Our Lover is Visiting His Girlfriend

Chronicle of an Open Marriage #31

Captain went away for the Thanksgiving holiday. Specifically, he went to visit his girlfriend. Here’s a man who is boisterously fucking both me and my husband, bringing us a lot of pleasure and marital relief, but his girlfriend doesn’t know about us. I’m not sure how to feel about that.

I told him as much before he went away. I said I was feeling a little jealous. I said I didn’t want to fuck another woman over. He said I wasn’t fucking her over.

I said, “Then YOU are fucking her over.”

He said, “Ouch.”

But let’s be honest here. It’s not the girlfriend I’m concerned about! It’s me. I don’t mind Captain fucking another woman so much as I mind him preferring to fuck another woman. I want to be loved. I want to be the favorite. And even if he tells me I am his favorite, how can I believe him when I know he isn’t much bothered by lying to someone he supposedly cares about?

I’m pretty sure this is not how polyamory is supposed to work. But here we are.

The girlfriend problem first came up when I organized a kind of date for our newly-forming “throuple.” Hubs had been seeing Captain for a while before I joined their party. For the two men alone, sex was straightforward. But as soon as I got into the mix, I started applying all the hetero-monogamous notions of relationship that I’d been operating under my whole life. (Oops!)

Translation? I started thinking that I loved Captain, since I loved fucking him. Then I tried to move the three of us beyond the bedroom, coming up with a plan to go hear music together.

You should know here that I am a baby polyamorist. In fact, I may not be poly at all. I definitely do like having two husbands. Who wouldn’t? But is that all it takes to be poly? I honestly don’t know.

When I suggested to Hubs that we open up our marriage almost a year ago, I wasn’t planning to get any outside sex myself. I wanted Hubs to do that. I felt beset by his needs.

But then about six months into the experiment, I fell into a sexy texting relationship with Hungry Man that set me on fire. That was surprising. And when he dumped me precipitously, I had an excess of sexual energy, so I got on the apps and wound up having a disappointing hookup with a younger man.

Then, in defeat, I joined up with Hubs and Captain — they’d been suggesting that arrangement for a while — and that’s where I remain to this day, four months later. But now it’s not in defeat so much as in thrall. Because as it turns out, Captain is a sex wizard with an enchanted cock.

But that’s another story…

For now, let’s go back to that first unfortunate date: here we are about four weeks into our fun three-way fucking. In my mind, we are in love, on a trajectory to move in together — the three of us.

Hubs suggests he drive us to the venue and me and Captain sit in the back so we can make out. It’s high school all over again! (Thank god Hubs is turned on by seeing me with another man. Otherwise, this new adventure would be impossible.) Hubs adjusts the rearview mirror so he can get a better look…

I have on a pretty party dress. Captain shows up in shorts and a long-sleeved tee. As we drive down the highway, I undo my seatbelt so I can lean across the seat and kiss him. And then, to my surprise, he pulls out his penis. That was not how I pictured this date would go…

I tell him to put his dick away, and then feel flustered. What is the agenda? I realize we haven’t discussed it. I explain that I don’t want him to traumatize other drivers who might look in the window and see his naked cock. “Traumatize?” he echoes and scowls.

A few miles later, I have a change of heart. When the road narrows down to one lane, and no one can look in the window, we fuck like bunnies in the back seat.

The day stumbles forward like that.

When we get to the venue, the band has been canceled. Hubs goes off on a bike ride, where he gets a flat. Me and Captain stay behind and drink Irish coffees. That’s when he tells me he has a girlfriend who lives several hundred miles away. They’ve been seeing each other for years. She has a garage full of his stuff. The long-term plan is for him to move in with her, as soon as he can get a job in that area. They talk on the phone every night.

I am stunned.

I ask him if he lies to his girlfriend about fucking other people. He says yes, because otherwise, it would be over. My insides are roiling.

Late that night, I text him that I don’t want to fuck him anymore. I say that I had been unhappy on the date, and felt pressured to fuck him in the car. (But did he actually pressure me? Or did I do that all by myself?) I say I don’t like that he lies to his girlfriend — that I don’t want to be part of his duplicity.

The next morning, Captain texts Hubs that I’ve dropped him “like a bad habit.” But Hubs replies that he’ll believe it when he sees it. Meanwhile, Hubs is obviously annoyed with me. Have I gone and jeopardized his good thing?

Then two days later, I change my mind. Why? I don’t know. There’s much I still don’t understand…

All I know for certain is that I like fucking Captain — and I don’t like getting on apps and vetting strangers and attempting to find pleasure in a random hookup and doing the whole extramarital sex thing on my own.

During our next three-way, I try to sound out what had happened. “I’m sorry I’m so changeable,” I say to Captain. “I think I just got my feelings hurt about you having a girlfriend. I think everything else spiraled out from that.”

Captain looks at me funny while fucking my husband and purses his lips.

In the three months since then, we’ve had more stumbles. There was the time I thought the two of them were doing some unhealthy male bonding over their shared misogyny — talking smack about me behind my back. There was the time (or two) that Captain said something overtly sexist, that he didn’t seem to know was sexist. And there was the strange jealousy Hubs and I sometimes fostered when vying for Captain’s attention. (Who does he love fucking most?)

But every time something ugly reared up, I did my best to confront it and repair our dynamic. Because I like what’s going on. Because I want it to continue. And now, our relationship is all good.

I think…

One philosophy I’ve used to smooth my rough waters was something I read in a Byron Katie book. She divides the universe into three categories: your business, my business, and God’s business. The latter refers to things that we have no control over like hurricanes and cancer. I decided the girlfriend was Captain’s business. And I decided to mind my own.

A helpful phrase I learned that seems to embody that philosophy is “Not my circus. Not my monkeys.” When I said it to Captain regarding his girlfriend he clowned about it and made me laugh.

“Did she just call me a monkey? I think that’s sexist!”

(Captain is funny, btw. He is sweet. He’s positive. He’s unbothered. He’s low maintenance. He doesn’t get his feelings hurt, and he doesn’t get flustered when we get ours hurt. He’s drama free. Plus, he has an enchanted cock! Can you blame me if I’m infatuated?)

Another thing I did to keep things copacetic was to consciously try to dial down my emotions. It makes sense to see this as a fun sexual relationship, not a serious romantic one. Our counselor helped me to understand that in therapy when I complained about Captain lying to his girlfriend.

“He’s your fuck buddy,” our counselor said. “You don’t have to hold him to the same standard as you would a life partner.”

Okay. I see that.

But at the same time I’m trying to rein in my emotions, Captain has been steadily drawing them out. He compliments me, kisses me passionately, looks into my eyes while we’re fucking. He sometimes verges on the “L” word, saying that he’s “falling” for me or referring to sex as “making love.”

He checks in via text early in the morning and late at night. And he participates in my fantasy that we could one day live together.

For that matter, so does Hubs.

I guess the truth is that we are ALL vulnerable. We’re all susceptible to the capital-R Romance that Western culture promotes. And if you’re fucking someone on the regular, is it even possible to not fall in love?

I don’t think it’s possible for me.

Still, I have questions:

• Can Captain love me and Hubs and his girlfriend, too?
• Can we continue to love him if there’s no future for us?
• Is having a future a prerequisite of love?
• Is sex without love worthwhile?
• Should I question Captain about his relationship with his girlfriend when he returns tomorrow?
• Should I leave that relationship alone?
• If I try to undermine it — to make myself his favorite — does that make me a bad person?
• Could the three of us ever live happily ever after?
• Am I imagining that I know Captain’s heart and mind when truly I only know his lips and cock?
• Is Captain as sweet and loving as he seems? Or is he lying to me, too?

I’ve also had a realization while writing this piece: I’m doing it again. I’ve planned another outing for the three of us with music and dancing, capped off by a night in a hotel. That date is in three weeks. Will this second attempt to take us beyond the bedroom go better than the first?

I guess we’re about to find out.

What happened next? Read Chronicle of an Open Marriage #32. Find all of my stories about opening our marriage on the list below, or about sex in general on this one. Get an email whenever I publish. And have a refreshing day.