HackMDPersonal Interaction Guides
In the context of Resources for Customising Intentional Relationships, personal interaction guides are meta-communication tools that provide relevant information to help reduce miscommunications in any type of relationship. These are often written in context-specific ways (see examples below) that outline boundaries and expectation for that context, prior to those times when there isn't time or capacity to HALT and have meta-conversations.
Guides for interacting can be written for any context, but are particularly useful for when there are topics we're not used to talking about, situations that are emotionally fraught, and for communicating aspects of our ways of interacting that are unusual or complex.
Examples
Some examples context-specific user guides are linked to below to illustrate how intricately personalised such guidelines can get (and, therefore, hopefully demonstrating the value of creating personalised guidelines for interacting in almost any context).
- Guides for new acquaintances & professional contexts:
- Statements on relationship intentions and expectations:
- Guides for context-specific interactions:
- Please refer to me as… (Ari, 2020)
- In response to being asked 'Are you in a relationship? (Teq, 2019)
- X's Rough Guide to Negotiating Rough Play (shared annonymously, 2021)
- Personalised glossaries and lists-of-terms
- Teq's glossary of taken-for-granted concepts that aren't all commonly used (2020)
- 'Some of my terms might be new for you and that's okay' (Sam, 2019)
Next Steps
- Return to the Overview of Resources for Customising Intentional Relationships
- Return to the List of Contents for Resources for Customising Intentional Relationships
Attribution & Contact
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