What do I want from my romantic life? Am I open to multiple sexual relationships, romantic relationships, or both? If I want more than one lover, what degree of closeness and intimacy do I expect, and what do I offer?
Let’s break this into parts:
What do I want from my romantic life? Currently I want affection, respect, consideration of my needs and desires, time together (different for each partner in nature and length), and a willingness to participate in my life outside of our particular relationship. Beyond that, I have different desires for each of my relationships because they are inherently different, due to being with different people.
Am I open to multiple sexual relationships, romantic relationships, or both? Currently I’m pretty saturated in terms of romantic relationships, at least really involved ones. Right now I’m only really interested in pursuing casual romantic relationships, ones where we get together every once in awhile and where our lives are not very entangled, other than by having overlapping friend groups. As for sexual relationships, I am more open to those: for more than casual, but not overly entangled – for friends I can have sex with, but don’t need a lot of my time (because I don’t really have a lot at this point in time).
If I want more than one lover, what degree of closeness and intimacy do I expect, and what do I offer? Currently, I am fairly saturated – I do have a couple casual dating partners, but beyond casual, I don’t think I have the space, time, energy, or spoons to handle that. As an introvert I need to have time for myself, I need to have spare time in my schedule to date myself.
So for anyone I am not entangled with (and also to those I am) I expect an understanding of my limitations with regards to time (whether that be because of my entangled partners or myself), I expect us to be able to converse about what we expect, I expect to have the chance (at least occasionally) to talk to each other, I expect that if anything comes up sexually or with regards to feelings that we will address it with each other, I expect that we will get some time to spend with just each other, I would expect to get touch time, and I expect to be recognized in situations where we are spending time with your other partner(s) (no denial that I exist or that we have some sort of relationship with each other).
I offer open communication, touch, time to spend with each other (either in person, digital message, or on the phone), time on my calendar when we want to spend time together (as is possible for each of us, schedule permitting), honesty, and conversation when we want it and silence when we don’t. I’m sure I’m forgetting a few things….