Dave's Blog

In most cases, when I meet someone new that I might be interested in, it’s never more than 5 minutes into the interaction before I mention something about “girlfriends.” I usually disqualify the vegetarians/vegans in that same time frame. Often, I disqualify those that don’t eat seafood or sushi at the same time. I’ve gotten pretty good at qualifying for my “must haves” in less than 10 minutes.

If you are looking to build a relationship, you’ve got to know what you want. If you don’t have your must haves and dealbreakers figured out, you’re likely to settle for less than what will work for you. This applies to any relationship, not just a multiple partner relationship.

If you don’t have your own life together, why would anyone want to join your life? Are you looking for a relationship to define you?

Many people have ended up in relationships knowing that their “new love” doesn’t match their list, but often believe that they can change the other person to include these things. This is often a path to a failed relationship.

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The basic path to building a relationship would be as follows:
1) Stop looking for a relationship.
2) Get your shit together.
3) Figure out what you want.
4) Determine if what you are doing now, will have any chance of getting you what you want.
5) Adjust as necessary (back to step 1 if necessary)
6) Once you have the above under control, make sure that having fun is included in your life. Don’t set aside time just to have fun, but make sure that your life is fun while you are living it and have your shit together.
7) Figure out if you have enough contact with other people in your daily life to have a chance of meeting someone “special.” If not, adjust your schedule as necessary.

What is the likelihood of meeting someone if the only places you are during the day is your office, alone or your home, alone or your car? Locking yourself in your office to eat lunch means that you have no chance of meeting anyone during that time. Do you actually think that you’re going to meet someone special if you only do your grocery shopping once a month? Do you actually think you are going to meet someone online playing some MMORPG (online gaming)?

If you set aside time every day just to find someone, you’re less likely to find someone than if you just meet people as part of your normal routine. I’ll be addressing some ideas of things you can do during the week in a future post. If you are generally social and interact at least a little with everyone you come in contact with, you’re more likely to find someone (without even trying to).

From Different paths, different relationships I stated

Most people assume that when you are casually dating, you are dating a few people at the same time. They also assume that you will either stop dating them, or stop dating the others when you decide to take one of the relationships to a “more serious level.” This isn’t the case with poly relationships. Simply waiting for the explosion and stating at that time, “I never agreed to be exclusive with you.” is one way to do this. This is also the path that will lead to the most drama and pain for your partner and yourself.

I believe Kevin had a question about this paragraph so I will attempt to make this more clear.

If you want your partner to get royally pissed off at you and cause all sorts of drama, that you would well deserve, do the following:

Wait until you have been dating someone for a while, and decide to take that relationship “to the next level” of seriousness (commitment, officially calling her your girlfriend, giving her a “promise ring”) but never ever suggest, or hint, or tell stories about, or bring up in any way the fact that you may never be exclusive with anyone.  Then, when your partner assumes that you are exclusive, and you act otherwise, and get caught, only then do you tell this partner “I never claimed that I would ever be exclusive with you or anyone else.”  This works especially well if you somehow give the person you are dating the idea that you haven’t been dating anyone else the entire time you have been seeing him/her.

If you don’t give the other person any idea that you may view relationships differently from what is considered “normal” it really isn’t fair to let them assume anything. Just because you are a different type of person from what they are used to dating doesn’t mean they will assume that everything about you is different.

It is generally a bad idea, also, to build a poly relationship with any of your partners thinking that they have a chance to become “the only one.”  If you truly are looking to be monogamous some day, then this doesn’t apply to you.  If you are like me, however, don’t give someone a false impression.

Bad karma.  Bad relationship.  Bad reputation. 

Try to leave them better than you found them.