For most of my life, I thought truth and goodness were supposed to make people more comfortable.

If I was doing life right, surely the people I loved would understand.

If I was making good choices, surely good people would recognize that.

If I was being honest, surely honesty would lead to connection.

I believed—without ever really saying it out loud—that other people’s comfort was evidence that I was on the right track.

And their discomfort?

That was something I needed to pay attention to.

Maybe I had gone too far.

Maybe I was being selfish.

Maybe I was wrong.

Maybe I needed to explain myself better.

Maybe I needed to soften the truth until everyone could live with it.

That way of living followed me for a very long time.

Then I wrote When Faith Couldn’t Hold.

And writing the book required me to stop measuring the truth of my story by whether other people would find it comfortable.

That may be one of the most important things I have ever learned.

The Truth Wasn’t Always Comfortable

My story did not fit neatly inside the theology I had been given.

Grief complicated it.

Questions complicated it.

My family complicated it.

My own lived experience complicated it.

There were things I had believed deeply that no longer made sense when I held them next to the reality of my life.

For a long time, that created an impossible tension.

Because if the belief was right, then what did that mean about my experience?

And if my experience was telling me something different, was I allowed to trust it?

Writing the book forced me to answer that.

I could not tell my story honestly while constantly editing it around what would be easiest for other people to hear.

At some point I had to stop asking:

Will this make people uncomfortable?

And begin asking:

Is it true?

Those are very different questions.

Then We Chose Television

Not long after that journey, Trent and I chose something that would have been almost unimaginable to an earlier version of me.

We wanted to be on a reality television show.

Not because we thought our life was perfect.

Not because we wanted everyone to agree with us.

We wanted people to see the beauty and humanity inside something they were often taught to judge.

We had built an unconventional life.

We had opened our marriage.

We had lived in a throuple.

We had questioned rules about sexuality, relationships, love, and what a marriage was supposed to look like.

And we knew there were people who would see that and immediately decide what it meant about us.

We chose to show it anyway.

That mattered.

Because once again, the question could not be:

Will everyone be comfortable with this?

Of course they wouldn’t.

The question was:

Is this our truth, and are we willing to stand inside it?

Our answer was yes.

Other People’s Discomfort Is Real

I want to be clear about something.

I am not saying other people’s feelings do not matter.

They do.

Relationships matter.

Impact matters.

Compassion matters.

I care when someone I love is hurting.

But I have learned there is a profound difference between caring about another person’s discomfort and making their discomfort the authority over my life.

For most of my life, I did not know there was a difference.

If someone I loved was uncomfortable with me, my instinct was to look inward immediately.

What did I do wrong?

What do I need to change?

How do I make this better?

How do I help them feel okay again?

Sometimes that is appropriate.

Sometimes repair is needed.

Sometimes we really have caused harm.

But sometimes another person is uncomfortable simply because we have become someone they did not expect us to become.

That is not the same thing as harm.

That Distinction Changed Everything

When This Is Poly aired, people had opinions.

Some loved us.

Some judged us.

Some misunderstood us.

Some reduced an incredibly complicated relationship to a stereotype.

Some people saw beauty.

Others saw something they could not understand.

And for perhaps the first time in my life, I began to understand that I did not have to make every interpretation of me my responsibility.

I could listen.

I could reflect.

I could ask myself whether there was something I genuinely needed to learn.

And then I could leave the rest where it belonged.

With them.

That is very different from the way I used to live.

Comfort Is Not the Same Thing as Truth

This is where the book and the show meet for me.

The book required me to write things that some people would rather I had left unsaid.

The show required me to live something that some people would rather I had not lived.

Both forced me to confront the same old belief:

If my truth makes someone uncomfortable, maybe I should change my truth.

I don’t believe that anymore.

Sometimes truth is uncomfortable.

Sometimes growth is uncomfortable.

Sometimes watching someone you love become more fully themselves is uncomfortable.

Sometimes realizing another person does not need your permission is uncomfortable.

And sometimes the most loving thing we can do—for ourselves and for each other—is stop demanding that truth arrive in a form that never disrupts us.

I Still Care

I have not become someone who doesn’t care what people think.

Honestly, I don’t want to.

I care deeply.

I care about people.

I care about how my choices affect the people I love.

I care whether I am living with integrity.

What has changed is whose comfort gets to decide whether I am allowed to tell the truth.

That answer is no longer everyone else’s.

I can hear someone’s discomfort without immediately abandoning myself.

I can consider criticism without automatically turning it into a verdict.

I can be misunderstood without rushing to rewrite myself into something more acceptable.

And I can tell the truth about my life without requiring unanimous approval first.

Maybe That Is What Freedom Looks Like

Not rebellion.

Not doing whatever I want without regard for anyone else.

Not becoming immune to criticism.

Something much quieter.

Knowing that another person’s discomfort is information—not automatically instruction.

That one distinction has changed the way I write.

The way I love.

The way I relate.

The way I understand freedom.

And the way I stand inside my own story.

When Faith Couldn’t Hold asked me to tell the truth.

This Is Poly asked me to let people see me living it.

Both taught me the same thing:

My truth does not become less true because someone else is uncomfortable with it.