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Welcome to An Opportunity, where every moment is a chance for growth, love, and self-discovery.
Join hosts as they navigate the intricacies of relationships, self-reflection, and the journey towards self-love. In each episode, we explore the transformative power of seizing opportunities for connection, personal healing, and meaningful change. Through candid conversations, personal stories, and expert insights, we invite you to embark on a path of authenticity, vulnerability, and profound growth. Whether you're seeking guidance in relationships, seeking self-acceptance, or simply exploring the depths of your own heart, An Opportunity is here to inspire and empower you.
Tune in and embrace the possibilities that await on your journey to a more fulfilling life.
Welcome back to an Opportunity podcast. I'm your host Lauren, joined by my amazing Co host Randolph. Hello everyone.
We're so glad you're here for Part 2 of our deep dive into all passes. Last time we talked about the factors you should consider before deciding whether a hall pass is right for your relationship. That's right. And today, we're getting into the details of what happens once you've made that decision. How do you set clear boundaries? What steps should you take to make sure both partners feel secure? And how do you navigate the relationship after the experience? It is a conversation that can really help you protect the bond you've worked so hard to build while exploring new possibilities. So let's get into it.
So setting clear boundaries and expectations for the Hall pass, the first thing that you should be super clear about is The Who, what, and when.
You should know specifically who this hall pass applies to or if it's allowing for a random encounter. And you should decide if your partner has a say in approving or vetoing the choice of the other person. I would say that your person should get veto power. I definitely think so, especially if there's like your partner knows who the other person is and kind of has experience with maybe their personality type and just doesn't really trust them and their intentions or really they just don't trust.
If you're safe. Absolutely. I think I believe also veto power kind of gives somebody who's completely out of control. There's nothing part like no part of that that your partner has control over. So that if that's one thing that makes them feel a little more comfortable in being able to say, hey, I don't want this person in this situation or I don't know what, I don't feel like somebody should have to have a reason either.
You should just be able to veto for whatever reason. But maybe, I don't know, give a number of vetoes. You're only allowed two vetoes. Yeah, yeah, maybe.
And then what is permissible? Is it going to be something that's strictly physical? Are there going to be emotional connections involved or allowed? Those different things should be explicitly spoken about. And I'm a pretty firm believer that if you can't sit down and have a conversation about what's going to take place during this hall pass, you probably shouldn't be getting a hall pass.
Definitely not. And yeah, it's going to be important to outline what is expected because if it is just an emotional kind of hall pass where you just need to talk to someone and, you know, get the other side of the experience of life, rather it's just meeting up and talking or not meeting you up at all and just talking on the Internet or something like that.
It's pretty important distinction. Yeah, absolutely. I think it is pretty crazy that there would be situations that someone wouldn't know exactly what's going on. I understand that they might want to have a little bit of an amnesia wall between and they don't want to know what takes place. But I feel like if you at least can have a conversation of here's what I'm asking that you don't do or what is on the table that you might do so that the other person can kind of have something to bounce off of during their thought process as far as how they'll handle their emotions and different things like that. So it's not just a wide open door to well, I said OK to this hall pass. So what exactly is happening? Yeah. And I would say it would be a good idea if your partner does set boundaries for communication and transparency, that you do everything that you can as the hall pass recipient to encourage that feeling of it's OK to be worried.
But I'm going to check in and I'm going to give you all the details that you need. And there's going to be complete transparency because that's going to be really important in this too. Yeah. And then the third portion of this would be when is there a specific time frame, One night, one weekend, a specific time period? Is this a one time event or is there a possibility of it happening again? Yeah, that would be a weird scenario if there was a timeline and the timeline was like. A month, but you're running out of time, so you're just scrambling to meet with anyone. And it'd be, oh, there could be very weird circumstances out there.
That's a little spooky for a girl. All right. Going into establishing communication rules, as we discussed before the hall pass is used, you should agree on how much detail needs to be shared and will both partners be discussing the logistics or specifics of the event, how it's supposed to take place specifically if there needs to be a meeting or anything before, I think would be really important. And really who the person is is a lot of the factor here, even when just communicating the rules of communication. So what if the person doesn't want to know? Like person that's giving the hall pass says OK, you can do this, but I don't I like fully amnesia barrier.
I don't want to know anything. I don't want to know who it is. I don't want to know where you are. I don't want to know anything. Then I would say just forget the hall pass and run. I mean, if your partner really doesn't care for your safety enough to say I don't want to know anything, then yeah, there's a lot more deeper issues than just a hall pass here, I would say, yeah, I think there's a difference between like, having the conversation of what could take place, where are you going to be, what safety precautions do you have in place? You know, all the things that we're going to talk about in this episode. But also it should be like you don't have to go through exactly what takes place and do like a blow by blow of exactly what happens in the in the night or the event or whatever. I think this definitely could be a situation where someone could say, well, I don't want to know anything. But it's like, well, I mean, you do want to know things.
You want to know where they are. You want to know if they're safe. You want to know some sort of a way to contact you if you're not available or you're not answering your phone, et cetera, Like those are all things that I would want to know. Yeah, I would hope so. I think it's important to even through a difficult process like this, that safety is going to be a number one priority. I mean, your significant other, when asking for the hall pass could have had someone in mind. And if you have no idea who that person is, you should at least. Get some basic information and some contact information or something so it's safe. Yeah, something. I mean, it doesn't have to be crazy. It doesn't have to be like, you know, you don't have to get their Social Security number and their bank card information and everything like that. But I mean, just the basic information just to ensure safety.
That has nothing to do with the activities that are going to happen in that event. That has everything to do with I would want the same information from you if you were going on a a business trip. I'd want to know where you are. Like, not necessarily who you're with, but I would want to know at least where you are and how to contact you if I can't reach you through normal channels like your phone. Yeah, Yeah, I agree. And during the event, you guys should talk about what is expected as far as updates go. I would just want to make sure that like the communication for during the event would be, do you want to receive text updates? Is your expectation that there'll be no communication that way? It's very clear from the beginning that hey, I, I'm not going to have any contact.
Don't expect messages from me because maybe your normal communication style is you're texting throughout the day while you're at work. Whatever you're doing, you're doing the text updates or you're calling periodically to to check up on each other where this could be out of the norm. So it could make a pretty anxious situation even worse for your partner just having to sit there and be like, OK, well, I'm just waiting, just kind of waiting to figure out what's going on and how long they're going to be. And I feel like if those all those situations are kind of taken care of, then, you know, like I feel like there should be clear understanding of, OK, I'll periodically update you or, you know, whatever the situation is. Do I want no contact? Do you want updates? And even if you say, OK, I don't want, I'm not going to have any communication.
I just want to kind of be full in this experience and I don't want to have any communication. I would still have something in place that says. If I don't hear from you by 10:00 PM, midnight, whatever the time is, then this is how I'm going to continue. That way it's, you know, that there's a cut off.
And even if there's not, you can say, hey, you know, checking in at midnight, going to be a few extra hours, going to be another hour. It doesn't necessarily have anything to do with control or anything like that, but if somebody hasn't heard from you in hours and they don't know who the person is or doesn't know their character, you could be in danger and they'd have no idea.
Yeah. Especially with this kind of situation where you're kind of taking a risk, you should allow your partner in as much as you can. That way the risk is minimal. Yeah, absolutely. And then during this time, you're kind of going to go over the emotional boundaries, whether it's attachment handling, jealousy and insecurity, because let's be honest, like jealousy and insecurity, those things are going to happen. I think it's pretty close to say that everybody, whether it overtakes you, is different. Each person could handle it well, but that doesn't mean that jealousy and insecurity might not have a place in the very beginning during the event itself where they're kind of just sitting, not really knowing what's going on, not knowing if you're OK, not knowing if you're having a good time like that.
I think that kind of breeds the environment for the jealousy and the insecurity to happen. So if you can set these emotional boundaries up in the very beginning, then you can discuss and agree that emotional attachment in the hall pass is off limits and how the experience should remain purely physical if that's what you're looking for. But I think having those rules and guidelines in place doesn't really leave the door open for the. Emotional attachment portion of it, to some degree, I understand that nobody knows ahead of time, like, oh, hey, I'm going to have an emotional attachment to somebody, right? Yeah. Well, I mean, you have to prepare yourself and prepare them for the fact that after the hall pass event, there's just going to be nothing You can't get emotionally attached to the other person can't. And you know, it's definitely fair to make that clear to them and to prepare for that yourself.
Absolutely. Because I think it could be if you, if you have those emotional feelings, it is kind of a, an easier way to say, OK, well, this was a one time thing.
I'm a normal human. I'm going to have an emotional response to, especially if you're having sexual acts. I think it's pretty normal to have some sort of an emotional response, an emotional connection to somebody.
I would hope so. I would hope so, yeah, I would hope so.
But addressing how you do handle the feelings of jealousy and insecurity that might arise, you want to make sure that in this, you're creating a safe space for both partners to be able to express their emotions openly without judgement. This is not something that anyone should go into without creating that because it should be an open thing of you're allowing this, they're allowing this, but they, you both are going to have feelings that, you know, you might have AB and C, but they have XY and Z. So they there has to be room for all of it.
Yeah, I agree. I think it's going to be tough kind of to establish this emotional boundary, but it's definitely something that needs to take place. And who knows? If it doesn't need to take place then I would say you should talk with your partner to see if this is just going to be. Turning into some sort of open relationship thing, because I really do think it's one way or the other. Yeah, you're not wrong. So you don't think that there's a place for someone to be indifferent in this situation as the partner that's giving a hall pass? Yes, I think there could be a place where the partner giving a hall pass is indifferent, but I think it wouldn't be a healthy place. I just, I cannot see a healthy relationship minded person being indifferent to this kind of structure in their relationship.
Yeah, I can see that. So I think next on the docket here is the agreement on privacy and confidentiality as far as deciding whether it's something to keep between you and your partner or if it's OK to share with close friends and maybe even bring to social media as maybe an advocate or anything like that. Yeah, I mean, I do think that there's a space for a therapist, if that's something just to go ahead, especially like for me, I have a therapist that I see every week. We know this, but you know, I have a therapist that I see every week. And it would be something that would be like, hey, what happened to you this week? I think that's a pretty big portion to add to that, just to make sure that if there's any feelings or anything that you would have a space to bring that up. I would caution anybody that does talk to a therapist about it, though, that anything that happens in that therapy session goes back.
Any, any realizations that you have in the therapy session should go back to your partner and it should be communicated. I don't think that there's that's not a space where you should have feelings and thoughts and not give them to your partner. Yeah. And I was going to say it could be something where you bring it to a therapist, but I don't think your partner should have any say in what you bring to your therapist and what you don't you don't think so? No, not at all.
I don't think that I don't think you should have a say in what I bring to them. But I think that it's pretty fair to say like, oh, hey, when I talk to my therapist.
We talked about the hall pass. It came up to, you know, XYZI realized that I feel this way about it and being able to communicate that to your partner. It's not like a you need to do this or else it's just you should be keeping your partner in the loop of how you're feeling and adding the other person like a therapist does. I feel like a therapist is safer, a safer bet than a close friend because a therapist has no skin in the game.
They don't know your partner. They don't know anything like that. They're not part of your life where a close friend might be. And they might have feelings or bring that to your partner where maybe you told them in confidence. And then they go directly to your partner. And it's like, oh, how could you do this? This is so stupid. Yeah, I would say it is a good idea to fill in your partner on how you're feeling. And I think that's the healthiest way to approach it. I just wouldn't say it is healthy to allow your partner to decide. Rather, you can bring it to therapy because it's a part of your psyche. And if we need to talk about it and either get some sort of reference on it or something like that, I think that's for you. I mean, that's fair.
Yeah. I'm just an advocate for if your partner's going to say don't bring this into therapy and you want to bring it into therapy because you think it could help you, then I think your partner's sabotaging therapy. Interesting.
I even think about it as far as social media goes. I obviously had to put this in here, but it definitely makes me laugh because it does seem like a really weird thing to say. All right, well, you can't post it on social media. Like no duh, like I can't Dang it, make a whole illustration of a hall pass and post it. And guess what? I just got It literally is like every single like a bullet point list of everything that happened and everyone's like did not sign up for this newsletter.
It's just a picture. And at the end of the picture it says. With AT Oh my gosh. But it should be at least discussed to make sure that says, hey, this shouldn't need to be or this this probably won't be an issue. But let's go ahead and just say like, we're not going to post this on social media and we're not going to discuss this publicly.
I think that there is an aspect of people being embarrassed or uncomfortable about it. I personally feel like people can just get happy in the same pants they got mad and about that. I'm not really the kind of person that says like, oh, I'm going to shy away from talking about something that I want to talk about purely out of discomfort or the fear of embarrassment or discomfort to someone else or for someone else.
I agree. But that's just me. All right, next is health and safety rules. This is mostly just for protection.
I think it's the use of protection during the hall pass experience and afterward to protect your partner. I think both of those are pretty important. Absolutely. I think getting STD tested before and after, I feel like if you're with anybody that's not OK with asking for ASTD test, that seems a little spooky to me.
Very spooky. I feel like if I were in this situation, it were full steam ahead and I said, OK, the last thing that we need to do before this hall pass, you need to get STD tested. And so do I. And that hall pass person was like, I don't know. I'd be like, I don't know either about this whole experience because that just seems very scary to me. It would be very scary, especially if you're just looking for protection and your partner isn't willing to give you or them the protection that you both deserve. That's something that, in my opinion, kind of crosses the line. Yeah, it's definitely a red flag.
Definitely a red flag. And while we're talking about protection, I want to bring up the reconnecting part because it would be really hard to reconnect with your partner after the whole pass without having that protection in place so that nothing significance changed. Rather it's in your your sex life or your partner's confidence in you or your confidence in yourself.
I think it's it would be very important to set aside time to reconnect. Emotionally and physically after the hall pass and re establish that intimacy and trust. And I don't think that would go very well if your partner or you isn't insistent on the basic protections. Absolutely. Like I said, I think it's a very spooky thing. It would be a really big red flag to me if or it wasn't on your mind to make sure that you've reconnected with me or Ivory connected with you 'cause it is something that I don't know. I feel like after that kind of act, your partner, they might not have harsh feelings towards you, but they might feel uncomfortable with being intimate with you after you've had a hall pass. So it should be something that's discussed and figured out and that you have a clear plan in place as far as what are we going to do? Maybe after the hall pass, you're going to take a a weekend trip somewhere and go do something super romantic together to reconnect.
Yeah, I agree. I mean, different strokes for different folks, sure. But for me personally, it would be maybe a month before I even thought about intimacy and probably quite a bit longer than that before I actually wanted to act on that intimacy afterward. And I think that's definitely fair. So you think it'd be like a month plus? Oh yeah. Like baseline minimum, probably 3 months before I actually acted on it.
Probably a whole month before I even thought about intimacy. So if I were to initiate, you would decline. Oh yeah. I guess it would be clear. Like that's not an as a punishment. I mean, maybe in some way it would be for the partner.
Maybe it would be OK. Well, you had your fun and now it's your fun at my expense is going to cost you intimacy with me. While I get my mind back in order and kind of re establish my connection with you. But you don't see that, like you don't see that as damaging in a way I do. But if this is something that was established before the hall pass, I think it's damaged already. But yeah, I think it's fair to say that if there is a hall pass situation and afterward you're just not feeling intimate at all, then that's totally understandable.
Hopefully it wouldn't be a punishment thing for me. It would be more of AI don't, I don't want to say depression thing, but it would it would be more of an inadequacy thing because I know me and I would feel like I just wasn't enough for my partner and was to stop that from happening in the future. And it would just, I don't want to say it would get me depressed, but it would certainly change how I acted towards my partner and how I approached things and how intimate I was and how connected I was. And so it would open Pandora's box, essentially.
I think so. Yeah. Interesting. So would you like, obviously we've established that like this is not something that we would do.
We're not judging anybody that does decide this or has decided or will decide. Yeah, absolutely not. But it's not something for us. So you're saying that hypothetically, if that was something that we ventured into, had the conversations and that's what we decided on, do you think that you would, what do you think the level of intimacy would be? Would it be completely non existent where there's like no kissing? No, no hugging, no hand holding, no cuddling. I think within the first month it would be definite like a strict cut off, like non existent intimacy. And I think that would be me feeling that, as I talked about before, that feeling of inadequacy. And not having trust in my partner to kind of help help me with that. And then I think everything after that first month period would be me trying to reconnect and move past the feeling of inadequacy and trying to get my relationship back on track.
This is exactly why having the conversation upfront, acknowledging everything that needs to be acknowledged is so important because like Randolph, he knows I, I know that there's not a way for you to know exactly what you would do in that situation, but you have a pretty good idea because you know how you are and what you believe in. So you have a pretty good indication of what's going to happen. So if you're able to have that conversation with your partner and you're able to say like, hey, this is for sure how I'm going to feel, minimum, I'm going to feel this or that, or at least planning for that to be the feeling, even if it is or isn't, could be the difference. But for me, hearing you say that, like obviously it's not something that I'm entertaining, but would cause me to pause feeling like the hall pass was the right thing to do because that would completely damage us. Yeah, At the very least temporarily.
And that that is an understandable feeling. I also feel like there's going to be people that are going to push themselves to be OK with it and to completely make this happen, working against their emotions. And I think they would be unhealthy as well because that's only going to cause resentment. I mean, you can be the tough guy and say no, it's fine.
I'm gonna work on. I'm gonna focus on work. I'm gonna focus on hanging out, the boys playing video games, whatever.
You can say that. But is it the healthiest approach to your own psyche, into your own emotional connection with your partner? I do not think so. I would absolutely disagree with that. Yeah, I agree. And that wraps up Part 2 of our Hall Pass series. We hope this episode gave you some helpful tools to set boundaries, navigate the experience, and keep your relationship strong afterward. And remember, it's all about open communication and making sure both partners are on the same page. If you're ever feeling unsure, taking the time to check in with each other can make all the difference. If you enjoyed today's episode, we'd love for you to leave us a review. It helps us improve and helps others find the podcast too. And if you want more exclusive content, consider joining our Patreon community. Thank you for tuning in today, and don't forget to follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok at an Opportunity podcast.
We'd love to hear your thoughts and continue the conversation there. Until next time, keep those conversations going and remember every relationship is an opportunity to grow together. Talk to you soon. Bye.