How to Enlist Your Wife's Help in Getting Your Girlfriend to Stop Sleeping With Her Husband

Tonight: great communication and no nookie. And it was AWESOME!!!!!!

Oh, and BTW, if you steal our book title I will SUE your ass.

-Red

TRIFECTACURE

There was a time when I would've officially staked a claim on being least emotional of the three of us.

Until recently (i.e., last week), my fallback was to blame the sudden tears, or biting sarcasm that seemed to erupt from me out of nowhere, on hormones.  I was blissfully naive.  I had no idea where that stuff was coming from.  It was new and foreign to me.  Now I realize what has gradually been occurring over the past few months...a Trifectacure!  Similar to getting a good (and consequently painful) pedicure, all of the tough skin and calouses gained by enduring unhealthy relationships have been unceremoniously scoured away, and what remains is raw, red, throbbing newness. 

Hopefully after some time, I will grow a new layer of skin, less thick and tough than the last, to replace what has been chafed off (mostly just this past weekend).  Maybe being a little more sensitive than usual will serve me well and bring more kindness and empathy to my repertoire?  Until then, we will all have to live with my short fuse and tearful eruptions (sorry guys)...

Impossible things

If you've done six impossible things before breakfast, why not round it off with dinner at Milliway's, the restaurant at the end of the universe?
-- Douglas Adams, "The Restaurant at the End of the Universe"

I want it all and I want it now. I want the best of both worlds. I also want to have principles to live by. I like my moral compass. I can bend, adjust, change, adapt. But I won't be anybody's fool or doormat. Been there, been that (that was marriage #1). Not again.

Me'n'Missy'n'Chloe are doomed to fail. We are an impossibility. We can not possibly have all that we want. Something has to give, and it does, every single day. Yet here we are still, unlikely as it is, more than 8 months in to this adventure, still together, still in love, still eager to see each other again and again. We lament the complication of our lives, but we will not split up in order to simplify. We long for the open lives of others, the advantages that couples have over a threesome. But we will not forsake the magic of our trifecta to go back to that couples' life. We are dependent and interdependent and intertwined in ways that are certainly unwise. But we persevere against the odds. How?

We are dedicated to each other. There is something about this particular mix of personalities which has staying power. Any of us could end this, on any day, but none of us want to. What we want is...each other, every day. When we are together, and sharing, and laughing...none of us has experienced anything like this. We all know that if this ends, there will never again be anything so fucking crazy good as this. We're a great fit. How else to say it?

I am the most unlikely threesome participant ever. I have never had a one-night stand. Everyone has had a one night stand, right? Well, not me. I can count my sexual partners on one hand. And that includes the two women I currently sleep with. I'm one of those sensitive nice guys who confuses love and sex and gets hurt when others do not. I do not have a tough skin. I have not overcome much adversity. I'm a smarty pants know-it-all, sheltered, clever. And finally, I am not young. It seems that most polyamory-types do not start at it at age 40. But I did get this party started. And this party ain't stoppin', so long as the love & respect endures.

Impossible things? Yeah, we do those. Now, what's for dinner?

---Red

The other shoe drops.

It had to happen sometime: recently, like a sudden storm, broke the first wrenching conflict we've had in the whole eight months. It took what was forecast to be a sunny weekend and plunged us into darkness.

I think we are okay, individually and jointly. But it's by no means certain. And the storm laid bare the (obvious but until then unacknowledged) fact that this could all go away in an instant. It would be messier than the end of your average secret relationship, in that Chloe runs my business (which was NOT my idea, rather my partner's, and we've been aiming for an exit strategy all along but not expecting to deploy it for a few months yet), and our families are pretty thoroughly entwined. We can get away with this because, well, women have women friends, right? And when someone's going through a divorce, they go stay at their friend's house a lot, right? (Yeah, there's that happening too.)

Anyway, it's early days to see how this seismic event will affect us. But I'm cautiously optimistic. The Trifecta started out as fun; I don’t think any of us foresaw the tumble of events that have led us to where we are now, and the intensity that would develop as a result. Upheaval was ultimately inevitable.

Each of us three, as it turns out, has demons. These may or may not be fatal. I had such a desperate hunger for affection, earlier in life, that at first I was just plain reckless, and later wound up in two long and awful relationships in a row. I have learned much since then. What I’ve got with Red is healthy. But I notice my anxiety rising when I feel tremors of interpersonal conflict, and I feel that old panic: "do anything to keep from being left behind!" At such a point I recall a Sufi poet, advising me to invite that nasty feeling into the house, and see what it has to tell me.

Of all the things I never imagined, one is this: what if Red wants to call it quits? I’ve known from the start that the odds are against this relationship lasting very long, and I’ve always assumed that if it ended, the reason would be that Chloe walked away. She’s the one at a stark and persisting disadvantage. I guess I might have thought, in a fleeting way, that Red and I could together decide it’s not a going concern. But it never occurred to me to wonder: what if one of the original pair decides they’ve had enough? It goes without saying that Chloe could shut things down unilaterally. But does Red get veto power over what I want? Or do I, over him? Would either of us keep seeing Chloe without the other? These are thoughts so alien I could not think them, could not conceive of them.

These thoughts have now been thought.

It happens all the time, that one person of a pair makes a bad choice. The two go through a crisis: there are spasms of doubt, anger, grief. There may be fear: will we survive this? Will one of us decide it’s a deal-breaker? Now draw the polygon: whose deal gets broken, among three?

A decade ago, someone in my marriage made a bad call. One of us threw in the towel. The other was not willing to let that happen. I had never seen a conflict successfully resolved, in any of my relationships, or anyone else’s. Red convinced me it was possible – not a foregone conclusion, but possible. He was right. I was surprised. Here we are now, with me making the case for taking our time, doing the hard work, giving everyone the benefit of the doubt. Assuming the best.

Chaos is – as I often tell my patients about certain symptoms – not dangerous in itself. Merely uncomfortable. If we learn to sit with it, it has less power to lay us low. Here I sit.

Trifecta meets chaos.

According to Dictionary.com:

Chaos Theory
Part of Speech:	n
Definition:	the study of unpredictable and complex dynamic systems that are highly sensitive to small changes in external conditions

It says that small differences or miscalculations result in widely diverging outcomes that make the system unpredictable. 

The mistake I made isn’t really important, right?  Of course it is.  But I’m hoping to not be so stupid again, and that we will all look back on it one day and laugh.  For now the best I can do is learn.  I made some miscalculations, and we all suffered the repercussions this weekend.  In the Trifecta at least, little baby miscalculations can and will lead to big scary unpredictability and hugely complex dynamics.

Miscalculation #1:  Men are men are men.   

In retrospect, it occurs to me that some women probably figure this out earlier on in life, and I may be a victim of my history of serial monogamy.  Apparently instead of knowing a little bit about all men, I know a whole lot about a select few.   There ARE men out there with feelings, with souls, with morals that don’t fly out the window the moment a pretty girl (or in this case two, heehee) walks by.  And there is at least ONE out there who can be brilliant both on the job AND after hours.  In some situations, I am learning that Red will rarely react the same way as any other man I have ever known.

Miscalculation #2:  If I have two partners, I will have twice the good and only half the bad. 

Uh…WHAT?  The doctor calls this “magical thinking.”  It is a relationship, not a middle school algebra equation.  If it were an algebra equation, it would be A+B+C=X, which is useless.  When there are highs, they are idyllic.  When there are lows, they are painfully excruciating.  The difference is that with three people you are enjoying the happiness of TWO other people but also suffering their pain and bitterness as well.  I felt the pain I caused one, I felt the pain I caused the other, I felt the pain between the two of them caused by me, and I felt the pain I caused the threesome as a whole.  Repeat after me...holy CRAP.

Miscalculation #3:  If I have an issue with one person in the Trifecta, it is an issue between the two of us. 

Nice try.  Actually in this, everyone is a stakeholder in EVERYTHING about EVERYONE.  We all have different thresholds and opinions.  It's not a matter of 'one deals with one', but more 'one deals with one, and the other, and they deal with each other, and the two deal with the one, and the other two deal with the other one', and so on and so forth.  WOW.   Besides all that, it was a revelation for me that if either Red or Missy made an ultimatum that ended the Trifecta, and it was over an issue that didn’t bother the other person as much, it could cause a huge rift in THEIR relationship.  Strange, but I never thought I’d be that important – I felt that since I was the one who came last, I would be the first to go if there were insurmountable problems.  So once again, it’s just not as simple as one (one=ME) would like to believe.

There are many more mistakes to be made and no way to prepare for them or predict the outcome.  That is really the bottom line.  My conclusion is that we should just accept the chaos, enjoy the good times, work through the bad times, and reap the benefits of being with two other people who seem willing to do the same.  

Bring it on, Chaos - we may just kick your ASS.

TRIFEXICO!!!

No one has ever asked us, out in the world, "What is the deal?" It's been a bit surprising, really, since there are times and places when we are openly affectionate in all directions.

It finally happened.

We took a trip, different from all our other trips, and way farther outside our usual orbit -- all the way across the border. On top of that, we went out to a club that is strictly intended for over-the-top partying, where a good third of the population was half my age. We never do this.

Within a half hour, a complete stranger came up and asked "What is the deal?" It happened while Chloe and I were off finding the restroom. Interestingly, it was the girl of the young couple across the firepit from us who got up and boldly approached Red. He confirmed that both of those ladies were, in fact, his girlfriends. After we came back, the three of us chatted briefly with the couple, and it was charming. Before long, two guys came over: they asked all three of us, "are you together??" -- and upon hearing "yes", instigated a chant of "three-some! three-some!" which got some other partiers to cheer as well. A young girl with a fake lei around her neck appeared and wanted to know details: to me and Chloe, she asked "Are you like sister wives?" We laughed, and Chloe said "No, we love each other!" The girl seemed flabbergasted. "I've always been curious about that sort of thing", she shared. And then she kept going. "You two don't get jealous over him?" Red said "Oh yeah, sure there's jealousy. That's part of the deal." Her eyes widened. She looked us over again -- you could see the cogs turning in her head -- and wondered "Do you all share a bed??" We cheerfully related that we do. A really big bed, preferably. This apparently was the biggest shocker of all.

Not long after, a guy asked Red, out of the girls' hearing, "What's your secret?" To which Red replied: "Be honest, and be clear about what you want." (This did not seem to be what the young man wanted to hear.) I guess we were becoming local celebrities at this point, because another guy standing on the far side of the fire pit pointed at Red and shouted, "He's my hero!"

At last. The applause Red has deserved all along, for bringing this about. We were tickled.

As the evening went on, and the booze flowed freely, and each of us was smooching the others at regular intervals, it just got sillier. Sometime after midnight, Chloe and I were at the bar (where she was employing her amazing horse-whistle skills to get us a bartender), and a much-pierced young man asked me: "Are you guys lesbians?" I laughed and said "Not exactly", which made him look very confused. "There's a guy involved," I explained. And this impressed him so much that he handed Chloe a free drink.

That's right, folks, among hundreds of twenty-somethings in short skirts and fancy pants, we three forty-somethings in jeans were the toast of the town. Now, we could see right off the bat that there were some differences in how the guys and the girls were processing this information. Not one of the guys gave any hint of realizing it's a triangle and not a V. It seemed they uniformly wanted to know How Can I, Right Now, Get Two Girls To Go Home With Me. The girls at least noticed that the three axes were approximately equal, and that a lot of it has to do with me and Chloe being close. The girl with the lei seemed disappointed when my answer to "How did you do it?" was "It took until after I was 40 to figure it out." I can't blame her. But seriously, you do not want to be giving advice on how to launch a threesome in the middle of inebriated mayhem.

Plenty of times I have danced on whatever available surface, singing along, and spilling my beer. I have afterward fallen into bed exhausted and ravenous. I have poured sand out of my pockets the next morning. But never, ever, have I felt so young and so old all at the same time. How about that.