Can a leopard change her spots?

Holden and I have been looking for ways to meet more poly people where we live. Actually, we’re hoping to meet ANY poly people here. This is a really big point of concern, though, because we’ve been completely closeted about this so far, except to a few close friends. My big fear is that someone out there will recognize the picture and discover our secret! I have a very large, very Catholic extended family and if one of them found out that my husband and I are polyamorous, word would spread along the networks of my family like a hot fuse to a bomb and things would get ugly real fast.

Holden, of course, sees a much less scary world out there as far as what could happen if someone does recognize a picture of one of us. I argued that even though my family is now his family, he still doesn’t have as much to lose in this situation if this gets found out. After all, they’ve accepted that he’s not Catholic and isn’t particularly religious, but in their minds I’m still the good Catholic girl I was brought up to be.

On the other hand, Cunning Minx said in one of her podcasts a couple weeks ago that you’re never going to meet anybody if you keep hiding behind the Internet.

So Holden and I have decided that he may use one photo of himself, his real self, on one online account. If someone out there does recognize him and ask, we’ll probably be able to explain it away as “someone stole that photo of him.” Or something.

I decided I’m not ready to put a photo of me up online because for one thing, I don’t use it that often. I feel like I’ll have better luck meeting poly friendly people if I make an effort to go to events, meet new people, and expand my circle of friends. It comes more naturally to me than it does to Holden, so we’ll each pursue our own avenues of meeting people and hopefully cover more ground that way.

-Grace

We went to a party with the new couple we’ve been hanging out with.  They were the only two people we knew, but it was a small party so we quickly got a feel for how this crowd would feel about topics like polyamory.  It was funny how we got around to the topic this time.  See, Holden likes to flirt with girls and when he knows he’s among friends who are comfortable with that, he really has fun with it.  So Holden was being his flirtatious self and one guy at the party asked me if it bothered me to have girls flirting back with Holden.  I explained to him that no, in fact, I find it a compliment.  “I know that Holden wouldn’t do anything that I would find offensive, and that if he did, that I could go to him any time and tell him so.  Honestly, it doesn’t bother me because we have such good communication.  If I felt like he was going to run off and sleep with some girl behind my back, then that would be different, but I know that Holden and I are strong in our relationship and that’s what comes first for him, always.”  I could tell it took him a little effort to process that, but he accepted it and we moved on.

A little later, I found out that one of the people at the party is a neopagan, so I asked him if there are many people in the pagan community around here who are polyamorous, since my husband and I are poly and are interested in meeting some other poly people around here.  He said that he’s always noticed the overlap between the two communities.  I asked him if someone like me, who is interested in learning more about neopaganism but doesn’t necessarily want to be initiated, wanted to attend a meeting to observe and meet people, if that would be welcomed in the local communities.  He gave me some good advice about which groups he’d had good experiences with and which ones might be a little more cliquish.

Another good friend of the couple that invited us got along really well with Holden and he has since kept in touch with her and mentioned that we’re poly.  She wasn’t quite sure exactly what that entails but when we’ve had conversations since about what we think about relationships and love, she’s either whole-heartedly agreed with us, or at least respected our opinions and shared her own.

This has been a great experience so far.  I guess I was fearing that I’d come across more closed-minded people than I have, and maybe that’s still in store for me down the road, but I feel really good about the level of comfort Holden and I have gained in talking about poly with people we trust.  I’d love to hear more about other people’s experiences of the first time they explained to someone that they’re poly.

-Grace

As our circle of friends is growing, we’re finding new opportunities for growth.

A friend of mine introduced me to another couple she knows who she felt we’d have a lot in common with.  She’s got a great eye for that kind of thing because ever since we met we’ve been getting to be closer and closer as friends.  We really do have a lot in common, but our life experiences have been so different that we never seem to run out of things to talk about.

One day we were hanging out with this couple and one of them mentioned “our polyamorous friend…”  Holden and I shot each other a glance and I interjected, “Oh, it’s funny you mention that because we’re actually polyamorous too.”  Their response couldn’t be more easygoing.  “Oh really?  Cool.”  And the conversation went on from there.  Ah, yes, I’m going to like these friends very much.

More coming soon about finding opportunities to talk about poly and how that goes for us.

-Grace

Ever since Holden and I have been talking about how and when to bring up poly with our friends, there have been little instances of poly-related chat coming up left and right! It’s like once we opened ourselves up to the possibility of talking about it, the universe decided to throw some opportunities our way.

To recap an earlier post, Holden and I decided that we’d feel okay about letting most of our friends know that we’re poly if the topic seems relevant to the conversation. There are a couple of friends we don’t know as well yet, but for the most part, as long as it feels comfortable, we’re not putting any restrictions on each other as far as whether or not to discuss poly as a general topic we’re interested in and as something we identify with.

Just a day or so after we talked about that, we went to lunch with a couple of people Holden had hung out with a few times and I had met once or twice. We spent the whole lunch hour talking about various mundane things, and for some reason Holden had to get back to work before the rest of us did. I stayed with our two friends and somehow the conversation drifted really naturally to polyamory. Because I didn’t know these people as well as Holden did I didn’t feel comfortable acknowledging that we are poly, but I did feel comfortable joining in the conversation and expressing my opinions openly. That may not seem like such a big deal to some people, but to me, it’s a whole new experience to tell the real truth about my opinions and not just stick with what won’t get me in trouble. That’s been Holden’s experience for years, so I guess he sort of takes it for granted anymore, but since I’m moderately new in developing my opinions about these relationship topics, it felt like a huge change in how I communicate with friends. We talked about how a certain college one of them attended had some polyamorous people who would get triple or quad style dorm rooms so they could all live together. It’s a pretty progressive liberal arts college, I guess.

(This topic made me interested in exploring the polyamorous community on college campuses and I’m curious about how other colleges handle the question of polyamory when it comes to student housing.)

When I brought up how I think that monogamy is great as long as it’s a conscious choice and not just what you default to because there’s not supposed to be anything else, they both agreed with me, and I was surprised at how much they both had thought about the idea before we’d spoken. They both identified to me that they’re not polyamorous, but that they can understand why some people would want to be. It was such a nice refreshing conversation to have. What an unexpected surprise! I felt pretty good about it, and after having talked to Holden about it, I now know that had he been there, he would have felt comfortable enough with them to let them know that we are actually polyamorous. Like I said before, I don’t know them as well as he does, so I held off this time, but if it comes up again, I’ll be happy to talk about it.

I’ve got to get going for now, but stay tuned for more posts about this. The world seems to be blossoming before me with new opportunities! I love spring!

-Grace

I wrote this post back in May of last year and somehow forgot to post it!  How strange.  Anyway, now that it’s May again and this seems relevant, I’ll post it.

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The mayflies are back. If you don’t know what mayflies are, they’re these bugs that look kind of like big mosquitos, but they don’t bite. The live something like three days total. They all hatch at once, boogie around for a couple of days mating and laying eggs, and if they don’t get eaten by a bird or a fish, they die anyway by the third or fourth day. Mayflies always remind me that life is short and we have to really live while we’re living. It also makes me think about ways I could be a better person and make others’ lives happier while they’re here too.

People tend to take those closest to them for granted the most. It’s true of our parents when we’re kids and it’s true of our spouses after we’ve been married a couple of years. I realize how much I take Holden for granted. I also take it for granted that he doesn’t need to be complimented to feel good about himself. See, Holden has always appeared very confident, with very healthy self esteem; sometimes overly healthy in fact. So I often forget that he has insecurities too, that he gets down about his appearance just like anyone else, and that he doesn’t always feel appreciated just because I smile at him. Deep down he knows I find him extremely attractive, but he does need to hear it sometimes. Unfortunately, I am terrible at remembering to speak my compliments out loud. I think nice things about him all the time, but stupidly, I keep them to myself.

So, in the spirit of the mayflies who have a lot of living to do in a very short time, I will try to remember that compliments and praise have a short shelf life, and must be renewed every day.

Holden and I have been talking a lot lately about letting new friends know that we are poly. A good number of our friends from where we used to live know that we’ve been edging our way into polyamory, but now we live in a new city and have a new circle of friends and only one of them knows explicitly that we’re poly.

The first part of our discussion has been which friends are we comfortable telling? Can we trust them not to talk about it in a way that would cause trouble for us? Do we know that they’re accepting and open minded enough to not reject us if they don’t agree with our lifestyle? And would it change anything about our friendship if they knew?

We’ve sort of gone through our group of friends one by one and considered them according to these questions. In almost all of the cases we’ve come to the conclusion that we’re ok with them knowing. A couple of people we’ve decided we either don’t know them well enough yet or there’s some concern holding us back from being fully open with them. All of these are pretty new friendships, though, and I have a feeling that over time all those concerns will work themselves out or simply go away.

Another big question is how do we tell them? We’ve discussed a couple of options.

One option is to make it one of those “I want to tell you this thing and it might be uncomfortable, but I’m just going to come out and say it” kind of things. That didn’t seem too appealing. First of all, we want to bring it to them in a way that doesn’t automatically make them think we’re interested in them and want to start a relationship with them. That’s not the case with any of these friends yet, and besides, that wouldn’t be how we’d do that anyway. Plus, that approach seems to make it out to be a bigger deal than I think they’ll think it is, and definitely than we think it is as regards our friendship.

Another option is to casually bring it up in conversation. This may prove tricky since topics like this don’t come up very often when we’re hanging out. However, it’s not outside the realm of possibilities so we’ll keep that open as an option for the future.

So I guess we’ve concluded that we want to tell our new friends as it becomes comfortable to do so. Chances are it won’t be as scary as we fear, but you’ll hear about it here either way.