poly and sharing

Our list conversations took place here in Pennsylvania between Christmas and New Year’s, mostly in the living room of my mother’s house. We tried to replicate our common positions in Amanda’s house — each of us sitting on either end of a large couch, our backs against each side rest, facing each other, toes almost touching. However, mother’s couch is from another era before comfort was invented, so we moved around the room into other seatings at different times. On occasion, our discussion extended into trips to the grocery store or drugstore. Most of the time, a mug or thermos of coffee was in hand.

One of my list items — “becoming more poly-oriented” — seemed to align with one of Amanda’s — “the sharing of Shae” — so we talked about them together.

---

I admitted to Amanda I really didn’t know what I meant about wanting to be more poly-oriented. It is an aspiration toward something nebulous.

Let me come at this in a roundabout way: bear with me…

At a certain point in life, you are what you are, and it really doesn’t matter how or why. For an obvious example, I am submissive, profoundly so. It used to be I wrote passionately how I was made this way, born into this “condition,” and that it wasn’t a result of or reaction against how I was raised as a girl. I still maintain my submissiveness is nature not nurture, but the argument now is not so important to me. I am what I am, and how I got here doesn’t so much matter.

This applies to me in another way. Whether by nature or nurture, I am still “morally oriented” toward the idea of monogamy.

I know, this seems ridiculous, considering my submissive lifestyle and how I am used. But that’s sort of the point: as a slave, I do what I am commanded to do, even unto multiple sexual relationships. I obey orders to be joined to multiple others in sexual ways.

But in all that, I still feel the moral conditioning deep down to need to justify what I do. I write often about this, how I feel promiscuous and shamed because of my slave life, yet I crave doing it. Maybe to justify my moral shame, I strive for meaning in the relationships that people have with me — even when they use me in non-relational ways. I “attach” to people who dominate me, perhaps thinking by doing so I legitimize the “unholy” relationship. I seek to make my services to another, even a random person, to be the best I can provide, possibly convincing myself that quality is somehow a virtue in a life that is not virtuous. And most of all, I find myself coming to love the dominants who debase me — my loving of them in their act of doing me maybe again a moral justification for what I do.

I know that some people — dominants, followers — try to argue me away from such a moral conditioning. (This is even as they find my wrestling with my shame to be especially compelling for them to watch.) But my response here is like the other: this is how I am. My moral compunctions are not my beliefs any more, not my rational thinking. They are not a philosophy I need to be talked out of. They are just somehow imprinted in me, whether by nature or nurture, and I cannot do or be anything other. I have become resigned that this is something I will always wrestle with.

Again, in this way too, I am what I am, and how I got here doesn’t so much matter.

---

It was about two years ago that I began to learn about polyamory. This changed my moral landscape somewhat. I found a kind of noble sensibility in the idea that we are capable of loving far more than monogamy allows.

I realize that my life of D/s slavery is not a prototypical example of polyamory. My multiple dominants and sharings are not true examples of poly-groups or polycules. My slave life is not actual polyamory, and I’m not publicly justifying what I do by claiming that.

But for me internally, if I think of myself as woman capable of “being love” to multiple people, I find something of my purpose. I don’t deny that I am wanton at heart, a trait which is released and given permission by my slave life. But I still have a desire to make, say, my depravity meaningful, to bring my loving, even so one-sided and unrequited, into the lives of people who use and consume me.

Well, it’s something like that. And something of what I’m getting at in my list item: “Become more “poly-oriented.” As I am used promiscuously, it helps me to think in terms of my being polyamorous — having a greater capacity to love.

This was some of the discussion with Amanda.

---

Her list item, “the sharing of Shae,” sort of connects to my “poly thinking.” And both of our list items had the neighborhood in mind.

This has been tricky for me to write about, as many of our neighbors now read this blog. But during my Pennsylvania absence, Amanda has been in discussion with everyone around the block about certain things when/if I get back. So, conversations have been had, and Amanda’s woo has been in high and effective use. I’ll get into that at some point in a future post. But the point here is that Amanda has created a potential playground within the neighborhood in which I might be shared in various ways.

From the first moment Amanda acquired me years ago she has talked about sharing me, and I have written many times about her intentions. Her item “the sharing of Shae” has been on her list for years, but always thwarted by circumstance (our move, her work, COVID, Pennsylvania). The difference now is that she might actually be able to make it possible this year.

The sharing of me is Amanda’s highest pleasure. And that in itself is an added motivator for me to give myself to it even beyond my submissive need. By being gifted by Amanda to others, I am gifting her.

But in all this from time to time, my original “moral orientation” kicks in. In traditional, monogamous terms, this seems so, well, patently wrong. Becoming the neighborhood slut is a scarlet-letter social shame — or that’s how I have internalized it. I have lived my slave life in conflicted sensibility — feeling guilty for being so broadly sexual yet justified in that I am dominantly made to be promiscuous.

Now, however, this new “poly thinking” seems to provide me another way of understanding myself. I have a capacity for being love to multiple people, and isn’t that a good thing? It doesn’t seem so wrong, then, to become pleasure to multiple others.

Or so I am telling myself…

---

So, “thinking poly” sort of helps lead me into a readiness for being shared. I say that, although I don’t quite know how one gets ready for something like this. And of course, I am still in PA, and my path back to Colorado is unclear.

But this was the gist of one of our list conversations.

Advertisement