TPE & parenting

[mandalamama]

i'm so happy to see threads on polyamory here! i'm bisexual, polyamorous, and was in a TPE relationship until January of this year. i'm sub. we're still married, vanilla now. the TPE ended when he lost control of his own life and became depressed. i've been struggling with staying in the relationship ... i still love the man i met and fell in love with, i just miss the Dom. and i definitely don't want a divorce. we're leaving it up to fate whether we take up the TPE/BDSM stuff again later, only when he's in control of his own life.

what i really want to ask is, do you parent differently because you lead a "different" lifestyle? how much of your self can you be in front of the kids, and how much do you have to hide? if you're submissive, do you worry about raising overly submissive children? or do they go the other way and rebel?

[Curious Me]

Hi mellybean,

What is TPE? vanilla? sub? Dom.?

[Satori]

Did you know there's a BDSM thread over in FYT? They discuss this very issue It gets closed from time to time but usually reappears so if its closed again give it a few days

[mandalamama]

Originally Posted by Satori

Did you know there's a BDSM thread over in FYT? They discuss this very issue It gets closed from time to time but usually reappears so if its closed again give it a few days

it's been closed for good, MDC "will not host" a group of that nature.

TPE = total power exchange. the dom and sub stuff, it's sorta the same dynamic as top and bottom.

[Divina]

Hi, mellybean! I'm in an open marriage, although we're sort of putting that on hold as we both need the energy and time for other survival-related issues right now. And we're not into TPE, but we dabble in the D/s play. We are in the process of working out how much to tell our kids about, how much PDA we're comfortable with (DH is rather reserved and even prefers not to kiss me in public), stuff like that. I expect it will be evolving as long as we have kids living at home and we're into anything alternative.

My teens know that both of us are bi and have an open relationship, but they haven't actually seen either of us with someone else. We tend to do things as a couple, and we have some friends who are also play pals or potentially so, but those things are so tenuous, I don't think I'd tell the kids about it unless it solidifies and becomes more of a partnership.

We have friends in a stable quad relationship. It works great for them, but they have trouble pinpointing why they're so successful. However, we talk to them a lot about these issues!

[catnip]