azurelunatic | Polyamory, read/write

DC feels that I'm coming out as Darkside's apologist for the lousy way he's treating me. She saw me through Shawn, saw the damage I took; and she met me a few years into the Shawn relationship, when I was already silent, quiet, his meek little secretary. She sees in Darkside another Shawn, another user, abuser, who will mold me into their conception of the perfect woman, then toss me, as their image of perfect won't be truly perfect.

I disagree.

Wired had alarm bells go off at my mention of stopping sex with other people because it bothered Darkside. I have a bad habit of writing the beginning motivation and the end result, skipping a good deal of internal debate in the process.

Given: Darkside values monogamy, and especially values my not sleeping with people who will do me mental and/or physical damage.
Given: I have a tendancy towards sleeping with people.
Opinion/Psychological observation: Darkside is less likely to allow himself to become attracted to someone who engages in frequent sexual activity with multiple people without an established healthy relationship.
Given: I love Darkside and wish to enter a relationship with him.
Observation: If I'm going to sleep with someone, it's most likely going to be someone I've slept with before.
Observation: Darkside approves of the idea of my sleeping with

ralmathon.
Fact: I have not had sex with

ralmathon.
Opinion: Neighbor does not wish to have sex with me.
Hypothesis: Darkside would not enter a relationship with me unless I were completely single.
Opinion: I really, really want to have a relationship with Darkside.

Weighing all of these factors, knowing Darkside as I do, I conclude that if Darkside has so much as a spark of attraction towards me, I could do one of two things to encourage it:

Continue sleeping with Adam, which situation frustrates Darkside for sake of my sanity

Make myself single so that Darkside would have a chance at me

Somehow, knowing Darkside as I do, seeing the disappointment in his eyes when he gets that tense expression on his face when I mention getting it on with Adam (not to mention

iroshi's insights on the matter), I don't think that the solution is to keep throwing myself at other guys.

Knowing Darkside's history as I do, I suspect that one of the best things I could do to encourage him towards a relationship would be to demonstrate my caring for him, and my constancy. Knowing his conservatism, I vote for that as well.

Understand that constancy and celibacy are well within my nature, just not the side of my nature that I've been exploring over the past eleven months. Polyamory has been my ethical position since I knew the word. Polyamory is the loving of many, but includes also the loving of the self.

I would be doing myself a great betrayal were I to ignore my love for Darkside (yesterday, I realized how much I did feel for him) and continue to maintain relationships that I feel little for, now, and ignore the possibilities of things that might be, because it would be giving up short-term pleasure.

Darkside has always been the person that I knew I could become exclusively pair-bonded to, were I given the opportunity. As I hadn't been given the opportunity, I continued to play with relationships that I knew held little to no future. Darkside's Primary status was part of the initial consultation with Adam about a relationship. Adam will not date a woman who's not of his religion. I could not, would not, change religions for the purpose of dating Adam.

Cordelia said it best: people before principles.

I mainly speak of my many small submissions to Darkside, because it pleases me to submit. I don't speak so much of the equally many, equally small, actions of standing up for what I choose to be doing at any particular moment, no matter what he thinks of it, because after the repairs to my mind and soul, standing up for myself is not so much a problem any more.

If Darkside didn't care about me the way I am, I wouldn't consider him my best friend. If he didn't continually say little things to build me up, help me be more myself, refuse to let me blind myself, I'd probably have wandered off, feeling lost, in some other direction.

boojum knew me as I was just beginning to know Shawn, and her ex,

pyrogenic, knew me before that. They're my baseline here. Everyone else I know on LJ has only known me after Shawn. I'm still not so sure how much of the me that I am now is me, and how much is Shawn, to whom I gave near-absolute write permission. Darkside's not Shawn. He refuses to become Shawn.

I could love him for that alone.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I am, honestly, at least a little bit concerned for myself on the hope-without-promise-of-return field. I hope to marry him, someday. I know it's happened before that dear, beloved friends of mine *cough*Shawn*cough* have gotten married right out from under me; that, and a few other factors, threw me into a severe depression of at least six months.

Here is where Neighbor first suggested the concept of me setting a goal (and I think you can guess what goal he suggested).

It does not surprise me that I don't shield particularly heavily over IM with you; if something started feeling odd in a bad way, I'd probably clamp down harder than a nervous virgin.

My readings in the past for my likely outcomes regarding my love for Darkside have been the 6 of cups, the "plays well with others" card. Not necessarily a particularly romantic card, but a card of harmony and caring. That's all I could ask for.

Whether he and I become anything more than friends, I'll still be the better for having known him, and so, I think, will he be the better for having been my friend.

Adam suggested, the other day, that I change myself to fall out of love with Darkside. I rejected the idea near-immediately, then thought about why. Yes, I might have more mental peace if I were not head-over-heels in love with the man. However, I don't want to become the person who would not love Darkside, given the depth of our connection, the things we've shared together. Darkside's noticed that when I try to unlove him, those are the times when my worst emotional states are predominant. Learning the control to keep from slipping so deeply into his personal space would be a good thing; unloving him by brute force psychomechanics would be a Bad Thing, as I would lessen myself in the process.

Discussing anything Darkside makes known to me is a tricky process. Interacting with him, I get overtones and undertones and everything else that someone like you or me gets out of a conversation. It reads as "said" to me; this is why the precise wordings from some of our conversations are fading, as the blank words don't convey the proper depth of feeling.

Unfortunately, when I chat with someone about something that happened, say, the interaction between him and my parents, the conversation becomes muddled. I see a lot more of what he thinks, feels, than my parents did, in that conversation. When my father brought up the topic that Darkside must have had a hard time holding onto friends, moving around so much as a military child, Darkside's expression changed into the expression I know to be of pain, when an old wound's disturbed, but to someone who does not know his face, isn't linked in (as my parents aren't) he would have just kept a poker face and replied that yes, it was difficult. He kept his outer composure extremely well; to my eye, he was still wincing over the old sore spot, dragged up yet again by my father, who didn't know, couldn't have known, that this was a Heavy Issue. Glass masks.

It does not surprise me that I don't shield particularly heavily over IM with you; if something started feeling odd in a bad way, I'd probably clamp down harder than a nervous virgin.

Personally, I think we recognize each other as co-Workers, for lack of a better term.
Fellow clerics? In another religion, I suppose we could call ourselves women of the cloth... :)

Adam suggested, the other day, that I change myself to fall out of love with Darkside.

Now, *that*, I would judge, would be a betrayal of yourself. Loving Darkside does not Harm you. It might hurt you a bit, but that's your own disappointed expectations, not the love itself.

I don't want to become the person who would not love Darkside

The person who would not love him, given all that he has given to you, and his deep caring for you...is someone you do not want to be, and someone I would not call friend. It would take a wounded or twisted person to return his caring with not-caring.

Just out of curiousity...does he ever read this stuff?

When even Darkside's recognized that my love for him's an integral part of me, and would not have me change it, even though when I over-express it as I'm likely to do, it causes him more than occasional discomfort, it's not something that I should lightly think about changing, especially on the request of someone whose judgement I don't particularly trust, even though I care about them. When Darkside kindly, gently, and firmly chewed me up one ear and down the other for attempting to squash that part of me that loved him, while holding my hand and reminding me that he did not think of me in that way, I'm even less likely to think upon that as a positive change to make.

Darkside doesn't read my journal, though he will occasionally snipe bits of it from over my shoulder, though he has been invited to and given the address time and time again. I wish he would read this journal sometimes... it would make some things so simple, but then it would make some things a good bit more embarrassing.

Polyamory, read/write

Plays Well With Others

Re: Plays Well With Others

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