(no subject)

[geekchick]

Here's a poly-related question that's come up more than once now, and I thought I'd check to see other people's thoughts on the matter.

Say your partner is getting involved with someone new. What level of contact and outreach do you expect from this new person up front?  Do you expect them to, for example, send you an email to say hello and to explain that they don't want to steal your partner from you? Do you expect them to make a concentrated effort to be actively friendly towards you and assume some sort of hostility if they don't, or do you assume things are fine unless there's some indication otherwise?  For that matter, do you even consider your partner's relationship with them to be any of your business?  (Assuming that your partner in question is not a spouse or primary-level partner.)   How do you handle it when one person in a relationship web has got wildly different ideas (in either direction) on how much contact is required for comfort than the other people involved? [Edit: I seem to have been unclear on this last bit, based on some of the answers. When I say "how much contact is required", in this context I mean in the initial getting involved stage; say Partner A really wants Potential Partner B to check in with them while B is initially getting involved with their common partner or else they'll assume Partner B is hostile, while it may not occur to Partner B that there's any reason to check in in the first place. All of this is in the context of making initial relationship-noises.]

Usually my take on it is that while outreach is not unwelcome, it's far from required.   If the only obvious thing that we have in common is that we share (or potentially share)  a partner, I don't necessarily feel like I need to try to force some sort of friendship there.  I assume things are neutral to okay unless I hear otherwise, and I honestly don't understand the mindset of assuming hostility from the outset.

Comments

Re: I missed a part

[mactavish.livejournal.com]

I think there's a big grey area in there. I don't see why C would "bring B in" without having talked it over with A, already, veto or otherwise, and I can't imagine a situation in which A wouldn't at least say so if s/he were incomfortable with someone else, even without veto rights. And if A and C have a good relationship and C trusts A's judgement, C would at least give A's concerns some weight, no? Is that coercion? (If C continues to push to be involved with both A and C, there are any number of reasons. Maybe A's been known to panic over just about anyone new, or maybe A holds an inexplicable grudge about B, but then there's more to work out.)

At any rate, there's a huge grey area before it becomes coercion.

Re: I missed a part

[brian1789.livejournal.com]

As I read him, he's saying that his partners are all independent, as though what happens with one doesn't affect the others. They have to resolve their own issues caused by him adding others -- in this case, A has to just cope, or leave. I associate the play-now-and-let-the-OSOs-just-cope-afterwards approach, that I seem to see in pdx42's description, with large-scale drama-generation...