Polyanais Dance

It's the last big hurdle. The one that makes my teeth clench and my belly boil. And I am trying so hard to understand my gut reaction and eroticize that feeling instead of let my insecurities undermine me. But there it is, the topic that never lets me get clear of my fears.

The evolution isn't so different from anyone. There is infidelity in every person's background. Both as do-er and do-ee. I'm no different. It's never pretty, it's just always a risk.

But walking into it knowing that it isn't a risk but a certainty...that takes courage. And I know, if it's truly polyamory, then it isn't infidelity. Theoretically I understand that. But when you are watching those bodies slap together, is it enough to understand? And how do you get to the point where you embrace it?

This is where I am starting to challenge myself. I need to find a way to push past whatever barrier it is in my head that gets so discombobulated by the thought of poly. I have a physical reaction. Just writing this, my feet are tapping, my brow is wrinkled, and I have this ball of icky in my stomach. However, my pussy is throbbing. This is the same reaction I have had with other concepts that I eventually accepted, mind you.

I've gathered or formed a few distinct opinions about poly over the past year which may or may not be true, or may not be true for long anyway.

For instance, poly works best if there is a hierarchy among the submissives. A top girl. When I put myself in a poly situation in my mind, I'm always the top girl. However, I can see myself not being the top girl, but if I am not, then my allegiance is to the actual top girl, not the Dominant. I'm not sure if that is how it would play out, or if that is the only way my mind can accept it at this stage.

Also, I think I still carry a stigma - that poly is just a way of letting a man have multiple sexual relationships without having to commit to any one person. And I know this is not the case, that the responsibility and consideration in a successful poly family does NOT equal a selfish man. But it IS hard to let go of that social conditioning, to not look at it and think of Warren Jeffs.

I've been going around and around about this for some time, trying to get my finger on the spot. I need to be enlightened, to not be so frightened of this. It's a loose tooth that I can't help but wiggle.

Uncomfortably Numb

On another site recently there was thread about how we develop and refine our taste for pain, and it got me thinking not just about pain, but about what I fetish-ize in general. The following (in italics) is the response that I wrote, and I feel like it needs a little more exploration.

I think what I struggle the most with is my internal perception that the numbness and subsequent growth is down a path of depravity I never intended. And before that is taken too far out of context, let me explain.

Shame and guilt have always been the primary driver for any fetish of mine. When I was younger, more innocent, the mere thought of being tied down and spanked was enough to send me into a paralysis of lustful guilt.

Now it is thoughts of being used publicly and humiliated.

And sometimes I don't know where that line is, the one that I won't ever cross, because I've crossed it again and again. Evidence as to why shame and guilt work so well with me, but also enough to worry me that my flexible line in the sand will take me to a place that I really don't want to go. How far is enough?

What I like to think, instead, is that the path isn't so much constantly forward as it is a cycle. I can travel it alone and rediscover submissiveness after pauses back in vanilla-land. Or I can find someone to travel with me, who pushes me into taking the party boats and excursions at each scheduled stop. And each successive trip around that cycle is different, sometimes better, sometimes less.

Pardon the cruise-ship jargon, but I thought maybe it worked better with an analogy.

In the end, what I have to believe is that I can have my limits pushed, my experiences widened, without giving in to those limits that would make me feel less human, that would cripple me with guilt. Just skirting on the edges is plenty, if you ask me.

I'm trying to understand this sudden shift in my psychology. Why I was NO NO NO to a sudden YES YES YES. And, granted, some of these things that I have fetish-ized are only compelling if they are forced on me, I won't do it voluntarily, without coercion.

But why am I not only saying yes in my mind, but saying yes more publicly? Part of what holds a edgy fetish as taboo for most people is that it is difficult to admit publicly. But if I am able to admit to something publicly, does that mean it is losing the taboo nature, or am I becoming desensitized?

Evasion

I can't think into the heat of what I've been feeling, so I'm giving you different words today. I've got two days to prepare myself and of course I'm a bit paralyzed.

The photo is of a bit of mixed media art I purchased from etsy, something inspired by one of my own favorite poems, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (Eliot).

I haven't hung it yet. I like to touch this painting, it is full of texture. It's not grand, and wasn't meant to be. Like Prufrock. Like me.

Spread Open and Pinned Against a Wall

It was explained to me this way, my moment of not doing as asked...

I deliberately chose that which would bring me to immediate submission, without the prettiness and niceties and how do you do's.

That is a startling revelation, and the truth of it gave me a release that the disobedience did not provide.

I have never felt so fileted, so skinless.

It's this - so many years of treating a brain anomaly with a mallet, when that troublesome spot needed instead the sharp and insistent focus of a laser.

Those earlier strides forward, so confident and self-assured, have changed into a cringing belly crawl. Still the right direction, but with deference and awareness.

I have no way of exiting, not now. I will be dealt with. There are no more buts, what ifs, my endless list of conditions and qualifications. I must accept that, I must keep myself from a wrong step while letting my fear catch up to acceptance.