I’ve got it pretty good for Thanksgiving. Instead of seeing bio family, I go to Big Sur every year and see chosen family. The friends who I met when we were all still very young (It was 1990. I was 20 and right in the middle of the age range). We became humans together. We had kids and break-ups and tragedies and victories. I love these people with fierce loyalty and I’ve chosen to love them.
And none of them are open or poly or particularly sex positive. If they are kinky they aren’t telling me about it. If any of them are anything but straight they aren’t telling me about it either. Worse, save one of them, they aren’t particularly interested in hearing about any of those parts of my life. They aren’t curious (or if they are they don’t show it). They aren’t even particularly comfortable hearing about any part of my life that relates to sex or open relationships or kink.
Like so many of us, I have to censor myself around my family, and the fact that it is chosen family and peers of my own generation instead of older relatives who I’m related to by the accident of birth for me makes this taste all the more bitter.
One thing I learned long ago, and even teach my clients sometimes, don’t mistake privacy with shame. People do this. I can’t/won’t/don’t want to tell my parents or friends or co-workers about what is going on in my relationships. They don’t need to know that my wife and my boyfriend surprised me with a 4 way with another of our lovers and we all had sex until the sun came up. Is it because I’m bad? Is it because what I did was dirty or shameful? No. It’s because I want my privacy, because they don’t want to hear it (I don’t really want to hear about my parents sex lives either) because knowing that at a party last weekend I left a 3 way with my wife and a person we had just met to go stick my cock in my girlfriends mouth while she got fucked from behind doesn’t do them any good.
So, no shame. I’ve got that at least. But it still isn’t easy for me. I feel unseen and unwelcome. Knowing that these huge parts of my life, the love and connection I feel with my friends and lovers, the sex and adventure and relationships, knowing that it makes them uncomfortable, I self censor to keep the peace and I feel sad that they don’t want to see all of me, to know about the me that is excited to be living this life.
Plus, I’m a sex educator and full time slut and sex party organizer and when I’m not holding sex parties I go to others and I don’t know what else to talk about sometimes. And lets face it, I don’t want to talk about mortgage rates or surfing (Big Sur, remember, some of them talk about surfing a lot) or construction techniques or tax rates. It’s just boring.
I’ve got it pretty good. But it still hurts.