January 22, 2011
More Love in Abundance
The third chapter is about self-examination and determining what kind of poly is right for you. You have to look really deep down inside yourself to figure it out, and answer some sometimes complex or confusing questions for yourself, and she gives you plenty of tools and the questions to ask to get you there. One thing she said did not resonate, however, and that was as discussed earlier on this blog: she mentions that it is basically the kiss of death to try to make a relationship work between a poly person and a monogamous person. As I have said and commenters have proven, that is just not true… but it does take a very special kind of mono person to get there.
For Michael and I, the questions came as the basis for poly for us, rather than to try to align ourselves once we had already slipped into a poly lifestyle. The rules were laid out before our first encounter, gone over many times and polished to remove the snags and conflicts. We wanted things to go well, and we had an idea of how hard it COULD be before we jumped in. For others who jump into poly without planning ahead, the transition can be that much more rocky.
Sage - Polyamaorouspeople said,
January 23, 2011 at 1:20 pm
Hi Kathleen
Your post interests me and I wonder how long you’ve managed to stay within your rules?
We started out with rules (or boundaries) but they turned out to be like electric fences: only in a certain place while we needed them for a specific purpose. We found that we kept outgrowing our fences and moving them back. Except for our life-long commitment to each other and the fact that we want to live with each other, all other boundaries are movable by mutual consent.
That doesn’t mean we don’t have a sense of our rights and responsibilities within our relationship (e.g. complete honesty and full-disclosure).
Kathleen said,
January 23, 2011 at 8:48 pm
I never said our rules were immutable, only that they were solidly in place before the first extramarital kiss. They have changed as we have changed, but it is always by mutual consent and actually they were pretty open to begin with, so while they have loosened a small amount, they haven’t actually changed all that much, come to think of it.