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Hello, friends.

I’ve scoured Reddit for conversations on this topic, but I haven’t found much that describes my particular situation. I’m hoping you can help me.

My wife and I (Me: D, her: s) have been in a 24/7 D/s relationship for about three years and we’ve recently entered a polyamorous relationship with a vanilla, but curious couple that we've been quaranteaming with. My wife and I have enjoyed poly relationships before we began D/s, but we’re finding it challenging to figure out how best to maintain our D/s structure while honoring the other relationships involved. There have been situations where our D/s structure has come between our new partners and us, challenging our poly ethic of not interfering with those other relationships.

For my part, I’m looking for a perspective that would allow me to offer my wife full freedom within another caring, committed relationship while still feeling her accountability to the rules and obligations of our D/s dynamic. It’s been tougher than I expected to find a way to integrate her poly relationship into the structure of our D/s- as opposed to her having a parallel relationship in which she’s not subject to the D/s dynamic she’s agreed- and wants- to be part of.

For her part, she’s finding that her partner is having a hard time understanding that there are things she doesn’t feel comfortable doing for him out of duty to me. I’m aware of the sticky ethics surrounding making another person party to our kinks- If she is to be expected to follow certain rules (e.g. asking before drinking alcohol,) then it would make him tangentially subject to our rules by expecting her to follow those rules when she’s with him- thus limiting the freedom they have in that relationship.

While we made sure the other couple knew about our dynamic before starting this relationship, my wife and I admit that we should have put more thought into what boundaries to establish before starting. To their credit the other couple has been reading up on D/s and are interested in finding ways to try it with us (and THAT’S a whole other conversation..) but I’m afraid the polyamorous promise of full freedom within another relationship is more limited than they’d expected, and challenging for me to figure out how to offer.

Can you offer any tricks or hacks to help? Thank you!