articulation of change

Talking with Bec these past days has been interesting. We've been friends for 12 years. Twelve years is a long time and, after all that time, we make interesting mirrors for each other. We were talking about non-monogomy the other day. At breakfast at the Paradox, actually. Friday. Sitting at the crowded counter and I was a little self-conscious as I recounted my latest feelings on the subject with so many strangers in earshot.

My latest feelings are a stark contrast to my previous feelings and Bec was surprised. Non-monogomy has always been one of my soap-box issues -- the kind of thing I talked at length about to anyone who'd listen. I caused a lot of eyes to roll. Started a few arguments. I just didn't believe in monogomy. Didn't feel it was natural for me. Didn't feel like I, personally, was capable of it. After all, I hadn't managed to stay monogomous in my relationships that were supposed to *be* monogomous. It hadn't played out as a feasible option.

I was also disturbed by how reductive monogomy seemed to be. As though the sole, defining feature of your primary relationship is the act of excluding others. As though, absent monogomy, your primary relationship has no freestanding merit. I know, *I'm* being reductive now, but I'm trying to make a point. The elevation of "cheating" to some capital crime seems to completely demean the value of the relationship that has been cheated on. If fucking (or even making out with or even *flirting* with, depending on whose defintion) someone else is enough to destroy your relationship, your relationship couldn't have been so great to begin with.

My favorite little personal saying used to be "Good relationships are not ended by third parties." If another person can break up your relationship, there must have already been cracks and fissures in the structure before that other person came along.

And I still believe that.

But something has changed. Maybe I'm just getting older. Maybe I'm streamlining my energy, or better understanding the value of discrimination in terms of choosing the direction of my life. Now, after my failed attempt at nonmonogomy with CB, I recognize the value of focus. I also recognize something very important about myself. Even though CB and I had an open relationship from the beginning, I didn't go "outside the relationship" (ie: fuck someone else) until I was done with CB. I didn't even want to. Sure, I had passing flirts and interests. I had minor fantasies and daydreams. But seriously pursuing something? Seriously trying to make something happen? I just wasn't inclined.

CB, meanwhile, took every opportunity that seemed to present itself. She always seemed to have the time and energy to devote to any of the three flings she had while we were together, not to mention the handful of other friends she wasn't fucking, but who could always command her time and attention whenever they called. And no, none of these other people, these third parties, broke up our relationship. CB's complete and utter inability to give me the same level of time and attention had a role. Among other things, of course. But even before the bender (the nails in the coffin of our dying relationship) she was spending all her time out with "friends" (the random people she'd meet in the bar or at the coffeeshop) rather than home with me. I won't belabour this point anymore (my archives are full of my complaining about these details) -- just know, it wasn't the fact of the third parties that speeded our decline. It was CB's choices around those people.

So, while I still believe that third parties don't break up relationships, I recognize for myself how powerful it is not to waste my energy for entertainment. In SK's relatively short absence, I've found myself confronted by the urge to look for attention elsewhere. It is habit, it is whim, it is irresponsible, immature, untamed curiousity and desire, boredom, lonliness -- it's a lot of things. Grey is a good example -- recall Grey from a few posts ago, a coworker who orchestrated a dinner out with me and another friend under questionable circumstances. Grey is interested in me. Grey was flirting with me all night. And Grey, even though I've always been suspicious of her and even though I once "washed my hands of her" because she behaved with so little interpersonal integrity -- despite all that, there was still a pull when we were on that "date" -- when she was flirting.

WHY? Just because. Just because I'm lonely, bored, lonely, tired, lonely, sad, lonely, anxious, etc, etc. Suddenly there's a woman flirting, ready to give attention. A woman whose life is so similar to SK's (both English, Jewish, both in the process work community, both have lived in Australia) it's almost disorienting to talk to her. Suddenly, there was this second-rate, stand-in for SK sort of throwing herself at me, on a date with a friend who was pushing us both in that direction, and there was the centrifugal force of the evening, like being washed down a drain, pulling us closer and closer together if I'd just let myself keep circling...

But thank god I didn't. Two years ago, I would have. I would not have been able to foreclose the possibility of something happening, something un-asked-for, something random. I would have been curious and I would have overridden doubts and red-flags and any voices of reason which might have popped up and screamed at me to reconsider. That is the spirit of the person who championed non-monogomy. I may as well have just been the champion of anything random and un-asked-for. Anything free, as it were. I may as well have been championing inertia and a lack of self-control.

Now, I'm just different. Older. Tired. There is no reason to be particularly curious about that other path. What would've happened with Grey if I'd gone down the drain? I shudder to think. But it's not a mysetery. I know exactly what would've happened, I've been there other times, with other people, I don't have to walk that road again. I feel now, for the first time, the value of just going home and putting time in where it counts, even if that means going home alone and missing someone dear. The value of saving my energy, preserving my privacy, making choices, rather than just letting things happen. CB just let a lot of things "happen" those last months of our relationship. She let herself forget to come home for dinner, she let herself get swept into hanging out all evening with kids she met at the coffeeshop, she let herself stay out till 6am with one of her flings, every single saturday night for four weeks. These opportunities presented themselves to her and she just let them happen, she just couldn't resist.

I can resist. I have learned the value of discrimination, determination, will. The value of time spent, work done. The value of my energy, of my privacy. And the value of a good relationship. Of caring and tenderness and love.