Polyamory, read/write

[azurelunatic]

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:

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


2. 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.

Comments

[azurelunatic]

Quite possible.

He's never messed with my mind in a way that I didn't give him permission to do; he handed me the chains, and I put them on. (That was the image I saw back when it was happening; why didn't I stop it then?)

He did influence me to invoke the "people before principles" clause of my programming, to accept a wider range of behaviors as acceptable.

It would be educational to have the notebooks from that era here with me, now, so I could read what was happening in my mind when I was reprogramming it for ease of use around him. I hadn't recovered myself much from Shawn's influence when I became engaged to BJ; hitting Arizona and meeting votania and Darkside did a lot to help me clean out my code and rewrite it. Darkside sat through me crying on the phone about Shawn to him, far later at night than I really should have been calling.

I think the primary reason I'm using Darkside's opinion as my touchstone for what, and what not, I should be doing, is because he took the teaching that my parents tried to give me far better than I did; he may be a little stuffy at times, but he's very much like I was, pre-Shawn. It's a feeling akin to meeting yourself again, only a copy that was saved at a certain date before a certain disaster, and got to mature naturally past that point without undue interference.

I didn't respect Shawn. I didn't respect BJ. I was closer to respecting Adam, very much closer. After certain of the upsets, though, I don't and can't trust him. He has a very Fire temper, and that's not a good thing for maintaining relationships. I respect Darkside immensely. It hurts Darkside, in fact, when I say something that lets him know that there are areas where I don't approve of something he's doing; he has high regard for my opinion as well.

I'm accustomed to rambling on, and thus tend to leave things out...