Well the more I think about everything that has taken place over the past several weeks the more I realize that this isn’t something that I can tell in one or two posts. There’s just too much. So I’m going to take it bit by bit and deliver it in pieces to the best of my ability.

So on to the sad stuff. Well sad to me, at least. You may find it ridiculous or even funny. I don’t know.

So, like I mentioned in the last post, we decided to approach Jinx with our proposition. That proposition being, basically, a marriage proposal between me, Blue, and Jinx. A full triad wherein our families would combine as one, commit to each other, and live happily ever after.

Once I had been convinced by Blue that she had really thought this whole thing through, and after many, many heartfelt discussions about the prospect of our triad becoming a reality had taken place, I finally allowed myself to actually consider it as a reality and not just some crazy idea that Blue had come up with to appease me.

This can be a dangerous thing, for me. I’m prone to let my imagination run wild when I latch on to an idea that appeals to me. I can easily get my hopes built up and, when something doesn’t happen like I had imagined it might, it can be somewhat devastating to me, emotionally. This situation was no exception.

The more I thought about it and the more Blue and I discussed it, the more excited I became about actually approaching Jinx with the proposal. The trouble was, it would be quite some time before we’d see Jinx in person and Blue and I had decided that the conversation was one that was best handled face to face. Making such a proposal over the phone was just too impersonal.

But I was practically bursting at the seems, wanting so badly to hear her say “yes” that I dropped a few subtle hints to Jinx during a few email exchanges about what we had in store. I didn’t say anything more than that there was something that Blue and I wanted to discuss with her and it was best handled in person but that was enough to get Jinx’s mind rolling on what that possible discussion would entail. And her eventual conclusions took me a little by surprise.

A few days before we were to meet with Jinx, halfway between our respective homes (we live several hours away from one another), she called to chat. Evidently her curiosity was getting the better of her and, after some initial chit chat, she told me “I don’t know if I’m ready to have your babies just yet”.

“What?!? Is that what you think we want to talk to you about?” I asked.

She told me that she figured it was either that or we wanted to ask her to move in with us. While that last bit was true, technically, what we wanted to ask her was way more involved and way more important, to us, than having a roommate. I didn’t quite know how to respond so I backed up a little bit. “Is there any chance that you’d be willing to come clean with [ insert fiance's name here ] anytime soon?” I asked.

“No, sweetie, it would hurt him too much.”

Talk about a kick in the nuts. And that is exactly what it felt like, too, it’s not just some analogy that I’m throwing out there.

I started to explain to Jinx the revelation that I had come to when I wrote the “Why Now?” post. I explained to her why I felt that it was wrong for us to continue a physical relationship behind [ insert fiance's name here ]’s back and, also, how I very, very, very much didn’t want our physical relationship to end. And how I very, very, very much didn’t want our relationship to devolve to “just friends”. And how I very, very, very much love her and want to continue doing so.

I then tried my best to explain what it was that Blue and I wanted to talk to her about. Admittedly, I didn’t do a very good job. I mean, seriously, I was an emotional wreck at this point and I’m surprised that I was able to formulate a cohesive sentence let alone explain something so complex as our proposal. When I had exhausted my best efforts at an explanation she told me “That’s not the kind of life that I want for myself. I want the life that I have chosen to have with [ insert fiance's name here ].”

Now I’m the kind of guy who doesn’t like to make others suffer at his expense. I also suffer from “martyr syndrome” when it comes to the ones that I love so my mind immediately went to “how do I make this as easy as possible on Jinx, considering the closeness of our families and the close friendship that still exists between us all, despite her choice about our physical and romantic relationship?”.

I told Jinx that I loved her very much, that I always will, but that I was going to try, really hard, to not be “in love” with her anymore. I wanted her to feel comfortable around Blue and I, I didn’t want her to feel pressured to requite my romantic feelings and felt that it would be in everyones best interest for me to stifle those feelings altogether.

When I told her goodbye, on the phone, and finally hung up, I was literally in tears. Hanging up that phone felt like losing her completely and I instantly felt like a hollow shell of myself. The only thing inside of me was blackness, an empty void, a vast expanse of nothingness that weighed so heavy on my soul that I would have gladly accepted death as an alternative. And, no, I’m not exaggerating.

Blue called me from work a little while later and asked me what was wrong. I told her about the conversation that I’d had, just a few minutes before, with Jinx. She told me to calm down, told me that she loved me very much and that she was sorry that I was hurting so much, and promised to come home early. She came home early, alright, and spent another couple of hours sitting in our driveway talking on the phone with Jinx before she finally came inside. I even went outside, at one point, and brought her a cup of coffee. She finally came in about an hour after that so we could talk.

That empty and hollow feeling that I described above lasted for several days. It’s what led me to write the “Goodbye, Jinx” post that you’ll find in last months archive. I thought it would help me to say goodbye by posting it but I couldn’t even bring myself to write it on my own.

The fact is, Jinx is going to marry [ insert fiance's name here ]. And Jinx has no intention of ever telling [ insert fiance's name here ] about the true nature of our relationship.

But the story doesn’t end there, not by a long shot. So, just like last time, I’ll leave you with

To be continued…

Wow!

So this would be the first week, in over a month, when I haven’t been tasked with working 50, 60, or 70+ hours per week fixing projects that others have screwed up and, finally, I feel like I have some room to actually breathe. And a lot has happened in that time so I’ll try to play catch-up!

Goodbye to Jinx?

Never. Even if I have to cut off all of my emotions when it comes to Jinx, I will never be able to say “good bye” to her. And, for that matter, I really suck at cutting off my emotions.

So here’s the story in a nutshell:

[nutshell] the story [/nutshell]

Hah!

Seriously, here goes the abridged version:

A few weeks prior to my starting this blog my wife, Blue, started dropping subtle hints about the eventuality of Jinx moving in with us. I generally blew those hints off and didn’t investigate further. My reasoning was simple; I didn’t believe that Blue really wanted that, that she was just saying those things in an attempt to make me feel better or to accommodate my feelings in some strange, weird, odd way. Well I was wrong.

After a couple of days of dropping hints, and after I’d already come to understand that my quest to understand my polyamorous nature was due to my knowing that I was soon to be facing the loss of my relationship with Jinx, I finally asked Blue what she was on about.

Typically when I get home from work I make my way to our bedroom and change into something comfortable like a pair of shorts. If Blue follows me in, we usually collapse on our bed for a few minutes and just talk about whatever is on our minds. It was in those moments that I would talk to Blue about polyamory. Every day, each time I would come up with something new to ponder or laugh about, I would bring it to Blue and we would discuss it. This allowed us both to ask questions of ourselves and each other with regards to poly and it was nice to be able to have a sympathetic ear and someone who at least tried to understand where the other was coming from.

In my mind, this was all about me. This was a “journey of self discovery” and any “issues” that we addressed were my issues. What can I say to that other than “sometimes I’m an idiot”?

It hadn’t occurred to me that Blue would be taking advantage of our discussions to understand things better from her point of view or to look inside of herself and how poly affected our relationship. Did I mention that sometimes I’m an idiot?

Evidently the hints that Blue had been dropping were due to the fact that the idea of having Jinx move in with us was something that had been on her mind. A lot. And she’d come to the conclusion that what would be best for all of us would be to have the three of us move in together and commit to each other as a complete triad. She’d even expressed a desire to hold a hand fasting ceremony between all three of us.

Evidently she was nuts. Or at least I assumed as much, because my immediate reaction was to try to talk her out of it. I brought up all of the difficulties of such an arrangement that I could imagine. I tried to talk some sense into her. I asked her questions that I knew she would find hard to answer such as “so what happens when I want to, on occasion, spend time alone with Jinx? I don’t know if you’re going to be able to handle that.” to which she answered “well I would have to just get over it, wouldn’t I? And you seem to forget that there’s going to be times when I want to spend time alone with her, too”. Yeah. Idiot.

Now don’t get me wrong, it isn’t that I don’t want such an arrangement. I do. Very much. But I wasn’t yet convinced that Blue was making the proposal for any reason other than trying to appease me. She has since convinced me otherwise.

We talked about it for a good while. We talked about those difficult things and we talked about the really great things too. And we talked to our kids about it.

Blue and I have a 16 year old and a 4 year old, both boys. And our family comes first in everything that we do. If it was something that our boys were unhappy about or dead set against, it wasn’t going to be something that we even approached Jinx with. At least not for now. But the boys were just fine with the idea. In fact, the 4 year old was ecstatic about the idea.

The 16 year old is very intelligent. Still, even though he’d seen Jinx spending the night in our bedroom on many occasions, he’d never quite put 2 + 2 together. Even though he knew about polyamory, specifically me being polyamorous and having feelings for Jinx, it never occurred to him that we did anything other than sleep in our bedroom. Even though he’d witnessed me going into my bathroom alone with Jinx to help her get dressed on more than one occasion, it never quite clicked into place for him. So when I talked to him about it his first question to me was “well where would she sleep?”. I was dumbfounded for a moment then told him “the same place she sleeps every time she spends the weekend, dude”. His face went from pale to bright red in the matter of a couple of seconds and it was like I could actually see reality dawning on him. “Oh” was all he said.

After a couple of minutes of letting it all sink in he looked at me and asked me “well can I still call her ‘Aunt’? I don’t know if I could think of her as my Mom just yet”. Again, I was dumbfounded for a moment then I told him “You don’t call her ‘Aunt’ right now, you call her by her first name… why should that change?” and he shrugged his shoulders and said “yeah, right, that’s true”.

I asked him, a few minutes later, how he felt about it all and he told me that he was fine with it, as long as we were happy, and that his only worry was that we were going to come up against a lot of outside trouble from people because we were doing something so out of the ordinary. His worry was in how others would treat us, that’s all. No earth shattering damage was done to his fragile young mind and, though he is very serious about being a Christian, no question of some violation of moral ethics ever entered the discussion. He was actually happy for us, in fact, though he doesn’t quite understand it all. He’s a great kid.

The 4 year old, like I mentioned, was another story altogether. When we discussed it with him, we didn’t get into very much detail. We asked him how he would feel about Jinx and her son moving in and all of us being one big family. He was excited and very much for the idea so we left it at that. But never underestimate the intelligence of a toddler. Over the next few days he would say things, every now and then, about how “Aunt Jinx” was going to be his “other Mom” and how her son was going to be his new brother. He would ask me questions about events to come such as Jinx and I picking him up from school (he doesn’t start school until August). Hell, he’s already started making plans. Maybe that says something about society, as a whole, and our views on monogamy that a 4 year old child who hasn’t been trained, yet, had no trouble accepting and loving the concept of having two moms and a dad… but that’s another post I guess.

Anyway, the boys were fine with it all so we decided to approach Jinx with the idea.

We eventually did and she didn’t say “no”. She didn’t say “yes” either, but… well… it’s complicated.

And who the hell was I kidding with that “abridged version” bullshit? I can’t ever sum things up without feeling that I’m doing myself and anyone bothering to read it all an injustice.

And it’s nearly time for me to get on the road so I suppose I’ll have to hold off telling the rest of the story for another day.

So, with that, I’ll leave you with

To be continued…