[poly] significant steps
due to late gaming and other delays, matthew got in very late and into bed around 6am this morning, so the Saturday Edition of Couch & Coffee Time got a later and groggier (on his part) start than usual, but as is often the case, the good stuff is worth waiting for.
we covered some significant ground this morning afternoon on the “managing relationships” front. and i mean, getting right into the meat and bones of our own process and actually defining some of our expectations and assumptions, starting to pull internalized rules and requirements out into the open for examination. i called him on the perceived issue of leaving me to do and present all the homework for consideration, as if all he had to do was offer or deny his approval, without him venturing to offer his own homework for consideration. we’re now both on the hook for putting things on the table; we both have the responsibility to hear each other out and determine collaborative solutions.
when things work between us, they work very, very well.
we’re consciously making the decision to approach this process as if to define a framework, rather than to create an all-encompassing body of legislation. matthew noted the idea that “every law has a person behind it”, meaning that laws are often formed as a reactionary procedure on the basis of the actions of a particular individual that are perceived to be a threat to the safety and security of the state. poly rules, for myself, have often taken the same path: formed reactively, not proactively. that’s in part because in History, my weasels have refused to limit their options by accepting restrictions up front, so all the options had to be open until they had to be closed in response to a particular crisis, and never without a fight.
that’s one way of doing things, but it requires always being in reactive mode doing damage control after the fact, then legislating in the aftermath for that particular contingency... which might be a one-off thing and not necessarily applicable to other situations. as soon as a rule becomes even remotely inapplicable, you’ve got loopholes. and my weasels LOOOOOOOOOOOOVE a good loophole. so this time instead, we’re trying to achieve a general framework of expectations that can be explicitly communicated to our lovers (current and going forward) that more accurately reflects things that are likely to happen, and what we expect from our lovers and from ourselves. it may work better; at the very least, should it fail, it will be a NEW mistake.
unfortunately, this also means we’re shaping communicable expectations that currently read like this: Either primary partner may approach the other's lover(s) directly to express fears or concerns about actions within the non-primary relationship that are perceived to have potential impact on the primary relationship (management regrets that at this time, one of us has only blunt, primitive, and explosive tools at her disposal when under duress; we're working to fix that. Please be patient with us, if you wind up on the receiving end.) obviously, some fine-tuning is still to come, both for the expressions, and for the internal processes i/we are striving to correct. part of this is still working cautiously around the raw and tender parts tied up with ultimatums, and what i/we have learned about them within our own context lately.
so far, there is only one *rule*, per se, and it’s really more of an a priori requirement: Getting involved with us requires a willingness to participate in our relationship management processes appropriate to the degree of relationship (which will vary from casual to more committed investments). people who aren’t willing to engage our processes aren’t likely to be taken on as anything more than casual lovers, if that. the risk and impact of bringing in people who aren’t willing to engage us is just too high. this doesn’t mean they have to know what we know, but they do have to be willing to engage the processes in good faith and as authentically as possible in the situations where the processes are invoked.
another explicit change for us is an end to the perception that i stick my head in the sand where matthew’s relationships are concerned. we’ve discovered time and again that because we are two different people and matthew doesn’t live in my head, he is not going to be the most accurate source of information about where my head is at, what i think or feel about current events in his non-primary relationships. he’s a reasonable guess at best, based on his experience, but even he admits, he’s often been wrong. especially recently, transmission of inaccurate assumptions have led to issues we’re still unravelling, so in the interest of making the lines of communication more functionally effective, lovers now should consider themselves strongly encouraged to approach the non-involved primary partner directly, any time there’s a question along the lines of, “how does A feel about [x]?” we’re deliberating whether or not that will be a rule; not everyone’s going to be comfortable addressing the other primary partner on issues pertaining to the non-primary relationship, but we figure it not only cuts the risk of miscommunication or misinterpretation through the involved primary partner’s filters, but it also gives *us* a gauge by which to measure the lover’s willingness to accept our structure and how we work. if a lover repeatedly *refuses* to take questions about A directly to A but insists on hiding behind or working exclusively through B, we can flag that for further investigation to determine whether or not there’s a problem there - *especially* if, in order to get into a relationship with one of us in the first place, the lover has agreed to abide by and participate in our relationship management processes.
there’s still a lot of homework to dig through, but this has been an extremely affirming start for us. for one thing, we still need to identify the effective area between the polarities of "boundary-defining protectionism" and “boundary-free operations” with regards to the statement "relationship management processes appropriate to the degree of relationship". that’s the area in which most of the framework will operate, giving us space to build some faith in predictable process while still allowing some room for interpretation. we’re aware that there’s always risk with interpretation, so we’ve made a specific point to note those situations in which we’re asking to deviate from expectations within the framework, or deviating from the framework entirely: what is it about the relationship-in-question that makes a deviation seem like a good idea, and can the deviation be done without threat to the primary relationship? is the deviation something that might become standard and therefore should be considered as an evolutionary change to the expectations within or the framework itself?
in the end, we reiterate our own Prime Directive, which is not *actually* “No Surprises” (much as i’d like it to be), but rather, “we will make decisions that speak to the high value that we put on the primary relationship.” i have to be able to trust this directive; more accurately, i have to get past my low opinion of a humanity that can pay easy lip service to high value without acting in ways that *i perceive* as showing that high value; as we’ve discovered elsewhere in our relationship, perceptions of value ALSO differ wildly between us on occasion. (“The Currency of Value” is a post that’s knocking around in my head that i haven’t gotten to yet, but will :)
things progress in slow but important steps, one conversation at a time, one puzzle-piece at a time. unravelling a Gordian Knot isn’t something one can do by just grabbing any strand and yanking. i’ve tried; it goes badly.
we covered some significant ground this morning afternoon on the “managing relationships” front. and i mean, getting right into the meat and bones of our own process and actually defining some of our expectations and assumptions, starting to pull internalized rules and requirements out into the open for examination. i called him on the perceived issue of leaving me to do and present all the homework for consideration, as if all he had to do was offer or deny his approval, without him venturing to offer his own homework for consideration. we’re now both on the hook for putting things on the table; we both have the responsibility to hear each other out and determine collaborative solutions.
when things work between us, they work very, very well.
we’re consciously making the decision to approach this process as if to define a framework, rather than to create an all-encompassing body of legislation. matthew noted the idea that “every law has a person behind it”, meaning that laws are often formed as a reactionary procedure on the basis of the actions of a particular individual that are perceived to be a threat to the safety and security of the state. poly rules, for myself, have often taken the same path: formed reactively, not proactively. that’s in part because in History, my weasels have refused to limit their options by accepting restrictions up front, so all the options had to be open until they had to be closed in response to a particular crisis, and never without a fight.
that’s one way of doing things, but it requires always being in reactive mode doing damage control after the fact, then legislating in the aftermath for that particular contingency... which might be a one-off thing and not necessarily applicable to other situations. as soon as a rule becomes even remotely inapplicable, you’ve got loopholes. and my weasels LOOOOOOOOOOOOVE a good loophole. so this time instead, we’re trying to achieve a general framework of expectations that can be explicitly communicated to our lovers (current and going forward) that more accurately reflects things that are likely to happen, and what we expect from our lovers and from ourselves. it may work better; at the very least, should it fail, it will be a NEW mistake.
unfortunately, this also means we’re shaping communicable expectations that currently read like this: Either primary partner may approach the other's lover(s) directly to express fears or concerns about actions within the non-primary relationship that are perceived to have potential impact on the primary relationship (management regrets that at this time, one of us has only blunt, primitive, and explosive tools at her disposal when under duress; we're working to fix that. Please be patient with us, if you wind up on the receiving end.) obviously, some fine-tuning is still to come, both for the expressions, and for the internal processes i/we are striving to correct. part of this is still working cautiously around the raw and tender parts tied up with ultimatums, and what i/we have learned about them within our own context lately.
so far, there is only one *rule*, per se, and it’s really more of an a priori requirement: Getting involved with us requires a willingness to participate in our relationship management processes appropriate to the degree of relationship (which will vary from casual to more committed investments). people who aren’t willing to engage our processes aren’t likely to be taken on as anything more than casual lovers, if that. the risk and impact of bringing in people who aren’t willing to engage us is just too high. this doesn’t mean they have to know what we know, but they do have to be willing to engage the processes in good faith and as authentically as possible in the situations where the processes are invoked.
another explicit change for us is an end to the perception that i stick my head in the sand where matthew’s relationships are concerned. we’ve discovered time and again that because we are two different people and matthew doesn’t live in my head, he is not going to be the most accurate source of information about where my head is at, what i think or feel about current events in his non-primary relationships. he’s a reasonable guess at best, based on his experience, but even he admits, he’s often been wrong. especially recently, transmission of inaccurate assumptions have led to issues we’re still unravelling, so in the interest of making the lines of communication more functionally effective, lovers now should consider themselves strongly encouraged to approach the non-involved primary partner directly, any time there’s a question along the lines of, “how does A feel about [x]?” we’re deliberating whether or not that will be a rule; not everyone’s going to be comfortable addressing the other primary partner on issues pertaining to the non-primary relationship, but we figure it not only cuts the risk of miscommunication or misinterpretation through the involved primary partner’s filters, but it also gives *us* a gauge by which to measure the lover’s willingness to accept our structure and how we work. if a lover repeatedly *refuses* to take questions about A directly to A but insists on hiding behind or working exclusively through B, we can flag that for further investigation to determine whether or not there’s a problem there - *especially* if, in order to get into a relationship with one of us in the first place, the lover has agreed to abide by and participate in our relationship management processes.
there’s still a lot of homework to dig through, but this has been an extremely affirming start for us. for one thing, we still need to identify the effective area between the polarities of "boundary-defining protectionism" and “boundary-free operations” with regards to the statement "relationship management processes appropriate to the degree of relationship". that’s the area in which most of the framework will operate, giving us space to build some faith in predictable process while still allowing some room for interpretation. we’re aware that there’s always risk with interpretation, so we’ve made a specific point to note those situations in which we’re asking to deviate from expectations within the framework, or deviating from the framework entirely: what is it about the relationship-in-question that makes a deviation seem like a good idea, and can the deviation be done without threat to the primary relationship? is the deviation something that might become standard and therefore should be considered as an evolutionary change to the expectations within or the framework itself?
in the end, we reiterate our own Prime Directive, which is not *actually* “No Surprises” (much as i’d like it to be), but rather, “we will make decisions that speak to the high value that we put on the primary relationship.” i have to be able to trust this directive; more accurately, i have to get past my low opinion of a humanity that can pay easy lip service to high value without acting in ways that *i perceive* as showing that high value; as we’ve discovered elsewhere in our relationship, perceptions of value ALSO differ wildly between us on occasion. (“The Currency of Value” is a post that’s knocking around in my head that i haven’t gotten to yet, but will :)
things progress in slow but important steps, one conversation at a time, one puzzle-piece at a time. unravelling a Gordian Knot isn’t something one can do by just grabbing any strand and yanking. i’ve tried; it goes badly.