TW STI mention

Apologies if the flair doesn't quite fit the post, it's the closest I could find.

Myself (25f), my Fella (26m) and our dearest friend (25ftm) have been FWB since we were 21. We unanimously agreed on Day 1 that bestie (let's call him LB for Lover Boy, the name Fella and I call him as banter) could pursue other casual relationships so long as he was up front with everyone and was always careful. LB isn't sure how to describe himself other than 'romantically monogamous', meaning if he and someone else click and he wants to pursue that relationship further, then we pause our arrangement, and he sees them exclusively. Fella and I don't have sex with anyone besides each other other than him. Cool, we've all known each other as babies and have always been close, so things actually worked pretty good! Everyone was happy, open, chill.

A few months back, LB got with this one dude that I now hate so much that I swear my brain forcibly made me forget his name, and LB opted to go exclusive (I hate the term go steady). Guy seemed pretty decent at first, nothing special, no real red flags.

WELL this fucking bitch was still sleeping around when he and LB had said they would only see one another. LB used condoms with him every time, but he ended up catching crabs. The asshole got the boot, and thankfully the beach cleared quickly.

LB had ended up liking this guy a lot, and he hoped that things'd work out with him. So that sucked. We live in a boondock-y, rural-ish small town in the midwest, so he doesn’t really have a variety of dudes to choose from. He got in his feelings about it with us over a few drinks a while afterwards. He confessed he was ‘done with dating and casual shit’ and that he’d developed more romantic feelings towards both fella and I. Fella and I were kind of 0_0 at first, but he was tipsy and emotional, so we kinda just patted his back and let him ramble.

Fella and I talked it out afterwards. Of course we kinda panicked, like SHIT SHIT SHIT our friendship is doomed, we never should have done this, our poor dude. But after the dust settled, we had a conversation. In all honesty, like I’ve said, we’ve always been close; he’s our daughter’s godfather, and they’re best friends. It’s adorable. She’s autistic, so she tends to kinda glom onto people, and he’s among the few that can handle it for extended periods of time. Our family sees LB pretty much every day (it helps that we’re neighbors), he’s at our house more often than his own, we go out and do stuff together fairly often. Even before, we’d always had the kind of friendship where we could genuinely talk to each other about any and everything, communicate effectively, banter hard, and just click over all. Hell, people call LB Fella and I’s third wheel already!

I digress. Thank Allah, Jehovah and everyone in between, Fella and I were able to communicate that both of us had feelings for LB. Our feelings towards each other hadn’t changed, we were/are still extremely happy together, all that mush. We agreed hey, if LB’s up for it, why not give the whole triad thing a try? So, we tell LB - not to laugh at his misfortune, but he didn’t remember opening up about that, so at first he kinda panicked because he thought that he’d just torpedoed our relationship. But he confirmed that what he said was true. 

We all agreed that we’d attempt to be a three-person-relationship, take it slow, see if it works for us. Nobody’s counting chickens by any means, duh, but honestly? Life is pretty fuckin good. Surprisingly, it’s legit not that much different to when we were FWB. We hang out, we get food, we do stuff, we make sure that we all get one on one time with one another, we still have our same hobbies n shit outside of each other…all three of us are honestly shocked. Granted, it’s been only two months (today), but things are good. We’re all just taking it slow, not making any MASSIVE plans for the future or anything, but there’s no interest nor plan to change things any time soon. 

So…yeah. Lol. IDK if it’s all to do with the fact that we’ve known each other forever, we already are as close as we are or that we were FWB before this, but we’re going strong. Nobody knows as of yet, and there’s no plans to come out for at MINIMUM another four months. If our luck keeps up, we'll all still be together by the time his birthday rolls around in December; Fella and I joke that we're gonna make his party unicorn themed - can a man be a unicorn to a 'hetero' couple? Nonetheless.

I will say, Fella and I are a pair of lucky bitches. LB's the biggest pain in the ass and the image of grumpy old man, but he's a great friend, godfather, and now lover I guess :D