Learning How To Talk

It's been said before, by people more experienced and more eloquent than I. As a person in a poly relationship, you will get sick to death of communicating.
Talking, listening, talking some more, yelling, writing, whispering. Trying so hard to put the half-formed thoughts and emotions that slosh around in your head into coherent words and sentences. Making sure you are understood, failing, railing against small misunderstandings.
I've been back in DC for five days. Three of those have been spent either arguing, or having a deeply emotional conversation. Often they've been both at the same time. Not bad arguments, and not bad conversations. Everything that was said needed to be said, and Minx, Hermit and I all know where we stand. Which is important in any relationship.

It's not that poly relationships are inherently more complex, more intense, more anything. It's that when there are more people, there are more points of view to consider. More emotions to be made known. More potential for miscommunication because maybe two of the group don't talk as much as they should, and the rest of the group assumes everyone knows what's going on. As an established couple of over a decade, Minx and Hermit know how to communicate together. I'm still learning how to communicate with each of them, and we're all working on group communication. All too often I assume Hermit can read my mind, or just plain forget to open my mouth and express myself to either of them.

Sometimes one of us swears blind we told the other two about something that was important. Last night the issue was where I was sleeping. To get everyone up to speed, I'm someone who needs a lot of sleep. I get grumpy, bitchy, and generally unpleasant when I haven't slept enough. I dislike being any of those things. I have trouble sleeping with two other people in a queen-sized bed, so I've taken to sleeping on the couch (actually a twin bed with lots of cushions). This also saves questions from the child who is too young to understand, and too young to reliably not tell the whole of church exactly where I sleep when I stay over. Hermit is sure that he's told me, numerous times, that it is important to him for both Minx and I to sleep in bed with him when I'm around. He needs to fall asleep next to the people he loves. It s entirely possible that he has said this before. Likely, even. Prior to last night's conversation, I have no recollection of this at all. Not a clue it was so important. So at almost midnight last night, after a different intense conversation, we had another conversation about why he wanted me to stay in the bed despite my poor quality of sleep. I'd been pushing against this a lot because (as I've said), I need sleep. Now I know how he feels about this, it's no longer a problem! I'll sleep there until I wake up, then relocate to the couch.

But wow, we actually had to have a whole conversation about that.