What Are Things To Consider and Goals When Merging Policules
Cathy: If you’re merging household and determining compatibility, what are some thoughts about poly styles and goals to talk about with the partners that are merging? We want to have a really peaceful powerful group as we merge our polycules.
Reid: Polycules. Cathy Vartuli from https://TheIntimacyDojo.com/
Cathy: Reid Mihalko from https://www.ReidAboutSex.com/.
Reid: Hmmm.
Cathy: I mean, can be challenging because you get one polycule and you have the known standards and expectations and he works through the goals and boundaries and then you have another one and might not match, that there might be some flooding ahead.
Reid: Yeah. I mean, my advice I teach this in some of my relationship classes. The idea of getting really care about what’s the purpose of being in a relationship at all. And that you being a poly person who likes to have a several different swirling electrons merging too create your poly molecule, if that’s the right term you’re the chemist here but the idea of have everybody who’s part of the household sit down and get clear about why they’re in a relationship with anyone.
Cathy: And why would they want to join households? What do you want to create?
Reid: Why would you be in a household with anyone like what’s the purpose of household for you? What’s the purpose of relationship for you? And then for everybody who’s merging households, what’s the shared intention for having the household? And when I teach you some relationships around the shared intention for a relationship, it’s the idea of no matter how bad the fight or the upset this is always the place you can meet and will always be in agreement. The best example the one that I use is for people who are parents who may be are getting divorce may be not. One thing the parents can almost always agree on is to be the best parents and co-parents for each other’s children. It is rare but it does happen when you have a parent who is like, “fuck no. No, my purpose in life is to not be the best parent to my children.”
Cathy: Oops!
That’s problematic, but most parents can agree to try to show up and be a good parents and that agreement is still true no matter how much they are upset to each other. That becomes like the base camp that you can always go back to and then build out from a place of agreement as you navigate things. I would imagine in my infinite wisdom in this video only a few minutes in, pulling these answers out of my ass that the same thing could be true for a household if you have different households merging into one. What is the shared household intention that no matter how big the upset, how many times somebody puts the toilet paper on the runway or leaves the toothbrush, toothpaste cap off.
Cathy: Or drinks last of the milk.
Reid: Whose paramour, you know did whatever no matter how big the upset, what’s the one thing at least that you can all agree on that you will almost always agree on. Establish that first and then build out from there about what each other needs are for the household, the people in the household to feel loved, honored and cherished.
Cathy: And make sure that everyone is in agreement. I know sometimes like there may be a new relationship in relationship energy and it’s really exciting and you’re like, I’m going to move my new lover in but your old relationships can be like, “What? We didn’t agree of it”. I think it’s important to talk to everybody and make sure that it’s yes for you.
Reid: And then the last thing that I will drop in again which is stuff that I cover in my relationship seminars is how you are going to handle when somebody realizes there was something that we should have talked about that we didn’t know to talk about. So this is really clever stuff about retro actively like we’re going to create today. This thing that’s going to save our assets years from now, which is the idea of and this is really useful just in Poly and relationships, this is also really useful for monogamy too. We had a need for a boundary that we didn’t anticipate. It never got spoken and the reason we’re finding it out now is it has been violated.
Cathy: Yes and the audience was already upset.
Reid: What’s the protocol? If you have something established then at least you can be like, “Holy shit! It’s happening!” Look how smart we were to predict that we wouldn’t know everything and then you go into whatever your protocol is result.
Cathy: Another thing that makes me feel really safe and timing exit strategies even though you’re like getting into a relationship or going deeper why would we have that but having an exit strategy gives everybody security. Knowing what would be the size of this when we would know to decide that sort of thing and we have a video on that a few exits strategies.
Reid: Cool!
Cathy: Yes.
Reid: What do you think? Was it helpful? Was it not helpful? What did we forget? What worked really well for you? Put it in the comments!