I am glad that both of you are/have good relationship role models. Right now, I'm very grateful for Soren, and how sanely he and I deal with relationships. Mark and I started younger ("and with a huge handicap," says the snarky part of my mind), so things weren't quite as smooth.
My partner and I did agree to be monogamous at the beginning of our relationship, until we were able to work through defensive behaviors we had acquired from our previous relationships which had not ended well.
These behaviors would have made any other relationship (not to mention our own) much more difficult to sustain over the long term. I believe this "time out" helped to make our relationship stronger, and although we have been monogamous for long periods of time since, this is now de facto rather than de jure.
Skillful, yes, but also fortunate in having met such good people, at times when we were able to get to know and love each other. It's not difficult for me to construct scenarios in which I never got to know Q or adrian_turtle, for example.
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I've been de facto monogamous for long periods--but I've never had a relationship that was expected/agreed to be monogamous, or wanted one.
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These behaviors would have made any other relationship (not to mention our own) much more difficult to sustain over the long term. I believe this "time out" helped to make our relationship stronger, and although we have been monogamous for long periods of time since, this is now de facto rather than de jure.
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