Relationships without prescriptions

I thought about this, came up with a list of my needs and what I can and cannot deal with in a relationship, posted in on LJ, felt empowered, decided that if I'm going to be in a relationship, it is MY relationship too, and I should be able to make MY rules as a pre-condition for the relationship, and re-phrased the list into theses rules:

1. Don't worry that I'm going to "steal your husband"- I really like being in a household with more than 2 adults, so it's much more likely that I'll end up spending so much time at your house that it makes more sense for me to just move in. I'm very willing to do tons of laundry, so you might end up thinking this is a good thing.
2. You can set boundaries, and draw some new lines as new emotional minefields are encountered, but overall boundaries need to get progressively looser, not more restrictive.
3. I cannot be a dirty little secret. We can discuss who to tell, who not to tell, we don't need to list our relationship status on facebook so people we went to grade school with can be shocked by our "lifestyle", you don't have to try to explain polyamory to my Dad, but I can't deal with living my life in the closet.
4. If you're going to veto me, do it before I get involved with your partner. If you need to think it over before you're sure, I can wait, but I cannot be in a relationship with possible retro-active veto hanging over my head like the Sword of Damocles.
5. We need to talk or IM or something, if anything is bothering you let me know.
6. Drama is bad, think things over before going off.
7. No relationship bonsai! Let it grow freely into whatever it's going to be, or don't bother planting the seed at all.
8. I get to love and be loved, and get to say so, and no one can freak out about this.
9. If/when the relationship gets labeled or that label gets changed, it will be an accurate descriptive label. If we cannot think of an word that accurately describes it, we will make one up. We will not mislabel K2 as a molehill to make it seem less scary.
 
4. If you're going to veto me, do it before I get involved with your partner. If you need to think it over before you're sure, I can wait, but I cannot be in a relationship with possible retro-active veto hanging over my head like the Sword of Damocles.

Very good point. I never thought of that. We have always considered veto power before anything gets too deep, I hadn't thought of it in terms of a time limit. Interesting thought.

7. No relationship bonsai! Let it grow freely into whatever it's going to be, or don't bother planting the seed at all.

I love this! I am totally going to use this line. Thanks again :)
 
4. If you're going to veto me, do it before I get involved with your partner. If you need to think it over before you're sure, I can wait, but I cannot be in a relationship with possible retro-active veto hanging over my head like the Sword of Damocles.

If a partner has veto power, that's pretty much a deal-breaker for me.
 
Except if the person is TOTALLY DESTRUCTIVE AND UNSTABLE, as was the case I am thinking about in my relationship with my husband. He was so in love with her and she was using him up to the point he forgot his family... it was crazy! (This was in our early days of Poly)

I told him my concerns and he chose to end it. If he had his reasons and things could be negotiated, then fine, I am willing to listen, but we had done that and he was vaccant and not able to participate in our family. To me, when kids are being affected, that warrants veto power.

I have the utmost respect for my husband and his choices in people he has in his life. I always make sure to give him lots of space to explore....

I just thought I better say this as veto power should never be taken lightly or be a power and control thing... to me its meant to preserve our primary relationship because of our child(for want of a better term) as far as I'm concerned...

Actually, come to think of it I never knew the term until after this situation.
 
I told him my concerns and he chose to end it.

This sounds different to me than veto.

As I interpret it, veto is where a partner overrides the other partner regardless of what they would have or have already chosen. Much as the President can override Congress.

Discussing, weighing pros and cons (including a partner's concerns) and arriving at a choice seems quite different to me.

~Raven~
 
I think preserving the primary relationship is definitely very important, but I don't see vetos as a constructive way to preserve them. Listening to a partner's concerns and discussing them definitely seems constructive. But a veto wouldn't address the concerns for me and would make me feel less secure about the relationship.
 
Because of the veto (if I can call it that as I expressed concerns that he took very seriously, which lead to him deciding to end it) we were able to re-focus on one another and our family. We gained prospective, and prioritized. He even thought of trying again with her to see if it helped having some time away.... he realized he had been completely delusional and that she couldn't offer him or us what he/we were looking for.

I can see that this is a different perspective than perhaps she may of come from. She was the one being vettoed. That totally sucked for her for sure... she didn't get it. She took it out on me and it meant the end of the relationship I had with her boyfriend. They both thought he was a wuss and that I was a control freak. To bad really, cause that is not how it went down.

It never was resolved, but I still talk to the boyfriend every now and then. What it boiled down to was that they are more of the open/swinger variety of poly and we are not... different strokes kind of thing. We just had a different idea about where it was going. He was in love with her and she was not at all. She used him for that in my opoinion... where as she just thought it was fun to fuck him and wasn't it cute that he was in love with her.... hahaha... lalalala. :p
 
I'm okay with a partner having veto power before the relationship starts- I wouldn't want to share a partner with someone I didn't like, or someone who was bat shit crazy. So, I can understand wanting to discuss it, ask questions, go over STD status/safe sex guidelines, etc, and I can understand the non-involved person being more practical and thoughtful about it than the 2 people who are looking at each other all googly-eyed.
 
I'm okay with a partner having veto power before the relationship starts- I wouldn't want to share a partner with someone I didn't like, or someone who was bat shit crazy. So, I can understand wanting to discuss it, ask questions, go over STD status/safe sex guidelines, etc, and I can understand the non-involved person being more practical and thoughtful about it than the 2 people who are looking at each other all googly-eyed.

If my prospective partner needed veto power from another partner in order to ensure good judgements on his or her behalf, I wouldn't trust their judgement enough to get involved with them in the first place.
 
If my prospective partner needed veto power from another partner in order to ensure good judgements on his or her behalf, I wouldn't trust their judgement enough to get involved with them in the first place.

It's not just a matter of good judgement- if this new person is going to be spending time in their house, give them access to Google calender (and vice-versa), and generally involved in their lives, then yes, it's important that everyone be able to tolerate each other.

Otherwise, if the primary just can't stand being around the new person for personality reasons (not that the new person is a bad partner, just they don't click, wouldn't want to hang out together, grate on each other's nerves) then that would limit the relationship to the extent that I'd probably rather not bother.
 
It's not just a matter of good judgement- if this new person is going to be spending time in their house, give them access to Google calender (and vice-versa), and generally involved in their lives, then yes, it's important that everyone be able to tolerate each other.

Otherwise, if the primary just can't stand being around the new person for personality reasons (not that the new person is a bad partner, just they don't click, wouldn't want to hang out together, grate on each other's nerves) then that would limit the relationship to the extent that I'd probably rather not bother.

I just don't see veto power as a necessary thing to create conditions that prevent such things from happening. All of that can be handled with discussion and communication. I think veto power gets even messier when you start to have to veto your partner's feelings for another person because you don't get along with the other partner. If there's an issue of my partner choosing other partners that I don't get along with, then that's something that needs to be dealt with. I don't see vetoing such a relationship as effectively dealing with the issue. Again, it comes down to trusting that my partner will make the right choices to honor everyone involved. I'm not going to dictate how my partner should act or not act on their feelings. I'll provide input and discuss my concerns, but I would never want to be the one to make the decision for my partner.
 
It's not just a matter of good judgement- if this new person is going to be spending time in their house, give them access to Google calender (and vice-versa), and generally involved in their lives, then yes, it's important that everyone be able to tolerate each other.

Otherwise, if the primary just can't stand being around the new person for personality reasons (not that the new person is a bad partner, just they don't click, wouldn't want to hang out together, grate on each other's nerves) then that would limit the relationship to the extent that I'd probably rather not bother.

I can tell some values differ here. My preference is non-hierarchical. Next it is not necessary for my loves to be chums. Logically I cannot expect each of my loves to have the same tastes in people I do.

I can see where this might matter in making the decision for all involved to live under the same roof but not beyond that. Otherwise they don't have to see each other regularly if they do not wish to. A poly relationship consists of fully realized sets. And hopefully fully realized people.

~Raven~
 
I guess I was going on the assumption that primary partners live together, and that thus the secondary partner would either end up spending some time around the primary, or schedules would have to be manipulated specifically to avoid them having to be around each other.

So, I'd prefer being vetoed before things got involved than try to have a relationship with someone whose wife couldn't stand being around me.

I don't really have much opinion on vetoes either way- I've heard about people who would just ignore their partner's vetoes while vetoing anyone their partner was interested, and I've heard of people sabotaging their partner's secondary relationship without using a veto. I've been in a situation where his wife was obviously uncomfortable with my relationship with him, so I ended the aspects of it that made her uncomfortable, intending it to be a temporary thing until she worked through her feelings and they resolved some issues, and eventually it became clear to me that she wasn't going to be comfortable with me having a sexual relationship with him under any conditions that would work for me. It would have been much less painful if she'd just vetoed me to begin with, but at least I learned form the experience.
 
I guess I was going on the assumption that primary partners live together, and that thus the secondary partner would either end up spending some time around the primary, or schedules would have to be manipulated specifically to avoid them having to be around each other. ]

Though I don't subscribe to the hierarchical model of primary,secondary,tertiary etc, I have encountered other poly people who do, yet cohabitation was not a characteristic inherent to their primary relationships.

It's interesting how varied polyamorous people can be even in this.


So, I'd prefer being vetoed before things got involved than try to have a relationship with someone whose wife couldn't stand being around me.

I don't really have much opinion on vetoes either way- I've heard about people who would just ignore their partner's vetoes while vetoing anyone their partner was interested, and I've heard of people sabotaging their partner's secondary relationship without using a veto. I've been in a situation where his wife was obviously uncomfortable with my relationship with him, so I ended the aspects of it that made her uncomfortable, intending it to be a temporary thing until she worked through her feelings and they resolved some issues, and eventually it became clear to me that she wasn't going to be comfortable with me having a sexual relationship with him under any conditions that would work for me. It would have been much less painful if she'd just vetoed me to begin with, but at least I learned form the experience.

You did say you learned from that experience and based on the signs were able to make a decision.

I guess it comes down to personal preference whether to deal with uncomfortable emotions and situations, learning, gaining skills and growing from the experience or avoid such situations and place relationship decisions in the hands of others.

~Raven~
 
You did say you learned from that experience and based on the signs were able to make a decision.

I guess it comes down to personal preference whether to deal with uncomfortable emotions and situations, learning, gaining skills and growing from the experience or avoid such situations and place relationship decisions in the hands of others.

~Raven~

Yes, I learned from my mistakes, which means I won't do that again.

Thinking back, the big mistake was that he started getting physical before we'd actually talked about the possibility of having a sexual relationship...So, by the time I got the chance to sit down and talk to both of them about it, I was having a hard time thinking about anything other than how I wanted to get naked with him ASAP, and if she'd said "You can screw my husband, but only outside in January on a snowbank when it's -10, and you both have to be wearing Jayne hats.", I would have been okay with that.

I'm not sure why she didn't object at that point, because I did tell her I tend to get emotionally involved, and that it was even more likely since I was already so close to him- and I thought she knew that I'd been interested in him for a long time, since there'd been that time a couple years before that she, I and a friend who'd also had sex with him were all hanging out, and I'd asked them really detailed questions about what he was like in bed- but she later pointed out that while we were having that conversation, she was getting an incredible back rub from the friend's boyfriend, so she wasn't exactly thinking straight herself.

So, what we should have done was all go out to Perkins and talked about it in detail when no one's back or front was being rubbed.
 
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I'm not sure why she didn't object at that point, because I did tell her I tend to get emotionally involved, and that it was even more likely since I was already so close to him- and I thought she knew that I'd been interested in him for a long time, since there'd been that time a couple years before that she, I and a friend who'd also had sex with him were all hanging out, and I'd asked them really detailed questions about what he was like in bed- but she later pointed out that while we were having that conversation, she was getting an incredible back rub from the friend's boyfriend, so she wasn't exactly thinking straight herself.

So, what we should have done was all go out to Perkins and talked about it in detail when no one's back or front was being rubbed.


It sounds like she made a decision and then had second thoughts. "I wasn't thinking clearly" statements are suspect. But I'm sorry you had a painful experience.

~Raven~
 
It sounds like she made a decision and then had second thoughts. "I wasn't thinking clearly" statements are suspect. But I'm sorry you had a painful experience.

~Raven~

I think they figured that since my ex had just left me, that I was on the rebound, and it'd just be friendly fun, and that when some time had passed and I was emotionally ready for a real relationship, I'd find some nice guy, fall in love, and be all coupled up, and everyone would be happy.

Shortly after I offered to take a break from him, I did meet a nice guy who is in a poly relationship that works much better with my rules, which made the first couple feel better, as if having one relationship that is going well erased all the pain from the one that ended.
 
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