A Joyous Week

I have had quite the week. A week filled with joys large and small, tinged by occasional wisps of pure wistfulness. A week in which I learned some more about myself and some more about others. And I experienced several emotions that begged for reflection I couldn't properly give them, for reasons that will become clear.

Let's see. I had a first date...not just a first date but my first date in the context of life as I'm finally living it. I had several social outings, some of them long-planned, others deliriously spur-of-the-moment. I had nighttime talks with friends old and new. And of course the needed balancing of that consuming relationship I talked about a couple of posts ago.

(Two months with no contact, yeah, like that was going to happen. That lasted two hours. Maybe.)

You want details on that date?  Here they are: it was a qualified success, by which I mean there will be further interaction.  The connection was primarily intellectual, at least on my part; frankly, in the presence of a Great Mind like hers I felt rather flattered to have my mind even noticed, and believe you me I'm not putting myself down saying so. Not just a mind, mind: I did find her quite attractive in other ways.

As such, we may be friends. Possibly more than that, down the road, but that's down the road around at least a few bends. I will cherish what I have with her, just as I do with everyone else.

And if you were looking for more detail than that, so sorry (actually I'm not): you're not going to get it from me, here or anywhere else. The curtain of privacy on that is and will be completely opaque.

 I can say this. I wasn't all that nervous, going in.

That surprised me a little. Okay, more than a little. There are certain endeavours I'm naturally confident in: test-taking and public speaking spring to mind. Tests don't faze me, and I have no trouble speaking in front of a crowd of any size. (I read somewhere that public speaking is the number one phobia in the world. Number two: death. There are people who would rather die than talk to other people? Seriously?)

But one on one social interactions are a different beast entirely, one I've been wary of my whole life. And dates are right up there with job interviews as the most stressful of those for me. (Actually, a date is a lot like a job interview, really...)

 She noticed a couple of unconscious physical tics...as little as two years ago, her noticing those would have derailed me. But then, as little as three years ago, the physical tics themselves likely would have overwhelmed me all by themselves.

I think I'm actually starting to come into my own. Even as I'm still learning what 'my own' actually is.

So that was one part of my week.

The social outings...all of a sudden my calendar was full to overflowing by Ken-standards. That came along as soon as every last speck of she cancelled therefore she must hate me had FULLY evaporated. Funny how that works. Again, cherish what you've got, let each relationship find its own level. It's one of many polyamorous principles that can be applied in monogamy as well. I've been saying that for a long time, but little niggles of insecurity were preventing it from fully taking hold in my own mind. Now I can actually feel that it has. It was an almost-audible click.

And over the past few weeks I've been experiencing something I thought was NRE but in reality was "only" limerence.

Oh-oh, he's lapsed into Martian.

Limerence is the clichéd experience of falling in love: giddy, all-consuming, often idealistic thoughts of another; desire; yearning; an aching need for reciprocation.

If limerance is falling in love, NRE -- "new relationship energy" -- is helping each other up from the fall and talking your first x steps together. It's just as giddy, just as all-consuming: the difference is, it's happening. NRE is limerence allowed to be mutually acted upon.

My wife, as usual, was right. Maybe because I wear my heart on my sleeve, my limerence suffuses my surroundings. My mind, I must admit, has not been firing on all cylinders of late. Details slipped out through a cranium that suddenly became a colander; what misted in instead were thoughts of her. Nor even fantasies, just thoughts: I wonder what she's doing right now, is she thinking of me, too?  Each time that thought recurred, at, oh, roughly ten second intervals, a little burst of mmmmmmm popped in my head.

"You know", Eva warned me two years ago, "when NRE hits you, you're going to be a total basket case."

Yeah, love, I see where you're coming from. If that was "just" limerence...

It's fun to watch someone go through the throes of NRE. Occasionally you have to kind of tap them on the shoulder (in my case, punching might work better) and say psssst, don't forget me, I'm over here...but seeing your partner so deliciously happy is one of the joys of polyamory ("I love to hear you sing, even if I didn't write the notes/I love to hear you laugh, even if I didn't tell the joke"). That's compersion, the opposite of jealousy: not pain, but happiness at another's happiness. And I'm feeling that too. Because the women I feel all that limerence for...we both know we're not in a place to indulge it. There's definitely some wistfulness watching her deep in NRE with a partner better suited to this time and place in her life...some that could have been me. But not once I have thought that SHOULD have been me, and so there's even joy in the sadness.

If I can keep this joy...if I can harness it and put it to use...there's no telling how far I can ride it. I have some thoughts on that. I'm going to keep them to myself for the time being: doubtless you, Dear Reader, have noticed the succession of Grand Plans I've announced over the years that have immediately fizzled. I think, rather than announcing what I'm going to do, I will simply do it, and then announce it done.