I’ll be the bad guy and admit that the honeymoon seems to be over…

I am reminded that this blog isn’t about just the happy and good times, but the challenges as well. There’s no use hiding the not-so-pretty parts. And in hiding them, we’d only be doing everyone and each other an injustice by making it appear to be all rainbows and sunshine.

I can only speak for myself of course, but this is the longest stretch of nitty-gritty reality that I have felt to date in the Trifecta. There was a while not long ago that these times were fleeting, or at least predictably temporary. This stretch feels never-ending. Work has been challenging , tension and emotions have been in the red zone, money is tight, schedules are hectic, vehicles are breaking down right and left, and the weather and families have been less than cooperative. Isn’t that just the perfect storm.

Lately I have felt burned out on LIFE. All of it. Sleep, peace, and quiet are foremost in my thoughts. I feel like a day or two (or five?) of not speaking or listening or looking anyone in the eye would do me some good. The dishes and laundry can pile up and I won’t feel bad. The TV can stay off in lieu of a mindless novel that I probably won’t remember five minutes after I’m done reading it. I have hardly noticed the stereo being off in my car during my daily commute. THAT is how tired I am of sensory input. Maybe that’s it – I just need a break from my own senses.

Posting my concerns will bring them out in the open (although I think the funk I'm in is obvious to anyone who knows me) and will probably worry Red and Missy. I maintain, however, that times like these will force a relationship thrive or fail. We should not panic or waste too much energy over-analyzing. This time was destined to come, and I think our relationship could potentially crash (or at least fizzle out) without us knowing whether or not we are capable of surviving less-than-happy days. I am not afraid of what is happening, I don't feel like running away, I don't see it as the end of anything - just a time to sit back and live in it, and see what happens at the other end.

I have a selfish streak. I swear I am usually a kind, giving, caring human being. I love others and am perfectly able to maintain long-term relationships. For the most part, I think I get along well with people and enjoy their quirkiness and differences. Sometimes though, if I begin to feel crummy enough, I will not care what other people think. I will not care about anyone or anything other than myself and my problems, no matter how insignificant they seem to other people (hence the selfishness). Caring for ME becomes my top priority. Anything or anyone who tries to help will probably fray my nerves even further, and make me more irritable. Leaving me alone during these times is probably best for everyone.

Understanding this about myself (I feel) is an accomplishment. Explaining it to my partner in a relationship seems like my responsibility. Attempting to help not one, but TWO people understand this and be o.k. with it has been difficult. Needing to be alone sometimes is not me running away from the Trifecta. It's not me hiding from my emotions. In fact, I see it as retreating to my corner to deal with my issues in my own time and way, without inflicting my mood on anyone else.

Missy and Red will have either similar or different ways of dealing with the end of the honeymoon (or maybe they already have, and I handled it beautifully? haha). I will do my best to understand and respect their needs as we move forward into whatever new phase happens to present itself... Conquering the end of the honeymoon should be celebrated! It means we are all returning to our normal selves and getting back to baseline, and are still all doing just fine. This is normal. It is good.

p.s. - searching Google for a "Three-person honeymoon" picture - I found THIS...   If that ain't foreboding...haha

Fair warning.

I'm on a bit of a bender, because just tonight I told my nearly 20 year-old daughter about the Trifecta, and it was (in that way only a 20 year-old can make it) ridiculously anticlimactic.  I'm NOT a fan of drama, and I dreaded "the talk," but c'mon - it's a threesome!  Apparently she has suspected, and/or all-out known about it for a long time.  There will be no scandalous Facebook posts from HER on that topic tonight.  Well...I am glad she didn't run screaming, that's the most important thing.

Regarding Missy's post of earlier this evening though, I do appreciate (admire?) her confidence that she can show me she loves me SO MUCH every single day, that I should just get over our inability to make a formal committment.  Maybe I will be!  I have been so far.  And I mean that sincerely.  But I won't be ashamed of the fact that I'm jealous that THEY have the security of marriage, while I am left feeling a little disposable.  Last hired, first fired - isn't that the way it works?  I will be the one that can't go to Red's Corporate Christmas Party.  Or Missy's Physician Appreciation Dinner.  And I will be the one who everyone wonders about at the holiday dinner or Super Bowl Party "who is that again, and why is she here?"  They are a given...the norm...the always accepted.  People who knew them "pre-me" will always root for their relationship to prevail (since the Trifecta is doomed, right?), and people who knew me before will always wonder why I can't go find a man (or woman) of my own.  And bonus...(not)...I can be voted off the island by not one, but two people, in a way that neither of them will have to worry about.  I won't get the health benefits or life insurance or hospital-visitation-on-the-death-bed privileges they are afforded (ok, that's a little far reaching, I know, haha).  But you catch my drift, right?

Of course, on another day, when I'm in a different mood...I am unbelievably humbled by the knowledge that my existence has changed their relationship forever, whether I like it or not.  No matter how good or bad this all turns out, their marriage will never be the same.  That is a lot of responsibility.  Responsibility that I sometimes don't feel capable of handling.  I didn't expect that.  In it's simplest terms, if they kick me to the curb, they hurt one person.  If I leave, I damage two.

Therein lies the difference between a threesome and the Trifecta.  We love, we suffer, we communicate, we celebrate, we fear, we worry...in a sometimes blissful, sometimes painful, but in always a brutally honest way.

Life Without Promises

It has been established in this forum that We Are Doomed. (See the very most hit-upon post, "Impossible Things", for proof.) So it shouldn't be any surprise that the issue of our untenable future arises from time to time.

At the moment, the curious feature of the Trifecta, for me, is that we are (1) persisting longer than I would have thought, and (2) still under the specter of doom at all times. I guess I imagined that either the one fact or the other would have prevailed by now. Because:

Red is a planner.

Chloe is a romantic.

I am a rebel.

My long-term relationships are three, and they go like this: I've been married to Red for six years, with him for eleven. Before that I was married for five years. Before that, I lived with a man for six years, who never promised to marry me nor have kids nor nothing. (I have not had children of my own, can't remember if I've mentioned that, and never will -- I love my stepchildren and that's plenty.) That first marriage was a mistake. I try to make a practice of "No Regret", so I'll go on record as saying I learned from it. There were no kids, no financial entanglements, it was easy to extricate myself from. But, it was ... unfortunate.

The previous relationship, on the other hand, was very meaningful to me. Let's call him Andrew. From the start, Andrew and I deferred the notion of marriage as Something Other People Do, because they need to feel like they have some official constraint keeping them together when they don't want to be. We didn't rule it out, the getting married thing, but we never considered it crucial. We had ups and downs -- I was in grad school, he was working, we were poor -- and we were very different personalities. He was quiet and reserved, I was bubbly and social. But together we had lots of friends, had an active life, enjoyed each other's company, and learned a lot from each other. It broke apart when I saw he was not all that jazzed about coming with me when my job would require relocating. Many months ahead, I said "if you're not into it, just tell me". He said he would. He didn't. I got a job in another city, and he didn't want to move. I declared that we were done. He said OK. It came time for me to move, and then he decided he couldn't live without me and asked me to marry him. I said: too late.

That makes it sound sad. In fact, most of the six years were great. The thing that made me and Andrew different from Red and his previous wife, or Chloe and her previous husband, is that we did not expect or extract from one another any promises about the future. I wanted to know he would stay with me, but I was willing to live without a ring or a wedding. I did not need a roadmap or a five-year plan. Did not build fantasies of how we would meld our families. We imagined how we would grow old together, but every time we had a storm of conflict, we made an active choice whether to stay together or go our separate ways. There was no legal bond, no family pressure, no structure of shame to influence our decision. Since we were already broke, there was no financial advantage or penalty to either of us for staying or going. And we stayed together longer than either of my marriages (so far).

Why am I going on about an old boyfriend in a blog about the Trifecta? (Bad form, you know, to wax rhapsodic about a partner from the past.)

Because it is very painful right now for Chloe to have no sense of security. No goal of official sanction in the future. Yes, I too wish we three could have such a thing -- but as Chloe observes, Red and I already have the societally acceptable bond. There is no "normal" room for any expansion of that relationship, only the secret versus the open-but-unconventional.

Her quandary causes me pain. I can't un-marry myself from Red (I mean I could, but it would be pointless). I can't invent some alternate universe in which our arrangement becomes widely accepted and we announce ourselves as newlyweds.

What I can do, since I am over-the-cliff in love with her, is make a living promise, every day: I care about you. You matter. I will support you, even on a day when I'm tired and sad and grouchy. I will shower all my dizzy happiness on you when a day is good.

That's what I mean when I say "I love you" to Red, too: but there's a visible symbol on my finger that holds me to it, not to mention a bunch of family. I want for both Red and Chloe to know that I can make a life of love -- I know how to do it, I've done it before -- where you don't have words like "wife" and "husband" to fall back on. In my twenties, Andrew and I joked about whether "mate" might be the best term to use for what we meant to each other. Now in my forties, I just want to soak up the warmth of my two lovers and language be damned.