Tag: opening up

Heart Opening

On August 18, 2015

In Introspection, Love & Relationships, Sacred

I have so much aching in the heart of me
So old
So removed

The armor holding it in has been pierced
Slowly, access has been given
Tender smooth muscle exposed to the elements now
So frozen
So cold
So just daring to hope for more
Just barely daring

Just enough to be proven to that love can penetrate it
Love can penetrate me
Love can penetrate everything
Anything
That’s why it’s so important
That’s why I do this work

I look forward to be shown what love can do
Let myself open in ways I have helped others open
Blossoming into fullness
The completely bearable fullness of being
Being alive inside
Trusting to be held

Making Open Relationships Work

By Tai Fenix Kulystin

On April 14, 2010

In Introspection, Polyamory

On Sunday after the rest of our weekend fun Onyx and I walked to Babeland here in Seattle for a workshop by Tristan Taormino. She called it Poly 201, basically the next level of information after her book Opening Up.

She talked about what does and does not make poly/non-monogamy work and started with a T-chart listing only what doesn’t make poly work on one side which included: New Relationship Energy, Time Management, Miscommunication, Agreement Violation, Jealousy, and Change. She then proceeded to address each factor individually and give the tools and skills to use to combat each of the potential issues. The following is her information both from my notes and as I remember it.

What doesn’t make poly work and the tools we can use to combat each of those issues:

New Relationship Energy: patience, compassion, communication
Time Management: organization, (google) calendars, negotiation skills
Miscommunication: honesty, full disclosure, self-awareness, communication
Agreement Violation: checklists, commitment
Jealousy: reality check, self-awareness, self-esteem, confidence, security, non-attachment, support/therapy

She stopped there to unpack jealousy a bit for us. Jealousy can be broken down into envy, competitiveness, possessiveness, excluded feelings, insecurity (fear of abandonment, not good enough, not valued, etc.), obsessiveness. Essentially “all roads lead to fear.” Jealousy isn’t about reason or using our intellect it’s about our reptilian brain overtaking us and it takes a fuckofalot to get us out of it. There is a lot of debate as to whether jealousy is innate or learned, but most likely it is some combination.

The following two situations can be both good or bad depending on the situation.

Change: the tools needed to cope depends on what kind of change is occuring
Love: compersion

Change can be welcome, or it can be difficult and unexpected. New love (and old love) can be a source of great happiness or something that catches us off guard. As Tristan said, there’s a reason why it is called “falling in love,” because most of the time you “fall on your face.” Or perhaps something came into your path that made you stumble and fall, not always in a good way.

When new love comes along specifically it can often trigger “old monogamous programming,” or the socialization that we all get in this culture to believe in monogamy. The best way to combat this is compersion. Compersion is finding joy and happiness in the happiness of your partner with another. It is the opposite of jealousy and a goal in most non-monogamous relationships.

Tristan offered “the selfish person’s guide to compersion” which essentially is for you (the selfish person) to remember that eventually the energy and excitement of the other relationship will come back and help to fuel your relationship. When a relationship is going well for someone they will feel good and that feeling good will bleed over into every relationship that person is in.

That’s the bare bones of what was covered. There was also a Q&A session at the end and after that we said hello to Tristan and got our copy of Opening Up signed. It was a wonderful workshop and was absolutely wonderful to see and meet Tristan Taormino. I highly encourage you to go to a workshop of hers if you ever have the chance!

Death, Rebirth, and Submission

By Tai Fenix Kulystin

On January 22, 2010

In a Love: Onyx, Identity: Submissive, Introspection, Polyamory

Clutched by notoca

When the triad first started we talked a lot about how it would change my relationship with Onyx. We had to get rid of the monogamous-type relationship we had developed over the years and move into an open polyamorous one and then also to incorporating Marla into the mix. I talked about it somewhat when it was happening, but not as much as we all were talking about it.

In Opening Up by Tristan Taormino she talks about this transition and needing to mourn the loss of the previous relationship. In some ways I think we did too good of a job of this. We destroyed our past relationship through everything that happened, and in many ways never rebuilt it while the triad was going on. In some ways I’m glad, as that has enabled us to come together now and be that much stronger after time apart and time to miss each other.

While talking about some of our pre-triad relationship failings Onyx said today: “that relationship is dead, and the two people involved live on only in the memories of two stronger, wiser, and more self-aware beings with the same names.” In so many ways it is so overwhelmingly true. This new second chance that we have been given has only been able to happen because we have already mourned the relationship we used to have, and we both have grown so incredibly much over the last year. We both knew that getting out of Utah would allow us to grow in new ways, but I never expected this.

It’s as if we are two different people than we were five years ago when we met. Some things are the same, of course, we’re still amazingly compatible and have rediscovered the love and lust that brought us together in the first place. We are both much more open than we were, we have fewer walls between us, and now we are able to give ourselves to the other without nearly as many reservations. Our love just continues to grow and it’s amazing.

Gone is the hesitation I felt in the past and my need for him to somehow prove his dominance over me in an unreasonable way. Now I just have this overwhelming desire to submit to him. To be completely honest it took me off guard. When he came up to Juneau I wasn’t sure if it was going to be a farewell trip or if we were going to reconnect, but I didn’t expect it to be so hard-hitting. I want to support and encourage him, to give myself to him in ways that I wasn’t prepared to before, to be completely open to him and do anything he desires.

We have been talking endlessly about everything, our communication has never been better, and the more we communicate the more I desire him and the more I desire to submit to him. It is amazing to feel this passion in our relationship again, though in some ways it is a completely new relationship as I mentioned above.

We have both come to express our desire for more firm D/s roles and have settled quite easily and surprisingly back into our Owner/cuntpet dynamic. Obviously the situation is quite different than it was before by nature of being so far away, but because we know each other so well it is also very easy to let our imagination combine with past experiences to bring our long distance interactions close to reality.

I’m having a lot of fun exploring my submissive side again, especially now that it is flowing so much easier than it once did. I love feeling confidence in our interactions and being able to let go of the expectations I once held so tightly on to, making our dynamic that much better. I am really surprised at how much more natural it feels this time around, how neither of us are struggling or straining, and how perfect it feels. He is my Owner again, and it is wonderful.

Polyamorous to Polyfidelitous

By Tai Fenix Kulystin

On June 25, 2009

In a Love: Marla, a Love: Onyx, Discourse, Introspection, Polyamory

If there were a Venn-diagram for non-monogamous relationships it would probably start as a big circle for non-monogamy. Inside that would be polyamory and inside that would be polyfidelity. Each of these circles would be blurry or maybe dotted lines instead of hard ones. Each circle would overlap with multiple other relationship configurations and various other types of relationship orientations and… well, maybe a Venn-diagram isn’t the most helpful illustration.

When defining a term that has to do with relationships or personal identities in any manner there is always some level of fluidity and openness to take into account. You may know this already, but I’m starting with the basics.

In the book Opening Up Tristan Taormino defines polyfidelity as “a multipartner group of three or more people who have made a commitment to each other to be in a primary relationship.” This can be different or exactly the same as polyamory simply depending on the identification of those within the group. There are no hard and fast lines here, and the terms really just depend on what the people within the relationship are most comfortable with.

Despite the “fidelity” part of the term, which makes most people think of having closed sexual conduct polyfidelity does not always exclude other relationships outside of the polyfidelitous group. Fidelity essentially means “faithful” and doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with sexual faithfulness (though it can). Taormino describes two types of polyfidelitous groups: closed and open, meaning closed or open to new relationships outside of the primary. Not all members of a polyfidelitous group have to be sexually involved, either.

While I dislike the terms “primary” and “secondary” or so on and I think maybe a better way to describe it is that everyone in a polyfidelitous relationship is committed to everyone else. Even if there isn’t a sexual or romantic relationship between the individuals there is always an emotional one and a commitment to being with the other in some way shape or form.

As I mentioned, this could look identical to polyamory or it could look completely different, it just depends on how the individuals want to identify.

So, why am I writing all this about polyfidelity? I will probably be using it in the future and now I can reference this post whenever I mention it.

I posted a while ago about our transition from mono to poly to triad and Not long after that I brought this difference up to Marla and Onyx and we all agreed that the definition for polyfidelitous fit our relationship.

Generally speaking the term triad is used to describe a polyfidelitous relationship between three people, so we had already kind of figured that out but at the same time I’m a sucker for semantics and finding new terms and labels to describe myself so that I can add them on to the long list of labels I already embrace to make such a long string of labels I eventually essentially become label-less again, though that’s another post.

Another term Taormino mentions in Opening Up is “trilationship” which is fairly self-explanatory I think. I pronounce it similar to tree-lationship so it sounds similar to relationship only different–also because pronouncing it try-lationship is kind of awkward. This is another term I will be using in the future.

On the Transition from Mono to Poly to Triad

By Tai Fenix Kulystin

On April 24, 2009

In a Love: Marla, a Love: Onyx, Introspection, Polyamory

Onyx and I have been talking heavily the last few days and weeks regarding the things that are coming up in regard to our shifting from essentially a monogamous relationship to a polyamorous relationship and then into the triad we are trying to develop. Despite calling ourselves polyamorous since the beginning of our relationship Marla is the first person we’ve actually opened up our relationship to in a serious way.

While we flirted with the idea of being with Kat and glen last year, mostly that was in an N-style relationship with everyone else as close friends but only relationships between some of us not all of us. Kat and I began exploring a possible relationship in addition to my relationship with Onyx and her relationship with glen. Perhaps eventually we would have evolved into a square or some other configuration, but we didn’t get past initial exploring.

Opening up our relationship has brought some issues between Onyx and myself to light, ones that need to be fixed before we can really move forward. For one, we really haven’t been paying a lot of attention to our relationship, a lot of the reason for that is because we really have not had any time apart for a very long time. We had over two months together when we moved and before he got a job when we were essentially with each other constantly.

In some ways we have come to take our relationship for granted. We are so used to the other one being around it’s difficult not to. Because we lack a sufficient amount of furniture we also have essentially been living in a studio apartment, because we have not been utilizing the bedroom for anything other than storage space. This needs to change, and we realize that.

For another, Onyx is much more comfortable with me being with someone else than I am with him being with someone else. This is something I need to work on. It’s not that I don’t want him to be with someone else, part of it is he’s never really expressed interest in someone else before so it’s a new experience for me. Of course, part of me wants to keep him all to myself, but only a small part of me, the rest of me wants him to be happy and have the same opportunities I do.

Because we are working on bringing Marla in we have begun communicating more often and more effectively, I believe. We are forced to because now we have another person involved and in some ways that’s more pressure on the both of us to make everything right. It’s both helped and hurt our relationship in many ways, which is normal for the monogamous to non-monogamous transition process.

Marla and I have been exploring our relationship quite heavily, and have moved into solid relationship territory as far as I’m concerned. We know each other quite well now, and our attraction and desire for each other continues to grow, even if I’m unable to express it sometimes. The next step is for us to meet, and we’re pretty sure that’s going to happen at the beginning of May while I’m in D.C. for Sex 2.0.

The problem for me comes in when Marla and Onyx try to get closer. Moving now from the polyamorous Vee relationship we have been nurturing into the triad we all desire. The problem stems from my own insecurity, and I really don’t like it at all. In many ways I am threatened by the idea of the two of them getting closer, even though part of me wants them to get closer and wants us to become a triad like we have all been talking about.

I had a dream a while back that the three of us were starting to fool around together and they up and left me, went to another room and locked the door so that they could play by themselves without me. This hurt. A lot. I woke up sobbing. It was not a good time. Essentially, it all comes back to my rejection phobia. It’s ridiculous, because I know they both love me and they are coming together in many ways because of me, but I’m not confident enough that I believe that they won’t stop being interested in me.

Logically I know this is silly, because I know that, like I said, in many ways I am the reason why they are coming together, but the fear is still there. I am working on acknowledging it, understanding it, and working with it to the point that it won’t be an issue, but I fear that the fear will always be there, lurking at the back of my mind.

The fear also makes me feel selfish, because I have no problem with me having multiple partners, but when my partners show interest in each other my insecurities flare up and I’m unable to fully feel the compersion that part of me feels. I am both elated and scared at the possibility of the two of them together.

On the one hand I really encourage their relationship. I’ve been trying to incorporate Onyx into the nightly phone calls that Marla and I have, I’ve been trying to encourage the two of them to explore and interact more so that they can get to know each other better, I’ve been trying to be the biggest supporter for their relationship. Then, when I see them interacting I close up, I send mixed signals, even though part of me wants them to work another part of me is worried that it will work too well.

This all mostly stems from sexual insecurity. It feels strange for me, as someone who embraces sexual expression and sexuality, to feel insecure about my sexuality. I have worked hard on being confident sexually, and I feel that I am in many ways but I’m not in others. Specifically, I haven’t been with a woman for years, and I’m worried that I’m not going to be any good. It’s a silly and baseless fear, but it’s one I have nonetheless.

My inability to be sexual with Marla compounds the issue. I want her, I fantasize about her, I imagine all sorts of wonderful things that we will eventually be able to do, but I have an extremely difficult time flirting with her or expressing my sexual interest in her at all. I’m not sure where this mental block is coming from, but it’s there and it’s not conscious. I’m worried that I will say the wrong thing, I overanalyze what I do say and always assume the worst, and then I watch Onyx and Marla interact so easily sexually and I’m envious and jealous both.

It seems easier for them to interact on a sexual level than on a personal one, and it’s the opposite for Marla and me. She has been pushing us in a more sexual direction but I have been resisting, even though I don’t want to resist. I watch how easy it is for Onyx to say things that I wish I could say and I shut down.

I’m working on figuring out how to fix this, but it may take a while. I’m hoping that meeting Marla in D.C. and actually physically being able to be with her will help me get over this mental block. Being able to explore each other and become sexual with each other on a physical level will help me be able to be sexual with her long-distance I think. Once I’m more able to be sexual with her long-distance I will be able to not be envious when she and Onyx express desires for each other sexually, and I’ll be able to feel the compersion I’ve been experiencing intellectually in my heart as well.

That’s the hope, anyway.