New Year, New Agreements

There are so many questions that accompany relationship agreements, one of the most important (but also most loaded!) topics in the non-monogamous community. In January, after a fall and holiday season that often reveal to us where some of our boundaries are, what the state of our relationships is, we need to come together with our partners and have serious discussions of whether our existing agreements work; whether some of them will be changed; which ones will change and how.

This workshop is about the HOW as well as the WHAT of relationship agreements. DURING the class, we're going to cover the list of topics below. BEFORE class, and for you to keep after, I'm giving you access to two free tools, one of which we're going to go over in class in detail. Both of these will be sent out to all ticket holders on 1/5, a week before class.

The Concerns-Based Relationship Agreements Framework is a tool I often use with couples new to non-monogamy or new to each other's style of non-monogamy, to help them recognize and empathize with their partner's concerns, boundaries, and pain points in forming relationship agreements - even if their partner cannot clearly frame all of them in perfect boundary statements. This is the tool we'll go over in detail in class.

The other is a Rule - Agreement - Boundary / Complaint - Request tool that helps with reframing your statements in ways that make them do what you want them to do. (Are you trying to mutually set a rule to control behavior of everyone in a group or network to not do a thing? Are you agreeing with the people in a discussion to do or not do something? Are you stating your discomfort with and intention to move away from something if it happens?/ Are you complaining about something having happened, or are you asking for an actionable change? These are all useful in some settings but they have different implications and meanings.) I'm doing a recorded session going over the use of this tool on 1/4 and including the recording for all attendees of this event. We'll be doing the two-sentence version during this class, not a rehash.

The topics for this 90 min workshop include:

• What’s an agreement vs a boundary vs a rule?
• How do our agreements support our boundaries?
• Why might we change agreements over time?
• What does it mean to be in agreement versus to have an agreement or agree to a rule?
• Do agreements change when folks get new partners? (Sometimes! Let’s discuss how and why that might be positive versus destabilizing)
• The power of the check in and how you choose to schedule those.

• Going over my preferred method for understanding concerns and agreements & rules in new relationships. It doesn’t have to be yours but it’s easy to return to and relies on concerns and boundaries the agreements are serving as the basis for the agreements - so there’s flexibility for change there.

If you can't attend live, a recording IS included with your ticket, but the recording does NOT include the Q&A which often includes rich wisdom from your fellow attendees and their experiences.

Host or Publisher Laura Boyle