No Excuses

Despite how much I seem to congratulate myself for living openly about my lifestyle and conducting relationships with honesty, I also have something to admit: I fuck up. Sometimes a lot. Having more than one lover isn't all affirmations, orgies, and vegan pot lucks -- sometimes it's hard. When I have four people in my life to whom I'm emotionally accountable, it seems to follow that I quadruple my opportunities for fucking up. It happens.

Of course I don't want to hurt those I hold closest to me. Maybe it's inevitable that by simply affording yourself the closeness, any movement might jab someone in the ribs. Jab, stab, shank. German choreographer Pina Bausch said something along the lines of (paraphrasing): "We destroy each other, and we want to. When we can't destroy each other, we destroy ourselves." Perhaps it's an inescapable aspect of the human condition, whatever that may be. 

When requited love gets beyond a pair or a triangle and grows into a web-like matrix, well, things are of course complicated. Lines get blurred in a vast tundra of grey area, but some things remain simple. Here's one: don't tout your radical honesty and then lie. Of course any reasonable self respecting adult in meaningful relationships wouldn't lie to their partners... but it's tempting to forget that avoiding being forthcoming with the truth and telling a lie look and feel the same - another territory in the United States of Grey Area. It comes down to this: if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck... it's a fucking duck. 

Yeah, I fuck up. I'm pretty upset about it, human as it may be. 

A friend was encouraging me the other day to be a little less hard on myself: "It's not productive to hate yourself." Tell it to Pina. She never said it was productive, just that we do it. But my friend is right, feeding the fire of self loathing will not alleviate whatever understandable loathing is directed at me by my hurt partners. Choosing to destroy myself because I see destroying them as very clearly not an option isn't helpful. 

The only things left for me to do are to live and learn... and try to do better the next time, if I am lucky enough to be afforded it.

For more relationship fail, stew in the muck of Disorder and the Cure or Distance: Emotional Problems of Nomadism. 
The latest from Seduce and Confuse is luring you with it's bedroom eyes.