PRAISE FOR THE HUSBAND SWAP

“Hilarious. Poignant. Thrillingly erotic. Mind-opening. Heart-breaking. Louisa Leontiades has a powerful voice and the courage to live into her questions.”

—Lucy H. Pearce, author The Rainbow Way and Moon Time

“The Husband Swap gives a much-needed peek at the always-entertaining world of polyamory and quads. It’s wonderful reading for anyone curious about the possibilities of love beyond monogamy.”

—Arianne Cohen, author of The Sex Diaries Project

“Candid, honest, and eye-opening, The Husband Swap is as unforgettable as it is unconventional.”

—Clint Travis, Reviewer’s Bookwatch, Midwest Book Review

“Read this book carefully. There are excellent lessons in it like a lovely coral reef below turbulent waves.”

—from the original foreword by Noël Lynne Figart, The Polyamorous Misanthrope

“Recommended for polyamorists, but also anyone struggling with being ‘different,’ for anyone questioning relationship structures and for people wanting to better understand some of the realities of open relationships.”

—Sarah Arlen, creator of Twice: A Polyamorous Love Story

“If you're looking for a true tale of how to open your heart and deal with the consequences, this book is for you. It doesn't matter what kinds of relationships you have, there's something in it for everyone.”

—Michón Neal, author of The Black Tree series

PRAISE FOR LESSONS IN LOVE AND LIFE TO MY YOUNGER SELF

“An excellent companion guide to the memoir The Husband Swap, Lessons reflects on key moments from the author’s journeys through open non-monogamy, drawing out important points which others can learn from. This is an essential addition to the self-help literature on polyamory, providing the grounding, in-depth personal stories that have been lacking so far.”

—Dr. Meg John Barker, author of Rewriting the Rules

“No matter who you are, no matter how you love, there is something here that can make your life better.”

—from the original foreword by Franklin Veaux, co-author of More Than Two

“Louisa Leontiades once again lets herself be vulnerable on the page so that we can witness what her heart has been through, and so that we can benefit from her hard-won wisdom by understanding her personal evolution from the inside.”

—Sarah Arlen, creator of Twice: A Polyamorous Love Story

A

WORLD

IN

US

Also by Louisa Leontiades

Necessary to Life: A Memoir of Devotion, Cancer and Abundant Love

Thorntree Press, 2017

Some Never Awaken: A Memoir of Abuse, Sexual Healing and Freedom

Postmodern Woman, 2016

A WORLD IN US

A Memoir of Open Marriage, Turbulent Love and Hard-Won Wisdom

LOUISA LEONTIADES

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY TIKVA WOLF

AND A FOREWORD BY GRACIE X

A World in Us

A Memoir of Open Marriage, Turbulent Love and Hard-Won Wisdom

Text copyright © 2015 by Louisa Leontiades

Illustrations copyright © 2015 by Tikva Wolf

Forewords copyright © 2017 by Gracie X and © 2015 by Noël Lynne Figart and Franklin Veaux, as indicated

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher except in the case of brief quotations in critical articles and reviews.

Thorntree Press, LLC

P.O. BOX 301231

Portland, OR 97294

press@thorntreepress.com

Cover illustration Bright Rain © 2007 Leonid Afremov®

Cover design by Franklin Veaux

Interior design by Mari Chijiiwa and Jeff Werner

Interior illustrations by Tikva Wolf, creator of Kimchi Cuddles

Substantive editing for the memoir by Lucy H. Pearce

Substantive editing for the lessons by Eve Rickert

Copy-editing and proofreading by Roma Ilnyckyj and Amy Haagsma

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Leontiades, Louisa, author. | Wolf, Tikva, illustrator. | Container of (work): Leontiades, Louisa Husband Swap. | Container of (work):
Leontiades, Louisa Lessons in Life and Love to My Younger Self.

Title: A world in us : a memoir of open marriage, turbulent love and hard-won
wisdom / by Louisa Leontiades ; illustrations by Tikva Wolf ; foreword by
Gracie X.

Description: Portland, OR : Thorntree Press, [2017] | “Husband Swap, and the
companion guide, Lessons in Life and Love to My Younger Self, were
originally published as two separate books in 2015”-- Preface.

Identifiers: LCCN 2016056179 (print) | LCCN 2017007178 (ebook) | ISBN
9781944934217 (pbk.) | ISBN 9781944934224 (ePub) | ISBN 9781944934231
(Mobipocket) | ISBN 9781944934248 ( Portable document format (PDF))

Subjects: LCSH: Leontiades, Louisa. | Non-monogamous
relationships--Biography. | Open marriage--Biography.

Classification: LCC HQ980 .L46 2017 (print) | LCC HQ980 (ebook) | DDC 306.84/23092 [B] --dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016056179

Digital edition v1.0

To those who

dare to love more.

Have courage,

because it really

does get better.

“Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.”

— Anaïs Nin

CONTENTS

PREFACE

FOREWORD by Gracie X

MEMOIR with a foreword by Noël Lynne Figart

LESSONS with a foreword by Franklin Veaux

PREFACE

My first memoir, The Husband Swap, and the companion guide, Lessons in Life and Love to My Younger Self, were originally published as two separate books in 2015. Together, they provide an example of how I’ve transformed my reality. One was a dark and painful recounting of events, written in real time. The other I wrote later, and was my attempt to document what I’d needed to learn in order to move on to a healthier life. It is only fitting that they should be joined now in this new volume, titled A World in Us, after one of Anaïs Nin’s most famous quotes.

It was my editor, Eve Rickert, who first suggested the quote, which was beloved by many polyamorous people (and which she’d cited in her own book, More Than Two). But afterwards, I wondered whether she wasn’t trying to tell me something.

“I like Richard Bach more,” I’d replied, skeptical.

But Jonathan Livingstone Seagull wasn’t a polyamorous bird.

Before Nin was scattered across the internet via memes featuring rosebuds bedecked with glistening dew, I’d never heard of her. My British schooling consisted of mainly male authors, like Charles Dickens and William Golding, who taught me that I deserved nothing and only had value if I could limp onwards after the hardest of knocks, lest I end up like Pip or Piggy. So I plunged myself into Nin’s bohemian world, which she painstakingly chronicled over 60 years, and fell into an abyss. It's warm and still down here. It's a place where emotional truth is bonded to the oxygen you breathe. It's an inky dark womb. A place where I could be reborn.

Nin was a memoirist, like me. Who was all kinds of fucked up, like me. Who followed love and personal growth as if it were an extremist religion, like me. Who was riddled with self-doubt, who was dedicated to the confusion of her psyche and who wrote about her deliberations compulsively. Like me.

Nin existed more fully in the pages of her own diaries, where the spoken and the unspoken meet. Some say she lived to create events for the sole purpose of writing about them in her journal, perhaps even more than desiring the experience itself. But I believe she edited her stories to create an aspirational and more beautiful life until they resembled an identity she could live with and by—like me. I've looked into the mirror so often, looking for identity and not finding it; I’ve written it down and searched for the truth, and then I’ve written my life and lived according to new — and I hope better — truths.

And so my editor and I decided that not just the compilation, but all my future memoirs, would have titles inspired by Nin’s work.

To many, Nin was an inspiration; to others, she was a monster. To me, she was a person who needed to write in order to live better. Like her, I have proved to myself that I can change my story and be cured of my past by writing and reframing it. I am so grateful for this, because the alternative was to remain, like Pip and Piggy, lost forever.

Louisa

July 2016

FOREWORD TO THE COMPILATION

What is the purpose of a relationship? Is it to spark emotional growth? Is it to move you to the next place? What role does longevity play in the quest for cutting-edge progressive relationships? Are short, firecracker relationships worth it? What makes sense when you have children?

Louisa Leontiades’s daring memoir examines these complex conundrums, which each of us must ultimately face and analyze for ourselves, in whatever relationship we find ourselves in or moving toward. Louisa takes us with her on her relationship road trip, but she ultimately delivers a map for starting and continuing a process of wise self-examination and relationship success.

When I read the original release of Louisa’s memoir, The Husband Swap, I was excited to hear a story about an open marriage and quad relationship similar to my own, which I chronicle in my own book, Wide Open: My Adventures in Polyamory, Open Marriage, and Loving on My Own Terms. Reading about her sometimes rugged transition into the world of open marriage, I highlighted passages and typed enthusiastic remarks in my e-reader notes: “Yes!” “Totally!” When the publishers at Thorntree Press approached me to write a foreword for this compilation with Lessons in Love and Life to My Younger Self, originally published as a separate book, I eagerly started reading the new material. The two books together, now released as A World in Us: A Memoir of Open Marriage, Turbulent Love and Hard-Won Wisdom, provide a seasoned prospective of consensual non-monogamy.

In the memoir, Louisa starts her journey into consensual non-monogamy with the smart zeal of a nervy beginner. This echoed my own gusto when, ten years ago, I first started out on the path of ethical non-monogamy. The thought of loving openly — not only with the consent but the support of my current spouse — sounded like the most enthralling possibility ever. No concept seemed more evolved! As ideas go, open marriage and polyamory were right up there with the Internet, the Pill, seedless watermelons, voicemail and solar energy. It had me ready to grab a megaphone, climb to the highest tower and yell my revelations to the world.

I recognized Louisa’s matched enthusiasm for her new life, which entailed her agreeing to move back to her homeland in England — which meant giving up a highly lucrative job and moving physically close to family that she had needed to distance herself from. Louisa courageously made this choice. In the lessons portion of this new book, told from her wise reflective self, she examines the conscious and somewhat subconscious reasons for making this ultimately challenging move.

Similar to Louisa, many polyamorous people embrace change to ultimately create positive transformation and to carve their own path of relationship expression. What I particularly enjoyed in Louisa’s words and admissions was her willingness to show her vulnerability. Decisions that seemed the correct choice at one time are now re-examined with hindsight. Louisa often asks What part of me made this decision? Were there motives I wasn’t fully aware of at the time? This pensiveness makes her insights as a writer — and character — valuable and worth emulating. When a person gets into the thick of any relationship, monogamous or polyamorous, there can be mess. But the difference with polyamory, from my experience at least, is the higher amount of mathematical permutations in which mess can happen: more people = more potential mess.

What I admire about Louisa as a pioneer in relationship innovation is her willingness to reveal the mess so that we can learn. Her memoir is like a tour through the lovely home of an old friend, the kitchen piled high with dirty dishes and a clear view of that dilapidated couch the cat has used as a scratching post for far too long. In the lessons, she does what all great mentors and teachers seek to do: put her home in order. I found myself alternating from wincing slightly when she divulged something particularly tender to quietly whispering “amen girl — amen” as she moved from the unique problems in being multi-partnered to suggesting better life practices that strive for relationship excellence.

This is what sets Louisa apart from the average relationship participant. In the midst of her challenging quad dynamic, and with a steadfast and unerring determination, she examines her new life, asking difficult questions followed by yet another challenging question. Like: Do I enable my husband? Am I jealous of my husband’s girlfriend not because of what she’s doing, but because she has qualities I don’t allow myself to embody? What is my part in this? And now that I’ve thrown away the hackneyed old relationship script, whats the new storyline going to be? Louisa’s wiser self in the lessons is chock full of hard-earned epiphanies from the world of open marriage. Take, for example, the eggplant incident. One day, an eggplant that Louisa had saved to make dinner for her husband was instead used by Elena, his girlfriend, to make a snack. This upset Louisa — quite a bit.

Louisa analyzes the depth of her upset. “Acknowledge your anger. Be conscious that you are angry.” This is a skill unto itself, and at times hard to do in the midst of a multi-partnered life. Even as my heart went out to Louisa, I couldn't help chuckling a bit about the damn eggplant. What Louisa clearly illustrates is that when you are melting down about an eggplant, it is inevitably, of course, not about the vegetable: something more compelling and complex is happening. Its easier to get angry about an eggplant than to talk about the fact that, for instance, your husband hasn't worked in years, or has become more of a kid brother than an romantic partner. Louisa has an uncanny ability to self-analyse, and her ability to exercise this skill is another reason why this book is particularly engaging and inspirational.

This makes Louisa’s book, although it is a story about polyamory, useful to anyone who is in a relationship. Monogamous, polyamorous, swinging, whatever structure your relationship follows: There is something here for you. Good relationship practices — honesty, self-examination and taking responsibility — hold true in all relationships.

I feel a kinship to Louisa as a writer, a seeker, and a “relationship artist.” With the combined work of her memoir and the lessons, we get a woman writing from a full spectrum of multi-partnered relationship experience: a place of satisfaction and integrated experiences that now make her life work. Louisa’s quad with her boyfriend, her husband and his girlfriend ultimately did not last. Does that mean that it was not worth doing? Absolutely not — there is so much to be inspired by in her story.

There is certainly pressure among polyamorous writers to tie everything up with a big bow and move the story to “happily ever after.” If we don’t, we feel it might reflect badly on our multi-partnered relationship orientation. When we have discord in a polyamorous relationship, we are told by the “professionals” that “polyamory does not work.” But when a monogamous relationship fails, the professionals don’t question monogamy. We need more stories and shared lessons about multiple loves. Poly pioneers are worth hearing about, writing about and discussing so that we can shape an understanding of what is useful and what is best avoided.

In her book, Louisa has a tendency to take too much responsibility for everything in her love life — a flaw I share. But at least with taking responsibility comes the next step: agency. And agency is a part of all successful relationships. Showing up as a full participant in what happens in your love life is certainly one necessary ingredient to successfully constructing relationships.

After breakdown comes breakthrough, and in this new volume, we get both. Society is witnessing a breakdown of traditional marriage and a breakthrough of all different kinds of relationship structures and orientations. These new relationship expressions allow us to live with authenticity, resilience and commitment to excellence. We can get a chance in Louisa’s words to experience a life with “new lessons to be learned, new adventures to be had and new miracles around the corner.”

I commend Louisa, my fellow relationship artist. May relationship miracles await all of us around life’s next corner.

— Gracie X

MEMOIR

FOREWORD TO THE MEMOIR

I first heard the second edition of The Husband Swap was coming out when Franklin Veaux, co-publisher of Thorntree Press, contacted me and asked me if I could write a foreword.

I don’t entirely know why Franklin asked me, and I don’t believe in Fate or Universal Intention. But if I did, I would believe that the Universe wanted to smack me, and smack me hard, to remind me I’m not allowed to get cocky about polyamory in my oh-so-hyper-sensible persona on my blog as The Polyamorous Misanthrope.

This (well-written) book made me cringe as if I were watching Fawlty Towers (lack of communication makes me squirm, and most of the humour in the show revolves around this). Why? Well, I’ve been as foolish as the people in this book.

Polyamory is supposed to be about love at its core. To truly love requires a deep understanding of both yourself and your partners. Even the smartest of people can be remarkably stupid and willing to fool themselves when it comes to love and sex. We see that in this book, as it definitely describes a train wreck of a relationship.

Louisa’s memoir made me relive my own group marriage, which we affectionately referred to as “OLQ” for “our little quad.” Ego, vanity, or lack of communication, appropriate boundaries, or maturity — you name it. Many of the incidents in this book could have been OLQ, and that hurt to read, because it meant owning that foolishness, blindness and lack of love.

I kind of hate to put that kind of thing out there in the polyamory press. I want to be positive about polyamory.I want polyamory to carry the banner of good, mature and loving relationships. I want us to be experts in love. I also believe in the truth.

The truth is that relationships work when the people involved are mature, have good self-knowledge, and are willing to put the work into being loving. To pretend that the train wrecks cannot happen would be irresponsible. Not to warn people of the possible pitfalls would be cruel.

I do not know the author personally, but I get the sense from this memoir that she’s feeling like the parent of an older teenager begging the kids, “No, no, I’m not telling you this because it’s okay to be foolish. Learn from my mistakes! Please, see what I did wrong so you can avoid the holes I fell in!”

You could, with some justification, point to these train wrecks as arguments against polyamory. That would be understandable.

It would also be wrong.

While open relationships are hardly new, the cultural narrative that allows us to have a benchmark about what’s acceptable in them and the social support to help us with reality checks when it is bad simply don’t exist yet. We see jealousy as an aberration rather than a signal that something might be wrong. Goodness knows poly people can be notoriously crap at boundaries until we’re burned a few times. I have to blame the monogamy narrative for that little gem of an idea, though. Ever seen a romantic movie or read a romance where the lovers had good boundaries? Nope, me neither.

The reality is that a failed relationship is simply not proof a relationship form doesn’t work. If that were so, we’d be insane not to ban the bog-standard monogamous marriage, given our current divorce rate.

Polyamorous or monogamous, we get into relationships for lots of reasons, and sometimes those reasons are the wrong ones. But more than that, sometimes there’s no reason to it. If you asked me why I am poly, I honestly couldn’t give you a reason. At least not one where Reason held sway. I am because I am, just as much as a person might be turned on by redheads, or want to swim the English Channel.

When you get into polyamory when Reason is not involved, you’ll start looking for reasons. As sure as God made little green apples, you’ll find the wrong reason. You’ll justify to yourself, and you’ll make a mess.

If you read this book with the idea “I could never do that!” or “No way would I permit that to happen in my life,” I invite you to do two things: develop a little more humility and work hard on your self-knowledge. That’s the best good that can ultimately come out of stories of relationships that didn’t work. Yes, pitfalls can be avoided, and yes, you might be able to learn from another’s mistake, but you can’t do it from arrogance. You can do it from learning to love genuinely and deeply.

The love that will allow you to avoid these mistakes is a love that involves knowledge of yourself, deep understanding of your partners, a willingness to set appropriate boundaries and a huge helping of honesty — starting with yourself. Do you know what you want? Are you sure you know? I ask this as an introvert who has a desperate need for solitude and thought for sixteen years that a group marriage would be the apex of happiness for me.

The polyamory community often hears that polyamory isn’t easy. That’s a bit disingenuous. The reality is that good relationships of any sort aren’t easy. It’s not necessarily that the relationships are work. It’s that good relationships require you to ruthlessly and tirelessly work on yourself.

However, even if relationships in general are work, it is true that polyamory isn’t for sissies, nor is it for people who do not know how to have good relationships. Read this book carefully. There are excellent lessons in it, like a lovely coral reef below turbulent waves.

Dive in and learn. You’ll be glad you did.

— Noël Lynne Figart, 2015

PROLOGUE

I was at work, logged on to Gmail, reading yet another round robin email chain between:

Me

My husband

His girlfriend

My boyfriend

And his wife

Like a riddle, five people were able to be four because my boyfriend’s wife and my husband’s girlfriend were one and the same person. In the world of open marriage and polyamory they call it a quad: a four-person relationship.

Our quad was multi-faceted and multilingual. We had Spanish, French, English and Swedish nationalities. We were introvert and extrovert, spiritual and mercenary. It made for a passionate schism and a ferocious fusion; sometimes thrilling and sometimes sickening. Conflict and misunderstanding led to tears and arguments. Several times I had stared into the abyss thinking that all our dreams of a higher “multiple” love were over, only to receive a last-minute reprieve.

But the joy that was our reward for all our heartache was exponential.

We were friends, squared.

I was in love with two amazing men. My sisterwife was in love with the same two amazing men. And they were in love with us both. We laughed together, we cried together. If I was happy, both my husband and boyfriend were happy, my sisterwife was happy, and in being happy we all radiated happiness back to one another like shimmering glass, basking in the glow of how unique and incredible our relationship was and had the potential to be. We were the pinnacle of bliss, the very epitome of togetherness.

But the reverse was also true. Ugly and self-destructive cruelty backfired in a vicious circle through frustration, misplaced loyalty and jealousy. And that day I had reached crisis point. It was the end of the line.

“Louisa, have you got the figures for the eight-month budget reforecast? We need to recalculate our spend for the Asia Pacific fund and upload it in Oracle tonight.”

“Sanders is trying to cut Opex. Heads are going to roll — inflate the forecast by twenty percent and maybe we’ll escape the brunt of it.”

I was dealing with love and conflict that raged so hard I wondered how no one else could hear the howling. But because they didn’t, instead I had to discuss whether to artificially inflate my budget forecast, which would necessitate three hours’ “last-minute” work to meet the deadline for an upload into our company systems. So whilst my colleagues in my very ordinary workplace discussed the very ordinary impact of a delay uploading some figures in our very ordinary resource management system, my mind was struggling to stay on the bearable side of sanity in my very unordinary world.

I no longer trusted myself to make any judgements, because everything that I once judged true had been turned upside down. I had sought to support what I thought was a higher ideal, the ability to love without limits, in defiance of my family and my society. But in doing so, I was in danger of losing myself. My psyche was breaking down.

My father had always told me “Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” And that day I asked myself, “How do you know at what point it will kill you?”

And is it possible to stop in time?

1

My name is Louisa.

I was once like you. A monogamous speck inside the normal distribution curve. I expected a faithful marriage, two point four kids and a home with no distinguishing features. Maybe a dog or two and a well-paid job in a corporate company.

Then I met a boy. We followed my predefined script. We went out for a while, and we got married.

But what happened after…well, that wasn’t written anywhere.

In 2002, my favourite haunt was a grotty, rundown Irish pub just off Boulevard Saint-Michel in Paris. The once-green awning was grey and torn and its name was… Le Galway. This had afforded me and my friends a few giggles since the quotable “le Big Mac” line from Pulp Fiction. It had also afforded me many raucous drunken nights and was as comfortable to slip into as a pair of old slippers. My home was split into two parts: my bedroom and bathroom, which were five minutes away, and this, my living room, which I shared with about twenty other regulars. We regarded it as ours and jealously evaluated every fresh face that slouched through the door to see whether they were worthy of paying for a pint in our dump.

One afternoon I had slipped into my second home for a yarn about the night before. I was sipping the black coffee for which I never paid and was bantering with the barman, discussing the exploits of some of our mutual friends. A man with long curly hair was also at the bar, and he was gazing at me with open admiration.

I turned to him and blossomed. He asked me out. I said yes.

We shared. We were emotionally intimate. We connected. He got inside my head. And then refused to get inside my pants. It was a first for me. When I said jump, they jumped. Usually I didn’t say anything at all, but they still jumped!

Ladies and gentlemen, I introduce you to Gilles. My French Not-Quite-Lover.

My French Not-Quite-Lover was erudite. A philosopher. A poet. He smoked cigarettes and said “bof!” at correctly timed intervals. He played chess at my local pub and beat most of his opponents. He studied aikido and explained Kant to me. And in a surprising twist of personality, he introduced me to the sitcom Friends by dropping quotes from it into our conversation at brilliantly timed comic intervals.

Gilles was the first one to love me…for me.

On our first proper date, after several hours of emails and instant messages, I got to our arranged rendezvous and had downed two apple martinis in the twenty minutes or so that I spent waiting for him, in an effort to calm my nerves.

“You took long enough,” I said as he strolled in.

“And you took less time to get here than Lindsay Wagner.” I was soon to learn about his love of the English language, gleaned predominantly from American television.

“What are you drinking?” he asked, sliding onto the bar stool next to me.

“Apple martinis,” I said. “I’ve already had two.” I dared him to frown in disapproval. Instead, he ordered me another.

“How come you managed to leave work so early?” he said. “You can’t have got much work done. We were messaging all day.”

“My company’s going bankrupt and has been for the last six months. You know what French administration is like,” I said. “It’s a company run by Americans, so you can imagine how the team feels about that.”

Anti-Americanism was so prevalent following 9/11 that I had seriously considered tattooing a Union Jack on my body to demonstrate my nationality before someone put a fist in my face from hearing my franglais.

“It’s the second company I’ve worked at that’s gone bankrupt. My friends are calling me ‘The Liquidator!’” I giggled at the name and tossed back another mouthful of apple martini.

He gazed at me speculatively. “And yet you look less manic than you did before. You don’t have that caged, hunted look that I remember.”

“When was that?” I asked.

“Um…last Christmas maybe.”

“You’ve been stalking me for a while, then,” I said. “How come you didn’t ask me out before?”

“You haven’t been around,” he said, ordering a Guinness.

“I used to go out with that bouncer at Polly Maggoo. We split up four months ago. I’ve been avoiding my usual haunts ever since because he spies on me. I’ve been trying to leave him for two years. That’s probably why I looked like that.”

“But if you were trying to leave him for two years, how long were you with him altogether?” he asked incredulously.

“Well, two years,” I said. “I guess I never really wanted to go out with him in the first place. But I never plucked up the courage to leave him until this summer. He hit me.”

I reached for my drink with an unsteady hand, and Gilles took both of my hands so I couldn’t.

“I don’t mind if you drink. But let’s stop that association. You should only drink when you think about happy things.”

“But why? Why don’t you mind?” My drinking was something I hid from myself and others. Something shameful. Something that would make others reject me.

“I have my own pain,” he replied. “I know why you do it.”

In his eyes I saw a mirror of hurt and knew that here was a man who would understand. So I told him about the roller coaster that had been my emotionally controlling and abusive ex-boyfriend.

In return, he told me about his mother’s depression and his escape to Ireland, his love for his best friend’s girl, and his betrayal of their friendship. I told him about my disastrous history of relationships, my one-night stands in search of love. He told me about tunes he had composed in his melancholy and sang them to me whilst he played the guitar. His voice was smooth, deep and gentle. It made me cry. And when I cried, so did he.

That night we slept face to face in the small single bed in his dead grandmother’s rent-controlled apartment. Two fuck-ups…together at last.

Gilles, mindful of my past and my emotional state of mind where men were concerned, decided that our relationship wasn’t going to be based on sex. It was going to be based on love. He didn’t sleep with me that night. Nor the night after, nor the night after that. And with every night that passed where he didn’t have sex with me, I fell in love with him a little bit more. He was an angel. A curly haired, blue-eyed angel.

In the days that followed, I met Gilles’s mother, his aunt and his sister. When I spoke on the phone to my mother that week, I told her that I was in love. And even though it had only been two weeks since we’d met, I told her that he was coming to our family reunion that year, and the year after that, and for the rest of my life. Months passed, and we spent every night in each other’s company until we eventually decided to save the money I paid for an apartment I was never in, and moved in together.

We dug up all his dead grandmother’s crockery and threw huge disorganised fondue parties at her apartment in the 5th arrondissement. We wrote ridiculous dialogue for spoof porn movies and then filmed them fully dressed in silly wigs with our friends. We learnt to rollerblade and spent hours careening round Paris risking our lives ducking around fiercely driven Citroëns. We played multi-player Tetris stoned off our faces on his old Nintendo 64. And oh, how we laughed together.

Two and a half years later, I married him in the caves underneath the Bastille as our friends read passages from Saint-Exupéry’s Le Petit Prince. Afterwards, we dined at a Michelin-starred restaurant and pocketed the candies they gave us with coffee. It was unbelievably idyllic, and I thought my future was set.

2

I cheated on my husband three years after we were married with an ex-boyfriend. If ever there was a lover from my past who could seduce me, it was Stefanos. And I let myself be seduced…willingly.

Stefanos had been my first love…and my first orgasm. I was in high school, and he was home for Christmas from university. He was a grown-up. He wanted sex. And I never wanted to refuse it, let alone for someone I loved. I gazed up at him in the bedroom of the tumbledown house we used for parties. His friend was crashed out drunk on the bed opposite. I didn’t care, because at eighteen, you’re as horny as hell. We made love in that room and took long soapy baths afterwards. As I lay back in the bathtub against him, cracked tiles had never seemed so romantic.

Two weeks of loving, and then he was gone.

Then, over ten years later, I joined Facebook. Suddenly, he was there again. And my teenage self awoke, glistening with lazy lust.

In the weeks before we’d exchanged emails. There wasn’t much innuendo in them. But their regularity and pace had increased as we wrote more. I fooled myself into thinking that an innocent flirtation was harmless as long as we didn’t meet. But after six weeks of virtual yearning, bonding and joking, an opportune business trip to London washed away my remaining fortitude, and I recklessly headed off in denial towards my destiny.

When we met that night I’d brought a mutual friend…just in case I was tempted. My first love and his flatmate heated up the barbecue and toasted the air with Kansas City rib sauce. The wine flowed. Our fingers were sticky, and the conversation danced in the summer air as our laughter drifted over the walls of his back garden. Halfway through the evening my friend took me to the bathroom and asked me, “Are you going to fuck him or what?”

“No!” I said feebly. “I’m married.”

But it was no use. I wanted to. So much that I stayed late even though I knew what would happen. I was a victim of my own circumstance and uncomfortable in my monogamy. I was playing at being a grown-up but didn’t even know what a grown-up was.

It was not the first time in our relationship that I had got drunk and amorous — that brief kiss with a classmate when I graduated from business school, that fumbling under the bridge with my boss as he walked me home from a conference — but this, I decided, must be the last.

Because I could no longer deny it. This was neither brief nor fumbling. This was sex. And also love. I still loved Stefanos.

I was forced to confront the fact that something was very wrong in my current state of affairs. And with me. For this encounter had been engineered with purpose. I had ignored all warning signs and followed our connection to its conclusion even at the risk of destroying everything I loved. I had pursued past love at the expense of current love. A moment of passion versus a lifetime of love and stability.

I consulted my two best friends over the phone in the eight hours I had left before I returned home. Eight hours is not long to make a life-changing decision, but by cheating I had already irrevocably changed my life.

“OK, so you made a mistake,” said Linda, “but telling him will only hurt him. You’ll force his hand. Do you want a divorce?”

I didn’t. But wasn’t it fair that he should have been able to ask for one?

Even Charlotte, the best believer in honesty when it suited her purpose, said, “Believe me Louisa, he couldn’t survive without you right now. Just logistically speaking: he has no career, no qualifications. On top of feeling guilty for cheating, you’ll feel guilty for abandoning him. Or making him abandon you.”

Damned if I did. Damned if I didn’t.

“I don’t want a divorce, and I don’t want to hurt him,” I said. “But I’ve done it already. My choice now is whether to compound the hurt by lying and risk a bigger discovery later or tell him now and get rid of this.”

In that moment I was peculiarly proud of myself, even if I had nothing to be proud of. I was a cheater. I had betrayed trust. But truly, I spent those eight hours alternately weeping from guilt and shame whilst trying to strengthen my resolve. Because if there was anything left to salvage of my integrity, I no longer wanted to be a liar.

Finally, in desperation Linda said, “Do you realise what you are risking? You have huge issues around rejection yourself. If he leaves you, what will you do?”

Charlotte gave me another way out: “Do you think you have precipitated a rejection scenario? Have you just been a coward? If you want to break up with him, why don’t you just do it? You don’t have to tell him you cheated.”

My friends knew me too well. But apparently not enough to understand that this was not what I wanted.

“I don’t want to break up with him. I love him.”

“So why did you cheat?” came the retort from both.

“I was drunk.”

Yes, the little voice inside my head said, but you weren’t drunk when you went to London. When you organised the dinner. You just had to get madly drunk to carry it out. Any court in the land would convict you of premeditation.

Slam dunk! Judgement.

On my way back from London, the argument raged back and forth in my mind over whether or not I should tell him. Perhaps telling him was a pure act of selfishness on my part…after all, I still loved him and intended to stay with him for the rest of my life. It would do no good to tell him.

But didn’t we trust each other to tell the truth? To be whole people united instead of building our future on a tissue of lies? Was my act a symptom of a deeper-rooted unhappiness? Or was it simply a secret selfish desire to relive my youth, to reconnect with my first love? Was it really important? Was it worth causing my husband so much pain? If it wasn’t to happen again, why upset the applecart?

Because I could never conduct an affair and look him in the eye.

Because I couldn’t even do it without a copious amount of alcohol.

Because he was too good, too guileless and too innocent.

Because he was beautiful in body and spirit.

To look at him day after day knowing that I held a secret that could destroy both him and me in his eyes was impossible. I couldn’t let him love an illusion. And I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t tell him. I would fall apart because of the guilt. Because try as I might, I couldn’t find any justification for what I had done apart from that I still loved my first love.

Just not in the same way as Gilles. And I loved Gilles too.

I needed something to change…although at that point I wasn’t sure what could change. The only options before me were divorce or long-term therapy.

He knew something big was coming. The fact that I had only sent him one text that day, which was to confirm my arrival time, meant something was wrong. As I walked in the door, I said those infamous words…

“We need to talk.”

Oh, the enormity of cheating. The ultimate betrayal. How many tomes have been written on how to cope with infidelity? How many couples go through the scripts of adulterer-adulteree? I, as the cheater, assumed my role of the wayward, defensive-yet-apologetic spouse. My husband adopted the role of the jealous and hurt cuckold. He offered me a cup of tea…I took it from him, but still I could not force myself to say anything.

“So what happened?” he asked at last.

“I cheated on you.” And that’s all I could say.

So he asked again. “How long has it been going on?”

“It was just that one time.” Full stop.

“Who is it?”

“His name is Stefanos. Not that it matters.”

“Why doesn’t it matter?” he said, tiring of my one-line responses.

Then, with an avalanche of emotion that made my voice weird and high like I’d never heard it before, came words I didn’t even recognise. “Because it could have been anyone. I have been unhappy for a long time. I just didn’t realise it.”

“Why have you been unhappy?” He was bewildered, and rightly so. We still laughed. We still partied. We still threw enormously disorganised dinners.

I whispered it out because I knew it would hurt: “Because I see no future with you. You can’t hold down a job. You haven’t finished any qualification. You haven’t finished anything actually in your life. Your last job was a year ago and even then you went on sick leave for two months. I can’t depend on you for anything. I can’t build a family with you.”

I didn’t mention the big elephant in the room. That we hadn’t had sex for a month, and only a handful of times in the last year. Usually after alcohol.

Then he suddenly got very French. His shoulders puffed, his mouth twisted into a sneer and he said, “So you go and cheat, and I am the one in the wrong?”

Of course he was right, and I knew it.

“No. What I did was inexcusable, I know. But I think it is a symptom of the larger whole.”

For hours I spouted reasons about how my relationship with him was unsatisfactory. I listed all the reasons, all his failings. He was crying, and I hated myself.

But throughout my outpouring I said nothing of how ashamed I was. Of how my decision to cheat was a subconscious effort to prompt change because I had found myself too scared to talk to him about what I really wanted, what I really needed out of life. Love. Connection. And sex. Better sex.

I’d previously claimed that sex wasn’t important to me. Sex as a need? My mother would have been horrified.

Yes, my needs were covered by layer upon layer of denial. I was scrambling for reasons. But the truth was, even if he had had a successful career, I would have used it as an excuse to complain about neglect. He could never actually win. I was running a very common script, that of deciphering why he wasn’t enough for me and why I needed someone else — as if someone else could give me everything. As if there were one person who could be my Mr. Right and who could satisfy every ever-changing facet of my personality. At that point I still believed that this was possible…desirable…and necessary.

Once the first blow had fallen, the initial decision was made that we would try to avoid the divorce courts. We talked and talked about what had to change in our relationship to avoid this situation happening again. But we ended up stuck.

To his question “Do you still love him?”

My answer was “Yes.”

To his question “Do you still love me?”

My answer was also “Yes.”

I couldn’t get away from the fact that I held love in my heart for two men. One from long ago and one now.

To his question “Will it happen again?”

I replied “I don’t know.”

To Gilles’s credit, his reaction was not that I must choose. His anger did not consume him, and he did not act out of impulse. For one thing, Stefanos, my first love, had no intention of pursuing anything with me (he was my first love, but I was not his). In examining my feelings and what I could do to eradicate the memory of this other man, I discovered to my horror that I had love in my heart not only for my first love, but also for at least two other past boyfriends and a multitude of friends. Our relationship had to start with zero deception; otherwise it wouldn’t work.

So to his question “Do you want it to happen again?”

My answer was “Yes.”

The connection with someone that I had loved and still loved had been such a magical experience that in all honesty I couldn’t say that I regretted it. I was sincerely sorry for the hurt that my husband was feeling and for my betrayal of our contract. But in trying to be honest I had uncovered my deepest, darkest desire: I loved connecting with people. I loved falling in love. I loved touching someone else’s soul and feeling the thrill of a truly empathetic and private conversation. It was what made me come alive. And in many cases those people were people I continued to care about. Some connections happened in a matter of minutes, and the love lasted a lifetime. Good friends, male and female, with whom I had bonded in an instant and had built a relationship with over a period of years. I wanted the freedom to follow these relationships to their natural conclusion. Even if that conclusion was love…and sex.

The relationship with my first love was passionate — and would always be, no matter whether we pursued it or not. These things did not die in me, and I did not want them to. My marriage represented an ultimate commitment for me: an agreement to spend my life with someone. But if my agreement meant that I had to disable my inclination to bond with others — the very thing that had made me bond with my husband in the first place — then it was clearly something I could not stick to. Stopping me from forming relationships was asking me to be something I wasn’t. So my alternatives were to be alone for my life with the ability to form free bonds, or be married and limit — or completely stop — forming bonds with others.

All the reasons I had given in the first place — my dissatisfaction over his procrastination and lack of ambition — were true. They were true in that he did procrastinate and he did have a lack of ambition. But they were not the only reasons that I had looked elsewhere. I had looked elsewhere because of my inherent character.

That he had his own set of issues about his career didn’t stop me loving him and wanting to be with him. But it had made me realise more quickly that he couldn’t satisfy every side of me. I had three business degrees and a strong competitive streak, and he didn’t. I loved cheesy pop music, and he loved jazz. I loved to go out and party, and he loved to develop computer graphics. But at the same time I had so much in common with my husband in other areas of my life, sides that I wouldn’t find with anyone else. A deep understanding of how we were driven. And above all, love. But neither of us had a firm grasp on what love was.

“How can you still love me if you love someone else?” he demanded.

To which I simply said, “I don’t know how it is possible…but it is possible.”

“Then what you feel for me cannot be love.”

He turned away. His unhappiness shrouded him, and I clutched desperately for the broken straws.

“Why? Why can it not be? What is love if not this — the desire to be with you for the rest of my life? The desire to plan and build a future with you? Why am I so disappointed that I am unable to build a future with you if I do not love you? On the contrary, I love you very much. In fact, maybe it’s you who doesn’t love me. You want me to be unhappy and to squash parts of my personality because you can’t live with them.”

I realised that being able to be myself was even more important to me than my love for my husband. I could not change who I was to be with him. Was I promiscuous? Destined to be alone for the rest of my life? Undeserving of love? But with that realisation something had clicked into place. The dissatisfaction and internal conflict that I had felt throughout my life wasn’t due to my husband or my marriage or my career. It was because for the majority of my life I had been trying to be something that I wasn’t. I was not true to myself.

What’s wrong with being a slut? I wondered.

It means you have no respect for yourself or for your body, said my mother, metaphorically sitting on my shoulder.

But I don’t want to sleep around with numerous blokes or put myself in danger. I just want to be able to love many people. I love to love and be loved.

But clearly there was something wrong with that because promiscuity, they said, was a mental disorder. So the next day I took myself off for therapy.

“I cheated on my husband!” I announced dramatically, throwing down the gauntlet as if to say, “Judge me if you will!”

The therapist, a bald man whose head was so perfectly shiny that it looked like no single hair had ever grown there, said only, “Did you enjoy it?”

“I don’t really remember it, to be honest. Maybe. I was very drunk. But I know I don’t enjoy the guilt.”

“How is your sex life with your husband?” he asked.

“I think it’s normal. We both enjoy it when it happens. But that’s not very often nowadays. It’s a little mundane. But I guess that’s what happens when you are married.”

“Where do you get your idea of what being married should be like, then?” he enquired.

“Um, well, Hollywood…Jane Austen…my parents.” Wasn’t that where everyone got their marriage ideas from?

“And how is your parents’ relationship?”

“They’re divorced,” I said. “They hate each other.”

“But what about before they divorced? Were they loving?”

“Only if loving includes throwing plates,” I said with a hint of sarcasm.

“Ah!”

We were both silent for a moment. Then he said, “Of course, you realise that most of your values and behaviours are inherited from your parents. You see the ultimate commitment as a sexless state. You also see that marriage requires fidelity.”

I picked up on the second part because it was really what would let me off the hook and said hopefully, “So it doesn’t?” Finally a call to authority. If a doctor said it, was there hope? Was there such a thing as a non-monogamous marriage? I hadn’t heard of it.

“Why are you asking me?” he said, throwing it back in my face. “Surely that’s for you and your husband to decide.”

“But it’s already decided,” I said, wondering what branch of religion he subscribed to. “By definition. It’s in the vows.”

“In the Christian vows, yes,” he pointed out. “Do you believe in Christianity?”

“No,” I said firmly. “I’m an agnostic. Have been for years.” As if indeed a state of doubt and questioning could be termed in any way a firm belief.

“So why do you believe in a Christian marriage?”

One sentence changed my world. I didn’t believe in Christian marriage and had been outspoken against it for years, albeit without any framework. But what other kind of marriage was there?

With bewildering speed and deafening bangs, everything else started falling into place as well. How many well-thumbed values and standards did I have that were inherited, unquestioned and constrictive? The fabric of my existence was woven from threads that I had played no part in making. A judgement here, a value there, an opinion decided upon to please someone else and never disputed. Nothing could be a given anymore unless it had been brutally tested and added to my repertoire (and even then I reserved the right to change it).

My husband felt the bottom plummeting out of his world. He, as I, believed that it was impossible to continue being married if I could not at least promise that I would try to remain faithful. Fidelity was one of the cornerstones of marriage as we knew it. If I felt the desire to bond with other people, then our marriage was over.

In our society, we are conditioned to think that you can only feel passion and be intimate with one person at a time. The choice is forced upon us: married and faithful…or single and non-exclusive. The princess gets married and lives happily ever after; the fairy tale never ends in consensual, mutual non-monogamy.

But my therapist had planted seeds. The next few days we limped through communicating whilst I spent hours throwing words around in Google. “Love without limits,” “open marriage”…and what I found made me hope.

But the word hope is terribly understated. My stomach was heated wires; my gut was a hollow vacuum. I could suddenly touch and taste the future. There was a concept and a name for what I wanted.

It was called polyamory. The more I read, the more things made sense.

3

“Poly” is from the Greek meaning “many.”

“Amory” is from the Latin meaning “love.”

The clue was in the name. The polyamory philosophy was of acceptance. That some of us were not meant to be monogamous. This didn’t mean cheating or betrayal. It meant that non-monogamy could be carried out honestly, ethically, responsibly and without hurt.

I’d heard of polygamy, the institutionalised, patriarchal, Mormon-like paradigm. One man. Many women. One penis. Many vaginas. But polyamory, it seemed, was the opposite. Freedom. Trust and equality. Women too were allowed to express love for more than one. And, for that matter, the love didn’t have to involve a penis. Gender was fluid. Sexuality was fluid. Relationships were fluid. The structure was not imposed, but instead evolved. Unlike polygamy, relationships could be defined in various levels of seriousness. It appeared that I could even have a short-term fling, if underpinned by the flutterings of love. To put it bluntly: I could have my cake and eat it too.

Polyamorists held a different view on love from the one I knew. It was not one true love; it could be several. Love was not a scarce resource. I could love someone one hundred percent and someone else also one hundred percent. It was instead something that functioned as a miracle, the loaves and the fishes: the more you give, the more you have the ability to give. Was I polyamorous? The lightness in my heart told me yes. I was like a marble, settling into a hole I’d always searched for.

But in my Internet searches I came across many who did not accept the opinion that monogamy was a choice. Monogamy was, as far as they were concerned, the one — and only —size that fit all. I had been brought up to believe this too. But the more I examined it, the more I came to question it.

In the discussion forums, there were those who considered monogamy an evolutionary process, an ideal state that could be attained by one man and one woman and which, in conjunction with their religious beliefs, justified the “rightness” of the goal. It was very difficult to argue with their beliefs, as they could not be proved or disproved; a belief is neither right nor wrong — it just “is.”

But the bottom line was that their opinions weren’t important. My husband’s was.

So I carried my discoveries home with trepidation.

“Gilles…” I said, as laid my printed articles out on the kitchen table. “Can you read these and let me know what you think?”

And in an attempt to legitimise my desire, I added, “A doctor wrote them.”

Feeble. I moved quietly around the kitchen fixing dinner, on tenterhooks, waiting for an explosion.

Which didn’t come.

During those last few weeks, I had come to realise how much my husband loved me. So much so that he was willing to listen to me even in the midst of his own personal pain and shock.

To my surprise he was smiling. “What were you expecting my reaction to be?” He looked at my anxious face.

“I didn’t know how you would react. Just because something is written down, it doesn’t necessarily mean you will accept it. No matter what my feelings may be.”

“Louisa, you never cease to amaze me. I’ve seen you overcome many things, and I knew our marriage would be an adventure. You’re examining values that society has laid down and tossing them out of the window. There aren’t many people who could do what you’re doing.”

“Or who would be stupid enough to do it!” I said with a rueful laugh.

“There’s a thin line between clever and stupid,” he said, quoting from Spinal Tap.

“Exactly. Large bread,” I quoted back.

“Polyamory.” He rolled the word around his mouth to see how it tasted.

“Sounds a bit mathematical,” I said.

“Well, my father’s going to love this!”

Gilles’s relationship with his father had never been an easy one, and as I watched him chuckling, I thought maybe he was enjoying this as yet another tool to build his barricade of rebellion. Like not finishing his qualifications had been.

“This isn’t just a way to annoy your father, is it? Is this something that actually appeals to you?”

Gilles quietened down, but I could still see feathers of excitement floating out from the wicked blue of his eyes. And there I saw the man from almost seven years ago, the man with whom I had fallen in love. He looked happier than he had in a long time. “I’ve been reading today too,” he said.

“Oh?”

“Remember Ron?”

Ron Smothermon was the author of our favourite self-help book, Winning through Enlightenment. In it he bluntly stated that there was no good or bad, there were only acts or consequences, and it was a matter of judgement as to what was good and bad. Pretty difficult to accept when you considered child abuse and murder.

“I was on chat today with Alex. He asked me what held us together if we weren’t bound by fidelity. So I started reading. What I came up with was this.” He opened the book and pointed to the passage.

I read: “When there is no choice not to be in a relationship, then there is no choice to be in the relationship.”

Gilles looked at me expectantly, waiting for me to come to the same aha! moment that he had earlier.

It didn’t take long. “So the only reason we are together is because we choose to be together?”

“Right!” he said. “And there should be no other reason. It’s the best reason of all.”

But once we had started to reflect on opening our marriage, it was difficult to know how to go about it with the kind of respect and honesty that we wanted to characterise our decision. How much respect was enough? If I met someone in a bar, would I have to phone my husband before the first chat?

The first drink? The first kiss?

It seemed sleazy to trawl around clubs with the one-liner “I’m married, but my husband’s OK with it,” like some cheating nympho.

“The thing is,” Gilles predicted gloomily, “that you will be able to score with ten blokes before I can make a move on anyone at all. I’m much shyer than you are, and I don’t have much social interaction outside of home.”

But that wasn’t quite right. And I said so.

“You aren’t shy at all. You’re insular, it’s different. You’re fantastic in social situations, when they happen. But if you made an effort to pull yourself away from the computer screen once in a while, maybe they would happen more often. How about the gym?”

“You don’t hit on women there!” he said, scandalised. “You just enjoy the bums in Lycra!”

“OK,” I said. “I agree. But there are women there every day. Fit women. Women with whom you have something in common. And women you can make friends with first.”

Another thought struck me. “You’ve had loads of conversations with girls when you’ve been out with the dogs. They’re babe magnets.”

Our stab at pre-children commitment had been two black-and-tan dachshunds called Casanova and Cleopatra.

The bizarre nature of our conversation hit us. And we started to laugh. I was advising my husband on how to get together with other women.

“Well, how are you going to meet someone, then?” he asked.

“My guess is just that it will happen naturally. I’m not going out advertising that I’m available,” I said.

“Yeah, but you always get guys trying to pick you up. And no one actually cares whether you are married or not.”

I frowned. That wasn’t how I saw polyamory. I was already a convert in less than twenty-four hours. “But that’s not part of the deal,” I said. “I want them to care about me. And I want them to be friends with you, Gilles.”

“’Cause that’s not going be weird!” he said, grimacing.

I tapped the article. “It says here, ‘If you can’t invite your wife’s lover round to dinner then it probably isn’t polyamory.’ That means we all have to be friends.”

The enormity of what we were looking at threw us once more. How on earth were we to go about it? In this instance, the problem would arise when I wanted to be open about it and introduce my new boyfriend to my husband. The concept of openness would frighten people away, whilst cheating in private was considered relatively acceptable. Oh, the irony! Even less likely would be a situation where we could maintain the two relationships if the new person was not fully prepared to go through some jealousy battles of his or her own. They would need to accept that our marriage would continue and be prepared to share each of us, as we would have to share their love and time as well with any new partner.

“What if you fall in love with someone and decide to leave me?” I spoke rhetorically, in that I was afraid of what the answer might be and wasn’t sure I wanted it answered.

And when his answer did come, I didn’t like it.

“I can’t know what will happen. We just have to trust that we love each other enough.”

“I know I love you,” I said. “God knows after the past three months of hell, I know that much. But no one knows what will happen. Maybe we’re bat-shit crazy.”

“What’s the alternative?” he asked. “Do we go back to monogamy? I’ve had close encounters of my own, you know. There was a girl once…” he trailed off, looking at me uncertainly.

It was a moment. A moment when I felt my heart rise to my throat. It was also the moment that, despite my own infidelity and my own guilt, I knew…there was no going back, for either of us.

“Go on,” I said, holding my breath. Was this going to be what polyamory felt like all the time? Like I was on the edge of a precipice?

“I didn’t do anything,” he said hurriedly. “But I felt a lot for her. I worked with her, but I was confused about my feelings. I still loved you. I still love you.”

I sat for a while in silence. I waited for the hurt to subside. And found what I was looking for. Gratitude. Gratitude that he was able to be honest with me. Gratitude that he too was human.

“Thank you,” I said.

“Is that sarcastic?” he asked nervously.

“No,” I replied genuinely. “Thank you for telling me. I love you. You are human. And thank God I am not leading you somewhere you don’t want to go. Tell me, do you think it would have made you happy to be with this girl?”

“I think so, yes,” he said uncertainly.

“Would it have made you happy to know that I would have been happy for you to be with her?” I continued.

“Yes,” he said. This time it was sure. The lights came on in the street below our apartment. And our world brightened.

He grasped my hands, and we felt a searing exchange of love pass between us. How amazing it felt to be able to have this kind of conversation together. I felt like crying out of sheer joy and relief. In one bound, my love for him tripled.

This journey was together.

4

When my husband and I wrote our wedding vows, we tried to define what we meant by our love and commitment. This is what we said to one another:

“Real love is more than the yearnings we feel; more than the warmth and glow, the excitement and romance. It is also caring as much about the welfare and happiness of the other as you do about your own. It is about taking risks: risking telling the truth; taking responsibility for oneself and for one’s words and actions; risking being open and vulnerable; risking and accepting honest communication and working together towards common goals.

Love is not total absorption in each other; it is looking outward in the same direction — together. Love makes burdens lighter, because you divide them. It makes joys more meaningful, because you share them. It makes you stronger so that you can reach out and become involved with life in ways that you dared not do alone.”

That night we read them again and both agreed that what we were doing was in accordance with our original agreement. To love one another and to embrace life with honesty and responsibility, despite the risks.

But our risks were not anyone else’s and shouldn’t be. Unless they too embraced those risks with joy and recognition of a truth that we thought could be the reward. Neither of us wanted anyone to be misled by our situation, nor did we want to cause unnecessary hurt.

Although our concept was to build multiple relationships, we had no idea how this was going to be possible. Our definition of polyamory was the freedom to love where we chose. We supposed that one-night stands could spark off the connection as well as long-time friendships, even if there was no one on our radar at that time. The talking hadn’t stopped by the time we got to bed that night.

“But if we open our marriage, then we shouldn’t set limits,” I argued. “Otherwise what’s the point? Limits shut doors.”

“Yes, but there are degrees of ‘open,’” he said. “I don’t want you just jumping random guys for the hell of it.”

“I don’t want that anyway. Polyamory is about respect,” I said. The expert after reading two whole books on the subject. “And that goes for you too. You’re my husband and I respect you.”

“How are you going to handle this freedom?” he wanted to know. “Are you in the right place to make non-destructive decisions?”

I assured him — and myself — that I was. But all the same, doubts flapped around us in the dark. How much could we open our relationship without losing it? Blinded by the overwhelming possibilities of our future, the subject in itself was daunting. Exciting but scary. We needed a framework.

In the land where there were no rules, we got to define them.

This is what we came up with.

Rule number 1: Any newcomer had to be fully aware of the situation.

It was about consent. It wasn’t fair for someone to get involved with either of us if they didn’t know about polyamory or had misconceptions about it. It wasn’t a free-for-all. It was complex and difficult. A challenge for everyone involved.

Privately, I thought if I announced our philosophy during a casual bar conversation, it would be enough to send anyone screaming to the hills. But on second thought, it was probably a good test of the type of person I myself would appreciate. Someone who, like us, would be slightly awed by the idea and interested enough to consider the possible ramifications. And not someone so scared of society’s opinions that they would be prevented from pursuing what we considered to be a giant leap for mankind.

Rule number 2: Protection, protection, protection.

Not second in importance, obviously, but surely second in sequence of time. If we were opening our relationship to more than one person, then above all we loved and respected our partners enough to make sure we were safe. But how safe was safe? Could we indulge in oral sex without protection? Was it the same for men and for women? We carried out endless debates and research before we came to our final conclusions. Condoms were a must during full sex, but otherwise not. At this point we paused for thought. Condoms could break. And result not only in disease, but also something potentially more life changing: a baby.

Legally, my husband would by default be the father of any offspring that I produced within our marriage unless he denied paternity. To deny it, he would have to sign a legally binding document saying that the conception had taken place without his knowledge or consent. Which would be untrue. Even more complex would be the issues that arose for him if he fathered a child with someone other than me. A whole new era of insecurity and jealousy would emerge. For whilst I was not jealous of his emotions, a child would take up a lot of his time and leave me out of the loop. And that was only the start of it.

Rule number 3: The relationship should not be harmful to either of us.

My husband therefore had the right to closely vet my possible amorous interests as to whether they had any harmful effects on me, caused him any direct distress or seemed to undermine our marriage.

How was harm to be defined? The pain that we had just gone through had in the final analysis provided growth and learning. Was all pain worthwhile from this perspective? And if we were allowing each other freedom, did having a right to veto prospective partners negate this and objectify them?

Our rules, far from settling the issues, opened up a world of new possibilities. I signed up for email lists in the hope that others had considered these issues before us. Some groups were closed, and I waited for permission to join the email lists, which came begrudgingly and slowly from the group members. It appeared I was entering into a cliquey world where new polyamorists weren’t welcome. Despite all our reading, we had no practical field experience. We asked stupid questions. And were attacked. I was in the minority. The lists I joined included polyamorists who were part of other groups — crossovers from the bisexual groups — and who had at least two different partners of different genders.

When my terribly excited introduction was attacked by the members, I retreated. Far from being open-minded, many wondered what on earth a heterosexual couple with no inclination towards kink or bisexuality could want from them.

This was not what I had been led to believe. Polyamory, as I understood it, represented open love with respect and integrity. And unsure of where to turn, I wondered for the zillionth time whether this was all a hideous mistake.

But the thought had barely formed in my mind when I received an email from a couple living in England. Once swingers, they had discovered their inclination towards polyamory by chance with another couple. Their relationship had not worked out. But they dreamt of endless possibilities of communities and relationships. Just like us.

All along I had been careful to differentiate my desire for love from my longing for a purely sexual thrill. Falling in love was a one-in-a-million chance. Falling in love with another couple was a one-in-a-billion chance. Or so I thought.

5

When I first got their email, I sighed. Swingers. Yet another misalignment with my vision of utopia.

“Are you going to write back?” asked Linda, my chief bridesmaid, whom I had just told about our new philosophy.

“Of course I will,” I said. “Not to do so would be impolite. But honestly, how on earth do they think it’s possible that we fall in love with them both?”

“His name is Morten,” she said thoughtfully. “That doesn’t sound British, does it?”

“No, it’s Swedish I think. Aren’t A-ha Swedish? I love A-ha.” Suddenly, I imagined myself in the video of “Take on Me.”

“I think A-ha are Norwegian,” she said. “But similar. They’re all terribly liberated up there. Just look at their mixed saunas.”

Images of bronzed, naked Swedes with enormous blond moustaches swam into my head. Doing unspeakable acts in hot wooden huts.

“Let’s see the pic again,” I said.

We both peered at the photo of Morten and his wife and decided it was definitely not Morten Harket of A-ha fame. Pity, I would have gone for him any day.

“But you can’t really tell anything in photos,” I said. “They don’t capture movement or depth. God, I feel like I’m preparing for a bid at auction: ‘For sale, one couple. Will travel!’”

“Yes,” my friend agreed, “it’s all a bit tacky, really.”

Later that day I replied to their email with a vague compliment about their appearance and a brush-off:

“It would be a miracle if Gilles and I both fell for the both of you — although handy I suppose — not because you aren’t good-looking, but because we are looking for deeper relationships than swinging and it is tricky to predict love like that. I know that polyamory covers a multitude of configurations, but we are essentially looking to build boyfriend/girlfriend relationships (we are both hetero as far as we know) as opposed to dating or recreational fun.”

I doubted I would ever hear back from them. But four hours later, I did. Gilles perked up when I forwarded him the email.

“Aha!” he said. Not the band, but an interjection of interest.

It presented him with the opportunity of building a relationship over the computer, a far easier proposition than in person.

“Where can I find their photo?” he said.

My judgement when I received the new couple’s first email was that swinging was a meat market. Swingers were no different from cattle. I, who considered myself liberated, passed the same unfair judgement on a couple I had never met. Swingers. Disgusting. But if the same judgement was passed on me with regards to my polyamorous lifestyle, I would cry over it for a week. In the wise words of Justin Timberlake, “What goes around, comes all the way back around.”

Just then, their response appeared:

“Dear Louisa

Thanks for your reply. From what you are writing it sounds like we are looking for exactly the same thing. If we were to meet the right couple, we would also want it to be serious relationships calling each other boyfriend/girlfriend. We are not afraid of true love outside our marriage. In the long term we would like to live, if not in the same house, then at least as next-door neighbours with our poly partners.”

I wasn’t convinced. But a few days later, a Facebook friend request came through from Morten. On the back of it, I received an email that shot a cannonball through my misconceptions and started a chain of events that would make my cup — and my email inbox — overflow for the next thirty days.

In the early days of our courtship, Gilles had invited me to a Tuck & Patti concert. Finger-pickin’ good guitarists and all round musicians. I had been still at that stage where I was enamoured of all his tastes, even if ordinarily such a concert would necessitate my munching three packets of caffeine pills. Unfortunately, I did not have any with me, and so I fell fast asleep. For an hour.

“So you don’t like acoustic guitar?” Gilles grinned at me later.

I thought, Thank God he’s already enough in love with me not to dump me for the tiny white lie I told him.

I said, “It’s not that I don’t like it. It’s beautiful.” Pause to gag. “I just prefer other types of music more.”

“Like what? Maybe we could go and see some concerts we both like?”

“Um. Bon Jovi? Def Leppard?”

Gilles visibly blanched.

Eventually we found one song that we had in common: “The Bad Touch” by Bloodhound Gang. And that only for its explicit lyrics, which we then learnt off by heart and sang to each other. Other than that, he listened to Joni Mitchell on headphones, and I went to Toto concerts with my best friend.

Years later, but only two months before we met Morten and Elena, I displayed my cheesy music taste to the world on Facebook by posting a link to the ’80s parody tune “Pop! Goes My Heart” as a two fingers at any so-called intelligent music lovers out there.

The next day I received an email from Morten:

“You have ruined me young lady ;-) Since last night I’ve been constantly humming that gluey tune, which seems to be stuck in my head — ‘I wasn’t gonna fall in love again, but then Pop! Goes my Heart!’”

Something warmed in me. That part of me that adored mainstream rock and pop for its comforting regularity in chorus and rhythm. That part of me that had always been shamed by my mother because if it wasn’t BBC Radio 4, then it was not suitable. Morten and I didn’t know each other, but he loved what I loved. I wasn’t stupid because I didn’t understand jazz and didn’t have acoustic guitar on my playlists. In reading his reassurance, my love for cheesy music finally felt validated.

That day I wrote him six emails. We were forming a relationship.

In challenging my values, I had reached very few firm conclusions. To be honest, often I would change my mind as soon as I had reached a conclusion.

But one thing was abundantly clear to me and remains steadfastly so: human beings are hard-wired to make relationships. We do so in many capacities, fleeting and long-lasting, between different sexes, both inside and outside of the confines of the almost universally accepted partnership we called marriage.

Some form relationships in secret liaisons; others live unhappily and unwillingly through their triads like Princess Diana, Prince Charles and Camilla; and still more try to shoehorn themselves into an exclusive partnership, but fail, cheat and divorce, becoming serial monogamists. Believing that it was necessary to stop loving someone in order to start loving someone else.

But our relationship was happening in parallel.

By the end of twenty-nine emails, thirty-two pages of text and four days, Morten and Elena had booked tickets to come and see us in Paris. Or, rather, to visit Paris. Stay in a hotel, which happened to be in the vicinity of our home…and maybe pop by for a coffee if we happened to be around. No expectations.

I was in love with Gilles all over again. I was on a beam of light from the prospect of meeting someone who liked Bryan Adams. I was also infatuated with the cleaner in our building, the tramp who sat outside the Blockbuster video store (who got a lot of money that week) and indeed anyone who crossed my path!

My husband had been busy getting to know the female half of the couple, Elena, through his preferred seduction medium, instant messenger.

As neither Gilles nor Elena had daytime jobs, their chat conversations bounced back and forth between them, and the speed at which their new relationship developed was ten times that of mine and Morten’s — which by any normal standards was a whirlwind. Having befriended her as well on Facebook, I scoured the photos of the two of them. Elena had flowing dark hair. High cheekbones. Eyes with zing. And she was a model.

Some were professional shots, on set or at launch parties, and others were more casual. But even in the “morning after” ones she looked perky and stylish. In comparison to me, who after any kind of party looked terribly in pain, with hair that could grease several cake tins and circles under my eyes, which looked like they’d been bitten by a few mosquitoes.

Jealousy was not a green-eyed monster. It was a blue-eyed English girl. And her name was Louisa.

6

Depth of affection is very difficult to judge. It is intangible.

So humans often measure depth of affection by units of time. The amount of time spent with one person may be used to prove how much love is felt. We are programmed by society to rank our love and apportion time accordingly. As soon as we realise the equation time = love, we demand that our best friends in the playground swear eternal friendship forever and forsake all others: “You are only my second-best friend, but you can be my best friend for two weeks until Helen comes back from having her appendix out.”

Of course, it rarely lasts.

But as we get older, we recognise that we can have several best friends and a few more with whom we enjoy specialised interests. And an even larger circle of mates. And the balance for adults changes as people grow at different rates and their priorities change with them.

This thinking, though, never applies to romantic relationships. If partners are very lucky or very skilled, then they grow together within a couple, by pruning the parts of themselves that do not fit into the relationship. Maintaining any type of long-term relationship means modifying oneself and necessitates compromise. But the choices are often limited to a binary decision. His way or her way. In more advanced relationships, a third solution may be found: in business lingo, the “win-win” solution. But why limit the choice to three solutions?

I was not the same person at twenty that I was at thirty. I would not be the same person at forty. And hopefully, that was only the halfway point of my life. And yet there was still a stigma attached to divorce, because one was supposed to marry for life, whether that life lasts five, twenty or sixty more years.

Any marriage ending in divorce was designated a failure. Society told me I should continue to prune myself to fit with the same person year upon year upon year. Sometimes pruning would be healthy, and I would flourish. Sometimes I would be forced to squash parts of myself that were fundamentally me — the sacrifice of myself to make my marriage work.

“She’s very pretty,” I said, trying to be the polyamorist that I had declared myself to be. I ignored some gnawing discomfort that had started to bounce off my diaphragm. Rather like acid reflux.

“Tu m’étonnes,” he said enthusiastically. “Lovely looking. Her photos are hot, hot, hot.”

Hot. That word told me a lot. Because from previous discussions I knew what he really meant.

“You mean she wore high-heeled boots in several photos? I know you like boots. But just because she wears them out doesn’t mean she’ll wear them in bed.”

I was the look-into-my-eyes-and-tell-me-you-love-me type. And trampling on someone with boots during sex was not my way to say I love you. I’d done it a little back in the beginning. You know, in that part of the relationship where you try stuff out to please your new boyfriend. But it wasn’t my thing. Our so-called win-win solution in this case had been an effort on my part to wear my high heels in bed on our anniversary. Wild.

“Well, I know it’ll suit you if she likes that stuff,” said the mature adult.

That stuff! repeated my puritan upbringing. Not prejudiced at all.

Slut! screamed the blued-eyed monster in my head.

You are a failure as a wife! boomed my conscience. It reverberated around my mind, echoing in the caverns of my body.

FAILURE, FAILURE, FAILURE!

Elena and I had long chats on instant messenger. I didn’t mention that I had doubts. After all, that wasn’t polyamory.

But, almost against my will, I found myself getting to like her. She was passionate and outspoken where I was reserved and stubborn. Along with my pot of admiration, however, I also felt perverse resentment. She grabbed life with both hands. How come she could speak out on her views and I could not? I was British. Polite to a fault. I minded my Ps and Qs. Stayed out of other people’s business. And said sorry when other people stepped on my toes. Elena had been involved in green politics, demanded organic food (and knew a lot about it), asked for and received the best service in restaurants, and kindly lectured one drunken girl in the street about all the dangers of binge drinking as she accompanied her home, two miles in the opposite direction of where she lived. That was Elena all over. She had an opinion about everything. And, most annoyingly, could almost always back it up with a ton of research. And went out of her way to help people who couldn’t or didn’t want to help themselves. That my husband fancied the pants off her had nothing to do with it. Yeah, right!

I found myself spending a lot of time in my bath. A surrogate amniotic sac, it comforted me when I was feeling insecure: a warm haven where I felt safe and suspended from reality. Whatever that was.

Because I was falling in love with Morten. I loved Gilles with a fury, but Morten was scattering fairy dust on my days. Everywhere I looked, I saw tinsel and beauty. Mid-November saw the first frosts and made crystals that hung off cobwebs. Achingly resplendent and all tempered with poignancy at its fleeting duration. I was on top of the world, but at that height, it was very scary. I asked myself again and again, Do you still love Gilles? Are you just kidding yourself?

But if there was one thing steady in my world, it was my husband and my love for him. It was certain that I loved him. Even if nothing else was. And really, nothing else was.

This one thought kept me sane. If he felt about me the same way that I felt about him, then it must have been possible to love and fall in love at the same time.

But Elena was not only a model. She was also highly likely to satisfy him more in bed than I was. Should I have made more of an effort to adopt his more kinky preferences? Why didn’t it please me to please my husband that way? Was this something I could overcome? If he was getting his needs satisfied elsewhere, would he continue to love me? Want me?

They were due to arrive in three weeks’ time. Borrowed time. Gilles and I reassured each other verbally, emotionally and physically. The sex had never been so good. We said we were polyamorous…but it didn’t feel that way.

“How will you feel if I kiss her in front of you?” he asked.

“How will you feel if I kiss him in front of you?” I replied.

“You can’t answer a question with a question!”

“OK. Well I guess I’ll feel better if I’m kissing him,” I replied, kissing Gilles.

And for three weeks we played the hare and the tortoise. First one of us would whiz ahead in our respective relationships, and then the other. Not that it was a competition. No way.

One day I arrived home from work to be greeted by Gilles hopping excitedly by the drinks cabinet. It looked like a celebration was in order. But I didn’t know about what.

“I’ve heard her voice,” he said, barely able to contain himself. “She sounds so cute. We talked for three hours.”

“Tell me more,” I said, dumping my bags and slamming the door in an effort to stop the hammering in my heart. “What did you speak about?”

“We discussed music. She played me some Imogen Heap down the phone. I really love it. And she cried when I played her ‘Blue’ by Joni.”

The coup de grâce. The way to Gilles’s heart was not through his stomach. It was through Joni Mitchell. And I felt punched once more in mine.

Despite the fact that this very day Morten and I had sloppily declared our slogan to be the line “It’s no better to be safe than sorry” from “Take on Me,” I started to be nasty about her. And it. And them. We were building fragile, delicate overtures in a new world, and I set about systematically destroying them with a few well-chosen words.

“You should take her to one of your brilliantly stimulating Tuck & Patti concerts,” I said sarcastically. Gilles started to smile and then realised I was being mean. And blinked in surprise. His wife was never mean.

“Maybe she wouldn’t fall asleep like I did. Or you can cry together at Radiohead. Thank God I won’t be subjected to it anymore.”

Gilles looked at me. He was confused. And I was glad. At least I hadn’t lost my power to hit him where it hurt.

“You seem to get along with her very well. I guess if this is divorce then it’s the nicest way to do it,” I started twitching my mouth from side to side in an effort not to cry. It got faster and faster until I looked like Samantha from Bewitched on coke.

“Why would you say ‘if this is divorce’?” he said gently.

“Because you have more in common with her than you do with me,” I said. “You spent hours on the phone talking with her and when I get home all we do is watch Friends. Or House. Or Cheers. Despite the fact we’ve seen them all at least fifty times.”

“But this is a different phase of the relationship. We read about this, don’t you remember? Polyamorists call it NRE, new relationship energy. You and I had this at the beginning of our relationship. We couldn’t tear ourselves away from each other for six months.”

It was true. But then…was not now.

“Yes,” I said, “but even then I was the one who learnt chess and started rollerblading to be a part of your activities. I couldn’t tear myself away from you. I made all the effort to be a part of your life. I even looked up quotes from Monty Python to be with you.”

“No one forced you to do that. But I thought it was very sweet,” he said.

“It wasn’t sweet. It was desperate. I’ve always made all the effort. We wouldn’t even be married if it wasn’t for me. You started having panic attacks at getting the paperwork together and suggested we postpone it. I was the one who suggested we get married when I got that well-paid job.”

“I would have asked you eventually. It was part of the plan,” he said.

“Yes, but you didn’t.”

“But I would’ve.”

“But you didn’t,” I said, spitting the “d” of “didn’t.”

“You just got in first, as usual!” he said, shaking his head.

My pile of resentment was starting to smoulder, and it took very little for it to burst into flame.

“Well, that says a lot about us. Maybe you don’t want to be polyamorous. Maybe you just want to be with Elena. Maybe you just don’t love me anymore. So if I am always first, here it is on the table. Let’s talk divorce!”

The dreaded d-word. Gilles’s crime had been to share music tastes with a woman, with whose husband I was having an emotional affair.

“I’ve done this. I have brought us to the point of divorce because of polyamory,” I said in total despair.

“No, you haven’t,” he said, exhausted at my histrionics, but I couldn’t stop.

“How can you say that?” I demanded. “I cheated on you and then encouraged you to find another woman. Not even that, I actually found her for you from the forum!”

“I don’t want to replace you,” he insisted, “but it’s great to share some passions with Elena. You are both very different. Polyamory is complementary. Come on, you know that.”

I knew all the theory. And supported it wholeheartedly. I also wanted Gilles to be happy. But I didn’t want to make myself unhappy in order for that to happen.

“Look, Louisa, you and I love each other. But we couldn’t have carried on the way we were. Right now you are enjoying rediscovering parts of yourself that you didn’t experience with me. And I am doing the same thing. The fact that this is causing you pain is understandable, given your need to be perfect all the time. But remember I love you as you are, without you having to like Joni Mitchell or Monty Python.”

“But I do like Monty Python,” I said in a small voice.

“And I’m glad that I helped you discover it,” he said, putting his arm around me, “and now we can discover a whole lot more with Morten and Elena.”

“I feel like I’m losing you,” I sobbed.

He hugged me close, “You’re not losing me, just as I am not losing you. You are sharing me, but it doesn’t mean you have any less of me. I still love you just as much — in fact, even more because you can let me explore my own character with someone else.”

Part of the thrill of new relationships was exploring common and contrasting facets of each other’s personalities. Parts that might have remained hidden if it weren’t for the other person. But the fission and friction of personalities that happened at the beginning, even with Gilles and me, had gradually tapered off to a melding of comfortable and loving trust — in itself beautiful and absolutely worthy of attainment. But now we were four very different people trying to keep the harmony that we had already achieved within our original couples, and we were re-exposing those parts of ourselves that had previously caused friction. Polyamory was sparking evolution and revolution, whereas monogamy had allowed us to settle around a comfortable median of stagnancy.

If there was one thing Gilles and I weren’t any longer, it was stagnant.

I had joined the gym, and this in itself was a landmark. I lost three kilos in the first week. My terror at being compared to a model overrode my aversion to moving my arse.

“My wife tried everything,” Gilles remarked dryly, “apart from eating less and exercising. Then she got a new boyfriend!”

Fortunately he benefited too, which soon stopped him poking fun at me.

In the second week we started to speak on the phone. I called Morten every lunchtime when he was out power walking. Clearly, he was also trying to get in shape.

“We’ll meet for a drink and a chat. No expectations,” he said.

By that point we’d invented new terms for each other. Acronyms were all we ever heard in our respective businesses. He was a programmer; I was a financial analyst. At work we talked in code most of the time and were constantly pissed off that our managers invented so many obscure acronyms. So he became my PVB. I was his PVG. It stood for poly-virtual-boyfriend and poly-virtual-girlfriend. It stood for our hope for a future together and our ridicule of a conformity we newly despised.

7

Our relationship might have been virtual, but it seemed we were already in love. And if falling in love is indeed a wash of oxytocin flooding our systems, then there was no question we had it in abundance. Our acronyms, as geeky as they were, signalled that we had both, over the course of two weeks, changed the course of our lives.

And yet we were terrified. We hadn’t met. We hadn’t even seen each other.

But then in the third week we did. On the webcam I’d bought earlier that day.

“But you’re beautiful,” he breathed out after we had spent five whole minutes gazing at each other in silence. I couldn’t speak. So I wrote in the chat window.

“So are you…”

I touched the screen where his lips were and longed to kiss them. He had blue eyes paler than mine. They were the same colour as light reflecting off the ocean. Fire and ice.

We gazed some more. I took in the curve of his jaw and the confidence in his stare. His smile was uneven. Sexy. I felt my groin jump in a way I hadn’t felt before and yet recognised it instinctively as the madness of lust. My brain knew it, and my body ached from it. I felt wanton. Reborn. And desperate to feel his body pressed against mine. Physical attraction had been relatively unimportant in my world. But now it was the only thing that existed. I had thought I was fallen-in-love ten minutes ago. But now I was falling more. And more. And more. He leaned in closer and kissed the camera.

“I don’t know how you got such a negative perception of yourself,” he said. “You got me so scared. You told me you were like a big fat Italian mama. And here I was falling in love with someone I didn’t know whether I would be physically attracted to.”

I finally spoke. I said, “I was fat, but I lost six kilos in the last two weeks.”

“Stand up and do a twirl,” he said.

I stood up and turned around so quickly that the webcam didn’t catch it.

“Again, more slowly please.”

I turned again so that the webcam caught two frames.

“I feel like a goldfish!” I said.

“I don’t want you to feel like a goldfish. It’s just that I can’t get enough of you. When I’m not emailing you, I’m thinking about you. When I’m not talking to you, I still hear your voice. I can only see part of your face on this damn camera and there is no zoom-out button.” He stabbed the keyboard with his finger.

I knew exactly how he was feeling. I wanted to cup his chin, feel his breath on my neck, trace the lifeline on his palm. Spend hours exploring his body, see him shiver at my touch. Hold him in my hands and devour him.

I was obsessed with someone I didn’t know. Someone I’d never met. And someone who was turning me on eight hundred miles away. More than my husband in the next room did. It was earth-shattering. Mind-blowing. Amazing but also horrifying. But no matter how horrified I was at the person I’d become, I couldn’t stop it. This was what I wanted. Me without the structure of society. Without the rigours of religion. Without the criticisms of my parents and in blatant disregard to my so-called decent upbringing. Which then sailed clean out of the window.

“Tonight’s game is called ‘five articles of clothing,’” I said, frightened at my own daring. Because five articles was not much between me and total debauchery.

“So what are the rules?” asked Morten, intrigued.

“There are no rules. But if you know me well enough you might be able to persuade me to take them off. The jumper’s dead easy. The trousers: not so easy, but fairly easy ’cause you can’t see them under the table. The top: pretty difficult. The bra: very difficult.”

“And the jackpot?” said Morten, holding his breath.

“Almost impossible,” I said.

“How do I get your jumper off, then?” Morten wondered aloud.

“Talk to me,” I said. “Make me laugh. I’m a sucker for compliments.”

And so the game started. The jumper was off after fifteen minutes.

“I love your smile,” he said.

“Well, you’re the one who brings it to my face,” I replied, laughing.

“So it’s my creation,” he said. “That doesn’t make me feel quite like God. But it does make me feel very good. Do you want to see how good?” He stood up and ever so slowly unbuckled his trousers. Then sat down as I almost screamed in frustration.

“You’ll get more…if I get more!” he said, grinning. I ripped off my top in haste and consoled myself that my bra, well, it was like a bikini, right?

The game progressed. My trousers came off with particular emphasis on my bottom. I was trembling. Evening had fallen and the sky was dark. The only light was from my computer screen, and it felt like I was channelled through it, suspended with him in cyberspace. I had two pieces of clothing left.

Then he said, “You’re so bloody beautiful. I love your legs. I love your eyes. I love talking to you. And I hate this distance between us.”

“It doesn’t feel that far right now,” I said. My nose inches away from the screen.

“Forget the distance,” he said. “You’re part of my world. And I can’t imagine it without you.”

“Nor me.”

“Hey, I just realised. I have only one piece of clothing left and you have two. Surely that’s not fair.”

“OK. How about my necklace?” I said.

“No fair!” he said. “You named the pieces of clothing in the beginning, and that wasn’t one of them. Sorry, darling. It’s time for your bra to go.”

Seconds ticked by and he said, “What are you waiting for?”

“My courage,” I said. “It seems to have deserted me.”

“I’m waiting,” he said. “I’ve got all night. All night. AAAAALLLL night.” Then he typed…

“Bye bye, little bra.”

The cursor blinked. And then the message window went crazy as he pressed copy and paste again and again:

“Bye bye, little bra.”

“Bye bye, little bra.”

“Bye bye, little bra.”

“Bye bye, little bra.”

“Bye bye, little bra.”

“Bye bye, little bra.”

And, almost fainting, I took it off. He didn’t speak for a while. So long I started to get nervous. Then he breathed out and said, “Wow. You’re amazing. Phenomenal.”

“So are you. But I can’t do any more. That’s far enough.”

“It’s OK. Are you OK? Are you freaking out?”

“No,” I said. “But bloody hell, I’m turned on.”

“If anyone says what we did is not beautiful, don’t believe them,” he said.

“I wasn’t planning on telling anyone!” I said. “Apart from Gilles.”

“I meant the devil on your shoulder,” he said. “Let’s just take it slow.”

It was time for bed. We were both exhausted, frustrated but exhilarated.

“The more time that passes,” he typed, “the more barriers tumble. The odds were really not in our favour. But we click so well emotionally and mentally. And judging from what I can see on this crappy webcam, your body is just as gorgeous as your mind. Now all that’s left is to meet in person.”

“But no expectations…” I typed back from my now fully dressed and repressed cage.

“No expectations.”

8

Getting ready to meet someone you’ve already been going out with for four weeks is terribly weird. Getting ready with your husband, who also happens to be meeting his girlfriend, wife of your boyfriend, is just plain nuts.

We bought a bottle of wine and drank it. We went to the supermarket and stocked up on entrées we thought would give the best impression. Dips. Obviously with no garlic. Breadsticks encrusted with sea salt and rosemary. Tiny useless rice crackers that could balance barely a sliver of feta cheese.

When we’d finished two hours early, all there was to do was wait. Our palms slippery and our gazes locked into one another, alternately stressed and incredulous. In the end we had sex. Urgent screwing was the only thing we could do to relieve the tension. It helped and we laughed, even though it destroyed our carefully styled hair, which had taken us an hour apiece.

Later that evening, four human beings, all of them courageous enough to question the belief that marriage between two people is the only natural and moral state, met in Paris late at night. Four highly volatile and unconventional people who had risked rejection and criticism by challenging the concept of monogamy convened on the steps of a small hotel. They knew each other without having seen each other. They were intimate without having touched each other. And two of them had fallen in love without knowing each other in person.

Impossible but true.

Morten took one look at me cringing by the steps and bounded over to my side in a single leap. He was more boyish than I had thought. And just as when I had met my husband, I could already see what our children would look like. He gave me a hug and said, “Virtual no more!”

“Hello,” I said shyly, and then said nothing else until we had made our way to the bar next door, hand-picked for its lack of popularity. We’d shared so much, and yet he was a stranger.

Gilles’s face had been inscrutable as I hugged Morten. After all, a hug was nothing in the grand scheme of things. I regularly hugged many of my friends, male and female. But this hug was symbolic. It was not a gesture as an end in itself. It was the possible beginning of something much greater. Elena smiled prettily and gave me a hug as well before turning to Gilles and kissing him on both cheeks. She was dressed in a London-funky style, and as she took off her jacket, her aura spread to fill the bar. I felt like I was in the presence of someone. Or, rather, “Someone” — with a capital “S.”

Seeing him in the context of his marriage, Morten became a different person. He and Elena peppered the conversation a lot with “we.” “That time we did such and such… When we went to this party…When we made this discovery...”

It made Gilles and me a “we” too. Two couples sitting opposite one another, discussing their lives and their adventures with no hint of the car crash of emotions that each newly formed couple had experienced over the last four weeks. Fresh doubts rushed over me. I was back in “monogamy land,” the four of us sitting sedately in a bar. We looked normal. But far from making me feel secure, I felt isolated. Had everything that had gone on in the past four weeks just been a dream?

Elena started ordering food and drinks. Even at that late hour she ordered with the supreme knowledge of someone who was used to being obeyed. She also spoke in Spanish. Since she knew only a little French, she preferred to communicate in her native language, assuming that as they were both Latin based, they would be similar enough to one another to get her understood. And she was right.

I, on the other hand, was flabbergasted. I had thought that I would be ordering for all of us, especially since that was the way it worked between Gilles and me. One pillar of my confidence crumbled. I was no longer in charge. I was not the hostess. I was a foreigner in a new land. When she had finished ordering, she turned to me, put her head on one side compassionately and said, “So how many men have you slept with? Morten tells me it’s a lot.”

And just like that a second pillar crumbled. I took a hefty swig of my vodka tonic.

“He’s right,” I replied hesitantly, feeling very unfamiliar in this country of brutal honesty with someone I had never met. “But the reason there are a lot is because I was searching for love. Clearly, without finding it. It was a very self-destructive time. And it’s probably why I have difficulty talking openly about it.”

I was very proud that I had managed to say even that. Gilles took my hand under the table. He of all people knew how ashamed I was of my self-destructive past. How I had been exploited time and again by ex-boyfriends for sex. How, far from enjoying it, I had become disgusted with myself. At least until Gilles had arrived.

“Oh no, honey, I didn’t realise that you didn’t enjoy it. That’s terrible,” Elena said and pressed my shoulder sympathetically. I wished she’d stop talking about it. “You poor baby. Don’t worry, I used to be totally hung up and repressed too. Morten helped me out. He’s a great psychoanalyst.”

Now I was repressed. Whether I knew it already was not the point.

“There’s a difference between repressed and preferences though,” said Morten.

I relaxed the minutest smidgen possible. Which obviously wasn’t a lot.

Morten added, “If you don’t enjoy everything Gilles does, that’s OK.” He took my other hand. Was it my imagination, or did the barman look slightly askance? Suddenly I felt wicked, elated and daring.

Elena was different. Bold. Thrilling. And we were too.

It was bewildering, the speed with which my emotions changed. From giddy joy, to desperate insecurity, and back again in three seconds. My feelings were mirrored in Gilles’s face. He looked at my hand being held by another man and laughed like a schoolboy. His nose wrinkled, and he got three dimples on both sides of his mouth. Elena started laughing, her eyes shining. We were all holding hands around the table. Morten said to me, “Do you want to come outside for a cigarette?”

But it’s not just a cigarette, is it? I thought. I was about to take the plunge. I was about to leave my established marriage and start a not-so-illicit affair with a stranger.

In one of our hundred emails from the past three weeks, Morten and I had revealed our naughty sides: party smoking was a shared pleasure. Elena didn’t smoke and neither did Gilles. In fact, they both detested it with a passion. It was nasty. Forbidden. Dangerous. And, they said, very smelly. But it represented our first opportunity to be alone. I hadn’t smoked in four months, but if there was one thing that would make me do so, it was this chance. The first kiss.

You can take your clothes off in front of a webcam. You can whisper sweet nothings into a phone. You can even write passionate declarations over email. But nothing, nothing compares to the possibility of touching your lips to someone else’s to confirm the fact that you are starting a relationship with someone other than your husband.

For an instant, I wanted to run. Cry, and say this had all been a terrible mistake. And yet as I looked into the eyes that I’d fallen for, I knew that it was already too late. I was like Neo from The Matrix, tumbling down the rabbit hole. I had to find out just how deep it went. So I picked up my jacket with trembling hands and followed him outside.

The deal had been that he couldn’t touch me before I touched him. But I didn’t even need the excuse of the cigarette to slide my hands around his waist. Taking control meant a quicker resolution to my nerves. The sooner we kissed, the sooner I would know. Wasn’t that the telltale sign of true love? He looked down at me and smiled the same smile I had seen over the webcam for the past week.

He said, “I guess it’s OK then if I put my arms around you?”

I smiled back. And said nothing. Which meant yes. I looked into his eyes and he leant down. Slowly. Slowly. Beats passed and the anticipation grew until I couldn’t hold back anymore. The kiss, when it came, tingled. It was tentative and teasing. It flirted coyly, lips, teeth and tongue, where Gilles’s kiss was normally deep and passionate. Two ways of kissing. With new love and old love.

They were both wonderful. And very different.

I held him tight in case I fell over. Surges of emotion ran up and down my body, and I tasted tobacco in his mouth; like the bitter taste of drugs, it made me feel high. His tongue briefly touched mine and then drew back, just for fun. He was holding back, playing, whilst I was clawing for more. For some semblance of sanity. I needed the reassurance of the kiss. I needed the endorphins to calm my racing heart. But there was no control, no scaffolding to support me in this brave new world.

When we went back inside, no one said anything about what might or might not have happened outside. But they knew. And we knew they knew.

Later, we went back to our apartment. Morten and I held hands. Gilles and Elena linked arms, but apart from that looked in no way physical. I started to be just a little bit nervous. Of course, I couldn’t force Gilles into a relationship. But Morten and I would never be able to be together if they were not also together. I suddenly realised the danger of dating a couple. Sure, it was the utopia. But also completely unrealistic. And the latent pressure, no matter which way it came, would be enormous.

As we walked in, Morten pounced on the CDs and asked if he could put music on. I busied myself doing irrelevant things. I put olives in two dishes and then decided it looked stingy and transferred them to one bowl. I cut feta and avocado. It was of paramount importance that I interweave them equidistant from the centre of the plate. And as I did so, I heard Def Leppard.

Accompanied by a groan from Gilles.

“Whose is this CD?” Morten said, coming into the kitchen to admire my handiwork. Which had by that time spread to arranging Pringles in neat concentric circles.

“Louisa’s, of course,” answered Gilles, as if insulted that anyone could think he ever listened to such prosaic music.

“Brilliant!” said Morten. “This was their fourth album and my favourite. Did you know that they took four years to record it because their drummer lost an arm in an accident and they waited for him to learn to drum with his feet?”

Two people who loved Def Leppard were within one metre of each other. Such passion could not be faked. Morten knew his stuff…and all without the aid of Google.

Gilles knew when he was beaten. He walked out and said, “Dozens of people spontaneously combust every year. It’s just not widely reported.”

I started to laugh, and Morten looked confused.

“You’ll have to watch a lot of films to be able to understand how Gilles and I communicate. Not only do we mix French and English, but also we often speak in quotes. That was a quote from Spinal Tap. Their drummer exploded on stage. It was tragic, really.”

Morten smiled and said, “Do you want another cigarette?”

It was freezing on the balcony. Cold enough to see my breath. And cold enough to use the temperature as an excuse to slip hands below layers of clothes to warm them on his goose-bumped flesh. The body I had longed to touch was finally here. And here I was, touching it. It was as if those four weeks had been all the time I had lived, and any time before that had been a life inside a cocoon. As I ran my hands up inside his shirt, I felt like I was flying. But I was still scared.

“What are we going to do if they don’t like each other?” I asked him, sharing my concerns.

“Well, after all their communication over the past weeks, I find it hard to believe that they won’t be friends.”

He said it so morosely that one would think friendship was the worst state in the world.

“But your ideal is to be with another couple. If that’s not us, then you will keep searching for another couple. And I would support that. After all, I want everyone to live their dream.”

“That’s sweet of you, and I know you mean it. But I can’t reverse this process. I’m falling for you. Not anyone else.” He looked at the stars and blew out the smoke from his menthol cigarette. “And yet I would do so much for Elena. She was almost destroyed by the last relationship.”

I’d heard all about it over the past weeks. Rob and Lydia, the perfect couple. The dream that had turned into a nightmare. I strained my eyes to see through the bushes into the living room. It felt wrong, like I was some kind of peeping Tom, so I turned away and said, “Maybe we won’t have to do anything. Our capacity to love may well be limitless, but time is not. Relationships, however transient, take time. And if Elena and Gilles don’t want to continue, then you won’t be coming back to Paris often.”

Morten stubbed his cigarette out viciously on the floor. “This sucks,” he complained. “We’re not even properly together before we start talking about the end.”

We walked in silence towards the patio door. But as he opened it, he went into a sharp reverse, bumping my nose with his back.

“Ow!” I squealed.

“Shhhhhhh!” he whispered, pointing in through the window. “They’re kissing.”

I peeked in. And sure enough, there they were. Definitely using tongues. Morten and I looked at each other. We found it hard to whisper through our grins.

“Let’s not disturb them,” I said. I felt if I left it alone then it might take its natural course. And I felt no jealousy whatsoever. I knew Gilles well enough to know that he wouldn’t be doing anything without wanting to. He was pigheaded that way. Just like his father.

Morten and I snuck past them and into the hallway. There we were left with the option of which room to choose. The choice was two bedrooms or a bathroom. One was our bedroom. Gilles’s and mine. The place we’d made love just four hours earlier. I couldn’t go in there and have sex on our sweat and juices. It was our sacred place. It also had dirty sheets. Two almost equal strikes against it in my anally retentive mind. So we went into the guest bedroom.

The week of the webcam, as it became known, was remarkable for several things. One of them was that you could see more than just the face. Devilishly exciting and very naughty.

Another of them was that it had an ability to predict the future. Morten had been lying on his belly, propped up on his elbows, looking face down at the camera and typing to me one evening when he wrote, “When do you think we’ll see each other in this position in real life?”

“4:23 on Saturday morning,” I had replied cheekily.

It was 4:17 when we went into the bedroom. And sure enough, at 4:23 he was propped up on his elbows looking at me. I was gazing up into the face I had fallen in love with, despite the distance that had separated us. Love made everything all right. Almost. I was still bloody terrified. And despite two drinks, totally sober.

“How are you feeling?”

“Like I’ve never felt before,” I said. “Terrified. Nervous. But knowing that something great is about to happen. Like just before you do a bungee jump.”

“Go on.”

His fingertips were stroking my face and his body was half covering mine. He hadn’t taken any clothes off, because somehow taking them off was a step too far, and I had resisted. My shirt, however, was unbuttoned, and my bra was lopsided.

And yet I still preserved some illusion that all was not lost. The difficulty was that half of me was screaming for more, and in my highly volatile state, words did not come easily. But he waited until they came. And waited. And waited.

“I feel like I don’t want you to stop. I feel like if I stopped now, I would regret it forever. ”

The fact that he wasn’t my husband and that he was a gentleman (just like my husband) gave a solid and necessary dynamic to the situation. He refused to do anything without my permission. This decision was my responsibility and required verbalisation. Active decision making. We’d discussed my power of saying no many times, because when push came to shove, my love for being loved meant that I was afraid of being rejected. And yes was a far easier proposition. He kissed me again, and breathed into my mouth.

“I don’t want to do anything if you’re not absolutely sure,” he said.

“How can I be sure of anything?” I said, throwing in some philosophy for good measure and retreating into my intellectuality. “How can anyone be sure of anything?”

I was twisting in his arms, but he held me so that I couldn’t turn my face away.

“That’s not what I mean. You can’t be sure of the outcome, but you can be sure you want to take the risk and be prepared to deal with the outcome, whatever that may be.”

I fell silent for what seemed like forever. I looked down through the mist to the murky depths of the ocean below and wondered what it would feel like if I hit the bottom. How much it would hurt. And if I could possibly turn away now.

Finally, I replied in the words of A-ha: “It’s no better to be safe than sorry.”

Elena and Gilles were in the other bedroom. Loving each other at the same time that I was loving another. It made me feel better. As if at least if it was a mistake, we were all making it together.

By tacit agreement, we had sex with my clothes on. Well, apart from the one sodden pair of panties that I pretended had served as a barrier. And as I wriggled out of them, I took responsibility for my life. I was doing this. I wasn’t forced. Coerced. Or anywhere I didn’t want to be.

“Shall we?” he said.

“Let’s do it,” I said.

He interlaced his fingers into mine and held my hands above my head as he slid into me. It was like coming home. Like it was always meant to be.

I woke early the next morning, cosseted in Morten’s arms. And I started to think. What do I do now?

If in doubt, follow a routine. Dictated by three definitive milestones. Breakfast, lunch and dinner. By the time the others had come up for air, Morten and I had visited the supermarket for provisions. And I had laid a table that looked spectacular. It was as if I was making up for something. Guilt. Elena, I slept with your husband, but look what a nice breakfast I’ve made you.

But when they awoke, everything was perfectly normal, because we were living in a parallel surreal universe.

We were smiling wide and happy in each other’s company. It didn’t seem forced, unnatural or in any way other than settled. Just as I had felt the previous night, I was at home. Elena sat on Gilles’s lap and I on Morten’s. We stayed at the breakfast table until it was lunchtime. We were talking and laughing and breaking bread together. I was comfortable in this universe that was not mine. A home away from home. Two different realities. And now my task was to reconcile the reality I had once known with what was about to come.

9

Suddenly, I understood more why people had given their lives to fight for a cause they considered worthwhile. Nothing in my life previously had prepared me for the eventuality that I would be someone who fought for freedom of choice. Following this path, I discovered, would mean that I would have to fight for my right even to choose, before I even fought for the choice itself. Because monogamy for many people was the only choice, and any other alternative was considered abhorrent.

From our first weekend together, I could already see how much backlash I would receive from the outside world. As our poly-family of four had drawn its first breath in the frosty beginnings of that winter, prejudice had already dug its claws in and gashed painful welts into the back of my brand-new world.

The world had seen me in all kinds of states, and yet this latest one had done more than raise a few eyebrows.

“She is ver’ beautiful, your wife,” commented the French waiter at our exclusive restaurant, to Gilles, admiring Elena’s cleavage.

“This is my girlfriend,” replied Gilles. He took my hand. “My wife is here.”

The waiter laughed. Surely we were pulling his leg.

“When chickens have teeth!” That was French for “pigs might fly.”

“No, it’s true!” I said, holding up my wedding band. Gilles held up his next to mine. They were the same.

“And I’m her boyfriend,” Morten chimed in.

“And he’s my husband,” added Elena.

We were all smiling. Until it occurred to us that the waiter was most definitely not. He was looking downright offended. He whisked around and started talking very rapidly to the maître d’.

The maître d’, who was a man of business, saw the bottle of Châteauneuf-du-Pape on the table and recognised that our table represented a good portion of his takings that evening, and possibly for future evenings. He came over and said, “I will be your personal host for this evening. Your waiter is indisposed.”

Indisposed. The French panacean excuse for anything one didn’t want to do.

“I can’t come to work. I am indisposed.”

“I can’t meet you at the cinema. I am indisposed.”

And the new, albeit unspoken one: “I can’t wait at your table, you sick, perverted people. I am indisposed.”

A shadow fell over our table. I wanted to sink into the floor. I had offended someone so much that they couldn’t bear to be in my presence. When threatened, my habitual reaction was flight. The fondant au chocolat had not arrived yet, but the very thought of it made me feel sick.

“Can’t we just pay and go?” I asked.

“Absolutely not!” replied Elena. “How dare he do that? We have as much right to be here as anyone else.”

She eyeballed the waiter nastily. He stuck his Gaulois nose in the air and pointedly ignored her.

I endured another thirty seconds of uncomfortable silence by bouncing my leg up and down whilst picking at my cuticles. When the dessert arrived, I wasn’t hungry. So I split mine between my boyfriend and my husband. Neither of whose hands I was holding. The melted chocolate in the middle spilled out onto the plate uncontrolled. Like my life. Elena spoke to the maître d’ about our right to live as we chose, indignant about the way we were treated. He listened without hearing and obsequiously offered us calvados to calm our ruffled feathers. Whilst admirably disguising his repulsion. Half an hour after our faux pas, we graciously left. I felt shunned.

“I never want to go through that again.”

Gilles laughed. He had found it funny. The others looked at me. Uncomprehendingly. Three seconds ticked by. Gilles rubbed my back in a kind of patting-your-seven-year-old-daughter-on-her-head-when-she’s-tired way. I looked back and realised that none of them had felt the sting of rejection as badly as I had. I had thought that we were in this together. But this battle was my own. And I didn’t have enough armour to fight it.

Thirty-two years of monogamous thinking versus three months of polyamorous thinking was an unfair advantage. My polyamorous self needed more research, because feeling secure in my own reasoning was the only way I could stand up for my beliefs to the world.

Methodically, I laid out my arguments as if I were standing trial. The prosecutor, who looked an awful lot like my mother, approached the witness box. I was shivering inside.

“Isn’t it true, Louisa, that polyamory is just a sexual free-for-all?”

“No!” (Head up, eyes straight ahead.) “Polyamory is like any committed relationship. It is not something to be entered into lightly, but honestly and deliberately.” (I thought my comparison to the marriage ceremony might win me a few points with the jury.) “But I am not for polyamory or against monogamy per se. I am for ‘choice,’ conducted with respect for oneself and for others. Although that may well include a ‘sexual free-for-all,’ as you put it.”

“How can you say you are not against monogamy, when you undermine everything it stands for?” the prosecution demanded.

“If, with as much knowledge as possible and lack of prejudice, individuals choose monogamy, then I applaud their choice. However, the choice of whether or not to live in monogamy is not one that is often made. It is an unquestioned assumption that the masses follow. So much so that it is ingrained in our pop culture, in our films and in many religions.”

“Marriage commits two people to love each other. Till death do you part. Loving a person outside of your own marriage is a betrayal. And even more if this love is expressed in an intimate fashion. How can you dispute this logic?”

“What betrayal are you referring to? The betrayal of having sex with someone else or going against the agreed contract set out between two parties? The second one is the real betrayal. But instead of changing the contract, you would try to stop people forming relationships with the argument that some adult relationships are ‘right’ and some are ‘wrong’ even though they consist of the same acts. Some relationships are justified by a piece of paper, whereas others, which might contain just as much commitment and love, are not.”

“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, have you reached your verdict?”

“We have, your Honour.”

“And how do you find the defendant?”

“Guilty on all counts!”

The problem was that no matter how sound my arguments were, I still felt like I was on trial. As if I needed to justify my way of life. Especially when I came in contact with the outside world. Which I promptly resolved to do as little as possible. And enclosed in our loved-up bubble, Gilles and I found it very easy to avoid others.

10

After our first meeting, I had taken advantage of an opportunity to travel to my company’s corporate headquarters in England. Elena was in Paris with Gilles, and this was my second meeting with Morten, but our first days spent alone.

My business trip consisted of meetings and more meetings. It was my job to make sure that all my time was spent talking to colleagues with whom I didn’t normally mix. I became adept at texting behind my back. It had been two weeks after our first meeting, and although the email and webcam had been active, I was still terrified.

“What if I don’t feel the same way about him when I see him next?” I wondered aloud.

“There’s not much you can do about it,” replied Gilles pragmatically. I hated him for stating the obvious.

This wasn’t boyfriend-girlfriend stuff from high school. I already felt committed. And I had already had sex with him. I couldn’t even go home at the end of the date. Because I was staying for three days. Seventy-two hours. Four thousand, three hundred and twenty minutes.

He answered the door to me at their London home, a twenty-minute commute from St Pancras station, took one look at my stiff expression and asked with concern, “What’s going on?”

“I don’t know you. Who are you really? You could be like Dexter.”

I didn’t want to insult him. But polyamory had had the peculiar effect of making me more honest than strictly necessary. Conventions were flouted overtly. Communication was direct. Blunt. You were intimately connected with people whom you weren’t even sleeping with, just by proxy.

“The amount of time we have spent together is more than some others do in a lifetime,” he said reassuringly.

“Have you planned anything for this weekend?” I asked.

“Nope. Not really. Dinner is booked for tomorrow. But apart from that, I thought we might stay in the rest of the time.”

Unspoken but obvious. And I still doubted.

Was it really possible that the universe would bless me with not only one wonderful man, but two at the same time? And the possibility of still more? Surely not. This man was probably an axe murderer. He and his wife were some sort of Bonnie and Clyde team who preyed on other unsuspecting couples for fun and torturous games. I entertained these thoughts as I sat at the kitchen table staring into the white lilies sitting on the white table under the crystal chandelier. Imagining how my arterial spray might redecorate their furnishings when he slit my throat.

Their home had wooden floors in the living areas, marble in the bathroom and natural grass matting on the staircase. There was little furniture, fewer books and almost no CDs. It was a show home. And masked all personality of the owners. Hence I had nothing to chat about.

“Your home is lovely,” was barely all I could find to say.

Morten took two bottles of cider from the fridge and led me to the living room. If in doubt, drink alcohol. I took one gulp and he pounced.

When I say pounced, I mean of course that he moved closer, put his hand on my arm and leaned in. But if he had pounced, my reaction would have been the same. Total resistance.

And then an utter waterfall of passion. Our clothes scattered a trail up to the bedroom as we tore them off. The perfectly made bed was utterly destroyed, and the beautiful —white — bedspread was stained. Again and again.

It was all about us that weekend. There was no Gilles and no Elena. It was two people perfectly content in each other’s company doing whatever came naturally. A bubble of sex, talking, eating, sleeping and breathing. Nothing else existed.

I’d heard of this Holy Grail they called multiple orgasms. But no Cosmo magazine was fully able to satisfy my curiosity. Multiple. Was it like continuous and ongoing? How long between each one? Wouldn’t you be exhausted after the first? Were women really able to do it?

And so I came. Effortlessly. Then twenty seconds later as he continued to move inside me, I came again. I was laughing so hard that he was almost forced out. But not quite. My soul seemed to have separated from my body and was dancing among the heavens. The light was so strong I couldn’t think or see straight. And then twenty seconds later I came again and started crying.

Amid my joy, I also felt grief. Grief that Gilles and I didn’t have sex like that and not knowing what the consequences might be. Because the sex Morten and I had just had felt like what sex was supposed to be.

As we lay together, my head on his chest, in wonder at what our bodies could accomplish together, he spoke.

“You know I fell for you before I met you, and for weeks I was worried that we would have a relationship that didn’t work on a physical level. We seemed so compatible on every other level that it seemed almost impossible that this one would work as well.”

“Does everything work as well as this?” I asked.

He looked down at me and smiled, “Well this does work spectacularly well, but I wouldn’t sniff at the rest would you?”

Pop music videos, candlelit dinners and dreams. Many, many dreams. That weekend we started talking about the children we would have and the community life we would build. He described the little girl we might have together and held me captivated. In the tumult of my emotions, I realised that I had longed for a child. Among the myriad of twinkling stars that Morten brought me that weekend, he brought me hope. The most important of them all.

And then, after two days of rapture, the weekend finally came to an end.

Reality surfaced and we switched on our mobiles.

“I wonder how Gilles and Elena are getting on,” I said idly. I had managed to push nagging doubts about their compatibility to the back of my mind. And, to be honest, it hadn’t been difficult.

But as my phone buzzed angrily with stored texts from Gilles, Morten’s phone shrilly protested with even more voicemails. The sinking feeling in my heart matched his.

11

Spiky. Their weekend together had been spiky. To say the very least. The letter “k” obstinately stuck out at forbidding angles. And whilst I read down the increasingly annoyed and frustrated texts from Gilles, my phone started to ring.

“Louisa, thank God you answered your phone. I don’t know what to do. Help me!” He sounded frantic, and I wondered what on earth had happened. Was she Dexter after all?

“Calm down and tell me what’s going on,” I replied.

“She says she can’t catch the plane because she’s so sad. She’s just lying prostrate on the sofa, not moving,” he said.

I heard the door to the living room slide shut. He’d said that in her full hearing, so it obviously wasn’t a secret.

“Why is she so sad?” I asked. “Have you done something?” Was Gilles the Dexter of my nightmares?

“Because I said that I didn’t consider her my girlfriend yet and didn’t know whether we would ever be like that. That we have fun together but that we have already had some spiky times and that in the beginning surely a relationship should be easier.”

“Is that all?”

“Yes!” he whimpered in utter panic. “I can’t be with a woman like this! If this is what she’s like after a weekend, what on earth will she be like later? You remember Fatal Attraction!”

My protective instinct kicked in so hard that I wanted to instantly be back and shout at her. Gilles was in trouble and nothing else mattered.

Then more thoughts spilled out of my brain unbidden.

Incredulity…How could anyone be so sad as to make them immobile?

Annoyance…What a waste of money for a plane ticket!

Reasoning…They’ve only seen each other twice, what does she expect?

Dislike…How selfish of her to make everyone worry like this.

Pity…Poor Gilles, having to cope with that.

And then totally unexpected.

Smugness…Ha! Gilles has to deal with a demanding female. Well it’s about bloody time.

I squashed that thought flat as soon as it came.

I said, “Gilles, chéri, ne t’inquiète pas. I’ll be back in five hours. Give her the phone, and I’ll put Morten on. I’m sure that he can get through to her even if you can’t.”

I passed over the phone to Morten, whose brow was furrowed and fearful. All weekend he had been laughing and happy. Now he was worried and afraid. And I suddenly felt a stab of fury at Elena for hurting the two men I loved.

The conversation that followed was Swedish, but even I understood the gist of it. Elena was unable or unwilling to get on the plane. And in their world, sadness was a perfectly legitimate reason for it. As Morten put the phone down, he took my hands and said,

“We can try our best to make it work — you and me, I mean. But to be honest, if Elena and Gilles aren’t together, then there is little hope. Different countries and logistics. It’s as simple as that.”

And that was that.

My new love started to creak and crack around the edges, and my towers of dreams vanished in a puff of smoke. Pop. Like Icarus, I had danced too close to the sun and suddenly started to plummet to my peril. Never in my life had I felt so out of control. Our future was entirely dependent on another couple. Needless to say, I didn’t blame Gilles. I loved Gilles. Or Morten. I loved Morten.

I blamed Elena.

Morten said, “We have to go. Your plane will be leaving soon.”

I wanted to stamp my foot and say, “Maybe I am also too sad to leave!” But I didn’t. My ears were singing and my hands were trembling, but I couldn’t make a fuss.

“Please, darling,” he said, “when you get back home look after my little Elena. She’s sad and alone in a strange country.”

How was it possible for him to demand something like that of me? To look after the person who was wrecking the possibilities of our new relationship? But as I opened my mouth to tell him how I felt, the words that came out were “I promise. Don’t worry.”

And I meant it. I would do it. Even if I didn’t get to be with him. Because I loved him and I couldn’t bear to hurt him. And if looking after the person he loved meant that he felt better, then I would do it.

Even though at that moment I wanted to throttle her.

We said nothing. Not in the car, not at the check-in and not at the departure gate. But just before I went in and turned my back on him for what may have been the last time, he frantically scrambled at me. Clawing at my mouth and at my waist. His hands held mine, and our reflectively blue eyes filled with tears.

“We’ll try, OK?”

It was the hopeless strangled cry of surrender. It was out of our hands.

The plane journey back was both too short and too long. When I landed, I phoned home. But there was no answer. Surely they hadn’t gone out. Had Gilles murdered Elena? Had Elena murdered Gilles?

When I opened the door, the house was quiet apart from Imogen Heap playing on the stereo and candles lit on the table. I blew them out. There was no one in the lounge. No one in the kitchen. No one in the dining room.

I found them in the bedroom. Gilles had obviously been crying. Elena was stroking his hair affectionately. And under the duvet they were obviously both naked. In my panic the words tumbled out of my mouth.

“Is everything all right? What’s going on?”

“I love your husband,” said Elena. “But he doesn’t know if he loves me or not.”

My emotions catapulted on what was rapidly becoming elastic in my gut. Far from it being over, it seemed like a rapprochement. I went over to Gilles and looked at him. He looked vulnerable and bewildered. I must have looked the same. I kissed his forehead, gathered myself together and said, “It’s late and I’m going to bed. If you two need to talk things through, then I suggest you spend the night together in here. I love you. Good luck.”

I leant over and kissed Elena on the cheek. She smiled at me timidly and thanked me.

I closed the door to our bedroom and phoned Morten. It barely rang before I heard his panicked voice on the phone.

“It’s OK!” I said “They’re OK. I don’t know exactly what’s going on, but they aren’t over, that’s for sure.”

I heard a sigh of relief down the phone. But I couldn’t match it.

“I’m going to bed now,” I said.

“But, darling, it’s good news. Why do you sound so sad?”

“Because I’m at the mercy of someone else for my happiness,” I said.

“Isn’t that what love is all about?”

I was angry. Angry at myself for being in this situation. Angry at Gilles for being in limbo. Angry at Elena for not caring about the repercussions of her actions. And angry at Morten for not understanding how bad I was feeling. I hadn’t realised that the dynamic of being in a quad meant that you were no longer solely in charge of your own destiny and relationship. And I didn’t like it one little bit.

Elena stayed three more days. And for all of them, Gilles slept in the same bed as her to solidify their new-found girlfriend-boyfriend status, which he had declared the morning after I’d returned.

I didn’t know whether to feel neglected or happy that I didn’t have to say goodbye to Morten just yet. So for the moment, I did what I had always done best. I remained in my safe haven called denial. And in the run-up to Christmas it wasn’t hard. Because despite my misgivings, I had dreams, many dreams.

I wanted it to work. And maybe, just maybe, that would be enough.

12

Christmas is traditionally a time for families. But it hadn’t been for Gilles and me for a long while. Family was more of a burden. So instead we’d celebrated Christmas down at the pub, with a load of other “lost boys” in Paris. We cooked a mammoth turkey in the industrial-sized ovens and helped ourselves to the beer on tap, which was afterwards put down in the books as “ullage,” that stuff that usually goes into the slop trays but that instead went down our throats.

And yet within three months, Gilles, Elena, Morten and I felt more like family than any I had ever known. There was more love. Much more. There was also just as much drama.

Even so, as Christmas meant family, we wanted to spend it together. But it took a bit of planning. Morten’s family visited them in London until December 26th, and they played at normality. Then half an hour after they left, we arrived. We were back in fantasy land once more.

Elena welcomed us joyfully into their home. “This is a traditional Spanish Christmas fruit cake — I made it last night — there’s spiced wine on the stove, and these odd-shaped biscuits are handmade by Morten. They’re Swedish.”

And he cooks! I thought.

Elena poured cinnamon and orange wine and tugged me through their spotless kitchen over a pale wooden floor, to their equally spotless living room. I took my shoes off. She asked me to. My coat had already been whipped off my shoulders and hung on a wooden hanger in their whiter-than-white wardrobe. The cushions looked like tiny puffs of cloud on a pristine turquoise sofa. Her home was fabulous. The tree dropped a needle as we whistled past. I wondered how it dared.

“I walked up to the counter and slammed two Christmas cards on the counter,” Morten was telling Gilles. “One said ‘to my beautiful girlfriend’ and the other said ‘to my beautiful wife.’ The teller looked at me and I just beamed as wide as I could.”

Gilles chuckled. “I’m not one for cards or flowers. One girlfriend dumped me when I gave her flowers. I learnt my lesson.”

Elena was scandalised. “I love flowers.”

“So do I,” I said. “But I’ll let you in on a secret. He’ll only get you one if you pounce on a flower seller in a restaurant and he can’t get out of it.”

Elena looked like she wouldn’t put up with that kind of behaviour. I thought that Gilles’s stubborn side was in for a challenge.

My card contained a fine silver chain with a heart strung on it. I held it aloft.

“It’s an ankle bracelet,” Morten blushed. “I think they’re really sexy. It’s so that even when you’re in Paris, you’ll still carry a piece of my heart with you.”

I had never dared buy an ankle bracelet before. Only prostitutes wore them. At least that’s what my mother told me. Gilles was tickled pink. He looked at me, knowing the inner battle that was currently going on in my head.

“Louisa, honey! Who’s going to win that battle, hmmm? Morten? Or your mother?”

“What do you mean?” asked Morten. Gilles was watching me intently as my mouth twitched in contemplation.

“Louisa doesn’t smoke in the street,” explained my husband.

“Only hookers do that,” I added.

“Or drink in the street.”

“Only alcoholics do that.”

“Or eat in the street.”

“Only the homeless do that.”

“Or wear patent shiny shoes. And she definitely does not wear anklets.”

“Anklets signal that you are a lady of the night,” I said, dutifully repeating what my mother had taught me.

“Oh my God! And why don’t you wear patent shoes?” Elena asked.

“Because boys can see your underwear reflected in the tops of your shoes,” I replied automatically. “The nuns taught her that.”

Elena started to laugh hysterically. “Goodness me, that’s just weird. But funny weird.”

I laughed as well, but I was feeling uneasy. I was betraying my world and my values. Instead, I turned my attention to my thread of silver. It twinkled under the carefully placed spotlights in their ceiling. An emblem of the future. And an “up yours” to my repressed past. I put it around my ankle and grinned. The weight of the chain felt good settling against the bone. I was a liberated — and chained — woman. I smiled at the irony.

Gilles opened his present to a gasp of admiration from me. It was a black velvet jacket. Gilles, unlike most of his compatriots, did not care for clothes. For years I had tried to get him to care, but to no avail. On this very trip he had packed five grey T-shirts, each with holes in the armpits. I metaphorically raised my eyebrows. But Gilles was awestruck. For someone who usually didn’t care what he looked like, he was surprisingly blown away by his present. Elena squeezed his arm.

“You’ll look even more handsome than you do already,” she said.

“I love it. Thanks,” he said. Kissing her. This was not the Gilles I knew.

It was Elena’s turn next. She opened her package and drew out a rusted antique yellow tin sign advertising 1950s products. “Oh my God, Elena. It’s old and dirty,” Morten said.

She bristled slightly. And then dazzled us with a smile, speaking to Gilles in lieu of a response to her husband.

“Gilles, darling. It’s the sign we saw together in Paris. You remembered. I love it.”

I looked at the dirty rusted tin and wondered where on earth it would be at home in Elena’s sparkling Victorian terrace.

Morten looked on, agreeably surprised, and put his wine down, missing the coaster. A sign of rebellion. I looked at Elena, but she was too busy looking at Gilles.

And last but not least.

“Your present is in your email,” I said to Morten.

We all rushed upstairs to the computer and an interminable log-in of five seconds. When he had found the relevant mail, Morten jumped up from his twirly office chair, sending it spinning, and hugged me so hard that my breath came in little pants.

“What is it?” asked Elena and Gilles in unison. They were puzzled and saw nothing on the screen to pique their interest.

“It’s two tickets to see Girls Aloud in May,” said Morten. “I finally have someone to go with.”

Holidays were about love, presents, laughter and fine dining. Which meant for me Michelin-starred restaurants and exotic yet tiny portions. Have a beetroot crisp drizzled in some gloopy balsamic syrup decorated with half a chive. That’ll be £15, please.

Fine dining for our poly-partners meant that every piece of food was organic, fair trade, and contained as many vitamins and minerals as possible. Oh, and it would probably also be free of gluten, dairy and red meat. Fish was OK…as long as it didn’t taste particularly strong and fishlike. Elena quizzed the waiter in the restaurant about exactly what it was we would be putting in our bodies.

“And is the chicken stock used in the sweet potato soup organic?”

Morten’s face told me that this was a perfectly normal and reasonable question to ask. Gilles’s face told me that he was almost bursting from wanting to laugh. The waiter’s face told me that he was paid £6.50 an hour and wouldn’t know what organic stock was if it came up and bit him on the bum. My face told everyone that I was English and thus would carry on regardless. And expressionless.

“This is one of our favourite restaurants,” said Morten, munching on some line-caught, chargrilled wild yellowfin tuna with locally sourced, seasonal roasted vegetables and sipping some organic elderflower wine. I concentrated on balancing some corn-fed, free-range chicken from my Caesar salad on my fork whilst nibbling my highland oatcake.

“Do you go out to any organic restaurants in Paris?” asked Elena.

Gilles and I looked at each other.

“Well, our favourite pub has green things growing in it,” I said, coughing on a couple of oatcake crumbs.

“Mainly mould in the toilet,” added Gilles.

I had joined Gilles after he had spent interminable nights in his grandmother’s flat eating chocolate cookies and salade piémontaise from a plastic tub in front of a networked computer game of Age of Empires. I had brought cooked dinners to his life. Some of them even included vegetables.

A couple years on we had done Carol Vorderman’s detox diets together. He had introduced me to the concept of exercise (although this was sporadic at best). My drinking was within the bounds of normality. We were relatively healthy. But compared to Morten and Elena, the ethically-and-organically-conscious-recycling warriors, we were ignorant, delinquent proletarians who may as well have lived off deep-fried battered Mars bars. My conscience jabbed me painfully about animal cruelty as I recalled the wafer-thin reconstituted turkey breast that I had enjoyed with my wheat-packed supermarket-brand loaf and lactose-full butter.

This was a new world in more ways than one.

That evening, after we returned home hand in hand with our poly-partners, I ventured a statement that seemed rude and ungracious to my ears.

Especially after they had been the ones to settle the bill.

“Some of the nights this holiday I would like to sleep with my husband.” I coloured as I spoke. “I mean, I would like to spend some nights in the same bed as Gilles.” Surely it was no one’s business if I would have sex with my husband or not. Even though they wouldn’t be able to help hearing us.

How much sharing was necessary in our new poly-world? How possessive could I be of my husband without it seeming ungenerous? Should he choose how many nights he spent with me and how many with Elena? Or did I as his wife have any more rights than his girlfriend? Did our new relationships take priority over the old or vice versa?

“Look what it says here,” Gilles had said, laughingly reading a thread on one discussion forum. “This poly-family apparently keeps a timetable tacked to the fridge to keep track of who is sleeping with whom.”

Our lives had been individually lived in parallel for the last year. Side by side we had watched television series, each tapping on a laptop, half-engrossed in a different task. But suddenly we were together again. Reading together. Talking together. Loving together. Preparing ourselves to love elsewhere. But together.

Practically, however, loving elsewhere would be done separately. And this necessitated a choice. Ranking and rejection. One would be chosen. One would be rejected. It was as simple as that. So…who was better in bed?

I wanted to be with my new love. But I didn’t want my old love to feel hurt. So instead I made no decision at all.

“I don’t mind really,” I said. Wanting to sleep with Morten.

“Well, neither do I,” added Morten, a little too quickly. Damn.

“I’m easy!” said Gilles.

“So I have to pick?” said Elena. She was better equipped to shoulder the burden of responsibility than we were. She was free to be honest no matter whether that made others uncomfortable or not. Because she knew it wasn’t her responsibility. And I was envious.

“I pick Gilles,” she said.

No surprise there, then.

“I guess you’re stuck with me, then!” Morten said to me, sounding, well, rejected. It was ridiculous. We had got the solution we wanted and both ended up feeling miserable about it. As I watched Gilles go upstairs with Elena, I felt like shouting out that I had changed my mind. I certainly didn’t want to be anyone’s reject. Most fortuitously, I had one of those multiple orgasms. It did wonders for my self-esteem.

The next night, we went through the same rigmarole. New loves had not been able to keep their hands off each other all day. Quite literally, they had been seen slinking off to the bedroom at various intervals during which time Amy Macdonald had been played very loudly on the lounge stereo. We sighed, blasé in our new languid polyamorous personas. And giggled at the sheer outrageousness of what we were doing.

But when the evening came, we all guiltily opted for a second night with our new partners. Guilt because polyamory was about respect and love, which to our minds meant treating each other fairly. We should have taken turns. Eeny, meeny, miny, moe.

The third night, we couldn’t put off our duty anymore. Back to our couples. Swing your partner, do-si-do. Apart from that, we were so tired from the constant frolicking with our new partners that no “swinging,” as it were, took place. Amy Macdonald was silent. And she had never seemed so deafening.

I was having trouble swallowing the omega-3, vitamin C, barley grass powder and Wellwoman capsules that had been assiduously placed next to my placemat when Elena brought it up. Over our breakfast of homemade pomegranate and blueberry fruit salad and fair trade detox ginseng tea, she confided, “I don’t understand. I love Morten so much, but I’m intoxicated by Gilles and want to be with him. I want to be with Morten too, but right now I am more sexual with Gilles.”

Whoosh. The oppressive thundercloud moved on. I breathed out and said, “Me too. I mean with Morten.” Not only more sexual. Better sex.

Morten chewed speculatively on a corn cracker laden with homemade hummus and goat’s cheese topped with alfalfa sprouts.

“Well we’re all in the honeymoon phase of the relationship. Isn’t it normal?”

“But what if we are just monogamous?” said Elena, starting to panic.

We were all silent for a little while until I said, “I don’t believe monogamy is an inclination. It’s a choice. And polyamory covers every configuration you can think of. You want your relationship with Morten. It will change. You want a relationship with Gilles. We shouldn’t be using the benchmark of what a monogamous relationship is like. Neither of your relationships will be the same as the ones you knew before. You are with two different men. They should be treated differently.”

“And remember, fair doesn’t mean equal,” added Gilles.

And so we started to do what felt right. Instead of putting quantitative measures on what we did, we put qualitative measures on the time we spent together — whatever that meant in terms of time. After a while, each couple no longer needed to regroup. A look or a touch was enough to be reassured that we still all loved each other. And where different people felt differently, we recognised the needs and desires on a case-by-case basis. We were a panel of three for the complainant.

“It’s aboot democracy,” said Gilles, quoting South Park.

During the ten days we spent there, Gilles and I had fallen even deeper head over heels in love, with them and with the lifestyle. It was the closest thing to family that we’d ever had. In such close quarters as their Victorian terrace, it was difficult to preserve any modesty, even though I had tried. But I was proud that at least no one had ever seen my bottom. In fact, I wasn’t sure even whether I had one. Whilst my Britishness appreciated that some activities were better kept in the bedroom, one bed had been in the living room, which was also the passageway to the toilet. The other bedroom was far from soundproof. I had acted according to my upbringing, however, and been deaf, dumb and blind when appropriate.

When I explained what our relationship was like to my friends, their first thought was about the sex.

“Do you enjoy sex more with Morten than you do with Gilles?”

I refused to be drawn. It was none of their business.

“It’s different,” I said. Just because Hollywood dictated that you should marry the person you had the best sex with didn’t mean it was true. I’d already thrown out enough paradigms to know that nothing was certain.

“Do you have sex more often with Morten than with Gilles?”

“Not in comparison to where we are in the relationship. Gilles and I are comfortable with our rhythm. Morten and I have a different rhythm, but it’s normal — we are in the throes of passion.”

I could see the words formed in their minds as clearly as if they had spoken them. Divorce. Denial.

They thought the fact I had a husband and a boyfriend meant that the former was ranked above the latter. Husband, after all, implies commitment and celebration in front of my family and friends. Certainly it had…back in the day when I had believed in monogamy. It was a stage-gate process we went through from dating to boyfriend to husband. Now that I had come to know my own nature better, I realised that I had used marriage predominantly to assuage my fear of losing my boyfriend. I loved him and he loved me. Once we had the marriage certificate, the eggshells were less likely to break —and even if they did, the French authorities had made staying married that much more attractive with a tax rebate. The marriage certificate was proof that we were permanently joined. Until divorce do us part.

Gilles and I were considering divorce, it was true. But no longer because we wanted to split up. No, the opposite. Because we wanted to stay together, love together and be together. Permanently joined. Until choice did us part.

13

In my old configuration, we had had one relationship. It was called Gilles & Louisa. Or sometimes Louisa & Gilles, depending on who was writing the Christmas cards. But in my new configuration, there was:

1. Gilles & Louisa

2. Gilles & Elena

3. Louisa & Morten

4. Elena & Morten

5. Gilles & Morten

6. Louisa & Elena

And then there was also:

7. Gilles & Louisa & Elena

8. Gilles & Louisa & Morten

9. Gilles & Elena & Morten

10. Louisa & Morten & Elena

And finally of course:

11. Gilles & Louisa & Morten & Elena

“This one goes to eleven!” quoted Gilles from Spinal Tap.

The fluid nature of each relationship and dynamic was difficult to get a grip on. Each combination had a different behaviour, and the individual elements had been known to achieve either high reactivity or good stability.

The molecule Gilles & Morten was rare, predominantly passive and could often be found where pizza boxes and PS2s were also present.

The molecule Gilles & Elena had high energy and was often visible during early mornings in the gym. It also absorbed large quantities of organic food and had evolved into a highly effective cleaning agent.

The molecule Gilles & Elena & Morten could be regularly found outdoors power walking, whilst Gilles & Louisa & Morten could only be found indoors, usually on a sofa, laughing and drinking coffee.

No molecule was quite the same as another. Nine out of eleven were new. Four out of eleven were sexual…although three had tried it out just for the hell of it. Our one foursome experience had been really rather awkward. We all had such different ways of relating to each other that swapping partners midway meant different rhythms and different preferences. No orgasms. Certainly not multiple. In the end Elena had said, “Shall I put on the kettle?”

Morten lifted his head out of her breasts and said, “Yeah, it’s not really working, is it.”

And that was that.

One out of eleven of these molecules was outside the realms of this world. That would be Louisa & Morten. Its formation was quite spectacular.

And finally, there was Louisa & Elena, which had an affinity for gold and wine, and generally occurred in expensive restaurants and overpriced shops in London. It was also potentially unstable and explosive.

When we first tried to find a label for Elena’s and my relationship, which only had its parallel in polygamous societies, the term we found was “sisterwife.” My sisterwife was called Elena. The origins of her name supposedly meant “shine” or “torch.” And, I would say, that was just about right. Any one of us could have been considered the odd one out, depending on what was under debate. I was the only one with what could be termed as a business career. I could walk the walk and talk the talk. Morten was the only one who came from a real, stable family life. He was very Zen and could cope with any amount of baggage. Gilles was a genius at language and was also the comedian of the family. We all shone at our individual strengths. But none of us shone quite as quirkily as Elena. She was different. She stood out.

For one thing, she expected nothing less than the truth. Always. Which was a hard pill to swallow in this world of half lies, overzealous tact and pretences. In The Matrix, Elena represented the red pill. The truth in the world of illusions. She was, through her own particular circumstances, someone who lived outside the frivolous foibles of our society. She was extremely self-aware. But she too had her own set of demons. One of which seemed to be a complete obliviousness to how hard the red pill was for others to take.

She and I were together by default, and yet we spent more time together than bosom buddies. We were not sisters, and yet we shared the same family, the same concerns and sometimes the same households. We were not lesbian or bisexual, and yet we had seen each other naked in compromising positions.

We had some wildly opposing views about societal norms, and our communication styles were very different. Above all, I saw the world (more or less) as relative, and she saw it (more or less) in polar opposites: good and bad, right and wrong. I found it difficult to state an opinion unless I was fully aware of the context, whereas she could give a definitive opinion and was fully prepared to take the consequences. She was the proton to my electron. I grew through internally imprinting my experiences, and she grew from projecting herself and her experiences outwards to the world.

Proof, if any were needed, that there was not just one Mr. or Mrs. Right was the fact that the two Mrs. Rights in our equation were very different. And rightly so. For polyamory was not about replacing your partners. As Gilles so often reminded me when I got insecure, it was about complementing. My sisterwife and I even had differing opinions about polyamory — what it was or wasn’t. She believed that people “were” polyamorous or they “were” monogamous, just as they “were” homosexual or heterosexual. I believed that unlike sexual inclination, polyamory was a choice of lifestyle that was more suited to our basic loving natures.

We were short on answers…but big on love and hope. Most of the time.

14

“How are we ever going to manage the separation?” my sisterwife asked despairingly. She had a Latin temper and emotions. “I can’t even survive one week without Gilles!” She started crying at the thought.

We had quickly realised, towards the end of our Christmas holiday, that our relationship would never survive the distance between two countries. Lacking in society support structures, we needed each other geographically close if our new-found love was to last.

It was the night before our departure after Christmas, and I felt the weight of decision-making power on my shoulders. Morten couldn’t speak French. He would have terrible difficulty getting a job in Paris. Gilles didn’t have regular work. And nor did Elena; as an actress and a singer, her best bet was to stay near London. It would be up to me whether we made a go of it or not. No one looked at me directly. The pressure was unspoken and yet immense.

“So you want us to move to England, then,” I stated baldly. The conclusion seemed inescapable.

A glimmer of hope danced like a tiny flame in the pit of Elena’s eyes. Morten took my shoulders and tipped up my chin.

“No one wants you to do anything you don’t want to,” he replied.

I left the dinner table and went upstairs to the study. I didn’t know it, but this was the first of many huge choices coming my way. But first, I had to recognise it as such. Because I only saw a devil’s alternative. Either stay in Paris and lose this relationship, something that was inconceivable. Or move to England, the country to which I swore I would never return when I left seventeen years before, risk my career and give the relationship a chance. And there was no guarantee that it would work.

“I’ve spent fifteen years of hard graft and strategic thinking to build up my persona into an international finance professional. I’ve lived and worked in six different countries, moving up the ladder to get to this point.” I spoke to the air in front of me, knowing full well that Morten was two steps behind.

“You’ll still have all that international experience even if you move to London. It can’t possibly be a bad move for your career if you handle it right.”

“And I left in the first place to escape the childhood memories bound up with my disastrous family and socially repressed world.”

“Maybe it’s time that the grown-up Louisa dealt with them. And what better time to do it than with three people who love you?”

I had no real arguments left other than the fact that I was giving up control of my life. I was being pressured into doing what other people wanted me to do, and just because of that I didn’t want to do it. I felt like screaming as loud as I could and getting him out of my head and out of my life. But I couldn’t. Because my love for him was already stronger than my ego. Everywhere I turned, it was a Catch-22. In order for us to live the dream, I would have to sacrifice the life and security I knew. It was too hard to deal with, so instead I burst into tears. He tried to reassure me.

“Listen, Louisa, you can organise the entire thing. Take all the time you want.”

But time was something we didn’t have. The more time that went past, the less chance there was of making it work.

Spontaneity was needed before sanity caught our dreams.

Elena said, “People move all the time. Nothing is impossible — love can move mountains. You should just stay here and not go back.”

I felt my diaphragm grind against my ribs and force my mouth into a twist of instant hatred. For one second before I resumed my mask. I thought, How can she assume anything about my life? Doesn’t she know what I risk by moving back?

To move or not to move to England, to be geographically close to my family…that was the question. Except that it wasn’t.

Because the question really was How willing am I to put my money where my mouth is and enter into a polyamorous relationship that cannot be kept secret from my family? From my world?

Discreet visits from couples could be kept secret.

Relationships could be kept indoors, in different social circles. I could run parallel lives, parallel loves. But changing jobs, countries and living arrangements was too big to be hidden. Questions would be asked, and no matter how proficient a liar I could be for myself, I could not lie successfully for four people. And lying to my family about such an enormous decision was not, by any stretch of the imagination, white. It was pitch-black deception.

And lo, my second demon appeared. His name was Rejection. Telling the truth to my family was tantamount to the battle between David and Goliath. Unarmed, I was staring Rejection in the face and inviting him into my life, saying “Come on in! I have your favourite dinner cooked, and while you’re here you can trash my house and my life.”

In the deliberation that followed, the ultimate decider was this: I couldn’t spend my life wondering “what if…”

So we would move.

15

“Did you read the articles I forwarded to you?” I asked.

“Yes. If only that kind of thing were less pie in the sky. But I don’t see how it would be possible in real life.”

She slowly exhaled. It wasn’t quite a sigh, because she tried her very best to be loyal. My mother’s marriage of twenty-three years had not been an easy one.

I had called her one evening after locking the door to the bedroom and arming myself with a very large mug of tea. Tea was always my preferred weapon of defence. Which is why I was drinking from the supersized Wallace and Gromit mug she had given Gilles the previous Christmas.

My mother, who had an ability to chat about curtain patterns for a full hour, would no doubt be vocal on our decision to open our marriage. She was the youngest of a traditional Victorian family of six children. All the family women of her generation had inherited the fascinated-with-fabric gene. I had recently felt it creeping up on me. They also operated according to a strict moral code. One family member may or may not have been a homosexual. The point was, we didn’t know. Or speak about it. Another may or may not have had extramarital affairs. We didn’t talk about that either.

This phone call constituted one of the hardest parts of my new life. I had always been honest with my mother, and in the last three months I had struggled to have normal conversations with her. I couldn’t cope with talking about interior decorating when all I wanted was to let her know about the most wonderful and the most difficult discovery of my life. The roller coaster of love, pain and more love. I loved and was loved by two amazing men. My husband loved me and loved another. And I was so happy that he was happy. And me. And my boyfriend. And my sisterwife. Despite the prospective conflict.

“Did you wonder why I sent them to you at all?”

“What, the articles?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“I only got halfway through the first one before I replied. They were rather long, and I didn’t have time for something that was so obviously fantasy.”

There had been much deliberation among us as to when we should let our families know about our relationship. And how we should let them know. My friends had, for the most part, been overwhelmingly supportive. But one or two of them had had reservations. Naturally, this was more or less the same reservation, and I had been well-versed in how to reply to it.

My friends said, “Tell me honestly that you are not doing this because you are unhappy with Gilles.”

“No. I can’t. That’s the point. I was unhappy with Gilles. But not because of him, because of me.”

If there was one thing I’d learnt by that point, it was that my problems…were because of me. Not that this made a huge difference to my ability to resolve them.

“What are you talking about?” my friends asked, more or less in one voice. “It’s not unreasonable to expect your man to work and to support you. You’re the one with the job, the ambition, the life.”

“So you expect me to leave someone I love because he doesn’t match up to other people’s standards of what a husband should be? He’s a person. I love him and I want him in my life. He loves me and wants to be in my life. Sure, there are things we are working on, like in any relationship: balance, finances.”

“But he doesn’t want children,” retorted Linda. Out of all my friends she’d been the one dreaming of children for years. Any relationship without children was inconceivable. Literally.

“Right now. He doesn’t want children right now,” I said.

“Louisa, you’re already thirty-two. Your biological clock is ticking. Maybe he will never be ready. What will you do then?”

“Well, not have children with him,” I said. “Obviously. You can’t force someone to have children with you. You of all people know that.” I said it pointedly. It was a sore spot with Linda, whose boyfriend had had a vasectomy before they’d met. They were hoping to reverse it. Or she would leave. “That’s the beauty of polyamory,” I continued. “I can still maintain our wonderful relationship with everything that we want together and have other partners who want what I want — like children, for example.”

“I don’t see it working,” she replied.

I accepted that a monogamous one-on-one arrangement worked for some people. But I also believed that people had great difficulty in challenging the norm and making a proactive choice about it. I had inherited all my parents’ middle-class values. I had cared about appearances. I had cared about disguising the reality of the aging process. I had cared about how much money people thought we had. I had even cared enough to lie to myself about my faults so successfully that I was unable to acknowledge who I really was. I had been lying to myself for years about the motives behind my behaviour. So much so that I hadn’t even realised that I had been living a lie.

“You can’t have it all!” Linda said, suddenly exasperated. “Are you suggesting that you would have children with someone other than your husband? How the hell would that work?”

“Try to be a little less monogamous in your thinking, if you would,” I said peevishly.

People were so convinced of their own position of being right that they thought I hadn’t considered any consequences of my decisions. But even in the worst-case scenario, I would be naïve. Hopeful. Hopeful of preserving my marriage despite our differing objectives in life.

“Polyamory is about building a community of people who openly love and support one another. Gilles may not want to be a father, but he would never stop me from being a mother. In fact, he would actively support me.”

“Someone who doesn’t want to be a father will never stay with you if you are becoming a mother of someone else’s child,” she said derisively.

My patience was coming to an end.

“What you don’t get is that it is already with his consent,” I said, “and as he would already give his love and support for the conception and pregnancy, why would he abandon me afterwards? Especially when he can enter into any relationship he wants. I have a higher opinion of Gilles than that.”

My friends obviously did not, though. It’s not like the same questions hadn’t occurred to me. He would in some sense be agreeing to have a child in his life. Just not his child. But the same could be argued with any woman of my age because he wasn’t going to escape without any child contact at all. It was unnatural. The majority of women chose to become mothers.

At my obvious and lengthy pause down the telephone my mother became suspicious.

“Did you send them to me for a reason?”

“Because you and I were talking about how marriage was an outdated concept,” I said to her. “And I consider that this is an amazing philosophy.”

I used the word amazing a lot in referring to polyamory. Morten pronounced it “amay-sing.” I loved his accent. Along with everything else about him. And loving him gave me the courage to plough on.

“And I wanted to let you know that Gilles and I do believe in this philosophy and we have decided to adopt it.”

Bombshell number one. I could feel it dropping from my airplane onto the rigidity of her life and knew how much pain I was causing. But I couldn’t lie to her anymore.

“Oh. Well you might agree with it, but I highly doubt you’ll be able to put it into practice,” she said dismissively. I girded up my loins.

“Well, that’s why I sent it to you. Because we have put it into practice. We are going out with another couple. Their names are Morten and Elena. And they live in England.”

Bombshell number two. I heard the roar of battle and the clash of swords between her unconditional love for me and her ferociously Victorian family ethics.

“…”

“…”

“…”

“Are you still there?”

“Yes.”

One word. My mother’s usually excessive vocal dexterity had been vanquished by my superior firepower.

“It isn’t just sex. I’m in love with him. We’ve been with them for six months,” I said. Hoping to jolt her out of her state of shock. And adding an extra three months just in case it made a difference.

“What…both of you?”

“Yes.”

She sighed. “Can you not keep this in the bedroom where it belongs?”

“Maybe you didn’t hear what I just said. This isn’t about sex; this is about love. The most important thing in the world.”

“But there is sex.”

“Yes,” I said. “But there is also love.”

Gilles and I were both superb examples of outwardly respectable, inwardly repressed middle class-dom. Both of our families cared much about keeping their lawns mowed and their cars washed; they had always paid their taxes and had “normal” professions. They kept up with the Joneses. But my mother was also compassionate, non-judgemental and intelligent. I had harboured a tiny hope that she might have looked at this radical solution in as positive a light as I did. More life, more growth and more love.

“I always knew you weren’t conventional. And that your path wouldn’t be either. And I love you as I love all my children. Unconditionally. I respect your right to choose. Even if I don’t agree with it.”

My mother, ladies and gentlemen. My mother said these words. Lucky. The word repeated itself in my head as if a mini- Kylie were in there: “Lucky, lucky, lucky…” But I hadn’t finished yet.

“We’re also planning to move back to England to be closer to them.”

Not so much of a bomb, more of a jarring clanger in this as-yet adult, reasoned conversation. As if someone with a rather large posterior had sat on a piano. But she needed to know. I would be an hour away from her doorstep, and there was no way of “keeping it in the bedroom,” as she had put it.

“Are you intimate...” I could feel her choosing her words carefully, “together?”

“No. But it’s a very open household. Because we are all in the same relationship.”

With every disclosure I could feel her pain multiplying, and my joy, as strong as it was, couldn’t inspire my mother to any kind of happiness. I felt her despair starting to keen, like a mother who had lost her cubs. She was scared. And I was also scared, but I couldn’t let it show.

“People will fight you,” she said. “You’re choosing such a difficult way.”

“It is a choice, I agree. But it is a choice to be true to my nature. Unless you think that my life should be about acting according to society’s definition of how we ‘should’ act. Isn’t that the same philosophy that stigmatised homosexuals?”

“I don’t have anything against homosexuals, you know that. But I wouldn’t choose that way for my boys. Your brothers. I don’t want them to experience unnecessary pain.”

“Then that’s the difference between us. I think being true to yourself is more important.”

After our phone call, I had run out of tea. I put on Linkin Park, opened the Jack Daniel’s and sang along, crying.

“Can’t you see that you’re smothering me?

Holding too tightly afraid to lose control,

’Cause everything that you thought I would be,

Has fallen apart right in front of you…”

Gilles found me before I had finished even one drink and said to me, “Don’t associate drinking with unhappiness, darling. Happy drinking, remember?”

“I’m hurting her, Gilles. What are we going to do if everyone rejects us?”

“Clearly, we’ll have to be unhappy and live according to others’ values,” he said.

He took me to the sofa and put on an episode of Friends. Our equivalent of comfort eating. And we landed on the one where Chandler goes out with a woman who has a husband, a boyfriend and several lovers. It’s funny how the implications of it had totally skipped me by on the first hundred viewings.

“She’s polyamorous!” I marvelled.

“So we’re not the only ones,” he replied, hugging me close. “See, we’re even represented in Friends!”

Telling my father…well, that was harder in many ways…but in the end it didn’t require wine or Friends.

Gilles and I called him Clint Eastwood, for his notorious impatience with ideas that could not pass muster, his habitual use of the term “goddammit” and his Midwest American accent. Born in Indianapolis, he had left the US aged twenty, but fifty years on his accent was undiminished. Now he was seventy-seven, and I was aware what an impact my revelations might have…I had irrational thoughts about my news causing him to have a heart attack. Death by polyamory. So I put it off as long as I could.

Since he was a pragmatic economist and not much of a speaker, I decided the best approach was by email. His response:

“Your announcement was quite a shock — but the main thing I am interested in is that you are healthy and happy; as I said, the rest is marginal.”

Economic language. Economists’ language.

“I’m not hung up on morals, but I have noticed that many morals are based on past experience and that they have been associated with the ‘best’ long-run solution for society. Utilitarian ethics. But best for most people in the past is not best for everyone and times change. If you and JR have been open with each other and you accept the risks — then it’s your risk and your life.”

My father remembered figures, conceptual models and anything based in algebra. Names were not his forte, and Gilles in my father’s head at that moment was JR, which happened to be my cousin’s name. But even if he couldn’t remember names, he was fair. Logical. And above all, he was not rejecting me.

This was as close to a blessing as I could hope for. And it was lucky…for the wheels were turning, and we were about to make our move…

16

The letter “L” stood for a lot of things. Love. Lust. Limbo…before my big move to another “L.” London.

It also stood for Louisa.

And Lydia.

I had known that Morten and Elena had come out of another polyamorous relationship with Rob and Lydia. I had known that it had ended badly. What had been admirably disguised from me until I had fallen firmly in love with Morten was that Morten was still in love with Lydia. His first poly-girlfriend. Or poly-ex-girlfriend, I reminded myself.

I wanted Morten and me to start our relationship right. I didn’t want to lie to him about my music and film tastes as I had done to Gilles, nor, for that matter, about past relationships. I wanted Morten to know that he could confide in me about anything.

“Do you want to talk about her?” I asked, wondering if I was just letting myself in for another roller coaster and at the same time admiring myself for being so magnanimous. Morten eyed me anxiously, and I could see his thoughts as plainly as if he had spoken them. Having been through one devastating breakup, he didn’t want to compromise a second relationship by tainting it so early with the sad memories of another.

But as I saw tenderness and compassion for me in his face, I also saw sorrow. Heartbreak. Loss. Loss of Lydia. Clearly, my new boyfriend was aching for his last girlfriend. And as his new girlfriend, all I wanted to do was heal the hurt. And in order to help I had to know about it.

“It’s obvious you still love her,” I continued gently, with strumming pangs in my heart. “And shouldn’t I be able to accept that you have love for many people? Isn’t that part of polyamory? Tell me why you broke up.”

Somewhere, a dam broke. I was appalled at the apparent pain I had unleashed. His words gushed out in a torrent of a water leak and sprayed pain across the table into my chest.

“Because we had to. Lydia and I couldn’t stay together once Rob and Elena had broken up. And Lydia broke her own moral code and started to fall for me. And then Elena found out how strongly she felt and told Rob. So Lydia felt forced to choose and demonstrate her loyalty to her husband.”

“Why did Elena tell Rob?”

“She believes in honesty at all times. No matter how much it hurts. And Rob had hurt her pretty badly. She wanted him to love her like she loved him, and it turns out what he wanted was something far more casual.”

“I see,” I said. “So, in fact, you have never fallen out of love with Lydia. And your relationship didn’t end because either of you wanted it to, but because of other people.”

As I said the words out loud, his eyes filled with tears and I fell just a little bit more in love. Accompanied by a hefty dollop of despair. I kissed him to comfort him, and he took my hand to go to the bedroom, where I filled the void temporarily but couldn’t replace her. Nor did I want to. I wanted to be The L. Not The Other L.

Elena said, “Lydia was a really good friend of mine. But she kept pushing me away even though she promised that we would still be friends when she and Morten broke up.”

“Maybe it’s too painful to see you because you remind her too much of Morten,” I suggested.

I’m sure that’s true. But now I feel like she was just pretending to like me so she could sleep with my husband. I feel betrayed.”

Her point of view was valid. Even if my point of view was that of Lydia. I loved Morten. And in order to be with him, I knew that I had to get along with Elena. I had to like her, whether or not I actually did. They were a team and had been for sixteen years.

In polyamory, a relationship isn’t a one-to-one mapping. It is a many-to-many. And so no matter whether I would have singled her out as a friend or not, Elena and I were family-in-law. Luckily, that day we hadn’t encountered any conflict. Unlike yesterday and, as it would turn out, unlike the next day. Because “L” in Elena’s book stood for Loyalty.

Lydia was everywhere in Morten and Elena’s Facebook photos. Blonde, petite and utterly charming. Laughing one minute, cheeky the next. She shone like an angel out from my screen and I could already see why he loved her.

“Would you mind if I wrote to her?” I asked him. “You love her so much, and I would like to love her too.”

“Thank you. Thank you for accepting and understanding the way I feel. It’s so difficult to be on top of the world with you one minute and then mourning Lydia the next.”

And so I dropped her a line:

Lydia,

I guess one of us had to take the plunge and as I browse through Facebook and see my newest friends’ profiles, you keep popping up! I hope you don’t mind this unprompted email and I also hope it doesn’t upset you.

Morten and Elena have talked about you (both) such a lot that I feel like I know you whilst actually I do not at all. I will try my best not to assume things...there are some things that I know for a fact though...such as...you like Justin Timberlake! I also know that Morten loved you and loves you still. I have felt weird about it at times, but almost immediately realise that this is due to my own insecurities...goodness, at least from a physical perspective, there is no way that one of us could replace the other (you are beautifully petite and I not at all!) and my honest belief is that Morten’s heart is big enough for Elena, you and me....let’s see when the fourth girlfriend comes along!

I don’t know what the future will bring, but I already trust Morten’s good judgement and would love to be friends with the people he loves. As I think you know Gilles and I are planning to move over to the UK this year and I look forward to meeting you and Rob when the time is right....

Lx

Later that day, after I had nervously refreshed my inbox about forty times, she replied:

Hi!

What a nice surprise! Thank you for a really nice email and thank you for taking the plunge, I have thought about messaging you before but never knew what to say.

Each time I meet Morten (which is only twice since you’ve been together) I always bombard him with questions, about you, about Gilles, about the four of you. I am so curious. I’m curious about the poly thing actually working. I’m curious about the differences. I’m curious about your outlooks and opinions especially as you didn’t come to this through swinging. Being this nosey usually gets me into trouble! I also think Morten and Elena are wonderful and I want them to be happy. He is so full of you and that makes me happy. They both deserved a couple that could give them what we couldn’t and you both seem perfect!

I still miss Morten and in the beginning I was an emotional wreck but time heals and when we met yesterday it was just really nice, no hurt, just great to see an old friend. I’ve said this to Morten a few times. You are soooo lucky to have him. He says you know that already but hey I wanted to remind you just in case :0)

I felt weird in the beginning when I lost him and he found you, but I can safely say that I feel no jealousy. I agree, there’s room for us all in that big heart of his. Thank you for being so incredibly understanding about this. He adores you and from hearing about you, reading this email and checking out your photos (I couldn’t resist!) I can see why.

PS. You are tiny too, what are you talking about?

I do love Justin Timberlake. Now I’ve lost Morten I’m thinking of going out with him instead :0)

I’ve thought about us meeting. You know I reckon we’d get on!

We have one big thing in common anyway! If you ever come to London and want to meet up I’d like that. Who knows what the future brings. I know M&E were sent to us to enrich our lives and teach us things we didn’t know about ourselves. It was a funny old rollercoaster but I wouldn’t change it for the world. Rob and I are stronger for the experience and only look back and smile. I’m pretty confident we won’t go poly again, but never say never!

With love

The Other Lx

How strange that both of us thought of ourselves as The Other L. I, because she had been first; I could not and would not replace her. And she, because she considered herself a mere memory from Morten’s past.

Several more emails followed. We both feared the judgement of the outside world and had both attended the same university. As we delightfully reminisced about favourite student hangouts, she confided in me the torment she had felt about Morten and how insecure she had felt that he had found someone else so quickly.

How her last night with Morten had been spent making love to music whilst both of them cried.

How their relationship had ended to the lyrics of “The Blower’s Daughter.”

“And so it is just like you said it should be,

We’ll both forget the breeze,

Most of the time.”

We acknowledged the importance the other held in Morten’s heart, which dissolved any resentment. She could not have a relationship with a man she loved. I, who loved Morten so much, could only weep at the fact that someone else had lost him. I wanted to hold her in my arms and comfort her, because I couldn’t even begin to understand how she had been strong enough to survive it. And I wondered if it were at all possible that there would be some place for her in our future.

But I had reckoned without Elena. And when she found out, there was hell to pay. She said, “I appreciate that you might want to get to know Lydia out of curiosity, but I find it weird and disloyal of you that you would go behind my back and make friends with her knowing how she hurt me. You’re hurting me by doing that.”

“I didn’t go behind your back,” I retorted. “I didn’t know that I was supposed to ask your permission.”

I had the uncanny feeling that jail bars were clanking in my head. Wasn’t this situation precisely what I had wanted to escape in monogamy?

She said, “Well I suppose it’s only emails. You don’t hang out. I couldn’t cope with that.”

“What do you mean? That I can’t be friends with someone that you aren’t friends with? Morten is my boyfriend and he loves Lydia.” I didn’t add that I could understand why he’d fallen in love with her in the first place. Someone kinder, softer and less brutally honest than Elena. Elena was shiny, like a diamond. Sometimes exhilarating. Sometimes cutting.

“Besides,” I added. “It’s not only curiosity, I hope to have them make some kind of peace. There was no malicious intent on her part; she wasn’t nasty to you.”

Elena said unashamedly, “I would have great difficulty with Morten being friends with Lydia if she can’t find it possible in her heart to be friends with me. I would ask him not to see her for my sake. And I know him well enough to know that he would do it. I’m more important to him than she is.”

I was scandalised. “You can’t tell him who he can and cannot see! And my choice of friends will certainly not be dictated to me.”

“Louisa, maybe you don’t understand. She rejected me and my offer of friendship. She hurt me.”

“But you said it yourself a million times, Elena,” I replied coldly. “You are the only one responsible for your hurt. I’m not saying that she played things brilliantly. But no one does in a breakup. You precipitated the events that forced her to choose. Given the situation, I totally understand why she chose not to see you.”

“But what I did was for the best,” protested Elena. “She was being dishonest — to herself as well as Rob. She created the threat by falling in love with Morten. Her fault. Not mine. I only exposed it. I know if it were me, I would prefer to know.”

“But you aren’t her!” I countered. “Think about her. You only exposed it because you wanted to hurt him like he hurt you. Have some humanity. Besides, you have issues around rejection, like all of us. Why can’t you understand that?”

“And why are you so much on her side when you don’t even know her?” She was shouting now, her Latin temper coming to the fore once again. “Am I that unimportant to you that you would choose an unknown girl over me?”

“I’m not choosing her over you, Elena. It isn’t about choice. I’m going with my principles. I can be friends with both of you.”

“I am your family, Louisa. I expect loyalty from my family and friends — otherwise it will never work,” she said ominously.

“What will never work?” I questioned, suddenly suspicious. “Do you mean to say that you would ask Morten not to see me either?”

“I think he would choose not to see you if you hurt me like that. He loves me,” she said coolly.

“Well I think that’s rotten. I would never ask Gilles to give you up because we can’t get along.” Little did I imagine that I would ever meet that scenario.

The fact was that I understood Lydia’s position and sympathised with her a lot more than Elena. Because I felt the same way as Lydia did. As Lydia had. Because I had started to feel that Elena was intrusively judgemental on the world around her and that it created drama to feed her ego. And with every argument we had, my distrust of her became increasingly certain.

Following Elena’s and my bust-up about Lydia, a flurry of emails abounded among the four of us. Morten and Gilles, whether they liked it or not, would be forced to take sides in this debate.

After some weeks and a lot of analysis had passed, we mutinously acknowledged that we were allowed to have our separate opinions. But everyone said it was a pity that such fundamental ingrained beliefs clashed. Elena above all had to be right as a matter of survival. And I didn’t trust her not to force her beliefs on my choices. By being the friend she wanted me to be, I risked being controlled...and what’s more, if I didn’t meet her criteria, rejected.

Nevertheless, I often came to Elena for advice, and she loved being asked. She knew things I didn’t. All about organic living, for one. And all about swinging, for another.

17

Yes, one of my newest discoveries about the world we lived in was that swingers were also normal people.

And that most of them were really nice. It was just that I didn’t understand them.

A long time ago in years past, I had been no stranger to miscellaneous sex. But my self-esteem had been at rock bottom, and sex had been my method of trying to be loved. It was the soul-bond I sought, and the physical act without the mental and spiritual connection meant very little to me. I simply didn’t understand why people would go out of their way to get it unless they were being self-destructive. But I had to find out.

Almost every other weekend, Morten and I saw each other. If I didn’t have business in England, he would take the Ryanair flight over to Paris. When we weren’t together, we were on the phone or MSN. We often talked about our vision of a world free of jealousy. Unfortunately, I wasn’t there yet. On one of our evening phone calls I asked, “Did you have a good time last night? Did you meet anyone?”

Elena and he had gone to a swinging “social” party in London. They didn’t “play” anymore, but many of their friends did, and, as Morten commented, how much more could you want from a party? Great friends, good music, liberated people and the pretty firm prospect of a snog. A “social” party was one where full sex didn’t happen, but possibilities were definitely open for an “after” party. I had learnt a lot of new vocabulary in the previous five months.

“Yeah, I kissed a lovely girl called Celine. She was very pretty. Not as pretty as you, though.”

I started to cry down the phone. It hurt. My emotions crunched around my windpipe and I felt sick. My whimpers reached Morten from Paris.

“Oh darling, don’t cry. We said it was OK, didn’t we? I love you, nothing’s changed between us.”

I cried harder. The thought of him kissing someone the way he kissed me made my gut twist and my stomach heave.

He said, “I won’t do it again if it hurts you this much. I’m sorry.”

“Why are you sorry?” I snapped. “I said it was OK, didn’t I? This is what we all wanted.”

“It’s OK, baby. Calm down. Why do you think you’re crying? What is it that hurts? Are you jealous?”

Clearly. I rolled my eyes down the phone at him, thankful that he couldn’t see what I was doing.

“I don’t understand what I’m feeling. Jealousy is the flip side of insecurity right?” I said.

“Right.”

“So if I’m not losing you and you are not betraying our agreement, then why am I upset?”

It was against my principles to be upset. It upset me. But being upset about my being upset only made things worse.

“Well, obviously what you want to feel and what you do feel are two different things. That’s OK. You shouldn’t push yourself,” he said gently.

“No. I won’t have it,” I said, stamping my feet.

My father had called me “Mistress Mary, quite contrary” when I was little. I continued to prove him right at the age of thirty-three, almost every day.

“I should push myself,” I said grumpily. “How do I know I am over it if we don’t test it?”

“But why hurt yourself unnecessarily?”

“Because pain brings growth. I will not be jealous. I will be secure in myself and we will be free to live and love. Will you see her again?”

“Probably not,” he replied. “It was just a bit of fun.”

Thankfully, the annoyance I felt at not being able to understand why he could have fun kissing a girl and not want to see her again immediately blotted out any hurt. If I had kissed someone, I would want at least to keep them as a friend. And hopefully my kissing them would be the manifestation of the first tentative blossoming of something deeper.

As usual, I decided to read up about it on the great god of our age: Wikipedia. And I found a great theory called “The Triangular Theory of Love”…I liked theories; they gave me some kind of precedent to hang my issues on.

Love was a combination of three ingredients: intimacy, passion and commitment. But not all love was sustainable. For example, a holiday romance where I had had intimacy and passion but, as it turned out, very little commitment. Other people called them flings. Did this mean that the burn and desperation I had felt for my holiday fling was not love? Maybe what others called “lust” was passion without the other two; but surely it was still an expression of love. A third of it, anyway. And many friendships had commitment and some intimacy with no passion at all. This was also love.

All of that made sense to me. But still, none of these configurations covered Morten’s encounter with Celine. There was no passion, no intimacy and no commitment. It was — just as he described it — exciting and fun. Fun!

“He says it’s like playing badminton.”

I was conferring with my husband on Skype from a lonely hotel on a business trip in Hungary about the problem in hand. Neither Gilles nor I could understand the attraction of swinging.

“Is that like a code name? Patch it through to my screen,” said Gilles, quoting 24.

Whenever Gilles and I were in public and needed to be discreet, we referred to sex as “playing Ping-Pong.” It seemed to characterise the yin-yang nature of intimacy as well as the exchange of power that happened between the sheets. It also made us titter uncontrollably when other people innocently commented upon it.

“No, he means like a hobby. It’s like going to play doubles. Something exciting they used to do together.”

“I thought the whole point of swinging was that you were supposed to do other people,” said Gilles flippantly.

“Yes. But just doing other people. Not living with other people or being in a relationship with other people. Like badminton is something you can do on a Thursday night and then go home. Compared to polyamory, which is a lifestyle change.”

“So do you know the other couple you’re swinging with, or not?” asked Gilles.

“Know and know. Not deeply, I guess. But I think they both had to like the couple. And in that case, the decision was a joint one. It was all about mutual consensual arrangement,” I said.

“How can they like them without knowing them then?” wondered Gilles.

“I don’t know. Maybe it’s a more masculine thing. Would you sleep with Nicole Kidman without getting to know her?”

Nicole had been top of Gilles’s “list of five celebrities he was allowed to sleep with without me getting mad” for three years running. Although obviously now it was just called “list of five celebrities he wanted to sleep with,” since permission and anger about infidelity were pretty much redundant in polyamory.

“Possibly…” said Gilles, “but now that I’m really allowed to have her, she doesn’t seem so attractive anymore.”

“Well, I would still go for Matt Damon,” I said emphatically. He was top of my list. “But only if he was exactly the same character as he was in Good Will Hunting. And he might not be like that in real life.”

“Good Will Humping,” said Gilles, quoting Friends. His comic timing was, as ever, impeccable.

If there was something that irritated me more than anything else in the world, it was not being able to understand something. I worked in finance. Not because I was good at maths. Quite the opposite. Because I was shit at maths. And the satisfaction that I gained from struggling my way through to understanding it had rewarded me beyond measure. And having applied this principle to every other area of my life, I decided that the only way to understand swinging was to try it.

I announced my decision to Gilles, who answered in another Friends quote.

“So you’re going to go through the tunnel?” he said.

“To the other side!” I replied.

Anyone who challenges society’s moral values renders themselves vulnerable. Whilst friendship between many is accepted and encouraged, intimacy between more than two people is often disparaged. Described as easy, loose and sluttish. And the majority of words are used to describe people (mostly women) who have sex on a casual basis.

In middle-class Britain, swinging was premeditated promiscuity. And therefore something that was heavily frowned upon. Almost worse than those poor women who were forced into the sex industry. This was — gasp — sex for fun. Shocking! In order to become a swinger, you had to expose yourself (metaphorically and literally) and your desire to carry out this crime to others. But you limited your risk by knowing that others were in the same position. Behavioural economics.

So it was that after a harrowing and (almost fully covered) photo shoot, in which I managed to grimace at the camera without looking in the slightest bit wanton, Morten and I created a profile for ourselves online. And then we started to shop. It was like Barnes & Noble for the over-eighteens. We read the dust jackets and looked at the photos. Of course I looked at Rob and Lydia’s profile first.

“Wow! So that’s what Lydia looks like naked.”

She was artfully posed on the bed like Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus, looking away from the camera with a classic silhouetted profile, a tiny little waist and full breasts squashed by one brown arm, tantalisingly looking like they were about to burst.

“I took that photo,” Morten said proudly. “What do you think of Rob?”

So this was the evil bastard who had broken Elena’s heart. I examined his photo carefully.

“He’s ginger,” I said in surprise, after looking at one of the more, ahem, revealing shots. “He’s attractive. And he knows it. Which somehow makes him more attractive. But you know what? It’s useless speculating about how attractive he is. For one, they aren’t poly anymore, and for two, Elena would not be happy if I were to entertain the possibility of getting off with her ex.”

“You’re probably right, darling,” said Morten naughtily. “But never say never. They’re still non-monogamous, after all.”

“Let’s look at the others,” I said, flicking faster through the images and ignoring his last comment.

“What about him?” Morten said hopefully. “The girl’s very attractive.”

I looked at Morten disdainfully.

“She has flab around her bum. Do you like that? Do I have it?”

“No, darling. Your bum is perfect. Much nicer than hers.”

“He doesn’t look very manly,” I said, mollified. “Let me read their profile.”

“If you don’t like him, you don’t have to. I don’t want you to do any of this for me.”

“No, I have to do this for me. Because otherwise I’ll never understand you.”

“OK yes, I know you feel you have to. But it would be the worst thing in the world if you slept with someone just because you thought I wanted to sleep with the girl. Swinging is so not as important to me as you are.”

I had flicked through twenty-five profiles by this point.

“They all look like crap. And look at that, this couple can’t even spell properly!”

“God forbid!” said Morten, laughing and hugging me. “Bad spelling means they must be terrible in bed.”

Nevertheless, I felt a curious frisson of excitement when Morten told me he had bought us two tickets to a “social” party. This was a new world that I had never dabbled in. If life was all about new experiences, this one had to be high up on the list of things to do.

As the evening approached, I sourced advice from those more experienced than me. None of my friends were any use. Fortunately, I had Elena and Lydia as a database. The most important question was “How do I say no nicely?” Because I couldn’t actually imagine me saying yes. Elena thought it was easy.

“Remember, swinging is about female empowerment,” she said. “You are the boss — and the rules support that. Any man who you think goes too far, he will be thrown out and banned permanently. Saying no is important, not only for you, but symbolically to stand up for women’s rights.”

Scary.

Lydia said, “Oh darling, I totally understand. I’m such a people pleaser. I totally get how difficult it is to tell people they aren’t sexually attractive. But just remember that they choose to put themselves on the front line of rejection by being swingers.”

Over the months, Lydia and I had become increasingly close. After all, if there was one person who could understand my position in our quad it was her, because she’d been there before me. Falling in love with the same man. Dealing with the same conflicts. Our friendship was borne uneasily by Elena, but as they had both made stabs at reconciliation, some patchy piecemeal contact had resumed between them and she found it less controversial.

“I would have loved to come and support you,” said Lydia, “but you and I would probably end up chatting all night and not have any experiences at all.”

Another couple, Aidan and Jacinthe, was driving us to the social, and as my nerves mounted, Jacinthe gave me her top tip.

“Keep your lipstick handy. And use it as an excuse if you can’t say no — just wave it in the air and head off to the bathroom.”

“You mean ‘Excuse me, I need to go to the ladies’ room’ like Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman?”

Comparisons to hookers seemed particularly apt. Aidan looked at me in the rear-view mirror and said, “Don’t worry. No one will force you to do what you don’t want to. Besides, this is a social. Probably nothing will happen anyway.”

As I entered the room, Vanilla Ice sang in my head:

“Girls were hot wearing less than bikinis,

Rock men lovers driving Lamborghinis…”

It was decadent. Luxurious. The girls were hot. The men were rich. And not hot. I dived for a table because I figured that I was allowed a good ten minutes of snorkelling some Dutch courage before I had to move. TV producers, actresses and generally branded people flitted about. They seemed to know each other. And some of the trendier ones knew Morten. Obstinately, I refused to have a bling-fizz drink and opted for a good old-fashioned pint. Out of keeping with my dress, but stout enough to give me some solid moral support. When Morten managed to peel my bare thighs away from where I had glued them to the faux-leather couch, we had conversations with other couples. About thirty of them. Variations of:

“Hi, I’m Morten. This is my girlfriend, Louisa.”

“Hi, nice to meet you. So how long have you been in the scene?”

“Well, this is Louisa’s first time.”

“Oh-ho” (knowingly to Morten). “So you’re the corrupter!”

Apparently there was always a corrupter and a corruptee.

Morten said, “Yes, but I am also married. My wife is her husband’s girlfriend.”

“Oh?”

“Yes, they’re not swinging at the moment.”

So many couples to swing with, so little time. Thus there was rarely a flicker of interest at this statement.

One swinging couple said, “This is our third party, Lisa is really into girls. And this is the best way for her to share the experience with me.”

“So Louisa, are you into girls?” said Lisa with a gleam.

“Um. Well I haven’t been until now,” I said, never sure of my ground. Then I thought, Shit, that could be taken two ways. Either it meant that I was not and have never been, or that I have just declared my interest in her.

“I think we’re pretty much straight,” laughed Morten, seeing my panicky face. “But who knows!”

“Well, just something to think about Louisa. You’re gorgeous.”

I thought, At least someone likes me at my first swinging party. Thank God. But it’s a girl. Does it matter? Could I be bisexual, after all? Should I try it?

I said, “Excuse me, I need to go to the ladies’ room.”

To which they replied, “We’ll see you later, we hope!”

After this conversation had been repeated every two minutes for an hour or so, I was exhausted. Plus I was very familiar with the ladies’ room. This was speed dating at its finest and it reminded me of YO! Sushi. Only I was the one sitting on the conveyor belt. £4.50 for a piece of the Louisa maki. Morten got me another pint and I wandered up to the second level, where they had comfy make-out chairs. A lone woman was squashed into the corner.

“You OK?” she asked. “I haven’t seen you here before.”

“No. This is my first time. Cue swinging virgin joke!” I chuckled, as if comfortable with it all.

With one deft movement she reached out and lifted up my skirt. As I had one hand grasped firmly around my pint and the other clutching my bag, there was not much I could do about it.

“Oh,” she said. “You’re wearing panties.”

What the fuck?

She lifted up her own skirt to reveal a distinct lack of underwear and said in a matter-of-fact way, “I never wear panties to these events. I’ve lost so many pairs, it’s just too expensive.”

As I stared incredulously at this woman stroking her trimmed pubic hair and wondered into what parallel universe I had just jumped, it occurred to me: Was she expecting a compliment? Was there some swinging etiquette I didn’t know about?

So I laughed falsely and loudly.

“Ha, ha, ha! Well, jolly good on you!” She stroked some more. I obviously hadn’t said enough. “That’s a very nice haircut, by the way. Oh Morten, there you are!”

Morten, of course, was nowhere to be seen. But she didn’t know that. I escaped downstairs and gratefully sank onto the couch with Aidan. He laughed at my expression and said, “You look all in. See anyone interesting?”

“Plenty interest-ing. But I’m not interest-ed.”

“Ah well,” he said. “Better luck next time. But you could always come home with us. I’d be up for a fuck with you.”

I mustered what was left of my dignity. Then I waved my lipstick in his face and said, “Excuse me, but I need to go to the ladies’ room.”

He de-friended me on Facebook the next day.

18

But polyamory was not all sex and swinging. Far from it. There were more important things in life. Like shared housework.

“Your cleaner really isn’t doing a very good job, Louisa,” said Elena one day as I walked in the door from work.

“Oh?” Breathe slowly. Cleaning wasn’t my favourite subject even at the best of times. And was really low down the list when I got in from a full day’s work.

“Come here and have a look,” Elena commanded. What I wanted to do was sit on the sofa and look at an episode of Friends. What I did was go with Elena to the kitchen. And resented all seven of my steps. She knelt down and pointed to a gap between the door and the fridge. Where there was a stripe of black goo.

It was filthy. Very obviously so. And so obviously so that one must have been blind not to have seen it. Gilles and I had of course never seen it. Shame bubbled up.

After our Christmas together and until the time that I managed to pull off the move to England, Elena had been true to her word. She could barely live a week without Gilles. She regularly came over to Paris, and when she got there she could hardly tear herself away. On several occasions plane tickets were discarded. The price of love was steep. And not only in money.

My limits were being severely tested. I felt invaded. My whole house had been turned upside down by Elena’s X-ray vision. It appeared that we didn’t have the right products to clean, we washed our clothes neither at the right temperatures nor with the right kinds of environmentally friendly detergents, and our state of hygiene was generally very poor. It was like having my mother in the house. Which was the worst possible situation I could think of.

“That’s nasty,” I said honestly. It really was.

“Ah well, don’t worry. The rest of your house is fine. You just need to talk to your cleaner and show her what do to. Why don’t we go down and see her?”

My cleaner was the wife of the concierge. A man on whose good side it was imperative to stay. And now I was going to go and criticise his wife’s cleaning skills. Which admittedly were not good. I tried my last desperate attempt to resist without being rude.

“I’m really quite tired.”

“Oh it’ll only take a minute,” she said. “Why don’t we do it now?”

By now I was growling quite fiercely. Not out loud, of course. That would be rude. I could feel razors growing on my tongue, and it was only by biting my lip very hard that the shame I felt from my inability to keep my house clean and the antagonism I felt towards Elena for her judgement was kept firmly under wraps. And so I went with her.

She was my guest. She was Morten’s wife. She was Gilles’s girlfriend. But in my world, guests did not comment on their hostess’ ability, or rather lack of ability, to clean. Now the question was whether it was the place of my boyfriend’s wife to do so. I didn’t feel it was. But it may have been the place of my husband’s girlfriend. After all, it was his home and his inability as well.

“I’m so glad I can contribute to the household like this. You don’t seem to have time to look at things like this and well…” She looked over at Gilles, whose shoulders told me that he wasn’t in a good mood. “Gilles, bless him, has no idea. Oh, and I bought you some beautiful antique dusty pink roses. We all know Gilles’s block with flowers.”

Gilles’s shoulders looked distinctly unhappy. He turned round and his face told the same story. Her laughter tinkled. “Gilles got in a tantrum today because I asked him to make the bed for you. You like the bed to be made, don’t you?”

It was true. Only yesterday I had grumbled that the bed was yet again unmade. Gilles hadn’t listened, as usual. He had a Gallic attitude to life and to mess. Everything was met with a shrug of his shoulders. Bed making. Bof! But it had not been my intention to impose upon Elena. Or indeed give her fuel to use with Gilles.

The flowers sat in the middle of the dining table, which was set for three. Two on one side, one on the other. The best silver, the best crockery, the best glassware, the best, the best, the best. She had done this all for me. And I felt like an honoured guest. In my own fucking house.

As we settled around the table, she said sweetly, “Do you want to sit next to Gilles?”

Grrrrrrrr. And now I felt obliged to be polite. She was my guest.

“Oh no, no, no. Please go ahead.”

So there we were. The couple and the mistress. Who felt like me.

“Today we went and saw an exhibition of Monet’s water lilies.”

I looked at Gilles in shock. He nodded his head. Affirmative. My husband was doing something other than watching TV, checking chessbase.com or training at the gym. Who was this man? Because it sure wasn’t my husband.

“But I love impressionism,” I said, wading through my confusion.

“I didn’t know that.” Gilles looked at me.

“I visited Paul Cézanne’s house and specialised in him when I did my history of art exams. That print in the toilet is Picasso. The reason I chose my apartment was because it was in rue Maurice Utrillo.”

“It was also a hundred metres from the pub.”

“Yes.”

I knew that it was as much my fault as his that we never moved anywhere or did anything. More, in fact. Because he wouldn’t do anything without me.

During our monogamous years together, Gilles and I had lost sight of who we were when we first met; the balance that we achieved so happily and easily at first had become a caricature of those characteristics that fell to each extreme percentile. I loved his easygoing nature; he loved my insatiable curiosity. Until his easygoing nature became lazy and passive, and my curiosity was transformed into a thirst to learn more and more and to take power. In fact, each of us had become a product of the other and, ironically, as with many couples, this had driven us apart. Together we symbiotically fed each other’s weaknesses.

These weaknesses in my case were sometimes also my strengths. My ambition and drive had led to success in my professional sphere. But the weakness that I nourished in my husband had left him dissatisfied with his life. And with our marriage. Which left me dissatisfied with him. Because arguments between Gilles and me were few and far between. I gave him little to argue with. Nothing to push against. Indeed, the only time I had seen him shaking with rage was once before our marriage during an argument with his father. But he argued with his new girlfriend. And this one with Elena was a humdinger.

“I feel like you’re invading my home,” shouted Gilles.

“Is this about making the bed?” She was laughing at him.

“Why are you treating me like a child?” he screamed back.

Meanwhile, I sat on the sofa watching them in fascination. It’s not often you get to see a soap opera up close and personal. And seeing Gilles scream was ever so slightly attractive.

“Why is it that you can’t make the bed for your wife?” asked Elena patronisingly. “What else were you doing with your day? I suppose checking your email is more important than doing anything for her, hmm?”

“She doesn’t care about the bed!” he said, exasperated. “Louisa and I, we have our own dynamic.”

“But she does!” said Elena. “You’ve heard her say so every morning this week. You don’t care about her!”

“I love her and she knows I do. And what business is it of yours, my marriage? We can sort our own affairs out, thank you!”

“Maybe you can, but Louisa’s unhappy and you don’t even see it. Her relationship with Morten is far more equal.”

There it was. And once out, it couldn’t be unspoken. I sat with bated breath for Gilles’s reply. Surely he could win this argument. Surely he would be able to counteract what Elena said. I wanted my marriage to work. I needed his belief that it would too.

But Gilles simply retreated into himself and said stubbornly, “We love each other and we’re building a future together.”

Elena lost it. And started yelling. “She’s building a future. You aren’t doing much. You don’t have a job. You’re not even trying to get a job. You don’t help round the house. You resent even making the bed. If you aren’t careful, she’ll leave you.”

Oh my God.

It was strange how the verbalisation of an idea could suddenly make your vision shift focus. In that instant I realised that I wanted children and had wanted them for a long time and that whilst I was scared, I was also ready. As I looked at Gilles stuttering apoplectically, I also realised that he wasn’t. Not one little bit. I had always known it wasn’t yet. But I had assumed that it was sometime soon. I had been very wrong. If my husband resented making the bed, then how much more would he resent the time out of his schedule to look after a child?

In the theoretical world of polyamory I could have it all. Gilles was my best friend and soulmate — even if he didn’t want children. Morten would be having children with Elena first, and although I loved him, I wouldn’t expect children to come from that relationship for some years. So I was left with one man I loved who didn’t want children and one man I loved with whom I couldn’t have children any time soon, if at all.

So what was I doing with either of them?

19

Elena left two days later. They had made up again. Regrouped. Rebonded. And I had heard it all through the thin walls of the guest bedroom. Furtive creaks of the bed interspersed with breathy sighs and the ultimate guttural moan from Gilles. I knew it well. But before it had made me happy. Now it was killing me. He accompanied her to the airport. Gilles was due back at six. Instead, a stranger came back at eight.

“You cut your hair! Your long curly hair,” I said. I felt truly bereft, in the same way that a mother regrets cutting her baby’s golden locks off and they never return.

Someone who vaguely looked like Gilles grinned at me.

“I wanted it to be a surprise. Elena says it looks really good.”

I said nothing more. But I looked so horrified that he dared not approach me. I turned and talked to the table.

“Your dinner’s cold. I waited for you to eat.”

“You didn’t have to,” he said warily.

“I thought that we would finally have a romantic evening together. I haven’t seen you alone in seven days.”

“We still can. I’ll heat it up.”

He didn’t get it. I had looked forward to being with him. I’d missed him. I’d longed for him. And if he had felt the same, then he would have come home to be with me just as soon as he could. But he had chosen to spend two hours longer than necessary cutting his hair.

“Don’t bother,” I said. “I’m not hungry.”

“What’s wrong, Louisa?” His tone was menacing. And he was prepared for a fight. Gilles, who never fought with me.

“You went and cut your hair,” I said sadly. I meant that he had spent the time away from me. But he misunderstood me.

“So what? It’s my hair, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know you anymore,” I said. “I don’t know who you are. I don’t know why you do what you do. And now you don’t even look like you anymore.”

The man I had married was a poet and a dreamer. This man was shorn, muscular and dressed to kill. He and Elena had been shopping earlier that day.

I had seen the pattern of a two-person marriage played out again and again. And rarely had I seen a couple where the partnership was, or remained, equal. One was naturally dominant and the other was submissive — and if each was lucky, they played their roles happily, neither of them seeking to redefine themselves. In another workable configuration, one was dominant in some aspects whilst another took charge of still others. But more often than not, the couples found themselves imbalanced.

In at least one of my closest friends’ relationships, this dynamic had resulted in divorce. My friends were ostensibly strong women who had sought men to nurture, care for…and control, because they were so insecure that they needed to be needed. And when they fed off the neediness enough, they were strong enough to stand on their own two feet, and ironically they came to despise what had become a parasite. They fed off the person that they initially sought to care for, to make themselves feel better and more secure.

I didn’t despise them for it, any more than I despised myself. For I was fast discovering that I was one of these women. Unconsciously, I had sought a man whom I could take care of and with whom I thought I could build a future, diminishing his responsibilities and his power until I was left with a shell who was dependent on me and with whom I was not satisfied. My husband had searched for and found a maternal figure who would absolve him of responsibility and manage his life.

And there I was.

But Elena had changed all of that. My man-child had rebelled and grown. He had cut his hair. The outward symbol of inner transformation. And with it had become a man who was my husband and yet a stranger. This man sighed and started to eat. “We need to talk,” he said. My heart leapt and my throat closed.

“About my future. Our future. The fitness course is all good and well, but I have to get a job. And since we’re moving to England, I have to get one there. And I think it should be as soon as possible.”

“But I won’t be able to move for another four months,” I said, stating the obvious.

The deal with my company had been signed, but these things took time. And I certainly hadn’t confided in my boss the real reason for the move. Which meant that Gilles was planning to leave Paris before me. Way before me.

I couldn’t ask the question I wanted to. Which was, “Are you leaving me for Elena?” So I started with another argument.

“But what about the dogs?” I said. “I can’t look after them here by myself.”

Gilles had wanted dogs for years. And in a misguided effort to make him happy, seven months earlier I had finally given my consent, despite my misgivings. I knew how much work dogs took. But apparently he hadn’t.

“Getting the dogs was a mistake. I resent the time it takes having to take care of them.”

It wasn’t like I didn’t know this. But a mistake? Our dogs were a mistake?

“So you’re giving up responsibility. Why am I not surprised?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“That you don’t know how to handle responsibility. We took on the dogs and committed to giving them a good home. You can’t just abandon them like this.”

“It’s not a mistake to admit we made a mistake,” said Gilles, as if he was repeating a phrase from memory.

“I can’t believe you’re saying this,” I said. “This isn’t you. This is Elena talking.”

He couldn’t deny it.

“Yes. But she’s only saying what I have felt for a long time.”

“So what? You’re giving up, yet again, when the going gets tough? And Elena knows you better than I do inside five months.”

It was a statement, not a question.

“Elena knows me in a different way. You and I have blind spots with each other.”

I was furious, frustrated and yes, jealous. The ultimate polyamorous sin.

“She hasn’t seen you give up on all your studies and your jobs for the past six years. She doesn’t know if it would be better for you to actually stick to something for once in your life.”

“They are preventing me from getting back to work.”

I hated that he had a point. “Only because you use them as an excuse.”

“An excuse, maybe. But also a reason. You know we can’t leave them alone for extended periods of time.”

He was right. Which meant Elena was also right. And I was therefore wrong. “But I love them.” I was crying as the dogs licked the tears off my face, not knowing that we were in the middle of abandoning them. Gilles was crying too. He came over and held me. I had no defences left.

“I’m sorry, darling,” he said. “If you see another way, tell me. Our relationship is terribly unequal. And my getting a job is the first step to rebalance it.”

“So you’re leaving. Don’t assume that you’ll move back in with me, then,” I said spitefully.

I had to be mean. It was my last resort. My life. My husband. My dogs. My marriage. My sanity. I was losing it all. I rocked myself back and forth on the sofa and the dogs licked my tears. It was so rare that Gilles made a decision. When he did, there was not much I could do about it.

This was an unknown realm, where we formed different partnerships independently of the other one. Whilst we had been venturing into the utopia of building relationships together, this new eventuality was dangerous. Suddenly, my husband was blossoming with another person and developing his relationship outside of the boundaries of our marriage, with trust as my only safeguard.

At first I had noticed nothing but a different sexuality. And although it was strange, it was no threat. We continued to love each other just as before, and our love life had never been better. And then doubt started to creep in. Emails from my new sisterwife gave rise to suspicion. He had confided in her concerns that he had not shared with me. She and I conversed easily over email, but the man she talked about was a different personality. The man that I thought I knew inside out — the passive, unambitious, loving, gentle husband — was emerging to become dominant, proactive and responsible, where with me he had been childlike, submissive and stubborn.

And this man, I didn’t know. I had done everything for him and us for several years. I did not expect much from him, and I got even less. Elena required higher standards. And somehow he met them. She required someone to take care of her and her needs, just as she took care of him and his needs in her own, but very different, way.

When Morten heard about our decision, he came over to Paris whilst Gilles visited London. With his new haircut and wearing his black velvet jacket.

“You have to look on the good side, darling,” Morten said. “The dog-sitter costs money, you were worried about the neighbours’ complaints and when you try to find a place to live it will be so much easier. Landlords in England are really picky about pets.”

“You don’t understand,” I said. “This isn’t just about the dogs. It’s everything. Elena is so much better for Gilles than I am.”

“How can you say that? You’ve supported him through the last six years.”

“But I didn’t give him anything to strive towards. He hasn’t grown with me.”

In five months with Elena, Gilles had transformed himself. I was happy for him, but that didn’t stop the guilt. The pain. Or the doubts.

“Okay, stop giving yourself a guilt trip. You didn’t have a choice. He wasn’t taking charge of anything. How long were you supposed to wait? You have to understand that both of you loved and needed each other at that time. People change.”

“But he helped me so much. He loved me and I blossomed. I have destroyed him.”

“It takes two to tango,” Morten replied. “You gave him love. You gave him marriage. You gave him financial support. The rest was up to him.”

“Should I let him go?” I asked. My question was not really to Morten. It was to myself.

“Let him go where? His choice is to be with you and with Elena. You’re not questioning Gilles now, you’re questioning polyamory again.”

The path out of Gilles’s and my settled patterns of interaction was certainly not proving to be an easy one. And I was in pain.

It was so tempting to fall back into my familiar grooves and give up the struggle. It seemed too hard when there was probably an easier option out there. An unknown partner, Mr. X, who would suit me better now that I had six years of change under my belt.

In the final analysis Gilles and I loved each other still, but the holes that we had gouged in each other’s personalities meant that together we had only been living a half-life. And I didn’t know whether it was too late to rebuild it.

20

My family had written many letters to me over the months since our announcement; none had picked up the phone, however, because of course they couldn’t actually talk about sex in person.

“This letter is not to pass judgment...but what you are doing is wrong.”

“We’ve seen it all before — wife-swapping is the unfancy term for it.”

“You have opened yourself up to an unimaginable world of hurt.”

“How could you be so selfish and immature as to shame your family this way?”

“As a Christian, I believe in the sanctity of marriage and the blessing of that sacred union with children. I can never accept the path you have chosen.”

“No one of any consequence is interested in what goes on in your sex life.”

Whilst opinions varied about who and who might not be consequential, I could say with some certainty that, on the contrary, there was much interest in our sex life. Even if our experience was more than mere “sex life,” since it had repercussions on every facet of my life, we had had offers from magazines, newspapers and several famous daytime TV shows.

Of course they were interested in our intimate interaction — who slept with whom. Twosomes? Threesomes? Foursomes?

Sex, after all, sold. But they were also interested in exactly how we overcame the common demons of jealousy and insecurity as well as the more practical elements of household arrangements and time management.

“In Sweden, I had a publishing deal,” said Elena.

“What were you writing about?” I asked curiously. I was impressed. Getting a publishing deal was, well, a big deal in my world.

“I was writing a story about my life.”

I wasn’t surprised. Things happened to Elena. She created excitement wherever she went. Often out of huge conflict. But that was how it happened: if you wanted one, you had to accept the other. It was devilishly scintillating being part of her world. But also full of drama.

And so one day she said, “Marie Claire wants to do a piece on us with a photo shoot. But I would write it. It could be my big break.”

My reaction was apportioned between support, envy and fear. Support because — wow — I had read some of Elena’s writing before. There was no doubt she had talent, and Marie Claire was a great glossy to showcase it. Envy because, in truth, I loved writing and would have loved to be an author. And above all, fear. Us in a magazine meant coming out in public and further shaming my family, many of whom already felt sick to their stomachs about my relationship status. My brothers had refused to talk to me since our announcement. And my mother was the youngest of six in a high-status British family; even if she supported my right to choose, it didn’t mean she liked my choice. Especially now that her five brothers and sisters were on the warpath.

“I don’t understand why,” said Morten’s father when he heard about it. “Why do you have to go and publicise it? Isn’t it enough that you do it in private?” He was supportive of our situation, but critical of anything he considered unnecessary thrill-seeking.

Elena sat up and started to speak, but I stepped over her and said, “You have to stand up for what you believe in. We believe in the ability to choose your relationship configuration, and we’ve been criticised for doing so. Fighting for the right to choose, if not the choice itself, is important.”

Afterwards, Elena had thanked me for sticking up for her.

“No one’s ever done that before,” she added, a little sadly.

“I wasn’t sticking up for you, really,” I bristled at her comment. “I was sticking up for my principles.”

Secretly I suspected that Elena wanted the article more for the fame than for fighting against the patriarchal system of marriage. But hey, did it really matter?

“Well, I think you were sticking up for me. And it felt good.”

It had taken some careful consideration before I agreed to take part in the article, and I had grilled Elena carefully about the editorial content. She assured me that not only would she write it, but I could veto anything if I thought it was out of line. It depended on us all taking part, because an article where four people were willing to “come out” was far juicier than an article that made a claim of open marriage without any supporting evidence.

But as it turned out, we were all screwed eventually. The article came out in the twentieth-anniversary edition. The cover was emblazoned with gold. It looked rich and glamorous…until you opened the pages where our story made it look cheap and tawdry. The text was fine. But the headlines told a different story.

“I’m Elena…meet my boyfriend Gilles and his girlfriend Louisa…who sleeps with my husband Morten.”

They had “forgotten” that Gilles and I were married. It made the headline more sensational.

“Elena and Gilles (left) sleep together, while Elena’s husband Morten (right) has sex with Louisa.”

The photographer had told me not to smile in the photos. I was to look sultry and sexy. And in the tiny hope that I might look halfway decent in a photo for once, I obeyed him. As it turned out, every photo of me — not smiling — was grim and looked like I was as miserable as hell. Which was naturally the first thing my mother called to my attention the next time we met.

I was tired of defending our life to the outside world. Tired of pretending there were no problems. Other people got support in their relationships, but for us there was little support, few therapists and lots of moral outrage.

I spent my time alone in Paris, waiting for the moment when I could move. And as my sense of isolation grew, so did my insecurity.

21

For the next months I commuted as often as I could. I was lonesome and emotional. It was such a big step, such a big change. And people at work were starting to notice my inability to deliver.

I hoped that Gilles was doing everything that he had promised me to make our future brighter. The reason for his moving over to England had been to pursue his career in fitness. But after four months there was no sign of an inclination to get a job.

Our instant chats were as breezy, loving and naturally full of quotes as they had always been. We hid behind other people’s dialogue to avoid the uncomfortable questions. There was no communication around his professional aspirations and, loath to nag him, I sourced my information from Morten over the phone.

“Do you know how Gilles is getting along in the job hunt?”

“Not well, according to Elena. He’s depressed,” said Morten.

“How come? Is there something wrong?”

“Nooo. Not exactly.” Morten speculated for a minute. “I think he feels the pressure of your expectations and finds it hard to motivate himself to get a job in an area where he has little confidence.”

“How can he feel the pressure of my expectations? We don’t talk about it. He’s projecting the pressure on himself.”

“Yes, sweetheart, I know. But even I can hear how disappointed you are in him. He probably hears it too when you talk.”

I inhaled the unfairness of it all whilst acknowledging that he was right. Because I was more than disappointed. I was angry at Gilles. And I couldn’t make myself not be.

“I have only ever wanted him to be happy, and as the years have gone by, I have lowered my expectations until now all I want is for him to find something that motivates him. It doesn’t even have to be paid, especially since I support him financially.” I couldn’t resist rubbing it in one more time to Morten and immediately regretted it. I felt mean and stingy and mercenary. Polyamory was bringing out all my bad sides.

Every three weeks or so when I could get over to England we congregated at Elena and Gilles’s place. At least that’s how it felt. Elena and Gilles were the couple, and Morten was my boyfriend and the third wheel. I looked at Elena with our two men at her beck and call and started to feel sorry for myself. But Elena, a contradiction as always, wrong-footed me.

“It’s odd,” she said. “You’d think I’d be really happy with two men here, and in some ways I am. But somehow there is always a piece missing, and when you come over it’s like we’re complete.”

My heart warmed, hearing her words. Feeling ostracised simply by geographical distance was doing nothing for my sense of security. I felt like I was busy working to support Gilles’s relationship with another woman and receiving nothing in return. It was at times like this when I badly needed to feel loved and appreciated that words like Elena’s mattered most.

“In any case, you’ll be here permanently in two months’ time and then we can be together all the time. Just the four of us.”

So close and yet so far. I had barely warmed to her before I felt ugly tentacles of conflict reach up to claw me back into the murky depths of dislike. I didn’t want to be together all the time. I badly needed to touch base with Gilles. I was losing him. We were unable to communicate about his life, his future and my worries. We needed to work on our relationship and change the dynamic somehow. Because right now he was my primary partner only according to our marriage certificate. He confided in Elena, had better and more regular sex with Elena, and spent more time with Elena — when they weren’t arguing or on a break. I felt trapped by my own restraints. I didn’t want to ask the questions that would help me understand what was going on for fear of learning what I didn’t want to know. I couldn’t work on our relationship as long as all his energy was flowing into her. And my energy, which found no way into Gilles, was flowing into Morten. I clung to the hope that when I moved to England it would be different. Elena and I would work on building a relationship; Gilles and I would be spending more time in each other’s company.

“Where are you tonight?” typed Gilles.

“Hungary. Rolling out this project. Well, not rolling it out right now. Actually watching ‘Iron Man’ on hotel TV with room service,” I typed back.

“It’s a hard life!” he replied. “But wasn’t Robert Downey Jr. on your list? You know you can actually get off with real people, darling. You don’t have to sit there watching celebrities.”

I could have gone out. I could have had a good old snog to make me feel better. But I knew that it would make me feel more alone than ever.

“I’m not interested,” I said. “Open relationships would be even better if there was more time in the day. Plus I am too depressed to flirt properly without alcohol and have a breakfast meeting tomorrow.”

“Why depressed?” said Gilles, concerned. His family had a history of depression, and in his mind there was nothing worse than this.

“I miss you,” I said. “Everything seems worse when we’re apart.”

“I miss you too, darling. But remember we’re together for life. A couple months is a drop in the ocean. The future is ours. Me as a personal trainer and you as a top exec.”

“How’s that going, by the way?” I dropped it in at what I hoped was a natural part of the conversation.

“Good. I was going to get a job, as you know. But then I realised that my body is my ticket to a new career. If I am going to start my own personal trainer business, I have to look the part y’know.”

“I think you already do. And so do my friends. Whenever you put those half-naked bodybuilding pose pictures up on Facebook they ping me asking what it’s like to have sex with someone so fit.”

“Do you tell them about the night of five times?” said Gilles, quoting Friends.

“Yeah honey, if there was a night of five times it hasn’t been with me lately.”

“Ah well,” he replied offhandedly, “not long to go now.”

“You were telling me about your plan…”

“I’m building my own website. I spend most time on that and at the gym now.”

“Are you OK for money then? You must be running out,” I said.

“No worries, that five grand you transferred has lasted. Elena and I stay in most nights.”

I wondered what Morten was doing all this time. Whilst Gilles and Elena were having sex. But I didn’t want to ostracise Gilles, criticise him or, above all, lose him. So, as usual, I said nothing.

22

I had longed for them all from abroad. For Gilles, my constant, my hero. For Morten, my romantic, my open and enlightening soul. And even for Elena, the irrepressible but exciting drama queen. Together we made a strong team to fight for polyamory. So far we had survived society’s backlash, family backlash and logistical nightmares. All for the sake of love.

When I finally reached England, we’d decided to move to Notting Hill. Out of all the areas in London, it was the only one I’d really heard of — romanticised by the film — and somewhere I envisaged a bohemian lifestyle of music, togetherness, parties and love. I wasn’t far off. Our apartment was just next to Portobello Road. Morten and Elena lived a stone’s throw away.

“You see, you and Elena have the stuff. Ladies’ Stuff,” explained Morten, giving it a capital “L” and a capital “S.” “Gilles and I don’t really need the stuff. So it’s really your apartment and Elena’s apartment. Gilles and I can just move between them.”

And so they did. On the several mornings a week when we’d spent the night with our poly partners, Gilles and Morten would pass each other at 8 a.m. on the road back to their respective homes five minutes apart and give each other a secret grin and wink. Only they knew what they’d been up to.

We lived much of the time in a loved-up bubble. Evenings spent together cuddling on the couch. Nights out at glamorous parties. Flexible friends over for dinner. Days out ice skating, the four of us holding hands as we whizzed round the rink.

But Elena took a lot of energy. Her emotions were transient. When she was up, it could have an exhilarating effect. We had parties, went shopping, went to the cinema to dance and sing to Mamma Mia at the top of our voices. She was the life and soul of the party. When she was down, it took its toll on all of us. For Elena suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder…which meant that her journey was a tough one, and so was ours. From the times we had to pick her bodily up off the floor, distraught, to the time we spent two hours trying to cajole her out of bed for Christmas lunch. Elena was an actress and a singer. A very good one. But she’d been out of work for years. She’d say, “I have an audition.” Or...“I’ve got a part in a music video.” Or…“They want me to sing in their band.”

And each time we’d applaud. Maybe this time she would go for it. Maybe this time she’d be happy with it. Maybe this was the turning point for her depression.

Self-sabotage was Elena’s way of binding people to her. She needed rescuing. And victimisation was her excuse. As well as mine. The foretelling of the loss of both my partners threw me back into my childhood drama of abandonment and rejection. We took turns in playing victim and persecutor, whilst Morten and Gilles were the rescuers. When we weren’t playing victim and persecutor, Elena and I were friends. The foursome worked. We went to museums together, we watched films together, we ate together. We were like a family.

But as months wore on, it became more and more obvious that the relationship was becoming romantically unbalanced. That initial lust just kept on going. And the longer we spent with our new partners, the less able we were to be with our spouses. And yet, it was still magical. Imagining a relationship where you could keep your husband as your best friend and occasional bed partner whilst incorporating a new love kept us all clinging to the hope it might work: past and future intertwined. Current and past loves committed — through choice — into a family.

In every family, there are issues. But families are bound by blood. And in the end, we…were not.

Elena’s and my issues clashed. So much so that it was she and I who went most often to couples therapy. Not just once, maybe ten times in all, both of us entrenched in the “rightness” of our point of view (that’s a lot of money and effort just to persuade another person that you’re right).

This story pivots on our relationship. But as all stories are, it is one point of view. There is also Elena’s story.

Her story of us.

Her story of now.

And her story of the past.

But it’s hers to tell.

23

“I love the idea of a community,” Elena said, sipping on her glass of sauvignon blanc. “I have always lived with many siblings, and Morten and I always thought that a parenting team of two was too small.”

We were taking time out over an expensive glass of wine to dream aloud together. It was a passion we had discovered that we shared.

“I never lived with any siblings. I spent most of my time by myself. I guess that’s why I like the idea of a community,” I said.

“Oh my,” she said. “I never even had my own room. What was it like?”

“Like I didn’t have to share!” I said, laughing. “Very unlike now.”

Elena was wearing my Joseph silk blouse and hadn’t asked to borrow it. To be fair, she had donated half her wardrobe to me because she thought it suited me better. She didn’t like my wardrobe (and had thrown some of it out). But it still irritated me when she assumed she could borrow clothes. Growing up as an only child meant that I lived by the ethos “What’s mine is mine. And what’s yours is mine.” She looked at my new boots and sighed.

“I wish we were the same size feet.”

One side of me said, Thank God we aren’t. Because she’d probably look better in them than me. The other side of me said, That would be really cool. So what I said was “Mmmmm.” And drank some more wine.

As was always the case, I knew we would be hearing from those two voices later. They were like Statler and Waldorf, the two old men shouting from the balcony in The Muppet Show. They provided regular heckling on my life.

I often heard the voices in my head. There was a scared ego inside of me that craved control and power. The child within that had developed barriers and boundaries as a framework for her life. Many of my battles were to try and dismantle this. My possessions, my home, my space, my security. And yet I didn’t function the same way about Gilles. He was not “mine” to share. He was a person who chose to spend his time with both of us, ranking neither one of us above the other. Most people found this aspect of poly life inconceivable. How generous it all seemed.

“Why did you get so upset with me the other day when I pointed out what I liked in your house?” Elena said. “You’re so difficult to understand sometimes.”

“It’s hard to vocalise something that I have never felt before. But it’s like you have taken the place of my mother.”

That hadn’t come out right. “I don’t mean like my mother,” I said, trying to clarify and failing miserably. “I mean like my mother in that she is the only close female who has been involved in my household before. You were pointing out what you liked. But what I heard was everything you didn’t say. The things you didn’t like. I felt judged and then criticised. It made me feel insecure, and I don’t like feeling insecure. No one does. Even my friends don’t give an opinion until they are asked. And even when I ask, they may not tell me. Or they’ll say something like ‘Well, I preferred the brown, but the pink is more you.’”

“But that’s ridiculous,” said Elena uncomprehendingly. “If it were the other way round I would want you to tell me straight out that something was ugly.”

I wasn’t quite sure whether this was true. Hadn’t she been hurt on numerous occasions by my honesty? The problem was that my honesty only ever came out to play in our arguments. It was not when I was at my most tactful.

“But I don’t,” I said. “I need tact. I need gentleness. I know it must sound ridiculous. After all, most people strive towards honesty. But you must admit, you and I are in a relationship that has no guidebook. For me especially; I never even had a sister, and this is like having an immediate wife. Without the sex, of course.”

At that rather repugnant thought, we both reached for our wine glasses. We were so much like family in that sense that by then any direct sexual interaction was out of the question.

Trying to explain my world to Elena was difficult.

“The other difficulty is that I come from a milieu where people tell half-truths. Or just no truths. Especially if they are unacceptable. What you don’t seem to understand is that I am also bound up in my values. Unravelling them and challenging them is like unravelling myself. And I have to be careful because otherwise I myself will completely unravel.”

“So how come I don’t have the same difficulty?” she said. “I’m in the same situation. I am challenging my life and our society.”

Everyone lives in their own reality. And Elena’s and mine were worlds apart. My difficulty was that I would always want to hold on to my world of pretence and social norms because if I lost touch with that reality, I risked losing my family. A family I loved very much, but who thought of me as a second-class citizen and a sinner. How could I straddle both worlds and be happy? How could I maintain my sense of self and become the person I wanted to be? Explaining to Elena also crystallised my own thoughts.

“But your background is totally different,” I pointed out. “You are already removed from your family. And you lived in a commune. Your professional life isn’t corporate or rigid. God knows an actress is expected to be exotic. And more than that, everything about you is positive because you have been forced to stand up for yourself, you have been forced to make the choices that most people don’t make, to their detriment. You had to fight for who you were and your space surrounded by siblings. Look at me; my life has been dictated in four chapters: school, university, career and marriage. I have done what society expects, I have followed the path of least resistance. I am negative where you are positive. I am the good girl. You have fought for environmental issues, for women’s rights. You even phoned up the council twice this week to complain about the dog poo in your street!”

The road where they lived was one of the poshest in London. And yet it was still strewn with chihuahua droppings, which had an unerring propensity to land right outside their door. And also had the same ability to stick to my boots. Elena had taken to spying out of her window to see if she could catch the guilty parties mid-act. Woe betide them.

“Above all,” I finished, “you know how to live in a community and share because you have always had to.”

Elena sighed again. She was so used to an “unboundaried” existence that it was difficult for her to conceive that my life and my security were represented by my customs, my possessions and my walls around some universal space. Since she had never had either, “herself” was represented by her, and her only. She was important, and others…if they didn’t fit into her way of thinking...were not.

I must have looked mutinous because she reached for my hand and said, “I see that you’re struggling and I’m sorry for it. I just find it hard because you are loving and kind to me a lot of the time. You invite me into your life and then you push me away. It taps into my own insecurities about rejection.”

Elena and I also had that in common. In fact, we were both fairly dominant women who came from unstable family backgrounds and had married our polar opposites. We both loved clothes and fine dining and dreamt of polyamorous communities. And truly we liked or even loved each other sometimes. Even with the conflict.

Like countless women of her generation, my mother had raised me with much criticism and sparing compliments. Self-improvement was the goal of her life and therefore of my life. I did not compete with my siblings because I hadn’t had any in the same household. Instead, I had been trained to compete against myself. Which was tough, because it meant that I never won. And then Elena arrived — the sister I never had. Representing what I never was. And perhaps everything I wanted to be. I was jealous and inadequate. Not good enough. I wondered how long I would be able to be able to stand feeling inferior.

“The other problem is that you are Gilles’s girlfriend. So when you come round, you act as his girlfriend. But I don’t know how to treat my husband’s girlfriend. The only pattern I have to copy is any other friend who I have known for a year. You just have to be patient. Eventually we will have known each other long enough for the two to converge anyway. I will have known you long enough for you to act like my long-term friend and a kind of sister. Without you, our lives would be very dull.”

“But perhaps easier,” she said insightfully.

I looked at her and felt my heart melt. She looked lost. A little Elena. Not the actress-slash-singer or the confident, outspoken woman that I perceived when I first met her. It was horrible that she felt like this. Even if it was true. Like our lives would be easier if she weren’t there. Above all, I didn’t want us to lose her. Because we went into it together, I wanted us to come out of it together. That was the whole point.

“Elena, please don’t say that. Look how much progress we’ve made in just one year. Building a family was never going to be easy. But it’s what we all want, more than anything.”

As I heard the words, I knew that they had been true once. I had looked forward to this future with such optimism and joy. But with a sinking heart I knew that we were fighting a difficult battle. Because along with the beauty of our relationship, something ugly was brewing. My growing dislike for her, which no matter how hard I tried to quash kept raging inside me. Wine made it disappear, so I had some more.

Elena, on the other hand, looked slightly happier. She drained her wine in one gulp and stood up. The glamorous femme fatale was back.

“Let’s go. I saw a wonderful natural shoe store that just opened round the corner. They have gorgeous high-heeled boots there that you’ll actually be able to walk in, unlike those other horrors.”

She pointed at the bumps that were starting to form on top of my soft leather shoes from years of stiletto abuse.

“Did you know you’re getting hammertoes because of the shoes you wear? Your feet will look horrid in a few years if you don’t do something about it.”

Fuck! I thought, cursing inside myself. Why does she always point out my faults?

24

Nothing is all dark. Nothing is all light. Our lives might have been hurtling towards a black hole, but there were plenty of stars along the way. For all the conflict and anger…there was love and there was light. And plenty of parties where it seemed that nothing was off limits.

Like that time my company paid for an overnight stay in London conveniently timed to coincide with Elena’s birthday. The suite was large. Large enough for at least two couples…if not more. Morten and I saw it. And knew what was going to happen.

“There’s Elena’s party tonight,” he said slowly…taking in the room and its splendidly spacious bed.

“Let’s go!” I said.

Sure, polyamory is about love. For some people that’s all there is and all there must be. But for me polyamory meant no limits. It also meant experimentation. And excitement.

So that night a group of glamorous people who had mostly gone to bed with one another on various occasions gathered together at a famous and highly expensive London nightclub. And then there was me. Just arrived in London. And ready to attack life with gusto.

“It’s tonight,” I said to Morten. “Tonight’s the night I’m going to push my boundaries.”

“How do you propose we do that?” he asked.

“With her,” I said, pointing like my mother taught me not to do.

He followed my gaze and said, “You know she and I have had sex before.”

“I know,” I replied. “Which is exactly why she’s the one. I know she’s not a threat. I know she fancies you. So let’s ask her.”

“Ask her what?” he said, a playful smile curling his lip. “A threesome?”

“No!” I replied too quickly. “Well, not yet. But just go. Ask her for a kiss. Right there on the dance floor. So I can see you do it.”

“OK, if it’s what you want,” he said.

Gilles came up from behind me. “What’s going on?” he asked, curious.

“Morten’s going to ask Tanya for a kiss. And I’m going to watch,” I said, clutching my vodka tonic.

Gilles plonked himself next to me and held my hand, “This is going to hurt. I did it last week with Elena. She asked me to get it on with someone else whilst she watched. It hurt her. But when we had sex afterwards it was fantastic. It’s like Nietzsche…enjoy the pain, because it’s the only thing we’ve got.”

Ah, Gilles. Ever the philosopher.

Then Elena came over and said, “This is going to hurt. But we’re here for you.” She sat on my other side and grabbed my hand.

So there we were, all three of us in a row, ready for some prime-time voyeurism. I was grateful for the support. I saw Morten ask and wave in my general direction. I saw Tanya look over at us. And laugh.

Off they went to dance on the floor. It was, most predictably, a slow song. Her hands snaked around his neck and intertwined in his hair. He bent his head and started to kiss her. Deeper and deeper. And the song went…

“I prayed that he would finish,

But he just kept right on…

Strumming my pain with his fingers,

Singing my life with his words,

Killing me softly with his song.”

I felt like dying. Then he came back after two minutes of hell. I was hurting, but the pain made me feel raging passion. And all I wanted to do was kiss him. Reclaim him whilst smelling her perfume on his stubble. It was mad. Primal. I couldn’t remember feeling this alive. Or this horny. Our kisses were urgent, driven by my desperate need to reconnect.

Within an hour the club had closed and a party went back to the hotel. Elena and Gilles went home. And seven of us in all, armed with yet more champagne, carried on. As we went up in the lift we all knew what was coming. And our minds were already exploding. Tanya and Sam, Brad and Jessica, and one other. Aaron, a stranger, who was a frequent flyer at such parties but who only ever watched. He was famous for it.

I’d never been into orgies and group sex. And at that point I hadn’t experimented much. Morten knew. He knew not to rush me. His focus was on me and me alone. Slowly, deliberately he stroked me, my hair, my face and kissed me. I felt the relentless beat of the music, the ebb and flow of the tide. The hunger so raw that it felt like we were all close to the edge. The alcohol and adrenalin were coursing in my veins. The desire mounted so slowly I hardly noticed as we approached the cliff before we took the dive and entered free fall. I was spinning way out of my depth and beyond any limit I had ever known.

Each couple wound themselves into each other, and for a time we were oblivious of one another.

All the while, Aaron pulled on his joint and watched us.

Thirty minutes later I lay half-dressed on the bed with Morten looking at me. I heard deep breaths, moans and sighs around me in stereo. Naked flesh touching my flesh. Precise delicate movements with carnal power. The smoke from the joint wafted around the room, making me dizzy. It was like a symphony. Surreal. Inspirational. And wonderful. Morten took a gulp of champagne and kissed me, letting it pour into my mouth. It fizzed around my teeth and my tongue. His tongue traced its way down and kissed my breasts. He took my panties with both hands and pulled them slowly down.

When he entered me, I was high. Was it on life? Was it on grass? Was it on love? Was I crazy? I hardly knew.

And Aaron watched me. He watched me stretch and cry and lose myself. He watched me being fucked, at first gently, but then again and again like an animal.

My head was tipped over the edge of the bed, and the stranger was upside down. I met his eyes as Morten drove into me time after time. Aaron breathed in and out, blowing the smoke so that the edges curled around my face, and I couldn’t tear my eyes away. Morten’s hands, Morten’s body, Morten’s kisses on my neck and Aaron’s eyes fucking my mind. He watched me come. The dark stranger in the armchair next to the bed, fully dressed. Watching me. Wanting me.

It went on all night. The watching, the waiting and the touching. We were all finished, and then someone would start again. Stroking, sighing and bristling with arousal. We sparked off other people’s desire and fell into sexual spirals. There was no shame, there was no embarrassment and there were no masks.

Polyamory was about love. There was plenty of talking. There was plenty of conflict. And then there was thrusting. And it was amazing.

25

“She sounds like she wants to be queen of the hive,” said my therapist as I looked at him both fascinated and appalled. He was saying exactly what I thought. Apart from the fact that I thought therapists were never supposed to give opinions. So in that case he was doing the opposite of what I thought.

“It’s not a bad thing per se,” he said reflectively. “But it does contradict what you told me was your vision of polyamory. This is more hierarchical. Like a pack of dogs.”

Yes. That was exactly it. And I was the bitch.

The others had encouraged me to go to therapy to try to identify where the problems I had with Elena stemmed from. A series of seemingly tiny incidents had created such animosity in me for her that it was scarcely veiled on many an occasion. The harder I tried to mask it, the worse it shone through. And when I tried to recount my reasons and why she bothered me so much, I got so angry that we got into even worse fights.

This latest therapy session was needed after what Gilles termed “The Eggplant Incident.”

Walking into my kitchen to prepare the moussaka I had planned for the four of us that night, I spent ten minutes hunting for the all-important — and equally missing —
ingredient before I turned to Gilles and asked him in bewilderment whether he had seen an eggplant. As if they regularly played hide-and-seek around our apartment. And not that I held out much hope — Gilles was oblivious to anything in the kitchen and was only interested in ingredients after they had been magicked into a meal for his consumption.

“Oh, Elena cooked for me after our jog this morning — omelette and eggplant.”

Right then and there, I lost it. “How the hell am I supposed to cook moussaka without eggplant? And why didn’t you tell me so I could replace it?”

My life was out of control. My relationships were out of control. The impotent fury I felt on a daily basis struggled in my stomach, bashing my insides with painful frenetic energy. It had to come out. And so it did. My voice got louder and my face got redder.

Gilles looked at me in surprise from his habitual recumbent position on the sofa. Who is this woman? his expression seemed to say. “Why are you getting so cross?” he said, looking at me as if I’d grown two heads. “It’s only an eggplant.”

“But I planned the whole week’s meals!” I screamed. “Tonight’s was supposed to be moussaka, and I haven’t defrosted anything else.”

“Wow! I never thought I’d see the day when I couldn’t eat anything out of my own fridge without asking permission,” he said sarcastically.

I couldn’t see him anymore. All I saw was hate. And anger. And no logic whatsoever. I threw the ingredients I had already collected on the floor, smashing several eggs in the process.

“I never said you had to ask fucking permission! But I would rather Elena didn’t come into my fucking house and cook my fucking food without at least letting me know so that I can replace it. You don’t do the fucking shopping. I plan the fucking food, I shop for the fucking food and I cook the fucking food. How dare you play martyr and make like I am being stingy?”

I rarely swore. But Gilles’s father did. And if there was one thing that triggered him, it was that. He yelled back, “How dare you make me feel like a failure and like I owe you something? I don’t care what you cook or what we eat.”

With that he turned back to the TV, and I felt kicked in my stomach yet again. I worked so hard to make sure we had lovely food to eat and a lovely home to live in. It was an extension of my love for him. I didn’t want him to be grateful. I wanted him to love me like he used to.

I went to our bedroom and burst into tears, isolated in my frustration. Gilles was acting like a stubborn teenager, and Elena came into my home as she pleased and did whatever she pleased, whenever she pleased.

When I spoke to Morten, he said coldly, “Gilles told Elena and Elena told me. We think you should go to therapy. It’s not normal to get so angry about an eggplant.”

We were four. And as it was a democracy, it felt like Elena and I campaigned to get the men on our sides in our different conflicts. Elena’s game demanded that Morten and Gilles attributed percentages in fault and blame ratios. As long as the scales were tipped in her favour, she could bear to hear that she was twenty-five percent to blame. As long as I was the most wrong. In this case, the vote was three to one. The Eggplant Incident had been a clear case. I was one hundred percent to blame.

Not only of overreaction, but of my apparent issues about eggplants.

When I tried to bring it up again in an effort to explain myself, Gilles misquoted from Cheers, “Louisa, I am sick and tired of The Eggplant Incident. Get a life.” He made it sound so pointless and petty that I felt belittled.

“Is it the eggplant you’re angry about?” said my therapist, knowing full well it wasn’t. It was, of course, what the eggplant represented.

“Of course it isn’t the fucking eggplant. It’s that I am apparently stuck in the mother role whilst my husband and his girlfriend do what the fuck they like. I don’t feel that either of them has any consideration for my feelings. They say they care about me, but actually they only care about themselves. I get taken for granted. I go to work and earn the money whilst she cultivates a great relationship with him and I feel like I am being squeezed out of the picture. I have so little time when I get back from work that my relationship with him can’t compete with theirs. I want to be his wife. But he doesn’t treat me like his wife.”

“Do you think it is balanced out by your relationship with Morten?” asked the therapist, already knowing the answer.

I “pah!”-ed in disgust. Much to the surprise of my former self, it had turned out that better sex…did not a marriage make. Marriage was about commitment. And caring. Neither of which I felt I had.

“Not even close. Elena is definitely his wife, even though their sex life is basically kaput. And whenever she wants him, he drops everything to be with her. And he doesn’t even seem to recognise that he is being taken for a ride. She spends all his money and then goes off and spends all her time with my husband.”

“It seems like you mind that Elena and Morten don’t have sex,” the therapist observed.

“Yes, I do mind. I mind that she only has sex with Gilles. She’s turned him into her primary partner. But he’s my primary partner.”

Was. He was my primary partner. But for some months that was no longer the case.

“So she has two primary partners, then?”

“Yes,” I said, the realisation hitting home, “that’s what it feels like. And I have none. I have to be satisfied with sloppy seconds.”

“So what good is this relationship doing you?”

“It brought me happiness for a while. It brought me freedom. It brought me the hope that Gilles and I could stay together despite our dwindling desire.”

“But what good is this relationship doing you now?” he asked.

“It’s making me learn things?” I said, hopefully stabbing about in the dark for the right answer, as if I were answering a teacher’s question.

“Sure,” he agreed, “life is of course about learning, but it’s also about taking care of yourself. Making yourself happy. Are you happy?”

“No. My chest feels tight all the time. Like I am waiting for the next conflict. It’s just another situation where I never get to do what I want because we do what Elena and her two partners want to do. And I seem to be the only one who doesn’t want to do that. And when I don’t go along with what she wants, with what they want, they tell me I am causing trouble. They would actually be fine together without me. I feel like a worthless spare part.”

The angrier I became about the situation, the more possessive and insecure I became about my life and my home. And my eggplant. And what the eggplant represented. Which was, of course, my husband.

26

My relationship with Elena had started off uneasy, but for a multitude of reasons had turned sour. And the worse it got, the less I was able to hide my true feelings. And the worse my relationship with Morten became. He loved his wife, and my negativity towards her caused him pain. As much as I understood his position, I was slowly coming to believe that he was being taken for granted too — and that his love for her blinded him to it. Our conversation the next morning escalated into a fight in ten seconds flat. A phenomenon that was becoming all too common.

“Hey sweetheart. Nice shoes. But I thought you wanted them in maroon?”

“I did, but Elena vetoed that. She told me to get them in antique brown, since it goes better with everything. Feel free to tell me I am squashed,” he added unnecessarily and spitefully at the end.

“Well, if you’re happy with them it’s the main thing. It just makes me disappointed that you didn’t actually get the shoes you wanted.”

“But she was right. They do go better with everything.”

“So what? Is that a criterion for purchase? If you wanted them in maroon, you should have got them in maroon and just worn them anyway. You’re not her doll. She doesn’t get to dress you as Ken to her Barbie.”

“It was easier to get brown when she preferred them instead of getting into an argument, and now we are both happy. It’s called compromise.”

“That’s not called compromise. It’s called bullying. You’re under her thumb.”

“She’s not a bully. You think so just because you’re so sensitive and fucked up that you hear criticism where there is none and overreact to the tiniest thing.”

“I am proud to be sensitive if that’s what I am, because it means that I respect other people’s sensitivities.”

“Well, I mind you being sensitive,” said Morten. “It sucks.”

“I suppose you would prefer that I was oblivious to the consequences of my actions,” I retorted. “I suppose you think it’s great that Elena spends your money like water and is oblivious to the enormous stress that this causes in your life.”

“Elena knows she has a problem with money. She is trying to cope with it. She gave me her credit card again the other day. By herself,” said Morten.

I no longer had any self-control or emotional intelligence. I said exactly what I thought from where I stood. And where I was standing was in a bucket full of pain. All the time.

“She treats you like a parent,” I said nastily. “‘Daddy, take my credit card, I’ve been a naughty girl.’ You’ll only give it back later, like you’ve done a thousand times.”

“You must know that insulting her doesn’t do you any favours with me. I think you’re pitiful. Pitiful and fucked up.”

“You’re right. I am fucked up, especially in this relationship,” I said. “It’s driving me nuts that I’m going out with someone who is blind to reality. You think it’s normal to have Elena direct and control events around her and in others’ lives, instead of letting people be who they are and do what they want. And you know what? That’s OK if you are happy with it. But I’m not happy with it. I don’t want to have anything to do with it.”

I’d fought enough. I’d fought with Gilles. I’d fought with Elena. And now I was fighting with Morten. And not only about our relationship. Because being in a quad apparently meant you fought other people’s battles too. Gilles and Elena fought hard. Lots and lots of fights. They broke up every few months.

Yet in the early days, I had encouraged Gilles to get back with her.

I had even mediated between the two of them. Everyone but Gilles could see how well he and Elena worked together when they got along. It wasn’t that they didn’t row — their relationship was explosive and passionate. It was that Gilles came out of his shell when he had someone to push against. Someone who didn’t cosset him like I did. Someone who pushed his buttons and forced him to take a stance. Gilles was becoming a man.

After the third breakup, during which Elena had tried —and failed — to harm herself (although the flower vase had not been so lucky), Morten and I had taken a stand. Their breakups were becoming more protracted each and every time. At first it was a few days, then it extended to a week and then several weeks.

During the first three breakups, Morten and I barely saw each other. We were too busy supporting our primary partners. It followed a prescribed routine. My primary partner would be angry and in denial. He growled and banged a lot of cupboard doors in a nicely “Frenchified” way — “Eh merde!”

Morten was at the very edges of sanity and trying to cope with Elena’s Latin despair. I would also try and support Elena by going over and reporting back as to how Gilles was doing and where his thoughts were. She was desperate for any crumb of news that might bring hope. But more often than not, our conversations didn’t lead anywhere good. She didn’t understand why he was angry, and I understood all too well. Quite simply, Gilles refused to put up with what he saw as ever-increasing and unreasonable demands. And having witnessed their relationship first-hand, I was very much on his side.

But their dynamic fed off itself, and despite the drama, they had been good for each other. He was forced to develop active points of view, and she acted her insecurities out less. But as the breakups became more severe, the harm manifested itself in all of us. Morten had to take time off work to look after Elena, and I lived with a stubborn anger that pervaded the entire household and every conversation.

After the fourth breakup Morten phoned me. “I have told Elena that I don’t support her getting back with Gilles. I just wanted you to know.”

“I agree,” I said. “It’s happened too many times. But you know we can’t stop them from getting back together.”

“Well, we can stop encouraging it.”

“Don’t you understand? Just by you and me being together there is some kind of latent pressure. Normally when people break up they don’t see each other all the time and aren’t reminded of what they lost. Elena and Gilles see us together,” I said. “It must be hell.”

“So what are you saying? Should we see each other less? Or outside the home?”

“I don’t know. I guess,” I said. I really didn’t know what to do. Where are the guidebooks for a situation like this? “But I feel that it’s just best to play it low-key right now. I hate this as much as you do.”

Morten lost his cool in his frustration.

“What’s wrong with Gilles? Why does he have to break up with her every time? Why can’t he just have the argument and then sort it out?”

“I’m sorry,” I said. Not feeling sorry at all. “Do you think that this is Gilles’s fault? Why does your wife have to be so unreasonably demanding? She can never let anything lie. It always has to be her own way.”

“But she’s right in her reasoning so much of the time. Why can’t Gilles wait for twenty minutes before going to the gym so that they can go together? It’s only twenty minutes for someone he loves!”

Morten spoke sarcastically in italics. And with every italic, my protective instinct rose up to fight in Gilles’s corner.

“But Morten! It’s every time and it’s not twenty minutes. She is never ready to leave when he asks her to be. She has no concept of time! Why should he have to have his schedule disrupted because she can’t get out of bed earlier? Why does she think she has to put makeup on to go to the gym?”

“If he puts the gym training before her, then he obviously doesn’t care for her. It gives rhythm and structure to her day and gets her out of that depressive cycle. It’s also just plain symbolic — it shows that he cares.”

He did care, of course. But Gilles had started to care for someone else more. Himself. Happy as I was about that, it also meant that Gilles was a vastly different man from the one I’d met and married.

27

My work represented an increasingly false reality. I was supposed to be a financial controller, manager of a team. But I was out of control, in free fall, in my life. And yet for several months pretending to be someone I was not kept me somewhat sane. Until my personal life started intruding even there. The round robin emails with ferocious discussion and ever- slanted misinterpretations drove me mad. Pop-up notifications from my three partners pinged relentlessly at the bottom of my screen. I turned them off, but it was no good. The sword of Damocles was waiting to drop, and that day I preferred to cut the cord myself than to wait endlessly in uncertainty. So I opened up the messages. And like Pandora’s box, all the hell of the world flew out. I was powerless, at my screen, in front of my colleagues. My anger and despair had nowhere to go in my sedate environment, even whilst I realised for the first time that this relationship, my beautiful utopia… was doomed.

“Sanders is trying to cut Opex. Heads are going to roll —
inflate the forecast by twenty percent and maybe we’ll escape the brunt of it.”

The next week Sanders did cut our budget. And I already knew that I would be going. My career was in tatters. Because over the last months it had been impossible to pretend that I was in any way effective at a job I had once been so good at.

That evening, I watched Fight Club on my laptop in bed and the tears poured down my face. I knew what it felt like trying to kill a part of my personality. Living according to my truth had proved harder than I thought.

But I knew I had been led to this point for a reason. It was the same reason for everything else that had happened in my life and indeed perhaps in everyone’s life. A desire to unravel and challenge the rules ingrained within my nature. The passion to learn and know myself. My quest was to free myself from those forces that impaired my rationality, wherever possible. I needed to let go of something. But just as our question had been How far can we open our relationship without losing it? My question was now How long can I stay in a relationship with someone I hate for two people I love?

That evening they were all very kind to me. None of them understood why I was going through a crisis or how this would affect us all. As I lay in my bed, I was finally the centre of attention. But not the way I had ever wanted it. I heard worried whispers in the living room. Some whispers were quieter than others, and unfortunately the louder lines were mainly Elena’s.

“She’s going through a nervous breakdown and should be on medication.”

My mouth curled in spite of myself. Not satisfied with taking my sanity, she wanted to take my freedom too. I felt like McMurphy in One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

“Well, we should take her to the hospital, then,” said Gilles.

The threat of hospitalisation worked better than anything else. I wanted to scream and cry. But if I did so, they might have committed me to a mental asylum. In an effort to prove everyone wrong and preserve my freedom, I got up and started to make dinner like a normal person would. And as I usually did. My kitchen, my haven.

But the crisis was only temporarily averted that evening and came raging back ten times stronger a few days later. I couldn’t pretend anymore.

We often spent time together on the sofa. That Sunday we were all in a row watching TV, holding each other’s hands like the equals we weren’t. Elena, then Gilles, then me, then Morten. I wondered whether Morten felt left out. On the edge like he was with only my hand for company, when my other hand was holding Gilles’s. Far from having two women, he had half a woman.

I didn’t want to favour one over the other, so instead I stayed rigidly in the middle, dividing my body and my balance equally between them. Meanwhile, Elena got playful and, fully clothed, rolled on top of Gilles.

“Get a room!” laughed Morten, quoting Friends. Happy. And not insecure or left out.

If possible, I went even stiffer. A challenge of overt ownership. Did she not spend enough time with him already? Could she not share when I was around?

Your husband is mine! Elena’s body language screamed at me.

And I am happy to be so! returned Gilles’s body language, his hand slipping out of mine like a forgetful and unregretted whisper. I could still feel the warmth of it fading.

They jumped off the sofa and scurried into the bedroom to perform a great Sunday afternoon sexual concerto, which we could hear very clearly, albeit it from behind closed doors.

I was not even an afterthought.

Two choices presented themselves to me.

1. Make a fuss, state your needs, be selfish and say you’re uncomfortable. Risk ridicule and misunderstanding, and destroy three other people’s perfectly good Sunday. Aren’t you worth it?

2. Keep quiet, rationalise with yourself about your own issues, which are presumably creating this panic inside you, be the bigger person. Live with it.

Live with it. Of course I would live with it. This was my way. Because I didn’t think I was worth it.

In a flash, I saw my life ahead. Elena had two primary partners. Her husband and my husband. She monopolised the attention of my husband whenever she wanted it. I was the doormat waiting to be used when they had had their fill. I was given the leftovers and had to be grateful for it.

My role of the future was financial support and safety net for rejected husbands. And sometime bed partner — but only when it suited Elena.

In was my nature to act as if other people had the same insecurities that I did. I wanted to share, but only with someone who felt like I did, someone whom I could trust to act according to my boundaries as I did according to theirs. My English passive communication was full of assumptions and social etiquette. All of which were being trampled on.

But Elena was not insecure about her husband being with me — she knew she was number one. Sixteen years of hardship had proved that. Their love had been tested again and again. He stayed with her despite the depression, the screaming arguments and even the lack of sex. Morten had remained the loyal rock he had always been.

But my husband had changed as a direct result of Elena. She had changed him and his love for me. And the more I felt him change, the more I perpetuated the cycle and withdrew from this stranger. The relationship they had was destroying the relationship that we had. As Gilles and Elena cleaved to each other, I was usurped. Redundant. Unimportant. And because I felt the pain of loss and rejection so keenly, I had to do it before it was done to me.

Coming from a fragmented family, my security and self-esteem were as damaged as any child who had been subject to arguing parents and consequent divorce. And probably just as damaged as some children who hadn’t. Growing up, after all, was a messy business.

But whilst my insecurities were protected within the confines of monogamy, in polyamory they were exposed. My insecurity was destroying me. Polyamory was impossible with people who had no idea, desire or understanding of how to tread around my insecurities. Perhaps it was true for all polyamorists. All partners had to be able to communicate, even the non-sexual ones, because otherwise it wouldn’t work.

Either I got rid of my insecurities, or I got rid of the catalysts that caused me so much pain. My insecurities had been with me from childhood. They were part of me, and I had no idea where to begin. More than that, it didn’t guarantee an end to the pain. If I were to work on myself, then pain was going to be a necessary part of my life for the foreseeable future.

And so the third course of action presented itself. The choice to leave. Because I felt that I was not good enough for either of them. And I couldn’t envisage building up my own self-esteem after a year of being in self-destruct mode to make a new reality for myself.

The contemplation of leaving two men I loved was almost more than I could bear. I didn’t know whether I was strong enough to do it. But worse would be continuing to live in this situation with Gilles, Morten and Elena. Her character and conflicts clashed severely with my character and conflicts.

When she felt rejected, she clung to whoever was rejecting her. More often than not it was me. The more she clung, the more I pushed her away and my dislike became tangible. If she felt insecure about Gilles, then she clung to him and I felt usurped and unloved. I was rejected, and so I withdrew from them both as much as I could. It meant that I couldn’t bear any contact with Elena. Nothing. Zip. Nada. And that my contact with Gilles was passive and biting, as we circled around each other like wary vultures under the same roof, trying to work things out.

Rejecting Elena was necessary to save my sanity…but it meant losing Morten. And the pain of that was unbearable.

The stone wheels didn’t grind slowly. And we hurtled towards our doom with the same speed with which we’d got together. My partners knew I was having problems. But they couldn’t comprehend just how big they were. Because for them my problems seemed inconsequential. Sparked off by the tiniest thing. Chaos brought about by a mere flap of a butterfly’s wing. But even if they couldn’t understand, they had to accept.

So after a fortnight of little communication, Morten and I met for coffee on neutral ground. He said, “The thought of working on my marriage and making Elena and me find each other again makes me very happy.”

He didn’t look happy. He looked the opposite of happy.

“Well, I love you. And I support your right to make the decision that works for you. Even if it hurts.” My heart was breaking. “But do you not even want to see me?”

“Of course I do. And not just for coffee. I love you. But then there’s another part of me that doesn’t want to see you at all. It just causes trouble. Elena can’t bear me seeing you. She feels betrayed.”

“And the part that’s not for coffee. Is that about sex?” I asked.

He looked over at me. His eyes red rimmed and worried. “Working on my marriage would be easier without you, but the fact that sex with you is so mind-blowing is difficult to give up.”

I felt knots twisting in my stomach. I couldn’t deny that the prospect of living without his touch made me feel barren and cold. Sex was not just sex with us. It was sacred. Special. It felt like the kind of sex that needed to result in a child. Every single time. And I had never felt like that with anyone else. Ever.

But as much as I felt the same, another side of me knew that I was worth more than that, and I said so.

“Well then, forget about the sex. I don’t want us to be just that. You are not just that for me and have never been. If I would be a whole lot easier to ‘give up’ if there were no sex, then…I think you have the answer.”

One minute passed, and it felt like a lifetime. My tears were starting to free-fall down my face. One of us had to say it. And it was me.

“Are we breaking up?”

He twisted his hands in despair and reached for a cigarette. The stress of those past few months had seen both our smoking escalate way out of the realms of party smoking. Then he said simply, “I cannot offer you what you want.”

“And I cannot offer you what you want.”

Grief and anger intermingled in my heart. We were in hell. And the wrench of the end was more painful than anything I had ever known. I was still in love with him. And he was still in love with me. But my relationship with Elena made a future together impossible…even though she was still with Gilles.

“Have we decided? Is this it?” I asked.

“I think so.”

Neither of us had wanted to say it. But we had. And it was over.

28

My thoughts turned to my marriage once again as I discussed with Gilles what we could possibly do to save our situation. We had reactivated date night in an effort to spend some quality time together. The problem was that I needed three glasses of wine to feel remotely sexual. A sad truth was that breaking up with Morten meant that I missed his touch. And no one else could replace it. Not even my husband. I was going through hell but thought it was unfair to burden Gilles with it.

Gilles and Elena had had a conversation that would become known as “The Bombshell” and were yet again on a break. But they had done it so many times now that no one believed them when they said it was over.

Gilles had broken up with Elena on five separate occasions before The Bombshell.

The Bombshell, a.k.a. the sixth breakup, was different. Because this one had been initiated by Elena. There had been no warning of what I was to read in the email that Gilles had forwarded me. It was the transcript of a chat conversation that looked mundane and ordinary like every other. But as was Elena’s wont, it started bluntly:

“Gilles darling. I just wanted to let you know that I asked Morten for a divorce.”

Several seconds had passed, as denoted by the time-stamps on the chat messages. Then Gilles said, “Did you mean it?”

“Morten and I are best friends,” replied Elena. “But my romantic relationship is with you and has been for a long time. Your relationship with Louisa is crumbling. Why don’t you just admit it like I have? Louisa and I don’t seem to be able to share the same men. She has a big problem.”

“Louisa has a problem with you. But you’re the one who has a problem sharing your men. You can’t share your men with someone who has a problem with you. She has never asked me or Morten to choose even though she can’t get along with you.”

To which she replied, “We all have to choose our futures because I for one can’t live like this anymore.”

“Me either. But I still love Louisa and I am not willing to lose her just because we are having difficulties.”

“OK…But if that’s your choice then you will lose me.”

“Just to be clear — are you telling me that if I still want to be with you I have to leave Louisa?”

“Yes.”

“You are asking for an impossible choice.”

“But don’t you realise that this has been an impossible choice for me too? I love Morten as well as you. I wish we had never met. I can’t be with you anymore and I can’t be with my husband. My heart is doubly broken. Louisa has both of you and I have no one.”

“Louisa doesn’t have both of us. She gets to work on her relationship with me. She and Morten have broken up.”

“They’ll get back together if I leave though. He obviously loves me more than you do.”

“Well, I love you. I don’t know what you mean by ‘more.’”

“I mean that he is willing to leave her. But you are not. So this is goodbye.”

29

The Bombshell was a prime example of brutal honesty. Elena didn’t sugar-coat her words. There was no kindness in her truthful communication. And it was part of what I couldn’t stomach about her. Because I felt the approach she justified under the banner of honesty hurt others unnecessarily. I believed in telling the truth, but trying to find the kindest way to do it. But whatever I thought, The Bombshell had done its job. Its honesty had blown us all wide open. She had told the truth.

For one thing, my suspicions that Elena had wanted Gilles as her primary partner were justified. My insecurities about her taking my husband were reinforced. Had it always been this way? And had I simply been going crazy because my body recognised what I had refused to…that I was losing my husband under my very nose?

Gilles had said, “You’re not losing me, just as I am not losing you. You are sharing me, but it doesn’t mean you have any less of me.”

Morten had said, “His choice is to be with you and with Elena. You’re not questioning Gilles now, you’re questioning polyamory again.”

My therapist’s room was filled with angel cards, crystals and books with titles like Compelled to Control and The Drama of Being a Child. It was a positive room…full of beanie cushions and hope. Everywhere I looked there were constructive therapeutic building blocks, and at that precise moment I wanted to destroy them all.

Happiness and mealy-mouthed goodness infuriated me. Fat lot of good it had done in the six months I had been coming here.

“You look angry,” said my therapist.

I paid him seventy quid an hour to have brilliant insights like these.

“Yes, I am,” I said through my teeth. “Because all this time I have been sitting here paying you money and doubting myself, trying to overcome my so-called issues with jealousy. And all this time my gut instinct was right. I knew she was a threat to my marriage. I knew she wanted Gilles for herself. No wonder I felt so bad. I don’t have an issue with polyamory. I do have an issue with someone stealing my husband. The utopia I saw that was polyamory was about sharing, not about stealing.”

“So if you knew it, why didn’t you trust yourself enough to believe you were right?”

“Because the concept of polyamory threw monogamy out of the window. And monogamy is an institution that is unquestioned. I thought, ‘If I’m wrong about monogamy, then maybe I’m wrong about everything else.’ When the others told me that I was the one in the wrong, I believed them — even though every bone in my body was telling me otherwise. I’ve been fighting my own beliefs this whole year.”

“Sit with your anger,” suggested my therapist. “Feel it. Allow yourself to experience it. You’ve suppressed it for too long. Only when you suppress it does it become a negative force that controls you. Now express it. Describe what you’re feeling calmly. Remembering that it takes more than one person to create a relationship.”

As I sat inflated with self-righteous anger, his last sentence pricked it flat.

I said miserably, “We let this happen. Me, Gilles, Elena and Morten. We were blind and naïve. Well, I was naïve. Morten was blind. Gilles was just the way he always is. He took the path of least resistance. And Elena, well she’s dazzling. And difficult. And now we are here. In a place where both primary relationships are shells. Elena abandoned hers and redirected her energies to Gilles. And I abandoned mine too. No wonder he turned to Elena.”

As I walked out of therapy that morning, my anger at Elena subsided. Only to be replaced surprisingly by compassion. Compassion for Elena.

I saw that Gilles and she had created a partnership where they were more romantically compatible than he and I. But she had driven herself into a corner. Even if our continued interaction was poisonous, she would never get Gilles to leave me by coercion. By forcing his hand she was left with the relationship she didn’t want. And I was relieved that Gilles and I could at last have some space to save our future, if at all possible.

Every Thursday Gilles and I dutifully traipsed along to the Italian restaurant around the corner after a couples therapy session to see if we couldn’t rootle through our emotions and recapture the romance. And by romance, I meant a bottle of red wine to lower my inhibitions.

Our therapy session that day had been a wearing one, and in it we had only discovered how much more we had to unravel before we could sort out where our relationship could go. And after I drained the last sip of wine I said, “I’m tired.”

“Do you want to go back home?” Gilles asked.

“No, I mean I’m tired of not knowing the future. I feel like I’ve been in limbo for the past few years. Waiting for our relationship to get settled, waiting for you to start your career. I thought when we got married our future was set. But I’m still waiting for it to start. Waiting…always waiting.”

“You English are good at that, though. Waiting. Queuing,” said Gilles. I could see him about to launch into an anecdote and hurriedly cut him off.

“Gilles, I want to have children. And I want them soon. Will it be with you?”

There it was. Out on the table with the empty bread-basket, the dregs of Chianti and the saucer of high-quality extra virgin olive oil scattered with Parmesan.

Gilles sucked in his bottom lip and looked at me. Blue eyes met blue eyes. And I could feel a quiet spark of desperation flint off between them. I was forcing his hand.

“I thought you weren’t sure about having children,” he replied.

“I wasn’t. I thought I didn’t. But actually I always did, I just…wasn’t sure about having them with you.”

“So what’s changed?” he asked.

“I don’t know. I’ve realised how much I love you. It took almost losing you to make me realise how precious our relationship is to me.”

“Are you drunk?” He laughed to ease the tension, and I did too. Because it was a pretty sure bet that I was, for words like this to come out of my mouth.

“Yes,” I said, “but it doesn’t mean that I don’t mean it, if you see what I mean. I mean, I do mean it.”

“But I still don’t have a job,” Gilles said, holding my hand. “You know what having children with me means.”

“Yes, I know,” I said. “But it doesn’t seem important anymore. I don’t want to wait for you to become something you can’t. We’re married. We love each other. I can provide for us both. Surely that should be enough.”

“OK!”

“OK, what? OK, we can try?” I said.

“Yes!”

“Are you drunk?” I asked, laughing to ease the tension.

“Yes!”

“Do you mean it?” I said. Suddenly uncertain.

“I do!” he said.

I walked out under a different sky from the one earlier in the evening. That night we were going to try to make a baby.

So remote and yet so familiar. My husband and his body, my love. I touched him tentatively, willing warmth to spread through our touch. But somehow things were different. Our bodies didn’t fit together anymore. Our sex was, well, just sex. Not sacred, not magical. It was…going through the motions and superficial.

I loved him. But he was a stranger. When I reached up to his face, it was wet with tears. And mine was too. We had lost each other.

When the time came to test, I wasn’t pregnant. And although I cried in Gilles’s arms about it, I also felt a little glad. I wanted the sex that created a baby to be special, and we had a long way to go to repair that. But a few days later, I was doubly glad. Because after six weeks and the sixth separation, Gilles and Elena were back together.

“After everything that’s been said, Gilles, how can you be back together? You said you would never get back with her. Those were your very words! I thought you had had it up to here with her!” I touched my nose, then changed my mind and raised my hand high above my head.

“Yes, but she didn’t mean what she said. She was overwrought.”

“Can I remind you that she wants you for herself? That hasn’t changed. Am I supposed to sit back and ignore that?” I had hardly been able to live with Elena before. Knowing what I knew now, I didn’t think it would be possible.

“She told me she was sorry for trying to force the choice,” he said.

“In my world sorry doesn’t make everything better,” I replied coldly. “Especially as it wasn’t even said to me.”

Gilles slammed his fist on the table. We were back in a situation we both despised. “There is so much to love about Elena that even though I forget it when we argue, it’s still there deep inside of me.”

“No, you’re right,” I said. “I don’t see it. And you know why I don’t see it? Because you only bring me the shit.”

“Well, they say that you never know what goes on behind closed doors. We’ve worked out how to manage it next time we start arguing,” he said complacently.

I started crying with anger.

“Why don’t you care about what it’s doing to me too? We’re trying for a baby. A poly relationship isn’t only between you and your partner. I am involved too. You can’t just act like it only impacts you. You aren’t single.”

“Stop it! Stop it now!” said Gilles, suddenly furious. “I thought you would be happy that I am happy. I was happy that you and Morten were happy together.”

“Yes, but we’re not together, are we? And you wouldn’t have been happy if you saw that our relationship caused me enormous pain the way I see that yours does for you. You and she cause me and Morten pain as well. You’re so selfish. I can’t bring a baby into this dynamic. And I can’t take this anymore.”

Their relationship was out of my control. And even my relationships were out of my control. My therapist had said to unleash my anger, and now its full fury descended on Gilles and Elena. In one fell swoop, my chance to repair my relationship — slim as it might have been — or start a family with Gilles had been eradicated.

And as I looked at him, I knew. It wasn’t him. It wasn’t even them. This was about me. And I had to leave.

The next day, I travelled to my father’s house in Cyprus. It gave me perspective and objectivity. And in that space it became obvious to me.

Far from not choosing, Gilles had made a very definite choice. His choice — albeit passively stubborn — was to be with Elena. Over the last months, our discussions had centred on how I was finding it increasingly difficult to live with all the issues she provoked in me. He loved her. And would not — could not — leave her, even if it was destroying me. And I would never ask him to.

30

I was jobless. Almost mindless. It was easy to book a ticket home and make my great escape. Arriving in Cyprus, the country that had seen my teenage rebellion, had been warm and comforting. Peace finally pervaded my mind, and the relief I experienced from being away from the anxiety and stress of our relationship liberated me. In Cyprus’ cicada-thrummed atmosphere, amid the support of my family and friends, it had been very easy to make the decision. And even easier after six local beers to write the email as the drunken tears dripped on my keyboard.

Gilles darling,

After some soul searching, I am going with the decision that I knew to be true in the first place. Both my head and my heart are telling me to let you go. I don’t want to be involved with Elena in any kind of poly relationship. I would never choose to be in a relationship with her myself and do not want her in my marriage. Whilst you and I are two people with two choices, it is our marriage that she is involved in — and a sisterwife relationship is far bigger than a friendship. If I am involved with you, then I am involved with her — it is as simple as that. I cannot be in her definition of family.

I hope that you and I may be able to be friends in the future…but I am not going to put off my future any longer. I do hope that you will be happy in your new triad. But maybe your biology is doing what your head is denying. You have a much more balanced relationship with her than you do with me and maybe your heart says that your longer-term future would be more successful with her. I wish you all happiness and luck. And above all love.

Lx

During those two weeks, my wounded heart was bathed by alcohol and human compassion, and my brain stimulated by intellectual company. So desperate was I for touch and warmth that I fell into a pool of enchantment with an angel in disguise. A beautiful man. There was no pain. It was like floating on heroin. Blissfully cocooned in a new land of new love, I released my past with all its pain and joy. I no longer wanted any of it. And I thought about staying. I was content. There were no round robin emails, no coercion to pick sides and no contact from the beyond to disturb my tranquillity.

But the universe works in mysterious ways. At 2 a.m., ten days later, my past phoned me using a cellular connection. It was Morten:

“I’m divorcing Elena. Will you come back to me?”

One of our biggest justifications for exploring polyamory was to avoid the curse of serial monogamy. In a land far, far away, Gilles and I had faced separation and divorce. Poly-amory, such as we defined it, was a perfect way of having our needs met by others and maintaining our beautiful relationship. Building and integrating multiple relationships seemed ideal, especially as many would just be the extension of a friendship. But an unacknowledged fact of relationships was the power they had to mould and change you. Neither of us had recognised the impact of the new relationships on our characters, and we had discounted the fact that our existing relationships would be thrown up, by the rose-tinted fluorescent lights of the new relationship, into a sharp relief, painfully highlighting any inadequacies and failings. And instead of working on them, it was all too easy to bask in the comfort of Turkish delights and numbing sweetmeats of the honeymoon period.

The mainstream might understand polyamory from a bisexual standpoint. After all, why should you deny yourself love if you are equally attracted to different genders? It doesn’t seem fair. But comparison between two differently gendered persons is much more difficult. It is obvious that they have different roles.

But in my heterosexual quad, polyamory had proved a comparison and a judgement in too many ways. Two women,in two similar roles. But with two vastly different natures.Elena and I were chalk and cheese. I was passive. She was active. I believed in a work ethic and resented it. She believed in creativity and expression but was jobless. I believed in acceptance, even for unacceptable behaviour. She would not and could not accept anything but high standards. I was struck by the fact that despite all our attempts at avoiding it, both couples had come to this. Divorce.

“Did you hear me? Are you there? For God’s sake say something!”

I said all I could think of to stall for time.

“I’ve been with someone else, someone wonderful, for the last ten days.”

But it didn’t work.

“Why should I care?” he said. “We’re polyamorous. Will you come back to me?”

“Yes,” I said.

“It’ll be all right, I promise. I love you. We’ll see each other tomorrow; I just had to hear your voice.”

Was it possible after sixteen years that Morten would leave his professed soulmate and partner to be with me? We had been together for twenty-four months, and yet we had never been together just the two of us, as primary partners. But the next day at the arrivals gate, he met me. Just him. And just me.

“Hello,” I said.

“Hello, how are you?”

“Um, a little dazed to be honest. Are you OK?”

I touched his face. It was familiar and yet a stranger’s. My stranger. The man with whom I had just agreed to build a future. He looked down at me with eyes that were weathered and exhausted and said, “I’m a bit of everything — very happy, very sad.”

“Can you fill me in from the beginning, please?”

“You mean what happened this week and in my head?

“Yes…how, why, stuff like that,” I said.

And as we sat in the arrivals hall at Gatwick airport with steaming cappuccinos, he started.

“First you and I were still together, then we knew it wasn’t working, but it didn’t really feel like we’d broken up until our coffee. I think that’s when it really struck me. That I was losing you. At the same time, I had strong doubts whether Elena and I would be able to repair our marriage enough to be happy together.

“I started panicking at first because I didn’t speak to anyone, and it just felt like my head would explode. We were looking to sign the tenancy agreement on our apartment for another year, and all I saw was this crossroads: Elena (for some reason always to the right) and you (to the left). And I started to believe that I was about to follow the wrong path…which was a huge step for me. You know how loyal I am, so breaking up a sixteen-year relationship is not peanuts.”

I almost smiled at his understated turn of phrase. Breaking up a relationship of any amount of time was not peanuts. And sixteen years wasn’t even coconuts. It was boulder-sized nuts.

“Finally I started to talk to Elena, which of course was terrible, but at the same time it felt good because the pressure in my head got a bit better. Then I talked to Gilles and more to Elena. Then, yesterday afternoon we went to therapy and then to the pub and then home. All those talks have made me stronger. All along, I have been consistent about the fact that this is what I want and one good test has been seeing Elena cry and say things that are horrible to hear, since I can’t help but feel guilty.

“I have done my fair share of crying too, but it hasn’t changed my mind. Not a bit. I cried at the therapist, at the pub and at home, and so did she. But I never had any doubt, and then I left the flat when Gilles came over, and I called you.”

“So this decision is barely embryonic...?” I said. “I believe you, but I am so terribly scared. For the last weeks, I have tried my best to put all of you away from my life. I even started to think I might stay in Cyprus.”

“I think in my mind the decision is older than I know consciously, but it’s very difficult to say ‘I have made up my mind, I am leaving you.’”

“Good Lord,” I said. “How is Elena...are she and Gilles still together through all of this?”

“Elena is a mess, but she is reaching out to her friends, which is good. And Gilles is there for her.”

“Dad was very fair to Gilles,” I said, “but said to me that it was doubtful that he would change and if I didn’t want that in the future then I shouldn’t have it now. And suddenly I knew that I thought the same way as my father about many things. And that continually doubting myself on those things wasn’t doing me, or him, any good.”

“He seems to be wise, your dad.”

“He is wise. Logical. You’re not that different. But Morten...you’re standing in front of me offering me everything I ever wanted and I’m terrified.”

“I am. And I’m also terrified.”

I held his hand, and we were both trembling.

“What scares you?” he asked.

“That you will take it away,” I answered. “That you’ll go back to her.”

“I guess I can understand that. But is there anything I can say or do?”

“No. You shouldn’t have to worry about my fears right now. I think you have enough to deal with. And I have already agreed to go into the unknown with you. I just hope and pray that I’m not being stupid.”

He said, “I made both Elena and Gilles promise not to say anything to you until I had made up my mind. If I had stayed with Elena, you would never even have heard about my doubts.”

“I couldn’t understand why everyone went quiet,” I said. “I thought you were all getting on with your lives. I can’t even begin to think of everything. That’s also scary.”

“But thrilling and happy too, right?” he said anxiously. “It is for me. It’s what kept me going through the horrible things I had to do. Thinking about you and us. We will have blue-eyed children.”

I started to sniffle. And pretty soon, it had turned into a full-blown storm. He said gently, “You’ve been frustrated with me lately when I didn’t make decisions. That I didn’t just break up with you even though it seemed like the best solution and was what I said I wanted. You should understand now that I couldn’t…I love you, Louisa. Let’s go home.”

31

My hands were shaking so much that even if I had had that enviable male ability to direct my stream of urine, it still would have been a hit-and-miss affair. Peeing on a stick was supposedly a simple task and one that I was not doing too well at. I washed my hands, walked out and sat down at my desk.

The packet said sixty seconds. In order to distract myself, I put it down next to me and scanned through the status updates on Facebook, forgetting that my whole world could change on its response. Until I glanced over and read “Pregnant.” I picked it up and shook it a few times, thinking that like an Etch A Sketch it might rub out. Or that suddenly the word “Not” would attach itself to the beginning.

“Not” did not.

After a few heart-plummeting and adrenalin-speeded seconds, I reached for the phone. It picked up after the third ring.

“Are you busy?”

“Just going into a meeting, can’t talk now.”

“Don’t put the phone down! I just needed to tell you that I’m pregnant.”

Tick, tock, tick, tock. I could hear the smile spreading across his face.

“Oh darling, that’s wonderful. Amazing. I’ll call you later when I’ve not been able to concentrate on this damn meeting.”

We’d moved out of the more expensive end of Notting Hill, where I had shamefully abused my credit card — easily blamed on my grief — to the only marginally less expensive Richmond, Surrey.

And we’d moved into a house exactly like the one in St Albans where I’d first visited Morten and Elena. In an effort to not fall short of her standards, I’d decorated it in the manner to which Morten had become accustomed. White. Minimalist. But with pointless and artfully placed cushions.

Our new home was about seven minutes’ walk from Gilles and Elena. We knew because we’d timed it. They lived on Richmond Green, in a prestigious address, discounted because the lady below them cooked a lot of soup and the smell of cabbage was rife. Not that they minded so much about money, because both were pretty flush from our recent divorces.

Gilles was still working on his fitness website and rock-hard body, whilst Elena started a psychology major at Roehampton. Our rare interactions had been tempered with friction and lubricated with alcohol as we attempted to stay friends. I had lost Gilles once; I didn’t want to lose him again. Of course this latest development would throw a spanner in the works. Morten and Elena had been trying for a baby for eight years. And now, within three months, I was pregnant.

I met Gilles alone to break the news, as did Morten with Elena. Then we met at a pub nearby.

“Just imagine us all with a child!” she was saying as we sipped orange juice round the table. Her eyes were dancing with fire. “Gilles and I can babysit, we’ll be godparents. And…” she turned to me with tears in her eyes. “I want you to know that I forgive you and that if you die, I will take care of Morten’s child as if it were my own.” Her desire for a child had coloured her life for so long that her happiness, despite her shock at our announcement, was tangible. It wasn’t my child. It was our child.

But I didn’t want to share with her.

Not now. Not ever.

Morten and Gilles shone with pride at her magnanimity, whilst I froze in horror.

My distrust of Elena ran fathoms deep. And my instinct on hearing her words was to take my unborn baby and run. It seemed that no sooner would I have my longed-for child than Elena would be there. Telling me how to raise it, taking it for walks and play dates…and demanding that it pick sides during our many arguments. If I were still alive, that is. Because clearly — if I was dead — she had already assumed parentage.

I had experienced once that when Elena wanted something or someone, she got it. Those events had almost taken my sanity. And nicely juiced up on hormones, I feared that she could drive me mad enough to have me committed to an asylum and take my place as mother. I know it sounded mad. But our entire relationship was not particularly sane. I had thought that as friends we might be able to continue, that I might keep Gilles in my life. But protecting my future relationship with my child was more important. And escaping once, it seemed, was just not enough.

32

In our first years together, Gilles had introduced me to his favourite English author, Jack London. He had written many classics, among them Martin Eden, the story of a poor working-class man who had transformed himself through becoming literate and reading poetry to pursue his dream of becoming a writer. But in the end, Martin had discovered that his intelligence and gift surpassed most of those around him, and having seen the darkest of human nature through prejudice in those who spurned and subsequently patronised him, he felt that he was unable to connect with the society in which he lived. He was alone. And so he chose to die.

When I read Martin Eden, I fell even deeper in love with Gilles. This complex piece of art was his favourite piece of prose! Here was a man who knew how harrowing life could be, who empathised with self-destructive behaviour and the quest for knowledge. Here was a man who would be by my side in life’s journey, would be someone to share thoughts and philosophy with. Our love was deep and mystical. And our meeting of minds, incredible.

Seven years later, I gave Gilles another Jack London classic and an autobiography of Arnold Schwarzenegger as a Christmas present. He had just taken up bodybuilding, which was to become part of his new career. The latter is of course hugely thumbed and a favourite. The former sits on my shelf now; I got it in the divorce because he never read it.

Gilles grew and changed into a man in his relationship with Elena. And as he grew and changed, so did I. We lost the demons that bound us together and we grew away from each other.

Supporting your partner to pursue their passion is a fine goal.

But when your partner’s passion is something in which you have no interest whatsoever it should also ring some alarm bells.

“What’s that for?” I asked him.

“It’s a bioelectrical impedance scale for measuring my body fat. I have to go from ten percent body fat to eight percent before the bodybuilding contest. Although its accuracy is somewhat debatable.”

He could have been talking in Greek. Worse actually, as I could have understood Greek.

As an actress, singer and model, Elena watched every gram that went in her mouth and kept her body highly maintained with the best organic creams, scrubs and foods. Looking young in her industry was a must. She does look young. And beautiful.

They share a passion for the pursuit of perfection, self-discipline and fitness.

I no longer believe that it’s a one-in-a-billion chance to fall in love with the same couple. In fact, I believe that if one half of a couple is emotionally compatible, there’s a better-than-odds-chance that the other side should be too. The compatibility tests have already been done, and it’s pretty easy to fall in love, if you are in fact looking to fall in love. Because it’s clear enough now that although we still loved each other, Gilles and I really needed different partners.

As our life journeys took different directions, as we changed, we were incredibly lucky to find new partners within the same couple. And for all that we have lived through, I will treasure the memories. Even the bad ones. They taught me a lot.

Some things didn’t change though.

“We’ve broken up again.”

It was Gilles. On my doorstep. I was seven months pregnant.

“This time it’s for real. She’s thrown all my stuff out of the window.”

I sighed and said, “Do you need somewhere to stay?”

It was like the old days. Gilles saw manipulation from all sides and Elena saw persecution. I tried emotionally to keep out of it, but my Gilles was alone and angry. He came round, turning to me for advice, comfort and the spare-room bed. I did my best to advise him from a neutral standpoint and supported honesty in all communications. Elena was devastated, but it was not my place or within my ability to support her.

After an emotionally draining month of counselling and support, the anger died down, and sure enough they got back together. It was inevitable.

And it was this straw that finally broke Gilles’s and my relationship. We are no longer husband and wife, lovers, or friends. We don’t even speak.

Although we solidified our friendship during that month even whilst I helped him make up his mind whether or not he wanted to be with Elena, when he went back I wasn’t interested in being her friend. I didn’t even want to try. Not one little bit. For the protection of myself and my family unit, I wanted nothing to do with her. I understood how much it must have hurt, and the consequences of my actions. Because it meant that Elena couldn’t stand Gilles being my friend, and eventually because of the problems it caused, he even stopped wanting to be. But as hard a sacrifice as it was to make for both of us, it was the best thing to do. I wasn’t part of his future, and he wasn’t part of mine.

It is now many years since we divorced. Gilles is a highly successful personal trainer. He and Elena are married and have a little girl.

As I see on his website, which I surreptitiously stalk from time to time, fitness is his passion. My philosopher and poet turned into a man who loves supplements and bodybuilding. He is inordinately proud of his body. It’s a massive achievement and a stellar example of what dedicated pursuit of perfection can bring. But it’s not for me. In any sense.

But despite all that has passed and how the events we created made a permanent — and now silent — fracture between our two couples, I will always love him. We took an adventure in the name of love. We got more than we bargained for. Joy. Pain. Growth.

And a family.

My children would not exist if it were not for the risks we took. So how can I ever say it was mistake?

“Mummy, shall we sing?”

“Just a moment darling. Mummy’s working.”

A little girl climbs up on my lap to look at my computer.

“How ’bout…teletummies?”

She starts to sing discordantly. “Tinky Winky…Dipsy…Laa-Laa…Po. Teletummies…Teletummies…say HELLO.”

Morten and I have a daughter. She is a blue-eyed and blonde-haired angel. She is nearly two and a half now. She has us around her little finger. Her Plasticine is on the floor, ground into our rug, and several pieces of Lego are scattered across the hall from where she left them. I will tread on them later, limping as I go. Her father is in the living room, singing “Each Peach Pear Plum” for our son, who’s almost four months.

We live in Sweden on an indie granite island where cars aren’t allowed and people grow their own food. It’s a far cry from the corporate life in fashionable Paris, the rich bohemian life in Notting Hill or the jewel-encrusted middle-class life in Richmond. Our unlikeliest of relationships has resulted in a different paradise.

EPILOGUE

“I know that was your experience of our relationship, but it doesn’t give a very good impression of polyamory,” said Morten as he finished reading the first draft of The Husband Swap. “People are bound to ask why on earth you’re still in an open relationship if it was nothing but heartache.”

For we are in one. Still. An open relationship is a state of mind. An eradication of jealousy that in itself is so worthwhile. And a belief in the possibility of multiple loves. Sometimes theoretical…and sometimes highly enjoyably practical.

“Haven’t you learned your lesson?” asked Linda incredulously, when she heard me recounting the story of a new lover.

“Haven’t you got everything you ever dreamt of?” added another.

“Surely it’s been proven that it doesn’t work! You proved it!” said Charlotte.

“You’re divorced,” I retorted. “Have you proved that monogamy doesn’t work? Will you give up on the dream of having a partner because of the pain you went through?”

“But it’s obvious that people need to be in a partnership. Two people. Like you are now.”

“I’m in a triad now,” I corrected her, because she, like everyone else, had preferred to ignore my newer relationship. But since a year had passed, I felt it had enough weight for me to contradict her. “And I love it. But society doesn’t support us, so yes, monogamy would be easier. But why is your choice of serial monogamy more natural than what I’m doing?” I asked.

“Because…”

As she trailed off trying to think of a reason, I smiled secretly to myself. You could throw anything at me now and I could undermine your argument — snap — like Miss Piggy’s karate chop.

Polyamory isn’t for the faint-hearted. It can only be borne in the long term by those committed to sorting out their demons and growing almost beyond what we recognise as the basis of our humanity. But as a utopia, I still believe in it and in my life I still swear by it.

I’m even chairwoman of the National Polyamory Association in Sweden. My mistakes have given me enough experience to advise others. But it’s still a journey. I’ve learnt from my mistakes, and yes, I keep making more. Fewer now than before.

There have been difficulties and breakups. I’ve learnt to communicate. I’ve healed my wounds. Built my self-esteem. But above all I’ve lived in love. Lots of love.

It really does make the world go round.

“To me it’s only obvious that people need relationships. We die without love,” I said. “I love you, for instance. Not in a jump-into-bed-with-you way, obviously. But love. Really love. And I would love you to find someone with whom you’d be happy. If you found someones and you were all OK with that, then I’d be just as happy.”

Charlotte appeared relieved. “I love you too. And if you get that from someones, I guess I’m OK with that as well.”

LESSONS

WITH EVE RICKERT

FOREWORD TO THE LESSONS

Louisa Leontiades and I could not have had more different childhood experiences, or have come to polyamory in more different ways.

Louisa, like many people, came to polyamory from a traditional monogamous marriage, while I’ve never been in a monogamous relationship. I’ve been in polyamorous relationships since the 1980s (back then, we had no language to describe them save “open”), and have been writing about polyamory since the 1990s.

I’ve never been in a quad. Louisa has. I’ve never lived with my entire romantic network. She has. I grew up in the American Midwest, the son of parents who valued education and taught me direct communication; she was born in the United Kingdom and raised by a family actively hostile to transparency and openness.

And yet…and yet…

As I read Lessons in Love and Life to My Younger Self, I found myself thinking, “Oh, God, I wish I’d known that, too.” Louisa’s imagined conversations with the younger, less-experienced version of herself, and especially the things her exploration of polyamory has taught her, resonated powerfully with me. Our life paths have been very different, but our experiences (and more importantly, the lessons we needed to learn from those experiences) are remarkably, even astonishingly, similar.

Perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised by that. Polyamory is not a relationship model that’s widely accepted by…well, by anyone, really. From the moment we’re born, we are told how our romantic relationships are “supposed” to be. Everywhere we look—our parents, our peers, schools, churches, Disney movies, TV shows—we see the same message: there’s only one right way to have romantic relationships. Happiness comes from monogamy and “till death do us part.” When we meet someone we fancy, the course is set: we date, we fall in love, we marry, we have kids, we die. Fade to black.

So perhaps it’s inevitable that we all internalize these ideas, no matter how poorly they fit, no matter how much we try to reject them. We are all social creatures, after all, programmed by our DNA to seek the love and approval of our fellow humans.

“We are all formed of frailty and error;” Voltaire said, “let us pardon reciprocally each other’s folly.” It’s my favourite quote, and it’s the backbone of the principles I try to live by. But like Louisa, before I could live this way, I had to first learn to forgive my own folly—to understand that we must apply compassion to ourselves before we can direct it to others.

Like Louisa, I made a lot of mistakes in my explorations of polyamory. Like her, there were times I felt lost, alone in a trackless wilderness, not sure if I would ever find my way home. Like her, I made mistakes, and those mistakes hurt people I loved. (And, like her, I wrote a memoir about the devastating mistakes I made and the people I hurt. It is no easy thing, this business of cataloguing and accounting for the darkest parts of yourself in such a public way.)

I’ve been an advocate for polyamory nearly my entire life. I’ve spoken about it, written about it, and travelled the country lecturing about it. Like any activist, I have tried to present the best face of polyamory. It is, I absolutely believe, a positive and healthy way to live. I’ve seen and been involved in many polyamorous relationships filled with love and joy, light and laughter.

Yet there is a great grey pachyderm in the living room, something those of us who have been working to promote polyamory as a valid way to live have never really talked about: polyamory is disruptive. From time to time, you will encounter folks who will tell you that polyamory is the next step in human evolution, a golden panacea that can save us from the blind, possessive ownership paradigms of conventional straight-laced monogamy. Don’t listen to them. There isn’t a word of truth to it.

Polyamory is hard. It’s not hard just because it’s a relatively new social construct, and we have few role models to show us how to do it well—though that is true. It’s hard also because it demands a great deal of those who practise it. Intimacy cannot exist without vulnerability, and in polyamorous relationships, we make ourselves vulnerable to many people. We also accept vulnerability from many people, and that means we have the capacity, if we are not meticulously careful, to hurt many people. “We are all formed of frailty and error,” and in polyamorous relationships, our mistakes affect more people. Polyamory raises the stakes.

Love has a way of coming into our lives like an unexpected tornado, ripping off the roof and sending the furniture flying. In my book More Than Two, my co-author and I talk about the monogamous fairy tale that true love conquers all—but there’s a polyamorous fairy tale, too. We like to tell the story that polyamory means that when you meet someone new, you can love that person without losing your existing relationships. Louisa and I came to polyamory from very different directions, yet we both learned, each in our own way, that the polyamorous fairy tale isn’t always true, either.

Polyamory is disruptive because love is disruptive. Even in polyamory, no matter how good your intentions, sometimes you will meet someone new, and that meeting will lead to the loss of someone you love. Love challenges us. Love changes us. If we falter, even for a moment, if we fail to treat the hearts of those we love with compassion and wisdom, we can fall.

The ways we respond to heartbreak, and the people we allow ourselves to become in the aftermath, are what really speak to the truth of our selves. We learn wisdom from the times we fall. Polyamory, for better or for worse, gives us more opportunities to fall.

Read this book. When you’re done, read it again. The wisdom in it is hard-won. Learn from Louisa’s experience. No matter who you are, no matter how you love, there is something here that can make your life better.

— Franklin Veaux, 2015

TO MY YOUNGER SELF

“Hey, who are you?”

“I’m you, in the future.”

“You’ve put on weight. And your hair is turning grey.”

“Maybe so. But you’re a lot happier in my world than you are in yours.”

It’s written plain as day on your face. A world where I can be happier with grey hair and ten more kilos? Impossible. But you can see that you’re more beautiful now than you ever were. Joy has transformative power. And back then, you were working out quite a few demons. It showed in your body, your face and your behaviour. It wasn’t always pretty. Sometimes, when you were drunk, it was downright ugly. Remember that time your husband filmed you? He captured the drunk Louisa in all her glory. Nasty, wasn’t it?

Once you wrote a memoir that detailed the highs — and lows — of a polyamorous quad relationship. Four people, two couples, living and loving together. The relationship, as many relationships do, ended badly. As you were a newcomer to polyamory, your memoir was an expression mostly of pain. A scream, as one of your current boyfriends describes it.

But I don’t think you ever intended for it to discourage those who wanted to enter a polyamorous relationship, nor was the memoir supposed to be used as propaganda by those who sail their banners against non-traditional relationships. And yet, when you published it, that is what it became: a warning signal to those embarking on the possibilities of new life and new love. Those with no guidance on how to avoid the pain you experienced — and the pain you inflicted on others (you did, you know).

But as time moves on, new perspective casts light on the experience. Personal development and analysis have allowed you to see some of the lessons learned. Emotional processing, after all, is one of the things we polyamorists do best. It’s allowed you to understand the reasons why your relationship crumbled, so that you can avoid some of the same pitfalls in the future, and it’s taught you that the hardest of lessons can result in the most amazing gifts.

This is not, above all, a critique of your partners’ behaviour: even if you might recognise their faults along with your own, their business is not your business. One of the best lessons you have learned over the past years is how important it is to take responsibility for the experience of your own life.

This book is about your lessons. I could have made it one hundred, or even more — after all, I’m still learning too. But I could also encapsulate it in one simple lesson that many people wiser than you or I have said before.

Know thyself.

(And keep trying, even if sometimes it seems impossible.)

INTRODUCTION BY MY OLDER SELF

“What did you expect?” said my mother, following the disastrous decline of my polyamorous quad. “And worse, why are you doing it again? Do you have a death wish? Haven’t you learnt anything?”

And I’ve asked these questions many times:

“What could I have said or done differently?”

“At what point did our relationship lose its way?”

“Did sexual desire just die, or was it pushed?”

They say that forewarned is forearmed. The truth about what purpose relationships might serve in your life, and why some of them last whilst others don’t, is elusive. If you could bottle it — why, you’d be a millionaire! But there’s no way of knowing whether our first polyamorous relationship might have evolved differently, or even of wishing that it had, had we done things differently.

All four of us made mistakes. I made mistakes. And I can’t change the past, nor would I want to, because all that I am and all that I have as the current me, I owe to the past me. (Thank you, past me.)

I have learnt a lot. How to communicate better. How to set up a polyamorous structure less conducive to drama and even abuse. What I could have done differently. But not without extensive research, thinking and yes, a whole lot of pain through self-development. I haven’t learnt that it’s safer to return to monogamy. On the contrary, some of the things I’ve uncovered are reasons why monogamy would be very bad for me. I’ve grown to know myself better, as a mixture of nature and nurture, as are we all. I’ve come to understand that my desire for freedom for both myself and my partners, for utter honesty, and to build my own reality accordingly, and my ability to love more than one, are all key facets of who I am.

But whether or not our relationship might have evolved differently, one thing was clear: it involved a lot of pain. One of the reasons I’ve done so much soul-searching is because now, unlike then, I have children. I would like to avoid such pain, such destruction, in the future. Any children who would have been caught in the crossfire would have had a very bad time of it. And yet putting the longevity of your relationship above all other things is also dangerous: valuing yourself is also about knowing when to leave. You must be able to demonstrate to yourself and others that relationships do end, and set an example for your children that teaches them they don’t have to stay in situations that make them unhappy — even if much of the work to be done is probably within themselves. You can leave, but if you don’t learn from your experiences, you are destined to make the same mistakes over and over again, and you will not find happiness elsewhere.

If you are in a polyamorous relationship, you will know that it is not always hearts and roses; indeed, sometimes it might seem as if you are going mad. You are not — at least, no more than we all are. You are, just like Alice, sane…but in a world that seems illogical, backwards and sometimes utterly incomprehensible. Why?

1. Because society has always instructed you that there is only one way to have relationships

2. Because you are not prepared for the enormity of the work you might have to do on yourself to be able to grow into someone who can cope with a previously uncharted reality

The more you understand yourself, the more you will understand human nature and your relationships. The more you understand your relationships, the better equipped you will be to stand up to the world and its recriminations.

So rest assured, there are lessons here that will not only improve the chances for your relationship, but also help you function in your daily life with more happiness, more love and a stronger sense of self-worth.

1

My French Not-Quite-Lover

You thought you were in love. You thought love would conquer all. But only one of those two beliefs was true.

You had escaped an abusive relationship, so now you sought someone you could control — or at least, someone who would never control you. You sought someone to care for. After being the victim for so long, you wanted to be the rescuer, and here was a man who could be rescued. But this rescue was no act of altruism: you unconsciously desired power. It fed into your damaged self-esteem and helped you regain your confidence.

But you also fell in love with someone who finally accepted you for you. You were so thankful you could have cried (and in those early days, you often did).

Acceptance is a powerful ingredient in any relationship, but there is much confusion over what acceptance looks like. It was an especially sensitive and confusing area for you, because you were rarely accepted or truly loved as yourself during your childhood. What did you think acceptance looked like? When you met the man who would become your first husband, it meant “being able to do what you want at any given moment.” Your husband bought into that, too. But acceptance in a romantic relationship is not about loving someone else at the expense of your own or each other’s growth — if it were, we would all be in relationships where we accepted the unacceptable, where none of our needs were met and our own growth was stunted. Sadly, that is indeed the reality that many live in.

So you both pushed the limits of acceptance on the premise that “if the other person really loves me, they will accommodate my needs even if it means sacrificing theirs.” In your particular case, that meant that you pursued your education and career across the world to dizzying heights, while he sacrificed his own professional path and goals to follow you — and you sacrificed your need for sexual compatibility to keep him by your side.

Your unmet needs diminished both of you and made you unhappy. You had been taught that your needs should be met by the other — in the romantic, happily-ever-after paradigm so commonly taught. You became dissatisfied with each other but continued trying to maintain a relationship and masked your disappointment.

There was little passion in your marriage, even in the beginning. And you learned later that passion was important to you, even though early on you liked to deny it.

A long-term romantic relationship with a partner where there is little sexual compatibility is of course possible, but it’s difficult within a monogamous paradigm. If you opted now to be in a monogamous relationship where sexual fidelity was required, you might choose your partner more carefully, rather than succumbing to the first man who accepted you, warts and all. At the time, you didn’t know yourself well enough. All you knew was that you loved him.

But love does not conquer all, and it sure as hell doesn’t ensure that you pick a compatible partner — especially if you intend on being monogamous — for the long term. Luckily, you don’t intend to be monogamous.

Yet, dear one, don’t beat yourself up about it. Few people know what they seek or why they fall in love, or even indeed what love is. Relationships, all relationships, destructive or healthy, teach us many things. Your relationship made you and him happy for several years. For that alone, it was worthwhile. It might have been better not to spend all your savings on a wedding, however — but that was a fun night, wasn’t it?



Loving someone does not necessarily a long-term relationship make. Compatibility is made up of numerous elements that rarely stay the same.

2

Cheating on My Husband

This lesson could be about cheating, and why it’s so destructive for you personally. Why lying and betrayal create more stress in you than they do in others who have potentially led less stressful lives. But no, we can talk about that later. This lesson is about denial.

How little you knew. How much you shut off your own powers of deduction! How great was your power to deny, and deny again. Because listening to yourself when the truth hurts is painful (of course). If you had listened to yourself, how different would your actions have been? And yet I think that your cheating was the impulsive act of your secret self, who was stronger than your denial. An act that would push you finally to listen to yourself and hear the words that had been screaming in your unwilling ears for so long: There is something wrong!

It’s terribly difficult to listen to yourself when nothing you have said over the years has been validated or considered worth hearing. I hear you. Women, especially, are taught as children that their role is to be “the good girl.” We are made up of sugar and spice and all things nice. Stray from the norm at your own risk!

And yet you could not stay in your “good girl” state of arrested development any longer if you intended to be happy. So you cheated with your first boyfriend. The fact that he was also the first to give you sexual pleasure is no coincidence. You might have loved him, but lust was a strong component. Among your many fine examples of denial was this: you missed sex. You wanted better sex. But could you admit it? Not really. Because liking sex for its own sake was bestial and cheap (or so you were taught). But somehow, you thought, “love” made it better. Less like cheating. Less cheap than a random betrayal.

Of course, the admissions you might have made would have forced you out of your relationship, right then and there. You would have had to admit that, really, you had rarely been sexually attracted to anyone, because the strength of attraction had to be very strong in order to overcome the sexual repression that ran deep in your veins, conditioned by the sex-negative society permeating your consciousness. To be fair, you didn’t have the language…and relationship education is not taught by schools, nor by those parents who have never been taught themselves.

So you were afraid to lose the only stability you had ever known. I understand. But if you had been honest with yourself, you would have recognised that the stability you thought you had was very shaky indeed. You could have told your husband. You could have treated him with the respect he deserved and been honest, instead of hiding your true feelings — from him and from yourself. He could have had a choice to work on a different kind of future with you.

“But hey!” I hear you say. “I wasn’t the only one in denial! He was too!”

Sure. There’s no question about that. But you are not responsible for how anyone else chooses to live their life, the lies they tell or how they construct their own reality. You are responsible for your own life, your own emotions and your own reality. And the sooner you realise that, the happier you will be.



Strive to be as honest with yourself as you possibly can be, because the consequence of remaining in denial means your life is a lie. And living in lies will make you unhappy.

3

A Life-Changing Discovery

It was like a marble settling into a hole, you said at the time. Polyamory sounded right. Many loves felt right. If ever there was a proof that we are “born” and not “made,” this was it, you thought.

You were wrong.

What felt right for you was freedom — for reasons we’ll look at later. It was also the ability to connect with many (which you are really good at, by the way).

Love, if it can be reduced to anything, is connectedness. Love does not stem from another person. It happens in those timeless moments when we see, know and understand that we are the same. It happens in those moments when we are vulnerable, when we see each other’s nakedness (and no, I’m not talking nudity, you prude).

Why did that conversation leave you gasping and newly in love with your partner of seven years? Because you were honest with each other, and honesty begets vulnerability. Vulnerability begets connection. And deep connection, in the moment, is one form of love.

You see, polyamory was a paradigm and a belief that forced you outside of your comfort zone. To a place where you (at least initially) had no lies to tell. The terrain was unfamiliar, and you were vulnerable. This fact alone means you often speak from the heart.

So it was in part because polyamory was so “out of this world” and unfamiliar that you started finally to speak the truth, because it was the only option open to you. But soon, if you are not careful (and as you will see), the lies will start to creep back in again.

If polyamory were the accepted way to conduct relationships, I suspect that there would be a great deal many more myths surrounding it, perhaps as many as for monogamy. These myths may be the truth for some, but once they become norms and enter into the consciousness as the accepted standard, they become expectations that don’t fit all realities. This is the way it happens.

The danger of trying to educate others in habits that only work for you is that you are asking others to adopt precepts that may be lies for them. If the precepts do not fit, they will cause unhappiness. The goal of relationship education should be to try to convey the importance of underlying principles. For you and me, this means freedom, responsibility and integrity. But only we know what works for us, for we are unique. Just like everyone else.

You and I have the habit of searching for the truth outside of ourselves. We look for that hole into which we can settle, like marbles. Don’t. Have the courage to build your own vision, always.

You do have courage, you know.



Seek to be vulnerable and authentic. That means building your own reality, with or without societal support, brick by honest brick. Your truth is inside you.

4

Redefining the Rules

Humans seek rules out of a need for security, and we need security as a matter of survival. There’s no reason to expect that we should live in a land without rules. Rules are all around us, in the laws we follow, and in the social etiquette we learn. It’s only natural to assume that where there are none, we should make up a few. The few rules you and your husband made, though — in truth, only three explicitly, although expectations can be considered as internalized implicit rules — eventually served to restrict you.

You thought it was normal and right to expect rule number 2: always to use protection with another partner. You had attributed priority and hierarchy to being “fluid bonded,” believing it to be a sign of intimacy — something exclusive to you and your husband. You believed your marriage needed certain elements to preserve its “specialness.”

Still, you thought, there are consequences! What about sexually transmitted disease? What about a baby? But the reasons you gave, disease and babies, were not the real reasons, were they? Everyone had a clean bill of health, and there was little risk of pregnancy. The real reason was that you wanted to protect the hierarchy you had imagined and created.

And when your husband finally decided the rules were too restrictive and broke your agreement, whom did you blame for that? Not your husband — you weren’t yet in a place to believe that he was responsible for anything. You blamed Elena. It was easier than believing that your husband didn’t care about your carefully discussed agreements.

Nowadays, you assume your own risk. If one of your partners doesn’t use protection with someone, you use it with him until the time that you can all sit down and have a conversation about it. You communicate. If his choice is to continue to have unprotected sex, you have to decide whether it crosses a boundary you cannot live with in the relationship. You have to own your shit (but no one else’s).

You strive, above all, not to dictate your partners’ actions in order to assuage your own insecurity. Because the choices they make are theirs to make. Yes, there are acts, and consequences to those acts. If your partner continues to cross a boundary that is important to you, maybe it’s time to look at whether your relationship still contains respect and love, and whether this is the platform for you to be the best person you can be.



Be careful that the rules you make around your relationship aren’t an effort to push the emotional risk onto other people. You do not have the right to control others’ actions, only your own. You can and must express your own needs. But it is up to you to seek partners who choose to do the things that help you feel loved, rather than making rules that they must do so.

5

The New Couple

As a society, we create division in order to access power and diminish others. Disgust, judgement and expectation — especially where others don’t match to our expectations — are the cornerstones of such barriers. I don’t blame you for feeling those things when you got that email. But since then, we have reconsidered our belief system. We’ve learned that caving to this knee-jerk response will cause us and others nothing but pain.

Why did you hate swinging so? Primarily because the culture you were raised in gave you a set of opinions around sex that condoned it within a very restricted set of conditions. Only if there was love, your mother said. Only if it is for procreation, your church said. Only if you “shut your eyes and think of England,” Queen Victoria said.

Did you, as an adopted, illegitimate child, grow up with the stigma of being a bastard? I know that you have suffered because of that stigma. But you are not required to adhere to ridiculous standards that others, seeking to justify their own superiority, have dictated. It is your choice to believe or reject those standards, and we know that now.

So despite all your misconceptions against swingers, and all your beliefs that falling in love with another couple was “impossible”…you fell in love. Could that have been because both couples were challenging societal norms, putting you all in a very small minority? Maybe. Could it have been because you were all trying to be honest about what you wanted out of life? Probably. Could it have been because your true self was stronger than all the judgements that had been foisted upon you? Definitely. Give yourself some credit here.

And yet the judgements and inherited values that you perpetuated harmed your partners in numerous ways. If you are honest with yourself, you’ll know you looked down on them — at least in this respect — before you met them. You were proud of the fact that you had come to polyamory through cheating and not swinging. Can you now see how screwed up that is?

I remember how you told others that you cheated out of a desire to reconnect with your first love. I remember how that rang true for you…but only because you wanted it to. Later, when you told everyone about polyamory, you were careful to emphasize “love.” Not sex. Love. While this is what many believe is the true definition of polyamory, the consequence of using “love” as a justification, as opposed to a simple descriptor, couching it in a system of judgement to set it apart from any other non-monogamous practice, is grounded in opposition and conflict. But you’ll find that out.

You have children now. Two of them! And you have found that one of the best ways of resolving your own divisive judgements is to look at your children and ask yourself this: Would you think any less of them if they chose to express themselves through swinging?

You wouldn’t. You’ve come to a place where you do not think less of them for the people they are choosing to become, even if there are personal consequences to all of those choices. Not all of their choices make you happy (that paint on the wall, those sleepless nights), but that doesn’t make your children any less worthy.

You know now that we all play out our human condition in a multitude of ways, especially within our relationships. Swinging was not your choice of self-expression, but so what? Neither is rock climbing.



Judgement in personal relationships serves only one purpose: to make you feel superior to others. It gives you a false sense of power and results in unnecessary ego conflict.

6

The Blue-Eyed Monster

If there’s one issue that comes up time and time again in polyamory, it’s jealousy. Here’s what we’ve learned so far.

Jealousy is a feeling that stems from the idea that you are incomplete without another person, that you “need” the other person to survive. It is driven by your own insecurity, a fear of not being able to survive without the source of love as you have defined it. But no one is the “source” of love. As we’ve already identified, love can occur in the connectedness of the moment and lingers in our mental models of another person. This can become expectation. Beware expectation! When you define someone as the source of your “good feeling,” it is easy to turn them into an object and a possession.

But what you defined as jealousy here…was not really. Or at least, not only. Many other feelings are wrongly defined as jealousy. Envy. Fear of abandonment. Entitlement. And yet when you wrote this chapter, you didn’t know any of that stuff. A lot of what you felt here was envy: that Elena lived the life you wanted, and that you were “not allowed.” But who didn’t allow you to live the life you wanted? Was it your adoptive mother? Was it society? Or was it that you were too afraid of the consequences to dare to grab life with both hands, as Elena did?

Who is responsible for your life? You are. Because if not you, then who? You don’t live in a society where you cannot survive without approval. We do not live in the pages of Vanity Fair. As you have now found out, living your authentic life polarizes. There is hate for your way of life, there is rejection, but it doesn’t kill you (only makes you stronger!). If this were all there was, I agree it would be a tough life. But as the petals of your personality have unfolded, people have seen into your heart. Some people — fewer people, but those people whom you now choose to surround yourself with — love you. Strongly and unerringly. For all that you are. Take heart. You are in a good place.

But Elena awoke in you a burning envy to be all that you could be, all that you had denied yourself. She was an actress, and you had chosen financial analysis, in line with your father’s wishes, instead of that degree in film and drama that you (much to his dismay) wanted. And instead of admitting this to yourself, you resented her. It wasn’t the best way to start a metamour relationship, was it?

But you know what? There’s a lot to feel compassion for here. Her way of being clashed directly with your issues, and sometimes people simply aren’t compatible with one another. There are a million reasons why this happened between you. You grew up with a narcissistic mother, and it made you hypersensitive to criticism. And Elena’s active involvement in her own life, and eventually yours, served only to remind you of the inadequacy you felt, which had been ingrained in you over and over again. When I remember how much pain you felt, even before meeting her, I am surprised and proud that you had the courage to pursue the path you did. I’m even prouder that you have chosen to live your own life now. And in those cases where you find you cannot, you no longer resent others, only put the desires they spark in you on your bucket list and try actively to make them happen.



Only you have the power to eradicate envy by living the life you want. And even if you can’t, no one else deserves your resentment for the way they choose to live their life. Ultimately, envy and resentment hurt you more than anyone else.

7

Webcam

We’re going to go over it until you get it. Sex is important to you. You might not be highly sexual, you might be more turned on by brains than brawn (you’re a sapiosexual, you know; look that word up), but sexual expression is nevertheless one of your fundamental needs — and one you’d been squashing until you met Morten. Squashing stuff, as we know, isn’t great. Like Pandora’s box, the more you squash it in, the more it risks bursting out in an, ahem, rather uncontrollable fashion. Just reading this makes me laugh because I know you hardly recognised the woman you were being in front of the camera.

Of course, I know this is difficult for you to admit. Not only did you live in a household where the adults were celibate for most of your childhood, but the diminished sexual attraction between you and your husband was also difficult to compare with this, a new lover. The polyamorists said not to compare. But living with your husband, the difference in desire was difficult to miss. And what happened then? Well…you felt guilty. But you didn’t need to feel guilty about two differing levels of attraction. Being attracted to another man was not “wrong.” Just awkward.

So let me take this opportunity to tell you a little something about the way guilt works for you.

You think you feel guilt because of something you’ve done in the past. But funnily enough, it’s kind of the other way round. You feel guilty about what you’ve done, but only because you are afraid you are going to do it again. As long as you feel guilty, you probably won’t do it. But as soon as you think you’ve felt guilty enough — like you’ve paid for your mistake — bam! You’ll go and do it again. This may be a result of the way people have used guilt to manipulate you in the past and also due to your religious upbringing. So stop with the guilt. You can better acknowledge that you made a mistake without feeling guilty about it. And being attracted to another man is not a mistake. So do you see how useless guilt is for you? How unproductive it is? How it diminishes your life experience? It stops you from actually owning your mistakes.

Whilst you felt guilty about the comparison between your new lover and your husband, it was too painful for you to face up to what the difference might actually mean. That was dishonest. And destructive. Even at this point, you knew that you felt far more sexual attraction to your new lover than you had ever felt to your husband. But you couldn’t admit it.

“Surely guilt is a very natural human emotion?” you ask. “You can’t blame me for feeling guilt. Everyone feels it.”

Absolutely! I do not blame you. Blaming you for your feelings only serves to make you feel persecuted. What I’m doing is asking you to face up to what you want in life and admit it honestly without shame or guilt. It takes time. But you’ll get there — in about five years.

When you drop guilt from your life, you will finally admit what you want out of life.



In your life, you use guilt as a currency that you pay with until one day you think you’ve paid enough to do again whatever it was you felt guilty about. It stops you from changing the underlying causes of your behaviour and living the life you want.

8

The Meeting

Shame was a big deal in your life. It stemmed from a fear of judgement. Your fears weren’t unfounded; people did judge you. But what you hadn’t realised is that living with shame had held you back for years. Your childhood was peppered with religious influences, and shame — the internalised judgements of others — was one of the many destructive tools used to make you “behave.” Yet by suppressing yourself and your true desires, by hiding from yourself, you managed to become the very person others would judge so severely. (If only they knew everything you’ve done now!)

But some things could not be hidden in your new world of honesty. Your former promiscuity, for one. It might surprise you to know that, nowadays, embracing your unparalleled ability to connect with others (and it is a great ability) combined with better self-esteem means you are far choosier in your partners. This is neither a good nor a bad thing. Because whilst your promiscuity happened to be destructive to you, it was nothing to be ashamed of. Promiscuity in general is nothing to be ashamed of. Trust me: I am you, after all.

So you tried to be honest, but soon realised that being honest meant you had to face up to who you were, with all that entailed. How terrible for you! How difficult it was to finally look in the mirror and see all that you had done, all that society would judge you for. Especially British society (luckily, you weren’t born in another area of the world where the repercussions might have been even greater).

Among the many things Elena brought to the table was a difference in attitude about sex. Sex was good as far as she was concerned. The fact that you’d slept with a lot of men meant — for her — that you were sexually adventurous. Nothing more.

But you blamed her, didn’t you? For making you feel awkward, embarrassed and ashamed. For exposing your vulnerability. If only you’d realised that the more you hid from yourself, the more vulnerable you would feel. The disgust for yourself that she exposed was redirected toward her, and that’s not cool. But remember what we said: no shame. You made a mistake. So what? Are you not — like everyone else — human?

I love you. With all your experiences. With all your superpowers and with all your abundant humanity. I love you and it’s not your fault. But it is your responsibility. Shame will hinder your ability to make healthy decisions, because shame is extremely damaging to your self-esteem. The more ashamed you feel, the more disgust you will feel for yourself, and the more you will make destructive choices.



No matter what you think you’ve done, lose the shame. It’s the product of internalizing other people’s judgement. It does no one any favours, least of all you.

9

Reconciling Fantasy and Reality

Ooh, this is a big one. Only nine chapters in, and you’ve covered your choice of partner, denial, judgement, envy, shame and guilt. And here is the biggest: your fear of rejection.

If I could pinpoint one overriding reason for relationship difficulties, whether monogamous or polyamorous, it would be a lack of self-esteem. So many people suffer from it. It’s very difficult to maintain good self-esteem when the whole world tells you that you are not worthy unless you achieve the standards set out by our society: a good education, a successful career, financial security and a long-term relationship. Hopefully by now you’ll be able to identify that many of the problems we’ve talked about so far are caused or magnified by your own lack of self-esteem.

But when you see those who have good self-esteem called selfish, and then rejected on that basis, it’s no surprise that you — with your fear of rejection — thought it was safer to remain worthless. Yes, you really did. You chose it, despite your three degrees, successful financial career and marriage. You’d crossed the t’s and dotted the i’s…but it still wasn’t enough. It still wasn’t safe to have high self-esteem in a world that seems to despise it.

Ironically, it’s only because so many people have low self-esteem that we all manage to get along pretty well. Because those of us with low self-esteem are — for the most part — careful with one another. We choose our words, hide our true opinions. And if we meet someone who isn’t careful with us, and who cannot or chooses not to gauge the impacts of their actions, they don’t remain in our circle for long.

This was your first encounter with the outside world, a place where even the choices you made that had nothing to do with anyone else offended them. You, the people pleaser, you, the adoptee who’d lived your whole life in fear of rejection, were in one instant crippled by insecurity.

The best course of action here — if you could have realised it — would have been to work on your own sense of self-worth. But there was no way to realise that, no way to prepare ahead. And as your partners had no idea what fear of rejection truly felt like, they were no help. You mustn’t blame them any more than you should blame yourself.

I can tell you now that the path you were about to follow, including the indirect influence of your partners, was the best thing for you. But before breakthrough comes breakdown. I am only thankful that you came out the other side.



If you feel rejection for your choices, the answer is not to choose something “more acceptable.” The answer is to work enough on your self-esteem until you know, without a shadow of a doubt, that your choices are the right ones for you. If you need to change them, you must be the one to decide that for yourself.

10

Alone Time

I have read a lot lately about celebrity suicide: gifted people who lose all hope. When there is nothing left, no hope, the alternative of killing yourself comes into play. You are so lucky, because with all that was about to happen, many people might have lost hope. You will consider suicide at one point, but thankfully decide against it. Because beneath all that difficulty and conflict, you believed something positive was in your future.

Morten gave you that hope, or at least allowed you to see that there were different alternatives from the ones you had thought of, even if it was originally the discovery of polyamory that had instilled the idea of “limitless possibilities” in your head.

Practice makes perfect, and this holds true of hope. Practising hope means you can carry on even when the world seems to be crashing around you. Maybe a miracle will happen. It will be, at the very least, another lesson. And that might be the same thing.

Until that moment, you hadn’t been sure if you wanted children. You weren’t sure how it would work out if you were also the breadwinner of the family. After all of your childhood experiences, you felt that you, above all people, needed to be an active, present and caring mother — to prove to yourself that you could parent differently. But you needed the right partner to do it with. It’s a beautiful love story. But there’s something else. Something deeper.

After that weekend, you started to idolise Morten. Sure, all that nice oxytocin and dopamine helped. The problem is that the mind likes to polarize people, events and stories. Morten became the “goodie” and Gilles became the “baddie.” Morten was the prince who rescued you, and Gilles was the person who had trapped you. In your own head, Morten was the future and Gilles…well, he was the past. You hadn’t realised that? No, I didn’t think you had.

The risk when we have unfulfilled dreams and unrecognised needs is that we look for people who can satisfy them. Those who represent the “greener side” of the grass. The negatives about such people become more negative, and the positives become more positive. Morten could do no wrong. Likewise, Gilles could do no right, and like many prophecies, yours eventually came true. It was not just because of you, of course, but remember this: without you, there would be no relationship. You are each one hundred percent responsible for your relationship.

But I’m not here to teach you what could have been, because what-ifs don’t help us now. I am here to reveal to you that you cast roles for your two partners intentionally, if not consciously. You got exactly what you wanted through your emotional responses and your unconscious encouragement of their behaviours. Yet you could not have done that alone, since every person has agency in their lives (even if this lesson is not for them, it is universal in its application). So in this case, what you intended was that Gilles should be a disappointment to you so that you could justify your growing love for Morten and your increasing dissatisfaction with Gilles. And so it came to pass. That’s a lesson you didn’t expect, now, isn’t it?



You have an extraordinary power to unconsciously influence others to manifest whatever it is you intend. And you won’t always like it, nor will you even always know what you intend.

11

Spiky

And now for a polyamory-specific lesson. It’s odd, you know, how there are so few in a book that focuses on a relationship style that people think must be the cause of problems. But polyamory is rarely the cause of the problems — the people practicing it are.

Yet some structures are more prone to dysfunction than others. For example, the quad. The quad doesn’t always have to be two couples, but it usually is. This type of quad, as Elisabeth Sheff mentions in her fifteen-year study The Polyamorists Next Door — yes, you’ve read all the books now! — is unusually prone to dysfunction (and even abuse). Why? Because it’s a case of two couples with “couple privilege” clashing.

COUPLE PRIVILEGE: The presumption that socially sanctioned pair-bond relationships involving only two people (such as marriage, long-term boyfriend / girlfriend, or other forms of conventional intimate / life partnerships) are inherently more important, “real” and valid than other types of intimate, romantic or sexual relationships.

~ Solopoly.net

Remember when Gilles broke your agreement about condoms? Whom did you blame? That’s right: Elena. Your natural instinct was not to blame your husband, because you put your marriage on a higher pedestal than his relationship with Elena. Who came to rescue Elena when you blamed her? Her husband, who put his marriage on a higher pedestal than his relationship with you. Who came to your rescue when Morten attacked you? Your husband, who put your marriage on a higher pedestal than his relationship with Elena. Each party was injured, and all of you were caught in a rather horrible Catch-22.

The obvious answer might be to just get rid of couple privilege. Except that you can’t, because couple privilege, like any other privilege, is deeply ingrained in our system. We glorify marriage as the ultimate state of togetherness. We are taught to protect it at almost any cost. You can choose not to buy into it, however; you can — as they say — “check your privilege.” You can’t eradicate the privilege, but you can eradicate your beliefs and actions that are rooted in couple privilege.

Within your relationship were numerous examples of unchecked couple privilege that resulted in the secondary partners being mistreated. You were mistreated, Morten was mistreated, Elena was mistreated and Gilles was mistreated. You were each the secondary partner of someone.

Couple privilege tends to instill a belief that the longevity of the relationship is what you value most, to the exclusion of your objectivity about the fair treatment of all the people involved with you and your partners. You had no idea that what you were doing was protecting your relationship — you thought you were protecting your spouse. Your husband didn’t need your loyalty or protection; he was not a child. But in buying into your couple privilege, not only did you mistreat others, you treated your husband like a child. And in doing so, you set the wheels in motion for a spiral of destruction.

I know — it had been a long time coming.



All people have the right to be treated with compassion and care, regardless of the type of relationship they are in or the longevity of their relationship.

12

An Alternative Christmas

Did you feel that? That release of pressure? Do you know why that happened? That’s called the power of honesty. I might have mentioned before how important honesty is to you. More so, I think, than to many others. Some people can live happily and cheat. Who are those people? Not you, at any rate. You might even say that this is why polyamory suits you so well. Since you are able to attract and connect with many people, and since you do not deal well with dishonesty, polyamory and you fit together. You can be open about the life you want to live.

There were certain things back then that made it hard for you to be honest. All that fear of rejection, for one. All that societal shaming, for another. It might be surprising for you to learn this, because after all in your childhood you lied your ass off, but you now cannot live happily without honesty.

Let me tell you a little bit about lying. You might think it will protect you from further repercussions, exposure…you might even feel that it is a necessary evil. That it will get you in with the “in-crowd” — even though it never did, did it? You might even feel that a certain level of lying is acceptable and laudable. But more than the disillusionment and disappointment that lying creates when it is discovered, lying creates more stress for you. Yes, you.

There’s something called “cognitive dissonance.” You will discover what it is when you are thirty-nine. Funny it took you that long to find a name for something you’ve been living with most of your life. Cognitive dissonance is when the picture you see of the outside world or the events you describe don’t match up with your internal reality. It creates a splintered world, two parallel universes that your mind is forever trying to reconcile. All lying does this, even white lies. As your mind tries to reconcile two disparate realities, you experience stress.

Stress is a killer: all that adrenaline and cortisol rushing round your system, preventing other bodily functions from working properly, putting you in a constant state of anxiety. Some people can deal with stress remarkably well. Others just think they do. You, who have been lied to all your life, cannot. Stress also prevents your mind from making decisions in your long-term best interest, because all you want to do is escape the situation your lies have created. That means flight…which eventually happened.

So here is, at last, one of the real reasons why monogamy is not for you. You could, of course, live as monogamous and continue to be attracted to people with whom you could not connect without cheating. You could repress all those desires and live a lie. But that seems to be a very stressful way of life, doesn’t it?



Lying creates stress, which pushes you away from rationality and into destructive decisions. The truth might hurt, but lying will eventually kill you. Don’t do it if you want to live a full and happy life.

13

The Periodic Table of Polyamory

There are many reasons why one person might be oblivious to another’s difficulties, from higher self-esteem, thoughtlessness or an innate inability to empathize, right up to narcissism and sociopathic tendencies. But sometimes it can be as simple as the fact that you have not communicated your needs and boundaries effectively to that other person. Are they expected to be a mind reader? It’s worse if you don’t even know your needs and boundaries. Which you didn’t then.

So no matter what you thought of Elena or why she couldn’t understand your difficulties, you still had very poor communication skills. You might have lived in seven different countries, but you are, my dear, terribly British in many ways. You have been brought up to not communicate your needs directly. Those who do are usually compared unfavourably to Americans…and as you know, there’s nothing worse for a Brit!

In a few years, there’ll be a program on BBC called Downton Abbey. The English-speaking world, Americans and Brits alike, will love it because it shows, among other things, how delightfully ridiculous and class-affected Britain was. And more importantly, how Brits never speak directly to one another. It’s a story about a tissue of unspoken truths, and how they can destroy. And it’s actually very funny. Maggie Smith plays the dowager countess Violet.

Violet to Isobel: “You are quite wonderful the way you see improvement wherever you look. I never knew such reforming zeal.”

Isobel: “I take that as a compliment.”

Violet: “I must have said it wrong.”

But she didn’t say it wrong. She used sarcasm: irony laced with insult. We Brits are wonderful at sarcasm, irony, double entendre and vague insinuation. And whilst all of it might make for a highly entertaining sitcom, in relationships it creates a situation fraught with misunderstanding, manipulation and hidden agendas. You will try to get what you want in any way other than by expressing yourself directly. That’s called passive communication.

One of the reasons Elena found England very odd was that her way of communicating put people off. They became defensive, they felt attacked, they retaliated. And so did you.

You won’t want to hear this, but nowadays you are much more American in your way of expressing yourself. Maybe if you had formed relationships with other British people you might have been able to hide behind your passive communication structure. But I doubt it. Because remember what we said about honesty? Direct communication is above all honest. And once you’d sampled direct communication through polyamory (and confronted your distaste at seeming “American”!) you realised that it was far less stressful. You’ve also learned compassion, because you learned the hard way that brutal honesty was far too painful. It alienated people.

Yet it has also meant a radical change in your relationships with your family. Many of them cannot take your honesty. They think it’s sensational, attention-grabbing and, well, just downright rude. Sounds scary, doesn’t it? Luckily your self-esteem has improved. You no longer fear rejection, and even when it happens, you know that honesty is your best policy. With it you have grown to realise the power of your own voice. Your messages cross cultures far more easily, you are empowered and, more importantly still, you empower others. Live to dream!



Passive communication might make you more acceptable to society, but it can damage your sense of self and destroy your relationships. Try wherever possible to say exactly what you mean, but always temper your words with compassion.

14

A New Life Together

There’s a saying in the relationship world that goes something like:

“The slower you go, the faster you’ll get there.”

This is true especially in new polyamorous relationships. Yeah, you probably needed to go slower, like maybe not agreeing to move to a new country after two months. But what’s done is done.

But this lesson is not about how fast you went, because to be quite frank with you, falling in love makes you do crazy stuff. It makes you believe in big dreams. And I never want you to stop falling in love, doing crazy stuff or believing in big dreams.

What were you feeling at this point? They’d just asked you to move. Leave your job, leave your home, and effectively come out to your family, because you could never move to England without your family knowing what was going on. Morten, Elena and even Gilles didn’t yet know the demons you harboured from childhood experiences, which moving to England meant confronting.

Darling girl! You were afraid of confronting all those old demons (something that would happen soon enough). But you were more afraid that everyone would force you to do it before you were ready.

Your job, your finances, your home, your marriage. You’d built them all up, an impressive stack of achievements to which you’d tied your identity. Who were you, if not a financial analyst? If you didn’t have those material possessions, so carefully accumulated, that graced the walls and counters of your Parisian apartment? If you weren’t a “regular” married woman? You saw all those external symbols of the person you thought you were crumbling before your very eyes.

People like you were then, with low self-esteem, are not proud of who they are, even if they can and do feel grateful and happy for what they have. That’s because you have only ever regarded yourself as your accomplishments, your successes (or lack of them). This is not your fault: society measures you in terms of your car, your money and your position in life.

From the cradle to the grave, you are identified. Your name, your sex, your skin colour, your race, your religion, your opinions, your judgements. I’m not saying you don’t have that stuff in your life. I am saying simply that you are not your stuff.

Let’s imagine you are suspended in a timeless place: It’s you. And a big bucket. In this bucket, put your physical body (like a rag doll). Then put in your name, your profession, your clothes, your house, your kids and your memories. Everything that makes up your life.

Let’s look at the bucket and everything in it. Observe it. All that stuff. Are you looking at it? Good. Now tell me. If everything that you think makes up you is in that bucket, then who is looking at the bucket? Why…you are. The nameless, placeless observer of the bucket is You. You are not the contents of your bucket. Period. But in the words of one modern philosopher…

You are not your job. You’re not how much money you have in the bank. You’re not the car you drive. You’re not the contents of your wallet. You’re not your fucking khakis. You’re the all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world.

~ Tyler Durden (Fight Club)



Learn to disassociate yourself from the stuff that you think is your identity. You are worthy not because of what you have, but simply because you are.

15

Telling the Parents

Thanks, Dad.



As long as you have been open with each other and you accept responsibility for the risks…it is your risk and your life.

16

The Other “L”

It’s called the veto: where one partner, through coercion, emotional blackmail or other, more direct methods, forbids their partner from seeing another — usually due to their own insecurity, entitlement or possessiveness. In this case it involved Morten’s ex-girlfriend, but the implications were clear: if you weren’t able to get along with Elena, then your relationship with Morten was at risk. Monogamous people do it all the time with friends. It’s normal (if not to my mind acceptable). But in polyamorous relationships, it has bigger repercussions. In polyamory, asking someone to end a romantic relationship is akin to asking a monogamous person to end a relationship with a parent or sibling, and it can be just as devastating.

The veto is used to shift emotional risk onto a third party to make another person feel more secure. Elena’s insecurity where Lydia was concerned prompted her to protect herself and her relationship with Morten through veto.

There is great divide in the polyamorous community about the “fairness” of a formal veto agreement, as many feel that it is unethical to shift vulnerability and risk in this way, and that its use destroys trust between partners. But the veto is such a norm in monogamous arrangements that you can’t dispute the fact that it is designed to protect relationships. You could call it the avoidance strategy, and it works much of the time. After all, ending a friendship tends to cause less emotional wreckage than ending a romantic or familial relationship. But it’s also part of what we saw earlier as “couple privilege.”

If you want responsibility for your life, if you want to be secure without shifting emotional risk onto someone else, and if you believe that people should place individual well-being over the longevity of a relationship, then you will not exercise a veto. But this requires trusting that your partner wants to be with you and that someone else cannot “manipulate” your partner away from you. And that’s not always true.

So ultimately it comes down to a single question:

Are you willing to restrict someone else’s freedom to choose in order to feel protected from the risk that your relationship might change form or that you might even lose it altogether?

No, that’s not really you, is it?

And you don’t want to be with someone who might rather be with someone else, anyway. You — and he — are worth much more.



If you truly want freedom of choice, that freedom must apply to everyone you are involved with. And that means that each individual also has the freedom to leave.

17

Swinging

You knew it. Or at least you said you did: polyamory was a lifestyle change. But what does that really mean? Lifestyle changes usually refer to eradicating cholesterol or taking up exercise. The phrase doesn’t really capture what is involved in a switch to polyamory. People refer to swinging as “The Lifestyle,” too, but polyamory isn’t just something you do on a Thursday night. Polyamory is a change you initially made only to accommodate your desire to love many, but it ended up shifting the way you thought about the world and your very sense of self. It’s given you a clearer idea of consent, abuse, privilege, feminism, ethical food choices, what you want for your children, whom you choose as your friends and what you want to do for a living. In short, there is no area in your life that has not been affected in some way by polyamory.

But you, like many others, fear change. Many of the difficulties you faced were of your own making. Not because you were responsible for the acts of others, but because you were resistant to change and terrified of what lay ahead. Fortunately for you, once you’d started down the path to polyamory, there was no going back…even though you sometimes desperately wanted to.

The threads that run through our lives create a tapestry; if one thread is pulled out, we have little way of knowing how it will affect the final picture. If you had known about every tear you would shed, how sick you would feel…that you would lose your professional life, your beliefs in what was wrong or right in the world, and eventually your relationship, would you still have done it? Probably not. Such enormity is difficult for us to embrace in advance.

How could I help you, my past you, when you were crying and at the bottom of your reserves? I cannot and would not change what you went through. But if there were any way to make it easier and prepare you for everything that was to come, I would have told you this:

What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly.

~ Richard Bach

Change happens, and it is not the end of the world (even if you might sometimes prefer it was). It is just the beginning of a new one. Remember this in future, because you’ll need this lesson a lot.



Everything changes, and change is easier when you embrace it. You will get through it, and you might even fly like you never have before.

18

Whose House Is It Anyway?

I’d like to introduce you to a new word: co-dependency. You’ll learn it in about eight months when Elena uses it to describe your relationship with Gilles. You will deny it hotly, or at least as hotly as you can, being English. But she was right, you know (and I know you will hate that).

Co-dependency is where you enable each other to play a role in what psychologists call “The Drama Triangle.” You could play the victim, the rescuer or the persecutor. The victim seeks to blame others for her own experience of life in order to avoid responsibility and stay closeted inside her insecurity, the persecutor seeks to bully others in order to feed into the power needed to bolster his self-esteem, and the rescuer seeks to rescue the victim from the clutches of the persecutor in order to once more, you guessed it, feel good about herself. None of these roles allow you to take responsibility for your own life.

Learning to recognize these games for what they are will take you the better part of thirty-seven years. But don’t blame yourself. Everyone plays them. Many of us are children in adults’ clothing, walking around having relationships with one another and acting out our protection mechanisms because that’s what we think we have to do in order to survive.

I’d like to say that you don’t play those games now. But I can’t. You are certainly more conscious of them when you do play them. But they are subtle. Insidious…and written out in every relationship around you. I’d also like to say that co-dependent relationships are not a bad thing per se…co-dependent relationships happen simply because we are wounded, and healing those wounds is a lifelong work. If we were to wait until we’d healed our wounds to have a relationship…why, we might never love at all.

Relationships are often the medium via which people get to know themselves. But the thing about co-dependent relationships is that they don’t help you grow emotionally. They only enable your existing weaknesses, and they often even make them worse. You choose nowadays not to get involved in relationships that have a strong element of co-dependency. It’s just not for you, even if it seems easier in the short term. Emotional growth is painful, but you like it.

“You mean I welcome pain?” you ask. “Sounds like the future me has lost a few marbles.”

“Do you remember doing your MBA?” I say. “Twelve-hour days, five hours studying at night. For thirteen months. Doesn’t it sound awful?”

You laugh. “No! It was one of the best experiences of my life. Because the sacrifice I made for that year expanded my mind beyond all I thought possible. In fact,” you say thoughtfully, “if sacrifice is forgoing something I value for the sake of something I value more, it wasn’t even a sacrifice. It was an investment. In me.”

Exactly.



Emotional growth is never a sacrifice. It is always an investment, and one that pays untold dividends.

19

Moving out of Denial

Today, you keep a lock of each of your children’s hair in a little wooden box. The first lock ever cut from their heads. You felt bereft cutting their curls. It was a sign that they were growing up…and naturally, away from you.

Cutting hair in Asia symbolises leaving the past behind and starting anew. That’s what your husband was doing. If there was one clear demonstration of the co-dependency of your relationship, it was this: you were left bereft, not as a wife might be by her husband, but as a mother would be by her son.

I find it hilarious that you’ve named this chapter “Moving out of Denial.” My dear, you were just as firmly in denial then as you ever had been. But yes, in a sense, things had started to shift.

In this chapter, you started to lose it because you already knew where this was headed. Could you have stopped it now? Could you have told Gilles that you loved him not like a lover, but like a son? Could you have started to be honest with each other and worked on your marriage? That’s another story.

For if nothing else, you needed the slow and painful decline of your marriage. To understand, step by painful step, that you both needed to change. That time allowed you to develop a relationship with Morten. It allowed Gilles to grow closer to Elena. It made sure you all developed the dynamics that allowed you eventually to switch partners.

Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.

~ Khalil Gibran

Giving birth is painful. But birth and its pain also mean new life. Your new life was stretching and bursting its way out. Your suffering was a result of your resistance to it. It’s over now. Not only because you have a new life, but because you don’t resist change when it comes…even when it causes pain. Don’t wish away the pain, because without it there will be no new life.

Without all that pain there would be no blonde and brown locks of hair nestled in that little wooden box that you keep in your bedside drawer.



Pain signals new life and new understanding. The more you embrace pain, the less you will suffer.

20

The Marie Claire Article

Even if you couldn’t “keep it in the bedroom,” as your mother said, you didn’t have to advertise it in a national magazine. But I’m glad you did, despite everything that followed. Because if there’s one thing that’s true about the word family in any culture, it’s that calling someone “family” denotes a level of importance and commitment to the relationship you have with them. And that article helped you find out what family meant to you.

Family can mean blood ties. Or adoption. Or marriage. Or friends. But all of these links can be severed through estrangement, abandonment, emancipation or divorce. You of all people know that no one is obliged to keep the family they are born with or acquire by proxy, nor should they, if this family consists of influences that are more destructive than they are joyful.

Sometimes polyamorous people use another name: “intentional” family. Your first family was not the one you were born to, as you were adopted. But now you’ve found that your true family is the one you made and continue to make on a daily basis.

Your family is a group of people whom you trust and whose support you use to empower yourself to grow in this world.

You have relatives, of course, but they are not who you consider your family.

You’ll come to realise that your children learn best by example. That your inconsistency in keeping in touch with your relatives will rub off on them. You will teach them that it is OK to have less contact with family members where the relationships are destructive.

The relationships that are destructive for you are those where there is no honest communication. They are those that contain judgement, denial, and bonds of duty and obligation over love and respect for each other. Those with people who vilify you for your choices and your life, or who try to create the illusion of superiority with classist, sexist behaviour. And this means that many of your relatives are not part of your life. And you’re grateful for this.

The bond that links your true family is not one of blood, but of respect and joy in each other’s life. Rarely do members of one family grow up under the same roof.

~ Richard Bach

Nowadays you cannot talk to the majority of your relatives about things that mark your life. They think the most transformative experiences of your life are the most shameful, and that your honesty is vulgar. Polyamory, you’ll be surprised to know, is just one of those experiences (oh yes, there’s much more in your future than you know about).

Luckily you’ve learned that if you can depend on your relatives to judge, condemn and lie — if you cannot communicate with, accept and trust them — then you are not obliged to accord them that all-important status of family.

P.S. You’ll also be happy to know that you’ve had a lot of articles published in famous magazines.



Your family is a group of people whom you trust and whose support you use to empower yourself to grow in this world. Your relatives are not necessarily those people.

21

A Long-Distance Relationship

Ha, ha, ha. Look at you, all screwed up in restraints of your own making. But my humour disguises something else: anger.

Even now, I’m angry at you. And do you know why? Because I’m sitting here in the future, and there’s nothing I can do about your situation. When were you going to wake up and stop suppressing your feelings? (There, that feels better.)

See, what I did there was to let it out. I still struggle to let it out compassionately — especially where you are concerned — but I think this is the hardest lesson. I still feel frustration and anger on a daily basis. It happens a lot when you have two toddlers! I am learning compassion with them; ironically, I rarely treat them as harshly as I treat myself. And that’s how I learn. Nowadays when I look at my own actions, I imagine they might be my child’s actions and try to help, rather than condemn, myself.

Anger always stems from powerlessness. But whether or not you can do anything to change the situation, you can always change the way you express it and your experience of it. Never by suppressing the anger, though. The anger masks everything else until you let it out somehow. Anger, especially suppressed anger, will put you in survival mode, flooding your body with adrenaline. It shuts off all but the most necessary parts of yourself, sending logic and reason flying. This is why anger has a bad name…but I don’t agree with its reputation.

You can’t selectively numb your anger, any more than you can turn off all lights in a room, and still expect to see the light.

~ Shannon L. Alder

You see, you cannot suppress just one single emotion; it doesn’t work that way. Cut one off, and you cut them all off. Emotions are signals. Our bodily reactions to them are what help us survive.

Your anger masked fear, which needed to be addressed. By suppressing your anger in an attempt to be “wise,” you were being just the opposite. Fortunately for you, anger comes out in mysterious ways. You can’t keep a lid on it forever. You’ll get angry about an eggplant in a few chapters’ time — screamingly, illogically angry. I know, it sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it? It was. If only you’d let it out sooner.



Acknowledge your anger. Be conscious that you are angry. And find a way to let your anger out without insulting. The more constructively you learn to deal with it, the less power it will hold over you in the future.

22

In Retrospect

Here’s something you already know about right and wrong. Normally they’re just two polar positions. Sometimes you can just let them be that. But when you get in a fight, when something big is at stake — like your relationships with Morten and Gilles — you’ll be fighting, and it will feel like a fight for survival.

It’s times like these when the reptilian mind takes over. You become highly concerned with your opinions being perceived as “right” and attacking others who undermine this in any way they can.

You’re saying, “But being right has nothing to do with survival!”

It does. In fact, the mind equates “being right” with surviving. As it develops patterns that promote our survival, the mind deems these patterns to be “right,” and more often than not, it becomes blind to the distinction. Being right — so you think — is the way to survive (even when it is not). Your judgement becomes clouded, your logic fuzzy.

Mind structures are the subject of psychologist Dr. Ron Smothermon’s 1980 book Winning through Enlightenment. That’s the book you and Gilles read cover to cover when first opening up your relationship. Turns out you didn’t absorb even the message set out in the beginning of the book:

“Being right represents successful survival ploys of the past. When they do not work, what we see is a desperate effort to use them anyway because they are so strongly associated with what worked in the past. Sometimes, people will die [or kill] in order to be right.”

Don’t worry, you don’t kill Elena — and obviously, she doesn’t kill you. You both live quite happily, out of contact now, though not too far from each other, in Sweden. (Bet you didn’t see that coming, did you?)

In a situation where two people are each, like you and Elena were, trying to disprove the other’s point of view, no one wins. Trying to convince someone else about the “rightness” of your position only means trying to create a situation where you are perceived as superior and the other person as inferior. You both did it — but you are not responsible for her choices, only your own.

So if you find yourself in either position, remember what your mind is trying to do…and walk away. It’s (mostly) not worth it.



Trying to convince someone else of the “rightness” of your position only means trying to create a situation where you are perceived as superior and the other person as inferior. You’re bigger than that.

23

Sharing with My Sisterwife

Here is one of your greatest lessons from this relationship: there was a wound that prevented you from living happily a lot of the time. The wound is about criticism: back then, you saw it everywhere. Said, unsaid, in a glance, in a comparison. That sensitivity made you very difficult to live with. If you’d been in a relationship with someone like Lydia, someone who trod around you because she lived with the same insecurities, the wound wouldn’t have been exposed — and you wouldn’t have been able to heal it. But it never occurred to Elena to tread carefully.

You heard criticism everywhere, even in constructive feedback. You felt belittled and incompetent. You heard judgement in compliments — because if one aspect of your appearance, home or personality was lauded, the others must have been lacking. And when you felt attacked, you barked hard, and bit even harder. But this is not a defect in your character. This is a result of having been judged and constantly criticized by a narcissistic mother.

You’d left your mother behind long before, and there was little chance of her coming back into your life if you could help it. And that meant you never dealt with any of your childhood crap (and back then, you’d never heard of maternal narcissism).

So here was a woman with dark hair and flashing eyes, just like your mother. A singer, like your mother. A woman who suffered from depression, like your mother. A woman with very decided, black-and-white opinions, like your mother. A woman who could dazzle, like your mother. A woman who was often convinced she was right. Like your mother.

She wasn’t your mother…but the likeness was too much to bear. After all the resentment, anger and envy, it was too much for you. It’s unsurprising that you and Elena liked drinking together. After all, that had been your way out once before, hadn’t it?

Elena was suffering, too. And sometimes that suffering meant that all of you suffered with her. That was your choice, you know, even if it seems impossible to imagine. But none of you suffered in quite the same way.

Sometimes I believe that Elena was specifically designed to conjure up all your childhood wounds. Sometimes I believe that you designed her and brought her into your life. She was the real gift in your relationship. Because until she came along, you hadn’t dealt with any of the stuff that was holding you back.

Just imagine if your mother had come back to live with you, like Elena did. You’d have been forced to grow and become an adult. Elena, just by virtue of who she was, gave you that opportunity. Never forget that.



Often, the worse the experience, the more you need its lessons. When you realise this, you will finally welcome those bad experiences into your life when they happen.

24

And Then There Was Thrusting

Ta-da! Here we are at jealousy. You knew it would raise its ugly head, right? Well, it turns out that it’s not so ugly.

Here’s a recap from earlier: In any relationship, jealousy means that the mind has decided you need the other person for your own survival, because you think you will be incomplete without them. Jealousy is one of those reactions that belies your insecurity (oh yes).

There’s a theory that makes a lot of sense to you nowadays, especially given your background. Original insecurity is rooted in childhood. It manifests itself during the time you grow and separate from your mother (who was once a part of you). The mind perceives this experience as a loss of the self and creates insecurity as a means of survival. After all, if your mother were to disappear before you were able to take care of yourself, it might mean death. But this pattern, established in our formative years, no longer serves us as adults. Losing someone no longer means death. Rationally, we know this. And yet in relationship after relationship, we reinforce it. (Some idiots like John Lennon even sing about it. Yes, at thirty-nine you call John Lennon an idiot. You’ve even done it on Facebook.)

Jealousy challenges you, because jealousy is a symptom of an underlying issue of your own insecurity and fear. Sometimes that’s a valid signal: Is your relationship in danger of breaking up? Then your jealousy is shouting at you to “wake the fuck up” and work on it.

But here was Morten kissing a woman you knew he had no interest in pursuing a relationship with. It was like the lightest experiment you possibly could have imagined….

So your relationship was fine. What did you feel? Jealous. Well, surprise, surprise, it meant you had deeper-rooted self-esteem issues. How much happier you were once you started working on it! Jealousy is far from being a demon. It’s an opportunity. Throw your arms open wide and say to jealousy, “Come on in old friend, I’m so glad you’re here! What is it you want me to work on?”

But in many cases, people run away from it.

Doing that is like saying, “Yes, my insecurity is a great thing. I like to feed it, and I have no intention of solving it. In fact, I prefer to criticise and oppress others to try to make it flourish better.”

We live in a fool’s paradise that lauds emotional intelligence yet has no structure to develop it. Our emotions make us feel uncomfortable, so we build controls to avoid facing them. We crown our maturity by learning how to drive, learning how to have sex and learning how to drink. And then we repress the very tools our minds provide that would help us actually become adults.

I’m not saying you’ve become an adult now, though (that would be lying). But you’re rarely jealous anymore. And that’s awesome. Even more awesome is that when you are jealous, you’re kind of happy about it. It means there’s some more emotional growth around the corner.



Jealousy is a great opportunity to dig deeper. Sure, your relationship might be in trouble, but it’s more likely that you have your own demons of insecurity to battle. In both cases, it’s a necessary emotion. Turn away from it at your peril.

25

The Eggplant Incident

So the worm turned at last. You finally expressed how you felt…and got sent off to therapy in the process. This lesson isn’t about eggplants (you used to call them aubergines, but then the second edition of The Husband Swap got published in America!). This lesson is about the validity of emotion. You felt belittled and pointless. I want you to remember precisely how that felt.

You’re going to name your daughter Freya. She’s the Norse goddess associated with love and sexuality — yes, polyamory even influenced the naming of your children! Your daughter will teach you many lessons, including the importance of not undermining her confidence by belittling the experience she has of life. Sometimes her tantrums seem vastly out of proportion to the event that sparked them — how hysterical she got when her little brother swallowed sausage skin, for example. But you see, she was afraid he would die. In her small world, this was a catastrophe. You’ve realised, thanks to her, that people act and feel according to their perception. And that you cannot diminish their experience even if your own is not the same.

An eggplant isn’t the end of the world. But for you, it sparked a whole cavalcade of emotions about the end of your marriage. It was the end of your world. Now, perhaps, your rage seems more understandable.

Just remember this: your emotions are valid. No question about it. But you have a choice as to what to do about them. You can learn how to express them constructively — like how to let them out without smashing eggs. But it’s a process, a lifetime of learning…which I hope I am teaching our children. Their lives will be so much more rewarding if they can communicate, if they can recognise why they are feeling what they are feeling. To give them voice is part of your life’s work.

Once you publish your book, you will feel so much better. Your voice will be heard. It’s why you believe that everyone has a right to express whatever it is they feel.

I just hope you remember that in future when your children start blogging about what their parents put them through.



Everyone has a right to tell their story, express their emotions and have their voice heard without being belittled for it. These rights are universal.

26

Fight Club

Here’s something that is curiously buried in your book. You encouraged Gilles to get back with Elena — not just once, but several times. Why, despite the fights and what you felt was the dysfunction in their relationship, did you persist?

Motivations are rarely single-stranded. When you spoke to Gilles’s best friend, you tried to explain.

“You don’t see what’s happening. Gilles is changing. I don’t know him anymore, but he’s growing. And I think he needed that. I didn’t do it for him.”

“But will you stay together?” his friend asked.

“I don’t know. I love him. But I want what’s best for him. Maybe it’s best for me too.”

It was, of course, true that it was best for Gilles to stay with Elena…but your approach also reflected the attitude of a mother, not a lover: you sacrificed your own relationship with Gilles for what you thought was his greater good. Fortunately, of course, you had Morten, and your relationship with him was healthier than the one you had with Gilles. You’re no saint, but you did what you thought was best for you both. But even back then you wondered if you had deeper, hidden motives: Why the hell are we doing what we’re doing? Why do we do what we do?

Human nature is a funny beast. Even after years of studying it, it still continues to surprise you. One of the most surprising things is how vile we can be…and also how amazing. Why have you struggled for so long to understand your motivations? Is it not enough to live from day to day clothed, fed and comfortable? Apparently not — although some people say you think too much!

Whatever we do, vile or amazing, it seems to me that it is in an attempt to make our lives mean something. We like to see a manifestation of the impact we have on the world. Your impact is felt when you interact with others, when you see the consequences of your actions on other people. An artist creates out of their own passion, but the result — in the best cases — is to produce a work of true emotional power. A writer writes as a medium of self-expression, but also to convey to others, in the strongest terms, the lives of other people. It’s how we feel life — and how we feel that life has meaning. We feel that life has meaning when we do the things that make us feel most alive.

So in perpetuating the existence of your quad, I think what you were doing was creating a situation that had a bigger impact for you all. Being with Morten and Elena made you feel alive. All that drama: in the beginning you conflated it with passion, aliveness and meaning. After years of remaining in a comfortable but lifeless state, living according to society’s expectations, both you and Gilles desired a life with more meaning.

Have you got a life with meaning now? Yes. But you no longer try to obtain meaning through drama. Lucky for you, passion and meaning can exist without drama. Indeed, I would say now that drama acts in direct opposition to finding a life with meaning. Drama reduces your life experience. Your life has meaning without you having to inject drama into it, and you realised this when you had children. Meaning without the drama. But one doesn’t have to have children to feel alive. The expression of life in all its manifestations makes us feel alive, more so when it’s constructive. So now — against all your parents’ aspirations for your career — you’re a writer. When you write, you express life, and it makes you feel alive.



You will have a meaningful life when you let go of society’s expectations and you do those things that make you feel the most alive.

27

The First Breakup

You skipped it in the memoir, didn’t you? Still afraid of people’s judgement — because if you wrote it, it would be more real. They took you to Accident & Emergency the day after you struggled out of bed, thinking So this is how it feels to go insane.

Your marriage was ending, your relationship with your boyfriend was ending, your job was ending…your life as you knew it was over. And you thought you were having a breakdown. Worse still, people you loved and trusted told you that you’d brought it on yourself. You saw it in their eyes and heard it in their words: Blame. Accusation. Scorn. They turned their backs on you, until the only place left to go was the hospital. Because when everyone believed you were crazy, you started to believe it too.

It is in your nature to question everything, even now. Of course, seven years on, you do it from a more stable base. But the very thing that drove you to challenge convention in the first place was what you mistook for insanity. Your mother, among others, showed you her own prison of pain and fear, and because you loved her, trusted her, you wondered whether she was right and you were wrong. But it wasn’t just her. Everyone thought you were insane. And it hurt. Because when everyone around you believes that you are doing something wrong, it takes an awful lot of courage and an awful lot of self-confidence to step out and say, “No: You are wrong. This is right, for me.”

As you didn’t have that self-confidence then, you had to build it amid constant opposition. But like trying to build a house in the middle of a raging tornado, it was almost impossible.

So you sat in the surreal surroundings of the hospital, looking at your new companions: the bleeding, the drunk, the miserable. For a time, you were one of them — at least until they told you to go home and stop wasting their time with your relationship issues.

But the experience made you think. Opening your relationship is never, ever the cause of a breakup. Opening up can be (but is not always) the act of two people in a relationship that isn’t working. Like you and Gilles. Many relationships don’t work because people are drawn to one another to heal unconscious childhood wounds. Eventually those wounds drive them apart, either by healing (leading to the realization that the wounds were the only things holding the two people together), or by reinforcing the pain. If only we had the relationship skills to solve the problems that arise and cope with the healing process.

But no one is trained in relationship skills, communication skills or psychology.

When you found yourself at the bottom, existing only in a world were nothing was true, you also found Nietzsche. Philosophy and insanity are good bedfellows.

“One’s belief in truth begins with doubt of all truths one has believed hitherto.”

You credited Nietzsche for a while with saving you. Of course that’s not true. You saved you. Over the years, you have built yourself back up from the ground. You know now that the only person you can ever trust to know what is right for you is you. When people call you insane, it’s simply a measure of how differently they are trying to achieve their goals compared with the strategy that you choose to achieve your goals. It’s only the struggle of living beliefs that are at odds with the establishment’s urge to conform.



You must believe in your insanity, because it is the only thing that will keep you from going mad.

28

The Bombshell

This is hard to write. Even now. Because books only tell one side of the story. It’s not untrue…but there’s more here than meets the eye.

Gilles forwarded this message to you — you shared everything. And when you finished reading it, you felt a grim satisfaction: satisfaction that Elena had said exactly what you wanted to say. Why hadn’t you done the same as Elena, and forced your partners to choose? It wasn’t because you were some wise, enlightened being, that’s for sure. I know you believed in freedom of choice. But back then, you hadn’t realised that in order to be a true proponent of freedom of choice, words and even actions weren’t enough. So you hadn’t said the words. But that didn’t mean you hadn’t participated in creating the situation.

There’s this thing we do, those of us who are taught to suppress our own voices and communicate passively. Because communicating passively isn’t understood by those who haven’t been brought up in the same way, it doesn’t always get the results we want. And you wanted to be out of the relationship with Elena. From the beginning, she had brought up all your issues. You felt threatened, exposed and insecure. Nevertheless, you were accommodating to a fault, at least in the beginning. You compromised and pretended, until in silent but screaming agony, your pretence turned to hostility. I really sympathize. You were in terrible pain. But in your own way, you had created a situation where her ultimatum was almost inevitable to break the deadlock.

After all, you couldn’t stand to have Elena in your home. You couldn’t stand to interact with her. And knowing how she was, you could have foreseen that it would be she who would take action first. She was the go-getter.

I know that’s painful to hear. And once more, with all your conflicting personalities and issues, I don’t believe it could have been any other way. Have you learned anything? Or would you still let the situation escalate out of control, until your only recourse is breakdown?

Giving too much at your own expense, pretending that everything was OK when it wasn’t, relinquishing your dreams, compromising your integrity — in short, being dishonest about your own fears, desires and needs — led you to this point. And just like George Bailey in It’s a Wonderful Life, a situation of your own making drove you to drinking and madness.



Being the martyr and capitulating to a situation that’s hurting you doesn’t help anyone in the long run. You must care for yourself and set your boundaries; otherwise, you risk destroying yourself and hurting everyone else in the process.

29

I Do

I’m thinking of writing an article. It will be called “Why you shouldn’t be your partner’s therapist.” But you didn’t really learn this one here. You learned this one over the last six months. Polyamory is really tricky where this is concerned. You’re going to be an intimate part of your partner’s breakups — and worse, you’re going to have to not take sides.

“But why?” you ask. “Gilles needed me. And I knew who I supported.”

Yes, you did. And it bounced you around the drama triangle like a Ping-Pong ball. There you were, his rescuer. He was the victim, Elena the persecutor. You fed your old pattern of treating him like a child. But as soon as they got back together, it was your turn to be the victim.

I’d like to say stay out of it, but I know that’s hard. It feels like it’s in your own best interest to play the therapist, to help those you love. Yet you will always get caught in the cross fire. Worse still, you are not attracted to victims. All that therapy you did for your husband disempowered him even more, until you burned out the little passion that was left.

How was he to get the support he needed, then? Not from you. He was a big boy; he could have sorted it out by himself — though you’d never let him learn how. Of course, the risk was that he would resent you for not giving him the counselling you always had.

So the bottom line is this: at some point, you have to stop trying to fulfil your partner’s needs, because there is a line between support and desperation. You’d crossed that line awhile back. You’d created the expectation that you would always be there to pick up the pieces. You couldn’t make him stay with you by doing this. In fact, all you were doing was killing the relationship.

And here’s another thing: earlier on in this chapter, you’d had sex. But sex in a dead relationship totally isn’t worth it. And by the way: planning a baby to mend a relationship? Really? You of all people know how damaging such a thing is. Thank goodness that didn’t pan out.



Playing therapist to your partner disempowers them, eliminates attraction and risks bouncing you round the drama triangle. There’s a reason we have professional therapists. If you or your partners need therapy, use them.

30

The Great Escape

There’s a point of no return in many relationships at which things become so toxic that absence, at least for a time, is the kindest solution for yourself (and others). Knowing that point, knowing when it’s time to leave, is something we spend our whole life trying to learn. Because actually, it’s a measure of how much you know and value yourself. When you left Elena, it also meant leaving the two men you loved. It is a measure of how much you valued yourself and your own sanity to have made such a huge decision.

Truly, that was the first time that you’d been forced to put yourself before others. And for that alone, you should be grateful for the experience. Until it happened, you had an amazing capacity to tolerate intolerable behaviour, so much so that you let yourself be trampled on again and again. Had you expressed your boundaries? Naturally not: you didn’t even know them, let alone how to express them.

Many people, those with better self-esteem, wouldn’t have let it get this far. But because your self-esteem was so low, it took an enormous amount of mistreatment for you to leave. Nevertheless, I can safely say that this was your turning point. Without this, you would have remained in your state of feeling worthless…maybe for your entire life. The bigger the challenge, the bigger the shift needed to overcome it. Leaving two men you loved hurt almost worse than anything you’d ever known.

This was the first time in this entire story that you’d done the right thing for yourself. The adult thing. So it’s not really surprising that you not only started to feel better, but also inspired the events that followed. Morten left Elena, while Gilles committed to her. You all started to work your way to a brighter future. All your mistakes, all your lessons brought you here. You did this. You finally found the key to shift your paradigm.

I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again: after breakdown comes breakthrough.



Love and accept yourself with all your humanity. It is the key to everything.

31

Somewhere down the River

Just because you’d made the first step doesn’t mean that you always did the best thing. You were still not actively creating your experience of life, but you’d realised that you could at least be responsible for it. It was difficult. Because knowing this, you still thought you could resolve your difficulties with Elena. You still hadn’t accepted that you didn’t have to include certain people in your life…for your own good.

You made plenty of the same mistakes. But you managed to admit them, and what’s more, repair them. One of them was trying again at the relationship with Elena. But even as friends, that wasn’t possible. And so you made the second adult decision of your life, which was to exclude Elena from it. No, it didn’t seem like an adult decision at the time. You were told you had problems. That was, of course, the truth. But the one problem you were starting to resolve was your need to give yourself the freedom to choose which relationships you kept and which you let go.

In a couple of years, you will read a great book by Mira Kirshenbaum called Too Good to Leave, Too Bad to Stay. In it is essentially a diagnostic yes/no test for whether to stay in or leave a relationship. The test has thirty-six questions, and if the answer to even one question is “yes,” she recommends that you leave. The point of the book is to help you towards long-term happiness. It’s designed for couples (of course!) but you’ve used it many times for other relationships at all levels. In polyamory terms, your relationship with a metamour doesn’t have to be close. But in the configuration you all chose, Elena was like a wife. Even when you’d transitioned the relationship to “friends,” you lived seven minutes apart, and you saw each other on an almost-daily basis in the beginning. You threw dinner parties together.

Your relationships should enhance your life, not drain it. At the very least, you should be happier inside them than out of them. And that wasn’t the case for either you or Elena. When you read Kirshenbaum’s question, “If God or some divine being told you it was OK to leave your relationship, would you feel relieved that you could finally leave?” you finally knew that you’d done the right thing. Because the answer was a resounding yes. So you left, despite your guilt and despite your doubts. Good for you.



Your relationships should enhance your life, not drain it. If they don’t, you should consider leaving. Now.

32

The Last Breakup

Everything changes. Of course, this particular thing hadn’t yet, because it only changed after you and Gilles stopped being in each other’s lives, and by then, the book was finished. But even when the book is finished, the story still continues.

It took you years to finally be at peace with the decision not to see Elena, though. Years of questioning and puzzling. A lot of your questions arose because you couldn’t be at peace with dropping people from your life. You thought that was a sign of weakness. If you were emotionally grown enough, you thought, you could accept anyone.

That’s not true, by the way. Not because it’s impossible, just that sometimes there are huge, clashing differences. There are so many lessons, but sometimes the best lesson we can take from them is that we are better off with different people. Nothing lasts forever. Sometimes, letting those people go is a sign that we are finally improving our self-esteem. Sometimes it’s a sign of strength.

Of course, the problem wasn’t Elena; the problem was Gilles. You loved him. You wanted him in your life, even if it was just as friends. And it hurt not to see him.

But beyond wanting him in your life, you fought tooth and nail for freedom of choice. Remember lesson 16? Freedom of choice, real freedom of choice, isn’t only for you; it’s for everyone else as well.

When you finally combined all your lessons, you saw that your relationship with Gilles had been life-changing. Your relationship with Elena was also life-changing. And when all those lessons were learned, there was nothing else for you to give one another. Feeling hurt about it was futile. The lesson was over, and it was time for you to learn something else. But living in the past and choosing to continue to feel pain had prevented you from moving on.



There are always new lessons to be learned, new adventures to be had, and new miracles around the corner. But clinging to the past will stop you from finding them.

SOME FINAL THOUGHTS

A wise man once said, “You teach best what you most need to learn.” If you’d have listened to that wise man (Richard Bach, in Illusions), it would have come as no surprise to you that your career is no longer in financial analysis, but in helping others identify, reframe and release their pain.

After all, if there’s one thing you’re an expert in, it’s not Excel spreadsheets — although yes, they’re still pretty cool. It’s how to deal constructively with immense pain.

“Could we have stayed in the quad?” you ask. “Could we all be living happily together the way we first imagined it?”

“No,” I reply.

“Why not?” you ask. “If you’ve learned all of this stuff, and it can’t prevent breakups, why learn it at all?”

“It can prevent get-togethers, and sometimes that’s better,” I say. In my mind, you and I are sitting together outside that pub in Richmond looking at the swans floating by. “But it’s nice that you think I know. You forget that I’m you, only about seven years later. You could have handled it better, of course. But then you wouldn’t have any of these lessons.”

“OK,” you say, throwing some breadcrumbs. “Well, you seem happier than I am. I want to be happy. And I guess at least that’s a good reason for me to learn them.”

Then I smile to myself. I can’t be sure, of course, but I think that is the reason. If we all did the work, if we were all happy, then the world would be a much better place. And no one can make you happy but yourself. But maybe someday, my older self will come by and tell me otherwise.

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—from the foreword by Michón Neal

Love, Retold

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More Than Two: A practical guide to ethical polyamory

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Ask Me About Polyamory: The best of Kimchi Cuddles

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— Dr. Meg-John Barker, author of Rewriting the Rules

When Someone You Love is Polyamorous: Understanding poly people and relationships

Dr. Elisabeth Sheff

An essential guidebook for family and friends of polyamorous people.

The Game Changer A memoir of disruptive love

Franklin Veaux

“A quiet story of trial, error and triumph that fundamentally questions everything we think we know about relationships in general, and polyamory in particular.”

— A V Flox

Stories From the Polycule:Real life in polyamorous families

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An anthology of personal stories and artwork from children, teens, adults and elders living in polyamorous families of all forms.

Purple Prose: Bisexuality in Britain

A collection edited by Kate Harrad

“A must-read for anyone who is attracted to people of more than one gender, and for those who know and love us.”

— Sue George, author of Women and Bisexuality

Table of Contents

CONTENTS

PREFACE

FOREWORD TO THE COMPILATION

MEMOIR

FOREWORD TO THE MEMOIR

PROLOGUE

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

31

32

EPILOGUE

LESSONS

FOREWORD TO THE LESSONS

TO MY YOUNGER SELF

INTRODUCTION BY MY OLDER SELF

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

31

32

SOME FINAL THOUGHTS