Stepping Out or maybe Stepping Away

I've thought quite a bit recently about my life.

At my age I supose it's natural. I would like to think as I'm sure a great many do, that my life has been just a little bit extrordinary but I wonder if that isn't like being just a little bit pregnant.

So, what has got me to thinking I need to have a diary? Well, let's say just one word, Polyamory.

You see, I am a middle class, white American female, married now just over twenty years (no lie), I have three great kids all somewhat normal and in various stages of maturity, I go to church, I volunteer at school, I shop and garden and lunch with my girlfriends. I'm of average height, average body style, average beauty. My IQ scores tell me I'm above average in intelligence but who's really to say. I bake cookies for my elderly neighbor, I drive too fast, I sometimes go through the express line with more than fifteen items, I've waited in line at Starbucks for twenty minutes to get a latte. I'm just like you, in so many ways I really am just like you. I live a wonderful, sometimes boring, middle class life.

Did I mention I have two lovers?

That my husband has a girlfriend?

That I'm Bi-sexual and have my eye on a woman I would love to date?

Yeah, that's the part that gets people everytime. Jaws drop open, there's generally lots of blinking like when the motor in your car won't start so you keep cranking the ignition. What does the average person say to that?

Well, it's my intention to help you and me have a better understanding of Polyamory; what it is, why we live it and how we manage, through the wonderful world of blogging.

First of all let's start with a little vocabulary.

My husband and I are partners for life. We are deeply in love, the best of friends and committed to staying together 'til death do us part. Our relationship is often reffered to as a Primary relationship. I know already you have lots of questions. How can we love eachother and be intimate with others? I'll get to that, right now let's just understand the language.

Now defining our other relationships can be tricky but let's keep it basic for now. My lovers because they share a good part of my life and because we have a strong committment to eachother, as does my husband and his girlfriend, they can be reffered to as Secondary relationships.

I also have a few friends with whom every once in a while I get together and we fool around. There is a varying degree of love involved, but not the same level of committment as our secondaries. These are called Tertiary relationships.

There are other words you should know as well like NRE, which isn't a word but it's a term I'll use pretty often. It stands for New Relationship Energy. It's a volitle mix of chemicals that attack the brain for a certain period of time, making you feel high, and reverting you back to the years when you were young and innocent about love and people and life in general. In other words you loose some common sense. Also, you'll need to know the term Quad, as reffering to a foursome of lovers, a Triad reffering to a threesome of lovers and last but not least Compersion. "Compersion is love manifested when a person takes joy in his or her loved one's happiness with another person. It is a form of empathy; that is, pleasure that a loved one is experiencing a good thing in his or her life. It need not be sexual." This definition I took from Wikipedia. It has a great section on Polyamory if you as a reader are interested in gaining more information.

So, by now, you are scratching your head, have lots of questions and concerns for the future of society and probably think America is certainly going to hell in a handbasket. This could be true, but whether or not your average, middle american neighbors are living an alternative lifestyle might not have as much to do with it as you think. Remember I did say I want to learn too. Part of the reason I'm writing in such a format is to explore my feelings and choices as I embark on a new stage of my life. The "whys" and the "hows" are not always easy answers, I have found in the last two years of actively living poly that sometimes there just aren't answers. As a person who likes to problem solve and fix things, that's a tough pill to swallow. I'm learning as I go and I though you might like to ride shotgun on this bumpy, roadtrip called LOVE.