I can’t count the number of time one or more members of our poly household have blogged about hierarchies, fairness, equality, or primary status. In fact I am beginning to see these terms as words I would like to strike from the dictionary.

There was a time when it could be argued that I disliked or misunderstood these terms because I was full, I had what I needed, therefore could not see the point of view from the “quad” member feeling the need of one of these terms.

Now I can say having been on both sides, and sitting now on the side of inequality I still wish these words no longer existed.

For 16 months while Fix lived away from home I spent almost every single night sleeping in the same bed as Goddess and Big. She slept in the middle between us wrapped around me. When Big ended our relationship I felt being in their bed with them was no longer the place for me so I moved back to my room, which in the end was exactly where I needed to be as Fix returned home within  a matter of weeks.

Suddenly I went from being held nightly by the woman I love to finding stolen moments and hoping and praying for any time Big would allow us.

You see Big refuses to sleep alone. So unless he is away on business, Goddess is with him. He demands Primary status, he demands she act in a hierarchical fashion, he demands the lions share of her time or attention. Recently they have had some rather serious problems in their marriage, mostly because of the above listed demands. He feels entitled to these things and feels he isn’t getting them.

If he wasn’t getting the “preferential” treatment he wanted then please tell me why it is he has had her sleeping next to him for the last 11 nights and I haven’t. Why it is he is leaving for 48 hours and upon his return she will again be expected to be by his side each night until he leaves again. It could be 6 days or 6 weeks.. it matters little. She is to be by his side when he is in residence.

Do not misunderstand. It is not sex I am looking for. It is the opportunity to have her eyes and beautiful smile be the last thing I see as I close my eyes, to feel her arms around me as I drift into slumber. It is rolling over at 3 a.m and feeling her warmth next to me. It is opening my eyes as dawn peeks thru the windows to see her sweet face relaxed in sleep.

I suppose I should be grateful that we are still living under the same roof. But I ask myself daily how i can move through our home with her in our daily duties as mothers and homemakers and still miss her terribly. My eyes search her out. I ache to run my hands through her hair, to smell her skin, to hold her to touch her.  She is with me and yet I feel completly alone.

Big would NEVER stand for almost two weeks away from her and yet he expects Fix and I to. He thinks because he is her legal husband and we are “just lovers”, he has the rights to her time and we have what he allows.

I admit to being hurt by his actions towards me. But I am finally  in a place where I can see past that. In fact I think he did me a favor by cutting me loose. But what hurts more is how he demeans what Goddess and I have and what Fix and Goddess have by placing us on “standy-by” status. We are supposed to wait in the wings until he is away, and only then can we have any place with her.

And within all of this turmoil is Goddess herself. Smack in the middle. Trying to balance us all. As much as Big’s actions hurt Fix and I, as much as he is “taking” from us, he has NO idea how he is hurting her and what he has taken from her. Why can’t he see that the more he gives, the more he will get back.

I wish so much we could all just live and love in harmony.

Temptress

Temptress and I stumbled upon interesting thread in the PolyWeekly forums a few weeks ago.  As we normally do, she sat there reading to me as I fritter unfocused at my desk right beside her.  We discussed the post and its replies before deciding to add a response of our own.

You can read the original at http://forum.polyweekly.com/index.php?topic=353.0 or read below the expanded blog worthy revision of our opinions.

~~~

Speaking as the female half of a cohabitating quad, we can say this topic has an extremely broad spectrum, and no single post or essay can begin to quantify all the nuances that poly cohabitation brings to the table.  We (from here on referred to as I for simplicity sake) can say, that like everything else in poly, there are no hard and fast rules and it is up to the constituents of each tribe how they go about setting guidelines that work within that home.

In our particular case, we did not opt for the incremental path.  We closed our eyes tightly and leapt quite quickly into the poly version of what two monogamous couples being monogamous together might look like.  I akin this choice to the differences between marrying your high school sweetheart at age 17 or living a full life first and then marrying at 35.  Both situations have their pros and cons, and which ever path you choose, you don’t have a lot of perspective on the other.  You just look up and say, “here is where we are, where do we go from here?”

I won’t try to dissect or recap our entire three years together (that’s what blog archives are for, right?) but all of us agreed from the start – before we even knew the poly community existed – that the caveat should be “do one relationship right first, when that one is solid, then consider adding more.”  Cohabitation is Life PLUS.  Remember the old commercial with the fried eggs?  “This is you brain, this is your brain on drugs.”  Same with cohabitation – it is not for the weary or faint of heart.

It is my opinion, of course, that cohabitation is the “final frontier;” especially so if you have children.  The four adults made a very serious choice reinforced with commitment (in a private ceremony, if you want to call it that; rings and promises were exchanged) and in so doing blended the lives of nine children.  When times are tough and we feel like selfishly making other choices, it is the love that brought us together and the life of these children that call us back to center.  For better or worse, these 9 children are fused into forced sibling-ness and to separate them now would be, in the words of our therapist, “detrimental and utterly devastating.”  They are our anchor to reality and a constant reminder of our original vision.

Were we adult singles, we might consider cohabitating more like playing extended house with our current lovers, when we as individuals are free to come and go as we please, needing nothing more than communication, honesty, and a Google calendar.  Our quad doesn’t spend every waking moment together, but we are consciously raising our children with the “village” mentality.  Only by living under the same roof did we feel like we were really life partners, not just weekend playthings.  And that doesn’t mean we feel like cohabitating is “THE” right way, just another option that fit best with our ideals.

We are extremely careful about keeping ourselves as much under the radar as possible, seeing as we still live in a conservative area.  That will change at some point in the future (the 3-5 year plan) but for now, we exist to most as “two families sharing residence for financial and child care benefits.”  Some have their suspicions, but we are careful not to confirm that for anyone not poly friendly.  The main thing is making sure we adhere to the residential laws in our county; making sure there are no more than two persons per bedroom and making sure our total numbers jive with the amount of mandatory square footage per occupant.  (For more on that, check your local housing regulations.)

I would think how a clan approaches their (potential) cohabitation would be similar to how they approach poly in general.  If you are the quiet and shy individualist, cohabitating is probably not the right answer for you.  Blending people into a tribe is messy – there is more noise, more issues for debate, and yes, more drama.  But there is also more love, more sex (don’t tell we actually admitted that), and more potential for support in the daily task of living.

With all the ups and downs our poly life has presented us in the last three years, I oft hear people ask, “Does this really make you happy?  Is this really working out for you?”  And I always, ALWAYS, say yes; without a doubt.  I don’t love the turmoil or the drama or the mental game playing, but life is always going to be messy in some way.  Regardless of the choices you make, there are no pristine and uncomplicated lives out there.  At least in this situation I am surrounded by people who love me and who are dedicated to sticking it out, in good times and bad times.  Regardless of our “mood of the day” the love is there, so I continue to hold on with the hope that we all can learn from our mistakes and evolve into the household we once held up as the ideal for what we each wanted in our lives. 

~the laundry goddess, November 8, 2008

 “The long and winding road
That leads to your door
Will never disappear
I’ve seen that road before
It always leads me here…”

It has been a long 9 months since the night I asked Fix to leave the family home.

Initially the intention was a 3-6 month therapeutic separation. Unfortunately we have surpassed the expected time frame, however I can say with great joy we are on the right track.

Somewhere in the vicinity of mid-July we turned a corner. I can not say what it was exactly that caused the winds to change, but change they did.

The happy smiling man I married almost 18 years ago, the caring warm hearted bear I shared with Goddess 3 years ago, the Daddy the children have waited for, has returned.

We are still taking things slowly, one day at a time, but now we know that each day brings us closer to being  under one roof again. Each day brings our family closer to being healed and whole.

~Temptress