You have absolutely no control over people who are going to watch what you do, perceive it wrongly, and use that as justification to behave in ways they want to anyway. If you start worrying about how people are perceiving what you do, you'll end up never doing anything. People who know you know what you're like and how your relationship works, and that's really the important part.
If you start trying to be stand-up guys "for the community", well, A) you're not going to succeed, because the community is nothing like monolithic, and B) because you'll be compromising personal and pair-bond values, you are more, not less, likely to really screw up and doing things that might hurt your relationship.
If people want to know, they should ask. If they don't want to ask, they shouldn't pretend to know.
And the idea that X and Y are justifying their behavior in their marriage based on what they think they saw you guys doing is ridiculous. First of all, they have nothing like your time-on-task, and second, they started out not communicating, cheating, and doing things foolishly or deliberately (or both) that would damage their relationship.
There is no single set of rules that can comprehensively promise success in a poly relationship, because every person is different, every circumstance is different, and while there are a few guiding principles that can help a couple (or more) establish a firm foundation that will let their relationship seek its own level while remaining healthy, open, and intimate, these are guiding principles,not rules. The rules come from how a couple apply those principles to their own relationship, and are individual and personal for a couple.
I will touch briefly on boundaries and permission, and Y's view of them as control. I think I need to take some serious thought before I make a long post on them, but I will say two things. First, this is a really common view in the poly community right now. He'll find a lot of supportive writing on the subject, which will give various reasons in support of this outlook that boil down to a selfish refusal to not do anything you really want to do, no matter what. And second, I think it's a copout.
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branchandroot
(no subject)
Date: 2003-10-03 08:35 am (UTC)You have absolutely no control over people who are going to watch what you do, perceive it wrongly, and use that as justification to behave in ways they want to anyway. If you start worrying about how people are perceiving what you do, you'll end up never doing anything. People who know you know what you're like and how your relationship works, and that's really the important part.
If you start trying to be stand-up guys "for the community", well, A) you're not going to succeed, because the community is nothing like monolithic, and B) because you'll be compromising personal and pair-bond values, you are more, not less, likely to really screw up and doing things that might hurt your relationship.
If people want to know, they should ask. If they don't want to ask, they shouldn't pretend to know.
And the idea that X and Y are justifying their behavior in their marriage based on what they think they saw you guys doing is ridiculous. First of all, they have nothing like your time-on-task, and second, they started out not communicating, cheating, and doing things foolishly or deliberately (or both) that would damage their relationship.
There is no single set of rules that can comprehensively promise success in a poly relationship, because every person is different, every circumstance is different, and while there are a few guiding principles that can help a couple (or more) establish a firm foundation that will let their relationship seek its own level while remaining healthy, open, and intimate, these are guiding principles,not rules. The rules come from how a couple apply those principles to their own relationship, and are individual and personal for a couple.
I will touch briefly on boundaries and permission, and Y's view of them as control. I think I need to take some serious thought before I make a long post on them, but I will say two things. First, this is a really common view in the poly community right now. He'll find a lot of supportive writing on the subject, which will give various reasons in support of this outlook that boil down to a selfish refusal to not do anything you really want to do, no matter what. And second, I think it's a copout.