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In lieu of actually talking about what's going on in my life (which I am currently dealing with like a responsible adult i.e. drowning myself in alcohol)

here are some noteworthy things that happened this past week that I felt ya'll should be aware of. They're not in any type of chronological order, or even ranked by the level of interest I feel you should invest in each. But do note that there are three of them. That makes me happy in only a way my very inner, secretest brain can comprehend.

First: This comic from Questionable Content. Because I totally love Questionable Content, but really? For those of you not familiar with the storyline, Marigold (the brunette one) just had super duper sexy times with this guy named Dale that she's been crushing on for awhile. So the natural follow-up to this sexy activity is that she will never show visual interest in any other man but Dale. Marigold the character is pretty into yaoi (If you're unfamiliar with that term, go do a Google search. I'll wait.) So, for sake of remaining canon, I'll say...if Shuichi from Gravitation walked through the room she wouldn't even bat an eyelash because now she's getting laid. (Give me a fucking break it's the one yaoi I'm familiar with. She watches a made-up one called Magical Love Gentlemen in the comic, but nobody's that canon.)  This is a trope that happens. If you're in a relationship of any format, you forsake all other interest in all those other people you used to want to bone.

Second: I know I just mentioned Switched at Birth, but something cool happened on this week's episode, too. Bay and Tank were all makey-outey, and then Bay said she didn't want to have sex right at that moment. And then there were lots of scenes were everybody (including Tank) was reassuring Bay that she wasn't obligated to have sex if she didn't feel like it and it's okay to say no.

Third: I have been reading these recaps of 50 Shades. The lady who writes them lives in Michigan (where I am from originally), so you know this shit will be good. I only wound up reading the first book of the 50 shades trilogy, but somehow this blogger had the incredible mental stamina to make it through all three. And her recaps are fucking hilarious. So you should check them out.

(I include that last gif only because GoT season 4 starts in April and I am so excited I seriously almost splooshed all over myself when there was a preview ad on yesterday during March Madness.)

Something important happens

Intrepid readers! On tonight's episode of Switched at Birth something really neat happened!

(For those of you unfamiliar with the show, here's a basic intro. Tons of total sitcom drama stuff has happened since I wrote that entry, but it'll give you the general gist of characters at least.)

So, tonight. Bay's parents/Daphne's bio parents/the Kennishes are having a dinner thing with one of Mr. Kennish's old baseball buddies. It's because Mrs. Kennish is writing this salacious novel about how all the baseball people used to get their freak on, but she's missing just that one crucial story before she ships it off to the publisher. So Mr. Kennish calls ups the wildest guy he used to know and invites him to dinner, in the hopes that he'll still be a party animal and spill some beans about his sexual exploits so Mrs. Kennish can put it in her book.

But he's not wild and crazy anymore.

He drinks non-alcoholic beer, he doesn't want to talk about the past, and he met his current girl...thing at a yoga retreat. I don't believe in the episode they explicitly say they're married? Maybe they did and I missed it. I'm too lazy to go back and watch it again. It's not really crucial to the main point, anyway.

The main point being.....

The baseball buddy and his girl thing are SWINGERS!!!

Mr. Kennish mentions at some point in the evening that he and Mrs. Kennish have been going through a "rough patch" recently, and then baseball buddy is all like, "we know just the thing to help the two of you feel more connected, and that thing is having sex with another couple." Okay, so he doesn't actually say that in the show. He actually says this:

Pth. No, he didn't really say that, either. But I did really appreciate the fact that Switched at Birth didn't take this opportunity to play up how weird the swinger couple was. They've already got Renzo, the penultimate gay best friend, so it was sort of unexpected to see swingers characterized in such a "normal people" fashion.

Also, I liked that Mr. and Mrs. Kennish don't get all icked out by the idea. They do go into another room so they can discuss the proposition privately, but their discussion is completely absent of judgement or childish giggles about the new weird thing they've just found out about somebody they thought they knew.

Then Mr. and Mrs. Kennish go back and tell baseball buddy and his girl thing that they're not interested. Baseball buddy and his girl thing politely say that they must have gotten the wrong impression, that they still had a good evening, and then they get their coats and leave. Baseball buddy even has a really nice little speech about how being open is really about intimacy, and being in dark places together so they don't seem so dark. I didn't really quite get that last part - it sounded better when he was saying it.

Intentional

In addition to talking to "men's room only" at the recent frisbee tournament, I was also casually aware of another one of the players trying his damnedest to stick it in pretty much anything that met his very strict criteria of being female and within his immediate vicinity.

P.S. If you're not picking up on the sarcasm in the last part of that sentence...

Tommy Boy. Applicable always.

He and his girlfriend are doing the on-again, off-again thing, and this particular weekend happened to be an "off" period. Which, I guess maybe I shouldn't use the word "girlfriend." Does she count as an "ex" for those 2 days that he's going to try and get frisky with somebody else before going back home and recommitting? I don't know. I didn't ask him all these questions. Sometimes I'm just too tired to sass. 

Sometimes I think about going rapidly from "on" to "off" and then this happens:

But in seriousness, there's a lot of confusing ways that straight people put their relationships together. This sort of, "we're together until it's convenient for us not to be, but then we'll be together again after that" format is soooo close to being non-monogamy. It's incredibly frustrating. There's no reason to not own up to wanting to bone other people or admitting that maybe you're not the "together forever" type of couple but that's okay and you don't have to use terminology like "boyfriend" or "girlfriend" if you don't want to.

Instead, a relationship gets hash-mashed together because two people happen to be in a similar geographical area and have a modicum of similar interests. Then nobody's actually happy because the intent of the relationship hasn't been considered. 

A lot of flack gets thrown around about how harmful the "ideal" partner is. Disney princes, the manic pixie dream girl, and the like. I'll take it one step further and say it's actually the set-up of the entire "ideal" relationship that's the problem, not just the people involved in said relationship. In the standard trope, two individuals (whatever their character affiliation) sort of orbit around each other until their faces smush together. Then they're officially "in a relationship." There might be arguments along the way about how the relationship isn't what one of them though it was going to be (this usually gets remedied in some large romantic gesture). On the flip side, sometimes there are loving comparisons to how much better this relationship is than any previous relationship. But there's never any moment where the two individuals sit down and figure out what "the relationship" means to either of them.

In a discussion with Now-hubby about his new girlfriend, I advised thinking more about the "how" of the relationship than the "what." How do they want their relationship to look? For example, are they going to visit every other weekend? Once a month for a longer period of time? (She lives about 5 hours away, so travel considerations will be significant if they continue seeing each other.) How as opposed to what. When you ask questions like, "What do I want in a relationship?" the answers become more easy to rigidly define. It's easy to quickly discount an entire segment of people or types of relationships that might otherwise be interesting or fulfilling, just because it doesn't fit into the "what" you've envisioned the relationship being. I've found it infinitely easier to meet people on equal footing and then figure out the "how" of them within my life.

Jibber Jabber

Last weekend, Frisbee and I went to a tournament a few hours away. A mutual friend had set up the team, and many emails commenced before travel as to how we were going to arrange carpool, hotel rooms, etc.

Amongst the emails one of the guys on the team requested a "guys only room" at the hotel. Number one reason was because "[my] wife would prefer that."

My initial reaction was to rage face.

Because...gah. Fucking straight people and their stupid relationship insecurities. We were going to be in town for a frisbee tournament and this lady can't even trust her spouse to sleep in the same bedroom as the women on the team because she's that afraid his dick will accidentally find it's way into somebody else's mouth?

Then we got to the tournament and I put two and two together about the guy who had sent the email requesting the guys only room. I had met him before and really gotten along with him. Which, in the standard ways of cognitive dissonance, left me with two options. 1. I could completely ignore the fact that I thought this guy was an alright character previously and hold onto my belief that because his relationship sounded stupid, he was probably stupid. Or 2. I could try and gather more information about the situation and see how the two disparate bits of information could be possible.

So I actually sat down on a break between games and talked to the guy about his relationship and the reasons behind requesting a guys only room. Yes, it was to avoid "temptation." But here's the thing. The more I talked with him the more I got the impression that he and his wife had actually sat down and really discussed how they wanted their relationship to look and function. As opposed to just sort of saying, "well, we're married and now that means we can't be around anybody of the opposite sex anymore."

And then never revisiting that thought or discussing it any further. Putting a ring on it tends to mean that you get to keep all the same shitty "exclusivity" rules that you had in your relationship, but now you don't actually ever have to talk about them ever again. Because...you know. It's probably written down in that marriage contract somewhere. And you both signed that.

It was incredibly refreshing to meet somebody who had actually considered his relationship and made boundaries within that relationship that he felt completely comfortable and good about. Is the "guys only" rule something I would abide by in my own relationships? No. Is it something I can actually respect if it comes from two people who have agreed upon it after considering all other options? Yes.