Comments on: What I Wanna Know!

By: Angela

Angela — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 18:57:50 +0000

My partner is going through some sort of mid-life crisis. While he insisted he wanted to continue practicing poly-fidelity, when he father become very ill, he started hunting down old girlfriends online and calling past lovers and female friends. When mentioning that he seemed like he was heading toward opening the relationship he said “No, we don’t have the time or energy to open the relationship.” The a friend came to visit, female, and he just came up the last night of her visit and asked if we could all have group sex.

Later he explained that it would have just been a fun adventure but she is also scheduled to keep visiting to help with our office work. So my thought is that he is lying to himself. He does agree that he presented all this poorly. He also is justifying this thinking because she is willing to come here and he will not need to leave the house or the business for the relationship.

So, the part of me that wants him happy wants to agree. On the other hand, after seven years of poly-fidelity I really wish he had discussed his real feelings in the four or five months before the suggestion. And especially before his old friend started spending weekends with us.

Do you think that in a mid-life grief stricken process that someone can truly lose such a sense of himself that he can’t see what he is heading for? Or could he really have only realized it at that moment?

By: Marv

Marv — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 16:09:34 +0000

A favorite quote of mine:

“Communication is to relationship, what breathing is to maintaing life.”

~ Virginia Satir

By: Edward Martin III

Edward Martin III — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 21:04:04 +0000

I like it best when such demands are from the first person point of view. Makes them seem more appropriate:

1. I want to know the following things about your life: _____
2. I will tell you the following things about MY life: _______
3. If you want to know something I haven’t told you, feel free to ask — I’m forgetful.

Crazytalk!

By: CdM

CdM — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 17:18:38 +0000

I think that the biggest thing to remember is that most people don’t like nasty surprises. Part of that is an obligation on your own part to communicate with your partners what you consider a “nasty surprise”. That’s going to be an individual preference and thus has to be made known to those that care about you.

In my opinion it’s all about setting expectations. There’s no one right way to do it, because it depends on the individuals involved. It all comes down to the secret of good relationships: communication.

By: David

David — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 14:16:58 +0000

Some people are better at self-disclosure than others. I’ve had partners tell me stuff which, while I found it useful to know in a “this where my mental headspace is right now” kind of way, I wasn’t itching for them to tell me. I’ve had other partners who wouldn’t tell me anything at all unless I crowbarred it from their mouths under an interrogation light (which, I know, sounds like a BDSM scene).

Personally, I fall somewhere in between towards the more tacit end of the scale; I’m not very good at volunteering information unsolicited, but I’ll happily tell a partner every detail they ask for once I have actually been asked. Then again, I’m quite a laid back person – I know now from experience that demanding partners don’t get on well with my “manana manana” approach to life and vice versa.

By: xiao xing

xiao xing — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 13:37:16 +0000

This was one of our early discussions — of course, we are a small and tight-knit group, but we felt it necessary to think about the possibilities. You hit it right on the nose: a lot of it is self-protection, and for very good reasons.

And yes, we’re still working on it, but recognising that we are all human has helped tremendously. :-)