New Relationship Energy and Rules

My secondary (how I loathe the term) boyfriend, Mr Oldman, has recently started being involved with a new girl. As a result, he's feeling this wonderful feeling that we in polyamory circles like to call "New Relationship Energy (NRE)". It's that feeling you get when you first get together with somebody, where you're checking your phone constantly for messages, thinking about them all the time and smiling to yourself, and unable to think about anything else and not wanting to.

(Aside: I, too, am at the beginning of a new relationship, so the two of us are both enjoying NRE for the first time since we began dating in September. This shit's addictive!)

Some background:  Mr Oldman and I are in a "medium distance" relationship. We live about two hours apart, and I see him most weekends. As a result, when I see him I get all excited and like to spend as much time as possible with him.

However, on a recent visit to see  Mr Oldman, he asked me if it would be OK if he spent the night with the new girl rather than me. I could relate to this because I was wanting to see my new squeeze as well, plus, I'd just recently heard  Mr Oldman talk about the wonderful night he'd spent with the new girl recently, and it made me feel so warm and fuzzy to hear about it, so who was I to refuse? And so they spent what I'm sure was another wonderful night together, and I stayed with my primary. (For the record, the following day my primary left me and my new beau alone for several hours, so I benefitted from a similar sort of arrangement).


The next day, the three of us (primary [Mr Wrong], secondary [Mr Oldman], myself) all went out for breakfast.  Mr Oldman  felt bad for blowing me off, but I legitimately understood perfectly the reasoning behind it. When you can't stop thinking about someone, it's kind of hard to pass up an opportunity to spend time with them. The feeling of NRE only lasts a couple of months at most, so it's important to take advantage of it while it exists. I told him as much.

Now, here is the part that I found really interesting: he said to me, "Let's make a rule that if you're visiting me, I have to spend time with you and not other people."

I gave him a look and said, "That's stupid. Let's make a rule that says 'do whatever you want (as long as it's not unfair)'. Most of the time, you're going to want to be with me on my visits; and times you don't want to be with me will be times you'd probably ask for an exception to be made to the rule anyway (you know, times like last night). So this would have the same effect but without any room for guilt tripping."

He agreed.