I dated a stripper once. I love starting this story that way. I dated a stripper for a few weeks, and one night, she invited me to her strip club to watch her perform. I asked if I could bring my partner along because he had never been to a strip club. She enthusiastically agreed.
During her show, my partner and I held hands while we cheered her on and kissed a few times. After the show, I thanked her for letting us come, and to my shock, she was livid with me. She said she felt disrespected in her place of work by having someone she was dating kissing someone else, even if she knew that person was my partner.
I reflected, and I realized that I had failed to provide the “I” and “S” of the fries model of consent. I had asked if my partner could come, but she did not know that my partner and I were big on PDA, and I had not asked what behaviors she was comfortable witnessing between us. Of course, it was perfectly reasonable that she might feel disrespected by me showing blatant affection to someone else in her place of work.
I apologized profusely, and she was very kind to forgive me, but still decided she wanted to discontinue dating me. I learned from that experience to be especially cognizant of my partners when they’re meeting the first few times. The next time I dated someone, before they met my partner, we discussed explicit behaviors we were and were not comfortable with during the meeting. Not everyone I have dated prefer this, and some like to just wing it on the first meeting and deal with emotions as they come up. However, for those that would like to err on the side of avoiding negative emotions upon meeting a metamour, establishing more explicit expectations can be exceedingly helpful.