More broadly, I want to express my complete support for your position. This is really a damned if you do, damned if you don’t situation. You had the strength and generosity (and you took the time!) to be out and be a model for everyone’s analysis/consideration, and then this was some people’s response. It’s surprising to see the volume of people who were essentially still making demands for answers from you in these comments (and I’m sure elsewhere too).

My family is being public/out and we’re figuring out the material forms that will take (and especially, with a newborn, how to make the time :)). I truly appreciate everybody who’s forged the path before us. You owe us nothing.

1) As someone who has been online long enough that some poly newbies come to me for advice, and someone who has chosen to make her life public so that others can learn from her mistakes, I completely agree that you owed no one anything, but I also have heard from others how valuable my experiences were for them.

My method of handling that is to take some time to gain some objectivity to the situation, then write about it in such a manner that only those who are already privy to those “juicy details” can figure out who I’m talking about. My post on Confronting The Monsters is such an example. I felt the lesson learned in that breakup was incredibly valuable and needed to be told (the lesson on confronting fears and direct communication). But I did so with pseudonyms, no dates or timelines, and not enough reference material to pinpoint the players unless you already knew who they were (for instance, I didn’t say if I was living with them or not, etc.).

I am quite public about all the good stuff (I’ve recently created an NRE tag on LJ and on Twitter), but I abhor the thought of dragging out all the dirty laundry for the public to ogle. I think it’s poor form and it doesn’t make matters any better, and usually makes things worse. So I applaud you for not wishing to contribute to that.

But if you can find a way to write it so that the lesson is what is taken from the story, and not the juicy gossip, it is sometimes helpful to see when a public figure has messed up and how, and not just the good stuff.

2) ProfStevie, she’s right, it’s way more than 6 – I think the actual number is 11 relationships in a quad. That is not the correct formula. the correct one can be found on a t-shirt at Poly Tees dot com. It’s far too complicated for me to type here in a plaintext box.

I just wish to say I am glad that your past the upset at least. I don’t equate a relationship ending with it being a failure. Maybe something changed, people change. We try to change together but that isn’t always the case. So for a million reasons, a relationship may not last the rest of our lives, but that does not mean it was a failure. What you had, from our POV, was good, and was nourishing and enriching. I’m glad you can take that, that we can all take that with us.

A sabbatical is quite often needed, glad you had one, and glad your back in the Poly community, owing no one but who you choose to owe anything to. All our love to all of you.

Personally, I’ve barely said a word publicly about what’s happened either generally to freinds/co-workers and especiallyon my LJ. Part of this is down to the excellent advice “Never put anything in writing you don’t want to show up in court” listed above. I have had heavily filtered posts passed onto those who should in no way get to hear the contents of those posts, so I have no compulsion in believing that anything could potentially be fair game in a court of law.

My ex-partner, on the other hand, has ranted more publicly to freinds of both of us and on her Livejournal. I’m not going to comment on what others are doing, but I’m certainly not going to join her and cause the demonic LJ dramallama to induce chaos amongst my freinds.

That said — do you know anyone who has friends-locked posts given to authorities?

I can see where if one of the friends is willing to print it out, then, it could be used, so even friends-locked can be dangerous. But, I’m wondering if this has born out to be a real situation.

*I* had the public portion of my LJ submitted as court-documents.