Category Archive

This latest incident — meeting someone, enjoying the experience of meeting them, only to have the next date abruptly cancelled because “I can’t do this!” — brings back a lot of memories.  I’ve been down this road before.

In my early 20s, I was actively dating women in the handful of years immediately following our move here to the BiCities.  After all, I was prime dating material from the aspects that I was a twenty-something and very attractive!  (I’d post a pic from that era to back up that claim, but that would ruin my anonymity, although I don’t think anyone who didn’t already know me would recognize my pics from 1978 or so.  Maybe sometime….) 

 I was doing something similar to what I am now in terms of meeting women — the “personals,” although at that time, there was no Internet.  There were Personals printed in the weekly publications, like The Twin Cities Reader and City Pages, that you could pick up in the wire bins in the lobbies of restaurants and bars, student hang-outs at the colleges, other business establishments.  At that time, one would write up a Personals ad, fee usually charged by the number of words, and either deliver it in person or mail it to the newspaper.  They would print it for the specified number of weeks you paid for.  They would assign you an anonymous box number, and you could either have your snail-mail forwarded to an address for a fee or go to the newspaper office and pick it up.  You then communicated with your respondents in one of two ways: a telephone call or a written letter, depending on the information they gave you.

This is how I met Rae in the fall of 1978.  She was four years older than me, an R.N. with a very intense position of being a neonatal ICU nurse in our large county hospital in downtown Minneapolis, and she lived only half-a-dozen blocks from me.  She was living with her male lover who was in his last year of medical school at the University of Minnesota.  She had never had a sexual relationship with a woman before but was interested in exploring her attraction.

We got along very well and a sexual relationship did ensue.  She even posted a notification in the Twin Cities Reader at one point, saying, “K — I’ve never met anyone as warm and wonderful as you.  I think I’m falling in love.  Love, R., R.N.”  I carried that little scrap of paper with me in my wallet for a long time!

But then things got “funny.”  I felt it coming on.  The end of that phase of our relationship came on the evening of our six-month “anniversary,” when we went out to a very nice Japanese restaurant and I gave her a card and small gift in celebration.  I was driving, and when I took her back to her apartment (she was now living alone, having broke up with the med school guy very recently), she gave me a quick peck, thanked me for the nice evening, said that it was a work night and she had to get some rest, and hopped out of the car.  I shrugged, decided then and there that she would call me next; I would make no further invitations.

I did not hear from her.  Six months later or so after our date at the Japanese restaurant, another notification appeared in the Twin Cities Reader.  It said, “K — Bisexuality is for me a very confusing place to be, but I will always remember and cherish our time together.  R., R.N.”  Since I was her first woman and she had had a longstanding history with men, including a brief marriage and divorce, I assumed that she had returned to the heterosexual lifestyle and left the unconventionality of bisexuality behind.

More than a year went by since that notification she put in the Reader.  Then I got a Christmas greeting from her in December 1980, explaining that she had been in an uncomfortable spot with me a year-and-a-half earlier, but she seemed to be in a better place.  She’d like to see me and “catch up.”  We then talked on the phone a couple of times and she invited me over to her apartment for a visit.  We had a lovely evening together.  Just fun!  We talked, laughed, caught up with each other, had some hot apple cider laced with a little “holiday cheer.”  Just had a nice evening together.  As the evening wore on, we sat closer to each other on the couch, and I think there were a couple of rather chaste kisses as the evening drew to a close.  Nothing heavy.  We wanted to see each other again and talked about doing so.

We talked on the phone a few more times and made plans to get together after the first of the year for a girls-afternoon at a St. Paul former strip club that had stopped featuring “exotic female dancers” but had gone the route of male strippers.  We were going to go and laughed at the prospect!  I was looking forward to it, just for the lighthearted silliness of it.   I needed that in a life that was pretty bogged down with full-time college courses and part-time jobs.

The day before we were scheduled to go to the Payne Reliever (on Payne Ave. in St. Paul), I received a letter from her.  (No email then, remember?)  She said, “I can’t see you again.  I thought I could but I can’t.”  I don’t remember what all it said, but it was all kind of crazy.  I’ve never had anything affect me like that letter did.  It was like a sharp slap in the face, and I burst into tears.  I sat there at my desk and cried for quite awhile.  Of course, I wrote her back and said that I was fine with being friends; I hadn’t gone into it expecting that we’d be lovers again.  I enjoyed her company, and what was so complicated about that that she couldn’t see me again, enjoy being friends with me?  I didn’t get any response to that.

THIRTEEN YEARS goes by.  A letter arrives.  I was still living at the same address I was when we had known each other in the late ’70s, early 80s.  (Same address, same husband.  Talk about stability!)  It had one of those absurd beginnings: “Remember me?”  That is such a crazy introduction to a letter when of course you remember this person!   It would be like your high school best friend or your ex-fiance in college beginning a letter that way after a lengthy absence.  Of course you remember who they are!  But anyway, she went on to say that she had actually left Minnesota for quite awhile back in the 80s, had been overseas with some medical group, had been working in California, etc., etc.  She had had a couple of lesbian relationships and had been “out” as a lesbian for all that time, much to my surprise.  However, she had moved back to the Twin Cities, had gotten involved with a Buddhist Temple (we were alike in that — ex-Catholics who became more Buddhist than anything), met a man at the Temple and married him recently, much to her friends’ surprise.  She was reconnecting with a “bisexual” side of herself.

We made plans to meet once again.  We went to the May Day celebration at Powderhorn Park in my neighborhood, a celebration that always draws a large GLBT gathering.  We went out to lunch a couple of times after that.  Talked on the phone.  We were estabishing a relationship again after 13 years apart, although a platonic relationship, I presumed.

Then…nothing after a couple of months.  No return phone calls.  No response to the notes and cards I sent.  I wasn’t surprised.  I didn’t cry.  I had become kind of callused by that point.

Looking in the phone book a year or so later, I noted that her husband was still at the same address she had given me but had reverted to his “maiden” name.  They had hyphenated their last names when they got married and both of them then went by the hyphenated name.  He was back to being just plain old “Johnson” instead of Robins-Johnson, as they had been listed before, and there was no listing for her.  Furthermore, I knew she had changed jobs because I recently had accepted a position at the HMO she was working for, and I knew from checking the employee roster that she wasn’t there.  She had done a “disappearing act” again.  Taken a powder.   

So, yeah, the long and the short of it is that this crazy kind of thing has happened before, the  “I can’t see you again” on the basis of a pleasant lunch or a nice evening.  For some people, connecting with someone and enjoying a friendship has to be a very complicated thing.  For some people, accepting the fluidity of their sexual orientation has to be a very traumatic and confusing thing.

….sigh….

On the evening of July 7 a year ago, the following incident happened with a woman I had been dating for almost four months.  (The post reprinted below is lifted from my LiveJournal account and was posted at 10:19 that night):

A few days ago, I made a comment to another person’s post about my polyamorous situation with my friend, Millie.  I said something to the effect that the past three months have been wonderful with her, but lurking in the shadows is the fear that she’s involved with so many people that I’m just going to drop off the bottom of the list someday.I think that it might have happened this evening.

I dropped my husband off at the airport for his weeklong trip to Wales at 5:30 this afternoon and then proceeded on to Millie’s house.  We had made plans to go out to dinner….and then……  (???)  I threw some overnight necessities in a bag, just in case I got an invitation to spend the night and decided to accept it!

First of all, 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” last 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.

Then over supper, she said that she’s been in a confused place about all these relationships she’s got going on, and there are a few.  There’s me.  There’s the guy in San Francisco.  There is the guy in Beloit, Wisconsin.  There are a couple of local men she’s having sex with.  She just got out of a messy menage a trois with a local couple that went on for quite awhile, although she is still in contact with the former participants and I think she’d like to return to it if they could work things out.   She mentioned something to that effect this evening.

She’s still cruising the Fast Cupid website, reading profiles and making contact with people.

She said that there is something missing in her life.  She wants to be in love.  She said that hanging out with me is nice but…..  She was out to our house for supper last with her 3-year-old and that was nice, too, but…..  She enjoyed being at the park after supper with my husband and me and watching her son play, but….

But there is something missing for her.

I don’t know what’s missing.  Therefore, I don’t know if I can provide it for her or not!  

I know that I’m uneasy about all the “activity” going on in her social life.  I’m technically polyamorous but I’ve never had more than two relationships going on at a time: that with my husband and that with a female lover.  I honestly don’t know what to make of all these various relationships she’s got going on, all in various stages and levels of frequency.  I’m having a hard time finding common definition with the term polyamory as it pertains to my life compared to how she chooses to conduct her polyamorous life.  I have found myself frequently pondering that term polyamory lately and wondering what it really means.  My recent observations would lead me to believe that for some people, it is a lifestyle of numerous sexual affairs going on concurrently, sometimes spontaneously and impulsively because HEY!  I’m poly, and it’s okay!  The only thing that separates that behavior from your basic ”affairs” and general sexual promiscuity is the level of honesty and self-acceptance about what’s going on.  

But that’s not how I’m comfortable conducting my sexual relationships and therein lies the problem.  

So, I’m home tonight.   We had supper together.  (She clarified that she wasn’t breaking up with me, although it sure felt like it!)  We shopped for a bit at the shopping mall by the restaurant.  I took her home.  We hugged goodnight.  I declined to go in.

I think it’s over and I’m sad tonight.

Sad but not surprised.

For those of you who have followed this blog (which may just be my husband and me, but that’s fine), you’ll know that running into Millie again at the BECAUSE conference kick-off evening the end of March was the incentive for the birth of this blog.  I had not seen or spoken to her since the night of July 7, with the exception of the note I put in her package which contained the repaired necklaces she had given me to fix and a paperback book I had borrowed from her.  It was done.  Over.

Over except for my remaining anger and confusion about what had gone on between us, something that hit me full in the face the evening our paths crossed at the BECAUSE conference and I left that evening, not to return for the full day of the conference on Saturday because she was giving one of the sessions the next day.

To end this year since my last dinner with her, an interesting thing happened.  As I’ve mentioned, I am a member of a dating site since the end of March.  I think it was on Wednesday that I noticed a local couple had looked at my profile.  The names they gave in their profile were Michael and Diane.  Common enough, All-American names, but it gave me pause because the couple in the menage a trois that Millie was involved with was Mike and Diane.  I read through their profile and picked out the fact that they were both from another state and had relocated here within the last couple of years.  Millie talked about them a lot with me and this rang a bell.  The ages seemed right.

I let this all simmer for a day and then decided, what the hell?  I shot them a message and asked if they had been involved with a local woman last year, that we may have a mutual acquaintance!  They gave me a honest reply back.  Yes, they were involved with a woman, a relationship that ended in early 2007.  They supposed that it could have been her.

I answered with the probable mutual acquaintance’s initials and said that I was just curious so I’d know who to stay away from in case she was still involved with them!

Michael replied that, yes, this was the woman and that if I were in proximity to them, I’d be about as far away from HER as I could get!

This resulted in a number of messages going back and forth over the next couple of days, some written by Michael, who had known Millie for a long time, and some written by Diane who had only met Millie through MIchael’s preexisting relationship with her.  The take-home message for me in all that was that Millie was/is an emotionally unpredictable woman.  I knew about her being treated for a long time for depression (for that matter, so have I), but MIchael postulated that she may be bipolar as well.    He went on to say after knowing her for more than a decade, “She has contradictory needs.  Sometimes she needs someone emotionally strong when she is feeling frail and needs someone to carry her and other times she needs them to be emotionally weak so that she can feel more control in her own life.   The people that seem to be best for her are either physically or emotionally distant from her…”

Diane said in a letter she wrote to me, “I would guess that she has quickly moved on to many other new conquests. It has been my observation that she flirts until she catches the person, takes what she wants and then moves on…”

Both of them agreed that it was good for me that I only experienced four months of this and decided to end it!

Have I had doubts about this?  Perhaps in some ways.  I know that I carry my own amount of baggage due to my growing-up years in a dysfunctional family and I know I tend to be hypersensitive to certain things.  Sometimes I have to pause and ask myself if I’m responding to some stimulus in an appropriate way or reacting from a need to protect an Inner Child from hurt and abuse.  This was one of those cases.

To “celebrate” the first anniversary of giving Millie the boot, I think that I can lay those doubts to rest, thanks to the input from MIchael and Diane, two people whom I never, ever expected to talk to!  They obviously didn’t have an easy time of it, either, and MIchael said that he let it go on for far too long.  This chance encounter with them reassured me that I was not out of line in making the decision I did, and I thank them for the words that they shared with me.

And now, let us return to our originally scheduled programming! 

My life isn’t all about being “queer.”  There are many facets to my life.  I’ve been partnered in a heterosexual marriage for almost 35 years now.  I was dating my husband’s male housemate when I was introduced to Dave in early 1971.  Shortly after meeting Dave, I stopped seeing Andrew, his housemate.  Andrew was  a man I had been dating for eight months, although all but about three-and-a-half of those months had been conducted behind my parents’ backs since they had forbidden me to see him.  (I was 15, Andrew was 23.  Hmmm, parents were worried and scared.  Wonder why??)

I have had an on-again/off-again relationship/friendship with Andrew for many years.  We’re not lovers.  We’ve had sex a time or two, the last time many years ago, but we’re not lovers.  He has romanticized and idealized me since he’s been 23 as the “leading lady of his innermost being.”  Or something like that.  I and my husband have remained his friends, and I’ve tried in many ways to open his eyes to the woman that is me in real life and not in fantasy.  I’m afraid I haven’t had that much success.

I gave him the link to this blog and encouraged him to read some of it, to become acquainted with the details that currently comprise my life.  He finally screwed up his courage and read at least parts of it.  He actually submitted a three-paragraph comment yesterday on the entry “In Love….Or Not.”  I didn’t consider that three-paragraph comment appropriate for public viewing and deleted it, but I’m going to reprint the first paragraph of that comment here:

‘Well, I dragged my feet in getting around to reading this.  I felt some kind of anxiety about what I might  read.  There is a working dichotomy within me between really wanting to know you and clinging to my  romanticisms about you.  Finding out that I am not on your short list does wrench my gut .  Strange that I should feel this response, though, the feelings I have are long and deep, but not so intense, now.  I think that age and decreasing testosterone levels have something to do with it, as you have written…”

I wondered how he would react to discovering at the age of 61 that he is not on my Short List, and now I know!  He’s got a wrench in his gut.

I spent two hours last night composing an email to him, and this is what I said:

Andrew,

It is such a telling remark you made: “…I dragged my feet in getting around to reading this. I felt some kind of anxiety about what I might read.  There is a working dichotomy within me between really wanting to know you and clinging to my romanticisms about you…”

I’ve always known this about you, yet this is the first time I’ve ever heard you say anything so honest, so truthful, about our relationship.  Ironically, the only thing I’ve ever wanted from you in my adult life is for you to know me as the woman who exists in reality, not the idealized, romanticized version you have of her.  Quite bluntly, having you love the romanticized, idealized image of me that you harbor in your mind means nothing to me.  Having you love the woman who exists in the day-to-day world, the woman who is three-dimensional in all her strengths, weaknesses, musings, foibles, needs, and wants, – good and bad – is what would mean something to me.   Knowing me the way my closest friends and my husband know me, and loving me and accepting me as they do for the myriad of mainstream and diverse qualities I bring to the world, is what would add substance to our relationship.  I’ve given you this chance on a number of occasions, and I continue to do so.

When I assigned a number to my occasions of being “in love” — and I always put this in quotes because I feel that every person’s definition of ”in love” is different and completely subjective — I vacilliated on this and came to several different answers before finally deciding on one.

It probably comes as the biggest surprise to me that ultimately I did not put my high school best friend, Jane, the woman I first made love to when I was 15, on that list, although she was on the first mental “draft” of that list.  Then I thought further about it and realized that what I felt for her was not really my definition of “in love.”  I loved her very much; I have no argument or hesitation with that.  She loved me as well.  We often spoke of our love for each other and said those words, “I love you,” to each other.  I loved her with the depth that I would feel for a dear sister or a life-long best friend, and the great sex between us added a certain dimension of interest and color to the relationship, but I was not “in love” with her.  It was a revelation to me when I decided not to put her on that Short List after the tremendous impact she has had on my life.

I didn’t put Larry on that list, even though he was a very heavy-duty “crush” during my freshman year in high school, and the bottom fell out of my stomach and I felt dizzy every time I saw him at the skating rink.  I fantasized about him.  I had his picture up in my locker at school.  I wrote his name all over my notebooks.  I wanted to be his girlfriend in the worst way!  Was I “in love?”  No!  I was an adolescent in the throes of a hormonally-driven lust, infatuated for some unknown reason with a guy I didn’t even really know and hadn’t even dated, in very much the same way as girls were swooning over Donny Osmond and Paul McCartney and Davey Jones of  The Monkees.  From my 52-year-old perspective, that  kind of infatuation is not the same as being “in love,” so Larry was dropped from the Short List.  Had you asked me when I was 14 if I was “in love” with Larry, I would have given the world a resounding “yes!”

Why did Frenchie make it onto the Short List?  I don’t really know, considering that ours was a relationship of two terribly mismatched individuals.  It never would have survived if it had ever gone as far as an engagement or a marriage.  (At least, I don’t think so, but who’s to say?)  But for some irrational reason, he stays on that list, maybe in memory of the depth of my feelings at the time…and maybe just in his memory.  He died in 2000 when he was 52-years-old.

What about Andrew?  Why did he ultimately not make it onto the Short List?

There is no question that something profound was going on during that summer I turned 15, and you were involved.  If I were to merely look at the feelings I had that summer of 1970 and ask myself if I was “in love,” the answer at that time would be yes.  From a 15-year-old’s perspective, I was “in love” with you that summer.

From an adult perspective as the 52-year-old woman I am now, what was going on that summer was a combination of extreme adolescent rebellion and an infatuation with a man I didn’t know very well at all.  The forbidden aspect of the relationship that my parents imparted to it added a whole complex array of intense emotion to what was going on.  It was a jumble of adolescent emotion and growth, both normal and dysfunctional, given what was going on in my nuclear family at the time. 

After we had been dating out in the open with parental consent for two or three months, I knew I wasn’t really “in love” when I couldn’t come right out and say it to you.  You wanted me to, but when it came down to it, I couldn’t say it and mean it.  It was then that I first started to realize the complexity of what all had gone on during the preceeding six months or so.  Something else was going on than a 15-year-old being “in love!”  That’s what the grown-up woman says.

Does this mean that we don’t have a caring, long-term relationship?  No, not at all.   The proof is in the 38 years we’ve known each other!  I love you as a devoted friend, as someone who will always be a part of my life!  I want to be there for you as a friend, as “family” who will be there and withstand the test of time.  I know that it doesn’t sound at all “romantic,” and it’s not, but it’s stable and steadfast and it will always be there for you.

So, you decide whether you want to know the real me after all these years or your romanticized version of me that you’ve held for so long.  I’ve probably given you all the “links” you’ll ever need if you want to know the real me.

In loving friendship,

Kinsey

Edit: No response whatsoever as of June 2, 2008 from the recipient of this letter.  Both my husband and other close friend who read this said that it was a very well-written letter, and I don’t take their opinions lightly.  However, it must have left Andrew speechless! 

Randi Sue was over to our house this past Thursday evening and met Dave.  We then went out to a local family restaurant and had a bite to eat, just the two of us.  I wanted to tell her about my feelings regarding our relationship, that my feelings in no way matched the intensity of her feelings, given the less than two weeks we had known each other, and that I was deeply concerned that her intensity and impulsivity was going to steer her down a path best not taken with me.  I am never going to be her “one-and-only,” and I don’t want to deter her from seeking that in a partner.  The truth is that I’m not focused on finding a “steady girlfriend” right now and being her exclusive partner.  I need a social support system in the bisexual community, not a lot of romantic entanglements to potentially hamper that process.  (As it is, I didn’t go to the monthly Bisexual Organizing Project’s girls-night Chic Chat last night because I was concerned I’d end up in an awkward situation with either Anne, Millie, or both!)   

I couldn’t say all those painfully truthful things, though.  She is so emotionally needy that I just couldn’t get the blunt words out.  I told her that I’m concerned about the “in love” aspect of her feelings and overwhelmed by it, but I couldn’t go into hard, cold honesty that it’s freaking me out and I don’t want to be in that situation with her.  It’s an imbalanced dynamic between the two of us, and that’s not good for either one of us.

Friday morning, I took about 60% of the middle section of that previous post titled “In Love…or Not” and posted it to my journal on the dating site through which we met.  She looks at my profile a couple of times a day.  Why, I don’t know, but she does, and I knew that she’d see the condensed version of my WordPress post there.  Later that day, I got the following email from her:

On 5/2/08, Randi Sue wrote:

 Dear Kinsey,

    I am not sorry that I shared my feelings with you.  I am sorry that we don’t share those feelings, but whatever will be will be.  I am an intensely emotional being.  I need to learn to protect myself from being hurt and still love freely.  I hope I can find a balance.

    I wish we had more time to talk yesterday.  I am glad I can talk with you.

    I would like to continue our friendship.  I like talking to you,  I care about you.  I don’t think that I can have a sexual relationship without being in love. I need and deserve love in my life.

Always,
Randi

And I responded with:

From: Kinsey
Date: May 2, 2008 12:24 PM
Subject: Re: Love
To: Randi

Yes, Randi, you need and deserve love, as much of it as you can get.  And if you need to be in love to have a sexual relationship, then that is what you should do.  That is why I’m pulling back from having that sexual relationship with you.  I don’t share that same level of intensity right now and may never.  I haven’t had enough time to tell if that’s where it could lead, given my own personal emotional composition and needs in life.

You need to find the person(s) who can feel as deeply as you do and who are free to get as involved as deeply as you would like to.  It needs to be a reciprocal relationship in order to give you the satisfaction, pleasure and fulfillment you need.  You deserve that, and I’d love to see you find it!

I would like for us to be friends, too.  I enjoy talking with you and doing things with you.  I care about you, too, and want what’s best in the long run.

Take care,

Kinsey

I think the romantic, sexual relationship with her is over now, and frankly, I’m relieved.  I felt way in over my head on this one, and that’s not a comfortable feeling at all!

And my husband once more reminded me to keep my pants on until it’s a little clearer what and who I’m getting involved with.  He said with a smirk that some tendencies just seem to be hardwired into my chromosomes, but I really should try to practice some restraint before getting into these sexual situations too early in a relationship!

 I agreed with him. 

 Enough said.

The thing I’m trying to figure out is why running into Millie bothered me so much, so much in fact that I couldn’t stand the thought of being at the conference all day on Saturday with her close by.  Why IS that??

When I reflect on it, though, that was the exact way I felt that evening last July 7th when she told me over supper that there is something missing from her life, that it was okay hanging out with me, but…  I just wanted to get away from her!  I honestly couldn’t wait to drop her off at home that night and drive like a bat out of hell home!  There was a feeling of relief and safety accompanying my arrival home that night.

It’s my emotional vulnerability.  It’s the wanting this one thing so much right now - the love and respect of a woman - that I have a very hard time when a relationship fails.  I was the closest I had come in a long, long time to getting deeply involved with a woman last spring and summer - that possibility was so VERY close! - and then the door to that possibility slammed on my fingers.  That’s what her words felt like to me.  It wasn’t that we were having an argument or a fight over a big issue.  Quite the contrary.  Her words about things missing from her life, of wanting to be in love, of “it was nice to be with me, but…” spoke of indifference to our relationship, and that was exactly what I DIDN’T feel!  I was not indifferent about what was going on between us!   Indifference is an emotional killer!

Part of me felt like a fool, although I don’t know exactly why.   Maybe it’s because I’ve had a number of relationships with women that either didn’t get off the ground or didn’t work out after a short time that I should have known that this time would be no different.  That’s pessimistic, yes, and I don’t want to be the kind of person who never gives anything a chance for fear it’ll fail.  But it did again, and that cynical little voice piped up, “You should have known this would happen!  It always does!”

Since the time of the breakup (and there is no mistake, it was MY breakup with HER.  I took the initiative to do something that she hesitated to do), I’ve been in the midst of this “dry spell” that I’ve mentioned.  There is nothing going on here, and that has led to the worry that it’ll never happen.  I’ve never worried about it before, to be honest, but I’ve never been 52 before, either, with a string of unfulfilled relationships and expectations behind me.

So, I looked at Millie and I remembered the disappointment, the pain, the cynicism, and the loss.  Now, there’s the fear that my time for fun and romance has passed.

Dave thinks I need to figure out where my emotions are coming from, and I agree with him, so that I can moderate how I react to Millie if our social circles are going to cross in the future.  He and I both agree that I can’t withdraw and do nothing.  It’s not productive and healthy.  I need to control this situation in the best way I can rather than letting it control me.

I still have some thinking to do about all this.  I need to get this in perspective and let my reaction to Millie roll off me rather than my emotions bulldozing over me!  Once of that was enough!

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.      

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.