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Originally Posted by ratbastid
It hasn't been easy. We've dealt with jealousy, envy, frustration, fears of abandonment... the list goes on and on and on. But who we are now is SO much more able to express what we say love is. We're as close as a couple as we've ever been. Other relationships may come and go, but we're clear that we're together for life.
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To me, that's the key point in all discussions of multiplex love: whose has precedence? If I had time to save only one of you from a burning building, which would it be? Which one am I committed to growing old with, and how much do my commitments mean?
Everybody wants precedence in the relationship that's most important to them. Even kids want to know that Mom and Dad love them best, or at least doesn't love their brother or sister _more._
If you can nail that down in a relationship -- you and me, we're for the ages -- then exploring relationships with other people is possible with mutual consent. On the other hand, there can always be complications: can you be sure that, even if you enter a relationship with full disclosure, the other person might hope for "something more?" That they might someday be the one with precedence?
So while I say that exploring other relationships is possible in a partnership where both agree, I wouldn't try it myself. Part of that is my own personality; I tend to be 100 percent with whoever I'm with at the time, and that makes it difficult to maintain a perspective. And part of that is because, relatively recently, I had a close but (I thought) professional relationship with a woman turn bad because she started crossing every boundary there was -- all the time proclaiming that she wasn't, and that I needed to "have a breakthrough." (It ended with me severing contact, and her standing in my driveway screaming, "I need you to make me feel happy!" She was married, of course, and so was I.)
In short, there are many pitfalls. The relationships that Ratbastid and Lurkette have forged have been good within their own relationship because they've thought things out, communicated well, and reaffirmed their basic relationship. Where such communication and deliberation does _not_ take place -- the vast majority of cases -- things don't tend to go well. Because one or the other of the partners feels threatened: they no longer are sure who has precedence.