PS024 - Shifting In Our Open Hearts - Two New Podcasts Go Live!
That's right folks! Two new podcasts with me have gone live in the past 48 hours!
Episode: https://shows.acast.com/660e243b2f834f0017de9181/episodes/660e2440acbcaf00174d9948
The first is from Erotic Awakening... my podcast entitled "Shifting In Our Open Hearts" -Through a great week reconnecting with a partner, Lee reflects on the fact that polyamory isn’t always easy. Our desires shift, our realities shift, and behavior does not always match identity. From sexy stories to encouragement to construct your own ideal relationship, this episode encourages you to look inward, look outward, and embrace your dreams… even through the muck and the mire.
-
[music intro]
Announcer:
Welcome to Erotic Awakening, an exploration of all things erotic. Every Thursday, your hosts, Dan and dawn, share with you their experience and insights on kink, power exchange, and erotic life, as well as bring you interviews with exciting people from various lifestyles. Then every Monday, you'll hear from our various guest hosts. These nationally-known educators bring a variety of experience to the mics and share with you an ever-increasing diverse world of alternative life.Erotic Awakening is intended for mature audiences. If you are offended by adult topics or prohibited by law, we recommend you stop listening right now.
Lee:
Hello, fellow adventurers of sexuality and spirit, and welcome to Erotic Awakening with Lee Harrington.I have had a crazy, fantastic last week and a half. I just got back from Dark Odyssey Summer Camp, which, for folks who don't know, Dark Odyssey is a tribe of folks, a gathering, a kinky conglomerate. Some people might call it a conference, or an event, or whatever it might be that brings together the BDSM, Leather, swinger, queer, and sacred sex populations.
And I missed Dark Odyssey Summer Camp last year because I was sick, which was really a shame because I had helped put together all of the programming and the schedule book and all that kind of stuff, but sometimes these things aren't meant to happen. And I finally got to go back to Summer Camp this year.
Now, don't be confused. If people have heard me talk about Dark Odyssey, there's actually four of them, so don't be too baffled. There's Winter Fire in February, Fusion in the center of summer, Summer Camp in September - which, the naming is a little confusing - and Dark Odyssey Surrender in San Francisco in November. And I go to three or four of them a year.
Now, Summer Camp was amazing because I got to reconnect with a partner. Now, don't get me wrong, I had great play with a couple of friends, I had some amazing service by somebody I really care about, I had really great fun running classes - actually, my classes were a blast this year, and was really profoundly touched by getting to run two different rituals over the course of the weekend. And then I had my own spiritual adventures as well. I got to hang on hooks for the first time since I've been on testosterone.
But one of the really amazing things for me this time at Summer Camp was reconnecting with my partner, Aiden. Now, folks might not have known because I haven't talked about it much, but we had some pretty radical shifts in our relationship last year, and it's been ups and downs, because that's how life rolls. You know what I mean?
Anybody I know that has had long-term relationships can attest to the fact that we shift and we change, and lives turn and twist, and that's part of what it is. That's part of life. It's part of how we shift in our open hearts.
And the open hearts that I'm talking about is that Aiden and I are polyamorous. And it hasn't always been a practiced polyamory. Has it been a practiced sluttery? Absolutely. I will happily attest to the fact that I can, at times, be a bit of a whore, a bit of a slut, a bit of a trollop, a bit of a piece of man meat. It's me. I own it, it's part of who I am.
But we haven't been dating a lot of people in a long-term kind of way. Some stuff here and there, I've got a few people in my world that are pretty amazing. But at the end of the day, it's been Aiden and I in a lot of different ways, and a lot of ways when it comes to this thing called relationship-ness, whatever that might be.
And at Summer Camp, I got to see him be with someone else in a way that he hasn't glowed since he was dating an ex of his. When he and I got together, he was seeing someone else, and it was really amazing because I got to see him have really fantastic times with his partner. And his partner got to see him glow with me, and there was this thing called compersion.
Compersion is the word that basically means “I love seeing my partner glow, being with someone else.” It's really cool. It's a pretty amazing thing. Casually, it's called frubble. F-R-U-B-B-L-E. Frubble. Compersion and frubble. It's the same stuff.
And I love this notion of compersion and frubble. I refer to it in one of my posts as “poly guacamole,” where I was in San Francisco and visiting a play partner of mine. And while we were together, while I was, you know, chained up - as you do - I made a whole bunch of Southwest food.
I made homemade salsa and guacamole, and made us this amazing dinner of southwest chicken over a big bed of vegetables, and drank wine, and had a fantastic evening that involved all kinds of vegetables up in my orifices - as you do. As you do.
And a couple of days later, I had a play partner of his run into me at a local cafe and say, “Oh my God, you make amazing guacamole.” And I said, “Well, how do you know?” And she said, “Well, I was over at his house a couple of days later, and he pulled out the leftover guacamole and I got to eat it.”
And we told stories, and joked about how we'd each played with him, and she was telling me that she realized that for the first time, she actually understood how polyamory could be a positive thing for everyone involved. Not in this theoretical kind of way, like, “oh, I'm happy that they're happy.” She'd never really felt that in the core of her body, but she got it on a tactile level because her partner having great food led to her having great food. So this notion of “poly guacamole.”
But frubble, or compersion, is an emotional experience, and not everyone has it. Some people who are polyamorous need that guacamole moment, need that experience of going, “Oh, they get something and therefore I get something.” And that's not a bad thing.
But there are others of us who can feel compersion or frubble. And at Summer Camp, I got to feel that moment. I got to feel that moment of seeing my partner really glow with someone else, as they were flirting, and joking, and getting to know them.
And I was really concerned when Aiden brought up that he was going to be seeing this person - I was actually not just concerned, but I was jealous. I was jealous because some of the things that he was talking about were stuff that he and I hadn't gotten to do recently. And I was really worried that I was going to, you know, be jealous in public.
And that's where I start to wonder, in those moments of jealousy, whether polyamory is right for me. Where I start to wonder, you know, is it going to be okay? Because I talk a big game sometimes, about the idea that open relationships are right as long as you communicate. But if I haven't gotten my needs met recently, or my perceived needs, or if I'm hungry for something and I haven't gotten those hungers met, am I really going to be okay with my partner going out and doing what it is that they want to do? Because there are times when I've gone, “you know what, I don't know.”
I have an ex of mine who - he was dating someone else, and she and I didn't always see eye to eye. In fact, there were times that she knew that I and he were out on a date, and she would purposefully send him text messages, to be able to make him come back home because she was having really hard times. And some of those hard times weren't always that reasonable of hard times.
And that's not to say that she was malicious, or mean-spirited, or any of that kind of stuff, though that might have been a possibility. I don't know.
But what I personally believe is that there was a part of her - because I talked to her about this a little bit, but I think it was more than what she and I talked about - that there were parts of her that she just wasn't comfortable with. That she wasn't getting her needs met and so instead, created some of these moments to be able to be seen and be able to be heard.
I think sometimes there's polyamory that just isn't right in its shape. That what we're looking for is an open relationship, to swing, or be able to have hookups, but that our partner wants to have romantic experiences with someone else, and that that's not going to be a good fit for us.
There's other times where we might really want to be able to explore power exchange outside our relationship, but our partner wants to have a sexual encounter, and that that's not comfortable.
I have been challenged by polyamory. I have been challenged at the idea of sharing my love with other loves. I have had times where I have been troubled. Where that idea of a ship that was open and sailing towards a new harbor, that I wanted it to be only my ship, not other relationships’.
And yet, there are weeks, like the last week, that I am given hope. That I am given hope that it really can all work out. Those moments where hope turns into joy, and bliss, as we have hotness together, the three of us, bodies pushed into bodies, rope tied around forms, fingers and hands exploring, hands pulled into hair, moans and groans erupting across our lips, my lover and I turning to one another and kissing, and then him going around to the other side, and kissing this person who is a joyous glimpse in his life.
These are moments when poly makes sense to me. When poly, and swinging, and open relationships, they make sense in my skin and my body. And there's other times where I blink and turn, and it's not quite right. And I think it's these waves of uncertainty that make me pause, and really consider what I'm in for. Make me really consider whether this is right for me because there is something important in consensually constructing a relationship that works for me. And I mean the consent of myself, as well as the consent of my partner and their partners.
Because if I bend over and say, and give over, and say, “You know what, do whatever you want, honey, it'll be fine, I'll tough it out, whatever you want to do, it's okay.” It's not really gonna be okay. It's not really gonna be what I long for and desire.
And I might not know what I want, but as I learn, sharing that information first with myself and then with other people - or if I'm an interpersonal learner, with other people and then with myself, as sometimes happens with me - there's some people who are internal processors, and some people who are external processors, and I'm a little more external sometimes.
But when I learn these things about myself, sharing them with myself, and then with my partners is kind of important. Because we learn new things about ourselves and we're not the same person we used to be.
I have a document hidden somewhere on my journal, I'll find it and put it in the notes, called “How to Fuck Bridgett.” Now, “How to Fuck Bridgett” was written because I learned something new about myself one day, and a couple years later, I went back and revised what I'd learned about myself, because I had changed.
I wrote this document about how to have sex with me, and the things that I was into, and though that document isn't really valid right now for me - there's pieces that are, but there's a lot of pieces that aren't - because my body has changed, my sexuality has transformed a little bit. But because my body has changed, it's not as active and accurate as it used to be.
But I love the idea of this document, because it reminds me that there was a snapshot that I had in my life where I was able to share the epiphanies of my sexual reality. I was able to share the realities of my erotic reality, and in doing so, I was able to take a moment and reflect for myself about these things, and then share them with others.
Now, am I saying that you, at home, should go forth and write a how-to-fuck-me document? It's not what I'm saying, though if you're wanting to, I think my version is a great place to start for ideas of what you might want to talk about, because I was a little bit on the thorough side over the couple revisions that I did. But you're probably going to come up with other ones too, and I would love to see what you came up with, because I'm always looking for new ideas of what to share with my lovers and my play partners.
And what I would love to have myself do, when I have some time and energy, or when I'm struck by a bit of revelesh - revelation, as it were, watch my words slip - I would love to write a document about how I experience love and what I'm looking for from lovers and play partners. That I'm able to say, you know what, this is what I'm looking for today.
That right now I'm looking for people who can serve me occasionally, because I'm not looking for somebody 24/7 right now. That I'm looking for hot pickup play once in a while, but because of my own “getting to reconnect with myself” stuff right now, capital-D “Dating” isn't necessarily on my horizon.
That there is someone who I really appreciate in my life right now, who I cherish and find delicious, somebody who I got to spend a lot of time with at Dark Odyssey Summer Camp. But I want to discuss with them what it's going to really look like after Summer Camp is over. And I don't know the shape of what that's going to look like right now. And I want to be able to say, “hey, let's sit down over dinner and figure it out.”
There are people that, yeah, I would love an ongoing relationship with, but I don't know what that's going to be to come to pass. And there are other people who have been in my world for ages and ages and ages, and we don't know what tomorrow is going to hold, but we're willing to play it by ear.
Polyamory comes in a thousand different shapes and sizes, and not everyone is going to fit you, just like everyone isn't going to fit me.
And there are some times when those things need to shift. That there was a time last year where Aiden and I had a very specific image, about a year and a half ago when we had our commitment ceremony, we had a very specific image of what our relationship was going to look like, and in turn what some of our polyamory might be affected by.
And yet that vision shifted and changed, and we found ourselves in a different place. A place where we became not just effectively monogamous, but effectively processing within that monogamy. Our identity was polyamorous, but our behavior became monogamous, with occasional non-monogamous encounters. Does that mean we weren't polyamorous anymore? Well, it depends on whether you define by behavior, or by identity. Our identity was definitely polyamorous, but our behavior, that wasn't always the case.
And as I look back on my polyamorous experience, as I've explored it, ooh, for the last…nineteen years, something like that, I'll go with that number for now. I've realized there's times where I was actively polyamorous, actively polygamous, actively monogamous, actively non-monogamous, actively swinging, even if my identity might have been polyamorous through all of those things. My behavior has not always matched my identity.
My identity is queer, with a lot of gay male overtones to it, and yet my behavior, if you took a snapshot from Dark Odyssey Summer Camp, was that I really dig women, and female-identified individuals, and genderqueer individuals, and the occasional trans man, and one really fucking hot man - whose identity is beyond description.
That's who I played with in the last week. It is what it is. Sometimes our behavior does not match our identity. Sometimes there is that one person who looks in your eyes and for myself, my body says - yes. There's other times when I look in their eye and I realize that the behavior that they exhibit is the behavior that I am longing for.
In one case, the behavior was service, and unabashed devotion in that moment. And my body leapt up and said, yes, please.
Or in the case of the look of the eyes, we wandered together, and we sat together, and we sung folk music together. And then we moaned together, eye to eye and heart to heart. And it was exactly as we each needed, in that moment.
And according to other people that I heard from, that individual was able to be fueled by that experience into other experiences they longed for. Here we go - back to poly guacamole, right? Sometimes we are fed by these experiences in ways that we wouldn't understand, and our lover's lover's lover gets that little bit of joy too.
I was going to say the trickle down effect, but I realized that that sounded really, really gross, and I'm going to pass on that because I prefer to play safer sex, thanks.
So my question is, when you struggle with your own sexual experiences, and sexual relationships, and emotional relationships, how do you sit with them? For me, I sit with them by journaling… by having long conversations with friends… I sit with these uncertainties by crying every once in a while, even if the tears don't always come. I sit with these thoughts by going on long walks.
Sometimes, I don't sit with the thoughts so well, and instead, the thoughts spiral, in a downward spiral, until I catch them, and notice that my thoughts are turning into feelings that I'm not controlling very well.
And sometimes, I realize that what I need to do is give it space and time. That today, it's not working, but tomorrow might be different. And in knowing that tomorrow might be different, that word hope comes back again.
My name is Lee Harrington, and this has been a jaunt through poly, and sex, and identity, and my own personal recent adventures. Through relationships, through fear, through troubled times, and into hope. Because this has been a piece of erotic awakening, and erotic awakening is not always easy and direct. And when we think that we can simply declare that “I am polyamorous” and the rest of the stuff will fall away and it will all be peachy keen, it's not true. Some days, it's hard.
And some weeks, it's like this week, as I receive text messages from my beloved from across the country, I know that it can be good again, even when we've had hard times.
But my hope for you is that today, today we'll start bringing a possibility for those good times. Whether you are monogamous, polyamorous, in an open relationship, swinging, by yourself choosing to be solo-sexual or asexual, having happy relationships in your asexuality, or something else entirely, that you are following your bliss. Or, today, making a choice to consensually construct something, bit by bit, brick by brick, that will bring you that bliss.
If you have any questions about sexuality, spirituality, kink, gender, connection, or anything else, feel free to drop me a line at lee@passionandsoul.com with the subject line “Ask Lee.” And you can find me anywhere on the internet by doing a search for Lee Harrington or PassionAndSoul.
Thank you so much, fellow adventurers of sexuality and spirit. This has been Erotic Awakening with Lee Harrington. And until next time, stay cool, have fun, be authentically you, continue on your journey, and have a fantastic adventure.
[music outro]
Passion And Soul Podcast:
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-passion-and-soul-podcast-by-lee-harrington/id840372122
RSS Feed: https://feeds.acast.com/public/shows/660e243b2f834f0017de9181
Erotic Awakening Network: http://www.eroticawakening.com/podcast/
*The second is from the Big Little Podcast. My second time on the show, we talked about my journey in age play, roles, identities, cupcake ninjas... and I even wrote them a new theme song!
http://www.biglittlepodcast.com/2012/09/episode-62-lee-harrington-interview/
*And you know what? There is more podcasting to come soon :) I love it!
Lee’s Upcoming Events/Appearances:
http://passionandsoul.com/appearances/
Lee Harrington Contact Information:
http://www.FetLife.com/passionandsoul
http://twitter.com/#!/PassionAndSoul
https://www.facebook.com/lee.harringon
https://www.facebook.com/passionandsoul
Support the Passion And Soul Podcast – Join our Patreon today!
