Compersion and Jealousy

When I heard GracieX talk about compersion last Saturday I thought about my first wife Cindy and my own experiences with compersion decades ago. I thought about the first time I saw Cindy have sex with another man.

Besides finding it erotic I felt honored to be able to experience her enjoying sex from an angle I never could have, had it been she and I performing the act. I felt joy for Cindy and her sex partner and felt joy for myself for having that moment. To me that was a big deal. When I say honor I mean, our sexuality is a real human experience - like seeing a baby be born or seeing a person die. Human experiences can be joyous or tragic, but they are human experiences. To me, human experiences are something to be honored.

Jealousy for me has always been something else, totally something else. Jealousy for me has been this mysterious stew of emotions that usually defy logic and for me have root in my wounded child. It's not one thing or the other. It's not a spectrum for me with jealousy at one end and compersion at the other.

What did I learn?

Looking back on all this, writing this blog, has brought back a lot of memories. I asked myself what did I learn from all this that I can reflect on now, over 30 years later?

At the time all this happened Polyamory was so inconceivable that there was not even a word for it. For a lot of the years after Mary and I broke it off I just thought of it as something weird we did in the 70s. I still loved Mary deeply even after she remarried and I stayed married to Cindy.

She was still both Cindy and my best friend and after Cindy died in a late night car accident, Mary was the first person I called. I remember telling her, "I love you. I have some bad news. I need your help." I think she just said, "Oh God...Oh God...Oh God." She and her husband drove through the night to be there to be with me and to help.

Mary had a heart attack and died a decade later.

This was a love that most people would not understand. It was a lifelong love and it rents my heart when I think of how much it hurts that they are both gone.

As much as it hurt, knowing I can give my whole heart to more than one person at a time has given me strength to go on. I did not have to divorce my love for Mary and Cindy to let others into my heart. When I remarried there was whole table of special people at my wedding. Mary was still alive then and she was there too.

One of my then teenage children called it the ex-girlfriend table. They were not all ex’s. I heard it was the most fun table at the wedding.

I learned there is more to love than I ever imagined!

Our struggles

During the time (1970s and 80s) of my poly relationships with both my inamorata Mary and my wife Cindy, emotions were very confused. Cindy and Mary were best friends and some intimacy occurred between them as well. Cindy was bi-curious and had very strong fantasies of having a female lover. But, she also had a conflict of her own over very strong conservative religious beliefs, which said homosexuality, and open marriage for that matter, was a major sin. The goal of the faith then was for gays to pray the gay away.

We still all were caught up in the hetronormative mindset in different ways. I was okay with Cindy exploring her bisexuality, in fact it was kinda hot to me when I got to see her and Mary together and with others. I did not have the guilt and self shaming over that that Cindy had over what we did. That was her struggle. My struggle was different.

What I struggled with was my love for Mary. I told Mary I loved her many times but she never admitted her love for me until after Cindy died in a car accident, about a decade after Mary and I stopped being sexually intimate.

Polyamory did not exist as a word when we had our triad and did not learn that word until well into the 21st Century. So, I thought my falling in love with Mary meant by definition that I was falling out of love with Cindy. I think now that was Mary’s fear and that’s why she said to me at the time, “I am not in love with you.”

This is the scarcity model of love. It treats love like a glass of water. If you pour the water from one glass to another, neither can be full.

In my mind being in love with two people simply was not possible. It took me a long time and a lot of pain to realize not only was it possible, it was my normal. Even more than two…

The kids

During the time of my poly relationships with both my inamorata Mary and my wife Cindy, and their relationships with other lovers, and other significant others, we all had kids. It was both complicated, and simplified, by the fact that Mary had once been married to Cindy’s brother Lenny.

It simplified things in that when Mary’s kids were really little their uncle coming to visit and spending a few days with their mom was no big deal to them. For our kids having their aunt Mary come visit and sleep with mom and dad was no different than having one of their little friends come visit and sleep over in their room.

Of course that started changing, as they got older.

The fact that Mary and Lenny were now divorced did make Mary and our relationship feel a bit less taboo. Even though Mary was not in anyway related to either Cindy or I biologically, when she was married to Lenny the relationship still felt a bit incestuous.

Our kids and Mary’s kids were, and are, cousins. That is a huge part of why this blog is anonymous. I love Mary deeply and profoundly and always will. I feel the same way about Cindy. That did not end when Cindy and Mary died.

Mary’s kids do not need to know both their uncle and aunt were their mother’s lovers or that their parents had an open marriage over 30 years ago when they were little. Neither do mine. Neither do the grandkids.

Changes

Change is constant in life and relationships. In 1979 there was some dramatic changes in our lives.

My Mary and Lenny split up.

For Cindy and I there was a change too. We moved away, about 100 miles away from where Mary lived. This had zero to do with what was going on in Mary’s life. I went to a new school.

It’s too bad Cindy and I did not make a connection with the swinging couple we met earlier. We were in the same town.

Cindy and I kept our marriage open, and I remained in my polyish relationship with Mary.

Meeting Swingers in 1978

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Memories and pain

Memories are fickle and non linear. Memories are sometimes as much a statement of who we are now as of who we were then. We remember with the knowledge of how things turn out, events that occurred when their outcomes were unknown. Memories are not always balanced or fair.

As I write about these remembrances there is surely much I have forgotten. I was young and I cannot ask either Cindy or Mary about their memories, since they are gone. They are my two angels in heaven now and someday I hope to join up with them again along with my current wife. I am sure I will have a lot of questions to ask and some apologies to make.

It wasn't easy. I remember fights and jealousies involving Cindy and I and between Mary and her husband Lenny. Like mothers who forget the pains of labor as they remember their baby's smile. There may be a lot more that I have forgotten because it hurts to remember.

Not remembering the pain does not mean it didn't happen. I don't remember ever arguing with Mary that does not mean it didn't happen. I do remember pain and a lot of drama in general. I remember there were tears. I don't want anybody to think this was easy and painless. The best parts hurt less to remember. Sometimes, we had no idea what we were getting ourselves into.

Mary and I

Mary and I spent a lot of time together in 1978. I drove her to work every morning. At the time Lenny and Mary were married. I would get up very early in the morning, drive to their house, pick Mary up and drive to her job.

One morning I over slept. I heard her say in my head, “Sam, are you awake?” I woke up and looked at the clock. Mary later said she was thinking that at just that moment. We were connected that way. I used to tell her we had that thing that’s called Radar Love. She could think about me, and I could hear her thoughts. I woke up in time to get to her and get her to work on time.

Mary and I went on both day and multi-day trips together. Our spouses watched the kids. Our favorite place to go for a getaway was the coast. On one such trip we barely escaped a head on collision with an oncoming car. I pulled over to the side of the road. We hugged each other. We cried, then we ended up laughing about how hard it would have been for our spouses to explain our deaths together to family and friends.

Since our spouses were siblings, Mary and I were also each other’s marriage counselors. Mary was both my wife Cindy and my best friend as well as our lover. Mary was able to give Cindy and I insights on each other without breaking any confidences.

Mary said the reason Cindy and I struggled was because we were both so much alike. Mary said Cindy and I had the same strengths and same weaknesses. I truly think this insight and the evolving polyamorous triad dynamic saved my marriage with Cindy and held our family together.

I told Mary many times that I had fallen in love with her. She told me that she was not in love with me. It was not until ten years later, after Cindy died in a car accident, that Mary told me she really had fallen in love with me. Mary said she felt she could not tell me she loved me back then because Cindy was both her sister-in-law and her best friend.

Mary did not want to chance breaking up Cindy and my marriage. Maybe it would have. I will never know what difference, if any, that would have made.

The seeds of shame

Cindy had adopted a religion in her teens that was conservative, fundamental and judgmental. At the same time she was a very vibrant, sexy and sexual young woman. Cindy worked as a nude model. She would go on dates with other men. She also began to realize her sexual attraction to other women.

A few times we would literally invite friends over and maybe have an orgy on Saturday night and get up and go to church Sunday morning as a family. We sowed our wild oats on Saturday night and Sunday morning prayed for a crop failure.

I am not saying there is anything wrong with this. I do know that she started leading more and more of a double life and feeling guilt and self-shaming herself over this duality about now. At this time I was okay with the double life we were leading as long as I could have my wife Cindy and Mary too.

I went to church with Cindy because that was what she wanted to do. This was late in the 1970s. We were too young to know how needless and destructive shame could ultimately prove to be.

No other word for it

In the mid-70s we had gone full swap, unlimited pass with no real negotiations of boundaries. Finding other partners was easier for Cindy than for me and she did find others. My focus was on Mary who I was falling in love with.

Our only reference point was the standard narrative. To me that narrative implied that to fall in love with Mary I had to stop loving Cindy. But, that’s not how it played out. Still filled with new relationship energy, I was all-gaga over Mary. But, I still loved Cindy. Cindy had other partners but made no outside emotional connections that she shared with me.

I do not want to make this sound easy, it wasn’t. Not only did we not communicate well, we lacked the words to communicate with. So, you can imagine the drama.

We had a close group of friends. We had group parties. These were not hard-core lifestylers who played safe, had rules and boundaries. Cindy would find someone to play with and I always found Mary. I loved seeing Cindy play and I enjoyed playing with Mary, sometimes just us, sometimes with Cindy (FMF) and sometimes I played with Mary and Lenny (MFM).

It was all great fun, but an emotional roller coaster. Lacking nothing else to call it we called it “weirdness.” It all felt weird, fun and sexy but weird. Cindy was moving towards swinging. I was moving towards polyamory. I wish I had known then what I know now. Weirdness was a bad choice for a name. It was followed by another term we did not understand, shaming...

Along came Mary

As Cindy and I were processing the feelings over Cindy’s affair with my brother we had one couple we confided in. That couple was Cindy’s brother Lenny and his wife Mary. Lenny and Mary were in an open marriage already. We discussed the feelings of regret, jealousy over the affair and how that contrasted with opening up our own marriage.

This was a totally home grown idea. For us the idea of having an open marriage was new but we had no real resources, no Internet and nowhere to turn for a role model or to join any kind of on-line group. This was the 1970s, remember. We were young and living in a conservative town. Terms like compersion, polyamory, the lifestyle; etc. did not exist for us. Where were the rules? Where was Reddit when we needed it?

Lenny and Mary listened, we talked, and they talked. They talked about how they rolled their own open marriage. It was sexy. With the help of some rum, some weed and I have long forgot what else, it became clear that some chemistry was developing between Mary, myself and; surprise, Cindy and Mary. Mary was the hinge.

For some reason, I cannot quite remember, I went in to take a shower. As I was soaping up my body, the door opened. It was Mary. Mary stepped into the shower with me. We started kissing. I will never forget how her skin felt, how her body tasted, how it felt to hold her.

Our good friend became our lover that night. She also entered my heart and never left it. She is still there now.

I am sure mom knew

I think she knew, I am almost sure of it!

Because my mom suffered from severe depression at times, folks had a tendency to underestimate her. She had been in and out of institutions at times, she had problems but she wasn’t stupid.

My mom, like me, suffered from chronic insomnia. This was the mid-70's. I was working nights a lot then and my parent’s house had paper thin walls. We were staying at my parent’s house as Cindy cared for my dad and our baby.

Dad was a huge man, tall and over 300 pounds. Cindy was small compared to him. Dad's body slowly failed him and he got worse and worse and became like a huge baby himself. He was determined to die at home. My wife Cindy was the only one willing and able to take care of dad. She took on a huge job caring for him and our baby at the same time. It was a major sacrifice for a 19 year-old woman and she did it willingly out of love.

She was also a very sexual young woman and my 35 year-old brother Darryl must have been an adventurous escape for her from her days. Darryl flew across country twice to visit dad (and my wife, it turns out.) Sometimes I found out later, when I was home and asleep from working long hours, she would go to him in the guest room, and then come back, wake me up and we would make love. I did not even know.

But, I think mom knew and never ever told. I can imagine what it must have been like for mom, laying next to her husband who was dying, knowing she needed Cindy to take care of him and hearing that all going on. Still, like me, mom loved Cindy too and Cindy would be there for mom too, when mom died years later.

I am glad I forgave Cindy. If it hadn't been for what happened the story of Mary would have likely been quite different. Cindy was a good person and I still love her almost 40 years later.

Darryl

I called Darryl and tried to have a heart-to-heart and, he lied. He said the affair had never happened. He said Cindy was making it up. He said she was crazy.

Looking back I can see that he was afraid. He had a wife and a family. The truth did not come out of his mouth until after Cindy was dead.

Of course when I told Cindy what Darryl said, she was even more livid than I was. I was angry with my brother and still processing that the affair had even happened. Cindy, in her mind, had to confess because of her guilt. Now she also felt betrayed by my brother, her former lover. Considering how she had cared after his and my father, this was especially searing for her. I told her I believe her and was there for her as she and I processed a raw bundle of emotions.

We went through a difficult period. As for me it took me over a decade and a half before I would have anything to do with my brother. Cindy never did. There was a permanent rent in our family that has never fully healed. That decade and a half later, when I decided to forgive my brother even though he had never asked for it, my forgiveness of him helped drive Cindy and I apart.

We opened up

After learning of Cindy's affair with my brother Darryl I went to my mom's house. There I met my sisters. I told them of what I learned and, surprisingly to me at the time, they stood up for my brother. Plus, my mom was sick herself and they said, "if mom learns of this it will kill her." I thought about this. I also thought of other very important things. I love Cindy. I have a family. I am partly to blame too because I had been a jerk. And, yes, we had been talking about opening our marriage anyway.

So, I went back home. I talked to Cindy and that's what we did. We did not do it for my sisters, my mom, or my brother. We did this because it was what we wanted to do, for us.

This was the 70's and this was before AIDS, and after the pill. But, this was before there were terms like sex-positive, polyamory and we were totally ignorant of what is now called the lifestyle and Tristan Taormino was not yet in grade school and her book Opening Up was decades away. With no guides, with no community, with no idea what we were doing we opened up our marriage and did it in a way that would now be called the wrong way to open up.

Of course there was still the issue of my brother to deal with...

Judgement or not

When you read what follows I know it may, or may not, make you think less of me. I can't help that. I hope it does not make you think less of Cindy. She was a sweet girl, only 19 at the time, I was 21.

According to Wikipedia, Open Marriage was a best selling book 1972 by Nena O'Neill and George O'Neill. It was on the New York Times best-seller list for 40 weeks. Cindy and I were readers. I can't remember if we read the book, but we may have. We certainly were aware of all the media hype then surrounding the book.

We talked about it and were even titillated by the idea of having other lovers. It was a fantasy we shared while we were having sex sometimes. Cindy was attracted to other women. She shared that fantasy too. She had at that time never had that experience.

When we became lovers, I was Cindy's second or third lover and she was my third. In the 1970's our country was in the middle of a sexual revolution. Please read the upcoming blog posts on Mary and Infidelity before passing judgement. We all make mistakes. But, was this a mistake or just a reaction to circumstances? Looking back I think maybe it saved our marriage.

Still it was not well timed or well thought out. We were in a very stressful situation and I was not helping. In 1977 Cindy had her affair with my brother Darryl.

Darryl lived out of state, thousands of miles away. He would come to visit our dad and, as it turned out, Cindy too. He was 35 and married with kids. At one point, perhaps during one of our conversations about open marriage, I seem to remember Cindy saying she felt attracted to Darryl and asking if she could have sex with him. I said no, it was not a good time for us to open our marriage. I did not know she had already done so.

In the summer of 1977 dad died. I quit the railroad. We moved to the state capitol. Sometime after that Cindy told me of her affair. She wanted to admit her guilt and unburden herself. I was crushed and left, I went to my mom's house.

A Difficult Start

About five months after we married, Cindy tested positive on a pregnancy test. Number one son was on his way! I was working at the post office, I think, when we found out Cindy was pregnant. Thankfully this was a period of time when our state had good social benefits. My post office job was temporary and benefits were limited. I have good memories of this time, I don’t remember too much negativity. We had gotten our first apartment. Shortly after this I got a job on by the railroad. Cindy's pregnancy was a pre-existing condition not covered by the railroad's health plan (America, what a country!)

Cindy was a great cook and I had been morbidly obese for much of my childhood. I lost most of my weight during the summer between High School and College, before I met Cindy. After we married I started putting weight back on. I had always yo-yoed with my weight. By the end of 1976 I was getting obese again.

After the baby came, we continued living in our apartment until my father's health deteriorated.

Sometime in the winter of of this year I was injured on the job. Early the next year things started changing, not for the better, in Cindy and my marriage. After a month I went back to work. Then, my father got very sick. We moved back in with my parents to help my dad. I was getting a lot of pressure from my sisters to do this. I was dead set against doing it. I thought it was too much. I was 21, my wife 19. This was about a year into our marriage.

I felt my siblings should share more in the burden of taking care of my dad. Cindy, who was 19 at the time, took care of my dad with almost no help. She and I started fighting a lot. I was very angry. I did not appreciate how much she loved my parents. She really took on a lot. She did it out of love. I just made her life more difficult.

Remember, we had a baby too. Our child had his own health problems. In addition, unbeknownst to me at the time, Cindy, and my oldest brother Darryl, started having sex. This was about 15 months into our marriage.

Early Married Life

My memories of the early months in my marriage with Cindy are mostly good ones. I worked a variety of odd jobs. I worked at a gas station. Sometimes Cindy would come hang out with me at the gas station. We were on midnight shifts, so we became somewhat nocturnal. Later I worked at factory making fish tanks, then the post office as a temporary. It was in this last job that I car pooled with a young black woman, who I started feeling an attraction for.

Cindy was crazy about animals and we always had them. We had a variety of pets, two kittens that died, a puppy that ate Cindy’s avocado trees and a black kitten we named Emma. Emma my car pooler asked why we named the cat after her. I said, because her eyes reminded us of you. Our pets seldom seemed to last long. I don't remember what happened to Emma the cat.

As strange as it now seems, we were trying to have a baby almost from the time we married. We hung blue boots over our bed even when we were living at my parent's house. That was totally nuts, of course, because I did not have a steady job. What was really nuts is my parents were all for the idea! It was in keeping with many of the other crazy (and/or stupid) things we did back then.

Cindy worked as a waitress for a short time. Like a fool, I got jealous of her wearing short skirts. The irony is, not too much later we discovered we enjoyed going to nude beaches. I was taking photography classes at a community college, so I took many nude photos of Cindy for my class. She had a fantastic body, especially before she had kids. Going to the nude beach was something we liked to do together.

We got married

Cindy and I decided early on to get married. Like, within the first month we were together. We waited five months before we got married, but only because she wasn't 18 yet. We also decided we were not going to be pregnant when we got married. Yes, we took some chances before we got on the birth control. But, I went with her to Planned Parenthood. She was 17 when she went on the pill. Thank God for Planned Parenthood!

I did not have a job. That did not matter at the time. We were young and stupid. When I got my unemployment checks we would get a motel room and screwed like rabbits as she cut classes. When I did not have money we did it in her bedroom at her parent's house when her parents were at work or at Lenny and Mary's place or in the car. Cindy's mom was horrified about the whole thing (which only encouraged Cindy.) We were obviously very mature and ready for marriage and parenthood.

Cindy's mom was not quite up to speed on our relationship. She let Cindy go away with me for a weekend on the coast. I think she thought Cindy and I had not yet had sex and that I would demand sex over that weekend and that would drive Cindy away from me. When that did not happen, we had already been screwing like weasels for weeks, and her 17 year-old daughter came back happy, happy as a clam, Cindy's mom tried to actively prevent Cindy and I from seeing each other.

She forbade Cindy from seeing me. That did not work. Nothing worked from Cindy's mom's perspective.

One week day Cindy and I moved Cindy's furniture out of her bedroom, from her parents' home, and into a room in her brother Lenny and his wife Mary's cottage. We did this behind Cindy's parents' back while they were at work, in the summer of 1975. It was cheaper than motel rooms and Lenny and Mary were happy to get the rent I paid.

Dating Cindy

When I think back on my dating years with Cindy I have few specific memories. It was not long after we started seeing each other that the fact that we were going to get married became a foregone conclusion. We dated for five months, but would have gotten married sooner if she had not been 17.

Cindy's step-dad was an Air Force officer. Cindy had base privileges and she and I would go to the Base Exchange together. Cindy’s mom worked for the military and we would go on base meet her for lunch.

At one point Cindy and I decided that I would join the Air Force and I took the exams to enlist. I did great on the electronics part, but had high blood pressure. I do not know why because I do not have it now. But, I flunked the physical.

I lived about 100 miles away from where Cindy did. I would drive up to to her town and stay for days. Sometimes I would sleep in my car near the railroad tracks, or in a field near where Cindy lived, or in the back yard of one of Cindy’s neighbors when they were gone on vacation.

That's when I met Mary, who would also be a great love of my life. Cindy and Mary would come by and bring me breakfast in the morning. Mary and Lenny were staying at Cindy and Lenny's mom's house. Mary was pregnant with her and Lenny's first child at the time.

When we had money I would get a motel room. That was great for sex and gave me a place to sleep. Cindy and I went to Planned Parenthood together. Cindy went on the pill. Neither of us wanted her to get pregnant before we married.

Mary and Lenny would hang out at a Denny’s until late at night. We would hang out with them or with one of Cindy's friends and her brother and friends. At that time of life, time seemed to pass slowly and seemed to be in abundant supply. None of us worked. It was an amazing summer.

We went away a few times. The trip to the coast as well as to Southern California where we mixed visiting Cindy’s sister and going to Disneyland with taking photos in the desert, where my car broke down. Somehow we managed to get by without working.

It was an endless summer. After Lenny and Mary got their cottage we moved into a spare room there. We smoked pot with Lenny, Mary didn’t smoke as she was pregnant. Summer passed. September came, Cindy turned 18 and the day we after her birthday we eloped and Mary had her first baby.

Meeting Cindy

Cindy and I were together over 16 years and had three children together. I met Cindy at a Community Colleges convention. Supposedly, it was a place for students to learn. In reality, it was a big party. At the previous year's conference I smoked pot for the first time and met a girl who said her friends called her Linda Lovelace, but that is a different story.

Cindy and I met in an elevator. I was 19 and I was not even a student. My friend Dave was, and he had a cool Ford Mustang which we drove down in.

Cindy, then 17, was in a hotel elevator telling all the convention attendees where the good parties were. She had a list of them. She had a loose fitting blouse and cute legs, so I followed her for over 16 years. We must have gone to a party together in the hotel that night.

Cindy was from a Sacramento college, where she was on the college newspaper. What happened after that is a blur. At some point Nancy-One called me on a phone and invited me to a private party for the two of us in her room. She said she had some wine. I turned her down because I had something better. That, of course, was Cindy.

I remember at some point talking Cindy into driving with me to an all-night drive-in movie, which we were both sure there must be a lot of in LA. I talked Dave out of the keys to his car and off we went! We drove around and around and ended up at a Motel. No, we didn't. She made me promise I wouldn't and we didn't. At least we didn't do that, then!

The next morning we drove back to the hotel where the convention was. Dave was livid because I had his car out all night. He told me I was on my own for getting home.

That worked out very well. Cindy was not going to leave me stranded. So, she talked her friends from Sacramento into taking me back with them. Yes, Dave kicking me out worked out very well for me.

Driving back I remember there was snow on Grapevine and part of the trip involved riding in the back of a Karmann Ghia, which Cindy called a fried egg on wheels. Oh yes, it was cramped in the back seat. Cindy and I were young and flexible so we just made out a lot.

Cindy remarked, "look what followed me home!"