Is This The Secret To ENM? To Cuckolding? To Life Itself??

You see it all around you
Good lovin’ gone bad
And usually it’s too late when you, realize what you had
And my mind goes back to a girl I left some years ago (who told me)

Just hold on loosely
But don’t let go
If you cling too tightly
You’re gonna lose control

(38 Special, 1981)

“The more you tighten your grip Tarkin, the more star systems will slip thru your fingers”

(Princess Leia, Star Wars)

If you’re of a certain age, you read those 38 Special lyrics and at some point, the melody kicked in. I’d also bet Carrie Fisher and Peter Cushing popped into your head shortly after. Well, if you happen to be a Star Wars nerd anyway.

Southern rock is a part of the soundtrack of my life. That genre seems to have been made for and by its era at the same time. It was impossible to get away from it on FM radio in the 70’s and 80’s. Bands like Lynyrd Skynyrd, The Outlaws, The Marshall Tucker Band, Blackfoot, Molly Hatchet, and .38 Special among others. What these bands had in common were infections melodies floating over an army of blues-based guitar playing, with no shortage of major chord sensibilities.

There are songs, “Freebird” immediately jumps to mind, that have become a part of the zeitgeist at large and I’d bet that the youngest Gen Z’er can hum along with. I wonder how much of that stems from Jenny’s heroin / coke binge at the hotel in “Forrest Gump”. Well, maybe not the Gen Z part, but the zeitgeist part. There are no shortage of “summon a generation” southern rock songs.

Kate and I, being the good Gen X’ers that we are bounce back and forth between listening to albums start to finish (well, not on vinyl) and the curated classic / arena / alt rock genre “radio stations” on Apple Music. The other day, I think while we were cooking, “Hold on Loosely” came on and filled in the part of my brain that was wondering what to write about this week.

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 and cuckold spectrums; 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 saw something on Tik Tok the other day, and it basically sums me up: “When someone asks you how you know everything, but your entire thought process is based off of pattern recognition, common sense, and remembering random things.” Added to the mix for me is the rectal cranial inversion that getting sober in my late 40’s fixed (translation, my head was up my ass till I got sober) and I’m damn near brilliant at this point.

At the risk of over pop culturing, I’m going to throw Benny Hill into the mix. Benny, for those unaware, was a British comedian who had a TV show back in the day. That program was fucking hilarious. He’s had an impact on your life whether you know it or not. Google the Benny Hill theme song, and you’ll see (hear) my point.

Benny’s show provided another pattern recognition / random thing point for me. There was a line in a skit that said “this marriage is like pushing a wagon uphill with a rope.” I heard that back in the days when “Hold On Loosley” was in regular rotation on FM radio. It stuck, initially because of the dichotomy of pushing something uphill with a rope. Over time, I recognized how accurate it was with marriages and relationships in general. Doesn’t matter how tightly you hold that rope, you’re just not going to push something uphill with it.

If you make the pivot, and correctly relate yourself to the problem at hand and the tools you have, well, that rope can sure do some pulling. Best have a firm grip on it tho.

What happens then when your dad gets cancer, or the politics of the day take a turn not to your liking, or you watch your wife walk down the street to a hotel with another man for the first time? Is holding on to what life was before that moment with every last measure of your energy the way to go?

I’ve certainly tried to cling in each of those situations, tried desperately to hold on to the way it was in one of them. Plot twist: I’d grind myself to a nub and whatever was going to happen, happened anyway.

The biggest mistake I’ve made with Kate is trying to control her. She’s very similar to Michael Jordan in his prime. With MJ, it was a given other teams couldn’t control him, they tried to contain him instead. You’d give him his 30–35 points and focus on the rest of the team. Didn’t work out all that well. Kate doesn’t have a monogamous bone in her body, and mixes that with a flirtatious moxie and empathetic love of people that is just her. Good luck trying to control or contain that.

With Kate, the winning formula has less to do with managing her and more about me managing myself. I either love her or I don’t. I either trust her or I don’t. I either have faith in our relationship or I don’t. Either I want the life we’ve chosen for ourselves, or I don’t. I’ve learned thru lived experience exactly what Princess Leia said; the more I tried to control Kate, the more our relationship slipped thru my fingers.

Neither of us are spring chickens and we each have marriages behind us. We each recognize that what we have together is pretty much a rare and precious thing, we want to keep it that way. Me loosing my shit (or Kate loosing her’s, that’s happened too) from a place of control or jealousy isn’t skillful at all. If recorded history has taught us anything it’s that jealousy as a relationship aid, well, doesn’t work.

This is where holding on loosely shows up. I’ve got to check my ego, remember that I’m just not the center of the universe, and that my wants needs and desires are no more important than anyone else’s. It’s the difference between an open hand and a clenched fist. One is about possibilities while keeping boundries in place, the other is closed off and hard, no give only take.

Something else I learned early on in my sobriety journey is a lesson that I’ve had to revisit countlesss times. Expectations are inversley proportional to serenity. Read that again if ya need to. Having in my head how something “should” be is clinging to that thing, the opposite of a holding on loosely.

Sure, our sexlife isn’t the picture postcard definition of “normal”, whatever the fuck that is anyway. We each have wants, desires, and needs; with us they go together like creamer into coffee. Kate needs connection and sex with more than one person; that’s what trips her trigger. Her being with those people trips mine.

For me, I also have to hold my desire for her to be with others loosely. I get this isn’t something that folks without the cuckold wiring are going to see all that clearly, but believe you me, it’s a damn thing. There’s nothing, not even whatever my cock does or has the potential for doing, that’s more of a turn on for me than Kate being with someone else.

This is a problematic thing for cuckolds because our chief desire is something that we can’t do ourselves, it requires our significant other to do something.

As anyone who was born with a penis and testicles will attest, the little brain can, and frequently does, take precedence over the big brain. Pretty sure the penis owner’s significant other’s can attest to this phenomenon as well. What the little brain finds the most erotic, the hottest, what makes it the horniest, can create problems for people other than the owner of said penis.

Well, this week I pushed Kate in a way that she didn’t want to be. I knew this, but the little head went on walkabout and forgot.

It was a confluence of events that lead to this. The chief driver was the little head, we’ve talked about that. Neither of us have had a particularly wonderful winter headspace wise, and that became additive. The exhaustion brought on by the news of the day has been a factor too. A very subtle one, and similar to the cuckold part in that if you don’t get it you probably won’t understand all the way, is my sober anniversary is just a couple days away at this point. Anniversary time among sober people is a reliable cause of wonky headspace. It’s a thing. If you know, you know.

Mix all that with a slow spell for us sexually, and too much screen time and thought poured in and away we go. Balance is a thing for me, and I got out of balance.

At the end of the day, it’s another lesson learned for me, and for us. Another predictable example of trying to control things going sideways.

I think I need to explore shame a bit. Wonder if that will end up being next weeks post…..

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

Sam & Kate