These days I’m only dating girls who are already poly- it’s just too hard otherwise. But 4 years ago when I hadn’t got a lot of it straight in my head yet, I happened upon someone who was also curious and trying to figure it out. At the time there was no harm in experimenting and discovering together and the fact that we were intensely attracted to each other made that process all the the more enjoyable.

Well, as of a year ago it’s now over, ending in a spectacularly disastrous fashion that would fit right in to the tabloid news. And the fallout has been devastating. My grief has given everyone the ammunition they needed to call into question my entire lifestyle choice.

So I’ve been quiet for a year as I try to process this story from start to finish and now I have some perspective to share with you what I have learned.

I met her before I was “out” and at that point I had no idea why I was so drawn to her. She played the guitar and sang and she wore similar gothic clothes to me. It was weirdly like looking in a mirror! We became Facebook friends and kept in touch. I noticed after a few months that she was very open about being bisexual and eventually after I figured out who I was and how I wanted to live, I chatted to her about it. She admitted to me that she was instantly attracted to me and thought she needed to keep her distance because I was married. I explained polyamory to her and she was genuinely curious about it. After a year of talking online we decided to meet up, the three of us.

There was a lot of alcohol consumed in our relationship. At the time I didn’t think anything of it as in the musicians’ culture big drinking was pretty normal but in hindsight and with the retrospective analysis of 4 years I have noticed this common denominator with many girls who say they want to “try poly”.

After a few months we decided to make it official. We called ourselves a triad. We were all so close it seemed like the natural step to me but it did not sit well with her. I think the fact that we were married was hard and although we tried to include her in our life as much as possible she resisted being included. This was possibly due to the fact that she couldn’t be open about our relationship. Two friends she confided in expressed extreme disapproval and we knew her family would reacted badly when they found out too.

After 3 months she called it off and said she just couldn’t do it.
I accepted that with difficulty but after a few weeks she started wanting to see us again, this time labeling me as a “non-platonic friend” or as most of us know it, a FWB ( friend with benefits).

This is where we ran into some tricky waters. She was organising to see us weekly and these plans were being made whilst sober.
Now I am demisexual which means casual meaningless sex is not something that I can engage in happily. To me this still felt like a relationship.

This is where I went wrong. Given that she had a boyfriend and she told both him and us that she loved us, coupled with weekly visits I was CONVINCED that she was actually polyamorous and I kept trying to convince her of that. If you read her version of events she states that I tried to push poly on her and I didn’t respect her relationship with her boyfriend.

I had a possible two realistic choices to make.

1. Happily accept FWB and act accordingly, or
2. Walk away and tell her that it was either a relationship or nothing because I wasn’t ok with FWB.

Unfortunately I created a third option, I made the mistake of trying to convince her she was poly, a mistake I will NEVER make again. The whole thing blew up in my face after she decided one morning she wanted to discontinue the relationship. We had both tried unsuccessfully to end it before but she always came back and I couldn’t resist her.

This time she guaranteed an ending by telling her parents who immediately got involved and threatened us with a raft of legal consequences if we ever spoke to her again.

She was in her thirties at the time, much too old for that kind of parental reaction but we went to see our lawyer nevertheless who advised us to compile and keep all our evidence which showed indisputably that all threats were invalid. I won’t say anything more on the legal situation as you never know when something will rear its ugly head again.

They didn’t need to threaten us. Honestly, as soon as she said it was over I was relieved and happy to comply with this as I had tried to end it so many times but she kept coming back.
FWB was not what we wanted at the time, we honestly thought we wanted a triad.

A year later I have some very definite lessons that I can say I’ve learned:

• Choose people who are prepared to live life in the open and not hide me like a dirty secret.
• If someone tells you they love me when they’re drunk, check if they can say it sober before I believe them.
• Never try to convince anyone that they are poly, even if they act like it.
• Assess all FWB offers on their own merit and accept or reject the offer without trying to negotiate it into something else.
• Listen to my husband’s instincts about someone who he warns “could cause a lot of trouble if it ends”. He literally predicted everything about a year before hand and I was like “ yeah yeah it’ll be fine”
• Don’t get dead set on a hard and fast poly model, let my expectations be flexible enough to be reassessed with each person.

A lot has happened in the last year and I have many stories to catch you up on. I have learned so much from all my mistakes and I have gotten closer to finding a poly model that realistically works in tandem with a long term marriage.

Two things happened to stall my writing. The nature of this breakup and the fact that someone in my husbands family found this blog and used my words against us.

So I am now writing under the name of AJ Bear and will herafter refer to my wonderful husband as Jay Bear (which is already his nickname).