2025 Week 12: If I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution

 This r/polyamory post has been on my mind lately. As much as I am attracted to other people and want to start dating them, I think the more germane, more pressing matter is to disentangle my and Jon's relationship. The post is a list of methods to increase autonomy and decrease enmeshment in your lives.

• Make dates with your partner. Focus on each other. No phones. Put them in the calendar.
• Expect that your time is your own and you have right to make plans without consulting your partner. If you and your partner don't have plans, the time belongs to you. This requires significant modification if you are raising small kids, but you can make agreements about who is responsible for dinner, bed time, etc. on certain days and also schedule family time and date nights.
• Make last minute plans on nights you don't have plans with your partner.
• Make some new friends (of any gender or orientation) that aren't also your partners friends. Make plans with them without running it by your spouse as long as you dont have family obligations or plans with your spouse. Foster privacy in those relationships.
• Make a budget for joint costs, savings, retirement planning and also a set amount of money for each of you that you spend anyway you want, "fun money" and don't have to discuss how it was spent. Individual credit cards or bank accounts work well for this and pay them off monthly or biweekly with your "fun money". Or save your fun money for a big purchase or vacation.
• Take a trip with a friend without your spouse.
• Attend some polyamory meetups (Individually) and make platonic poly friends.
• If you don't have friends or hobbies yet, still spend time apart. Take yourself to dinner while your spouse does whatever they want. Go to a movie or museum solo while your spouse does what they want.
• Go to some classes and events (meetup.com is a good resource) by yourself.
• Consider having separate bedrooms. You can sleep together every night or separately and you can manage your own private space the way you want.

I am pleased to note that we are already doing some of the bullet points on the list. The money one is a non-issue because we are not financially enmeshed (apart from being co-owners of a home). We started travelling apart, going for meetups and making new friends last year. 

More recently (like these few weeks) we've started filling our calendars with things that do not involve each other. I've been going out almost every weeknight. I used to feel guilty about that, thinking I ought to stay home, cook dinner and watch TV with Jon, but now I believe that kind of low-engagement time together is harmful and makes you take each other for granted. Instead of doing all that I would rather have intentional dates where we do things that will make our relationship grow.

Of this list, the one that excites me most is the idea of separate bedrooms. Since I was a child I have always fantasised about my dream room. In fact the original plan for our house was to sleep in separate bedrooms while renting out the main bedroom - but somehow I sidelined all of that after moving in. No wonder I've been secretly ragey. 

Thankfully my room is still here and I'm in the midst of setting it up exactly how I like it. (Wall of books, combined sofa/bed, 24" iMac...) That means I have 100% autonomy over what to furnish it with, including a $500 slab of pine for a bed which Jon thinks looks like a warehouse pallet. I'm drunk on all this purchasing power!

Last week I had a really bad case of limerence for someone I met and chastely hung out with twice. Haha. I'm glad it's finally subsided so I can be somewhat normal again. I find the attraction holds up, even after the hormones have stopped flooding my system. He's idealistic, brave, self-sufficient, playful and creative: all of which I also aspire towards. 

Maybe it's my new crush's influence or something, but I've lately felt the need to also do something more than my current project of funding interesting/socially valuable ventures. I want to put my brain to use, too. I went to Wares and the Book Bar and looked at a bunch of books on Singapore's political history. Now I'm toying with a research/writing project. What if I remedied my woeful ignorance and made the content in these books publicly available at the same time?

(Could this be the end of my midlife crisis?)

I'm halfway through Emma Goldman's Living My Life Part 1 (I guess that makes me 1/4 of the way through the entire thing). I had expected a semi-boring narrative about community organising and anarchist propaganda, not this beautiful mess of love affairs, art, beauty, philosophy, Nietzsche, imprisonment, travel and work (she worked so much, from making corsets to selling ice cream). Then again, her most famous quote is:

If I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution.