One of the recurring debates in CNM communities concerns how relationships should be structured: through explicit rules and agreements that govern specific behaviours, or through shared values that partners apply to situations as they arise, without prescribing outcomes in advance. This isn't a trivial argument. How you come down on it shapes what your CNM relationships look like and what you ask of partners.
The rules position
People who favour explicit rules and agreements argue that specific, behavioural agreements produce clarity that values alone can't. If partners agree in advance that one partner will be informed before a new sexual contact, there's no ambiguity about what's expected. Values like "honesty" and "transparency" can be sincerely held while being interpreted very differently by different people; explicit agreements reduce the interpretive gap.
Rules also provide predictability that helps some people manage anxiety. Knowing what to expect, having the limits of what's permitted or required defined, produces a kind of security that abstract values don't always generate. For people new to CNM, explicit structure provides guardrails while they're building the skills to navigate without them.
The rules framework also provides a shared reference point when disagreements arise: what did we agree to, and did this match it? This is a concrete way to address conflict that values-based approaches sometimes lack.
The values position
Critics of rules-based CNM argue that explicit agreements tend to proliferate into unsustainable complexity, address specific scenarios rather than the underlying concerns driving them, and create adversarial dynamics around enforcement and violation. Rules about specific behaviours can technically be followed while violating the spirit of what partners need. And they create a lowest-common-denominator problem: rules can tell you what's not allowed but not what's actually good.
The values position argues that what partners need is not prescriptive agreements but shared ethical orientation: mutual commitments to honesty, care, and consideration that produce good decisions in situations that rules can't anticipate. If both partners are genuinely oriented toward each other's wellbeing, the specific situations will be navigated well. If they're not, rules won't fix it.
There's also a philosophical argument: that relationship agreements governing another person's behaviour are a form of control that values-based CNM should reject. The aim is partners who treat you well because they care about you, not partners who comply with agreements out of obligation.
Where the real disagreement sits
Most of the substantive disagreement isn't actually about rules vs. values — it's about what the agreements are trying to solve. Explicit agreements are genuinely useful for coordinating practical matters: scheduling, safer sex practices, how and when to communicate. They're less useful as substitutes for trust, and using them that way produces the rule proliferation that values-advocates criticise.
Conversely, a pure values approach that refuses to make explicit agreements relies on partners having identical intuitions about what their shared values require in specific situations. People who are genuinely aligned in their values still sometimes need to actually articulate what those values mean in a specific context.
Where most CNM relationships actually land
Most functioning CNM relationships use some version of both: explicit agreements around matters where coordination matters (communication practices, safer sex, how metamours are introduced) combined with reliance on shared values and goodwill for the vast majority of situations that agreements can't anticipate.
The debate is most practically useful for identifying what you're asking agreements to do. If an agreement is meant to coordinate logistics, it's probably a useful agreement. If an agreement is meant to manage anxiety by controlling a partner's behaviour, it's worth examining whether that's an agreement problem or something else.
The ethical question underneath
There's a deeper question the debate points toward: what kind of relationship do you want? One where trust is demonstrated by compliance with explicit commitments, or one where trust is demonstrated by ongoing care and consideration that doesn't require enforcement? These aren't mutually exclusive, and most people want elements of both. But knowing which you weight more heavily shapes what you look for in partners and how you build your CNM relationships.