True kudos to the organizers of the Reason Rally for a really fabulous lineup, specifically the great representation of women here (not just speakers but discussion of misogyny and all of the important women’s issues happening now…as they have been for an incredibly long time).  Greta Christina (freethoughtblogs.com/gretachristina) is speaking now and is the first speaker to really gety us riled up talking about the important question, “why are atheists angry?”  And it’s because, “maybe we have legitimate things to be angry about.”  Yep.

But, seriously, it’s Adam Savage from Mythbusters.  Yes, I want him to blow something up in the name of science…but what kind of chemist would I be if that weren’t the case?

In case I’m not really selling the tshirts, or Pepperidge Farm Goldfish Space Crackers enough (clearly I want them to sponsor us…and they totes should. Pepperidge Farm remembers, yo!), here’s a nice shot of not only one of the versions of the tshirts you can get, but also a rocketship cracker that looks like the website symbol.  AMAZING!

As I said, we’re all wearing our fancy tshirts (check out the link on the right of this page to get one of your VERY OWN!  You don’t want to be the only one without a shirt do you…DO YOU???) which say “Atheist, Polyamorous, Skeptics” on the front.

Between sets, a gentleman approached us to get a good look at the shirts.  I noticed him looking and said in a welcoming way, “Hi!  I noticed you checking out our tshirts!”

“Yeah, I was wondering.  I assumed at first that you had a lascivious for that word ‘polyamorous’, but you just mean you love everybody, right?”

Wes: No, we mean the lascivious thing.

Me: Yeah, polyamory like dating multiple people.

Then he walked away after seemingly thinking we were offended or something.  We really weren’t!  If you see us, we really like talking about all the things mentioned on our shirts…also lots of other stuff.  We’re quite pleasant 🙂

Also, Space Goldfish have made their first appearance.

Hello!

Ok, I’ll write more than that, if you insist.  While I have battery on my telephonic device, I’ll be blogging about the things going on at this already impressive event.

1.  Shaun, Ginny, Wes, and I got into line for the tents that house the tables for the various secular organizations (secular swag, ftw!).  The line was long and seemingly unmoving.  For whatever reason, everyone thought Ginny knew what was going on and asked her what we were waiting for (I assume it’s the glasses and knowing expression).  I found myself completely amazed by the fact that everyone asked first what we were waiting for before getting into line…no herd following.  To me, this is the biggest difference between a free thinker and, well, everybody else.

2. People’s signs say things like “I believe in life before death”, a picture of American coins with “In Science We Trust”, and general sentiments expressing that we’re happy and moral without a god.  It’s totes controversial apparently.

3.  I am impressed with the general sentiment of sex positivity here and, so far, focuses on women’s autonomy.

4.  The sound quality here is frakkin’ incredible.  Shut up.  I’m imprssed by that crap, ok?

5.  Wes, Shaun, Ginny and I are all wearing matching tshirts for Polyskeptic.com because we’re AWESOME and…ADORABLE…OR SOMETHING.

More to come!

The year was 1990 and I was starting 5^th grade at Public Nerd Academy.  The more popular name for Public Nerd Academy is J.R. Masterman Laboratory and Demonstration School.  In other words, a magnet school for people who scored high in standardized tests and excelled in traditional education settings.  I had spent September of that year at my elementary school, awaiting a spot at Masterman.  I had applied late and was only going because all of my friends abandoned me to go be smart somewhere else.

In a matter of days, it became clear that I needed to get out of my elementary school.  I was doing well, but with minimal effort.  On day one, my teacher knew that I was waiting to leave and she tried to shame me and break my confidence about the move.  “You think you want to go to a school like that, but those kids spend all their time in the library!  You won’t last a day!”  On day 5, after I had shown an uncanny ability to memorize boring facts under pressure (including a correction of one of her pieces of data), accelerated understanding of proper family tree notation, and keen comprehension of place value, she started changing her tune.  “I hope you get in there.  You’re going to be really bored here.”

Finally, after my mom wrote a scathing letter to the school board (someone had transposed my test scores and it was affecting my ability to be accepted into the school), I got a spot.  On my last day at my elementary school, my teacher was all smiles.  My dad had come to school with me that day and at some point we found ourselves in the principal’s office (scandal!).  The principal then attempted to shame me and break my confidence too.  “Here you are a big fish in a little pond!  There you will be just the opposite!” “I hear your best friend hates it there and wants to come back here!”

Both points were loads of crap, and even at 9 years old, I was aware of it.  My dad did not need to defend me, as I looked the principal straight in the eye and said, “I’m not learning anything here.  I’m alright with being a little fish.  Also, my friend doesn’t want to come back here.  She’s happy there.” And with that, my dad signed some papers and I started up at Masterman the next week.

On my first day I was greeted with a whole cornucopia of new information.  Some of it seemed useless in retrospect, but it was interesting and it made me enjoy class.  Class was more difficult.  We were learning things that I didn’t know and I had to think a lot.  It was a whole new world!  I thought I had found a place completely different from the one from which I came.  I had no fear of showing my intelligence.  I had no fear of speaking up, of speaking out, of being different.  I trusted that the caliber of people I would now encounter would generally be higher now, especially the adults.

Yeah, I was 9.  What do you want?  Of course I had no fear of these things…I had only been there a couple of days and none of my notions had been challenged yet!  Also, as a 9 year old, I respected adults, but I only really trusted my parents because they weren’t full of crap.  If they told me someone was, in fact, full of crap, I believed them (and they were usually right).

My 5^th grade teacher, Mrs. Levine, was, as it turned out, not a high caliber individual and facilitated my learning of a very important life lesson.

Throughout my education, my mother has been defiant about certain things.  She is not a fan of the education system and thinks that people’s obsession and pretention about education (especially higher education) is akin to religious zealotry.  I don’t disagree with her on this point, though we have had some conflict since I decided to go to college (I wanted to be a chemist, which requires higher learning than highschool can provide and hands on experience that books cannot provide).  As such, she was not really a PTA kind of mom.  Obviously, she wanted me to go to school and was involved with my education at home (helping me with homework and such), but she had no desire to be involved at the school otherwise.  She didn’t want to make cupcakes for meetings or hear people whine about the text books or whatever it is people go on about at these things.  At Masterman, it was called the Home and School Association and every year, the school’s goal was to get 100% of parents to be involved.  To join, your parent had to fill out a form and pay $5.

If your class managed to get 100% enrollment, the class was rewarded with…

You guessed it!  A pizza party!  DOMINOS FOR ALL!

So, I go home my first week of school and tell my mom about this, though I let out the part about the pizza party because, well, I’ll admit something here: I didn’t really care if we got a pizza party or not.  If my mom wanted to join The Association (the home and school one…not the wussy band from the 60’s.  Though if that had been the case, I would have really tried to convince her.  Who doesn’t want to sing “Windy”?), great, but if she didn’t, who was I to force her? It’s her time and money (even if it’s just $5).  As expected, she didn’t want to be involved, so I didn’t bring in the form.

A few days before the deadline, Mrs. Levine ominously called 4 students up to her desk.  I was one of them.  She looked at us with a “knowing” look that was tinged with disappointment.  She spoke.

“As you know, the deadline for joining the Home and School Association is coming up.  You are the only 4 students to have not brought in your forms and pay.  I didn’t want you to be the cause of the class being denied a pizza party, so I filled out the forms and paid $5 for each of you.”

We all looked at each other in a confused fashion.  And then she said,

“I expect to be paid back before the party.”

I was astounded, to say the least.  When I was 9, I wasn’t really cursing yet, but had I been a cursing type at that time, I definitely would have asked the important question, “Are you fucking kidding me?”

I don’t know what this woman thought was going on, but she seemed to be in complete denial of the various circumstances that led to our parents not joining the Home and School Association.  In my case, it was out of principle.  My mom didn’t want to be on the Home and School Association, so she didn’t join.  How can it be simpler than that? The point of the contest was that the school wanted as many parents involved as possible.  That’s a noble goal, but if someone doesn’t want to be involved, they have their reasons and YOU CAN’T MAKE THEM.  That seems to go against the idea of a volunteer organization.  As for the other kids, sure, it could be simple forgetfulness.  Or it could be that $5 is a hardship for the family.  We were going to PUBLIC school after all.  Theoretically, you’re not supposed to have to pay for your education there.  Theoretically, you were going to school to be educated and the money required to get the kid clothes and school supplies might have tapped them out, especially in the beginning of the year.  Sometimes you just don’t have 5 bucks.  Or maybe the kids that didn’t pay have terrible relationships with their parents and couldn’t bring themselves to tell them about it.  Who knows?  Mrs. Levine certainly didn’t and she took it upon herself to go against the seeming wishes of the parents simply to win at a dumb contest for a trivial prize.

I often wish that I was the person then that I am now.  Over the years after encountering many instances of authoritative idiocy, I started to speak up and call people on their crap (not in my personal life so much but certainly in my school and professional life).  If I had been this person, I would have laughed in her face and called her out in front of the whole class and explain to her that she had just taught us a really shitty lesson about how to get your way.

I went home and told my mom about this and she was flabbergasted.  I think she may have said, “Are you fucking kidding me?” and I told her that I wasn’t and that my teacher is ridiculous.  My mom refused to pay and I agreed with her.  There was just so much out about this that I couldn’t disagree with the decision.

So, it went on for several days that I didn’t bring in Levine’s money.  As it turned out, my class was the only class to have “achieved” 100% enrollment and Levine was walking around exceedingly smug about it.  This was, of course, disgusting because she had cheated to win and was in charge of educating a bunch of 9 year olds.  Every few days she would ask us about our payment.  I told her that my mother didn’t want to join.  One day during a quiet period in class (we were reading or something), she came up behind me at my desk, leaned down and spoke into my ear.

“Gina, you still haven’t paid me back the $5.  The pizza party is tomorrow.  If you don’t bring me the $5 by then, I’m sorry, but I can’t allow you to go to the pizza party.  It just wouldn’t be fair to the other students.”

And then she skulked away.

I was, once again, astounded.  This was my teacher?  Look, I know.  If you elect not to participate, then you don’t participate.  But this was a parent thing.  The woman knew this and was manipulating me to feel badly so that I would go home and guilt trip my mother.  This woman was one of the first adults to show themselves as completely and utterly full of shit.  It was an important day in my development.

My mother and I had a very open relationship growing up.  She would ask how my day was and I would tell her, in great detail.  We talked about everything.  So, of course I told her about this incident.  She couldn’t believe it.  “Really?  They’re going to punish YOU because I don’t want to be on the stupid association?  REALLY?” She went to her purse and pulled out a $5 bill and gave it to me.  She thought about writing a letter and making a big deal of it, but figured that would just bring the place down on me and decided against it.  So Levine won that round.

The next year, we had to back to her classroom to get our assignments for 6^th grade.  She was in a neck brace.  Apparently, she got whiplash falling off a dinghy.  That was possibly the funniest thing I had ever heard.

I got her back that year because there was a holiday door decorating contest on our floor.  I walked down to see what Levine’s class had done and it was clear that Levine had, once again, done the whole thing herself in order to win a fucking pizza party.  I went back to my classroom and sat down with the teacher (who I had a really good relationship with) and told her  this entire story and then I said, “We are going to win this door decorating contest and we’re going to win with student-done work.  Also, FYI, tacky always wins.”  So everyone in the class made cut outs and various decorations and we hung up lights and giant balls of tinsel and we won that motherfucking pizza party fair and square.

And it was the best slice of Dominos I have ever had.

Thinking about this incident in conjunction with the teacher and principal at my elementary school attempting to make me feel unworthy and unconfident, I just am amazed that people like this are allowed to have any influence on children.  At the age, children are so impressionable.  It is the time that really decides how socially adjusted they’re going to be.  If authoritative people are telling them that they are not good enough or that they are so full of themselves to acknowledge that they are smart or that being a rational outspoken person makes a detriment to the welfare of the group, they will believe it.  If you tell them that cheating to win just to look good, they will adopt that into their own ethics.  Or, if you as an authoritative figure show yourself to be untrustworthy and vindictive, kids learn that too.  They learn that respect should not be guaranteed and won’t be given away freely.

We live in a time when parents are struggling to keep a home afloat.  Both parents work a lot of the time and the time spent with their children is often minimized.  Parents influence as much as they can, but once kids are in school their teachers are the parent figures.  We spend 13 years in these institutions and form so much of our identities there.  We have to be able to trust our teachers to do right by us and so often they fail.

I do think a lot of teachers try very hard to be successful.  I have often thought about taking up the profession but it just seems like such a daunting task (much like becoming a parent).  I am intimidated by the fact that even if you are the best teacher in the world, you will not reach everyone, you cannot save everyone.  I do think that many of the people that choose to do it are generally a noble sort.  I don’t believe the old adage, “Those who can’t, teach”.  Teaching is a skill that many people do not possess.  However, choosing to be a teacher doesn’t mean that you deserve automatic respect and reverence.  You need to show your students they can trust you and you need to encourage them to think critically at all times.  Breaking down their confidence when they acknowledge that they need more challenge is NOT useful.  Teaching that dishonesty and manipulation is the best way to win is completely detrimental to satisfying success.  Teaching that it’s ok to assume what’s best for someone without ever talking to them teaches you how to be terrible at relationships.  As a teacher, you have just as much influence over kids’ ideas as their parents.  Sometimes even moreso.

If they don’t learn the important things in school, they are handicapped for the rest of their lives as they try to catch up.

My desk phone rang around 3pm.

I started off telling Wes and Jessie this story last night in the same fashion and Wes said, “That’s a pretty dramatic beginning to a story…”  I felt like I was about to let them down.  The story wasn’t going to be that dramatic.  But if it makes you feel better, you can read it in your best film noir voice.

 I’ve been in a “Wah! I don’t wanna be productive at work!  IT’S NICE OUTSIDE!” kind of mood, so I pondered pretending I wasn’t here.  I mean, it’s plausible thing.  I could be in the lab doing very important scientific things or not so important scientific things (like analyzing glitter or something).  But then I thought, “No, no, no.  The minute the lab is unresponsive, everyone gets all up in arms about it and there will be a meeting and I just don’t want another fucking meeting…unless there will be pizza…which there likely will be tomorrow.”

Side note: I don’t know about you, but I remember how the faculty at my middle school totally manipulated us with pizza parties.  When you are 10 or 11, there is seemingly no greater prize than the pizza party…and they always ordered Dominos!  We were so young and naïve.  I mean, Domino’s?  Their whole ad campaign right now basically says, “We know our pizza is awful, but we acknowledge that and are really trying to improve!  Artisan crusts!” But back then, if you were the kid that jeopardized the class’ chance at that party, you were screwed.  I have an entire story about the time I was that kid, actually…seems like an excellent way to talk about indoctrination on here.  BUT I DIGRESS.  The point is the meeting will be acceptable if there is pizza, but otherwise, fuck it.

So, not wanting yet another meeting about how the lab responsible for everyone else’s irresponsibility (bitter!), I picked up the phone.

It was a coworker with whom I had shared a bit of information about my upbringing.  I had lunch with her months ago and as I was engaged at the time, the subject of my changing my name (or in my actual case, not changing my name) came up.  One thing led to another and I explained that I was raised by an independent, feminist, strong woman who also believed in a lot things in the sphere of astrology and numerology.  Long story short, one of the reasons that my mother changed her name from her married name to her maiden name was because her maiden name was numerologically preferable.  I don’t remember how that worked, but the lesson that I took from it was that you don’t have to change your name when you marry.  But what my coworker got from this story was that I knew a lot about astrology.

One of the problems with being a good public speaker is that you can convince people that you really know what you’re talking about while only espousing a few facts.  I’m not saying that I do this all the time, but I think I have led people to believe that I know a great deal about things that I don’t, simply because I have more than 5 minutes of knowledge about them.  It could also be that I simply know more about astrology than a lot of people…but that doesn’t mean I know a lot!  As my boss would say, I know enough to be dangerous.  In our business, that usually means that you know enough to get into trouble but not enough to get out of trouble.

Anyway, I pick up the phone and she starts off by asking, “Your mom is really into astrology right?”

“Yes…”

“OK, well, I was reading this thing and apparently on my birthday (which was earlier this month), the planets aligned in exactly the way they were the day I was born and…(something something something) it’s called a solar return.”

She wanted to know if I knew how to interpret solar returns and if I knew anything about them.  I attempted to look up information about them on my work computer, but the internet filter here blocked them as websites about “alternative spirituality/belief”.  Sure, I could go look on my phone, but I’m not going to.

“No, I don’t know anything about solar returns.  I haven’t spoken to my mom about that stuff in a long time and I don’t think she ever mentioned them.”

“The website wants a bunch of personal information before it gives me my predictions and I don’t want to do that.”

“Good idea.”

“It’s probably just gimmicky…”

“Yes, probably.”

Yeah, I know.  I should have taken the opportunity to say something stronger like, “YES, IT IS MOST CERTAINLY A LOAD OF HORSESHIT!” or, even better, I could have started talking about The Dark Crystal and how if the planets are aligned just right, the crystal shard will illuminate and bring peace to the darkened valley.  Then throw out a little strained “I am still emperor!!!” and “TRIAL BY STONE!” and no one would laugh because neither Peter nor Shaun would be around.

This whole thing got me thinking about the fact that the belief systems surrounding your upbringing follow you, no matter how little you subscribe to them.  By no means was my “leaving of astrology” cathartic or dramatic.  My parents just know that at some point I fully embraced a skeptical, scientific view point on the ugliness and beauty of the world.  But my mom still says astrological things very matter-of-factly to me and, well, I don’t really argue.

But regardless of how little influence the actual beliefs had on my morality or point of view, they were still a very large part of my life as a kid.  The knowledge is there.  The mindset is understood.  Much like someone raised in a classic religious setting, I understand how people in that setting think (in terms of their spirituality anyway.  I do not claim to be able to predict, say, how they feel about broccoli or Walmart).

When you are raised around the New Age, you find yourself replacing the word “god” with “the Universe”.  Instead of saying “God will provide” you say “The Universe will provide you with the things you truly want and need”. 

When you study chemistry at Drexel University, you are required to attend Physical Chemistry I through Physical Chemistry IV.  In that time you are introduced to quantum mechanics/quantum theory and the wonderful concept of entropy.  When I learned about these things in depth (and I say that relatively tongue in cheek as you could study quantum mechanics for a life time with my particular brain and never truly learn about it depth.) the “Universe” made considerably more sense to me.

Don’t worry.  I’m not going to suddenly reveal that I am a huge believer in “The Secret” or Deepak Chopra.  No.  Just no.

I didn’t combine the concept of the New Age “intelligent Universe” and the Universe in terms of quantum theory.  I replaced the New Age concept with the scientific concept, with all its chaos and disregard for what kind of guitar I want to find at the used guitar store today. (When I would find exactly what I was looking for on the first try, my dad would say that the Universe knows or something.  I liked the idea but I didn’t like it enough to incorporate New Age faith into my life any more than classic religious faith).

Of course, I wouldn’t expect anyone I’ve talked to superficially to be aware of my journey from knowing about astrology and somewhat buying it to rejecting it and not giving a crap (now THERE is a subtitle for a book).  But clearly knowing this particular piece of my history really stuck with this person, even though we discussed it almost a year ago.  Belief systems tend to leave indelible labels.  I assume that people here who know this about me just lump it in with my “free spirit” and “off the beaten path” persona.  People are probably much more comfortable with thinking that I obey the stars than knowing that I am an atheist.

I guess that’s fine for now…as long as I don’t get any calls asking about what I know about crystals.

*Working on witty scientifically obscure responses…NOW*

Yesterday, Wes, Jessie and I had a lovely poly family and another friend over for dinner.  The poly family consists of a triad structured similarly to us.  The married couple in the triad have an adorable 3 year old who ran around the whole time trying to get our dog, Lola, to play with her.  Lola must be getting old because she just couldn’t keep up with this kid.  When she wasn’t trying to convince the dog to go with her places, she was wandering around trying to catch one of the numerous pantry moths that are fluttering around our house.  Incidentally, this was a favorite pastime of a few other guests as well.  One thing I’ll say about coming over to our house: There’s something for everybody.

At some point, we started talking about my blog and our friend, H, said that some of the posts I had going for a while had her worried or at least feeling badly about my attitude towards myself.  She pointed out that I am very hard on myself.  If I recall correctly, there was a stint where I was going through some bouts with jealousy and other negative feelings.  I was feeling generally down and, as it turned out, it was because I was misidentifying the root causes.  The jealousy I was experiencing last month (?) was about wanting to be able to spend more time with Shaun and Ginny.  I loved that Jessie lives with us, but I wanted to be able to spend that kind of time, share that kind of space with Shaun and Ginny as well. The circumstances of our lives right now mean that this isn’t practical at all, but it doesn’t change the desire.  Once I identified what was really going on with me, the feelings dissipated and I felt fine.  But sometimes it’s difficult to discern.

When Wes and I first started practicing polyamory, I, as I have mentioned, had a lot of issues with jealousy and insecurity.  At that time, I would define it as pretty classic jealousy.  “What? I’m not good enough for you?” “That person you like is pretty different than me.  Do you want me to be like that?” “It’s only a matter of time before you leave me.”  Stuff like that. People who have tendencies towards jealousy (especially jealousy born from insecurity…which is likely what it is most of the time) have thoughts akin to this, regardless of relationship structure.  Being committed to making polyamory work for us simply meant that I had to identify these thoughts and feelings and expose them for what they were: Bullshit.  To do anything less would extend the amount of time the polyamory was stressful.  The rational part of me knew that if I could punch through the bullshit I heaped on myself that poly would be a source of happiness for me.  Those who read my entries on here and on my other blog know that this has certainly turned out to be the case.   

But I couldn’t just get there.  As I thought more about it and worked through things, I realized that jealousy behaves very much like a disease. It has no value except to harm….

Well, let me not exactly put it that way.  It’s not so much of a disease as it is an addiction.  If you have a partner who indulges your jealousy, then having a jealous fit can result in them saying nice things to you, reassuring you, taking you out…whatever.  While that can be nice, you’re coercing this behavior because you “used”.  When you use an addictive drug, you do it to feel the high, but there is a cost.

At least that’s the way I look at it.  So yeah, I can see why someone might think I’m often pretty hard on myself.  I remember talking to a friend a while ago whilst in the middle of a jealous fit and while I tried to get it together and get centered in reality again, she said something to the effect of “You have every right to make demands.  You can negotiate.” I responded, “No, there aren’t compromises here.”

When I say that, I do not mean to give the impression that whatever Wes’ says goes and therefore there are no compromises.  I say this to mean that I have an extremely high standard for myself.  I look at jealousy and possessiveness as highly negative things, highly destructive things.  I do not have tolerance for them in myself.

This is not to say that I don’t feel them.  This is not to say that it isn’t a struggle.  This is simply to say that I do not feel justified in feeling them.  I do not accept them as “just a normal part of our relationship”.  They are things to recognize and work through in a healthy way.  But they are not cute.  They don’t mean that my love is stronger.  The costs are not worth the potential (fleeting) benefit.

What needs to be understood here is that I am incredibly happy with my life right now.  A large reason for this happiness is that I have learned to deal with the negative things my mind comes up with to distract me from the positive.  Polyamory has been a huge motivator in getting me to really face my fears and issues head on and plow through.

But it is never over.  Self-improvement, at least for me, is generally about fighting my natural tendencies to do things that cause me stress and unhappiness.  If I’m not paying attention, I can easily slip back into those behaviors.  So yes, I am hard on myself because I love being happy and my efforts have resulted in my not having very many times where I have to be hard on myself.  Slipping into a jealous fit just doesn’t happen all that often anymore, whereas it used to happen every day.  There was a time several years ago, long before polyamory came into the picture, when I would cry most days of the week.  Now it might be once every several weeks, is short lived and is likely because I’m exhausted and need a nap or a glass of water.

I will fully admit that I’ve been really far too hard on myself from time to time.  That has also made it onto the list of things I need to be vigilant about.  I am developing an emotional muscle memory of sorts for dealing with old recurring issues and now it’s time for me to pay attention to how big a deal any particular “infraction” is, how much real thought I need to put into why it happened (I usually know right away now), and to generally skip those moments of feeling needlessly feeling bad about myself for “failing again”.  There is certainly some insanity to the way I do things, but all I can say is that it has generally served me well and I am working on it.  Always working on it.

I will never be perfect.  I am starting to see the pleasantness in that thought.  Perfection of personality and habit are asymptotic goals, but there’s no harm in knowing that and working on getting closer to that ideal access.  I am finding balance.

What I told her ultimately was that I share these stories of what I deal with so that it doesn’t just seem like I just woke up one day and was fine with everyone and everything.  My choice to be polyamorous was about wanting Wes and I to be as happy as possible.  Freedom, trust, communication, personal growth…all those things are important to mutual happiness and it is a large portion of what we mean when we say that we are committed to each other.  But it takes work, no matter what your relationship structure is.  It just seems to me that polyamory forces the issue…relationship masterclass, if you will.  Currently, the relationships we have outside of our own have made ours much stronger.  The skills we have learned, the people we have connected with have added to our compatibility.

I talk about these things so that you know you aren’t alone.  I often thought I was alone…that people who practiced non-monogamy were necessarily not jealous by nature.  I said this to our guests last night and they all laughed maniacally at me about it.  Apparently, I was dead wrong about my assumption (not surprising…do I need to remind you about how I used to think everyone was an atheist Jew?).  And so I don’t feel so much like a freak.  I hope to do that for you, too.