Today Fix was at the house hanging out with us, helping work on a few things around the house, having dinner, and playing around with the kids.  Casanova (YM8) came through the dinning area after dinner with a bandana on his arm like a sling, announcing he had a broken arm.  Then he proceeded to take it off and use it for a parachute, launching some appropriately sized boy toys over the banister into the foyer below.

Fix decide he was going to make The Most Amazing Parachute Ever and then he calls to Casanova and says, “Bring me your G.I. Joe!” 

“Huh?  What’s that?”  says the boy.

Fix replies aghast, “What do you mean, “What’s that?”  It’s G.I. JOE!  Everybody knows what G.I. Joe is.  What’s wrong here?”  We could hear him huff from the other room.  Temptress and I began to chuckle from our office.

Our families have had such different backgrounds; I honestly never thought to introduce the boy to G.I. Joe.  His two older brothers didn’t have such toys either.  No guns, no green army men, and no other types of military or war items.  In fact, the closest thing to cowboys and Indians they ever got was Toy Story’s Buzz and Woody.  Not that I’m against these toys, (ok, I’m a passivist, so maybe I influenced that a little, but…) they just didn’t ever enter the picture as something I would have chosen for them, nor did they ever ask for such.

I was raised in a house of women.  No brothers, no father, not even any uncles, cousins, or boy friends that were around enough to have any type of influence in gender roles for this little girl.  I was always immersed in “feminine” play things:  baby dolls, Barbie, Holly Hobbie, and Easy Bake Oven.  There was a boy about my age, the son of my mother’s friend, who had G.I. Joes.  When we were in our early elementary years, he would bring them and play with me and my Barbies.  This, of course, was never a first choice of play time for either of us, but as long as we were forced together, we made the best of it.

Suffice to say, my boys have been gifted toys of art, music, building sets, books, sports equipment, camping and scout gear, games that teach, and now that they are older, some video games.  OK, I’ll admit it, yes, I’m one of those moms.  But I’m learning to relax a little and accept that boys will indeed be boys and that is still ok.  Not that my boys are prissy, but they are far from the other end of the spectrum.

Big isn’t much of a macho guy either.  For those of you that know him, he’s totally a “Suit.”  He hikes and camps and does the scout thing and an occasional fishing trip with his Dad, but he doesn’t hunt or have any hobbies that require weapons.  He isn’t much of a sports fan and most months no one in the house even has a clue what season it happens to be.  (The only exception being high school football, but we’re there for the marching band, LOL)  Anyway, you get the picture.  Back to tonight…

Fix stands there in our craft room, eyes amusingly mocking me, and asks in a humorously indignant tone exactly what kind of a mother I am not buying the boy a G.I. Joe.  “That’s a sacrilege, you know.”  I smile politely and told him what I told you, it just never entered my head to do so.  He rolls his eyes and takes one look at the pajama clad boy and says, “Go get your shoes on.”

At 30 minutes ‘til bedtime, Fix and the underprivileged boy head out to our local oversized-under priced-multi purpose-store-for-everything (ya, you know the one) in search of that thing he couldn’t wait another minute to own.  And I glowed.  THIS is what our family is all about.

Sometimes polyamory gets a bad wrap.  People get all hung up on the multiple relationships between the adults.  But as far as I am concerned, there is nothing like the love and bonding I see between my children and the others that we now consider family.

Just like one person cannot possibly meet the needs of another, in my estimation, even two parents cannot possibly cover all the facets of childhood.  My kids need my OCD tendencies and love for culinary creations, Big’s mathematical intellect and risk management style, Temptress’ technical expertise and relaxed approach to life, and they most certainly benefit from Fix’s mechanical brilliance and his heart for those really important things like G.I. Joes.

It’s now WAY past bedtime, and all the really big kids in the house are at the kitchen table oohing and ahhing over the tiny sized weapons and green army tank.  But it’s a Saturday night and we’re making memories over here.

~the laundry goddess, August 30, 2008

In today’s society people today seem to look for a quick easy solution to life’s larger problems. It’s like everyone thinks slapping on some tape on a struggling relationship will solve everything. Personal relationships aren’t that simple.

Relationships in all forms, whether they be business or personal, need to be fostered from the beginning with great care. You can’t just stop after offering services to a client in a particular way, throw up your hands and say “I QUIT!”. Then a year later start offering the same wonderful customer service as you did in the beginning.  Expecting your client to welcome it unconditionally.

Individuals have expectations of each other. If you build a relationship with the expectation that you will be a constant variable or convince them you can offer assistance, they will expect it.  They will request it. Of course expectations also lead to a level of stress on your part, but you can’t just quit without recourse. Parties who don’t deliver on expectations loose respect and belief from other half.

Change is an inevitable part of relationships. Couples with successful marriages of 60 years will tell you stories of turbulence and change. Companies such as Apple and Kellogg’s can tell you incredible stories of major strategy and innovative change. Do not be naive to think any successful partnerships had a blast guiding the other halves through change. People will resist change. Gentle, consistent guidance and support in the direction of change will guide the resistant through it. Not easy, but consistency is the key.

Consistency.

Honesty.

 Integrity.

Sincerity.

Relationships broken, both business and personal, cannot be fixed with a quick solution. Some relationships must weather the change. People need to come to terms with the reality that relationships on the brink of breaking cannot be repaired in a last ditch effort. Not a hastily applied piece of tape nor a day of insincere actions will wash away how the relationship was fostered during the early days or the rough waves.

Time and care will be what is required. If one is diligent and sincere and truly desirous of reparations, then in time, that which is wanted so dearly will be achieved.

Temptress

As I left yesterday you asked for a good-bye kiss. I could not offer that. Instead I gave a small portion of what was rolling around in my head and on my heart. You accuse me often of shutting down and not sharing. And many times when I do share you accuse me of “attacking” you. I took a chance on honesty yesterday and told you exactly what was there. I am certain my words hurt. And while you may not believe me, hurt was not the intention. Honesty was.  Yesterday your barbed comments in LG’s direction were meant to poke her I am sure. While they may have accomplished that goal, they hurt me as well.

I do love you, I love you dearly, but I do not love the way you manipulate a situation to suit yourself. Someone can ask something of you and you will be very honest and tell them you can not give that. Then let time pass and a situation change and then at some point you need that very thing that was asked of you. And you expect compliance.

How fair is it of you to deny someone because you don’t “like” it… and yet when you find need of the very same thing you expect it.

You want to blame me… (or Fix and I/polyamory) for the distance in your marriage right now.

You want to say if we had not come along your marriage would have been fine, it would not be in the difficult position it is now.

Well you may be right about it that. But what you don’t understand is that while you would have been happy, she would have been dying. She was dying a little inside each and every day. I know, because I was too.  When you give over everything of yourself to facilitate the happiness of the person you have chosen to spend your life with, you in a sense give them your life, your soul.

Over time your identity, who you are inside, becomes what they need you to be. Your true and real self withers and atrophies and over time it can die a complete death and leave you an empty shell of who you once were.

LG and I were on that path. We were giving so much of who and what we were to the two of you, that we were losing ourselves. Taking poly, and the relationship she and I have out of the equation for the moment, I can tell you that we each loved our husbands to the best of our ability and in wanting their happiness, we were willing to sacrifice ourselves. It that the fault of the two of you?

No… it was ours. Or maybe it was our mothers, our friends, our religion, or our society. But somewhere along the way we were given the message that the happiness of our spouse was our responsibility even if it was to the detriment of our inner selves.

Does that mean we were miserable every day of our married lives? No. The choices we made, we made freely and we were willing to live the rest of our lives in the manner we had chosen. But then some event within our lives rattled us inside, shook us awake and made us realize we were dying and hadn’t known it. And in the wake of that internal quake and eruption, began that which would carry our inner selves to a place where our souls wanted to live, they wanted to breathe and see the light of day. And when we tried to quash that awakening for your sakes our souls rebelled and begged for life. And in a stunning realization we stood up, breathed deep and made a conscious choice to live again.

We did not realize the repercussions to you two, or to ourselves that this choice would have, we see them clearly now, but even with the pain that has been experienced we know that we made the correct choice. The choice to live is always right.

You are both wanted by our sides, in our lives and in our hearts, but we can no longer walk this path as malleable, complacent and compliant wives who wander through this life with no “self” left. We also do not want our former selves to be the example set for our daughters. We want their happiness as well as our own, and if our former selves set the path of unhappiness for our daughters then we would not be the mothers that they needed us to be.

You and LG have trained each other throughout your years of marriage to know what to expect from the other. You now are in the position of not knowing the woman your wife has become and therefore you do not know what to expect from her and you still wish for her to fill all of those places for you she has in the past. She on the other hand has come to know exactly who you are and no longer expects you to meet those needs. Rather she has embraced the polyamorous life you two chose and has found ways for her needs to be met in other ways. This does not mean that she needs you any less, only differently.

You want her to reach for you, to turn to you, to want you. The more you pull her to your desired path, the more the freed soul in her will pull away.

My only advice to you is this. She has made a commitment to you and will honor that, but if you continue on this path that is all that you will have left of you two. Commitment.

You need to show her that she can count on you, she can expect certain things from you, she can come to see you as the man she needs you to be.  But this can’t be done if you go about these tasks as putting on a face, of “kissing ass” and pretending. You have to want inside to share that which is important to her. To make a conscious choice to be a part of what interests her, not because she is a part of your To-Do list, but because you truly desire to understand her and what she is about.

Once this is accomplished I am certain you will find that your needs will be met by her. This is not a “if you do for me, then I will do for you” situation. It is about learning what is important to her and what she needs and then acting on it from love not duty. When she begins to feel cherished by you once again, then she will have no need to pull away, all you will need to do is look to your side and she will be there.

I know you would feel better blaming me for this situation. It is always less painful to point a finger at the perceived cause rather than the real one. You think she hides behind me, that she turns to me over you. What you don’t seem to remember of recall is that you have trained her over the years to not need you. When ever she did need you, you pointed her in the direction of others. Whether it was an emotional need ( “That’s what your friends are for”), a child care or household  need ( “That’s why I moved your mother in”) or a professional need (“ hire a housekeeper, plumber, fix-it guy, etc.”). You trained her to not need you.

In her eyes she feels she and the children were trophies, trophies to be pulled out and showed off as accomplishments, not cherished and adored parts of you. And now that you see her needs being met by me/Fix, you see her happy, you see the physical and emotional attention she offers us in return, you want that as well and then have no idea why she isn’t in a place emotionally right now to offer that.

Instead of laying blame, lay a new foundation. Build a new relationship. But do it with care and time and the realization that she can not see you differently until you truly are different.

~ Temptress

It never ceases to amaze me how a person can look at another and create assumptions about who they are and what they are about.

There have been numerous times over these last three years that we have left restaurants etc. snickering and giggling over the perplexed looks the waiter, clerk or other employ has worn in their quest to discern which wife belongs to which husband, which child goes with what mommy/daddy or why the hell is that man kissing two women. I am certain our poly life and the actions we take out in public confuse those in the land of normal.

On some occasions the person is so very blatant about their need to figure it out that we enjoy goosing them, playing a little cat and mouse for our enjoyment.

Today, my Goddess and I were out taking care of mommy duties free and unencumbered by the children who have all now returned to the land of quality education when we for the first time did not need to goose the person with the assumption…. She goosed herself.

LM3 will be taking ballet one day a week at her pre-school. This caused our LM’s 6 and 8 to beg longingly for ballet as well. So my Goddess and I stopped by the ballet school to register the two girls and pay up their first month. We have considered ourselves family from day one and to most people we refer to ourselves as a “blended” family when asked.

When filling out the girls applications today, we decided to fill out only one for ease. The form was made to accommodate more than one child so we thought this was a good choice for all concerned. The form asked for father’s name first, which I drew a line thru and wrote “mother” and then followed it with my name. On the next line that asked for mother I wrote  LG’s name.

During the course of the class choosing we had explained that the girls lived together and we were a blended family. When it came time to pay we handed her the amount listed for signing up two children from a family (a $5 discount). We were not looking for a discount per say, really five bucks isn’t going to break us, but in the scheme of things we consider ourselves family, and when we present ourselves as such we expect to be given the same treatment/benefits of such.

The woman says to us that since the girls aren’t really sisters we aren’t considered a family. We both state to her again that we are a blended family, we live in the same home and while they are not “sisters” we do consider ourselves family and they do call themselves sisters. Before we could explain further the woman’s eyes widened slightly and she said no problem, she would accept the discount amount. And then she followed it by saying  most women from families like ours, come out and say so right away, she didn’t understand our “situation” at first.

It took LG and I both about 2 seconds to realize that the woman had decided that since no fathers names were on the application, and that we had presented ourselves as family and living together, that in fact we were a lesbian couple.

She spent the remainder of our time there tripping all over herself. She had created an assumption that no matter how wrong (or right) it may have been, she now felt completely flustered by. LG and I did nothing to dissuade her from her chosen assumption, but neither did we do anything to show her she was “wrong”. Over the course of the next 9 months we will be at that dance studio on a weekly basis and in time she will come to know us and our girls and there will be enough evidence to show the real make up of our household.

While we are not hiding our lifestyle any longer per say, for the protection of our children we are not flaunting it. And we have also come to the conclusion that if people get to know us and our kids and then find us to be “normal” and our children well adjusted and happy, then when the “truth” comes out it will be a small blip on their radar and in some way we will have been able to show that families that are different are really just as normal as everyone else.

But in the end, what is normal?

Temptress