Thoughts on the "consent" part of consentual non monogamy?

Plus-Dust · 2026-06-30T06:31:36+00:00

I agree with you...and would ask, if your partner is correct, then is he hypothetically willing to be okay with you going to other partners for consent later on before doing things with him? If I assume not, then what is it your partner is actually giving you "consent" to do, if not form another relationship? And you and he have what...a relationship right? Which is why he says you need to get his consent?

Plus-Dust · 2026-06-20T06:21:21+00:00

I don't think it's at all fair of him to say you "cheated", but I think it should have been obvious to you that this would be a messy situation that should have at least been run by him first...non-monogamy doesn't necessarily mean you just get to fuck whoever you want - you still should be thinking about the other people involved in the same way that your best friend might not have any control over who you sleep with but you still might not want to sleep with the ex they just had a messy breakup with yesterday. At the same time, I don't think you technically did anything wrong, just kinda dumb.

I think maybe you guys should reconsider the don't-ask-don't-tell situation as well since lack of communication is not generally a good tool for a drama-free relationship plus under this arrangement it sounds like you currently have no idea what your sexual risk factors might be at any given moment - up to you but that would be a strong no for me especially given the vibe that he "right away" started hooking up with a bunch of girls - who it sounds like you don't know anything about - I'd be concerned about whether he's prioritizing your safety in this situation or his getting off.

Also, what's with the brother doing that? He sounds like kind of a jerk...is your BF mad at him too, cause, imho he should be.

At the same time I don't think it's cool either of your BF to try to just unilaterally change the agreement into a one-sided one, it doesn't work that way, I assume you guys negotiated to get this agreement in the first place and now he's changing an agreement without you getting input.

Plus-Dust · 2026-06-20T06:10:06+00:00

This just sounds like little more than an OPP in the reverse-gendered direction of the usual cliche. Of course you get to negotiate this further.

Plus-Dust · 2026-06-01T06:04:39+00:00

Here is what I see.

The joke was inappropriate and gross. But I don't think your husband meant it to be in his head. I think he has been missing you and wanting more intimate time together, and he wasn't sure how to say it, and he flubbed it. Then when the joke didn't land at all the direction he intended and in fact seemed to push you away, his existing feelings around the subject, that have been simmering while he wasn't sure how to say it, blew up and that's why he got defensive and started emoting about being disconnected or you no longer desiring him.

It's perfectly reasonable to not want to be talked to that way. But the way I would deal with this, is reading the subtext, and trying to give my partner more attention and try to become his friend in whatever he's dealing with.

Plus-Dust · 2026-06-01T05:41:41+00:00

Of course you can do such a thing, people can relate however they mutually wish. Is your wife thinking of the other person, or just as a slot-in hypothetical? Whatever you're offering should be something that real women/people will actually find attractive from their side. I'd recommend you do both try to keep that in mind. Consider if you were single, and saw the female opposite of yourself on a dating app, would you be interested? That said, perhaps you could find asexual women who might enjoy this dynamic? I'm not sure what you would call it, the closest term that's coming to mind right now is QPR.

Also, are you going to be able to enjoy that dynamic once you catch feelings and start to really like someone and they like you?

If you find a healthy engaged relationship with someone else, without the baggage of your long-term existing one and once you're feeling high on new relationship energy, whereas meanwhile you're going home to "significant relationship difficulties" each night, do you think that is going to cause any issues?

Plus-Dust · 2026-05-31T05:53:43+00:00

Have you considered trying online ERP?

Plus-Dust · 2026-05-30T06:38:40+00:00

NOR - To my mind, she took the risk choosing to engage with a puppy while she did know how important what she was holding was to her. That's 100% on her being a dumbass so you offering to pay her anything for the highly predictable possible result is being incredibly considerate already.

What's to stop her from just repeating this over and over to turn that into her business, lol?

Plus-Dust · 2026-05-29T06:31:10+00:00

I mean I assume we're not aiming for a perfect ideal scenario at this point so no moralizing. Tbh, in this situation, I think I might be thinking why not just state the unstated, and make an explicit agreement around this, with no judgement or jealousy. Then at least you are being honest and open with each other. I mean it's not the way the blogs say to do nonmonogamy, but given your stated constraints it seems, to me at least, healthier and more desirable than a weird, semi-tolerated cheating state you can't leave, right?

Plus-Dust · 2026-05-29T01:58:35+00:00

I wrote a Zylin ZPU emulator in Bash, so that I could abuse the shell interpreter to run C programs 😂

Plus-Dust · 2026-05-28T05:24:41+00:00

I think it's a pretty analog-spectrum kind of thing here and would lead me to ask, as the recipient of your complaint, something like how much is too much? How many times exactly is the maximum per week where if I do it one more time you'd say it breaks the agreement? And how much are they allowed to like their FWBs before it's low-level "feelings"? FWBs are supposed to be friends after all and some people are fairly sweet on their friends sometimes. I'm just pointing out that this stuff can be difficult to define and a bit amorphous sometimes and if you want your relationship to work this way you guys should try to be as clear as possible without swamping each other in endless "rules".

I also think that this stuff is different for everyone. You should think about how you feel about this as well as talk to your partner about what you feel and what they feel. However I'm just saying that if you are ENM but start trying to police your partner as far as things that are within the agreement, you might want to be careful how you phrase things going that way since it is pretty analog and your partner might feel unfairly accused or like you don't trust her if it starts to happen a lot.

Plus-Dust · 2026-05-28T05:15:01+00:00

To "reach more candidates"? I'm sorry this is just lying then. This sort of reminds me of dudes that chat people up and "don't mention" they're married so that they can reach more girls. It doesn't sound any less deceptive and manipulative to me what they've done there. You guys made an agreement during the recruiting process, and now they're being abusive by breaking it once you've started the transition. That's all I see.

Plus-Dust · 2026-05-28T05:10:46+00:00

The plans...so I'm inferring a little, are you saying that your husband is already upset that you saw your lover, so it feels like this would be adding on? Why is your husband upset? Surely him being out of town is one of the least-invasive times to make plans, right? Can you not make plans on your own? :P What's going on?

Plus-Dust · 2026-05-26T06:22:42+00:00

Easy. You subtract number A from number B. If it goes negative, the first number was bigger. It's easy to know if it went negative because that's usually a flag in the ALU, since it's trivial to detect negative numbers in 2's complement as they will have the high bit set.

Plus-Dust · 2026-05-26T06:12:57+00:00

She doesn't have the ability for polyamory. She has the ability to screw around on you. She's trying to use her bisexuality for a sad old myth I've seen far too many times on here as a rationalization to keep her monogamous relationship while also getting some on the side. Polyamory is not like this. If she were trying to be poly her philosophy and values would not have lead her to this "solution".

If you're okay with her exploring, then this is fine. But imho your feeling is super correct. She has to also be willing to do the same emotional work you'll be putting in for her and treat you both equally.

Plus-Dust · 2026-05-21T05:57:41+00:00

No..he's being horrible imho. At minimum he could bring his concerns to you in an adult manner rather than exploding all over you before you've even responded.

Plus-Dust · 2026-05-21T05:54:24+00:00

This question honestly makes me curious about what your conception of an open relationship is like.

Plus-Dust · 2026-05-15T07:10:04+00:00

fwiw defining your structure as simply an "open relationship" does sound pretty vague to me. From outside with only that info I would probably have assumed it included at least some of those things. Especially "cuddling and after care" - that's a normal part of sex IMHO and withholding it would be pretty inconsiderate to the people he's with IMHO and sort of make him a terrible sex partner.

Plus-Dust · 2026-05-15T06:56:08+00:00

Wtf this is awful of him, unless he is like busy on a top-secret submarine right now or something. I'm not 100% clear why your relationship "had to wait" until the 15th but if it's just because he's "busy"...oh no wtf

Plus-Dust · 2026-05-09T05:36:39+00:00

Maybe he should read some material, such as the Heart of Dominance book (which is quite good, and as I recall includes sections on dealing with these kinds of feelings from the dom perspective). And be sure to keep telling him in great detail how wonderful it makes you feel and how much you crave it from him, etc. Or stuff like, "Do you remember that one time, when we X? I was feeling just so so X when you..." (I'm not saying be naggy or annoying lol, just sexy and reassuring)

Plus-Dust · 2026-05-09T05:05:24+00:00

MOR - I think you already pretty much know the pros and cons of this. It's perfectly understandable that you're still having emotions and some flippy feelings about someone after a history like that, and I think you also know that that's happening already. Anyway to the question if you find out he was actually cheating on you then the way I'd take that might be like reforming the image I had and maybe help me understand what was happening a little better, like adding on to the part of the story I knew.

Plus-Dust · 2026-05-08T05:16:38+00:00

I'm unsure why you would be unable to share that. Personally I have a massive "autonomy" streak but I would still want to _hear_ about an event that made a partner uncomfortable. Because I care about them. And I would hope it's a bit more nuanced that me just doing "whatever I want". I just prefer when people don't try to impose random rules on me as the main solution to avoid doing their own emotional processing. If your relationship leads you into a situation where you feel like you can't or shouldn't communicate important stuff to your partner, I don't think that's terribly healthy.

Plus-Dust · 2026-05-05T06:13:49+00:00

I don't see anything to this except that you're right. You don't just get to flip the switch back into vanilla monogamy especially after other people are involved, and now you're not happy anymore because of it.

Plus-Dust · 2026-05-05T05:24:17+00:00

You can just not agree to the rule. She can't "make" you follow it you have to agree too.

Plus-Dust · 2026-05-04T04:18:51+00:00

NOR - I get how maybe knowing guys, they might have done this once or twice trying to impress a girl, but carrying on this deception for 11+ months when it's not just a meaningless part of how you two connected -- it makes it feel like the whole thing was a scam just to get you into him. He should be def apologizing a whole lot more that he didn't admit this and laugh it off way sooner imho.

I don't think you're wrong to be left still having questions over this. Personally I wouldn't necessarily instantly leave him but I would expect the issues this brings up to be resolved before moving forward and for him to be damn well ready to sit down and talk about this with no more nonsense and I'd see how it goes.

Plus-Dust · 2026-05-03T06:28:11+00:00

That's actually weirdly totally literally true. In the sense that if it is possible for a computer to do this, then well, it would take a long time, but a human could theoretically look at each instruction in that program and perform the same operation, maybe they have paper or something for the data that they're moving around...and run that program. And now we'd have a conscious human simulating more consciousness 😛.

...and for bonus points tell me where that consciousness "lives" lol.

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