Category: Polyamory
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Your Polycule Isn’t Your Relationship Counselor
There is a reason marriage counseling is a thing. Sometimes you and your partner(s) need help understanding each other and working through problems. Mental illness can increase the (actual or perceived) lack of understanding as well as clashes of personality and/or communications styles. Many people will turn to friends or family to help them sort…
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Polyamory Etiquette: Informal Invitations
Last week we looked as best practices for addressing formal invitations to poly folk. This week we’re going to take a look at informal invitations. There are lots of types of informal invites. Everything from calling someone up “Hey, you want to come over?” to sending an email to inviting someone to an event on…
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Poly Advice for the Mentally Ill: You Need Talk about Problems
Standard Poly Advice: You need to talk about problems I have no objection to this very important advice. The problem comes in when people hear this advice as meaning “You need to talk about problems RIGHT AWAY.” Someone in the middle of a mental health crisis is probably going to be behaving or speaking in…
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Formal Invitations for Poly Folk
The nice thing about formal invitations is you are expected to list everyone who is invited. If someone’s name isn’t on there, they aren’t invited. This solves a lot of this “who is included?” of informal invitations. This post generally assumes you are issuing an invite to people who are out about being poly. If…
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Polyamory Etiquette: Let’s Talk Invitations
Invitations can range from, “hey, wanna come over and catch Jessica Jones?” to engraved vellum cardstock begging the “pleasure of your company” at a wedding or other major event. That’s formality. There’s another range for invitations: who’s invited. Usually, there is a set standard. You can invite one person. You can invite one person and…
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Poly Advice for the Mentally Ill: “Set Clear Boundaries and Expectations”
I’ve written a fair bit about boundaries in the past. There is a fair bit of theoretical discussion in polyamory about the benefits of using boundaries or agreements in relationships. Theory aside, no matter which you use for relationships, we all have personal boundaries. For instance, many people have a boundary about respect in relationships.…
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Polyamory Etiquette: Bumping Into Your Metamour
I missed a few posts in April, so look for these bonus posts throughout May as I get caught up. If you and your various poly partners and their various poly parters live in the same area, sooner or later you’re going to bump into each other at a local fair, browsing the grocery store,…
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Polyamory Etiquette: Running into a Poly Partner in Public
Life was even crazier than usual last month, and in the craziness I completely forgot that I’d been going to get in depth on how to handle unexpected encounters with poly partners, metamours, friends and family. With that in mind, this today we’ll be looking at how to handle it when you run into one…
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Etiquette for Polyamory Partners and Children
I talked about interactions between poly partners and children a couple of times in the Raising Children in a Poly Family blog series. But this apparently an issue a lot of people stress about, so I’m going to pull it all together in one place. This article assumes that you want your children to meet…