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All posts for the month November, 2013

Family Portraits

Posted by Caroline on November 21, 2013
Posted in: polyamory. 3 Comments

My son’s new preschool has a bulletin board right by the front entrance where everyone is asked to post a family picture.  It’s a sea of Typical Family Portraits: a mom, a dad, a kid or two, and maybe a dog.  We’ve now been there for over two months and the teachers keep bugging me to get them our family portrait.

I’ve totally choked.

Let me preface this by saying that I have a way of completely overthinking EVERYTHING.  Even a damn picture.  I could, of course, produce a Typical Family Portrait.  That would be the easy and simple.  We are not out as poly to preschool or my son’s friends’ parents and, to borrow some phrasing from my beloved queer friends, we “present” as a monogamous couple.  We attend birthday parties with just us and our son.  We gloss over the poly parts of our lives by using phrases like, “a friend of mine” and “a person we know”.  When my boyfriend comes with me for pick up, we don’t hold hands or brush up against each other.  The Typical Family Portrait would just be an extension of what we’ve been doing already.  Avoiding it and playing it safe.  Not lying, but also not revealing.

But the radically honest person in me is cringing with self-loathing.

I believe strongly that if one CAN come out she should.  Not only for her own mental health, but also to aide in progressing polyamory to be a more accepted and understood lifestyle.  If we all came out, we wouldn’t be considered so weird.  But this–my son’s preschool–is the first place I’ve had doubts about whether or not I SHOULD.  It’s not as simple as just “you can take me or leave me just the way I am, and your loss if you if you don’t like it.”  It isn’t really about ME at all.  It’s my son’s space, and it feels like opening up my innocent son to the potential for discrimination.  What if birthday party invitations stopped coming?  What if the other parents stopped talking to us, or told their kids to stop talking to him?  Heck, what if the preschool called child services on us?  Seems really unlikely–we are in Chicago after all–but do I really want to take the risk?

Most friends I talk to think I’m probably totally safe–my neighborhood and this preschool are not known for being intolerant–but I’ve already experienced that rejection first hand and it’s made me a bit paranoid.  My boyfriend lives in a more conservative suburb, and most of his friends are devout Catholics.  Though they are nice to my face, they certainly don’t agree with our choices and they’ve told us that we are not allowed to bring either my son or my wife to their houses.  Essentially, if we want to be friends with them we must play the part of monogamous couple and there is only “so far they can go” in accepting our lifestyle.  To paint a broad stroke, my being poly has resulted in my son being discriminated against: he’s not allowed in their houses or to play with their children.  (Thankfully, he’s too young to know the difference and has never met them so it really doesn’t matter.  Still, not a pattern I want to continue.)

We are new to this preschool and the stakes are so much higher.  We are still getting to know the parents, and we have no clue how socially conservative they swing.  I know that one day I’m going to have to bite the bullet and come out to at least some of my son’s friends’ parents and deal with their reactions.  I know I am delaying the inevitable.

Still, it pains me to admit that now simply is not the right time.  I know it’s a little manipulative, but I want them to know us and like us first so it’s harder to reject us in the future.  I don’t want to cut off those relationships before they even get started.  Our Typical Family Portrait is still true, it’s not a lie.  We are, knowingly, privileged to be in a relationship that “passes” as monogamous, so this form of manipulation can actually work.  Who’s to say being patient and waiting for the right time may not make a bigger difference in the long run?  Maybe people who would have outright rejected us at first will be more open when they know us a people first before poly.

But the idealist on my shoulder keeps yelling at me to shut up and stand up for myself and others who are less privileged.  Push buttons!  Fight the good fight!  I have to stop myself, take a deep breath, and keep reminding myself that this is for my son, not for me or anyone else.  Sometimes my principles about doing the right thing for him must supersede other principles.

After all, it’s just a freaking picture, right?

Coming Out At Work (Again)

Posted by Tim on November 21, 2013
Posted in: polyamory. Tagged: , , , , . Leave a comment

I started a new job a few weeks ago. I’m back in a corporate environment again. It’s been mostly good so far: having a steady paycheck is nice, and I do know how to do this job well without too much ramping up. It is cutting into my ability to sleep in every morning, which will take some getting used to. But from an existential and financial, this is a big step in a better direction.

The folks in working with are very nice and welcoming, which I feel is really important if I’m to do well in this new place. I want to have a good interpersonal connection with everyone on my team, and I feel like I am integrating very well. They are quirky and funny and dorky, which definitely makes them my people.

The one thing that I am really anxious about is coming out as poly at some point. I came out at work when I had my last corporate job. I inched my way out to folks, approaching those I knew would be understanding, or at least would roll their eyes at me and get back to work. It felt really good to discuss my life with them without having to do an elaborate self-censoring dance. And I knew that I was lucky to find myself in that workplace with a majority of queer folks, which made those first hurdles nearly nonexistent. I cherished that.

A few months ago, it dawned on me that I was going to have to go through that whole process again. At first I was a little angry, because in my head I had “already” done all that work. It was unfair that I had to start over again at the beginning. Even without the greater societal norms and expectations that I had to climb around, it felt like I was being personally penalized. Once those vague feelings were centered on a specific new job, the anxiety zoomed up to the foreground. I was going to have to have that conversation with these specific people, in these specific circumstances.

I have not come out to anyone there yet. I’ve only been there a few weeks, and I feel like I want to know the lay of the land more first before I start making moves. And I am already not as confident that it will be as easy this time. These folks are a bit older, and bit more conservative, than my old team. I think it’s going to take me a little more time, and I’ll need to be a bit more intentional.

But I will come out to them, one way or another. My relationships are too big, and too present in my life, to pretend that they aren’t there. I long to be myself in that group, truly and completely. I look forward to being in that place.

Forty-Five Minutes On OKCupid

Posted by Tim on November 19, 2013
Posted in: polyamory. Tagged: , , . Leave a comment

In an attempt to research some stuff tonight about dating and relationships statuses, I reactivated my OKCupid account for about 45 minutes tonight. And by the end of it, I was very happy to turn that account back off, for two reasons.

First, OKCupid can be a rather harsh place. I’ve written about the feelings that I had during those first two weeks I spent on that site, and how stressful it was to go through those first few motions. Not having anyone to help process the excitement and anxiety of it all. I felt a small shade of that again tonight, looking at that page again. While there was that small thrill of seeing new faces and imaging new relationships and new NRE, I was so happy that I am in lovely relationships already. I’m also happy to be in a community that I feel comfortable in, and at a place in my life where I am satisfied and energized by what I have.

Secondly, dear god my profile is an embarrassing mess. I’m not sure I even know what I was trying to say in there, other than randomly thrashing at the keyboard in hopes that something nice or witty or attractive would somehow come tumbling out. It is a monument to how different I am now than I was a year and a half ago. I am happy to see the differences, but also a bit embarrassed that I ever put a profile like that out in public.

I know that this is my story, and my stress, and my feelings. I know that there are a bunch of people out there that enjoy using that site and meeting new people and presenting that part of themselves out to the waiting masses. I don’t want to diminish the value that other people get out of being there. But I was so very, very glad to have that all turned back off again.