Secondaries: Integration/In a Bubble

Are you known to, and welcome among, all the people in your partners' life

  • All of them, just as much as if I were a spouse

    Votes: 7 36.8%
  • More than half of them

    Votes: 3 15.8%
  • Fewer than half of them

    Votes: 5 26.3%
  • Not at all.

    Votes: 4 21.1%

  • Total voters
    19
  • Poll closed .

WhatHappened

Active member
I'm curious, from those who are secondaries: how much are you a part of your bf/gf's life?

Are you kept completely isolated, and a secret from, from their friends, family, neighbors, co-workers, or anyone else?

Is your relationship known to some of the people in your partner's life? Is there some integration, but some people from whom your partner chooses to keep your relationship secret (or private, if you prefer?)

Or are your partner's friends, family, neighbors, and co-workers as much a part of your life as they would be if you were a spouse?

If your partner, or the two of you jointly, decide to keep your relationship private from some or all, what are your reasons?
 
I have met quite a few of Prof's friends and neigbours. He calls me his "date" aargh. "Friend" works fine for me.

I haven't met his family, but none of them live close. I am not sure how out he is to his family. Interesting question. He is not out at work so I would be introduced as "friend," if that happened.

His primary does not want secondaries meeting mutual friends.

He divides his time between 2 cities so I am integrated here as much as I want to be, which is not much :)

Kips is not out at all, agreement with wife. He has told a couple of overseas friends but none in his city or at work. This also suits me just fine.

I am out to family, friends and a few work colleagues. I don't discuss my private life easily.

My best friend hasn't told her husband. She thinks he would be a bit upset, I respect her decision. I am not bothered either way.

I really don't like and am not good at good chit-chat, classic INTJ. So not meeting people works for me. I do best one-to-one, same with friends, I make friends veeeery sloooooowly and rarely have get to-gethers. I find group events torturous.

Would it be different if we were married? Not really. I would try to keep out of their work and family relationships as much as possible, that was how I operated when I was married.

I am quite happy with my level of integration.
 
I met pretty much all of Seven's friends when we were together. I also met his dad, step-mom, and one of his brothers. He would also talk about me to other people that I hadn't met.

I wouldn't be someone's secret. And even if I couldn't introduce them as a boyfriend/girlfriend I would make sure my family knew how important they were to me.
 
I voted for Dude - since he doesn't post here.

Since the question specified "all" of the people in partner's life, I had to answer "less than half" as there are a ton of peripheral people in my life that I don't share ANY personal info with (like co-workers and neighbors) as I am basically a private person. (It took me 3 years to learn the names of my neighbors for crying out loud :rolleyes:)

Now, if you limit it to important people (i.e. people we care about) - probably more than half. We are out to friends (mine, MrS's, Dude's) - these are the people we socialize and hang out with regularly. They all know. Our immediate families know that Dude lives with us and we consider him "family" and we leave it at that. He is invited to all "family" functions that don't involve extended family (which we are not close to anyway).

Due to professional considerations (mine) - this will continue to be the case until I retire (hopefully in 10-15 years :p). When we are traveling or someplace where I am not likely to be recognized by clients (concerts, restaurants in the city, etc)...we are out publicly as well. (I love the looks I get dancing with/kissing on/holding hands with my two boys...I'm a bit of an imp that way :D - I always read them as "jealous disapproval")
 
I wouldn't be someone's secret. And even if I couldn't introduce them as a boyfriend/girlfriend I would make sure my family knew how important they were to me.

In what situations would you be unable to introduce them as your boyfriend? With your family? Would you feel that being introduced as someone important, but not specifically as a girlfriend, is the same as being kept a secret?
 
I didn't vote. Neither of my partners have any other partners.
But I wanted to notate-that neither of them is secondary either. One is my husband. One is my boyfriend. Both know everyone in my life and everyone meaningful in each others lives. We all live together and I don't do secrets. I could never disrespect anyone I love by treating them as "less than" a meaningful person in my life.
I don't even keep friends secret, I can't imagine doing that to a lover.
 
In what situations would you be unable to introduce them as your boyfriend? With your family? Would you feel that being introduced as someone important, but not specifically as a girlfriend, is the same as being kept a secret?
My husband's family. My parents and my co-workers did know about Seven and mine relationship as did family.

My husband's family is very conservative Christian so they knew that Seven was my best friend who I would spend a day or two of a week with. But they had very limited interaction in regards to Seven and I.

For another relationship if they felt there were people who couldn't know I was a girlfriend, as long as the closeness of our relationship was still expressed, I'd be fine.
 
I don't have any other partners buy j is N's secondary ans she is includes in all aspects of our life. She spends the night whenever she wishes. She's included on all our social functions and she even lives with n's mom at my bff's house. I even picked up food for her and took it to her work lol
 
I can't vote because I'm nobody's secondary and I don't have a secondary partner either. I have two partners, one of them doesn't have other partners and the other has one other partner. All of my important people (and actually less important people as well) know about both of them. And both of my partners have told about me to all of their important people and most of their less important people as well. There's only a few exceptions when we have to hide being poly.
 
I did not vote, since I am nobody's secondary. I think Mark can be seen as my secondary, due to the realities of life (physical distance of my two homes etc.) For him I should have voted "Less than half", due to very similar reasons than JaneQ.

We are all very private, and I'd say both my relationships have been extra private in the beginning. I told about CJ only to very few most important people until we moved in together. After that I let my co-workers know, and my bio family got to know about him only after we married. Still today most of my relatives have not met CJ, and probably will never meet. I go to the few family functions of my bio family, to which I get invited, alone.

I have started a similar kind of integration process with Mark, little by little. I have told about him to the most important people in my life, and he has met some of them. He has been very happy about being integrated into my life and being accepted by my closest ones. People who are not important to me and/or whom I know would disapprove, do not need to know. He has been introduced to some people as "a friend", and he seems to be good with that.
 
My family and Runic Wolf's family know Wendigo as my best friend, because that is what he was when they were introduced. All of our mutual friends who have asked know that we are seeing each other. Wendigo's wife was once in a quad with us, so obviously I'm known to her. We catch up when we can in the mornings when we pass in the parking lot after dropping the guys off at work. Since she is an author and writer/ copy editor and works from home, there isn't much opportunity for her to hang out (working 11 hours a day doesn't help.) As for their family, we're seen as friends. Up until a year ago, Wendgio lived with his wife's sister and her 2 kids. Prior to that, they shared property with his mother-in-law, brother-in-law, his brother-in-law's girlfriend and kids. This meant there wasn't a lot of privacy, so we would only visit occasionally. (And since at the time, the property was his mother-in-law's, they didn't want to risk her finding out that everything was not what it seemed. Everyone in the family know's he comes over to our house though, so it's just kind of stuck in their memory that we're really good friends. At the moment, our kids only know that we're best friends. His son is a senior in high school and just lost his virginity (though he doesn't know that Wendigo knows yet) and Wendigo felt that it would be better to explain the poly/ kinky thing after his son had a few relationships under his belt since he's just starting to explore his own sexuality.
 
My current partner isn't going to be the guy I have a baby with or end up living with. This is something we discussed and therefore, he isn't going to be introduced to any friends or family as a partner. It's highly unlikely I could be out to my family in the sense that they meet more than one partner and after hearing some fun facts about my family, my partner agreed that we wouldn't go there. I've met his friends though, as his girlfriend. I might meet more of his family.
 
I am known to almost all of M's friends. The ones who don't know me, it isn't because I am a secret, but because we haven't been dating long (just under 3 months) and he hasn't had the opportunity to introduce me. I am a secret to his mother and to his in-laws. This doesn't bother me. His son knows who I am.

M is known to almost all of my friends, and to my children. My inlaws and my parents don't know I am poly, so we are similar in that way. I have struggled with the idea of letting my parents know, but in the end I keep coming back to the fact that they probably will not be accepting and there will be drama with no point to it, so I stay silent.
 
In what situations would you be unable to introduce them as your boyfriend? With your family? Would you feel that being introduced as someone important, but not specifically as a girlfriend, is the same as being kept a secret?

I have introduced H to my family. H was even in C and my wedding party. My family has been around H several times and they really like him and think he is a great guy, but as far as they know he is just a good friend of mine. My family knows that I stay the night at H's house a lot when I am visiting him (LDR), but they don't think anything of it since H also has a gf.

Since my family is very conservative Christian, I could never see myself telling them the truth about H. It would just lead to judgement and disappointment on their part.
 
I'm curious, from those who are secondaries: how much are you a part of your bf/gf's life?

We are a family. There is no exclusion, intentional or otherwise.

Are you kept completely isolated, and a secret from, from their friends, family, neighbors, co-workers, or anyone else?

No, and honestly I wouldn't have an interest in being excluded. If we met as people and didn't like each other, that would be on thing, but being removed intentionally would be annoying, at this stage, for all of us.

I say at this stage because shit happens and things change. Just a matter of how and when.

Is your relationship known to some of the people in your partner's life? Is there some integration, but some people from whom your partner chooses to keep your relationship secret (or private, if you prefer?)

Everyone in our world is poly friendly or family friendly. No one is excluded and there is no secrecy.

Or are your partner's friends, family, neighbors, and co-workers as much a part of your life as they would be if you were a spouse?

Yes.. heck even my metamour. I get along great with his family.. haha

If your partner, or the two of you jointly, decide to keep your relationship private from some or all, what are your reasons?

When we all first got together we didn't scream it from rooftops. We simply let things lie until we knew more as a couple of couplings. As we got more involved and more intertwined more people knew. Some we intentionally came out to, otherwise we simply let see our relationship for what it was, without labels. Its not to say we aren't out.. we just didn't give it a label... we are a family, we live as a family and we are accepted as a family.

Lastly anyone who wasnt poly friendly... We ditched.. period. Not worth out time to put that much work into friendships which just became annoying more than productive.
 
I did vote, although out of my three partners, only my husband is currently operating under the primary/secondary models, as far as I understand, both my other partners just consider people "partners"


Are you kept completely isolated, and a secret from, from their friends, family, neighbors, co-workers, or anyone else?

Brian, my partner of 2.5 years, is not out as poly to his family, and they live in another country. When his mother visited this year, I did not meet her, neither did his other partner of 7 years. He is really private and just thinks nothing is their business. His soon to be ex-wife didn't want to be friends with me, and I respected that, but it did mean there wasn't meshing of space on that level, no board game nights or movies. Now that he and his wife have separated. I have recently been invited a couple times to events where coworkers would be. In general hs is not interested in his coworkers knowing his personal business.

Greg, who I have been with less than a year, is not out to one sibling, but not to his parents, though it looks like he will be not too far in the future, and he is looking forward to introduce both me and his other partner to them. He has recently become more out at work, which is nice, as my husband works at the same company, and my husband is very out as poly. He's invited me to a work type party but we didn't end up going.

I would be open to being totally a secret to family/coworkers in a casual relationship, but never to friends/other partners.

Is your relationship known to some of the people in your partner's life? Is there some integration, but some people from whom your partner chooses to keep your relationship secret (or private, if you prefer?)

Don't think there is anything to say that I didn't say in the former answer - both of my other partners are either all out in places, or not out, neither of them introduce partner A around, but not partner B, or vice versa. My relationships with my partners are known to my friends and family that I care enough to have in my life, my husband feels free to reference to his friends and coworkers when I have plans with my boyfriends.

Or are your partner's friends, family, neighbors, and co-workers as much a part of your life as they would be if you were a spouse?
No. I don't have to talk to their neighbors because I don't live with them. I don't have to go to holidays if I don't want to. I don't have to go to work events if I don't want to. I feel more of an obligation to do some of these things with my husband.
That said - Greg is making an attempt to make me a part of his life in a way that makes it possible for me to spend time with his other partners and friends. I *may* have them be as much a part of my life as I would if they were friends and partners of my spouse, my husband doesn't mind hosting people here, so at some point a nice general extended family dynamic might be taking over. My goal in general is to spend time with people I like, and not to be with people I don't have stuff in common with, and that goes the same for your friends, partners and coworkers if I'm married to you or just seeing you once a month.

If your partner, or the two of you jointly, decide to keep your relationship private from some or all, what are your reasons?

As I mentioned, both of my partners aren't all out everywhere. I respect this, and will refrain from PDA or mentioning being in a relationship with them as needed. Nevertheless, this has made me realize that I am not really interested in being involved with people who are not fully out if they want to have me around people they care about, especially if they are close with their family. I don't have any interest in hanging out in a group "pretending" I am just a friend, and luckily I haven't had to do that.
 
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