Signs of Men I’ve Loved

Posted on July 14, 2018 by Victoria

Spending this last week with my love has me thinking about all the men I love and connecting the dots of what they all might have in common. I absolutely love the way we do relationships in a variety of ways including this way as expressed by May More.

One thing I’ve noticed is that I’m forever falling for society’s weirdos. The ones that have been called “Gay” “weird” “Black Sheep” etc. They move differently; all of them sensing or sensitive type. I would even venture so far as to say they are all Empaths like me… Perhaps.

As we all know by now if you follow this blog, I am polyamorous. When I fall in love, I don’t fall out or at least I never have. I might grow apart from the person I love, however to this day I love them still. I think about them often and some are still in my life. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

One thing I love about me is that I love in the moment and without attachment. If my journey with the someone I love has ended, I accepted it as such because I know I can never lose that love. They may have brought it out, but that love originates in me. At its source, love is infinite.

So without further Ado let’s get into this, shall we.

The sign of the first guy I ever loved at 14 years old. Yeah, I know too young blah blah. Yet, here I am at 32 still claiming him as my love and he claims me as well. We know what it is… anywho.

Leo a fire sign— what did I love about this guy. First of all, needless to say weirdo 😆. He was/is a “fuck you looking at” class clown type to make me laugh until my stomach hurt. I love the things he said about me; the way he talked about me to other people when I wasn’t around.

The messages would always get back to me. In my head, I would be like, “Aww, he said that about me.”

I’ve always expressed my love through touch and words of affirmation. I like writing letters and almost every man I love his gotten a letter in some form from me.

Today, I’m learning that my love is actually in writing down my feelings.

Next up, the Sagittarius. I fell in love with how this man was on a mission to find out who I was before ever approaching me. He interviewed a couple of folks from my neighborhood. I thought it was the cutest thing ever. I also love the way he’d stare at my lips and into my eyes as I was talking while actually listening because you know I test for these things 😆. Again, he was constantly verbally expressing what he loves about me and why he loves me. What can I say, I love hearing beautiful honest and unusual things about myself. 🤷🏾‍♀️

Next up, another Sag. He once said to me, “You are so beautiful.” I said, “I know.” He responded, “No, you don’t have a clue.” I knew in that moment that he could see who I am. He took such care with me. He was corny level hilarious and I was partly laughing with him and at him at the same time. He’d often share the private men-folk conversations that were being had about me. People didn’t know we were dating so he enjoyed listening to the conversations. We’d laugh about them later.

If you’re noticing, all of my lovers so far have been Fire signs, but this one is a Cancer.😭 My first water sign. Seeing him cry was a beautiful experience. It’s funny now because the interwebs are always talking about Cancers the criers.

I’d rarely seen men cry outside of the death of a loved one. I loved his effort. His willingness to step outside his comfort zone. So sensitive 😍, verbally expressive of his love for me, very protective of me, defending my honor when I wasn’t there to speak for myself. You know the type.

Them : Shut up, you just saying that cuz you like her.
Him: So

I love a man with integrity. Obviously here in lies a trend. He could read me like a book and I loved it because it meant he was paying attention, close attention to the things I didn’t say.

Water sign once again, this time a Scorpio. This one doesn’t do much talking, but his expression towards me and to the things I say are everything. His smile, his eyes, his laugh, his eyebrows say it all. The way he reacts to me, staring at me when I’m asleep, and kissing me awake. The Cancer would do these things as well. All the PDA is my fave. He once made me a mixtape. It was actually a CD; mixtape just sounds better.

He loves to kiss. ‘Kisses all ova’ is what he text me. The way each of them expresses his love is what I seem to be falling in love with.

And Sagittarius is up once again. Could you guess that he’s a clown; silly and sensitive. Fire signs aren’t known for being sensitive, but they are… at least the ones I’ve dated. His words, his integrity… very protective of me and he expressed his love for me through the care of my children and of course of me. He was so selfless in his love for us. I never experienced that before; Even being married.

Then there was a Pisces; the briefest love affair I’ve ever experienced… I’m still in love with the magic of how it all went down. When we touched, energy surged through my body. I never had such a physical reaction to someone before. It was instant and we were inseparable for about 36 hours give or take. Once again, protective of me always in a chivalrous way. The way he talked about me with his mother 😍 He is super silly, resourceful, talented, skilled and also a clown.

They’ve all been the resourceful and very family oriented: home, children, siblings. I tend to attract men with historically (not scientifically) feminine characteristics.

Some might say that I couldn’t possibly have been in love that many times, but I say love is a friend that I’d recognized anywhere and it was so easy to identify in these men that I love.

These are all the signs of the men I love. What patterns do you notice? People boast of falling in love twice in their lifetime or three times. I guess I’m lucky in love; currently at 7. Oh My polyamorous 💓.

An Analysis of Love

Posted on August 1, 2017 by Victoria

Love doesn’t hurt it is the things we associate with love that hurts us.

Monogamy = commitment = faithful = love

This is the assumed equation when it comes to love. However in my experience, it is an equation that is lacking dynamically. Can not one who is polyamorous also be committed, faithful, and in love…Indeed, they are the most loving that I know.

The truth is we, more often than not, use love to dominate, possess, control, and manipulate.

If you love me you would…

you would be… you would do…
If only you loved me enough.

I assure you, love is enough.

Love is not property. One cannot just decide how it behaves, when it behaves, or who it behaves or mistakenly labeled “misbehaves” with.

Love cannot be possessed.

Love is whimsical. Love is wild. Love is free…Attempts to tame it will only bring you torment…Why torture yourself?

Love is not some physical entity that can be owned, bought, sold, or traded on a whim. Love is like the wind.

Love is a weightless sphere, an orb, with mass, surface, layers, depth, and diameter. At any perspective from which you are examining it, you are not seeing its entire part. Love is a whole we often use to fill holes. Don’t get me wrong, love is very capable of filling holes, thus making one heal whole, just not in the ways we seek to do so.

Love leads by example.

When we hurt the ones we love, it is not because we don’t love them. Perhaps it may be because we’ve had poor, poor examples of love.

Most times we are not hurt by any direct act at all but rather by our own expectations for the people we love, and by our lack of accountability for those expectations. It seems much easier to blame rather than take responsibility for the true cause of our self-inflicted pain.

Love is perfect…human beings are not. Falling in love does not render one imperfect being suddenly perfect. Instead, it renders them capable of perfection through acceptance.

Accept love as it is, formless and fluid in its imperfect package.

Charlotte Kasl, author of “if the Buddha date” said that falling in love, which is kind of like falling out of your neocortex into your more primitive instincts, can feel euphoric.

She says that, “When we “fall in love” and project the image of The Perfect One onto our new love interest, it implies that we are incomplete the way we are.” She advises that when this happens, “Go inside yourself and ask, What crazy expectations am I feeding myself?” She encourages the reader to, “Bring yourself back to the present, peel away your expectations, and look at the mortal before you.”

Love without expectations, without exception, without exclusion.

It is the most liberating feeling in life.

What is it Like to Date in Texas?

Posted on June 22, 2017 by Victoria

Everything’s bigger in Texas but what is it like to date in this great state? Prior to visiting his post, you probably hadn’t considered it to possibly even care, but now…Now, you’re curious. Well don’t you worry your pretty little head, I’m gonna give you all the detail of dating in Houston, Texas but first a little background on me for those of you who are new here.

I am a cisgender bisexual black woman; a single-mother of two; a non-monogamous relationship anarchist who loves to eat. Those things individually carry so much weight in the world of dating. You can’t imagine the calamity when you place them all into one scenario. It’s all good though, because I do enjoy being the wow factor however it is perceived.

While I’ve spent my single life dating in Atlanta, Miami, and now Houston, I grew up in Mississippi where you’re basically taught how to be a “good church-going woman”, where you’re encouraged to go to college because our people died for such a right, find you a good man, get married, and have kids or else your life is fruitless and not worth mentioning at family gatherings. Being a self-sustaining, well educated, single parent gets you all shame and no shine depending on how many kids you have, whether they have different fathers, and whether you were able to get married again in order to redeem yourself which you can read all about in Free My Postpartum Sexuality.

Fortunately for me, I’m a Mississippi baptist culture renegade. I don’t mind taking my shine. . .not at all.

Now, trust me when I tell you I have enough intel on dating to write an entire book (e-book perhaps) from a variety of perspectives but today I’m going to focus on two notable difference for me.

Going Dutch

I used to see so many headlines questioning the whole going dutch thing. At one point I’m sure this was a trending topic.

“Do you think that a man and a woman should split the check (go dutch) on a dinner date?”

Of course that sparked the whole back and forth of “if women want to be treated like men (referencing feminism) then we can rightfully expect them to do things that men [traditionally] do” (like taking out the trash and paying for the meal).

Now, I was raised real baptist southern hospitality like in my upbringing. I can appreciate a man who holds my hand as I walk down the steps, open the car door for me to get in, and covers the tab. That’s one thing I was taught to enjoy that has maintained throughout my dating experience. Even so, being the fierce feminist that I now know I have always, always been, I didn’t mind going dutch or covering the tab if I had it. No big deal.

Dating in Atlanta it was a very common thing to go dutch or to alternate between who was paying for the meal if you were going steady. I mean, there were things to consider like being broke college students with part-time jobs back when you were only making $6/hr on average.

I can easily say that splitting the ticket was a very common thing for me when I was in Atlanta just because I was willing to do it.

Now in Miami, although I didn’t date very much here, it was my least favorite city to date in. The general culture of dating had an air of disrespect that could prove damaging to one’s personal self-worth especially for black women.

While dating in Miami, I had to threaten to call the cops twice. I’ve not had to do that in any of the other cities I’ve dated in and like I mentioned earlier, I didn’t date much here.

I don’t recall splitting the check in Miami though and at this stage, I had stopped even offering. Dating in Miami was a very unpleasant experience. A friend of mine, who was born elsewhere but spent his adolescence in Miami told me, “Never date dudes from Miami because they’re disrespectful af.” He worked in a barbershop. His advice was too little, too late.

Texas…oh Texas. I love dating here. I feel a re-connection to that southern gentleman that comes down to my father’s doorstep to call on me. Not to say that I haven’t been on some garbage dates out here in Texas however, I can still count them on one hand and that’s worth something to me because over the last three years, I have been on a dating frenzy. I have met some really great guys who have gone above and beyond what I’ve ever witnessed in my personal life which is actually kind of sad when you consider things. Very few real examples of romance. . .damn.

These guys open my car door for me, hold my hand down the steps, and if I whip out the plastic at the end of the date, asks me what am I fixin to do with that. I can honestly say that in my three years of dating in Houston, Texas, I have never, had to pay for my own meal while out on a date. They will not let me. They tell me to put my money away or that they’ve already taken care of it. And no, I didn’t insist. The Universe knows what I want.

The men in Texas have me spoiled. I don’t even want to drink if I have to pay for it myself. I appreciate y’all so much. The real MVP’s

One day I told a friend of mine that I was going to a local bar because I was hungry. He said, “If you’re hungry, why would you go to a bar?” I responded, “So some guy who thinks I’m cute will buy me a drink and some lemon pepper wing.” He laughed hysterically, he could not believe this was something women would think to do. He told me such a thought had never crossed his mind to sit at a bar waiting for a woman to buy him a meal.

Houston we have confirmation, chivalry is not dead it just lives in Texas.

The Swirl

I really must know, what are your thoughts or better yet, your background on interracial dating. Here, I’ll go first. I wasn’t too keen on dating outside my race. Not because I didn’t like or find other racial groups attractive, but it was more so because I just assumed I wasn’t suppose to. I’m also from a place where a person gets shamed or killed for engaging in an unauthorized swirl.

White guys, Hispanic guys, Asian guys (or girls) were never on my list of things to do. The only guys outside of my own race that I found any romantic attraction to existed as a fictional character on my television screen: the Justin Timberlake, Channing Tatum, Mark Wahlberg types.

And this would be true, until my family and I relocated to Georgia. My interest in dating outside my race was suddenly sparked by one simple revelation, “Psst hey, Jesus likes you.” Jesus and I stood outside everyday and had conversations in my broken Spanish and his barely English. Struggling to fall in love to no avail.

There were plenty of other nonBlack guys who would declare their infatuation with me. I never really took it seriously. I just kept getting that feeling that I was doing something that I wasn’t suppose to be doing and everybody was staring which made the discomfort that much more unbearable. That feeling magnified when my friend’s mom chewed me out on some “How dare you date a white guy,” type shit after a white guy dropped me off at her house one day. After that, I was almost terrified to date outside my race. Shame…that’s what I felt that day.

In Miami, it was a similar experience, mostly with Latino guys, but they’d always wanted to know if I was mixed, which made me not want to date them. No white guys though, I’m still not 100 percent sure that white guys even exist in Miami (I’m only joking a little).

And then there was Texas…oh Texas. I had never been approached by men from such a variety of backgrounds: Latino, Native American (Native American!?), black men who don’t consider themselves black (African or West Indian), white, Indian, Vietnamese, biracial, multiracial, oh my goodness a rainbow, smorgasbord of men. Well, they do say that variety is the spice of life.

I was a little apprehensive at first. I was really thinking, “What the hell do they want with me?” I mean I’ve heard the Sarah Baartman story; The way that black women had been an object of fetishism, a dream of sexual fantasy, movie scenes of lighter toned guys telling dark skinned girls (of various races) that you’re good enough to fuck but not to take home to their parents.

I’m still a bit leery of guys from other races specifically for this reason. Don’t get me wrong though, I’m suspicious of every guy that tries to date me for different reasons. However in the case of the swirl, I truly feel like some of them just want to know if the rumors are true to which some have actually admitted.

And on the other side of that are my parents and more specifically, my grandmother. She’d have much to say. She’s an 80 year old black woman who raised several black children through the civil rights movement while living in rural Mississippi. If you have no clue how terrifying and traumatic that must have been for her, I invite you to read Death of Innocence: The Story of the Hate Crime That Changed America and Coming of Age in Mississippi: The Classic Autobiography of Growing Up Poor and Black in the Rural South. How would she not have much to say? She isn’t too keen on me dating outside of my race either. “I just don’t trust The Folks,” she’d say to me…with good reason grandma, with good reason.

Overall, dating in Texas has been a welcomed enlightening experience. I am in all honesty enjoying every friggin minute of it. I mean, it is an almost but not quite entirely new experience in dating. While there are some things to overcome, some cons to be evaluated, I’ll save that for another post because this one is much longer than I intended it to be. Want to know what it’s like to date in other cities, Nell’s got the perfect guide to what it’s like to date in the city of London.

This post contains affiliate links to the following books Coming of Age in Mississippi: The Classic Autobiography of Growing Up Poor and Black in the Rural South and Death of Innocence: The Story of the Hate Crime That Changed America. Thank you for your support.