Jealousy...My thoughts

Let's talk about the dreaded "J" word..Jealousy.  Jealousy is a hot button topic in the poly community. Jealousy does not go away when you decide to become poly.  On a personal level I rarely, if any, ever feel jealous. Compersion comes more easily for me. I've always felt that the reality of polyamory is that my partner(s) will interact with others so why would I feel jealous or bothered by that?  I believe that the huge amounts of self work and learning about who I am contribute to the fact that I don't readily feel jealous.  This doesn't mean that I'm a better person because I don't feel jealous.   I've talked to partners and my friends who identify as poly who deal with varying degrees of jealousy.

 In the book More than Two, there's a chapter called "taming the green eyed monster" There's a highly insightful section called the chameleon emotion which discusses this. A quote that I found that sums up this post is this" One of the things that can make jealousy such a challenge is that it's a shape-shifter:jealousy masquerades as other emotions. Before you can fight it, you need to see it for what it is. Some of the emotions that can have jealousy at their root are fear, loneliness, loss, sadness, anger, betrayal, envy and humiliation."

However, after thinking about my poly journey thus far I've noticed that I deal with other emotions.
Instead of jealousy I deal with anger. My anger eventually leads to bitterness and hostility towards that other person. I think that my anger is just as serious, if not more serious than jealousy.  Throughout my journey I know that I felt jealousy when my partners gave another partner something that I readily asked in the relationship to another partner or when we broke up they gave them that thing I'd been asking them for.  This lead to anger and a host of other emotions. I began to ask myself why wasn't I good enough? Why can't I get what he gave this other person? That's where the anger, the doubt and betrayal come in at. 

 I first experienced these emotions with a past partner. After our relationship ended we just decided to be friends. I wanted to be friends with him because he was and still is a great person but as time went on I started to feel angry towards him. I resented that months later he'd gone back to a previous relationship and all the things I wanted when we were together he was giving to someone else. My anger festered but I never spoke of it. Since we don't live in the same city he never saw or felt my facial expressions or vibe, phone and text conversations can hide emotions and they hid how I felt for almost a a year when I finally lay everything out on the line. I needed to tell him everything. I'd been holding most of my feelings in because I didn't want to seem "crazy" or jealousy honestly.

But when I unpacked these emotions, let me tell you just how much better I felt. I actually got a chance to heal and thoroughly process so much that had been holding me back. It was indeed jealousy but that feeling was hidden by bitterness, betrayal, and sadness.

Black & Poly's 5th Anniversary

Hey ya'll so I'm back from the anniversary celebration and I had a whole week to process and come down from my "poly high". So here's a recap of what I felt and did while I was out there:
My plane ride was uneventful accept when 30 minutes before we landed I dropped my phone. I heard it hit the group (so I thought) and was seriously frantic about finding it and not letting anyone steal it. Sorry, I was slightly neurotic about someone stealing my phone even though they can't access anything without my fingerprint. (Let's thank technology and Iphones please). The people in the seats in front of me were very nice and attempted to help out as best they could but couldn't find anything so I started searching through my bag and found that I'd stuffed it in with my knitting when I was frantically searching for it.  Which goes to show you that looking for something really helps.

Other than that my plane ride was good. We landed and once I was picked up by the hotel van my phone was dead and I was starving. I knew that there were a few events that were planned for that Friday that I'd already missed and |I was so upset so I said to myself  I would charge my phone and eat then head on over to the host hotel and mingle. That was the initial plan and it didn't work out. I got to my hotel room charged my phone and ordered food from door dash and fell asleep. The biggest problem I faced was the time difference. I live on the east coast and we're 3 hours ahead of California so my body had some serious adjusting to do unfortunately. I was jet lagged and trying to recoup. I decided that the next day I would be ready to do all the events that were planned.

I woke up at 5 am PST and was starving and bored so I got coffee and waited. I'd taken a look at the agenda on Black & Poly website gotten confused on the time for the breakfast . I got to the host hotel at 10:30 a.m. and missed everything except the mimosas. (I'm a huge fan of mimosas so I was happy to have at least had 2 glasses)  I got a chance to put faces to names that I'd interacted with on Facebook and in the Black & Poly group.  For the remainder of the day we spent it on Venice Beach just shopping, eating all the delicious food and taking in the sites. I had a great time but I was wore out by the time we got back with only an hour to spare before the banquet that night. I rushed to my hotel room, showered, changed into a new outfit then headed over the the hotel. I'm going to be totally honest and tell you this was what I was waiting for and I was so excited. If you didn't know several poly celebrities were there. Well, I call them poly celebrities. For one, Dossie Easton, the coauthor of The Ethical Slut was there the whole weekend and was a speaker.  Can I tell you that I had a serious fan girl moment???!!! I kept trying to tell myself not to be creepy and not to completely loss it when i talked to her.  When I finally met her I almost died, okay no I didn't but I was smiling ear to ear. Ms. Easton is such a nice person and so humble. We talked for a few minutes and then took a picture together.

There were several other speakers and the night was really great. The food was delicious but towards the end of the night I was wondering where was the cast of Compersion? I've been a fan since it came out over a year ago and I've told several of my poly friends and partners to watch this series. I've donated to get the second season's fundraising campaign.  Compersion is a groundbreaking series that shows black people entering into polyamory. I won't rant about how important seeing people of color in alternative relationships is right now-that's going to be another post for another day. Finally towards the end of the night they showed up and I almost lost it. Okay don't laugh at me but I just had to go over and talk to them so when I saw my chance I said Hey Keena to the actress who plays her on the show. She looked at me and smiled. Her husband on the show was also by her side and we all laughed and joked.  They both were so down to earth and cool to talk to. It felt like I was talking to friends I'd met years ago and we were catching up. Of course I took the opportunity to take several pictures with them. After I took the pictures I posted on social media that I could die now because I'd met some of my idols.

The next day several of the attendees all met to have brunch at The Cheesecake factory and talk about the wonderful weekend we'd had.  My flight back to Cleveland was uneventful and I got back home at 5 am my time and went back to my normal work schedule. Here are a few pics from my wonderful weekend.