I personally value this forum for so many of the reasons mentioned in the well thought out and articulated responses to this question. I also value it for the caring attitude embodied in the original post.
I believe, if we have a responsibility to anyone then it is not to a single homogenous group but to a multiplicity of individuals each with their own concerns and reasons for being here. I like Patience’s statement “warts and all”. To me that means that all who come here will both be allowed to present and also privileged to see an undistorted view of the community. I believe that, for a person making life decisions as many here undoubtably are and not just SOs by any means, such a view is essential. Distorted perception yields distorted decisions.
I have just revealed my cross dressing to my wife. That’s a stressful thing for me and for her. It could be made more stressful by her encountering ideas I don’t share but that others in the community do. However, I don’t want her to see an idealized view if she were to come here. I’d prefer instead that she was aware and that that awareness would result in honest conversation. In my opinion an attempt to control a person’s peceptions is a form of an attempt to control the person. From what I’ve read here so far that isn’t what this forum is about. That idea is one small part of the rationale that convinced me I needed to tell my wife. I felt, and this is a purely personal judgment not one I lay on anybody else, that I was controlling her perceptions and subsequently her decisions by keeping my secret. There were a lot of other competing (and conflicting) ideas and ideals involved in that decision as well but that’s maybe a topic for another post or a book perhaps
