Please comment on my draft LDR rules!

[underthewater]

Hi everyone, so I've been in this LDR for a week and so far everything feels ok. I wrote some LDR rules as I believe it's important that both parties are very clear about each other's boundries, expectation etc. And I'd like to have your comments on it before I send it to him for his input (we've informally discussed this before). Thanks!

1. Taking care of one’s self is the best reward to each other’s love and care. Work/study hard, eat healthily and enjoy life when possible.
2. Be trustful, responsive, sharing, supportive and cool at ALL times.
3. Get in touch everyday with no strong words and no repetitive or redundant talk.
4. Make efforts to see each other as much as both can.
5. No flirtation, ONS or the 3rd person, always see individuals of the other gender in public.
6. No drama, no games (e.g. be extremely careful on words when argue as break-up can’t be undone).
7. No headboard policy: settle argument/disagreement/resentment down before the end of the day (Greenwich Time).
8. The ultimate goal is to become a happy, comfortable and interdependent couple with no distance in between.

[squiddie]

3. Get in touch everyday with no strong words and no repetitive or redundant talk.

5. No flirtation, ONS or the 3rd person, always see individuals of the other gender in public.

7. No headboard policy: settle argument/disagreement/resentment down before the end of the day (Greenwich Time).

I take issue with these three, and I will explain why.

3. Speaking every day is better as an unspoken rule. When it feels like an obligation, that can lead to resentment. At the beginning of our LDR, the BF was 6 time zones ahead of me, and was often ready to go to bed by the time I got home from school. I never wanted him to feel like he HAD to stay up and talk to me, because he gets cranky and snappy when he's tired. Additionally, you may not be able to find things to talk about every day. Let some days go in between, especially if you're feeling busy.

5. OK I get the flirting part, that's understandable. But this rule screams of not trusting one another.

7. Sometimes it is better to sleep on negative feelings. You often wake up the next morning wondering what you were upset about in the first place. If a disagreement or fight is going nowhere, it's better to step back and resolve to return to it later, if it even matters the next morning.

[folclor]

3. Get in touch everyday with no strong words and no repetitive or redundant talk.
4. Make efforts to see each other as much as both can.

First off, no offense, but I don't see why we need rules for an LDR as every relationship is different. That being said, most of these I quite like. The two above are the ones I take some issue with.
3. You say "no strong words and no repetitive or redundant talk." If all the conversation is, "I love you, I miss you, I love you, I miss you, etc" it gets old and tiring and you no longer want to talk to the person. but...some things need to be repeated. We talk about issues more than once because perspectives change and we come up with new ideas. It's good to discuss things and it's also a great thing to tell your partner you love them if you really do. Now, if it's habit then the words are hollow, but I don't see why anything shouldn't be repetitive. Also, I agree with squiddie. If you set a rule that you have to talk every day resentment will grow. I don't ask my boyfriend to talk every day because I don't want to feel like an obligation.

4. This one is a little trickier. yes, it's a great idea to go see each other often. It keeps the connection alive and is exciting/stimulating for both partners, often. However, making efforts to see each other as much as possible can lead to resentment on both parts. What if...one person can't visit because of work or school while the other one has quite a long time off? What if that one person with the time off always ends up doing the visiting and the one who has work/school never returns the favor? Or, if it's equal visits, you can get burnt out on traveling. For couples who live only a few hours away, they may take that statement literally and go see each other every weekend. That's great to see each other often, but it's terrible for relationships with friends and possibly family. Also, horrible for the bank. Seeing each other as much as you can within set limits is a better idea.

Anyway, I do like most of your other ideas. Don't mind my general dislike of the rules thing as I really don't like rules anyway so I'm going to be against putting them on situations with emotional involvement.

[Moon]

To be honest, if my guy sent me a set of rules he expected me to follow, regardless of how reasonable, I'd probably tell him to F**k Off. I'm an adult and I live by my own rules. It's fine to talk and come to agreements, but rules like #'s 2, 3 and 7 just aren't realistic. Everybody has bad days, we all have miscommunications at times, and sometimes life just gets in the way of talking everyday. I apologize if this is too offensive, or blunt (Hey, you asked ), but for a new relationship, this seems a bit too controlling and feels untrustworthy. Just relax and enjoy what you have!

[vixx360]

I have to say that I agree with pretty much everything that's been said so far, this seems like a fairly prescriptive set of rules that I think you would find unrealistic after a while. I do think that you have to set and agree upon some boundries and limits in any relationship but a set of rules like this may put you under a whole lot of pressure to live up to and possibly do more harm than good.

You might want to try to switch this from a list of "thou shall" and "thou shall not"'s and just relax and agree on some goals and boundries, much better to say that you will try to spend quality time together, express yourselves openly and honestly, while respecting that people have differences rather than rules 2 through 4.

Setting 'no flirting' as a rule is all well and good, except for the fact that we all have different definitions of what flirting is, if you are in an exclusive relationship rather than setting rules, you need to express and agree on your expectations of what this means and a list of rules will not really help you here, can you imagine the conversation..... "but you agreed 'no flirting or kissing' there's nothing in the rules about not sharing a bed..." I'm not saying this will happen but a discussion of expections, respect for the relationship and boundries will go much further than a list of stuff you can and can't do.

As for "always seeing people of the other gender in public", I'm sure I understand the sentiment but you guys need a bit of trust, he can't be on his own in a room with a women, you can't be trusted on your own in a room with a guy, do you both have a serious lack of self control????

Please don't take this the wrong way, the examples I've given above are the extreems of the situation but rules put very narrow circles around behaviour and can always be circumvented, at this early stage my opinion (for what it's worth) is that you will gain much more from having open and honest conversations about your expectations and goals, conversations that will directly go against rule #3 because they will be repeated as your relationship progresses.......

Rule 8 however is a great goal and I hope you achieve it

[garnet]

To be honest, if my guy sent me a set of rules he expected me to follow, regardless of how reasonable, I'd probably tell him to F**k Off. I'm an adult and I live by my own rules.

This!

[sam]

This!

Me too..

[Michelle]

If you are going to have rules in your relationship it is best to talk them out together and agree to them. To send him these rules and expect him to follow them is not cool at all.

That said, I think it is fine to have rules. Some ground rules are very important. But make sure your boyfriend is involved in creating them; a relationship is a partnership. Otherwise he will see you as too controlling and you'll push him away.

[Andy]

Haha! I bloody love this thread! XD

6. No drama, no games (e.g. be extremely careful on words when argue as break-up can’t be undone).
7. No headboard policy: settle argument/disagreement/resentment down before the end of the day (Greenwich Time).

That bit really made me laugh! Especially the Greenwich Time comment! Lol! Oh man. Everything you need to take note of was written in this post here my friend:

To be honest, if my guy sent me a set of rules he expected me to follow, regardless of how reasonable, I'd probably tell him to F**k Off. I'm an adult and I live by my own rules. It's fine to talk and come to agreements, but rules like #'s 2, 3 and 7 just aren't realistic. Everybody has bad days, we all have miscommunications at times, and sometimes life just gets in the way of talking everyday. I apologize if this is too offensive, or blunt (Hey, you asked ), but for a new relationship, this seems a bit too controlling and feels untrustworthy. Just relax and enjoy what you have!

You should seriously think about scratching that list if you want my honest opinion. Clearly most of your rules go without saying, but I like your number 8 and I wish you all the luck in the world on your way to achieving it

[seshei]

I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing to have some guidelines, and to know each others' expectations. But, as Michelle said, it's probably best to work those guidelines out together rather than to just come up with them on your own. I know my bf and I have some guidelines when it comes to disagreements, otherwise we both tend to get defensive easily. We don't have problems disagreeing in person, but at a distance it easily disintegrates. However, we did come up with those guidelines together. I think if he came up with them on his own, and sent them to me, I'd probably have been annoyed, and felt like he was being demanding. It does change the perspective of those kinds of things when you're both involved.

[underthewater]

Hi, thanks for all your replies. I don't know why everybody thinks that I came up with this list on my own, I think I said clearly in my first post that "we've informally discussed this before" which I meant we talked about it and some of the ideas were actually his. The reason why I wrote this out was that my boyfriend had ADD and he didn't remember things like this if we just talked about it. I think since we've already had some agreement here, why not confirm it with him?

Well actually we barely argue and never fight, we're just...not that type. I think when we discussed this we got some ideas from his housemates' experiences (they are a couple who argue all the time, big drama, some 3rd person involved, etc) so even we don't really have those issues at the moment, it's always a good idea to agree on not letting them happen in our lives in the future.

[squiddie]

From what it sounds, you just wanted us to tell you to go ahead and send him the list as is. If that's what you were going to do, why ask us what we thought? If this is already what you two have discussed and are okay with it, why did you want our input?

[Zephii]

I think your rules are a little off base. I know there are several couples here that have rules, though not necessarily written down ones, and you might make a thread and ask people what their rules are for the purpose of gaining insight.

Generally if a couple have the best intentions for each other and they think before they speak/act, everything works out fine. I personally feel that to need such limits you don't know each other very well. Spend a bit more time finding out each other's needs and opinions and you'll both know what's right and wrong for you as a couple.

I'm sorry if I'm too blunt, I mean well.
Carrots xx

[paulawriteslove]

If you are going to have rules in your relationship it is best to talk them out together and agree to them. To send him these rules and expect him to follow them is not cool at all.

That said, I think it is fine to have rules. Some ground rules are very important. But make sure your boyfriend is involved in creating them; a relationship is a partnership. Otherwise he will see you as too controlling and you'll push him away.

I completely agree with Michelle. You need to talk to your SO and not just hand him some rules that you've made. Best of luck!

[machstx]

ok so i didnt read every single response but i agree with most of what i read. would you expect these rules if you were ina CDR? i think i know where your coming from. my bf and i started out in a CDR and i thought we had to have all these rules when we became LDR. before we became LD i was always making sure to say things like "when were long distance we cant do this and we have to make sure we always do this and blah blah blah". but ive learned (been in an LDR one year on sep 13) that the more you act how you wanted to be treated everything is fine. its out of fear i was making all those rules because i wanted to make it work. however looks like trust is an issue if u have to set rules like that? maybe try expressing the possible issues you could have?? (the rules) then listen to his response and go from there. you dont want to set out rules and have a negative forced thing. its hard enough. good luck and keep us posted!