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So, the other day, my Wife and I were driving on the highway. She turns to me, and says, "I think I want to be involved. We should create a couples profile, and see if we can find a girl for a Triad". (A Triad is, basically, a serious three-way relationship where ideally everyone loves each other.)
"Great!", I say, and we drive on in silence as I try to process this.

Now I don't know how many of you are familiar with online dating, but it really sucks to be a guy on an online dating site (unless you are really, really hot). For a guy, it's mostly looking at pictures of women (some attractive, most not), then reading their profile, and sending a message that is hopefully good and original. It takes a lot of work, and a lot of time. The vast majority of your messages will be unanswered. It's tough not to feel like the mud on their boots that they try to scrape off, but there are entire forums related to this subject. Now, I'm not a terrible looking guy, but I am married and open about that, so that deters a lot of women.
My wife knows that the online dating scene hasn't been the easiest thing for me, and so her suggestion to make a couple's profile was her way of helping. My wife is pretty damn good looking, with beautiful reddish hair. Finding a women with her as part of the package might make things easier.

Now for me, a Triad is really my ideal end game. The thought of having a wife and a girlfriend that not only get along, but actually love each other would be amazing! My mind was racing for much of the day, trying to sort everything out.

This brings us to Unicorns. So, what is a Unicorn? Well, a Unicorn is a creature that is exceedingly rare with mythical qualities. So basically: a single (or at least available) woman, who is bisexual, attractive, open to being a "secondary" in an existing relationship, intellectually stimulating (for me), and spiritual (for my Wife). That Unicorn seems like a pretty amazing person...

Often couples looking for Unicorns unilaterally set rules that will apply to the Unicorn. Things like only sleeping with the Unicorn together, rules around being seen in public, loving them equally (as if that is even possible), etc. Now, we aren't really heavy on the rules (practice safer sex, basically), but many couples do have these rules, so Unicorn Hunters generally have a bad rap.

So, at the end of the day, we sit down on the couch and have a deeper conversation about things. I ask her why she wants to be involved now, when she didn't before. What changed her mind? I've been complaining about how crappy internet dating is, so I'm worried that she is only agreeing to this to try and help me out.

I make her read a really good article on Unicorn Hunting to make sure that we are on the same page. I don't want to set a lot of rules to restrict the relationship. The Unicorn is a person too, and they deserve to be treated fairly. If we do this, we are going to do this right.

We have a lot going on in our life right now. She has an appointment next Monday to have her UID taken out because we are going to try to have a baby (I'm terrified about that...). My Mom has been battling with booze for years and my sister thinks that things are getting worse, so she wants to stage an intervention type thing. I had to tell my sister that while I support her confronting our Mom about the drinking, I have a full plate and I can't guarantee much help on that front from me. I told my sister about my Wife and mine's relationship and how we were trying an open/polyamorous style of relationship. I trust my sister a lot, and I was really worried about coming out to her about this, but she really took it well. She didn't seem that surprised, mostly curious. She said that my wife and I have such a good relationship, that she could see how this could work. That was a really pleasant surprise. I've been really worried about opening up to my family... I'm sure that there are still mines to navigate there though. I have a big family, and some of them are really Catholic.

Anyways, so back to Unicorn Hunting... I didn't want my wife to be involved because she pitied me and my failures at online dating. I made her read the Unicorn Hunting Article. She reads the article, looks up at me, and says "I'm relieved".
"Why is that?", I say. It turns out that she did suggest becoming involved not for herself, but for me. Her #1 priority in life right now is a baby. She doesn't feel that she has the time or motivation to be involved with another person right now. I suspected as much, so while a little disappointed, I was happy that we could get to the bottom of things, and that we were doing things for the right reasons.

So, it's back to me being solo. I'm cool with that. At this point, I want to prove to myself that I can get a girl on my own. Everything in life that is worth a damn requires effort.

Well, back to the world of dating...

****

P.S. I'm sure some of you are thinking "Open Relationship + Baby = Not good (that poor baby)". Here's the thing... I'd wait another 5 years to have a baby if I had the choice, but I don't. My wife is 32.5 years old, so we are running out of time to have babies. Having kids is important to us, so biologically speaking, now is the time to have kids.

My wife an I both come from divorced parents, so we know all about a kid living with a broken family, and that is not something we want for our kids. My wife and I are both fully committed to each other and our relationship. Even though we have decided to take an unconventional path, I believe that our relationship is still much more stable than the average. Maybe both of us having parents that ended up cheating and breaking up the family gives us different perspectives and opinions. Remove the desire to cheat, improve communication, and maybe we can have a happy marriage while being free to explore ourselves as well. It won't be all smiles and rainbows, but neither of us are expecting that.

****

P.P.S. I'm curious to hear feedback on my journal entries. Do people enjoy them? Should I continue? Is this the right location for them? I realize that this is a tech site, but it's where I feel comfortable. Plus, there is a link for here for a journal, so I just start typing. There are a lot of people here that are married, and I'm sure there are some that may relate to my journals. Maybe it's helpful in some bizarre way. For me, I just like putting it out there. I like collecting my thoughts and writing it down. I also think that it might be neat to look back on years from know. Let me know what you think.

If you like my journal entries, add me to your Soylent Friends list. You will get a message when I make a new entry. Thanks for reading!

-- Snow

EDIT: Here is the article on Unicorn Hunting. It's a really great read:
http://davidlnoble.livejournal.com/176039.html

So, that girl from the previous entries and I had a second date yesterday.

I picked her up and took her out to the mountains for a short hike to a canyon that has frozen waterfalls, and then we had lunch at a place that makes flatbread pizzas.

I think she was still pretty nervous, because I had to make most of the conversation for the first 1/2 of the day. After a while she started opening up and talking a lot more. She seems like a really nice person, but I don't think that we are very compatible.

At the end of the date, I took a peck on the lips, and left. I felt pretty used after the date. I thought that I had arranged for a pretty damn good date, I paid for everything, and not even a thank you. I'm not upset that I didn't get any action (quite the opposite... there was no chemistry, so it would have felt weird...), but just a simple thank you would have been very nice. I'm not even upset about paying for everything (I probably make double what she does), it's just that it felt like it was taken for granted... Maybe that is what I'm going to have to get used to.

I was really hoping that it would work out because just getting a first date was a terrible process filled with rejection.

Anyways, back to square one.

This is a book review for the book "Opening Up: A Guide To Creating and Sustaining Open Relationships" by Tristan Taormino

http://www.amazon.ca/Opening-Up-Creating-Sustaining-Relationships/dp/157344295X

I don't really know the proper format and style for a book review, and I frankly don't care, so this might be in an unconventional style.

This is a book all about open relationships. The history, the different kinds, as well as some related topics - jealousy, setting rules and boundaries, dealing with problems, raising children, and a few others. For those that have been following my other journal entries, you will know that my wife and I are opening up our marriage. This book is often highly recommended to couples (or individuals) who want to explore open relationships.

The author sent out a questionnaire to collect data from people in nonmonogamous relationships, and the book incorporates the results of that questionnaire through stats and case studies that are sprinkled throughout the book. The book overs many different types of nonmonogamy - partnered nonmonogamy, swinging, ployamory, solo polyamory, polyfidelity, and also when one member is monogamous while the other is not. Each of these gets it's own chapter where the book explains each in detail.

From there, the book provides information and examples on how one might negotiate an open relationship, and deal with things while in one.

I read this book earlier this week, and really found it really helpful. I come from a large and pretty close family that is quite conservative, and so for me, nonmongamy is pretty foreign. This book really helped me wrap my head around everything, while providing examples of relationships that were working while being open.

This book definitely has a favourable bias towards open relationships, there were many case studies of relationships that were working, but very few (if any) of relationships that fell apart. This may have been intentional by the writer, or it may have been a result of the self selected respondents of the survey (people that it didn't work for might not have responded).

I find that this book helped me 'normalize' the concept of open relationships. My wife is currently reading it as well and is about 1/3 of the way through. She has enjoyed it this far, and has also said that it has really helped.

I agree with the many other people that have recommended this book. This is a must read for people interested or currently in open relationships.

-- Snow

So, if you haven't read my first journal entry, I would suggest you read that before reading this:

http://soylentnews.org/~Snow/journal/800

When I wrote that journal entry, I was really in a low place. My job sucked, my sex life was lacking, I had lost my self identity, and I was just generally confused with my life. It has been just under a month from that last entry. I wasn't entirely surprised by the response from that Journal. Many people identified with my struggles. I think that these problems are rather common, it's just that it's so personal, that no one really likes to talk about it.

Unfortunately, my job still sucks. I still feel undervalued, and not appreaciated. Right now, that is okay. It was really shitty though when I didn't really have anything working in my life. It's nice to have SOMETHING that is going right, be it your job, your relationships, or something else. Just something that makes you feel good.

In my previous entry, I revealed diffrent parts of my life. One was my frustration with my sex life. At around the same time as I wrote the journal entry, I had a chat with my wife and we decided to cut back her hours. We could easily make do with the cut to our income, and she would come home exhausted and just wanted to be alone. She is now working 4 days per week, and I could immediately see a difference. She was happier, I come home to a nice cooked dinner on Mondays, and I'm getting a lot more sex. Since having her hours cut back, I've been getting laid 3-4 times per week (except for period time, which is right now). She gets aroused more easily, and we have all around better sex. We bought some sex toys, and have been lightly eperimenting with new things.

It has been 4-5 months since we started discussing opening up our marriage. It's been an interesting experience. We spoke at length last night, and believe it or not, at this point we are both in agreement that so far, this has been a positive thing for our relationship. Let me explain... We have been together for a long time. Like any couple that has been together for a while, there are good times and bad times. There were times where we were teetering on the edge of breakup, but never quite pulled the trigger. Time would go on and things would change and get better. I didn't even realize it, but I really took her for granted.

Since having conversations about opening up, I have been treating her much better. I don't know if it's because of guilt or appreciation of her acceptance of my situation, or something else, but I find myself wanting to do little things for her. She says that she notices a change for the better though, so that is good.

I was pretty depressed last journal entry because I wasn't having much luck with the dating website I was on, and it was just the cherry on top of everything else. Im happy to report that I had my first date in 12-13 years last night. I was really nervous - my hands were really clammy while I was waiting for her to arrive -- but it went really well. I had a lot of fun, and it was exciting to get to know someone new like that.

After the Date, my wife and I chatted for a couple hours about the date, life, and conventional monogamy. She says that in her heart, she is okay with the nonmonogmay, but her brain she is battling the ideas that we have all had impressed on us for our entire lives. Marriage is one man and one woman. They love each other unconditionally. Always. Everything is always perfect... blah, blah, blah. We couldn't think of one marriage that we know that was actually happy. We both refuse to raise kids in a broken household, so maybe there are other ways than the normal conventional style.

This whole experiance has been really weird. We are just taking things one day at a time, and going from there. Again, it's good to get my thoughts and feelings out, and who knows, there might be people that read that that can identify or benefit from my experience.

I'll try to keep posting every once and a while for those that wish to follow.

This last week has been really good :). Please feel free to comment below, and provide your advice or comments. If you have questions, I'll try to answer them.

-- Snow

It looks like a triumph of the designers...over the users. It's Android 5 Lollipop and the associated app changes. For those who haven’t had the privilege yet, we have:

– Integrated private and business email and calendars. These used to be separate, but now both appear in the Google apps. It will be very easy to accidentally send business email from your private account or vice versa. If you create a new calendar entry, will it go to Exchange, or to Google calendar? I would have thought it obvious that most people prefer to keep their business and private lives separate. Now, doing so will be a huge effort, or else will require the installation of third-party apps.

– Reduced UI functionality. Just as an example, the font size in Mail and Calendar is now huge, with no option to reduce it. There is no longer a zoom function, so you cannot change the size that way either. To compensate for the huge font,, they have reduced the days you can see to 5, so as you scroll through your calendar, it is no longer by week – the day on the left is Monday, then Wednesday, then Friday. You can turn the phone to landscape to see a full week, but then you can only see 4-1/2 hours of your day (again, no zoom option).

– Arbitrary UI changes. Designers just cannot leave well enough alone. Just as an example, at the bottom, the “back” function used to be a curled arrow pointing left and the “home” function was a house. Now the “back” function is a triangle and the “home” function is a circle. Huh? What brain-dead designer thought changing things like this was a good idea?

A sign of the apocalypse? Until now, Google’s software has clearly undergone a lot of user testing. This time, I cannot imagine anyone but the designers would like the changes they’ve made – they just ake no sense for the typical user.

In every person's life, they have good times and not-so-good times. It's easy to take the good times for granted. When times are good, there is no reason to think why - it just is. Eventually, the pendilum will swing back in the other direction and that, my friends, is where I am today.

It's been a tough couple months for me. I'm 31, recently married, no kids. My wife and I lived together for over 10 years before getting married. Needless to say, we met rather young. She is an amazing woman -- beautiful, smart, and caring. She is the only woman I could imagine living my life with. As I mentioned, we met rather young, and because of that, I never had a chance to fool around with other women. I thought that I could live with that, but over the last 6 months or so (and talk of having a baby), the reality has hit home, and I don't think I want to life my entire life only being with 3 women. So what do you do? I have a wife that I love very much and want to spend my life with, but a burning need to experience the world.

***

I have a good job that allows me to live comfortably, but it is killing me. Most days I only do one or two hours of work, which sounds great until you actually have to live it for a couple months. It's really boring and unfufilling. I am by far the most technical and experienced person on the team, yet another person runs the team (It's complicated...). I don't get invited to meetings and because of that, mistakes get made and then I have to clean up the mess. I get no appreciation at all even though I pull rabbits out of my ass all the time - for what? It's just super stable... I can't imagine getting laid off or fired. That being said, my mood is getting the best of me and I've been really pissy and irritable lately. If it get's much worse, I might get fired.

***

How many of you are married? Women and men don't need sex in the same way. For a man, sex is very, very important. If I don't get sex, I get really depressed. It get's really old when I have to initate sex all the time. I get rejected often because she's 'too tired' or 'not in the mood'. It's humiliating and painful to be rejected so much, like a knife to the heart. It hardly seems worth even trying. I get 'intimate' with my computer more than my wife. I would guess I get sex about 5 times a month.

Last Tuesday, we had talked about sex in the evening, and then she took a bath (which usually means I'm getting lucky). When she crawled into bed, she says 'I'm so tired..." AKA 'No sex for you'. Ouch. Well another date with the computer then... The following day, I sent her a very well written article that explains how men need sex just like women need to talk. She understood the article and plans to do better. Last night she actually initated sex, it was amazing. I hope to get more of this...

***

I really do have an amazing wife, and we have a strong relationship. Over the summer I told her that I don't know if I can live my life without having sex with other women. I only get one life, and sex is so important to me. I'm not looking to screw anything with legs, but I'd like to bring my number from 3 to something like 10. I dropped this on her 3-4 months after we got married (Remember we have been living together for over 10 years, so it feels like we have been married for a long time...). I felt like a complete asshole, but I'm caught between a rock and a hard place. One one side I would never want to hurt my wife -- but on the other, I only get one chance at life, so I want to get everything out of it.

We talked about this a few more times over the next few months, and she agrees to allow me to date other women on the side. It felt like I had escaped from a trap. I try Tinder, and then gave up on that and opened an account on another dating website. I very stongly believe in honesty, so I put in my profile that I am married. I don't want to decieve anyone.

It's been a couple weeks now, and no good nibbles. I think I'm pretty good looking for a nerd (I'm thin, but tall) and I'm reasonably socialable. The lack of interest has really gotten be down even more though.

***

So, that's my life. Sometimes it helps just writing things down, so I hope this helps. I have a job that is unfufilling, an unfulfilling sex life (although my wife says she'll try now - which in itself is pretty sad), and constant rejection on dating sites. It's getting pretty tough to deal with. I hope things get better soon.

-- Snow

Alright, time for confessions. I only post journals in an attempt to get Ethanol_fueled's journals off the front page. So here is my anti-Ethanol_fueled journal entry. Maybe, in a future when Soylent News is a self-respecting news aggregator, such measures will not be necessary. (And yes, I know, that at present they are futile.)

I just used my last moderation point to troll rate someone. OK, it was not someone, it was an asshole. Seriously, who are these people that in this day and age can keep spewing racism, sexism, and how they are metrically challenged in the organ department? Guns? F**king Cowards. If you need a gun to defend yourself, you are probably a criminal. Bad boyz? White Bad Boyz? KKK Boyz? You know, if you are an oath keeper, you are already a lying sack of it. Defend the Constitution? You do realize that this means you have to be able to read the Constitution first, so you know what it is you are defending? Else, perchance, you find yourself defending the Protocols of the Teutonic Knights! You know, Nazi shit?

Recently I came across a video of John Cleese explaining Fox News with the insight that you have to know at least enough to be right in order to know you are wrong, and this is exactly what conservatives are lacking. Ah, here it is! Now this is the problem, and it does point out how arguing with these people is really no use at all. Seriously? Cops saying they _are_ the cop that shot the kid? Are they actually saying that they are racist child-murderers? See: too stupid to know that they are stupid.

I think it is nice that Soylent News covers these terribly fascist events in American, if only for the edification of the rest of the world. But let not all these people who do in fact listen to Fox New think that somehow they are right, or even in the majority. Liberals have more guns that conservatives, and they are better shots, since they do not get all emotional about their targets.

So I am not saying that we kick out all the neo-conservatives and neo-liberals and neo-nazis, I am just saying that if you are one of those, expect no mercy from things like reality and logic and humanity, and ethics. We owe you nothing less.

OK, my contributions of late seem to be more complaining than anything. I really try not to smite idiots with negmod points, seriously! But I do hang on to the last few mod points, just in case a late-breaking egregious post should be made. And here is my latest complaint. Mod points come with a nice notification, and even some direction to proper usage. That is all well and good. There also is a date and time of expiration for said mod points. But my expiration time always seems to be an hour off. I am assuming this time is changed to local 24-hour format, no problem. Perhaps Slashcode is unaware that not all time-zones practice Daylight Savings? Or perhaps I am not where I think I am. I guess I could just remember, for Soylent News Mod points, that 18:05 is not 6:05 local time, but in fact 5:05. Wait, is it leap ahead, or fall back, if you do not have Daylight Saving Time? (And what fools think we can save daylight? If we could, the whole solar power at night thing would already be solved.)

Any way, it is probably better that I lose mod points before I can use them in nasty ways. Live long and prosper, whatever time matrix you find yourself in.

Copyrights and patents are bad. They are monopolies. They lead to incorrect thinking about property and ownership. They appeal to the bad in our natures. They provide opportunities for the anti-social to shakedown legitimate businesses. To restrict copying is to restrict sharing of knowledge, and teaching and education. Restrictions take away a natural right that is crucial to the existence and advancement of our civilizations. They are unenforceable. They cannot be enforced through technology such as DRM and copy protection, and they cannot be enforced through policing and legal means. Trying to enforce them is very costly and futile. Copyrights are also not the least of all evils. We have better ways to promote the progress of science and art, we do not need to live with copyright.

Intellectual Property plays on our bad instincts.

A strong emotion that intellectual property wrongly engages is Fear of Loss. We know through experimentation that when presented with a choice in which people already have something but must risk its loss in order to gamble for a much larger gain, at good odds, most people will refuse to take the chance. But when presented with the identical choice except that they do not already possess the things to be risked, more will take the chance. Those who possess copyrights or patents mislead themselves into thinking they are like physical property which can be stolen, and therefore must be guarded from theft. The greedy have tried to hoard these "properties" as if they are gold. Out of fear of small losses that are not real, we overlook big gains for us all. Copyright plays on our instincts in a negative way.

A bad habit of thought that copyright and patents promote is "mother may I". The system default is "no", unless "permission is obtained". This slows down progress both directly because even if permission is freely granted it takes more time and effort just to check, and indirectly by conditioning the public to be compliant and submissive, which makes people less adventurous and therefore less innovative.

Even our language hurts our understanding. Languages reflect the fears of a people, and one fear present in many languages is fear of loss. Many English phrases are needlessly possessive. "I have an idea" or "I've got an idea" could make it sound like I have property rights over the idea, as if I had said "I have a car." Same with "my idea". The language uses the same words for these different cases. It does not make sufficient distinction between the material and the immaterial.

Intellectual Property denies to us the right to share knowledge.

Sharing of knowledge is a right that should be every bit as fundamental as Freedom of Speech and Religion.

The sharing of knowledge, particularly the education and teaching of our young, and our ability to do so far better than any other animal is what lifted us to the top of the animal kingdom. Every ancient civilization employed a writing system. Their value was so obvious and large that no civilized society could do without. The feature we use to distinguish the civilized from the uncivilized is records and record keeping.
While it could be possible to do some record keeping through memory alone, in practice that is impossible. To be remembered, records have to be written.

Now, today, for hustlers to try to tell everyone that knowledge should be kept locked away because it is valuable, is outrageous. They are only trying to set up or maintain a racket with themselves as the kingpins. They would shut down the public library and used book store and ban them if they could.

Copyrights and patents are monopolies, and monopolies are bad.

Monopolies of all kinds share some common features. A monopoly always results in higher prices, poorer goods and services, and slower progress. In recognition of the harm that monopolies cuase, we have outlawed some monopolistic practices.

Opportunists have seen the current system as a chance to engage in Rent Seeking, and have tried to be first to monopolize every idea. The result is a mess in which the truly original ideas must be navigated through a minefield of dubious claims from patent trolls. Because it is far too burdensome to check all existing patents for possible infringements, it forces us to violate rights and risk punishment in order to get anywhere. In a day's work, a software engineer may violate hundreds of patents. Occasionally, the explorers have to take time out to soothe the fears of the uninformed who have only heard that somehow the law is being broken, and to deal with accusations from competitors and enemies seeking to use patents not to claim their just rewards, but to extort victims for money and to stifle competition. All this makes patent and copyright ironic, working against the purpose for which they were enacted, which is "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts"

Copyrights and patents are an unnatural kind of monopoly in that they can exist only through force of law and custom. Technological means such as copy protection and Digital Rights Management have failed to do more than inconvenience customers, some of whom find it faster and easier to pay the blackmail. To force compliance from the unwilling through technological means is simply impossible. Even those willing to comply cannot always do so, any more than anyone can choose to stop breathing. That leaves legal means, which take a great deal of effort and expense to attempt, and these efforts are not successful either. Nor can they be.

Copyrights and patents are not the only way to promote the arts and sciences.

This simple fact is often quickly overlooked in arguments over the law. Upon hearing that copyrights should be abolished, many people jump to the conclusion that artists will starve and we'll have no more art. This of course presumes a lot of things that simply are not true. Most of all, it presumes that copyright is the only way for artists to make a living.

So, what else is there? We could have nothing. No rewards, but also no restrictions. Art would still be created under those conditions. However the more desirable option would be some form of patronage. Patronage is not a new idea, it has existed for centuries. With current technology we are already doing patronage far better than it could be done in past centuries. There is also advertising, the model that works for broadcast radio and TV. And there are other ways. They are not perfect, but they do not have to be. They only have to be better than copyright, a low bar indeed.