I've been outed

[Anonymous (a3fd)]

I have an acquaintance in real life. I found out she was poly and so I shared with her that my partner and I are also poly. It was nice to be able to talk about it with somebody.

A few weeks later, I had some people over and she outed me to the whole group. Two of those people I had only met a few times and never would have shared that information with them.

I am pretty "out" with close friends and family but my partner isn't and we live in a small rural community.

How do I handle this?

 

[Anonymous (5665)]

That's a big issue to deal with, and how you proceed from here depends a lot on how you feel about it. If you feel this way too big of a trust breach, you should cut your losses with this friend.

If you want to try to salvage the friendship, you need to make sure your friend understands what she did was wrong, and reestablish some boundaries with her. That conversation could go something like this:

"At the get-together a few weeks ago, you mentioned that my partner and I are poly in front of the group. I know we have talked about that privately before, and I really appreciated being able to share that with someone who gets it.

That said, I hadn't shared that part of my life with everyone there, since some of them I barely know. My partner and I are very intentional about who we open up to, especially living in a small rural community where privacy matters a lot.

I wanted to let you know how that landed with me because it caught me off guard and put us in an uncomfortable position. I am not upset with you, I get that it might have seemed casual, but I do need to ask that going forward, please don’t mention anything about our relationship style unless we have made it clear it is okay with the people present.

Thanks for understanding, and for respecting that boundary. I know this kind of thing can be tricky sometimes, and I appreciate your discretion moving forward."

Putting your friend aside, you might also need to do damage control for your partner's sake. Maybe having a similar conversation to those that now know about your lifestyle.

Good luck.

 

[Anonymous (a3fd)]

That's a big issue to deal with, and how you proceed from here depends a lot on how you feel about it. If you feel this way too big of a trust breach, you should cut your losses with this friend.

If you want to try to salvage the friendship, you need to make sure your friend understands what she did was wrong, and reestablish some boundaries with her. That conversation could go something like this:

"At the get-together a few weeks ago, you mentioned that my partner and I are poly in front of the group. I know we have talked about that privately before, and I really appreciated being able to share that with someone who gets it.

That said, I hadn't shared that part of my life with everyone there, since some of them I barely know. My partner and I are very intentional about who we open up to, especially living in a small rural community where privacy matters a lot.

I wanted to let you know how that landed with me because it caught me off guard and put us in an uncomfortable position. I am not upset with you, I get that it might have seemed casual, but I do need to ask that going forward, please don’t mention anything about our relationship style unless we have made it clear it is okay with the people present.

Thanks for understanding, and for respecting that boundary. I know this kind of thing can be tricky sometimes, and I appreciate your discretion moving forward."

Putting your friend aside, you might also need to do damage control for your partner's sake. Maybe having a similar conversation to those that now know about your lifestyle.

Good luck.

I honestly don't even want to be friends with her at this point. I feel like this was a big breach of trust and it should have been something that they knew without me having to explicitly tell them.

yeah the damage control is more d8ifficult. Like is it worse to bring it up or just ignore it?

 

[Anonymous (e353)]

Hm, I'm a little curious, is the friend older than you, younger than you, or about the same age as you?

Something I've noticed is that people born after like 2004 or so don't really have the same outlook on sexuality as people born before then do. I'm not trying to be an old man shaking my fist at the youngsters or anything, but those folks in particular may not have grown up in a time or place where it was imperative for your safety to keep your sexuality hidden if you're not an allo, monogamous, hetero person. And in some ways, that's a good thing, it shows that the queer community has made some pretty impressive strides and is much more acceptable now than it used to be. But, because they haven't grown up needing to be cautious about who they come out of the closet to, they don't realize that not everyone feels safe sharing that information.

So, to your friend, it may not have been malicious at all. They might have just been excited to have something in common with you and didn't realize how sharing that bit of information could be unsafe for you. That doesn't mean you can't be upset about it, of course, but if they were just being thoughtless and careless in the moment and they're capable of understanding the situation from your perspective, I think the friendship can still be salvaged.

 

[Anonymous (a3fd)]

They are around the same age as me 30-40 ish. They should have known better. I do hear what your saying but yeah, they don't have that excuse. And for the record, they aren't fully "out" with their friends and family too