Our History

This is a communication from Phoenix Household.  This is a little about our history.   

We were in therapy years ago, we resolved the issues that led to that therapy.  Our therapist's goal, at that time, was integration.  We tried.  It was not successful.  A multiple life is all we have ever known, we do not know how to be any other way. 

  The system was closed for a time.  There was only one person running this body, but there were always others nearby.  Nearly two years ago, the system opened again and with the help of the people we found on the net and humans in the earth world who we have grown to trust, we have been able to organize into our present form.   

Years ago, someone in this household married a man.  That person is no longer with us.  Since then, to use a popular form, we have had two major front runners.  Twice now, our household has had to get used to the idea that we are married to a man, that we live with a man that we do not really know, that we did not choose.  During our years of therapy we came to realize a fact that we had always suspected and realized at that time, that we are woman-centered.  In the parlance of the earth world, we are gay.   

For many reasons we have chosen to remain in this relationship.  For one thing, he was the only one who stuck by us during the years of therapy.  He was the only person we could count on.  For that we honor him, and so far we have chosen to stay with him.  We have not chosen to share the fact of our household with him because he would see us as a thing to be fixed.  He had a hard time during therapy with what he saw as our inconsistency.  He is a good man, he treats us well, he says he loves us, but he does not know who we are and we are not willing to share the fact of our present multiplicity with him.     

A few weeks ago this man was diagnosed with bladder cancer.  He had surgery and the prognosis at that time was not positive.  When the pathology reports finally came back he was in the clear, but we had a few weeks of uncertainty and the prospect of a grim future.  I know this is not a long time in the course of illness in this earth world.  But this short time has had a dramatic effect on our household.  When there is so much to deal with in the earth world, the interface between this world and Otherwhere shuts down.  Access is very limited.  Since we all interface with the earth world from Otherwhere now, having access closed is not good at all.  It is not healthy for us, it is stressful to be cut off from Otherwhere, from each other.  it is a burden to the ones who remain here, Diana, FAX...   We are a household, a collective of souls.  That is the most important thing to us.  Unity is prime.  To be denied access...  It is like being cut off from the heart of us.  We need a peaceful environment to explore what it means to be a household, to grow, to learn, to hear each other, to be aware of each other's concerns.  We do not deal well with this sort of stress.  This is a thing we have not figured out yet.  I know if we are involved with humans, humans sometimes become ill.  Perhaps it would make a difference if it was someone we loved.  We do not know.   

So our question is, who's the wife?  Wife is a strange term to apply to a multiple household in the first place. 

What is our responsibility?  What is our responsibility to this man, what is our responsibility to ourselves?  What are the ethical concerns?  Honor is so important to us.  To do the honorable thing.  All these years we thought we were.  But now we aren't sure what that means in this circumstance.  

Last Thursday when he got the clean bill of health a big message appeared on our general message board, in capital letters: LIFE IS TOO SHORT.  LIfe is too short.  What does that mean?  Life is too short to be involved in a relationship with someone we do not love, not in a wife sort of way?  We respect him, we honor him, but we are not nurtured by this relationship.  Does what we need really matter?  Is it healthy for us to bury our needs, the needs of the household, of any one of us; to bury the need to feel truly loved and nurtured and to give those feelings to some other in return?  We thought we knew that what we wanted truly mattered.  We thought we were living that life.  We thought it didn't matter that we really don't have 'in love' feelings for him. From what we read of this culture people don't stay 'in love.'  'In love' changes and deepens over time to loving, caring feelings. That is what the books say, what people say.  Lust doesn't last, it becomes something greater.  We do not feel those greater feelings.  Sometimes we feel as if we are choking.   Saying this makes us feel small and mean.  It makes us feel selfish.  We have always thought, oh, we must stay with him because he cared for us when we were in hell.  Even though we do not love him, we must honor him.  Now there is a difference in our household.  On that day, last Thursday, FAX laid it all out for us, people split up all the time, this is how they handle the financial arrangements, this is what we should ask for, we have been with this person for 25 years, we raised children together.  We have something called 'equity' together.  Place does not matter.  And we felt liberated.  We felt open to change.  Now we can see that it is possible to leave, that it is possible to make the financial arrangements for both of us to be free, although he does not want to be free of us, seems to be satisfied with a warm body in the house even though there is no intimacy, no real sharing of interests.  Before there was never any question but that we would stay.  Now, this new opportunity is there.  It is very odd, very frightening.  That is not to say that we will leave for no reason, that any of us just want to go, but if there is reason, if we are lucky enough to find a forever love or if they find us, we have the capablitity of doing it.  Our needs have been buried by our sense of honor to the husband of this body.  Now we know that or needs matter.  What we want matters.  We don't understand what it all means.

FAX
of Phoenix House