For sake of clarity, I’ll use names, but they’re all fake names. This may seem like the wrong submitted but it feels right to me. However, the amount of text I wrote seems to be too long for one post, so I will post about one third of it and the rest in the comments, marked with a (2) and a (3) at the beginning.

In January 2020, my wife of fifteen years Janet and I got into a fight. It started as an argument and escalated to her attacking me physically, and me restraining her from attacking, which made things worse. I was so much in shock that the only way I could think of to de-escalate was to send my son to get the neighbors to intervene while I continued to hold her. (For clarity, I clenched my own wrists tightly behind her back, but did not apply pressure or force to her body, if that makes any difference to anyone. I thought I was doing the right thing.) Opinions differ as to which lines were crossed by whom, but she equivocates me putting my arms around her with rape, and for her, that was the night our relationship broke.

Concurrently, Janet was trying to set up some one of her friends with a recent acquaintance in a three-way chat group. Kyle wasn’t interested in the girl but they all kept talking, and slowly he started having tender feelings toward my wife, and she developed mutual feelings, which she became aware of on the 6th of March. She became intensely sad, often staring blankly around the room but unable to talk about whatever was bothering her any time I asked (which was frequent).

On the 22nd of March, I became reacquainted with someone from my childhood, Melinda, who had started posting poetry on Facebook. I was one of few people to take interest and we discussed ways to make her writing more impactful. That developed into a friendship and I agreed to help her with her manuscript. Reading it was intensely intimate, a bit more like reading a diary than a book of poetry. It felt equally thrilling and inappropriate to access someone’s inner thoughts through their writing. It was like a psycho-sexual connection with virtually a complete stranger. As I got to know her through her writing and through our conversations, I learned about the many people in her life who had victimized her, and I was filled with compassion to help her. It was the perfect combination of my hero complex and her narcissism, which I knew nothing about. I wanted to know her better and she took an interest in me as well, and there was an immediate bond between us. She asked me many deeply personal questions, even inappropriate questions which made me uncomfortable but I liked the attention.

I made it clear, however, that I wasn’t going to have any sort of fling or affair or cheat on Janet. For better or for worse, I had a strong belief in and respect for the sanctity of marriage and the vows I swore. As time progressed and feelings grew more intense, I remembered hearing about polyamory and the idea that a person could have multiple meaningful relationships with several people who each fill a niche in someone’s soul, rather than expecting one person to be the only relationship and holding them responsible for filling all the niches.

I began a series of conversations with Janet about these concepts and articulated areas in our relationship where some wishes were unmet and how it might be worth considering redefining the terms of our relationship and what we would consider disloyalty towards one another with regards to our external friendships and relationships. For me it was clear: cheating didn’t mean having an external relationship, it meant breaking an agreement made between husband and wife about acceptable conduct, and using deception to conceal a relationship or the activities within that relationship. NOT cheating meant having good open communication and discussing everything in advance and coming to an agreement on what is okay or not okay.

Basically I had just a few guiding principles: 1. We honor our spouse by asking permission and coming to agreement BEFORE taking any action with an external partner. 2. Our marriage relationship takes preeminence. Nothing is okay unless we are okay. 3. As soon as someone feels they have to be sneaky, that is a sign that they are doing something they shouldn’t do and have a guilty conscience, which needs to be corrected before progressing further.

These conversations allowed her to feel comfortable finally telling me about her feelings for Kyle, and in return, I told her of my growing feelings for Melinda. Both of them were several thousand miles away, so we figured, no problem. We gave each other permission to engage with our new friends and explore these new feelings and for a while, everything was great. I openly shared with Janet details of my conversations and how I felt about Melinda, and we had what polyamorists call “new relationship energy”. At one point I said that primarily, I wanted Janet to be happy, and that as long as things were great between us, I could possibly even be okay with her having sex with someone else.

All along the way, I kept asking Janet about her feelings regarding my interactions with Melinda, how she would feel if our conversation were affectionate or flirtatious, etc. And every time I asked the response was the same, “You’re fine, I don’t mind, don’t give me details, go be happy.”

Towards the end of June, Janet asked to use my phone and it made me really nervous that she might see a message pop-up or read my conversation with Melinda, and in a moment of panic, I deleted the conversation from a different device. I immediately realized it was a mistake, showing I felt I needed to hide something and thus, not in accordance with my philosophy of open and honest communication. I confessed to deleting the conversation and offered to open Melinda’s account so she could read everything just to prove that I had nothing to hide and to restore trust, but Janet was devastated by directly seeing in detail what I thought she had vaguely known all along. Nothing explicit but lots of emotional connection.

That resulted in several months of a “platonic” stage. The platonic phase ended in maybe August, when Janet told me she could no longer consider me her husband, but could consider us Friends With Benefits.

Towards the end of that time, my relationship with Melinda disintegrated overnight, and I felt devastated and utterly lonely. Janet hadn’t been able to admit it, but each time I asked her permission to engage with Melinda, she had told me yes but meant no. She was hurt that I would even ask, and took it as evidence that I didn’t love her anymore. She was extremely hurt by all the things she had agreed to allow and had indicated would NOT hurt her, and now that I was in agony, she had no capacity to show me the support and affection I craved. She told me many times, directly and unambiguously, that she could not give me what I needed and instructed me to find someone who could. That was the beginning of what I call my Others Period, between October 2020 and May 2021.