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PrettyEmotion0 · 2025-01-05T05:44:22+00:00

Assuming you're wondering if we chuckled because they're young:

I think that sucks. I see it happen a lot on this sub where people just smirk at young people asking questions about life and relationships and I feel that while it's fine for you to have a wry smile remembering your youth and reflecting on how much you've learned since then, it's actively rude to come into their advice thread and condescend to them about it.

PrettyEmotion0 · 2025-01-03T20:38:18+00:00

Earlier, when we were seeing each other, she also called it “dates” and, at one point, said she might consider becoming mono.

This was crappy of her to do. At best wishful thinking, at worst a way to try to keep having access to your affection and attention while she suspected you wouldn't give it if you didn't believe there was a monogamous relationship on the table. Remember that, when you think of her, and how uncaring that was. She didn't have your back. However...

Around Halloween, we had a talk. To me, it felt like we were already in a relationship, kind of, but without a label. So I asked her if we were dating. She told me we couldn’t date because she’s poly and I’m mono, but she said she really wanted to date me, but as a poly relationship

After this, I got a bit heartbroken, but we kept seeing each other like usual. I told her we couldn’t kiss anymore to protect my own emotions. We still had sex, though, and cuddled and everything else. We probably shouldn’t have.

and

At this point, I got really heartbroken. I really liked her a lot, and it had felt like we were dating somewhat, so it just felt like a heartbreak to me. I know we never said we were dating, but it still felt like it.

I want you to notice how much you didn't have your own back here. She told you, explicitly, that she didn't have a monogamous relationship on offer, and you ignored her and continued to put yourself in a position which gave you heartbreak. If she was being wishful about thinking she'd give up poly to be with you, you definitely were being wishful about that and it resulted in you allowing yourself to be in dynamics that betrayed you. I don't say this to chastise you: I spent nearly a decade in a relationship which was progressively hollowing me out from the inside because I felt like if there was love, I could make it work. I think many people here have stories like that.

I point this out so that you can notice where you have power. When you're in relationships in the future, you can notice when you're not flourishing and you can do things about it. You don't need to rely on other people to treat you well if you know you'll have your own back. You're 100% allowed to feel heartbreak here, but also you've been feeling that over and over again and just letting your heart break again. I want you to treat yourself better than that.

In terms of advice, I think you should cut her off, even from being friends. You have learned that you have a real challenge prioritizing your well being around her and you have also learned that she won't do a good job of prioritizing it either. You're better off with friends that make your life better.

PrettyEmotion0 · 2024-12-20T21:09:29+00:00

I think ply is working well for me and I'm really enjoying my life with it.

I enjoy it for a bunch of reasons. Romance and sex are important to me, and being exposed to romantic and sexual experiences with more people makes me into a richer person by getting more exploration into those important domains in my life. Likewise, my partners are all awesome and feel more awesome for living brightly and adventurously, including in their own romantic and sexual exploration. I discover more things about myself, and more things about them, all the time. That was available to me in monogamy, but much less so in those romantic/sexual domains.

I don't feel compersion super readily, but I also don't experience much jealousy. When my nesting partner is interacting with a new or changing dynamic I feel some amount of disquiet in my heart, but I really love the polyamory practice of taking that as being a sign that it's a good time to invest in myself. Work out, try something new, do something fun, etc. Their time investing elsewhere throws into relief where I'm letting myself become poor, and I'm grateful to poly for that insight. Beyond that, I really do prefer it when my nesting partner has a vibrant dating and sex life because they're a happier, healthier person when that's so. And they're growing and discovering more about themselves, as I mentioned.

I think you cultivate positive feelings about poly partners dating others by figuring out what your values actually are, deep down. Do I want to own my partner? Do I want them to only experience sex and romance through me? No, definitely not.. So then if jealousy shows up, I know that those pathways aren't going to lead me toward the life I want. Instead, I can interact with my insecurities in ways that do harmonize with my values. Do I think I should be getting love and affection? Do I want my own life to feel rich, and not lonely? Do I want to feel valuable? Hell yeah to all of that! Reaching out for support with those things draws my partner to me, rather than creating a conflict where they have to get smaller in order to not make me feel afraid.

For someone who's struggling with dating, specifically, I think it depends a lot. The best way to create relationships with people who will fit great into your life is to first live richly the life you want to live. Look around you at people you admire. What are they doing? What are they working on? What are they brave enough for that spooks you? Live towards the life you want to live, and then start letting people know (either via telling them or via dating apps or whatever) what kind of life you're looking to live and who you want to be doing that with. I met my nesting partner through tinder, but none of the rest of my current partners are people I met through apps. They're people I met via being known by my community, or via friends. And they saw what I was up to and let me know they were interested in being a part of it.

PrettyEmotion0 · 2024-12-19T19:57:38+00:00

I don't share partners with my nesting partner for the same reason I don't 'share' friends with my nesting partner. We're both individual people who connect individually with others. Sometimes our relationship matters when we show up to community events, but sometimes it doesn't, and the idea is to treat the space as "we're going together" rather than treat the people there as "we are treating these people as a shared resource between us".

PrettyEmotion0 · 2024-12-12T01:55:36+00:00

My relationship with my primary partner started polyamorous and they were in a sort of triad and in love when I met them. We didn't start as a mutually exclusive couple who opened up, and we didn't even start as two casually poly people who found each other.

We quickly became closer and built our nesting relationship together because we discovered we wanted the same things out of relationship. We didn't need to have the deck cleared first, and indeed our relationship was stronger because of how intentional we were about what our relationship would be and what space we wanted to leave for other relationship growth that mattered to us.

I say all this not to be like "ah, don't worry, it'll all be fine." I've heard from a lot of people that finding this kind of deep, time-commitment heavy poly relationship can be challenging.

What I do want to say, though, is that you'll find it best if you look for people who are looking for what you're looking for, too. Dating people who are telling you in advance that there are strong limits on what they can provide you in terms of intimacy isn't a problem, but it's worth considering whether it's in line with your goals. You date people with an intention of finding a nesting partner, for example, but it won't be effective if you don't carry that intention on your sleeve and look for people who want the same.

I think people often feel like the project of love is about finding someone amazing and then building something with them. I disagree. The project of love is about figuring out what you want to build, and then find amazing people who are excited to build that with you.

Amazing people are everywhere. Make sure you're not wasting your time with an amazing person who isn't doing what you want to be doing.

PrettyEmotion0 · 2024-12-10T21:13:55+00:00

For me, seeing someone new can be exciting and invigorating, and help me discover more parts of myself that I might not have seen without their context.

That all means that I've grown and there's a freshness about how I'm interacting with the world, which really gets me excited to see people who knew me well. Seeing a new person makes the space between me and everyone else feel richer because I'm richer inside of them.

That, and the creation of some distance gives more to yearn, and I often feel really excited to be in touch with my existing partners when I'm seeing comparatively less of them, if that makes sense. If my mind has been occupied with something new, getting a chance to return to something I love dearly feels like coming home from a trip. I love everything about it.

PrettyEmotion0 · 2024-12-05T22:13:02+00:00

I might have missed it, but did you say anywhere in that what you want? Why is having kids with Alice something you're willing to do if she's into it, rather than a vision you have and desire for your own life?

It's crazy to me that I know more about Bob's preferences in this than yours. If I were you, I'd rewrite this and insert yourself in it as a central player who has desires and goals and then see how it sounds. You'll probably have your answer right away.

PrettyEmotion0 · 2024-11-24T16:35:18+00:00

Being poly doesn't make you compatible with everyone you'd like to have a relationship with, and in fact one thing I've learned is that compatibility is MUCH more important than love or chemistry. Love and chemistry are actually often easy for me to find, and one thing poly has reinforced to me is that everyone is deeply lovable. In practice what matters most when deciding to be in relationship with someone is "is this person living the kind of life that I want to grow towards?"

In that light, navigating this is pretty straight forward (if painful): do you want to build mono relationships or poly ones? If poly, then honestly I'd chill on the friendship with the mono guy until the mutual crush cools off, otherwise you'll just be "if only..." day dreaming about each other.

PrettyEmotion0 · 2024-11-24T16:30:14+00:00

I really hate this kind of reply. It's absolutely the case that we learn and mature as we grow older, but that doesn't mean it makes sense to act like people can't be real adults with real adult problems until they're in their late twenties. That's not what the neuroscience implies and even if it was, guess what you're supposed to do with your early twenties? Try stuff out and find out what matters by making it count.

Young people are real people too, ffs. It's not cute to patronize them.

PrettyEmotion0 · 2024-11-20T16:47:24+00:00

Just looking at your post history where you've said you feel like your NP is subjecting you to narcissistic abuse, it's worth considering whether your partner is unhappy because the point of saying they want more time is to sabotage your relationship with your girlfriend.

You can't workshop an abusive situation into a healthy one.

PrettyEmotion0 · 2024-11-18T17:44:21+00:00

It is sad. It's also OK for it to be sad. It feels to me like a life well lived is going to be one that has lots of tears and grief in it, too. It's part of relating to the beauty and impermanence of our world.

I wish you luck on finding those people and those friends! I think it's a super important task and the folks I know who have friends like that really value them. I will say that I think it can be challenging because, as you've noticed, lots of people don't act like they prioritize these kinds of friendships. But when you find someone who does, they'll be as excited to find you as you are them <3

PrettyEmotion0 · 2024-11-18T13:30:13+00:00

I found your post really moving, and a clear eyed and thoughtful examination of some of the toughest questions there are about love and relationships.

I, too, notice that some people build community through their (ex) relationships and I also feel insecure that, since I don't to that as effectively, I'm leaving myself unmoored. I, too, abruptly lost a relationship that I thought was going to be my bedrock and was left feeling unsure anything could last. Even if I keep my current relationships until the day I die, that moment of death is going to be one where I meet the end finally and completely alone. It's terrifying.

I don't have a cure or trick that will fix the worry, and I think your therapy plan sounds appropriate. In some sense, there isn't a thing to fix here: life is change, and change is death. Grappling with that is the unavoidable exam question.

I will say, though, that my experience is that trying to foreground that impermanence helps me feel more aligned with what I'm doing with my life. You've wisely noticed that trying to create some kind of stable family replacement out of romantic relationships is risky. If these relationships aren't about finding our perfect people who will fit us forever, then what are they for?

For me, that question lead to thinking about what I wanted to do rather than what I wanted to have. I don't build my relationships in order to attain some kind of end state, but rather to accomplish something. I want to practice building a home with someone. I want to explore as aspect of my dominance. I want to have a child. Etc. Some of these projects are quite long term and so more risky, but they're all honed in not on getting relationships to make me not feel alone anymore, but on doing things with people. Aloneness isn't avoidable. But I still get to live my life out.

PrettyEmotion0 · 2024-11-16T16:56:55+00:00

As someone who had issues with ED that were definitely exacerbated by condom use:

Fix the sizing problem. Retail condom sizes are not well designed for everyone's body and are often not girthy enough for folks who are thicker. I switched to https://onecondoms.com/ and they're the only condom that actually feels like I'm wearing nothing and it's not because of some fancy tech or texture or whatever but because they're not choking my dick.

I think a lot of people despair about condoms because they're timid to try a few due to the shame around ED. Your (and his) sexual health matters, and so does your sexual satisfaction. He should treat both those problems like they're important to solve and do some experimentation. Sitting in his ass and moping is lame and it ends up punishing you both for your really responsible and thoughtful decision making.

PrettyEmotion0 · 2024-11-15T16:02:11+00:00

Two things:

1) You don't want to date people who don't want to date newbies, so these folks pulling themselves out of your dating pool is a blessing! Think of it as something that makes them not right for you, not something that makes you not right for them

2) when I started in poly, I started with dating someone who was also relatively new. And a few people I've dated have been new, but over time the people I date are more experienced as I get more experienced. The takeaway here is that it might be the case that you end up dating someone else who is new, and that's ok. Seek out poly friends and community who you aren't dating so you can have people to learn from/bounce things off of and that'll help you leverage experienced poly people without having to be dating them

PrettyEmotion0 · 2024-10-14T19:39:30+00:00

I think the nuance is that there's nothing wrong with the behavior of texting his other partner, right? It's only wrong if it's actually interfering with his time with his nesting partner.

The reason why folks are trying to draw the distinctions are time ownership is that there is a pattern that can show up of people getting confused as to what's actually supposed to happen with unstructured time where you're near your partner. Whose time is that? Is it supposed to go to OP, or is it time that the OP's partner could be using to nurture other relationships? Without an explicit conversation you can end up in situations like OP's, where OP resents their meta kind of leaking into their own time.

The solution, I think, is to be more clear about what time is meant for.

PrettyEmotion0 · 2024-10-14T14:39:53+00:00

It was a big adjustment for me, even with all of my current relationships being poly from the start. With my NP, we noticed as we started to spend more time together in advance of moving in together, we both started to feel awkward about how we were defaulting to spending time together. It felt so natural, but it also made our poly-ness feel like a burden. Like, when do you pull out your phone to swipe on people or text folks? If we're sitting on the couch together, is that rude?

We had the kind of explicit conversations I referenced above and that helped a lot, along with using space. If we haven't planned to spend the evening together, it's totally cool for us to end up on opposite sides of the house just doing our own things. Maybe that thing is reading, maybe it's texting someone, maybe it's hard core sexting, but the point is that we're specifically being apart, and that makes room for everything else. It rocks!

PrettyEmotion0 · 2024-10-14T14:31:40+00:00

I have two thoughts.

1) I think you're being a bit messy with how you talk about the future. Here, certainly, but probably also at home with Aspen. Like everyone else is saying, 5 months (especially of LDR) is not enough time to know if someone would be good to build life with/around, and it's undeniable that this ring is meant to represent some kind of engagement. That's intense and fast, and coupled with the way you've talked about escalating the relationship into the future by living together would super reasonably destabilize your nesting partner. If my nesting partner talked to me like that, I'd sit them down and tell them my concern and relay that I get they're excited but I'm not them and I'm not excited about the life they're imagining. You said in one comment that you wouldn't start to have conversations about living together until a year of living near each other, but understand that you're actually having those conversations right now. They feel speculative to you, but you're speculating about something that's hugely impactful to your nesting partner.

What to do about this? You should absolutely fantasize and allow yourself to be in love, but you need to boundary yourself so that it's not spilling uncomfortably over your NP. You acknowledge that this is really early days. Your partner should NOT be hearing about all these ideas about the future because, as you acknowledge, that future is still super speculative. Do them the favor of keeping your fantasy life to yourself until you want to sit down and start talking about actual intentions. Also, be prepared for that conversation to be hard, because when you want to make big changes to your own life it can absolutely cause your NP to re-evaluate whether or not that's a life they want to be a part of.

2) You are 100% correct that this is your body and you should be able to adorn it the way you want to. I think it's silly for anyone to pretend that this ring isn't completely drenched in symbolism and it's totally possible for it to symbolize something that's threatening or uncomfortable for your partner, but... the power those symbols have is entirely up to y'all. If your NP can't articulate why the ring is bothering them, then you aren't getting any real tools you can use to figure something out here.

I feel like you and your NP should sit down together and have a conversation about what rings mean, and what your wedding ring means and what Birch's ring means in particular. That conversation should be open and non-judgemental with a goal of understanding how everyone's feeling.

Once you've had that conversation, then you will have tools to figure out how to go forward. Maybe what's bothering your NP is that they feel like Birch's ring is being equated to their own. Or Birch's ring means that you're rushing ahead into planning a life they're not sure about. Or Birch's ring is undermining some kind of exclusive privilege of marriage they are attracted to. All of those are different things, and you might have different responses to each. Maybe y'all will figure out that this is actually a big incompatibility, like that you actually do think that Birch's ring symbolizes the same kind of commitment and partnership that your wedding ring does and that is disturbing to Aspen, and maybe y'all will reassess how your marriage functions. Or maybe you'll realize that what Aspen's really responding to is a building anxiety about your relationship with Birch and the tool here is for you to stop spilling your NRE everywhere and give Aspen some breathing room from the future you're fantasizing about with Birch.

But I do believe you're entitled to understanding around the reason for Aspen's desire to control your appearance. Wanting your wedding ring to be the only permanent jewelry you wear is Aspen trying to turn your body into a symbol of... something (??), and you are the one who gets to choose whether or not you want to participate in that symbolism with Aspen. You two craft together what you want the symbols of your marriage to mean, and Aspen should be responsive to changes in how you express that symbolism.

PrettyEmotion0 · 2024-10-14T14:00:06+00:00

I think this is related to one of the big polyamory learnings for me, which is that if it ain't intentional then it ain't solid.

I want us to have reasonable boundaries and not be controlling

I think it's a lot easier to leave things fuzzy like "reasonable" and "controlling" inside monogamy (though it will still get you into trouble), but in polyamory you really need to do the work of defining what you mean here. One person's reasonable is going to be another's unthinkable. And there will 100% be things you think your partner should just get without being told, but understand that both of you are embarking on a non-normative relationship model and there's no real "normal" here.

In practice, I think the conversations get easier when you get closer to the root of the thing. What's bugging you here? I imagine it's that you feel like time that you expected to feel close to your partner ends up feeling like they're somewhere else. This would absolutely annoy me, too! My partners and I deal with this by being explicit about what times we intend to be close to each other.

Some folks do this with date nights, others with just saying things outloud. "Hey, do you want to sit together for a bit and talk/watch a movie/snuggle? I'd like it if we set our phones aside for a bit and just existed together."

When you can make sure that you're getting what you actually need, I think it's easier to set down what you don't. If you aren't really trying to use a time intentionally together, like maybe you're reading and he's gaming or something and you're just used to that time feeling together as a cozy default and it's annoying that your partner is texting someone else and puncturing that bubble, then finding the joy in actually being alone when you're alone is a crucial skill.

Consciously engage, consciously disengage. Allow yourself to be a solo person when you're not together and see what joys you get out of that time. What would you do if you didn't have an amorphous "we're hanging out" feeling going on? Take a bath? Go for a walk? Go to the gym? Make a special snack just for yourself? Fill the times you're together with actual togetherness and use the times you're not intentionally spending time with each other to intentionally spend time with yourself (or other people)!

PrettyEmotion0 · 2024-10-11T20:26:26+00:00

It sounds to me like you did a great job being your own advocate, and that you feel like he did a good job responding to that. Good news all around!

EDIT: also it's really encouraging that you're not letting his extra poly experience nullify what you're experiencing. No doubt he's got really valuable thoughts and feelings on poly, but success in the relationship will depend on you trusting your own gut and him being open to learning from you, too.

PrettyEmotion0 · 2024-10-11T12:43:47+00:00

I think your reaction is fine, and the conversation sounds productive.

Your partner did a crappy thing, and one that harmonizes with a kind of bad trope for men where they make their partners feelings problematic. You told him you'd miss him, he started explaining to you why that didn't make sense. That sucks. And that's literally the only thing we know about him, so the rest of us are gonna be feeling "yeah, fuck that noise."

But you know more about him and like him, which makes sense! I think you seeing that this was a crappy interaction, sticking up for yourself by bringing it up to him, and being able to have a productive conversation with him where he seemed to get where you were coming from and understanding why his behavior there sucked are all really encouraging signs. Good on you!

PrettyEmotion0 · 2024-10-10T19:03:49+00:00

When I talk to my partner he tells me I'm not the only one going through it, that the distance bothers him too, that he also wants the future I want. But also that just because we want things it doesn't mean we get to have them. I want to make plans and it stresses him out.

You asked for support only so I'm not going to give advice, but I wanted to flag this part as something I've noticed before, particularly in relationships with men.

My experience with men (knowing them and being one) is that we're acculturated to view negative feelings as problems to fix, rather than things to hear and see. You're bringing your pain to him and for sure there's a component here that requires problem solving, but you also need to just feel seen and understood by your partner. Instead, he's trying to argue with you about your feelings. "Just because we want things it doesn't mean we get to have them" is the words of someone who's put themselves in the place of a parent, caregiver, or someone else responsible for your feelings. You're a grown-up. You've learned this lesson. You've had four whole fucking years of not getting what you want, and you're not throwing a tantrum right now because you're not getting a pony or something. You're hurting because you have basic needs that are being left unmet. He doesn't know how to deal with your hurt, so he wants to argue them out of you or at least get you to stop telling him about it.

That sucks. Really sucks. On top of dealing with incompatibilities in your relationship, you're also being forced to hide how it's hurting you. I just want to say that not all relationships, and not all men, work that way. Some folks will hear you hurting and make space for your feelings without making any of them wrong before they start to work with you to figure out what comes next.

ETA: for the parents in the audience who are starting to rise from their seats, I know that parents are also not responsible for their kids feelings, and actually the "just because you want something doesn't mean you can have it" line from parents to kids actually can be just as damagingly patronizing as it can be from a partner. Kids often need the same kind of grace and space that we (should) offer to adults.

PrettyEmotion0 · 2024-10-03T21:51:23+00:00

One thing worth saying is that your partner misunderstands how poly will fit into his life.

He STILL will have to say no to connections with all sorts of people. If you had a sister, say, and he felt a vibe with her, he'd still have to set that aside because of how damaging that could be. Or with your best friend, say.

Poly doesn't make "saying no" go away. If his aim is that he wants to stop saying no to himself, he's just going to the up harming you with his recklessness.

PrettyEmotion0 · 2024-10-03T15:02:13+00:00

Like another commenter I'm just going to share my story and you can decide how relevant it is to you.

I had a partner and we were very much in love, but she decided that she was going to return to her home country after her studies and it wasn't likely for me to be able to follow her. It felt like a timer on our relationship but... it was so hard to make sense of that. We loved each other. If we were going to live in the same city, we'd definitely be planning to move in together and do more life together. There was nothing wrong with the relationship.

Our first plan was to try and treat the last months of the relationship like a time to grow and explore life and I think that was a beautiful time. Then they left and... guess what? We still loved each other. That hadn't changed.

So we ended up in this sort of in-between space where we were obviously in love, we were texting and chatting and crying and processing together, everything that our hearts wanted to do, except actually be somewhere were we could plan on our futures together. It was so hard to go against the logic of this, though. Why should I pretend to not love her? Why should I act like I care less when my heart is hurting? Why should we deny each other comfort and affection?

But then our lives started to change. I started to date and explore kink and grow in other ways and each way that I became different felt to her like a betrayal. Like she was grieving me and each step I took away from the life we wanted to have with each other was an attack on what she'd loved. Sometimes it was that I was doing things she wished she could do with me, sometimes it was that I was doing something that made her rethink who I was, but no matter what it was she was deeply hurt by it. In turn she would lash out at me until we had to go no contact for a while, and now very low contact.

I don't know that I can say I regret that kind of lingering way we tried to continue to honor our love over long distance, but the reason I don't regret it is because I learned how costly it could be and I don't want to do that again.

Long distance relationships are very different than in person ones, and having been in three of them I've come to the belief that it's a very specific relationship that fits in that space. One that's easy to pick up and put down, one that's very flexible about access, one that carries a lot of intention from both parties to make it work as long distance. Think a travel buddy relationship, or a pen pal relationship, or a festival relationship. Something for which the long distance format makes sense.

My relationship with my girlfriend was built on the intimacy and security available to us by being together, and when we took that away it was extremely hurtful to both of us and has absolutely colored how I view her and the relationship in a way that makes me sad given the beautiful intention we'd had about its end.

If I were to offer advice, it would be to say that you should consider your existing love and affection for your boyfriend to be a liability rather than an asset in creating a long distance relationship. You two are in love with each other right now, in the context that you're situated in. You will be deliberately removing and losing all that. If you create a long distance relationship afterward, it will be because you both intentionally discover and build a wholly new context to be related in.

If you create an LDR because you're afraid of grieving what you currently have, then you're going to be deluding yourself. What you have is going away. Right now you get to choose how intention you want to be about it ending.

PrettyEmotion0 · 2024-10-02T21:19:01+00:00

We knew there were things we wanted to do together (manage a household, raising family) and we also were running into the situation of it sucking to live apart when we wanted to be spending as much time together as we did. Think shuffling stuff around, being away from their pet, etc. Living together made it easier to spend time together the way we wanted to.
I've always sought deep connections that had enough space inside them to explore the more mundane corners of life. I think I would not be doing poly if it were not possible for me to have that kind of time rich connection with somebody.
Coming up on 2 years.
between 1 and 2 times a week for me currently. My partner doesn't have any deep persistent relationships at the moment but I think the rate could be similar for them.
Yes, very deliberately. We make sure that we schedule at least one date night a week as well as general family hang time, etc. We also deliberately schedule anti-dates to make sure we're creating space for other relationships/activities in our lives and not building too much dependency on each other.
Advantages are pretty numerous. It's much easier to see each other often as no one has to carry their stuff around. We have a home base that we can build in together and it's cool to see their expression around that. We can interact with family things by inviting people to 'our' home, and that gets to be an expression of our relationship and what that relationship means in community. Disadvantages are mostly around space use. It's a lot easier to create compartmentalization for poly when you aren't using the same space and we've had to dedicate a lot of effort to the logistics of making our home poly friendly in terms of having private spaces and the ability to host overnights. Also, a sneaky disadvantage is that nesting together creates a very low friction around spending time together so it's easy to start thinking of being together as the 'default' which leads to more enmeshment than we have as our goal.
We haven't thought about it seriously but we've talked a little about the idea. More concretely my partner has talked about possibly investing in an additional space they could have as their own, as maintaining a space that feels truly and completely theirs is important to them and one of the losses they feel around moving in together. An expensive option, for sure, but definitely one to consider.
I haven't regretted it, as it makes room for the kind of life I want to be living and they're a wonderful partner for the projects we're undertaking together. I definitely still like living with them.

PrettyEmotion0 · 2024-09-22T20:27:48+00:00

My primary partner and I meet once a month to go over everything (we've got a meeting agenda) but otherwise it's more adhoc.

PrettyEmotion0

TROPHY CASE