Sex in Numbers

Well, it's been an interesting year, plotting my sex life in numbers. I have really enjoyed using xTracker, since it keeps a lot of meaningful stats. I do wish that it had a separate function for both giving and receiving oral sex though, so I just track blowjobs as handjobs lol since I don't really do that to completion. It's been very interesting going over the raw statistics! I look forward to comparing this coming year's data. I can track sexual encounters by partner (and can pick more than 1!), store pics, and keep track of everything from number of orgasms to what activities we did in what positions to where my partner ejaculates. Definitely an app I'd recommend for hotwife couples!

At the beginning of the year, I had said that I wanted to have sex on average 4 times per week. Well, everyone told me that target was a bit too ambitious for reality, and I suppose it was. It looks like I am going to finish the year at 133 times, or just over 2.5 times per week. I think there is still a lot of room for improvement!

I've still only had the same two sex partners this year, which I find sort of interesting. I don't consider myself a polyfidelitous sort of person, because I like leaving myself available for opportunities. I've had a few so far but they just didn't seem appealing enough. Life's been busy, my two men are both wonderful in the sack, and nothing has caught my attention hard enough to make me want to change it up. I'm sure it'll happen in the future, especially if I meet another woman I'm attracted to. I do miss playing with women!

I read an interesting article about how sex and sexuality is changing in recent times- even over the last twenty years. Apparently the amount of sex people having is on the decline, and the average person had sex 62 times a year in the 1990s, and the most recent measurement had declined to 54 times by 2014. I guess even this year of mine where I had less was still more than double average! But then again, I do have a very high sex drive ;)   I wish they had tracked duration, as well. I suspect that my average encounter is far longer than the societal average (although then I suppose we'd have to specify what they are counting as sex?). One company has it marked pretty low:

I do think it's sad to read that people are struggling to build the kinds of connections that will let them develop intimacy. It's certainly made me consider what kinds of things I want to teach Kiddo so that he can learn to build healthy relationships when he matures. Being able to make intimate connections is so important to emotional health and happiness.

I'm so lucky to have Charles and Henry in my life. I agree that the best sex comes with partners who have been around enough to learn what you like. Having encounters with new people is fun, but nothing beats a lover touching you exactly the way you like to be touched.

Looking forward to 2020 and lots of sex and happiness!

Merry Poly Christmas!

It truly has been a wonderful holiday season.

And I'll drop yet another plug for living life authentically; when you are open about who you are, not only do you not feel ashamed of your choices but you can make the choices that give you the most happiness without worrying about what other people think.

So instead of wishing and wanting, I had exactly who I wanted over for the holidays. Henry and I host Christmas, as always. We invited my family over. His family is never around for Christmas since they are snowbirds, but they were here for Thanksgiving, which apparently I didn't remember to write about. Sometimes just living life keeps me busy :)

Anyway, so my parents came, as well as a few friends we invited, and then me, Henry, Kiddo, and Charles. My parents had met Charles at Thanksgiving, and although they don't understand poly, they like to see me happy and they were still polite. My mom was a little embarrassing at Christmas with stories about me but we were all enjoying the wine and food and company, so I can live with that. I got to enjoy the holiday with my nearest and dearest without any drama and it felt so good.

We have our dinner on Christmas Eve, so once Kiddo went to bed, everyone cleared out and we stuffed the stockings and put all the presents under the Christmas tree. Charles was staying over to be part of our festivities on Christmas morning which means a lot to me. We don't mind hosting lots of people for Christmas dinner on the 24th but we generally keep Christmas morning to be just our family. I don't think of Charles as family yet, we've only been dating for 18 months, but he is important to me, so I wanted to have him here this year to celebrate with us.

So once all the preparations were made, we were all pretty tired and the boys collapsed onto either end of the couch. I lay down with them, with my upper body lying across Henry and my legs and bare feet in Charles' lap. If we weren't all so tired this could have gone fun places, since I was wearing a sundress (yup, in December!) and no panties. But we were tired, so instead it just wound up being cuddly and loving and wonderful. Henry was still rubbing my neck and upper chest and Charles was stroking my feet and legs but I was just exhausted from all the holiday stress so I just enjoyed being close to both of them. And we all just hung out and talked about normal stuff, nothing sexual or relationshippy or anything like that. I love that my boys can get along with each other and they are actually friends!

Since it had come up before, we planned in advance who I would be sleeping with. One of life's poly problems is that I can only be in one place at a time, and I don't like sleeping in a bed with three people since I like having a lot of space to move around and hate being touched at night. In our first year together, it made sense that whenever Charles was here, that I slept with him. After all, Henry gets by far the majority of my nights. But since this has become an ongoing thing, it doesn't feel right that Henry never gets any of the special occasions, and I wanted to make sure that he was happy and feeling good too. So we agreed for this year that Charles got my birthday party weekend and New Year's Eve, and Henry got my actual birthday and Christmas. So I joked that I was reverse cuckolding Charles as we tucked him into the guest room while I went to bed in my bedroom with Henry!

Christmas morning was pretty fantastic, too, although I was very tired again. Henry made our traditional Christmas breakfast, which is snowman pancakes decorated with chocolate chips, and double smoked bacon scarves. My parents had returned to open gifts in the morning, and it was nice being with everyone for our low key celebration. They don't know Charles well but made sure there was a gift for him under the tree as well. Being authentic can be so rewarding!

Once the gifts were open and the wrapping paper was thrown out, Charles came over to give me a Christmas hug, and since Henry was within arm's length I reached out to him too. I wound up in the centre of a giant squishy hug from the two of them and got my Christmas kiss from Henry and then leaned over and got my Christmas kiss from Charles, too. That was a pretty awesome feeling!

And when we had a little privacy, Charles gave me my last Christmas gift- the key to his new chastity device. I think we are going to have some fun with that! I know it's not typical hotwifing since it seems I do a lot of the cuckolding type activities with my boyfriend, but labels are sticky and no fun- we do what works for us all!

So the holidays have been pretty wonderful, and I've even gotten some good quality time with Henry in, too. Asking for a friend... how many sex sessions would you count four hours of amazing, bedrocking sex as, and why? (if you base it on male ejaculations, you're fired from commenting here again!)  I did count it as one but it's fun to think about. I'll have some interesting comments on statistics for the end of the year.

Happy holidays, everyone!

More Thoughts on Communication

There have been some interesting topics of conversation on the various forums that I haunt lately, and so I thought I'd share some of my thoughts here as well. I was asked how Henry and I communicate.

Looking back, my communication with my ex husband Mark was a disaster. We did so many things wrong. Unfortunately, I think that may be a more common thing when you meet as young as we did- we were only 17 years old when we started dating. We developed some really unhealthy patterns and were unable to figure out how to break them. Between that and life sending us in different directions (which had absolutely zero to do with hotwifing), our marriage was not going to last.

Henry and I communicate very well- in fact, it's one of our strong suits. We had to work at it because our communication patterns are so different. I used to be the kind of person who got very worked up when we argued. It would be more important for me to be right than to keep the peace. I definitely did a lot of things wrong before when I was learning how to communicate effectively.

I got lucky with Henry, because he is so good at de-escalation and focusing on the issue. We were able to find ways to work out issues by always using the team approach. Even when we are angry, we remember that our partner is hurting too and that ultimately, we want to work things out for the best of both of us. We are not enemies.

So, we have a few strategies. The first we got from the book Living M/s (an excellent book even if you don't have a D/s relationship), and it's called Porch Time. Basically, it doesn't have to be a porch, but it's a quiet place where either partner can ask to go right away to talk or vent with no recriminations. There is no defending oneself during porch time- it is always always always a safe space to vent and to listen to your partner. When both partners are calm, that's when productive discussion of an issue can happen.

We also specifically request consent before discussing a topic that could be emotional or involved. We never ambush each other or suddenly drop a topic. We say, I have an issue we need to discuss. Is now a good time? And the other person if they aren't feeling up to it will say, now isn't a good time, I am tired/distracted/whatever, can we do this on X date? And then we can discuss it when we're both mentally able to be present and proactive. It's not fair to dump a heavy issue on your partner when they can't devote time to it- either to you or to them because the odds of actually solving the problem reduce exponentially.

There is a big difference between that and walking away from an angry/upset partner. I recognize that there seem to be two camps of people; ones who get worked up during a fight and ones who need to retreat/calm down. The problem is that if you don't pay specific issue to that problem it can significantly worsen the marital bond. It was one of the worst problems I had with my ex-husband Mark. I'd get upset and he would literally walk away from me and tell me we could talk when I calmed down. That is one of the worst ways to dismiss someone's emotions out of hand and invalidate them as a human being. It's totally okay to disagree with someone's thoughts. The difference is in how you handle that. If you love and care for someone, then you can support them through difficult feelings even if you don't agree with them. Validation is the most important part of listening, and validation doesn't mean agreement. It just means you are hearing someone and care for them.

Feelings are never wrong. They're just the equivalent of emotional weather and they will pass. Actions based on feelings can be wrong. Thoughts can be wrong. Feelings are just feelings. What's important to remember is that you're a team and that you want to solve problems as a team. Your partner is not your enemy, even if they're doing something you think is wrong. You just have to figure the best way to solve things for the team. Always always always person first. Remember that this is someone you love who is upset or hurting. Person and feelings, then solving the problem.

For that matter, solving the problem might just be listening. It's always good to ask your partner what their desired outcome is. Maybe they literally just want you to listen. Maybe they have a solution in mind already that will need to be discussed. But trying to solve when someone just wants to be heard is just as bad as tuning out. It's also pretty arrogant, too. Think about it- someone is obviously been thinking about an issue enough to get upset about it, they've probably been thinking about options. If you think you can just waltz in after 5 minutes and solve it for them, you're seriously implying that they aren't smart enough to work out their own solution and that's both rude and arrogant. Immediately presenting someone with a solution is generally a poorly received option unless they're asking you for one.

So remember- First make sure both partners are ready and willing to participate in a loaded conversation. Then, respect the person, listen to their feelings, ask what they want from you, then go to potential solutions. I suspect that your next argument will go much more smoothly if both partners use these techniques.

What Makes Relationships Work?

I've been doing a lot of reading lately on Emotional Intelligence and various marriage advice books as I find it is really interesting to learn from all the different perspectives. And on that note, I do spend time reading on many relationship forums, from ones designed for newly engaged couples or honeymooners, to Fetlife, to forums on various forms of consensual or nonconsensual nonmonogamy. It's very interesting seeing the wide variety of ways that people manage their relationships, how they express their wants and needs, and even what their wants and needs actually are. I think that regardless of whether or not the concepts that I see fit into what I want in my relationships, there is always something to be learned from other perspectives, even if it's only so that we stop and think about our response and reexamine why we feel the way that we do.

If you're curious, the books I've been reading lately are Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman, which I think is really a fabulous in-depth look at how our brains process emotion and how we can change our emotional responses. I've also been reading How to Be an Adult in Relationships by David Richo, which I found slightly less useful as it comes at things from a very Eastern perspective and that doesn't really resonate with me. However, I found the concepts useful and worth discussing, it was just more effort to parse the material and take what worked for me and leave the rest. The third book I've been reading is Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work by John Gottman, which I found intriguing as it opened by basically refuting standard practice in marriage counseling and shifting perspective to a new take on things. I'd also highly recommend The Polyamory Toolkit by Dan & Dawn Williams, who are great authors and they share a variety of perspectives about personal growth and emotional management that you may find useful whether your relationship is poly or not.

I like learning about new things, and I love playing with ideas, if you haven't learned that about me yet. While I'd like to think that I'm very emotionally literate and have become more so over the years since I believe that consensual nonmonogamy requires an additional level of communication in relationships. I also believe that there is always more to learn and the biggest mistake you can make is thinking that you know it all. Especially when it comes to people- we are all so different, and learning about the different perspectives people have helps me widen my frame of reference.

What sparked all this internal processing was that Charles and Henry both have very different communication styles and different ways of relating. Henry and I are very much in sync, and Charles and I are still learning each other. Sometimes it feels like we are speaking different languages! Fortunately, I think it helps that I do try to spend time drilling down and figuring out what the actual issues are that bother me, and I think I am better than average at expressing those things. I suspect that makes it easier for us to work through issues as we learn to communicate in ways that are more easily heard by our partner.

I always tell people that communication is so important, but I wonder sometimes if they and their partner both have similar ideas as to what the other person wants from them when they communicate something. Personally, when I express a feeling to my partner, I am not looking for a quick fix. In fact, I find it pretty arrogant when someone thinks they can solve my issue right off the bat, as though I don't have perspective on my own situation. Generally, what I'm looking for is validation- you don't have to agree with my thoughts or feelings, but a simple mirroring back that shows me that you've heard and understood what I've said is absolutely priceless. It says to me that even if the topic doesn't matter, that I matter to the listener.

Not everyone processes things the way Henry and I do. In one of those books I mentioned above, one of the featured couples dealt with frustration by him turning on ESPN or she would go shopping. I honestly can't understand how they can be happy together if they don't actually work out their issues, but what is important in this context is that they are both happy with how they manage issues- neither one of them is secretly (or not-so-secretly) frustrated and bitter about the lack of active resolution. So while I would be miserably unhappy in that type of arrangement, they found a way to make it work for them. This is one of the reasons why I continue to trumpet that the lack of universality is one of the best features in relationships- there is no right or wrong as long as there is informed consent. People should structure their relationships to suit the people involved and not worry about what's "normal".

So it's been interesting when Charles and I have been dealing with issues in how we communicate. His way of managing things isn't wrong; it's just different from what I am used to, and he isn't used to doing things the way that I do. I'm really glad that we have the tools to build on this because our relationship is pretty amazing and he makes me so happy- I don't want to throw out the baby with the bathwater! But communication is very important to me, so if we couldn't find a positive way to resolve things, it would likely have ended our relationship.

I also don't think he's used to dealing with someone who is as passionate as I am, in general. I joke that I live my life with the dial set to eleven; I feel my feelings in a magnified sort of way, which is beyond wonderful when things are going well and rather rough when they are not. I generally manage my emotions fairly well, and I have to admit that sharing my NRE with him has been pretty wonderful too.

So how do we handle this? We both read the books, and we're putting emphasis on remembering that our partner speaks our language with a slight foreign accent. So when we need a certain kind of response, we mention that before we get into the thought or feeling we want to share. If I'm upset about something, I ask him to restate back what I've said so that I can be sure he understands me, and then I share the thought or feeling. If he needs something from me, I recognize that he may not be able to share it right away and that I will hold space for him to find his words. Together, we can take this as an opportunity to deepen our connection simply by prioritizing it.

Poor guy has been sick this week and my life has been beyond busy with family and work stuff, so we haven't seen each other or talked beyond a few texts in the last week. I am hoping to see him for our regular date night tomorrow but it'll depend on how he's feeling- I don't really want to get sick either, let alone Henry or Kiddo. I'm looking forward to seeing him again soon, though.

I haven't gotten as much quality time with Henry either since there's been so much going on. He's got a giant work project on deadline plus he's getting snipped on Friday so that's taking up a lot of his time and energy! Isn't real life fun? Who would have thought that with two lovely men in my life that I'd still be missing sex and cuddles right now?