The Difference Between Pacing Requests and Power Grabs
Reader Q&A: How to ask for what your nervous system needs without controlling someone else’s relationship
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To celebrate the two-year anniversary of this Substack, we’re coming together as a small circle of readers to connect, share, and meet others walking this open relationship journey. You can find the Zoom registration and details here.
Today’s reader question:
I’m really curious about the intersection of non-hierarchical dynamics and honoring the pace of the people inside them.
My partner is seeing someone new. It feels safer for me if they move more slowly than they both might naturally default to. How do I ask for a slower pace without exerting power over his new partner? How does my partner honor my need for pacing without feeling restricted?
Similarly, how do we balance my desire to honor my “no” or “not right now” without worrying about losing connection, alongside my partner’s other desires? When is it reasonable for him to honor my no, and when is it reasonable for him to interpret it as incompatibility?
If it’s his job to always honor my nervous system’s pace, doesn’t that risk placing the relationship as an entity above the people within it?
Short answer:
Asking for nervous system pacing around your partner’s isn’t the same as exerting power.
Non-hierarchy means agency and impact — the freedom to choose, alongside honest reckoning with how our choices affect the people we’re connected to.
This distinction matters most when one person needs more time for integration, and worries that naming that need might turn them into “the controlling one.”
But let’s slow this all the way down.
