Coming Out

It's always nerve wracking to reveal something private and personal to people whose opinion matters to you. Will they secretly judge you? Will they be weirded out? Will it change things? I had no intention of coming out as poly to one of my belly dance friends last night...but the topic came up, and it started to feel dishonest not to reveal. So after only half of a Corona, I spilled my deep dark secrets.

It all started with some belly dance drahmah. Two days ago, one the professional dancers from the mother troupe ( in which my partner is a musician) sent out a nice but very damaging resignation letter to the public announce egroup by mistake. The letter was meant to go only to the private troupe list, but a slip of the finger sent it out to over 150 other people. The professional troupe has been having some pretty bad growing pains lately, and a public letter airing their dirty laundry was the last thing they needed. There were a flurry of letters behind the scenes as people dealt with their shock over the abrupt resignation and the salacious details in the letter.

This Saturday night, our small troupe is performing at a student hafla. (This is our third Sat night in a row performing!) We are the opening and closing act. There are five in our troupe, but one can't make this gig, so we have a guest. We have been working almost solely on choreography the past two months, and not at all on the improv tribal moves. A few of us in the troupe had decided that it might be prudent to work out what moves we were going to do, even though this violates the spirit of improv dancing. I think it's more important to look cohesive as a group during a performance, rather than not practicing and going out there cold but honoring the Goddess of Improv. Usually when we do an improv performance we have several practice sessions where we go over everything we know. Then we are able to do improv, yet have it look tight. Since we didn't have the luxury of any improv practice, a few of us had decided to talk and work out mostly what we were going to do. The guest dancer absolutely refused to work out anything with us, which really pissed off the alpha female who runs our troupe. Both of us were so jangled from the events of the last two days we decided to head out to a bar on the river to have a drink and dish about the dance community.

On a side note, the woman whom my partner is starting to "date" (whom I don't care for) is also getting involved with my favorite musician from another band. (What is it about this woman??) That guy is also dating a poly married woman, and although, I am not certain he is truly poly, he has found himself dating people who identify thusly. So now, I have had this low grade worry that he will bring her to one of the gigs where I am performing, or one of the upcoming parties....I am territorial, and I just don't want this unpleasant person in my happy dance space...My partner would know not to invite her, but I have no control over what this other guy might do. So, the dance world, like the poly world is small, and the spider web of our connections is indeed tangled.

ANYHOW, my dance friend started talking about musicians who may come to her upcoming party in June. She is hoping to have enough musicians there that we can dance to live music to entertain some of her relatives from England. She asked about two of the musicians in my partner's band. Those guys are in a MFM vee triad, and I realized that my friend was unaware of that fact. It is not a secret by any means, so I told her about them.

"Wow, she said....that is the fourth group of people this month in our circle that I have found out are...what is the word....polyamourous?" I can't believe I know four sets of people who are doing poly!" (Funny, there are three separate poly relationships happening in the mother troupe including my partner, and my friend just learned about the musician guy from above.)

"Actually....you know five.", I said. "Really????? WHO ELSE?" she asks. I sigh, and hear myself telling her about my own poly relationship. I feel close enough to her that it would have felt like a lie not to tell her, and really, it would be sort of a relief not to have to hide it. (Actually, she knows six sets of people, but the last set of people was not my secret to tell.)

We ended up having a soul sharing of sorts. I told her about my journey into poly, what was good, what was painful...and she in turn told me some things about her 20 year monogamous journey...which has also been painful at times, due to differences in sex drive and interests.

Actually, my friend would really benefit from poly in her particular situation, but neither of us thinks her husband would ever be okay or be able to do the necessary emotional ground work to pull that sort of thing off.

This morning, I felt a little overexposed. I am really a pretty private person, and although I can open up to those I trust, I still tend to hold cards close to my chest. It's hard telling people about poly, because I often wind up having to defend something that I am not so sure of myself at times...but I am sure that it is a valid lifestyle, and I believe people should be free to live how they want to live. When it comes to most things in life, whether it be the first amendment, abortion rights, or whom someone wants to sleep with or marry...I favor openness. I like having personal freedom in my relationship, and even though I don't often exercise that freedom, I still know I have it.

My friend was supportive. Like most of our monogamous friends, she seemed more unsettled by the radical honesty aspect of poly, rather than the being able to have other sexual partners part. She told me things she was afraid to say to her husband....things that seemed small to me, because my partner and I have traveled so deeply into those waters of honesty. I can't imagine living any other way. Something so normal to me (being honest about who you really are and how you really feel), is an exotic way of life to her.

I tried to explain the weird paradox of radical honesty....that although it seems like you are protecting your partner from pain by not telling them everything (those scary truths in a relationship) that talking about the hard stuff actually builds trust. I don't think she understood, because the concept was so foreign....but she can see how close my partner and I are.

So, things continue to spin here. I wonder why poly issues are so up in my life right now. It hasn't been on my mind much in the last couple of years. Of course, someone new coming into the picture is bound to shake things up.

I don't know much about the current new age religion sweeping the mainstream known as the Secret, but I know it has to do with the law of attraction. I wonder if all this focusing on poly is going to bring something my way. Sometimes, it does feel like something new is coming to me, and it makes me shiver with both with longing and fear. I guess time will tell.