I’ve written about this before, but one of my best dates with Zac was when he’d just gotten a fiction prompt on robots, and we bounced ideas off each other as we were going through the grocery store. I was very emotional when he came up with a great line, because it was then that I knew I wanted to be with him for as long as he’d have me, because my love for him is limitless. There’s nothing he could do that would scare me away, and the fact that he’s poly doesn’t scare me, either, because all of our relationships with him are completely unique and separate.

I’m also not trying to scare him by saying that my love for him is limitless, because my platonic relationships run just as deep. I wouldn’t feel less love for him if he decided we were better friends than partners, or I did. You have partners that you’re romantic with, and partners that you’re not. One of Zac’s friends has a literal murder board because their red and yellow (romantic and platonic) strings are just as important to them. Emotional intimacy is important, and sometimes more important than sex. Think of all the straight women with kids who move in together so that their kids still have two parents to handle them.

To me, that is polyamory because you’re not showing your boyfriend any less attention than the co-parent (I’m assuming these women still date). Once you get to a relationship where you’re living together and taking care of a household and raising kids, wouldn’t it be harder to break up all that to move in with someone else the kids don’t know? Does it make it any less of a serious relationship when you’re not having sex?

What I have learned over the last year is that Zac is my orange string. I want him in my life to whatever level he’ll accept, and right now, everything is working out perfectly for us because I am obsessed with writing to the point where I go off the grid. Zac is so busy that he doesn’t get freaked out when I don’t reply right away, wouldn’t wander around worrying that I’m dating someone else (if I was dating anyone else, he’d be thrilled and not threatened). He’s bisexual. He doesn’t want anything but the tea.

That being said, I love our orange string and I don’t know how much I want my own time to be divided. It is not that I feel this Protestant urge to be monogamous and I’m hoping from Zac that this will turn into something more….. a something more that cannot be there. All of his relationships are secure, so that would be pointless and something a traditional woman would do. I am anything but that.

A traditional woman would be trying to weed out all the other partners so that they got more time than everyone else, hoping to eventually change Zac into something he’s not. They’d be jumping up and down to show why they “deserve the rose.” I see it all the time.

What I also see is men who have attractions to other women and instead of cheating, will ask their wives to open the relationship. The wife agrees, and one of two things happens.

The first is regret. Sometimes on both sides, sometimes on the wife because she agreed to it under duress (the first red flag it’s not going to go well).

Here’s the second. Men get controlling and jealous, wanting to shut the relationship down into monogamy when they realize how much easier it is for women to get multiple dates than men. They stop being confident that they can meet someone else, so instead of working on themselves, they start working on either forcing their wives to break up with their other partners, or trying to sabotage their other relationships so that the partner will realize “they’re the only one left.”

Here’s the third. There are heterosexual couples who are called “unicorn hunters.” The reason they are is that this type relationship blows up the most frequently, and works so incredibly rarely that it’s practically fictional.

Generally, both women are bi, so they want a female partner because it works out for both of them….. but they don’t treat their “unicorn” as a real person. They’re just there for the pleasure of a couple, because their hierarchy is so entrenched. If the couple has children, the “unicorn” quickly feels like the maid and the nanny……… because in reality, that serves the couple perfectly. Use the unicorn and emotionally abuse them. Treat them like an employee, but don’t pay them.

But that’s not the only dynamic. If the unicorn is dating both of them, the couple divides because they start fighting about time and it gets nasty quickly…… that’s because the unicorn is either not dating or “not allowed to date.” Why would they be allowed to take time off and be their own person when they need them to be chief cook and bottle washer?

The other thing that happens frequently is that couples try to find younger women and the husband abuses both women. That’s because the wife sees the power imbalance early and the younger woman doesn’t, because she doesn’t have enough life experience for that. So, one woman is too afraid to rock the boat and the young woman is too naive to leave. Eventually, they band together. But that takes time.

In absolutely all of the reading I’ve done on polyamory, there are two things that make a difference in how successful your relationships are in the future.

The first is not being in a relationship at all when you start thinking about polyamory, and not getting into a relationship hierarchy at all. You have the ability to see that all of your relationships have this dynamic and no one is mourning something they’ve lost while also trying to integrate new partners into their lives.

Failing that, you have to find a poly-friendly therapist and work out all your issues before you just decide to casually say “I think we should open our relationship,” especially when you find out that the reason one partner wants poly is covering their ass because they’ve been cheating for months. It happens more often than you think, and it’s devastating. Better to break up immediately because you will not get over lying and cheating. That’s not poly, that’s lying and cheating.

The best way I’ve ever heard polyamory phrased is that I own Zac like he’s my neighborhood, my favorite place and not my favorite possession.

The reason I’m pouring my heart into him is not so we can be more to each other in terms of time, but more to each other in terms of quality…… because here’s what I see, and I told him this. “You’re about to go on a journey, and I want to be there for all of it.” Plus, I’m getting closer with his other partners, and that feels good, too. It feels like being a part of our weird little family rather than Zac and me cocooning to the rest of the world- what has happened in every one of my monogamous relationships. They’ve been so intense that I didn’t have the time I needed to be present with all of you.

He hasn’t counted up the months as to what I mean by this, so he underestimated by a large margin what I actually meant. I am not directing him in the slightest, I am excited to see what’s going to happen for him.

What I mean by “weird little family” is that like all families, there are issues and jealousies that pop up (over time, not feelings….. all our relationships are separate except for the few times a year we’re all in the same room). I do not know why, but I believe it is because two of us live in Virginia, but people believe his latest partner is the one before me.

Even I thought that until I counted it up.

So, I laid out all my feelings about all of this to Zac, and it was the most healthy conversation I’ve ever had with anyone….. because he’s used to having these conversations all the time. Negotiating boundaries is hard, and we do it well.

He said something that I really needed to hear, to the point that I almost cried. I said something about how our relationship is easy because when we have something to work out, it’s a few minute conversation and not making things bigger than they really are by holding everything in.

My beautiful boy looked at me and said, “I think you should take a lot of credit for that, because I don’t think I’m that way all the time. I think you bring it out in me.”

It was the first time in a long time that someone had told me that I was also good at negotiating boundaries, and again, something I really needed to hear.

Then, he cuddled me and I felt safe…. because I’d brought up a problem, and we talked about it until it was quickly over. What made me feel safe is that he never once invalidated my feelings, just called me on my logic and reassured me when my perceptions were off. That he’s in it for the long haul, too.

But again, this is not about a competition. This is about making what we have solid in and of itself. If I’m bringing out something in Zac that he actually likes, then I hope he knows how often he does it for me.

I am afraid that getting lost in this relationship would cost me something else, and I’m not doing that ever again with writing time.

I don’t just have this project going, I’m doing the hard work to learn fiction as well. What I’ve learned from Jonna & Tony Mendez is that there is a world of difference becoming a respected author and being picked for Oprah’s Book Club.

I know I want the first, and I think I want the second, but the stimulation of all that scares me to death. But ultimately, it’s not on me to decide whether I’m well-respected or Oprah’s Book Club-level famous. It’s up to you, my readers.

Because I’m already good at non-fiction, perhaps I should release one of those, first. I feel that when I write about history/intelligence operations, I do it the way Rachel Maddow does…. by combing through the research and putting together the story so that it’s compelling, when you really can’t make research do that.

For instance, count them up. How many hours of research do you think that Brené Brown did on shame and vulnerability before she published her first book? Did her first TED Talk? I met her in either 1999 or 2000, and she was working on it even then. Again….. count them up.

Editor’s Note:

Even though I met Brene a very long time ago, I don’t want you to think we’re best friends or anything. We spent some time together when she was in the Master’s program at the Graduate School of Social Work, so she was a student/TA who I lovingly call “one of my kids,” what I called all the students/TAs in the GSSW because I was the supervisor of their computer lab for a year before I started web development. Meeting her was a million to one, and I didn’t even recognize her name when her books started coming out. I thought, “that looks like one of my kids” when I saw her first TED Talk. So, I contacted her team to make sure our dates lined up, and it was indeed the same person. That being said, she wouldn’t know me from Adam….. but she might….. one day. 😉

Now that I think about it, I probably have enough material for a book on shame and vulnerability right now. You could write it with this year’s entries alone, but it would be better with edited versions of the last 10 years, because this is the decade in which I’ve grown the most.

I really had to look at what I was doing in all of my relationships, and when I hit 45 and realized there were only 20 years left until I was older than my mom, all of my qualms about standing up for myself went out the window. I started vomiting up emotions at an alarming rate, because a lot of it was old information in new context and new information with no context.

I feel that everyone has seen this shift, and thinks that I’m only angry. No, I think I’m experiencing the rage older women get when they realize just how much bullshit is in the world and just how much of it will not be solved while they’re still living.

You realize just how little things matter on a grand scale, that of course you should work for social justice, but you can’t burn yourself out on it at the expense of time with your family and friends. I feel this way about any community event.

I see this all the time in church members because I grew up as a United Methodist preacher’s kid. They come to a Sunday worship, and have a meaningful experience that they’ve never had before. Then, they start coming regularly and pretty quickly get involved with committees up to their eyeballs because this church is the coolest thing they’ve ever seen. But it’s not sustainable, and people burn out after six months to a year.

I keep tabs on my religious friends because of it, because they’re the ones that will tell me it’s been three Sundays and they’re already in charge of something…. most people don’t join committees as fast as they realize that churches are hosting a special event. They get put in charge of that one event and it’s not that hard, so they sign up for a few more.

Then they join a committee without dropping all the special events, and they realize, “oh my God. We’re at church all the time.” People really don’t like to talk about their feelings, so I can only think of a few times in my life when I knew why someone left…. in those cases, it was pretty obvious. Most people just ghost because they wanted something so bad that they started excluding other things that were important to them- and that’s okay.

Churches love Marthas, and they tend to take advantage of them. Don’t forget to be Mary some of the time….. or as I phrased it in a sermon, “Don’t Just Do Something…. Sit There.”

And that’s how I feel about Zac. We have the moments where we don’t just do something, we sit there. We have quiet moments where when a problem comes up, we aren’t reactive. We hold space for each other without getting defensive. We are honest about the important things- vulnerability, honesty, negative feelings on both sides, and really being able to take all that in because either we’re walking and talking (being mobile makes me thoughtful), or we’re lying on a bed/couch where we’re already comfortable.

I don’t choose moments to talk to him based on how important my need is, but when I can sense that we’re both in a relaxed mood. I don’t tiptoe around him because I think he’ll get mad, I actively look for the moments in which he has the bandwidth to hear me. It’s one thing to have a conversation in which you are totally focused on each other, and another when you’re both slammed and overstimulated up to your eyeballs. We’re both neurodivergent, so I know how to look for those things.

I don’t want to trigger a meltdown or a burnout, or to irritate his anxiety that I’m pulling away…. because I’m finally convinced he doesn’t want me to do so. Because his other partners live so much further than me, I think he feels like it’s an imposition on me to make the trip, because he’d think of it as a drag and I think of it as free, unencumbered writing time on the train both ways.

And, just like with Sam, I’ll never have another partner who hates it that I don’t drive. If I need to get somewhere fast or need groceries, I have an Uber account and I know how to use it. If I have the time, I want to be on the train because it is just enough stimulation through movement (I wear Bluetooth cans to keep out the rest) to provide a lot more creativity than normal.

My creativity is knowing that Zac is not a red string or a yellow. He’s both, and as I’ve kidded him before, “I prefer burnt orange.

Our relationship feeds my writing not in being able to write about it, I just understand it better because I write about it. The real reason is bigger than that. We have the same commitment to each other- to be brutally honest all the time (because we’re neurodivergent, so we’re likely to do that, anyway).

I want him in my life because he makes me a better me than I could be on my own, because our friendship is so strong. I have never wanted a relationship that transcends his others, or even impacts them.

But I also know that I deserve the right to take up space, and I learned that Zac appreciates that I can do it without making it hurt…. or at least, trying not to make it hurt. Some truth bombs are just hard, and you can’t go around them, because if you did it would be detrimental to both of you.

I’m also finding out the differences between being with a man and being with a woman, because this is the first serious relationship with a man I’ve ever had- in that it has lasted so long, not that I wasn’t Zac-serious about the other, Matt.

There’s only been the three, and Ryan was 7th-8th grade, so every bit as emotionally intense without the drive of our hormones kicking in- mostly (Hi, our parents!). All of our friendships have been as strong as mine with Zac, it’s only that Zac and I have been together much longer than Matt and I were, and approaching being together longer than Ryan and me.

We were unusual for kids. I was with him for a year and two months, and I will never feel that way about anyone in my life. That’s because our relationship never complicated itself with sex. It was always a good time, and still is. We still want the tea on who each other’s dating, how work is going, all that. Plus, I trust him more than I do anyone else, because we met when I was 13. We both made relationship-ending mistakes, but his was so easy to forgive because at the time, I no longer believed I could love him the way he deserved to be loved (bullshit, bullshit, bullshit- thanks a lot, lesbians. But I’m not bitter. #eyeroll).

What I have learned from my experience with Ryan is that a red string can certainly become yellow, and I knew that was typically true of lesbians. I didn’t know it was true of men as well, but it so is, especially since we’ve both dated women. I think men trust women that have dated women more, in some cases, than straight men and women because of the outside perspective angle. I can take gender roles out of something and explain the dynamic that’s going on in their relationship…. and then whether they realize that’s what I’m doing is on them.

What I find is that men will absolutely take on female roles if they understand what they’re doing to their wives when they don’t. But, they won’t hear it from their wives, and they won’t hear it from their male friends, because they’re all stuck in the same heteronormative bullshit institution.

The best comment I ever got on my marriage article was “I didn’t know the writer was gay until the end.”

That’s kind of because I write, like another reader said, “a 15 year old boy……… and his mother.”

And on that note, I think my love for Zac is clear and why. He shows love every day to his “twinkie bitch boyfriend by sending me pictures of himself dressed for work every day, and at least a few times a week, a picture of Oliver, who is a dog, as well.

I think that’s my favorite nickname now, Twinkie Bitch Boyfriend. Zac is the first person I ever told I thought I was nonbinary, because I knew he would know what I meant, that I never wanted to change anything, I could just see both sides of my brain working at once. It’s not a slam to say I look like a tweaker at a club, he’s honoring what I told him……. that I’m so female, and so not.

I just need a better twinkie bitch boyfriend haircut, which I usually achieve by going to a stylist with either a picture of Matt Smith and asking them if they can make me into The Doctor, or taking a picture of Robert Pattinson and saying, “can you make me a sparkly vampire?”

I love both actors, but Robert’s haircut in Twilight suits me. Speaking of which, I love the Twilight movies because the people who wrote the script were a fuck ton more talented than Stephanie Meyer and also the movies have terrible moments which make them even better popcorn films.

Which I’ll have to watch, since I promised Zac “Slow Horses…” because he’s my orange string.