Love Salesman

No one told me that you need to watch your plurals when you create a polycule.

My polycule had planned to buy tickets for an event and there was a crazy miscommunication. Allow me to set the stage.

I live with my nesting partner, let's call them A. I see them almost daily.

I have a close distance partner called C. I see them weekly.

I have a somewhat long distance partner called M. I see them monthly.

M's nesting partner is P.

We all consider the core "polycule" to be myself, C and M as we do the most activities together with A and P (and others) tagging along for specific activities or if they feel like it.

Initially I planned to buy all four tickets (A was busy and wasn't going to attend). I was stopped because P gets a military discount. I had assumed that with the discount P could buy both the tickets for that household (therefore purchasing M's ticket with discount). This was incorrect, the discount only applied to P's ticket and therefore only purchased one for themselves under the assumption I would get the rest.

So I messages back saying "okay, I'll buy ours now too" which I had said in reference to myself and C, who I was sitting next to at the time.

Weeks later we are a few days before the event and M asks if I have their ticket. I said no. There was a kerfuffle of panic because the even was sold out already, but we were able to find another ticket for M to attend and it was a blast.

In retrospect I realized that the use of "us", "we", and "you" (plural) and "you" (singular) are all very confusing. We've agreed to use more specific names next time to avoid the stress of that happening again.

It's just difficult since outside of a polycule, those terms are generally descriptive enough with context that folks know who you are talking about. When married mono couples say "we would like to go" or "our tickets" it's generally safe to assume they mean themselves.

Would love to know if other polycule encounter this and if you have unique solutions!