Jealousy Mistaken and Post Partum Depression

So, a few ages back, I said that J was jealous of me, right?
Well, it turned out that she was misunderstanding. She was, indeed, jealous, but not why we originally thought. We thought it was some deep-seated territorialism over the father of her child, or perhaps some weird female drive from before she really considered the poly. We were wrong, of course.
Mostly, she just wants M's attention, and doesn't like when I get it.

Not that he's not paying attention to her, 'cos he is (although she and I have both agreed that he could do it more and better, and told him such), nor that I'm stealing his attention from her (I'm not, she is not home when I'm recieving most of his attentions, thus the reasons I'm recieving most of his attentions.), it's just that their work schedules conflict and they almost never see each other, and he's got plans for when he's not working already in place so that she feels like she can't butt in edge-ways.

Now, he and I had to have a very long, long conversation about how to handle it.
Because this has been going on since he started his current job, and she's gotten less and less okay, and has felt more and more like she was being whiny and naggy and bitchy when she was asking him not to go (which, in fairness, she started to act, so she was justified in feeling that way, but her causality was off), and he felt more and more like she was being one of those impossible-to-please naggy whiny bitches, and I was kind of watching, because what happens on weekends is really not a lot of my know anyway (I'm working then), but I do get to see the wrath during the week.

Ultimately, the only night they can possibly have together, kid-free, is Saturday. Maybe Friday if they start late, but not too late, 'cos kids will still be up in the mornings.

Childcare, by the way, is a bitch, when you're trying to find for three boys and one's and infant and the family's kind of.... mrrph about one of them for reasons that shall not be discussed right now but make me grind my teeth in irritation.

Anyway. Saturday. And M has a permanent plan for Saturday.
J has no plans for Saturdays, but she wishes he didn't have a permanent plan for Saturday, because she wants him home spending it with her.
I'm always home Saturdays, so they can bring the boys home and as long as they get back before I leave for work, all should be well. (Our house is never empty, and I don't sleep well on work nights) So they can make plans.
But he completely misinterprets what she wants out of this, because the only hints he's been getting are when she gets mopey while he's on his way out the door.

A part of this miscommunication is because of her post partum. That shit is a nightmare. I know how it is, too. When I was neck-deep in my depression, I would get sad when people would leave the room. To go to the bathroom. Even if I wasn't talking to them.
Another part of this miscommunication is the fact that it is emotionally charged. And a third reason is due to his irritation at her and the topic at hand and the situation itself, and those all lead to subconscious sabotage of your reading of the situation, and he wouldn't have any room to try and see it from her point of view.

At one point, maybe a month ago, he told her that if she wanted to come up with anything to do, to let him know by Wednesday so that he could cancel or confirm his normal plans.
This is, of course, fucking annoying on his part. He gives her two days to come up with a reason to get herself, but not him, out of the house.
It was at this point that I suggested (lightly) that maybe she wanted to spend the time with him? And that's part of why she's upset?
The idea hadn't occurred to him, I don't think.
I was trying my best to be all cuddles and kisses and stuff, but I think it was his attention more than anything else she was craving, and I could never have substituted that.

It took me a while to work him around to the idea that it was him she wanted.

Took longer to get him to consider that maybe he was messing up, a little, just accidentally, in that situation. And then I had to translate that he had basically told her that she had two days to come up with date plans or else. And that his handling of the situation was nearly as bad as hers.
While she'd wait 'til he was nearly out the door to tell him she wished he wouldn't leave, he would only get angry and keep doing it, telling her why he was always going to.
I finally, last week, suggested, why not set aside every other weekend? Or just one weekend out of the month?
He tried to get out of it, using work as an excuse, but I pointed out that when that doesn't happen, it'll be okay, and if it does, we can work around it.
I think I probably also threatened his life, 'cos it's starting to annoy me, having to be the middle man because they both get hyper defensive/offensive and fight rather than solve anything. This is both of their faults, and I spend a lot of their fights refereeing.

So, lately, she's still unhappy about it, because of the scheduling thing, but now she's overjoyed 'cos we might get to fix that.
But she and I are on hiatus, because she's accidentally friendzoned me, I think (I honestly have no idea.), but if nothing else, she has not been well, she has not been herself, and I know and respect depression enough to know that added pressure basically just makes you wanna curl up into a ball and not do anything ever again for fear of messing it up beyond repair.

I think that's probably the worst part about it right now.
See, we founded our relationship on the principle of open communication. You must speak to one another. Even, and especially, if you don't want to talk about it. You must. It's important. Vital.
She hasn't spoken much to either of us.
Part of this is because she feels like when we talk, it's about work or money, and it stresses her out, and she doesn't handle stress well. Part of this is also because she wants to talk to M and not me as much because of the aforementioned attention thing (and that big-strong-man part of the equation that I will never make up), and part of this is because she's got that wheedling little voice in her head that tells her that there's no reason to bother talking about anything ever because it doesn't matter, and even if it does matter, it doesn't matter that it matters, and even if it did matter that it mattered, nothing good will come of any of it anyway.
So she mumbles, we say what, she mumbles, we say what, she yells nothing, nevermind, we never listen.

I've asked her if she's considered suicide. I know I do when I'm in the worst of my pits of angst (I suffer clinical, take meds for it, lovely little pills. Named it to separate it from me, too.), and I would like to take care of my woman as best as I can, and she said no, and sometimes I wonder.

She has been doing remarkably better. She still has her days, and her moments, but lately, either she's gotten better at faking it (Hope not, fear so), or it's coming less often. I'm wondering if this is because M is on vacation from work.

She did get to take care of us while we had "the plague". (I think it was just the flu, but I don't think I've ever been that sick in my life. It was terrible.) She got to make us chicken soup and get us medicine and make sure we were taking it and helping me use the thermometer, and just overall got to be needed and wanted and helpful in ways she knew how. She seemed to like it.

Alright, thanks for reading. Have a good evening.

On Fluid Bond and Triad Relations

Hello. Again, I assume.
Things have been pretty normal, pretty quiet, all things considered. I have had a few thoughts, and a coworker asked me a question that inspired about ten seconds' thought before I answered correctly. And it seems that our love J has been having some difficulties with her head. We're thinking it's post-partum depression, but it's definitely a form of depression. I'm also trying to unspoil the L midget, because this is damn ridiculous.

The coworker asked me what would happen if I were to become pregnant. I said, immediately, that he would be delighted. And coworker asked if J would mind, and this is what brought on the ten seconds of thought-- and then I figured out that she would laugh her ass off. 'cos I don't want to give birth. Or even have kids, which is funny, seeing as there are three between the two people I'm with, but I still have the ability to step back and away and call for the biologicals. The exception to this is L, who is simple enough to care for. Ish. But I constantly, when there are troubles with the parenting (as M reminds himself, "the joys of parenthood"), like when K decided to smear poop all in his room or when Mj and K fight and I have to interfere, etc.-- I singsong the phrase, "never having children". Which I think annoys M, because he's been trying his damnedest to get me to feel all included in the parenting thing, while I'm keeping my distance, not so much on purpose as by a reflex that I don't really want to work my way through at the moment, for various reasons, the chief of which being a sense of being out of my territory and edging into someone else's. I also have a list (that doesn't actually have a number system) of reasons I don't want to have children. 'cos kids are hard and rely entirely on you to explain and demonstrate and are going to fuck up (I know, I was one.), and really? Playing with your poop? Really?

Speaking of children being awful-- L is spoiled rotten, right? "But how can a five month old be spoiled?" I pretend to hear you ask. Well, let me explain.
You can totally spoil a five-month-old. By carrying it around constantly from the minute it's born, and never setting it down. After a while, it gets used to this, and then refuses to be put down and quiet simultaneously. J and I have blamed this on M. Because it is totally his fault.
So what the child does is cry. Non-stop. Despite having been fed, changed, burped, empty of poop, and all other things that could be wrong have been established fixed or non-existent, and the only way to make him stop is to pick him up and carry him around. He won't let you sit down, he won't let you stand still. He loves being put into the baby carry-thingie that works like a front-backpack, but I'm not a particularly tall person, and therefore my arms are not long enough to do things with him there, except, sometimes, laundry. And the little bundle of joy and spit-up is heavy, after a minute, and I already have an upper back problem. Also, I am completely out of commission for this indulgence for him after I've worked, and even the day after.
So I'm unspoiling him, slowly. Not by letting him cry, though I've done that before, because it was that or punt the little shit through a wall, and I would miss him if I did that, as well as be horribly murdered by his parents. He has a mobile in his crib that has a light that circles a little picture against the umbrella of the mobile, it plays music, and of course the dancing animals. I put him in the crib, I turn on the music, and he lies, transfixed, on the bed and watches the pretty colors and listens to the music. It's working, somewhat. He also hates being alone, and if he can't find one of us adults, he gets upset.
He also likes to talk to us. He makes screaming noises and squeaking noises and just in general doesn't shut up. It's so cute.

J has been suffering an awful depression, lately. I've actually got the chemical chronic kind, but hers kind of happened around the birth of the baby, and hasn't really buggered off. There are a lot of little elements in it, but at this point it's kind of chicken and egg, trying to tell which is happening why. Like, she doesn't go out and go do stuff with friends anymore. Part of this was because she lost a lot of contacts during the pregnancy, as several of them were players in a shared sport, and also couldn't go out partying due to pregnancy; another bit has become, lately, money, since even with three working adults in the house, between us attempting to save money for her classes, paying bills (of which the other two have several individually and I have a couple of my own, but that's related to lifestyles and spending habits before we formed our little family), we don't really have much to spare. In addition to making her feel stuck in the house, the idea alone stresses her out.
At the moment, both M and I are trying to figure out what to do about it. We're not entirely sure. When we try to come up with a way to help her out, when we suggest it to her, in true depression-suffering fashion, she finds six reasons that it's not an acceptable option and shoots it down. I know that she has no idea that she's doing this, nor how often she does it, because I've been there, I've done that, and I've driven many people to distraction behaving that way. I told M that he was just gonna have to tie her up and gag her and drag her out and make her have fun. I'm only hoping that she's not too far gone to enjoy something, 'cos I've been there and done that, too. 'course, as aforementioned, mine's chronic-chemical, and I'm pretty sure hers is just a bad patch. She's even said as much, when she hears other people talk about theirs. As it is, she shuffles around and mumbles a lot and sighs heavily all the time (been there, done that, too.). I've suggested St. John's Wort (didn't work for me, but it's OTC, and a good way to eliminate zoloft from the list of options of medicine when we can get her to a doctor.), and I've considered sharing my knock-off paxil with her (worked wonders for me, where three others [prozac, zoloft, celexa] have failed.), but a, I kinda need that, and b, since hers is situational, or at least apparently so, she probably doesn't need so much medicine as sunlight and exercise, and c, she might be one of the ones that needs the month to feel the effects, and I can't share like that. (I felt mine same-day, but again, different chemistry.)

So, I was asked by someone else, after I'd told said someone about the wedding, if I wanted a boyfriend on the side. I turned him down, of course, but couldn't quite make it clear to him that our relationship isn't open. I mean, yes, we're polyamorous, but we're closed. When I tried to clear it up for him, I wound up asking him if he understood quite what I meant when I told him that I was dating two people, and he said he sort of understood-- like a mormon polygamist marriage. I sort of agreed with that, only the exception is that J is not my 'sister', or my fellow bride; she's my girlfriend, in the same sense that M is my boyfriend. I'm their girlfriend, is the way I explain it to people who are only sort of familiar with polyamory. I usually start off that bit with the "they're married", and sometimes it confuses people, but sometimes not.

I then tried to edge around the idea of fluid-bond without being gross about it, or insulting, because telling people that you're refraining from having sex with them because they might get someone's genitals sick is rather insulting, and I failed, but I do feel that it's kind of necessary to explain, so here is where I'm going to do it.
A fluid bond is basically agreeing to not have sex with anyone else outside the relationship/circle/whatever your group happens to identify as. There could be ten people, or three, or fifty, but basically, everyone gets declared clean and doesn't have sex with people outside the other nine, two, or forty-nine people. This is for several reasons, the chief of which is to avoid unwanted infections, and also so that if there are any children that crop up, you can identify whose (unless you're in the group of fifty, in which case, it's either of vital importance, or fuck it, we'll all raise it as our own.). Having been on the unfortunate side of a broken fluid bond, I'm a little titchy about the idea in general. (My ex slept with an infected woman. I'm clear now, but paranoid.)

So, that's what's been going on in our life.
You know, I don't often update, but that's actually because I've forgotten that our relationship is unconventional, except when I go about telling other people about it, and kind of have to knock around the bush for a moment to explain, but even then, people catch on fairly quickly and understand pretty well, even if they think it's a little weird. Most of the reactions have been "I would be too jealous", and while J was for a while, I never have been. Mostly I just feel lucky to be involved. J didn't have to share if she didn't want to, and has tried to anyway, bless her heart. (It's probably another factor in the depression, but we haven't talked about that. I'm wondering if we're all going to need relationship therapy before long...)
But I've gotten to where I feel completely normal about it. It's just a relationship, same as any one with two people in it, only there are three of us. (Of course, I've only got one monamorous to go on, and that was dominantly online, and one other that was only ever online, so I've got kind of a skewed standard, and this is my third relationship ever, sooo....) I did, in the beginning, tell both J and M that they could update the blog, but neither of them has indulged in this. M reads it, I think he checks it fairly regularly, to see what I've got to say (and, in fact, my last posting was met with a question as to whether or not I keep a second blog where I complain about 'us', too; I do have a second blog, but I don't really bitch much about us, because I'm too busy bitching about my issues with my ex and work and the like, slice of MY life, rather than OUR life, and this blog is distinctly about US.), and to see if I've got any complaints or reports that he doesn't know about, I think. I do communicate better in written form, but still.

Oh. It was J's birthday a couple of weeks ago. I know what I want to do for her birthday, but it's looking like that's going to have to wait 'til effin' springtime. M's got my gift-idea ready, but I don't really want to, especially considering how little we did for J. Hers should really come first, and after that we can diddle at mine (despite my requests otherwise. I'm perpetually disappointed with my efforts at a birthday. Eighteenth and nineteenth were pretty good, I think.).

L is hitting his milestones about perfect. His motor function is a little (but not much) slower than suggested it could be, but aside from being unsure how to flex his elbow, he's right on cue with everything.

K's potty-training has been rather hit-or-miss. He has pooped in the potty of his own accord, completely independent of us and without even telling us a few times, but then he'll also go squat behind the furniture to hide from us, or go in his pull-up and then act like he's going to the bathroom to potty. We're currently trying the "you get a treat when you go on the potty" bribery, which works to an extent.

I had a nigh-on argument with M about Mj and how and what we're teaching him. M was trying to give him a little extra responsibility regarding K, and how he would get into trouble if K was up to something and M didn't stop him. I completely disagreed with this, at this particular stage, partly because I've gotten familiar with M and his ways, and partly because I don't think a three-year-old should have any responsibility over any other person ever, because three and four year-olds aren't all that good at discerning good reasons for their own doings, let alone someone else's, and it annoys me even when adults get pissy because they can't figure out why someone's doing something. M had a few good points, being that we needed to teach him early and a sense of responsibility, but I argued that dressing himself would probably be his best bet for a next step, rather than giving him permission to boss his brother around. (He does that enough already.)

Alrighty. That's about it for now. Take care.