Would You Keep Your Own Bedroom?

[joreth]

I have a question for all poly people who are pair-bonded. The poll wizard limits me to characters, so let me explain what I'm looking for before you get to it.  There is no "right" or "wrong" answers, I am genuinely interested to hear how other people view their relationships.  You're welcome to explain further or ask questions in the comments.

For the purposes of this question, "pair-bonded" means one or more of the following:

• Having an intense/deep emotional connection to someone that includes feeling like part of a "couple".
• Sharing dwelling space with another person
• Mixing finances with another person
• Committed to childrearing with the other parent
• Legally or religiously married to another person
• Uses the term "primary" to describe a relationship

If you have more than one person with whom you are pair-bonded, or you are in a bonded family structure (e.g. a live-in triad), this also applies to you, even though I am using terminology for a MF couple from the perspective of the female.  Just replace the pronouns with the appropriate pronouns, because it's time-consuming and cumbersome to try and cover all possible gender & orientation configurations, so I'm going to use the most common ones for simplicity only.

I would like to stick with people who have someone in mind for this question, because it is impossible to tell what our future relationships will look like, even though some of us think we know what we want it to look like.  So I want to stick with people who have a pair-bonded partner and who will have to think of how this scenario would affect their existing living arrangements and habits.  I see a lot of people who come to polyamory as part of a pre-existing couple, usually monogamous or swingers, and I am curious as to how that affects a couple that already has habits or patterns of being "a couple" when it comes to multi-partner living arrangements.  That's not the question, that's why I'm asking partnered people the question below.  Since our culture is not really set up for communal living arrangements, many poly families don't have the option - they get as many bedrooms as they can afford, or they deal with the "other couple" living across town because that's where everyone bought their houses before getting into a relationship or because they can't afford a house big enough for everyone.  But I'd like to know what people would *prefer* in an ideal world.

So, to all poly people who are currently pair-bonded to someone but would like some sort of communal living situation, here's the question:

Let's say you had the ability to build your dream poly house, and money, size, and location were no object - you won the Supermegacolossalginormous World Lottery and, after taxes, still gave you enough left over to live wherever you wanted to live.  Every room you ever wanted in a house will be there.  This could be a communal house, an apartment-style complex, or a collection of private bungalows scattered about the property - whatever your personal dream-poly living situation is so long as there are some communal spaces (otherwise, it's not a communal house).  There is also a massive bedroom with a massive custom bed specifically for the purpose of group sleeping/whatever.  This room belongs to no individual, and anyone from the household can sleep there with the intention of sharing sleeping space with anyone/everyone else in the household.

You also have the option to include a bedroom suite for every adult in the house.  A bedroom "suite" is big enough for a private bathroom, a large bed, a living room area, and a mini kitchen, sort of like an extended-stay hotel room, but comfortably sized & personally furnished (if going with the individual bungalow setup, then every adult gets their own full-sized bungalow).  Each adult can sleep in his own room if they do not want to sleep in the group bedroom, if they want to share "private time" with certain other partners, or whatever else they choose to use their room for.

The question is, as someone who is pair-bonded to another person, would you utilize your own personal bedroom?

• Yes.  Even though I have a pair-bonded relationship, I can see the need for a personal bedroom for some "alone time", to entertain guests without imposing on the rest of the household or the shared rooms, for "private time" with a partner who is not my pair-bonded partner in a way that does not kick my pair-bonded partner out of space he also considers "his", to have somewhere to go without feeling trapped or "kicked out" if he wants to use his space without me, or just to have space to spread out and do my own thing that others might not share or be interested in.  It does not matter how often I sleep in my own room, or even if I never do, but I want some space that belongs to me.


• Yes, but we enjoy sleeping together and/or we have an arrangement to always sleep together.  Since every adult gets their own room, this would give us, as a couple, two rooms to share, one of which could be designated as "ours", which is a special place just for us, and the other could be "the room where we can be without the other person", such as having "private time" with another partner.


• Possibly.  I enjoy sleeping with my pair-bonded partner and/or we have an agreement to always sleep together, so I can't see ever sleeping in my own bedroom, but I could use the space for other purposes, particularly if I ever want some "private time" with a partner who is not my pair-bonded partner but I don't want to kick him out of space he also considers "his" or "ours".  In this case, I would share his space & use mine for non-sleeping or non-pair-bonded-partner activities.  Since each adult gets their own, and I would be sharing his, he would not have his own personal space but I would.  Maybe we're mono/poly and he's the mono one or maybe he just doesn't want his own personal space.


• No.  I enjoy sleeping with my pair-bonded partner and/or we have an agreement to always sleep together, so I can't see ever sleeping in my own bedroom and I have no other needs for personal space without him, especially if every room I've ever wanted in a house was in this house.  He can share my bedroom and it will become "ours", and he can keep his own bedroom if he wants to do non-sleeping or non-pair-bonded-partner activities so that I am not kicked out of my own room.


• No.  We are pair-bonded and we always sleep together.  We prefer to have an "our room", not "his and hers rooms" - that's part of what being pair-bonded means to us.  We do not need any separate space from each other for any reason, and if we ever do decide to have "private time" with other partners, we can go to their personal rooms, leaving our room just for us.  Anyone else in the house can have personal rooms if they want, but my partner and I give up our personal rooms in favor of sharing a single suite.

Would you use/be interested in a personal bedroom even while partnered?

Yes, both of us can have our own space

Yes, but both rooms will be shared

Possibly, I'll just share his room & never sleep in mine. He won't have his own

No, but he can keep his own room, mine will become "ours"

No, we will share a room and have no "personal" rooms

myspace layouts

Comments

[zaiah.livejournal.com]

So this house has:
Top Floor: Two bedrooms (one good sized, but one is very small)
Main Floor: 1 bedroom, full bath (and living room/dining/kitchen/three doors to the outside/decks)
Basement: A long family room, a small not-quite-legal bedroom, a full bath and a utility room
Garage: Connects with the Basement by the back stairs - also to the back yard

Garage is currently being worked on (long slow and only when has extra money about) to become a large bedroom.

The 2 bedrooms upstairs are occupied by paying roommates.

Because we want to promote social space and play space the downstairs bedroom is the 'Fuck Room' but was largely empty, initially. We did not want to put any roommates in the main floor or downstairs rooms because of the sort of.. ownership that occurs in main areas surrounding a bedroom when that person is the only person with a bedroom on that floor.

[zaiah.livejournal.com]

Initially, the main floor bedroom was "my room" and the home office and Franklin's bedroom occupied the basement. When my daughter stayed over she stayed in my room and if I had one of my other partners over we stayed in my room. It was not used otherwise and I kinda hated it. I hated going into there to get my clothing out and then go back to 'Franklin's' room where we were actually living. It felt like living out of a suitcase every day and being exiled to a drafty unused wing of the manor when company was over. It felt like being excluded or banished.

I also found I had strong emotional reaction to being kicked out of the bed shared with Franklin when he has a sweetie over who did not want to share a bed with me. I am very okay with sharing the main bed, but when one of the sweeties wanted understandable 'alone time' - it meant kicking me out to the less comfortable and less liked space.. I was dealing with more emotions than just getting/having to sleep alone (I dislike sleeping alone).

Rearranging (even though I still believe in the idea that every adult should have their own space (if they so desire it)) the main floor bedroom has now been turned into the home office with the loft put in there - my daughter can still sleep there when she visits, Franklin has a reason to leave the basement and see the light of day, and there is better lighting in there for working.

Some of the social space has been brought down to one end of the basement though it still opens to the bedroom on the other half so it is not roommate friendly / open / social space, but social when we have INVITED people to be there. The bed from "my room" is now in the Fuck Room (until a better bed can be had for that space) and the Fuck Room is now for sweeties who spend the night who do not want to share space in the other/main bed - both my sweeties or Franklin's - with a stated goal that neither of us needs to feel kicked out of the main bed.

It feels, still, extremely selfish for me to ask for this - and yet I get a shiver of delight I did not expect - when it is called 'our room.' As a person who previously espoused that everyone should have their own room - I still think everyone SHOULD have their own room, but that they might not need to be forced to? or I could have a room with my name on it that was largely empty if we had the additional room/space to burn?

We'd like the basement to become all social space and move the main bedroom to the converted garage - so that the family room in the basement and full bath there doesn't need to belong to any one (set of) person(s) downstairs and with the home office and communal areas of the household on the main floor so again - no one 'owns' that space or bathroom either.

If you were to live here - we've discussed that the garage bedroom would probably be yours - so you could have even more privacy and autonomy and we would keep the fuck room and basement social space and rearrange the other needs among the other three bedrooms in the house - perhaps I would take the small upstairs bedroom as 'mine' (and my daughter's when she visits) and we'd put Franklins home office into the main floor living room and give Franklin the main/shared/his own? room in either the main floor or the larger room on the second story - ?? Perhaps with another full time sweetie living here there would be more negotiation on who sleeps where/when though, generally, I like the idea of keeping a sort of main bed the communal space and people being able to opt to the satellite locations for whatever reason, but no one needing to be kicked out of the communal area.

Lot's of ways to navigate the space!

I'm still grappling with wanting to feel that there was a space for me IN the 'main' bedroom and not that anytime anyone over showed an interest in Franklin that I was supposed to somehow disappear and make as though I didn't exist (which was how I initially felt) - I like that the Fuck Room is available for overnight guests whether his or mine and that when there have been 'shared bed' peoples - space is made for them to be in that communal space.

It seems to be the overnight guests who are determining where they want to be not Franklin or I excluding or enforcing it.

[emanix.livejournal.com]

Interesting... it hadn't really occurred to me on a conscious level that I do this, but reading your comment brought it home - part of my habit since sharing the House of Joy is to have a regular, at least once weekly date night *with myself* in my own space, to reclaim my room and keep it feeling like mine (as well as to get work done) - because I think it is easy to fall into habits that make things emotionally harder for oneself. There was a point where I started feeling 'pushed out' of E's giant bed when he had a date over, because that had become default for a while, which was when I started paying more attention to my 'relationship' with my room. Since I started spending more time up here (I'm in my 'cave' as I write this) it's very clear that I am 'queen' of my domain, and it's an honour even for my primary partners to be invited in. (Though with a cunning shift of furniture and attitude it still manages to become public space for parties. :))