The Rules

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As I mentioned in my self-description, I am a very impulsive person. It's easy for me to make major decisions on the spur of the moment, or get wrapped up in something I'm excited about now, even if now is a terrible time to be doing that, or maybe it's really not something I should be doing at all. This is particularly true if I'm in a high energy, high excitement state. Since I go hard into extrovert mode when I'm around people I like, and absorb energy from those situations, I'm basically in that sort of state any time I'm at a party, con, or similar situation. This can be a dangerous combination, given all the exciting people!

In addition, if I'm hyperfocused on something, it's really easy for me to miss really obvious clues in my surroundings, and make bad decisions because of it. 

To help address both of these issues, I make a lot of my decisions in advance, and force myself to abide by those decisions in the moment, even if I don't want to. This means that I have a fairly extensive set of rules. Most of these rules relate to social situations, but that's just because that's where I'm most likely to run into these issues.

Here are a few of my example rules:

* If there are five or fewer people at a party that started with ten or more, and I am not super close with the hosts, I should leave. I don't want to be imposing by being one of the last few people dragging the party out, when they are too polite to say so.

* If I went to an event with a partner, I should not flirt seriously with anyone I do not have an established relationship with, unless my partner and I have discussed this possibility explicitly. To be clear, this is not about jealousy. This is because if I'm having fun flirting with someone new, I will often hyperfocus on that interaction to the exclusion of everything else, and that is rude to the partner I brought. 

* I should not stand, jump, or climb on someone else's furniture without explicit permission.

* I may not decide to have sex with someone and have sex with them on the same day.

* If I am hosting an event with fewer than 30 people I should have at least one real one-on-one conversation with each person in attendance at some point during the event.

By the way, basically all these rules come from some problem that happened because I violated them.

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