Covid Poly: Airplane mode

 

Polyamory is not always the easiest of activities.  It's a world riff with tripping points and surprise new emotional quandaries. 

Sprinkle a year of COVID isolation on top, and we create a landmine filled landscape just waiting for an unwary wanderer.

Enter me and my big old foot. Allow me to set the scene... 

My metamor "X", is a great guy with a good heart. Covid has been rough, and as someone who is somewhat routine focused... the inability to do all the things he normally has on calendar has taken a toll.  (Acknowledging that it's taken a toll on everyone, in different ways). 

It culminated this past month, where X reached a point where he needed a change...  So he set up a flight across the country to spend time with family in a sunny location.   My partner "Y" had some hard decisions to make, about how to cohabitate with him when he returns from being in an airplane for hours on end. Y also started a discussion with me on what my comfort level was.. 

So..  the stage is set, the players cast, and the disease shadowed theater ready....   and now the ambush. 

Personally, I was not comfortable with the situation, and the potential exposure.. so I cancelled my weekly date night with Y for the week...  only to realize it would be a week until we get a chance to see each other again...

Enter ninja feelings, stage right.  

This rekindled the hard feelings of being the Third in a relationship. To know that the default/cohabitation situation of marriage.. combined with my metamor not being out with their family...  means that anytime that family visits.. I have a price to pay for it in time with my Partner.. and the feeling of being stuffed in a box and put on the shelf until convenient. 

So now, I am processing these hard feels... and doing it in the isolation of COVID.  The laughs never end in this greek tragedy

Isolation

 

Equalibrium

 
How does that work? 

They ask, every time I explain I'm in love with a married women. 

"Quite well".. I fib slightly.  It's easier to not get into the challenges. 

And there are challenges, distance, the inability to build a life together in the examples I've grown up with.

Having to accept that as the "freerer" agent, it will always be easier to give up a piece of me in support of the relationship.

Most recently, this reflects in the living situation. Buckle up, and settle in for a little tale...

Last year, right before pandemic, I rented a small studio apartment over closer to my partner. This seemed like a really good idea, as it cut my commute time to my job and gave us a chance to experience life closer.  It started out as a place for me to crash a few nights a week. 

Fast forward to october 2020, I changed jobs, was working full time remote, and living 100% in a very tiny studio apartment.  And I'm fairly.. unhappy.  (recognizing my priviledge at having a roof over my head),  I don't have my self in this place.  I don't have self in my partners space (I've helped build/decorate/remodel their space to their desires, and enjoy doing that for them).   So I linger in limbo..  until something changes, breaks, or such. 

Here's the rub... my partner has expressed multiple times a desire to figure out near/cohabitation, and for me, it's important as I don't want to live alone as I get older.  But it's one thing to express, its another to put energy into a solution.   To be fair, none of us know what to do, so I'm not frustrated at my partner... 

I'm frustrated at the situation, and the apparent lack of solution.