My HeartSong Into Polyamory*Part Two

The winter of 85/86 was a magical one. A whirlwind of polyamorous energy engulfed me and my circle of friends as we caught an exhilarating ride on an enormous spiral of love.

I had moved into a house that was a two story duplex of sorts. I was an apprenticing midwife and we used the downstairs for prenatal appointments and birthing classes.

Len, the local moccasin maker, lived across the street. He was a sweet and gentle man, a polyamorous, social butterfly and his home was a
magnet to like-minded, open hearted folks.

We would invariably go out dancing on the weekend to one of the local bands such as Spark-n-Cinder or a visiting band such as Robert Cray. After the show when the bar had booted us out the door, we would find ourselves standing in a circle on a street corner. There would be ten or fifteen of us, embracing and smiling at one another, wet with sweat from dancing all night, counting how many feet in the circle were wearing Len's moccasins, an unspoken and unnecessary, but nevertheless token symbol of our tribe.

We would then head back to Len's, walking arm in arm for a night of "trundling." Don't ask me why we called what we did trundling because it makes no logical sense to me now. But that's the word we came up with and no one questioned whether it was a valid description of the activity we were engaged in, so it stuck. Trundling consisted of lying around the living room intertwined with each other's body parts. We were fully clothed, chatting, laughing and massaging whatever leg, back, or foot that happened to be within our reach.

Some nights when we didn't go out dancing, we would head for a sweat in the back yard. The atmosphere was always sincere but not too earnest, with the intent of opening our hearts to each other and the earth. We were definitely evolving into a new and deeper sense of our spirituality. We would get naked, enter the wood fired sauna and sing and sweat our prayers for hours.

Harold came and for a visit and we enjoyed a couple of days and nights together. We maintained a close connection for many years and are still friends with infrequent connection today. We both ended up at a LovingMore Conference at Harbin Hot Springs about five years ago and camped with the same theme camp, PolyParadise, at BurningMan last year.

During this time, I met my youngest son's father while sufi dancing and had an immediate vision of the two of us walking together, climbing a hill with a dark and curly-haired toddler walking between us, holding our hands. Our child was conceived five months later, on Easter Sunday, after a community sweat lodge celebration. Read here about his christening ceremony the next Easter. The day before I had participated in a ritual where I married myself. This symbolized another step along the road of emancipating myself from the belief that I needed a man to behave in such and such a way to validate my self-worth.
Shortly after the debut of the love affair with my youngest son's father, we found ourselves at an all night party where the love and sexual energy was buzzing full force and having it's way with us, teasing us along. Six or so of us ended up in a make shift bed on the floor a bit before sunrise. We were chatting an massaging each other. I was on the outside, lying next to my lover and he was lying next to our friend Shirley. They started kissing and getting very cozy. While enjoying this at first, I suddenly found myself overcome with jealousy. I turned my back to them, contemplating my feelings. I realized I had the choice to continue separating myself into the jealousy I was experiencing, or I could join in and share the love. I decided to go along for the ride. Shortly thereafter we drove home to my house and I experienced my first sexual encounter as part of a triad. I was hooked and ready for more. Lots more. Unfortunately, Shirley had just starting dating a lesbian, and their relationship got very serious, very fast, and she committed to monogamy. They are still together as a married couple today.

In the beginning of this new relationship I would imagine living polyamorously. I remember a dream I had of being in an encampment of women and my lover was going in and out of the various tents, making love with each woman. It had a sort of 'Krsna and the gopis' spin to it and I felt totally accepting of his love for other women. As long as I was his "Radha" I felt secure in my position.

It turned out that I wasn't his Radha, and it was a difficult relationship, to say the least. For eight long years we struggled together, monogamously. Well, I was monogamous. All of my "monogamous" relationships were one-sided with each of my partners cheating on me once, twice, or three times at some point along the way. We actually struggled for longer than eight years together but that's how long we held on to the sex. We had good sex together--well, good for what I knew of sex at the time, but he was a fine lover and we fit together very well. A year before we finally split up, I told him I would no longer be monogamous with him and then although I had no specific new lover in my sights, I would occasionally remind him that I was no longer practicing monogamy, and the fact that I wasn't actually being sexual with anyone else was irrelevant. I kept reminding him because I knew the pattern of complacency, on both our parts. I was still in love with him and wanted our relationship to work. I also knew I was serious about finding another lover and I wasn't interested in cheating on him. I eventually came to understand that it was time for me to move on but I was addicted to him sexually. Talk about pheromones. I had to physically withdraw from that man when we finally called it quits.
Jerry arrived on the scene and we fell
into deep and passionate love. We were consumed in New Relationship Energy (NRE) and although we shared our complete sexual histories and openly discussed monogamy, non-monogamy and everything in between, we were basically head-over-heels smitten with each other and not the least bit interested in taking on other lovers. I had finally found the love of my life, the man of my dreams, and kinda forgot, once again, my desire to live polyamorously. So once again, I fell into living monogamously almost by default. It's what I knew, and Jerry was just what I had been looking for.

We were married three years after our first date. We had a huge ceremony with over two-hundred family and friends. At one point everyone held hands and made a huge circle. It was incredible. Everyone gave their self to love that day. We had performances and ceremony during the afternoon, and then food and drink and lots of dancing with bands playing late into the night. We committed ourselves to loving each other, telling the truth, and pushing the boundaries of what we understood relationship to be. We've kept that commitment, albeit, with the imperfection of our humanness of course.

During the year leading up to our actual wedding day, I started having reservations about committing to marriage and exactly what that meant as far as my sexuality was concerned. I realized that there was no way I was willing to commit myself to monogamy with just one man for the rest of my life. Jerry and I shared a journal at the time and one of us would write our thoughts and feelings and leave the journal out for the other to read. I started writing about my concerns and he would read what I wrote and write me back. We talked about it too of course, discussing it all to the best of our abilities, and sorted out an agreement that worked for each of us at that time.

As we humans are ever evolving, our agreements must eventually change to keep up with our changing understanding of ourselves. That's been Jerry's and my and process when dealing with our marriage in general, as well as staying true to our sexual selves and practicing polyamory specifically. We are currently in our fourteenth year of relationship and it's an on-going process. Because I never wanted to be married, simply because I happened to already be married, Jerry and I have a yearly ritual of reassessing our marriage and deciding if we want to stay together. Each year we have made the conscious choice to remarry and redo our vows. Each year our vows are different than the year before as they reflect the deepening truth of our understanding of ourselves. A constant for us has been our willingness to commit to authenticity of self and love for the other.

I've a long way to go in creating the polyamourous life of my dreams but as time goes by, I find myself more accepting and in grateful appreciation of the reality that I live. My heartsong remains polyamorous and I've certainly been blessed with a beautiful "bouquet of lovers", both with and without the potential of more sexual loving.