Because a post from me is slightly overdue.

I have no idea what to say but this blog is becoming slightly unbalanced in terms of mine and Mistress' posts and that isn't fair so here we go.

If my life were to have one running theme it would be that there's always something wrong but it's never quite enough to deserve any help. I could be a little autistic, I could have mild cerebral palsy, I could be slightly dyslexic, I have some leg problems, I might be depressed, I have a possible phobia. etc. etc.

Looking at each thing one at a time they wouldn't cause me much of a problem, which is of course what the doctors do. But they all add up and they're making things very difficult for me. Right now my main focus is the phobia I mentioned. One of the biggest problems with it is that it's a needle phobia, very very very common and very often blown out of proportion by countless people. I can't tell you how many times I've had to hear people talk about their "phobia" how they "can't look" and sometimes they have to "hold someone's hand". The last time I had to have an injection? I was in school and waited until the nurses were distracted, ran off and hid in a mostly abandoned toilet block crying for a few hours until I was found, taken to a special room, left to cry in there for a while until everyone else was done and they then spent an hour trying to convince me to even sit down in a chair next to a nurse.

You might think a reaction like that would suggest I deserved some help. I certainly do.

Now, I'm trying very hard not to be negative about this, but after almost a year of pushing, this is all I've managed to get. I was offered access to an online Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) course in order to try to make some progress. Keeping in mind I sought help because I was offered a trip to NEPAL and was being held back by my phobia, I'm sure you can understand my disappointment. That trip to Nepal was about three months ago, it was apparently fun.

I am only at my second session and it is still in the basics which, having studied phobias and anxiety disorders for 2 years, is very boring and demotivating. I'm finding it difficult to see how it will help and then there's a part of me saying that I'm not finding it helpful because once again, my problems aren't bad enough to need help.

I'm not going to give up on this program because even if it turned out to be useless all the way through to the end, at least I can tell the doctors I tried. Sooner or later they'll have to do something because both me and Mistress can see my health being at risk due to this. It's looking increasingly likely that I have a thyroid disorder, take a guess how they test for those.

So right now I'm feeling skeptical and a little let down. I'll keep on with this course and put as much effort into it as I would any other therapy I had been offered in the hope that it helps. I will probably write a few posts about it to try and keep myself thinking rationally and hopefully more positive.

//EDIT

I forgot there was more. This online program came with a bunch of questionnaires at the start to get an idea of my problems. I ranked high for depression, social anxiety, generalised anxiety and specific anxiety, all of which are having a noticeable effect on my social, work and home life. And yet, if I said any of that to a doctor, I bet all of my savings that I'd leave their office with nothing but a few leaflets. The NHS ladies and gentlemen, you get what you pay for.

Polyamory?

So I just finished reading this entry on Pygar's blog. Before anyone reads this I suggest they go read that post and the article linked to in it.

I started writing a comment but it grew long-winded since polyamory is a subject very close to my heart, being that I am poly myself.

In direct answer to the questions asked I would say this: Yes, I have had failed poly relationships, mostly because of self-centrism (I'll talk about that in this blog post); I think the article is interesting and should be read by more people, because it smacks of truth and from a biological standpoint it is highly accurate; I believe polyamory is most natural but being repressed; and finally, in my experience gender is not as much of an issue as sexuality. Most heterosexual people I have met have been the least open to polyamorous relationships, with bisexual and pansexual people being the most open.

Being pansexual myself probably lends itself to partly of why I am so polyamorous.

Let me explain that. For those who don't know, pansexuality is basically saying fuckitall to gender. That isn't saying pansexuals can't have a preference (mine runs towards femininity, be it male, female, trans, queer, or whatever), but gender is like hair colour to us. I don't care if you're a brunette or a redhead or have vividly purple hair, in fact in the latter case I'd probably just ask where you got it done. The same goes with gender. I personally feel like limiting myself to a specific set of genders is limiting who I can love. And loving someone is the most wonderful feeling on earth, so why on earth would I place a limit on who I can love?

The same goes with my polyamory. I love to love. I feel like I have so much love to give to other people that it seems unfair to both myself and anyone who cares for me to limit myself. Some people would say it's selfishness but I say it's the opposite - there is no double standard here. I have three people I romantically love aside from my kitten and they are all more tied to other people than myself. Good for them. I want their happiness with whomever they choose, even or especially if it isn't me.

If my kitten ever found a playmate she wanted, found someone she loved and wanted to get into a relationship with, I would encourage it. (In fact I have done this before.) I want her to be happy and if limiting herself to only me means she is less happy then I refuse to do that to her. Maxiekitten is my biggest love and the most important to me, but all of my others are very, very important to me as well and I love them all equally. The only reason I love them less is because they in turn love me less than who they are also with. It levels and equals out.

Now, the part of my post that is more in line with Pygar's question of whether monogamy or polyamory was more natural. I think it sort of differs. Certainly among animals monogamy is less natural. But humans have slowly developed a culture where monogamy is prevalent.

But it wasn't always so. Monogamy is a pretty recent thing, historically speaking, and if you want to disagree just read the damn bible of all things. Polygamy's everywhere in the old testament, and was widely accepted as how things were done. I think the world's culture moving to being more self-centric (everything is all about "me", "me", "me" - "my" wants, "my" needs, "my" desires, making sure "I" get fulfilled firstly and more importantly to anything else) is what makes polyamory harder.

It's becoming about not wanting to share. I am poly. I am also in a somewhat monogamous relationship because my love is not poly, not completely so anyways. There are people in my life that I have had for longer than her, and she is perfectly accepting of them and understanding, so long as I don't shove it in her face. She is also open to the idea of having a playmate, but scared of fully sharing me. I am not looking for anyone else, firstly because I respect her fears and second because, honestly, I am the luckiest person on earth to have so much love in my life, it would be selfish to ask for even more and I am content with what I have.

It's like we feel that sharing leads to losing, somehow. Personally I think it's the opposite. As I stated before, I am polyamorous partly because I am a giving person. I have all this love inside of me, how could I be so selfish as to focus it on one person and one person alone? How could I be so selfish as to expect the people I love more than anything to selfishly focus only on me and not find more and more happiness? If my kitten ever found someone she loved and wanted me to share her with, I would gladly accept it, as I said before. I would encourage it. Because it is selfish of me to do otherwise.

And yes, by doing so I risk becoming less important to her, but you know what?

It's more important to me that she be as happy as she can possibly be, than it is that I be the most important person in her life. Because to me, that is what love is about. Wanting someone to be happy and to make them happy more than you want anything else.

And I think that monogamy stands in the way of that because of how we see it as a society as the be-all and end-all of relationships.  I do NOT think monogamy is wrong. I think monogamy is perfectly and exactly what some people need to be happy. I do however think that how society views it in general is detrimental to the happiness of every person who could possibly be poly and is being held back because it's "unacceptable".

The biggest hindrance to relationships of any kind is dishonesty, and I think that dishonesty to oneself is even worse than dishonesty to one's partner(s). And with how we view monogamy it is very hard for poly people to be honest with themselves about their leanings, which leads to cheating, lacking communication, and broken hearts.

Okay I should probably shut up now before I go on another rant, hahaha. Pygar, I want to thank you for such a great post and great questions to answer, it really inspired me.

Sleeping

I find that the hardest single thing to deal with and try to work around in my particular LDR is sleep patterns.

kitten and I are both insomniacs. For similar and different reasons, really. She hates to sleep. Period. She doesn't like being asleep, I'm fairly certain it even frightens her on some level, which is not an irrational thing. Sleep is scary for me too. But, that is only occasionally why I am such an insomniac, more frequently is that I have bipolar and am 75% of the time (maybe 80%) in a mixed state. Which means with symptoms of mania and depression simultaneously. Usually I jump back and forth between a depressed mania (dysphoric mania) and a manic depression (agitated depression) several times a week or even a day. Which means insomnia is rampant, especially the kind where I am exhausted but just cannot fucking sleep!

I'm currently being medicated for this; not the insomnia itself, but the bipolar type in general with something called Saphris which knocks. me. flat. I liked/loved it at first but I've recently learned that if kitten is awake when I take it I can't stand it. I hate it so much and it's scary, being forced to sleep when I want to stay awake. The anxiety could probably be gotten over by taking half a Xanax (my PRN - aka as needed - for general and social anxiety) but I dislike having to take those at all.

I am trying to get a balance so that I am awake still and can help kitten sleep through hypnosis and other means (she is particularly fond of hypnosis, as am I), before I take my medicine and pass the fuck out so that the anxiety of being torn away from her, and the worry about not being there when she needs me, is not present.

The problem, really, lies in wanting to be there when she wakes up and to put her to sleep and to stay with her all day, and that is just not possible. I'm thinking of starting a 4-6 hours at night, 3-5 hours at day schedule so that I nap while she is in classes or studying, and then am able to wake up before or when she does and sleep after she does. Partly because I usually wake up after four to six hours of sleep unable to sleep anyfuckinghow and get sick of trying to force myself back to sleep.

It's frustrating and difficult and it makes me realise that even more, no matter how easy things seem to be going, there is a long and trying road ahead of us. I am prepared to work with what I have, and can only hope that what I have is enough, I suppose. <3<3<3

I love thee, mine kitten.

Anyhow, I just needed to ramble and get thoughts out. Which is exactly what this place is for :)

Being There

I've learned, over time, that a large part of what makes any relationship (especially D/s and other TTWD dynamics) work is simply paying attention to your partner. To their thoughts and ideas. Their needs and wants. Just being there for them.

Even, or maybe especially, in an online or long distance relationship, being there is not just important, but utterly and completely necessary. I say "or maybe", because I have seen far too many in person, face-to-face relationships that didn't work out because of a refusal to do the exact thing I will be talking about in this post, and have experienced it myself.

If you aren't there, how will you know their innermost fears? Their hopes and desires? That the most important thing for them right now is to be loved? That right at this moment the only thing they crave from you is attention/affection/sex/cuddles/a shoulder to cry on/someone to listen to (or to them)?

You can't know this if you aren't there. And being in a LDR, even across countries, does not mean that being there is impossible. Especially when there are things like blogging, which can allow partners to express their thoughts in long-form after much thinking, without interruption and without as much bias as there is in the heat of the moment (or with that bias, when necessary). As well as services such as GTalk (which, did you know, allows for text messaging if one partner has access to a computer?), AIM, Y!M, and Skype. Hearing someone's voice at the end of an exhausting and depressing day can be such a lift. Seeing their face, even, watching that brilliant soft smile light up their features when they realise that they get to see you again; it doesn't have to be limited to in person or in the same country relationships.

When we have things like Google Drive and Dropbox which can share folders, files, voice and/or videos recordings, pictures, and even allow for (in the former case) simultaneous collaborative file editing.

The latter two I find especially important in my particular dynamic because I monitor her schedule. I make sure she is getting her studying done on time, doing enough of it, and getting to bed at a decent time (we are still working on this >.>;;; 5 hour time differences and insomniac tendencies do not make for easy sleep patterns). I make sure she gets her homework and revision done, and she gets treats and rewards in the form of hours to be spent with me doing anything she wishes.

Whether it be cybering or snuggling (intensive snuggling/makeouts - I am very freely affectionate with her anyhow so that has never been asked for, hahaha) or hypnotism or play sessions or whatever else, it is her time to be spent. Half of it is, anyways. The other half is to be spent how I want, so that the hours actually get spent, because I know my kitten has a hard time asking for things she needs, much less wants. Plus, she wishes to serve and submit to me and asking or demanding that her treats be spent a certain way is not submitting, to her. I think it can be when done a certain way but that is just one thing we compromise on.

It has taken a while to finally achieve the balance we have, and none of it would have been even the slightest bit possible if I did not take time out every single day to at least check up on her, if not spend a few hours with her.

More frequently, we are constantly connected, constantly talking. Instant messaging, texting, calling through skype, we are almost always together and it suits us well - but we aren't so attached that we have to talk constantly to be secure. We can spend days with only a short few messages sent between us to check up on and make sure our partner is doing fine.

The point is, despite being so far apart, I am there for her to the absolute best of my ability, and she the same for me. We communicate, we listen, we give affection, and sometimes we will just be on call, saying nothing, relaxing together.

I know many couples that live together cannot say the same, and I know that my first D/s dynamic (More like M/s, with me as the slave) relationship was in person for the most part, even living together, and we largely fell apart not due to incompatibility or even physical abuse, but to neglect. To him not being there for me even when I was being abused (physically, but only to a minor extent, and much more so psychologically) by his friends. To him not trusting or listening to me, not taking time out to make sure my needs were met.

Much (not all, not even most, but definitely some) of the blame is my own, though, because I did not think (or was afraid to admit) that it was wrong of him to treat me like that. So I allowed the treatment. I thought that as his possession he could do with me as he wanted, and allowed the use and psychological abuse, thinking that it was fine - normal, even.

BDSM and TTWD should never be abusive; SSC or RACK, whichever your flavour, should be followed at all times, and I will never disagree with that. But more important than those things, to me, is remembering that neglect is a form of abuse as well, and not being there for your partner will ultimately end in a ruined friendship, relationship, and possibly even a broken person who has to clean up after him or her self because the one person who could help them either would/will not, or has broken their trust so badly that it it would never be allowed even if they were willing.

So more than just keeping a relationship working and running smoothly as possible, whether online, long distance, or in person, being there is possibly the most important thing in a relationship. Especially because "Being There" encompasses so many varied things within a relationship, not just one small aspect that might easily fall by the wayside.