Finding a Balance

I think we're in some kind of odd limbo right now. I trust him so completely, and I feel like he trusts me as well. When we scene, it's so intense, so intimate, so connected. Yet we haven't really been talking nearly as much as we did for a bit. He's said I'm free to ask him about anything, and he's never even hesitated to answer me.

There is so much I want to know about him. What exactly played out in Guatemala? He uprooted his whole life to go. How has that affected what he's looking for now? Some of it is deeply personal, almost peering into his soul. Yet, I don't know if I truly have that right. If we're just play partners, then I would never feel I had that right. But I know it's more than just play partners to me. What am I to him? What does he want out of this? These aren't questions most people are used to having to answer.

I guess it's one of the good/bad things about being poly. To really make poly work, you have to be able to articulate with a fair amount of clarity what you want from a relationship. I've done reasonably well with being sure to state that things may change, and I always promise to communicated that change with as much notice as possible. That's a lesson I learned the hard way.

But I don't think he's poly at heart. He's always been up front that he is still looking for a long-term relationship, for someone to serve him full-time. I can't be that; really, I don't want to go through what it would take to be that. I think that if something terrible happened to pull L out of my life, he and I could make a pretty good go at it. But I'm not ever going to find out.

With him certainly not having a lot of poly experience, we never really defined if things would ever go beyond play partners. So now I'm trying to sort out if it's just me feeling insecure, or if I really do need to poke and see where things are at right now. It's been all of four months. Is that too soon?

The intensity level of BDSM is so high; how could I trust someone that completely and not end up with feelings for him? What I don't know is if he can feel this intensity and have it still be just play. The last few weeks, the intensity of play has been there, but afterwards, it's been much more of a pull-back. There are good, logical reasons for it. He needed to call his mom before she went to bed one week. The next, he'd spent the day before dealing with his mom's hip replacement surgery and was exhausted. This last week, he's just started the early shift. He was up at 4:30 am to get to work by 5:30 am. Of course he was exhausted.

Add to this the fact that my schedule is nuts this week, and I haven't seen him online. Then add this lovely monthly hormonal stew. What have you got? A recipe for one seriously insecure woman. Sigh. I thought I was doing so much better. I'm sure he's enjoying our scenes. God how I love that he makes that so obvious. But before, I could also cling to the way he held me, the way we talked, the bits of himself that were revealed.

I think, having gotten all of this out, that I am going to have to check in. At least to make sure that the pull back is just that he's got so much going on in his life, that it isn't something I've done to make him less comfortable.