I am a Yo-yo

I hate to admit I could be hormonal, as I usually pride myself on my rationality, and I equally hate people that use hormones as an excuse for behaving badly, but I do have to wonder if I am less sane than usual since I changed my brand of contraception.

A friend said to me that it sounded like my mind was made up to leave already. It makes me realise that I have almost been looking for excuses to go, rather than reasons to stay (of which there are still many, but every time anything upsets me I seem to forget all about them).

Everything seems poignant at the moment. After the row with my love on Sunday night, which I am sure was more my fault than his if I am honest about it, he went out and bought sirloin steak, and champagne and strawberries for a romantic meal in to apologise for not having been available on demand the night before.
I feel guilty over that now, because with any other guy expecting instant performance would be totally unreasonable, but I went into a kind of shock because he has never let me down before.

It is a hard place to be in, ethically. I feel that it is a silly, arbitrary rule that my love will accept me playing in some ways with other people and not others (- and we are only talking safe sex, here. It is only sane to expect that I not endanger our mutual health, but that is not the issue here).
I understand that most of society would be on his side, and that he is bending far more than normal in allowing me to have *any* kind of sex play with other people, but that still doesn't make it a rational position - after all, most of society believed that the earth was flat until not all that long ago.
I remind myself that I agreed to it before, because I felt being a free agent was not so important to me as being with him, and it is not fair for me to keep on trying to move the goalposts. I usually feel the same way, but it has been more and more tempting to break the rule, partly just because it *is* a rule, and a large part of me hates having any kind of imposed limitations.
My love has made a lot more changes for me recently, and stretched his own boundaries of what he will accept, yet I keep tripping against this one and struggling to keep on the right side of it, and it gets harder and harder. Hardest of all, I find I love him a little less each time I catch him acting on ingrained prejudice or instinct instead of logic.

The problem I have is the emotional blackmail behind it, exactly that same type of blackmail at the root of my problems with monogamy - To enjoy one particular person, one has to forsake all others. I tend to use ice-cream to demonstrate the non-logic of this - It is like being offered a lifetime supply of your favourite ice-cream, but only if you give up all other flavours of ice cream, including the ones you know about now, and any others you may encounter in the future.
Now here is the point - that yes, perhaps you might like one flavour of ice-cream enough to ignore all of the rest of them, but why should it be necessary?

I'm still working on this one.

The meal was lovely, and slightly silly - we got dressed up and cooked in our evening dress, and then sat on the sofa to eat because the dining table was too piled with junk to bother clearing. It appealed to our joint sense of humour, and was all the more touching for it.
Afterwards we got talking about how to divide our finances again.
I think whether I am leaving or not, I need to separate my money from his - it was fine when we were both earning to have the joint account, but since things are so on the edge I realise how trapped I feel not having easy access to my own money, and I need to take a step back in order to feel like my own person again.

Visiting home in less than a month's time, anyway, and I can see how it feels being back. Maybe it will help to make my decision easier. At the very least I am looking forward to seeing A and N and hopefully a few more of my nearest and dearest, and catching up on missed time.

Spiraling Again

Damn, just when I think I have made up my mind that I am staying and I can cope with everything, another incident and I am uncertain again.

A fantastic time with Nice Guy this morning, and with my love this afternoon, then this evening it all goes and crumbles because NG decides to play tease - not a nice thing to do, but nobody said it wasn't within the rules - damn pedant. He gets me well turned on and then says 'right, that's it, I'm not playing any more - I'm declaring a ration of one lot of sex per day' - would have been nice to have mentioned that sooner methinks.

So I am annoyed with NG, because now it is late, I am frustrated, and I know damn well that my love is not going to want to play with me, but I just have to try, (partly because NG says to me that most men would love to have it offered on a plate like that - but hey, this is a single guy talking who is definitely not living with a woman of unusually high sex drive, I really should not have listened to this) so this turns into a full-blown row with my beloved, and now I am both frustrated and unsure whether I am still wanting to stay here again.

The whole penetrative sex thing rears its head again, as well, as I suspect NG sent me home partly to avoid the temptation of breaking that rule, and by the time I got home to my love nothing else would satisfy me, and he was neither willing nor able to provide at such a late time of night. Nothing I can say convinces my love that it is not the one single part of his body that makes him special to me, especially since I am forced into begging him to use precisely that because I am not allowed to do the same with anyone else - and if I am honest, there are days when only proper animal style sex will do.
I feel ridiculous being such a slave to my desires (which only makes me the more angry), and awful about demanding things from him when he so clearly doesn't want to, and even more dreadful that I am thinking about leaving over this, when it feels so small and silly after all we have gone through, but what else do I have?

When I really get down to basics, I don't believe there is a point to life other than enjoying oneself, and I would be enjoying myself more at the moment if I was single.

Relationships are so Fragile

Sometimes when things are going well, it is easy to forget how little it takes to really hurt things.

This afternoon was all smiles and laughter, and then T managed to thoughtlessly close a door on me, giving me a nasty bruise on my hip. That would have been fine if he had apologised, but he decided to blame me instead for having been in the doorway (where I was supposed to be, I must add, as we were leaving a building together) - a nasty move that my father always used when I was a child, and always guaranteed to rub me up the wrong way. So I was angry and upset, and he was annoyed by what he no doubt saw as a massive overreaction, and things escalated from there.

Thankfully, rather than use the violence I was considering to demonstrate exactly how much a door handle moving at pace can hurt, I removed myself from the area and went to talk to NG again who, coming from an outside point of view, was a welcome ray of sanity.
To be honest, I was rather enjoying over reacting. I have always felt that my logic circuits got in the way of some really good melodrama, but NG was rather soothing, and confirmed my suspicion that, yes, I really ought to be a big girl, get over it and go home and forgive T for being thoughtless and lacking in social skills like the geek he is. So I did go back, and then we went out to dinner, and all was cheerful again, and we had a fantastic evening.

I do wonder though, just *how* thoughtless, and how insolent one can allow a loved one to be, and not be a doormat. I have a strong suspicion as well, that is it had been anyone other than myself that T had slammed the door into accidentally, that he would have been precisely as apologetic and solicitous as I thought he should have been towards me, but that because I am familiar territory he feels less obliged to care.
I find this rather upsetting, as I feel things should rather be the opposite way around. And I have been feeling somewhat unappreciated lately - I am afraid I am still unavoidably begrudging the fact that neither a birthday present, nor an anniversary celebration has ever materialised this year, both of which were some months ago - it rather suggests that our relationship is lower on his priority list that, say, updating his new PC, watching sci-fi series on DVD, or getting the washing up done , which makes it all the harder to take, even though it was such a tiny thing.

I know full well I can be thoughtless too, and lord knows, I am not the easiest person to live with, but I spend my time trying to learn from my mistakes (and others') and when I stumble over a problem I make plans to grow from it - but I don't get any such intentions from T. It makes me a little bit uncomfortable about the future again.

I have made some enormous changes to my life for him, because T is, and expects to be, the most important part of my life, and I think it is only fair to expect in return to be at least somewhere in his top priorities - If I am not, then what on earth am I putting myself out for?

Fingers Crossed...

Things are still going well. I have never been one to trust to luck. I worry that T is somewhat quiet, though I know he always is. I let him in on a little secret of mine the other night, and have still not had an opinion on that, so praying it will not be another bombshell.

And by Everything, I love Nice Guys. That is not to say I am In Love - except with T (and if he is not fooling me about this change, more so than ever), but my world has been somewhat rocked, and that is all I have to say for now.

Bouncing Back

I have just had the best night out since I got to this middle-of-nowhere place. Got a couple of friends from back home who have out to visit, and since they had been asking if they would get to meet NG while they were out here, I decided on the spur of the moment to invite a bunch of friends out for dinner for the evening. The girls were on top form, and we had a fantastically giggly dinner, with R cheerfully putting her foot in every conversational hole available with a grace that only she has, and the rest of us looking on in awe and laughter, and encouraging a few more, and T was witty as ever, just to remind me why I love him. NG said he had not had so much fun sober in years, and Miss Sunshine says she can see why I like him, which is lovely - it is always nice when one's friends like each other.
We came back and had drinks at our house, and I sat back and listened happily to NG and T talk enthusiastic geek for about an hour - bliss!

T seems so very happy and confident as compared to just over a week ago, I am still finding it hard to trust the change. I am scared of being back where I was before, and even closer to Christmas without a job or a home to go to. At least now my friendship with NG here is a bit more out in the open, I think I could stay there as a stop-gap without quite so much gossip stirring, which is better, but it is not a permanent option, by any means.

Nothing much more to say tonight - I am happy, and desperately hoping that things stay as they are. Though I know I need to talk to T about finances - after all, things are not 100% sorted out, and the big almost break-up last week led me to realise that there are things we need to work out again for my own peace of mind.
I am optimistic, however, and hoping that things will work out for the good. I am starting to love it here, despite the goldfish bowl, I have new friends, I have career potential, I have new hobbies. I guess I just needed contact with my old friends to feel like myself again.

Planning a trip back to see the rest of them in a month's time, hopefully people here to visit at Christmas, and then I will go back for a longer tour in the summer if I can, to where I really can be myself. It is a compromise, but it means I get to be with T, and that is worth some compromise, I think.

Tantrum over (for now)

It is a beautiful morning, I have already spent some lovely time with T, and I am having some 'me time'. The sun is shining and I have just been peeked at by a tiny bird that alighted on my window sill and peered over the frame at me as if to see what I am doing, and there are other little avian critters audible chirping in the background. The world seems a bit nicer than it did yesterday.

Yesterday I felt dreadful most of the day through lack of sleep. I was up until some ridiculous time in the morning waiting for T to come home on Thursday, so that I could leap on him and finally get what I needed, and I had to get up early to run an errand in the morning, so I managed to get in about 3.5 hours sleep - not quite enough, really!

I don't take back anything I said the other night, I still wonder about things. I am well aware that life is often about compromises, but I have a suspicion that the people who are happiest, or most successful in life are the ones who refuse to accept that things can't be changed.

Having been sat at home, getting more and more frustrated and angry on the Thursday night, and incapable of focusing on anything else, I practically raped T when he got home, and it was technically good sex, but it wasn't the kind of sex I like to have with him - which is relaxed, loving, connected and with *him* rather than with one specific part of his anatomy.

By 3am on Thursday night, most of me simply did not care who I was in bed with as long as it was male. I realised when I was mulling things over, trying to find a new way to discuss this with T, that I felt guilty over this because I was simply using him, and it seemed somewhat unfair. I would much prefer to get my animal urges seen to elsewhere, then come home and be loving and attentive and giving, rather than ignoring his needs totally and demanding attention straight away because I have no other option.
The thing that make my relationship with T special is not his genitalia. I have said this to T, anyway. No results as yet, but he did nod and say he would have a think about that.

I am sure it is hard for a man, having so many centuries of chauvinist society behind them, and probably the caveman genes to boot, to let go of these things - I realised yesterday that T, whilst allowing me to see other men, in making this request of me he has effectively castrated every other man I might see. The men are the same as the women. Usually, if I am honest, this is a good thing for me - I adore oral sex, especially receiving (well, who doesn't?) and the non-penetrative thing shifts the focus very much in that direction. However I love both men and women, and while women are perfectly suited to that kind of thing, really, most men are better at others - i.e. what they were designed for - and I would dearly love to be able to see them in their best light.

Being ethical is hard.

I guess I am an optimist. I believe that it is possible to have a life that suits me just right, and that someday I will.

I am working on it. I believe it is worth working on. I will try to have patience, and faith. Maybe someday it will all come right, and for now, it is not too often that I feel like I did on Thursday night. There is time.


To quote Sheryl Crow:

No one said it would be easy
But no one said it'd be this hard
No one said it would be easy
No one thought we'd come this far

Grrrr! (Late night rant)

It is the middle of the night, I am tired, hyper, and impossibly horny. T is out lord knows where with a bunch of workmates, NG is at home, presumably in bed - I just left his house a short while ago, seemed like a good idea going over at the time, but has really left me just as frustrated as when I went - hell, in my current state anything that could even marginally afford an orgasm might seem like a good idea, this feels almost terminal, but NG managed to make sure I was in almost precisely the same frustrated state after his involvement as I was before - hey, I never said being a Nice Guy precluded being mean as hell - as long as you get to feel morally correct while you're doing it!

What am I doing here, really? I love T dearly, but I am the bane of his life and I know it. NG is lovely, and very tempting to get more involved with than I ought to, but I do keep on wishing he was B, whilst B is spending time getting to know his new girlfriend back home. I'm sure I am well out of that situation, but I can't help feeling wistful. I left what little I had back there for even less out here. I realise all of my stability depends on T, and I can't cope with that, whereas at least before we moved out here I had a steady job, even if it was just a part time one, and friends all over the place I could visit if I needed to. Out here in the middle of nowhere it is just me and T and the goldfish bowl.
I can't even assume NG isn't a part of the gossip circle, really, either. I found out yesterday that he had passed on something I thought was in confidence to another acquaintance of ours, (I made fairly light of it at the time, after all, it can't be taken back once it is out, though I did express some discomfort anyway) so I don't feel as easy in front of him as I did. Probably for the best really, but it is hard for me to be physically open with people and not mentally, and vice versa.

I am going round and round in circles in my head. I love living here in some ways, I have made friends that I would not have otherwise, my freelance work is going fabulously, and I still have opportunities here that I could not possibly get anywhere else, both career-wise and socially, but I am still uncomfortable about the fact that there are rules that I am being tempted more and more to break. Works great in the light of day, when I am grounded and sensible, or just not tired and frustrated and lonely, perhaps most of the time - but there are days, when, if I am honest, all I want is a damn good fuck, and it is so so hard when T is nowhere in sight, and there is a perfectly lovely guy just down the road, with his potential reduced by what is, when you get down to it, a pretty arbitrary rule.

Despite everything I have been through in the past week, despite the relief when I found out that I didn't have to go straight away, despite my attachment to T, singledom is calling me again. I am well aware that every freedom comes with its own responsibility, but I still find myself longing for that one bit of freedom that I don't have. Sleeping with guys and being limited to non-penetrative sex feels like going to a steakhouse and ordering vegetarian - it is just perverse.

I know, I know, it is apparently asking a lot for a guy to 'let' his partner not only see other people, but do anything she likes with them (bearing in mind we are still talking about *safe* sex, here, I'm not one for unnecessarily risky behaviour), but hell, makes as much sense to stop me at that point as it would to let me say, play tennis with a guy, but never to serve the ball. There is a whole area of fun that I am being barred from, and as a hedonistic sort of person, when I am being denied pleasure for reasons of someone else's insecurities, that makes me itch to either fix those or move on.

Oh what can I do though... T wants to be the most important person in my life, and he almost is, but when I really dig deep, I can only say that the most important person in my life is me, and has to be, and what I want right now, is not what I am getting.

Nice Guys

Ohhh god, Nice Guys... Let me tell you about Nice Guys (and please note the capital letters). Nice Guys are smart. They may not always be top of the I.Q. ladder, although the ones I have met haven't exactly been slouches, they might tend to do themselves down. A Nice Guy might not push himself forward - you will almost always have to do the chasing, but believe you me, they are worth it.
Nice Guys are sensitive, they pay attention to what other people are feeling, and it matters to them. They are good listeners, and usually good talkers too. Nice Guys constantly try to better themselves. And by all that is true, Nice Guys are SEXY.
For those of you that have not slept with a Nice Guy, let me spell it out to you.
Have you ever imagined a guy that puts your needs first, who knows (or puts the effort into learning) exactly what turns you on, and uses it to perfection? Have you ever wanted a guy who took pride in making you feel as good as you possibly can? A lover who is interested in more than just the old in-and-out, who will take you to the moon and beyond and then hold on patiently while you drift gently back down? This, my friends, is the Nice Guy.

And what does the average girl do with such a lovely creature as this? Ahh, here is the tragedy - the average girl takes one look, sees a friendly smile, a listening ear and a soft shoulder, and uses him as a sounding block to pour out her troubles on. Out come the tales of woe about the bastards she is dating, the difficulties of work, family, and who knows what else, and never a thought to the gorgeous possibilities of making love with a person who is connecting with you as a person, rather than as an object.

Ladies, I have known Nice Guys, I have dated them both in the long and the short term, I have been a lot of places and seen a lot of things, and I promise you, you have not lived until you have had one of these. If you are honest and upfront, whether you want a long term relationship, a one night stand, or just a damn good conversation, a Nice Guy will not let you down.

_ _ _ _ _

I cannot deny it, I am a sucker for intelligent conversation. Intelligent conversation about relationships and morality even more so. Occasionally I will catch myself having a particularly fascinating discussion with someone of either gender and almost literally drooling at the sheer clarity of an argument. Not to mention perhaps, at risk of a little crudeness, moist in certain other places as well.

After my love went to bed this evening, I was feeling excessively perky, so I wandered around to talk to Nice Guy, who is a little more of a night owl, like myself and we talked non-stop for something like three hours about relationships, about morality, about polyamory versus society as a whole, about sex and its place in our lives, and so much else besides.
By gosh I was so turned on by the end of it I was almost having orgasms right there in my chair, but then it was late, and he had to work in the morning, and as he so sensibly pointed out (there is the one catch, my dears, with the Nice Guy - he will rarely let you make a bad decision if it is obvious at the time) - things as they stand with my love are still rather new and untested (see previous couple of posts), so we should really be taking things slowly.
I will admit, I have my faults. I can be tactless at times, and I do tend to rush headlong into things just because they feel good at the time, with little thought to the consequences. I am still learning. Sometimes at times when I would much rather be doing other things, like having wonderful sex with sexy people. Curses, curses, and thank heavens for Nice Guys!

So here I am folks, subliming my energy into a nice long rant for your edification, having left things with NG for another night, and about to go to bed, frustrated as anything, but feeling just about as cheerful in that as I could possibly be. I have every reason to believe that there will be other nights, and I suspect our next experience will only be improved by the wait. And best of all? All as ethical as could be.

P.S. NG and my love are on a group night out together tomorrow without me. I am feeling somewhat jealous about this simply because I would love to be a fly on the wall when they have their next conversation, considering that they both know what is going on with the other. I am optimistic about the outcome, but it is still an odd feeling knowing that two of your lovers are going to be meeting, and could very likely be talking about you without your knowing it.

Last minute miracle?

Goodness, it has been a strange week.

I did indeed see Nice Guy again, and temptation was tougher than ever, so having got back from his house, I realised I needed to remove myself from the area or spiral into destructive behaviour - I packed up my things, charged my phone and drove until I was too sleepy to drive any farther, slept in the car for a while and then carried on driving until I was about as far as I could get away without a plane flight being involved.

I was out of my car barely thirty seconds when a rather friendly local chap stopped to ask if I needed directions, and when I said I was looking for coffee he said he would take me a place he knew and he was buying - well, that ended up turning into a fantastic fish dinner and a glorious afternoon on the beach, and some no strings fun as well.
After that, I decided to shift slightly closer to home. I landed in another town and amazingly quickly was offered drinks by another friendly guy - a student. Had a fantastic couple of hours with him, but I got a bit annoyed when he almost refused to let me leave, so I ended up storming off in a bit of a bad temper, and then struggling to find where I had parked the car as he had led me so far out of the parts of town I knew.
Then I had been wandering around for a few minutes, heading vaguely in the right direction, but not sure where I was, when I ran across an older gentleman, who nodded and smiled at me, and then doubled back to ask if I needed help, after another accepted invitation for coffee, I ended up talking to him until late and when he offered me a bed at his house for the night I accepted (hell, the guy was in his sixties and quite frail, I am sure he was in much more danger from me than vice versa). Left at around 6:30am, after breakfast and tea very kindly provided.

I suppose these things ought to make me feel better about the human race, except they all very clearly wanted sex, even the elderly gent, although he was far too much of a gentleman to push anything unwanted - yes, I know, I am polyamorous and open-minded, and I love sex, and I am of course going to find it flattering that people are interested in me, but I do wonder - is there no such thing as an altruistic act?

Anyway, I came home for that appointment, and having nowhere else really to go, I came back to the house to discuss the breakup with T, and things got a bit heated. I guess I got frustrated at him, and I pushed at things that I wouldn't usually, and asked him to tell me again why this particular guy was so off limits as compared to anyone else, and actually got a new answer - that T was upset because I was 'taking away his friends' - that he felt uncomfortable around other people I was seeing, and therefore when I was seeing someone he liked he felt I was threatening his social life.
I don't usually make any kind of you-statements in arguments if I can help it, feeling that each person is responsible for their own behaviour, and you can only change from the inside, but I listened to this, and then asked him if he had considered that I wasn't making him feel awkward, that he was doing that all on his own, and if he didn't act oddly around people, they would not act oddly around him.
T is not usually one to admit he is wrong, but he stepped back, thought about that, and said I had made an interesting point, and then we talked about that for more hours, about how we could act on it.

So this seems to have been a bit of a revelation, and suddenly we are back together and trying again, and back to all the agreements we had before without me having to change a thing, except to support him in his new bid to change his behaviour - I am a little shell-shocked really.
I have always been one for problem solving, both in and out of relationships, but this solution has turned up a little too quickly, and at a difficult time for me to trust it.

We are taking things a day at a time, and seeing how it works out. If it does... oh, if it does, I think I have almost everything I ever dreamed about. I guess if it doesn't work, then at least we tried everything we could.

Ending

Well, it is sad, but unavoidable. It becomes clear that the compromise we agreed on is not working. T has admitted to me that he was in fact not happy with what we had agreed before anyway, but was trying to stick by it because he didn't want to lose me. Upsetting stuff.
The long and the short of it is that we are splitting up sooner rather than later, and I will shortly be looking for a new place to live. Talking November now, rather than in the new year.

There is going to be a lot of difficult discussion ahead, dividing the house and mortgage and everything, and sorting out what belongs to who, though we are both still very much in love, and intend to support each other through it. We just have to accept that the gap between what we both want out of life is too wide to compromise over as life partners, but hopefully we can stay friends for a long time ahead.

Only trouble now is... I'd really like to see Nice Guy again, but it is rather against T's wishes, and I will be living under his roof until I leave this country, despite us being definitely over. It is not just NG he doesn't want me to see, he is expecting me to be celibate until I leave. I'm afraid I am just not that kind of girl. Not sure what I can do about this.
It is very very tempting to just go ahead with it anyway, on the basis that I am pretty sure I could find somewhere to stay if the worst came and T kicked me out, and otherwise what he doesn't know won't hurt him. I know it is not the ethical way to go, but I have been pushed rather to my limit out here, and he has not been honest with me for a lot of the way to this point, otherwise I would not be in this mess. At least a couple of my friends agree, too, that really if we are not in a relationship any more either, then he has no right at all to dictate what I do outside of the house.

Well, I will see NG again on a platonic basis hopefully at some point this week, and explain the situation, and see where things go. I really want to do more though... there was a mention of things to do with massage oil, and some other things to do with whipped cream, I think it was, both of which sound rather lovely, and I would hate to have to miss out just because T is being unreasonable.

Lions and Tigers and Bears, Oh My!

Today's title feels appropriate for two reasons - one shallow, in that I wore my 'Dorothy shoes' out for the first time - some rather glorious red sequined high-heeled slippers, with ribbon bows on the front - and the other reason being a little more metaphorical - that I feel surrounded by unseen (and, if I am very very lucky, imaginary) dangers, and find myself spinning in circles wondering how to get out.

I am still pondering where to take my next step. There is time, but I suspect it will go quickly, and I would like, for once, to be organised, and at least somewhat sure about where I am heading, rather than fuzzy and pushed along by fate. I am considering moving to a specific UK city - one that I haven't lived in before, but I have friends there who tell me I would love it, and I suspect they are right. I have always felt like a city girl at heart, despite being brought up in small towns all my life, except for a sadly brief stint at university. At the worst, I will have tried and failed, and I would rather that than spend my entire life regretting the not having tried.

Of course, I do have a dreadful habit of complicating things for myself. I am not very good at resisting a particular type of person... Ok, I admit it, I have a fetish for geeks. There is method in my madness - the word 'geek' says to me intelligence, attention to detail, a healthy respect for women (after all, familiarity does seem to breed contempt!), a certain amount of manual dexterity (ever met a geek that can't type?!), and best of all, there is probably an exception to the rule, but I am yet to meet a geek that is a bastard. Anyway... the goldfishbowl community I am living in happens to have a certain proportion of people who fit my criteria - oh how can a girl resist, I ask you? Well, I can't, that's for fairly certain. So I end up playing out a scene I am learning to recognise... (a dramatic representation:)

Geek of Desire: "You're flirting with me, aren't you? But don't you have a boyfriend?"

Me: "Well, yes, and yes, but I promise you this is ok... we have an agreement"

GoD*: "Oh, um, ok..." (looks terrified)

Me: "So, are you interested in hearing the exact details?"

GoD:"um, ah, er..." (contrives to look both terrified and fascinated)

Me: "Well..." (explains details of agreement in as tactful a manner as possible)

GoD:"Gosh!" (continues to look both interested and frightened rabbit-like)

(flirtation continues, and perhaps heads into more interesting areas)

GoD:"are you really sure this is ok, your boyfriend must be an understanding chap!"

Me: "It's what we agreed, you can ask him if you like..."

GoD:"strangled squeak!"

And so it goes... HOWEVER... Despite having agreed this, and having checked with T that what we agreed was ok to continue for the moment, I get home, having spent a beyond pleasant night with a new friend, and I feel in the sake of openness, I should let T know, and of course, bang! Up against the brick wall again - he is upset with me. Yes, he agreed what he agreed. Yes, he Ok'ed it in advance. No, he can/will not explain to me why he is upset. I thought we had gone past this already, more fool me for thinking having worked through issues with external relationships before that we had it worked out.
So now I have a live-in partner, who is not quite ex yet, who is mad at me for unexplained reasons, that may or may not become clear, a brand new friend who turns me on enormously, who I may or may not be involved with again - it is quite clear that we would both *like* to, but the wisdom of it is questionable, despite his being single, and my officially being 'allowed' to, and well, my right hand. Did I mention I don't do celibacy well, or indeed monogamy? Oh... expletive! (no, not expletive deleted, just expletive - I can't think of one vehement enough!)

Perhaps it was predictable, given the circumstance, but you know what - I try to trust my partners, long or short term, to say what they mean and mean what they say. If it wasn't ok, I wanted to hear it before, and not after the fact, when the topic was open for discussion, and I gave plenty of opportunity. I despair.

Why oh why, oh why can people never be straightforward?

*Apologies for the acronym, I simply could not resist - I tried!