I’m trying to develop a social network within the bisexual community here in the Twin Cities.  I’m trying to do my part towards supporting a sense of community for the bisexual population  within the GLBT community.  I believe in this cause.  It’s been sorely lacking in my own life, and I would imagine that many people who identify as bisexual feel the same sense of aloneness and isolation in their lives.

The only group I’ve connected with so far here in the Twin Cities that seems to have any merit in this regard is the Bisexual Organizing Project, and they have a grand total of 240 members, a handful of which participate in any social events!  That seems like a very low number considering the rather substantial bisexual population that must surely exist here in a large, liberal metropolitan area.  However, it is what it is.  (Organizing bisexuals is a lot like herding cats, a whole line of thinking reserved for another post!)

The monthly “bi brunch” is being held this Sunday at a member’s home northwest of Minneapolis, followed by the every-other-month board meeting.  I’ve vaciliated about attending.  I’ve been tending more towards going rather than not going since finding out through the Yahoo Group postings that Millie is otherwise occupied on Mother’s Day! 

I extended an offer to Anne to ride with me to the brunch and meeting on Sunday, aware that she currently does not have a car and relies mostly on public transit.  I’m not going to let that relationship of two “dates” duration deter me from getting involved with the group.  I have absolutely no ill feelings towards Anne.  I wanted to be her friend.

My husband has no ill feelings towards me being friends with Anne.  He stated that he had some trouble wrapping his head around my potential sexual involvement with trans women, and he further went on to later refine this discomfort to say that he has trouble with the concept of me getting sexually involved with pre-surgical trans women.  I understand this feeling, even though I don’t share his same level of discomfort.  I respect his feelings, especially since they were stated in a very appropriate personal ownership of these feelings without any demands, ultimatums, slams or insults in any way associated with his sharing of these feelings.

We’ve talked quite a lot about this whole situation in recent days, and I’m impressed with the level of honesty, open communication, and non-defensive sharing that has gone on.  I’ve acknowledged his feelings.  He’s acknowledged mine, and we’re learning from each other.  Saturday night, I did draw my line in the sand, which was this: “I understand your feelings about my potential sexual relationships with trans women, particularly pre-surgical trans women, but I expect that they’ll always be welcomed warmly as friends in our home and treated no differently than anyone else in that regard.” 

He was firm in his agreement of that position.  “Absolutely!” he stated.  “Of course!” 

Of course, I never expected that there would be any problem with that aspect of my relationships.  He’s a good man, not a bigot, not a “red neck,” not narrow-minded and rigid in his beliefs.  He’s trying to wrap his head around a complex set of issues, a set of issues that his own personal experiences have not covered in his life, and I respect him for the effort he puts into expanding his insights.

Anne, however, appeared to reject my offer of friendship.  The feeling I got was that if she can’t have me as a lover, then she doesn’t want my company.

So be it.  You can’t have everyone as your lover.  Some people are platonic friends, and that is well and good.

The Bisexual Organizing Project with its 240 members appears to be its own little ”Peyton Place,” with members having romantic and sexual partnerships with each other.  That seems to be a complicating factor in its dynamics.  Probably even interferes with its smooth operation at times, depending on who is sleeping with whom and who isn’t anymore, etc.!  I really would like to keep those complications to a minimum if I’m going to get more involved with this group!

Anne turned me down for the ride to the Brunch and Board Meeting on Sunday.  I told her to let me know if she changes her mind, that her contribution and input to the group is welcomed and appreciated.

I want to support this community, not do things to cause conflict and ill will.  Let’s pray I succeed. 

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.

Yesterday evening, as we were relaxing after just finishing our evening meal, Dave said to me, “I read  your WordPress blog this afternoon.”

“You read the latest entry I wrote this afternoon?” I asked.

“Uh-huh,” he confirmed.

I had not as yet given him the details of what all has happened this week between Randi Sue and me.  In part, I’ve been a bit embarrassed that I have found myself in this situation again.  It happens from time to time, and as I said in a previous blog, my vow was not to rush into sexual relationships with people, which I have had a tendency to do.   Dave was given instructions to remind me of that if I ever called home on a first or second date again and said that I wasn’t coming home that night (barring being too drunk to drive — also not a good thing!)

Well, he wasn’t around to remind me of that last Wednesday evening nor last Friday night.  Not that withholding a sexual encounter would necessarily keep a person from “falling in love” with me.  That can happen in the absence of sex, as I well know from my own experience.

Nonetheless, I hadn’t rushed into telling him every detail of this past week with Randi Sue.  He knew enough by the time he had finished reading my previous post.  As (almost) always, he was understanding, sympathetic, supportive, and we had a good talk last night.  I unburdened my soul to him, a process that always makes me feel better and less alone.

We talked quite a bit about this phenomenon known as “being in love,” and I told him who was on my Short List.  Him, of course.  (He was relieved to hear that!)  I did recall aloud last night that we had only known each other about six weeks and had been dating for a month when those three little words were mutually spoken to each other 37 years ago.  Not a lengthy period of time to know each other before saying, “I love you!”  However, when I said those words to him for the first time, there was no hesitancy about saying those words.  I meant it from the bottom of my heart.  I knew them to be true and right.  There was never any question about it, no second thoughts.  There never has been with him.

I don’t fall in love easily.  I’m pretty reserved about that emotion, if one actually does have control over that emotion.  I’ve been in love six times for sure.  Four of those times were with men: my boyfriend from my teens, Henry, then Dave, and two Johns.  John #1 was the brother of a good friend of mine in high school, and he and I began a relationship while I was around their house a lot during the six months I was involved in the engagement festivities of his older sister.  I was one of her bridesmaids in her 1974 wedding.  Maggie got married and moved off to Columbus, Ohio, and her brother, a young man who was then struggling with his gay sexual orientation, and I continued our relationship.  That relationship went on for another three years, although it was by and large an intellectual and long-distance relationship.  I haven’t seen him since 1977, but I still think about him and hope all is well.

John #2 was a Family Practice physician I worked with in 1977.  We kept in touch after I left that clinic’s employ.  He was a married man 11 years older than me with four kids.  On the night we made love for the first time, I was 24 and he was 35.  I was in love with him until the summer of 1985, even though I only saw him less than a handful of times during those years.  I went from loving him intensely and deeply to feeling literally nothing for the man when I found out what all came out as his divorce proceedings at that time: he had been physically abusing his wife.  There were times when his wife would end up at the E.R. after John had dragged her around by her hair and blackened her eye.  Stuff like that.  I felt sick, and that was that.  It was over, and I shuddered to think that I wasted my love on the man, that I was ever alone with him.

Then there were two outwardly platonic friendships with high school friends that never played out in any sexual and/or romantic sense, but I was in love with both of those young women: Lorrie, a neighbor girl, whom I had known since she was 11 years old and stayed in touch with until she was 25, and then Marie, a high school classmate of mine.  (Marie died when she was 40-years-old of some kind of cancer.  I was heartbroken when I read that obituary in 1995.)  I loved those two women, but it was unrequited love.

Yes, there have been some relationships other than those which qualified for “in love” status that have caused their share of emotional pleasure and pain, and have been deep and meaningful relationships in their own right.  I’ve loved individuals without feeling that intense emotion I associate as “being in love.” 

I took note of the fact that all of these “in love” relationship began much earlier in my life, in my teens and early 20s.  Does age and/or hormone levels affect this phenomenon?  I would speculate that it does.  It is a powerful drive to pair off with a mate and want to express that desire sexually.  I think that age, experience, multiple time and energy commitments such as career and family, and decreasing hormone levels makes the “in love” phenomenon less common in older individuals — older individuals such as myself!

And this led to a discussion last night about whether trans individuals who have just recently made the full transition to living physically as the gender they self-identify as being are more susceptible to this “in love” phenomenon due to the newness of their lives, the novelty, the inexperience, and the effect of recently-initiated levels of sex hormones on the brain and other organs.  I’ve had two experiences lately of middle-aged (late 40s to late 50s) trans women being “in love” on the basis of a first date and another such experience that occurred 18 months ago!

I don’t know if there will ever be more people to add to my Short List of individuals whom I have been in love with.  That may or may not happen.  We’ll see.

My horoscope for today, courtesy of Holiday Mathis in the Twin Cities Star Tribune newspaper, reads: “Getting back to basics is a personal process, since what is ‘basic’ to you is not even in the realm for someone else.  Get what you need without wondering why you need it or telling yourself that you shouldn’t need it.”

Interesting advice.  Of course, these horoscope snippets found here and there are always subject to one’s own interpretation in light of whatever may be going on in one’s life at the moment.

I’m in a “patch” again, brought about by a evening a week ago Friday that ended by feeling an emotional connection with a person.  We impulsively kissed at the end of Friday evening.  Necked, even.  Wednesday evening, it went further than that at her house.  Friday evening at my house, she announced that she thought she was falling in love.  She emailed that she loves me on Sunday.  She’s intent on being my “girlfriend.”

She said that she hoped I wasn’t scared by this.  Well, yes, honestly, I am freaked.  I don’t fall in love in a week’s time.  I haven’t done that kind of thing since my teens and early 20s.  It’s been a long time since I’ve had that feeling of “being in love.”  (I’ll grandfather my husband in on this emotion, however, since I felt that “in love” feeling very strongly towards him in the earlier months and years of our relationship, and it slowly developed into a deeper, more enduring kind of lifelong love and partnership.)

I need a relationship to develop more slowly, learning about each other along the way to know if a deeper, more enduring relationship is a feasibility given all the other circumstances in my life (i.e. married and bisexual, full time job, lots of demands for my time and attention.)  This “in love” process in the matter of a week is something I just can’t relate to.  Yes, I’m pragmatic and logical, not impulsive and emotional.  Usually.  I must confess that I didn’t behave like my usual pragmatic and logical self a week ago Friday evening, and that confession doesn’t really feel good now.

Does that make me wrong for wanting a relationship to proceed at a slower, more conservative pace?  Does it make me wrong for feeling skeptical, hesitant and concerned about the future of a relationship based on such an impulsive beginning?  Does it make me less of a feeling, caring person for needing my space, needing to grow in trust and sharing rather than jumping into it with both feet (and an arm and a leg?) 

I don’t think so, but I feel like the “bad guy” here for wanting to back off from my “girlfriend’s” level of intensity and involvement.  Frankly, I just don’t know what to do with it right now!

She is an unattached woman right now, not in any other romantic relationships, and on the rebound from recently splitting with her spouse.  I find it hard to imagine that her intense emotional involvement with a woman who is clear about her marriage being her primary relationship is fated to be a positive experience long term.  I see her wanting a one-on-one relationship with someone she can come home to every evening, someone to share her bed every night, someone who puts her first above all others — like my husband is to me.  I won’t be that person to her, and I will disappoint her, sadden her, and it will end.  This is the pragmatic, logical side of me speaking, but why go there? 

Yes, why go there?

I’m just not sure what to do with this.

In my previous post, Transcending Trans, I published a letter that I sent six days ago to not one but two trans women in my life.

Anne (not her real name) was the woman who had contacted me via a dating site, and I wrote about that contact and meeting in the post, Caffeine Hangover.  Even before we met that first evening to go to the Bisexual Organizing Project’s women’s-only evening at Wilde Roast Cafe called Chic Chat, she had sent me a brief email that said, “This makes me really glad that you are willing to go to Chic Chat with me.  Don’t give up on BOP just because of Millie.  You know, the irony of our situation has not escaped me.  You and I first met on a dating service when you had given up on dating services, and I was the one who made that original posting for the BECAUSE conference you found.  And yes, when Lynn was talking about who had helped make the conference possible, my name was in the list.  Please, take it as a sign that I was fated to be here for you…”

I responded to that email by saying that I had taken it as a sign, and I had.  Fate had given me a second chance to get involved in the bisexual community here in the Twin Cities.  Fate had snagged me by the back of the jacket as I was running from Millie again and all those attendant emotions and said, “Hey, come back here!  Here is a supportive friend who is willing to go with you and introduce you to some people.  Go!”  I had not gone down the path, though, of thinking that this woman was slated to be a romantic partner because of the means of our introduction and some common events in our background.  I approached it from the standpoint of making a friend and building some connections, an important thing in and of itself.

She said nothing in her profile on the dating site that suggested her status as a trans woman, and that’s okay.  However, my experience with that situation in the past was that individuals have been upfront about these circumstances, even if it’s in a rather oblique, subtle way at first, not wanting to surprise or discomfit their dates in any way.   It just puts that set of circumstances out there right away and prevents any misunderstanding or embarrassment later should this be an unsettling situation for the date.  I figured it out on my own in three seconds when I picked her up at her house that Saturday evening, visually took in her stature and bone structure and the male timbre of her voice.  I knew what her basic circumstances were without knowing any of the specific details.

We had a pleasant-enough evening going to Chic Chat that Saturday, but I was relieved that it wasn’t a one-on-one date.  She was difficult to engage socially.  She had split with her spouse of close to thirty years within recent months and was seriously depressed.  It was readily apparent that there were many stressors in her life, and she was just hanging on day to day emotionally.  And then there was her status in an “extended, polyamorous family,” a situation I approach with a great deal of reservation as a potential participant until I know the details of that configuration.   My conclusion by the end of that evening due to multiple factors in her life was that this was a person I had no interest in getting romantically involved with.  I was interested in being her friend.

However, that Saturday night, I had no sooner dropped her off at her house and returned home when I had an email waiting for me that said what a nice evening she had had and she wondered if she should have kissed me goodnight or invited me in.  I replied, no, I was in no hurry to take things in that direction.  I was interested in developing a friendship.

In that spirit, and knowing that she was depressed, bereft, and struggling, I had suggested during that evening that we make some plans to go out for an Indian meal, something I knew she’d enjoy.   We went out for this meal at Taste of India, a restaurant that I love to visit for its wonderful cuisine.  We had a nice evening.  We talked about many things over supper: her life, my life, all kinds of things.  She actually seemed more at ease with me on that one-on-one level, and after a two-hour dinner, I left feeling the bonds of a friendship.  I also found out that evening that she was in the process of putting together the details for her surgical transition that had yet to happen, and I wanted to be there as a source of support and friendship as she entered that phase of her life.  We shared a quick goodnight peck on the lips in the car when I dropped her off.

The next morning, I had both a brief email, thanking me for a wonderful evening and stating that she wanted to see me again soon, and a link to a web page depicting a medevial, romantic scene.  The verse on the card was:  

Can you imagine my surprise
When I looked into your eyes
Because after all
It was just a meeting of the lips,
Not so very much at all.
A soft caress, a fleeting touch,
Just a whisper of a kiss.
But it set my blood afire,
Singed my soul with desire.

She added the message, “What is in a first kiss? Hope and longing for what may come.”

Okay, well, I knew we were on two different paths with this thing at that point and I was mildly freaked, although I am generally such a calm, together person that I don’t display too much outward emotional demonstration when I am only “mildly freaked!”  I spent a lot of time that Sunday talking to my spouse at various times throughout the day about my recent social developments.

There were even some musings during that day with him as to what it would be like to be married to a person for many years, then to find out somewhere down the road that the partner is transgendered and wants to transition to living as the other sex, complete with the surgical reassignment.  That’s a nearly impossible situation for a straight spouse to adjust to.  I went on to say, however, that I, as a bisexual woman with a fully-developed sexual appreciation for both sexes, could probably make that adjustment, given that the relationship had many other redeeming qualities.  I could emotionally and sexually transition along with the partner, and even continue with a sexual relationship while my partner was in various stages of the transition, including living outwardly as a woman while still having the genitalia of a man.

I think at this point, my husband was mildly freaked.  He didn’t say anything during the course of the day, but that Sunday night, under the influence of a bottle of wine, he said what he did, that he was uncomfortable with my relationships with trans women.  As I mentioned in the letter I wrote to Anne, he didn’t elaborate further, and I didn’t press that night, just kind of quietly digesting that disconcerting bit of sharing and wondering what to do with it from there.

Anne’s response was, “I understand, Kinsey.  You have your primary relationship to worry about.  I hope you and Dave are able to work through any issues you have.  I have to confess that I cried a little, but I expect I will heal.  I only wish that what I am didn’t keep having to be an obstacle to people.  I want nothing but the best for you.  I will miss you.”

So, no consideration of my offer of friendship there.  I get the impression that she wanted a romantic relationship with me or nothing at all.  I’m undecided as to whether I should try to clarify the situation with her and again extend that friendship or write this one off as two people who are clearly on different pages.  (Any thoughts, Readers?) 

Dave read the letters I had sent to both Anne and Randi Sue, and he read Anne’s response.  He initiated a conversation about this on Tuesday morning this week and clarified that he did not mean his statement about his discomfort with my relationships with trans women as an across-the-board, blanket statement.  He said that he meant it with regard to the situation of me having a sexual relationship with a pre-op trans woman, that he was having trouble getting his head around that.   He didn’t mean it in a general way that he was uncomfortable with my transgendered friends or even that he would be necessarily uncomfortable with a sexual relationship between me and a trans woman who had been through the surgical reassignment.  He just couldn’t wrap his head around the situation of me being sexually involved with a person who physically was still in an incomplete state of transition.

“That wasn’t specifically what you said Sunday night!” I pointed out.

“No, that wasn’t what I said,” he countered.  “Consider the state I was in by the time I said what I said!”

Over the course of the next day or so, I thought about who my husband is a person, what has gone into shaping him into who he is.  He is a soon-to-be 58-year-old man who was born and raised in a town in northern Minnesota.  Although it is an ethnically-diverse region, those cultures are of the European variety, and he did not grow up with any contact with racial diversity.  He didn’t know his first African American person until he moved to Ohio when he was 20-years-old.  He did not have any contact with sexual orientation diversity as a child or young man.  Sex wasn’t even something that was talked about in his conservative and inhibited household.  He may have had some acquaintance with a couple of gay men during his college days on the Iron Range, particularly during his involvement with the Theatre Arts folks at the community college (yes, I’m being stereotypical here, but there is some truth in the stereotypes, I’ve observed!), but nothing on a personal basis.  I’m sure that I’m the first woman he had ever known who loves being sexually with women, and lo and behold, he found himself engaged to her!

Having a bisexual woman as his best friend, lover, and wife since his early 20s has been a culturally “enlightening” experience for the heterosexual guy from northern Minnesota!  He has been a very open and accepting individual to the range of orientation and gender diversity that I’ve introduced him to as part of my own orientation and involvement with the LGBT community.  He has embraced his expanded horizons and has been a loving partner to me and a welcoming individual to my friends and lovers over the years.

He ran up against a “sticking point” last weekend with the idea of me getting sexually involved with a pre-surgical trans woman.  He even said that it was his problem, a potential growth experience for him, and at no time did he deliver any ultimatums or demands regarding my behavior.  I chose to respect those feelings, even in their rather incomplete description initially, and shared with my trans acquaintances what was going on here.

I publically give the man a hell of a lot of credit for all that he is and all the acceptance, kindness, and openness he has given to me and to my many LGBT friends over the years.  He is a remarkable man, still growing, still learning, and I love and appreciate him for it.  He has grown in many ways that so many people wouldn’t even consider!

Anne has apparently written me off as a friend, and I’m sorry for that.  I’m also sorry for any pain my husband’s words of that Sunday night caused her.  I can appreciate her feelings in the matter.,

Randi Sue (not her real name), on the other hand, a woman I met face-to-face for the first time nine days ago, said that she’d rather have me as a friend than not at all, a response that seemed a bit more appropriate to the circumstances.

To be continued…..

A strange turn of events this week.

A week ago, I signed up for a new dating site recommended by one of the women on my Yahoo Group, Coming Out as a Married Lesbian or Bisexual.   As I mentioned in a previous post, the Personals have ceased over this past year to be a productive means of meeting other bisexual women, and I’ve blamed that on my “over-the-hill” age of 52.  I’m sure that it puts me out of the age demographics of the folks who are cruising the sites.  50 is about the maximum age you’ll see listed as a search parameter unless the person doing the looking is 50 or older herself, and there are few of those in relation to the 18-40 year olds on these dating sites.

Anyhow, if it’s free to post a profile on a site, what’s the harm in trying?  You never know when someone interesting might come along and strike up a conversation!

Probably within 24 hours of posting my profile, I received a response from a local woman.  During the course of exchanging a few emails over the next several days, it came to light that she was at that BECAUSE conference last weekend.   Due to that commonality, I shared with her what had happened at the conference that Friday evening which resulted in my not returning for the full day of the conference on Saturday.  I gave her the link to this blog so she could read what I had written about it.

Along with having a traumatic time dealing with the conference, I also had misgivings about getting involved with activities that the Bisexual Organizing Project (BOP) here in the BiCities hosts for fear of who I would end up in the same room with.   My new acquaintance suggested that we go together to ”Chic Chat,” the girls-only night of food, beverage and conversation held at a coffee cafe close to the University of Minnesota campus on the first Saturday of the month.  With a companion for the evening, I felt comfortable giving it a whirl and agreed to go.

I had a very nice evening at the cafe.  There were 10-12 women there for Chic Chat.  The young woman sitting at the next table was also attending her first Chic Chat after being at the BECAUSE conference last weekend and we found we had our professional background in common.  Suddenly, acronyms such as BSL3, DNA, HIV, FDA, PCR and other phrases unique to our laboratory professions were flying back and forth.  I stopped at one point and laughed.  “You know, we’re talking a foreign language to the other guests here tonight!” I said. 

And I found out that BOP has a beading morning coming up on a Saturday morning a couple of weeks from now.  Yes, indeed, I’m thinking about going to that!  What could be better than a fellowship of bisexual women who like beads?  Not much, I’m thinking!  I’m on it!

My downfall of the evening, however, was not sticking to decaf coffee like I told myself I was going to before I left.  I don’t typically drink any caffeinated beverages after 9:30 in the morning on weekdays; a little later in the morning on weekends.  I’ve never been a coffee, tea or soft drink imbiber later in the day unless it’s decaffeinated.  I know what it does to me: I’ll be up all night!

I did not heed that advice and had a tall raspberry mocha latte or something like that last evening.  I got home about 10:30, completely wide awake.  At 1:30 when I went to bed, I was still completely wide awake.  Dave woke up when I came to bed and we talked.  He was awake and I was awake, and it was 2:30 at least before I managed to fall into a fitful sleep.  I slept off and on until about 9:00 this morning and then got up.  I am still tired and have a vague headache.  I can hold my liquor but I can’t hold my caffeine!

I’m pleased that the supportive circumstances came together for me to give BOP another try.  Fate has been kind to me this week!

I find it strange myself that I had such a strong reaction to seeing Millie at the conference Friday evening, considering that I cannot honestly claim to have ever been in love with her.  I hadn’t gone down that path.

One thing I WAS in love with was the whole concept of being publically open and out about my bisexuality, uncloseted, good with who I was.  Millie was very publically affectionate and it encouraged me to be the same way to a degree I never had been before.  I found that I highly enjoyed that feeling of freedom.  During that time with her, I also came out to a couple of friends at work, something I hadn’t done before.  It rather surprised me when that came out of my mouth to Jason and Ron after I started dating Millie, but that felt pretty good, too.  And then I came out to my family physician in June, wanting him to understand why a married woman was requesting STD screening.  I came away from that visit relieved and impressed with how all that was handled.

I felt like something beautiful was blossoming inside me in a way that it never had before, and I was in love with this newfound feeling of self-love and acceptance.  I was terribly frustrated and disappointed when I no longer had anyone to share that openness with.  I felt like Millie had dangled a carrot in front of my nose with her displays of affection and her tacit invitations to be a part of her family, imparting a wholeness to my life that hadn’t been there before, and then she suddenly snatched it away in a change of heart, leaving me with a hollow, empty feeling.  

I have written a prescription for myself.  That prescription is to not be so enamored with the thought of being in a romantic relationship with someone that I get involved quickly, choosing to turn my head the other way to the obvious pitfalls and incompatibilities in my haste to be a woman’s “partner.”   Some of the “breakups,” both major and minor, and the couple of one-night-stands I’ve admittedly had over the last four or five years wouldn’t have happened if I had not gotten so quickly involved in a sexual relationship with these people.   I need to learn to say, “Let’s slow it down and get to know each other well as people before we get sexually involved.”  Getting to know someone well — well enough at any rate to know whether a romantic relationship is appropriate — doesn’t happen in the span of a few dates.  It happens over weeks and months.

More than anything, I need a social network, a group of friends who will support me in my desire to be open about my orientation and lifestyle.  I need some comraderie, a broader social focus to this which has never been there for me since my days of hanging out a lesbian coffeehouse and attending a GLBT church in the 1970s.  I need to look beyond the dating scene and establish a stronger support system that will be there in a more consistent fashion for me.

And I need to remember these words.  I’ve talked about this with Dave recently and asked him to remind me of this if and when I ever call home again on a first date and say I won’t be home that night.  He’s been instructed to remind me of what I’ve said here!  I hope he doesn’t have to.  That’s a terrible spot to place a husband in, after all!          

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.      

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.