Emotion Management and Love, Sweet Love!

Cheers Sexy People!

Well, it’s been a helluva week! Lots of ups and downs and revelations. I’ve been thinking alot lately about emotion management and release, being authentic, and how love truly makes the world go round.

Have you ever had moments where you feel like you are being replaced? It brings up feelings of insecurity, self-worth, what-the-hell-am-I-doing-with-my-life type of thoughts. I am currently going through a HUGE transitional period in my life. Many of my readers know that I resigned from my day job months ago. But I’m doing this loooonnnnggg good-bye dance which is dragging it out, but it is slowly coming to a close. Replacing myself at a job that I have been at for almost 15 years is… strange. Like… REALLY STRANGE. I had to place the ads, screen the candidates, interview people… to replace me and all of my functions at this job. My replacement (a former employee of mine whom I adore) started Monday. Monday and Tuesday this week were filled with lots of anxiety for me as I moved out of my old office to make room. I’m filled with mixed emotions of sadness, trepidation, doubt, and also excitement at what’s next and what’s possible! I’m partly leaving this job to find a more authentic life!

But I’m finding leaving this job is turning out to be one of the hardest things I’ve ever done, certainly professionally. I was almost relieved to read an article earlier this week that stated that practicing polyamory is also up there as one of the hardest things a person can choose to do in their lifetime. It takes lots of work, swimming upstream against what mainstream society is doing and understands.  And mostly you have to just figure it out as you go, with not much information or mentors out there to effectively help you.

By late Tuesday, I don’t think I fully understood just how like nervous jelly my insides were, trying to show a brave face and get through the day. The night before my beau had a date over at our house. To manage my own emotions, when his date started cuddling and being super affectionate with him and I started to have emotions where I felt threatened – where I felt like I might be replaced – I simply left the room. It worked. I got myself involved with something in the kitchen and distracted myself. I don’t want to ask my boyfriend to not do something that he is enjoying… I simply need to manage my own needs and my own emotions to take care of myself. In that moment, it was leaving the room.

The following day, I was planning to spend the nite with my beau. I was looking forward to reconnecting. I told him I was having a rough day, dealing with this transition at work. I needed a huge hug to help hold me together. He talked to me throughout the day which eased my mind. I started to get excited about the future and what my life will look like once I taste sweet freedom – once I call the shots. As I was driving home, my beau said he’ll be back shortly as he had to drop his date off… in reality, this is not a big deal and I should not be surprised that she was still there. It turned out they both had the day off. But in that moment when I was already in a weakened state trying to pretend I was fine…. all of a sudden, I was NOT FINE. I slowly allowed myself to burst into tears. I wasn’t even 100% sure why I was crying. I went in the house and sobbed for over an hour. I was overwhelmed with grief, sadness, doubt, and feelings of being replaced… exhausted from feelings of threats in my life, exhausted from trying to dig out of these emotional holes.

But how do I reconcile this?

I chose to leave my job.

I chose to be polyamorous.

What the fuck is wrong with me? (but somehow this crying feels good, so I’m going with it)

I texted my good friend to ask her to please talk me off of this ledge that I found myself on (I later found out she was on a date with her poly, married boyfriend at the time, bless her heart). She reminded me that I was dealing with real feelings of loss… loss of my job, loss of my identity in that role / title, loss of the dysfunctional family that are my workmates. And it was normal that I was unraveling. I knew logically that I was not losing my polyamorous boyfriend to his poly-friendly date. But in a weakened state, my mind was playing tricks on me and I felt pushed over the edge. Apparently, I needed a big RELEASE. And out it came. Tear after tear. My beau came home to find me like that. I knew I couldn’t explain to him right away what was going on. I told him you might want to leave me alone for three hours until I “level out” and sort through what I’m going through. Instead, he came close to me, held me, talked to me, and patiently waited until I wanted to talk to him about what was causing me to be so upset. Eventually, I told him EVERYTHING. And he listened and commented and gave me some guidance, where it was needed, filled in the blanks where that was needed, and reassured me that indeed, I am not being replaced by his latest date. I am a big priority for him, and he wants to be there for me, emotionally and physically — that we are fine. After several hours of talking and all of that release… though I was completely exhausted, I felt relief.

Sometimes you just gotta cry it out. We are human. Sometimes we hurt. Sometimes we need a hug.

The next day, I bought flowers for both my beau – for being so awesome and consoling and talking to me ad nauseum when I needed it – and for my husband – because he has been super stressed out lately with his job. He has said to me, “I just can’t deal with one more thing right now – my head would explode!” So I replied, “aren’t you glad that we are polyamorous so that my beau could help me manage my negative emotions so that you didn’t have to deal with it?!” He said: amen to that! Our poly family works maybe in a strange way to some. But it works for us.

Yesterday I had a wonderful day. Work was fine. I felt respected and heard. In the evening, I spent a few hours working on my new life and my new creative website. Then my husband, beau and our dear friend spent some quality, sexy time together, in and out of the hottub. And it was effing awesome. No jealousy. No weirdness. Just giggles, smiles and some cigar smoking too.

I never knew this is where I’d end up in my unusual life. I’m so happy I have my funny poly family, my funny poly friends near and far, as well as all of my monogamous ones as well. Wonders never cease. Sometimes when we follow our nose, it takes us to the right place.

Amen to that!

This article has been floating around on the polyamorous forums on Facebook, and I enjoyed reading it this week. Maybe you will too if you have not read it yet. Here’s an excerpt that spoke to me:

My hypothesis is that the more shifts that occur within a polyamory network, the more jealousy that occurs, which then requires higher degrees of individualistic emotion management.  In other words, individual freedom in relationships has an evil twin of individual constraint of emotion.

We can reduce jealousy by making it everyone’s responsibility to support and recognize all existing relationships within the community.  Polyamory experts advise a jealous person to turn to his/her partner for reassurance that their relationship is important. But social network research indicates that dyads need support from the networks in which they are embedded; support that shows the relationship is recognized and valued.  Polyamory experts say the purpose of meeting your partner’s partners is to soothe your own jealousy or to find out if you happen to like the person (once again, the individualistic, what’s in it for me?).  But from a social standpoint, the purpose of meeting a partner’s partner is to make a contribution to reducing jealousy in your community by letting the person know that you recognize and value of the relationship they have with your partner.  A sense of security in a relationship is dependent upon the community having the relationship’s back, and each person can contribute to that effort, and receive its benefits.

You can find the entire article here:
http://www.salon.com/2014/07/14/jealous_of_what_solving_polyamorys_jealousy_problem/

How about you? Do you have any techniques for emotion management, when they get the better of you? How are you living a more authentic life? How does your polycule support you in times of stress?

Wishing you peace, love and happiness,
(and thrilling, fun sex too)

Kitty