Dame and puppy play with rope, belts, and blood.

(Warning: this post includes talk of period blood.)

I learned all kinds of new things about my switchy, kinky brain the other night. Fiance and I had plans for kink, but the unexpected arrival of my period forced us to change our plans--not because sex during shark week is gross (it's not), but because the cramping and fatigue I get on day 1 fucks with my brain and I was pretty sure I'd have no chance of really getting into the right headspace.

So we opted for a slightly kinky stay-at-home date night with dinner, wine, and rope instead. Fiance put me in a simple chest harness most of the night that still gave me full range of motion and felt absolutely amazing to wear. I took dozens of pictures... here's just one of them:

We didn't stick to our original plans at all. We just resolved to just "see where things go" and how I felt as we snuggled, messed around, watched Firefly and drank.

And this "see where things go" plan ended up being spectacular. It let me just sort of let my brain go where it wanted to, and holy hell, some magical combination of the wine and the rope and maybe even my period pushed me into a very dommy mood pretty quickly. I stepped into a version of Dame that I'd never met before, and with Fiance's consent, I discovered the magic and pleasure of thwacking puppy on the ass with my own belt. The sounds. The reactions. Him letting me know that I can hit him harder, and the thrill of trying to do so.  There was this incredibly intense emotional aspect to it. Each time I brought my belt down, I wanted to immediately kiss and touch the place I'd just hit. There was this play between several high-intensity voices in my head "did I hurt him?" and "I want to do that again." and "oh my god I love this man so much."

I can't touch that belt now without smiling. I wear it nearly every day.

For the first time, I let my head play with the idea of puppy being "mine" in that very dominant sense you see in all the kinky tumblr feeds. And that was kind of thrilling. Surprisingly so. I felt more than a little bit unleashed in a way I'd never felt before. Not beastial, so much as completely unmonitored, completely free to take joy in what we were doing, and how we were fucking.  Dominance as an act of unabashed, unrestrained wanting, consumption, worship, and pleasure. I felt this intense need to cherish him in this violent and all-consuming way. It was otherworldly. I felt like a rockstar, or an artist, or some other kind of burning and bleeding thing.

And there was blood, of course. This wasn't the first time we've fucked on my period, but this was the first time that seemed to add to the intensity of what I was feeling instead of just making me distracted and self-conscious about staining something. For some reason, being in Dame's dommy headspace made it spectacularly hot to see the mess I'd left on him when we were finished. It looked like a painting--thick red oil paint smeared across a messy, fleshy canvas... my puppy entirely spent and exhausted, panting on the bed.

It was incredible. And with his permission, I took pictures. And no, you can't see them. No one but us can see them. But I will treasure them. Cherish them. And maybe someday I'll put a real paintbrush to real canvas and create something inspired by them. Something besides this blog post, and the marks he left on my skin to remember the night by.

Three things that helped me get back on solid ground

(This post is kind of "Part 2" of the previous post. Read that first.)

Things were very rough, but they are better now. Things are not the same as before, which I expected, and feel is normal and right--I've landed on a different shore from the one I was flung from, but I do feel like I'm on solid ground again.

This morning, Fiance observed that this was probably one of the fastest recoveries he's ever seen me go through, which made me feel really good. It made me realize that the years of work on my mental health and happiness weren't all unraveling, and weren't undone. The way my brain is wired really is different now compared to where it was before.  The "default" state of my brain really is higher, and the moments of happiness aren't the temporary things anymore. The crisis moments, the depression moments, those are the things that my brain recognizes will pass.

This makes me happy.

When Fiance said those things to me, I realized that there were three key things that are different in my life right now that I think helped me get back on my feet.  And they showed up in the last few days in three key things that happened. The order I describe them in this blog post is not the order in which they happened though. In my mind they are all part of a kind of simultaneous experience of getting better. Yes, maybe the third in this list made the other two possible...chronology is a real thing... but I would not be as whole as I feel right now if it weren't for all three.

Thing one: did work that I love.

First, I went back to work yesterday, and this particular work that I do makes me feel fulfilled and capable and strong on levels that no other work or job I've ever had does. I walked out of the office that night feeling nearly whole. Feeling like I had expertise and control over something important and that I was helping other people have better lives...

Walking out of work that night reminded me that my future in-laws don't get to decide what's right for me in my life. Even if the judgments I felt like they passed on me through Fiance's second-hand retelling of their conversation was wrong, this experience helps remind me that no one, not even parents or in-laws or strangers on the internet can decide or judge me for the choices I've made in my life to be happy.  They don't know how much my work fulfills me, and fuck them if they think I should be working "more hours" or bringing home more of a paycheck. Fuck them for implying that my choices aren't "fair" or show "selfishness".

So the first thing that's different is I have work that makes me feel a lot of dignity and self-respect, and so I found myself on solid ground emotionally on at least one front more quickly than I thought I would. It helped reinforce to me that my choices were right for me, and I should fight tooth and nail to keep doing this kind of work.

Thing two: voiced my very last secret fear.

The second thing that happened is that during one of our emotional conversations, Fiance and I talked about the very very last hard thing that until now I've left completely unvoiced, and unstated.  I won't get into exactly what that difficult scary thing was, except to say that this scary thing felt like I'd been sitting on a nuke that could go off and destroy everything if I let it out. I felt like it was something I could only confide to a therapist... someone legally required to keep it secret, and who could then help me understand it in a safe environment.

Well, I told Fiance about it. And he listened, and we talked about it, and the end result was not the destruction of our marriage-before-it-started. The end result was a mutual commitment to each other, and a promise to him and from him that even if any part of my now-not-secret-fear were true, we still want to get married. He's still my foundation, and my life partner. His dad and stepmom don't get a say in whether or not we get married.

And suddenly I realized the nuke would never go off. That it hadn't been a nuke at all. Maybe it was just a big brick with the word "nuke" spray painted onto the side. Or maybe in some relationships, it would have been a nuke, but in this one, it's just a dud, and that fact... the fact that THIS context, THIS relationship makes it possible to transmute the most destructive secret I've kept from him into something more benign... it helped me understand how "forever" this relationship is.

There was more to our conversation, but it stemmed from voicing that fear and talking through it. And so this second thing that happened was that I landed back on solid ground in terms of my relationship with my primary partner, my Fiance, and I have no more secret fears. I have nothing else to fear, no more sources of anxiety regarding my relationship with my Fiance. And so I feel like I'm on solid ground again.

Thing three: polyamory.

The third thing that happened is a thing that makes me feel so very strongly that polyamory is a thing that needs to continue being a part of my life, and my marriage. My other romantic partner came over for lunch, and I cried and told him about the roughness and pain and fear and the massive emotionally violent breakdown I'd had after hearing how coming out to my in-laws went.  I cried, and I was vulnerable and broken, and then afterwards he helped put me back together again. There were kisses and snuggles, and I believe that these kisses and snuggles were so profoundly healing precisely because they came from someone who loves me and who is NOT involved in the thing that was hurting me.  He was an outside person who could just listen and be invested in my emotional state, and could love me and touch me when I was ready for that in a way that I simply couldn't have had if polyamory weren't a thing in my life. It was a profound kind of healing moment that I needed badly, and I don't think I could have gotten in any other way. 

I never felt like I was on shaky ground with regards to how I feel about polyamory being right for us, but this experience gave me a concrete example of exactly why it's so very right. So very healthy for my brain, and my health and my relationship with my Fiance. Because of that experience, I could be more open and vulnerable and brave and strong with my Fiance, and it was the very next morning and the very next day when Thing one, and Thing two happened, and so I can't help but credit this poly afternoon as the real turning point for me, even if I can only recognize it as the turning point in retrospect.  

I have the urge to re-tell some of this experience in terms of the allegory from my dream in my last post, but I don't think I could do it without diminishing this. Something about the dusk not being dusk at all, but actually being those moments before dawn. The sun rose. And while the sunlight didn't make the waters my adrift house was floating on less dangerous, it gave me more energy to rally, and keep things together while I figured out how to install a rudder and a sail. Or something. See? It sounds reductive. Diminished told that way... sorry about that.  

Things were very rough; they are better now.

Someone ripped my house up by the foundation and set it adrift in the ocean

I haven't blogged in ages. Not because I haven't wanted to... more because things were going very well... so well in fact that writing about them here, in this pseudo anonymous space would have felt a little shallow. A little reductive.  Poly things took off. I've somehow found myself living in a world where I can have a Fiance and another romantic partner at the same time.  Many joy. Very magic. Wow.

I came out to my mother about us opening our relationship, and how much of a spectacularly positive thing that has been for me and the Fiance. My mother said all the right things. Gave all the right kinds of support. She sent us a book about love. She said she'd let me know when she was ready to get pictures or talk to the Fiance or hear more so my news could be "really real" for her. Many joy. Very magic. Wow.

Then Fiance came out to his dad and stepmom. And they did not say all the right things. Did not give all the right support. They raised issues and complaints and concerns about me, about the very nature of our relationship, and none of that was expected. It's ripped a crack in something very foundational in me, and I'm sort of set adrift now. For a little while after hearing about their conversation, I felt like my life, all of it, was over. I felt like my marriage was over before it'd even started.  It's been a shattering few days. I'm barely holding it together. But I'm working on it. I came back from a breakdown that had me collapsed on the floor making terrifying animal noises in record time, and I'm researching therapists, and I am working hard not to close up and lock everything down in my brain again. Keep the protective walls at maybe waist high instead of going up to the sky. Some minutes I'm fine. Some minutes I'm strong, and I have my feet under me. But then some minutes I'm just crumpled in a corner crying.

Like now.

Last night I dreamed.  And the symbols in the dream were so obvious... so transparent... that I couldn't have made them more plain if I were a bitter, disenfranchised high school student with a creative writing assignment.

In my dream, someone ripped my entire house out by its foundation and used a couple boards like a lever to shove it into the ocean before anyone could react, setting it adrift at sea with me still inside. I was angry and I was scared and I was bitter. It was some kind of twilight. Like just after sunset. Visibility was bad. Waves were relatively calm though. There was no wind, but the white foam when waves broke on the beach were like reminders of past and future storms.  The house floated upright, and I had some amount of confidence that it would hold, but not for long. Only for as long as my anger held and I kept my wits.

I looked over the edge of my roof, or perhaps out a window, and I could see sharp and jagged rocks just under the surface of the water, but I was smart enough to know how to time the movement of the house so that a swell could carry it over the top of them. Get us to a place where we wouldn't be in immediate danger. I felt clever. But it felt like triage. I'd saved us for this moment, but at a cost.

Now we were out in deeper waters, with those sharp rocks between us and safety.  There's no way to get back to the same solid ground we came from. So I started scanning the coastline, found we were in some kind of bay. There's a peninsula made of... paper I think, to our right. It's hard to see it in the dusk. And I have no way to steer the house there. And if we made it, the new coastline might actually be made of paper anyway and sink the second we tried to land.  I knew we needed to find a new place to be. But I didn't know how. We needed help.

Someone (a version of me?) wanted to jump overboard with a vague rationale of paddling or pushing the house by hand back to shore or swimming back to land by herself and running away.  I don't know if I told her no (I wanted to). I don't know if she jumped. But I remember thinking it was a stupid idea and would get her killed.

Sometimes dreams are nonsense. And sometimes they are just straight-up re-tellings of your emotional state.  Which I guess can be cathartic. I guess this can be therapeutic. Writing about it now feels good.  Makes me feel a little better.

I feel like this dream is a way all the different versions of me in my head (and I've got a lot of them) are trying to affirm to me that they know how I feel. They understand what I'm going through. And they are doing their part to process things, use the machinery of my brain and all the symbols at its disposal to just "be with me" and empathize. 

Or something. I don't really know how to end this blog post... there's no wrap-up. No moment where I land on something hopeful right now. Except to reassure you (and myself) that I am okay. I'm going back to work today after the long holiday break. And I've gotten replies and referrals from several kink and poly friendly therapists. That's not nothing. But I know that I will not be able to see my Fiance's dad or stepmom again for a long time. 

Need to squee....

My favorite twitter person just followed me back. :D

*swoon*

@pandoras_mouth, I love you so very much. :)

Birthday kink, and our "you'd be a spectacularly bad lesbian" joke

Last weekend was Fiancé's birthday, and as I've tweeted elsewhere, the VAST majority of my gifts to him this year were kink related. :) I can't tell you how much fun it was to wake him up in that outfit, and let him be the one to decide how I was going to make him late for... anything else we had planned that morning (I was about to say 'late for work' but it was a Saturday).

And we also threw a party at our apartment and everyone we invited showed up. Fiancé wore a bow-tie! He looked amazing, and adorable, and a little like the 11th Doctor, but much less dopey. :)  Crush helped cook, and prep, and that was lovely on so many levels. There were tickle fights and hugs with other amazing beautiful wonderful people that I wish I could spend every waking hour sort of orbiting. :) And then there was the spectacularly unexpected hour or so when Crush's wife fell asleep on my shoulder and I didn't dare move or speak, worried I'd break that spell.  Even though I know she's not interested in me in that way, that hour (or year... hard to say how long she was there) made me feel so amazing.  I felt trusted in a way I've never felt before, especially because not only is she a dear dear friend that I want very much to be closer to, she is also Crush's wife. More than once I had to try not to cry. Haha (I am such a dork.)

I still have a few more gifts for Fiancé coming (*shakes fist at vendor for being slow*), but Monday night was my second kink-related gift to him: I dressed in a corset, tights, skirt and heels, made dinner. On the table was a wrapped gift: a length of Twisted Monk's October Limited Edition Blood Drop rope (now sold out. Sorry.). I timed it in such a way that everything was ready when he walked in the door, and had all these pseudo plans of just pretending like everything was normal.  It was ridiculously fun, but the cooking-in-heels-and-corset thing taught me several new things related to my kink brain that I didn't know before...

For one, I think the "service" aspect of subbing doesn't do anything for me. I wanted to try it. Try to be a "good sexy housewife" just to see what that felt like, and I'm glad I did. But while I was cooking, it just felt like any other birthday prep work. I still felt good doing it, was excited for him to come home, but it contributed absolutely no kink-level things or arousal-level things or anything else beyond what I'd experienced doing this in vanilla.  Plus, cooking in heels was absolutely awful. That made me grumpy. Remind me never to do that again. 10 minutes after he arrived, I had to kick off those fucking shoes and spend the rest of the night sliding around in tights instead.

Other things I learned that night were how incredibly hot it felt to be in bondage and continue to do pretty mundane things. We watched an episode of The Newsroom with me in ropes next to him on the couch, and it was for some reason thrilling to have to struggle to figure out how to drink my champagne, and have the ropes tighten and grip me in new and interesting ways when bringing the glass up to my lips. And Fiancé's smile when he'd see me struggle, and how he'd keep hold of the loose end of my rope... just thinking about this makes me want to go shopping for a collar and leash, and buy him a million books on bondage so he can learn new and exciting ways to tie me up for activities that have nothing to do with sex. :) *swoon*

The sexytimes part of the kink night also taught me new things, some of which I won't get into because they are just more "yes, I liked that" and "no that didn't do much for me".  But one thing specifically I think is worth writing about: at one point, he made me taste myself, which may not seem weird, or boundary-pushing (because I know that tasting body fluids either on accident or on purpose sometimes happens a lot in vanilla sex) but for me, this was one of those Big Moments where I had to really fucking pay attention to how my brain would respond.  And having that happen recently also gives me an excuse to finally write the blog post I've had sitting in a half-draft state for weeks... I've been wanting to write about my fear of lady-fluids for a long time, but each time I almost hit publish, I chicken out. Well, not this time, bitches. I've got you now.

*ahem* here we go....

In the past, my fiancé and I have joked a lot about the fact that I'd be "a spectacularly bad lesbian". For years and years, pretty much forever in fact, even after I finally accepted and internalized my bisexuality, I've been pretty grossed out by the smell and taste of my own pussy. It was a very strong dislike. So strong that I used to really freak out if my partner tried to kiss me after going down on me.  With each new partner, I started integrating "Okay, and if you go down on me, you have to go brush your teeth afterwards before you can kiss me again" into the usual conversations about birth control and STDs.

And, inevitably, I'd get the funny look, and once or twice the question, "But aren't you bi?" Yes. I'm bi. And yes, I'm afraid of pussy. Shut up. Do you want to fuck or not?

It always felt to me like this embarrassing black mark on my sexuality. It made me feel a lot of doubt about my identity, and made me even question the validity of my own feelings... Even my "can't-eat-for-days" and "throw-up-with-nervousness-before-I-see-her" crush on The Woman, who blew my mind and made me feel more swoony than any other person of any gender I've ever crushed on before or after.  

This fear of tasting pussy made me doubt everything I felt about women. Like, maybe I'm not really bi. Maybe this is "just a phase".  And even worse "maybe I'm just crushing on women for attention". I was a walking, talking, breathing, case of biphobia, and no small amount of self-hatred for it.

Eventually, I kind of learned to hate myself less for it and just accepted that perhaps some people just can't handle the taste and smell, and that it HAS to be sort of common... but I'm pretty sure this continued to be a big part of why I was never brave enough to actually express my interest, or confess my crushes, to anyone but my journals, my livejournal (in pseudo-anonymous ways) and trusted guy friends (who no doubt got off on all my pining and swooning).

Fast forward, oh... 10 or so years from then to now, and not much has changed. While I've had countless crushes on women, I've still never had a girlfriend, never had meaningful sex with a woman, and my Fiancé always rinses his mouth after going down on me.  The difference these days is that I feel like this phobia is pretty childish. I'm an adult. And my juices are not gross. No one's juices are gross.  The rest of the world seems to be able to either push past their dislike, or as what seems more likely, actually deeply enjoy the taste and smell, so why can't I?

So, bit by bit... I started pushing my own boundaries. Secretly at first. Tasting myself on my toys and hands after masturbating. It was scary. But I was brave. It was gross and weird and strange... it turned me right the hell off for the most part, but I kept trying, kept pushing boundaries.

I reached a turning point not too long ago when while enjoying some solo time, I tasted myself and pretended it was the taste of a girl I was crushing hard on. And that was spectacular. I'd reached some kind of breakthrough.  For the first time ever, I felt the anxiety about all of this melt away.

I tweeted something about that the next day:

Yesterday, wanted to tweet "I taste myself and pretend it's her", but chickened out until now. Feeling braver. #crushinghard

— Inner Jane (@InnerJane) October 10, 2015

But that breakthrough was a little short-lived.  My changes aren't always straight lines, and this particular fear and anxiety still hasn't gone completely away (and I have some theories as to why, but won't post them here... if you're interested, and you are one of the few people who know who I am in real life, you can email me or IM me about this.)

But the long and short of it is that Birthday Kink Night was another sort of breakthrough/turning point for me in this area. Not in quite the epic way the first one was, but hearing the words "I'm going to make you taste yourself" from someone I love and trust so completely while also deep in subspace was a pretty fucking fantastic, and a pretty safe way to keep my brain from flipping its shit.  It did break me out of the headspace for a second or two, but only really enough for me to realize that I didn't hate that. So, I took a mental note, congratulated myself on the babysteps I was still taking after sort of relapsing over the last few weeks, and then continued to enjoy the night.

As an epilogue, I'll also mention that corsets are cool. (Read that in the 11th doctor's "bowties are cool" for added effect.)  Even cheap Halloween-quality corsets. I took pictures, but of course I can't share those with you... but the fact that I happily took some kind of reminds me of the breakthroughs I talked about in my last post. :) I'm still this "different person" that I became after my transformative Adventures at the Strip Club day and didn't careen back to reality with a crash or revert back into some older, more reserved version of myself after coming down from that high. This, and many other things in my brain right now, makes me very happy. :)

I went to a strip club last night.

I went to a strip club last night. I went to a motherfucking strip club. I. Me. This girl who not that long ago used to cringe and hide her face any time anyone made an even slightly dirty joke out loud. This girl who maybe just 2 months ago could barely muster up the energy to have sex with her Fiance about once a week.  This girl who couldn't even say the word "penis" out loud with a straight face. This girl. Me. I.  I went to a fully nude, fully insane, fully amazing strip club.

And it was spectacular. It was fantastic. I had the most mindblowing time, and got to meet and flirt and smell some of the most amazing women. In the car ride home, I think I yelled out something like "Holy shit, there's no question about it. I'm totally a raging bisexual back here." I can't remember everything. There was no alcohol involved, but the night was such a blur of color and flesh and elevated heartrates that I'm sure it will be weeks from now and I'll still recall new details that will thrill and excite me. I can't tell you all the stories. But I owe this experience to two very very dear friends who took Fiance and me there as a most fantastic and inspired engagement gift... I still have no fucking words, but they both got a lot of hugs and snuggles and I wish I could do something, anything to really truly thank them in some way that does justice to how that experience transformed me.

And... and... going to the club wasn't the only mind-blowing thing that I did yesterday. I sort of changed three times yesterday... ("A day of three changes?") Sort of bolstered by the anticipation of going to the club, and also sort of bolstered by the unabashed desire just to try it and see how it felt, I shaved everything... and I mean everything. With a razor. Fiance was there, helping me. Supervising. Helping me touch up places I couldn't see or reach. Telling me I was a good girl when I needed to sink slightly into subspace in order to really fully trust that the blade wasn't going to cut me.  It was a fantastic and amazing experience, and afterwards I felt changed for the first of the three times.

I looked at myself in the mirror after shaving and just said "Who the fuck am I?" with this massive grin. I think I even yelled something like "holy shit, I have a pussy!" while looking at the color and texture of skin that I'd never actually really seen before. And in this really deep belly sort of way, I felt this glow... this unabashed glow that I can only attribute to actually discovering that I like myself.

And then the second of three changes happened. A lightswitch in my brain flipped from off to on, and despite the fact that for my entire life, I swore I'd never ever let anyone ever do this to me (not even a future life partner after being married for a million years), I decided I wanted to take naked pictures of myself. Naked pictures. Of myself. Explicit ones. Very explicit ones. I. Me. This girl who used to hate her body so much that the thought of ever there existing any kind of even half-nude or sexualized picture of her used to send her into a massive anxiety and panic attack just thinking about it.  But for some reason, yesterday, I wanted to. I needed to. So I did. :D Fiance helped with angles and poses and also helped with making sure my phone didn't auto-upload any of these images to the cloud.  We must have taken a dozen or so... some with rope (purple of course!), some without. Some up close, some zoomed out. None showed my face, and none were very good, but they were mine. My naked pictures. I'd never felt so fucking powerful before that moment as I did right then, zooming in and out looking at my own god damned cunt in high definition.

I don't have good words to process any of this. I don't think I've had nearly enough sleep to process any of this.

After we got home from the strip club last night, I had to just pause looking in the mirror at one point and just be *baffled*.  Somewhere in the club, somewhere between learning how to tip properly at the stage and learning what it's like to have this gorgeous tattooed woman who just made you feel so much teasing you in a private dance so intense that it ends in involuntary tears and many laughter-filled hugs (I am not making this up. While I wasn't sobbing or anything, I can honestly say I cried a bit in the arms of a stripper!) I changed for the the third time in a day.

When we got home, I found myself having one of those incredibly surreal moments where you look at yourself in the mirror and you see someone totally different from who you were the last time you stood there. Like the night before and after losing your virginity... I remember pretty distinctly looking in the mirror before sneaking off to meet my friend (yes, I lost my v-card to a friend rather than a boyfriend. I'm actually pretty damn proud of this.) and thinking to myself something like "the next time I am standing here, looking at myself in this bathroom mirror, I'm going to be a changed person."  I don't mean this to say that losing my virginity was some kind of mythic, epic thing. (It wasn't. It was actually pretty disappointing and frustrating, but that's another story.) But even so, I marked that moment with this mirrored eye-contact with myself and just marveled at how I was about to do something sort of huge and different and personal and in that romantic-narcissistic headspace all 16 year olds live in, I felt and believed that after that point, I'd be changed forever.

And last night after coming home, I had one of those exact moments but sort of in reverse. I looked in the mirror and saw myself as a changed person. Wholly changed. "Who the fuck am I?" I said with an uncontrollably huge smile. Just a few weeks ago, I'd never have even fathomed that I'd be doing and thinking and being in the ways I have been lately.

And I'm so fucking pleased with myself over all of it. Every single thing.  I had the most spectacular time last night. I wore high heels all night and didn't die (although I'm sore as fuck this morning... but that COULD have been from the wild sex after coming home... not sure if I can blame the heels). I fell in love over and over and over again with the women on stage, chatting with us, doing acrobatics and dives and flinging their underwear at my friend next to me.  I got to watch as a stripper in full Harley Quinn cosplay and character grabbed my Fiance by the tie and dragged him off to be molested (I think when he came back, he said something about how he'd never ever been so hot for a woman threatening to murder him before.)

I'm still more than just a little bit stunned by it all. I can't expect to process this all in one post. I am sure I'll be thinking about this for weeks... I know that for days and days to come, I'm going to be thinking non-stop about the stripper who treated me oh so well and gave me the most spectacular hugs, celebrating with me the fact that it was my first time there by being so incredibly warm and generous with her smiles and body and laughter.  She told me afterwards how thrilled she'd felt to dance for me because of how enthusiastic and genuinely into it I was. We hugged and she said I was her "favorite" to dance for, and even if she says that or something like that to all her clients, she made me feel it. She made me feel like she understood me, my nervousness and enthusiasm and the happy dizzy feeling she was making me feel on a level that I had no hope of really understanding for myself just then, or maybe even ever...

I really don't know how I'm going to return to my "normal life" after this. It's 9:35 am on a random Sunday in October and I have two very large stacks of papers to grade and lessons to write, and dishes to do, and laundry to fold, but all I want to do is just continue to bask in this afterglow... write some smutty fiction, and put my black high heels on again and walk around in them for just a little while more.

Anger, emotional pacing, and Captain Jane at sea

Yesterday was a bit of an angry, tumultuous day.  For a brief few hours, I worried that I'd slipped back into some form of depression/anxiety, but in reality, I think it was just the way I needed to process some feelings, and the way it happened was kind of like a storm at sea.

Let me unpack...

For various reasons, which I won't get into, it's become sort of apparent that my excitement/enthusiasm for polyamory is perhaps maybe sort of outpacing Fiance's comfort with what (and who) I am interested in.  And this is okay! It's okay for him to not be ready. This is all completely normal. And I understand and respect that he needs to process things and work on his own feelings at his own pace. He reminds me every time we talk that he "wants to say yes", and one of the reasons he can't just say yes before he's ready is that he doesn't want to discover he's really not okay and ask me to put the brakes on things after he's given the green light.  It makes perfect and total sense, and I love him for the thought and seriousness he's  putting into all of this and how open he is to not only considering it, but also his willingness to try and actively work to change how he feels about this so that he can get to a point where he can freely and happily give me something I really want.

That said, my feelings for my crush lately have gone from "pleasant hum" to "roaring firehose of emotion". I came out to his wife recently, which was an amazing and positive experience, and I think made us closer friends, but partly because of how unexpected it was that she did not ask us to give up on our crush, I let myself (and my feelings) dial themselves up way past eleven. Way further than I should have, considering the two people who sort of hold the starter guns still have them buried in their pockets (and one of them only just recently learned she had one).

So yesterday was a reality check. Fiance and I talked. And I cried over a wonky comedy-of-errors misunderstanding that ended up being totally hilarious and harmless, but drained the everliving fuck out of my emotions. In the end, I got a better and stronger sense of just how much slower I need to be moving emotionally for this all to remain sane.  And I also got the real sense that I needed to do something now in order to well... calm the fuck down, so to speak.  So, I decided to try and take a break. Crush and I agreed to go no-contact (I slipped once...more on that later), and I put all the things (literally and metaphorically) that make me think of him in a little box out of sight.  And then I tried to dive into my work, and chores, and all the things I've been neglecting. I skipped going in to work so I could take the day to process and get my feet under me again.

But... unfortunately (or maybe this is normal? I don't know), I didn't feel relieved at all. I expected and needed and wanted to feel like a burden had been lifted. That this internal pressure had been set aside (if not released) and I could get back into a headspace where I could dial shit down, calm my tits, and go back to where I was just a few days ago. And.. to be fair, I think I succeeded. There were long swaths of time where I didn't think about him. And my feelings dialed down, and on some levels, this was a successful experiment.

But on other levels, it really wasn't. Some emotions dialed down, but others got dialed way up... I got anxious for reasons I don't fully understand... maybe because I'm behind on my work... but more likely it was because I felt like I was cutting myself off from a good friend who I'd normally go to talk about my inner life.  Looking back at it now, I think it really was because I didn't have (or felt like I didn't have) anyone to talk to about what was going on in my head. And that was miserable.

I started doing a lot of chores.  And, I got angry, mostly at myself for reasons I didn't understand then (I thought I was failing at dialing down the crush feelings).  I was pretty emotionally raw all day, Fiance supported the fuck out of me though, and gave me deep and long fantastic hugs whenever I needed them (which averaged once every oh... 10-15 minutes), and let me be angry with the world without taking it personally....

Except once, when I did direct my anger directly at him (sorry sweetie) because of something he said, or rather, something I heard when he said something else... this actually is relevant to my attempts to process things so here's a bit of a tangent....

While I was deep in "angry at myself" mode, I was still busy actively trying hard to figure out ways to snap out of it. Feel better again. Have a catharsis.  And so my thoughts turned to kink. And I started planning. I started building a scene in my head that I thought would really help me feel better. And I wanted it. I wanted to go deep sub. Really deep. Let everything go. Relinquish all control and put my complete and absolute trust in my sweetie so that I could reconnect with both him, and a much more calm and open version of myself. I wanted it to include punishment, and restraint, and sensory deprivation. I wanted a collar and a leash (I found a tie), and I wanted to be told how bad I'd been and how guilty I should feel, and how the only way to redeem myself would be to do exactly as he said. I wrote down real safewords (up until now we've been using the "we mean what we say, especially when we say it three times" method in our super mild novice-kink games).   I started laying out the ropes, the shoes, the toys, the blindfold...

And then I came to him and started to describe some of what I wanted (and in my mind needed) that night... and in response where I expected him to be enthusiastic about it, the way he had been enthusiastic whenever I'd come to him asking for hugs, instead he said something about how I should make sure the laundry was done first... and because chores are a topic of endless arguments between us, and my emotionally raw state, it triggered a storm inside me that I had no control over. When he said this as a simple logistical comment (we need a cleared off bed for kink), I heard it as an instruction/direction that I should "finish your chores before you play" ....  And I just lost it inside. I broke. I closed up. I shut down. In my head, I threw a screaming raging temper tantrum and punched a wall. Wind and rain and huge boulders of destruction were flying everywhere.  Outside, I don't know what I did or what I looked like. I probably just walked away and continued to fold clothes, letting things bubble up as my anger built up... I don't think I raised my voice until much later, after I'd already broken down and IMed my crush (breaking my own "no contact today" rules) to let out some of what I was feeling (looking back, this is the moment when I should have realized that some of my anger wasn't anything to do with the crush feelings. It had everything to do with feeling like I couldn't talk to my friend).

But Fiance and I got past that moment. Talked about it. I apologized. I think he did too. And so we started working towards kink, which was fun, and interesting, and started WAY earlier in the evening than I expected! (I was expecting to start after raid... but we kind of started during raid, during breaks, and between pulls... At one point, I was raiding in a thong and a tie and cat ears, exchanging dirty PMs between pulls, and following orders to make sure I was in clear view of him, and looking at porn whenever I wasn't DPSing... *swoon*) Our games did not end up including all the things on my wishlist (no punishment play), which is okay because I don't know if that kind of catharsis would have happened for me anyway.  But we pushed boundaries, and discovered new things (like how fun it is being blindfolded and half naked and led by a tie around the house. And how HOLY SHIT I do NOT like mirrors involved in my kink! Nope-noped the fuck away from that!) Hopefully I'll find time to write more about the specifics of what we learned later as I continue to discover new things about my strange and ever-changing "switchy" brain (I wonder if my synaesthesia has anything to do with how my brain seems to refuse to settle into a favorite role...)

I woke up this morning feeling SO much better. Something got processed yesterday, whether it was during our kink play, or the long deep sleep afterwards, or maybe even in the moments this morning when I got up to make coffee. I feel better. Calmer. My feet are much closer to being under me. I see clear skies and calm waters. I took all the things that make me think of my crush back out from their box and felt the familiar pleasant hum.

All of this though adds up to... I don't know... half a dozen things. But the thing I wanted this post to add up to was how processing emotions is hard as fuck. Especially for me sometimes. My inner life is volatile and made of things that I don't really fully understand until later when I've had time to reflect. There are sea monsters and huge waves, and sometimes these wide magical stretches of depth and clarity that deceive me into thinking that navigating this ocean is easy.  It's not. But my ship has not yet sunk, and I'm still my own captain... Captain Jane.... haha. That makes me giggle so much that I need to put that in the title of this post. (I've been searching for a domme honorific for a while... maybe Captain Jane might work...? Dunno.)

The other thing that I'm coming away from yesterday understanding is that once I have them, I do not do well when cut off from friends. Even if it's self-exile. I felt a little bit like this was a useful experiment or dress-rehearsal for the someday-what-if scenario if/when the Fiance tells me he definitely is not comfortable with me and Crush being together. If that day comes, I think I know better now than to try and deal with my feelings through going "no contact" with him. That was a dumb idea yesterday, and will continue to be a dumb idea for as long as he's my friend.

A "Yellow Sunshine" poem I wrote about being bi in 2003

I have been going through my old CDs from all the backups I made in college (lots of stuff on these discs from High School....) looking for some of my old porn, and I stumbled across a folder filled with random text files and mini-journals.

One of them included this poem, which seems to be all about a crush on a girl. I don't remember which girl though. It seems too light and happy to be about The Woman (more about her in another post), but it seems to have been someone... someone with a boyfriend. Maybe someone I studied with regularly... According to the text file, I wrote this on March 15, 2003.

Yellow sunshine in my brain
scattered rainbows
contacts falling out
so bouncy
running down the halls, the urge to do a cartwheel
but hesitate.
So shy.

The ink smeared on my study-guide looks like art
I can stare at it, and see the future
or the past
so pretty

I'm the sunshine
and the raindrops
that together
make me queer.

My mood, so high
I could be a substance
sought after by
your girlfriend

And she would be my girlfriend
after that.

My head is a happy cloud
light-colored, headed
believe me not
I'm not on fire
Just happy.

I want to capture this
and put it in a solution
next to my old syringe
for a rainy day.

The poem feels so familiar... I still have the ability to just kind of sit with feelings of happiness even if I know that I'll never be able to act on those feelings. I think that's sort of where I must have been when I wrote this. Intoxicated, but willing to just put the infatuation in a drawer next to all my other crushes.

Okcupid feature request...

Okcupid feature requests:

• The ability to require users spend a minimum number of minutes on your profile before they can message you.  (Did you even read the first sentence where I say I'm only dating women?!)

• The ability to require a minimum number of words in your message before it will be sent. ("Ur hot. How r u" is not a thoughtful message. Fuck off.)

• The ability to stop receiving messages from people outside my "looking for" filters (uh, seriously fuck off, 57 year old man from Nevada who is guilty of both of the above. How did you get in here?)

Vodka, inhibitions, dominance and purple feathers

So, yesterday, the partner and I had some super awesome non-bedroom alone time in the form of actually having a dinner date.  It was so good, and made me so happy. :)  But even though we weren't in the bedroom, I still learned a lot of stuff about how my re-awakened sex-crazed brain seems to work.

So (to back up a bit), during our "dry spell"--which, for the record, is a terrible word for where we were for the X number of years between first getting together and now. It wasn't technically "dry". We had sex, semi-regularly, barring stress or other things. Granted, it sometimes felt perfunctory and I remember feeling mentally and emotionally exhausted (rather than energized)... So, while it wasn't really a "dry spell", it was very very far from the kind of engaged, enthusiastic, wake-the-neighbors sex we're having now at all hours of the day (remind me to tell you my new record for number of orgasms in a single day. Oh nevermind, why wait. It's 7. And I think I've reached that record 3 times now?).

Anyway, during our "dry spell", we both knew that if I was drinking, my interest in sex rose considerably. So, inevitably, we'd both make at least some effort to be drunk or tipsy semi-regularly because of how much it just made (and still makes) me want to be touched and cuddled, and well... fucked.  (Not to mention the fact that I sometimes get an insatiable oral fixation when I'm tipsy. I hope you interpret that in exactly the way I know you are in an adult-oriented blog.)

Basically, we knew that certain levels of tipsy lowered my inhibitions considerably (duh), but also multiplied all kinds of other feelings and interests regarding sex that I'd normally be pretty un-interested in while sober (sorry, sweetie. I hope I can make it up to you now).

So, yesterday the partner and I were on a date, and we'd had a drink. And the combination of not really having much alcohol in months (aside from a few key nights with friends) and the fact that I've basically cut breads and starches out of my diet entirely, my one vodka martini hit me pretty hard, and for a little while, I was exactly in that perfect amount of tipsy that used to turn me from "oh, I'd rather read a book" to "um... could I please take off your pants?". It was the first time we'd really had any real amount of alcohol since... well... since our "nearly-dry" spell ended.

And holy crap, I felt like the entire world was made out of sex. Our waitress was so fucking hot and kissable. (At one point as she was walking away, I whispered for the benefit of just my partner, "Do you want to come home with us?" which I think made him more than a little excited.) And so was the other waitress that was serving the table next to us.  And so were the people on tv. And every word out of everyone's mouth was a fucking inuendo in my head. It was spectacular.

But not only that, I started to also discover how alcohol might change the sorts of kink I'm interested in.  So far, I've been very interested in subbing/bottoming. I love being tied up, restrained, bound, and exposed. I love relinquishing control, relaxing my guard, dissolving all of my anxieties, and opening myself up... It's glorious. It's magical. It's alchemical. It makes me feel like a whole human being instead of the impostor I usually feel like I am.

But after this one drink yesterday, I started thinking more and more about how fun it might be to really embrace dominance. And I don't mean the kinds of fantasies I've had since college... it's no surprise to anyone I've slept with that I often fantasize about being with women, and when I do, I'm almost always the one taking the lead in what we're doing. But in those fantasies, there's no kink. It's just us, with her under me while I learn how to make her moan...

No, yesterday I was thinking (to my delight and surprise) about dressing up in black corsets and purple feathers, with black heels and maybe fishnet gloves, and pushing my partner onto the bed, tying him down... and... well... I'll let you imagine what you'd like. (And to help, here's a picture of some of the things we picked up today before our date... they--along with the other toys that came in the mail--were in the trunk of the car during dinner:)

This was kind of new for me. Over the past 3-4 years, I've gone back and forth with being more or less comfortable "taking the lead" in sex with my partner in pretty general and vanilla ways (such as being on top, initiating sex, etc), but my brain on vodka last night after my recent sexual revival/revolution/re-awakening was decidedly dominant. And she was hot. And what was so incredibly exciting and mind blowing was that she was a part of me.  I think I'll name her Mistress Jane. Or Dominatrix Jane. Not quite sure yet.  And to be fair, Dominatrix Jane was very interested in fucking women too (like our waitress), which was a kind of amplification of my usual fantasies about women. But the thing that was new and interesting and exciting was that for the first time, I wanted to take on that role with men (like my partner). I just need to take a moment and marvel at that for a second... Brains are weird, and changing, and plastic, and dynamic, and so is sexuality. And it's so delicious. 

So, of course, once we were in the car and out of earshot of anyone else, I told him all about this. :) What I learned about myself is that it seems like alcohol still lowers my inhibitions, raises my libido, and multiplies my interest in sex. But now that I have this new, much higher "base level" interest, it seems to be also transforming what KIND of sex I want to have, and with whom.

After we got home (and before sexy times) my partner and I went for our evening walk, and for some reason in my slightly tipsy state, I decided I wanted to run/jog as much as I could and really push myself (we've both been on a health and fitness kick lately), so I ran... and I reached the end of the block where in the few times I've run in the past, I'd stop, but this time I kept going. And going... and going.  I remember thinking to myself,

"Holy shit, I'm still running. How am I able to do this?" 

And then later, at the end of the street, turning the corner where SURELY I'm going to need to be done running, I still didn't stop.

"Okay, well, this running stuff is a thing that's still happening, so I'm just going to keep going! Fuck yeah!" 

I ran much farther and longer than I've ever run since probably high school, and I didn't stop when I started to feel tired. I kept going until I felt like my lungs were going to burst. I kept surprising myself again and again with the fact that I wasn't tired enough to stop yet.  It felt amazing!

When we both returned to walking, I commented on how it seems like alcohol makes me want to run, and how I didn't fully understand why. (Last time we drank and then went for a walk, I jogged/ran for a while then too, but not NEARLY this far or this hard). I thought maybe it was because alcohol loosened my muscles or dulled aches and pains, or possibly that it was a coincidence and really it's just that I'm carrying around so much less body weight since losing 15lbs that it's just easier to pick up my feet and move. But I think what he said is really more along the lines of what's going on:

He talked about how alcohol lowers my inhibitions (true) and maybe makes me more interested in risk-taking and pushing boundaries (so true!).  The right amount of alcohol pushes me to ignore my anxieties and fears (which probably really does help me loosen my muscles and even avoid injury). But really, it's all about fear and about letting that go, relinquishing one kind of control and grabbing hold of another, lowering your guard, and dissolving anxieties into noting. It's magical, and alchemical, and glorious.

And clearly, as I'm thinking about this all this morning, this applies to more than just running and sex.

And, to be super clear, I don't mean this blog post to be about advocating alcohol as a performance/esteem booster or anything. What I mean by exploring all of this is that alcohol seems to be an incredibly useful reminder that my "limits" (in whatever part of my life I find them) are probably much higher, farther away, and look very different than I think when I'm sober. It's reminding me that I probably have all kinds of different versions of myself buried inside me who I haven't met. "Dominatrix Jane" made her first appearance in my brain at dinner tonight, and apparently I've got some kind of long-distance runner inside me too somewhere. Both happy and delightful surprises.

Brains are weird. :)

Ergonomic bondage? :)

I am quite sore this morning. My arms ache from being tied over my head, and my legs ache from pulling against ropes. All my core muscles are tingly and sore.  For the most part, this is a fantastic kind of sore and ache.

But, unfortunately, my lower back and hips also hurt in that way that suggests I probably fucked things up again (and maybe I should spend part of the morning in the hot tub). Maybe not as bad as I've fucked things up in the past doing things like, oh, unloading the dishwasher, but it's it's still there. (Apparently kink is still less dangerous than housework. That's good to know. Solution: more kink? Less dishes? I'm okay with that.)

So, this has taught us a few things. Although it's incredibly hot to be tied down in the way we tried last night, it's really not good for my hips and back to immobilize them in that way. I need to be able to bend at the hips, and the combination of (semi-involuntary) side-to-side hip movement and straining against the ropes at my ankles probably put pressure and tension in areas of my back and hips where it shouldn't have been.  I have some ideas on how we can make things better and still make oh-so-pretty rope marks on my ankles, but we will have to experiment (carefully) a bit more to be sure.

But now we know. And we have some important data that may help us be safe and injury free when our order from Twisted Monk arrives.

Maybe there are people out there in the kink communities who have advice on "ergonomic bondage" or something. Haha.

Quick note to-do list:

No context to-do list:

• Figure out how to be okay talking more during sex (dirty or otherwise)
• Write some sexy email types of things to my partner

Because of reasons that are good.

On feeling welcomed, invited, and feeling feels for friends on a loveseat

Last night, I spent a few hours squished into a small loveseat with a very snuggly couple--one a long-term friend (and ex-boyfriend, full disclosure) the other his long-term partner who I'd only met a few times. It felt very magical. I had zero complaints about the fact that the movie we were watching was slow as fuck, and I could spend long swaths of time just quietly feeling feels and never really miss anything important.  Everyone else in the room, all squished together into the other big couch, filled up the slow slow pace of the movie through endless and hilarious Mystery Science Theater comments. (Although, the award for the comment that almost broke me goes to my friend next to me: "I'm getting a psychic message from the space anus!"). I was so happy to see my friend again, and so happy that he and his partner were so warm and full of hugs and "invitation", for lack of a better word.

But this isn't really just a blog post about sitting in a couch and feeling feels.  This particular group of friends actually used to be a source of a lot of anxiety for me. The hosts in particular are people I like and admire and always wanted to be friends with because they are fantastic people, but who also always always made me feel a little small and a little judged.  Especially the wife. She's the kind of person who makes her opinions and judgments of other people pretty public knowledge, and expects you and everyone around you to have thick enough skin to handle it and see it as a non-threatening thing.

I never had thick enough skin.

I remember times hanging out with this group of friends, and hearing her go on about the stupidity or terrible choices someone else (from work, or an absent friend) had made. Sometimes it was about relationships. Sometimes it was about work or jobs, etc.  There was never ever any true malice in the way she talked though.  It was more of a "what can you do?" or "stupid's gonna dumb." I remember hearing and watching her, and seeing how everyone else in the room laughed, and empathized, and I felt like an outsider, pretending to smile and chuckle while inside my innerJane was kind of curled up in a ball in tears because I just knew that when I'm not in the room, her judgments and jokes must also be about me.

This was also a time when I felt very much like my "membership" in this group was sort of contingent and temporary since the only way I'd gotten to know any of them was through people I'd dated. I felt like I had no legitimate claim to be in this group because of it. That as soon as I stopped dating one of them (and I've sort of serially dated 3 "members" of this group. My current partner included.) I'd no longer be welcome. I'd no longer be invited.

But I understand now that this isn't true. "Anxiety/insecurity lies," as another close friend reminded me recently. It really was mostly just a case where the Anxiety/Insecurity Monster found a little source of fuel and inflated itself in my head.  For years.  For no good reason.

I know this for sure now because of how different I felt around them all last night. I was there alone (my partner was sick and couldn't come) which a year ago would have resulted in me making some excuse and not going at all.   But instead, I was happy to go alone and dive into this group of friends. It really drove home the fact that I've changed and healed and grown from who and what I was when I was filled mostly with anxiety and depression and insecurity (not saying all of those things are gone, but I feel like they are no longer my foundation).  Even though my partner was sick and couldn't join us, I felt completely welcome, open, happy to see everyone, and confident that my invitation wasn't "by accident" or "out of obligation" or "because you're engaged to..." I felt like I was Part of the Group. I really was invited for me. I really was welcome.

And it wasn't anything that they did differently that changed things either. Host Wife still made some of her usual "haha-is-she-judging-them-I-can't-tell" comments about the fact that the two people who were late (the friends I spent the movie squished with on the couch) don't use traditional labels or even boundaries to define their relationship, but when I heard her comments, they sounded and felt different in my head. Instead of feeling so anxious and judged myself, or defensive of them, I surprised myself by actually not being bothered by it. Like, I had to kind of mentally take a step back and be surprised at myself. And kind of proud. All of a sudden, it didn't sound threatening. And it didn't make me feel threatened. I even managed to say some things in a tone that showed not only did I not judge them for being that way, I was really looking forward to seeing them, and I knew that they were on their way.

And when they arrived, I didn't hold back the hugs, or worry (much) about what it looked like for me to accept their invitation to join them on the too-small love-seat. Years of conditioning of course made me conscious of the possibility that Host Wife looked at us in a judging way (my fiance was absent, afterall), but I feel like that was a kind of residual reaction and nothing more.  I relaxed and gave myself full permission to just quietly feel the feels for these two fantastic friends who make me feel welcome and loved even though we rarely ever see each other.

So yeah... shit's different now in my head.  *does a little dance*  I won't pretend that my battles with the Anxiety/Insecurity monster are over though. This was just one of those days where I went to a place where the monster usually lives, and to my surprise discovered that he'd shriveled up into a tiny cute ball of "non-issue" and I could just greet him and gently pat him on the head and tell him it's okay to be small and irrelevant.

:)

This blog is an experiment...

Like a lot of things going on in my life lately, this blog is an experiment, and hopefully a successful one.

It's an experiment in being "open" (but not specifically about being "out"). I'm hoping to use this place to open up about things that are important, scary, sexy, and playful to me, but that I can't share in any of my other social media areas.

For the most part, I expect I'll be writing a lot about kink. Writing publicly (aliased of course) about kink is thrilling to me, even if no one ever reads this. And not in an "exhibitionist" sort of way (I don't think that's one of my kinks, although I'm open to evolving), but in a "I'm telling the world something of my new truth!" sort of way.

These last few weeks, for example, have been spectacular in terms of how much I've discovered about myself, my relationship with my partner, kink and polyamory.

I feel like it all started when somehow I managed to convince myself it was okay to open up to my partner about the fact that I develop very strong infatuations with and crushes on pretty much anyone I come to care about. These feelings vary in intensity, and I've experienced them all my life. My pattern for making friends for a very long time has been to fall in love with them a little bit (okay sometimes a LOT of little bit), develop a lot of emotional intimacy (and frequently physical intimacy) before finally settling into some version of friendship that feels very permanent and lasting.

Up until recently, I thought I had to hide these feelings from him. I felt like they were a kind of cheating. I worked very hard to keep my feelings at bay, under wraps, only indulging in fantasy in the deepest, darkest corners of my brain.

But then I gradually began to open up more to him about these experiences.  At first it was vague about crushes in general, and admiring beautiful people from afar.  And I encouraged him to tell me about crushes on people he must surely have. And then gradually, I admitted to having "crush-like symptoms" (I couldn't yet think of it as something harmless) on some mutual friends, and to my utter joy and disbelief, he was happy to hear about this. Supportive of it even. Encouraged me to feel these feelings.

At more than a few points (these conversations took days) he even shared things about my crushes in order to essentially encourage me to explore those feelings... He shared things that I never would have expected him to share, all in this playful way of encouraging me not to feel ashamed/anxious about feeling this way.  That took me a while to sort of process.

But once I got over the surprise/shock/bafflement that his reaction was so positive, I realized this: the bottom line was that he trusts me to have these feelings, and to explore them as much as I'd like to.  He's not threatened by the thought of me falling in love or in lust with additional people.

It's an amazing feeling... and it was a major turning point for me, and for us, and sort of made all kinds of things start to tumble out of me over the next few days/weeks.

Hopefully some of that will make it into this blog. And some of the new stuff will also make it into this blog in the future. :)

Read at your own risk, of course.