Coming Out
Libby shares her best tips for coming out as polyamorous, mostly hard won through her own coming out mishaps.
Transcript
When to come out, how to come out, who to come out to, who not to come out to. This is a topic that comes up a lot in my work. As you might imagine, people ask me about this all the time. And so I thought it was time that I did an episode about it.
Learning how to do that in a peaceful and loving way without a lot of drama or unnecessary angst and conflict and pain is actually a pretty big deal. I have seen breakups in polyamorous communities create so much strife, especially amongst mutual friends and shared partners. And all I want in the world is for us to all be kinder to one another. And I think learning how to ex Sept when a relationship is over and come to terms with that together, as best you can and you know, nothing is gonna truly take the pain away of, of grief when you're losing something that you wish you didn't have to lose, but there are ways to move through grief that as I said before, are more loving. So I have a whole workshop about it, and I hope you will join me. And again, if you wanna find out more, you can find out about it all on my website, li send back.com. Now I'm gonna go into today's episode. I'm really excited about this topic, and I'll see you on the other side.
Now I'm not gonna go over every single possible question that you could possibly have about coming out as polyamorous or non-monogamous, but I'm gonna go over my top tips. This episode also is not gonna go into coming out to your children. That is kind of a whole nother ball of wax. If I was gonna talk about that, it would really be its own episode. I do talk about it a little bit in my polyamory parenting episode, which I recommend you check out for the purposes of this episode. We're talking about adults coming out to other adults about being non-monogamous. My top tips really all fall under the same category of being strategic. So they are picking the right time, answering some key questions before you start telling people and recognizing that coming out as a process rather than a one-and-done conversation. First tip pick the right time.
Now here's what I mean by pick the right time. I'm not saying pick the right time to tell someone so that they're going to receive it. Well, although that is an element, I guess, of what I'm saying, but broader than that, I want to tell you picking the right time means picking a time and being intentional about it rather than being impulsive. Now I can total really empathize and understand if you are the sort of person who wants to live your truth live out loud. And when you discover non-monogamy polyamory and you find that it truly aligns with who you truly are meant to be. And you're in love perhaps with someone and you wanna shout that from the rooftops and it just feels wrong to not immediate. Tell everyone post about it on Facebook, share it with your family, your friends, everyone that you know, that can be absolutely catastrophic.
So some considerations when you're thinking about is this the time, first of all, have you spoken to everyone who already knows who would be impacted by you coming out in a broader way? So this means any existing partners that you have, who if you're coming out, that might mean they're coming out too, and they may or may not be ready for that, right? And this can go with established partners with whom you, you are seen as monogamous, perhaps if that's your situation, or it could be newer partners as well, who may not be ready to have people know that they are non-monogamous and that they are dating someone who has other partners. It's really important to make sure you have these conversations. And if somebody is saying, Hey, I'm not ready. That has to be a negotiation. Another thing is like, how new are you to non monogamy or polyamory?
That's another question to ask, because if you are still new to this, still acclimating yourself still in a discovery mode. One of my favorite writers said something, and I don't even remember who it is actually, but wrote something along the lines of you want to write from your scars and not from your open wounds. And in this case, I'm not, I don't think polyamory isn't a scar or an open wound necessarily, but the idea is you wanna share widely with people about something that you have already got a pretty good handle on and already have a good idea about how you feel about it. And you've already done some processing around it so that when you're sharing it with the wider world, you're, you're not impacted by people's opinions about it. And you feel pretty solid about where you are. And so you don't need anybody to have any particular reaction.
If you seem unsettled about non-monogamy and then you're coming out, then people might feel that they're being invited to comment, to step in, to have an opinion. And I don't generally think that's what you want. I mean, there are times when that is useful when it's a really close friend or family member who you really trust, obviously you can share your works and progress with them, but when you're coming out in sort of a broader way, I recommend you feel really solid in your relational practices. And again, that you've had conversations with other people about what the general message is that you're gonna be sharing.
I also think it's important to consider who you're speaking to obviously, and whether it is a good time for them to receive your coming out information. Well, and so this would be maybe don't come out to your sister on her wedding day. For instance, maybe don't come out to your parents on Christmas when you're spending family time together. Maybe don't come out to uncle George during the Thanksgiving football game, but on the flip side, it can be really important not to wait too long, because if you wait too long, then people could find out and the way they might find out might not be in the way that you would like them to know. They might find out through the grapevine, they might find out from your kids, they might find out and think you're cheating. And let me just tell you that literally happened to me.
My husband and I were planning to come out to his parents and we'd been try it. It was kind of like a really funny sitcom. Like we were trying to come out to them all the way back in December of like 2017. And we had a whole, or no, it was December, 2016. We had this whole plan of how we were gonna come out to them and then it just didn't work. And we weren't able to, and then we tried again to like get them alone, but they just wouldn't like, stay isolated enough for us to have the conversation. And so, you know, finally, like we had to like bring my mom into the you know, into a, into a conspiracy to get them alone so that we could talk to them for longer than five minutes to tell them that we were polyamorous.
And it was really unfortunate because, you know, it's funny actually, cuz it was the weekend of our anniversary and we had just been out of town and they were hanging out with the kids while we were out of town together and we came home and I told my husband, I was like, I think that your mom's mad at me about something. And he was like, no, no, no, no, no, I'm sure you're, you're making that up. And I was like, no, I think she's mad at me about something. And then, you know, we sit them down and we, we start to tell them that we're non-monogamous and my mother-in-law looks at me and she says, I'm just gonna say a name to you. And then she said that name of my partner, who I had only been with for like about a month and a half or two months, something like that.
And I just was like, how, wait, how do you, how do you know his name? And she told me that a month ago when she had been babysitting the kids with my father-in-law while my husband and I were out in Chicago visiting his sister that she had, we we'd given her a tablet that had the baby camera on there. So that, you know, when they were, when the kids were down for bedtime or naps that, you know, they could check on them and make sure they were okay and they were sleeping and doing what they were supposed to do. And also installed on that tablet was my messenger app where messages were going back and forth between me and my new partner that I was in intense NRE with. And my mother-in-law saw those with no context. So she thought for a whole month that I was cheating on her son and that took some time to unwind.
So part of the picking the right time is making sure you don't wait too long. Second tip is answer these three questions before you pull someone aside to tell all them that you are non-monogamous slash polyamorous. The first question you wanna answer is why am I telling this person? And this is really important to answer both for yourself, to be clear, why does this person need to know? Because I really am a believer that not everyone needs to know everything about you. It's not that you need to hide, but like not everybody needs to know everything about you, especially depending on who the person is to you. Like if you have a relatively casual sexual partner who you see sometimes like that is more you telling someone about your sex life and like I don't pull people aside and tell them the sex that I have with my, you know, more established partners that they know about.
So why would I tell them about the sex that I'm having with my, what otherwise would be friends. Right. And I mean, it would be like me pulling aside someone and being like, Hey, just so you know, I play tennis with my best friend Bob, they'd be like, okay, thanks for telling me, like, it's just really worth asking yourself, why does this person need to know? I'll give you an example of a good reason to tell someone which again is, you know, if you have an established relationship, maybe you don't want the person to think you're cheating. In my case, what happened was that I, I was, you know, actively practicing non-monogamy. I don't think that I was in any serious relationship at the time, but I was celebrating my birthday. And I realized everyone at my birthday party knew that I was non-monogamous except for one friend who was there.
And half the people there were poly as well. Like, and this person just had no idea and I just didn't feel right. Having them be there and not know what everyone else knew, but the way that I went about telling the person. And so this goes to the second part of the figuring out, why you wanna tell the person tip, which is figure it out and then tell the person why you're telling them. So with this person, you know, he was a friend of mine. We'd known each other for a long time. And I told him, but I didn't give him any context as to why I was telling him. And then he just looks at me and he goes, well, we are not. And I could tell that he thought I was maybe hitting on him which was really awkward because he is married and monogamous.
And I knew that. And so I like quickly tried to explain, no, no, no, no, that's not what I mean. This is why I'm telling you, but you know, things were already awkward. So don't make my mistake and be clear on why you're telling someone and then be clear with them, why you're telling with them, because otherwise they may be confused as to why. Second question that you wanna ask yourself before you come out to someone is what do I want them to think? So what I mean by that is you want to set them up to think what you want them to think about it rather than just sort of leaving it to them, to figure out what they think about it. And maybe it, it might even feel like a test. So an example will, would be, I want you to think, well of me.
I want you to think that I have thought this through that. This is an essential part of who I am. I want you to think that the people that I am choosing as my partners are people that I value and that I care about. And again, the ties to the why do you want them to know again, think ahead. What are the things you're worried that they're gonna think about you when you tell them and just get ahead of that and go ahead and, and front load the conversation with, Hey, here are the things that I want you to think about this and tied to that is the third question, which is what do you want them to know? And so some things that I can think of that you might want them to know is you might want them to know that you and your existing partner, if you have one, the one that they may already know that the two of you are in good shape, that you have a solid relationship and that this isn't any kind of sign that you're about to break up.
You may want them to know that if you don't have another previously established partner that you are, are being treated well, that you are taken care of, you might want them to know that you're not a homewrecker and that you have the full blessing of everyone involved in the relationship. If that's your position you may want them to know that this isn't something that is a phase for you. You may want them to know if it's a family member, you know what your intentions are long term with this person, whoever it may be or people, you know, you may want them to know your plans for your future relationships. You may want to them to know your philosophies around family. You may want them to know about this really great podcast. If they wanna learn more, it's useful. Also, when you're thinking of these two questions, what do I want them to think?
And what do I want them to know? And even why, you know, why am I telling them, think about what they might be curious about and the concerns that they might have? I know that when we came out to my in-laws, they kept asking us like, okay, but what are we supposed to do with that information? How are we supposed to relate to your partners? And what do you expect from us here? And, you know, my husband and I were really confused by these questions because we really didn't have an answer right away. We didn't have an, an expectation of them. We just wanted them to know about us. Like that was the reason why we were telling them was we just wanted them to know the truth about who we were and who we loved and how we were. And, you know, we didn't have any expectations beyond that, but of course my in-laws had the, you know, template of romantic and sexual part nurse as these are people who may ultimately become family to us.
And these are people who, when you get really close, you know, you would wanna include them on family holidays, you'd expect Christmas cards and birthday cards and all kinds of things like this. And, you know, so I think when we told them, they just weren't sure how these other people were fitting into their template of what you do with a romantic partner of members of your family. And, you know, we just didn't anticipate that, and we didn't have an answer for them because we really wanted them to feel at choice. Right. We wanted them to feel like they could, you know, connect to and include our other partners in whatever ways that felt aligned to them. Although now, reflecting on it, that wasn't totally honest of us, because I think we, we do view our partners as our family, and we do want our family to welcome them as family and see them that way as well.
And I think we didn't say that. I think we didn't say that we had that hope or that expectation or that desire and that, that was part of what it, it meant to us. I think that's why I wish we'd had that conversation differently. I wish we had offered them more information about what we were hoping for from them. But I guess like we didn't have an expectation that they would do that because we wanted to give them room to feel however they felt about it. And that brings me to my last tip, which is coming out is a process. And what I mean by that is exactly what I just said about by in-laws, which is understand that the first time you tell someone that you’re polyamorous, you may completely rock their world or break their brain and they may not respond well.
You might trigger them if they've ever been cheated on, or if they've ever come close to cheating, or if they've ever thought about cheating themselves, or they've ever thought about wanting to be non-monogamous, or they've ever really desired another person outside their primary relationship that they're in. And so they may really react strongly negatively towards you doing something that they feel is wrong or that they feel that they couldn't do themselves. There are all kinds of reasons for why somebody might have a bad reaction if it's a family member and they really had some idea of what your relationship should be, or who they expect you to become, or if they have some hopes around, you know, you creating family and they hear that you're in this non-monogamous partnership. And they see that as incongruent with, you know, having children and having a household and having a family which, you know, for the record, it definitely isn't.
But you know, some people might see it that way. You're not gonna necessarily be able to get ahead of every single thing that the person you're telling might worry about and might be upset by. And, you know, you just can't control for it all. And this is why I think it's so important while I think it's good to be intentional while I think it's good to think ahead about what might concern the people you're telling that also it's so important to give them room, to feel one way about it and have a bad first reaction, have their own first draft and give them a chance to keep thinking about it and keep revisiting it and keep working through their feelings on it and make sure to signal to them that you're open to this being at dialogue, that if they aren't able to take it all in right now, that's okay.
And also be willing to set some boundaries for yourself as well. If the conversation does turn hurtful or judgmental or unsupportive in ways, it are harmful to you, but, you know, it's okay to set a boundary, but that doesn't have to be a wall. So you can say, Hey, I can't hear you saying that about my partner right now, or, you know, it really hurts me that you're saying that this is a phase when I'm trying to tell you, this is who I am. All of that is really important. And also I would continue actually with people who you really care about to try to leave the door open for them to come around. I have found that pretty much everyone in my life who's had an initial, like negative reaction of any kind has with time come around to at least if not you know, celebration with me.
So those are my main tips, which again, I'll just go back over them. First of all, pick the right time. And part of picking the right time is not just picking a good time for the person to receive what you have to say, but pick the right time for you and pick the right time for everyone else who would be impacted by you coming out. Second, answer the three questions. Why am I telling this person, what do I want them to think? And what do I want them to know? And lastly, remember coming out a process. So do you have any fun coming out stories or mishaps that you want to share? I'd love to hear from you.
