Hi Steve, I am new to this forum

[turtlesuds]

I must admit, the very first thing I was attracted when I came to this site via an invitation from a dear friend, were your posts about waking up with my alarm clock and polyphasic sleep. You have no idea how much I battle with my body's circadian rhythyms and what my life demands of me. I am exploring your propositions carefully.

The next thing that caught my eye was the word "Polyamoury" and then a post where you address "Jealousy."

My romantic life before I met my husband was ruled by "Jealousy." Jealousy brings all kinds of rules and constraints, resentments and fears. Distrust is at the heart of it.

I hated it. I swore when I dug myself out of that hell hole that I would never tolerate a partnership where jealousy was involved.

I am new, and I have not read much of what you or Erin have written. I must say, as a woman inclined toward feministic instincts, I was concerned for Erin and your children when you approached this subject of Polyamoury.

I was then drawn into a post where you portrayed a dialogue you had with Erin about jealousy, where the two of you attempted to try it on, and didn't find any value in it.

My number one question is this: How does Erin feel about your newfound freedom? I mean, I know she is a pretty enlightened person. I am not questioning the sincerity behind it, I just want to know *how* she does it.

Is she also seeking a poyamorous lifestyle?

I did not want to get married. I did because I found myself pregnant after years of believing I was infertile. i was deeply in love with my now husband.

I experienced much distress over getting married. We planned the wedding in one month while I was 4 months pregnant. I wanted to do it for the baby, but my entire being was screaming at me, "This is not what you wanted."

I had decided after a lifetime of witnessing my father and his habits of sexual harassment, bigotry, and bestiality (metaphorical, not literal) that I did not ever want to be that woman who was blindly trapped into a marriage with a husband that was detached and unstimulated, secretly darting around engaging in or fantasizing about engaging in sex with other women.

with my pregnancy came this overwhelming sense of loss of my sexuality. I have not recovered and my daughter is almost 3.

My husband, even though he married me, stopped touching me when I became pregnant, actually 3 months before we knew. His chemistry knew, and something about it pushed him away.

I was distressed about this. My libido increased as my pregnancy progressed, his shrivelled. This made me very paranoid and insecure.

I had to turn my body off, the same way I did while being sexually abused as a child.

I had to ignore every signal, every impulse. After I gave birth it was easy. My daughter provided me with enough need that I had no time or energy to worry or waste on my libido. I suffered a lot of physical trauma from her birth as well, so that made it even easier.

No later than one month after having my child did my husband suddenly discover a renewed interest in engaging in sex with me. This was very confusing and aggravating to me.

I can still feel anger creeping up as I am typing this. "WTF? When I wanted and needed you so badly you had no time for me, but all the time in the world for pornography. I was invisible to you. Now you want me? Well too bad, now I am torn and tired. Heavy and exhausted. FU!"

I have let myself go physically, fulfilling the prophecy of his fear when he was loathe to even smell me.

Now he is hurt and grasping in the dark to connect with me. I am sympathetic, he is after all only a stupid male.

Still, what am I to do? I have recently found a friend online, one who lives far away thank God. This friend and I made a very quick and intense connection. He is the one who brought me to this site.

We have acknowledged our "love" for each other, and both of us I am pretty sure have at one time or another had our own sexual fantasies involving the other.

I am not worried about this at all. I understand it, and I do not need to bring any of this to fruition. It is just that I know that I am already guilty of something I have encountered before as "emotional infidelity."

I find it very strange that your exploration of polyamoury is one of the first things that I keyed in on when I found this site.

If I could anything I wanted, it would be to re establish the sexual energy I had with my husband before the pregnancy. Our love was truly pure. We both acknowledged and appreciated each others' sexuality, to the point of standing back and enjoying watching other people flirt with the other.

Now we are both very frustrated, pent up, and I for one am not in a place where I can even stand to see my own self naked, let alone in a sexual context, except in the context of fantasy with a person I know I will probably never meet.

I feel that my marriage is in a "crisis," yet I don't have the energy to fix it.
I just want to be, and I just want to be me. I don't want to be a wife, yet I love being a mother.

So far I define my behavior and actions by my responsibilities as a parent. Sadly, I feel this makes me exactly the person I never wanted to be, One who is working toward maintaining an illusion, a constraint, for the sake of propriety.

[Brutha]

You should probably read through the forum threads about those blog posts. All the information you seek is out there.