Coming Out -- A Timeline

If you're one of us – that is, you're poly, involved with someone who is poly, or your relationships generally don't fit into the one-size-fits-all container available at Couples-R-Us – there's a good chance you're still “in the closet” about it.

Why come out? Especially when we all know that normal people don't take kindly to having freaks in their midst?

This was one of the (rhetorical) questions I got from my parents when I finally came out to them. Okay, they didn't actually call me a freak, but it was certainly implied by the horrified tone in which they talked about my fringe lifestyle.

My reasons for coming out (to most people I know) and for staying in the closet (when it comes to a more public forum, such as facebook) may not be the same as other people's reasons for choosing whether to disclose or keep it close; but for what it's worth, I thought I'd share a timeline of my own experiences, both in and out of the closet.

1993-1998: The fact that my marriage was theoretically open was something I didn't discuss with anyone except my husband – with three exceptions. My motive for spilling the secret, in each of those three cases, was the same: I was attracted to someone, and I wanted him to know that I wasn't as out-of-bounds as I might appear to be. (These confessions were extremely effective, by the way.)

1999-2000: During the first year of my affair with Scott, I told almost no one about it. There were many reasons for secrecy, not the least of which was that Scott was cheating on his significant other, and we didn't want her to find out. I was also still shell-shocked from the reaction Parker had gotten from the one friend he told: after writing his closest male friend a long email about the fact that his wife was sleeping with another guy, Parker got an immediate and impassioned response, in which this normally gentle soul wrote, “If it were me, I'd feel like killing someone. In fact, I'm considering homicide on your behalf.” Whoa.

      Still, I made a few confessions. I spilled the whole story to my brother, because it was starting to weigh on me that my family wasn't seeing “the real me,” and I knew that my brother, as a fellow black sheep (partying, body-piercing), would go easy on the judgment.

      In the summer of 1999, I attended a Writers at Work conference. In my nonfiction workshop, Lucy Grealy (whose highly-charged erotic essay I'd just read in Nerve magazine) said something about a woman she knew who had a tattoo on each cheek, “One for her husband, and one for her lover.” Unable to resist this opportunity to be the provocateur, I piped up, “I have a husband and a lover. And I highly recommend it.” It was like a little bomb had gone off, destroying the flow of the conversation and sending sparks of curiosity and animosity zinging around the room. The subject was immediately changed.

      At that same conference, I had a more in-depth conversation with Mark Doty, a former professor of mine (whose very moving memoir about his partner's death from AIDS I had also recently read), about the fact that I was currently in two romantic relationships, and about how my partners knew about and accepted each other. He seemed to think this was a novel concept: “In my world, no one really expects sexual exclusivity,” he mused, “but being in love with more than one person at a time is a totally different thing....aren't your partners jealous of each other?”

2000-2003: After Scott and Monique got divorced, there was no longer any pressing need to keep my relationship with him a secret. Still, we were initially cautious, fearing some kind of bad reaction. As time went on, however, it became increasingly awkward to keep our friends in the dark. Parker might take our son Denali on an outing with friends of ours on a weekend when I was staying with Scott, for example, and, naturally, someone would invariably ask, “Where's Viny?” At first, Parker would just say, “Oh, it's one of her wandering days.” No one pressed him for details, but we could tell they were beginning to wonder. So eventually, we came out to all of our close friends. Social events were a lot easier to navigate after that – Scott even came to parties with us on occasion, and our friends simply accepted him as one of us.

      There was one other new motivation for going semi-public with our open marriage: in 2001, Parker became obsessed with a friend of ours. I found myself in the position of confessing something in order to inform this woman that he was more available than it might seem. (This confession was not so effective – more on this “poly women have it easier than poly men” topic in a future post.)

May 2003: We came out to Parker's mother – not entirely by choice. I'll tell that story separately.

2004-2006: After Parker and I moved to a different state, my relationship with Scott became a much more occasional thing. It wasn't actually necessary to “explain” anything to new friends and neighbors. Nevertheless, I found myself opening up to them anyway. My open marriage, my poly identity – I wanted to share these facts about myself with the people I was getting to know. By that point, I figured that if knowing the truth about me made someone decide not to like me, then it was better to lose his or her friendship sooner rather than later.

2006-2007: In January of 2006, our whole relationship landscape changed. We had recently met Lilianna and Rick, another couple in an open marriage. They were new to poly, and were still dealing with a lot of raw emotions. We were quickly entangled in each others' lives in all sorts of ways. Lilianna and Parker began a relationship, then Rick and I began our own relationship – and in the midst of our mutual jealousy (partly despite it, and no doubt partly because of it) Lilianna and I became the best of friends. Everyone in our social circle soon knew the scoop.

      Around this time, I began appearing occasionally as a guest lecturer at the local University. Two of our friends taught in the Sociology Department, and they'd ask me to appear whenever they were teaching a unit on a topic such as “alternative family structures.” Several times, someone from the class came up to me afterward and thanked me for being brave enough to share my story. Some of these students confessed to being in non-traditional relationships themselves, and they expressed gratitude for the chance to participate in a real, thought-provoking discussion on a topic they were used to keeping to themselves.

January 2007: I came out to the remainder of my immediate family – my parents and my sister. That was a pretty harrowing experience, and will be discussed in its own entry.

2008-present: I rarely have a reason for lounging around in the poly closet these days. I'm pretty much out, and the fresh air is a joy. Still, as I've indicated, I do exercise some discretion about whom I choose to tell my not-so-secret secrets. Or, in the case of this blog, I am choosing to share personal details with you, no matter who you are, but I'm keeping my real name hidden. It's about having some measure of control over my information, or some way to protect myself, given that I can't control people's reactions to what they find out about me. In some cases, being discreet is also my way of supporting and protecting friends or lovers who don't wish to come out of the closet, for whatever reason.

Coming Out

According to the facebook status of one of my poly acquaintances, yesterday was National Coming Out Day. She's always been very “out” there. At present, there's no “polyamorous” relationship status on facebook, but if there were, she'd be the type to advertise it. As it is, hers reads “It's complicated.” I keep my own relationship status blank.

There are a lot of poly people in the closet.

Luckily, it's a spacious closet: all kinds of room to cavort in the dark with whomever, amidst various crazy costumes and the plainer-looking garments we put on whenever we have to pretend to be “normal” people.

Yes, right-wing pundits and Christian conservatives, you heard me right. It's your worst nightmare, a MONSTER ORGY in your nice, neat closet! And we're partying so hard in here, we're eventually going to bring down the whole house.

So hey, come on in and join the fun!

Reflections on Impermanence

Vermeer's "The Milkmaid"

This was the picture on the front of a postcard I recently sent Scott.  I've actually had it in my possession for the past seven years, because I bought it in Amsterdam in the fall of 2003, after Scott and I had just viewed the original painting in person.  "So, I guess some things last," I wrote on the back, thinking of the painting, still vibrant after almost 400 years, and the postcard, none the worse for its seven years of be-bopping around.  He called me this morning, mock-indignant:  "'Some things last?' What's that supposed to mean?"  And suddenly, I felt as if I were two selves: the present self, awash in nostalgia and a vague sadness; and a former self, simply delighted to hear his voice.  Emotional vertigo, followed almost immediately by a flash of anxiety, a very specific anxiety I feel almost every time I talk to him.  It's particularly acute whenever I have something to say that I'm not sure he'll want to hear. "I've started writing my tell-all memoir," I told him, "although it's only a blog."  He laughed. "Well, I hope you've changed the names to protect the innocent," he said.  "Don't worry," I assured him, "Your name is Scott."  He didn't ask for the link, and I wasn't surprised: he's made it very clear that he wants to hear as little about what he calls my "dating life" as possible, short of requiring me to manufacture outright falsehoods in an attempt to spare his feelings.  Scott and I have always walked a shaky line between Too Much Information and Not Enough, and we frequently find ourselves veering off course.  Some things never change. Still, I'm glad he called, and I'm glad I 'fessed up.

A Short History of Dishonesty (Part II)

It's easy not to worry overmuch about the unsuspecting spouse of someone you're secretly fucking.

Especially if, as in my case, you hardly know the person you're helping to betray. I had interacted with Monique only a couple of times, briefly, before Scott and I became lovers.

Oh, I experienced little twinges of conscience, but they were easily silenced. I told myself that Monique must know what we were up to, at least on some level, because she was aware of how much time Scott and I spent together (the fact that we were best friends was never a secret). On one occasion, in fact, she had even encouraged him to go on a camping trip with me, alone, just the two of us, telling him that school was stressing us both out and we ought to get away together and just relax.

Or at least, that's the story Scott told me. And it was on that “camping trip” that I first had sex with him.

By the time Scott and Monique got married, though, it was finally clear to me 1) that Monique didn't know the truth about the nature of Scott's relationship with me, and 2) that if she ever found out, it wouldn't be pretty. By then, however, it was too late: I could not extricate myself.

Parker and I attended the wedding. Some months later, Scott showed me the wedding video, and I'll never forget how strange it felt to watch everyone go through the motions, as if it were an ordinary marriage, two people with eyes only for each other, plighting their simple troth.

During the exchange of vows, the videographer had been standing behind the wedding party. What I saw on the television screen, then, was this tableau: the black-robed back of the judge, slightly off to one side; Scott and Monique, facing each other; and one member of the audience, directly behind the couple – literally coming between the two of them. It's a woman wearing sunglasses and a slinky black dress, the requisite costume of the Evil Other Woman. Me. I was the only member of the audience whose face the camera fully captured, and my expression was unreadable.

The wedding took place in July of 1999. That November, Parker, Denali and I shared Thanksgiving dinner with Scott and Monique. Some time between then and Christmas, Monique discovered a suspicious motel room charge on a credit card statement, and I backed up Scott's implausible cover-up story, although I had previously sworn to myself that I would never outright lie to Monique about anything, were she to ask me point-blank. We saw them again at Christmastime, and Monique was cool toward me – as she had every right to be. For some reason, I ended up straightening her hair during that visit. So there I was, running my fingers through her loose curls, marveling at the texture: she had baby-fine hair, but it looked so full that I'd never realized, until I touched it, how soft it was. Something in that intimacy of touch both relieved and unnerved me: I was coming into contact with her essential humanity, which made me feel simultaneously better about her and worse about myself.

Then, in February, I took Scott out to dinner for his birthday, with Monique's express permission. Two days later, she announced that she wanted a divorce. That time, they managed to work through it, deciding to seek marriage counseling. In April or May, I spent several days at their house because I was attending a conference in San Francisco, near where they lived. One evening, the three of us decided to have dinner together in the city. Monique and I arrived at the restaurant at about the same time, only to learn that Scott had been delayed in rush-hour traffic. She and I ordered martinis and sat down at the bar to wait. As I remember it, the conversation between us was relaxed and friendly. One particular interchange, however, stands out in my memory: I said something offhand like, “Oh, well, you know how things have been for Scott this week at work, what with yada yada and blah blah blah going on,” and Monique fixed me with a stare. “No,” she said deliberately, “I don't know.” Then she added, in an almost wistful tone, “Scott doesn't talk to me the way he talks to you.” She might as well have slapped me across the face. I think, in fact, I would have preferred that superficial sensation of pain to having to feel, if only for a moment, how she felt inside.

That was the last time I had any real interaction with Monique. She and Scott were pretty much on the rocks all summer, and the breakup was for real, the divorce pending, by August of 2000. He moved out, and I helped him find a new apartment.

We Interrupt Our Regularly Scheduled Program...

...to bring you these Tales from the Time(less) Crypt!

First, two journal entries from January of 1999:

“[Parker], if he's not jealous of my person, is jealous of my my time. He thinks school eats up too much of my time. And [Scott] eats up my time, too, and the fact that I've an adorable 2 year old son doesn't help either – I feel a bit stretched thin. But I don't begrudge any of these people my time. I love being at school, being with [Scott], being with [Parker], and being with [Denali] – so who loses? I think maybe I could just never sleep. That's one solution. Too many different lives to be living at once. (Right now, as I write, it's late at night, [Parker]'s gone to bed, it's the 1^st day of my last semester as a Master's student, and I'm supposed to be reading Querrelle.)”

“Absolute insanity. I wasn't kidding about never sleeping. Been keeping up with schoolwork, but just barely. [Parker] said to me the other day, 'Do you realize you're the center of the universe? Everyone wants you.' This feels a bit too close to the truth for comfort. Don't worry; this isn't going to my head because I'm completely inadequate for that position & I know it. Still I do feel like I'm stuck there, if only for my requisite 15 minutes of fame type thing, so I'd better make the most of it – not sleep, just go go go. Maybe I need some amphetamines or something, ha.”

***

So, what made me go digging up the past today? The fact that there are some uncanny resemblances to the present there.

Last night, I called up Travis to say that I didn't think it would work to get together tonight after all, that I was feeling out of balance and overwhelmed. “But we could have lunch on Friday, instead, and we can have a sleepover on Sunday, after dinner – oh, so, Lilianna and Rick and their girls are coming over for dinner that night; but you're invited too, if you want to come,” I said. Travis was, understandably, not pleased: just last week, we had a whole conversation about how he sometimes feels like he's a line in my dayplanner, or a little box on the calendar.

My friend Cate, with whom I sometimes process issues like this, said she knew exactly how Travis felt. “Being your friend means having a relationship when you have the time,” she said. I winced at that one, for sure.

No one wants to feel like an appointment. I get that.

So I told Travis that, if I were him, I'd be feeling exactly the way he's feeling. At his suggestion, we played a little switcheroo game, in which I pretended to be the one in his position: he was too busy to see me all week, and then he went and made plans on Sunday night without consulting me. “I'd feel upset. I'd wonder if I was important to you, if you even wanted to see me at all,” I said. “Okay,” he said, slightly mollified, “Well, maybe you should just think about this for a while.”

“Um, could we maybe try it the other way around?” I wanted to know. “Could you try on what it might be like to be me?”

“Okay,” he said, with a slight laugh. Silence.

“Alright, then... pretend you have, oh, I don't know, at least seven other people, all of whom want you to do something with them this week: one of them has a birthday party and you're supposed to bake the cake, one of them is leaving town and you're in charge of the farewell party, one of them said to you the last time she saw you, 'Hello, my distant friend'....”

“You feel overwhelmed. You feel pulled in different directions.”

“Yeah, but it's 'you' we're talking about, not me, right?”

“...I would look at the situation and prioritize, cut some things out. I wouldn't have gotten myself into the situation in the first place.”

Well okay, then. Travis is himself, and on some level, I'm incomprehensible to him. My need to feel important to people (and this takes various forms, some more narcissistic than others: I like to feel desired, needed, appreciated, respected, admired), along with my discomfort at having to say “No” to anyone I care about, leads me to over-commit myself. Habitually. That's a negative way of looking at it, but if I'm trying to own my own stuff, it's an accurate assessment of my inherent pathology. (Maybe there was something to my mother's “addiction” accusation after all: isn't it always the shard of truth in the load of horseshit that really slices us up whenever we find ourselves feeling unjustly maligned?)

But this is me – this is my life. Of course Travis wouldn't have gotten himself into my position – he's a different person. In accordance with his nature, he has chosen a very different path for himself, one with a lot of autonomy and a fair amount of alone time.

[cont'd, several hours later]

As usual, after some time has passed, and some good conversations have taken the wind out of my assails, I'm feeling calmer.

Parker wisely pointed out something I often forget. He said that my life is full of people who will let me know if I have been neglecting them, and that there are also those who don't advocate for themselves, and who depend on me to make time for them. As it happens, I have a child in each category.

Sienna, my two-year-old, knows how to advocate for herself. Witness this hot-off-the-press interaction:

Sienna (sitting on the kitchen table, eating toast with honey): Mommy, stop hula-hooping.

Me: Why? It's exercise. It's good for me.

Sienna: No! Don't exercise again! You don't love exercising. You like feeding me toast.

My son Denali, on the other hand, would like to believe he would be happier without me around to nag him about cleaning his room, eating something more healthy than noodles with butter, or cutting down on the time he spends on facebook. But I know that he needs time with his mother, at least every so often.

Then Parker added, “But there's also someone in your life -- I can actually only think of one person in this category -- who has no advocate.”

“Oh, shit,” I thought, “Who am I overlooking?”

And then Parker went on to spell it out for me: “It's you.”

I realized that he's right: I have just about zero time to myself, time in which to pay attention to my own thoughts. Maybe that's why I started this blog. Maybe that's why I have been fantasizing lately about living in a cottage by the sea all by myself, with no one to answer to...for about three weeks, by which time I would be thoroughly sick of solitude, impatient to get back to my people.

I also had a good conversation with Travis this afternoon, in which he agreed that he hadn't done a very good job of trying to put himself in my shoes. He concluded with a characteristically off-the-wall-yet-right-on-the-mark comment: “Sometimes we just get stuck down one of our emotional cul-de-sacs and bang up against the ticky-tack houses that are there. You know?”

A Short History of Dishonesty (Part I)

At 24, five years into my marriage, I fell in love with Scott, a fellow graduate student. We'd known each other for a year, over which time our interactions had gotten steadily more meaningful, until the exertion of sublimation spread a high sheen over everything: my dreams, the weather, you name it.  I was positively crackling. By December of 1998, I was going out of my way to accidentally bump into him, and every conversation was analyzed (by me) for covert meanings and possible shades of emotion. Above all, I wondered if he might be engaged in a similar decoding of everything I said to him.

One evening, we were slated to go to the same holiday party, and Scott offered to drive us both there. When we got to the place the party was supposed to be, it didn't look like it was happening, or at least we didn't feel very motivated to check it out. “Shall we do something else?” I wanted to know. So we ended up in sort of a dive bar, secreted in a booth, drinking Long Island Iced Teas and confessing our mutual attraction.

I got back home around midnight, still giddy, even though the alcohol had long ago worn off. Parker was already asleep. I lay there next to him, unable to sleep myself, repeating my mantra: “In the morning, I'm going to have to ask him.” I was petrified that even though we'd married with a vague understanding that neither of us was going to hold the other to that “forsaking all others” clause in the standard vows, Parker would say No.

I must have fallen asleep at some point, because I remember waking up and launching into a slightly sanitized re-telling of the previous evening. I told Parker that Scott and I had confessed to having a crush on each other, and I wanted to know if that was okay. Parker seemed fine: so far, so good. I ventured further: what if something actually happened? I mean, what if we, say, made out? I mean, it probably wouldn't even get that far, but what if? Parker said that would be fine with him. “So, alright,” I said, mustering up my courage, “Will you still be happy with me if I end up having sex with him?”

Parker's reply, and I quote: “If you were happy, why would I be unhappy?”

I took this as permission. Which it was, in a manner of speaking, although Parker certainly experienced some unhappy moments when lovely theory gave birth to messy, squalling reality.

As for my conscience, I figured I was in the clear: I had been honest with my spouse, and therefore had no further reason to keep myself in check. The fact that Scott was living with another woman, who was (in fact, though I didn't know it until a few months later) already his fiancee – well, this was Scott's problem, not mine. 

And so it was that my first extramarital relationship should probably be classified as an affair, because Scott never told Monique the truth about the part I was playing in their lives. 

Scott and I were lovers before he married Monique, and we were lovers after the wedding, and we were lovers when their divorce was final, less than two years later, and we continued to be lovers for several years after that -- while he recovered from his divorce and experimented with dating again, and during his on-again off-again relationship with Chani, who knew about me, although she was clearly hoping for me to drop out of the picture. 

As far as I know, Monique still doesn't know the truth about any of this, although I'm certain she had her suspicions: after all, I watched her marriage to Scott collapse under the weight of what was not said when it needed to be said, a lie of omission that ended up spawning a host of other deceptions. 

After all these years, Scott is still a dear friend and an occasional lover (depending on what's going on in his dating life and/or his ability to tolerate what's going on in mine). But our relationship began with a big lie, a lie that has plagued us ever since.

Is Honesty Always the Best Policy?

When it comes to the question of whether or not to disclose one's “poly-ness” – i.e., the fact that one has, or is open to having, multiple sexual/romantic partners – to current or prospective lovers, the Poly party line is pretty clear: be honest.

There are those who prefer a “don't ask, don't tell” arrangement, but this approach is only ethical when there's been an explicit agreement to maintain personal privacy: in other words, all the people involved have freely assented to, and are comfortable with, not knowing what their partner(s) may be up to with other partner(s). Personally, I wouldn't be comfortable with such an arrangement, and I have my doubts as to the general advisability of keeping secrets from intimates.

However, there are all kinds of dicey situations, instances in which it's not at all clear whether or not honesty is appropriate.

Here, for your consideration, are two real-life dilemmas:

1. Tomorrow night, my boyfriend Travis is going to pick up his nephew from the airport. It seems that this young man is planning on staying in our fair city indefinitely. Unfortunately, this presents something of a problem for us. You see, Travis has not told his family that he's involved with a married woman. Oh, he's certainly talked about me; his family knows we've been dating. Maybe six months ago, Travis and I even had dinner with the nephew in question – but I made sure not to say anything about my husband, my children, or anything else that would reveal me as something other than a suitable single. Travis has been understandably chary of spilling the whole story to his mother or his sisters, what with the hand-wringing and tsk-tsking that would doubtless ensue. Should he tell his family the truth about me? How much is honesty going to cost him?
2. Last night, my friend Lilianna and I were talking about an incident that happened at a professional conference we both attended this past summer. She met a woman there who reminded her of a lover of hers, personality-wise. As luck would have it, it turned out that Lilianna also reminded this woman of a lover of hers. Although both women identify as heterosexuals, they knew they stood to gain a lot from further conversation, so they exchanged email addresses, promising to keep in touch. The trouble is this: Lilianna had led this woman to believe that both of them were talking about former lovers, when in fact Lilianna had been talking about a current boyfriend. “She already knew I was married,” Lilianna explained. “What was I supposed to say? I was afraid that if the poly stuff came out, she'd have a lot of judgment about it – and that if she had a bad response, it might even compromise my ability to participate in these conferences in the future.” Now, though, Lilianna feels strange about further contact with her: if she and Conference Woman continue talking, the seemingly harmless “former lover” ruse would rapidly morph into an albatross around Lilianna's neck.