It's Complicated- By Amanda Torrey

I have a girlfriend who is about 10 years younger than me.  She is a compelling woman who probably wields more power than she’s comfortable managing.  We’ve been good friends since David and I were first married.  There were three of us then who were young, fairly newly married couples, but for whatever reason she attached and I don’t know how to say it…but linked into me.  In time her accountant husband was hired by a mid-sized oil company and through her organization and his drive and ambition, they became rich.  I’m sure that being such a handsome couple helped a lot in his steady promotion but be that as it may, predictably they faded from us, though she would call me once a year to get “an Amanda fix.”  David and I got heavily involved in the Chicago kink and then the magickal community which did not suit the life they were carving out for their children.  Eventually even the one call a year stopped, and in fact she didn’t answer any of my inquiring emails.  I completely understood.  The funny thing was I could feel her flood my heart and soul at the same time every year.  It would burn into my brain and at those times I would look at the computer, knowing I had to connect even if it would not be acknowledged.

She finally called one day a decade later.  Apparently, as her husband got farther up in the company, he lost his hard-on for her.  Eventually she divorced him after 4 years of celebacy and found another man whose libido matched hers.  Her husband didn’t fight the divorce, understanding completely that she needed more out of her marriage than he could offer so he now shares all his wealth with her and she has the freedom to “be.”  My friend is not a slothful person.  She’s a solid runner, for years rode and showed horses, became fluid in spanish, travels the world with her boyfriend, is now a licensed masseuse and is finishing her bachelors in Psychology.

Her husband is amazed that where he has dated 14 women in the 3 years they’ve been separated, she’s picked and stayed with one man.  I told her she was poly and she disagreed saying she is not having sex with her ex-husband.  I argued that he trusts her with his deepest inner feelings, her judgment in running their large house and they continue to run their house together.  I know he’d take her back in a heartbeat if he could, but she doesn’t want to go back to that life…even if their bond is much stronger than simply exes.  Clearly he still deeply loves her.  Neither of them are hiding their love life from their lovers or each other.  In my eyes and language, that makes her poly.

I have another friend I met with her lover at a pagan gathering.   This woman was married to a politico, by which I mean his career is working in the office of an alderman.  Her husband is younger than she is, they have no children but, she has a hunger for artistic and magickal communities.  She took an older man as a lover and as he was also married and pagan, they both became “magickal partners”at a witches’ coven she attended.   They invited me to their bed, but even if I wasn’t bisexual, I was more interested in my friendship with her than I was with him.  She never lied to her husband and in fact told him about her new situation from the very beginning.  Because she was so open, he believed he was being cuckolded later explaining to me that his world doesn’t have a context for these sorts of opportunities.  She came to me because Terra Incognita was openly poly in the pagan community and wanted me to help him understand.  I ended up participating in a trist with them as well.

David and I hosted a Tantric workshop with the Lessins from Hawaii.  They were expensive, but I encouraged them to pay the fee for him to come for the weekend.  I’d just met Kristin and this workshop became was an excellent opportunity to get to know her better and see if she was honestly “priesthood” material.  The husband did come for the weekend and ended up partnering with Kristin.  The Lessins did a good job in giving him the tools for expansive loving and he did begin to develop his own relationships leaving her free to enjoy her lover guilt-free.  If I was poly with this woman, her lover and her husband separately, I see my bond with her, not with either of them even as the sex was with them not with her.

Since this post is about a point, not a story, it’d be irrelevant to tell you that her lover ended up dying of cancer and her husband left his other relationships to be with her.  :)

Labels are dangerous.  Communication and writing is equally dangerous — because without context and the story, there is no meaning.  I don’t usually go to dream circles, but I met a woman at a dream circle last night.  She was a successful career woman with an equally successful husband who came to this gathering with her daughter.  I was part of her 4 person group in our evening’s workings.  This was a fascinating woman.  This last summer she grew a butterfly garden raising monarchs from their beginnings, tagging them and setting them free.  Some of her tags were found later in Mexico.  She asked for my email since I was interested in photographs she took of the process.

She told me she didn’t see the purpose to everything having meaning anymore.  She used to be involved in tarot and astrology…but not now.  I wanted to tell her the Universe speaks a language of symbols which you can read in all sorts of places, tarot and astrology being just two of them.  Her daughter wants to know more about us because she’s confused about her sexuality.  Relationships have meaning.  Connecting dots are important.  The dots are really there.  Poly is simply a dot in a larger matrix (I hope I’m  not getting trite here).  The difference between my interactions with this woman and my married friend is sex. In this way I agree sex differentiates these two women in my life, even if my interest is equally intense.

Instead of forcing this post to get bigger as my attempts to define multi-dimensional relationships becomes futile, let’s just accept there is a valid way to view partners outside a traditional construct.  To do otherwise is not giving human potentials the credit we’re due for being multi-dimensional.  I’m happy I’m a human being with all my flaws and triggers.  If I’m not filling my potentials and reaching new opportunities in my life, that’s my own fault.  Yes it’s complicated, but its well worth the price.