Poly dates

People have all sorts of questions about polyamory.  People hear that I’m polyamorous, and I explain what that means, and they want to know things.  People ask me things like ‘how are you so awesome?’ and ‘what can I do to be just like you?’ a lot* and I can only tell them that this is all quite difficult sometimes to maintain the awesome.

But totally worth it.  I mean, yeah we deal with jealousy, time-management issues, and sheer exhaustion sometimes, but then again I would not want to live any other way.  When it is all working out, I’m happy, my partners are happy, and their partners are happy.  It’s just a happiness clusterfuck.

I met Ginny more than 3-and-a-half years ago (married for more than a year) in a wonderful beer place in Decatur (outside of Atlanta) Georgia.  I’ve been with Gina more than 2 years now as well.  They are both central people in my life, and I enjoy being able to see them almost every day.  But even though they are around most of the time, we still need to set times aside to do things together.  We still need to have dates.

Last night, Ginny and I had dinner at a local great beer place–Eulogy–mostly because it’s closer to us than The Brick Store (the place where we met) and also has a great beer selection.  I love Belgian beers, the Dijon mussels there are amazing, and it gives us some time to talk while not distracted by the internet, bubble wrap**, or other things that we do at home on an average evening.

Also last night Wes and Gina went to Monk’s, which is probably the premier place in Philly for Belgian beer and mussels (although Gina apparently drank wine–heresy!).  so it seems we were all on a similar page last night.  Al the while, Jessie had a date over to watch Doctor Who (because what else would anyone watch?), rounding out the house.  All in all, a not so-rare night around here, where everyone has a date and it’s all natural.  Take that mononormativity!

And tonight, I have a date with Gina.   So far, Gina has requested I make her some pizza pretzels for dinner (because while driving a date home a few nights ago, I stopped at the late night pretzel factory to pick up some pretzels.  Because that’s a thing that exists here).  I made myself one the other days and took a picture, which compelled her to threaten me with painful death*** if I didn’t make her one.

It will also likely include me mixing some ridiculous drinks at our in-house bar (PolyBar Galactica!) and maybe even watching Babylon 5 (oh, that’s what else people should watch…).  In fact, for a while we would do things like that every Friday night, and it’s always a good time.

Oh, right, Ginny has a date tonight as well.  And for all I know, 6 people may show up and be in the hot tub.  It’s Friday after all.

Then tomorrow (you thought I was done, didn’t you?) there is the slut walk here in Philly.  I will probably catch some of that, perhaps with my newest partner (who will remained unnamed to save her from the indignity of being associated with me), and then we will all be going to a party tomorrow with some poly friends.  Three nights in a row with three different dates.  My life is awesome.

So, people might ask how poly people manage to keep all of this in order.  They may also wonder where we get the energy for it.  Well, the energy part comes in with how awesome I am****, but the time-management has a lot to do with tools such as Google calendar, with its ability to share your calendar and have other people’s events show up on yours.  This way, you know if your partner has plans some night (assuming they update their calendar) and can make time for the people you care about.

i just wanted to share some of our recent daily life, to show you that while this can be hard, it can be highly rewarding.  This works, if you want it to.  And while there are hard days (recently, there have been a few hard days and nights for me), I will keep moving forward.

I will keep enjoying life, because there will be a time when I can’t.*****

 

_____

*almost never.  OK, never.

** Seriously, Ginny loves the stuff.  The other night she was wearing some on her head and was popping it while watching some stupid show.  She does that a lot.

*** No painful death was actually voiced.  But it was heavily implied.  I’m not taking any chances.

**** OK, how awesome we all are.

***** Now this is a 5-star post! Sweet….