Mmmmm….Pancakes

Clifford the Wonder Dog had an amazing Labor Day weekend. There were multiple kid encounters over multiple days, trips to the park, long car rides, a family reunion complete with cousin dogs, Lisa and her dog Bailey stopped by, a bath, grandkids sleeping over Friday night, Chris sleeping over Saturday night. As we took the hour-long drive home yesterday, she was out like a light in the back seat, itself an odd occurrence for Clifford who loves watching the world from a car window.

In addition to Clifford, Kate and I had a pretty doggone (see what I did there??) good weekend as well. A good mix of family, kitchen table polyamory and projects around the house. (Casa Da Sam and Kate is I think 114 years old, it’s got good bones, but it’s a fixer upper for sure. We painted the dining room today which has been a loooong time coming; it’s now one color instead of three.)

It’s always nice to look back at a 3 day weekend and think “yeah, that was a good one”. Labor Day 2024 was a good one for sure.

By way of an introduction if you’re reading us for the first time……Kate and I are a married couple in our 50’s whose relationship is Ethically Non-Monogamous (ENM). We’re swingers, our marriage is open; we have sex with other people. We’re in a committed relationship, and somewhere on the polyamorous spectrum; Kate has a boyfriend (or two) and is a Hotwife. It’s neither of our first marriages. We met in a 12 step meeting; we’re each more than a decade sober now. If you’re curious about how this all works, we talk about our relationship in varying degrees of depth in other posts. We have an email address listed in our “about” page if you would like to contact us.

I’m an early riser. I’m usually up before 5, most days before 4. This isn’t as horrible as it sounds; Kate and I are sleeping by 10PM on a typical day.

My sleep patterns have their advantages.

For me, the wee wee hours of the morning are my quality guitar playing time. It’s amazing just how good a Stratocaster (or Les Paul, or Telecaster….I’m in a Strat frame of mind lately) paired with a MacBook and decent headphones can sound.

Kate took good advantage of my early wake up on Sunday.

Chris, our friend we met thanks to this blog, stayed the night on Saturday. When I got up at my typical time, Kate staggered out of our bed and joined Chris in the guest room. They slept for a couple hours while I rocked out. Eventually, I went back up and slept for another 90 minutes; my nap game is strong.

I woke up to the sounds of Kate and Chris downstairs rummaging around, the smell of bacon and pancakes drawing me out of bed. Chris brought foo foo pancake mix and thick cut bacon, he wanted to cook breakfast for us all. In what would probably be the least surprising development of the day, the two had morning sex before heading downstairs. Kitchen table polyamory with organic local maple syrup thrown in for good measure.

MMF threesomes can get on the awkward side. Typically, this stems from one penis owner going to great lengths to avoid any contact with the other penis owner. MMF threesomes are a LOT of fun when the penis owners can accept that what happens in threesome has no bearing on what happens outside of threesomes. Communicating before gettin naked helps too.

We had a threesome with a guy last year who spent had to be a half hour talking about how any male-to-male contact was a no go and show stopper for him. Ok, that’s fine, it was clear 30 seconds in. We played just the once with him. I get preferences and what you’re into matters, it’s all good. I (Kate agrees) think it’s much too limiting to be overly rigid with much of anything in a threesome. There’s a line between preferences and homophobia, if you’re on the latter side, an MMF probably isn’t for you.

Kate has nothing against a nice DP every now and then, believe me the guys had better be comfortable with at least accidental penis on penis contact in those close quarters.

After eating and relaxing on the porch for a good while Saturday night, the energy shifted to the sexual side as we moved indoors.

The evolution of Kate has been fun to watch; I’d guess it’s the same about me from her prospective. Our first MMF, she was borderline demur (well, at least initially) and decidedly passive. Not on Saturday. Moments after we got inside, she spoke up and asked what the plan was, what was in and out of bounds. After a few minutes of Kate centric heavy petting and making out on the couch, we made the move upstairs.

The next hour or so was a blur of sexual activity among 3 people who like each other first and foremost and are absolutely comfortable with each other. There was no angst, stress, or concern. Instead, lots of smiles, laughter and orgasms were what happened. Kind of hard to argue with that.

Sunday, at the family picnic, Kate and I were face to face with her daughter Nicole for the first time since coming out to her as ENM. Neither of us were overly anxious about this, but it was a thing.

Nicole and my son Ben were our points of concern with coming out. We had dinner with Ben and his family a couple weeks ago, and it went fine. We’re not sure if he told his wife or not, either way, no issues with them at all.

It went the same way sharing space with Nicole. Kate and I are both pretty sure she told her husband, Rick; that seems to make sense and to fit. Nicole was, if anything, a touch more engaging than usual at the picnic. She’s also had more frequent and wide ranging conversations with Kate since she told her we’re ENM. It’s still early, but my sense is that the shared vulnerability and honesty with Nicole is having really nice, unexpected but not surprising results.

Kate and I have seen this more times than we can count. In our relationship, either of us laying something bare has reliably resulted in the two of us connecting on a slightly deeper level than we were moments ago. We’ve seen the same thing happen with other couples, and lifestyle solo’s; it’s also decidedly not uncommon in the 12 step world in which we met. The authenticity and invitation to openness that comes from being vulnerable is a wonderful thing.

A couple of housekeeping notes. First of all, due to me screwing up my work vacation time, we’ve had to cancel our trip to Splash in Ft Lauderdale later this month. No blood, no foul, we’ll try again next year, perhaps to the Atlanta event. Instead we’re going to take a New England road trip early in October. We’re going to spend a couple nights in Vermont, then on to the Boston area for a few days. Kate’s been wanting to visit Salem and have that experience for a while, we’re going to take a day for that. We’ll be going to a small meet and greet in Boston as well.

Yesterday, Kate opened what has the potential to be our next great can of worms….more to follow on that….

Thanks for reading!!!! Be kind to yourself and others,

Sam & Kate

PS….If you’ve made it this far, please take a moment and clap (once, or up to 50 times) for this post. It’s feedback for Kate and me, (comments and highlites are always welcome too!) and helps push the story up algorithmically. Thanks!!!