F*CK the Unicorn (and not in the good way).

Ok.  Admittedly, I am in a mood.

I read this:
http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2012/01/30/sl-letter-of-the-day-we-found-our-unicornbut-shes-engaged

I realize I am stuck on the moniker, and this isn't the topic of the article, but who wants the pressure of being "The Unicorn?"

On any given day, I usually appreciate and enjoy Dan Savage's advice.  I really do.  Trust me.  But who wants to be "The Unattainable," or "The Elusive," or the object of the "Dude! You didn't really think you'd ever get a piece of that, AND still keep your wife, did you?!" type of locker room banter.

Maybe some girls do, but not me.  Well, not at MY age anyhow.

All I have ever wanted was to be satisfied, and (dare I say?) happy.  Once in a while, (or ok, often...) some adventure and excitement in my relationship are great and fun.  Why is it so disturbingly rare to be in a happy, long-lasting, committed relationship?  Why is must it be even more rare to find two people to be loved by?  Is there some unimpassioned ruling entity out there that says "threesomes" must be made of hopelessly beautiful people, engaged in short term, fleeting and/or risque encounters?  Are there no other "normal" people out there who crave committed intimacy (with...eek! more than one person?) on a long-term, loving basis?  Please help me discover that someone else has forged this path and can offer advice that will make my daily living situation less...impossible.

We have told our story...we hear stories...but have we ever actually MET anyone?  Not all three of them in the same room at the same time.

Good for all you young, sexy, beautiful, successful twenty- or thirty-somethings, engaged in exciting, fulfilling threesomes.  I can hardly wait to read someday about how perfectly and wonderfully things worked out for you.  And I sincerely hope they do.

Haven't we (meaning "most people," I suppose) all been at some point, ridiculously fanciful and full of beautiful, utopian fantasies of the "dream relationship" occuring during our lifetime?  No one said it would be easy.  Only after one has experienced the excruciating emotions of not only love, but loss, hatred, grief, bliss, dissappointment, betrayal, jealousy, and spite (among all others), have we become whole, and therefore finally capable of experiencing that "dream relationship."  In whatever form it may take.

Wait.  Is it just me?

I am human.  I am no more or less special than anyone else.  I want to feel cared for and loved.  I want to care for and love.  I don't need to be labeled.  Not "The Third" or "The Prize" or (God forbid) "The Unicorn."   I am a human being - trying to be as satisfied as possible during the little time I have left on this earth. 

I would appreciate if you would refer to me and treat me as such.

Thank you.

P.S. - I have truly and sincerely, down to my CORE, fully enjoyed and appreciated all the special treatment and attention I have received over the past two years.  However, it wouldn't be fair to any of us if EACH ONE of us didn't feel that wonderful at any given moment.

No matter what...this too shall pass.

Impermanence. 

I am striving not to cling TOO desperately to the good times in life and despise the bad.  I suspect it is best to live in each moment as much as possible, knowing that the experience will be over soon enough and possibly even forgotten one day - although hopefully not.

Lately, returning in my mind to both the beautiful memories and the tremendous pain I have felt since the birth of the Trifecta has kept my entire being grounded in reality, while still teetering on the brink of fantasy.  I can't speak for everyone, but looking back, I feel like we are all now such tremendously different people than we were at the beginning (when we thought we were wise and knew ourselves so well).  Back then I imagined there was no way of telling where or who we would be right now.

It is a busy time of year.  It is a busy time in life.  In all things, I will let myself actually FEEL, so as not to get to the end and realize I was too busy to notice the details.  There are moments that I don't want to end and there are times that I wish "it" would all go away, but the impermanence is an equalizing factor.  Impermanence brings balance.  No decisions will be made in my mind based solely on a single experience or set of similar experiences, because that would surely be representative of only one elevation of the roller coaster we're on.

Until the end, I hope to laugh a little more loudly than I should, cry a little more often, and pause a moment too long before I reply.  I will be aware of that strange look that crosses my face when I say something I'm not really sure about, but I will say it anyhow.  I will want to be alone when it's best to be around others, and I will likely blurt things out when it's best to keep quiet. 

I have faith that it will all work itself out in the end.

Still crazy after all of these months

It's December and the Trifecta is well into its second year and going strong. Chloe and her daughter have a sweet little dog now and have moved into a nicer apartment. Chloe and Missy are still colleagues at work and that is going pretty well. I'm doing fine as well.

We've overcome a lot of challenges together. one of the nice things about there being three of us is that it keeps us honest. We know that we've got two others to make decisions with, and anything we come up with gets double the scrutiny, and also double the refining. Thusly we make good decisions together.

Each of our experiences of the relationship is rather different. We each get different things from being in this relationship. I love the challenge of being with two women. It occupies my mind and body, it pushes me to be a better man and a more complete individual. I have to be more sweet, more strong, more wise and more clever. And with double the scruinty, I can't get away with mailing it in, ever. The Trifecta keeps me sharp and focused.

I love Missy and Chloe. They are my life. They are my heart. More than anything, I want to deserve them, and keep on deserving them.

Love,

Red

As tempted as I am to spend this time writing about all the beautiful sunshine and happiness that happened on our recent "family" vacation, the rest of it should be recorded too - in the hopes that someday, somehow, we may look back and laugh.

It has been over a year since the beginning of the Trifecta.  In the early times, I assumed that a magical day would come where I would be able to safely look back and say that I had seen it all...experienced ALL of the dark, weird, uncomfortable moments.  I (stupidly) hoped that it wouldn't take a year.  I would've laughed if anyone had told me back then that it would not only take MORE than a year, but that I might never be happy with some things - important things.

Am I a big baby?  Apparently.  I suspect that I will always mourn the loss of that childish dream of a single, perfect soul mate.  A guilty pleasure of mine is the sappy, predictable romantic comedy, so this is clearly a problem.  I suspect I will continue to be sad and feel sorry for myself every time, at the very moment the boy finds the girl he was meant to be with, and they live happily ever after.  I know reality.  I know the feeling that you've found your soul mate, and then a few years later being miserable and angry and disappointed.  I know divorce.  I also know bliss.  I know that some of the most intensely spectacular moments I have ever had have been within the Trifecta - beautiful moments that I truly believe would be impossible between just two people.  Yet I will always mourn the loss of the boy/girl sould mate phenomena.

I have considered the possiblity that maybe THREE people could be soul mates.  We have all gone through this-and-that to become the people we are, in the place we are, and that the universe brought us together, and so on and so forth...  The death of that theory is in the numbers.  The beauty of the soul mate dream (in MY mind, anyhow) is that you can be yourself - the good, the bad and the ugly - with a single other person who will love you despite all of your flaws.  That will always be impossible with us, because we will always have to put someone (or everyone) else's feelings first - and we're good at it, otherwise we wouldn't have made it this far.  It is frustrating how difficult it is for me to relax enough to experience a meltdown and get all boo-hooey and sappy and greedy for love and affection, for fear that someone's feelings will be hurt.  I worry "have we left him alone too long?  Is he lonely?", or "will her feelings be hurt if we go someplace nice and she's not here?"  I have realized that we aren't a glob of three people, but there are two separate one-on-one relationships that I am fortunate enough to have.  They will always be in flux though, and I will always need to be concerned about someone being short changed.  I want everyone to be happy with me all the time...unrealistic, I know. 

So alas, we arrive again at the beginning - no mysteries have been solved and no answers learned...welcome to my world.

Mother******* Nature.

Recently we went on an epic roadtrip. We had kids with us and visited Red's parents, but along the way we got a few nights of Trifecta-only time. It was bliss.

But I have to say, Mother Nature can be a bitch.

The first half of the trip, I was menstruating. The second half, Chloe was menstruating. WTF?? It was quite a parade to rain on. Happily, none of us is particularly squeamish about that sort of thing, but nonetheless the whole phenomenon tends to render each of us girls crampy and cranky and generally uncomfortable.

Then again ... we got up above 9,000 feet one day toward the end, looking around at the mountains (still with snow on them!), the lake, the wildlife, the shockingly blue sky ... and I thought: okay, Mother. I guess you dish out the beauty and the beastliness both. I'll take that.

What a tease.

Two more nights.

For the last three weeks, because of various summer anomalies in other people's schedules, Chloe and Red and I have had the house to ourselves. Her clothes are hanging next to mine in the closet. She replaced our showerhead (which I suspect was out of sheer exasperation, but I choose to see it as incredibly sweet). I've stopped being jealous of Red having the middle of the bed. We've even figured out the exact right configuration and timing of open windows and doors, to keep that bed at the right temperature!

And now, it's about to end.

Regular routines resume, and the fact is we don't live together. Yet. Might never. And it makes me terribly, awfully sad to give up the temporary taste of it.

At the same time, I'm silly with joy over how much fun it's been. And how comfortable. We're not sick of each other, and even though there's been way more work hours than usual for two of us, we've all gotten through that with humor and grace.

There was an earlier period like this, where we got to see what it was like to spend every night together for a while. We're so much closer now. More practical? Not necessarily ... we keep saying we're going to catch up on sleep, but then we keep oops having more CRAZY hot awesome blinding sex almost every time we go to bed. Sheesh.

Next week makes a year we've been a triple. We can hold out long enough to finally achieve the Trifecta Dream Home, right?

*yawn*

So very boring.

Well, no: the Trifecta continues to be the most novel and engaging thing in my life, and I want to spend every minute I possibly can just reveling in it.

And there are still periods of melodrama. There's a family member who thinks Chloe and Red are having an affair, without me knowing (which would make me the THICKEST wife EVER), and while we would love to disabuse this person of their delusion, that would probably blow our cover at work, which might get someone fired. So we're still debating what to do, and how to arrange life around this person (total avoidance is not an option).

There are exciting new discoveries. (Remember Mexico, where we learned that straight boys AND straight girls gave us the thumbs-up? Turns out, gay guys are also impressed by Red! And make us feel welcome in their bars, so far without exception.)

I finally got everybody rings. Here is one of them:

Because in three weeks, we reach our one-year mark.

I'm pretty sure I have never been this happy. By turns it gets dramatic, weird, exciting, and confusing. But it also has gotten *comfortable*. It has become the default, the Way Things Are. That may be the best part of all.