A Date With Myself

When the most is happening in my life, the biggest upheavals, I have less time to write about it, so my intention to write something every day is simply not working, but I have been not keeping up for so long it is hard to know where to start.
I have been trying to look after myself for the past couple of weeks. I have been a bit low, but I have tried not to let myself wallow in it. After the big discussion with T he went away for two weeks on a course, and I have had a lot of time to myself - something I guess I will be getting used to over the coming months.
During that fortnight I decided to treat myself with a bit of care, and took myself out doing the tourist thing, decided I would spend a day on a date with myself. It was rather romantic really. I took myself into one of the larger towns, found a nice cafe to have drinks in, write in my diary for a bit. Then I took myself to the beach, had a lovely walk along the coast, went out to dinner, all on my own (I 'went dutch', in case you're wondering!) and well... realised that I had been pretending for a long time that alone is an unnatural thing to be. Silly to be scared of one's own company, isn't it?

To follow on from my rant last week, it is settled, more or less, that T and myself will be splitting up. I am staying here until after Christmas, most likely until February, and in the meantime will be making some big decisions about where I am going to go, and what I will be doing for money and accommodation. After all, having moved to be with T, I gave up my job, burned a lot of bridges, was planning to never go back to the small town we moved from. I still hope not to, really. After all, there is nothing really to tie me there. My friends are scattered around the country, and I spent almost half my life desperate to get out of the place. I could go almost anywhere in the world, dependent on practical things like costs, and visas. I guess the world is my oyster.
It all had been building up for a while, I guess. We got to this place, and I began discovering issues that we had managed to ignore before, such as why exactly he was opposed to getting married - and ultimately that, while he is apparently happy for me to see other people, he is not *so* happy with it that he is willing to back me up in terms of being willing to weather negative gossip - as I'm sure there will be in a place like this. - I realise that in a particular way I have managed to lead quite a sheltered life - I have managed to grow up surrounded by intelligent, open minded people, amongst whom I have never had to hide who or what I am, and the late realisation that not everyone in the world is the same is a bit of a culture shock - how embarrassingly naive of me!

Ohh if only this place was as he, and indeed everyone who spoke about it advertised it to me. If only... but there is no point regretting what can't be changed, just to move on. It makes me sad that the only lesson I feel I can learn on this is to pay more attention to minor clues, and to be less trusting of what people tell me.
I have made a promise to myself, when I get out of this mess, however I do, I will stay single for at least a year. (That is to say formally unattached - celibacy is not something I am ever likely to achieve, I have to admit to myself!)

A Rant

I am back, and I am angry.

Today, I rant. I will come back and give backstory perhaps, later, but I need to get this out, and here is as good a place as any. Not everything is sweet and nice in the world of polyamory – I am in a minority, and sometimes I forget that. Before I set off on my new adventure I was maybe a little spoiled – everything was going so swimmingly, I got overexcited, I was showing off, perhaps, on here, and in person, and I missed a few signs that things were not as right as they could be because for the first time in my life I was feeling accepted for who and what I am, and it made me a little dizzy, and boy am I paying for it now.

The area that T and I have moved to is not like where we were before. The community is much smaller, everybody knows everybody, and attitudes are much more old fashioned. Everywhere I go I can feel this undercurrent of seething frustration where there are people wanting more but terrified to do anything about it. There are whispers of adultery, of forbidden fruit, nothing is open and above board, and everybody walks around in fear of what people will think. Into this I walk, naïve in some ways, because I am so upfront and honest about my sexuality, and my friendships in the normal course of events, that I don’t think about whether things are or aren’t what they appear to be. It never occurred to me for an instant until I was ‘warned’ by a number of people, that things like leaving someone’s house at 6am having been discussing philosophy over late night cups of tea could look anything other than innocent, or that it could matter. Let alone actually playing with someone.

And this is one of the things that makes me angry, because T has moved us here with the unvoiced assumption that I would play by these rules, which only became clear after we got here. That I cannot have a perfectly innocent cup of tea with someone of the opposite sex without ripples going through the entire community, that I am supposed to be circumspect and sneak around, and be discreet to the point of paranoia makes me feel horribly uncomfortable. This is not how I am as a person. In my mind it makes me appear far more guilty if I am looking around ever time I go in and out of a house to see who might be watching, than if I was skipping along openly and affectionately as is my usual wont. Half of the community is instantly a problem for me in terms of friendship, which is upsetting because I find, having grown up with mostly male friends that guys are easier in general to talk to. And god forbid anyone in the place should find out I am bi – nobody is safe!

And what does T think? What is the position of the man that I have thrown away my previous life for? Who said he loved me precisely because I am so upfront and honest and always myself. Who I have shared life with for four years, and was planning to grow old with. What does he think? He thinks I should play along, because he is scared about what these people will think of him, too. He admits that he was more bothered by things than he was letting on before we moved house, but was scared to tell me in case I was upset. Upset! How goddamned upset am I going to feel when I find out I have been misled, even by omission, by the person I ought to trust more than any other? By the man I wanted to marry, who I thought was right for me because he was fearless and intelligent enough to brave being a minority, to cope with less open minded people’s assumptions and ignore them as not mattering, and to understand and accept me as a person. I feel I am being surrounded from all sides, and undermined at the roots at the same time. This attitude is so insidious I have even started to doubt myself in the last few days and weeks, but I go over and check what is in my head and I am well aware that I have done nothing wrong.

I am angry because I have been nothing but open and honest all the way through. I have tried *so damn hard* to not hurt anybody, and it only seems to make things worse. I have tried to take the higher ground, the ethical route, and it just keeps coming back that it is easier to ask forgiveness than permission, because society is used to the hypocrisy of clandestine affairs, it is understood, and almost accepted, unlike polyamory.
I have been misled, pushed around, forced into dishonesty and sneaking around that is against all my principles, and I have been attacked from all sides just for being who I am, and I am sick to the back teeth and beyond
I am angry at T for wanting to put me in a position where I am sneaking around because he is bothered by what others think of it, that makes it so much worse in my opinion than being out and proud, and in everyone's faces. And most of all I am angry at society for being so damn pathetic, that they will hate and fear what they cannot understand and cause my beloved to act this way. They are all so scared, so jealous, so unwilling to examine their own rote taught assumptions about right and wrong, and ‘normal’ that at the same time as I am angry I pity them, but it does not make it right.