I Came Out to My Bookclub Last Night

Until then, they thought I was just another suburban wife

I’ve been thinking for a while about opportunities to be more open with the people in my life about who I really am — a pansexual and polyamorous woman, but as I recently said in Dipping My Toes Into Pride, “A few close friends are supportive, but what I’ve mostly experienced is that people don’t want to know. It rattles their perception, of both me and the world, for me to talk about having relationships and sexual connections with women (and other people besides my husband) — and so mostly I don’t talk about it.” I easily pass as a monogamous married hetero woman and that’s how people in my life tend to think of me. So far, I’ve been mostly content to let that ride.

But last night, I decided to take the plunge when an opportunity presented itself, and tell my book club friends about being pansexual and polyamorous. I’m so glad that I finally did! We were actually discussing the book this time, something that we do somewhat intermittently depending on how much of a conversation it actually sparks, but this time a pansexual character brought up some questions that were a great segue for me in being more authentic.

I’ve been in a book club of some sort most of my adult life, but I’ve only been in this particular one for about 4 years or so. We’re a casual group with no real rules, and I like that relaxed atmosphere. Read the book, or don’t — but come on by and have a glass of wine while we all visit and chat. That totally works for me and where I am in my life right now, although I almost always read the book.

They are a really nice group of women, even though a couple of them are clearly much more conservative than I am but they are friendly and pretty open-minded and we really like each other, so this was something that helped me decide it was time to come out to them. After I’d explained the difference between gender expression and sexuality (e.g., just because you are non-binary, doesn’t mean you are necessarily bisexual), and how pansexual is different than bisexual, the question of polyamory came up.

“If you’re going to be involved with more than one person, why bother getting married?” one friend asked. Another woman in the group answered that question, pointing out that just because you want to have a committed live-in relationship, or that you might want to raise children with someone, doesn’t mean everyone wants to limit themselves to only that. I added that polyamory means different types of intimate connections, so not all relationships have the same configurations or parameters. Some people might have multiple people that they consider to be spouses, but others might only have what they consider multiple boyfriends/girlfriends/lovers. Some people might have both, but ultimately it was about love, and that it was possible to love more than one person at a time.

As I was listening to myself answering these questions, I started to wonder why I was still hiding behind being knowledgeable without actually being honest about why that is. I realized that I was doing it out of habit and that I actually felt pretty comfortable with how this group of friends would receive it if I told them — and so I decided it was time to do just that. It was already 11:30 pm and we had been just about to call it a night, but I also figured that this opportunity might not come around again for a while to bring it up naturally and in context, so I took a deep breath and told them, “James and I are actually polyamorous, and we have been for several years.”

Nobody looked like they were going to fall over from shock. Nobody got strangely silent. Instead, they were full of questions, and I was more than happy to answer them. The fact that we’d been drinking wine since 6 pm probably helped with that, but interestingly, I was completely sober. I’d stopped drinking at about 8:30 to be sure that I’d be good to drive home, and in retrospect, I was pleased that it hadn’t taken liquid courage for me to finally open up. I did it because I was just ready.

I told them that I’d had a boyfriend for 7 years but that we were just friends now, and I told them that we’d been involved with and were involved with women as well. They seemed to take this all in stride, even though a few minutes before several people had been imagining out loud that having sex with a woman would be “too many boobs in bed.” I told them how nice it is to kiss women, but also that I had no idea I was interested in that until I was almost 50.

It turned into a great opportunity to talk about how socialized expectations and opportunity (or lack thereof) impacts our sexuality. Even though I had learned about the Kinsey scale in college, where it’s hypothesized that most people are somewhere on a scale of bisexuality, with only a few at either end of the spectrum who are completely and totally hetero- or homosexual, it never occurred to me that I was anything but straight. I’d never had one of those college lesbian experimentation sessions that so many women have, and once I married a man, that seemed to be the end of it.

My sexuality and my relationship status were settled, completely in line with what was expected of me. I’d found some women really attractive, but I suppose I always just assumed that these were “girl crushes” — non-sexual chemistry that wasn’t really an indication of anything much beyond that. It wasn’t until I gave myself permission to look at women in a sexual light that I discovered that I do find some of them quite sexually interesting.

I also told the group about how freeing and empowering it was to go to a sex club, a place where swingers and poly people hung out, and how it was in that atmosphere that I finally reclaimed my sexuality for myself — taking it back from a world that had always sent the message that my sexuality existed for the pleasure and enjoyment of men. They actually seemed to understand how this might be the case, and although a couple of people said, “I think I’d be too insecure or jealous to do that,” nobody said anything else that was disparaging or dismissive. They didn’t treat me any differently than they had before.

I acknowledged that this wasn’t a lifestyle that was for everyone, and when they asked me about how we’d dealt with jealousy, I admitted that I’d never really experienced it much. James and I decided to open up our relationship at a time when it was very secure, loving, hot, and heavy. It was a way to bring in something additional to our relationship, not a way to try to deal with some issue, which is never a good idea. The one time I had a small flicker of jealousy early on, I got over it almost immediately because I realized that James loved me, and I was the one going home with him.

He and I had done a lot of talking about what we wanted out of this before we ever actually embarked on it, and we’d agreed to only see other people together, but in recent years have talked about that being flexible in certain situations — although due to the pandemic, we’ve not yet had the opportunity to test that. In general, we mostly just want to see and be involved with other people together because of what that brings to our relationship. We always laugh and talk a lot with whomever we are with and that is a part of the overall experience for us. Plus, having sex with someone else makes us both feel very present, and out of our usual lanes, and that’s good for our relationship as well.

We weren’t stagnant or stale, but we’ve also been married for over 30 years, and as relationship expert Esther Perel points out, having a little bit of mystery and the excitement of the less known is essential to erotic energy.

Love rests on two pillars: surrender and autonomy. Our need for togetherness exists alongside our need for separateness. One does not exist without the other. With too much distance, there can be no connection. But too much merging eradicates the separateness of two distinct individuals. Then there is nothing more to transcend, no bridge to walk on, no one to visit on the other side, no other internal world to enter. When people become fused — when two become one — connection can no longer happen. There is no one to connect with. Thus separateness is a precondition for connection: this is the essential paradox of intimacy and sex.

Perel, Esther. Mating in Captivity (p. 48). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

This certainly doesn’t mean that all couples need to have sex and relationships with other people in order to keep their love alive, but it does point to a central challenge in the way that relationships are currently constructed — where we are expected to get all of our needs met by one other person — something that is fairly new to our culture. We are expected to have both the stability and security of closeness with our partner as well as the continued passion and sexual excitement that comes when you are just getting to know someone or when everything is not completely settled and domesticated.

James and I managed that in other ways before we opened up our relationship, in part because raising a special needs son has precluded us from having a typical suburban family experience. There was no opportunity to become so enmeshed in each other that we got a bit bored, or that we were so cozy together that the flame of passion was dampened. We were often flying by the seat of our pants, barely keeping it together, and although we turned to each other for support in that, there was never an opportunity to become so fused that we lost the erotic spark.

And, at the same time, what was pretty good only got better when we decided to open up our relationship to others. For one thing, we now had to communicate at a much higher level, and I found myself becoming less co-dependent. Instead of taking so much of my identity from being half of a couple, I began to view myself as a whole person who has inter-relatedness with a variety of other people. This was both healthy and empowering for me.

James and I have discovered that we enjoy being in intimate relationships with a variety of people, while still keeping our marriage as the central pillar of our lives. We honestly care about the other people we are involved with, even when those connections are somewhat casual, and we’re always clear about what our expectations are so that nobody feels blindsided or disrespected.

It’s a way of being connected that really works for us both, and it adds a lot to our lives, both as individuals and as a couple. For that reason, I’m really excited to have more of my/our friends know the truth about us and to get to interact more authentically with them going forward. Due to some uncomfortable experiences in the past, I’ve been a bit reluctant to come out to all of my friends, but I think now I’ll be more inclined to do so when a natural opportunity presents itself again — and that is something that I’m very happy and excited about.

© Copyright Elle Beau 2022