That Time I Fell in Love With a Married Woman

That did not end like I expected it to

It all started with a Facebook thread, of all things, an exchange between a group of people online, some strangers, some close friends…we have these exchanges every day, and I didn’t think much of it at the time when I was enjoying a chat in my downtime with a female friend of mine who I’d been talking to for quite some time.

It had been like this for a while. I’d been on a streak that had become a habit over the course of nearly a year, a litany of flirtations that I never saw anything but friendship and casual fun coming from. The endless stream of people in my vast and expansive social life was often like a river of ghosts, flowing past me as I introduced myself to one woman and said goodbye to another — always looking for someone that impressed me beyond words.

I wanted more…

Little did I know at the time that one of the most unusual experiences of my life was about to take place, as I sat at my laptop keyboard in Los Angeles, plucking away at each individual letter of the text, to compose whatever clever pieces of exchange I thought might bring me some amusement in my hours of relaxation.

In what seemed an unlikely time to fall in love, already having several flirtatious friends who I was talking to regularly and considering that the social circle I was interacting with was about 2,800 miles away in Florida, it was just another online conversation with no particular destination in mind — I was just there to waste some time.

…And that’s when it happened, an extremely unique woman entered the conversation and said something undeniably hilarious and concise, and at a glance, I instantly noticed something about her — she was simply the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen — a striking moment, though I didn’t think much would come of it — nor did I have any intention of much coming from it.

After a brief and public exchange of comments, I sent her a friend request and went on about my life; a request which she accepted, unbeknownst to me for a few days, as it had gotten buried in the sea of notifications that we deal with as just a fact of life in our modern world — her acceptance went unnoticed until she commented on a private post of mine.

“Interesting. I must have missed her,” I thought to myself. I decided to check out her profile and see if she was as interesting as I’d originally thought.

She was stunning, interesting, and brilliant all at the same time, with unusual humor and a concise wit in her posts, she seemed great in every way — but alas, there was one thing problem: she was obviously married.

For the record, I’m not the type of guy to try to lure a married woman out from behind her husband’s back — it’s just not of interest to me, and the weight of the ethical burden on my shoulders would significantly outweigh any deeply corrupted moments of joy I might obtain from such a situation.

Nonetheless, I wanted to send a message and introduce myself, pay her a compliment or two, and then exit the conversation so as to not interrupt her life.

One brief exchange to make her smile was all I wanted— then I could return to my career and regular life on the other side of the country.

Something about her was just “different” and, as my typing began, I found myself uncharacteristically a little nervous, but somehow I still managed to channel my usual style of communication — which is a blend of sophistication and boldness…

“Hey, I just wanted to send a brief message and say, with all due respect, that you’re one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever seen, and you’re insanely smart as well — a deadly combination. You’re married, I see, and I in no way intend to interrupt or disrespect your current relationship in any way, but I just had to tell you that in case you weren’t having the best of days and needed a sincere, genuine compliment from a complete stranger to put a smile on your face. You don’t have to reply to this — in fact, I don’t even expect you to — I’m not trying to start up a conversation, but hopefully I can put a smile on your face. Take care.”

I actually said this in earnest. I thought that was going to be the end of it…but it was just the beginning.

I didn’t expect a reply, but I got one, and, as it turns out, she and her husband had been discussing expanding their relationship horizons to include inviting an additional partner into their mix.

“We don’t exactly have an open relationship — we have a ‘do whatever you want,’ relationship.” I was intrigued. Admittedly, when I first heard this, I thought, “Isn’t that the same thing?” We began talking and suddenly got swept away in a rushing current of quick laughs, playful and overt flirtations, and intimate banter.

Her husband and she share everything and she told him about me, and that’s when things got really interesting — he was more than okay with her pursuing a long-distance flirtation that might lead up to something more. Little did I know that “Do whatever you want,” meant, to them, that they don’t stand in one another’s way. They are free to do what they want, but that doesn’t mean that you don’t ask someone before you do something that might upset them — consent was of paramount importance to them; this was respectable.

After a few weeks of conversation, we set out to have a strictly-casual-yet-romantic relationship and our process of long-distance dating began under the pretense that it would be strictly physical, and we’d keep our deeper emotions and passions to ourselves. I couldn’t have been more wrong in my assumption that being supportive in our partner’s individual endeavors meant a disregard for our thoughts and feelings.

Here I was, dating a married woman on the other side of the country from afar — what could possibly go wrong with this scenario?

I admit, at first, I felt a sense of despair for them, a bit of hopelessness, but how wrong I was in my estimations of their lives. I assumed that loving so freely could only be a detached kind of love, devoid of any real communication and commitment — I would only come to find out later exactly how wrong I was. Nonetheless, I decided that I’d come to visit her when a break in my hectic work schedule permitted and we’d see how things went.

“Adventures are either really good or really bad,” I thought to myself, “but no matter what, if you do them right, at least they’re guaranteed to not be boring…”

With that, I left Los Angeles and slowly began my long trek to Florida to meet this person who was strikingly similar to me, with a few stops along the way.

Street Art in Oakland, California; Source: Joe Duncan

The discussions heated up as I traveled from Los Angeles to Oakland, then to New Mexico, Texas, Missouri, and Ohio, among several other states. In transit between Oakland and New Mexico, things really began to pick up steam, conversations got heated, and we become extremely flirtatious, jumping right into those kinds of conversations you have with extremely good friends you’ve known for years.

The trip would end up taking me three months to get to Florida, I left in May, but with work as abundant as it was, and me needing money as I did, I didn’t end up arriving until the end of July, working my way back city-by-city as she patiently waited for me.

At this point, you probably think I’m simply weird, perhaps naive — but you just don’t understand — and I know everyone says this, but something about this time was different — she was different. There was something about her I couldn’t quite put my finger on, something about our connection I couldn’t quite explain.

We just seemed to “click” and were discreetly falling in love over the vast and expansive network of digital cyberspace — it seemed at the time, that neither of us could help it; and she was still married.

It just seemed to work a little too well, even though we hadn’t met one another, knowing only mere digital representations of ourselves. What we knew were merely copies, holograms composed of endless streams of light which flashed forth from our screens to paint wonderful images, bits and bytes that had traveled over a vast, expansive, and labyrinthine maze of underground cables just to reach us — light that was destined to reach the eyes of the other where it would then seep inside of our pupils and ignite our imaginations, before inevitably dying inside of the mind of the recipient.

Was this person even real? Everyone in my life except for two people reminded me on a near-constant basis just how bad of an idea this actually was.

At this point, I just wanted to believe so badly in a happy ending amidst a turbulent and chaotic professional life, complete with endless travels, new faces, and forgotten connections.

When you travel enough, you begin to assume that everyone you meet will be invisible in two weeks — nothing is substantial, everything is empty, disposable — nihilistic, even. You meet someone, you make a connection, then off to the next city you go. Such is the life of the traveler.

The plan that I would come to visit her and her husband on occasion and become this figure who entered and exited her life began to fade, and as we talked for long hours into the night, with each exhilarating hour blending away into the next, each passing day melting and shriveling up to give way to another; soon, both our passion and our excitement became the only constant.

I decided to ditch everything on a whim and move 3,000 miles away to Florida to be near her…I knew I’d have to leave my career and find something new, I knew I’d have to leave behind an entire lifestyle of travel and my beloved home city of Los Angeles…but she was worth it — and I knew that she was in my depths, somewhere in the undeniable-yet-unspeakable part of my psyche, that deep structure where the rigors of reason are not permitted, that place of pure emotion that reaches all the way down into the fabric of my existence — even in the coldest and hardest places of bone. Love knows no reason — in fact, love and reason might be antithetical in both form and concept.

It’s not often that a person as unique and unusual as I am comes across his identical other — someone who’s exactly like you in almost every way. I knew that if I didn’t seize upon this moment, I would regret it and it wouldn’t come again.

Magnum Ultimo — The Finale

Eventually, the moment had come and I had arrived in Florida. I made it to her city and then had to postpone our first meeting to travel to Jacksonville briefly to work on an extremely important gig I had been invited to; she suddenly began to stop believing in me — or believing that I was who I said I was.

At this point, there was an uncomfortable sense of doubt that overcame both of us in various ways, something that almost undid everything that had led up to this point over the past three and a half months — almost.

I rushed back immediately to her, and eventually, we did meet, and she was even more stunning in person than online — her presence was bold and she carried with her a sense of both purpose and authenticity that engulfed me, and both were a breath of fresh air. We met alone with her husband’s graces and had dinner, and then spent our first weekend together immediately afterward. We met some mutual friends and hung out at the beach. From there we actually began dating, but the story is far from over.

It wouldn’t be until three months into our casual dating experiment when it had become obvious to her husband that we were both quite in love, and that’s when things took a very unexpected turn…

“He’s okay with us having an emotional relationship together and developing a deep emotional bond,” she texted me one night, “We talked for a very long time about it, a few hours, and he’s more than happy for us, and just wants us to enjoy ourselves and our lives together.”

Come to find out, he had initiated the idea on his own. We all discussed it and came to the conclusion that making a casual thing into something much more substantial was simply a great idea. And with that, we then began the process of becoming a trio, and we were officially polyamorous.

We began to plan for the future and adopt a lifestyle that included the three of us, and they were kind enough to take me in as if I was on a near-equal footing in a relationship that they’d been doing for a decade and a half. I was respected and cared for, and most of all loved. I was invited into the most beautiful relationship I’ve ever seen.

Fast-Forward to Now

Now we live together and the three of us enjoy a love beyond anything I’d ever imagined, something I’ve described at length here. In this process of loving, I’ve learned the true definition of how to love another person and multiple at the same time. I’ve made mistakes, I shied away at first, I tried to run at times and flee back into the safe and secure familiarity of the single life, but they patiently waited for me to come around every time.

I used to wonder how one became polyamorous in the first place, but now I know, it’s sort of like a threesome, it’s not really something you set out to do, it’s something that just seems to happen organically when certain chemistries align properly.

Our relationship accidentally fell into place in a way that tears at many things we’ve been taught, ideas like people are selfish and jealousy is natural, showing me that these things are much more flexible than rigid and unchangeable.

If you like monogamy and want to stick with it, excellent, I admire you for sticking by what you believe in, and this story isn’t trying to proclaim with a snarky grin that polyamory is better than everything else, nor that relationship failures are due to relationship dynamics, but that I’ve learned an immense world of openness and love through this rich and entirely unexpected experience.

“Through everything, I’m really happy with how all of this came together,” she said to me just tonight over a decent horror flick as we cuddled.

My take is, we should never be afraid of love — we don’t know what can happen if we don’t try, and nothing great ever came about by trying to live as comfortably as possible. We should give ourselves credit where credit is due, as I think most of the time our human intuition is spot-on, it’s when we don’t listen to that intuition that we run into trouble; behind every failed relationship is a list of red flags we ignored.

What this whole process also taught me that we can love openly, yet securely, carelessly and freely, yet considerately and with loyalty— that we can be who we are, that we can live independently and still care for others, and that what we expect in life isn’t always what we find — but what we get is often better than anything we could have ever imagined formerly as long as we’re willing to be open to new things.

The rewards of this rich life that I’ve fallen into have been astronomically greater than anything I could have ever imagined, and I would have never known if I didn’t make that decision to give someone a chance and move across the country, with nothing more than unadulterated intuition as my guide. There is always a risk in love, so if we’re going to risk, we might as well make it one worth writing about.