Monthly Archive

When I got home Friday evening after attending the keynote address, Dave wanted to know how it went.  “Fine,” I said.  “Great speakers.  Great atmosphere.  I really belong there.  It’s a great place for me to be.”  Pause.  “I don’t know if I’m going back tomorrow for the conference.”

Whoa!

“Millie was there,” I explained in response to his confused expression.  “She sat right behind me during the presentation this evening.”

“Oh, Millie again,” he sympathized.

I sat down at the table with a glass of Caffeine-Free Diet Pepsi and started going through the program of the next day’s events.  I found some critical information.  Millie was not only a attendee at the conference but she was also a presenter on Saturday, conducting the session, “Crossing Boundaries: A Moderated Discussion.”  In the program, this session was thusly described:  “Gay, lesbian, bi, trans, poly, swinger, kinky, BDSM, leather.  Do you identify with more than one of these groups?  We all reject some mainstream assumptions about sexuality, but we aren’t always accepting of each other.  This moderated discussion will explore crossing the boundaries between groups…”  Millie’s little bio said that she “identifies as bi, poly, and kinky.  Her recent introduction to kink has brought into sharp relief the lines we draw between ‘my group’ and ‘your group’ and has inspired her workshop offering.”

Well, obviously Millie has been doing a lot better than I’ve been doing since she has some new experiences to add to her repertoire since we last saw each other!  Am I jealous that she’s been more “active” than I’ve been during these past eight months?  Hell, yeah!

This further brought up the topic that I was concerned about.  If Millie was presenting at the conference, she apparently was involved to a fairly good extent with “BOP,” the Bisexual Organizing Project, which is the main group here in the BiCities that hosts bisexual events and get-togethers.  I had been thinking of becoming more active with them and checking out some of the social events.

Or maybe not.

Let’s just sum this up by saying that I went to bed a very unhappy, confused individual Friday night, knowing that I was behaving like an adolescent, knowing that I was cutting off my nose to spite my face, knowing that I was not taking an adult, mature approach to this sudden turn of events.

But that’s how I felt. 

I had been stressed about going to the conference, knowing that I’d need to push myself to socialize with a group of people where I knew no one (other than Millie!!)  I knew I was breaking ground into unchartered territory.  I knew I was confronting my own potential position in life as a Mentor rather than a Player.  There were just a lot of unknowns, and I was trying to deal with it and take off on a different course in my life!  Throw Millie into the mix in an unanticipated fashion and I was just completely off-balance.

I did not go to the conference on Saturday, as much as I wanted to attend Dr. Charmoli’s two sessions.  I spent the whole day at the computer, working on this blog.

Now, where to from here?  That, of course, is the question!

No answers yet.  Stay tuned!

Since online dating has tanked for me, I had to think about other options for meeting people (i.e. bisexual women.)  I knew that I needed to find a Real Life social circle, some way to get involved in a network of people that would bring me into the community I seek.  I needed to meet people face-to-face, perhaps with an external community focus involved, and bypass the whole “search parameters” thing that eliminated me from someone’s consideration on an online dating site before they had even met me!

I hadn’t done anything about it.  It’s easy to just let that sort of thing slide when one is busy with a full-time job, errands, chores, and last but not certainly least, a spouse.  I’ve been coasting, still occasionally going through the entire BiCupid listing of women near and far that fall within the age range of 35 to 65.

I’ve been a member of the Bi Resource Group on Yahoo for quite some time — not that they ever post anything relevant to the BiCities and I can’t attend a potluck in Santa Cruz, California! — but in January, there was a posting for:

LABEL THIS!       Because              Midwest conference on bisexualityFriday, March 28—Sunday, March 30, 2008Coffman Union, university of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota

About BECAUSE

The BECAUSE Conference is the premier weekend for bisexuals, queers, questioning, and all others who are neither one thing nor the other. BECAUSE attracts people from throughout the Midwest and beyond to attend various educational workshops, get active, and generally enjoy the community experience.

[Note from author: BECAUSE is an acronym that stands for "Bisexual Empowerment Conference: A Uniting Supportive Experience."]

I did a lot of “hmmmm-ing” about this.  Coffman Union, the University of Minnesota — my alma mater.  I’m only 10 miles away now.  Easy to get to.  The fee was reasonable.  $40.  Shoot, I had already spent $160 on BiCupid with nothing to show for it, so that wasn’t an obstacle.  After thinking about it for several weeks and talking it over with my spouse who said, “By all means, go!!  You should go!”, I submitted my registration for the conference.

I was very nervous as this weekend of the conference approached.  I don’t know exactly why.  I was NOT nervous about being out as a bisexual or being worried that I’d run into someone on campus who might want to know what I was doing there.  I am not that closeted and fearful about discovery!  

No, I think I was nervous about not knowing anyone there, about having to put my best foot forward and introduce myself.  I was concerned that I wouldn’t fit in there, that it would be a bunch of late teens and 20-Something college students who would look at me like I was their grandmother!  My husband and I had several talks about this as the weekend of the conference approached, and he pointed out, “Maybe this is your time to be a mentor, to be the voice of experience for a younger crowd.”  He’s right, but a part of me doesn’t want to be solely a mentor and a “voice of experience.”  I want a social life, too, and was just apprehensive that I was going to be relegated to that Mentor role because of my age, that my time for close relationships with women has passed.  Nope, not ready for that just yet!

The kick-off of the conference was the keynote address at 7:00 Friday evening at Coffman Union.   Dave and I met up after work and had supper together at the Caspian Bistro on the edge of the campus.  He went home to work on his model boat, and I went on to the conference just down the street about half-a-mile.

I got checked in to the conference up on the third floor of Coffman Union, filled out my name badge and selected my appropriate color-coded flashy dot to “label” me if I wanted.  I played along with it and stuck on the teal blue dot that stood for Bisexual and the golden-orangy one that stood for Polyamorous.  I filled out my boxed lunch selection for the next day which was being catered by a local coffeehouse and put that in the appropriate bin.   Then I went into the conference room and selected a seat just a row back from the front so I could see and hear the speaker well.  I draped my coat over the chair and cruised to the tables at the back of the room where they had a lot of books and magazines on display.

Then someone says from just behind my right shoulder, “Hello, Kinsey.”

I turned around, my stomach settling somewhere around my knees.  “Hello, Millie,” I returned.

Fuck!  Goddammit! 

“Thank you for repairing those necklaces.  That was nice of you.  They were perfect,” she said.

Keep your voice neutral and unemotional, I instructed myself.  “You’re welcome,” I replied, actually thinking, Nice of you to thank me for that repair work over eight months after the fact!  

“How have you been?” she wanted to know.

“Fine,” I stated, offering no further elaboration.

She paused for a moment and then said, “Well, good to see you.”    She turned and walked away.

“Yeah,” I muttered to her back.

I noticed that she was seated with another woman just behind where I had parked my coat.  Great.  Just fucking great.  I couldn’t even put some physical distance between us without making it obvious that I was doing that since I would have to retrieve my coat and bag from the row in front of her.  I decided to just sit where I was and not make any further display of my emotions about seeing her.

Several people got up and spoke during the next hour, and I enjoyed listening to all of them, particularly the local psychotherapist, Dr. Margaret Charmoli, who hosts a half-hour weekly cable TV show called BiCities!.  I don’t watch television and don’t have cable TV, but if I did, I would watch this show!  She is bisexual and a bi-activist, along with being a therapist and a TV show host,  and I loved listening to her talk about the quest to be included, the quest to be understood, the quest to be treated as the unique entity that we are and not as a “fucked-up subset of the gay/lesbian community.”  I found myself nodding my head a lot and really internalizing what she had to say.

The person actually designated as the keynote speaker is a psychotherapist and researcher by the name of Ron Fox, a man in his 60s who has identified as bisexual since his 20s.  He, too, captured much of the emotions and experiences that I have been through while making a similar journey during the same era.   While listening to both him and Dr. Charmoli talk, I didn’t feel crazy or confused or fucked-up for being a bisexual.  I felt proud and integrated and whole, and it was so refreshing and wonderful to hear these remarkably intelligent, productive, dynamic people affirm this!

Yes, yes, I thought, I soooo belong here!  I need to be here!  This is a great place for me to be!

Unfortunately, the whole time I was listening to the speakers, I was also aware of Millie sitting behind me with her friend, whispering their little conversations.  It was unnerving and unsettling.  I had not been prepared in the least to spend the BECAUSE conference in the same room with Millie!

I was quite undecided what I was going to do about that.  At the end of the speakers’ presentations, I did not stay for the refreshments and social hour.  I headed for the door immediately and made my exit.  Before I left, I stopped at the registration table and pulled my lunch order from the bin and pocketed it.

I drove home, feeling confused, upset, adolescent, and frustrated.      

These initial half a dozen posts tell the story of my history and what led up to the inception of this particular blog this weekend.  To understand what led up to this weekend, you need to read these posts in the order that they were published.  There is a chronology of events there.  Otherwise, it may not make a lot of sense. 

In order, these posts are:

Condensed Love Life

Bisexuality Circa 1998

Millie and Her Yo-Yo

Immediate Aftermath of Millie

Happiness From Within

The Past Eight Months

The New Plan

Friday Night.  Home.  

The previous post, Happiness from Within, was optimistic and upbeat, and I was feeling that way in spite of the trauma of losing a relationship, a relationship that had encouraged a wholeness and integration that I hadn’t really experienced before.  I took that lesson away from it, though, that it was possible to have that as a part of my life.  It wasn’t just a fantasy.

I jumped back into the dating scene right away and posted my profile on some new websites.  I shelled out $60 for a 3-month membership on the website BiCupid, liking the looks of that site quite a bit and wanting to search profiles and write emails to my heart’s content for my 60 bucks. 

What has happened since July?  Well, hardly anything.  I let my Silver membership on FastCupid lapse, although my profile is still there, and I am getting zero responses to my profile there.  My attempts to initiate some conversation with a couple of interesting, albeit long-distance, women there was met with no response.  In one case, I was actually blocked from further correspondence, and I thought, WTF??

BiCupid is an interesting website, and I’ve taken advantage of my “Preferred” status (meaning I’ve paid a lot of money to send some emails!) and have written to anyone who sounds interesting, no matter how far away they live.  I’m open to long-distance communication via email, and I’m willing to hop on a plane and make some visits should the interest be there to develop a real life friendship.  In July, I immediately connected with a 60-year-old woman in New York City, a psychotherapist in part-time private practice who was married and had a personal and professional handle on the subjects of bisexuality and polyamory.  We exchanged daily emails for a couple of months until it became glaringly apparent that we didn’t really have that much in common except for our generation and our experience with bisexuality and polyamory.  In fact, we probably really didn’t like each other all that much!  We just let it go by tacit agreement.

I made the acquaintance of one lovely woman in Texas, and we keep in touch rather sporadically.  As far as I can foresee, it’s a long-distance friendship.

Other than that….. nothing.  I forked out another $100 in October to extent my BiCupid Preferred status another six months.  I’ve exchanged a couple of emails, sometimes on a one-time-only basis.  More often than not, the emails I send out are met with no response.  All of these fellow BiCupiders I send emails to are long-distance.  There are no profiles in my age range on BiCupid that I’m interested in here in Minnesota.  I go through the whole list periodically.

Granted, I’m looking in an ”older” demographic.  35 years old is my bottom range for considering an intimate relationship with a woman unless she is truly an exceptionally intelligent and mature woman.  (I can think of one such woman on LiveJournal who is only 33 right now, a woman I’ve known since I started blogging there in 2004.  With her, yeah, I’d consider it, but Montana is a long ways away from the BiCities!  And besides, I don’t think she’s interested.)  I’m 52 years old, and I feel uncomfortable even considering sticking my toe into the demographic pool of 20-some year olds — not that any of them would be remotely interested in a 52-year-old woman who is maybe older than their moms! 

So, this narrows my options.  Nor am I exactly choice online dating material due to my own age.  I’m out of the usual dating demographics now.  When even a thirty-something year old woman plugs in an age range into the site’s search parameters, it is typically something like “28 to 45.”  A forty-something year old woman might typically plug in ”35-50.”  It seems like 50 is about the cut-off for what people are typically searching for when they fill in the blank.  That leaves my profile out of contention from the get-go.  I’m generally “over the hill” for online dating now.

I have never, EVER been in a “dry spell” like this of such duration, not when I’ve been actively trying!

It has led me to moments of despondency that this relationship with a woman, the relationship that will complete my range of emotional and sexual needs, will never happen, not beyond the fleeting glimmers of possibility it’s already seen in my life.  I’m certainly a long way from dead and/or decrepit at 52, but I feel that sand slipping through the proverbial hourglass.  It hasn’t been a comfortable, reassuring feeling.  It fact, I’ve hated it.  I’ve had moments of regretting that 17-year period of monogamy in my marriage.  I was prime dating material then when I was 25 to 42 years old, and I wasn’t pursuing it then.  (Of course, these were the years of 1981-1998.  There were no internet opportunities in the ’80s then for meeting people.  There wasn’t for me until we upgraded our computer and signed up for Internet access in December 1997.  It’s no coincidence that that 17-year period of monogamy ended soon after the Internet became part of our household!) 

Part of that 17-year period of monogamy during the years 1981-1997 (and pre-Internet) was due to the fact that bisexual individuals are invisible in our society.  This was true when I was a young woman back in the 1970s and ’80s and it’s true today.  Heterosexually-partnered bisexuals are even more invisible because the assumption is immediately made that the partners are straight.  We don’t generally walk around wearing a prominent lavender lapel pin with BISEXUAL stamped in its center.

No, in order for bisexually-oriented individuals to meet others that share that orientation, there needs to be an explicit venue for that introduction to happen.  Social groups spring up and then disband.  There really are no bisexual bars or coffeehouses, etc.  The gay and lesbian community in general would prefer that we’d just go away.  We’re a thorn in their side.  The attitude is out there in both the straight and the gay/lesbian world that bisexuals are just a fucked-up branch of the gay/lesbian community, probably really gay or lesbian but unwilling or afraid to commit to their “true identity.” We’re the the chronic “fence-sitters.”  We’re viewed with skepticism and mistrust.  We’re dismissed, not considered a positive, viable entity in the community.   In fact, I’ve heard it said that we “don’t really exist!”

The Internet has helped to bring some folks together, but what happens when that ceases to be a productive option?  I seem to be experiencing that phenomenon during these past eight months, and it has led me to the conclusion — being the intelligent individual that I am! — that I need a new plan!

I snagged this from an email I had sent to a close friend last summer, a week or so after my decision to end the relationship with Millie:

I’ve been happier these past few months than I’ve probably ever been in my adult life. It’s not because I was in love with Millie. I hadn’t gotten there with the relationship yet. I saw what was going on in her life with the multiple partners and general unsettledness and it wasn’t a place where I was going to put my trust just yet. I was observing and waiting to see what was going to happen in her life before I let my emotions run towards the “in love” side. We never said those three little words to each other.

What I’ve been happy about — happier than I’ve ever been — is the integration of my sexual orientation into a fulfilling configuration in my life. I’ve been “out” with my orientation to more people than I’ve ever been: some coworkers, my doctor, my sister, my niece, other friends. I’ve allowed the faceless public to see what affection looks like between two women. I’ve been at ease with that. Hell, I’ve reveled in that! For once, I felt like I was in a relationship that embraced my love of women and my love for my husband, without those two facets of my life being at odds with each other. Those pieces of my life were blending into a whole — the whole much greater than the sum of the parts. I always knew it could be this way! My bisexuality is a positive thing, not a negative, not a stance of confusion. It’s the blending and embracing of a spectrum of feelings, appreciation and desire in a way that many people will never experience. It’s a beautiful thing! It’s a blessing and a gift.But no, it hasn’t been a happy place for me for most of my teen and adult life because it’s not an accepted orientation. It’s a tough road to travel. I’ve often refuted the claim that bisexuality is a stance of a person confused about their true gay/lesbian identity. If I were predominantly lesbian in my orientation, would I choose this path called bisexuality? The answer is undoubtedly no. It is much easier to be either lesbian or straight, and if I were either of those things, I wouldn’t have any trouble being one of those orientations and living openly as straight or lesbian.

The Monday after that Saturday night “break up,” I got a brief e-mail from her: “My dear, you were so out of sorts Saturday evening, and I feel I contributed to it. Write and tell me how you’re doing.”

Fuck you, Millie, was my gut reaction to that email.  I didn’t answer it.

I sat down at the dining room table with my beading tools Tuesday evening and restrung the four broken necklaces that Millie had given me Friday evening when she and her son were over for dinner. As per her request, I also made a matching pair of earrings harvested from beads from one of the necklaces. I sat at that damn table for 3 and a half hours and got the job finished. I packed the repaired necklaces up in a box, threw in the paperback novel I had borrowed and not read, and then bleary-eyed and weary, wrote the following brief letter to put in with it:

July 10, 2007

Dear Millie,
Thank you for the pleasure of your company during the past few months. My life has been richer and happier for the experiences that our relationship has brought me during that time. I felt at peace with myself and my life, smiled a lot more often, and had feelings blossoming inside me in a way that I hadn’t felt in quite the same way before.

I talked a lot about these feelings with Dave, my life-long partner and soulmate. I never talked about these feelings with you because I wasn’t sure what direction our relationship was going to take. You’ve had so much going on – both with things and with a variety of people – that I didn’t want to add to the complexities of your life. Your life and all its components hasn’t seemed like a very stable place right now, and I didn’t trust myself to get deeply involved too quickly.

For now, I was content to spend time with you, get to know you, and see if our relationship was pointed in a direction that might foster that trust and closeness. It’s obviously not going in that direction. As you said, something is missing from your life, and I’m not providing what you need. So, continue your search. I hope you find what you’re seeking, what gives your life meaning and happiness. Take care,
Kinsey

I tossed that in the mailbox Wednesday morning and felt as though I had achieved a small amount of closure. I resisted the (faint) urge to say anything to the e-mail she wrote late Wednesday night before receiving the package and the note I had written the night before.  I felt that the note in the package said all I really needed to say, and she’d receive it Thursday.  Her Wednesday email said:

“Well, I know you’re alive because I see you’re on line at Fastcupid.

If you are mad at me I’d like to know what I did. If you just don’t want to talk to me, well, I can’t exactly make you, but it was never my intention to drive you away. I’m sorry if I’m confused or not so clear about things in my life as you are.

You said something Saturday night that started to make things make more sense to me. You told me that you talked to Dave about our relationship. I’ve felt for a while that the idea of what was between us was much more developed for you then for me, but I couldn’t figure out why. Really we’ve only talked about it a bit that first night at my place.

Maybe we got involved too fast, I don’t know. Sometimes it doesn’t seem like we have much in common. But then there are times when we’ve really had fun, so I don’t know. Maybe I just need to talk more then you do

So, please let me know where we stand.

Millie

She was surprised that I talked to Dave about our relationship??  She knew we have an open and honest relationship.  Why wouldn’t I have talked to him?  OF COURSE I talked to him about my sexual involvement with her!  From Day One!  Duh!

She couldn’t figure out why the relationship was more “developed” for me than for her because we hadn’t talked about it beyond the evening of that first sexual encounter??  Well, we’re two different people, for one.  Two people don’t always follow the same path.  What’s to figure?  And talking about it or not talking about it doesn’t change the inferences that are there because of other outward  nonverbal behaviors, such as hugging, kissing, holding hands, having sex, noticing the ”gleam” in a partner’s eyes!  Does not talking about it ensure that nothing serious develops for one party or the other in light of those behaviors?  I’m not sure where she was coming from with this comment.  It seems like a very naive position from a woman who has allegedly had a lot of experience.   

I could have told her a lot regarding where we stand and why, and why what she said to me Saturday evening “drove me away,” whether it was her intention or not. Basically, if you’re wondering outloud what you have in common with someone, you wonder why you’re in the relationship, you’re musing that it’s not providing what you need, then WHY ARE YOU SPENDING TIME WITH THIS PERSON!!?? I never pressured her in any way to go out with me. I was never the one who said, “Take me to bed.” I was never the one who said, “Let’s go snuggle for a bit…” I was the one who said on the evening of that very first sexual encounter in May, “I don’t want to rush into this. I want to make sure we’re on the same page with this first.”

She replied, “I don’t do one-night stands, and I don’t get involved lightly.” I took her at her word.

And this week in July was the last time I had any contact or any words with Millie.

Prior to last night. 

Millie and I seemed to be off to a good start during those first couple of months.  We enjoyed each other’s company.  We did fun things together, as trite as that sounds.  We tried new restaurants and hung out at coffeehouses.  I hung out at her apartment while she decorated her son’s “alien” birthday cake the evening before his birthday, and we laughed and ate bile green frosting.  We made love with green frosting still in our teeth and giggled.  We went to an art fair one Sunday, her two young sons in tow, followed by supper at a Chinese buffet, and we both agreed that my first meeting with her children went well.  My husband and I helped her move from her apartment into her new house.  She met Dave that weekend and I met her father, and we all seemed to get along.

I was a bit concerned about her level of polyamory.  One might say that she was VERY polyamorous, and she had a number of sexual relationships going on with men.  I wasn’t sure where I stood in that line-up and was just playing it kind of ’cool,’ enouraging her to talk to me about those relationships so I would have an understanding of them and just taking things easy between the two of us.  There were no “I love you’s,” no long discussions about our relationship at that point.  I didn’t feel any need to sit and analyse it’s every nuance.  I was just paying attention, you might say, to what was going on and trying to get a sense for where things were headed for us.

It started to get kind of hinky in June.  The “yo-yo” thing started, although the first time it happened, I tried not to let it bother me too much.  This is how the first “yo-yo” incident went.  She and I met up after work one evening.  We met at a restaurant we both wanted to try, which as it turned out was closed.  She was waiting for me to show up, parked at the curb beside the restaurant.  I got into her car so we could make a Plan B for our supper.  She pulled me close in the car, in broad daylight on a busy city street, and kissed me.  Passionately.  In fact, we sat and necked for awhile with a couple of passersby stopping on the sidewalk to gawk!

Eventually, we made a plan to go somewhere else for supper, a place that was laid-back and comfortable, and we held hands publically over dinner and wine.  After supper, we went out for ice cream and strolled the neighborhood, a cone in one hand, the free arm around each other’s waist.  Didn’t care who saw or gawked.

And, oh, that felt so nice to me!

At the end of that evening, we sat in the car and kissed a bit more.   We both agreed that since it was a work night, it was late for me to drive to her house for some lovemaking and then drive home again.  That actually covered quite a few miles over our metropolitan area.  We delayed our gratification and made plans to meet Sunday afternoon, and she promised me she would “ravish me!”

I went to her house on Sunday, and we went out to lunch.  After lunch, she gave me my first lesson in cribbage.  (I sucked at it whereas she was an expert gamer.)  Eventually, I wanted to cash in on that offer to “ravish me!”  I had been looking forward to it and had even worn my silk panties!

She then started alluding to a headache, was feeling out of sorts, restless.  She just wanted me to hold her.  Okay, that was fine.  I’ve been around a bit, too, and know what it’s like to just not feel quite in the mood due to this or that.  Then she mentioned her “confusion” about her relationships.  It didn’t seem to be directed at our relationship specifically, and I didn’t really know where to go with that.  To be honest, under the circumstances, I really wasn’t in the mood to talk about Scott or Bill or Dan or Whoever Else she had something going on with.

This was the first bout of “yo-yo” I experienced with her: passionate and affectionate on Wednesday evening but four days later, ambivalent and moody about being close with me.

In a weird turn of events that afternoon, she suddenly got a bit intense and aggressive and we had sex.  Just prior to that, I had been wondering if I should get up and go home and leave her to nap or whatever and work out her odd mood.  Before I left that afternoon, we got to talking about the Pride Festival coming up the next weekend, and I said I had never gone.  She announced that we should go then!  I was all for that.

We went to the Pride Festival the next Saturday and had a fabulous time.  I had never felt so open and free, so comfortable in my own skin.  We walked around the entire Festival with our arms around each other’s waists, had our photo taken together in a big, rainbow-banner draped chair, held hands, kissed.   When I had to leave to pick up my husband at the airport, she said that it was the best Pride Festival ever for her, and we kissed passionately good-bye, drawing grins from the other Festival-goers nearby.

I was literally on Cloud 9.  I just felt so good about my life, about everything, like all the pieces were finally coming together.  

The Friday evening after the Pride Festival, Millie and her 3-year-old came over for supper with Dave and me.  We had a nice “family evening,” the meal geared towards the tastes of a 3-year-old.  We went to a nearby park after supper.  The grown-ups talked while Jay played.  I was comfortable and happy with the way we were all meshing together.

The following evening, Dave was leaving on one of his business trips and Millie’s kids were at their dad’s, Millie’s recent ex-husband.  I dropped Dave off at the airport and then went directly to Millie’s house.  We had plans to go out to dinner, and I had thrown a few personal items in my bag just in case it evolved that I was spending the night.  (I never had yet, but she had said very early on, “Sometime I would like you to spend the night,” and I thought that night might be the night.)

I immediately took note of the fact that there were no hugs at the door.  No lingering kisses. 

She told me on the way to dinner that she had a recent one-night stand to confess, something that she needed to tell to all her partners.  She had been flirting with her kid’s karate instructor for the past six weeks or so and “got carried away” the previous week.  She didn’t think that this was a good situation to be in with this man since she feels he doesn’t understand polyamory, and he has a girlfriend who would be jealous if she knew about this affair.  She doesn’t want to be in that situation, but they had sex.  Hence, the one-night stand.Okay.  Thanks for sharing, Millie.  We hadn’t as yet had sex since the karate instructor encounter so I wasn’t worried from an infectious disease standpoint.  I appreciated her honesty, as far as that went. 

And I thought, well, why not?  If I’m not what you need, if I and my lifestyle don’t light up your dials, then move on! 

What did she want from me, a sympathetic ear?  A shoulder to cry on?  If she had just wanted a friend, then why the passionate kisses, why the lovemaking that she initiated, the public displays of affection?

I felt like a damn yo-yo!  A mere week earlier, I had shared with her her “best Pride EVER!”  I left her with a gleam in her eye!  A week later, she doesn’t know what I offer to her life, if we have anything in common!  

Did she not think that I was becoming emotionally involved in the relationship?  Did she think I was immune to that because I was a married woman?  Did she think that I was just out for an occasional romp in the sack to fulfill my kinkier side?  I actually think that’s what she thought. 

We had supper.  We shopped at the mall a bit.  I took her home.  We hugged briefly goodbye.  She invited me in, and I declined.

I drove home, feeling gutted and raw.  I knew it was over.  I can’t be a human yo-yo for someone –  someone who wants me one day and is ambivalent and confused the next.

From 1981 to 1998, I was in a 17-year period of no romantic/sexual relationships with women, although I still acknowledged and considered myself bisexual. I just wasn’t actively pursuing a relationship and none were dropping into my lap. Bisexual relationships don’t tend to drop into a married woman’s lap. (Prior to 1981, I had had a number of experiences with women but nothing very fruitful in terms of relationships. Hence, the weariness and the “semi-retirement” from pursuing it.)

From 1998 to 2001, I was in a relationship with a woman where I was more or less “officially” considered her girlfriend. We were partnered in that sense. However, it was a lopsided affair with the world revolving around Maura.  [Note: at no time are real names used in this blog, with the exception of noted personalities, authors, etc.]  She was very self-absorbed and high maintenance. The fact that she got married a year-and-a-half after we met, got pregnant a month after the wedding, and delivered a child nine months after her wedding to Ryan did not smooth our relationship any. It just demanded more of her than what she was able to give, and it’s not hard to imagine that I was relegated to the bottom of the priority list. I am NOT high maintenance and am a centered, giving woman who can deal with a certain amount of that kind of relationship, but I reached my limit with it, especially when they decided to relocate to a town in Wisconsin which was a six-hour drive from the Twin Cities. That was the last straw for me. We weren’t doing well with her living a 20-minute drive from me at that point. We probably weren’t going to be doing any WORSE with her living six hours away from me, but it wasn’t going to improve the relationship, either. It was time to end it and move on.

In the spring of 2003, I corresponded with a 45-year-old male-to-female (MTF) transgendered woman who lived only a few miles from me. (Yes, I am comfortable with transgendered individuals.  I feel that the transgendered and bisexual members of the GLBT acronym have something in common from the “blending” standpoint.)  This was through the FastCupid website where I’ve had a profile posted since shortly before this time.  We wrote a couple of times and decided to meet. On the evening that we went out to dinner that first time, she was only about a week home from her major surgical sex reassignment operation in Neenah, Wisconsin. She was sitting on an inflatable “doughnut” to cushion her sore, reconstructed bottom while we dined that evening! Interestingly enough, though, a sexual relationship blossomed between us, beginning that evening, even though I was the only one who had breasts and genitals that could be touched and stimulated. But, hey! It worked well for me!

This was not a heavy-duty romantic relationship for either one of us. She had a need to experience her new female body sexually, and that was the basis for her making the sexual overtures on that first date.  I knew that, and I enjoyed being a part of that experience for her.   However, it was only a few weeks later when she said to me that she wanted emotional closeness, wanted to be in love, and she couldn’t do that with a married woman.  Still, the sexual relationship went on regularly for four months! I was the one who finally let the relationship go without any declarations or announcements of termination.  I just didn’t answer an email, and she never wrote back and asked me what was up.  It was just over, and I assume she moved on to something more suited to her needs.

In November of that year (2003), I went out with a woman I had known for a number of years. We had met when we were both members of a bisexual women’s support group at Chrysalis Women’s Center in Minneapolis in 1997. She and I had gotten together for some dinner dates over the years, very sporadically. We never really “clicked” for some reason but never lost touch with each other, either. Personally, I found her quite attractive and entertained thoughts of having a relationship with her. I told her this during one of our sporadic dinner dates in the spring of that year, news that she appeared to be fairly receptive to. Then we didn’t see each other for some months again!

Well, we went out that evening in November 2003, her husband of 28 years gone on a hunting trip and mine out-of-town on business. We went back to my house after supper and had sex for the first time. It was a brief tryst that evening because she had to get home to greet her husband when he arrived from his hunting trip. We saw each other once for dinner around the holidays.

Her 50th birthday was in late February 2004, and I purchased an amethyst (Feb.’s birthstone) and diamond necklace for her, wanting to give a woman I cared about something special for that milestone birthday.  When she put off seeing me after my suggestions to get together to celebrate her birthday, I let it go, and I let it go for good that time. Her situation was being married to a man who did not support her bisexuality. He knew of it but was uncomfortable with it. One-night stands he could handle, but an ongoing relationship between his wife and another woman was something he could not handle, and I think she knew she was potentially getting into a more serious relationship if she continued seeing me. This is quite different from the dynamics of my marriage, and I really don’t want to get romantically involved with someone who has that situation going on.  I occasionally wear that amethyst and diamond necklace that I did not give her, and I remember why I bought it and why the intended recipient did not get it.  I like the necklace, anyway. 

A year went by. I corresponded with another woman on FastCupid, a divorced woman my age, and we met for dinner in October 2004. Dated a few times. My husband was gone over Thanksgiving weekend that year, and Rosalind and I “played” (her term, not mine) that Saturday night at her house and I spent the night, something that I rarely have done. It was very, very nice. She was very attractive and very sexual, and I felt my sex drive re-energizing and coming to life in a way I hadn’t felt in a long time.  We saw each other a few times after that, with no further sexual encounters between us. It quickly became apparent through our conversations and e-mails that she was interested in a “friend with bennies” from a woman partner. It didn’t mean anything beyond that. She was emphatic that she wasn’t a lesbian and told me this several times.  That’s fine because I don’t consider myself a lesbian, either, but her emphasis on this suggested the unlikelihood that she would get emotionally involved with another woman.  In fact, she could go for several weeks at a time and not touch base with me if she was busy with a male friend or what-not.  Well, I want to mean something to a woman, not just be a “friend with bennies” when it’s convenient. I ended that one on the basis of emotional incompatibility.

Fast-forward another 20 months — Fall of 2006. Another FastCupid correspondent. Another MTF transgendered woman. A very interesting woman: a former high school teacher whose story was written up in the Star Tribune newspaper years ago when she made her very public transition from male to female at the high school she worked at in 1998. Since retiring, she has been self-employed as a motivational speaker in the area of transgendered life and receives numerous engagements to speak nationwide. Yes, I found her very interesting! She found me very interesting as well, to the extent of wanting a serious thing with me on the basis of the first date in November.  (Okay, so I didn’t go home until the next day. Not the thing to do on the “first date,” and I’d do well to remember that!)  She called me a “married lesbian” on that first date.  Even when I objected that I wasn’t a “married lesbian” but a bisexual woman, she insisted that I was a married lesbian until she saw I was getting seriously irritated.  For the second date, she wanted me to spend the weekend with her to see how we viewed the relationship in that light.  (As opposed to the porch light that my husband leaves on for me at home?)  I saw a lot of red flags flying with this relationship.  Dee wasn’t experienced with bisexuality and polyamory and I sensed I was getting into something with her that was not compatable with my life.  I backed off on that relationship in a hurry! 

Millie, a woman almost 16 years younger than me, responded to my FastCupid profile in March 2007. I found our interests and lifestyles to be compatible, found her attractive, and enjoyed exchanging e-mail with a woman who could intelligently string some sentences together — unfortunately, a quality that seems to be hard to find! We didn’t waste a lot of time chatting each other up but decided to meet soon after our online introduction.

We dated and corresponded for about six weeks before sexually pleasing each other one Saturday night at her apartment. She cried and said how good it felt to be in my arms. I stroked her hair, and she cuddled against me and said, “You know how badly you want something to happen sometimes but you’re not sure it will?  I wasn’t sure this would.  I’m so happy it did!”  Being with me like that really seemed to mean something to her!

We saw each other regularly after that. She was always eager to hug me, kiss me, hold hands with me. She didn’t care who saw us displaying these affections towards each other. She introduced me to her kids. She told me that her youngest son, three-and-a-half, wanted to know if he could call Kinsey ”Mommy,” too, since I was Mommy’s girlfriend. We had a wonderful day at the Pride Festival, completely “out and proud,” our arms around each other, our affection there for everyone to see.

Then……

I’ve struggled with this issue a bit lately: what to do with the personal subject matter of my sexual orientation?  A significant part of me wanted to just put it in my “regular” blog where I write about a variety of subjects pertaining to my life.  Why make this topic any different from writing about my marriage or my job or the movies I’ve seen?

Because it is different.

I’ve got a few friends on my other blog who might be uncomfortable reading about my sexual orientation.  I don’t want to subject them to that discomfort unless they actively express an interest in knowing, either directly or because they’ve come across my blog through certain search terms that they themselves have employed.  I don’t want to open up a lot of controversies with nonsupportive, unappreciative folks!  That’s not the purpose of writing a blog like this.

So what IS the purpose?  The purpose is to allow myself to talk about, share, and explore these issues without censoring myself.  I feel as though I’m in a phase of my life again where I need to do that.  I need to connect with some like-minded people and develop a personal support group who can appreciate this journey.  For the most part, this has been a very lonely journey, and I’m very frustrated with being isolated and lonely!

I’ll give Marissa some credit here for getting this particular journal underway.  Her post, “Censoring Me,”  rattled my cage, got me to thinking about this issue of what to say where.  I don’t really like compartmentalizing my life this way.  I feel as though I should just be able to put everything out there in proud and forthright terms, my personal photo right along side those posts, my friends and family able to read it if they so choose, without trepidation and concern about the consequences.  But that’s a Perfect World, the one that exists in my fantasy life!  I know that there would be concerns and possible unpleasant repercussions if I put it all out there under my true, unveiled identity.  This is a compromise, a relatively safe place to write without censoring myself, and I need that right now.

So, if you’re an invited friend, or if you’ve come across this blog because you’re looking for like-minded folks as well, stop and read.  Comment.  Become a friend.

Welcome!