Book Club Anxiety

I'm currently re-reading Sex at Dawn, since it's been 4 months and I'm hosting a book club discussion on it Friday night. Girls only. Some of these girls I know very well, some slightly; all I trust to some extent because of how the group is maintained. I just don't know that I'm comfortable talking about my life at all with a group of people. I'd like to keep the discussion centered on the book and hypothetical situations. But I won't be the only one there, of course, and I'm not sure how it will work out. I am, honestly, squirming just thinking about it. Hopefully re-reading will help straighten out my thoughts.

Strange News

I sprained my elbow last night during sex. Too much wrestling? It hurts like a mother, but I'm just happy it's not broken, which is what I feared this morning. That would really get in the way. Who injures themselves having sex? Sheesh. Also, George's fling has mellowed for now. I'm thinking it's my turn. I want to experience so much in life, like another interesting relationship, but I'm not interested in a one night stand or anything really deeply meaningful like my marriage. I don't want anything that takes away from my time or relationship with George, but I want to find someone interesting who can converse about subjects he and I have in common. Also who is attractive and is looking for all I want and no more. Someone to chat to once a week or once a month. Ugh. Where do I look? Everything I see is for swinging and one night stands or long term relationships for singles. I feel like I'm trying to retrain my brain to move in the direction I want, but I don't even know where to find the trailhead to start hiking. Such serious problems. Ha! If I was less happy in my marriage, would it drive me to seek someone out with a little more energy?

Randomness

I'm a terrible blogger. I'm inconsistent and, when I do blog, I just ramble on about whatever I feel like.

That wasn't an apology. :)

First Kiss
HardofThinking, my faithful reader (thanks!), commented on the last post that previous relationships are off limits for them. While I can see obvious reasons for that rule, here is my reasoning for not having it.

Previous relationships are not an issue for either of us because neither of us were in long, intense relationships before marriage. My personal longest relationship was maybe 8 months, and it's not something I'm interested in revisiting for numerous reasons, one of which was that it was kind of an emotionally unpleasant experience at the end. I'm not a drama kind of girl, and George is not a drama kind of guy, so previous drama-filled relationships would be off the board. His first kiss was with someone who seems to me to also be very low drama, as well as really admirable in many other ways. That's why it worked. There were no long-lasting, deeply-hidden "wish I'd fallen in love and had a life with her" type of feelings. She's just a great girl and also hot, as George puts it.


Friendships
I have this really wonderful friend. I'll call her Cassandra (because, when I was a dreamy little 10-year old, I thought Cassandra was the loveliest name on earth). One of the reasons I love Cassie is because I can tell her anything and she gets me, and I get her. She's the only person I've talked to about George and me, and she just finds it fascinating and finds me (insert most amazing compliment ever). You see why we're friends?

I've found being able to occasionally talk out loud about how I'm processing this is really beneficial, and the response/suggestions/input/encouragement from Cassie is deeply meaningful to me. While moving past monogamy is exciting and crazy, it can be a lot to navigate through and it's important to give yourself time to think through and unpleasantly react to possibilities as well as reality. My conversation with Cassie this last Sunday as we hiked up a canyon was great for this reason. All these things I'd thought inside and figured out internally sounded at least as real and legitimate and comfortably part of me spoken aloud as they did in my head. And my very smart, very feeling friend thought they did, too. I want to share some of that conversation, so here it is (totally paraphrased).

(Shit. Have I given myself a name yet? I don't think so. Let's call me Jezebel. Ha! No, that sounds a bit religious. Rita.)

C: So how are things with you and George?

R: Good. He had his first kiss!

C: I'm so proud of him! I just want to pat him on his back. I'm so glad after all that talking about it, he just went for it. Do you worry about infatuation? It's human nature, even with friendships, to be infatuated with whatever is new. What if that happened?

R: I don't think it will. I asked him specifically before that meeting what he felt, just needing to know, not resisting, ready for whatever he said. Was he infatuated? A little? Starting to fall in love? I just needed to know and understand his side of it. He just said she's a good friend and she's hot. Men are so simple, and I always feel like I learn from that.

C: Do you feel self-conscious? Does it make you worried?

R: Not worried about us. Maybe unsettled while the situation is unsettled. I worry a little for George; I know he doesn't obsess over it, but I know he feels more unsettled than I do. I just don't want him to be too disappointed or hurt, though he really can handle it just fine. And not self-conscious. I always thought confidence meant you feel like you're great at this or that, but now I feel very confident that this or that aspect is a part of me intrinsically, and I feel really grounded knowing that.

C: Wow. I think you're the most confident person I know.

R: I think that's why it works for us. We're both very comfortable with ourselves and very open in our conversations.

C: So, what if he'd said he was infatuated with her?

R: She is a really great person and I was ready for him to say that maybe he was a little infatuated. It would be okay...I'm not worried. I know who and what I am to him.

C: Well, what exactly is it that he could say that would be too much? What if he said he was falling in love with her? What would be the worst? What would really leave you devastated and feel like you were at the breaking point?

R: Hmm. (pause) I can't think of anything. If he said, for example, he was feeling infatuated, I think I would notice before he'd said anything anyhow, but I wouldn't be upset. I don't think that's permanent. The kind of relationship we have together is full of infatuation and love, but it is deeply nourished over a long time. And we both love it and want it to continue.

C: Do you think about yourself in this? Do you think you'll do anything?

R: There's this funny thing about me. I feel comfortable with George and know that our relationship is solid no matter what happens, but I still haven't figured out if it would mess me up if I did something. I don't know why I can't trust myself. Plus, I don't even really know how to flirt. And I'm really picky. I basically like George and maybe Daniel Craig. So I don't know if anything will happen for me. Maybe not ever.

C: No, I can't see that. It will happen for both of you.


Book Club
I'm hosting book club this month, and I was going to let Sex at Dawn slip by (because I'm not sure I know how to have a conversation on it with 20-30 friends in a way that works for everyone), but somebody brought it up again. I do think it's a really important book to read. It's life changing for me, so I suggested to my friends that they read it simultaneously with their spouses if possible, and give themselves some time to think about it before we meet. Also, that it may not be a big deal for some people; it just was for me. These friends are also former mormons; most of them monogamous their entire lives. I don't care what they choose in life, but I think thinking about the possibility that monogamy is not necessarily the most natural path in life is really beneficial in so many ways, even if you choose that path.

Cassandra asked me what I would do if someone asked, "What effect has this had on you and George?" My answer was that he and I had taken a lot of time to discuss the book and the theories behind it to understand what marriage means to us.

She said that, inevitably, someone will be blunt and just say, "Do you have an open marriage?" What would I answer? I fumbled. Ugh. I don't know. My kind, wise friend quickly responded, "Don't hesitate. Just lie. Say 'no.' They don't need to know. They don't have two hours for you to explain everything about who you are and who George is and how strong and open communication-wise your relationship is. They don't know. You just need to lie."

Yep. I do. I agree. I am deeply protective of what other people think of George. I love him intensely and don't want anyone to think anything ill of him. In future social settings, rare as they are, with my book club friends + significant others, I don't want them to think they know what he's thinking about them. I just want them to think that he loves me. Because he does.


Tim Minchin
Last but not least...just click here.

First Kiss

There are so many thoughts running through my head, as usual. Let me offer some context: George has, for the last few weeks, been working on a small side project with an old acquaintance. They dated briefly many, many years ago and hadn't seen each other since. When they got reacquainted and subsequently started working on this project they seemed to reconnect almost immediately. So much so, that we were forced to rethink the boundaries that we had set for ourselves.

Initially, we had agreed that extramarital sex was OK, provided we didn't form relationships. The ideal scenario would be a hookup for George while on a business trip or for me after a night out dancing with girlfriends (an idea I've still not fully warmed up to, but that ironically has been an option since before we read Sex at Dawn).

We now found ourselves in a situation where George had made a connection with someone, and because of their history, the relationship was already in place. They met together on a couple of occasions within the context of this project, but the conversation would drift, which led to meetings  longer than they needed to be, meetings which also always ended with an embrace that George felt was different than when friends hug goodbye.

During George's last meeting with this friend, they ended up having to redo much of the work, which included some down time where they had nothing to do but wait and talk, sitting next to each other, constantly closer as the evening progressed.

At one point she asked him, "You seem to be very comfortable with me physically, is this normal for you?"

"Are you uncomfortable with the contact?" he responded.

"No, but you're married, and I'm married. This isn't how married people normally are with each other unless they're planning to hook up."

George's explanation was that when we left our religion, we left the forced values behind and instead adopted the scientific method as our value system. He said we both recognize that sexual exclusivity is not the natural condition for human beings, and we decided that being exclusive was not going to be something we required of each other.

She took it all in (and didn't run for the door!). Shortly thereafter, work completed, they went to the parking lot to load up their things and say goodbye.

George had his first kiss not-with-me since he married me. It didn't move on to other things, at least not yet, maybe not ever, who knows? But I've been anxious for this, really. Anxious to see if everything I thought I would feel and he thought he would feel was right.

It was. I was comfortable with the idea before I ever gave my consent, and I was comfortable after it happened. A little anxious to know how it went, how it felt for him. It felt totally natural to him. Totally natural! Also, a little thrilling. Actually, a lot thrilling. (I would hope so!) Also, there was no guilt!

It blew my mind. It's all I could think about as I was falling asleep, and again getting ready in the morning. It felt totally natural. That's exactly what I'd thought would happen, what I hoped, and I'm in awe that such a taboo idea could feel so natural. George had the same reaction (mind blown) by the absence of guilt that he'd been taught his entire life would be there if he did anything outside the norm. It's not like we're still religious, and not like we didn't guess what it would be like, but theory can be different than life. It feels like we're scientists that came up with a hypothesis and just tested it, finding no evidence to the contrary. I'm sort of giddy.

George is a little giddy, too.

Jealousy

I'm an introspective, analytical type o' gal. I like to take the crystal sphere of my thoughts out, metaphorically of course, hold it in my hand, and look at it from all directions to figure out why I'm feeling the way I am, and where something went wrong, if it did. (By wrong I mean any emotion I'm not happy to be experiencing, like sadness, hurt, hopelessness, insecurity, jealousy or anger (some people may like being angry; I'm not one of them).) We've all probably done this on one level or another at some point, and I just do it very deliberately. Like taking time to breathe deeply.

I never felt jealousy in my relationship until after our Sex at Dawn reading and subsequent discussions. I think I never worried before about what I meant to George, since he made it pretty apparent (and still does). But I wasn't wrong when I thought such a life-altering transition might be scattered with small complications. It's only natural, really, and I don't mind the complications as long as we continue to work through them together. Luckily, George never minds working through them, either, be they my complications or his.

For the record, I do feel like I'm writing this from a naive position. We're young in our open marriage, and I don't intend to come across as a 22-year old who tells a random 40-year old mother how to raise her young children, since she obviously knows. I'm still learning; this is just what I know so far.

So, at this point, jealousy is a feeling that seems to crop up whenever I'm not really paying attention, and I do think a lot of it is related to the newness of sharing him physically and emotionally (theoretical or literally). Thus, it's a subject I've paid significant attention to, spending more time than usual staring into my own glass ball.

Jealousy for me stems from insecurity. Let's say, for an earlier example, that George looks at a picture of a beautiful girl, or someone walking by. For the most part, I don't care. If that picture is of a girl looking seductively at him (the camera) or the girl walking by smiles at him (not me), I'm more likely to be jealous. There's a risk there, albeit small in these examples, that George could choose to have sex with one of these women. There's a strong likelihood that he's going to feel at least a small bit of excitement by the encounter, especially the latter encounter.

Embedded in that possibility is the additional risk that he may choose to walk away from time he could be spending with me to spend time with her and the risk that he could feel a level of excitement with her he doesn't feel with me. Ay, there's the rub.

So it comes down to fear. To insecurity, really. I'm afraid there's something better than me out there for him. Insecure in my ability to be...not enough per se, but as good as it gets. I'm afraid that an interest in pursuing other options may be more important than time with me, with familiar, known-quantity me. And I'm insecure with my own body, everything from my fair features to my size to the tightness of my vagina (not always insecure, to be clear, just momentarily; I usually think I'm fairly sexy and working my way up the hotness scale).

A sidenote: I try to quickly eliminate any feelings of "I want to be enough" as fast as they come. Since reading Sex at Dawn, when the term "enough" refers to "only", it's no longer allowed. By nature, humans, and perhaps to a greater extent penis-endowed humans, crave variation and thrive from it. So I deny any assertion that I should be the only. I no longer believe that's the healthiest lifestyle, or I wouldn't be writing this blog. I do believe it's possible to be monogamous your whole life, but not the happiest option.

Great! Do you see how amazing it is to look through these thoughts and figure out exactly why I have this jealousy? Do you know what that means? It means I have the root of the problem, and when I have the root it means I can fix the problem. I'm a problem-fixer by nature (and go crazy when I can't fix problems, which is an issue for me at times), so I'm practically at victory here. But just practically, because another hard part is coming (did you think all that analyzing was easy? ha!).

I've tried to do the next part on my own, and it doesn't work. The next part is reminding myself

1. That I'm as amazing as it gets for him, which is why he's with me.
2. That he's not going to give up time with me that I don't offer to pursue other subjects (I do try to be generous), and
3. He's madly attracted to me, which is why we have incredible sex all the time.

I've tried telling myself those things, and they're good reminders on a regular basis, but if I have a real moment of jealousy that doesn't go away after a little while (6-48 hours, depending on what happened), I have to talk to George. Lucky for me, George is happy to talk to me. In fact, he always says he likes it. We haven't been the type to have those crazy emotional talks throughout our marriage because we've always been pretty happily married, with a few normal ups and downs. But I think we both like the communication because it's comforting to know our relationship is important to the other person, and we really, really value feeling secure in knowing both how I feel about George and how he feels about me. (Probably if we didn't like each other, the knowing would not work out so nicely.)

So my method is basically to remind myself of what I already know, and if/when that fails, don't waste time asking for a minute to talk it out. My fears of being too high-maintenance are really overblown, and sometimes it's just my turn to need something in the relationship. That's allowed in a relationship, and it's good to remind myself of that.

I admit it's scary to me to feel jealous. I feel a disconcerting level of threat to my security in life and my opportunity to love my husband. The fear, though, makes me anxious to figure out what went wrong this time and what to discuss. And George, well, George is a strong 50% of why our relationship is so beautiful.

More History

My life has been crazy busy the last four months. During that crazy busy time this shift occurred, and processing all of that while trying to keep my head and my family's heads above water has been a monumental task for me. However, I'm not one to back down from a challenge. I realized that I might need to reprocess some things once my head was clearer of external stresses and told myself not to get frustrated (with myself) if I find my head swimming and going through questions and concerns all over again. It turns out I've only done that a bit, but maybe I should back up and explain what that shift was like in the first place.

George finished reading Sex at Dawn before I did and asked me to please, though my life is busy, please finish it quickly because he really wanted to be able to talk to me about it. Being the awesome wife that I am, I finished it within a few days of his request. I asked him what he felt about the book. He said it was like this huge weight had been lifted from him, this guilt that he had carried for years on end could leave. There's a biological and evolutionary reason that he naturally thinks of other women when he walks by them. He doesn't spend hours after fantasizing about them (at least not that I know, or at least not typically), but it's something he's never been able to help – those initial thoughts of seeing and touching other women. Honestly, he seemed like he was letting out this huge sigh of relief that he'd been holding onto forever. It made me sad for him, that he carried that guilt so heavy and so long.

I'm going to go off on a tangent here for a second on something really important to me and my marriage. Two huge shifts have occurred in our marriage – leaving our religion and leaving our monogamy-only beliefs – and both have been initiated by George being willing to talk to me openly and from a vulnerable standpoint. It makes me love him intensely that he's so good to me that way. Communication is not only essential to maintaining a good marriage, it's essential to growth together as well. It eases my fears when I'm hesitant to mention how I feel about anything but need to let him know. God, I love that man.

We talked more about some interesting points in the book relating to both males and females, and we had some fascinating points to explore in an analytical/scientific sort of way. Then I asked him what it means to him literally, how it translates into what he wants in life. He said he didn't know, that he was just processing it all and didn't know what it meant yet. I didn't either, but I felt it was less necessary for me to figure that out right away than it was for him.

A few days later he figured it out. He asked, very gently, if I would extend him the same courtesy he had once mentioned in passing to me (when I was headed out dancing with girlfriends): if I found someone I wanted to go home with, go for it, since he knew I would come back to him no matter what. The request blew me sideways for a good 10 seconds. Then, because I recover quickly and it sounded entirely logical, I said okay.

Over the next couple of weeks, we continued to have conversations on the subject. I felt a strong need to figure out who I am sexually, if that makes sense. I've always really, really enjoyed sex with my husband and didn't know how to even think about other men, or if I wanted to. (I'm still processing this, still not sure what I want, FYI.) I wanted, though, to feel like Marilyn Monroe when I want to. To just feel beautiful and pleasurable outside and in whenever I want that. I know Marilyn had issues, so I'm not referring to a permanent state, just the idea of feeling sexy to myself and to others.

As far as George goes, I wanted and want things. I want to feel like he likes me the most and longest and always wants to come back to me. I want him to feel like he can explore who he is and what sex feels like with someone else and tell me about it, because it interests me scientifically and sexually. And I want him to not obsess over any encounter he has until it becomes better in his mind than maybe it was, because I fear that possibility could ruin our marriage. That last point led me to conclude that having a one-time-in-your-life experience is more dangerous than having multiple times. If you have one experience with sex outside marriage, that's monumental. If you have several experiences, it's less monumental. Well, so my logic goes, anyhow. In any case, he was maybe a little surprised with my decision but understood. Ha!

Then the pressure sort of went away to hurry out and have sex. George was really busy with work (no, really), but he told me that knowing he was free to participate when he wants took a lot of immediacy away. That's when it started to feel normal to us both, I think. If he was on a business trip, I'd sort of be rooting for him for something to happen, but he was busy working with distant colleagues and couldn't really be thinking about it anyhow.

So here we are now. We are still both monogamous, and yet we don't feel tied to monogamy anymore. I would even say I/we don't feel monogamous because it seems like a way of life that includes guilt for extra-marital thoughts, and that's gone. I don't expect George will be sexually exclusive for too much longer, but I don't know. And the jury's out on me. I haven't decided yet. I have a lot of self-evaluation left.

That's what I love about blogging, especially with a bit more time on my hands these days (hooray!!): I can think through things so much better by writing them down. I want to post about the whole subject of jealousy – so important, and so related to fear – and everything I'm wondering about myself. And who knows what else. But, like I said, this won't be a fast novel. It's my real life, and real life is usually pretty normal. Well, depending on your definition.

Intro

Starting a new blog feels like a toddler learning to walk...I have all this history that clarifies internally what I'm doing, but I still feel like I'm taking steps in an unfamiliar, darkened room.

Let me give as brief a history as I'm comfortable with: I'm 38. So is my husband. (Let's name him, shall we? We'll call him George.) We were both raised in a very conservative Christian religion (Mormon...and I don't care to argue about if it's Christian or not, because I just don't care) in different parts of the US. We married in our young 20's and have had a very successful, happy marriage with some kids.

In our mid-30's, we made an amazing discovery. Mormonism is provably false. (Not here to argue that, either.) It totally rocked our world, quite unpleasantly at first. Our lives shifted in ways we never thought possible, and we grew from that shift. We started drawing our own conclusions about social norms and morality. We were – to my great surprise – happier than we'd ever been. Closer than we'd ever been, and our marriage had always been good.

A couple of years later, we read Sex at Dawn by Christopher Ryan and Calcida Jethá. What followed was another shock as we internalized and analyzed and considered more information we hadn't really approached before, and we felt another huge paradigm shift take place. Namely, that of monogamy.

I'll attempt a quick summation of our previous beliefs on morality and our current worldview:

Previous – Marry as virgins.

Current – Why would you marry as a virgin? Wouldn't it be better to understand your own sexuality before deciding who you're comfortable sharing it with for the rest of your life? Other than a belief in a judgmental god or an inability to practice safe sex, I don't see any good reasoning here.

Previous – Never have any sexual thoughts about anyone but your spouse. Sinner.

Current – Biologically impossible for most of us. Makes sense, considering our anthropological background.

Previous – Be good, go to heaven, have sex with your spouse forever.

Current – Don't believe in heaven, and I'm not really interested in living forever. It's a long, dang time. I'm more concerned about living fully right now, with my feet on provable earth, breathing provable air. I'm going to enjoy being in love with my spouse as long as we are here, since my life is fulfilling and beautiful and amazing.

Previous – Being good includes being monogamous.

Current – Humans are not really monogamous creatures. Of sexually active humans (let's set the bar low...twice a year?), what percent only have sex with one partner their entire lives? (I'm going to have to research that...I can only find information on monogamy while married.) The fact that I have to research the issue means we all know the percentage is not 100, or even close to it. It's not because we're inherently evil or untrustworthy; in fact, you can trust that we will at least consider snuggling, fondling, kissing, and/or having sex with other humans no matter how monogamous we are. Read Sex at Dawn, for goodness sake. If you disagree with a full half of the anthropological conclusions in that book, it will still enlighten you. We are not wired to be monogamous, though we find great happiness and fulfillment in strong relationships. Those relationships, however, can break down when we have incorrect assumptions about sexuality. So let's define good as having a sincere, affecting interest in the welfare of humanity and having a giving, honest relationship with your loved one, whatever that relationship may be.


So much more to cover, but I can't type all day. There you have the start.