Jealousy, posessiveness, fear, change, LOVE

Possessiveness, territoriality, the hoarding mentality -- those things have always been so difficult for me to handle in loving relationships. When I was a child, I learned that the harder I tried to hold onto something I feared losing, the more of a certainty that fear became. So I simultaneously arrived at two things: In recognizing that loss was inevitable, I stopped fearing it. And, perhaps fatalistically, I prepared for it. In my past three long term relationships, which ran from 1988 through 2004, I had the same conversations with each of them: That nothing lasts forever, that no one person can be all things to another, that attraction to others is inevitable, that if one of us meets someone else we will be happier with, we should give our blessings to them. The happiness and well-being of the ones I love is essential to my own.

And so I find myself in a relationship with a man whose love makes me a little bit giddy. Who says the sweetest, corniest things that lure my inner child to come out and play. Who has more kindness and constancy in him than I had thought possible in someone of our generation. A man who devilishly plays with my libido like it is a cross between a lute and a cat's toy. He delights in me, melts at my touch, makes me laugh, and supports me. But he also wants me all to himself. And therein lies the very heart of the problem.

I've asked him for 6 months. Give me 6 months. There is a lot going on in my life, my world, and choosing him--which something in me very much wants to do and at the same time is very afraid to do--would be a huge change in my life. Not just a change from polyamory to monogamy, but a change in place, which would mean leaving my community. But when I ask myself what I want, more and more, I find myself answering "him", and when I think about it, I recognize that if I do not choose "us", then I'll always wonder what might have been.

Where does the desire for personal freedom and self-expression find itself when two people merge their lives to form an exclusive partnership? I remember what happened to it when I was younger, less secure in myself, more eager to 'fix' others or to 'make them happy.' I am so far from that place, and yet , I know that it is my daily rituals, my affirmations of self and non-self, my me-time, the pure freedom to be spontaneous--that it is these things which maintain the self I know as 'me' me. And I have seen how easy it is to slide out of healthy habits and ways of being, to let things slip for love, and I find myself conflicted, clinging almost jealously to my current life and way of being in the face of... love. There is tremendous possibility there. I love him like I have never loved another, in ways I never thought possible for me, and I know myself for 10 kinds of a fool if I pass up those possibilities out of fear or possessiveness.

"Mine. I am mine. No one claims me. No one owns me," my inner child says while at the same time she reaches out to him, teases him, shares with him. Loves him.

I like things just the way they are, and yet I know that change is inevitable. He won't keep forever like a doll in a glass case. He's a person with his own needs and desires. I suppose I am faced with the choices we all are: shall I sit on the side of the path and wait for Life to happen and choose for me? Or shall I take action and choose for myself what I want from Life, even knowing the path I choose to walk may not lead where I wanted?

I am reminded of the final words of a poem by slam-poet Shane Koyczan that go something like this: "Its a game. You play, you win. You play, you lose. You play. The world is a window that holds a sign. There is 'help wanted' out there but if you are playing to win, the first thing you have to do is 'apply within'."

Six months. Six months to wrestle with my choices and then take a stand for my own happiness, for what I want for myself and my life. Six months. 180 days. So many days. Why does it feel like so little time?