I keep wanting to write, but between the part that the little guy isn’t sleeping well and, well, the part where I really don’t know how to start this post, I keep putting it off.

So much for being a writer.

There have been some wonderful, challenging developments around here lately; those of you who see me on FetLife might know what those are.

I’ve mentioned my husband’s mistress on here…she’s an amazing, wonderful woman who I have come to love dearly. She makes me laugh, she makes me think, and is just a hell of a lot of fun to be around. It’s also a trip to see my 5-year-old daughter top her when she comes to visit.

I’ve mentioned my own dominant, Mr. Wycked, he of the gorgeous bondage furniture and toys, which I loved even when I first met him at Folsom Fringe 2007 and he explained why he wouldn’t make portable or easily-disguised furniture.

There’s another dynamic forming, however, that is not so easily categorized, but is very real. C (aka SamtheEagle on FetLife) was the first to identify it as this. The term we’re using is poly family. As DB refers to it, we’re a pleather family.

I have to admit – I have my own biases about the polyamory label; am a bit more comfortable with a variation found in The Ethical Slut called polyfidelity. Admittedly, my biases about the term polyamory have a lot to do with my assumptions that polyamory is a term people use to try to excuse promiscuity. And this is most decidedly not about being promiscuous. Within this grouping, C and I have intimacies and activities that are exclusive to us alone. As a group, we have discussed and continue to discuss what is okay in our minds for each of the pairings to do. The is the most extensive way in which we speak of what each couple does for a variety of reasons, I don’t wish to hear the details of C’s time with DeviantBitch; he doesn’t wish to hear much of what I do with Mr. Wycked, and we don’t really need specifics regarding what happens between Mr. Wycked and DB. We’re all maintaining our individual lives – we *don’t* all live together, nor do we plan on doing so at any point in the future. We try to each check in with each other and as a group on a regular basis – sometimes over coffee, sometimes over Sunday night family dinner with the kids present. Last weekend, with C gone, his mistress came up and gardened with me and the kids. Only she and the sweet girl child know what all is in that first raised bed; there’s quite a collection of seeds and plants of all sorts, it seems.

We’re not entirely sure what this means. It does mean that it’s increased the complexity and amount of communication that each of us has to choose to maintain. One might say that it increased the communication needs exponentially rather than in an additive way. Even as I write this, the next post is formulating in my mind that deals with some of the complexity and challenge of choosing to create and support a family-of-choice dynamic when moments of difficulty do not get resolved with communication, but instead fester and cause lingering hurt feelings.

One of the ways of describing this relationship, for me, is that of an intentional community, marked by committment to the members of the family. One of the things that encourages me is the committment we are making to each other and to the whole – that even when difficult issues come up, we will endeavor to choose love and move through them. We have all certainly heard horror stores of poly families of varying arrangements that have fallen apart and had disastrous consequences for all involved, including children of various family members. We have *every* intention of not letting this happen.

So – that is where things are now. It is amazing to walk this journey in a unique way with my spouse and my chosen family members, who I love deeply and who love me. It became profound last weekend, when I was having an unusually severe time with instant depresssion brought on by an extreme lack of sleep with C out of town during the last month while baby A’s canine teeth have been making their grand push through his gums; as a result, my sleep over the past month has come largely in 2 hour blocks, and that’s been when I’ve gotten any. Last Friday, as a result, I fell apart. It may have been the most severe experience of depression, certainly wtih very little warning/buildup, that I have ever had. C was on the phone listening, helpless to do anything – other than mobilizing the forces, as it were, and communicated on my behalf to Mr. W and DB (I tend to withdraw when I get depressed), and while he was talking me through the worst of it, they were preparing to come up here and help, if need be. (There wasn’t much they could do, and I eventually felt safe enough to stay on my own, but when baby A is uncomfortable, I’m the only one he wants, and there really isn’t anything anyone else can do; trying otherwise just escalates him). It was a profound experience of community, however, and something I’m not likely to forget soon.

I don’t know where this journey will take us. I know that I will be enriched for experiencing whatever it brings.

Love and blessings,
Raven