Link to Part 3

I didn’t realize it at the time, but being a stay-at-home Dad gave me imposter syndrome, or perhaps awakened from dormancy the imposter syndrome I already had. For all their flaws, my parents raised me to understand the importance of a hard day’s work. Unfortunately in doing so, they inadvertently conditioned me to equate my self-worth with my income. For a person with such a belief to find himself in a position where he is unable to earn to the extent he’s accustomed to earning, and thereby unable to provide for his family as much as he believes he is supposed to, is to lose much of his sense of self-worth.

Over the years, I met a lot of people as a direct result of being a parent: Parents of my daughter’s classmates and friends. Parents of her soccer and softball teammates. Fellow theater parents. Teachers. Coaches. Assistant coaches. Dance instructors. I accompanied her to birthday parties, mingled at many a post-season barbecue, and chaperoned her school field trips. The people I met were all people I could have conceivably connected with as friends if I felt like I had the slightest speck of worthwhile life experience to share. But virtually every first conversation I had with one of these people included the question I always dreaded: “What do you do?”

This obviously furthered the notion that my value as a person was tied intrinsically to my financial worth. Hey, before I begin a conversation with you and perhaps get emotionally invested in you as a human being, I want to know what social benefits interacting with you will provide my family and I. Given the circumstances it’s understandable that I might withdraw into my introversion, or at the very least try to avoid mindless conversation. And when I did find myself fielding such a query, I always replied that I was self-employed, and volunteered the nature of my business if asked. Even if I told them that I was a stay-at-home parent, I always led with the occupation that made me money.

I found it increasingly difficult to believe I belonged anywhere. I even found hanging out with longtime friends somewhat awkward because I had little else to talk about other than my kid and experiences I had because of her. Had I seen any new movies? Of course not. Was I watching such-and-such TV series? No, just Dora the Explorer. Did I go anywhere fun lately? Yeah, the park so she could run around. I pushed her on the swings for like twenty minutes. Do you want to hear more about this?

The smart thing would have been to join some sort of support group for stay-at-home Dads, but at the time I knew of no such thing. They may have existed in the area where I was living, but they weren’t on Meetup and none of the relatives who tried finding such a thing for me to attend ever did. There were Mommy and Me groups, and perhaps they allowed stay-at-home Dads to join. But I wasn’t about to inflict my presence on a group of women who might conceivably want to whip out a titty and feed their babies.

Even when we opened our marriage and got involved with other people, the self-esteem boost I derived from my adventures didn’t always last. Extramarital sex, group sex, play parties – on some level these things were a stopgap measure. A Band-Aid. A dose of MDMA to take my mind off of how disappointed I was in myself and the course my life had taken. Sure, I enjoyed being a stay-at-home Dad, but I missed the home and the life I gave up to be one. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I regret none of the relationships I forged nor the sex I had during this time, and I’d like to do it all again, please and thank you. But my point stands.

I suppose that it didn’t help that the things I probably put the most effort into – my bountiful sex life with my wife, as well as the many extramarital relationships I had after we opened up – aren’t things I can talk about with most people. Blame society and its repressiveness when it comes to sex, I guess, but when I was at my in-laws’ annual block party and a neighbor asked what was new in my life, I couldn’t tell them that I’d just gotten back from a weekend hotel stay with one of my long-term partners. And that’s on the tame side! Imagine if I’d instead told them, for example, that said partner and I had done alkyl nitrites and fucked in front of an appreciative crowd at an out-of-town sex club. Not necessarily saying that I did this or anything.

Hell, forget about things I’ve done with women who aren’t my wife. Let’s take non-monogamy all the way out of the conversation. What if I told this hypothetical neighbor that I’d given my wife a facial the night before? Or found her G-spot right before we left for the party? Fucked her until she almost passed out? I’d certainly have been proud of myself if I’d done any of those things. But noooooo, polite society only wants to hear about our accomplishments if they don’t involve sex. That’s bullshit! Some of us don’t have anything PG-rated to boast about.

But Jack, you might be saying, why not just make friends with local kinky/non-monogamous people with whom you can share such filth? For various reasons, paramount among them my wife’s need for discretion, we were never really able to do this. Maybe it was a cop-out, I don’t know. But this is why most of my partners over the last decade or so have been a plane flight – or a long road trip – away. It’s also why, throughout our non-monogamous adventure, I’ve usually been unable to date locally.

Circa 2019, I attended a polyamory meetup. I liked the thought of building a local social circle of like-minded kinksters or similar, but even if I didn’t manage that I thought it would do me some good to be around people with whom I could talk about the highs and lows of loving multiple people at once. I enjoyed the meetup, and I found it very freeing to tell others about my experience and hear about theirs. I’d shared such details of my life on this blog for years, but that’s not the same as sitting on comfortable furniture in a well-lit and very inviting room among people who seemed to be deriving as much validation from the experience as I was.

I made friends among the attendees, and even hung out with some of them outside of the meetup. However, I didn’t attend for long, and eventually I let go of those friends, a couple of whom were by then more than just friends. There are a couple reasons why I gave up on it: For one, I didn’t think my wife liked that I was attending a regular event related to non-monogamy. Sure, we were open, and both she and I had other relationships. And sure, I would have much rather attended the meetup with her, but schedules didn’t allow for it – or maybe she just didn’t want to attend – and since it was something I had sought out because I was interested in it, I opted to go alone. She seemed to disapprove, and I stopped.

But a more pressing reason was imposter syndrome.

Up next: Something to Fall Back On, wherein I discuss the proper way to encourage childhood dreams to flourish.