On Romantic Paranoia

This is meant to capture for myself the war going on within myself at the prospect of each of us seeing other people.

I wish there were a word that means “thinking/feeling” so I could avoid one of those pesky false dichotomies. During her last time here the submissive - or adoring? - portion of my feelings for her seemed to evolve.

I think they may be deeper or purer or something. Also more romanticized. That feeling is adding to my own emotional confusion in two ways:

1. It makes the prospect of her having another man submit more threatening. I don’t understand this well enough to explain it. It might not even be true.
2. It also makes me feel even more conflicted about my engaging in D/s with someone else. Let me use boot adoration as a symbol. To date it has been an intimacy with her only. It isn’t that the prospect of licking and kissing another person’s isn’t arousing. But the idea also leaves me feeling like a man who has wandered into a forest and become lost.

Alexandra is looking for something narrower than what we share. Were that not true our romance would indeed be over. That she might find more than she is seeking inspires fear.

Aside from commonplace romantic paranoia my insecurity is inflamed by a specific event. A woman that I’ve lived with for five years walked out on me. I don’t blame her that was the single most damaging event of my adult life. It was worse than the years spent with the guy who became a crack addict and eventually died on my dining room floor.

Even the most monogamous of people wonder what dalliance with someone other than his or her partner would be like. (I think there’s some study - of questionable validity no doubt - that says thinking about someone other than your partner is very common during sex.) That makes for entertaining masturbation and allows you to explore unlikely and impossible sex. Hours of various forms of chemical cbt or a few days in a box - every masochist knows what I mean.

I came very close to becoming involved with a nice male dominant. The sight of Charles’ limp wrist banished all thoughts of sadomasochism. (Only to lead to bouts of Whose Afraid of Virginia Woolf emotional S&:M that made for the second most emotionally harmful experience of my adult life.) He is unattached I think. But I don’t really know that really want to - even though I’m not likely to find better hereabouts - actually write him.

Alexandra’s needs require that my psychosexual self change. One might say mature. But growth and adaptation isn’t always possible. E.g., it is one thing to say that everyone is latently bisexual. But crazy to expect monosexully oriented people to change.

I am having flashes of emotional nausea. I suffer from extreme acrophobia. So I picture poor Jimmy Stewart in Vertigo. Finding balance is difficult. Any moment I may plummet to the bottom. But I said flashes. But only flashes.

During most of the day I’m not even thinking about The Polyamory Problem. Resolution won’t come from analysis. Invisibly dedicated neurons are - one hopes - weighing, sorting, tabulating. My coldly analytical side quite forcefully tells my scaredy cat component to just hush up for now.

For now I can only be certain of my own uncertainty.

(Now to go back and prop my legs up.)