I was wondering about people's opinions on this... If you break up with an ex, who is still in the closet, are you not able to talk about him or her to anyone? Do you have to hide their identity for life? Can you only tell people who don't know the person? What is the moral thing, if any, to do?
Wow that's a tough position to be in. I think you can talk about them, but with discretion. It'd be disrespectful to tell anybody and everybody who asks you, but you have every right to confide in close friends and family members. Your feelings matter too! Don't bottle anything up because you don't want to out them. Your primary focus now should be yourself.
It's not about bottling it up: its about being able to reveal my partners to people. I prefer to be open and not hide my past but I don't understand why I'm obligated for life to uphold someone's secret.
Well. I've been the closeted ex. The answer is don't talk about them and out them if they don't want to be out. It's a lot of stress on the other person. I've been on the raw end of this. It's not a good deal.
I think the obvious first rule that should apply is: don't reveal their identity to anyone who could use it to harm them. If they could get fired, bullied, abused for being found out, then outing them would be a shitty thing to do (and far more trouble than it's worth, even if you broke up on bad terms. That sort of stuff will come back to bite you in the ass). In all other cases, there is a bit of a grey area. If you need to talk about it, to a good friend, who wouldn't abuse this knowledge, I'd say you're probably fine. Doubly so if they don't actually know the person. Talking about breakups to friends is one of the ways to get over the breakup in the first place, after all. And being truthful about what happened is a big part of it. In any case, it should also be possible to mention you had an ex, without identifying them too much. You don't need to give their full name, social security number, picture ID, and address to be able to talk about them. Those usually aren't relevant anyway, when you're talking about the relationship. It's not as if friends or even future partners will need to do full background checks on the guy (actually, if they insist on doing so... that is rather a big red flag in my book). You could just talk about "my ex, [firstname]". To give a practical example (yeah, I still remember your previous thread ) Telling everyone in the workplace the identity of your FWB is probably going to make his life harder, not going to make your life easier, and a pretty bad thing to do. Mentioning you just broke up with a guy to some colleagues, without identifying the guy, is probably OK, if it makes your life easier. Telling a couple of close friends who don't even know the guy or wouldn't use the information to harass him is probably OK. But whatever you tell them is going to be about your experience with the relationship, so identifying him too much isn't really useful or necessary. You have an ex, this is why you broke up, this is how you feel about it and how you want to proceed in the future. It's about you being honest, not about them being able to stalk him on facebook Telling a future boyfriend is probably also OK (and, in fact, probably best to mention something about previous boyfriends). But there too: it's about what the relationship meant to you. The only way they'll need this info is to get an idea about who YOU are, not to do a background check on your exes.
Philp you are the best by the way My concern really is that my ex and I weren't exactly discrete. He'd buy me lunch, coffee and gifts and give them to me at work, we'd meet up at bars and pubs with each other with friends often. If I started talking about my ex and giving away hints, my friends, especially my work friends, would know exactly who it was. But ultimately its my responsibility for life to protect this guy's secret...even if I don't think its a big deal, it is for him. I don't want to risk him being hurt so, I won't say a word.
