This is going to be a very long read, so I thank all the readers who stick it out until the end. Three people will be mentioned in this retelling: me, my ex-partner, and their primary partner. No one in this story is a monster, and I’m not intending that my readers should think as much. All three of us have terrible traumas which have resulted in us becoming stunted, imperfect individuals who are probably still growing up and finding ourselves. Each person involved in this story has a litany of sexual traumas and unhappy childhoods, all of which influences our relationship behaviors. Though I don’t feel at liberty to discuss the sensitive subject of either EXP’s or WF’s traumatic background, I can go into more detail about my own.

Dramatis Personae

EXP: my ex-partner, (AFAB NB, ~35)

WF: EXP’s primary partner, the “Wife” (F ~30)

And

Me: see below

I’m a neurodivergent, autistic non-binary AMAB woman in my mid 30s, over educated, autodidactic bibliophile. Translation: I read way too many books (mostly non fiction) and don’t easily form human relationships because interpersonal relationships baffle me. I spend a lot of my spare time in the gym working out because I’m physically hyperactive, and I’m also chronically anxious, bordering on paranoid, and exercise is one of only a couple tried and tested outlets I know of for getting this out. I was sexually assaulted as a child, my parents split when I wasn’t yet a teenager, and I was raised mostly by my mother, kind of an arch conservative, pull yourself up by your bootstraps immigrant, and a tiger mom at that, who moved my siblings and I out of the country, and I returned stateside later, to go to college, and I’ve been here ever since. Later on in my late twenties, while I was in college, my father died a premature death after I had stopped returning his calls. He was not yet even of retirement age. What this means is that I am, in EXP’s words, self-centered and codependent in my relationships, and I have a deathly fear of abandonment which means my relationship partners often find me suffocating, and that I care more about preserving my romantic relationships and being soothed by my partners than I do about my partners themselves. Instead of taking care of my mental health and relying on a therapist to help me with these issues, I rely on my partners to do the impossible task of soothing my many disorders. I have been known to make unwelcome texts and phone calls, basically bombarding my partners with too much communication and then accusing them of withholding affection when they don’t reciprocate my level of attachment. So, as I relate what the other people in this story are doing, please take into account the way I am using EXP as a surrogate therapist, and a source of the parental or maternal affection I never received growing up.

I (AMAB NB~35) am feeling a mixture of intense pining and relief. I broke up with my partner EXP (AFAB NB ~35) of 2 years on Friday or Saturday. Today EXP seemed to tell me off for good, writing a parting indictment of my flaws on the message app we use and then blocking me, which is the same way we broke up for the first time 6 months ago, after which EXP asked me to take them back. EXP and I both had problems and I want to be as unsparing of myself as I am of them. It’s important for me to mention at the beginning that I come to any relationship with a series of traumas from my childhood and my early adulthood which still influence me and affect the kind of partner I am in relationships. I was sexually assaulted when I was a child, my parents split when I was not yet a teenager (I lived with my mother thereafter and she moved my siblings and I to another country) and later my father died (a relatively young man, he was not yet retirement age) shortly after I refused to take his calls anymore. You can read above how this influences my own behavior.

This relationship began quite disastrously from the jump, yet for reasons I’ll get into below I was mesmerized by EXP and addicted to them from the moment we exchanged messages on the app where we met. We bonded over the fact that we were somewhat reticent and antisocial neurodivergent millennials with way too much education. EXP has a background in psychology and so taught me a lot of things I didn’t understand about why people are as they are, and why I was the way I was. EXP also gave me the first acceptance and kindness I had ever known as a trans person who was learning later in life that I was a woman. EXP provided me my first encouragement, to explore transitioning and dressing according to my identity. We both had a history of therapy as children, because our schools didn’t know what to do with us; we were above average in intelligence but suffered from all sorts of behavioral problems. We learned as adults that we were autistic but that the autism spectrum wasn’t well understood when we were kids and so we kind of slipped the net. They and I led pretty identical young adulthoods. We each did an extra year of high school because we were underachievers who didn’t like going to school and facing the bullies and other pressures there. We both started college in our twenties but didn’t finish until our early thirties because of our handicap and a lot of the same issues. So naturally for these reasons and many other startling similarities we had this sense of being kindred spirits from the moment we got to know one another. My partner even resided in the city where I was born and grew up (I now live in another state) and so being with them had this strangely providential feeling, like I was getting back to where it all began.

So needless to say we were long distance partners falling fast for one another. Because we were both broke (I from paying tuition and EXP had student loan debt) I’d make the multi-hour drive out to the state where EXP lived, because it was cheaper than buying plane tickets. When we got together EXP told me offhandedly that they had a primary partner—WF (F~30, who they would later refer to as their Wife in virtually all conversations with me, as a way of asserting hierarchy)—and that they had been experimenting with poly relationships. The first thing EXP told me about her was that they ‘just lived together and kissed sometimes.’ They told me that it wasn’t going so well and that EXP and WF were on the verge of breaking up imminently. It turns out that, though they had many problems, that wasn’t the case at all, and that in our first month together I was already being misled about what I was getting involved in.

I soon learned that years before I and EXP had ever met, WF—had been engaged to marry EXP and that the arrangement fell apart when WF had gotten cold feet and wanted to call it off. The stillborn nuptial was quietly swept under a rug and thereafter EXP still referred to WF as “my wife.” So, to many people, like EXP’s parents and family members, EXP and WF were for all intents and purposes married, if not legally so. And I was the secret partner who was not allowed to meet the family, or friends of the family, lest that embarrassing secret become common knowledge. Stranger still, though WF had given EXP permission to pursue primarily sexual encounters, she was adamant that EXP could not pursue romantic relationships. But when my partner and I started falling for one another, all that blew up and before long I was having to apologize to WF and beg her to let me stay in a relationship with EXP.

From then on, I learned that WF was jealous of EXP and had developed a nascent sexual attraction to me. This was always very strange to me since WF claimed to be more attracted to masculinity than femininity, and I identify as a non-binary woman who still has some male parts. I’m athletic because I’m anxious and hyperactive, and exercise is one of the only proven outlets I have for my anxiety, so I think as a consequence of my having a well developed physique, WF had grown jealous of EXP’s relationship with me. WF on the other hand was unhealthy and out of shape, and so I never physically fancied her. But before I knew it, EXP was telling me that I was only still around because of WF’s goodwill, the implication being that we had to sweeten this arrangement for WF. Sooner or later I was being nudged and maneuvered by EXP into entering a poly triad with WF that I never wanted to be in, in order to placate WF and keep her interested enough in letting me stay with EXP. It started with threesomes and gradually evolved into WF and I alone, while EXP busied themselves with other distractions. I remember feeling terrified the first times I had to spend alone with WF.

So if I put out sexually, WF would in essence refrain from whispering all my shortcomings in EXP’s ear and making a stink about our relationship. To add even more craziness to the triad debacle, I learned that the intimacy between EXP and WF was one sided. EXP initiated almost all sexual encounters, and that intimacy was almost never reciprocated by WF for years at a time. EXP would perform things on WF and get literally nothing in return for it. So when I did my obligatory bit to keep harmony between all three of us, EXP would get jealous and resentful that WF was initiating sexual encounters with me, and was not initiating or expressing sexual interest in EXP. When I told EXP that I didn’t even enjoy this obligation, and that I’d happily stop doing it if EXP would only say the word, EXP eviscerated me and launched into a furious tirade about how I was not allowed to suggest that WF was physically unattractive to me.

This eventually came to a head one day when I was in EXP and WF’s apartment studying for school in one of the bedrooms. EXP was at work, and expecting WF and I to meet them for lunch. Before we were due to leave, I eventually dozed off on the bed under a small pile of textbooks and notebooks, and I was awakened to find WF standing over me and rubbing my chest and my face with her hand. She bent over me to kiss me and I didn’t protest at all, because of the influence WF had on EXP’s thinking. I didn’t want to say that I didn’t want this, and wind up turning both of them against me, so I consented by opening my arms, reaching up to her, and appearing to invite her toward me. And I let her do what she liked. I pretended to climax so that it would end. Afterward, because it was so exhausting, we fell asleep and missed EXP’s lunch hour. Worst of all the encounter was unprotected. I knew that I wouldn’t be able to lie to EXP about having unprotected sex. WF suggested we didn’t have to tell, but I knew that I wouldn’t be able to keep the secret and that sooner or later EXP was going to be angry with both of us. Later on that happened, as WF and I sat in the living room, with EXP venting their anger at both of us, for both the lapse, as well as the fact that we had been intimate at all, instead of meeting for lunch. When I told EXP privately that I was studying and dozing, and that sex with WF was the furthest thing from my mind at the time that it happened, they told me that they were accepting WF’s version of the story in which it was a mutually invited encounter, and told me that I was lying. I knew then that this was a toxic relationship that I should have bailed from long ago, but I was too in love and attracted to EXP, and I stayed.

A lot more of this relationship was toxic and topsy turvy, but I still love EXP, and I miss being with them. If they asked to come back, I would take them enthusiastically. I’m relieved that it’s over and I can go on, but I also feel as though all the effort and time I poured into this relationship was for nothing, and that I have a hole in my heart where EXP belongs.