Explaining Your Relationship

[Giselle47]

HOW do you explain your relationship with your vampire to family and freinds outside of the community?

IF the vampire you are donating to is your bf, gf or whatever, you can get by better. In my case I am WAY older;he has children and lives with a parent. I say all this because I am interested in what your explaination would be for the "outside" world. I also think it is something other donors struggle with.

What I do: For my grown children, I tell them we are friends because we both are RPG'rs on a vampire game online. We also used his business of being a sliversmith. My friends do order pieces from time to time.

Ok now it is your turn. Put the thinking caps on and help out others out there who struggles with this.

[diss]

to the people who mustn't know about the donoring, they're simply friends from the internet. i've been hanging out on the internet for a long time, and have been meeting people from fora and chats since the beginning. so there's never really any questions asked. but that is mostly family.

actual friends all know that i'm a donor. few of them are really surprised; perhaps that real vampires exist, but once they get over that surprise, not that i'm involved with them. that's the advantage of having a well-cultivated image as an eccentric.

[AerisD]

A couple of friends who are open to the occult and just very open minded know I am a donor. Everyone else doesn't know, except for my mom. My mom knows I am a psi donor however I had to lie to her that I wasn't a sang donor because I knew she'd freak out to high hell. My mom is very spiritually open but more so on the religious side. She knows I'm sensitive to energy and can understand the psi donating, albeit she's a tad wary of it. I've told my parents that my sang is just a friend who I hang out with, which is pretty much true. We go and see a movie usually or just hang out and then she feeds.

I hide the bandages on my shoulders under clothes or explain them as cat scratches, which is entirely possible because when I hold my cats sometimes they try to escape and claw me D:

[WingedWolfPsion]

I married him, so I don't have to. lol

[Scion]

I've given this question quite a bit of thought since it was first posted. I tend to not explain anything. As far as my family is concerned, all they know is that I love my vampire, but I don't say that she's "my vampire". What goes on behind closed doors I keep to myself.

My friends are a different story. First I should add a disclaimer that my vampire is not my girlfriend in the literal sense, but in order to answer the question I'm going to say that she is just for the sake of ease.

To the ones I'm closest to I've told that my girlfriend is a vampire. Everyone knows I love vampires so they laugh it off as a joke, which is fine. At least I'm not lying to them. I don't feel the need to say, "No really. She's a real vampire."

The only person I've explained it to in detail was a complete stranger I met at work. We were talking and one thing led to another and vampires came up. I told her I was dating one. She laughed and asked if it was difficult having sex in a coffin. I waved her off and said she was an idiot, which only added fuel to her curiosity. I explained to her that real vampires exist and that I'm a donor. She didn't believe me at first so I pulled the collar of my shirt to the side and showed her a couple scars. She was immediately facinated.

Long story short I think it's much easier explaining my relationship with people who don't know me vs. people I care about. It's probably because I care about the opinions of my friends and family but could care less of those who don't mean squat to me. While that's all well and good, I still feel a bit of resentment because this is who I am, and eventhough I don't like needing to feel accepted by my friends and family, their opinion means a lot to me. *taps chin in deep thought* I suppose I could compare it to coming out of the closet.

[Giselle47]

Dang! Scion once again, you are dead on. I find it easier to tell to explain it to a couple here. I think they actual understood. Then again It may just have been because they knew they did not have to claim to be related to the crazy person who feeds someone her blood.

[Sylivia]

Scion.. I find it ironic that you compare it to coming out of the closit.. My first donor and I were close friends for years but after she started donating to me we became inseperable and though we tried to explaine to close friends we found it easier in the end to just tell people we were gay and leave it at that....Course it turned out that she actualy was . I find that people will often pretend that they believe and understand but I can tell that they really don't. So many people are closed minded and dont want to believe in anything that is outside the "acceptable norm." I find sometimes I wish to explaine but most of the time I don't tell any one anything they don't absalutely need to know........Blessed Be

[Scion]

I understand, Sylivia. I thought I'd only have to come out of the closet once in my life, but I may have to again. Although it's much easier to say, "Mom, I like girls." rather than, "Mom, I let my girlfriend cut me and drink my blood."

I've thought about it time and time again, trying to gauge how she would react, and I just can't pin point anything, but her opinion means a great deal to me, and so in a way I'm fearful of it.

But as much as I'm gay, I'm just as much a donor if not more so.

[Giselle47]

I feel for you Scion. Altho I am not gay, I can understand how you can love someone the same sex that much. I just think it is just SAD we can get by saying we are gay better than saying we are a donor. It is sad we have to worry about it at all.

[Scion]

I feel for you Scion. Altho I am not gay, I can understand how you can love someone the same sex that much. I just think it is just SAD we can get by saying we are gay better than saying we are a donor. It is sad we have to worry about it at all.

*smiles* Giselle, you and I are going to be great friends....

[Sylivia]

Scion ...I was so worried to death to tell my mother I had a girlfriend. She took it much better that I thought but it took a while to accept that im bi but she finaly did so when I told her that I'm vampiric it felt like dejavue...but she has come to terms with that over the years as well...So I can fully understand where your coming from... I almost didnt tell her but it just sort of sliped out one day while we were watching a movie and talking about it... and she made a remark about the kid biting his girlfriend jokingingly pretending to be a vampire and I slipped and said an exacto knife workes better...Lol ..oops

[CShepherd]

Sylvia, I'm very glad that your mother was able to come to terms with your vampirism. If ever something about me being a donor slipped out, I would just say hastily that I was kidding. It must have taken a lot of courage to actually continue telling her the truth. I feel that I could never tell my family.

Also, the comparison of coming out as a vamp or donor to coming out as gay is striking...Do you think that the vamp community will ever be like the LGBT community is now, in the sense that it is out in the open? Or is that just a scary thought?

[diss]

the coming out analogy is, i think, very appropriate. but even the LGBT community is only relatively out. a heck of a lot of lgbt-folk are not out, or experience discrimination if they're out. very many are only partially out.

i do believe it will become more and more easy to be out as a vampire or donor, but it will be a very gradual process.

[CShepherd]

Just to clarify, when I said that the LGBT community is out, I just meant that most everyone knows about it. Although, like you said Diss, it cannot be wholly out until there is less discrimination.

This is a better way to phrase my question: Would it be better for the vampire community to be more visible (so that most people will have heard of it), or not too visible like it is now? I prefer less visibility; that way, if I were to explain to someone that I am a donor I could teach them about real vampirism from scratch.

[diss]

i'm actually quite an advocate for the VC to relatively out. it's the only way that vampirism can slowly be normalised and de-othered.

[Scion]

Just to clarify, when I said that the LGBT community is out, I just meant that most everyone knows about it. Although, like you said Diss, it cannot be wholly out until there is less discrimination.

This is a better way to phrase my question: Would it be better for the vampire community to be more visible (so that most people will have heard of it), or not too visible like it is now? I prefer less visibility; that way, if I were to explain to someone that I am a donor I could teach them about real vampirism from scratch.

Sadly, I don't think people are ready to accept vampirsm, at least not in the United States. It took years for blacks to gain respect, years for women, and it is still taking a while for the LGBT community. Maybe when the "vampire craze" settles down we can concentrate on "coming out", but it's not now, and I mean that both for vampires and donors alike.

From a Law Enforcement point of view, I can see donors labled as victims; coerced into giving what they're pressured into. Whether or not that is true, the vampire will be prosecuted.

[Giselle47]

Scion, you have it so right. Vampires may eventually be excepted. Donors (sang ones anyway) will be seen as "victims" in most eyes. I listen to the Coast To Coast Interview with JM Dixon. The interviewer kept refering to donors as "victim/donor". Yes, he used victims first. What dissapointed me the most was the fact JM Dixon did not correct the interviewer to stop using donors and victims lumped together as the same word. To me donor is c-o-m-p-l-e-t-l-y different word than victim. Donors give energy freely. Victims do not have a choice.

[Sylivia]

Sylvia, I'm very glad that your mother was able to come to terms with your vampirism. If ever something about me being a donor slipped out, I would just say hastily that I was kidding. It must have taken a lot of courage to actually continue telling her the truth. I feel that I could never tell my family.

Also, the comparison of coming out as a vamp or donor to coming out as gay is striking...Do you think that the vamp community will ever be like the LGBT community is now, in the sense that it is out in the open? Or is that just a scary thought?

I was wanting to tell her badly so I just took the oppertunity....As for the Idea of our comunity being out like the LBGT i personaly prefer it the way things are. I say this because I dont think most mundanes are ready to to understand our unique community and would twist it into somthing it's not. I would rather stay out of the limelight. Our community has existed for centuries behind the black veil and has blossomed. Do we really need to be accepted by the general public? unlike the The GLTG community that is still fighting for basic rights to be married. I see no benifits to be gained by us. only Grief and possible hate crimes. That's just my opinion and feelings though. Lets keep it simple. Blessed be.

[diss]

actually, the black veil is just barely a decade old, the VC as the even semi-coherent entity it is today 15, maybe 20 years at a stretch, with a few isolated groups going back into the seventies. there are a few rumours of very small and isolated groups here and there before that, but almost zero documentation.

i have no doubt that there were blood-drinkers and psi-feeders before that, right back to the early evolution of the human species if nor further. but a vampire community is something very new.

[Sylivia]

Diss I've always had much respect and admiration of your views thus far but I have to dissagree this time .people of similarity tend to group together and 2 can be a comunity whether it be documented or not it's human nature and even though the official black veil has not been around long. I would say that that a form of it was in play long before. Just as the wiccan community was forced to hide so did the vampiric. The fact that we know more about our comunity now and its existance is not hard to find now only brings home my point that it has blossomed greatly from within... With that said I have noticed we have vered way off the original topic. ..Blessed be.