I'm working on this writing and looking for peoples thoughts on what I have so far. This is a first draft be nice :)

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Have you heard of the shouting test? No? Well thats no surprise because I made it up.

Not right now of course, It was a little more than 2 years ago. I was in the midst of looking for a house to rent. It was me and Pn (Partner nesting) who actually came up with the idea. See were ENM and we’re considering moving in to gether. Now all the articles and discussions about moving stress to have all the big talks before deciding to move. Being the awesome communicators we are, we set to work at having them. From this labor of love caomes the Shout Test. Being ENM, living together, having kids work, our relationship, and others to maintain was a lot and we recognized this. So off to work we went. We each came up with our Deal Breakers, i.e. The things that we had to have or moving in wasn't possible. Mine were fairly simple:

1. Separate Rooms
2. I have to be able to host and have sex with my partners, their metamours,

There was push back at first but we talked and worked out a compromise and continued to move forward. The solution “The Shout Test” and a few reasonable boundaries. So the Shout Test is when you’re looking at a new house with a Poly Partner and you need to check how well sound carries. Every house we looked at we would take turns standing in different rooms and shouting or making sex noises to see how much the other could hear. House after house we asked our realtor to wait outside while we did our test till finally we settled on a rental that suited our needs:

Separate Bedrooms

Basement for Dungeon

Second story for our rooms (the distance helped reduce noise)

The house we found had it all so again forward we went. I was beyond excited to start sharing my life with my now new nesting partner. I was confident we had discussed exit strategies, what to do if there was a conflict and how to resolve it, how we should treat guests and our metamours. And if we hadn’t talked about it I was certain that we would find a compromise.

Fast forward 2 years, countless discussions, crying nights, regular re negotiations, and compromises our new boundaries effectively made it a pain, if not impossible to host. Little by little I conceded, how could I not? Seeing the person I care about in pain was not something I enjoyed. As the oceans slowly erode our shorelines, so to did these discussions slowly erode my ability to host. With each discussion and re negotiation the boundaries became more restrictive and required more maintenance until it wasn’t worth the work to host my partners. Victory for my nesting partner, a reprieve from having to deal with their feelings about people coming over. Defeat for me. The interactions with my nesting partner would leave my guests/partners feeling uneasy, nervous, and unlikely to come over. All our work, all my communication about deal breakers, it was all for nothing.

I found myself paying rent for a house with a basement dungeon that was effectively useless. Of course I could use it, if my nesting partner was gone (covid ish times and working from home made this one particularly hard), if there wasn’t any sexual play, if the paddle slaps and yells weren’t to loud, if the music was set to a certain volume, if my nesting partner and I were in a good place, if I planned it a week out and asked my partner the correct way at the correct time, if my guests met my partner ahead of time, if, if, if… The hardest thing was standing up for my boundary, one I had communicated so thoroughly and so often. I was devastated, helpless against my partner's hurt feelings. How could I host when I knew it hurt my partner so much? This was the question that would repeatedly come up, How could I if I truly cared. Resentment grew on both sides, me wondering how could they knowing how important this was to me? Them wondering the exact opposite. I railed against the idea that I was an uncaring bad guy, how could I be when I communicated my needs so clearly. So I resolved to not bend on my values, to not compromise on my needs, to hold them accountable to our shout test. Because I’m worth it, because I love myself enough to not give up what I need from my home and partner, because I owe it to my partner to not resent them. I was the one who caved, agreed to the new compromises, I put myself in this by not staying true to myself. Now I needed a change if we were going to continue. Thus began my journey, to live in alignment with my values and honor my needs and allow my partner to be responsible for their own feelings.