Scared off
February 27, 2008
A couple of months ago I met a woman, Cindy, and we hit it off pretty well as friends. We had a lot in common and enjoyed doing a lot of the same things, so I invited her to a weekly gathering Holden and I attend. She said she was looking for some new friends in the area and this was a great opportunity for me to introduce her around to some of my other friends. She started coming to our weekly get togethers and seemed to hit it off with several other members of the group. I felt pretty good about bringing a new friend into my life.
As Holden and I spent more time talking with Cindy, she expressed to us how liberal and open minded she was about all kinds of things. At one point, Holden decided it would be ok to talk to her about the general idea that he and I are considering practicing polyamory, and specifically polyfidelity. He wasn’t interested in her, specifically, but she seemed like the kind of person he could discuss the concept with. I wasn’t present when the conversation started, but by the time I arrived, Cindy was already asking questions and listening in an engaged way to what Holden was explaining. It was all very general and sort of “just scraping the surface” but it was kind of refreshing to be talking with someone in person fairly openly about how we feel about faithfulness, commitment, and relationships. At some point she had to leave, but the conversation ended on a good note and Holden thought of a few things she had asked about that he wanted to give her more clarification on later. He sent her an email later explaining some more details about some questions she had, and also a clarification that this is a rather sensitive subject and that we’d appreciate it if she’d sort of keep it between us, since we’re not comfortable about everyone knowing just yet. Her response was terse and dismissive. Something along the lines of, “How dare you tell me all this stuff and then tell me I have to keep secrets for you. I’m not interested anyway.” Holden replied that he was sorry he’d made her uncomfortable and that in the future we could refrain from talking about that subject if it would help. He further clarified that it wasn’t that we were asking her to keep a secret, just to show some discretion in how he handled the topic, should it come up. He apologized again, and said he hoped we could all have drinks together at the next get together. She then promptly blocked our email and Facebook contacts and has since stopped coming to anything we go to.
Now, I was actually a little bothered that Holden took it upon himself to talk to Cindy about poly in the first place. I wasn’t comfortable with her at that level yet and I didn’t feel like we knew her well enough to have that discussion. Holden has since agreed with me that it was a mistake to bring it up to her, especially without talking to me about the idea first. But regardless of whether or not Holden was right in talking about it with her, Cindy’s reaction is really puzzling to both of us.
For one thing, she seemed genuinely interested in learning more about the topic. She asked some really intuitive questions and seemed at the time to be receiving our answers positively, or at the very least neutrally. Maybe Holden’s request for discretion was misinterpreted, or maybe he worded it wrong, but I’m having a hard time seeing why it prompted such a strong response from her. I guess it’s a sensitive request for her.
And lastly, I didn’t see Holden give Cindy any indication that he was talking to her about poly because he wanted to have a relationship with HER. When she said, “I’m not interested” I wanted to tell her, “don’t flatter yourself! He’s not interested in you either!”
It’s not really all that big a deal in the grand scheme of things. Cindy hasn’t been in contact with any of our other friends either. I do feel kind of bad that this encounter has seemed to soured her on our whole group of friends (who meet around a topic completely unrelated to sexuality or poly.) Ultimately, Holden and I haven’t taken it too hard. I mean, we tried to reach out to her when she got uncomfortable, but she clearly didn’t want that, so I guess that was her choice.
I knew there would be some people in life that would simply reject us outright for our feelings about relationships, but I didn’t expect it to be someone who touts herself as an open minded liberal person with a strong drive to question authority and the status quo, as Cindy claimed and seemed to be.
On the bright side, Holden and I (especially Holden) have learned a valuable lesson about when it’s ok to bring up poly and how to go about preparing for the discussion.
