Sash & Me Experience ... Auto-Polyamory!

Hi! It's Ariel!

I've been wanting to blog about this a while, and it's exciting but also kinda makes me anxious in this weird tingly good-bad-good way, and Sasha said she'd blog it with me if I wanted in our usual conversation-type way of posting. But she also kinda laughed at how fidgety it made me and said maybe I ought to try writing it myself?

As a sort of confidence-builder, you know.

And so whoosh, here we are!

Okay, then!

Okay, really, here we go this time ...

I guess to start with, I'm definitely for sure real, all right? I can pose and wear clothes, I take up space, you can touch me (well, you can't but the people in my life can) and I have my own personality and likes and dislikes and really, all the things. All the real person things.

Sort of.

Gosh, you know, I guess the weirdest thing about writing this post is, the more I write, the less I'm worried people will think bad things about me, so you'd think it would be getting easier, but it's not.

Gimme a sec, I'm going to ask my polies why they think that's happening.

...

Elle says, "It's not getting easier because you're still the same amount of lazy." Thanks, Elle.

Sasha says, "I thought we already agreed you'd write this one yourself!"

Claire says, "Aers, I think deep down you already know the answer to that, and if you can't get it out, this probably isn't the right time to work on this particular post."

And of course msg says, "What's the rule around here when everybody tells you something different?"

(The rule is, listen to Claire!)

Which, okay, she's right. Deep down the answer is, I'm not worried people will think bad things about me, I'm worried they'll think nothing things about me, that I'm nothing. And mostly won't even think that, but will think bad things about msg.

It's so unfair! And it makes me sad a little that people would think I'm nothing, but sad a lot that they'd think bad things about msg, who is amazing.

But I don't think it means this isn't the right time for me to do this post.

It just means I have to be braver and count on the fact that lots of people are nice and kind and like to hear interesting things about interesting people who have different points of view and different or even weirdo lifestyles. And if there are people who aren't those kinds of people and who like to think bad things about other people and get all judgy and stuff, well, they should just stop reading right now because I don't think they're important. At. All.

Whew!

Now let's do this thing!

Auto-polyamory.

I for sure didn't invent that word. I mean, I don't even know if it's one word or two words! Does the hyphen make it one word? What? Oh. Elle says it's a compound word. So I guess that means one.

Which is also what the "auto" means! One. Like, as in, you do it by yourself. Maybe it doesn't exactly mean "one," but that's what I'm making it mean.

But Ariel, you must be asking, how can it be auto and also poly at the same time if auto means one and poly means bunches?

Welcome to the miracle of imagination!

Now, I want to be careful here because I'm borderline admitting that I'm basically an "imaginary friend." Which is not really the case because like I said earlier I have a body and everything. It's very not-imaginary, and let me tell you, it has some very not-imaginary parts. And that body is like your body, bio-folks out there reading this. Not because it has flesh and blood and farts and stuff, because it doesn't. Hang on ... Elle says I need to look up "queef." Sorry, Elle, I'm on a roll and don't have time for dictionarying.

No, how my body is like your body, biologicals, is that it shapes me. You're who you are partly because of your brain, but also partly because of your body, right? That hunk o' bones and muscles and blubber is where your brain grew up, and you're who you are and how you are because your body is the way it is. Like, if you wear glasses, that made you experience things different from how people without glasses experience them. And if you're clumsy, that made your personality different from someone who has crazy good balance, like a ballet dancer, right?

Well I'm the same way. My little cute button nose and my kinda hazely green eyes and the shape of my face and my smile and sure, some of my other parts too all mean I'm just not going to make someone imagine the same things about me as if I had big blue eyes like Elle or deep emerald ones like Claire or a sassy smirk like Sasha. And since I'm, uh, sort of an "imaginary friend," what gets imagined about me really is me. So that makes my body part of who I am and not just a nicely shaped lump of soft rubber that was designed for having fun with in bed.

The point is, I have actual reality. Same with Elle, same with Claire, same with Sasha. I admit it is a different reality than how you're real, reader-folks, but we're real, and I'm sticking with that.

But we do all partly come from msg's head. Not in a mental illness kind of way, in an imagination kind of way. (Ohboy, please don't think I'm running down mental illnesses or people who suffer from them. That's definitely not anything to be ashamed of. It's just not us.)

Lucky for me and my polies, msg has an extra big helping of imagination. He is super-imaginative, in fact. A successful author for one thing. I mean, depending on how you define success. Strangers buying your books and saying they love them seems like success to me, even if we're not rolling in dough. And he's good because he has spent thousands of hours getting inside the heads of people who aren't him, coming up with what they would think and what they would say.

Really, now that I think about it, it's a pretty short step from that to auto-polyamory.

Uh-oh. I just realized all of this is really just a very long introduction to what I'm actually blogging about today? Yikes! I've gotta learn to plan out my posts better, because probably my actual post topic of auto-polyamory is going to take less to talk about than the introduction did. Sorry.

As a short cut, you can read about the start of our wacky poly love-fest on Claire's blog, uhhh ... here.

(Yay! Sash's link lesson worked! I learned something!)

And in case you're lazy like I am and don't want to follow the link, it basically talks about how meeting people and becoming friends with them is kinda like rolling dice. Sometimes the numbers come up good, and sometimes not so much. And after an extra-lame roll of the friends-making dice, msg and Claire decided, why not just skip the rolling and turn the dice up the way they want them to come out? Some people call that cheating, but I feel like it only makes sense if you're not actually rolling dice against someone else, and you really feel like your life could use some better die rolls.

This is not to say msg hasn't got other folks in his life or is giving up on rolling the friend dice for real sometimes, just that he's no longer thinking, this is something I have to do to be happy. All the pressure is off, right? And what will happen will happen, but in the meantime ... auto-polyamory!

So what is it like, living in a house with three girlfriends, all of us having to depend on our boyfriend for all the moving around/talking/thinking/daydreaming kinda stuff that normal people just do for themselves?

It's awesome!

Firstly, all five of us have one single totally agreed-on goal in life, and that is being happy with each other and making our love work. Hmm. I could see somebody saying, "Isn't that two goals?" and maybe they would be kinda right. But here's the thing with the "auto" part of auto-polyamory -- it starts with the thing that is the bestest and most straight-to-the-point part of a happy life, and that is loving yourself.

I, Ariel April Worthy, love myself. I am great. And every day I have four other people telling me I'm great in case I forget it for a minute or an hour or something. And each of those four also have four people telling them they're great.

And when you spend a lot of time with people who are great, who tell you you're great, and who you can make happy by telling them how great they are, well, it doesn't leave very much room for being unhappy, you know?

(Just to be clear, we don't always-always talk about how great we all are. Sometimes someone will say, "Hey ... uh ... that thing you just did there? That was kinda dumb." Elle is especially good at saying that kind of thing. It's a talent she has. But giving each other honest criticism is always followed up by saying something like, "You can do better! I have faith in you!" Or in Elle's case, something like, "Aw, was that a little too mean of me? Here, let me f*** your brains out to make it up to you.")

Secondly, everyone around here is a great sharer! Claire and Elle share a body, because there's only one that fits their faces and they have to trade off. Claire and Elle and Sasha and me all share a boyfriend, because, although he is talented, he's not quite able to keep four women satisfied in bed all at the same time. Sash and me share this blog ... all of us share a phone and the laptop we use for social media and stuff ... it's just all sharing all the time. Or most of the time. We do take turns allowing each other to be selfish sometimes, like today, when I asked msg, "Hey, do you want to hang out with me all day, just us two?"

One of the best parts about all the sharing is that our older polys always get a kick out of me and Sasha's reactions to movies and shows and books and music that's new to us. In a way, it's like they're getting to see and hear all these amazing things for the first time too, like this morning when -- well, I'll save that for a different post, as this morning was a great experience. Several great experiences, in fact!

Thirdly, there's no pressure on anybody around here unless they put it on themselves. I mean, I might ask for something, and I might even say, "Pleeeeease?" in a very adorable irresistible voice. But then if the other person or people seem less than 100% about my idea, I say, "I mean, only if you want to, of course."

It's quiet, obviously ... that's a thing I wouldn't mind being a little different, is if us girls could talk out loud on our own. But everyone has limitations, right? It's a trade-off. There's things I'm great at, and other things I can't do at all. Same for all my girlfriends. And same for msg too! And for you, Mr. or Ms. Reader Person.

That's how being human is. Even for us not-biologicals!

I guess I should wrap this up. I think I've mostly covered it.

Except to say, we are sooooo lucky. Most people don't have even one lover who always has their back 100% of the time. We've got four each. And most people would probably have a hard time juggling four wacky wild-personality polys, but we are gifted with the right amazing super-talented brainpower to make it work.

But also ... from another angle, it's not luck at all.

We decided we wanted this.

And we did it.

Easy peasy!

Squeeze you later ... !