MIA

I found this decent little tidbit on r/sex the other day on good and bad reasons to open a relationship. I'd like to add the single poly perspective and say that you can also define yourself as poly if it's something that makes you happy. Even if you're not in a "relationship" yet and you just want to be open and honest with anybody you might wind up dating that you won't be entirely exclusive. I understand that relationships are work, and that you can't be happy 100% of the time. And you don't have to reach bouncing off the walls types of happiness. That shit can be irritating.

Just...general okayness with open/poly/whatever being what you want and who you are.

Also, there's this pretty neat article up on Vice about poly. The closed vs. open relationship chart near the end is something I haven't seen before, and interesting.

Good advice

If you don't know about Fairly Odd Parents, you should. If nothing else because then you can appreciate how this meme was created.

Voted most likely

The school year is beginning again, and with it all the fantastic team building exercises that are forced upon workshop participants. Build the tallest tower you can using only paper plates and straws! Sit back to back with a partner; one of you describes a picture and the other has to draw it. Get it? We're working on clear communication and being a good listener.

Honestly? I feel like they should just have you do this damn stuff during the interview process if it's so important to job function. Maybe instead of asking that question about what a person's greatest weaknesses are. "I'm sorry, your resume was stellar and your references all check out, but you couldn't work on a team to play a game of charades without being a total ass-hat, so we're going with a different candidate."

In any case, we were in our classroom today setting things up for the students to come in tomorrow.
We have a few new full-time assistants, so those of us who have been there longer were going over the dynamic of the room. As part of this the lead teacher had us include, "something important to know about you" in our intros when we were introducing ourselves to the newbies.

Since I've been pretty good about the whole, "be honest in appropriate situations" thing, I decided my "something important" was going to be telling everybody about Now-Hubby and Frisbee. I think I phrased it as, "I'm married, and am also in another significant relationship." One of the newbies totally shocked my by saying she has a relative who's in a similar type of relationship. And the rest of the newbies just sort of moved on and accepted it.

Cheers, fellow co-workers. Let's go write some acrostic poems and share them with the group.

Bag it up

Marie Claire of all places has a very decent article about condom use in their September issue.

For a totally better and awesomely informative look at contraceptive use in the United States in general, check this out.

And finally, if you're a woman and are looking for an alternative form of birth control, you could always consider this as well.

Self-aware

This past weekend Frisbee and I went to a birthday party. One of the other people that play frisbee was turning a fairly significant age. I'll leave it up to you to guess which number.

 

After the party had been going on for a few hours, I found myself hanging out with one of the frisbee folks that I find fairly attractive. For the sake of clarity, I'll call him Newcastle. So I was hanging out with Newcastle, and we decided to go outside where some of the other frisbee people were playing a game in the parking lot. On the way outside, I put my arm around him and asked if it was okay. I told him all the reasons that I think he's a pretty cool dude.

When we were heading back inside later, I was holding his hand. When we were almost back to the front door of the hotel, he stopped me and told me all the things he liked about me.

Which was pretty much everything, except for the fact that I'm married. I asked if it was because he didn't believe me when I said Now-hubby is okay with me flirting, etc. with other people. Newcastle said it's just not who he is - that he likes to go on "dinner and a movie" type dates, and be exclusive. I asked if it was because he actually didn't find me attractive and was just trying to let me down without hurting my feelings. He said I'm pretty much, "his perfect girl."

Then he asked if I wanted to kiss him.

Which I did. Up against the wall of the hotel. For at least the next five minutes. It was phenomenal. We eventually stopped because the whole me being married thing was "too much" for him to get over. These are the frustrating ones. The potential good things that I have to let go because there's a fundamental difference in the way the other person approaches and thinks about things. There's definite interest on both sides, but it just doesn't work. No matter how much I reassure and communicate and answer all the questions honestly.

 The super frustrating part came once we were back inside and he said, "Seriously, though. Where are the girls like you?" And I just wanted to scream. I am a girl like me. And I'm right here.