wanted to pursue that.

I don’t have a problem at all with someone who wants to practice a polyfi form of polyamory and more than I have a problem with someone who doesn’t want polyfi to be a part of their polyamory style. It is all about what works for you in my opinion. I’ve always said poly for each person is what they make it….what works for them. Though I believe that can change over time.

This post I referred to had the reason some are always seeking new relationships to be that they want to be open to all that polyamory has to offer. Well, I’m open to all it has to offer me as well I believe.

I’ve thought about this lately as I imagine you know. I’ve considered asking to have our quad opened up. I see the main restriction to the number of relationships a person can maintain to be time. Not your capacity to love but your time management.

I have much more time on my hands these days. No children live at home now and Dirk still works shiftwork. Leaving me alone 7 straight evenings on the month, sleeping alone 7 straight nights in a month and spending parts of three weekends a month alone. I’ve finally accepted how my relationship with Chane is and he cannot be with me any significant amount of that time. While I am fine with being alone for the most part, there are times that I would definitely like some company. And I’ve fully opened myself up to being poly. I see seeking another relationship as perfectly acceptable in my eyes.

Being open to the possibilities of all poly has to offer does not mean I want to constantly be trolling for someone new. I don’t generally want the NRE involved in a new relationship and never feel as if I should enjoy it to the max any way. I never want those I love to feel like they are on the back burner and I’ve put way too much work into my current relationships to want to jeopardize them.

In my book, being open to the opportunities is just that. Being open. Who knows what will come along?

It’s Our Anniversary!

Today is the third anniversary of when we made an agreement for the quad tohandle things as a marriage. It wasn’t something we would treat as easily ended when things got tough. We were going to be in this for the long haul. We commemorated this decision by getting matching rings for us all.

Sex and Differences

I don’t often blog about sex. I more than admit that I like it and want it and find it in some ways essential. But, I don’t think I could end a relationship entirely over sex (or the lack thereof). It’s true that part of my attraction to someone is there attitude regarding sex and their ability to enjoy sex. Since learning to enjoy my sexuality after many years of repressing it (for reasons totally understandable), I find that sex is an important way of expressing myself. Whether that expression is love for a partner, the simple enjoyment of sex without love or whatever I want it to be.

This was Father’s Day weekend and I feel as if I received a gift instead of the guys. I was lucky enough to have individual time with both my men. And extra lucky for me, part of that time was engaging in sex! How lucky can one woman be?! Enjoying sex with either of them isn’t normally a rare occurrence, but occasionally the following just hits me and I revel in the ability and freedom to enjoy.

Part of any type of open relationship, no matter what you call it—-swinging, polyamory, open marriage, is the diversity of those you engage with. Today I’m strictly speaking of the diversity of those you engage in sex with.

My two men are so alike in may ways and I able to appreciate that. But they do have their differences and sex is one of those. Both are giving sexual partners thank goodness but for the most part that is where the similarities end. Some differences are:

They do not approach/broach sex with me in the same way.

They do not kiss me the same way.

They do not touch me the same way.

One is more vocal than the other.

One is more rough than the other.

They flirt with me differently.

They tell me they love me differently. In ways and in tone.

Still no explicit sex details for me here. I sometimes would like to do that better but I accept my writing limitations.

But, that wasn’t really my intention with this post.

I wanted to plainly state what is glaringly obvious to me at times…I’m so lucky! Poyamory has given us the chance to experience some very diverse relationships and that has truly enhanced our lives in many ways.

HAPPY FATHER’S DAY!!

Father’s Day Poems

Father’s Day

Over the years
As we grow old,
We remember our father
So brave and bold.

In the garden,
Leaning on the plow,
He would listen to me;
I see him now.

He would give advice
And understand;
He was always there
To lend a hand.

God made fathers
Strong and firm,
For he knew our lives
Would have great concerns.

So he gave us fathers
To teach us to pray,
And guide our lives,
And show us the way.

So on his day

Let’s take the time

To say “Thanks, dad.
I’m glad you’re mine.”
Mary Frances Bogle

My Dad’s Hands

Bedtime came, we were settling down,
I was holding one of my lads.
As I grasped him so tight, I saw a strange sight:
My hands. . .they looked like my dad’s!
I remember them well, those old gnarled hooks,
there was always a cracked nail or two.
And thanks to a hammer that strayed from its mark,
his thumb was a beautiful blue!
They were rough, I remember, incredibly tough,
as strong as a carpenter’s vice.
But holding a scared little boy at night,
they seemed to me awfully nice!
The sight of those hands – how impressive it was
in the eyes of his little boy.
Other dads’ hands were cleaner, it seemed
(the effects of their office employ).
I gave little thought in my formative years
of the reason for Dad’s raspy mitts:
The love in the toil, the dirt and the oil,
rusty plumbing that gave those hands fits!
Thinking back, misty-eyed, and thinking ahead,
when one day my time is done.
The torch of love in my own wrinkled hands
will pass on to the hands of my son.
I don’t mind the bruises, the scars here and there
or the hammer that just seemed to slip.
I want most of all when my son takes my hand,
to feel that love lies in the grip.
David Kettler

Fathers are Wonderful People

Fathers are wonderful people
Too little understood,
And we do not sing their praises
As often as we should…

For, somehow, Father seems to be
The man who pays the bills,
While Mother binds up little hurts
And nurses all our ills…

And Father struggles daily
To live up to “HIS IMAGE”
As protector and provider
And “hero or the scrimmage”…

And perhaps that is the reason
We sometimes get the notion,
That Fathers are not subject
To the thing we call emotion,

But if you look inside Dad’s heart,
Where no one else can see
You’ll find he’s sentimental
And as “soft” as he can be…

But he’s so busy every day
In the grueling race of life,
He leaves the sentimental stuff
To his partner and his wife…

But Fathers are just WONDERFUL
In a million different ways,
And they merit loving compliments
And accolade of praise,

For the only reason Dad aspires
To fortune and success
Is to make the family proud of him
And to bring them happiness…

And like OUR HEAVENLY FATHER,
He’s a guardian and a guide,
Someone that we can count on
To be ALWAYS ON OUR SIDE.
Helen Steiner Rice

Quotes on Fathers

” By the time a man realizes that maybe his father was right, he usually has a son who thinks he’s wrong.”—-Charles Wadsworth

“When you teach your son, you teach your son’s son.”—-The Talmud

“My grandfather always said that living is like licking honey off a thorn.”—Louis Adamic

“If the new American father feels bewildered and even defeated, let him take comfort from the fact that whatever he does in any fathering situation has a fifty percent chance of being right.”—-Bill Cosby

“A new father quickly learns that his child invariably comes to the bathroom at precisely the times when he’s in there, as if he needed company. The only way for this father to be certain of bathroom privacy is to shave at the gas station.”—-Bill Cosby

“Be kind to thy father, for when thou wert young, Who loved thee so fondly as he? He caught the first accents that fell from thy tongue, And joined in thy innocent glee.”—-Margaret Courtney

“I talk and talk and talk, and I haven’t taught people in 50 years what my father taught by example in one week.”—-Mario Cuomo

“A king, realizing his incompetence, can either delegate or abdicate his duties. A father can do neither. If only sons could see the paradox, they would understand the dilemma.”—-Marlene Dietrich

“The father is always a Republican toward his son, and his mother’s a Democrat.”—-Robert Frost

“You don’t have to deserve your mother’s love. You have to deserve your father’s. He’s more particular.”—-Robert Frost (opposite for us)

“A father is a banker provided by nature.”—-French Proverb

“A father is more than a hundred schoolmasters.”—-George Herbert

“My father didn’t tell me how to live; he lived, and let me watch him do it.”—-Clarence Budington Kelland

“My father said, ‘Politics asks the question: Is it expedient? Vanity asks: Is it popular? But conscience asks: Is it right?’ “—-Dexter Scott King

“My father taught me to work; he did not teach me to love it.”—-Abraham Lincoln

“Sometimes the poorest man leaves his children the richest inheritance.”—-Ruth E. Renkel

“That is the thankless position of the father in the family–provider for all, and the enemy of all.”—-J. August Strindberg

“A man’s children and his garden reflect the amount of weeding done during the growing season.”—-Unknown

“A truly rich man is one whose children run into his arms when his hands are empty.”—-Unknown

“The most important thing a father can do for his children is to love their mother.”—-Unknown

“My father fave me the greatest gift anyone could give another person, he believed in me.”—-Jim Valvano

Fathers

On the Beach at Night

On the beach at night,
Stands a child with her father,
Watching the east, the autumn sky.

Up through the darkness,
While ravening clouds, the burial clouds, in black masses spreading,
Lower sullen and fast athwart and down the sky,
Amid a transparent clear belt of ether yet left in the east,
Ascends large and calm the lord-star Jupiter,
And nigh at hand, only a very little above,
Swim the delicate sisters the Pleiades.

From the beach the child holding the hand of her father,
Those burial-clouds that lower victorious soon to devour all,
Watching, silently weeps.

Weep not, child,
Weep not, my darling,
With these kisses let me remove your tears,
The ravening clouds shall not long be victorious,
They shall not long possess the sky, they devour the stars only in apparition,
Jupiter shall emerge, be patient, watch again another night, the Pleiades shall emerge,
They are immortal, all those stars both silvery and golden shall shine out again,
The great stars and the little ones shall shine out again, they endure,
The vast immortal suns and the long-enduring pensive moons shall again shine.

Then dearest child mournest thou only for Jupiter?
Considerest thou alone the burial of the stars?

Something there is,
(With my lips soothing thee, adding I whisper,
I give thee the first suggestion, the problem and indirection,)
Something there is more immortal even than the stars,
(Many the burials, many the days and nights, passing away,)
Something that shall endure longer even than lustrous Jupiter
Longer than sun or any revolving satellite,
Or the radiant sisters the Pleiades.

Poem by Walt Whitman

For Our Fathers

Anecdote For Fathers

I have a boy of five years old;
His face is fair and fresh to see;
His limbs are cast in beauty's mold
And dearly he loves me.

One morn we strolled on our dry walk,
Or quiet home all full in view,
And held such intermitted talk
As we are wont to do.

My thoughts on former pleasures ran;
I thought of Kilve's delightful shore,
Our pleasant home when spring began,
A long, long year before.

A day it was when I could bear
Some fond regrets to entertain;
With so much happiness to spare,
I could not feel a pain.

The green earth echoed to the feet
Of lambs that bounded through the glade,
From shade to sunshine, and as fleet
From sunshine back to shade.

Birds warbled round me---and each trace
Of inward sadness had its charm;
Kilve, thought I, was a favoured place,
And so is Liswyn farm.

My boy beside me tripped, so slim
And graceful in his rustic dress!
And, as we talked, I questioned him,
In very idleness.

"Now tell me, had you rather be,"
I said. and took him by the arm,
"On Kilve's smooth shore, by the green sea,
Or here at Liswyn farm?"

In careless mood he looked at me,
While still I held him by the arm,
And said, "At Kilve I'd rather be
Than here at Liswyn farm."

"Now, little Edward, say why so:
My little Edward, tell me why."---
"I cannot tell, I do not know."---
"Why, this is strange," said I;

"For, here are woods, hills smooth and warm:
There surely must one reason be
Why you would change sweet Liswyn farm
For Kilve by the green sea."

At this, my boy hung down his head,
He blushed with shame, nor made reply;
And three times to the child I said,
"Why, :Edward, tell me why?"

His head he raised---there was in sight,
It caught his eye, he saw it plain---
Upon the house-top, glittering bright,
A broad and gilded vane.

Then did the boy his tongue unlock,
And eased his mind with this reply:
"At Kilve there was no weather-cock;
And that's the reaon why."

O dearest, dearest boy! my heart
For better lore would seldom yearn,
Could I but teach the hundredth part
Of what from thee I learn.

Poem by William Wordsworth

One of My Favorite Blogs

Polyamory in the News!

. . . by Alan

Way to go Canadians!