Privacy concerns

I think it is a sub section of the larger manual 'Act like a woman' :rolleyes:

Ah, maybe that got thrown away with the packaging: "Buy your own REAL, LIVE woman! She walks, she talks...she shops, cooks and bitches at you!" :p

...or maybe I came "used" on eBay without all the "New In Box" features (my parents are cheap that way). Would kind of explain why I don't like pink, don't like chocolate or ice cream, don't wear jewelry/makeup, hate shopping and don't cook. I must not have RTFM! :D
 
Well, I just meant that it is more appropriate to be "demanding" when you have known each other a long long time and really know each other's personality and the issues between you. Better yet, to just be nice to each other and talk civilized yet honest about things, still in most cases there are once in a while neccesary to use ultimatums and vetos and I think as a wife I have a right to do that. Of course you can always decide that a new person should have such rights but then it needs to be actively negotiated (hopefully one will negotiate anyway, but I guess you might know what I mean. Putting in the years gives you something to expect).

Well, I guess anyone can TRY to use ultimatums/vetoes...but I, personally, would not want to be in a relationship with someone who thought that that was "appropriate" or saw it as "right".

Sure, in a longer relationship (whether married or not) there might be more of a reason to forgive such tactics ... but if any relationship is at the point of ultimatums/vetoes then I think a whole lot of communication has been neglected.
 
Well, I guess anyone can TRY to use ultimatums/vetoes...but I, personally, would not want to be in a relationship with someone who thought that that was "appropriate" or saw it as "right".

Sure, in a longer relationship (whether married or not) there might be more of a reason to forgive such tactics ... but if any relationship is at the point of ultimatums/vetoes then I think a whole lot of communication has been neglected.
Yes, one might see those things differently according to temerament and experience.

However, the point here was not ultimatums, but the use of the art of "sticking in there and hoping for the better". THAT is the tecnique one should not used when not in a commited, long-term relationship because the other person has given no reason to deserve such persistance.
 
I am using "behaving like a wife" the way it is used in the book "Men who can't love" http://www.amazon.com/Men-Cant-Love-Steven-Carter/dp/1567310478 For those who have not read it, it describes a dynamic of escalation where usually a man withholds something (information, love), the women reacts and then the prosess of action and reaction escalates. Without maybe even realizing it, women tend to belive that by behaving like a wife (understanding, patient OR accusingly, like he owns her), she can make the guy in question behave like a husband (responsible, caring more or even engage with her in an argument). They want the other person to change, instead they both tend to enchance what they want less. If one instead behaves a bit like it was a business arrangement ("what are your interests? what are mine? where do we merge?") it becomes less emotional - and therefore strangely better equipped to deal with the emotions. You could of course call it whatever you like, but that was the term from the book. I guess the point overlapps with what some of you guys have already said, I just wanted to clarify what I meant by it.
 
It's hard to make that one work in poly dynamics. Because there are all sorts of LONG TERM relationships that aren't spouses.

My husband and I have been together for 15 years. But my boyfriend and I have been together for almost 21.

When shit hit the fan-as it sometimes will-the one who had the longevity-was my boyfriend, not my husband. That he also had bonds with every one of the children-and had a bond with the oldest for 5 years longer, played into things as well.
 
So... a few intense/yucky msg-txt conversations later and one in person meeting today that was serious, but not yucky... I have come to a number of conclusions.

1 - Morp has some pretty serious trauma/abuse/betrayal in his past, which leads to him having a hair trigger on some issues. This may/hopefully will improve in the future.

2 - We are not suited for a D/s relationship. Kinky play sure. Top/bottom/switch (reasonably low risk kinks), ok. Authority transfer? uh, no. I don't have a need or desire to completely change the way I am submissive, and he has no need or desire to be the type of dominant I want. So that's done.

3 - He gets into snarly moods. He takes them way less seriously than I have been. We will be improving communication - in that he will tell me when he is being snarly and I will be leaving him alone until he is in a better mood, rather than trying to fix/talk/do something to help, which actually ends up making it worse. If something serious happens, after he is done being snarly all by himself, he will come to me to discuss it calmly. Same with myself; I will need to be snarly by myself and then speak calmly afterwards.

4 - We have completely different relationship styles. I'm more like LovingRadiance - in which if I'm in a relationship with someone I tend to want them (and their kids, etc etc) to be "part of the family". He's more like London - in which everyone is completely separate, very private, very autonomous. He is absolutely very independent, and touchy about anyone having any real control over any part of his life or being able to figuratively tie him down in anyway. So part of his refusing to provide information about himself is due to his past history; and part of it is due to his need to retain complete autonomy.

5 - If I have any hope of keeping this relationship, I need to back off - let go, let it be, stop trying so hard. I over-analyze and am prone to huge emotional swings - devastated if he's angry with me, joyful when he's happy with me, etc - and I need to decouple that. Norwegianpoly had a good point ("acting like a wife") - I was acting a lot more like I was, as my grandma would say, "attached at the hip" with him, and less like a woman in a still new, essentially dating, relationship. Not only was this confusing to him (as mentioned, he takes his own mood swings far less seriously, and didn't understand that they affected me so intensely), but it was spilling over into Guy's and my relationship. So much so that Guy and I had a serious talk about the emotional tide coloring and tugging on his and my relationship and that he was unhappy about it. So I will be working on letting the relationship with Morp be what it will be. It is definitely going to be more a 'casual friendly relationship' shape than a 'another 24/7 D/s co-primary' shape.

6 - Morp has less knowledge about the internet and how it works than I do. I would like someone to remedy that (if only so that he can be as private as he likes but currently isn't), but at this point he's not about to trust me to look at his accounts more than the little (public!) information I've already seen. So until he decides that he's going to learn more and fix it himself, I just need to limit online interaction with/regarding him to fetlife and chatting. I have Pidgin, which enables me to connect with and message via any of the IM services he and I are signed up for, without having to sign into any of them on their own websites. (So if we're chatting via google chat, for example, I have no chance of accidentally seeing something about his kids from google+.)

All in all - thank you all for being here. Typing things out often helps me clarify my thoughts, and you bring up points I wouldn't have thought of otherwise.
 
Sounds like a workable, clearer plan for moving it forward. Kudos!

I hope it flies how you hope it does now that you seem on surer footing with new agreements and expectations of each other and selves.

GG
 
In relation to 4, if he is like me, people that do not seem as if they are going to try and intrude and impose themselves in my life are much more likely to have me integrate them in my life naturally. It's whwn I think they are trying to break down my boundaries that it gets into a vicious circle of me building barriers and them trying to get around them.
 
Back
Top