005 - Fundamentals: Rules vs. Agreements (ft. Boundaries)

Bon giorno, Prince de Pesa. Hello, multi-emory listeners. I'm going to be taking my next somatic healing retreat to Italy. So I know that they all say "when in Rome", but we're going to be skipping Rome entirely and we're heading somewhere better. We're holding our next somatic retreat at this absolutely gorgeous former winery located in Piedmont in northern Italy from September 22nd to the 25th, 2026. I'm really excited about the fact that this time we're going to a much more quiet tucked away corner of Italy that hasn't quite been discovered yet, so there's not going to be a ton of tourists, just rolling hills, fresh air, and access to authentic local food. And over the course of four days, my colleague Orriet and I will be guiding group somatic sessions to help you work through some of the emotional patterns that talk therapy alone hasn't been able to shift. Plus, there's going to be plenty of downtime for you to wander, to decompress, or to just exist and hang out alongside other polyamorous people who get it. We handle everything so that you can be totally present. All of your accommodations are included, all meals, snacks, drinks, we hire a private chef to be on site, you're welcome to come solo, or you can bring a partner or multiple partners. We offer sliding-scale pricing and if cost is a concern for you, please don't let that stop you from applying, we're happy to work with you on that. So go to multi-amory.com/retreat to apply again, that's multi-amory.com/retreat and I hope to see you in Italy. If you're happy with the same old ways of dating, if you enjoy sucking at communications, and you have no desire to improve your romantic life, then our podcast might not be for you. But you want some out-of-the-box ideas to deepen your current relationships. broaden your sexual horizons, develop a better understanding of yourself, or learn more about non-monogamy than you've come to the right place. I'm Jason, I'm Emily, and I'm Dedekern, and this is the multi-amory podcast. On this episode of the multi-amory podcast, we're talking about rules versus agreements, featuring special guest boundaries. So actually in putting this episode together, I noticed a huge shift in the polyamory advice out there since five years ago or so when we started doing this podcast, and that's that more and more people are discouraging rules and not leaning so hard into rules when they're giving advice about getting into polyamory or opening up a relationship. And that is a change even from just five years ago, and then even a bigger change from 10 years ago or 20 years ago is a huge change from that. And yet, it's still one of the most common assumptions that people make when they think about opening up a relationship, or when they think about what non-monogamy is, or even when they think about what any relationship should have even monogamous ones. There's kind of, it's like people don't even ask the question a lot of the time because they just assume. It's got to all be about rules, and if you just have the right rules, that must be how you're able to do it. And so today we're going to be diving a little more deeply into rules and looking at how they compare to agreements and how we might be able to change our thinking about them. Yeah, so I think what I've noticed over the past five years, and also noticed after working with clients for a number of years now, is sometimes it comes down to semantics because I've seen some people incorporate what they in their relationship call rules that actually are quite effective and feel really good and healthy and secure for everyone involved. And then the other side, I've seen people in their relationships incorporate something that they call boundaries that are actually very restrictive and very controlling and very inflexible and controlling someone else's behavior. And so I don't want to turn this necessarily into just policing people's language and being like, you gotta use the right word. But I think it is more about looking at like the intent and the functioning of the rule or the agreement or the special guest boundary, whatever it is that you are putting in place in your relationship. Yeah, I guess I did want to say it's more of like the philosophy of agreements versus the philosophy of rules rather than like this one thing is always good as long as you call it that or it follows some certain rules to become an agreement. Like if it matches these things, then it's okay. And if it's these things, then it's not. It's more about changing even the intention of them and how you go about them and kind of the whole philosophy behind it. Yeah. So we're going to start off here with rules because I think it is kind of the one that people, at least when we started doing the podcast and when we started like thinking about our own relationships, it became the thing that we were like, well, I don't know if this is something that we really want to do. And I remember in early interviews with other like experts in the field, some of them said what? That this is not something that you want to be a part of or even like the ethical slud, I think, talks about rules quite a bit because it was sort of with that parameter of where in a relationship where there's a primary person and the rules are applied to the second areas or to whom ever as well. So anyways, we're going to get into what a rule actually is and why people do them. So people might do them to make themselves feel safer, especially if they don't really trust their partner or if they don't know their partner that well. Or they just started opening things up and it's like, well, I don't know what's going to happen. So let's do a rule to make us feel safe. Yeah, it's like, especially when opening up, I think it's like all of a sudden there's these unknowns because we haven't done this before. So I'm scared. Exactly. And in order to make myself feel safer, I think rules are going to do that. So let's make rules because then I'll feel safe. Yeah. And you might want to do it because you want to protect or preserve your relationship, especially again, if you're opening up for the first time. And there is a lot of unknown there. And you want to essentially keep the relationship still feeling the same way that it always has. Still feeling as safe as it always has been. And so you might make a rule in order to sort of preserve that. Also, rules can give us stability and clarity. Or at least we think that they can. Stability and the relationship clarity for like what each person wants. It becomes very clear. And I clear about what the people don't want as well. Also rules are put in place just to get what we need. If we really want something, then we might put a rule on it and say like, okay, like that way I'll always get what I need. At least that might be the idea. Okay. So that was the most interesting one to me because especially as we're talking about like, is it about rules? Is it about agreements? Is it about boundaries? Is there something that underlies all of that? And I think it really is about just being able to communicate what you need and maybe even what you fear as well. Because, okay, I'm going to put this out there. This is not necessarily I've not put this theory through the gauntlet of criticism and thought and stuff like that. So this is kind of untested as it as it is. I have a theory that the better you are at communicating your needs and your fears to your partner. And the better you are at understanding your partner's needs and your partner's fears combined with wanting to help your partner get what they need and wanting to help your partner, you know, not be in a constitative panic and fear. I feel like the more that information is understood amongst both partners, the less of a need you have for things like rules. That's my suspicion. That is my suspicion. I'll have to kind of continue some more experiments on that and kind of see. Well, just because I feel like it's like if I know that these are the things my partner values, if I know that these are the things my partner needs, not that I've assumed it, but my partner has told me this and provided that those needs don't cross some kind of boundary of mine, I'm going to act in such a way that supports my partner getting those needs fulfilled. Yeah. Does that make sense? I'm sure someone's going to come out of the woodworks and be like, what about this? But what about that? And that's totally fine. Like I said, untested theory. But it's like I try to think of the example like in my partnerships, right? That I, for instance, like I text Jace pretty much every single day and I text Alex pretty much every single day. There was never an agreement put in place. There was never a rule put in place, but it became clear to me pretty early on in both those relationships, what level of communication they needed and wanted and also what would make the relationship feel the best. And so I'm like, okay, and then I do that. And I feel like there's a lot of other things that that applies to. I think combined with the trust and belief that your partner will do the same for you. Right. Yeah. That they all have their best interest in mind. Right. That they're not someone who ultimately would just want to screw you over. Thank you. And you need to random. Exactly. Yeah. I think that sometimes there is this assumption that like if I don't put this rule in place, then everything's just going to be chaotic. My partner will, you know, want to do these things that are not healthy or good for the relationship. And so in order for me to like be certain, which is the next one to experience certainty, that in order to feel certain that like my partner is always always going to have a good time. my best interest at heart will put these rules in place just to make sure that that always happens for both of us. Yeah. And I just, I feel like this is one of those things that once you really start digging into kind of some of the assumptions that are behind a lot of rules, it's actually very troubling. You're like, oh, actually, this is kind of fucked up because essentially what I'm saying is I think that my partner is selfish. I think that my partner doesn't care about my feelings, you know, or some variation therein. But like, that's at the heart of a lot of rules that I see people make and ones that I have made before or partners have wanted to make like kind of at the heart of it is this very negative assumption about my partner. And once I kind of realized that I was like, oof, yeah, so maybe that's a bigger issue to address, you know? Yeah. So it seems like what we're getting to is for the purpose of this discussion that a rule is anything that's put in place with the purpose of kind of controlling your partner's behavior. Right. Right. And I don't think, and I don't think you get a free pass if that rule also controls your behavior, like even if the rule applies to both of you. So I think that's kind of like the philosophy behind what we are calling rules for this episode. Yeah. And I would, I would adjust that a little bit to say controlling someone else's behavior. Because sometimes it's a metamorph, you said your partners, but I like it could even extend out to other people as well. That's true. But it's anything trying to control someone else's behavior, even if you're also abiding by it, doesn't matter. You're still trying to restrict someone else's behavior. Okay. Okay. So with that, I guess, fundamental in place, let's examine what rules tend to actually do. And one of those things is that rules, especially particularly controlling rules, tend to turn our partner away instead of toward us. So there tends to be more of an action. I feel of like either protecting or pushing away rather than I'm bringing you in or turning towards you or looking towards you for what it is that I need. So we've talked about this before on our cognitive biases episode. And there's this cognitive bias known as reactants. And basically the more that a person perceives that their personal freedoms or personal freedom to choose or make decisions is restricted or threatened in some way, the more resistance they're going to experience, including feeling anger toward the source of whatever the rule or whatever the control is. And people are often not consciously aware of this kind of reaction to give an example not related to relationships. I think we also mentioned this example in the cognitive biases episode that they find if you have a wall and there's a sign on the wall that says absolutely under no circumstances should you write on this wall. People are more likely to write on it than when you have a wall where the sign says, please don't write on this wall. You know, both of them are asking for the same thing, but one of them gives more of this sense of like, I'm taking away your personal freedom to write wherever the heck you want. And therefore people are going to feel more likely like I need to assert that I do have this freedom and they're going to be more likely to want to break that rule. Yeah, it's so interesting. I found just like, I know this is maybe childish, but I've literally just this last week with Dettaker had this experience where there was something I was going to do. I was going to like switch over the laundry or put the clothes in the laundry or something and I was literally getting out of the chair to go do it. And Dettaker calls from the other room and it's like, hey, put the laundry and don't forget to do that. And you were like, I don't want to. I mean, I did go do it, but I felt that reaction of like, don't know. Don't you tell me what to do? Yeah, even the dog is like, hey, that's messed up. Yeah. So anyway, maybe that's a little bit childish, but there is that reaction. I've even had that toward like my alarm clock. You know where it's like, I was going to get out of bed, but now that the alarm's going off now, I want to go back to sleep. That little bit of like, no, don't take away my freedom to choose what I'm going to do. Interesting. So I went down this big rabbit hole of research about reactants and studies about it and stuff like that. And one of the things they found that was interesting is that this reaction of like, anger toward the source and also resistance against it, is tends to be especially strong when either that freedom is a really important one to you or it's part of a group of other freedoms. And part of what or like, I'm sorry, or it's like a whole group of freedoms is being restricted all at once. And part of that comes from this fear, or at least they theorize, part of this fear that, well, if I let this freedom get restricted, what's next? You know that if I let this one get taken from me, others might get taken to. Or if this person is someone who's going to take this from me, they might want to take others later. So I'm going to react against it now. And I thought that was really interesting. It's probably why some people are like for government or against, you know, more government, just because of that fear based reaction for sure. Sure. Yeah. Depending on who they are. But yeah, it also, the studies that you were looking into talked about how we can experience a bicarious reactants. So it's like when we witness somebody's freedom being restricted, we experience this intense anger and also a desire for the thing that they aren't being allowed to do. So we might fear things like you just said, like our freedom would be restricted as well. So there was a study by, I'm going to try to pronounce this, sit in the pahla and colleagues. I think that's right. Yeah, that's right. But yes, yeah. Yeah. So there was a study about public health messaging and the study showed that using less controlling language and reaffirming a person's freedom to choose will increase the effectiveness of a message. So rather than saying something like you, you know, cannot go to, your children cannot go to school unless they have the flu shots or, but rather saying like, it's a great idea because you like giving reasons why you should give your kids a flu shot so that you will stay safe and that they'll stay safe or something along those lines that is not like restricting the fact that they would get to go to school or something. But then, that's a completely hypothetical, by the way. Yeah, just when you were telling me about this study, you were saying that also not only is it like less restricting language, but also throwing in like a PS of like, but hey, like you got to make the choice is best for you and your family. Yeah, yeah. Like throwing into the end, hey, you still have freedom to choose that that was the most effective messaging that actually got people to be the most compliant with whatever the message was. Yeah, unfortunately, yeah. It's like reverse psychology. Yeah, a little bit. Yeah. It's not exactly reverse psychology, but reverse psychology actually is based on this idea of reactants or is intertwined with it is that idea of like, I'm going to restrict your ability to do the thing I do want you to do in the hopes that that will make you want to do it more. So yeah, that is the whole idea there. Yeah, I couldn't find exactly the wording that they used for that kind of reaffirming of your freedom to choose at the end, but I did think that was interesting. And I think that goes along with what we're going to talk about later about approaching things more as an agreement of like, well, you can do what you're going to do. So I'm not going to restrict that. And I hope that you'll choose things that, you know, help me out and that benefit me. And I trust you to do that. That's a very different thing from saying you can't do X, Y, or Z because I might be upset by it or it might go badly or something like that. Another one with that vicarious reactants thing that study was, it was specifically women watching a video of a meeting where the women weren't allowed to participate in a discussion about something. And that afterward they found that the women who watched that expressed more interest in the topic of what that meeting was about, then, then if, you know, then they're like base level. And it's that idea of like, I'm more interested in this thing because I saw someone else's ability to participate being taken from them. And so it has become more important to me. And the same way it probably became more important to those women in the video, although I think they were actors. But still, yeah, so it is really interesting. And then lastly, just that short-term restriction is more likely to be accepted. So that is even if someone is going to really limit your freedoms, as long as there isn't understanding that this is temporary, that's going to elicit less of that reactant response. And the example is- Like you can't go outside and a storm or something? Sure. Yeah. And you know, if someone there's an earthquake and someone comes in and is like, everyone will go this way quickly, you know, like into this hallway, whatever it is, you're more likely to not be like, no, I can choose where I want to go. Because it's like, yeah, I get it. This is just an emergency. Unfortunately, you know, people can abuse this for things like Homeland Security laws, where it's like, oh, well, this is an emergency, everyone. Don't worry. It's just temporary. And then 10 years later. Yeah. It ain't. Yeah. Okay. Sorry. But to apply it to relationships and not to like national security emergencies or whether emergencies. I feel like this could be something like, you know, I don't know, it's like, yeah, I know you had plans for dates tonight, but I'm like knocked out with a flu and like puking every 10 minutes. Like I'm really sorry, I really need your help taking care of me tonight. And so can you do like, do you mind rescheduling your date? Something like that? I might even propose something. So I think we'll get to that actually a little bit later with one of the other examples. I would say more it's something that of like the idea of we're like, I'm pregnant right now. And so while I'm pregnant, let's put some rules in place about our dating habits or something with the understanding that like this is, right, this is temporary during this time. That's just an example. It depends what the rules are still. But just an example of that's probably going to elicit less reactants and resistance against you. Clearly, this is temporary. This is for a special circumstance or something like that. So let's move on to what else rules actually can do. Rules are kind of inflexible and they can often lead to things like legalistic disputes. So the law out there, our American law, that law, yeah, exactly. Most law. It's really complex. I'm glad that he has to deal with all that and not me because it's a lot. So law is designed to be followed to the letter, the letter of the law, but that prevents us from seeing the spirit of the law. So rules really tend to not be flexible for extending, it, extending circumstances. So again, if you have a rule in place, I don't know that if I go on a date or if I have a date planned, then I will always go on it, for example. But then an inextenuating circumstance comes up of like, hey, like I'm puking my brains out. Can you please help me? But then you say like, no, I have this date. That's our rule is that we always allow the dates to happen and go with the thing that's in set and stone. That really doesn't allow for an accentuating circumstance. So you're either following the rule or you aren't. And then we can try to anticipate all possible situations that might arise. But then often like we can just end up with this really big dictionary-sized book of rules, like one does in the legal system. Yeah. And then unfortunately, yeah, you're just kind of getting into the small semantics of each thing, I guess. It's like the thing Dettaker likes to mention that like it's like trying to draw a map of a country you've never been to. It's that like you could- I mean, it's impossible. Right. You know, it could be like, you know, no sleepovers with anyone else. It's like, oh, but what if they're sick and I want to go, you know, be with them while they're really sick or something's wrong? It's like, well, okay. Only under those circumstances, but only if the sickness is bad enough that they had to go to a doctor. You know, you kind of get into this thing where you're- I want to see the doctors go. And even be back home by 8 a.m. the next day. Right. Right. And you the doctors know proving that that's where you were. It's just, yeah, it gets out of hand really quickly. So some examples of this, like worrying about following rules to the letter, since rules are inherently kind of a binary system. You either follow them or you didn't, is things like say a rule saying you can't have sleepovers and you come home at six in the morning and your partner's really mad. It's like, hey, we have a rule that you can't have sleepovers. You're like, well, we didn't sleep. So I'm fine. Yeah, that's going to go over rules. Yeah. And then the example, like we just brought up of you having a partner who's really sick or an emergency happens where they, you know, have a death in the family and you want to support them, that if you have a rule in place, your only flexibility comes from just like being willing to break a rule. And I was like, well, I care about you and I want to support you. So I'm going to break my rule with another partner in order to be there and support you. Like they just rules are inherently inflexible like that. And unless they have these million different clauses and you have to go consult the-- Consult the-- Consult the legal test. Yeah. Yeah. And so related to that often, I think what we see with really restrictive rules is that the only options are either compliance with the rule or just failure and breaking the rule or failing to follow the rule. And often it's unenforceable as well. So I think rules as we traditionally know them, like especially if you've harkened back to your like elementary school days, for instance. Usually-- No hitting. Yeah, no hitting or like no talking or no talking out of turn or whatever it is. That they're enforced with punishment, right? You know, and you use punishments or penalties on a partner and that can lead to a toxic relationship that involves threats and passive aggression. You know, so it can be things like, okay, our rule is whatever you're doing when you go out, you're always home by 10 p.m. That's the rule. Like we're always home by 10 p.m. That's the rule. And then something happens, maybe the partner loses track at a time, they're home half an hour later. Then it's the punishment usually being that your partner is really upset. And we have to have a big discussion about it. Maybe what comes out of that discussion is something productive of like maybe this wasn't a realistic rule for us or, or hey, maybe we need to put in place that if you're going to be late, you'll communicate with me or something like that. Maybe it'll be productive. However, it's like you had to go through breaking the rule and dealing with the punishment of like your partner's upsetness in order to get there. And on the flip side of that punishment, if you do follow a rule that doesn't really elicit like a positive response necessarily, it more is just a neutral one. It's like, yeah, you followed the rule because it's a rule obviously. So sometimes there can still be a negative in your head because like, oh shit, I'm worried that maybe I might accidentally break a rule and someone will get pissed. And then also as more rules are added to the equation because of those extenuating circumstances or because of all of those things that come up in life, there's really like fewer and fewer ways to show your partner that you care or to accept caring because you have these all of these like required behaviors that occur instead of really affectionate and loving ones. They just become things that someone feels almost entitled to because we put that rule or that thing in place. Yeah. So, Jason's going to give an example, but I wanted to give just some way that I've seen this play out often with couples that I've seen or that I've worked with that sometimes there can be that rule like the one I used of like we have a rule that we're always home by 10 p.m. Regardless of whether we're on a date or what we're doing or whatever, we're always home by 10 p.m. And I've definitely seen partners kind of try to put rules in place and think that they're actually going to be rewarding it because the idea being is like, well, if my partner can follow these rules, then I know that I can trust them and then I can like ease up on the rules and then that's going to be their reward. But again, is that kind of a problem of like, well, your partner is coming home on time probably because they don't want to upset you, you know? And because there's this implicit thread of like if they break the rule, then it's going to go really poorly for them. It's not because they're like so necessarily invested in like taking care of you and your feelings are like so invested in making sure that you know that the two of you like have a good eating together or something. It's like part of the motivation becomes around just avoiding the punishment of breaking the rule if that makes sense. Or even if their motivation is like, I really want to be here to spend time with you. You don't get to experience that because you don't know like, are they here because they want to be with me or just because they're following the rule? And so it's like on both sides, it's like you could end up building sort of resentment and a feeling of obligation. And then on the other side, I don't get to feel like, oh, wow, like they came home early to spend time with me. It's just like, no, they just followed the rule. And so I feel like you're missing out on the positives while also adding the threat of negatives. Yeah, just because your relationship is so like stuck in this box of what you want it to be in order for it to be perfect all the time. Yeah, like this idea that I'm in order for my needs to get met because I don't trust my partner to care about me. I'm going to put rules to make sure I get these things and that at least in my experience and in a lot of people that I know, the experience is they end up not feeling satisfied by those things that they made this rule to make sure that they get. So an example of this, like a real life example here that I, some variation of this comes up quite a bit actually. And that's that comes from a place of like, I want to know that you care about me, even if you're with other people or maybe we don't live together or something. So I'm going to make a rule, we'll make a rule that you need to text me every morning. You know, text me good morning. I love you. Something like that every morning. The problem is here, it's just like that where it's when they do it, they're just following a rule. And like I had a friend in a relationship like this and, you know, it's sometimes be later in the dead, see him for lunch or something and he'd be like, Oh, shit. I was really busy this morning and I totally forgot to text my girlfriend. Good morning. Fuck, she's going to be pissed at me later tonight. And then he'll send a message and be like, Oh, God, she hasn't responded. She's, she must be mad at me. And then on the other side, when he does text good morning, I bet that's not as sweet and special as a random good morning text is, even if it's, even if you do it every day, it's still like, "Wow, they think about me." Instead, it's like, "No, he's just following the rule." And so that's one where I've seen it in several relationships. Really end up as this just like not fun, not romantic, not loving thing for either person, when that was the whole purpose of the rule, was to feel cared about, and to feel love. To feel like, to feel safe, as opposed. Yeah. So here's this last one. And this is a doozy, and I think a little controversial, but rules can be a way to make your partner responsible for your unwillingness to be comfortable, or to work through something uncomfortable, or rules can also hide the fact that you're not comfortable, and that you just want different things in the relationship. And so the thing is that like, if I'm uncomfortable with something, or uncomfortable with something my partner is doing, or uncomfortable with the direction my partner is heading in the relationship, I can either discuss it with my partner, and we can work together on the ways that I can grow, or we can grow, or we can negotiate, we can figure out what's going to actually make this work, or I can just make a rule that forbids my partner from doing the thing that they're doing that's making me uncomfortable, and it protects me from the situation. The metaphor that I think I've mentioned on the show before, and that I-- It's been a while though. Tell us a few. So have I, the story of the Thorn? Little Thorn story. I don't remember. I don't remember that. So this comes from a book by Michael Singer, called The Untethered Soul, which is fantastic and great, and I recommend it to everybody. But it's this idea of like, imagine that one day, you get this big old Thorn stuck in your arm, and it's like lodged right in a nerve center, so it's like anything that mildly brushes up against it, sends all this shooting pain up and down your arm, Emily's like flapping in and despair, just listening to this story. So it's horrible. And so you're like, this is this sucks. Okay, so what I need to do is I will create like a little protective barrier, like some kind of little shield around this Thorn to make sure that no one accidentally bumps into it. And what I'll do is also like, I need to kind of in my house, I need to widen all my doorways, because sometimes when I'm going through a doorway, I bump in it really sucks. I'm going to widen all my doorways so that I don't risk that. And actually, I'm going to put on kind of like a hazmat suit of armor so that if someone comes close to me and wants to touch me, that like, they won't touch the Thorn, you know, the armor will protect me. And you go through all of this rigor role instead of just working on getting the Thorn out. Taking the Thorn out of your stupid arms. Geez. Well, I kind of wanted to be more compassionate about it. And I don't want this to come across as like, if anything upsets you in a relationship, it's just your fault and it's just something you need to work on. But it's maybe something to consider, and at least examine and analyze. Yeah. So, like, and then the example of being incompatible is something like my partner and I fundamentally disagree about something important, about our future. And so instead of seeing that incompatibility for what it is as hard as that could be, instead we try to make rules that prevent one of us or both of us from doing certain parts of that, or for indicating the fact that we do want different things or acting upon the things that are different from what we want. Rather than them changing what they want, you know, we put rules around it as a way to kind of not face the reality of just like we want fundamentally different things or we have fundamentally different philosophies about what a relationship looks like or, you know, how communication should go or any number of things, right? And so we'll kind of make rules to stop us from having to accept that fact as hard as that could be. So, our lovely friend, Annalisa, who was on the Buddhism and polyamory or Buddhism in relationships podcast that we did a couple of weeks ago. Yeah, I'm, she actually does a class where she talks about non-monogamy and rules and boundaries and agreements and things like this. So, she has a good example for this specific thing on, you know, rules being a potential to not have to work on your own shit. And so this one is, the example is, okay, I'm uncomfortable with the idea of you dating other men. So that shouldn't be followed by, therefore, we should set up a one-penis policy type of situation. This is assuming a relationship, but like a heterosexual-seeming relationship. Yes. That is holding up. Or even, I mean, well, yeah, I guess it would be a heterosexual one. If a homosexual relationship with two men is going to be non-monogamous, I'm assuming the one-penis policy. It would be a two-penis policy. Yeah, not one-penis. So, all right. So instead of the one-penis policy thing or rule, I, instead, that should be followed by something like, I'm going to work on this. While I'm working on it, please understand that I'm going to have some fears. It would be amazing if you could be supportive. And so maybe that support would look like something of maybe you don't date men for a short period of time. It might look like you just help your partner process, what they're going through while you are dating men. You know, any number of things, but it basically is about helping your partner in their growth, not shouldering their fears so that they don't have to. Yeah. Yeah, that's a great. I mean, gosh, they could go off on this for so long. I'm not gonna. No, I'm not gonna. You wrote a whole article about it back in the day. That's good. I think our most talked about post. Yeah. People got angry about this one. Well, it's just that there's just so many options available to you outside of just telling your partner you're not allowed to date any other men. Mm-hmm. You know, like there's so many options because it could be like, "Hey, actually, I would love to sit down with you and talk about my fears of dating other men or I want to sit down and talk to you about like my bad history of other men." Or I want to talk to you about my fears of like what might happen if someone hurts you. Or let me sit down and let's kind of come up with some actual things that we could do. Maybe it's like, "Hey, actually, like if I met your other male partner sooner in the dating process rather than later, that would make me feel better." Or if I didn't meet them for a while, maybe that'll help me feel better. You know, it's like there's so many options I feel outside of just. Here's the rule. No other men. And maybe God forbid, let's have a conversation where I can actually examine like what being a man means to me. And what you dating other men means to me about my masculinity or about my, you know, what I mean as a human being, you know, God forbid we actually like have that sort of. Have those conversations? Right. And actually that sort of willingness to introspect and to grow. And instead it's like, "No, I don't want to do that work. I'm just going to make a rule for you instead. That's easier." Right. So another example of a rule like this that can kind of mask the unwillingness to work through uncomfortable stuff is a rule of no introducing other partners to our friends. I've seen this one a lot, you know, especially with couples who just start opening up and they decide like, "Okay, fine, you can date whoever, but you can't introduce them to anyone that we know." Now of course this is going to be accepting scenarios where it is paramount to your personal safety to stay in the closet, you know, like if your friends being aware of the fact that your non-monogamous is going to cause major problems for you, then yes, okay, collaborate with your partner on what is going to help everyone in the situation, including the person that your partner is dating to feel relatively safe or safe enough in a situation. However, I do feel like in most scenarios a rule like this, it can mask my worries of being replaced. Like I worry if you can introduce a different partner to our friends, then our friends are going to love that partner way better and think that they're way cooler and think that you've like abandoned me or like I'm old news, and then I'm going to be abandoned and totally replaced. It can mask worries of looking bad in front of your friends or being emasculated in front of your mutual friends. This idea of like, "Oh, if my friends see that like I let my partner date a bunch of other people, they're going to think that like I'm a doop of some kind." "A doop of some kind?" "You get what I mean." "People have those worries." And again, it's kind of like I'm not willing to sit down and have these uncomfortable conversations with you of like, "Hey, this brings this up for me because I have this story that like if my friends meet your other partner, they're going to like them way more." "If they meet your other partner, it's going to make me look bad." And there's so many other options to talk about that and confront it and come up with things to do about that to make that feel better rather than just inflexibly deciding, "Okay, no, like our friends never shall meet. Never the twain shall meet." Yeah, and just another quick example of this would be in that situation where we have different ideas of what we want our relationship to be. be where, for example, one person wants to have a monogamous relationship and the other wants to have a polyamorous relationship, for example, that sometimes a rule like don't ask, don't tell, comes up as a way to just sort of hide ourselves from the fact that we are very deeply incompatible about this where it's like, you know, we think it's like, oh, well, this is a way where we can both get what we want sort of, but I feel like it can end up leading to bigger problems down the road because of the fact that it's preventing you from actually confronting that thing, preventing you from actually having to face it and discuss it and think about it and figure out if your relationship is going to work with these two people who you are. That was a weird way to say that. These two people who you are. I think we get the chance. Yeah, you get the chance. All right, so now we want to look at agreements as an alternative philosophy to rules. So like we said at the beginning, it's not about just you phrase something differently and call it an agreement. Now it's okay, but more this philosophy of making an agreement instead. So this is what we mean by that and that's that it's making a change from instead of focusing on either requiring a behavior or restricting a behavior. Instead, it's a philosophy change toward turning toward each other, having honest conversations, taking ownership of your own growth, trusting each other to mutually care and respect each other. And then from there discussing with each other, what it is that you would really like, what are the things that are meaningful to you? What are the things that are challenging for you right now? And that this is going to be an ongoing conversation. Because if we are taking ownership of working on our own things, those are going to change over time. And so this is an ongoing conversation. It's flexible. Yeah, it's flexible. It's, you know, if an agreement ends up in a place where it's like, well, okay, yeah, we had this great conversation and we made this agreement that you're going to text me every morning and I get upset if you don't do it. It's like, no, no, no, we've actually just ended up back in the same place. Yeah, yeah. Right. And so I think that's where people can, and I don't even know if agreements is the right term for this. Yeah, I agree. It gets all sticky, but it really, I think, does boil down to kind of the philosophy behind it. The intention. And the intention behind it, yeah. So I will say that I think that when we started this podcast, I definitely kind of came into it in much more of a harsh like any rule is bad, any agreement is good. You know, and then that's just what you got to live by. And I will say after working with clients and seeing all the myriad of ways that people make this work, I've softened on that a little bit because I think I have realized like it's, it's really more important to focus on what's the need behind this rule or this agreement. That's that's working in the relationship. Is it working? Is it functioning? Is it helping everyone to feel safe and feel relatively happy and peaceful? And so I've recently landed on this training wheels metaphor essentially. So if you look at, so especially for people who are just starting out in a non-monogamous relationship, or they're just opening up from a monogamous relationship, you can put in rules or agreements, whatever you like. But I encourage people to think of them like training wheels. And the thing is that training wheels on your bike, they were never intended to be a permanent feature of your bike. You know, they were always intended to be something that you put on and you take off. That's why they're built that way. They're not soldered directly onto the bike. You have to attach them. It's soldering what you do. Soldered. Soldered. I've always said, what is soldering? That's how you spell it. I just think it's pronounced soldered. My mind is blown right now. You weld it. It's fine. Okay, you get what I mean. Training wheels are not welded onto your bike. When you get it, they're designed to be put on and put off. And so that's something to invite into your process as you're negotiating with your partner of what kind of rules or what kind of agreements might help us here. Of knowing like we should put things in place that are not going to be super difficult for us to put down. So that can include things like putting sunset clauses on particular agreements or rules if it's stuff that we're just starting out with. And because this is the thing, if you do leave your training wheels on, it makes it much more difficult for you to actually ride the bike in the long term, right? Because it's like if you're going to ride that bike for anything beyond just up and down the sidewalk, like if you're going to go on grass, if you're going to get up any speed, if you're going to do any turns, if you're going to keep up with all your neighbor kid friends, or if you're going to go even more advanced level and try like some mountain biking, like on some trails and like really adventurous stuff, it's like if you have training wheels on those situations, they make it potentially more dangerous and more difficult for you to actually be in that situation. Okay. Now I'm getting pretty excited about this bike before. I'll bring it back to real world situations is something like, something like no sleepovers. Absolutely. I don't care what the circumstances are like, like you don't sleep over with someone else. It's like, okay, that's great for as long as you're going at like five miles an hour, just kind of maybe going on a first date occasionally with other people and not really escalating. But if you're intending to be building more ongoing relationships with people or maybe deeper relationships with people as the difficulty ramps up a little bit, it's like that training wheel that you have in place of like no sleepovers. Maybe it served you at the beginning of helping establish a sense of consistency and safety and knowing that your partner's not going to abandon you. But as you start getting a little bit more advanced, it's going to be the thing that holds you back. And if anything, if you try to go on like a freaking mountain trail with training wheels on, it's probably going to break those training wheels even at the very least, maybe your whole bike. Maybe your whole you. I don't know. That's true. You know. And so I encourage people to think about that. It's like training wheels in and of themselves are not a terrible thing, but you are going to outgrow them. Or you're going to have to accept that we are kind of limited to just going back and forth on the sidewalk. Whatever that means for for you. And I don't know. Sidewalk of life. Sidewalk of relationships. And I don't know how well I'll y'all remember back having your training wheels. But I know some kids are like ready. Like get those off of me as soon as I think I can maybe wobble on this bike and be okay. And other kids it's really scary. But but someone is there being like no, no, no, let's try taking these off. And it can be scary. But eventually you would never imagine like man, remember the days when I used to have training wheels. That was so much better than this. I do like this metaphor. It's a fun one. It is a good one. So just think of yourself as a teeny tiny baby with your training wheels. But then also think of yourself when you were a teenager and you were like training wheels of for babies. I don't need that anymore because it was true. Yeah. Okay. So so as we're continuing with this kind of moving into a philosophy of agreements and maybe even we could say like a philosophy of communication and trust as opposed to a philosophy of restriction and requirement. That something else that comes up is boundaries. So this is the you know, boom, boom, boom, this is like the the bridge of the song where special guest where boundaries shows up in the song and like sings sings a verse or you know does a guitar solo or something. He drops some what is it? He drops some bars. Yeah. Yeah. Something like that. So so boundaries comes in and we're not going to go into this because we have a whole episode about boundaries and it's honestly a little bit. It's a little bit of a separate thing from what rules and agreements are trying to do. They're related and they're interconnected, which is why we want to acknowledge this here and we will talk about boundaries a little bit more when we get into real life examples. But the basic thing here is to not confuse boundaries with rules or agreements and they can get sometimes confused and because they are a little bit related. But the key difference here is that a boundary is something you set for yourself and that can be enforced unilaterally completely by yourself either by you removing yourself from that situation generally usually that or by you know stopping a particular action or something like that. Of your own. An action of your own. Yeah. Right. It's like I'm not going to be in a room where this is happening or I won't stay in a relationship where this is happening or whatever it is it's something that is for yourself to protect yourself to protect your own well-being and that you can enforce entirely yourself. So for more in depth into that our episode on boundaries is episode 178. Definitely recommend going back and checking that out. But just keep that in mind. And just something to be aware of with boundaries is that if you catch yourself thinking about your boundaries or saying to a friend of yours like I put this boundary up for my partner or my partner keeps breaking this boundary of mine or the two of us set up this boundary together. That's a probably a good way to show yourself that what you're talking about isn't actually a boundary. But it might be a ruler and agreement but not something that you yourself are enforcing rather something that you put up and that your partner you know keeps breaking or doing whatever but that's something to think of. about that actually you're not really talking about boundaries in this scenario. Yeah, it's a great little litmus test. Mm-hmm. Okay, so for the end of the episode here, we want to take a look at some concrete examples of what does it look like when you shift from a rules-based philosophy to more of a communication and trust philosophy or we'll call it an agreement philosophy as a shorthand for right now. And then also is a boundary an option here? Is a boundary relevant to this and what would that look like? So who wants to take us on this little demo? I'll take it. I'll take it. I'll do it. Okay, so in this example, I have a personal feeling and the personal feeling is I can't stand the smell of cigarette smoke and I don't want to be around it. So that's my feeling, that's my preference. However, my partner occasionally likes to smoke at bars when they're out with their friends. Okay, so there's something that my partner does that runs counter to how I feel about it or makes me uncomfortable or something like that. So there's a number of options of how we can resolve this or rectify this essentially. I could put in a really restrictive rule, which is you were not allowed to smoke anymore or you're not allowed to go out to bars and smoke with your friends anymore. Okay. Now that rule could solve my problem of preventing me from having to be around cigarette smoke. It would probably be a difficult rule to enforce honestly, you know, because it would require me to be like keeping tabs on my partner and maybe having their friends report back to me on what's going on. It would require some work to be resentful. If you want to guarantee they really, really want to go to a bar and smoke, make that roll. Yes. Yes. That's also the side effect, most likely in the situation. Okay. So I could ease up on the restrictiveness of that rule and I could make a slightly better rule or we called it kind of a bandaid rule. I don't even want to call it better per se, but. Okay, but maybe slightly less restrictive, which is like, okay, the rule is if you're going to go out to a bar and smoke, you have to take off your clothes in the laundry room before you come into the bedroom. Like you have to. There's all your clothes. You need to walk into the whole shower and then feel like you should add that to your room and brush your teeth and then you can come in. Okay. Now, again, this gets me a little bit closer to what it is that I need. It doesn't allow for a lot of flexibility. If it's like, well, it's freezing colds and I don't want to have to like take off all my clothes and be naked completely and like walk through the house in the dark, you know, or there's just something like that. So we could take a little bit further. You could talk about it and we could come up with an agreement and I can be like, hey, if you're going to go out to a bar and smoke, maybe when you come back, just kind of consider how smoky you and your clothes might be and maybe take some steps to mitigate the smell before coming into contact with me. Or maybe my partner and I can work on like, what would make this feel easier? And maybe, you know, he could be like, well, okay, I could get under in the laundry room, but I can also make sure that maybe I set some other clothes out in the laundry room ahead of time so that when I come home and it's late, I can just do that and switch clothes or maybe I'll keep extra set of clothes in my car or something, you know, so we could make it into a collaborative process of like, okay, how can I get what is that I need in this situation? And to give them the freedom to maybe they have a different idea of like, oh, I could do this and that would also solve the problem for you and help give you what you need. You know, it allows some flexibility and it allows them to take steps in caring for you. Yeah. Yeah. You could also have a boundary in this situation and it could be like, if my partner gets into bed with me and they smell all smoky, then I'm going to go and sleep on the couch. And now this could be tricky because you could also turn that into a threat, right? Because then it can kind of loop around and it could be like, if you come in smelling like cigarette smoke and get into bed with me, like, I am going to sleep on the couch and I'm never going to sleep in the same bed with you again. So you better make sure that that doesn't happen. Whoa. It could be that extreme or it could just be like, you know, maybe your partner goes out and smokes once a year with their friends and then they come home that night and you wake up and you're like, oh, God, they smell terrible. I'm just going to go sleep on the couch, protect myself, protect my sleep, just go sleep on the couch. And then I don't know if it seems like it's a big enough problem that merits a discussion. We can talk about it. If not, then it's like, whatever. I enforced my boundary to protect myself in that situation. And this is a good example too where you're that boundary and that sort of agreement we talked about work together, right? It's like, I have this boundary. So no matter what, I won't have to sleep in bed with that smell because I have a boundary and I will go take care of myself. I will take responsibility for myself. However, assuming that my partner does care about me and my well-being, they know that I don't like sleeping on the couch or I'm assuming that you don't. But you know, if my partner knows that about me then they're and we've talked about this then they would probably, I would hope, take some steps to not smell like that so that I don't have to do that. Right? So see how these two kind of can complement each other. And it's not like, well, my partner either did or didn't do the thing I wanted and now they have all the power and there's nothing I can do about it. So it's like, that's where the boundary comes in is empowering yourself. Yeah, it takes some of the power back. So okay, there are common rules out there that a lot of people will try, especially like when they're first getting into polyamory. But some of these also have to do with non-monogamous relationships rather. But we wanted to get into a couple of really common rules that people try. Kind of take the same. So what are some of those? Treatment of all of them of like what we can try to do that. Sure. What's the rule version? What's the agreement version? What's a boundary version? Yeah. Something like that. Yeah. Okay, so I'm going to start here with rule number one. So this one, there's different variations on it, but it's something like as your primary partner or the person you live with, you can only have two dates out of the house per week or less. Some sort of time restriction or like you can only date Monday through Friday, nine to five while I'm at work or whatever it is, right? You can only go out on one weekend day or all your weekends have to be for me, whatever it is, some restriction on time. So let's look at this one. So that's what would be like where that rule comes from? What is it trying to get the personal feeling? Well, okay. Yeah, okay. The personal feeling I feel is related to like I want to make sure that I'm also getting quality time with you or like enough quality time with you. And I do feel like that rule can sometimes be phrased in a different way of like we need to have at least five nights a week together. That's our rule. Sure. Yeah. Same thing essentially. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But I do think that it is that that feeling of like and maybe there's a fear there of like I'm afraid that if this rule isn't in place, then you're going to be gone all the time. And I'm going to be alone all the time. I think that's a common fear that people experience. Mm-hmm. Well, the partner action and this could just simply be that they have another person who they really care about and that they want to see on a regular basis. And so there's a potential for those two things to be incompatible. The reality of that situation may or may not be the case, but yeah, they may feel like oh, there's a possibility that I'm never going to get to see my partner because they're going to be gone with this other person all the time, right? Right. So then the restrictive rule is this one, right? It's that you can only go out two days a week or you have to spend five days a week with me. Or I would say that the slightly less restrictive version of it can sometimes look like, well, you just always have to spend more nights a week with me than with someone else or it can turn into things like well, you just you can't go on trips with them or you can't spend more than more than two days in a row with them or you know, there's different ways it can look to try to soften it, but it's still kind of coming back to this same thing that has a lot of those rule problems that we talked about earlier, right? Well, what's, yeah, of being inflexible and not allowing us to turn toward each other and instead just kind of the best you can hope for is just compliance. Well, what's a good agreement with this one? Yeah, what might be an agreement version of this this be? So this is what I actually talked to people about quite a bit and it's to try to get to have a conversation where you're actually talking about the heart of this, which in this case is I want to be sure that you're spending quality time with me. I want to know that you care about your time with me and I find that often this comes down not to the amount of time, but the quality of it. Because if you think about it, especially with people who live together and like Emily and I, we were really bad about this when we lived together years and years ago was yes, we spent more nights a week together than we ever did with anyone else, but it was usually less nights doing chores or watching TV. Fucking around on the couch watching TV, eating some, I don't know, Pad Thai. It was less about doing like an actual date with each other. So yeah, I'm assuming probably the thing that people want most is like, well, if I'm going out two nights a week on dates with other people, then why don't we have a couple nights a week where we have a date night and you know, we're out of the house. we're doing something really special with one another and that way I feel like my time with you is also really important to you. Mm-hmm. Or even just something about, let's make sure that we have even just one night a week together where we have a certain amount of time that we're not on our phones and we're just here with each other. Or at least we're not talking to other people on our phones. Maybe we're playing space team with each other. Or you know, whatever. Whatever it is we like to do. Just from the past, mostly. Maybe it is that we like to watch TV together. But let's do that intentionally. Let's be together and do that instead of what a lot of us tend to do which is just like I'm watching TV but I'm also on my phone and I'm doing other things and I'm not really as present as I could be. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And so what would a boundary with this be? I suppose if I'm thinking about the boundary treatment it would be. I guess it would kind of be going even deeper and it would be a sense of like, I can't be in a relationship if I feel neglected by my partner or I can't be in a relationship if I'm not getting my quality time needs met. Now it's still worth. That's a rough boundary there. It still requires, I think, examination because it's like I think you need to examine for yourself. What do I actually need as far as quality time or quantity of time is concerned? Is it, again, like really check yourself? Is it just that I need to feel like I'm getting more time than this other person? Or whatever, you know? And I think this is. Yeah, I think this is an example where a boundary is not actually appropriate for this particular thing. I think it's. Well, maybe not for like trying to enforce or change the situation but it's like that people have those boundaries. Maybe they don't understand, maybe they don't state them but it's like I know I have those boundaries. If suddenly like I didn't see Jace for like weeks at a time and there was no communication, I'm like that there's a boundary there clearly because I'm like I don't think I can be in a relationship like this. And so I would have to either. You know, we'd have to kind of figure out how we fix this or I'd have to leave. Like people have those boundaries. I don't think that this is a necessary. Again, like it's a situation where it could be very easy to turn that into a threat. Yeah, what I'm getting at though is I don't think. I don't think trying to turn everything into a boundary like that because even the boundary you mentioned is very amorphous. Right? That I just don't think that is necessarily helpful. And maybe it is for some people but I think that at least for me falls more into this category of like. If I'm with a partner who just really doesn't give a shit about spending time with me, we're just gonna break up. And it doesn't have to be so much a boundary. Whereas I feel like boundaries are particularly useful in protecting ourselves when we can get them a little more specific. I'm just gonna say though that like some people. I feel like you are not this type of person but some people need to be aware of this kind of boundary with themselves. Yeah, that's a great point. Yeah. Because I've got tons of clients where it's like they do start dating someone non-monogamous and that person is just like checked out all the time. And they don't know. Am I just supposed to be just okay with this? Because non-monogamy or. But you know, but it is nice when we do spend time together. But it's like I think for some people it is important to be clear on that boundary of like. No, actually I need these certain things in a relationship and this relationship is not giving it to me. Therefore I need to make my own decision to protect myself and maybe not be in this kind of relationship. So in the bonus content for this one we want to go through some more rules, some more really common ones. And we would love to do that now but we're already at an hour long and you know. We got to. We got to have some sort of standards for this link of this podcast. We have to have some sort of boundaries. Because you've never performed. How long we want a podcast at you all out there. Never before have we gone over an hour as our listeners well know. So. Gosh. Yeah. We got to keep hold ourselves to that. No, but honestly this is something that. I think we all find really fascinating this process of kind of looking at these and getting to the bottom of what it is that. What's really the purpose of these and what are maybe more skillful ways of getting what we need. So we would love to do that and to do that in the bonus content. We would also love to hear from all of you what are your experiences with these. Do you have particular rules that you have struggled with or that you still do think are really important to have in your relationship? Or was there something that came up in this that made you really realize, oh yeah. I could be going about this in a different way that might make my relationships better and more positive and more focused on turning toward and trusting each other. We would love to hear about all of that as well as joining you in the bonus content. And to get access to all of that and to have a place to share your thoughts with other listeners. You can join our Patreon at patreon.com/multiamory where you can discuss in our episode discussion thread in our Facebook group and in our Discord chat. In addition, you could chat about it publicly in our Twitter, Facebook or Instagram. You can email us at [email protected] or leave us a voicemail at 678-MUL-TI-05 or you can leave us a voice message on Facebook. Multiamory is created and produced by Emily Matlack, Dedeker Winston and me, Jace Lindgren. Our episodes are edited by Mauricio Bavanera. Our social media wizard is Will McMillan. Our theme song is "Forms I Know I Did" by Josh and Anand from the Fractal Cave EP. The full transcript is available on this episode's page on multiamory.com.