Good for Good Reasons in Book Seven: Reconstruction 2020

Before I go into the more recent, I want to make sure I explain something from a few nights ago. You see, when I say that Nala loves when Victoria and Essen’s kids come over… and loves those kids… I’m not “projecting” onto Nala… I’m not assuming due to energy or mood… I’m not even basing it off of “she sits with their toys instead of with me” or anything like that. Nala straight up told me hardcore herself recently.

What with Chuckers being an absolute ass and preventing Essen or the kids to visit… Victoria and her kids came over less often. And, truly, Nala adores one of Essen’s kids so much that… even if it were something Nala would never permit someone else to do… if 2 of 3 does it and I intervene “Sorry, 2. Nala doesn’t like that.” NALA WILL ACTUALLY CAME BACK to 2 of 3 like “Why’d you stop?” CRAZINESS. SO.... Nala hadn’t seen the kids in a while. A while for her being like a few days, lol. I’m siting at my desk chair in the basement, working on something and see Nala sort of just… lazily walking around the basement. As she sometimes does. I notice that she’s coming over which she’ll do to either bug me to play with her or slump next to me. Instead, I hear this odd sound of something hard hitting the plastic and Nala sits expectantly. I turn to her and ask, “What’chu got, Nala?” She leans down, picks up the block (she had apparently brought over), lets it drop(!) and looks back at me… expectantly. EERIE, KIND OF in its obvious meaning. Especially considering, if she was doing this for my attention? Or because she was bored? She would have simply taken the block, run over to the couch, and started gnawing on it, while I shouted “Bad Dog!” and forced it out of her mouth. This dog gingerly taking the block in her mouth, bringing it to me, than sitting expectantly… only logical way for me to interpret that is “When are they coming back?!” It was heart-breakingly adorable!

So truly… Nala loves those kids. And with her small body, high energy, and desperate desire to play and run around? Those kids love Nala. And those are great kids. And Essen is a great friend. So if Essen and the kids were going to be forced to stay trapped in that nightmare hellscape of a house with a fucking tyrant warden… that was going to be devastatingly heartbreaking for all! And while I fully anticipate that this is merely a calm before a bigger storm (one that is coming sooner than I think is realized)… I am definitely in favor of the “bask in the sun before the blizzard” kind of guy!!

So yesterday- All Kids! :) HOORAY! And all kids and Essen having some freedom put EVERYONE in a good mood! Kids were having an absolute riot, Essen and Remus and Victoria were a lot more relaxed and happier and just… there was a whole big mood of “at least for today, we can have these moments.” And especially with 1 of 3 likely having to go with Chuckers and be separated from her friends and family at some point? Building good memories is important.

And here comes the CK perspective.
How I handle every day (but particularly Wednesdays as the A.M. is trash day) I’ll pull into the garage, close the garage door, walk through the empty North garage to the front of the house, open the side door, walk to the street, check mail, grab Trash Cans, turn around… wave to Nala who is staring at me from the Front Door, bring the trash can to the North Garage, walk into the house, pet Nala, let her out. It’s all routine. Every day. The same. The house, but for the clatter of dog nails on hardwood, quiet. Cold. Empty. That’s my After Work Experience.
But last night, with the people over was better. And last night had some new spins so it was better still.

I pulled into the garage, closed the garage door, walked through the empty North garage to the front of the house… as I did I heard the laughter of children and Remus’ son shout something in his distinctive voice but (as distinct as the voice is) I couldn’t make out what he said… then I heard the distinct sound of a gaggle of tiny feet pounding downstairs.... opened the side door, walked to the street, checked mail (Victoria’s yarn had come; she paid me back for it but doesn’t have her own Etsy Account), grabbed Trash Cans, and turned around. There was life in my house. Tiny child heads barely visible bobbing up and down in the window. Victoria’s unmistakable red hair going from side to side as she checked on children and what she was cooking, Essen at the sink cleaning dishes that were needed for dinner. Just… life in the house changes everything. As I walked back to the North Garage and set the trash can down, Essen opened the door. That’s even a step further, man. Life in the house is good enough on its own. That life being excited to see me and taking the extra step of opening the door to say hi as I was walking in?? Man. That… gets me. HARD. Like… reminds me of when I was a kid and we would get so excited when Dad came home from work that the dog and the kids would rush the door and mom would open it so Kody could run out and greet Dad and… It was really special.

And the night was good. Remus downstairs on his computer watching if/when the kids went downstairs. Essen and I upstairs watching the majority of the kids as they played, ran around, colored, or trashed my “empty but not empty as Kids are brilliant at finding things I didn’t know were in there” guest room. Essen would help with making dinner periodically but… uhm… y’all know that Victoria is physically incredibly attractive… and has some very impressive sexual qualities… but that year in culinary school? That part’s hot, too! She was making “individual set up” stir fry. So.... veggies stir frying over here, imitation crab stir frying over here, noodles stir frying over here, tofu stir frying over here. As she says, she “hates” how I have an electric oven versus gas and wishes I “had more appropriate things for actual cooking” (bowls, pans, pots, etc) but she LOVES the space (can’t blame her… her kitchen is essentially ‘part of the wall of the dining room’ in a lot of ways). The food was EXCELLENT and then she surprised me by telling me the special Vegan Soup she makes for Essen? She made me a batch, too. “Maybe some healthy food to take to work” since she knows I’m trying to “eat more regularly and more healthfully.” GUYS? I’m… cared about. I know it is an insecure man that needs his loved ones to ‘prove’ that they care about him? BUT I think anyone who has read this space for a year or more understands why proof makes a difference!

After the food part, Essen actually helped clean up (THANK YOU!! I mean, I get it… they cooked, it’s my house, so I don’t typically feel bad if they leave a cooking mess… but all the same? Y’all just cooked for 8 people, and I’m just one guy cleaning up. Help is absolutely appreciated!) While I tried to help the kids finish their food and Remus was working on something. Victoria told me something the other day that now connects. She said that when Remus is feeling particularly low mood, in a negative place, he restores by spending time alone with video games. I’m wondering if that was said partly because that’s how he’s been feeling lately and that is what was going on last night. He has been having trouble sleeping and pulling some harder duties at work. ANYway… I could still hear some of the conversation between Essen and Victoria. NOT surprisingly, Essen is feeling all sorts of “in need of physical affection”. Though, even she said recently “As touch starved as I feel, you had it 5 times worse, Chris. Literally by the math!” So Victoria checked to make sure I had all the kids in one room and aggressively pushed Essen against the wall in the kitchen. No, they didn’t kiss or make out or touch genitals or anything. Just this “dominant pushing against the wall” was what Essen was looking for and it helped put Essen into a space of “Yes, Mistress” that she was looking for. But the funny thing?
One of those “topping fantasies” that I’ve always wanted to try? Pin Victoria up against the wall and fuck her ‘til she screams. Even put it in the letter I wanted to talk to her about! Because without TRUST, which I felt had become an issue between us, I didn’t feel like I could do that. I felt trying that would result in being laughed at, or rejected, or compared. BUT seeing her do that so freely with Essen… and the mood of the night, the absolute joy everyone was experiencing that we could have this VERY UNEXPECTED time together? There was… just… great mood, positive vibe, general comfort flowing all around.

So when Essen took the kids downstairs to clean up, get their shoes, and all that… I grabbed Victoria under the arms, picked her off the ground, turned, and shoved her into the wall. The look of turned on surprise was… it’s important to know I can have that effect on a woman… especially an attractive woman… and especially an attractive woman in a position and with a desire to have sex with me. That was… that was encouraging. That was good to know!!

To the point when, after all the kids left and Essen and Remus left… Victoria asked me “talk first or sex?” And I admitted, “The ethical part of my nature says talk. But instead, I’m going to pick you up and carry you to the bedroom.” She smiled and said okay. So I literally picked her up, threw her over my shoulder, and carried her into the bedroom. I won’t go into epic detail but… it was good. It was very good. I still didn’t finish. And that is getting frustrating because I got REALLY close this time. And a part of me wonders if we’d had the talk first, if that would have helped. Because I 100% know that the issue is emotional/mental with me at this point. But yeah… EXCELLENT night of fun. And if by mouth or hand I can give her a few orgasms… and by penetrative sex I can give her 4 more… dude, I’m exceptionally okay with that!!!! I don’t need my ending if I got to participate in that many of hers! lol. And… here’s the thing that IS just for this space because the woman CAN NOT handle compliments. When she’s on top, naked, looking at me with her head back lit by the ceiling light? The lines of her shoulders and her neck and her face take on this glorious artful ineffable beauty. She’d be furious to know I even have those thoughts but I do.

Afterwards, we both got dressed again (a good thing to point out as, honestly, I support the idea of “Serious conversations need clothing; naked conversations should never be so heavy that someone would need to get dressed to storm out).

And this is one of those “All humans are on a spectrum, ups and downs, high moods and low moods, times when they shine and times when they fail.” The look on her face after she read the letter? I’ll put it this way. After Nancy would read a letter like that, she’d typically cry… tell me that she was trying but it was hard… yell a lot… make me feel like shit having emotions… and then the rest of the night would be filled with tension, resentment, and hurt. Victoria? Her face blossomed into this serious face of maturity, understanding, and contemplation. She instantly said, “Chris, this letter doesn’t make you bad. You don’t need to apologize for it. You have feelings and those feelings are valid. Healthy or not; they’re still valid.”

Hashtag New Fucking Way to Start a Serious Conversation!!!

After 10 years of conversations like that with Nancy… this one was the first one where I ever honestly felt like I was talking to an adult. We discussed a lot of my feelings of rejection, criticism, comparison. How things had been strained lately. We put it all out there. And honestly… I felt cared about in that conversation. Not like, “You let us run around your house and I fuck you sometimes, tee hee.” It was very sincerely and honestly (and spoken aloud)
(1) You are cared about. You have value outside of that which you provide us with space. You have value as a friend and a terrific person. I care about you.
(2) If you weren’t “enough” I wouldn’t want to spend so much time with you. Even if that time goes ‘wrong’, it is never because you aren’t enough. And I know that I’m often overwhelmed with your inexperience. That isn’t a judgment. You’re 36 years old and your sexual history is Nancy. I knew “inexperience” was a thing going in. That inexperience does not make you ‘not enough.’ And I am truly sorry if I ever made you feel that way in any way.

The biggest things? AND MORE PROOF OF AN ADULT FUCKING CONVERSATION… is we both saw ways in which we didn’t communicate/interpret and discussed ways in which we can communicate better.
For example… for me… anything unspoken, unsaid, or undiscussed… my brain goes to its default understanding. After 10 years with Nancy, my default understanding is “absolute rejection.” So, if Victoria stops and doesn’t explain why… I take it as rejection. Default understanding.
And we discussed the particular issues presented.

(A) A few tries ago, she got dismissive about my attempt at initiating and went back to her phone. MY default chimes in with “Just like Nancy, for fuck sake. NO Chris, even though we’re on the bed and I mentioned I’d be keen for sex. NO, my phone is more important.” This default was made even worse when she mentioned what Remus would have done in the situation. So now on top of the narrative in my head I have the addition “And Remus would do it better anyway.”
BUT from Victoria’s perspective? Sometimes she’s “in the middle”. Like… she wants to be in the mood but her energy isn’t quite where she wants it to be to really BE IN the mood. She liked my attempt at initiating but it hadn’t really pushed her one way or the other; and she was offering a possible suggestion to help. Having discussed that now, there is a possible solution or more discussion… I’ll get to that later.

(B) The time immediately prior, it took some time… things were definitely a little off… but we had started some fooling around. She’d asked, “What now?” I said, “Should I get a condom?” She sighed derisively and said, “No. We’ll just call it.”
MY default chimes in with “Yup. Firm rejection, Chris. Clearly Victoria is unhappy about your lack of assertiveness so you fucked up! Good job on fucking up!” BUT from Victoria’s perspective? She was feeling pretty low energy. It had been a rough day, trouble with the kids at school, trouble getting them properly fed and taken care of… just low energy. It wasn’t a “no to Chris” but a realization that “sex probably isn’t on the table today.” But the lack of communication?

So this discussion was SUPER helpful to assist in understanding each other.
She needed to know that, obviously and of course she’s allowed to say no whenever she wants to. But if it is an energy thing or a head space thing, even if she doesn’t want to go into details… just let me know. A simple, “Feeling off today” would suffice.
I needed to know that many times if she and I are expecting to have an intimate evening, she REALLY wants that to happen and will shuffle her energy around. Like… she considers “Do I expend energy trying to explain why tonight might not be a good night? Loss of that energy maybe guaranteeing it wouldn’t be a good night for sex? Or do I save that energy and put it in to trying to have sex?”
So the conversation needed to be around.... (CK to V) “You don’t owe me explanations and you don’t owe me energy… either way. But the truth when naked can hurt more. If you’re just not sure, even if you just say “Yellow” when you walk in the door, that’ll be enough. Something where I know how you’re feeling and that… we can give it a try but it might not work and that’s okay.”

Then even after that she went back and apologized for the way that last try went. Stating that from her perspective it was the out to say (even if not communicated) “Sorry, I’m not feeling it tonight. Don’t get a condom, but can we cuddle or something? I’m just feeling more of a holding mood?” (Which btw, we did cuddle after she said no to the condom- energy thing). But now she realized how it could have been perceived by me and how it could be seen as mean-spirited. For me it was, “Okay, do you want to have sex with me?” and the answer was “No” and felt like (for various reasons, some involving past trauma) “Not if you’re gonna be like that.” It all lies in communication.

And, call this an ego move but… it was also really important for me to hear from her that she does find me attractive and is honestly interested in me sexually. (One may have thought ‘no duh’ but repeated failed attempts at sex lead me to think Nancy Area… continued failed attempts with me knowing Victoria has at least 2 other men every week lead me to think ‘Nancy Area and you’re not needed or wanted anymore’) But what was even more important?? That she DOES care about me. Because that’s the thing. This isn’t a romantic relationship. This is a friendship. That sometimes involves sex. But friends, especially friends healing from trauma, still need to know that they’re cared about. ESPECIALLY if their trauma directly relates to feelings of being cared about, appreciated, wanted, etc.

So for her to read the letter, consider my point of view, apologize, discuss communication issues, discuss her own feelings and perspectives, and end it all with a spontaneous “I care about you.” That… that was good. Needed.

We then cuddled and discussed more just about… the nature of things. How I wasn’t looking to her as the “Strong woman fixing the broken man” just… a guy in need of community. And yeah. The night went great. Even on the “poly” thing. Because, again I’ll take flak for this, it is fine.... I don’t consider myself an active part of the POLY element. Whatever Remus, Essen, and Victoria are doing romantically or sexually… I’m not involved but for if they flirt or anything in my house. But I have a friendship with each of them on an individual level… like being friends with a guy and his brother and sister. That being said, I am in a sexual relationship with one of them which adds an element to that made more important by my own trauma issues. So that I tend to be more sensitive to their relationship issues and more prone to falling into my toxic default without communication or connection. So that’s just part of a Me, Us, and Them angle. There’s ME who is good friends with Victoria, casual friends with Remus, and developing a really good friendship with Essen. There’s US which is Victoria and I have a sexual element to our relationship and due to her situation and my trauma, we need to do a better job of communicating. There’s THEM which is Victoria, Remus, Skully (Victoria’s Committed Partner), Gizmo (Remus’ Committed Partner), and Essen (and technically the spouses and other partners of Skully and Gizmo). That is totally a THEM thing that is too complicated, convoluted, and (frankly) too much effort for me!! I’m interested in it only insofar as how those tangled relationships are impacting my friends’ lives. That’s it.

Which was proven last night, as well. After good sex, a meaningful conversation, and cuddling… Victoria is telling me how, somewhat against her will, that she’s falling in love with Skully. Skully is a big softy, totally self-sacrificing, kind, really cares about other people. AND I’LL TELL YOU THIS… if Victoria had told me that even 12 hours earlier? I’d be pissed off. I’d be livid. I know that she and I would make ABYSMAL romantic partners (TRULY abysmal, I’ve diagrammed the scenarios a number of ways and we wouldn’t make it past ONE MONTH and even that is generous). SO the issue there is… why 12 hours previously would I have been livid to know a friend of mine was in love with someone who had many of my best qualities?? Because of trauma triggers.
(1) The consecutive sexual rejections without discussion triggering toxic default
(2) Toxic Default and less than thinking driving me to instantly think she didn’t care about me
(3) Thinking that one of my closest friends and few sexual partners didn’t care about me would send me on a looping spiral focusing on how Nancy was a close friend and only sexual partner and apparently never cared about me at all and refused to even pretend when it was literally “Pretend to give a shit about the man you married, or get the fuck out of the house and go back to being poor!”
(4) Which would lead me to the historical remembrance/realization that despite that, Nancy already has a new man and fill-in family and the closest I’ve even gotten to an actual date was when a girl flirted with me in an attempt to get me to subscribe to her Only Fans.

And that’s how crazy can happen. A friend says she’s in love with a guy like you; and in seconds you’re furious about it because SURE, HE can get girls like this and I can’t get SHIT so WHAT THE FUCK?! (which… may look familiar). But after (1) sexually reconnecting; (2) An honest discussion; (3) a direct statement of “I care”; and (4) excellent reinforcement of my good qualities independent of both value judgments or dating conversations.......
Put those pieces back and the Friendship to THEM element was strong enough again. I was really happy for her, laughed because I know she wants to do something to spite herself she’s that opposed to mushy (another reason she and I would never work), mentioned surprise that Skully seems right since he’s a big ol’ softy; and then got to find out some really cool things about Skully and how he IS a softy but can handle her bullshit in really healthy and caring ways. I was happy for my friend. And that’s the way to handle this “community” I’m presently part of.
ME… I have strengths, weaknesses, good qualities, bad qualities, and stuff I need to work out.
US… I have an amazing friend that I have a special relationship with. Like all relationships, it requires time, communication, caring, and understanding.
THEM… I have three friends that are involved in a type of relationship matrix that does not appeal to me, but is what they want. As long as they are happy, healthy, and cared about… it isn’t my place to judge them or compare my choices to theirs. I’m not part of all of that and that has been my choice. Victoria has given me a few reasons to think “If I wanted to go poly, she might be okay exploring that” and I told her I wanted to stay monogamous. Essen and I even had a full conversation where she does think I’m attractive with a great heart and I’m a wonderful guy… and if I were up for a non-monogamous relationship after her marriage officially ends, she’d be interested… but she knows me (and isn’t wrong) that I’m not looking for that. THEM is complicated. Convoluted. Doesn’t work for me. Is something THEY know doesn’t work for me. The only reason to even have a THEM in my life right now is that the THEM in this scenario involves three of my friends. Ultimately… as far as my “emotional investment”… when it comes to THEM… it would be like if I was living in Des Moines and hanging out with any of my friends in relationships. True, the Group Chat and the fact that my COVID bubble is made up of THEM means that, for now, I may be a little closer to THEM than if I was living in Des Moines and hanging out with any of my friends in relationships. But part of that is honestly just the Nature of COVID and Relationships right now. There are some romantic couples, marriages, even just roomies that now feel WAY MORE knowledgeable and involved with one another due to COVID restrictions and everything.

I just have to keep all of that in mind.