Healing

The day we were partnered up, the girl I rolled around on the floor with regressed to be a Chicago cop during the time of the Prohibition. Her accent and mannerisms changed during the regression, she remembered names with such detail, and her emotions were so strong that I felt like I was watching a movie, and I was in complete awe and suspense. The cop’s name was Frank, and I was very fond of his character.

The next morning I wrote on her arm “I (heart) Frank.” She then wrote on her other arm “I (heart) Vera.” Shortly after that she turned to me and said “You were the girl!” There had been a girl in Frank’s life, a beautiful girl, whose heart he had broken because she had wanted to get married but he couldn’t leave his sick mother’s home. My classmate said that the first time she saw me in the beginning of the week, she had thought “There is the beautiful blond girl” even though I wasn’t blond. For the rest of the week, she and I sat next to each other and cuddled a lot, and I really liked being close to her. Like I said, I heart Frank.

Later that day, I talked to Kean on the phone and found out about his sexual activities while I was gone, and there had been some, and I didn’t sleep well AT ALL that night. The next morning I knew that I had to bring this up with the group during check-in. I was ashamed for what I was going through–the fear, the jealousy, the insecurity–and I was afraid that the women were going to have judgments about nonmonogamy, but I knew that I had to do it.

I was super nervous when it was my turn to speak, and I was shaking. I said that I was in an open relationship and that my boyfriend was seeing other people, and that it was really hard for me to deal with my feelings while I was so far away from him and didn’t get the chance to reconnect and reground myself with him. I started realizing that the core issue behind my struggles was lack of self-love and lack of trust in the universe, not trusting that things were going to work out okay for me. I started crying.

The women were very loving and supportive about it. Some offered advice and hugs, and one of them said that she heard me say “I just don’t have peace” and “I just can’t trust” and she asked me if it was okay for her to heal those beliefs for me. I said yes.

That night I slept a lot better than the nights before. I did wake up in the middle of the night but I felt peaceful and trusting, and when I thought of Kean, I felt nothing but love.

Lemons and compersion

A lot has been going on in my little brain. I have had to admit to myself and others that I am extremely insecure, jealous, possessive and territorial. My claws have been coming out, I have been pacing around my room, I have been getting pissed off and said hurtful things, I have been losing sleep.

Why? Fear of loss. Fear of not being enough.

I have been trying to control a situation that needs allowing. I have been trying to set boundaries where no boundaries can make me feel safe. I have been asking for reassurance that nobody can give me.

Then there are the moments of peace and clarity. They come almost as often as the freak-out moments. In the peaceful moments I am not worried, I am not scared, I know that everything is going to be okay no matter what happens. My psyche has been very black and white lately, and I have almost no control over which color it is in any given moment.

In one of the moments of peace, I called up the person-in-question, apologized and said that I have been an asshole and to please enjoy my boyfriend, and I meant it. I really did; I was filled with love for all of us and wanted to be in a cuddle pile involving all of us.

A week later I freaked out again because of some body language that made me squirmy. At least, after the phone conversation all feelings of resentment and animosity were gone, and they have not returned.

All that was left after that was fear. It feels like a fear of death. I have been quoting to my clients something from The Witch of Portobello:

“Anyone who tries to imprison love will cut off the spring that feeds it, and the trapped water will grow stagnant and rank.”

I know this. I believe it. I am trying my best not to imprison it, but to allow it, to give it the freedom it needs to flourish. It’s just really hard because of the fear of the loss of the love.

I talked to my aunt last week, and she told me to transform all my fear into love. Whenever I feel the fear, she said to send unconditional love to it. She said every time I do this, my ego will look like it has just bitten into a really sour lemon. So now I keep picturing my ego with a sour lemon face all the time. It makes me laugh. And it really works.

I am feeling love more and more; the fear is not as strong.

Last night shit hit the fan again. I was pacing, growling. Then I meditated on unconditional love. I calmed down. I sent them love. I felt full of love.

By the time Kean got to my house, I had questions and I had things I needed to talk about but I was also full of love. I took a light-hearted approach. I asked what happened and how he felt. I did this without the tension that is usually present. And he responded with much more honesty and sincerity, with less defensiveness and caution. And the honesty made me feel good. Honesty is the remedy to all the worst case scenarios I have been coming up with in my head.

What I am working on now is compersion. When I first started pondering open relationships–before I ever considered one for myself–I knew that the only way it can really work is if you can be genuinely happy for your partner when they get some. That feeling of happiness, of sharing the joy of your partner being with somebody else, is compersion, and that is my ultimate goal. I have been getting more and more glimpses of it, and I know that I am headed there.

Today I feel really good. I feel in love (not in fear), I feel connected, I feel like we have reached a new plateau of support and communication. I feel like we are team, and when one of us scores, we both win. Now if only I can hold on to that feeling. I am getting there.

A year ago I knew intuitively that I had to try out being in an open relationship to see if it is for me. I think it is for me, even if now it is still very hard. Our relationship is getting stronger and stronger, and it is getting more and more exciting. New sexual energy is entering our beds, and we can both feel it. There is no stagnancy, no rut.

From Opening Up by Tristan Taormin:

“[...] they value their freedom and the freedom of their partners, and with that freedoms comes, for some, a greater sense of security. It sounds like a contradiction, but one of the most profound things I have learned from people in nonmonogamous relationships is how confident and content they feel about the strength of their partnerships. One woman said she knows her partners are in a relationship because they want to be, not out of obligation.”

I am really starting to feel that, and it’s beautiful.