So TheKnight and I are pretty openly poly - all our friends know, even distant acquaintances (or at least they *could* know); if his work found out it might be a little awkward but not tragic or career ending; I'm a freelancer, etc.
There's one major exception to that - family. My family is a non-issue; my father and I are estranged and I don't really have other family. TheKnight's family, though... that's a problem. Just to put things in context: for over a decade they lived several states away, our non-monogamy was casual relationships only, usually together, and we didn't have a child. So on all those fronts there was just no need to tell them, but still, we've been "hiding" this for a very long time, since before we were married.
Now, though... both my father in law and grandfather in law have serious medical issues (the latter has Alzheimer's and stage one melanoma, the former has liver disease and is recovering from a stroke), so they moved up here and live five minutes away. Which is fabulous for my three year old, and for TheKnight and I, and for them... but we're having a bit of a hard time maintaining boundaries / privacy. (Examples: showing up randomly at our house without calling first; being very pushy about finding out "why / what else we're doing" if we decline an invitation, etc.). I'm really tired of the lying / omission this entails if one or both of us have a date, and I'm kind of terrified that we're going to get outed inadvertently by one of those random visits.
Quite obviously we are going to have to come out. But my mother-in-law is sort of a brittle personality that always feels like there's too much going on, too much stress, etc... and there keep being moderate health crises here and there... and now she has the possibility of some serious health issues herself. So the timing is bad...
But the timing is ALWAYS bad.
So those of you who are out to family, how did you do it? And what did you do to make it go better? She's not religious, not really, though she was raised Catholic and still sort of thinks of herself as one. She DID marry her high school sweetheart so us not being monogamous will be a bit of a shock on that front. And I'm actually expecting a weird form of time jealousy where she feels like we're neglecting her by spending time with partners - we already get it a bit when we have plans with friends. (She didn't have many friends in Florida and doesn't have many here).
I hate being forced into this, to some degree - if she could just accept "don't come over without asking" and "sometimes we're busy and aren't going to tell you every detail of our lives" it would be SO much better.
tl;dr: how do you come out to someone who is way more integrated in your life than you're really comfortable with?
There's one major exception to that - family. My family is a non-issue; my father and I are estranged and I don't really have other family. TheKnight's family, though... that's a problem. Just to put things in context: for over a decade they lived several states away, our non-monogamy was casual relationships only, usually together, and we didn't have a child. So on all those fronts there was just no need to tell them, but still, we've been "hiding" this for a very long time, since before we were married.
Now, though... both my father in law and grandfather in law have serious medical issues (the latter has Alzheimer's and stage one melanoma, the former has liver disease and is recovering from a stroke), so they moved up here and live five minutes away. Which is fabulous for my three year old, and for TheKnight and I, and for them... but we're having a bit of a hard time maintaining boundaries / privacy. (Examples: showing up randomly at our house without calling first; being very pushy about finding out "why / what else we're doing" if we decline an invitation, etc.). I'm really tired of the lying / omission this entails if one or both of us have a date, and I'm kind of terrified that we're going to get outed inadvertently by one of those random visits.
Quite obviously we are going to have to come out. But my mother-in-law is sort of a brittle personality that always feels like there's too much going on, too much stress, etc... and there keep being moderate health crises here and there... and now she has the possibility of some serious health issues herself. So the timing is bad...
But the timing is ALWAYS bad.
So those of you who are out to family, how did you do it? And what did you do to make it go better? She's not religious, not really, though she was raised Catholic and still sort of thinks of herself as one. She DID marry her high school sweetheart so us not being monogamous will be a bit of a shock on that front. And I'm actually expecting a weird form of time jealousy where she feels like we're neglecting her by spending time with partners - we already get it a bit when we have plans with friends. (She didn't have many friends in Florida and doesn't have many here).
I hate being forced into this, to some degree - if she could just accept "don't come over without asking" and "sometimes we're busy and aren't going to tell you every detail of our lives" it would be SO much better.
tl;dr: how do you come out to someone who is way more integrated in your life than you're really comfortable with?