optimusmime

So I feel like I should take a cue from Naima and get down my feelings on some of the things that have been going on in our life lately.

There have been happenings that are more "surface" events. I'm puttering around going to job interviews and sending out resumes. We got a new bed. Naima got a brand new Prius. It's red and it's pretty amazing, really. Next week we're going on a five day road trip up to Washington state. I'm going to be meeting her parents for the first time.

As she mentioned in her own blog, the two of us have been talking about "swinging" a lot lately. I think most couples discuss it at some point or another in some capacity or another, even if in passing, but we're talking from the position of it being a possibility.

My first sexual experience as an adult was in an open arrangement. In so far as firsts are concerned, it definitely wasn't as bad as the horror stories some have about their own first time. I think it gave me a bit of a head start on overcoming the social conceptions that we all must come to terms with regarding things like sexuality and monogamy. Simply and quickly, I met a girl that was in an open arrangement with a married couple. The three of them were sleeping together in various combinations. I found out about it, but my reaction to the information surprised me. Rather than feeling somewhat jealous or disgusted, I was intrigued. When she confided in me, she informed me that the couple in question was interested in bringing me into their arrangement. I agreed to try it out. The relationship itself was sexually gratifying for everyone involved, or at least I thought so. My girlfriend seemed genuinely relieved that I understood her preference and appreciative that I wasn't trying to force an issue of monogamy into her life. The other man's wife was very attracted to me, enjoyed my company, and enjoyed the sex. Looking back, as a young and inexperienced man up to his ears in on-demand tail, I did not have the sense of awareness necessary to observe the growing problem : the fourth member of our party, my second partner's husband.

I honestly think this person had entered into the arrangement with my girlfriend thinking that this was going to be a situation where he was going to live the harem life and have a wife and a concubine. When his wife said, "Okay, my turn." I don't know what was going through his head to make him agree. Two months after things got going, he abruptly called an end to our arrangement and stopped speaking to me. Now, he and his former wife are divorced. He obviously either mistakenly believed he would enjoy his wife with another man or felt cornered by his wife's request that she be able to enjoy the same things she'd allowed him to enjoy.

Part of me thinks that perhaps Naima sees my first experience as putting me in a place ahead of her, where I've made up my mind aided by experience and I'm wanting to jump back in to where I was then. The thing is, even though my experience started positive, it ended very negatively. The couple that we had played with seemed almost bulletproof. They were married. Not only were they "swingers", they had an open relationship : I watched my new friend, the husband, attempt to seduce many of our mutual female friends, all without his wife knowing until after the deed. I don't know why having an open relationship seemed more stable than a "soft" swinging arrangement, but it did. And they'd been doing this for a while. I was just the first guy they'd brought into it.

All of those things make this a hot-button issue, for me. I think I've always fantasized about multiple partner scenarios. My porn tastes tend to run toward three or more persons : one-on-one kinda' bores me. Do I think that sets me apart from anyone else? I don't. I think that there are a lot of people out there that fantasize regularly about having multiple partners or being one of someone else's multiple partners. Do I think that perhaps I fantasize about it more, maybe even a lot more, than the "average" person? It's very possible.

But why do so many people fantasize in this vein? And at what point does something become worth pursuing as reality versus leaving it in the realm of fantasy? How do you reconcile a strong fantasy when it stands in direct opposition to what hundreds of millions of people would tell you is the "correct" way to conduct a relationship? If you are attracted to scenarios that defy what most everyone else considers to be the norm, what does that say about you? Does that mean that you are incapable of love, or that they love deeper than you? Does it mean you're immature or selfish? How much of the relationship is defined by monogamy, if they aren't mutually exclusive. What makes your relationship anything more than a glorified friendship if the two parties are sleeping with other people? What sort of commitment can you make if you do not make a sexual commitment? Is a sexual commitment even something a person should do? Is it healthy? Is it natural? What does it mean to make an emotional commitment without the sexual commitment?

See where this all might start to get difficult?

Part of me is terrified of the entire thing. My reaction to considering the person I love the most, without question, without exaggeration - my entire world a million times over - having a sexual encounter with another person is confusing. I feel jealous. I feel excited. I feel turned-on. I feel alternately like a good and bad fiance for being able to consider it.

Once you do it, you can't go back. So obvious, yet so true. And I remember how things turned out the first time. And I'm not even really as scared as I should be, or could be, because in the end, I wasn't the one that paid the price. I had a pretty awesome experience that got cut short by someone else dealing with this and coming out on the ruined end.

But there are all the parts of me that look at this and see possibility. I can't reconcile where I stand on just what human love is and the nature of the arrangements we place ourselves in with our companions. I don't know exactly what it is, but I know that there is something, something about the a-typical monogamous relationship that just isn't what we should be striving for. In my own opinion, of course. Something about it is not right. I don't know if I'd use the word "wrong"... but definitely not right. Nonsense.

I have felt so close to Naima the more we've talked about this. This entire process has involved a lot of communication, honest and hard and sometimes scary communication. And we've tackled it together. It's been a real long, hard, and naked look into areas of her mind that before this I might've sometimes felt I wasn't too familiar with. There's also something about having small emotional duresses continuously soothed over by tenderness and love. Like falling onto your butt every few steps only to get hugged and kissed and held. We talk, and if jealousy appears, we love. That's par the course for us in general, but much more so during the course of these discussions. We talk about the nature of love in general and it makes me examine my own love for her, helps me appreciate not just her, but what we share.

And of course, there's the heat that some of these talks can generate. We've been all over each other after a few of our talks.

I think I'm pretty much in the same place as Naima. Unsure. And a lot of other things. I want to know more and learn more. I think that's the right course of action. I definitely think that at this point I have to do something. Doing nothing about the issue leaves it in this place where there's no resolution, and without exploring it, I don't think there ever will be. I'm either leaning towards a more open sexual relationship with my partner and looking over my shoulder at the traditional arrangement, or vice-versa.