A Unique Experience

[joreth]

I don't know that I've ever felt envy before for a situation that I was so physically unable to participate in that I wouldn't have even wanted to participate in had I been given the option.

I'm a proponent of sharing the compersion and the up sides to polyamory.  Although I don't advocate outright ignoring the down sides, it's generally better PR to not focus too much public attention on them - the opposition will do that for us.  But sometimes, polyamory offers us the opportunity to experience unique negative emotions and situations in addition to the unique positive experiences and emotions.

Here's one of those negatives.

Fortunately, it wasn't an earth-shattering, mind-crumbling negative, just a twinge of envy and a "oh, hey, that's interesting - didn't know I could envy something I didn't actually want to do anyway".  But it was kinda wierd.

And because some people will ask for the details, and others won't but will want to hear them, here's what happened.

tacit posted about it, so I won't recount in full, but basically, my metamour got to have her two male partners fist her and fig her at Frolicon this past weekend.

Now, I don't like fisting and I'm not interested in figging, plus my antibiotics gave me a rather painful yeast infection so I didn't want really any genital contact at all over the weekend (which is a damn shame since I was at Frolicon). So I *really* didn't want to be in her position at all. Also, I'm not involved with either her or her other partner, the_no_lj_d, so I wasn't interested in joining in the existing party either. Actually, I quite enjoyed myself watching everyone else in the room and chatting with aclaro, femetal, and redheadlass, so I wasn't even feeling left out or anything.

What I *do* want is to have two (or more) male partners get along well enough with each other that I can have group sex with them, and have them gang up on me and coordinate their attacks.

What I *do* want is to attend a freakin' play party with a partner that I'm A) having penetrative sex with, B) have the play party allow penetration, and C) have my partner be interested in public sex - a situation I have yet to experience with all 3 elements in place.

What I *do* want is an event that is public enough and with the right kind of "public" that it might encourage certain of my friends to participate in, even if it's at a distance or with boundaries.

What I *do* like is the idea of my partner announcing to the world how much fun he had at said event.

There are two bits of irony in all of this.  1) I have had less group sex and less threesomes since becoming polyamorous and ceasing to be involved with monogamous men, and 2) I have had less group sex with *male partners* since I established that I am, indeed, straight and my bi-curiosity did not ever develop into an interest in sex with other women.

So I find myself just a tiny bit envious of a situation that I didn't actually want to participate in.  It's an interesting feeling.

Comments

[zaiah.livejournal.com]

Some broken html here, dear. Also, I added you to my list ( a week ago or so) cause I was getting tired of clicking you directly to see if you had new content so it is easier for me this way without any implied crap of LJ friending associated with it. I would like to comment on envy when I get back from an errand that I must now go do.

[joreth]

Yeah, the stupid formatting always gives me trouble when I put things behind a cut and then edit it afterwards. Hopefully it's fixed now.

Also, don't worry, I don't put too much stock into all those silly implications of LJ friending - if someone friends me, I assume it's because they want to read my stuff. If they un-friend me, I assume it's because they *don't* want to read my stuff. Anything more complicated or personal than that should be handled directly and with communication :-)

[zaiah.livejournal.com]

Yay for low drama LJ friending! :) ((I should add that in addition to wanting your posts to appear in order for my daily reading.. I had no concerns of you having access to any of my entries (all are friends-locked).))

I was terribly down Thursday, Friday, and Saturday because I could not be there to meet you and others.. I wasn't even wanting any play things or to be at panels or to see and be seen. I wanted to BE there because so many people I wanted to meet would be - in particular metamors! -and to BE there for the potential memory making features and activities because events like that seem to create and increase in 'time' of the trust = time * experience type equation. As in - if I had met you there and things were pleasant enough then a year of following up with textual communication could = ~5 years of lower intensity friendship. And I was so FRUSTRATED to be missing out on that type of activity.

It was NEVER a possibility that I would be going. I barely even knew much about the event or that it existed until well after it was a forgone conclusion I would not be going.. I had family Easter things to do.. I only know a few people that were going.. I didn't have the travel money.. I couldn't justify the expenditure of time.. and about 10 other things... but I was just miserable with the ache of being there. And I knew it was stupid to be feeling that way and I couldn't do anything about it. *le sigh* ((I would have loved to meet you!))

Now.. I am an individual that is highly motivated by compersion. I love to see people happy and in relationships with one another. I LIKE helping making things go.. helping find the things a love was looking for for their otherlove is more appealing to me than looking for things for myself. Helping free up time and money and opportunities for the other people to share makes me happy. This extends back through childhood when I would babysit for people (friends of my family) who needed the 'date night' but not for money and not because I liked their kids.

Every once in a while someone else's scene/behavior - instead of triggering the 'awe that's so sweet' response - triggers (sometimes a deep and painful) envy.. where I feel this loss and grief inside of me. It is SO confusing to me when that happens.

I like your addition here to the post of the list of things that you DO want. I admire the focus on the things that feed and care for ourselves. Not only is my list similar .. I relate to the feeling of frustration of feeling I have less experiences than I want given my so called relationship statuses.

Recently, I got to meet a newborn baby. She is the (non)squalling spawn of an LJ friend I'd never met yet and wasn't especially close to ..and I got to watch the interactions of the mom, one of the siblings, and one of the dads and realized how much of the oooh baby! human response that many of us are hardwired in lays over my compersion feelings of warmth and love. It crystalizes it a LITTLE as the living example of family formation.

('Family Formation' is sort of my personal title for when people become important enough to each other that they create 'something' between them. ..what other people call a 'relationship' - a term I don't like to use because we have all sorts of relationships with all sorts of people. and the big R doesn't actually reflect for me the sort of change of creating something that I admire and love to see - and no I don't need kids to be the thing of family formation!)

I was recently helping Noah's other girlfriends run errands and stuff when Noah was busy and/or needed to nap even though I barely know some of them (and they are not necessarily friendship-type personalities for me so I wasn't really even getting anything directly out of the time spent) and I realized that rather than feeling like a chore.. I was emotionally getting off on it because I was helping make his 'family' go the 'second order' response of helping make the life of someone I care for easier or better became a 'first order' reinforcer for me.

Weird eh? :)

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to put some words to the things I have been reflecting on.

[james-the-evil1.livejournal.com]

Coordinated attacks ROCK. Franklin & I engaged in joint BDSM play once & we worked well together, I've always hoped to find an MF combo I could take it further with. I've done it with FF combos before but it's MUCH harder to set it up with an MF pair. :-(

[joreth]

It's very frustrating, ALL of my MFM threesomes have been before I was poly and with "monogamous" men, some of whom were somewhat coordinated. Just once I'd like to experience it in a poly context instead of the fumbling, low-emotionally-intimate settings of casual sex in a monogamous paradigm.

[dayo.livejournal.com]

Hey. Hope you're feeling ok. If you want to talk about it feel free to ping me on IM.

[joreth]

Oh yeah, no worries. This really was just a "huh, wouldja look at that?" response. I wasn't going to write about it at all because I didn't need to process about it - I understand what's going on and I know the steps necessary to "fix" it, and I know what is and is not possible.

I decided to write about it because I thought other people might have had similar experiences but maybe didn't really understand what was happening or what to do about it. It can be really confusing to feel envy or jealousy about a situation that a person doesn't actually want to experience in the first place, and all too often people let the "ought tos" and "shoulds" interfere with their ability to examine and process their emotions.

[pretendpeterpan.livejournal.com]

Wow, I totally know what you are talking about here. Sometimes I have really childish moments of, "well, my partner is having fun with someone else, and even though I don't want to particularly do that activity, I'm jealous." Not to be confused with feeling like I *should* be jealous because of leftover bad habits from monogamous relationships.

[joreth]

:-) that's good to know. Unfortunately, my local partners don't like public sex and none of my partners are willing to have group sex with each other, and the one partner who does like public sex and would be willing to consider having group sex as long as the other partner was willing ... well he's moving 3,500 miles away in 2 weeks. So I can just file this away for future reference.