How do I get over my toxic triad?

I was the third in a marriage of 15 years, for almost 2 years.

A husband and bisexual wife. I fell madly in love with her, but I don’t think I ever was in love with the husband. She was my first woman, though I’ve known I was bi for years.

He turned out to be a narcissist— he demanded I have s*x with him without her, and tricked me into believing that she was in-the-know, and could not be confronted with it because of her ‘sexual inadequacy’ (she told me that she’s pretty much asexual). I believed him. More so because she would often say ‘I’m fine with our dynamic so long as you don’t get pregnant…” and would let us be alone together for hours a day.

He was her king. To her, he could do no wrong. If I ever defended her from his abuse, she would get angry at ME.

So I continued to believe this narrative he fed me about her knowing, and considered it our little ‘setup’. I did enjoy the sex with him, but not nearly as much as I did with her especially when we were making love all together, which became rarer and rarer months into the relationship as she wrestled with her depression and lack of sex drive.

On the times I doubted the story he told me, he would threaten me with things like “you know how I’ll treat her tonight if you don’t…” and “if you don’t make love to me than there’s no point if you being in this relationship with us.” He also said that if I talked about it with her, it would be catastrophic because she couldn’t be faced with the truth of her sexual inadequacy, not because she didn’t know.

I hated him in those moments, but stayed because I justified the moments of profound beauty that the three of us shared. The husband was also incredibly successful, intelligent, witty and kind (when he wanted to be).

{ Important aside on their status: He painted this grand image of what the three of us could be together — all the lofty dreams we would achieve in ‘saving the planet’ with our combined intelligence; I was in awe of them both…they each were uniquely attractive but when together they were gods to me. They were self-made millionaires, with extremely high intelligence and social connections that I never came close to having access to before. I was 26 when I met them; she was 33 and he was 36. He promised me that he could set me up with higher ups at major publications, and started introducing me to notable execs in their inner circle. This is, admittedly, something I deeply miss now that I’m out of it — the illusion or the dream all that we could have been, and all I could have achieved in my career had I stayed. }

I began to feel like the wife’s protector — if I got him laid and sexually satisfied he wouldn’t verbally abuse her. I thought the love the three of us shared would heal their marriage, and make him treat her with kindess and respect.

Then…after doing some research, I realized the man was a narcissist about a year into the relationship. I decided to leave a few months later, realizing I could not change him.…but I couldn’t leave her. I persuaded her to come away with me for 2 weeks to visit my family; we convinced him to let her go under the guise of ‘networking in the nyc area’.

During this time together, I NEVER saw her happier. She laughed, we cuddled and held each other sweetly in the evening. She started listening to me, for once, when I suggested he could be a narc. She even started sending me articles about it and send that they resonated with her.

Then, I asked her…”I have to bring it up even though I know it may hurt you. You are aware that I get your husband off without you, right?” She was appalled and said she did not. I started sobbing, realizing I had been played by him and sold a narrative that I wanted to believe for fear of losing her if I didn’t comply.

At first, she reacted surprisingly calmly and even hugged me and said she was not angry. But then she left me the next morning and never came back. She tried to make it work with him, but they got into a horrible fight one day and she left him, after about a month back home.

My love for her has not dissipated in the slightest, even a year after she left.

I feel like I was used, discarded and worst of all, that I’m a horrible person for being so easily manipulated into disloyalty, shattering her trust in me forever.

My life is forever changed and I cannot move on from the grief of what I did, and how I lost a woman I’ve loved more than anyone else in my life because of it. She will never trust me again.

———

Her and I are infrequently in touch. These days not so much. But 6 months ago, she was vulnerable with me in a way she never was before and told me:

Her: “I am forever grateful for the growth you inspired and supported in me.”

I responded: “You deserve the world”

Her: “reading your poetry [I sent her a book of all the poems I wrote about her and us] was a profound experience for me. you internally chose to dream and push past the stigma every day. I regret the distance I put between us and any pain that caused you. only now do I realize how dissociative I was, the dynamic became fraught long before you were in the picture. and you deserve so much more, M. I hope you are continuing to heal and becoming confident in that knowing.”