How did everyone tell their family members about poly? Especially those who aren’t a first wife, how did you share this news with your family and any children you had previous to joining a family? I’m not at this step yet but trying to be ahead of the game about it. Should I have him meet my whole family and child first or tell them beforehand?
This thread has included many thoughtful viewpoints from many different perspectives, and I won't review them all but predominantly just add my own.
[TLDR warning]
Given my what is around here a long absence, please indulge me as I repeat (for many) that I'm a trained psychotherapist, with my first concentration having been working with victims of childhood sexual abuse. Indulge me further as I acknowledge that just the mention of that topic has a tendency to unconsciously engage a number of very common presuppositions. The problem, however, is that the presuppositions about childhood sexual abuse held by the average person are actually incorrect, and the difference between incorrect and correct presuppositions not only explains the dividing line between lay and professional people but more importantly the same distinction between
counselors who follow the incorrect presuppositions and those counselors who set aside all biases they bring into their relationships with clients. Unfortunately, even most trained, credentialed and experienced counselors drag incorrect assumptions about victimhood into their work with abused children, and this tends to determine the difference between whether abuse events are (a) processed and transcended to the point of being able to leave them in the rearview mirror, or (b) dragged along in life like a self-fulfilling anchor of permanent-victimhood trauma.
The bottom line is that, outside of violent, physically-damaging events, the long-term prognosis for victims of childhood sexual abuse is almost universally determined
by the manner in which the significant adults in those children's lives react to learning about the abuse. In most cases, any sustained trauma is determined far more by negative adult reactions than it is by the inappropriate sexual contact. Another way to put it is to assert that the meaning that adults coercively attach to what has already occurred has far greater potential to traumatize than do the inappropriate sex acts. And I'm not minimizing the potential for sexual abuse to throw kids for a loop -- just asserting that overreactions on the part of important adults is more traumatizing.
The point here is that the manner in which we approach any significant life change will be the greatest predictor of how that event will transpire and be experienced internally by everyone in question. Just as a Screaming-Meemie Mommy will freak out a kid who just wonders why Daddy licked her va-jay-jay -- so too will the manner in which one discloses one's position or intentions about polygyny. In fact, it has a tendency to be a self-fulfilling prophecy determined by how one approaches it, with, of course, variation based on the individual audiences. Know your audience, and speak
into the manner in which your audience is listening . . . but also know yourself, and time your disclosures for moments and situations during which you can come from a place of confidence as if you have the coolest info in the world to share instead of from a place of self-doubt as if you're almost begging your audience to condemn you. Generally speaking, the outcome will reflect the manner in which you frame things.
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Now, the only other thing to add is how I handle all this.
First, there is the distinction between witnessing and evangelism. Where anything related to religious beliefs is concerned, I'm typically a big fan of witnessing, which is just sharing oneself and one's beliefs, whereas evangelism diminishes the personal sharing and brings in an agenda of
changing minds or
saving souls. I see salvation as a personal issue, which means that another person's salvation is neither my responsibility or an excuse for me to treat it like an emergency that justifies badgering someone about what they supposedly should believe.
With two major exceptions in my life in regard to polygyny (mentioned later), my approach has always been the same. In fact, it's pretty much my orientation to everything of any spiritual, metaphysical, political or philosophical importance to me: I'm just transparent as hell. In 1959, I started telling anyone during any circumstance during which it seemed to bear some kind of relationship to whatever topic was at hand that I believed in men being free to marry more than one woman. I'd just finished my first full read-through of the Bible, and observing the preponderance of great men who had more than one wife did not escape me, so I brought it up in Sunday School and was sent to the principal's office, er, I mean, the pastor, for doing so (prinicipals' offices followed in due course). His response was inadequate, so I just kept asking one pastor after another. By the time I was in 3rd grade, I was pretty sure that's what I wanted to do when I grew up. (However, exception-to-transparency #1 happened in the disastrous wake of the first romantic relationship in which I briefly experienced having two best-friend girlfriends during 9th grade; the 2nd exception was a lengthy period after making the mistake in 1993 of caving in to my current wife's demand that we remove another woman from our relationship and thence forward keep the whole thing a secret; that didn't end well . . . or maybe it did.)
In almost every facet of my life, I believe in letting people know exactly what I believe. I don't bring up polygyny or any other 'sensitive' topic (sex, drugs, religion, politics) out of the blue in my life, but I certainly do inject those topics pretty much any time they might be relevant, and I'm always prepared to discuss them to whatever degree the folks around me are interested in doing so. In almost all circumstances, I'm entirely comfortable and casual about doing so, and the net result is that the worst that ever happens is that people temporarily distance themselves from me or just go on to pretend that it's not even real! Much more often it initiates long-term honest communication. What I carry with me is confidence that I know what I'm talking about, awareness that there are always more people seeking my attention than I have time to give, and dedication to being able to live without the approval of others. I take Paul's numerous admonitions along those lines very seriously and believe I would be demonstrating insufficient faith in the Word of our LORD if I elevated approval-seeking over properly representing scriptural truths -- and that extends not only into refraining from worrying about whether my friends or extended family reject me but all the way to being unwilling to compromise myself in an effort to receive approval from my own wife.
Let me remind you, though: I am not evangelizing. I'm not suggesting that you should do as I do; I'm just telling you how
I approach discussing polygyny -- I'm
witnessing. Pretty much every person in my life with whom I have more than just a superficial acquaintance knows that I believe in plural marriage and I'm open to demonstrating the tremendous generosity it entails to take on the responsibility of a second wife (challenge that if you dare, but it takes
far more generosity for a man to take on two women than it does for a woman to 'allow' him to do so).
But I am me and you are you and we are not all together. One has to do what one can be comfortable with. I'm pretty much an open book and will answer almost anything anyone asks me. I would be remiss, however, if I didn't acknowledge that I've been the Black Sheep of my birth family ever since I was 2 years old and was probably already pretty much at peace about that by the 1959 Sunday School turmoil. Different people have different tolerance levels for that sort of thing. Just be honest with yourself about your own.
I told you this was too long to read.
she's only gonna get cuter!! Lol