{"id":672,"date":"2012-03-06T08:00:30","date_gmt":"2012-03-06T13:00:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.polyamorousmisanthrope.com\/?p=672"},"modified":"2012-03-06T08:00:30","modified_gmt":"2012-03-06T13:00:30","slug":"unbundling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/polyamorousmisanthrope.com\/wordpress\/2012\/03\/06\/unbundling\/","title":{"rendered":"Unbundling"},"content":{"rendered":"

Guest column by Vrimj today!<\/em><\/p>\n

Suggestion for Married Couples moving from monogamy to polyamory:<\/p>\n

Unbundle.<\/p>\n

A lot of the newbie mistakes that hurt everyone in the poly world come from married couples who consider themselves a package deal, in part because they consider themselves a package.<\/p>\n

When businesses try to sell me bundled services, say the TV, phone, internet deals out there, the chances are that only one of those things is actually driving my business (in this case it is internet for me) something else might be neutral or maybe nice to have (TV for me) and something else might actually be something I don’t want and dislike having but will put up with to get a better deal on what I want (for me, the landline phone, I hate them)<\/p>\n

Yea, when couples sell themselves as a bundle the effect is likely to be the same. Someone\u00a0might<\/em>\u00a0be thrilled to get TV and Internet, but it is unlikely that they are going to feel exactly the same way about them.<\/p>\n

It is more likely that the reaction will be, ok this is something that comes with the thing I really want and makes it easier to get.
\nAnd that\u00a0SUCKS<\/strong>\u00a0from both sides. I know I did it. Oh my did it suck.<\/p>\n

I suggest instead you date as individuals. Yea you aren’t sharing a “customer base” but you know what? You are much more likely to have enthusiastic “customers” who\u00a0really are in to you<\/em>\u00a0as a result. If someone happens to be a shared partner you can have the assurance it is because they wanted what each of you had to offer.<\/p>\n

How to do it-<\/p>\n

Don’t start looking right away. Yea really. Put down the OK Cupid profile.<\/p>\n

Instead start thinking about how you work as a relationship. I suggest you do this by looking at your calendars. If you don’t have calendars write down the reasons you don’t and\/or keep one for a few weeks.<\/p>\n

Go through and look at each event and roughly classify it as fun or nonfun. Then add if it was shared or solo. If it was solo add who was doing it.<\/p>\n

Go though and sum up each category and look at the numbers.<\/p>\n

Now (and only now) ask yourself, are you used to having fun separately?<\/p>\n

If you are not\u00a0start here<\/strong>. There is a lot to get used to in polyamory but goodness knows you don’t need to add to it. Getting used to having fun separately so you don’t pile that on top of all the other stuff.<\/p>\n

If you are not regularly doing fun apart (say at\u00a0least<\/em>\u00a015% of your fun) work on that first, it will make the rest of the adjustments easier because you will have something to compare them to.<\/p>\n

Also having fun apart doing things that are not really mutual interests can make the next step, finding interesting people to date, a lot easier!<\/p>\n

Unbundling<\/strong><\/center><\/p>\n

\u00a9 2012, Vrimj<\/p>\n

Used by permission<\/p>\n

Vrimj disdains twee bios…<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Guest column by Vrimj today! Suggestion for Married Couples moving from monogamy to polyamory: Unbundle. A lot of the newbie mistakes that hurt everyone in the poly world come from married couples who consider themselves a package deal, in part because they consider themselves a package. When businesses try to sell me bundled services, say…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-672","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-guest-column","category-polyamory-101"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/polyamorousmisanthrope.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/672","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/polyamorousmisanthrope.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/polyamorousmisanthrope.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/polyamorousmisanthrope.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/polyamorousmisanthrope.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=672"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/polyamorousmisanthrope.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/672\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/polyamorousmisanthrope.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=672"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/polyamorousmisanthrope.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=672"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/polyamorousmisanthrope.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=672"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}