I have a fundamental flaw that is of course so embedded in my personality, that I cannot recognize it. Maybe you can help.
I fall in love with plain, vanilla women for about a year, sometimes less sometimes much longer. At the end, I find myself searching for someone who is as un-vanilla as I can find. I break up with my vanilla love and then join my kinky friend. Only to long for the love I gave up.
Everyone ends up getting hurt. Yet the pattern repeats. Like the story of falling into the pothole. I would like to not even walk down that street.
I think maybe I am poly and am unable to reach some kind of self-code of action. Is there some kind of test or description that fits poly. And yes, this is my shit and I do own it. But I sure as hell would like to get rid of it.
The first question I’d ask is, “Where’s the love?” No seriously. I’m not talking about sexual hots here. Not to run it down (’cause it’s awesome), but I tend to be a bit unromantic when it comes to actual love. “I’m gonna dump you for the kinky when vanilla gets too much” doesn’t taste much like love to me. Yes, yes, it’s not your intention to do such a thing, but you’ve a pattern of doing it, and that does speak of an underlying issue. Think about what love is to you. If it’s primarily driven by a perception of emotion, you may be calling something love that isn’t love. It’s an easy mistake to make. I think most of us do, especially with the One True Love message we get from books, movies, television, songs, you name it.
Now, to give you the benefit of the doubt, it is possible that your sexual desires and what you do best with in a living day to day situation has some differences. That’s not too terribly unusual, and plenty of poly people live with it. However, if you don’t tend to enjoy vanilla sex, for pity’s sake, don’t date vanilla chicks! There’s not much that’ll trump good partner selection when it comes to any relationship style — poly or otherwise.
Now, maybe you like kinky and vanilla. Plenty do. And poly is a good way to deal with that if you have a partner who is all one way or the other. While I’m not a behavioral expert, I expect it’s not as binary as all that.
Another thing you might want to think about: Just because you have the hots for someone doesn’t mean you have to have a relationship with them. That ties into the good partner selection thing. For example, if you are into someone, but don’t want an LDR, you don’t date someone on the opposite coast no matter how into them you are or how wonderful they are. Since this four paragraph letter is really all I have to go on, I’m making a leap here in trying any sort of diagnosis, but it does seem that it’s possible that you think if you have the hots for someone who is interested in you, that you have to have a relationship with that person.
You don’t.
I know everything from The Princess Bride on down will tell you that’s the way True Love works. It’s also a big ole steamin’ pile of nonsense.
As to the question about whether or not you are poly? I have no idea, but I do have one question to ask you: How do you feel about your partner also being free to have other loves (even ones the same sex as you, if you’re mostly hetero). If you’re not okay with that? I don’t think poly would work out well for you in the long run. And before I get a flood of people defending the One Penis (or Vagina) Policy in relationships, I stick to finding inequitable relationships distasteful. It’s one thing when the dice fall that way. It can happen. It’s entirely another when there’s a rule about it, and 99.99% of the time, it’s about someone not wanting to confront their own feelings of jealousy or insecurity.
I think your advice is spot on. A person I know is constantly saying she is calmest when she’s a slave, but then she runs from multiple opportunities to be a slave because whoever it is isn’t ‘the One’.
I’m not saying there isn’t one out there for her, but how do you find it by running from all potentials??
Oh, and totally off topic, I ran across your blog almost a year ago and asked a question about lesbian D/s relationships. I’ve now been in a 24/7 tpe relationship with my partner for 8 months. This has been the best year of our five year relationship. Thank you for helping me find what I’ve always wanted!! You rock!!
I’m tickled as hell you’re happy, Becca. That’s awesome.
“However, if you don’t tend to enjoy vanilla sex, for pity’s sake, don’t date vanilla chicks! ”
That’s an excellent point. Along with the questions about how you’d feel about your partner dating someone else, I’d ask why the letter-writer dates vanilla women when he knows that he needs kinky sex to be happy in the long term. The cycling between vanilla and kinky women reminds me of the binge-purge cycle that I’ve read is common for crossdressers (and other kinky people) to go through before they accept their kink.
The letter-writer could also be trapped by the idea that there are good, vanilla women you can bring home to mother and bad, kinky women you have the kinky-funtimes with and that these roles are mutually exclusive (madonna/whore complex, anyone?). That would make it more than a little difficult to have a lasting relationship with anyone, no matter which set of needs they fulfill.
Speculating wildly from a very short letter is really kind of fun 🙂
Lots of fun, yes. Though I sometimes wince wondering how useful me mouthing off to a 500 word letter actually IS!
That’s an interesting point about the good girl/bad girl thing, too.
The letter-writer could also be trapped by the idea that there are good, vanilla women you can bring home to mother and bad, kinky women you have the kinky-funtimes with and that these roles are mutually exclusive (madonna/whore complex, anyone?). That would make it more than a little difficult to have a lasting relationship with anyone, no matter which set of needs they fulfill.
I was going to add this too, I have been burnt by this, as a kinky person, I feel like I have been seen as not the partner type, and it hurts like hell.
Now it may be that the letter writer has when selected kinky partners selected people who work only on a kink level, if this is correct letter writer, then I would recommend fetlife and non sexual kink events, find kinky women who you can fall in love with.
But think hard about how you feel about kinky women, are you stopping yourself from seeing them as partners? Ask yourself if the next vanilla women you fall for turned out to be deeply kinky, would that be the best thing even? In which case I say look for a kinky women you get on with on a romantic/ relationship level, or would you feel cheated, like she lied to you, in that case, I say work on how you feel about your own, and your partners kinkiness, it wont be easy, but it will much better for you, and your partners, and the vanilla women who I suspect are confused and disappointed when you leave.
Reposted because the tags didn’t work.
I was going to add this too, I have been burnt by this, as a kinky person, I feel like I have been seen as not the partner type, and it hurts like hell.
Now it may be that the letter writer has when selected kinky partners selected people who work only on a kink level, if this is correct letter writer, then I would recommend fetlife and non sexual kink events, find kinky women who you can fall in love with.
But think hard about how you feel about kinky women, are you stopping yourself from seeing them as partners? Ask yourself if the next vanilla women you fall for turned out to be deeply kinky, would that be the best thing even? In which case I say look for a kinky women you get on with on a romantic/ relationship level, or would you feel cheated, like she lied to you, in that case, I say work on how you feel about your own, and your partners kinkiness, it wont be easy, but it will much better for you, and your partners, and the vanilla women who I suspect are confused and disappointed when you leave.