To be or not to be?

One of the hardest decisions we have to make, is do we tell new friends about 'us'.
When meeting new people we always present ourselves as a singleton. "Hi my name is Lonnie and i am a multiple" is a bit too much of an opening statement for most people. But at some stage as the relationship develops, even just a friendship, there comes the question......"should we tell this person that we are not who they think we are?"
Do they need to know? Do we want or need to tell?
The whole point to hiding it is for our own self protection. We HAD to hide it when we were young. No one could know or they would find out our other secret......that very bad things were happening to us. It was the primary objective, to hide it all. Thats why we had DID, to get through all that was happening to us and still go on to live a seemily normal childhood. 
But we are adults now, and we are not living that life anymore. All the old rules still seem to apply though.....hide, hide, hide!!!
It deosnt work so well now in the adult world. Having a 5 year old pop out because she wants to say Hi, doesnt make sense to someone who has no idea about who we are. Its not fair on the other hand to make everyone inside have to hide if they dont fit into our age appropriate activities. We are many, and there is no original person. No one person in our system holds a greater position of importance than another, so it seems unfair that only a select few get to come out and socialize with others.
When we are socializing with other multiples, or those who know us well and understand, we can have much more freedom to just be us, just be who we are. Otherwise we are living a life of pretend. Pretending to be who we are not, so that those around us are comfortable. Dont get me wrong, I know that to a degree that will always be our life, but like most people we just want to have times and places where we can just be free to be us, and be accepted for who we are. 
This brings me back to my original question, how and when do we tell new friends that 'I' am 'We'?
How do we also deal with the fear of going against a life long self protection training that screams 'we must never let anyone in and they must never now about us'?
I dont have the answers..........