Adventures in Dating

The good news is that my campaign to lift myself out of depression is working.  That bad news is that it is keeping me too busy to find time to write, though I have been percolating with ideas, and that wasn't happening when I was depressed. I've also been too busy to read so much. As a bonus, I've found that I want to be more active...and here I was beating myself up for not being active enough, with that inactivity affecting my health.  It proves once again my hypothesis if everything is working the way it should, we will do what is right for our bodies.  I was depressed, and didn't feel like getting out and moving.  In fact, it could hurt more, aches and pains, getting older. Not so depressed, there is lightness in my step, and I feel invigorated rather than fatigued.  So the lesson once again is, rather than place the blame on laziness, look for the reasons underlying the symptom.

Mondrian's Composition in Brown and Gray

Just the knowledge that I've been depressed helped me lift myself out, some.  Thanks to my Buddhist training, I have the skill to catch a thought at its inception (sometimes) and when I could catch that thought, I could also make a choice.  I would say to myself, "Oh, there's that depressed impulse again. I don't need to fall into it."  And I would look up, rather than hunker down in. Let me say that I don't think people who are ill can just decide not to be sick, and people with depression can just decide not to be depressed.  In my case, I am not naturally prone to depression, and I don't think I was severely depressed, though it must have been going on for a long time. With this awareness, I could steer myself toward my more natural positive state of mind.

The other main action has been my adventures in dating.  I can't count the ways I am grateful for my relationship with my sweetie, nor can words say how deeply I love him.  I believe our freedom makes this deep love possible.  We are a lot of things to each other, but we don't have to provide everything the other wants or likes, nor do we expect it from each other. I have no reason to be resentful or disappointed, and I'm not.  He loves me even though I'm a pack rat and leave messy habitats wherever I go!  When has a couple been evenly matched on how often they want to have sex? When have they been interested in the same exact things? What we do expect is honesty and consideration; these are the signs our relationship is healthy. On my adventures in dating, I have the freedom to seek what I need with the comfort of knowing my existing love will not be torn apart.

Just as an aside, I learned a few things about this particular scene.  One thing, online dating is the thing for us fat women.  All I have to do is wait, and those who are looking for someone exactly like me come and find me.  I don't have to approach only to be rejected.  They find me!  Another thing, there are a lot of way younger guys who are looking for older, large women.  What's up with that?  I was talking to another quite bosomy woman who is thirty-three. (I, if you haven't been keeping up, am forty-five.)  We were comparing our experiences with online dating. She said she seems to attract older, creepy guys. I said I too have had interest from some older guys, but have been surprised by how many younger men are interested in me, and not just geek boys (who are sexy) but fit, athletic guys.  Just that alone patches up a whole bunch of tears in self-esteem that might still exist from years of being considered too fat to be sexy.  When I said she should go to the site I'm using, she said, "Oh, I'm too young."  They might be twenty, but these particular guys are looking for me, not her.  Baffling, but hey! I'm not looking for that much younger, but I'll give them a chance.

Another thing learned, sexting is the thing they're into.  Instead of talking on the phone and getting excited, or chatting online, they're looking for sexy texting.  Oh, that is hard on my thumbs.  And then sometimes it turns out that's all they are looking for, and when it comes time to actually meet me in person, they turn into flakes. Hmmm.   Finally, I've learned it's a little suspicious if they don't post a photo as part of their profile...could be a sign of cheating.  This is the thing that's difficult to navigate.  I don't want to poach, so the ones who are honest are left to continue suffering, but the liars get to cheat all they want until their actions start to reveal their secrets.  I feel for the honest ones, I do...they aren't getting what they need, and they don't see a way to find it in their existing relationship. They still love, but don't know how to fix what's broken. I think the sexting without follow-through may be related to this, that these guys are seeking stimulation without it seeming to be cheating.

If you're reading, you who don't want to be cheating dogs, you need to be brave and talk to her. Tell her what you've always wanted and haven't been able to find with her, but that you love her. And that you want her to have a way to find what she's always wanted too.  We always change, all of us, and our needs change, while our love remains.  Yes, the monogamist way is often to break it off, to allow the love to wither, and to seek the next monogamous partner that newly meets our needs. Or to cheat. Sometimes, and this has to be very hard, steer the changes together so that the two still mesh.  Sometimes this is possible, many loves, to seek new loves, or simply to date, while consciously nurturing this love you've dedicated so much of your life to.  How could you tear it apart? You could be surprised. If you are careful, and considerate, and take it slowly, you could find what you're looking for and keep what you have.

Psyche looks upon the divine Eros

I've found those endorphins I needed. I found that boosts to the ego sure help lift depression as well.  I've had some awkward encounters, some nice encounters, some really hot encounters, and one very profound encounter. At the time I told him I felt we touched a bit of heaven.  Later I told him I felt the act we shared opened a gateway and returned a piece of me to me, and it was a sacred moment.  All these encounters helped with endorphins, but this one, I think, brought the healing I needed.  Then, of course, I struggled with attaching to that and falling a little bit in love...how could I not?  Classic Eros and Psyche. (That's another writing project.)

This Space of Love, Part 2

If you want to read Part 1, go here.

In part 2 of her coming out poly, Rachel talks about the limits of language. She said, "In retrospect, I can see that it's problematic to use the single word love to describe both things--my feelings for a new interest and my feelings for a long term mate." I so understand this need to differentiate loves. A new love can be giddy and exciting, while a long-term love banks from a depth of emotional investments, time, memories, and shared experiences.

A while back I meant to investigate why people cheat. I never got around to that again. In some cases, in many cases, I think people find themselves falling in love, and drawn to the new love over the old love. Because we live in a monogamous world, they convince themselves they no longer love the first person, or they accept having two loves, but don't believe they could ever keep the first relationship if they confess the new love. They try to have both worlds, so they cheat. Therapists would say that is a red flag, that something seriously needed fixing in a relationship, or an affair wouldn't happen. Maybe. Perhaps sometimes the thing that makes it so difficult for these accidental cheaters is that completely unexpected crash into love. Love can be quite overwhelming. They don't say "swept off her feet" for nothing.

It says something about Rachel and her relationship with her husband that she could look within herself and accept that she loved two people, and that she could tell him and they could move forward from there. Still, it would be important for him to preserve what they have as special, as love, and view her new feeling as something else....or it could be threatening. (I don't mean to imply I have Rachel and her H figured out, but think of them more as a springboard for my thoughts.)

There is power in words, an unspoken hierarchy in words, unconscious sway from hidden words. Something exists before the words, but putting that something into words gives it a life, solidifies it, makes it somehow more real. (Whatever real means.) When it comes to love, I have experienced the monstrous tornado before any words, and I could not put any other word to that swirling giddy maelstrom. At the time, that first time, I could not withhold the word. It spilled out, it could be no other. Confession: the recipient of that feeling disdained it, saying it was silly, like a high school infatuation. Perhaps that has shaped my reluctance to use the word. I did have crushes in high school. They were nothing like this.

Before that, I did give shape to love through the word. I loved my first husband, not in that whirlwind way, but in naming it so, it became so. It was not enough of a love to weather this maelstrom. After that too, I experienced the edge of the brink of love, the readiness to tip over, and I slipped into the space of love when I named it, when I said the words, "I love you." I expressed it in a poem, as lovers do:

as soon as the words
flew from my mouth
like little incandescent
butterflies

i knew it was true.
"i love you"
i said.
and i felt the love
take form
where a moment before it had
only been a thought.

So much of this love thing cannot be named, cannot be contained or held in a complete thought, perhaps that is why we try to express it so much in poetry and song, more than any other inner feeling. That first time I truly fell in love, it wasn't just falling in love, it was awakening to my full capacity to love, awakening to the full potential of this space of love. I knew that, even as I felt pulled to that particular person, I knew it wasn't just about him.

A friend of mine has been going to open mike poetry nights. She reports that so many of the intimacies shared are over the anguish and despair over this thing called love. People release suffering and pain through spilling out the words. Unreleased words, hidden truths, can hold us hostage our whole lives, keeping us from loving fully. Monsters in the closet like undisclosed rape, regrets over lost loves, unspoken, perhaps even pushed down til un-thought, these affect how we can love, who we can love.

So too with cheating. Undisclosed feelings separate us from each other. Keeping a piece apart, a web woven of undisclosed words can create an insurmountable wall. Hidden truths and lies can tear apart a fragile love.

In my first post on this space of love, I didn't wish to dilute different flavors of love by labelling them crushes. As I try to wrap my words around this entity, this space of love, I am also trying to say that encouraging this word, love, for these connecting feelings, this breeds more love, bigger love, all-encompassing love, thus greater kindness, compassion and caring. I am not making the word smaller, it doesn't make my love for Steve smaller, or the same as my love for others, but I am making my love for others bigger. (this must be why some say god is love. if anything i would say love is god.)

I found it so intriguing when I read Wendy-O Matik's book (thanks for the comment, Wendy!) that she gave expression to the very same thoughts I had experienced in my polyamorous relationship. She said,

When you have love for someone, you are inspired to do things for them, purely as an act of kindness and not because they owe you something in return. Love has no guarantees, no return-policy, no cash-back, no refunds, no price tags, no guidelines. That's what is so problematic about love. It's a wild ride on the beautiful side of life but completely in the dark.

I say when you love like that, the possibilities completely open up. If you don't expect exact returns, well, you are free to love however much you can produce. What does it cost, really? After a while, you get used to that wild ride. It's not so dark. It's easier to roll with the dips and swells. If there is a cost in anguish, it is made up for with new capacities for compassion. When polyamory works, when people get through the transition from monogamous mindsets, when they've had a chance to experience it when settled, I think there is an almost universal experience of this opening up to a greater capacity to love. The word changes shape, changes its meaning, becomes more inclusive. If we let it.

There is yet another inspiration from Rachel, these words, "this space of love," helped give shape to this understanding of love, helped put words to an inner landscape that is evolving in me. Coming up next, where she found "this space of love." Go here for Part 3.

Why People Cheat?

I get a few email alerts for sex columns in the Village Voice. This week the theme seems to be cheaters. Tristan Taormino wonders why so many more people cheat, rather than try out the honest open relationships of polyamory. She reports here that the one personals site specifically for the polyamorous, polymatchmaker.com, has 7,000 members. A website for married seeking married (cheaters) has over a million members.

I also get an email alert for Dan Savage's column. A woman admits to a problem with cheating. Dan asks her why she isn't upfront with new lovers, and gives a great plug for honest open relationships. He quite rightly notices her final sentence, "I just wish I could stop," and says that's something she "should definitely hash out with a shrink."

I finally started using technorati after I got some snarky attention from some sites that shall remain unnamed and unlinked here...I don't want to get their attention again. (Of course one can use technorati to find those sites that linked to mine.) I started noodling around and looked for other blogs talking about Buddhism or polyamory.


I found Polyamorously Perverse, by a guy who is refreshingly candid and articulate about his path towards (or not towards) polyamory. He is that rare man who came out to his wife as non-monogamously inclined, and proceeded to work on nurturing and repairing his marriage while convincing her how important this is to him. I've met men who've lied to me and said they're single, or that they're in an open relationship, or that they have a "don't ask don't tell" policy (wishful thinking), or have been honest with me that they are indeed looking to cheat. I have felt sad for a good many of them, because it was apparent that they felt no other way was possible. They didn't want to lose their wives, but they were incredibly unhappy in their sex life. (That is not always to be believed either.)


So it was quite refreshing to come across this thoughtful, candid, despairing man who is indeed a case in point as to why there are a million members of the cheaters site, and only 7,000 on the openly poly site. Some people just don't want to do the work it takes to nurture a relationship, whether poly or mono. No doubt I will steer cheaters there in the future.


I would say more but it's late. Thoughts on why people choose cheating when I return.