LadyPact
Posts: 20086
Joined: 2/21/2007
Status: offline
|
There are a lot of threads on various sections of the boards just now where folks are asking what boils down to a very common question. It's one that I receive a lot on the other side as well. Basically, it boils down to how do you go from a monogamous relationship and transition into a poly situation. Since it gets asked so often in various forms, I am creating this thread for the purpose of a reference point.
Let Me say up front that I do not consider Myself the authority on poly relationships. Not everything that has worked for us will work for everyone else. There are a lot of different kinds of poly out there and I am in no way attempting to say that My way is the only way. There are other folks out there who have successful poly families that are nothing like Mine. I have nothing but respect and admiration for anybody who makes this work, even if they have different methods than My own. Hopefully, they'll even join in at some point in this thread and talk about their path to success.
Hopefully, I've covered all of the disclaimers. With those things said, I'm going to proceed to the topic. This is to share with you how we transitioned from monogamy to poly.
Why Did You Decide To Become Poly?
Just as important as the 'how', I think it's important to mention the 'why'. When we decided to make this transition, it wasn't because we were unhappy. It wasn't because of a lack of love. We weren't trying to fix a relationship that was broken. In fact, we were quite happy together. At the same time, we realized that in our equality based relationship, we could not incorporate BDSM or an authority dynamic into that without including another person. Neither of us are submissive and we didn't want to mess up the good marriage that we had by trying to turn the other person into something that they are not. This goes all of the way to even just bottoming for each other. Sure, we could do it to make the other person happy, but it doesn't make us happy doing it, so it's kind of futile.
The bottom line of that comes down to we had wants that we knew didn't suit the personality of the other. For us, that was about BDSM. For others, it can be a whole list of other things. Kind of an insert your wants here __________ concept.
There's Still Just Two of You
Once we determined that the solution for us was to add people to our life, we had to do a bit of stumbling around exactly how to do that. Neither of us had ever been poly before, so we had to figure out how to make it work for us. We knew that we had a relationship that it was very important for us to keep in tact. For that to happen, we knew that we needed to ensure that the emotional and mental well being of the other was a priority.
How To Set The Boundaries
Being brand new to this, the only way we could think of to figure out how to set boundaries that we would both be comfortable with was to communicate with each other. In doing so, we had to talk as openly and honestly as we possibly could. What did we think we wanted? What did we not want? How would we feel if this happened? How would we solve problems? What scared us? How would insecurities be handled? And, of course the big one..... What if it just plain didn't work?
I want to make sure that I convey something very important here. We didn't do this over a quick dinner or even over the course of a weekend. It wasn't just one communication session. This process lasted for months. We came up with every possible potential hypothetical situation we could think of and explored it.
Consequentially, just having these discussions deepened our bond. It put us in the position of knowing each other in such a way that it served us in loving each other more. We started as a strong couple. When we were done, we had only added to the strength of that foundation.
House Rules
We came up with what we decided we were going to call the House Rules. Other folks use terms such as rules for engagement, or acceptable and not acceptable. We decided that we liked the term house rules because we knew that we as a couple had started with that foundation of knowing that our hopes of poly were secondary to what we already had. We were also starting out with some things that we were comfortable with in places other than our home and how we would progress before bringing others into where we lived. One example of this was that casual play partners weren't to be brought home. Only folks who made it to the level of being under consideration would be allowed to know where we lived.
Some of the things that we decided that belonged on our list of house rules:
If poly didn't work, we would return to being monogamous.
Each spouse had veto authority if the additional person wasn't suited for us.
Our bedroom in our home was off limits.
Each spouse had the option of observing the others interactions.
No hard limits would be broken.
Problems between us would be settled between us, without putting someone else in the middle.
Adding Another Person
Well, we figured that we were about as ready as the two of us could possibly be. We had talked the subject darn near to death (kind of like I'm doing here with you) and it was time to incorporate another person.
Now we had something new on our plate. The idea of bringing in another living person who has their own wants, hopes, fears, etc, etc.
Our basic approach to this was just plain honesty. By this time, there were some casual folks that we played with (S/m) who knew us. We told people outright that we were new to poly and were still finding our way. We were in our trial and error period and we didn't have enough experience yet to know beyond doubt if we were going to succeed or fail. We couldn't make any promises because we were just starting out ourselves.
Like a lot of other things in life, honesty is the best policy.
What Did You Think and How Did That Work Out?
There's a difference between how you think you will feel about something before you have to actually go through it. Actually feeling things like jealousy, time envy, or insecurity are a lot different than just talking about them. We hit bumps in the road like everyone else. One that was surprising to him was the first time one of My subs said "I love you" to Me. It didn't sit well with him at all at first. (That has changed now that we've been doing this for a few years.)
We found that some of the House Rules were practical. Others we found that we had to alter. Some of them changed and grew as we did. Some came off of the list all together as we became more experienced. We even had to rework the whole thing a couple of times because life threw us some situations that we had to figure out how the rules would apply. I tend to look at it as something that will always be a work in progress, just like people.
What Was The Result?
We consider ourselves to be a happy, functional poly family. My current boy has been collared to Me for over two years now. My other half has turned out to be something more of a top than a Dominant in his interactions with others, and that's worked out, too. We've found that we like co-topping and we have a really good time doing that. All in all, I'd say it's worked out pretty good for us.
I know this was a pretty long original. I'd like to thank you for your patience in reading all of it. I'd also like to invite anyone who would like to contribute in talking about what has worked for them or any other thing that I may have possibly forgotten.
_____________________________
Proud owner of LPslittleclip.
I really do appreciate your opinion and all, but My dynamic is not a democracy and you don't get a vote.
Now running "Lady Pact's World".
|
How We Transitioned From Monogamy To Poly - 
Profile
New Messages
No New Messages
Hot Topic w/ New Messages
Hot Topic w/o New Messages
Locked w/ New Messages
Locked w/o New Messages
Post New Thread