I’ve always felt like we operated more like two interconnected triads than as a quad. As such, Fix’s and Temptress’s separation directly affects the other three more than me. I see the pain both women are going through. Fix is so hurt that he is trying to hurt everyone else around him. He asked Temptress to stop all intimacy with Laundry Goddess and me and also to pack up and move their family out. She refused on both counts. Tonight she is reconsidering the full stop though. She feels she needs to meet him halfway.

I can’t imagine a loss much greater than losing one’s family. Fix brings much of it on himself. He refuses to take responsibility for the anger he directs at his wife and kids. I question if he would be able to continue with a poly relationship even if he is able recover. After so much has gone on over the last two years, I have trouble imagining him healing enough that I’ll feel comfortable living with him again. Temptress has told me that the two of them would be divorced already if they hadn’t joined us but I doubt either of them would have ever left without someone else to go to. Trying to pull towards and away from a relationship simultaneously is next to impossible. Have we provided the safety net she needed to make some hard decisions or did we put her in a position to have to choose us over her husband?

The real question is where do we go from here? Where will this therapeutic separation for 3-6 months lead us? I am ready to be the husband of two and father to nine children. I believe we can put things in place financially to handle that handsomely. I am also somewhat mentally prepared to see her pull away from us to give their original family a shot at working. How will LG handle it if she does? How does that possibility affect the choices of houses we are looking at? How does that affect the working relationship between Temptress and myself? Could we all live under one roof, but more like a duplex style with the families separated out? How do we separate out the finances and put our housemates back on their own feet? How do the current stresses of raising our teenagers play in to any decisions? What about the little ones who don’t remember a time when they weren’t living together as one unit?

Even if Temptress pulled away, moved out, and tried to make a go of her marriage, would it ever get a fair shake if she knew she had us to come running to at the first sign of trouble? How long do we sit around waiting to see if we fit back into her life? When do you fight for a relationship and when do you run away from it? At the end of the day, she has to choose and LG and I will support her choice. Everyone deserves another chance.

~Mr. Big

11/25/07

Well… That’s that.. Looks like the three want me out apairently me wanting thangs across the board to be the same for all 4 is now 3 and 1. With me out for 3 to 6 mos. Till I get more help. Seance I am the one with all the problums and won’t take the responsabilaty for my actions. It ok for them to make so meny rules that I can’t fart with out sleeping alone for weeks and the three of them live happyly togather day and night. But it all my fault. I am the one who pulled away. I am the one who wanted this poly thang to make me happy and make are marrage better to fill the emty spaces that I couldent get filled from my spouse sence we were such a berdun on me for 15 years I am a loud an uncareing person that don’t care about enythang ecept who will lay me next and a hotel stay. Yep its all me I asked for a full stop on the relationships till tempress and I get back on good ground again goddess has put what she says a nothen on us till I repair the marrage with temp. Temp has put a stop on us till I get more help on my manners and mouth. Thae fact is sence my breakdown. No iam not the same as I use to be. Nore is she fact she had her mid life befor. After that I was told I needed to come up to her level like it or not took her some time to get thru some tough times but I sat and let her find her way and no I never ask the right questons becouse she would not talk to me at the timeabout what was happening and when I did ask I got hell for it. She spent most nights on the putter talking to goddess and I would get upset at the late times she would be up talking to her but not me. Butt I was wrong and its my falt that I wouldent ask or talk. I could say I dident care but that would not be the right truth. Course my truth is so wrong eny way if I did say the truth it would still be wrong. For 22 mos we been in this and I have issue with how I am seen in this and treated likethe one that don’t belongs. Or if I were to say it correctly. The one who needs to come up to there level. That’s that

When I married my husband those many years ago, I was a starry eyed girl who believed in “for better for worse”. Who believed that there was nothing that could ever happen to change my love for him. I felt my love was as unconditional as the love I felt for each child born to us.

I realize now that was faulty thinking. How arrogant of me to believe I was so much better than the rest of the world to be able to hold on to those ideals when so many others before me had failed.

I spent the first half of our marriage in a state of delirious euphoria. We were so happy and often felt we had the world by the tail. I’m not sure what changed for him initially, but as 1997 drew to a close I noticed a subtle shift. It would be almost an entire year before I realized that he was struggling with something internally. And by the birth of our daughter in February of 2000 I came to the full and stunning realization that he was not happy. He loved me, he loved our children, I never doubted that for a moment. I still don’t. But he had the air of a man who felt trapped in the life he lived. I treaded carefully, always monitoring what I said and how I behaved. I tried so very hard from then until 2004 to be the best wife I could be for him. To keep the house, make it a home, corral the children into calm and silence when he walked thru the door each night. No he didn’t get slippers and a pipe and martini each night, but sometimes it felt as if that was a role I needed to play to keep him with us. Each day I awoke and looked at his sleeping form and wondered if this was day he would decide he couldn’t live with us anymore. And each night as I kissed him goodnight, I wondered if it would be last we slept beside each other.

Did I spend these years miserable? No, in fact I made lemonade from lemons. I lived each day with the hand dealt and tried to keep and air of happiness floating within our home.

In 2004 we were handed a huge shock when we found out LM3 was on her way. We thought our baby days were behind us. I had begun classes to return to work, life was settling into a predictable if not perfect pattern, and our oldest who was challenging child from the word go was about to graduate High School and fly from our nest.

About 2 weeks after we told about the coming baby I spent an entire night sitting awake and having a conversation with my belly and looking deep inside myself. By morning, I was at peace with the coming baby and had turned my shock into delirious happiness. I had 1 final chance to carry a baby, a final birth to savor, 1 final term of 2 am nursings in the moonlight and I was determined to enjoy every teeny tiny moment and to relish this, what would be my swan song in this stage of motherhood.

But something I was no longer at peace with was myself. Who I was, or rather who I had become. I had allowed so many things to tweak my persona to the point that I could barely recognize myself. I spent the entire pregnancy, and months following her birth, searching deep into my soul. It was almost as this little one I carried inside had shown me a portal to the inner depths of myself. I am so very thankful for the wonderful opportunity that had been handed to me and I used it to the best of my ability.

I questioned everything about myself. What I believed, who I was, what I wanted from life. What I wanted for myself, and my children.

I began to change my appearance, my manner of dress, what I read, where I went, who my friends were, what I believed, and how I worshipped. And what seems to have had the most impact on me recently, is what I wanted from my husband and my marriage.
My husband began to notice these changes, but as some men do chalked them up to pregnancy hormones. And even as these many changes spilled over into the following year he sent asking glances my way but never really asked or questioned what was happening within me. And I, realizing how very different I had become with the new or maybe I should say the real me, or who I was really was inside, was not in a place yet where I could look at my husband and say, “ I love you, but…” Apparently, men are not the only ones who have can have a midlife crisis, it has been insinuated by many friends that I may have been living within my very own midlife event.

In the fall of 2005, the south was plagued with hurricanes. And my dutiful husband went with his utility company to help restore power. It would take him from us for 9 weeks. During those 9 weeks, the world as we knew it changed. His demons were set free to plague him in full force, simply haunting from the shadows was no longer their style, instead they stared him right in the eye.

And I, while home with the children alone for that time, was able to tell my dearest friend that I wanted more than friendship from her. That in fact I was in love with her. She in turn had an offer me, for us, that brought 2 couples into a world we never thought to see.

After the hurricane work passed, we took a weekend to try on our new polyamorous marriage. The weekend itself was eye opening enough, but the trip home was an event I wish had been left out of my life lessons. Finding out that my husband had had an affair with a close friend was enough. And in fact I think over time I could have come to terms with that. But my husbands demons had rattled him enough that he in fact was making plans to leave our marriage and family since he now felt confident that I would be loved and cared for by new loves. For 7 hours my husband drilled into my head that he didn’t love me, he didn’t think he ever loved me and we should divorce. There was so much more said that hurt beyond measure, but these were what stuck with me most. These are the words that haunt me still today. Finally at the end of that day he recanted all that he had said. His excuse was that he planned to leave me and thought it would hurt less if I hated him first.

What he hadn’t counted on was my depth of love for him. Be that as it may, something inside me died that day, I’m not sure what exactly, I know that the way I look at him has never been the same. Within 6 weeks of this shattering event we celebrated our 15th anniversary by renewing our vows on the beach. The setting was perfect, only those closest and dearest to us were there, it was in the eyes of those there a most beautiful and perfect day.

I felt it was a last ditch effort to save what I saw as a sand castle being washed away with the incoming tide. When I look at the pictures from that day I feel sad, we had waited years for this particular anniversary so we could celebrate it with a renewal of vows, and laughingly thumb our noses at those who said it would never last. Maybe they were right after all.

When my husband had his breakdown, I in some ways saw this as a do over. I was in hopes that what ever demons he was fighting would finally be laid to rest. And he would be like the phoenix, able to rise from the ashes, better, stronger and more wonderful than ever before.

It has been a heart breaking realization to come to terms with the fact that he may never heal from his demons. In fact they may haunt him so badly for the rest of his life that he will always be this time bomb of anger and depression. He seems more unhappy and withdrawn from me than he ever was in those dark years between 98 and 05. In fact what I saw as a do over has become such a test of my love for him and my commitment to our marriage that I have begun to mourn the fact that maybe am I not up to that task any longer.

I love him so very desperately, that fact has not changed. But can I continue to live with him, with who he has become? That is the question that haunts me. Do I want him out of my life… NO. I still want him close to me, and my life and our children ,as much as he is happy to be. But I can’t be the dutiful wife any longer, standing by him come what may. My unconditional love, apparently has conditions. I want more. I feel, I, we, deserve more.

The question now is will a marriage of roommates be what becomes of us, or will it be taken further and ended altogether. Or can we find someway to build a new marriage. I am at a crossroads once again in my life and this time it is not a decision I want to make.

I love my husband… I want our marriage and life together, but most of all what I want is for Fix to find peace and happiness inside himself.

Our Little Miss, age 3, has been in our cohabitating home for 21 of her 36 months. She was a mere 15 months old when we moved our loves and their family to our city. We used to think that when the younger children got older, they would scarcely remember a time when the whole tribe wasn’t together; that we would all meld into one family blob.

As the primary domestic engineer, I do most of the cooking/feeding, some of the bathing/bedtime routine, and a fair portion of the children’s general looking after, including routine discipline and special events/treats. Temptress and I assumed given the young age of LM3, that having two mommies to care for her would in some way negate the “my mommy” curve, at least with one of our kidlets. Not so, not even by a long shot. Recently Little Miss has taken to demanding “I want Mommy.” And she is not ambivalent about which one.

This does not bother me in an “I want her to think of us equally” way, although it can be quite annoying in the “I don’t have time to play ring around the mommy duty” when things need to get done in a timely manner and the little stinker wants to take everything through the Mommy Appeals Process. But her persistence has gotten me to thinking about what seems to be this innate place inside most of us that is desperately in need of that ONE other person to be of significant importance.

We also have a similar situation with LM13, as she has been stubbornly separating out our familial lines since the adults began trying to erase them. We hear things from her like, “that’s not the way OUR family used to do it” or “Our family always puts the cranberry salad in this bowl.” It’s an understandable defense strategy for a kid who doesn’t grasp the full impact of our poly blending. Even more so when we acknowledge she has some strong loyalty issues that surround this posture.

Another thing I’m beginning to see with all of the children (with one exception – there is always an exception, isn’t’ there??) is that no matter how much they love our “one big happy” existence, sooner or later they all will demand time with the care-giver of origin. No matter which child asks, or in what manner they request, there seems to be a need for one-on-one, personal, private, and specialized time alone with their “most important” for the moment.

I have to think that the terms Primary, Secondary, and etc. in the poly vocabulary may not be so much of a job title as it is the soul’s need to cling to the hope that no matter what else happens in this life, there is at least one other soul on this planet with whom you truly belong. This may indeed be the #1 argument for Monogamy’s supporters. But taken to extreme, I suppose you could use this same argument for only having one child per family as well.

Many months ago, after what seemed like many months of intense discussion over the primary/secondary issue with Big, I told him in the heat of a rather prickly moment that I never wanted him to utter those words again. And a nod in his favor, he hasn’t. But the removal of those terms from his speech did not eradicate his feelings on the subject. I know he still needs me to be first, most, best for him. Unfortunately, my best is not now and never has been enough for his contentment.

I realized within a few years of starting our ever growing family, that the role of house frāu, however important at the time, would not satisfy me long term, but it was important enough in the big picture to dedicate three plus decades to that calling. I knew I would have time for me/us; for fun and frivolity; for indulgence and spontaneity once the children were a little older and needed less of everything. I love being a Mommy, but it isn’t my entire self. I have so many more facets that have either been temporarily placed on hold, or have not yet been given opportunity. I cannot do or be all, and for this small time in our life line, the children and their needs outweigh Big’s need to socialize, or at least my ability to be the mingling side kick.

I’m usually not one to proclaim my better qualities, but in our prior monogamous life Big had it good by most people’s standards; he had it really, really good if only by our own standards. I was a stay at home mom and I was rather effective at what I did. I lived for my family. He was my universe and my world revolved around him. I did with him, and for him, in his time, and normally by his whim. I’m just now coming to terms with the flaw in that Utopia.

It’s not that I believed I was “all that.” I just wanted to be all that. With my conservative upbringing I had been trained to think I could be everything he needed, and then in turn he would be everything I needed. And it wasn’t long before I realized I could never live up to that ideal. Neither could he. That childhood fed Cinderella dream of happily ever after began to get a little cloudy and the circumstances I shaped for myself began to look more like trappings than the path to fulfillment I’d imagined. Slowly I realized not only could I not be everything, but I wasn’t nearly enough. Reality hit hard that day, and most every day since.

So here we sit in the middle of Polyville and I’m thinking we’re a long damn way from 1950’s Leave it to Beaver monogamy, or, in our case, let’s use the 1970’s Brady Bunch Gone Wild analogy. There are days I feel very lost in a world I don’t understand, and there is no place to go for any definitive answers. We’ve had to meter out our rules of engagement and determine for ourselves what works. This can be quite troublesome for the paint-by-the-numbers kind of gal I tend to be.

Big and I are now of the belief that one person cannot be expected to fill all needs of another. We’ve traveled down a path away from monogamy and into polyamory. Our poly-fi status meets my need for variety and my need for security. Big, Fix, and Temptress together fill the vast majority of my emotional and physical needs. We are an amazing team. I’ll be honest that not every single hole is filled, but those that are remaining are minor, or temporarily unimportant – for all things shall come to me in due time. Within these walls and with these people I have a very full and joyous life. Apparently, this is not the case for Big.

Thanks to his internet poly communications, Big now refers to our sizeable family as a “confining box.” Somehow in his internal rationalization of our alternate lifestyle, he convinced himself that “true poly” means love is unlimited (ok, most poly folk will agree with that, as do T and I) but in his mind, he can no longer be enclosed by our “fi” constraints. I’m not sure why this surprised me, as he wasn’t able to live within his vows of monogamy either.

The question is not so much if it is permissible for him to continue his ongoing pursuit of other relationships outside our quad, as much as it is whether he is fulfilling the commitments he has already put in place. Isn’t there a fine line between following your dreams, and being selfish in your pursuits to the exclusion of those trophies you already have on the shelf?

As much of a contradiction as it may seem, I hear him say things like, “This isn’t what I signed up for,” and “I may have wanted more, but I didn’t want to loose what I already had.” I think what seems to be the problem is he underestimated the effect that his actions and wanderings would have on the starry eyed 18 year old bride he married. He took some steps that set some changes in motion, and the inertia is still producing ripples that are on some days outside his comfort zone.

I’m not sure how to help him move from, “You can’t have your cake and eat it too,” to “Whoever said you can’t have your cake and eat it too never had dessert at our house.” That change in mentality is really just a paradigm shift, but compersion has to evolve from within a person no matter how much I’d love to give him a dose or two. Another quote I’ve heard lately is, “Jealousy isn’t about how much you love someone, it’s about how insecure you are.”

There are days I feel his discomfort. I can sympathize with his plight. He sees our situation from his own eyes and from his point of view. The best analogy I can come up with for my own understanding is… he saw a cool brochure for a trip that looked adventurous and fun, we planned and packed, but when we arrived at the destination, it wasn’t exactly as he had envisioned. That is the trouble with journeying into uncharted waters. You think you know what you’re looking for, but you can’t be certain it’s actually out there.

Everyday we make choices. Some choices are planned and well thought out, others are spontaneous and impulsive. Sometimes you achieve the results you wanted and sometimes you don’t. Sometimes you can get away with stepping over boundaries and other days you can’t. There are consequences to every action. Even inaction will eventually reap a consequence. Sometimes you can predict a consequence and other times they come from the blue and smite thee about the head and shoulders.

There are many things in this game called LIFE that are out of our control, but our job as sentient beings is to take what we have and move forward in such a way that leaves us with as little regret as possible. I’ve come to a place where I may not have had a lot of choice with the genesis, but I’m feeling relatively content in the journey. I wish that was the case for everyone.

In the immortal words of Forrest Gump, “Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re gonna get.”

~the laundry goddess, November 4, 2007

One of the things I constantly endeavor to do for our kids is to create memories. I’m always wondering what they will remember when they look back on their childhood. So in this vein, I am ever vigilant to add in the details, the fun little quirks that make the kids say, “Thanks mom that was fun!”

Last Halloween we decided to take the holiday festivities a step further and invited a few friends from the neighborhood for an early evening buffet. We had ghoulishly fun and creepy foods and then allowed the kids to fan out into the neighborhood for trick or treating, followed by a candy count/swap session where we warmed ourselves with hot chocolate until other parents arrived to pick up their masquerading marauders. We had a fabulous time and it is something the kids talked about for the better part of eleven months. “We are going to do that again, right? Mom, RIGHT??”

So, yes, we did it again. Temptress and I searched for more fun and creepy foods, gathered more ensemble pieces to our festively spooky décor, and created some positively delightful memories for our brood which this year consisted of a gruesome monster, a matching set of vampiress sisters (ages 14 and 5 respectively), an Autumn fae, a TopGun styled fighter pilot, one cross dressing bleach blonde Malibu Barbie wanna-be, one headless boxer, an Arabian princess, and one of the sweetest pale legged little ladybugs you’ll ever see.

Temptress and I spent the better part of a month planning this occasion with nothing less than the fervor of a corporate R&D staff. I think even Martha Stewart would have been proud at the atmosphere we created. At last count we had near 35 children (including a few crashers without invitations) and an assortment of parental units that enjoyed the evening. I can’t say it went off without a hitch, but nothing that a towel, a band-aid, or a strawberry margarita didn’t fix.

The kids all gathered at our home, running in and out drooling over the banquet table. With menu items like Monster Toes and Swamp Slime, who wouldn’t be hungry? If I haven’t mentioned it before now, let me just say for the record that dry ice has to be one of the coolest inventions on the planet. Between the smoldering cauldron of magic potion punch and the house lit entirely by candlelight and glow sticks, the evening took on a spooky elegance. Even our precious cockatiel got into the spirit of things with his pumpkin colored cage drape.

All in all, I’m not sure who had more fun – the candy laden kidlets or the parents enjoying some much needed fellowship. Temptress and I finally got a chance to sit down and prop up the feet near 9pm last night. These special celebrations require lots of preparation, but the results are so worth the toll on the back and the nerves. Not only did our eyes and stomachs get a treat, but we found some much needed nourishment of the soul having a living room full of new family friends that knew us as a family unit.

After only two years, I’m certain we’ve perpetuated a family tradition that will help bind our clan. It’s something to look back on, and something to which we can look forward. Maybe the events that fuel our memories aren’t really about the magnitude of the moment, but the lingering of the emotion. May we always endeavor to build in earnest that which brings us hope and happiness.

Wishing a very happy and blessed new year to everyone,

~the laundry goddess, November 1, 2007