He Slept With “Jane”…

…and I am fine.

Some of you who have been following my blog right along already know who Jane is.  She’s the woman I gave the fake name to that my partner did some withholding about.  That triggered the f*ck out of me for various reasons in the past.

Things had been quieter for a bit between her and my boyfriend, until they weren’t again.  And then one day, about a month ago, she came over to his house for a pre-planned date, and they had sex.  And I decided to handle the whole thing differently this time.

I decided that, first of all, rather than ask him to let me know what had happened between them as soon as the date was over, I would just wait until the next day to find out.  My partner found this to be a big relief for him, since he is never sure if his date will want to stay the night, which would make it awkward for him to call me.  But that’s not why I did it.  I did it for me, so that perhaps I wouldn’t be as anxious the night of their date.  And it worked.  I went through the night as if nothing out of the ordinary were happening, and for all I knew, it wasn’t. (That’s the thing about these dates he has, or any of us, I suppose.  Anything from nothing at all to full-on sex could happen. And really, there’s no sure way to predict it.) I barely thought about him or them the entire night.  I intentionally kept myself fairly well distracted, and had maybe two, ten-second blips of anxiety come up the whole night.

And then I went to sleep.  And then I woke up waaaay too many times.  It was kind of like when you go to sleep knowing something is going to take place the next day- like, you are going to be taking a plane somewhere, or you are going on a job interview- something that feels big.  And then your unconscious mind, the part of you that’s worrying something will go wrong, keeps waking you up, over and over.  Finally, I woke up at the ass-crack of dawn, got on Facebook, and saw that my partner was on there too.  So I asked him to call me on his way to work, which he did.

As you already know, they did have sex.  At first, I barely reacted.  I trusted that my partner was following the safe sex practices we had agreed upon previously.  And I didn’t feel much at all.

Until later that day.  And then I had one of my major crying sessions in which I felt fear, anger, and sadness.  The anger was the part of me that wants to be able to blame my partner for my feelings, the thought that he’d done something “wrong” (which he hadn’t), almost like:  if I’m feeling bad, then he must have done something to cause it.  Nope, nice try, insecure self. 🙂

And the sadness was simply about his wanting to have sex with others.  Again, kind of an irrational emotion, because of course he wants to have sex with others.  He’s been very up front about that.  And so have I.  And even though a part of me doubts at times that I am cut out for this non-monogamy thing, I have a deep knowing that it is my soul’s choice and an important part of not only my journey but also my work here on the planet.  To be thorough, I was also grappling with some larger issues at the time, and my tears were about all of it. Definitely part of my crying, though, was about the fact that my partner had just had sex with Jane, and planned to do it again.

And then I got over it.  I was done crying and writing in my journal about it, and there was no residue left that I needed to do the dreaded (by him) talking with my partner about.

In some ways, one  could say I hadn’t made any progress at all in terms of my insecurities.  I still had anxiety, as evidenced by my disturbed sleep, and I still had emotional upset, as evidenced by my crying the next day.  All true.  And yet, there were some significant differences:

1.  I was essentially perfectly happy the night of their date.  That’s a huge switch from the anxiety I had the last time they went out.

2.  Although I cried the next day, the fears that came up were mostly that irrational fear of abandonment that I get, that has nothing to do with the person my boyfriend slept with.  I did very little of the comparing I’d done the last time he had sex with another woman.  The part of me that already knows I am enough, and don’t need to compare myself with anyone, was much more present.  And the little girl that was abandoned as a child in this lifetime and in other, past lifetimes, she was the one that mostly showed up.

3.  Lastly, it was all over and done with fairly quickly, with no long, drawn-out talking sessions between the two of us.

Stay tuned to my blogs for more adventures in non-monogamy, and whatever else I feel like writing about in the realm of sex and spirit!