Some thoughts on being out

One of the many questions that inevitably comes up in almost any poly discussion group,usually multiple times, is the question about being open about being polyamorous.

The same thing comes up in kink-related social groups, and I imagine in just about any other alternative sexuality group you can name.

Now, I’m a big fan of openness and transparency. There are a lot of reasons for that. On a philosophical level, I do not believe there is anything to be gained by pretending to be something you’re not, and I don’t see how deceiving people who would shun you if they knew the truth actually benefits anyone. (To my mind, if someone–your family, say–loves you only so long as they don’t know the truth about you, then they don’t actually love you. They only love an imaginary projection of you, and that love is conditional on you agreeing not to do anything that might spoil the projection.)

On a practical level, it’s hard to find other people like you when everyone is closeted. If I am polyamorous, and I’m in a room with ten other poly people but none of us are open, all eleven of us might be thinking “Wow, I wonder where I can go to meet other poly people? It’s so hard to do!”

But there’s one objection to openness that I hear all the time, and that’s what I’d like to talk about here. A lot of folks say “I’m not open because it’s nobody else’s business how I live my life.” And to some extent it seems true, but there are problems with that idea.

Before I talk about those, though, I’d like to back up a little and talk about the way I grew up.


I spent my elementary and middle school years growing up in the rural Midwest. This is where I lived:

See that clump of trees on the right? It’s where my old house is. We lived outside a tiny town called Venango, Nebraska, population (at the time) 242.

I’ve written about a trip I took as an adult through Venango, with lots of pictures, in my blog here. Time has not been kind to the town. It’s half deserted; many of the houses are boarded up, and the school closed a long time ago. The most eerie thing about it is the total and complete absence of children. We stopped at the playground behind the school when we visited it. All of the playground equipment is covered by a fine dusting of rust, and when we turned the merry-go-round, rust drifted off it in flakes. I have to think that if there was even one child left in the entire town, the playground wouldn’t be this disused.

It was no picnic for me growing up there. I was the stereotypical geek as a kid; I was into model rocketry, and I owned a TRS-80 computer, the only computer of any sort in a 40-mile radius. (I know this because the only other computer within any distance was an Apple II belonging to the owner of the business my mother worked at in the next town over, about 45 minutes away; he used it to do bookkeeping.)

There were eight people in my middle school class, the largest class the school had seen in years. While I was teaching myself the basics of aeronautics, electronics, and Z-80 assembly language programming, the main topic of conversation among my peers were the relative merits of the Denver Broncos vs. the Dallas Cowboys–a discussion that often involved a great deal of heat but never seemed to get resolved, no matter how many times it was hashed out.

So it’s safe to say I grew up alienated from all the people around me.

Which is pretty unpleasant. I was able to partially mitigate the fact that I had no friends when my parents got me a 300 baud telephone modem, and for quite literally the first time in my life I was able to encounter, if only in a crude way, people who were kind of like me.

As alienated as I was, I still had some things going for me. One of the things I noticed growing up was the casual, offhand racism that permeated the Midwest; the people around me were quite confident that whites were better than blacks, even though most of them had, quite literally, never once met a person who was black. Even as an outcast, I still had some measure of privilege; it’s hard to say how much better or worse things might have been had I been a football-loving African American, or (worse yet) geeky and also black.

My parents moved to Florida when I started high school, so all at once I went from having eight people in my class to having two thousand. For the first time in my life, I met other people who were like me. I was still something of an outcast from most of the folks around me, of course; the fact that there were other geeky, nerdy people in the school didn’t mean we weren’t a distinct minority. I was still introverted and painfully shy back then, but at least I had a social circle, something that was totally new to me.


What does this have to do with being out about polyamory? Quite a lot.

After my first year in college, I made a conscious decision: I did not want to be introverted or shy any more. I deliberately and systematically set about learning the skills that would get me there. I started choosing different kinds of people in my social circle. If I found a social situation that made me uncomfortable, I deliberately kept putting myself in it.

It was about this same time that I started realizing that I was kinky and poly, as well. Prior to starting college, I wasn’t a sexual being in any meaningful sense of the word; I barely even recognized that boys and girls are different.

But even before I was interested in sex or relationships, I still knew I was polyamorous, though there was no language for it. The stories about the beautiful princess forced to choose between her suitors never quite made sense with me; if princesses live in castles, which seemed axiomatic to me when I was a kid, why wasn’t there room for all of them?

As a person newly interested in sexual relationships, that idea stayed. Why on earth should I expect someone to pledge her fidelity to me, simply because I fancied her? On the face of it, the idea just made no sense.

Growing up alienated seems to have had a positive side effect; I found out that being isolated from a social circle is inconvenient, but it isn’t fatal. I learned that I could find ways to interact with people like me, first online and then in person. And I learned that things like “being shy” and “having poor social skills” weren’t death sentences; they were things I could learn to cope with and skills I could acquire.

So in that sense, having an isolated childhood didn’t really leave that much of a mark on me. i was resilient enough to make choices about who I wanted to be and then find ways to be that person.


In the 1990s, which is positively antediluvian as far as the Internet goes, I started working on a Web site. (The Wayback Machine only started capturing the poly section of the site in 2000, for reasons I don’t completely understand.)

The goal in making the site was to create the resource that the younger version of me would have found valuable. When I actually started doing this polyamory thing, I didn’t have the advantage of being able to learn from other people’s mistakes, which meant that I had to make my own…and while experience might be the best teacher, sometimes the tuition is very high.

The site became a whole lot more popular than I expected it to be, which pretty much finished off any chance I might have to be quiet about being polyamorous. Not that there was ever much chance of that to begin with, but still.

So I’ve never been closeted. Not even a little bit.


Which takes us back ’round to the issue of what business it is of anyone else’s.

On the face of it, “it’s nobody’s business who I’m involved with” seems to make sense…except that, in a very real sense, it is.

We live in a society that sanctions only one kind of relationship, and tends to stigmatize others.

When a person wears a wedding ring and says in casual conversation “My wife and I went to dinner last night,” that person is validating those social conventions. He could say that it’s nobody’s business how he conducts his romantic affairs, of course; but the simple act of wearing a wedding ring is a public declaration of a very specific kind of relationship. And it’s hard to talk about the things we do, even casually, without talking about the people we do them with, and what those people’s relationships are to us.

When folks at poly get-togethers talk about being closeted, by far and away the most common thing they talk about is being afraid of other people’s reactions to learning the truth. Essentially, it boils down to a very simple idea: “I want to control information so as to control the way people interact with me.” The fear of being shunned, and the extent to which people are willing to jump through hoops to control information and to create the impression of normalcy in order to avoid that fear, is sometimes quite remarkable.

I’ve never had the fear of how people will react to me for being polyamorous (or kinky or anything else). I’d like to think it’s because I’m, like, all evolved and stuff, but it’s really a lot simpler. I know what it’s like to be totally alienated from my peers. I know that I can survive it. I know that I can create my own social circles and my own family. I’ve met that monster under the bed. It has no power over me. If there’s a monster under my bed, fucker better pay me rent, just like anyone else living here.

I realize that I am in a privileged position about this. I work for myself; I don’t have to worry about a conservative employer firing me if they find out how I live my life. I’m not in the military. (Under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, adultery is a crime, punishable by dishonorable discharge, prison, or both.) I am not financially dependent on a family that would disown me if they found out. I don’t have children who might be vulnerable to being taken away, or an ex-spouse who can use polyamory against me in a custody hearing.

So I can be open about who I am, and I don’t have to worry about suffering for it.

And that’s kind of the point.

In a world where it really was nobody’s business how we conduct our private lives, nobody would have to worry about these things. Nobody would have to worry about getting fired or getting a dishonorable discharge or losing children because of being polyamorous. The fact that there are people who do have to worry about these things means that much of the world tries to make it their business how we conduct our romantic lives.

Polyamory, and homosexuality, and BDSM, and all kinds of other non-socially-sanctioned relationship structures are perceived negatively in part because people don’t often see them, and it’s easier to vilify something that you don’t see every day. Like the racists in Venango who’d never laid eyes on a black person, when you don’t have the experience of seeing something yourself, it’s easier to project all your own fears onto it.

When those of us who have a privileged enough position to be able to live openly choose to do so, we help create a visible face for polyamory that makes it that little bit harder for others to vilify or marginalize us. So in that sense, it very much is other people’s business what I get up to; by creating institutions which can be used against folks who are polyamorous, they’ve made it that way, whether we like it or not. By creating the social expectation that people in officially sanctioned relationships can advertise their relationship status but people who aren’t, can’t, they’ve made it that way.


Columnist Dan Savage started a campaign aimed at teen gays and lesbians called “It Gets Better.” Part of the campaign is to do exactly what edwardmartiniii talks about in this essay: namely, to speak up when we see something wrong.

If the alienated, disenfranchised me from 1977 could see the me from 2012, he’d be amazed. The person I am today is the person the elementary-school version of me fantasized about being, and more.

But it took a lot of work to get here. And that’s why it matters. By being open about who I am, not only do I live my life without compromise, exactly the way I want to; I help make it that much easier for other people who, right now, don’t have a social group where they belong. I think that everyone who, like me, is in a position to be able to be out without risk, does a service to others by choosing to be so. It does get better, because we make choices that help make it better.

68 thoughts on “Some thoughts on being out

    • Shyness and introversion aren’t necessarily the same thing. It’s possible that I have always naturally been an extrovert, but having no peer group and no opportunity for socialization masked my extroversion. I certainly came out of Venango with a powerful sense of fear at new social situations, so it’s tough to say if being energized in social situations came with choosing to be more outgoing, or was hidden inside somewhere all along.

      • Yeah, I don’t think you were an actual introvert. I am an extreme introvert and being around people makes me really tired. I get along with folks fine, but can only take it in short bursts. No “curing” that 🙂

        • I think this is true, also; I perceive a distinct difference between shyness (uncertainty and anxiety about social interaction leading to reduced interaction), bashfulness (shame about opening up for social interaction, usually about subsets of one’s personality or “belonging” to a particular social group), and introversion (social interaction having net-negative psychological energy tradeoff, exacerbated by increasing the number of social interactors). If I was speaking what you said above, I’d have called myself shy and bashful, and been uncertain of introversion until I had overcome the shyness/bashfulness.

      • this makes sense to me.

        I have always called myself shy, but once I have some comfort in a situation I am anything but.

        This idea of the “shy” energies coming from the environment (the outside) instead of from our own natural tendencies (the inside) when we are in environments that do not match our natural tendencies makes a hell of a lot of sense!

        I will have to think on this more.
        Thank you.

    • I did exactly the same thing that tacit did. When I moved away from home to go to college, I made a conscious decision not to be shy anymore, and I succeeded by learning the skills I needed.

      Many times, people find situations uncomfortable and draining when they don’t have the skills needed to navigate them, and when they aren’t accustomed to them. Social situations used to be excruciating for me, but now I do find many types of them energizing because I have acquired the skills and experience to feel comfortable and confident in them.

      So, on one hand, I would argue that yes, a person absolutely could decide to learn how to be energized around people. I don’t believe that our personalities are as static as many would believe.

      But I am also curious where this definition of introversion/extroversion as a form of getting energized comes from. I’ve looked in several dictionaries and none of them define these terms this way. They use them synonymously with “shy” and “outgoing,” with a secondary definition of being inward- or outward-focused. I see a lot of discussions on LJ in which people jump on someone for using “introvert” or “extrovert” to mean “shy” or “outgoing,” claiming that this definition is wrong. But Webster’s would disagree.

      So, is this something new in the field of psychology, that hasn’t been reflected in dictionaries yet? I’m curious where this concept came from.

      For myself, I require both social interaction AND time alone in order to feel happy, healthy, and energetic, as do most of the people I know. I guess that would make us intrextroverts. 😛

      • The notion that extroversion and introversion are separate from things like shyness or social anxiety started, I think, with Jungian personality typing systems like the Myers-Briggs system. In these personality typing systems, an extrovert is a person who feels energized by being around other people in large social groups, whereas an introvert is someone who feels drained by large social gatherings and feels energized in the company of a small number of intimates or alone.

        So it’s possible to be shy, but to feel energized in social situations; and it’s possible to have few inhibitions and not be shy, but to need recovery time after spending time in social settings.

        I think it’s useful to separate introversion/extroversion from things like shyness, because (at least to me) it certainly seems possible to be shy but also to prefer social gatherings. Once I learned the tools not to be shy, I went from someone who looked like an introvert to someone who looks like an extrovert, but I’m not sure the core part of who I am actually changed.

        • I think the new definitions of introversion/extroversion are really useful. I just get annoyed when people jump all over someone for using the traditional dictionary definitions of these words. Those definitions aren’t *wrong,* even if they aren’t necessarily as useful.

          I don’t know how much I buy into the introvert/extrovert dichotomy, however. Perhaps it’s a lot like the Kinsey scale, where a lot of people fall somewhere in the middle, maybe leaning more to one side than the other. For me personally, I cannot define myself as either an introvert or an extrovert. Sometimes I find social events to be very energizing. Other times they totally drain me. The same is true of being alone. Whether I’m an introvert or an extrovert varies from day to day and week to week.

          • Meyers-Briggs is definitely a set of scales, at least in some implementations. The last time I took it with any significance was probably 15 years ago, but the results were presented as points along four different scales, indicating how strongly expressed each of the traits. It stuck in my mind because my results were almost straight down the middle. The administrator said that it either meant that I was flexible and easy-going, or that I was a sociopath. *whistles innocently*

  1. I work for a megabank. They actually have strong LGBT links to the community and are a good employer (internal PRIDE networking groups, benefits packages that cover domestic partners and so on). They claim to support diversity… but if I came out to my current boss about my kink/poly nature and if he started to discriminate then I very much doubt that they would do much ‘cos it’s not on the “list”.

    (Despite this I do wear my “Story of O Slave Ring” on my ring finger; no one knows what it symbolises, though!)

    Do you see attitudes to kink and poly changing so that they become more mainstream supported?

  2. I work for a megabank. They actually have strong LGBT links to the community and are a good employer (internal PRIDE networking groups, benefits packages that cover domestic partners and so on). They claim to support diversity… but if I came out to my current boss about my kink/poly nature and if he started to discriminate then I very much doubt that they would do much ‘cos it’s not on the “list”.

    (Despite this I do wear my “Story of O Slave Ring” on my ring finger; no one knows what it symbolises, though!)

    Do you see attitudes to kink and poly changing so that they become more mainstream supported?

  3. I live in a poly household of 12 people, adults and kids. While we can’t (and wouldn’t want to) hide that fact, we have found it necessary at times to phrase things in ways that “normal” folks would understand. For me it’s been mostly a matter of convenience: do I have the time and the inclination to launch into a long explanation? Or can I just say “housemate” and keep on bagging my groceries?

    That policy has been sorely tested recently. One of my wives — the one who, legally, is married to someone else — has suffered a serious health issue. It’s been difficult to convey why I’m so worried about a mere “housemate.” So I’ve had to give a bit more explanation.

  4. I live in a poly household of 12 people, adults and kids. While we can’t (and wouldn’t want to) hide that fact, we have found it necessary at times to phrase things in ways that “normal” folks would understand. For me it’s been mostly a matter of convenience: do I have the time and the inclination to launch into a long explanation? Or can I just say “housemate” and keep on bagging my groceries?

    That policy has been sorely tested recently. One of my wives — the one who, legally, is married to someone else — has suffered a serious health issue. It’s been difficult to convey why I’m so worried about a mere “housemate.” So I’ve had to give a bit more explanation.

  5. I’m in a partial closet. My close friends and a few casual ones know about the family situation. My mother does. (I sort of had to tell her when it looked like she was going to be a Step Grandma, a role she warmed to.) My husband’s workplace knew, when he worked there. He quit, so being fired for anything wasn’t an issue.

    Really the only people I’m strictly in the closet to, is my workplace, and my grandmother. Workplace is kind of self explanatory. I don’t think it’s appropriate to go deeply into one’s personal life there anyway. Some do. I choose not to. Do people know I’m married and I have a bunch of house mates? Sure, but I wouldn’t tell my co-workers about my bedroom habits if I were monogamous, nor go into detail about my dating life if I were single.

    As for my grandmother, I’m not afraid she would stop loving me. In her case I’m more just knowing that she wouldn’t understand no matter how I explained it. It would bother her. It would worry her. I choose not to burden her with it. She’s in her late 80’s and I would rather enjoy what time is left with her without her asking me if Brian is forcing me to have this kind of relationship, because in her mind men are the ones who would desire such a thing. I can wish things would be different, but that’s just how it is.

    • Hee. I was discussing this article with two of my sweeties here and my grandmother was the first person to come to mind for all of us. She’s the only person in my blood-relation family to which I am close that doesn’t know the nature of my poly family. Last fall, the three of us took a trip down to NC to visit my dad and some of the family. (The short version: dad was about to start his forth round of cancer treatments and … well, we all knew that this was likely to be the last time we’d get to see him alive. We were unfortunately correct.) Grandma had met the partner with which I live several times before and was glad to meet our friend. We tried to be careful, but I’m pretty sure ‘sweetie’ slipped out at least a few times.

      A few weeks later dad died and my live-in partner and I were back in NC for the funeral and other arrangements. Grandma asked how our friend that was with us was doing and said that she was really sweet. At the time I took this as normal family conversation, but I got to thinking about it later: Grandma isn’t dumb. She also knew that my dad sometimes had more than one partner at a time, although I’m not sure I’d call him poly exactly. I think she might have known more about the situation than any of us realized!

      No, I’m still not going to sit down and tell her all about it, nor about my other partners, especially my boyfriend. I agree with you: I don’t think she’d stop loving me, but I don’t see the need to inflict worry on her at her age. My mother used to worry a bit, but I honestly think seeing some of how my poly family looked after us when dad died helped alleviate some of her fears. No, she still doesn’t understand it, but she knows we’re all happy and that we’re taking care of each other.

      • My girlfriend and I feel that way about her parents — we’re out to everyone else who matters (all of our friends, my two male partners’ families, our children, etc. — the only exception being my mother, who is a hell-beast and isn’t allowed ANY personal information if I can help it), but we’re kind of . . . unsure about what exactly her parents know about us, and we’re kind of okay with it being that way.

        (Amusingly, she’s BEEN in a poly relationship before, years ago, also a FMF triad, and her parents knew her partners-at-the-time . . . so it’s not like they’d be entirely new to the idea.)

        They’ve just accepted me as being a valued part of their daughter’s family, they’ve welcomed me into their home and celebrated birthdays and holidays with us — but since I’m a long-distance partner to my girlfriend and her husband, we’re . . . not 100% sure whether they know that I’m *sleeping* with both of them or not.

        Since they treat me with respect as someone who is dear to their daughter and son-in-law, and a quasi-parent to their grandchild, I’m okay with never sitting down and specifically hashing out The Conversation with a couple of quietly conservative 80-year-old Brits 😉

        But, yes — in this case, it’s “not being very loudly out,” rather than being in the closet. If they asked, they’d be told. And I’m pretty sure they know, or at least suspect. But I think plausible deniability is something that they don’t mind having, because it’s the least confrontational way of dealing with the situation. So — we’re okay with that.

        In the case of my mother, I *am* in the closet — but I’m in the closet about just about everything with her. I’d cut off contact if I could, but there are financial ties involved (both my daughter and I have an unfortunate and expensive genetic disorder that causes all sorts of medical mayhem, and I’ve had to stop working because of it), so we’re just keeping our heads down and being thankful that she lives an hour and a half away and I don’t have to see her too often.

        — A <3

    • “Workplace is kind of self explanatory. I don’t think it’s appropriate to go deeply into one’s personal life there anyway.”

      I’m not sure how this isn’t the “no one’s business” excuse that Franklin’s entire post was talking about…? Not saying you have to be out (I’m closeted at work myself), but writing it off as “self explanatory” especially seems to amplify the idea that vanilla/monogamy is normal and everything else is “inappropriate.”

      • The basic difference that I tried to explain was that I wouldn’t talk about any deep aspect of my personal life with my coworkers no matter what I was. I don’t discuss my poly, I wouldn’t discuss my monogamy if I was monogamous, and I wouldn’t talk about my dating life past “I’m dating a thing. It’s cool,” if I was dating. Conversely I’m not interested in my co-worker’s personal lives past simple status, and find it deeply intrusive when I am subjected to long winded discussions about everything that’s great or terrible about their respective relationships. I don’t care who’s gay, or straight. I don’t care who’s cheating on who, or why, and a rrrreeeaaally don’t care who’s having problems with their partners.

        My husband, on the other hand, was pretty open with his co-workers to the point that he, I and one of his girlfriends attended social functions for his work together. People found it unusual, but once it was old news, they pretty much just accepted the whole thing.

        It might be worth a mention that I work in the hospitality industry, which tends to attract highly social people. There was an actual memo next to the time clock for a very long time declaring the back desk and office a “no gossip zone.” People have been disciplined and fired for inappropriate behavior that being too involved in each others lives caused. My husband on the other hand worked in television, which was a more open, creative environment.

      • Again with the “what she said” post!

        I don’t go “deeply into [my] personal life there” either (well, it depends on the coworker, honestly), but my coworkers don’t have to go “deeply into one’s personal life” for me to know they’re monogamously married by their wedding ring, the picture of their wife & kids on their desk or computer screen, and the casual water-cooler conversation of “my wife and I took the kids to see the new Disney movie this weekend…”

        So I speak of my partners in the same vein. I don’t have to say “we had an orgy this weekend where I got double-teamed, then we sat around relationship-processing about my boyfriend’s wife’s new love interest”. But I do say “How was my vacation? Well, 2 of my boyfriends & I went to visit my other boyfriend across the country for his commitment ceremony to his live-in girlfriend” in just the same way I might have said “my boyfriend and I went to my best friend from college’s wedding in Portland” if I were monogamous.

        By choosing my words to deliberately obscure my relationships when, had the relationship been monogamous the words would have been acceptable within the context, that makes my relationships “other people’s business” because it is for their benefit that I am making this deliberate effort to hide things. Their concern over my relationships dictates how I behave and how I speak of them in public, when I censor myself beyond what would otherwise be situationally-appropriate speech. Which means, as Franklin is saying, that they have already made my relationships their business, whether I like it or not.

    • As for my grandmother, I’m not afraid she would stop loving me. In her case I’m more just knowing that she wouldn’t understand no matter how I explained it. It would bother her. It would worry her. I choose not to burden her with it. She’s in her late 80’s and I would rather enjoy what time is left with her without her asking me if Brian is forcing me to have this kind of relationship, because in her mind men are the ones who would desire such a thing. I can wish things would be different, but that’s just how it is.

      This almost exactly explains why I have not come out to my parents, who are in their late 70s. They would still love me. They wouldn’t disown me. But they would be disappointed and worried and frankly, I don’t want to deal with it. They also live 3,000 miles away, and never visit here. So it’s not like I have to behave unnaturally around my boyfriend when they visit or anything.

  6. I’m in a partial closet. My close friends and a few casual ones know about the family situation. My mother does. (I sort of had to tell her when it looked like she was going to be a Step Grandma, a role she warmed to.) My husband’s workplace knew, when he worked there. He quit, so being fired for anything wasn’t an issue.

    Really the only people I’m strictly in the closet to, is my workplace, and my grandmother. Workplace is kind of self explanatory. I don’t think it’s appropriate to go deeply into one’s personal life there anyway. Some do. I choose not to. Do people know I’m married and I have a bunch of house mates? Sure, but I wouldn’t tell my co-workers about my bedroom habits if I were monogamous, nor go into detail about my dating life if I were single.

    As for my grandmother, I’m not afraid she would stop loving me. In her case I’m more just knowing that she wouldn’t understand no matter how I explained it. It would bother her. It would worry her. I choose not to burden her with it. She’s in her late 80’s and I would rather enjoy what time is left with her without her asking me if Brian is forcing me to have this kind of relationship, because in her mind men are the ones who would desire such a thing. I can wish things would be different, but that’s just how it is.

  7. This was a fantastic read that really got me thinking a lot.
    I’m married, I wear a wedding band, my husband wears a wedding band, we have kids and conservative parents, but we have a lot of freedom in our relationship to love others. Of course many people do not approve, but we don’t care. Truth be told that as we get older we are undoubtably settling together more as a closed unit, but controlling each other and policing each others feelings is something we’re both strongly against. Many times I have thought how wonderful it would be to be in love with more people and have a much larger family unit. If I felt that way now, I would embrace it completely and unapologetically.

    For many years of my relationship with my husband I had other boyfriends and one very specific long term serious boyfriend, our relationship only ended because he moved away.
    Personally, I see nothing wrong with any kind of adult consenting relationship. It should all be embraced. Whether you’re monogamous or poly these are things to be celebrated, because when lifestyles and love are present people should feel open and safe.

  8. This was a fantastic read that really got me thinking a lot.
    I’m married, I wear a wedding band, my husband wears a wedding band, we have kids and conservative parents, but we have a lot of freedom in our relationship to love others. Of course many people do not approve, but we don’t care. Truth be told that as we get older we are undoubtably settling together more as a closed unit, but controlling each other and policing each others feelings is something we’re both strongly against. Many times I have thought how wonderful it would be to be in love with more people and have a much larger family unit. If I felt that way now, I would embrace it completely and unapologetically.

    For many years of my relationship with my husband I had other boyfriends and one very specific long term serious boyfriend, our relationship only ended because he moved away.
    Personally, I see nothing wrong with any kind of adult consenting relationship. It should all be embraced. Whether you’re monogamous or poly these are things to be celebrated, because when lifestyles and love are present people should feel open and safe.

  9. I think there’s a difference between being out and being an activist/evangelist.

    Being an activist/evangilist involves things like having a website people refer to, actively telling your story and writing posts like this one. Speaking at events, organizing meet-ups and retreats. Being profiled in the media. Basically, being a poster child for a term for others, usually strangers to you, to see. These are all important things, and I’m very happy that people are still willing to put their lives out for others to see. I am also happy that I was able to carry that banner for a short while for poly, and now a bit for location independence. The impacts are widespread, but also carries a risk of the people your message reaching putting you into a ‘them’ category – as you’re not as real to them, as say a close friend or brother. It’s easy for folks to see activists as somehow gifted with special powers to be different or deranged & not like most people.

    Then there’s being out. And that’s being out to your friends and family, co-workers. The people you interact with in your life. This is a very powerful thing and also carries a great deal of risk if the people in your life don’t accept you. The people who really do love you are influenced more deeply by seeing you live your life as you wish. I deeply honor and respect people who are bold enough to be casually out in their every day life – the impacts of this are huge, even if their intentions are not of spreading a message. Just being yourself has a powerful message, and impacts people in your life more than you may ever realize.

    I’ve actually met more poly folks ‘in the wild’ since I left the more organized poly world – just by being casually out. Just in telling the story of how I met Chris and casually referencing the poly parts, tends to open people up to revealing their ‘secret’. Poly is all over the place, and it’s amazing how just a casual use of language can help you discover them.

    Some days, I feel inclined to be more of an activist and be willing to be on stage to talk about my lifestyles (poly, technomadism, etc.). And other days, I just don’t feel like sharing. Even a small thing, like a checker at the grocery story asking where I’m from can lead to a half hour conversation. And sometimes, I just don’t feel like opening that up – I just want to get home before my ice cream melts.

    All and all, being ‘out’ and being an activist/evangalist has benefited me personally – by helping find my tribe of like minded people. And as a side benefit, helping others consider there are alternatives to the defaults they’ve always assumed. But being an activist has also created a barrier sometimes to ‘follower’s seeing me as a peer and being approachable as a friend, and not just a mentor/influencer.

  10. I think there’s a difference between being out and being an activist/evangelist.

    Being an activist/evangilist involves things like having a website people refer to, actively telling your story and writing posts like this one. Speaking at events, organizing meet-ups and retreats. Being profiled in the media. Basically, being a poster child for a term for others, usually strangers to you, to see. These are all important things, and I’m very happy that people are still willing to put their lives out for others to see. I am also happy that I was able to carry that banner for a short while for poly, and now a bit for location independence. The impacts are widespread, but also carries a risk of the people your message reaching putting you into a ‘them’ category – as you’re not as real to them, as say a close friend or brother. It’s easy for folks to see activists as somehow gifted with special powers to be different or deranged & not like most people.

    Then there’s being out. And that’s being out to your friends and family, co-workers. The people you interact with in your life. This is a very powerful thing and also carries a great deal of risk if the people in your life don’t accept you. The people who really do love you are influenced more deeply by seeing you live your life as you wish. I deeply honor and respect people who are bold enough to be casually out in their every day life – the impacts of this are huge, even if their intentions are not of spreading a message. Just being yourself has a powerful message, and impacts people in your life more than you may ever realize.

    I’ve actually met more poly folks ‘in the wild’ since I left the more organized poly world – just by being casually out. Just in telling the story of how I met Chris and casually referencing the poly parts, tends to open people up to revealing their ‘secret’. Poly is all over the place, and it’s amazing how just a casual use of language can help you discover them.

    Some days, I feel inclined to be more of an activist and be willing to be on stage to talk about my lifestyles (poly, technomadism, etc.). And other days, I just don’t feel like sharing. Even a small thing, like a checker at the grocery story asking where I’m from can lead to a half hour conversation. And sometimes, I just don’t feel like opening that up – I just want to get home before my ice cream melts.

    All and all, being ‘out’ and being an activist/evangalist has benefited me personally – by helping find my tribe of like minded people. And as a side benefit, helping others consider there are alternatives to the defaults they’ve always assumed. But being an activist has also created a barrier sometimes to ‘follower’s seeing me as a peer and being approachable as a friend, and not just a mentor/influencer.

  11. Hee. I was discussing this article with two of my sweeties here and my grandmother was the first person to come to mind for all of us. She’s the only person in my blood-relation family to which I am close that doesn’t know the nature of my poly family. Last fall, the three of us took a trip down to NC to visit my dad and some of the family. (The short version: dad was about to start his forth round of cancer treatments and … well, we all knew that this was likely to be the last time we’d get to see him alive. We were unfortunately correct.) Grandma had met the partner with which I live several times before and was glad to meet our friend. We tried to be careful, but I’m pretty sure ‘sweetie’ slipped out at least a few times.

    A few weeks later dad died and my live-in partner and I were back in NC for the funeral and other arrangements. Grandma asked how our friend that was with us was doing and said that she was really sweet. At the time I took this as normal family conversation, but I got to thinking about it later: Grandma isn’t dumb. She also knew that my dad sometimes had more than one partner at a time, although I’m not sure I’d call him poly exactly. I think she might have known more about the situation than any of us realized!

    No, I’m still not going to sit down and tell her all about it, nor about my other partners, especially my boyfriend. I agree with you: I don’t think she’d stop loving me, but I don’t see the need to inflict worry on her at her age. My mother used to worry a bit, but I honestly think seeing some of how my poly family looked after us when dad died helped alleviate some of her fears. No, she still doesn’t understand it, but she knows we’re all happy and that we’re taking care of each other.

  12. “Workplace is kind of self explanatory. I don’t think it’s appropriate to go deeply into one’s personal life there anyway.”

    I’m not sure how this isn’t the “no one’s business” excuse that Franklin’s entire post was talking about…? Not saying you have to be out (I’m closeted at work myself), but writing it off as “self explanatory” especially seems to amplify the idea that vanilla/monogamy is normal and everything else is “inappropriate.”

  13. Shyness and introversion aren’t necessarily the same thing. It’s possible that I have always naturally been an extrovert, but having no peer group and no opportunity for socialization masked my extroversion. I certainly came out of Venango with a powerful sense of fear at new social situations, so it’s tough to say if being energized in social situations came with choosing to be more outgoing, or was hidden inside somewhere all along.

  14. I did exactly the same thing that tacit did. When I moved away from home to go to college, I made a conscious decision not to be shy anymore, and I succeeded by learning the skills I needed.

    Many times, people find situations uncomfortable and draining when they don’t have the skills needed to navigate them, and when they aren’t accustomed to them. Social situations used to be excruciating for me, but now I do find many types of them energizing because I have acquired the skills and experience to feel comfortable and confident in them.

    So, on one hand, I would argue that yes, a person absolutely could decide to learn how to be energized around people. I don’t believe that our personalities are as static as many would believe.

    But I am also curious where this definition of introversion/extroversion as a form of getting energized comes from. I’ve looked in several dictionaries and none of them define these terms this way. They use them synonymously with “shy” and “outgoing,” with a secondary definition of being inward- or outward-focused. I see a lot of discussions on LJ in which people jump on someone for using “introvert” or “extrovert” to mean “shy” or “outgoing,” claiming that this definition is wrong. But Webster’s would disagree.

    So, is this something new in the field of psychology, that hasn’t been reflected in dictionaries yet? I’m curious where this concept came from.

    For myself, I require both social interaction AND time alone in order to feel happy, healthy, and energetic, as do most of the people I know. I guess that would make us intrextroverts. 😛

  15. As for my grandmother, I’m not afraid she would stop loving me. In her case I’m more just knowing that she wouldn’t understand no matter how I explained it. It would bother her. It would worry her. I choose not to burden her with it. She’s in her late 80’s and I would rather enjoy what time is left with her without her asking me if Brian is forcing me to have this kind of relationship, because in her mind men are the ones who would desire such a thing. I can wish things would be different, but that’s just how it is.

    This almost exactly explains why I have not come out to my parents, who are in their late 70s. They would still love me. They wouldn’t disown me. But they would be disappointed and worried and frankly, I don’t want to deal with it. They also live 3,000 miles away, and never visit here. So it’s not like I have to behave unnaturally around my boyfriend when they visit or anything.

  16. The notion that extroversion and introversion are separate from things like shyness or social anxiety started, I think, with Jungian personality typing systems like the Myers-Briggs system. In these personality typing systems, an extrovert is a person who feels energized by being around other people in large social groups, whereas an introvert is someone who feels drained by large social gatherings and feels energized in the company of a small number of intimates or alone.

    So it’s possible to be shy, but to feel energized in social situations; and it’s possible to have few inhibitions and not be shy, but to need recovery time after spending time in social settings.

    I think it’s useful to separate introversion/extroversion from things like shyness, because (at least to me) it certainly seems possible to be shy but also to prefer social gatherings. Once I learned the tools not to be shy, I went from someone who looked like an introvert to someone who looks like an extrovert, but I’m not sure the core part of who I am actually changed.

  17. I think the new definitions of introversion/extroversion are really useful. I just get annoyed when people jump all over someone for using the traditional dictionary definitions of these words. Those definitions aren’t *wrong,* even if they aren’t necessarily as useful.

    I don’t know how much I buy into the introvert/extrovert dichotomy, however. Perhaps it’s a lot like the Kinsey scale, where a lot of people fall somewhere in the middle, maybe leaning more to one side than the other. For me personally, I cannot define myself as either an introvert or an extrovert. Sometimes I find social events to be very energizing. Other times they totally drain me. The same is true of being alone. Whether I’m an introvert or an extrovert varies from day to day and week to week.

  18. The basic difference that I tried to explain was that I wouldn’t talk about any deep aspect of my personal life with my coworkers no matter what I was. I don’t discuss my poly, I wouldn’t discuss my monogamy if I was monogamous, and I wouldn’t talk about my dating life past “I’m dating a thing. It’s cool,” if I was dating. Conversely I’m not interested in my co-worker’s personal lives past simple status, and find it deeply intrusive when I am subjected to long winded discussions about everything that’s great or terrible about their respective relationships. I don’t care who’s gay, or straight. I don’t care who’s cheating on who, or why, and a rrrreeeaaally don’t care who’s having problems with their partners.

    My husband, on the other hand, was pretty open with his co-workers to the point that he, I and one of his girlfriends attended social functions for his work together. People found it unusual, but once it was old news, they pretty much just accepted the whole thing.

    It might be worth a mention that I work in the hospitality industry, which tends to attract highly social people. There was an actual memo next to the time clock for a very long time declaring the back desk and office a “no gossip zone.” People have been disciplined and fired for inappropriate behavior that being too involved in each others lives caused. My husband on the other hand worked in television, which was a more open, creative environment.

  19. Meyers-Briggs is definitely a set of scales, at least in some implementations. The last time I took it with any significance was probably 15 years ago, but the results were presented as points along four different scales, indicating how strongly expressed each of the traits. It stuck in my mind because my results were almost straight down the middle. The administrator said that it either meant that I was flexible and easy-going, or that I was a sociopath. *whistles innocently*

  20. Again with the “what she said” post!

    I don’t go “deeply into [my] personal life there” either (well, it depends on the coworker, honestly), but my coworkers don’t have to go “deeply into one’s personal life” for me to know they’re monogamously married by their wedding ring, the picture of their wife & kids on their desk or computer screen, and the casual water-cooler conversation of “my wife and I took the kids to see the new Disney movie this weekend…”

    So I speak of my partners in the same vein. I don’t have to say “we had an orgy this weekend where I got double-teamed, then we sat around relationship-processing about my boyfriend’s wife’s new love interest”. But I do say “How was my vacation? Well, 2 of my boyfriends & I went to visit my other boyfriend across the country for his commitment ceremony to his live-in girlfriend” in just the same way I might have said “my boyfriend and I went to my best friend from college’s wedding in Portland” if I were monogamous.

    By choosing my words to deliberately obscure my relationships when, had the relationship been monogamous the words would have been acceptable within the context, that makes my relationships “other people’s business” because it is for their benefit that I am making this deliberate effort to hide things. Their concern over my relationships dictates how I behave and how I speak of them in public, when I censor myself beyond what would otherwise be situationally-appropriate speech. Which means, as Franklin is saying, that they have already made my relationships their business, whether I like it or not.

  21. I’m curious if, in your isolated and alienated childhood, you never feared lynching? Never felt like the other people didn’t kill you for being different only because they were distracted by something else?

  22. I’m curious if, in your isolated and alienated childhood, you never feared lynching? Never felt like the other people didn’t kill you for being different only because they were distracted by something else?

  23. Yeah, I don’t think you were an actual introvert. I am an extreme introvert and being around people makes me really tired. I get along with folks fine, but can only take it in short bursts. No “curing” that 🙂

  24. The “without risk” is hard – it really does come down to each individual, including their fuzzy predictions. Those chosen to be out though, nod of the hat for paving the way. I’m lucky to have grown up with the internet, able to reach out and lurk on forums where people in similar situations had a lot of insight. Very, very lucky.

    I’m young – I’ve told maybe about 20 friends my age, and I’ve encountered no problems (except for a now ex-boyfriend who felt like I logically deconstructed his notion of love and romance as a two person thing). My big problem with being “out” is I’m completely invisible. I live with my singular boyfriend, and haven’t had two relationships at the same time. Being out is more work, and explanation, that just being myself. Hm.

  25. The “without risk” is hard – it really does come down to each individual, including their fuzzy predictions. Those chosen to be out though, nod of the hat for paving the way. I’m lucky to have grown up with the internet, able to reach out and lurk on forums where people in similar situations had a lot of insight. Very, very lucky.

    I’m young – I’ve told maybe about 20 friends my age, and I’ve encountered no problems (except for a now ex-boyfriend who felt like I logically deconstructed his notion of love and romance as a two person thing). My big problem with being “out” is I’m completely invisible. I live with my singular boyfriend, and haven’t had two relationships at the same time. Being out is more work, and explanation, that just being myself. Hm.

  26. *nodding vigorously*

    Bear with this comment being written blind to other people’s comments.

    Thank you for writing this. There is SO MUCH of it which echoes my own experiences. I’ve been both sides of the closeted situation, and I discovered in the process that it is intensely sanity-draining for me to attempt to maintain closetedness.
    My poly family was on NYC cable TV in the early 2000s, and I was very out; I was a college student studying physics and there wasn’t a reason in the world to bother hiding who I was.
    Later, in 2006, when Big Love was on TV, we were interviewed by the Salt Lake City CBS station – but this time, I had them blur my face, because at that time I was a public high school physics teacher, and a first year teacher far from tenure. The process of grad school for education (which transitioned me from hard research science to teaching) put me in a closet, and the psychological impact of spending just one school year unable to refer to my partner as “wife” (she was legally married before we met, and we were ceremonially handfasted, but nothing legal – because bigamy laws), being unable to offhandedly mention things about my personal life in the presence of coworkers, was just so very damaging. And it’s led me to make very different kinds of choices about my life since then; everything comes from a more-centered core of “what can I do that remains honest to myself and openly honest to the world?”

    I’d say I’m lucky that I can be open; however, I feel more that I’m willing to bite the bullets of very different social acceptance in order to retain my sanity [such as it is, and as squirrelly as it may be to keep hold of already].

    This is in sharp contrast to my brother, who is also poly, but is deeply closeted about it to his first/legal-wife’s family; his second/”unlawful-“wife’s family I understand to have only partial/limited awareness of their poly status.

  27. *nodding vigorously*

    Bear with this comment being written blind to other people’s comments.

    Thank you for writing this. There is SO MUCH of it which echoes my own experiences. I’ve been both sides of the closeted situation, and I discovered in the process that it is intensely sanity-draining for me to attempt to maintain closetedness.
    My poly family was on NYC cable TV in the early 2000s, and I was very out; I was a college student studying physics and there wasn’t a reason in the world to bother hiding who I was.
    Later, in 2006, when Big Love was on TV, we were interviewed by the Salt Lake City CBS station – but this time, I had them blur my face, because at that time I was a public high school physics teacher, and a first year teacher far from tenure. The process of grad school for education (which transitioned me from hard research science to teaching) put me in a closet, and the psychological impact of spending just one school year unable to refer to my partner as “wife” (she was legally married before we met, and we were ceremonially handfasted, but nothing legal – because bigamy laws), being unable to offhandedly mention things about my personal life in the presence of coworkers, was just so very damaging. And it’s led me to make very different kinds of choices about my life since then; everything comes from a more-centered core of “what can I do that remains honest to myself and openly honest to the world?”

    I’d say I’m lucky that I can be open; however, I feel more that I’m willing to bite the bullets of very different social acceptance in order to retain my sanity [such as it is, and as squirrelly as it may be to keep hold of already].

    This is in sharp contrast to my brother, who is also poly, but is deeply closeted about it to his first/legal-wife’s family; his second/”unlawful-“wife’s family I understand to have only partial/limited awareness of their poly status.

  28. I think this is true, also; I perceive a distinct difference between shyness (uncertainty and anxiety about social interaction leading to reduced interaction), bashfulness (shame about opening up for social interaction, usually about subsets of one’s personality or “belonging” to a particular social group), and introversion (social interaction having net-negative psychological energy tradeoff, exacerbated by increasing the number of social interactors). If I was speaking what you said above, I’d have called myself shy and bashful, and been uncertain of introversion until I had overcome the shyness/bashfulness.

  29. I’ve decided perhaps you could use a comment from someone closeted IRL to balance out all the ones that are living openly, and hopefully provide some insight into the road you didn’t take through life.

    My parents are politically-conservative, religiously-moderate Catholics. They provide a loving environment but are prone to freaking out about minor things. The rest of the family has similar leanings, and all my friends who weren’t of conservative bent moved away or dropped out of touch over the years.

    Growing up, I’ve drifted away from the faith into Wiccan and Native beliefs, realized I’m not entirely straight, but bisexual, come to believe that polyamory is a practical approach to relationships, and taken an interest in controvertial hobbies like BDSM and furry fandom. I’ve tested the waters as to how my parents and family might react to me coming out about these things by casually mentioning them when they appear in the news.

    When you carefully broach the subject of say, homosexuality to someone and they freak out on a rant about “perverts” and how they’re disease-ridden and/or deserve violence, well, that’s a pretty good sign not to come out to them. When your continued survival depends on their good will, providing your food, medicine, shelter, clothing, transportation and even the communication to write this post, the risk of coming out is very high. I chose not to play the longshot 10% chance it will go well.

    So it’s rational to live the lie as long as necessary. Even if it’s years.

    I’ve been aware of a lot of the issues you point out, such as this circle of family and friends doesn’t love me but a fake illusion of me. Or that ironically if I came out I would become that Other they fear, and might make it less exotic and fearful. I even think of all the missed opportunities I had to live life to its fullest by pretending to be more “normal” than I am. These things leave me with a lot of regret, but not as much regret as doing without food and shelter would.

    I can live with it because I have plans for the future. I’ve always known “it gets better”. When I get a job, move out, have my own independent income and finances, then I might come out. For the first time in my life I’ll be in a position where it won’t matter whether my family know who I really am or not, and free to choose who I come out to, and do it on my own terms.

    If my parents accept me then, it won’t necessarily be a sign I could have come out to them all along, because they were more high-strung in the past about hot topics and have mellowed out over the years. I may in fact be approaching the first time when I’ll be independent enough and they’ll be open-minded enough, for coming out to them to have a positive outcome in the end.

    I can easily see how someone might have to remain closeted with not just their parents and birth family, but their employer and coworkers, perhaps their whole lives (or at least until retirement). Yes it sucks, yes it’s a raw deal all around, but when push comes to shove, most people will do what it takes to survive.

  30. I’ve decided perhaps you could use a comment from someone closeted IRL to balance out all the ones that are living openly, and hopefully provide some insight into the road you didn’t take through life.

    My parents are politically-conservative, religiously-moderate Catholics. They provide a loving environment but are prone to freaking out about minor things. The rest of the family has similar leanings, and all my friends who weren’t of conservative bent moved away or dropped out of touch over the years.

    Growing up, I’ve drifted away from the faith into Wiccan and Native beliefs, realized I’m not entirely straight, but bisexual, come to believe that polyamory is a practical approach to relationships, and taken an interest in controvertial hobbies like BDSM and furry fandom. I’ve tested the waters as to how my parents and family might react to me coming out about these things by casually mentioning them when they appear in the news.

    When you carefully broach the subject of say, homosexuality to someone and they freak out on a rant about “perverts” and how they’re disease-ridden and/or deserve violence, well, that’s a pretty good sign not to come out to them. When your continued survival depends on their good will, providing your food, medicine, shelter, clothing, transportation and even the communication to write this post, the risk of coming out is very high. I chose not to play the longshot 10% chance it will go well.

    So it’s rational to live the lie as long as necessary. Even if it’s years.

    I’ve been aware of a lot of the issues you point out, such as this circle of family and friends doesn’t love me but a fake illusion of me. Or that ironically if I came out I would become that Other they fear, and might make it less exotic and fearful. I even think of all the missed opportunities I had to live life to its fullest by pretending to be more “normal” than I am. These things leave me with a lot of regret, but not as much regret as doing without food and shelter would.

    I can live with it because I have plans for the future. I’ve always known “it gets better”. When I get a job, move out, have my own independent income and finances, then I might come out. For the first time in my life I’ll be in a position where it won’t matter whether my family know who I really am or not, and free to choose who I come out to, and do it on my own terms.

    If my parents accept me then, it won’t necessarily be a sign I could have come out to them all along, because they were more high-strung in the past about hot topics and have mellowed out over the years. I may in fact be approaching the first time when I’ll be independent enough and they’ll be open-minded enough, for coming out to them to have a positive outcome in the end.

    I can easily see how someone might have to remain closeted with not just their parents and birth family, but their employer and coworkers, perhaps their whole lives (or at least until retirement). Yes it sucks, yes it’s a raw deal all around, but when push comes to shove, most people will do what it takes to survive.

  31. this makes sense to me.

    I have always called myself shy, but once I have some comfort in a situation I am anything but.

    This idea of the “shy” energies coming from the environment (the outside) instead of from our own natural tendencies (the inside) when we are in environments that do not match our natural tendencies makes a hell of a lot of sense!

    I will have to think on this more.
    Thank you.

  32. My girlfriend and I feel that way about her parents — we’re out to everyone else who matters (all of our friends, my two male partners’ families, our children, etc. — the only exception being my mother, who is a hell-beast and isn’t allowed ANY personal information if I can help it), but we’re kind of . . . unsure about what exactly her parents know about us, and we’re kind of okay with it being that way.

    (Amusingly, she’s BEEN in a poly relationship before, years ago, also a FMF triad, and her parents knew her partners-at-the-time . . . so it’s not like they’d be entirely new to the idea.)

    They’ve just accepted me as being a valued part of their daughter’s family, they’ve welcomed me into their home and celebrated birthdays and holidays with us — but since I’m a long-distance partner to my girlfriend and her husband, we’re . . . not 100% sure whether they know that I’m *sleeping* with both of them or not.

    Since they treat me with respect as someone who is dear to their daughter and son-in-law, and a quasi-parent to their grandchild, I’m okay with never sitting down and specifically hashing out The Conversation with a couple of quietly conservative 80-year-old Brits 😉

    But, yes — in this case, it’s “not being very loudly out,” rather than being in the closet. If they asked, they’d be told. And I’m pretty sure they know, or at least suspect. But I think plausible deniability is something that they don’t mind having, because it’s the least confrontational way of dealing with the situation. So — we’re okay with that.

    In the case of my mother, I *am* in the closet — but I’m in the closet about just about everything with her. I’d cut off contact if I could, but there are financial ties involved (both my daughter and I have an unfortunate and expensive genetic disorder that causes all sorts of medical mayhem, and I’ve had to stop working because of it), so we’re just keeping our heads down and being thankful that she lives an hour and a half away and I don’t have to see her too often.

    — A <3

  33. Awesome

    Hey, an awesome piece, I liked it a lot, most particularly because of your very flexible recognition of diversity and constraints, of the power of openness and of honesty.

    That said, I stalled at the intro briefly on this bit:

    “On a philosophical level, I do not believe there is anything to be gained by pretending to be something you’re not, and I don’t see how deceiving people who would shun you if they knew the truth actually benefits anyone. (To my mind, if someone–your family, say–loves you only so long as they don’t know the truth about you, then they don’t actually love you. They only love an imaginary projection of you, and that love is conditional on you agreeing not to do anything that might spoil the projection.”

    It seems to capture so much that challenges me in a single short paragraph where the rest of the essay just comforts me. Permit me to muse in return on those challenges.

    1) There is much to be gained by pretending to be something you’re not. I’m sorry but that seems such an obvious truth to me that I wonder if you’re intending irony? Or your musing is simply head in the clouds? So much of life around us functions, and power is distributed to and by people pretending to be things they are not. The entire professional world is replete with it, the legal world, never mind the bleedingly obvious – the world of entertainment. And much, very much is to be gained by this.

    2) Deceiving people who would shun you if they knew the truth actually benefits everyone! A truth I thought to be similarly obvious to the previous one. It benefits the people who would shun you as shunning someone is not good for them, doesn’t add to their joy in life or benefit them, and benefits you because being shunned isn’t fun. To be sure it’s survivable (you survived it, I survived it, many survived it and yes, you weren’t hurt by it, nor was I, nor were many, but neither was it buckets of fun and having buckets of fun instead is clearly something to be gained)

    To be continued …

    • Re: Awesome

      Continued …

      3) Love is conditional. I find it one of the most incredible fantasies that it’s not. Well, OK, I back down a little. Love is a four letter word, that is all. And it means a great many things to a great many people and in that family of things are unconditional things, and conditional things. And whether you say love is unconditional or conditional reflects perhaps your focus in that family of things or your bias or fantasies. As a parent I can tell you that the love of your children comes as close to feeling unconditional as any, but let me assure you that the unconditional stuff is what’s left after you discover your child is an unrepentant serial murderer who subjected and continues to subject victims to lengthy ordeals of torture and abuse, violent, sexual, and more, including children, and animals, has chosen to contest the world record for mass of metal carried in body piercings and the rather more mundane area of skin covered in tattoos and has chosen to violently aggressive and challenging imagery to cover their body in, and further they have torched your family home to the ground, abused and murdered after lengthy ordeals all of their siblings, and keep you holed up in a cage for ten years before being caught, and laughing maniacally the whole way, and receiving certification in court as to their alleged sanity (which you say well question at this point, but let is test the unconditionality of your love to the extreme for a moment). I’m sure a more creative writer could add some more challenging prose, but you get the point I’m sure. That the love you have which remains at that point for your child, is what is unconditional. And I feel it fair to suspect that for many parents, perhaps the majority, perhaps not, that will in fact be functionally zero. That what is left that might be called love is of a memory, and not of person. I’m sorry if that seemed extreme, but I have an issue with this seemingly common fantasy that conditional love is somehow less valuable or interesting than (the fantasy of) unconditional love. If you find people how love you as an outed whatever, it is in no small part because they love what you have outed as or that you outed. Some of them, will in turn harbor anger towards conservative society for the judgments it inflicts upon us (which is an understandable anger, my point being simply that the love you find in outing is not unconditional either!).

      4) To suggest because of this conditionality that they only love an imaginary projection of you not the real you, presupposes something very challenging, which you in fact go on to admit it seems. It presupposes that there is a real you. A static kind of thing that is different to the imaginary projection. I put it to you in equally philosophical terms that the distinction is questionable, that there you can run your life attempting to discover the “real you” (not an uncommon paradigm) or you can run your life attempting to define the “real you” to make it, to sculpt it, to drive it. One is mode of discovery and the other a mode of construction. The real experience of life is somewhere between them for most I suspect. Discovering what is, discovering what is inside us, what is around us, and then exerting pressure on both to make them in turn what we would choose them to be. In that latter endeavor we typically have more control over what is inside us, can sculpt our own thoughts and feelings far more easily than those of others. But others in turn outnumber us and shifting the way a 1000 people think just a little is as much perhaps as shifting the way you think a lot.

    • Re: Awesome

      Continued …

      Anyhow, just some rambling muses in return. As I said, the essay on the whole struck a very resonant and positive chord with me. Your honesty, openness, history and understanding of your own privilege, your modest and musing tone and the lovely pictures even. This one opening paragraph left me much to consider, confronted me with a four clear challenges at once, to things I felt were obvious, and clearly it seems are not (the usual fate of things we imagine to be obvious ;-).

      You know what I’d be interested in actually: how people combine polyamory with family life, with the having of children, mortgage and career … by your own confession they would probably write under pseudonym. Because I confess perhaps to some interest in or inclination to polyamory, have never understood why love of one should preclude love of another and have never demanded that it should from anyone else. But I confess equally, that the mere openness to the idea causes grave insecurity in many people including those I love and have loved … and I love them, and am not comfortable with fueling their insecurity and so engage not in pretence, but in discretion perhaps at times, albeit not even enough of that for some, in that it simply doesn’t get discussed.

      And on the flip side I have also noticed that well, an intense emotional and/or physical relationship takes time and energy and generally robs me of sufficient to pursue another in parallel. Perhaps in no small part because managing multiple relationships takes so much time and energy in a world where dedication is presumed, and hence offered.

      I wonder if among the successfully polyamorous there is a gender imbalance, if there are more of one or the other gender? Perhaps not. But I might fairly presume (without knowing) that men are more inclined to feel polyamorous and women more inclined to be successful at it ;-). Perhaps that only embodies stereotypes that are not as true as they make out to me.

    • Re: Awesome

      “If you want me to give you a two-hour presentation, I am ready today. If you want only a five-minute speech, it will take me two weeks to prepare.”
      — Mark Twain, writer.

      Who’d have thought the box would not hold more than about 4000 characters. Put another way, I like your essay and hence thought it worth engageing. Good work.

    • Re: Awesome

      Your point about gaining from pretending to be something you’re not is well taken. There certainly are people who do indeed benefit from doing this.

      Philosophically, I personally, on an individual level, don’t see the gain in doing so, because at the end of the day the person whose opinion of me is most important is the person I see in the mirror. I can not look at myself if I am being dishonest or deliberately deceptive. So that bit really applies strongly to me, but is less of a global statement than a personal statement.

      Similarly, I’m not sure I personally see the benefit in deceiving people who would shun me if they knew the truth. For me, the pain of being shunned is less than the pain of being forced to live, even in appearance, according to other people’s expectation of me–especially when those expectations are informed by ideas I find abhorrent, such as racism, misogyny, religious orthodoxy, homophobia, xenophobia, and so on.

      I think that any calculation of the benefits of deception have to include its costs as well. If, for example, someone who is gay is deceiving people by pretending to be straight in order to avoid being shunned, that person is indirectly promoting the idea that homophobia is acceptable…which carries, I think, a pretty significant cost, even if it is a hidden cost.

      I grant you without reservation that love is conditional. Again, though, this goes back to the idea that if people whose love is conditional on your appearance of conformity to ideas or standards that are repugnant, there is little to be gained by maintaining it.

      I see a significant difference between withholding love from someone who is a serial killer, and withholding love from someone who is, say, polyamorous. The difference comes down, as it often does, to the ideas of consent and choice. A relationship style involving more than two people is vastly different in this regard from a hobby involving dismembering college coeds.

      When I conform to an idea which I find morally repulsive, such as the idea that it’s OK to discriminate against someone based on who they have sex with or how they have sex or in what position they have sex, I make myself a participant in that morally repulsive idea. Furthermore, I do it to conform to an image of me that is a projection on the part of the other person, rather than reality. I find that I simply can not do this; it’s far more destructive than losing that person’s love…both to me and, indirectly, to the other people who are like me.

      The points you make are good, and perhaps a person whose philosophical and ethical systems are different from mine would agree with them. I have found that I can’t live deceptively and be happy, no matter what pragmatic gains I might make by doing so.

  34. Awesome

    Hey, an awesome piece, I liked it a lot, most particularly because of your very flexible recognition of diversity and constraints, of the power of openness and of honesty.

    That said, I stalled at the intro briefly on this bit:

    “On a philosophical level, I do not believe there is anything to be gained by pretending to be something you’re not, and I don’t see how deceiving people who would shun you if they knew the truth actually benefits anyone. (To my mind, if someone–your family, say–loves you only so long as they don’t know the truth about you, then they don’t actually love you. They only love an imaginary projection of you, and that love is conditional on you agreeing not to do anything that might spoil the projection.”

    It seems to capture so much that challenges me in a single short paragraph where the rest of the essay just comforts me. Permit me to muse in return on those challenges.

    1) There is much to be gained by pretending to be something you’re not. I’m sorry but that seems such an obvious truth to me that I wonder if you’re intending irony? Or your musing is simply head in the clouds? So much of life around us functions, and power is distributed to and by people pretending to be things they are not. The entire professional world is replete with it, the legal world, never mind the bleedingly obvious – the world of entertainment. And much, very much is to be gained by this.

    2) Deceiving people who would shun you if they knew the truth actually benefits everyone! A truth I thought to be similarly obvious to the previous one. It benefits the people who would shun you as shunning someone is not good for them, doesn’t add to their joy in life or benefit them, and benefits you because being shunned isn’t fun. To be sure it’s survivable (you survived it, I survived it, many survived it and yes, you weren’t hurt by it, nor was I, nor were many, but neither was it buckets of fun and having buckets of fun instead is clearly something to be gained)

    To be continued …

  35. Re: Awesome

    Continued …

    3) Love is conditional. I find it one of the most incredible fantasies that it’s not. Well, OK, I back down a little. Love is a four letter word, that is all. And it means a great many things to a great many people and in that family of things are unconditional things, and conditional things. And whether you say love is unconditional or conditional reflects perhaps your focus in that family of things or your bias or fantasies. As a parent I can tell you that the love of your children comes as close to feeling unconditional as any, but let me assure you that the unconditional stuff is what’s left after you discover your child is an unrepentant serial murderer who subjected and continues to subject victims to lengthy ordeals of torture and abuse, violent, sexual, and more, including children, and animals, has chosen to contest the world record for mass of metal carried in body piercings and the rather more mundane area of skin covered in tattoos and has chosen to violently aggressive and challenging imagery to cover their body in, and further they have torched your family home to the ground, abused and murdered after lengthy ordeals all of their siblings, and keep you holed up in a cage for ten years before being caught, and laughing maniacally the whole way, and receiving certification in court as to their alleged sanity (which you say well question at this point, but let is test the unconditionality of your love to the extreme for a moment). I’m sure a more creative writer could add some more challenging prose, but you get the point I’m sure. That the love you have which remains at that point for your child, is what is unconditional. And I feel it fair to suspect that for many parents, perhaps the majority, perhaps not, that will in fact be functionally zero. That what is left that might be called love is of a memory, and not of person. I’m sorry if that seemed extreme, but I have an issue with this seemingly common fantasy that conditional love is somehow less valuable or interesting than (the fantasy of) unconditional love. If you find people how love you as an outed whatever, it is in no small part because they love what you have outed as or that you outed. Some of them, will in turn harbor anger towards conservative society for the judgments it inflicts upon us (which is an understandable anger, my point being simply that the love you find in outing is not unconditional either!).

    4) To suggest because of this conditionality that they only love an imaginary projection of you not the real you, presupposes something very challenging, which you in fact go on to admit it seems. It presupposes that there is a real you. A static kind of thing that is different to the imaginary projection. I put it to you in equally philosophical terms that the distinction is questionable, that there you can run your life attempting to discover the “real you” (not an uncommon paradigm) or you can run your life attempting to define the “real you” to make it, to sculpt it, to drive it. One is mode of discovery and the other a mode of construction. The real experience of life is somewhere between them for most I suspect. Discovering what is, discovering what is inside us, what is around us, and then exerting pressure on both to make them in turn what we would choose them to be. In that latter endeavor we typically have more control over what is inside us, can sculpt our own thoughts and feelings far more easily than those of others. But others in turn outnumber us and shifting the way a 1000 people think just a little is as much perhaps as shifting the way you think a lot.

  36. Re: Awesome

    Continued …

    Anyhow, just some rambling muses in return. As I said, the essay on the whole struck a very resonant and positive chord with me. Your honesty, openness, history and understanding of your own privilege, your modest and musing tone and the lovely pictures even. This one opening paragraph left me much to consider, confronted me with a four clear challenges at once, to things I felt were obvious, and clearly it seems are not (the usual fate of things we imagine to be obvious ;-).

    You know what I’d be interested in actually: how people combine polyamory with family life, with the having of children, mortgage and career … by your own confession they would probably write under pseudonym. Because I confess perhaps to some interest in or inclination to polyamory, have never understood why love of one should preclude love of another and have never demanded that it should from anyone else. But I confess equally, that the mere openness to the idea causes grave insecurity in many people including those I love and have loved … and I love them, and am not comfortable with fueling their insecurity and so engage not in pretence, but in discretion perhaps at times, albeit not even enough of that for some, in that it simply doesn’t get discussed.

    And on the flip side I have also noticed that well, an intense emotional and/or physical relationship takes time and energy and generally robs me of sufficient to pursue another in parallel. Perhaps in no small part because managing multiple relationships takes so much time and energy in a world where dedication is presumed, and hence offered.

    I wonder if among the successfully polyamorous there is a gender imbalance, if there are more of one or the other gender? Perhaps not. But I might fairly presume (without knowing) that men are more inclined to feel polyamorous and women more inclined to be successful at it ;-). Perhaps that only embodies stereotypes that are not as true as they make out to me.

  37. Re: Awesome

    “If you want me to give you a two-hour presentation, I am ready today. If you want only a five-minute speech, it will take me two weeks to prepare.”
    — Mark Twain, writer.

    Who’d have thought the box would not hold more than about 4000 characters. Put another way, I like your essay and hence thought it worth engageing. Good work.

  38. Re: Awesome

    Your point about gaining from pretending to be something you’re not is well taken. There certainly are people who do indeed benefit from doing this.

    Philosophically, I personally, on an individual level, don’t see the gain in doing so, because at the end of the day the person whose opinion of me is most important is the person I see in the mirror. I can not look at myself if I am being dishonest or deliberately deceptive. So that bit really applies strongly to me, but is less of a global statement than a personal statement.

    Similarly, I’m not sure I personally see the benefit in deceiving people who would shun me if they knew the truth. For me, the pain of being shunned is less than the pain of being forced to live, even in appearance, according to other people’s expectation of me–especially when those expectations are informed by ideas I find abhorrent, such as racism, misogyny, religious orthodoxy, homophobia, xenophobia, and so on.

    I think that any calculation of the benefits of deception have to include its costs as well. If, for example, someone who is gay is deceiving people by pretending to be straight in order to avoid being shunned, that person is indirectly promoting the idea that homophobia is acceptable…which carries, I think, a pretty significant cost, even if it is a hidden cost.

    I grant you without reservation that love is conditional. Again, though, this goes back to the idea that if people whose love is conditional on your appearance of conformity to ideas or standards that are repugnant, there is little to be gained by maintaining it.

    I see a significant difference between withholding love from someone who is a serial killer, and withholding love from someone who is, say, polyamorous. The difference comes down, as it often does, to the ideas of consent and choice. A relationship style involving more than two people is vastly different in this regard from a hobby involving dismembering college coeds.

    When I conform to an idea which I find morally repulsive, such as the idea that it’s OK to discriminate against someone based on who they have sex with or how they have sex or in what position they have sex, I make myself a participant in that morally repulsive idea. Furthermore, I do it to conform to an image of me that is a projection on the part of the other person, rather than reality. I find that I simply can not do this; it’s far more destructive than losing that person’s love…both to me and, indirectly, to the other people who are like me.

    The points you make are good, and perhaps a person whose philosophical and ethical systems are different from mine would agree with them. I have found that I can’t live deceptively and be happy, no matter what pragmatic gains I might make by doing so.

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