In my dating adventures fairly recently I had a person tell me that they felt that dating me would require them to do a lot of things that they don’t want to do in a relationship because they think those things are excessive and they didn’t feel like manipulated into a relationship they didn’t benefit from like the people who at the time were in or talking about relationshipping with me.
This was also after I decided sex was probably never happening and I told them so. We also never made it to going out bc I don’t meet up with people till I’m comfortable. (This may also be why I haven’t tried to figure out my OKC password bc this was my last login and I was like over OKC at that point).
But you know what? That’s great! It’s good to establish boundaries. Not great to be a dick about it.
The rules for dating me don’t make me an uptight bitch or a spoiled brat.
If you want to be in a relationship with me, you
-will radically love me
-radically support me
-radically honor me
-radically communicate with me.
And that means there are things you’re not going to like. There are things that you will want to do with me that you’ll never get to do because I don’t agree with them. But that’s the whole point of a relationship created between people is to have conversations and figure out what you want out of a relationship. When I negotiate a relationship with people they are given the baseline for what I require to be in a relationship with me. If that doesn’t work for you then we’re not in a relationship.
But honestly, I feel like that’s really regular and if people are not doing that and still getting in relationships with people that are not doing things they want and need, then I’m pretty sure that’s not my personal problem.
I’ve also been told a lot of other things in my adventure in the polyamorous community over the years.
I’ve been called abusive and manipulative because of the high levels of communication I describe as being necessary for my relationships.
I’ve been called spoiled and prissy for having specific needs that one particular partner was heavily negotiated and practically begged to be able to engage because I felt that it wasn’t appropriate to let them engage that way because I felt I was being spoiled and a lot.
Not only do I have strict views of how I will be treated in a relationship; I have strict ways of getting into relationships and strict ways of ensuring equity can be established in relationships.
Again relationshipping with me is not for everyone.
It’s for people who can establish methods of communication and processing and for the hard work of living with a person that has disabilities that impacts their life.
It’s for people who can live with having discussions about every interaction and expectation in a relationship to have clarity.
Because I have shit and I work on that shit.
But having invisible disabilities is hard and building relationships with them is harder.
Involving someone without giving them the facts is not for me. It’s ok if not having the information to make those decisions as I disclose is not for them.
I value the ideas of informed consent and being risk-aware. I don’t believe you can be in a risk-aware relationship with me if you don’t have the facts.
If you are relationshipping with you are part of an accountability circle. You cant do that if you don’t know me. Due to the various definitions of how people date, you can’t date me if you don’t know me.
My relationship approach has been described as clinical. And I don’t understand what’s wrong with that word. As a person who has disabilities my life has a lot of clinical components. I’m not ashamed of that as a person whose disabilities affect their everyday life that I consider that before involving others. It can be detrimental not to. So when it comes to relationships, of course, some of that will have equitable background for it especially when there’s so much to disclose and figure out before agreeing to whatever type of partnership is desired.
Do you want a casual relationship? Undefined? Something full of intent? Do you want to build something that will last the intention of a family? With the intention of working through rather than saying this is no longer viable?
I am not my illnesses and disorders, but they do inform and impact the way I interact with the world.
Revolution Kitty 