I’ve seen a lot of talk on here about the way to “hinge properly” being basically to present your partners with as little information as possible regarding your agreements with other relationships? Or, perhaps another way of saying it is to present every piece of information as if it were your own idea?

Ex: in a recent comment, someone brought up that a metamour had required some kind of written agreement about safer sex. Another commenter asked if it would have been fine if the partner had “hinged properly” and presented the agreement as his own boundaries instead of presenting it as the metamour’s requirement.

To me, this isn’t “hinging properly” at all — presenting an outside party’s decisions as your own is disrespectful and takes agency away from the person being presented with the boundaries. I actually was deeply hurt by (and ended things with) a partner who suddenly told me he “was no longer able to offer” doing certain things with me, couldn’t explain what had changed, and then I found out later it was because one of his other partners told him she’d break up with him if he did those things with me. To me, he denied me information about who was actually calling the shots in the relationship — information that would have changed my decision to stay with him, had he informed me of his rationale.

Not sure if this makes sense, but I did (and still do) believe that I had the right to that information. To me, I would rather know how much influence a meta has over my relationship, rather than have it hidden behind the hinge’s “personal boundaries.” I feel like it also prevents everyone from making any unreasonable demands — like, I am not going to ask for anything that I would be embarrassed/ashamed for my meta to know I’m asking for.