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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.

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

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

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

July 10, 2007

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So, please let me know where we stand.

Millie

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

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

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

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

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

Prior to last night. 

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

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

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

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

And, oh, that felt so nice to me!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Then……