Need advice about putting "in an open relationship" on facebook!!!

What is your facebook relationship status?

  • Not public - not fully visible to total fb strangers

    Votes: 19 43.2%

  • Publicaly Visible and Single

    Votes: 5 11.4%

  • Publicaly Visible and In a relationship

    Votes: 3 6.8%

  • Publicaly Visible and Engaged

    Votes: 1 2.3%

  • Publicaly Visible and Married

    Votes: 9 20.5%

  • Publicaly Visible and In a civil union

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Publicaly Visible and In a domestic partnership

    Votes: 1 2.3%

  • Publicaly Visible and In an open relationship

    Votes: 4 9.1%

  • Publicaly Visible and It’s complicated

    Votes: 1 2.3%

  • Publicaly Visible and Separated/Divorced/Widowed

    Votes: 1 2.3%
  • Total voters
    44
J

justascientist

New member
Hi. Take the poll. I think #1 is the most common; the new trend today is to keep your relationship status private or blank on facebook. However, I was wondering about changing it from friends/private/or blank to "in an open relationship" PUBLICLY VISIBLE. Has anyone here put "in an open relationship" and made that publicly visible to anyone? What were the benefits and harm that came from doing that?
 
We are not "out" so...But I am also an incredibly private person. There is not anything public on my FB page and I only "friend" people that I know in real life.
 
Yeah, like JaneQ I'm really secretive about myself on Facebook ... Frankly I don't trust Facebook. It'd be like the last place in the world where I'd out myself, if I was going to out myself. Which I can't anyway because my two poly partners would absolutely die of a stroke if I did that.

Of course if only my feelings mattered, then I guess I'd out myself to the world. I don't see why not.

If your poly partners don't mind, and you don't mind, then sure, announce your relationship status on Facebook. I don't know what the benefits and harm would be. I just know Facebook's bad at protecting your privacy, even when you try to protect it.
 
I have 2 accounts, 1 where I use nates last name and the other I use my own last name. Im out to everyone but this makes it easier since we keep relationships separate.

1 says married to nate
Other says in a relationship with sam
 
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I have 3 Facebooks I use regularly: My real-name one, and then one for each of the two pen names I write under.

On my real-name profile and my teen fiction pen name profile, I just have married...I think I tagged Hubby on each of those. On the erotic romance author profile, since that's where it seemed somewhat logical, I put that I have an "it's complicated" relationship with Hubby...and then had to add a note explaining that it's a GOOD complication.

I can't tag S2 on Facebook; he won't let me friend him there.
 
KC43 said:
I have 3 Facebooks I use regularly: My real-name one, and then one for each of the two pen names I write under.
Click to expand...

I actually have two - a "family" one and a "friend" one. Neither of which is my real-name (or my JaneQ pseudonym:p). There are two people that are "friended" on both of them (although others have guessed :eek:). (No, not Dude and MrS - they aren't on Fake-Book at all!) But I don't actually trust the privacy of ANYTHING online - so I am carefully vague on all fronts.
 
I am completely out in real life and on Facebook. My status used to say married to DarkKnight but now it is engaged to PunkRockAwesomesauce. Once we have our commitment ceremony I will prolly switch to just say open relationship.
 
Based on the poll thus far, it sounds like it is easier to be openly gay than openly open.

Inyourendo said:
I have 2 accounts, 1 where I use nates last name and the other I use my own last name. Im out to everyone but this makes it easier since we keep relationships separate.

1 says married to nate
Other says in a relationship with sam
Click to expand...

Wow. That sounds really more complicated than just putting "In an open relationship" Thanks for much for your interesting reply.
 
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I've set my status to open (visible by anyone) recently and things worked fine for me. Other then a few mocking remarks from "friends" nothing initially happened. But after a while people started showing up in real life and because they saw my status they started opening up to me and sharing their experiences also. I live in Romania where most of the people are orthodox christian but not fanatics so nothing crazy happened.
My advice is to go out in the open through all channels that you find relevant. Those who are friends will understand, those who won't aren't friends :)
 
viorels said:
I've set my status to open (visible by anyone) ... Other then a few mocking remarks from "friends"...
Click to expand...

I saw the 1st open vote and wondered who it was. Thanks for much for taking the time to share your story. Nice to see someone with some balls around here.

Would you please share the mocking remarks so that I know what I would be getting? Were the mocking remarks in private chat or visible to your friends?
 
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Mine says "it's complicated," but the privacy is set to "only me," so I may as well not have it there at all. I would have it as a public status if it weren't for some of Julian's coworkers who are suspicious that he's cheating on Maya with me. They're conservative and it could be bad for him if they confirmed our relationship (even if they misconstrued it).

Julian's status (public) says he's married.
Maya's status says Open Marriage, but the privacy is set to friends-only.
 
justascientist said:
Based on the poll thus far, it sounds like it is easier to be openly gay than openly open.



Wow. That sounds really more complicated than just putting "In an open relationship" Thanks for much for your interesting reply.
Click to expand...

Not really. I live two completely different life's so I have 1 Facebook for each.
 
justascientist said:
I saw the 1st open vote and wondered who it was. Thanks for much for taking the time to share your story. Nice to see someone with some balls around here.
Click to expand...

I find your stance that if you aren't openly acknowledging your poly status to everyone in the world that you are a coward kind of offensive. There are valid reasons for not wanting that type of openness that have nothing to do with cowardness. For instance, Kevin has said he'd be open about it to everyone but his partners have asked him not to be. I think being respectful of your partners' feelings is more important than being open to strangers.

I don't have mine marked as in an open relationship for several reasons. When I signed up for Facebook, I'd been married for a long time and was still monogamous. When we opened up our marriage, we weren't telling all our family and I wasn't about to tell them through a Facebook relationship status change. All of our families know now but I still have it listed as married. There's a few reasons for that. The first reason is that I am friends with a lot of co-workers, including my two managers. Since my work has an ethics clause to employment and a lot of people confuse ethics with morality (and poly is immoral in some people's eyes), I don't want to take the chance that I might loose my job over it. I'm not interested in being a poly crusader, I just want to live my life and be happy. The other reason is that I think my kids, who are young adults, would be embarrassed if we came out publicly on Facebook. I care more about my relationship with my kids than I do about being a crusader for poly, so how they feel is important to me..
 
Re:
"I'm not interested in being a poly crusader, I just want to live my life and be happy."
Click to expand...

Yeah, that's how I feel also.
 
I had two FB accounts - one for family and work which did not mention my relationships, sex, religion and so on at all and another for friends which was my poly/kink/sex-positive/open/pagan/alt account. I closed both down as I was spending too much time there and I have concerns about privacy. I am more and more unwilling to be the product social media sells.

I didn't answer the poll as there wasn't an option that fit my circumstances. I do use other social networks but those are more private, don't use user's data as proprietary data. For example, on Fetlife I am listed as polyamorous and had been also listed as 'in an open relationship' when that was true.
 
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I didn't answer the poll because I don't answer polls, in general.

I'm not out on my Facebooks because I'm not ready to explain the situation to Country yet (she's friends with me on my real-name FB and my teen fiction author FB), and because Hubby has asked that no one related to him or connected in any way to his family find out about the situation, and several of them are friends with me on those two accounts as well.

I'm semi-out on the erotic romance author FB account because it just seems to fit that persona, and because no one I'm concerned about is friends with me on there.
 
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