Love is a funny thing.
It makes us do *excruciatingly* weird things sometimes. It makes us turn our backs on things that we've been raised to think are the one, true and good way of doing things. It makes us change who we are and how we act. It makes us change what we believe. And, it makes us think that we can control it...can control who and where we love...how much we love them...whether we can cage that love or let it out.
Way back when I was a fresh, clean innocent young thing just discovering the world of perversions that were available to me, I was monogamous. I thought that you were supposed to work to get the perfect partner for you, settle down to the house with the white picket fence, 2.5 kids and a dog. Then along came what I thought was the love of my life. The catch? He wasn't monogamous.
So. I bent and twisted and shimmied myself around until what finally shook loose was the fact that I wasn't monogamous either. If I'd paid attention to my friends and the people I'd dated up *until* that point, it would have been glaringly obvious. But, it's only on reflection does the fact that my best friends and I traded boyfriends around the group come to mean anything at all. And the little interlude that happened between me and my best friend and her boyfriend should have been a wake up call...but it wasn't. Nor was the fact that she sent me out with him when she had to work.
So...ok...love doesn't have to be limiting or what we are taught that it should be. And maybe if we taught our children that love comes in all shapes and sizes it might be better for them in the long run. But, I suspect that most people are, deep inside, in step with the society that spawns them.
Being in love with several people at once has had more than its share of ups and downs. You'd think that with the time I've spent coming to terms with being polyamorous I would have learned that you can't control love. You can't control when and where and with who it happens.
But, I still have my illusions. For the life of me, I *KNOW* that speaking about how I feel with people is Very Important. Hell, I speak about how I feel with people that I've never spoken to on lists and forums just like this one. I post my feelings hither and yon for anyone and everyone to read. So *WHY* is it so hard to speak those feelings to the people that *should* hear them. Why do I get a sick feeling inside when the thought of doing so comes to mind?
It's been quite a few years, now, since one lover told me that he thought I needed to find someone who wanted to be my primary partner instead of getting involved with people who couldn't give me that level of commitment. I think I responded that I didn't do primary/secondary style relationships. I either loved someone or I didn't. While that's technically true...now, years later, I can somewhat see what he was getting at. And I think he may have been right.
I do have a tendency to pick people who, for one reason or another, are partially unavailable to me. My ex-husband who was unavailable to me because we had incompatible goals and needs when it came down to the end. The several married men that I was involved with at the tail end of my marriage.
Even my lover was unavailable, because I was married at the time and he didn't want the depth of relationship that I offered because he could only see himself as secondary, I think, due to the marriage.
Now, there's one man that's collared to someone else and Tiger who's that's now half a continent away....though for the time we were together, he was as available as could be. Of them all, I know that he loves me just as much as I do him. Distance is the limiting factor that provides the limitation, rather than the relationship itself.
And, here I sit...pondering love. Why? Because that very same lover messaged me a few days ago out of the blue. And all of this came rushing back. The time we spent together. And all of the ups and downs that comes with this particular relationship. And the fact that I fall more deeply in love with the men I choose than they do. I don't speak about it so that there isn't any pressure or choices for them to make.
Oh, to be sure, I've sort of skirted the issue with one or two of them, just to get a feel for what they saw the relationship as. And what I was left with was the fact that they were happy with the relationship as it was and didn't want more than that.
Love doesn't ask whether you want it to happen. It just happens. And I've learned to live with what my partners can offer. It's who they are. And part of what makes me love them, I suspect.
But it's also a protection mechanism for me. I take away the chance that they might hurt me. I take away the opportunity for them to refuse what I could hold out to them, offer them. Sometimes I wonder if it's an escape clause for me. If I don't tell them I love them, I am "safe". If I don't give them the opportunity to respond, they can't break my heart. If I don't *admit* that I love them to anyone, I can hide it from myself until the dead of night comes and I can roll it around and then put it back away before it scares me too much.
And that is the delusion of thinking you can control love. I'm sitting here trying to figure out when I can get out to visit my old lover while writing this. Knowing, and trying to ignore, just how painful it is to be with him, but not wanting to give up the opportunity to spend a little time with him...because that's what he can give.
It's been months since we've spoken...or even run into each other online. And yet, here I am calculating how and when and what I need to do to get out there with the barest crook of a finger. Oh, there's no doubt that he cares for me...I know he does. But there's a small part of me that wants *so* much more.
I live in fear that someday, at just the wrong moment, I'll tell them. Then the cat will be out of the bag and the pressure will be on. Love so often doesn't come without strings, even when we really, really want it to. I try hard to keep it that way. But love moves on its own. So, I keep the strings to myself, since I can't seem to keep them from happening.
Love is. And it goes where it wants. Damn it.
