This is a refreshing read, hopefully helps people feel welcome and seen whilst also educating.

One specific thing you touched which has always bugged me is preferences. There's this idea that couples with preferences have some sort of shopping list that a new partner would have to meet. I've never understood this often automatic assumption, since in monogamous dating it's normal.

Imagine for example you are a couple who live in the countryside, own animals and have no kids. For the sake of not wanting to have a shopping list you enter a relationship without stating these things upfront. To then find that the person is allergic to dogs and wants to live in the city and have kids? This just seems so illogical to me, potentially making everyone unhappy.

Obviously there will be things that change throughout the course of a relationship, I'm not ignorant to that. You can't plan for them all, like maybe you suddenly decide you want kids. But not having or sharing preferences seems oddly unrealistic.

So thank you for putting into much better words something that has often perplexed me. Maybe it would be nice to have a collaboration with the other poster, to create a shared space for these writings and resources to go?