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

[cranberrynomiko.livejournal.com]

I have a similar -- though not nearly as fancy as you've described! -- setup with my current partner. We each have our own room, where we can sleep by ourselves if we need to, or do work, or just be alone. Having tried sharing a room with someone previously, I find I prefer this. Stress levels can go through the roof if each person doesn't have space to get away that is "theirs". Escaping to a common room feels more like exile from your comfortable, personal space; I've found this tends to make tensions worse rather than better.

[joreth]

From someone who is unable to answer the poll:

(1) Yes, both of us can have our own space

Would You Keep Your Own Bedroom?

[femetal.livejournal.com]

I can't do the poll until I get home, but I promise I will.

I have designed many poly dream houses, and every design includes personal space for each individual. I would have a futon or sofa bed in mine, but would likely only sleep in it when I was sick. I would almost certainly sleep in the communal bed more than 99% of the time. I would use my private space for one on one time and for hobbies and such.

[joreth]

I completely agree, that is how I prefer my living situations. But the largest number of people I've ever had in one house was 3, and we each had our own room but no communal bedroom that we could all 3 fit together. I know some people who *have* to sleep with their partner every night and I was curious as to how that would change if people with a pair-bonded partner lived in a house with multiple partners. I also know people who try and squeeze everyone into a single room when all the family gets together, but how would that last in a regular living-together situation? How long could sharing a bed with 5 other people really go on before someone needs their "space"?

Re: Would You Keep Your Own Bedroom?

[joreth]

That's pretty much how I tend to design all my poly houses, but they have been, historically, designed based on my personal preferences. I assumed *everyone* would want their own space, whether they use it or not. But now I'm curious just how many people *actually* share those preferences. If I remove money or space from the equation, what would people really want to do, as opposed to what would they be OK with?

[redheadlass.livejournal.com]

While I'd like to have my own space, and I voted as such, I actually don't care that much as long as I have some place where I can go be alone. That space doesn't have to be mine so much as it has to be solitary when I need it to be.

Right now, at home, all of my space is shared and my solitary time is spent when Mike is not home or is sleeping, and I'm usually in the main room of the house.

[joreth]

That makes sense, I didn't give an option like that. I think it didn't occur to me because the only way I figured I could ensure that it was solitary was to make it "mine" :-) The more people in the house, the less likely the house would be empty at any given time and, with Murphy's Law, the less likely it would be empty (or a common room would be empty) exactly when I most need it to be.

But I can definitely see your position - mostly what I would need is the ability to be alone, not that I am feeling territorial over boundaries.

I suspect, however, that some people who go for the "our space" would be doing that for territorial reasons and not introvert needs.

I already kind of have this

[(Anonymous)]

When we built our house, 2 1/2 years before we became polyamorous (and we had no clue that we were going to be transitioning to poly at that point), we built finished two bedrooms in the basement for our boys, which left two bedrooms on the main floor that were not needed. One of them is the computer room, the other one is my craft room/office (now that I work from home). Like I said, this was long before poly was even on the radar, so yes, I would still want my own space in my dream home : ). It would definitely be nice to have it big enough to have a bed in it too, so we wouldn't end up setting up an air mattress or having one of us sleep on the couch when other partners are over, like we do now.

[emanix.livejournal.com]

Interesting poll, I shall have to come back and check out the results again later!

Me, I've always shared housing and prefer it that way, but having a space to myself has always been important to me. A couple of times in my life that I've been so short on cash that 'my' space was a corner of a shared room, but it was always there in some form.

My first pair-bonded living situation was T, and we specifically looked for a house in which we could have our own rooms, on the basis that it's far more romantic to know a partner is sleeping with you out of choice rather than simply having nowhere else to go (at that point we were accidentally monogamous). I also used my room as studio space, which meant I didn't keep him awake if I was working late, and could just fall asleep in there when I was done.

My current situation is similar, though the House of Joy is shared with more people - there is me with my own room cum office space, my primary E (werenerd),and several housemates who are very much part of the family (one is also a metamour). We're lucky living in the city, communal living is a much more common thing - I was sharing with friends before I moved into the House of Joy - so it was relatively easy to find a house the size we were looking for.
My other current primary lives in a separate house just down the road. We tried living together for a while and discovered that we work better when our rooms are in separate buildings. I invite friends and lovers into my own space whenever I feel like it (and tell everyone to GO AWAY when I need to, as well), and have a double bed so it's comfy to share. Oh, and the guys now have a gigantic circular bed each, which are great for parties & when three or more of us want to cuddle up. At least for now, we're all living the dream down here in South London. :)

[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.

[summer-jackel.livejournal.com]

Kestrel and I had been a monogamous couple for approximately 10 years and cohabiting full time for about three when Lucy moved in with us. At that point, he and I shared a bedroom. When Lucy moved in, she had a private room, but we all slept in the big bed in the shared bedroom. (It is a slightly larger than king sized bed).

It wasn't too long before we realized that we all needed 1:1 time with each other and started a rotation where we'd sleep in the big bed if we were sleeping as a couple or a triad, and the third person would have time alone in one of the other rooms. Things got complicated at that point, with Lucy and Kestrel wanting more 1:1 time than either wanted with me, and everyone feeling as though the big bedroom had most of my belongings in it and felt more like my space. So for awhile, whoever was with me slept in the big bed, and Kestrel and Lucy spent their nights in Lucy's room, because neither of them wanted to be in a space that felt like mine or move me out of "my" bed, especially after things started to become less pleasant in the triad.

Right now, I am really happy to not be cohabiting with any of my lovers. I don't know if my living dynamics will change or not, but I have shadows around sharing space and all of the emotional meanings that it can encode that I don't think I even want to touch for a few years. Still, if I was going to cohabit with one or more of my sweeties, I think it would be vital to have separate rooms. If we're positing an ideal or near-ideal situation, I think that each person in the home would have a room that she and a partner could sleep in and felt like "hers", even if in practice she almost always slept with one of her partners. That way, everyone has a place to be that isn't the others' space as well, which is good if problems do arise and privacy is needed. It creates a space to be with new lovers that isn't the shared space of an existing relationship and lets the existing couples keep that neat "I have been invited into my lover's personal space" feeling even while cohabiting.

My really ideal situation is that all my sweeties and I have separate little cabins on one large piece of land, though. (or at least I have a separate cabin and can walk a half mile or so to their homes, however they wish to configure themselves). This dream situation is of course both rural enough to make me happy and close enough to the city for the more urban branch of my network. It's a nice fantasy.

[bhael.livejournal.com]

I voted for, "No, we will share a room and have no 'personal' rooms," with the caveat that our dream house would have private sanctuaries anyway.

Backstory:

I was in a triad for three years. Though the relationship didn't work out, I still consider myself to be poly. However, I'm currently engaged to a wonderful man who is not poly.

I can't say I wouldn't be pleased if he warmed to the idea of poly, but I don't push him. I won't push him. Poly just isn't as important to me as he is.

[joreth]

well, if the caveat is that the dream house had private sanctuaries, then that would be the "we would both have personal rooms" option. The point of the option for "no personal rooms" is that there are "no personal rooms". If you wanted to include private sanctuaries, that defeats the whole point of saying you wanted "no personal rooms".

[bhael.livejournal.com]

Ah, I understand now. I was taking the "personal rooms" option to mean "personal BEDrooms." My mistake.

[joreth]

I did call them bedrooms, but then, somewhere in there, I said the rooms could be used for sleeping, or for whatever the owner wants to use it for. The rooms were actually "suites" in my example, which included "living room space" and even a small kitchen area. No one is being forced to sleep anywhere they don't want to, the question is, do people who identify as part of a "couple", even in polyamorous living situations, do those people want to give up any space devoted to individual or private needs?

[joreth]

I can totally understand that. I go through phases of how far away I want to be from my partners. Sometimes I want a totally separate building, completely independent and self-sustaining, but nearby, and other times I want to be in the same building so I'm not left out of spontaneous events.

I lived in a triad that went bad myself, and even though we all had our own rooms, at the end I started to feel trapped in my own room because if I came out, I'd have to interact with the individuals I didn't want to interact with. I started making excuses to leave the house, and then I felt kicked out of my own home. So the idea of living with partners makes me more nervous than Christian in a den full of lions.

But then I ended up with very functional relationships who were so far away that the preparation for visiting alone was exhausting enough to make me occasionally skip the visit in favor of avoiding the prep.

So I go back and forth between the self-sustaining bedroom "suite" as part of a house to avoid the travel time, and separate dwellings to avoid all the issues of being kicked out and trapped :-)

My OCD occasionally spurs me onto actually drafting out my various poly housing ideas (I built a Gingerbread House out of one of the plans - to scale), but this time I thought I'd actually ask what other people consider important, rather than designing a house built *only* on my own preferences. Sometimes people come up with solutions to problems I hadn't thought of, so thanks for the input!

Re: I already kind of have this

[joreth]

Yep, the idea that, if my partner wanted alone time with another partner, I would have to go sleep away from my preferred bed, without all my stuff that comprises my nightly routine, would quickly make me unfairly resentful of the metamour, who would represent a disruption even if it's not intended. I would end up thinking "he's the one who wants the alone time, he can go sacrifice his good night's sleep & find somewhere else to be", and that would be inconsiderate to both my partner and my metamour.

Far better to have him have his own bedroom where he can invite whomever he wants so my routine is not disrupted, and my bad back is not sacrificed for his pleasure by sleeping on some couch. This makes me not resentful, and not cranky or in pain from the disruption, it makes him not feel as though he's kicking me out or having to "choose" between us, it makes her feel invited by him and not resented by me, and the communal bedroom solves any issue of sleeping alone or being left out, or just enjoying the company of the partners, in addition to it being *my choice* to sleep there instead of my private room, which removes any resentment of the disruption.

[bettybaker.livejournal.com]

My fiance and I live in a four bedroom house, so we sleep together in one room most nights, but each have separate "lairs". I have a guest bedroom that I call my boudoir, and I've taken ownership of the front porch. He has a computer room to hole up in. I think it's super important to have places to escape to; otherwise we'd never get our introvert time.

[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. :))

[pierceheart.livejournal.com]

I opted for:

Yes, both of us can have our own space

Ideally, I think I'd also like a space that was just ours as a couple, that we don't share with any other partners.

I think my primary partner would agree about that.

And there's a possessiveness/territoriality thing in that - and I find I'm okay with that.

For my other current major relationship - which is sometimes descriptive/sometimes prescriptive secondary, I'd also prefer to have a room that was only ours, but I do not know how that partner would feel about that, whether they would want to have ONLY their own space, or their own space AND only us space.

[(Anonymous)]

My current primary live-with partner and I each have our own bedroom. We typically sleep together about 3/4 of the time, apart the rest of the time.

I have a new very long-distance partner who I (tentatively, it's a very new relationship) feel pair-bonded with. When I visit him, I want to to sleep with him in his room. When he visits me, I want him to sleep with me in my room. I wouldn't now be comfortable sleeping with both of them. I don't think they'd be comfortable sleeping together; they're not that close.

If we all lived together, I think it would be preferable for each to have our own space, not necessarily bedroom, and I would probably sleep with either of them in their room the majority of the time, and only in my own when I wanted to be alone or both of them were having private time with others.

This would actually be possible in the house that he has now -- fodder for daydreams, should the relationship prove to be a long-lasting one.

[shrike1978.livejournal.com]

So, I'm very late to the party here, but I was going back through your old posts and saw this as particularly relevant. My triad just began fully cohabitating about two months ago. We bought a house together and just move into it a week and a half ago. It is huge. It has six bedrooms, so all three of us have a separate bedroom, as well as having bedrooms for the kids and an office.

This was one of my requirements for cohabitation, and it would be even for a monogamous relationship. I was an only child, and while I'm a very public person and have become very social and extroverted in the last few years, I have a strong introverted streak that manifests itself quite forcefully from time to time, and I absolutely require my own space if I'm expected to maintain a relationship. I need a door I can close and not be bothered.

[joreth]

Thanks for the perspective! This is very similar to my own needs, so I have to admit some confusion when it comes to other people not wanting their own space. It means that I automatically factor in "me space" when it comes to living or visiting arrangements, and I'm told that's not always the preferred option.