"for me poly is as much about having a relationship with just my lover as it is about being part of a bigger network."

for me living is being a part of a bigger network. i don't follow the typical rules of pair-bonding in the way that most in this society do. it just has never really made that much sense to me. when i get too deeply into a duo i get co-dependant. i have no desires to be co-dependant. i did that for years with my mom. when i saw tendencies to lose myself in a relationship with one other person, i realized that for me, right now, i cannot commit to a future time that is not now. i'm really trying very hard to be present now.

"dating or getting in a relationship with someone whose partner doesn't support thier relationship with you has never worked for me either as the new person or as a person in the established duo or group."

i guess i see people much more as independant beings. i don't idolize heirarchical ways of looking at interactions between people. a label or relat-ing-ship doesn't mean that i should or shouldn't try to explore where i am led with someone. i don't believe that anyone can own another person. not in this society. marriage does not mean ownership and if you own yourself you make your own decisions. when i find myself moving towards intimacy (of whatever sort) with a person, it's usually THAT person who i ask to make decisions about what THEY want. i usually expect that if they have a "primary relationship" that they will be first off considering that in discussion. if not, i will ask about it and the rules there. if it's more than someone i'm having fun with at a party that is.

"I can't imagine getting involved with someone whose partner was not ok with it. to me that borders on cheating or at the very least the person sabotaging thier primary relationship and i don't want to be a part of that drama. "

i actually was in a situation where i was in a primary relationship and did not support my partner's other relationship. i never ever would have vetoed her seeing the person, but i became a little obsessed with their stuff. i didn't like the other person for my own reasons that had nothing to do with how good she was for my partner's life. my partner continued to see the other person and i left the partnership. it was the best possible thing that could have happened for all of us. they are much better at keeping each other satisfied and happy than i ever could and though the other person and i are not friends or anything, my ex and i have a wonderful loving friendship. she is one of the most important relationships in my life. even still, now that we are not partners, we make significant time for each other in our lives. it turned out great that this other person brought drama into our primary partnership and that i wouldn't veto. i made decisions about my own life as an individual and did not keep trying to make her make decisions she didn't want to.

my life now is also incredibly amazing and more full of love and support and my feeling good about myself and the people in my life that ever before. i think life is leading all of us to our OWN paths and places and experiences. sometimes there are people we happen upon who have so much to give us so much of the time that enlightens, brightens, stimulates and loves us in the right way that we link up with them and hang on tight. that makes sense to me. what doesn't is when someone has a chance to glow in the light of some experience they feel is amazing and someone who really loves them saying, "no. i don't want you to have that."

i guess i don't think of myself as a threat to primary relationships because i'm not really built for them. i love it if someone who i bond with fabulously wants to spend time with me, but i am never looking to steal someone from their primary relationship. if they are primary relationship inclined, like all kinds of rules and stuff, i'm never going to satisfy them by replacing what they have with their primary. i make that very clear to people.
and i actually don't like drama either. it's why i asked this question. asking permission didn't seem to work for me to lessen drama when i did go against character and ask the person i wanted to date to ask their partner. at what point do you respect yourself and the person you started dating and say, "no, you are outside of what we are having here and we have begun something that feels good and real to us." at what point do you put someone else's happiness above your own? maybe it's cause i know that for me, if i am unhappy, it is easy for me to make the people around me miserable. so i try to keep committed to living and trying to find happiness and joy and peace and comfort and excitement. that way i can be a better creature for everything around me.

"I do find that a person that is really interested in me will sometimes sugar coat the truth and so I perfer to actually talk to the potential sweetie in law themselves. "

this feels weird to me. i'm not dating the sweetie. i guess this comes back to seeing people as individuals who choose to connect with others on their own and do not have someone else making their choices for them. there are several situations where i have dated people and it would have made their partner feel very uncomfortable if i wanted to meet them solely to get to know them as the partner of the person i am dating. different people have very different cultural or personal ways of going about poly. i like meeting people and am happy to all have dinner if that's what folks want, but i feel like a forced meeting is weird. and going up to someone and asking their permission to fuck someone else is just super weird, too. interest in getting to know me because you might like to know me as a person (even if it's because you want a face to go with the stories you hear) is totally cool. i just hate being given ugly energy by people and don't try to put myself in that position, so if someone is highly inclined towards ugly jealousy and we have to pretend there is no intimate or sexual chemistry between me and their partner i don't really like to do that alot. people like that are having their own intense struggles. when i am really jealous or envious or anything like that it is really painful, luckily i can usually resolve it really quickly by reminding myself to be happy for the happiness the person i love enough to be jealous about is having.

what i intensely dislike is feeling like i have to censor myself. i won't do it. if something is happening in my life i will not keep it a big secret. to me that feels like what happened when i was one of the "other women/other men" when i dated someone who was inclined towards poly who was cheating on her monogamously inclined "love-of-her-life". i was young and would not do it again. i dislike cheating. even if things are ugly because people are struggling with the truth, i would much prefer the truth to cheating.

Hey! Thanks Kerrick and turtle, for answering the question. Anyone else have anything to say? If you do go about asking permission how do you do it? How does it make you feel?