Getting to Yes

I’ve been on dozens of dates since I broke up with Aaron. Lackluster to downright bad. I’ve even questioned if I’m really cut out for non-monogamy: maybe I’m not capable of feeling love or desire for anyone but Mac.

The women in my polyamory support group liken dating to door-to-door sales. One woman said it takes at least a dozen no’s to get to the yes. Another woman said she had recently revised her numbers upwards: at least 20 bad dates before finding a keeper.

After months of bad dates, I finally got to my yes. And it was immediate. We started chatting on OKCupid and it was a yes. It was yes to coffee the following week, then yes to a walk instead so we would have more privacy, then yes to snuggling in his SUV, then yes to going back to his place that same morning.

I’d just been on a spiritual retreat, and something that came up for me was to trust my body, to trust desire. Jacob was the perfect person to put that into practice.

Jacob had left his marriage and the Mormon church the previous year. His life was in shambles – a contested divorce, facing complete rejection from the entire Mormon community, and recently separated from a girlfriend, who he treasures wholly, who had cheated on him. When I met with him last Thursday he’d slept with 5 women the previous week, 3 of them in a single day. He seemed manic and in a deep crisis.

Back at his place – a yurt in the woods that doubles as his painting studio - it was yes to a cup of tea, then yes to dancing together, yes to spending the entire morning moving in and out of conversation and sensual touch.  It was a huge yes(!) to letting him give me the first orgasm I’ve had with any man since my husband in over 13 years.

Before we’d gone back to his house he’d said, “I want to have sex with you and make you come and have beautiful conversations with you, but I can’t love you. I can love you as a friend, but I can’t love you.”

“I know,” I said, sad to hear it, but realistic about his limitations. He ultimately wants a monogamous relationship, he believes in that, in the person who is your everything.

But then in his bed, wrapped in his quilts, my fingers in his thick blond hair, just graying at the temples, he said, “I’m feeling some big things for you. I feel like you really care about me.”

“I do,” I said.

We talked over the course of the next week and he said he was having feelings of love for me. And I was feeling that, too. Nascent love, when the spark is there from the very beginning and it's just a question of time and how it's tended.

It was the time and tending that was in question. I asked him about the last time he’d fallen in love and he told me a lot about his ex-girlfriend over the course of the morning. They’d met at an ex-Mormon support group and had this instant connection. She’d also just left the church and an emotionally abusive marriage. They clung to each other, each needing something from the other in the dark, unsettled days of early divorce. They’d each married young and hadn’t had other sexual partners outside of their marriage. They were curious, and decided to open their relationship, enjoy a little belated rumspringa. The opening stressed and challenged their relationship, and ultimately led Jacob’s girlfriend Liz to cheating and subsequent deception and lying.

When I met Jacob they’d been separated about a month. She was still texting him, displaying her anguish and pain over having hurt him. He was feeling conflicted, still wounded by her actions, but also still very much in love.

Empathy is a big part of being in non-monogamous relationships, so I wrote to him sharing my thoughts on their situation, hopefully giving him a new perspective on her cheating. I imagined her having conflicted feelings about falling into things so deeply with him after leaving her husband and the church. I imagined she was trying to balance her very real, deep love for Jacob with her desire to explore her sexuality and stand on her own two feet as a newly independent woman. I wrote that I thought her cheating could have stemmed somewhat from fear - fear of losing her newly gained independence and freedom.

He said that what I had written really affected him, really helped him to see the situation from a new perspective. They ended up talking that weekend, making love. Jacob showed Liz my e-mail and said she broke down crying because it so perfectly captured her emotions. Just a week after our first amazing morning together Jacob came to my place for a cup of coffee and he showed me a video Liz crying, saying how much she loves me for the role I’d had in helping them get back together.

I’m glad, glad that I was able to help them both back to a place of stillness. Jacob seemed so much more grounded and peaceful than when we’d first met. I’m also sad for the things we won’t get to share together. My heart is just a little bit broken over what might have been.

Non-monogamy is all about communication and empathy, even when it means empathizing oneself out of a lover if that is what is in their best interest. For the first time I felt what polyamorists call compersion – feeling happy for people you care about when they find love with others. I’m glad I was able to help these two people find love again. It’s an honor to have played that role in their lives and their appreciation is palpable.

Jacob and I had a spark and now our work is to tend the flames of friendship. He seems committed to that in a real way, and I am too.

I feel good about getting to yes with Jacob. I felt for the first time what I want it to feel like when I go out with someone. I want a mutual sense of magnetism, curiosity and wonder that only grows with each new discovery. Now I know that I can trust my body, that my body is going to know who is right and what feels right. It made me believe in a magic place between monogamy and casual sex, where trust and mutual caring reign supreme.