On being a victim

This post has a trigger and TMI warning for childhood sexual abuse.

Keep reading after the jump if you want to.

I would like to warn any friends who read this that this contains some very personal information that you might have preferred not to have found out.

I wrote this over a period from June 2012-now, which is why it's so long.

The broken refrigerator and its application to triggers

This entry was written after my first day of "therapy", but published well afterwards.

The counselling session opened with mindfulness meditation. (I mentioned I was nervous, he suggested we do a meditation/breathing exercise to get me calmer). That took me by surprise. It was just like Sam Harris' one from the Global Atheist Convention 2012, so I felt a little less weird about it since I'd had experience with that sort of thing before.

I noticed one interesting thing that my counsellor said that I could really relate to as a polyamorist.

He said, "Often when we feel negative emotions our immediate reaction is to run away from them or avoid them. But we would really benefit from looking at the emotions, or confronting them in some way and examining the reasons behind them. It's often just your body and mind trying to warn you about a threat, but in reality there's no threat there."

I almost said to him, "that sounds just like the broken refrigerator analogy for polyamory!". 

But I didn't. I wrote this blog post instead.

It's a cultural thing, okay?

Atheism and Christmas time is a theme that's been done to death, but in all my time I haven't really seen much on a topic near and dear to my heart: the nativity scene.

A nativity scene is about the most religious Christmas decoration you could imagine - small ceramic figures of  Jesus, Mary, Joseph, the wise men and farm animals. It's the first thing you'd expect an atheist family to cast aside.

When I was a kid, my family had a nativity scene. A real basic one - the holy family and some animals. It was without a doubt my absolute favourite part of christmas. I'd set it out and arrange the figures with much joy.

When I went to France at the end of year 11, I had the opportunity to stay in Provence, a region that has an amazing custom of the crèche - a nativity scene that is of such a scale that it extends to incorporate the entire city of Bethlehem. Most families have one with a few dozen pieces; some churches or shopping centres would have ones with hundreds. My host mother had quite a few pieces and we even went on a trip to Frejus so she could visit a market and pick up a new figure or two.

My host mother's creche! Isn't it pretty? (click to see full size)

Remembering my childhood fascinations, I was fascinated with them and was almost going to buy a few figures until I saw the ones at the market cost several euros each (boo!).

A few days ago, amid very droll observations of the presence of Christmas stuff in the stores in August, I thought to myself, "me and Mr Wrong need to buy a christmas tree in the after christmas sales so we have one next year". Then I remembered the nativity scene thing, and all the stuff it meant to me and reminded me of and how "cool" it was.

So you know what I did? I bought one. A legitimate provençale set that's going to be shipped from France with about a dozen pieces.

And you know what? I like the tradition. So I'm going to continue it, religious baggage be damned!

I'd like to hear other peoples' opinions on this. What religious customs are you keeping that perhaps you shouldn't? What customs do you miss?

Relationships that can't last aren't such a problem in polyamory

Often, you see on dating advice columns or similar people asking for advice about their current relationships. They have a partner who they love a great deal and have a nice relationship with, but for some reason or other there's a point of incompatibility that, whilst small, is insurmountable. I often see this on reddit where a girl is childfree but her boyfriend wants kids, or a guy is fiscally responsible but his boyfriend throws money around on designer shoes, and many other examples.

In these situations, the sage dispensing their valuable advise will invariably say something along the lines of "You need to break up. I know it's going to be hard, I know you don't want to do this, but you can't stay together so it's best to get it over with."

This seems to stem in some way on the monogamous need to find "the one" - any time you're spending with this "dead end" partner is time you could be searching for "the one". In polyamory, you can date partners who "aren't marriage material" whilst still being able to date partners who are.

I can relate to this situation. Mr Wonderful is just such a partner; he's super important to me right now and my world revolves around him and I want to spend every minute I can snuggled into his shoulder, but I know on a deeper level that we're not compatible at this stage in our lives. (Maybe in 5 years that will change; who knows). I know that if I was monogamous, I would be seriously considering ending things with him because it would be the right long-term strategy so I could go find my prince charming.

But I am so, so happy that I'm not monogamous because I'm not ready to say goodbye to Mr Wonderful.

I might never be.

But I'm also not ready to marry him in the foreseeable future. And there's no problem with that.

The things society lets us get away with

Yesterday I got to help out at a science fair as one of the judges. It was a pretty cool experience, ranging from seeing the kids who really didn't give a shit (as was to be expected) to the kids who had done awesome experiments and obviously put a lot of effort into their data and its presentation.

The highlight for me was a poster detailing one student's quest to find out how to store coke to prevent it going flat; refrigerated or not and with the lid on or not. As a heavy drinker of pepsi (I am trying to cut back, I swear!) I could really relate to this. Other honourable mentions include comparing different types of diet drink in how they react to mentos and the really dedicated group that grew three plants, feeding them monster energy drink, powerade (it's got electrolytes! they're what plants crave!), or water and measuring the plant height every day.

After the judging was over, the school invited us into the staff room for a cup of tea and a biscuit. I walked in, all smiles, and was greeted by a middle-aged teacher who was sitting at the table eating his lunch.

The following exchange occurs:

Him: You can't be an engineer! (smiling, joking way)
Me: Why? (expecting a comment about my age, funnily enough)
Him: You're a woman! Women are meant to be at home cooking dinner. (again, clearly a joke and meaning nothing by it)
Me: Dude, that's not funny, not even as a joke.

I am really proud of myself for saying something back, even if he got a little bit offended by my reaction. He made some justificationy comments like "I'm not a sexist, my sister in law is an engineer and when she was presenting to some businessmen in Dubai they mistook her for the tea lady and asked her to bring them coffee".

But seriously, you might think my reaction was a bit much, but imagine someone saying something like that to a black man. Doesn't that just horrify you and make you super uncomfortable, thinking about someone joking that a black engineer shouldn't be engineering but shining shoes or picking cotton or whatever the racism is?

Why the hell does our society let people make comments like that about women?

Oh, and the best thing? He was the home economics teacher.

Disengage!

I hate being in the closet.

Yeah, there's a polyamory closet. Parents, work colleagues, and friends don't necessarily take kindly to hearing their son's girlfriend has a guy on the side.

Me and Mr Wrong came out of the closet together around November 2011. This was pretty early into being poly; I made a post on the subject. In the intervening six months, my mother hasn't gotten more positive and isn't quite sure how she feels about us being engaged if we're not going to be "committed" to one another. (Being committed and being exclusive are, of course, two very different things!)

Mr Oldman sort-of-but-not-really came out to his Mum in January. He told her that his new girlfriend (me!) was dating someone else as well; in my mind, he communicated that I was casually dating two guys and would eventually "choose" one of them. He properly came out to his sister (in detail) more recently. He was speaking of coming out to his mother in more detail soon, which has made me really happy.

I hate the closet. I hate "being dishonest". Having dinner with Mr Oldman's parents while we were dating was really stressful for me - I felt like I was walking on eggshells. I keep on having to dance around the fact that I live with a guy I'm desperately in love with. Before I go to see them, I have to "disengage" - take off my ring. I don't like lying. I can't do it.

Strangely enough, I once encouraged Mr Wonderful to give the closet a go. He was having to choose between me and another girl, and was worried that the Other Girl's parents wouldn't approve of him having two girlfriends. I told him "the closet was invented for people like you" and pontificated on the benefits of introducing the Other Girl to his parents whilst keeping me his secret on the side. I think I proposed this partially because I knew the Other Girl wasn't poly inclined (so it would never happen), and I would have been okay with it because I wouldn't be the one lying to Mr Wonderful's parents. Plus, a stressful relationship filled with lies is better than no relationship at all.

Of course, Mr Wonderful hates lying even more than I do (he told me to swear never to tell his sister about us; within a fortnight he'd told her on his own), so it wasn't really an option for him.

But I really don't understand how so many poly people think the closet is acceptable in the long-term. I read about many triads who are outwardly a "couple" with a "roommate". Do these people really want to hide their loving, multiple-year relationships from the world? How can they do it, when I couldn't stand hiding my (at the time) ordinary, two-month relationship from my parents?

Platonic Sex

I found this in my archives and saw that I never posted it. Rather than let it linger, I think it should be published for the world to see.

This was written in February/March 2012.

This all remains pretty accurate. I never developed feelings for 3; I certainly give partial credit to the rules we made, though our desire to ensure that no feelings came of it probably had a greater impact.
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So, it turns out an FWB arrangement can work; at least for a little while.

It's still surprisingly early days. Because of things we won't get into, we've been physically intimate less than half a dozen times, so there's certainly a possibility that in a few months time there'll be another post that will make me eat these words.

I'm impressed by how well my brain is compartmentalising the arrangement. I was actually rather worried that it wouldn't; that the stories would be true and I'd begin to feel those pesky emotions I've heard so much about, but no.

I still fantasize sexually, of course. The object of my fantasy varies depending on the day and the act I'm fantasising about, and 3 is very much in the rotation. But I'm very detached, emotionally speaking. The feelings of romance and affection I feel for my boyfriends Mr Wrong and Mr Oldman are very strong when I think about them and especially so in sexual situations; not so with 3.

I remember once when I was waiting to see 3 for some planned intimacy. I remember worrying because I didn't feel like being intimate with him; I wasn't looking forward to it. I hoped that when the situation became sexual it would work out; and it did.

I don't quite know what I'm trying to say here. I guess it's that in a sexual context (in bed, undressed) I find 3 irressistable, but seeing him in a non-sexual context (even shirtless for swimming, say) does nothing for me.

I guess I'm just impressed my mind can be so detached from the whole thing. The media has always made it clear that such detachment is at best difficult and at worst impossible, but it's not been our experience.

I should also mention that the sex is very interesting because it's completely detached and platonic - we'll be hanging out as friends in bed, kissing and touching, laughing and joking, without any of the warm emotions that I have with Mr Wrong and Mr Oldman. I still have a great time with 3, but it's so very different.

I wish that I had words to describe it beyond "platonic", because apparently by definition the act of sex can't be "platonic" (which is defined as: Intimate and affectionate but not sexual.). But oh well - when I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less.