[QUOTE=WhyNot]
I think the first thing to figure out is how much information in general your son likes to have. Is he the curious george type who just has to know everything and wants to play “what-if?” and know all about every detail of everything you can present to him? Does he get mad if he thinks you know something he doesn’t? Or is he a kid that learns best in pieces, slowly absorbing and digesting one bit before moving onto the next. Is he made anxious by contingency plans because it makes him focus on everything that could go wrong?
The reason I ask is that I think different kids need different amounts of information. A kid who gets mad that he doesn’t know everything is going to be mad if he thinks you’re keeping things from him. A kid that gets overwhelmed by TMI is going to be really icked out by any mention of his parents’ love life.
My son is strongly in the second camp. When he faced major surgery at age 11, he begged me NOT to let the doctor tell him what to expect. He asked that I tell him only what he absolutely needed to know, 'cause all the rest just got him more worried and made him feel sick. So I stuck to things like, “When you wake up, you won’t be able to talk because there will be a tube in your mouth,” and not, “There’s a 10% chance that the doctor might cut a nerve and you’ll need a wheelchair.” Those are extremes, of course, but I think you get the idea.
As a result, I try, with most things in life, to wait until he asks for information. Then I know he’s ready to process it. We’ve never hidden our dates or lied about where we’re going with whom. He knows when Dad is going out with “his friend Rebecca”, and when Mom takes an afternoon walk in the woods with Steve. He also knows that Mom knows and Dad knows, so there was never (I hope) a feeling like he had to keep illicit affairs secret. He has several friends in poly families, and he knows his own grandparents live with another couple, so the idea of variance in family make up is not totally foreign to him. When we see cliched love triangles on TV, a common shout-out is, “Another Problem Solved By…Polyamory!” is a silly 50’s advertising voice. My hope was that he’d put two and two together and simply ask me if we were poly someday, at which point I’d say, “Why, yes son, we are! Pass the popcorn.” 
Well, that didn’t exactly happen and now he’s 14 and people are started to not censor themselves around him and a few weeks ago, a friend asked my husband if his recent night out was “a date or just hanging out,” in front of the kid. It was one of those awkward moments until the kid said, “Hey, if you have a wife, it’s not a date!” and my internal meter went, “Uh-oh.” So I decided it was time to bite the bullet and be a little more proactive.
I decided that loading the car for camping was a good time, since we’d have the work to focus on and could avoid eye contact if that made him more comfortable, y’know? I’ve found other good times for Big Talks with kids are while driving and while playing video games, for the same reason. I just said something like, “Look, I want to let you know that your dad and I have an open marriage, just like ____ and _____ do. That means we have sometimes have relationships with other people, but our focus is always on each other and you kids. I wanted to let you know before someone else tells you - my parents didn’t and I found out from one of my dad’s girlfriends, and that was rather awkward. I also don’t want you thinking that we’re cheating or anything like that. Y’know, the campground has a few poly families: _____, ______, and ______'s folks are all poly. So if you want to talk to anyone, besides me, of course, they would be a good place to start and not make you feel weird about it.”
He just sort of nodded and kept packing. Didn’t really miss a beat.
So, yeah, upshot of all that: be honest, but don’t offer him an encyclopedia if he’s asking for a Reader’s Digest.
[/QUOTE]
Thank you for your detailed response. I’m really not sure exactly how much our son wants to know. I am generally in the “gimme the Reader’s Digest version and I’ll ask for the details I want” category, while **Rhiannon **is definitely a “tell me every little detail” person. Our son, being only 8, is still developing his personality, so we’ll just have to play it by ear at the moment.
As **Rhiannon **mentioned, she is not new to having “secondary” relationships, but I am. We are currently involved with another couple, who we had known as friends for some time. It’s just recently that the relationship has changed, and we’re still working out the bugs. This is the first time either member of the other couple has had this type of relationship as well.
We are not trying to “hide” the fact that we have a relationship from the kids (they have 2); though we are of course keeping the details secret. We get together as a “family” from time to time, and we don’t attempt to hide our general affection for each other when we are all together. When Rhiannon went on a date with her “boyfriend” recently, he came over to the house and hung out for a while until I got home from work, then the two of them went out for dinner and a stroll around the town. We thought that our son was going to notice that mom was not home, so he might as well know who she was with. That way, he would know that it was OK with me, and he wouldn’t start thinking something was “wrong”.
The situation we are in now is very much different than where we have been in the past. Then, it was always **Rhiannon **in a relationship, and me not. This was by a combination of choice and circumstance; I was not necessarily looking for another relationship, and nothing presented itself to me. Rhiannon, being quite a bit more outgoing than me, just seemed more naturally to find herself in relationships, and that was fine. Now, with us being in relationships at the same time, with another married couple, the dynamic is completely different. In addition to the “boy\girl” relationships, we also have close friendships with the spouses of our “partners”. We also have a very close relationship on a “family” level, including our children. This makes things sometimes easier, and sometimes quite a bit harder. It is sometimes difficult to avoid “pairing off” the entire time if both families are together, which is something that **Rhiannon **and I don’t necessarily want to do. There is a difference between “partner swapping” and “polyamory” that can sometimes be very subtle and difficult to reconcile. This has caused some tension in our current relationship, to the point at which all four of us seriously questioned whether or not we wanted to continue down this path. In the end, I think we have all decided that we care about each other too much to “give up” over something as silly as “Hey, you’re spending too much time with your own spouse, now it’s my turn!” (which was not really silly at all earlier this week, but it makes me feel better to think of it that way).
Just a few months ago, I wouldn’t have thought for a moment that we would be where we are today. It had been quite a few years since Rhiannon’s last relationship, and she really had no desire for another one. I had never done this, and really had no great desire. Then somehow, we found ourselves in the relationship we are now, and it just all seems perfectly normal (in a really bizarre, twisted sort of way). It’s not that there was something “missing” in our marriage relationship, it’s more like we’re both getting a “bonus”. I can’t really put into words what the “bonus” is, but it enhances our lives both within and outside of our marriage. If this lifestyle was not enhancing our marriage, neither **Rhiannon **nor I would be doing what we are doing. If it were not enhancing our partners’ marriage, we would not be doing it with them.
WhyNot, I’d like to personally thank you for starting this thread; it could not have come at a better time. We’ve been dealing with some “issues” the past few days. The same sort of stuff that happens from time to time with married couples, but with the added complication that instead of one couple, we have six between the four of us. This thread has been great to read, to reinforce the fact that we aren’t completely weird. It has been great to give me a place where I can talk about how I’m feeling to people who will understand me, but who I don’t have any obligation to. It’s been a real help to me the past couple of days.
On preview, this post seems to be all over the place, and I hope it makes some sense to anyone who has gotten this far. It’s really been rather cathartic to me.
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