What It’s Like to Be the Other Guy in an Open Marriage

I’m perched on the couch where it all began.

It’s the couch on which, some eight months ago after getting high and watching a hilariously shitty Christian movie, I had sex for the first time with a girl I’d known and crushed on for years who happened—sorry, who happens—to be married.

I was driving the last of her few belongings to my place when I had nearly had an actual panic attack—like the head-fogging-up-on-the-brink-of-puking onset of a panic attack—and performed a highly illegal u-turn and immediately located a liquor store and returned to that couch where I tried to get drunk and suppress the overwhelming guilt of it all as she sat beside me and told me that she loves me and that everything was going to be OK and not to feel guilty as it was her decision to leave her partner of eight years.

It wasn’t supposed to happen like this.

She’d told me from the beginning that she couldn’t be my primary partner. The open relationship situation negotiated with her husband of a few years meant they could hook up with other people on occasion, letting each other know when and with whom it was happening. One time, she helped him set up a Tinder profile before he embarked on a work trip.

They were the archetype of the highly communicative, sex-positive, fucking adorable couple.

Which was a curious situation for me—whose teenage years were largely defined by attending abstinence-only conferences, reading a vast collection of anti-masturbation books, and obviously never taking a sex-ed class—to land in.

I’d only ever had one serious girlfriend. We made out a lot in my parents’ basement but never went much beyond that.

Once, after over two years of dating (I would’ve been in my early 20s by this point), she touched my dick as we kissed. I said we should stop and then proceeded to tell her that I still looked at porn. She cried for a bit and I prayed for her out loud.

She suggested we take a break shortly after that. But not before I insisted that we get married.

The target of terror flipped in the following years as my commitment to the Messiah faded: rather than fearing the eternal consequences of unconsecrated intercourse, I worried I’d immediately reveal my utter sexual ineptitude—having no idea, for example, where or what exactly a clitoris is—and completely fuck up someone’s night.

Which is why I originally rebuffed her initial advances.

She’d showed me pictures of the girl she’d recently road-tripped to fuck, which in retrospect was a pretty clear indicator that she was open to the idea of extra-marital activities.

But when she actually approached me during a hip-hop show looking incredibly hot and asked me to come home with her—the husband was on the aforementioned work trip—I very awkwardly rebuffed: “Maybe,” I whispered at first, with a “not tonight” when she was hopping in the cab.

We talked it out at a bar the next day.

I tried to explain in highly hedged terms that I wasn’t interested: the unspoken subtext was that I hated my body and didn’t know if my dick was too small and had no idea how to remove a bra or put on a condom or show enthusiasm without being overbearing.

Turns out my attempts were a bit too subtle. Or perhaps her own fundamentalist background allowed her to see right through my excuses.

She patiently taught me where to kiss her and what felt good. We hooked up a few times in the following weeks. In retrospect, the early days feel a bit like a typical indie rom-com, the kind with Greta Gerwig or Jake Johnson: 04:00 sushi, lengthy playlists of PBR&B, and a large quantity of gin.

One night, outside a small burger joint we’d wandered to after hooking up, I told her that she was the first person I’d ever had sex with.

She’d guessed it before first asking me to come home with her, having liked me and feeling it unfair for me not to have a chance to try sex before giving up all hope. Early on, she mentioned that she might try to match me up with one of her friends.

But then we started to fall in love.

We’d just left my favourite dive bar when she told me, prefacing it with “this is really fucked up.” By that point, it was completely obvious.

We clicked in a real way. Chalk up every cliche in the book about losing track of time and feeling like you can tell one another anything.

Her husband, who I’d amicably hung out with a few times at parties and played shooters with on the same couch I’d hooked up with his wife on, joked that we were basically the same person.

He and I never talked about the set-up openly. Nor would I touch or kiss her when he was in the room: it was an unspoken rule of sorts, a concession to the fact I was a bit of an interloper. But those awkward interactions were far more reasonable than the times I tried to tell close friends about the situation.

One of my oldest friends, who had recently proposed to his partner, stared in stunned silence. Another friend yelled at me for a half-hour. I stopped telling people after that; while my crew’s pretty goddamn progressive when it comes to sex, many still seem to take wedding vows rather seriously.

Which is why shit started to get very, very real when she told her husband that we were in love.

He’d probably seen it coming.

She and I were almost constantly texting. She’d sometimes cab home late in the night: we weren’t fucking as per an amended rule, but that left a fair few options open.

She’d got married young, for a bunch of complicated reasons. Over the years, she became increasingly critical of the concept of marriage. They’d had discussions about it: not so much about him and her, but more so about the institution itself.

There was nothing especially wrong with their relationship. But maybe sunk costs and a legally binding contract shouldn’t be the only reasons to stick with something exclusively for 60 years.

She pitched the concept of a polyamorous situation. He wasn’t into it. Understandably.

It was then that we began to speak of how we wanted to be together. To move to a new city, adopt a cat, and fuck without feeling like we were cheating.

The opportunity arrived far more abruptly when he asked her to choose.

Between him—a nice guy with a stable job—and me, someone who juggles anxiety and depression and probably low-key alcoholism while making well below the low income cut-off.

It was Easter weekend. The symbolism wasn’t lost on us.

We caught the train to a grassy field adjacent to a major highway where two tiny churches stood: one Catholic, the other Russian Orthodox. I’m fairly certain the similarities to Anna Karenina were accidental.

She told me that she wanted to be with me. The calmness I felt while hearing those words—a final answer to a few weeks of uncertainty—was only comparable to the time when we came down from a mushroom trip (on that same goddamn couch) after I’d basically encountered God while listening to James Blake. In other words, one of the most perfect moments of my life.

READ MORE: We Talked to Polyamorous People About How They Make Their Relationships Work

She would tell her husband and hope they could work through the consequences somewhat amicably, trying to help him understand that it wasn’t that he’d done anything wrong but just that she wanted her life to go in a different direction.

We went to a Humpty’s Family Restaurant on the other side of the highway to celebrate the decision, sitting for hours while talking about nothing in particular.

The following days are mostly a blur. I think I was partway through a round of Left 4 Dead 2 when she arrived back at my place carrying a backpack containing a few pairs of clothes and a toothbrush and a laptop.

She couldn’t stay at her apartment any longer. All her close friends live out of town. Her family wouldn’t understand. So she moved in.

And it’s been fucking amazing.

Only a few friends know the full story. Most people—including my parents, who adore her—have received an abridged synopsis which omits the entire open relationship set-up and the accidental home-wrecking that ensued.

Her husband unfriended me on Facebook a few weeks ago. It makes sense. But for whatever reason it messed with my head, foreshadowing the near-breakdown to come.

Part of it’s knowing that he’s a really nice dude who I legitimately miss being friends with. And that I inadvertently fucked up his life for reasons he may still not fully understand. That his enmity towards her has something to do with me.

Also realizing that with a few exceptions, her and I won’t be able to tell the actual story of how we met and fell in love: it’s too messy and breaks too many rules and furthers every stereotype in the book about the potential downsides of open relationships.

But perhaps the thing that fucks me up the most is simply not knowing how I’d respond if the same thing happens to me. If, down the road, the girl I’m embarrassingly in love with falls for someone else, or wants to hook up with other people, or simply needs to move on.

All of which would be completely reasonable outcomes. Desires, sexualities and ambitions exist on spectrums, often changing without any real predictability. It’s ludicrous to assume that kind of possessiveness over someone else.

But that’s probably a hell of a lot easier said when you’re not the one left packing up the apartment.