Discussing poly with your kids - but keeping that info inside your household

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Glitterkittyn

New member
Hi poly friends!
Some background. We live in the Pacific NW, USA. My husband of 25+ years and I have been poly for the last couple years. We started when he fell in love with his female coworker. Lots of up and downs but we are all very happy now. We identify as more of a poly pod, with a strong focus on family togetherness. We do things separately, he and his GF, she and I and together merging both families and our kids. I've been dating a wonderful, amazing man for the past 4 months. I love him SO much! (Yes, I know NRE :D) It's been very easy for us all to meld together. He too has kids which we include in our "big" family. All our kids get along famously. His children have known he and his wife are poly for perhaps 5 years. My BF and his wife are planning on divorcing (nothing related to poly, just have grown apart and have different goals. I like her as a friend too, she's a fantastic person) and we are talking about my BF moving in with our family. We are coming to a head on needing to discuss our poly status and thoughts with our kids. Here are the questions I need help with.
- how to discuss poly with our kids, 10 and 6 so they understand what's going on and that it's ok to live this lifestyle?
- How do we talk about keeping this information just in our immediate household and family? This is a difficult one as we don't want them to have to keep secrets or think this is shameful. (We have family that we know would shun and condemn us as well as perhaps try to take our children because we are "indecent" parents. So, in short we don't want to share our poly status with them. Same thing for our employers, we could be discriminated against and let go if they found out. Of course it would be for "other reasons.")

Thoughts? Ideas? How did you all discuss living poly, loving more than two with your children? How did they react? How did you keep the information inside your home?

Thank you!!
 
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That sounds difficult indeed :confused:
You realize keeping seecrets is difficult and don't want to put the kids through it. You're not even sure is they can be trusted to keep the secret I guess. Yet, you have to tell the kids, because otherwise they will secondguess you, or the other kids might tell them before you.

I get the trouble with employment, but I guess your kids friends circles have little to do with your coworkers. Also, in the worst case scenario, maybe the crisis of having to change work would be managable? :confused:
The real danger seems to be from the extended family knowing, if they are really going to sue you, which to me (in my liberal country) sounds kind of extreme. Is there any way you could talk to them and sort this out as adults? If your bf is moving in with you, you might need to tell them some "official" story anyway.
 
I think if you just explain the reality to the kids that while you think that people can live all sorts of different ways and be happy as long as everyone is happy.... not everyone thinks that way, and some people don't always like they way other people live (even though it's none of their business). Because of that, many people keep their personal lives private and don't like to overshare. It's not a secret, just personal and doesn't need to be blabbed about.

If they're willing to accept those others into the family, they can always just call them your friends "mom's friend" and "dad's friend" or roommates. Heck, even if the kids blab, they're young enough that you can just laugh it off to other adults and be like "oh that's cute, they're young and they don't necessarily understand the nuances between friends, close friends, loved ones, romantic relationships, etc." if you feel like you really need to keep something secret from employers or family.

It might be worth consulting an attorney, but usually people don't lose custody of kids that are in good homes just because a family member doesn't like their lifestyle.

Aside from all of that though... I'd like to caution you against moving your b/f in when you've only been together for a few months. Like you said, you're in NRE land, and moving a partner in with your kids is a BIG change. You might wanna just take a deep breath and make sure you're not rushing into something. I'm not saying that it will definitely fall apart, but that early into a relationship I wouldn't be moving in with someone even if I was mono and had no kids and we were just 2 single people that started dating 4 months ago!
 
My thoughts:

Telling the kids doesn't have to be any big production. "Some people love only one person, and some people love more than one. Daddy and I both love people besides each other, and that's okay because we all know it's happening and no one is lying. We aren't doing anything wrong, and we aren't ashamed. But... a lot of people do think this is wrong, because they don't understand how it works. Unfortunately, some of those people are part of our family. Daddy and I don't like telling you to keep secrets, but in this case, we have to ask you not to talk to other people about the other relationships we have. We don't want to upset people or get into arguments."
 
I guess I'm the dissenter. Imo, it's not realistic or fair to expect children that age to keep secrets for their parents. I do understand the desire to be fully open, but imo if there are many reasons why disclosure could have a significant impact on the family, then IMHO it's best not to risk it by telling young children.
 
Thanks for the advice everyone. Keep it coming :)

To be clear, BF and I have known each other the past 1.5 years casually and have been dating for 4 months, seeing each other 2-3 times a week. We are talking about the move in (he and possibly his daughter) for next fall. So not that soon. We've also been considering a roommate in any case so we can pay off the house sooner and pay down bills, so win win.
 
We just recently told our 14 year old. That went fine. Apparently we did manage to get across the accepting people for who they are thing pretty well. Lol Anyway the 8 almost 9 year old will be up next. He is exceptionally bright and will start to figure out something is going on. So he'll get an age appropriate talk. The 7 and 5 year old are the unknowns. The oldest knows she can't say anything because it would affect our positions in our community. The 8 yr old should be all right too I think just really not sure on the other two. So all that in order to say I understand we're you're coming from. Good luck.
 
Hi Glitterkittyn,

Simple is better, e.g., "Mom and Dad love each other but we love [girlfriend] and [boyfriend] too." As for the keeping-it-a-secret part, that's not really possible unless you ask your kids not to tell anyone. And the kids may still make a mistake and out you. The six-year-old in particular, but the ten-year-old too. There's just no way to be completely safe. But, you could say something like, "We believe in what we're doing, but other people might not understand. Some people might even try to do bad things to us. So, don't tell anyone okay?" and possibly, "at least not right now." The time may come when you decide to out yourselves. Perhaps when the kids are grown.

Anyway those are my thoughts.
Sincerely,
Kevin T.
 
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I will join Pinkpig in the dissenter camp. It is certainly unrealistic to expect children to keep secrets - and there could be custody implications. While the Gay community has won legal protection, none exists for the poly world - I was just reading about the potential dangers of this situation in the "Ethical Slut" a month or two back.

While I applaud you for wanting to be open - with children involved, it is possible you could run into real problems. Consider carefully.

Al
 
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My "big"family is located in the very conservative south, and we've told all three of our children. My 10 yr old was very concerned about keeping secrets, but when I started quizzing her about the personal lives of her friends parents it began to make sense. Keeping a secret, and having private information is not the same thing. We all live under the same roof, and do not shut people out. When their friends parents come over we just don't offer up unsolicited information. We get to know them which makes it much harder for them to be judgemental when they find out. No problems yet.
 
I'd err on the side of caution and not tell any kid until they were 14 or so. Littler kids will slip up, preteens/young teens might get mad and hormonal for some reason or another and out you to a few friends just because they were in a pissy mood.

And I also wouldnt move bf in yet. Sure, you've known him over a year. But you're in NRE... the romance is only 4 months along and might not last. I understand you want a roommate to pay off mortgage sooner, but I still think you should wait a full year past when your romantic relationship started to start cohabiting. Also, living together is much different than hanging out a couple nights a week.

But then, I was fully in love with my current partner, and she with me, and we spent 3 days a week together, and yet we both kept paying rent on our apartments and didn't move in together until 3 years had passed. Even though, yes, it would have been a big savings. I was paranoid about it because my ex husband had started moving his stuff into my place soon after our first date, and it makes it so much harder to split up once you're living together, in case things do not work out. I am just super cautious about such things.
 
In your place, I'd wait before moving the boyfriend in. And if/when we did it, I'd simply tell the kids that [name] would be living with us for a while and be low key about visibly "commentworthy" behavior with him around kids. I wouldn't trust kids to keep a secret of this sort. Young kids lack the discretion to know what could be a problem to say and what is okay. Older kids may out you in some anger/rebellious episode.

I would, on a priority find/create a situation where polyamory would be acceptable - at least to the point where you aren't worried about losing kids or a job before I "came out" even to my kids. Till then, at best, it would be "uncle visits us" "uncle will be staying here" etc with no behavior that can't be interpreted as "good friends" visible to anyone other than the adults in the relationship.

Frankly, if the risk were losing custody of my child, I wouldn't move a lover in. If that collapsed the relationship, so be it.
 
Okay, apparently I'm the only one who's got lost, then.
Glitterkittyn said:
he fell in love with his female coworker ...merging both families and our kids.
Click to expand...
As you have experience with being "merged," how did you manage to slip THAT past all those kids?
________________

And while I'm here: I would really like to have some collection point for how many actual true "I lost my baby because I'm poly!!" stories there are out there, maybe with a subsidiary section for how many people have actually lost jobs, got evicted, had the barn burned down, been approached by angry mobs with pitchforks & torches, etc.

Lacking such data, I increasingly get the impression it's like the Internet paranoids who believe they alone have unearthed some Massive Conspiracy & "if they knew how much I knew, I'd be a dead man!"

As a clinician told me, most paranoiacs are boring, uncreative people who justify their uselessness by creating "proof" that others are keeping them from their true potential -- that's why they can't hold a job, move out of Mom's basement, shower occasionally...

As such, I'd at least offer that the trope has got old, & should more often be pushed aside as likely irrelevant.
 
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Ravenscroft said:
Okay, apparently I'm the only one who's got lost, then.

As you have experience with being "merged," how did you manage to slip THAT past all those kids?
________________

And while I'm here: I would really like to have some collection point for how many actual true "I lost my baby because I'm poly!!" stories there are out there, maybe with a subsidiary section for how many people have actually lost jobs, got evicted, had the barn burned down, been approached by angry mobs with pitchforks & torches, etc.

Lacking such data, I increasingly get the impression it's like the Internet paranoids who believe they alone have unearthed some Massive Conspiracy & "if they knew how much I knew, I'd be a dead man!"

As a clinician told me, most paranoiacs are boring, uncreative people who justify their uselessness by creating "proof" that others are keeping them from their true potential -- that's why they can't hold a job, move out of Mom's basement, shower occasionally...

As such, I'd at least offer that the trope has got old, & should more often be pushed aside as likely irrelevant.
Click to expand...

You'll be hard pressed to find proof with this sort of thing, because civil court cases involving minors are not allowed to be shared because of child protection laws.

But for the record I am one - I shared when I shouldn't have. However mine was an extreme example. And not one to be worried about in this situation. If you happen to know a person who would have such a vendetta then worry or would try to swoop social services in. And even then you'd just have to be extremely unlucky with the social service person you got. I had roughly, 10 -12 different social service people helping my kids with access to different mental health services etc, and we had maybe 1 bad social service person who would have considered poly a threat out of 20 over the past 11 years they been involved. Even the police and ex husband and others knew about my polyness for years and wasn't an issue. It only became an issue because of the last social worker I was involved with. But hey-ho live and learn.
 
I'd say no...

We discuss this every few months. Our children are older, 4 of our 5 combined children are between 18-22, but we still don't feel like burdening them with this "secret". I moved in about 18 months ago, but there were compelling reasons for the move and all three of us are the roughly same age and place in our careers, so no eyebrows were raised. Once the youngest reaches 18, we plan to tell them, as we will be moving our household to a resort town where we hope to retire someday (we have somewhat portable careers). The obvious downside to this is the inability to be publicly affectionate with your partners, and I will admit that this has been and continues to be a source of frustration for us. However, we are quite good at making time for each other in private, and we do all get away for weekends often which helps, plus we cosleep, which I know gets tricky with an increasing number of partners under one roof.
So I guess I would ask, why do you want them to know? Is it for their good or yours? Are you seeking to alleviate a sense of unease you are feeling about the situation? I'm not trying to stir up trouble here just asking questions we have asked ourselves. Our kids have just rolled with it, and they don't seem to be bothered by the arrangement.
 
Hi All. Thanks for the thoughts and discussion. Let's see if I can remember all the questions.
Merging of families between husband and GF and her kids. That amounts to vacations, holidays, other outings and time together. I am seeing my BF as well. And we ALL do things together. He has 2 older kids as well. Currently we are all living in separate houses.
As far as WHY we are talking about sharing our relationships with the kids we feel like we aren't doing anything "wrong" and it feels deceptive to sidestep or hide our love and relationships, especially with those that are closest to us. And, it would certainly be a heck of a lot easier if we didn't have to tip toe around our own house. Perhaps that is selfish 🤔
I appreciate the thoughts and discussion. For now we're going to continue to keep things on the down low.
 
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