Matters of the Heart: Part 2

The reason that Maitri and I travelled to <midwestern city> is for our sweethearts’ wedding.  It occurs to me that the plural possessive form in the object of that sentence requires some elaboration.  Maitri and I are polyamorous.  Basically, that means that our commitment to each other doesn’t include ‘forsaking all others’.  Polyamory (sometimes ‘poly' for short) comes in just about as many flavors as there are people practicing it.  Maybe in a future post I’ll elaborate on the specifics and ideological underpinnings of this way of conducting relationships, but for now I’m going to stick to how things actually play out in my experience.  I will emphasize one more point, though, which is that the relationships that occur under the umbrella of polyamory (or even more generally ethical non-monogamy) happen with the knowledge and consent of all involved.  So no deception, no secrets. 

Maitri and I are each dating both members of the couple who got married this past weekend, Teddy Theory and Paradox.  

I’ve been putting writing this post off so long that it seems like I could never do it justice.  As if I have to make up for the fading subtleties of this game-changing experience by writing a perfect composition with elegantly slicing insight.  But that’s not what manifest spontaneity is about.  So as I write about the past, I’ll root myself in feeling the present.  That seems so much more workable now.  And honest.  On we go.  

Celebrating the wedding of my sweethearts Teddy and Paradox was face-explodingly joyous.  At the end of the ceremony, my cheeks hurt from smiling so much and I neither could nor would want to have stopped.  Being part of the wedding party, it wasn’t just the day of the ceremony and the reception afterwards that I got to spend with Teddy and Paradox.  There was brunch on Thursday, most of that afternoon in Teddy's and Paradox’s suite, the rehearsal, then the rehearsal dinner.  After just that Thursday, I felt more myself in a very particular but unpinndownable way than I have certainly in the last 6 months.  At that point, I didn’t know what it was but I did know that I felt so at home among my sweethearts, their close friends, and my wife.  I knew that I was sitting at the right table when the conversation topic became whether you would rather give up cheese or all forms of oral sex for the rest your life (after long deliberation and discussion verging on debate, I decided cheese).  

The next day, getting ready for the wedding at the venue, I felt like water matching the pace of a river.  Recalling it now, I feel this sense of expanding peace with a low center of gravity.  I keep wanting to sink into the details and explore my recollections of them and find out what phrases they pull up.  That would be one thing to do — and nice for a later me looking back on this.  But I’m doing this now and the next thing that leaps up from the horizon is the ceremony.  The chairs were arranged in a circle with the wedding party sitting on the innermost row.  Throughout the ceremony, I experienced wave-upon-wave of, “How right this is for these two people.”  There was one reading in particular that brought tears to me with it’s naked truth and beauty.  That reading, by Anne Morrow Lindbergh, expressed how I feel about intimate relationships.  As it was being read, I was reflecting on my relationship with Maitri.  She was sitting exactly across the circle from me and so I couldn’t see her.  But I held her presence in my awareness.  It felt like I had to open just about as much as I could to accommodate my feelings for Maitri, Teddy, Paradox, and all my newfound people in the room.  It now brings to mind a quote by my teacher, Sakyong Mipham, “Love mixed with space is called letting go.”  Like letting go of my relationship with Maitri as the local vertical in the gravity-less space of intimacy.  Don’t mistake me — Maitri is most definitely my wife and anchor partner, and that provides a lot of orientation to my life.  But my relationship with her is not a measuring stick.  That distorts the depth of my connection with her as well as my connections with my other partners.  

I don’t know when it was during the course of the weekend, but gradually a new understanding of intimacy dawned on me.  I’ve known that I care for Teddy and Paradox very much for some time, but there’s always been this feeling like there was a rock under the insole of my shoe.  Not painful, but not comfortable.  Truth be told it’s been perplexing me for at least a year, and I’d just chalked it up to not getting to see them very often.  The rock was that I was holding my relationship with Maitri as the reference point for (especially) romantic intimacy with my other partners.  Having to let go to accommodate the joy and love that I was feeling was like a gem suddenly catching the sun and blazing in its brilliance.  The splendor of that moment burnt up the ledger-mind that’s always comparing this to that.  That falling away of reference point encompassed my relationship to my girlfriend, Graceheart, in whose apartment Maitri and I were staying while she was out of town.  

The dawning of that understanding—really, a grokking—was sparked by something the woman who delivered the reading that was so meaningful to me said (I'm calling her Enticing Sky).  Part of the ceremony was a ring warming.  The rings were passed around the circle from the outside to the center so that everyone could touch them.  I’d thought for a week about the kind of intention I wanted to hold when my turn with the rings came to me.  Enticing Sky told me at the reception that she noticed how I’d paused and touched the rings and that it brought her joy knowing of my relationships to Teddy and Paradox in the midst of their vows to each other.  In that moment I felt seen by her in a way that I didn’t expect anyone to, especially not someone whom I’d met the day before.  Perhaps most importantly, it wasn’t a curiosity to her.  For me that enlivened my sense of rightness about the whole situation and simultaneously put her on my heart radar.  

I cannot get this all down.  My internal censor is back up at 11.  At this point, I think I’ve just got to call it a night.  Apparently there will be a Matters of the Heart: Part 3.