Emotionally Stunted?

I spent the evening with Thomas, my secondary boyfriend, two night ago.  Sadly, Thomas is emotionally stunted.  No, that's not true.  He is not emotionally stunted.  He just has a hard time expressing his emotions, which make him seem emotionally stunted.  Every once in a while, he reveals something deeply emotional to me & I am surprised, because it's always unexpected.

Thomas grew up in a household in which emotions were not accepted, nor supported.  He never saw his parents hold hands & his father was a functional alcoholic.  He was marreid for 5 years in his early 20's to a women 10 years older than he.  She was caught cheating on him.  When he asked her to stop, she said she did, but continued.  Their marriage ended in divorce.  All of those factors have created Thomas, a grown man without the ability to express his emotions.

I know that I scare Thomas.  I think he believes that I make him weak, because I create very strong emottions in him.  So strong he is not able to share them with me, for fear of rejection.  When we lived together, 10 years ago, he would tell me he loved me, when he thought I was sleeping.  That's how afriad he was of my response.

I have learned to accept his failing, mostly due to my relationship with James.  James freely emotionally vomits on me.  Without that very human connection, I would be lost.  For my part, I have told Thomas that I am in love him, without expecting a reponse, which he predictably did not deliver.  I also give him lost of hugs & little kisses.  Perhaps one day he will be comfortable doing those things for me, without prompting.  If not, I still have Thomas :)

Mary & Dinner

James, my primary boyfriend, invited Mary, a wrench wench, to dinner tonight.  The original reason was because, while working with us, out of town for a week, she mentioned she needed to move out of her parents home & we have multiple empty rooms in our home.  However, the real reason he invited her over is James is really interested in having sex with her.  Who am I kidding?  As a middle aged man, James is interested in having sex with any cute girl in her 20's.  Mary fits the bill.

James is so wonderfully charming & childlike, when he gets someone new in his sights.  He becomes hyper giddy & playful.  Frequently, I am focus of that energy, when is victim is not around, so it's fun, while it lasts.

Unfortunately, James has many obstacles in his way to finding an additional partner.  For starters, he is a man.  In sex & dating, men are at the mercy of women.  While men look for a reason to have sex with a stranger, women look for a reason not to have sex with a stranger.  James is in his mid 50's, but his spirit is still in his 20's & 30's.  Therefore, he relates to people of that age.  Sadly, very few women in there 20's & 30's want to date a man in his 50's.  To top it all off, James is polyamorous.  That is not negotiable.  He must also find a polyamorous partner.  He has lots of road blocks.

Perhaps things will work out with him & Mary.  Chances are likely they will not.  Either way, we will have a lovely dinner tonight :)

Matthew's Appearance & Sex

I went to New York City, with my old boyfriend Matthew recently.  We dated for about two years, until 6 months after my arrest.  I told him I was uninterested in continuing to date him, because we live several states away.  However, in reality, I preferred not to date him anymore, because he became physically unattractive to me over the years.

Yes, I realize all of this sounds very shallow.  In reality, I think many people would like to stop having sex with a current partner, because they find them unattractive.   Luckily, because I am polyamorous, if I find one partner too unattractive to have sex with them, I can take on a new partner, but still love the original one.  

I still love Matthew.  I just have a hard time seeing him naked, without becoming uneasy.  Whenever we are together he goes on & on about us getting back together, even asking "Can we be lovers again?"  I am definitely not interested in that.  But, I do like hanging out with him.  

What should I do?    You I ditch him completely or continue to explain that I am not interested in having a romantic relationship with him & allow him to make the decision to see me or not?

Matthew asks for $

Matthew, my former boyfriend, in interested in borrowing $1k to $10K for his retail store from now through January.  I don't have any qualms giving him the money, although I do have to ask my business partners, James & Richard.  Because Matthew is a former lover I am more emotionally connected to the situation & they are not.  The only downside is getting all the cash together at one time.  Being a hand whore is profitable, but everything so far has gone to paying bills & getting us out of debt.  I will ask them tomorrow.

"Please, please, don't let that be him."

I had a funny incident with my whore visitor yesterday.  I am in a great space, in which I can see the main street, by looking out my window.  I connected with my visitor & told him to join me, in 5 minutes.  I then looked out the window, to see when he arrived, so I could unlock the front door.

To my surprise, an awkward old white man with a limp passed me first.  I thought, "Please, please, don't let that be him.  I didn't think he sounded like an old awkward white guy."

Fortunately, several moments after the old man passed, a young yummy black guy, got out of his car & walked up my front steps.  I was so excited, I nearly jumped into his lap, giggling & telling him the story.  He laughed too.

He had the most delicious cock.  I could have played with him all day :)

LIBERATED IN LOVE: CAN OPEN MARRIAGE WORK

http://www.harpersbazaar.com/magazine/feature-articles/open-marriages-0809?click=main_srEnjoy.%20let%20me%20know%20wha

These days, when a bride floats down the aisle we think of a monogamous future in which she and her husband are blissfully faithful forever; anything else seems shocking, bohemian, perverse. Take the unusual and much-talked-about ménage of flame-haired actress Tilda Swinton. She lives in a large, rambling house in Scotland with her twins and their father, playwright John Byrne — and her lover, Sandro Kopp, a beautiful, shaggy-haired artist nearly 20 years younger than she is, sometimes lives there too. When pressed by reporters, she has called her arrangement "sane," which is about the last word most of us would associate with that kind of home life. "We are all a family," she has said. "What you must also know is that we are all very happy."

No doubt there are hidden difficulties that Swinton is not delving into. But is it possible that other ways of life can offer a rich or complicated kind of happiness? Is our idea of love perhaps too narrow, too literal, too unimaginative? The legendary journalist Gay Talese has been married to his glamorous editor wife, Nan, for 50 years this past June, and he is currently writing a book on their extraordinary and epic relationship. Over the years, he has had what he calls "romantic friendships" with other people, but the Taleses have maintained a closer and deeper connection than that of many more ordinary couples. "One can coast on the pillow talk of an affair for years. Affairs don't have the burden of breakfast, lunch, and dinner," Talese says. "But in the end, sex is not that important. The premier affair is marriage. Marriage is the main event."

In the 1910s and '20s, it was fashionable in certain circles to carry on with this type of romantic experiment. Virginia Woolf's sister, Vanessa Bell, a ravishing, statuesque painter who liked to wear gypsyish head scarves, lived on an English country estate with her lover, Duncan Grant, his gay lover, and her children, and her husband sometimes popped by for a week or two. She believed it was more important to live fully than to be conventionally comfortable or secure. One of Bell's frequent guests and ex-flames, the art critic Roger Fry, called her unorthodox household "a triumph of reasonableness over the conventions."

Open marriages have always fascinated and unsettled us because they threaten our assumptions; they raise questions we prefer not be raised. Is it too much to ask that one be attracted to, or intimate with, only one person for the rest of his or her days? How can we balance the comfort and stability of marriage with the desire for novelty and freshness? How does one resolve the yearning for freedom with the need for a settled life? A friend of mine has a pact with her husband that if one of them has a one-night stand while traveling away from the family, it's okay. She tells me, "In a long marriage begun in one's 20s, it seems to me that fetishizing monogamy is a mistake. Our arrangement is that if a partner wants to explore a fleeting intimacy with another while, say, abroad, this is okay, with the caveat that it's like gays in the military: Don't ask, don't tell." They've agreed that a far-flung fling every once in a while is not threatening to their relationship. This pact seems bewildering and scandalous to nearly everyone they describe it to. But for them, the possibility — the idea itself — lets some air into the marriage.

But are open marriages happy? We all know about spiking divorce rates in the '70s and the crazy ice storm that was marriage at that time. In 1972, there was a best-selling book, Open Marriage, that asked, "Is it the 'unfaithful' human being who is the failure, or is it the standard itself?" But its co-author Nena O'Neill recanted several years later, writing that fidelity was central to marriage. Jealousy is not, after all, an easy emotion to overcome. The fantasy that one can transcend rogue feelings like possessiveness and anger is rarely ever true, but one still can't help noticing that there are some unconventional marriages that endure where more traditional unions fail.

Talese says that offbeat marriages can be stronger "because you are both free and you remain together by choice, because of your admiration for each other day by day. I've never for one day in 50 years felt that Nan didn't love me, and she's never felt that I didn't love her."

It is an act of imagination to live differently from everyone else, and maybe, in rare and magnificent moments, it works.

Liberated in Love: Can Open Marriage Work?

With actress Tilda Swinton declaring that three is company in her relationship, we explore whether giving up monogamy can set you free.

By Katie Roiph

These days, when a bride floats down the aisle we think of a monogamous future in which she and her husband are blissfully faithful forever; anything else seems shocking, bohemian, perverse. Take the unusual and much-talked-about ménage of flame-haired actress Tilda Swinton. She lives in a large, rambling house in Scotland with her twins and their father, playwright John Byrne — and her lover, Sandro Kopp, a beautiful, shaggy-haired artist nearly 20 years younger than she is, sometimes lives there too. When pressed by reporters, she has called her arrangement "sane," which is about the last word most of us would associate with that kind of home life. "We are all a family," she has said. "What you must also know is that we are all very happy."

No doubt there are hidden difficulties that Swinton is not delving into. But is it possible that other ways of life can offer a rich or complicated kind of happiness? Is our idea of love perhaps too narrow, too literal, too unimaginative? The legendary journalist Gay Talese has been married to his glamorous editor wife, Nan, for 50 years this past June, and he is currently writing a book on their extraordinary and epic relationship. Over the years, he has had what he calls "romantic friendships" with other people, but the Taleses have maintained a closer and deeper connection than that of many more ordinary couples. "One can coast on the pillow talk of an affair for years. Affairs don't have the burden of breakfast, lunch, and dinner," Talese says. "But in the end, sex is not that important. The premier affair is marriage. Marriage is the main event."

In the 1910s and '20s, it was fashionable in certain circles to carry on with this type of romantic experiment. Virginia Woolf's sister, Vanessa Bell, a ravishing, statuesque painter who liked to wear gypsyish head scarves, lived on an English country estate with her lover, Duncan Grant, his gay lover, and her children, and her husband sometimes popped by for a week or two. She believed it was more important to live fully than to be conventionally comfortable or secure. One of Bell's frequent guests and ex-flames, the art critic Roger Fry, called her unorthodox household "a triumph of reasonableness over the conventions."

Open marriages have always fascinated and unsettled us because they threaten our assumptions; they raise questions we prefer not be raised. Is it too much to ask that one be attracted to, or intimate with, only one person for the rest of his or her days? How can we balance the comfort and stability of marriage with the desire for novelty and freshness? How does one resolve the yearning for freedom with the need for a settled life? A friend of mine has a pact with her husband that if one of them has a one-night stand while traveling away from the family, it's okay. She tells me, "In a long marriage begun in one's 20s, it seems to me that fetishizing monogamy is a mistake. Our arrangement is that if a partner wants to explore a fleeting intimacy with another while, say, abroad, this is okay, with the caveat that it's like gays in the military: Don't ask, don't tell." They've agreed that a far-flung fling every once in a while is not threatening to their relationship. This pact seems bewildering and scandalous to nearly everyone they describe it to. But for them, the possibility — the idea itself — lets some air into the marriage.

But are open marriages happy? We all know about spiking divorce rates in the '70s and the crazy ice storm that was marriage at that time. In 1972, there was a best-selling book, Open Marriage, that asked, "Is it the 'unfaithful' human being who is the failure, or is it the standard itself?" But its co-author Nena O'Neill recanted several years later, writing that fidelity was central to marriage. Jealousy is not, after all, an easy emotion to overcome. The fantasy that one can transcend rogue feelings like possessiveness and anger is rarely ever true, but one still can't help noticing that there are some unconventional marriages that endure where more traditional unions fail.

Talese says that offbeat marriages can be stronger "because you are both free and you remain together by choice, because of your admiration for each other day by day. I've never for one day in 50 years felt that Nan didn't love me, and she's never felt that I didn't love her."

It is an act of imagination to live differently from everyone else, and maybe, in rare and magnificent moments, it works. 

http://www.harpersbazaar.com/magazine/feature-articles/open-marriages-0809?click=main_srEnjoy.%20let%20me%20know%20wha