"A little bit of you makes me your man..."

I have been busy. I have certainly been too busy to pursue all the things I have wanted to. I have been poly-saturated. I have never been super saturated. Something is going to have to give and I don't know what it will be. I am not great at saying no, but there will have to be some in my life or I will hate myself by the end of the year.

So, I am going to work it out here, lucky you.

TL;dr: I have way too much in my life and something needs to go.

The dramatis personæ:

• My husband - person I live with in an ethically non-monogamous relationship
• Housemate - person who lives with my husband and me and has since 2010. 
• reads the blog and can see comments on FB and the blog
• Rope Guy (RG) - Secondary relationship, we've been dating since November of 2018
• Rope Guy is able to read this blog, so if you want him to see comments, please leave them here. He cannot see comments on Facebook. 
• Keto - Tertiary relationship, we've been on a number of dates, but Keto is very inexperienced with regards to relationships. He lives over an hour away from me.
• Lefty Teacher (LT) - A fellow teacher I have known for a couple of weeks. We seem to have experienced a mutual connection. We have both commented that this level of attraction was unexpected. He lives an hour away and the drive is only slightly better than
• LA Guy - A person I met at a convention in September and saw again recently. We hit it off, but I can't figure out how much my feelings are because of his obvious attraction and the concerns of the other people I am involved with.

The end of the year is coming on and starting in November, I will be involved with a Christmas fair.  As in past years, there are three weekends of rehearsals and five weekends of performances. As far as I know, I will be leading rehearsal sessions, which will oblige me to attend every day of the workshops. (This is a paid position.) The performance days are more flexible, but participating in the Christmas fair has been a relative constant in my life since 2001. I really enjoy the part I play and the members of my cast. Despite the issues with my ex (and his ex), I don't want to give up doing the fair.

I have a full time job, a hobby that is going to keep me busy for the better part of eight weekends, social events, and a number of people who would like my time and attention. There is too much going on, but what do I give up?

My husband is non-negotiable. He is very flexible and has been dealing with my participation at the fair since 2007 (most of our relationship). My housemate is in a similar position, so I am including them because they do get my time, but of everyone in this list, my husband and my housemate offer the most flexibility when it comes to spending time with them. However, I won't give my husband or my housemate up (obviously).

I do not like hierarchical titles in my polyships. I only use them to give an easy label for the purposes of this thought experiment.

I have an issue. I keep thinking that if I am good enough, that if make some people happy, I will get y needs met based on merit. How I have managed to keep this naive perspective? You'd think that my past relationships would have shown me otherwise.

I don't want to hurt Keto. I like him well enough and enjoy his company, but I will have to be honest, given the choice between LT and Keto, LT got my time this weekend, Keto didn't. Keto and LT both require emotional labor, so that isn't the problem. I am more attracted to LT and more willing to make the time and effort to see him. Logically, Keto is the better investment, but LT is just so much yummier.

LT is also a disaster waiting to happen. I can't let myself get too attached, because LT is a recent widower who has gone through a long period of grieving. He has decided that he wants to explore a number of things that he did not do because he got into a monogamous relationship at 21. He is in his early 40s and is exploring his desires and interests for the first time. It is absolutely fascinating and scary as hell. Our first date went much differently than planned. What was supposed to be a brief fling  exploring some mutual interests has potential to be something else, but what I don't know.  The possibility of getting hurt is very high.

Keto is steady and reliable, but he wants more time and is starting to get upset that I am not making it for him. He went through fair last year, so he knows how little he will see of me for the rest of the year. If I am taking even more time from him to pursue LT, I am just being an ass. I don't want to be that person.

LA Guy isn't a huge problem. Given his job and obligations, he can probably only get up to my area once during fair season. There is the potential of going down to see him for a trip to Disneyland (because you have all met me). However, he is another person who needs bandwidth for phone calls, texts, and what not.

While I wouldn't say Rope Guy is non-negotiable, of all of the external relationships I am in, I think that this one is the most important to me. However, our time together is challenging to schedule. He is married, he has a child (albeit a grown one) and he has at least two other people he is dating (although not on a regularly scheduled basis.)

So looking at this weekend is a good example of what I am facing. RG and I were thinking of getting together this Friday night. I forgot that I had made plans with friends, but once I was reminded, I had to let RG know that Friday wasn't available. (In my defense, Friday is usually his date night with his wife, but she is traveling this week.) RG is not available on Saturday because he has a date with one of the other people he is involved with. I had plans for Sunday. RG and I were planning to see if we could manage Monday, but that has it's own issues.

Luckily, my plans with LT (which were set for Sunday) could be moved to Saturday. I was able to do the good poly thing: I changed my plans with LT to Saturday, accommodate RG and see him Sunday, thus making everyone happy. Well, except Keto, who asked if I wanted to accompany him to a party this Sunday. I politely told him I already had plans.

That's just one weekend! Next weekend my mother wants my husband and I to look at her floors which means an entire day out of the area. That leaves only one day to see whomever I decide to see, which I haven't even asked about because...well because I am a coward.  Rehearsals for fair start the  weekend after. Any time I want to spend with anyone require figuring out logistics of time and place. I think of the nine weekends of rehearsal and fair last year, I spent at least one night in a hotel seven out of nine weekends.

I don't want to hurt anyone. I don't know how to admit to myself what I want. I know that getting involved with LT is a bad idea, except it feels so right. (And yes, I know that this is the same logic that kept me in a toxic relationship for 18 months after I should have dumped the person.)

I am just supersaturated right now and I can't take on any more. I have been poly a long time and this is the first time I have been in such a pickle. I don't know how to tell Keto that he's just not interesting enough, but that's where I feel like I am going. I just know that if I do that, it's really going to hurt him.

I just want to hide and hope it sorts itself out without me. But I know how I felt when that happened to me, it sucks to feel disposable.

I had trouble finding a song for this situation, so I decided to go with the cheeky choice, because why not, it's about dancing.

Today's Song - Mambo #5 by Lou Bega