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

[iroshi.livejournal.com]

My opinion on the matter is this: it is all right to change yourself to better suit someone you love IF and ONLY IF you never, in the slightest, betray yourself in the process.

I've been watching you. Carefully. You know this. And even when I question you about the intervening steps sometimes (unpack, Az!), I have not seen that you are betraying yourself in any instance.

If you were to put it to people that someone whose respect you value would respect you more if you were not having casual sex, and so you have decided that you value that respect more than the sex, and will therefore stop having casual sex...who would then worry? Or complain? Or say that there was abuse there? But because you phrase it differently than that (when honestly, that is the core of the issue), they worry.

From actions that I have perceived from Darkside in the past (albeit, through you, but I get more of an unbiased view from IM'ing you than most would, given my particular talents, and the fact that you trust me enough to shield very little from me...dunno whether you're conscious of that or not), I trust him with you. He has refused to let you betray yourself in the past, for him or for any other you wished to give parts of yourself to. He loves you, and can therefore be trusted (to the extent one can trust anyone, of course, since he is human and fallible) to put your happiness and health and harmony as high priorities.

Whether he will ever come to consider himself IN love with you is a separate issue. As long as you are not betraying yourself, hoping for something you may not ever get, then I am content with the changes you are making.

Besides which, I think they are changes which will be healthy for you, no matter what your reasons for initiating them.

[iroshi.livejournal.com]

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.

While I didn't know you before-Shawn, no, and I can make no commentary on how much of your programming has returned to pre-Shawn-code, I can say that all of your core programming has been written by Az. I can't give you a datestamp on it, but I can tell you who the author is. There are a handful of subroutines that still have Shawn's stamp on them...but most of them are fairly isolated and will only pop up in not-often-used functions.

I suspect a lot of your re-written core has been re-written with his effects still in mind, to prevent a reoccurrance of that particular programming style. For lack of a better metaphor. :)

Plays Well With Others

[azurelunatic]

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.

Re: Plays Well With Others

[iroshi.livejournal.com]

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?

[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...

[azurelunatic]

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.

[crimmycat.livejournal.com]

...when I was already silent, quiet, his meek little secretary.

scary. that sounds exactly like Crystal, the few times I've met her. Except for a certain latent hostility brimming under the surface, you didn't mention that.

[azurelunatic]

You mean the grouchy way I would snap out to my friends about all his shortcomings, then after they started laying into him, would defend him against them? You mean that one?

[azurelunatic]

...and Christel wasn't entirely stable when they did get together... and he hasn't been helping.

[azurelunatic]

Post to the poly community on the subject: http://www.livejournal.com/talkread.bml?journal=polyamory&itemid=303154

[azurelunatic]

FYI, Christel took their kid and left Shawn about two weeks ago. He's moping but otherwise not creating a problem.

(Am re-reading old entries from Augusts past. 2001 is next.)