How to tell friends and family...

M

MHHIPDX

New member
So I have been seeing my boyfriend for a year as part of a V. Things have been great and the love we have for each other has not changed since we started dating. I am absolutely and completely in love with him. I know he feels the same and put relationship has been fun and loving.

I had never done a relationship like this. I think my friends were surprised and a little taken a back when my boyfriend came to meet them and we sat down and told them this is what was happening.

Lately, I lost one of my friends because he made rude comments about my boyfriend and about the contents of our relationship. having another partner. I felt like the trust and the respect wasn’t there for us anymore as friends.

I keep thinking about what to say to my family about it when it comes time because they all know I’m in a relationship. Does anyone have any advice?
 
My advice is to have a few resources ready to share, if you think your family will want to know more about your relationship style when you introduce the idea to them. I don’t live close to my family, so I chose to tell them over email; we had one on one follow-up conversations when I visited, but it wasn’t a ‘stand up at Thanksgiving dinner and drop a conversational bomb’ type situation! Have you had discussions of other heavy topics with your family before? Think about what worked or didn’t work there. Are you expecting them to be confused, antagonistic (maybe they’re religious or very conservative), generally supportive? My family is pretty liberal, and I had already navigated coming out as queer with them before, coming out poly went pretty smoothly for me.
 
Hi MHHIPDX,

There is a really good video on coming out, at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJ-8ocmtb_8 ... and a great article, at https://www.morethantwo.com/polyamory.html#polyamory-faq ... and here are a few threads on this forum:

My perspective is, that no matter how great your presentation: When you come out, there's no guarantee that your family/friends will react positively. And, it's not your job to make them react positively, that is their choice. I tend think that the way they'll react is the same way they'd react if your presentation was poorly done. Their reaction is based on the substance of what you say (i.e., what you are coming out as, e.g., poly), not on the quality of your presentation. It's a question of, do they care more about *you* as a person, or do they care more about *their* code of morals?

I could be wrong, to some small degree. Maybe a great presentation does increase your chances of a positive outcome. Read all you can about it (about how to tell your friends and family), then prepare your presentation and go forth with it. Be able to say that you tried your best to break it to them gently.

An approach that I like is, say to them, "I need to let you know that I am polyamorous." Then, if they say, "What's polyamorous?" you can kind of carry on with the conversation from there.

Just some thoughts, I hope it helps.
Sincerely,
Kevin T.
 
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