Human Dignity

http://pervertedimp.com/2013/04/25/human-dignity/

Leadership and Community

http://pervertedimp.com/2012/12/03/leadership-and-community/

Rape Culture Rant

http://pervertedimp.com/2012/10/11/rape-culture-rant/

Everything Changes, Everything Stays the Same

A good number of changes currently happening in my poly life and in the community I’m a part of. A new space has been acquired by some community leaders and a lot of groups are moving their meetings there. This includes my weekly Wednesday group. We are moving away from the space we have occupied for three years now, to a new place, a new space. And with high hopes that it will work for us and allow us to reach even more people.

I have also stepped down from being the little d with toy, back to a more comfortable s. I had a great time last year, learning and experiencing new things in this role. But this year, with a lot of upheaval in my life, it just didn’t feel comfortable anymore. We are examining our dynamic and determining how best to continue. It will take a bit of adjustment, but I think we’ll all come out happy in the end.

We said our fond farewell to our usual Wednesday night space in the best way we knew how. With friends, family, food and screams. He lined us up, his toy, myself and the engineer and tore into our thighs and chests. We started with the big dragon tail, then the little, then a nice blue rubber ball on a flexible rod, and ended with a round of the flyswatter, by their vote. I voted for more dragon tail because it’s not a fear response for me like the flyswatter, but it was just too much sting for them to want another round. We followed up with water and cuddles.

New and busy times lay ahead. I am grateful for what we’ve had and look forward to what is coming.

Rant Ranty Rant

It has been a rough few weeks. Relationship and communication issues on both sides of my poly family. But I don’t really want to talk about that stuff here. So, what shall I talk about? I could rant about the importance of talking about problems. I could fume over folks encouraging deception and dishonesty. I could lament the damage to friendships caused by miscommunication. Or I could talk about how a community is a big set of dominoes. This all feels quite passive aggressive though, and that does not become us. So, what shall I write about this week?

Oh feck it, let’s be ranty. It’s my blog. If you want positive, happy thoughts, take a look at my 31 Days of Gratitude posts.

First things first. If you have a problem with someone you Care About. Tell Them. (Yes, it’s going to be a capital letter day.) If you don’t like their behavior, avoiding them won’t fix it. If you talk to them, you can help them. Or they can help you. Depending on what is needed. If you just ignore the problem, how are they supposed to know it Is a problem? We do not have the luxury of being able to observe our own behavior from the outside. Sometimes we need the insight of others to see the truth. If you love someone, share with them what you see. And be open to hear how they feel, or to hear why they are doing something. What you see may not be their truth.

Next. If you are having a problem, you don’t have to deal with it alone. Ask for help. Tell the people who love you. Or more importantly, if they ask you, don’t lie about it. Don’t hide the problem so that when it comes out, it expands into multiple problems. Obviously, you don’t need to tell Everyone your problems, but the people you love will feel cheated and lied to if you keep important information from them.

Oh, and to all those people who think it’s okay to contribute to lying and breaking promises and then just cut and run. Fuck you. Where the hell is your respect for friends and community? For trust and communication? Take some fucking responsibility for your actions and agreements and man up when you do something wrong. Or at the very least, don’t discourage other people from doing the right thing.

And let’s all remember that we’re a pretty interconnected community. What you say to one person not only gets around to everyone else, but it can also affect everyone else. If you hurt your play partner, you’re also causing pain to all his other partners, and their partners in a nice big ripple effect. Don’t expect everything to be fine and dandy just because it wasn’t her you said things to.

Well, that was far more ranting and cursing that I usually do. Like I said, it’s been a rough couple weeks. I’m sure I could go on, but I think that is plenty for one day. Writing this did encourage me to send out a couple emails explaining my feelings to people. I’d also like to thank the communications presenter from last night, excellent points were made about positive and negative communication behaviors. I think I’ve got a couple negative behaviors in this blog post, but in the personal communications, I think I stay with positive behaviors.

 

Emotional Blackmail

I read Emotional Blackmail by Susan Forward this week, and while there is a lot to it, and a lot that does not apply to my own situation. I found myself realizing that while I don’t let others blackmail me, I may be doing it for them. I have hot buttons from my past, that I use against myself to control my current behavior. I scare myself into behaving certain ways, even though I don’t want to. So here they are, and my attempts to disarm them.

Fear of anger or raised voices. There was hardly ever any yelling in my house as a child. Occasionally, my brother or I got yelled at, but mostly when we were too young to remember or doing something dangerous. But there was a single instance where my father yelled at my mother, called her a bad name, and she left the house. I heard the yelling, I still don’t know what it was about, and I saw her drive away. She came back, I don’t remember how long it took, but that set a hot button in my developing mind. Yelling and anger equals a loved one leaving. I struggle with that one, I fear raising anger, I fear conflict. I have become a peacemaker, which is not bad, unless it is at the expense of my own needs or wants. I blackmail myself – don’t do that, it’ll make them angry. You don’t want to see them angry. What if you make them so angry they just leave? Which is unfair to the other person, I’m not giving them a chance – to react to what I want, or to show that it doesn’t make them angry. And unfair to myself – I am not being true to who I am.

Emotional responsibility. I know I’ve talked about this before. Especially in the Ethical Slut posts. But I find it hard to not feel responsible when my partners are sad/upset/depressed. Or at least responsible for making them feel better, or to avoid causing those feelings. Obviously, none of us wants to upset our partners, but I can also take this too far, into blackmail. Don’t say that, you’ll only upset him. It’s not really that important, you don’t want to make him feel bad. Look at how miserable he is, how could you do that? But I am not the gauge of what will make a person sad. I am not responsible for how they react and deal with things. I should not avoid things because they’re uncomfortable to talk about. It only leads to deception and bottling, which is way worse than a few tears before things get worked out. I can offer to help, and keep talking through things. But I should not try to stop someone else feeling their own emotions and reactions.

Self worth. I’ve often struggled with replacement fears since becoming poly. I’ve always struggled with my self image and self esteem. Those things have been growing by leaps and bounds since I found a community here that loves and supports me for who I am. But there’s a hot button left over from college and my second boyfriend. I tried to date him a second time(or was it a third, I had an odd dating record), late in my sophomore year. He told me, he didn’t need the ego boost that dating me gave him anymore. He was popular now. What a strange thing to say, and even odder still to internalize. What it wrote in my head was, I’m only needed by guys who aren’t confident or popular, I’m just an ego boost until someone better comes along. This has played a major role in my replacement fears – worrying the new girl is better than me, so I won’t be needed anymore. It took a much stronger sense of self, this last time, to not go there. I am finally fully confident in my worth, and did not feel that I even Could be replaced.

 

What’ve You Got To Lose?

A journal entry from earlier this week:

The longer you’ve been around, the more you have to lose. As wife, before girlfriends exist, you have everything. All the love, time, attention, interest. Then comes girlfriend, and love multiplies, but time and attention are divided, and if you’re lucky, interest gets multiplied by the extra energy. Sometimes, though, NRE can make it feel like she gets more and you get less. It can take time to rebalance.

The cycle continues for girlfriend. You get all you can until second girlfriend arrives. Then, by the needs of reality, time and attention are further divided, love is multiplied, and interest fluctuates, hopefully ending up in the positive direction. As more partners are added, balance gets harder to maintain, and needs and wants are weighed more carefully.

One ripple causes waves throughout, and if it starts as a wave, storms can appear. Tidal pools of spiraling emotions, pulling everyone down until someone catches a life-preserver and pulls the rest back up.

So, how do you survive the divisions? By enjoying that which is multiplied. By believing the benefits outweigh the cost. By being heard, even when you don’t get everything you want. By being gracious, compassionate, compersive and by compromising. Life is a state of constant change, you have to keep up and ask for the love and support you need to do so.

 

This is relevant in two, completely opposite directions in my life right now. One, hubby is down to just me. This makes the time he has to spend with me greater, though my availability has not truly changed. It may, if needed, or as schedules naturally morph over time and situation. But he and I must find a new balance, as he will be home for time I’ve previously spent alone, and he may find a desire for more of my time than he currently has.

Two, he is up to a wife and four girlfriends, and his wife is changing to day shifts next week. For a while now, most of the time divided by him, has been time she is usually at work. Now, though, it won’t be, and I imagine she is feeling the sting sharper for the amount of time she now has available and the huge chunks of it already scheduled with us. So, we look for balance, not only of time between the five of us, but of place, to give her space in her home.

We don’t have answers for any of this, yet. But we are all committed to making it work. For the love we all share, and the community we are creating together, makes us all stronger and better, and fills our lives with incredible joy.

Two Years and Counting

Wow, I’ve been blogging for two years now. Two on WordPress, and one cross-posting from PervertedImp.com. That also means that I’ve been part of my local community for three years. What a ride it has been. Honest poly relationships, real community, play parties, limits being found, crossed and offered. Learning from classes, from mentors, from friends and from experiences. Journals, blogs, emails, chats, stories, tweets and threads.

I have posted about scenes, relationships, love, polyamory, social networking, wish lists, family, failures, and successes. I have had a couple flash fiction pieces published, and posts reblogged on other sites and did one meme for silly fun. I created an informational section on clothing care, and started a group about it on FetLife.com. I started out completely anonymous, and then sharing it with loved ones, my kinky family, and then friends.

I have an amazing life, a wonderful husband, and awesome boyfriend and a incredible toy. I have tons of people surrounding me, caring about me, teaching me and supporting me. I am part of groups that meet weekly, sometimes more than once a week, and have more opportunities for play parties and learning experiences than I even begin to have time for.

I made a silly post once about the numbers on my blog and the top posts and all that. Today I wanted to see how people were getting to my blog. Some are coming from Twitter, some from Fetlife, some from email subscriptions. But the part that amuses me the most is the search terms that land people on my blog. So I looked at the top terms. Both sites, of course, have Perverted Imp and other permutations in the top of the list. Over at WordPress, we the other top three terms are Shibari (Complete Shibari, or Shibari blog), Resistance Play, and various permutations of Straitjacket. PervertedImp.com is a little more varied, though with (Complete) Shibari still in a lot of the upper slots. The next two amuse me more, though: Consensual Feminization and Masochist Turn Ons. I am definitely becoming more and more a girl in this community, and my masochist turn ons have increased by leaps and bounds. Painslut also features heavily in my most searched terms.

This is a pretty bland post, without much substance. For substance, see the earlier post this week and I promise more fun next week, too. But today, my head is full of vampires and LARPing. For now, Thank You to everyone who contributes to this absolutely amazing life I lead.

New Toy, Rushing River and Solid Bridge

My mind is full and swirling this week. I thought I had about five different topics to write about, but in just a few seconds of brainstorming on the page, I came up with ten. Discussions this week have ranged from masturbation and orgasm, to STDs, to interrogation, to labels, to song and dance, to cathartic release and pleasure from pain. A new relationship is being established and others are struggling to survive. There’s a big event this weekend, but I won’t be there, I regret missing the classes, but the play parties never really were my thing. So, let’s take some of those topics and look a little deeper.

What do you want to do with our toy? He’s been asking me that for a couple weeks now, since we established she wanted to be our toy. I talk about teaching her, or helping her, or getting her to buy cute clothes. But what do I want to Do with her? I don’t know, I’ve never had a toy before. Fair to say she’s never been a toy before either. But we’re all very curious and excited about the possibilities.

I see myself in her, just starting her journey into kink. I remember when, to me, kinky was a pair of handcuffs, a set of nipple clamps and a spanking during sex. I remember coming into this community and meeting him and lover and having the doors thrust wide open before me. I remember barreling through, glad they were the ones holding my hands. There was so much to learn and do and experience, and now we have a new toy, just starting her journey and I’m excited to be the one holding her hand.

One of our conversations this week was on labels, if she wanted to take a public label, and she decided not yet. She decided that it was something she wanted to keep personal for now. Those who needed to know, would know, but it didn’t need to be declared to the world at large. This got me thinking for myself, too.

He and I are rebuilding things, and have left off kink labels, as well. I have had varying degrees of comfort and discomfort with this. I felt like I had lost something, lost something very important to us. I tried on a label for a couple weeks, but it didn’t fit well and I couldn’t explain why I wanted to wear it. I realized at the end of that attempt, that trying to label something that was still being created was just going to add to the confusion, and I stopped.

Yesterday, I was visualizing myself standing in the middle of a rushing river, I had a hand stretched out to the cliffs on either side. One cliff labeled Girlfriend, the other labeled Submissive. But back in August, the Submissive cliff broke off in my hand, and I was left floundering, with only Girlfriend to cling to. I eventually got back to my feet, with the solid help of the Girlfriend cliff, but then I started trying to shove the broken piece back into the cliff, trying to find a place where it would fit.

I realized, that I really just needed to get out of the river, stop fighting the current, there was no need. I could easily and happily sit on the Girlfriend bank, on the solid ground of our relationship. I’d like the submissive bank to be part of our life, but building a bridge to it with him is a much more secure way to get there, than standing in the rushing water, fighting to stay upright.

Thanksgiving

Last year, I thanked everyone who helped me take my first steps into the local community and my first steps into personal growth and acceptance. Most of those people are still a part of my increasingly wonderful life, and I am still incredibly grateful to them all. The community here, my chosen family within the community, all are exceptional people who make my life joyful, interesting and entertaining. I am a writer, introverted, anti-social, quiet, and more at home in nature than a city. But I have found something incredible here. I have found acceptance and love, growth and exploration, and a life more full than I ever expected to have. My dream office is a furnished attic with pillows and a big circular window, a papasan and some bean bags. Used to be, I’d imagine myself spending most of my time up there, writing in seclusion and quiet. I still want that attic office, but now it is imagined for my private writing time each day, when I take an hour or two to myself amidst a life so full.

Thank you to my parents, for loving me and not asking too many questions.
Thank you to my hubby, for loving me and taking this journey with me.

Thank you to him and his wife, for making me a part of their lives.
Thank you to lover, for everything you gave to and shared with me.

Thank you to the crew, for being my chosen family, with all the joy and struggles of any family.

Thank you to the clubs and the patrons, for letting us do those things we do.
Thank you to the groups who organize the parties and the events, for providing a safe place to learn and explore and share with so many people.
Thank you to the munch, for giving so many a place to meet and enjoy each other with no pressure.

Happy Thanksgiving!

What are you thankful for?