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Wayward5oul -> RE: remembering contracts (12/18/2016 9:49:32 PM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: UllrsIshtar
My husband and I have one.
We don't believe in vowing 'till death do us part' (in fact, we only got married for immigration purposes), nor do we believe in passively being with somebody 'until it feels wrong and one of you leaves'.
So instead, we commit each year to spend the next year together.
The expectations we both have of each other, and the commitments we make to each other, what is and isn't permissible in our relationship in terms of poly, and the terms on which we would split (from a financial/logistic perspective) are all defined in our contract.
The month leading up to our renewal is spent on personal introspection, and mutual discussion of the last year, and our desires/goals moving forward. We each take the time to honestly examine "Was it worth it to have spent the last year of my life with this person? What do I want to have change in this relationship going forward? What are my expectations of my partner and how might they have changed? Has my partner lived up to the commitments/responsibilities they have made towards me? How, if at all, might I have fallen short this year on the commitments I've made? Am I happy? Am I satisfied? If not, what has to change going forward? Do I want to spend another year with them?" as well as pinning down how to handle any logistical issues that might need addressing.
If we can agree to terms, we vow to stay together for another year. And we both take that vow serious, and literal. We vow on our honor that, no matter what, we will not break up during that year.
It doesn't matter what might happen, or how our partner might go astray (they might become a drug addict, gamble away our live savings, spiral into a deep depression which makes them not live up to their responsibilities due to fatigue, cheat etc etc) during that year, we've vowed to stand by them, and try to help them to work out the issue, and recover from it.
Doing this provides a different perspective to a whole lot of things. Through tough times, and fights, and one party perhaps making a big hurtful mistake, there's always the fact that we need to find some way to 'work it out' and continue to live with each other for the remainder of the year. Even though big blow ups like, where one of us questions during the fight whether we still want to be in the relationship, that don't happen (4 times in 7 years), the fact that we vowed to stay together for the year changes the tone in those situations, and places deeper emphasis on the reasons we chose to be together in the fist place, instead of the reasons we're currently feeling hurt and angry.
We've both been in relationships where the relationship went bad, and should have ended sooner, but all parties stayed in it longer than they should have, out of a fear or change, or a habitual complacency. We really like how having a year long contract forces us to examine every year why we're together, and whether that's a good thing, and whether it's a good enough thing to make us want to commit to another full year together, and forces us to define and articulate our expectations of each other, and what we bring to the table ourselves, brings us closer together, and has made us to confront, and solve some issues that might have otherwise become a path to silent resentment. In traditional relationships, it's often the case where, when one party isn't fully happy, or expects more from the other one, or one party's expectations of the relationship, or personal needs change as they grow older, that doesn't really get discussed in an effort to avoid fighting, and in the long run leads to silent resentments which builds up until somebody has had enough and leaves. We avoid being in that situation, because every year we need to define to each other and ourselves why exactly we are together.
Not the kind of contract you were thinking of, but there you have it.
That makes an awful lot of sense to me. I have always thought that if I ever got married again, that there should be some sort of time frame where where some reflection like this should be mandatory for the marriage to continue. A friend of mine thinks that marriages should subject to renewal every five years.
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