Poly living: "shared custody model"

rory

New member
There's this article about poly living styles that looks at the challenges of living together as a poly family. The author states that it is a common dream, but isn't always realistic or automatically the best option. She brings up an alternative which can often be simpler to sustain, which she calls "shared custody model".

Now, I love this idea, because it embodies the thought that you don't have to choose either x or y, but can have your cake and eat it, too, so to speak. ;) I also like the practical approach to creating something that suits the individuals and relationships involved.

There is a thread on the forum about multi-partner co-habitation, about ideal relationships, and about solo poly living. In this thread I'd like thoughts and/or experiences of "shared custody model", alternatives in between of living together and living separately. Is that something you do, or something you wish to do in the future? What does that look like to you? :)
 
Hey rory, thanks for sharing that article. I skimmed some of the specific relationship summaries, but agree with the thrust of the article.

One example she didnt list is shown on the reality show, Sister Wives. In that family, they all shared living space in one house, with a room for each wife, and the husband rotated which woman to sleep with each night. Later, they moved and now each wife has her own house and dad has to drive in between them every day. Sounds a bit exhausting, but I guess it's working for them.

I am rather an anomaly here on this board because I don't even live with my primary. We've been together 3 years (Jan 31 is our anniversary! yay!) and have maintained our own apartments all that time.

Reasons? It's expensive to move. miss pixi has 2 active dogs and I like being able to get away from the hair, barking and drooling several days a week. Both miss pixe and I like having some alone time. Also, my need for order and cleanliness conflicts with her more casual housekeeping preferences.

I also like to be able to have other lovers come visit me at my place at least one day a week. Sometimes, however, miss pixi is here when a guy comes over and is fine with him and me gettin jiggy, so that works too. But I really like having the run of my own apartment for dates with my guys.

Also, I have a job locally and like not having a long commute to get to it during the week.

So, most of the time, we spend a long weekend together, with personal time during the week.

Perhaps some day miss pixi and I will actually live together, but we'd need a bigger place, so I could have my own room to escape from the dogs and have lovers visit me, with room for privacy.

All of my present lovers are fairly new (several months and 4-6 dates so far on average), so of course any kind of shared living arrangements are not on the table as yet. The Hottie, 34, is newly divorced, lives up in Maine and has a young daughter and a demanding full time job. The Gentleman is 63 and set in his ways as a bachelor and loves his personal space. The Ginger, 59, has a lovely home with his wife. I am really eager to visit it and hopefully be invited to spend time there on a regular basis. miss pixi is excited about The Ginger's solar underground house and 57 acres, and joked she's ready to move in right away! hehe But she hasn't even met him yet.
 
For me, this topic is in the future, since one of my relationships is an LDR, and that won't change for a few years. But I think many people who are/have been in LDRs would agree, sometimes it's nice to think about what things will be like once you are closer to each other, even if you can't know what your life will look like at that point. At the moment I live with my husband Alec, and Mya lives with her husband JJ.

If there were no financial constraints, I think I would want a semi-detached house that has two apartments with one shared wall between them. The floor plan for each would look something like this

15215FP01.jpg


I would live in one with Alec, and Mya and JJ would live in the other. But I'd take down the shared wall of one of the two sets bedrooms next to each other, thus making it into one larger room for me and Mya, which would be in both of our homes, while still maintaining two separate households.

I doubt any landlord would support this plan, though, so that's why the disclaimer about the finances... :p Maybe some day we'll be in a place where all of us can&want to buy property.

More realistically, we are thinking that we'd like two apartments near each other, and at least one of our homes needs to have a room which is shared by me and Mya. So even if I continue to live separately with her, we'll still have our own space(s) private to us.
 
Magdlyn, congrats on the anniversary! :) It's cool that you wrote about your experience. I can totally relate to the need of alone time, I am similar in that respect. I live in a one-bedroom apartment with Alec, and at one point we struggled to share space so much that I actually wondered whether I would rather live alone. But we managed to rearrange so that we have our "own rooms", that is, I mostly spend time in our bedroom and Alec hangs out in the living room, and we come together when we actually want to spend time with each other.

I can also see the value in having that space for dating. That is also something I think is a benefit if the four of us have two separate apartments instead of co-habitating: if one of the guys has a date, it is possible to arrange so that they can have the apartment to themselves and I'll sleep at Mya's or the other way around (neither of them is dating right now, but that's not to say that won't/can't happen in the future). :)
 
I've made a decision that I will be in a cohousing community by the end of ten years. I don't know where yet, or if it will be in a new community or if I will buy into an existing cohousing development. But I will be in cohousing by 2021 or therabouts. I'm attracted to cohousing because there is private space and ways to develop and maintain separate financial equity. I've never found the income sharing model appealing because I am profoundly unwilling to give anyone, much less many someones, that much financial control over my life. (I have friends, however, who don't feel it limits their options.) I am very attracted to cohousing's model of connected, intertwined community that cooperates together while preserving personal and possibly family independence and personal space. And I was really glad that the article mentioned cohousing as an option for this 'shared custody' idea.

Anyway, it would be ideal for me to move in with partners into a cohousing situation. I would have my own space, my own finances; they would have the same and we could easily move back and forth between those spaces and the community areas. So that would be my dream.
 
Magdlyn, congrats on the anniversary! :)

Thanks!

It's cool that you wrote about your experience. I can totally relate to the need of alone time, I am similar in that respect. I live in a one-bedroom apartment with Alec, and at one point we struggled to share space so much that I actually wondered whether I would rather live alone. But we managed to rearrange so that we have our "own rooms", that is, I mostly spend time in our bedroom and Alec hangs out in the living room, and we come together when we actually want to spend time with each other.

Yeah. In the first year, during NRE, miss pixi and I didnt want much personal space when we were together, but later we developed strategies for alone time when at one of our apartments. She's more of a night owl than me, so often I go to bed around midnight (we have sex on the couch before my bedtime...) and she stays up til 2. She needs more sleep than me, so I usually have several hours in the morning to myself. I like that quiet time to myself in the morning, and I take the dogs out then too.

If there was another partner or 2 in this mix, I probably wouldnt get that "me time."
 
Aaargh! I wrote a huge post, and then my browser shut down on me :-/

I really enjoyed the article, thanks for posting! I think the "shared-custody model" is probably much more realistic for most people, or at least for me anyway :)

Fly (BF) and I have lived together for 4 of our almost 6 (in February!) years, but we're still relatively independent of each other. Our house is ginormous, and we each have our own bedroom, even though we sleep together several times a week (always in his room, because he hates my mattress). Our finances are completely separate, and we contribute proportionately to bills, groceries, etc. We used to not even eat meals together much, but since his kiddo moved in about a year ago, we've been making an effort to do family dinners and stuff most days. We've had roommates off and on while I've been living with Fly, but I've found that I hate sharing the kitchen, I have a hard time with people who have a radically different tolerance level for mess (neat freaks and slobs are equally frustrating!), and I really dislike having to negotiate every tiny little thing with other people. I absolutely adore our last roommate, but even with him it was a relief when he moved back to Japan.

Punk, the newer BF, lives in another city, far enough away that it's not super convenient to just hang out or be spontaneous. He also has a wife, daughter, and other partners, so the distance + time commitments for us both means that we usually only see each other about once a week. I wish he lived closer, but that's not going to happen :)

Ideally, I'd love to find an OSO who lived close, maybe in the neighborhood. Not in the same house or even next door, because I like having some space and privacy, but close enough that I could walk over after kiddo's in bed and spend the night and be able to come home before Fly goes to work so I can take kiddo to school. Or just to see each other several times a week. We've agreed to no lovin' in the house with OSO's while the other one is home, but I think Fly's at the point where he'd be ok with a lover of mine hanging out with us, eating dinner or watching tv or whatever. I'd be fine with the reverse as well, but I don't know if he'd be into integrating his FWB's more into his regular life.

Unfortunately, I haven't managed the art of falling in love with people based on their address :) But if I could structure my life any way I wanted, the "shared-custody model" described in the article would be very, very appealing.

Oh, and happy anniversary Magdlyn!
 
I haven't had time to read the link yet, but shared custody is essentially what we have. I live with my husband at a house we built. Two nights a week I spend the evening and night with my boyfriend in the room he rents in a house fairly near us. He's trying to buy a house, so hopefully soon he'll have more of his own space. My husband's girlfriend is married, so they just take turns going to each other's house. I wish we had one more bedroom, maybe we'll eventually finish one in the basement.
 
For me, this topic is in the future, since one of my relationships is an LDR, and that won't change for a few years. But I think many people who are/have been in LDRs would agree, sometimes it's nice to think about what things will be like once you are closer to each other, even if you can't know what your life will look like at that point. At the moment I live with my husband Alec, and Mya lives with her husband JJ.

If there were no financial constraints, I think I would want a semi-detached house that has two apartments with one shared wall between them. The floor plan for each would look something like this

15215FP01.jpg


I would live in one with Alec, and Mya and JJ would live in the other. But I'd take down the shared wall of one of the two sets bedrooms next to each other, thus making it into one larger room for me and Mya, which would be in both of our homes, while still maintaining two separate households.

I doubt any landlord would support this plan, though, so that's why the disclaimer about the finances... :p Maybe some day we'll be in a place where all of us can&want to buy property.

More realistically, we are thinking that we'd like two apartments near each other, and at least one of our homes needs to have a room which is shared by me and Mya. So even if I continue to live separately with her, we'll still have our own space(s) private to us.

Perhaps you should all be looking for jobs up in Northeast Pennsylvania...houses like that, "doubles," are a dime a dozen up that way. Literally. They sell for around $50k in some cities and towns and that includes both halves....
 
Entredeux, thank you so much for your post, and please keep posting more to the forum. :) There are definitely things I can so totally relate to.

ultimately, i have had to give up my idea that some eventual co-habitation would be the best arrangement. we've had many discussion about this idea, but it wasn't until i encountered a description about all the different arrangements that work for people that i started to feel less pressure (and i think its really interesting how many people hold the cohabitation thing up as some kind of goal, which i certainly was doing). that said, i think its great people can do that. my only point is that for a while this kind of narrow thinking really made it hard for me to think about our specific situation, desires, goals ...

I agree with this. I think for me the unquestioned goal of living together wasn't so much "what I think poly should be like" but "what I think serious relationships should be like". That is, if I love somebody and am in a committed relationship, isn't it obvious that I will live with them?

It was only after the practical reality got in the way of that assumption that I started to question if it is even what I would most like myself. I mean I like my space and I sometimes feel I don't get enough of it, even though I live with only one partner, and I have such a flexible schedule with studies that I can spend ridiculous amounts of time alone at home during the day. So would it really be greatest idea for me to live with two partners and a metamour..?

Also, for me what I enjoy the most is intimate, one-on-one time with my partner. Group time can be fun, but for me alone time is what the relationship is about and group time comes in addition to that. I feel that co-habitation may not be the best way to accommodate that (even though it can be done).

i also wanted to say that i appreciated the comments about "alone time" (for me this is nearly impossible). i find that i value the time with each of my partners so much (and miss them when i'm in another place) that i tend to forget to take time for myself (aside from work and traveling). i really struggle with that - and sometimes i think i get pretty emotionally and physically worn out - but i haven't yet found ways to really take that time. its especially difficult with my gf since that relationship is newer and we have never lived together full time. we simply haven't had that kind of down time that comes with living together everyday and that makes it difficult for both of us to develop habits independent of each other when we are together. i imagine i'm not alone in this....

Maybe we should start a separate discussion about alone time... Though I very much don't mind if that's talked about here, since it definitely relates to the topic for me. But maybe there would be other experiences, too. It is somehow comforting (strangely enough) that you would still struggle with alone time that far into the relationship. Or maybe it should be discomforting... :rolleyes:

It's just that it shows me that I maybe..sometimes..have a little too high expectations of myself. In most situations I'm good at implementing change when I regard it necessary. We are on a learning curve about how I balance my time when Mya is visiting here and I have two full-time partners with me. The first visit was heaven, but I was so tired afterwards coming off the high. We made some changes so that the second visit would be less draining, and mostly I did stick to the decisions (I studied more and slept more) but I didn't spend much alone time even though I planned to. It's just such a temptation, because it's so nice to see Mya and connect with her, and I do want to spend time with Alec, as well, and there's the eating and the studying and the sleeping and all the sex... Not that I want to sound ungrateful. :p But I do think it is important to prioritise and learn to balance all of that, and still take care of our own needs.

Perhaps you should all be looking for jobs up in Northeast Pennsylvania...houses like that, "doubles," are a dime a dozen up that way. Literally. They sell for around $50k in some cities and towns and that includes both halves....
Haha, that is practically free. Too bad we're in Europe, and pretty specific about the city we wish to end up living in (and unfortunately not cheap at all...). ;)
 
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For the past 4 years MC and I have been sharing a house with a roommate in order to save money. Because of that experience (which is about to end) I can consider living with TGIB a tad bit more realistically than some people might who want to live with all their partners. For instance, I already know:

- Finances will not be shared beyond how much everyone contributes for rent and utilities.
- MC and I decide what to buy/cook for ourselves and our kids. If TGIB wants to join us, he's always welcome. There will always be plenty. If he wants anything different, he's on his own.
- We can help with each other's kids (when asked) but we are NOT parents to each other's children.
- There will be certain minimums for cleanliness (no attracting wildlife!) in bedrooms but those are mostly personal space. "Take care of your own stuff" along with a written chore-chart will be the rule for the common rooms.

And that's IF we're sharing living space in the same house! Honestly, that's not likely to happen anyway. TGIB does not want (at least for the moment) to live with anyone, so in a perfect world once he moves to CA he'll be able to get an apartment very close to our place. Once MC and I are able to move my ultimate goal will be a house big enough for me, MC, and our kids with an apartment over the garage or separate in-law quarters for TGIB, so he can be separate but very close, only walking-distance away.

I'm one of those people who would not deal well with trying to live in two places- occasional overnights at TGIB's would be fine, but I have 2 small children. I want to spend most of my time at home. I could see have a few toiletries and maybe a spare set of clothes at his place, but I would be a visitor in his space. I would not expect nor have equal say or responsibility in how the place is kept.
 
I had a hard time with the commute to be with Mono in the early days. I didn't like leaving my son. He lives with us now and the commute is to his apartment downstairs ;)

Alone time is hard to come by in my life, but I am getting better at advocating that I get some because I go a bit batty when I don't. Its a balancing act. ALL OF IT! :p

Mags, its great to hear your up date! Congrats. I haven't caught up on your life in awhile. Sounds like you are doing really well and are happy. :)

I like your house rory! :) looks cozy.
 
Ive had to re-think living arrangements recently.

I think that if things get very serious with John's new gf, we will have to have separate houses, that he would go between. I just know we couldn't afford to buy a house big enough for all the kids - 7 between both of us. We could add on to our house now, which I really want to do, if I can get permits and not for several years.

I also am unsure about the whole all living together thing being the ultimate, though I know John still wants it. I kinda do too, but not until a serious commitment has been made, living with my now ex-bf and being on a lease with him means I'm stuck for 10 more months... well at least until we buy the house, which should happen in June or July. I am glad I made the decision to move in to a place with him, but being stuck in a place with him, bc I need his part of rent and I'm not willing to give this place up since we will be buying it next year, is not as good. Luckily we still get along fine.
 
I've never understood the fascination with poly tangles wanting to get all cozy and co-habitate in smallish places. The thought of sharing a bed with multiple people leaves me cold. I've also not heard a majority of the polyfolk I know speak of wanting such, so why it's regarded as a widely held dream or in higher regard than any other living arrangement, I've no idea.

I have long wanted to have a huge house (or a couple of acres with several houses clustered together) with many more rooms than people so that folks can come and stay as they needed or wanted. Partners could be included in the menagerie--if they wanted to come stay. The house is always imagined as large enough to provide everybody who wants it some private space, so it isn't like being all cozy with just the family. It's more like a non-commercial boarding house.

We're looking at sharing space with a friend of mine who's interested in dating my wife. When she moves back into the state, we'll be looking for a larger space that will accommodate all of us. I'm wondering if we're going to be able to find someplace that will offer enough room for complete comfort, or if we'll have to find additional space for personal retreats.
 
We've always wanted to renovate an old Victorian... you know the kind that have been made into 3 family housing... this is something all three of us have wanted to do separately for years. In reality, it's not that simple.
 
The more I think about this, the more I realize we might have done this backwards.

The three of us have been good friends for years now, to the point where E and I went in on a big, rambling house 18 months ago. Nine months later is when the world shifted and things got to be physical.

As for the just sleeping together as three, we did it before everything "started" - usually on road trips where other accommodations weren't available. Back then, we got in the habit of talking about random things as we drifted off to sleep. We still do it now, a couple times a month, because it's like a sleepover with really good friends.

The only thing I have to watch out for is making sure I hit up the bathroom before I crawl into the middle. It's a pain getting in and out of that spot sometimes without completely messing up the blankets.
 
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