Hello, my name is _____.

Almost a year, it's been?! So, so much has happened.

Last week Chloe and I moved our business into a new space. No more sharing with three or four other people - just us! Red provided extra muscle, and all the tech support. Our friends and family are excited for us. The days when working together seemed like a terrible idea (we'll get on each other's nerves, the Trifecta will dissolve and we'll be stuck dependent on each other, finances ruin romances)... those seem like a century ago.

Our little family is content. The three of us, plus two cats and a dog - oh yeah, we *never* thought we'd have pets together - we make a good household. All three kids live elsewhere now, and they're each doing pretty well. (Ripley in particular is on her feet, Red having done a fantastic job navigating the hardest stretch of parenting I could imagine.)

We're out of the closet almost everywhere; us girls are increasingly active in LGBT events, and Red joins in sometimes.

We're past the four year mark, and really wish we could be legally married to all of each other. There will be legal papers, and a ceremony at some point. It sure would be nice for that to be as "real" as everyone else's marriage, but I guess this is kinda what it was like to be gay and partnered, up until recently.

Here is a committed threesome of Swedes:

http://nordicinnovation.nu/swedens-blogging-polyfamily-goes-viral/

And there's another nearby, three men, who are good friends of ours. We are not as weird as I once thought.

In fact, you know what? Less hiding, more smiling.

Hi, I'm Kathleen. She's Michelle, and he's Sean. We are the Trifecta, and I am proud to love them both.

 

Three to the Third

Today marks the third anniversary of our first date as a Trifecta.

Chloe is almost all the way moved in. Her mom recently came to visit and got fully adjusted to the idea of us. We have four trips planned in the next three months. My business is running better than at any time since I started it six years ago. Sick family members are back to stable condition.

Can I get a AMEN?

High Heals

That's it: I'm going to hire a lawyer!

Actually, we've talked about this several times, the idea of a "pre-nup" kind of thing to bring some degree of legal status to the Trifecta. (Don't worry, we're not about to start lobbying for legalization of polygamy.) What I want is a document to formalize the financial, medical, and legal ties we have (or want to have). Clearly the biggest beneficiary of this would be Chloe, who currently has NO legal status -- if you've been paying attention, you know that this is a great source of hurt. If anything awful happens (breakup, death, disability, medical catastrophe, job loss), there is a pre-existing setup that protects me and Red. You don't have to do much legwork to get that: get married, and *poof* you're insulated. Chloe, however, could wind up out in the cold under any number of scenarios. Despite having done nothing to deserve it, she is flying without a net, on her own, at risk of devastating loss. Not a beneficiary on anyone's life insurance. No 401K. No guarantee she could find other work if our business goes under. A stateless person in the politics of relationships.

This bothers me terribly.

And not just because Chloe happens to find the fact of marriage more important and appealing than I do (see several previous posts on that topic). But because in very practical terms, she bears all of the risk right now, at the same time that she has the least individual resources of any of us.

When I bring this up Chloe gets uncomfortable. She says she doesn't want to be a burden, doesn't like the idea of elbowing into our financial space. Also it's kind of morbid (someone will die ... maybe someone will break this thing up ...) Such a contract is about as romantic as a two-by-four. But ten days ago Red formally asked Chloe to move in with us, which surprised and delighted both her and me. The melding of resources and space and stuff is in process already. The psychological sense of her "presence" in the house is greater.

That means it's almost time to get this thing on paper.

So I was once again trying to sell the idea to Chloe the other day, as she and I sat at OUR dining room table (tee hee! that's so much fun to say). She objected in the usual way. For whatever reason, this explanation popped into my head for the first time: it's simply an artifact of everyone's history, I said, that you have fewer resources and less safety net than Red and I do. Expecting you to hitch your wagon to ours, but then be the most at risk if bad things happen? That's not fair. How things got this way is nobody's fault. Just like me being three inches shorter than you is not my fault. It's just a fact, neither good nor bad. To level the playing field, however, I can wear high heels. What's wrong with wearing high heels?

That made her smile. It's always been a little weird for Chloe that she is taller than me, and our standing hugs and kisses are therefore asymmetric. If I come home from work in heels and she's already barefoot, we giggle and enjoy the fact that I can be the top hugger, and look her right in the eye.

Love is giggly sometimes, and at other times it's solemn as hell. I want to do both parts right.

Moving Right Along

Well I don't even know how to describe THAT hiatus. 

Usually when I return to this space after a while, it's a cheerful thing. I was hoping this would be the same. Unfortunately, the crisis that drew me away has not resolved neatly. It’s a family member’s illness, more complicated than was immediately obvious; there have been hospitals, doctors, sleepless nights, re-shuffling of which children live where. By this point it’s a matter of adapting to the new normal. So, I can’t just avoid blogging because there’s a Giant Emergency going on. Call it Chronic Mild-To-Moderate Upheaval. I will pick up in a different place and start again.  

(For the Trifecta, there is actually an upside to this saga: one more important person in our lives is in the loop, so the closet is almost obsolete.) 

The challenge is to keep all the focus from being always on the Upheaval, because that skews our sense of what’s important. I try to be mindful, in a moment of decision or anguish: will this matter tomorrow? In a week? In a month? In a year? Five years on? Sometimes even if the answer is “not one bit”, my emotional self does not care. But it’s worth at least checking, in case sanity is an available option. 

Depending on the day of the week, it might be only one of the three of us who has access to sanity. I’m extra grateful lately, for those shining moments.

For example: this year Chloe took matters into her own hands when it came time to find a Valentine’s card. There being only two owls on the cutest card in the store, she carefully fashioned a third owl almost identical to the originals, hanging it upside down on the same branch. Beautiful. To me it reflects how we’re all MacGyvering this whole thing as we go along.

 

BRING IT ON

I second Chloe's emotion: the holidays are MUCH less dread-inducing this third year ... you'd think, after the second go-round was even worse than the first, that we'd be squinching our eyes shut and bracing for the worst. But things have changed.

We're out of the closet to about fifty times more people than we used to be.

All of us have gotten more comfortable with two people splitting off for a little while, and doing different things. He watches football while we go to a lesbian bar. They go to the gym while I visit my mom. That sort of thing.

We've acquired some new hobbies we all like to do together: hiking, for one. We did a little of that before, but now it's A Thing.

There is more open conflict than there used to be -- no more hanging back, for fear that it might be fatal; now we plow right into a fight. Sometimes it's two-on-one. Often it's just between two and the third person has to choose whether to speak up for one or the other, or try hard to stay neutral, or just evacuate the premises. On the one hand, it's scarier than with just two people, because there's the risk of feeling ganged-up-on. On the other hand, if you're feeling wounded by one, you can turn to the other for comfort, even if they don't back your position. Just a long hug and a good cry can do wonders. (Not to mention the age-old practice of Sexual Conflict Resolution.)

I've had a pretty crappy week. Have not been the best of company. But we're about to run off for a major adventure, dragging four teenagers with us and expecting to have an epic time, and I'm as jazzed as I just about ever get. I love these two people so much. So very much. When I give thanks, this is what I'm talking about.

Pass the gravy!

Born This Way.

As we've come out of the closet to more and more people over these years, I notice a couple of patterns of reaction. One: Red must be some kind of PIMP DADDY to get two girls on him! Another: Missy must be like the most generous wife EVAR, to share the dude she already had legal claim to. Yet another: Chloe must have magical powers of seduction, and may actually be dangerous. And of course: well, y'all have fun and enjoy it while you can, cuz I tried that [or watched someone try it, etc.] and it never lasts.

Where to begin.

That last one is not really worth wasting breath over. Our Trifecta is a constant exercise in making it up as we go along, with the express goal of having it last forever. We've nailed down another year and a day, and I'm betting on a lot longer than that!

No, what I'm ruminating on today is the tricky business of explaining who we are and how we got to this place, and for that matter, how I understand it myself.

We recently attended our first "poly meetup", which was a pleasant non-hookup-y event in a low-stress venue with some very nice people. We'd been wary of going to any of the groups we learned about early on, because it seemed we might be at risk of sleaze. None of us want people thinking we're looking to expand the triad. So we waited until we came across a group that sounded like it was more family-oriented, not focused on "snuggle parties", and not happening on a Saturday night in a bar. It did feel nice to be among people who are not judgmental, and to hear about some of their experiences. But afterwards we realized: it wasn't clear that any of them were actually in the same boat as us. When we present ourselves as a long-standing three-person relationship, theoretically it could be a V with Red in the middle, or Chloe in the middle, or me in the middle (the default assumption is that the guy is the vertex), or it could be the actual three-way that it is. When we met other three-person groups last week, in some cases it was unclear what their deal was too, but in others it was explicitly "husband and wife plus husband's girlfriend" or vice versa.

I do not know how to describe us, either to new people or existing friends and family, without drawing a diagram:

 Red and Chloe are lovers.

Missy and Red are lovers.

Chloe and Missy are lovers.

By "lovers", yes we mean both physically and emotionally. If you've read much of this blog, you may recall that early on, there was a lot more sexual involvement in the first two cases than in the third -- that has evolved, much to my delight. And when Chloe and I go out just the two of us, people seem to receive us fairly readily as a same-sex couple. But when all three of us are together, the assumption is different.

Dear Reader: How do you imagine that the Trifecta got started? There have been allusions to it over time, but mostly to the effect of "it was Red's idea". When you hear that, what do you imagine? Apparently, the default is "he wanted to sleep with another woman and his wife was cool with that as long as it was a threesome". There is a grain of truth there, but only a grain.

The fact is, I was born bisexual. I realized almost 20 years ago that I'd been wired that way all along: besides having girls show up in my sex dreams and my fantasies, those intense fixations I got on various girls throughout my youth were actually romantic crushes, the same kind as I got on boys (though I couldn't identify them as such because it was too outlandish, too crazy, to be possible). By the time I was able to do so, I was already married (for the first time), and the option of stepping out and experimenting with girls -- never mind a threesome -- was just not on the table. Or so it seemed.

Once I'd been with Red for while, I shared all this with him, and he was not in the least freaked out. For his part, there was also some unfulfilled longing: he simply hadn't been with very many women, and wondered what someone else might be like. (My 20's had been quite lively, so although I was no longer interested in sleeping around, I felt a little sad on his behalf.) That's where it stayed for the longest time. Neither of us wanted to deceive the other, and giving permission to go extracurricular felt uncomfortable, so the feeling was "that ship has sailed, and we're happy sleeping just with each other".

Then a few years ago, an unlikely opportunity arose. There was a woman who was interested in Red, and when he was reluctant to get with her without me present, she agreed to include me ... because Red conveyed, completely truthfully, that I had always wanted to go to bed with a girl and hadn't pursued any opportunity. So this way, everyone gets at least a taste of what they want. Great! It actually was only great briefly, and that's all I have to say about that.

But the next thing that happened was even more remarkable. Red was already friends with Chloe, and I had been in social settings with her a couple of times. They'd had conversations that led Red to think she might be open to a threesome, so he ran it by me and then proposed it to her. (A very entertaining story, if he wants to tell it!) The understanding from the start was that this was to be low-stakes, fun, and if anyone didn't like it well then it's no huge loss.

The rest is history.

The POINT, however, is that we didn't get here because Chloe came along and seduced Red, with me tagging along -- nor because Red wanted to play the field, and convinced me to tag along. My desire to explore being with a girl was at least as big a factor. Far from feeling like the generous cool wife who's willing to share her man, I feel like the luckiest bi girl in the world. Selfish, even, sometimes. I get to have a girlfriend, and keep my husband too?!? That's an embarrassment of riches.

I don't presume to speak for either of my loves when I tell my version of our Creation Story. It's meaningful to me that (a) Red loved me so much that he wanted to help me explore my identity even if it might be scary for both of us, (b) Chloe was so open-minded that even though she'd never had a girlfriend, she was willing to find out what it would be like, and (c) I've grown enough by now that I'm not weirded out by my nature. I can't imagine having only him or only her. I guess that means "poly" is part of how I'm wired too. Long ago I wrote that I don't care about labels: that's true up to a point, but the prouder I get of who we are, the louder I want to rejoice.

"We're here, we're something out of the ordinary if not altogether queer, get used to it!"

But seriously, folks...

It's fun to look at my rings and remember I'm connected by gold and gems to two amazing, loving people who are as beautiful and multi-faceted as my garnet and diamonds.

Some symbols are less smile-inducing than that. Yet maybe at least as important.

I had major surgery two weeks ago. (Not for a life-threatening condition, and yes I'm doing fine thank you. Though I should have listened to the doctor about how long the recovery takes. Doctors make terrible patients, it's true.)

When you go in for surgery, even if you're young(-ish) and otherwise healthy, you should ALWAYS have an advance healthcare directive in your hand. This is not as much about specifying what your wishes are, should your medical condition become grave, as it is about designating who you want to make decisions for you if you can't. About twice a month I get involved in a hospital case where this really, really matters and we all wish the patient had signed a simple document.

So, in the run-up to my surgery, I prepared my advance directive. Remember Chloe a while back talking about how sad it feels not to have any official standing in the Trifecta, compared to the Actual Husband? Well I wanted to make sure that (a) she would be permitted to visit me at any and all stages of the medical journey, and (b) she would be consulted, along with Red, about any unexpected decision-making that might have to happen without my say-so. The very first line of my advance directive identifies both Red and Chloe, with equal and shared decision-making authority, as my designated healthcare agents. The document is typed, legally binding, signed by witnesses (who didn't see that line, but saw me sign my name), and is in effect until and unless I revoke it specifically.

For me, somehow, seeing that piece of paper was really pleasing. The content is serious; the concreteness is satisfying.

The actual hospital experience was kind of amusing. I made clear from the get-go that I wanted both of them with me at all times; in some rooms it wasn't possible, because there was only space for one other person. But the staff were very respectful about this, and encouraged me to inform everyone about my preference. ("So, it's your husband and your ... gal-friend I'm going to look for now?") We all hung out in the pre-op waiting room, joking about the bad TV and awesome wi-fi. Chloe came with me to the pre-anesthesia area, held my hand, met the surgeon and anesthesiologist, and kissed me goodbye. The surgeon later went out to the waiting room and gave them both the details about what happened, showed them pictures, answered questions. Red met me in the recovery room, kissed me hello, and poked me to remind me to breathe deep when the monitor alarms went off. They both came to the discharge area where the nurse got me dressed and made sure I wasn't too wobbly, before helping me into the car and tucking me into bed.

Not that I can read their minds or anything, but I think Chloe and Red felt almost like equal partners of mine that day.

I know I felt it.

Still here...

I have been reminded recently that we haven't kept the blog up very well this year...  We have been distracted with work and family, and frankly have settled in to day to day living in a way that just doesn't have enough drama to be posting about as often!

So what has been going on with us?  We've been trying to figure out (for a LONG time) how we can live together without coming out to the two younger kids (their mom is the ex-wife and a big meanie).  I'm not happy in my apartment, but still need to house my daughter, who is a full-time college student.  She was against living with us at the beginning, saying "it would just be too weird, mom," but has since spent enough time in family situations with us (and hates the apartment enough now) that she has become more comfortable with the idea.  The Trifecta has one bed, so in order not to be out with the two younger kids (who are there every other weekend and every Wednesday), I would need my own bedroom.  They each have their own room and my daughter would need her own room...sheesh...that's a five-bedroom house.  The coordination required to find a big house to rent, finding a renter for Missy & Red's three-bedroom house, at the same time the lease runs out on my apartment?  Nearly impossible, and prohibitively expensive.  It is a work in progress.

We enjoyed the first season of "Married and Dating" - the Showtime television series.  Our relationship is not like any on the show, but I appreciate that it's exposing people to the poly lifestyle.  We have been more active in trying to meet other families like ours (to share ideas and commiserate), and are meeting with a group in a couple of weeks - I'll have to update you on how that goes.

What else?  Missy and I attended the Pride Parade & Festival a few months ago - that's always fun.  My daughter was the designated driver for the event, and Missy gave her $20's along the way as hush money, which was brilliant!  "Here's a twenty for not telling anyone how silly we're being...here's a twenty for not laughing at us until you're out of earshot...here's a twenty for pretending we aren't drinking/dancing/giggling too much...here's a twenty to forget our silliness IMMEDIATELY...and here's a final twenty for not reminding us tomorrow of how silly we've been acting today (because we probably won't remember)!"  We also went to a local, smaller Pride Festival a few days ago and enjoyed it very much.  We were introduced to several organizations that will help us volunteer our time for and spend our money at businesses that value equality.   Every little bit helps - maybe someday I will be able to get health benefits and have a wedding and not need hide who I am to people.

Missy's "Year and a Day" sweetness was wonderful.  I have no idea what Red thinks of it, because he only has two feelings (he said it, not me), but it has made things feel more tangible and lasting in my mind.  I can't explain how, but it's nice to have something other than an open ended "we're together" type of relationship.  My feelings about commitment have become rather battered over bad relationships & divorces, and I have become jaded against something that has ALWAYS led to disappointment in my life.  But this feels different.  I'm hoping that in that "different-ness" I will find something that actually works for me and feels great along the way.

In closing, my sincere hope is that people reading our blog are able to see through the drama and (sometimes) bad writing, and will have a sense of our true feelings - feelings that this relationship is a good and lasting one, worth the trouble it causes, and worth the extra work it takes to nourish it.

A Year And A Day

Oh I'm sorry, did everyone think we packed up our marbles and went home?

Nope. Time has elapsed at a puzzling rate, and anyway we've mostly been too busy to write. There have been exciting developments: I stopped being scared! (That the Trifecta would end with either a bang or a whimper, that is. I'm still scared of big hairy spiders.) But seriously, dispensing with fear has been a big relief for me.

In fact it allowed me to take us all one little step further into the future we dream of.

Early last month, Chloe and Red and I were enjoying our longest-ever stretch in our Desert Getaway spot. FOUR nights and days in which to sweat away the botherments of the city! Three visits to our favorite bar! And in the end, two rings.

The epic-ness of our trip became clear at the very beginning: we arrived in town just after the departure of a huge, freakish summer storm. It had dumped inches of water in the course of an hour, and littered the streets with gigantic palm branches. Our hotel's elevators and fitness center were flooded. ("Damn," said Chloe to the desk clerk who wore the cleverest bolo tie I've ever seen. "For the first time, we actually brought our workout clothes!" He could see we were both relieved.)

I had spent most of a week nervously shopping for jewelry for each of us, which I've done before. I got us all sorta-matching trinity knot items our first Christmas (a necklace for her, earrings for me, a keychain for him). For our first anniversary, triple-birthstone rings for all of us. Red's ring fell apart though, so then I got trinity bands for him and Chloe (that way them two had a pair of matching rings, and Chloe and I had a pair of matching rings, and Red and I already had our wedding rings from five years earlier). I kind of liked that asymmetry: the three different sets of two rings really reflected, I thought, the fact that there isn't just one relationship that each of us experiences identically. Now we had just passed our SECOND anniversary (who knew! actually possible!), and I was ready to take things to another level. Especially since the silver trinkets were starting to look worn out.

But there were two problems. One, the sweet little handfasting ceremony I had in mind, for us to promise things to each other? Got scooped by the people on Showtime's "Polyamory: Married and Dating". CURSE THEM. I will let others speak about just how much those people are Not Like Us (keywords: open vs. closed), but let it be said that I did not want to evoke THAT in my escalation.

The second problem still baffles me. How can Chloe and I be so bonded, so close, so intimately interwined with each other body and soul ... and yet I still have *no* idea what jewelry she would like?! For days I moped around jewelry shops and online sites, wretchedly failing to identify anything that I thought would please us both. Then I gave up and just tried to find rings I thought Chloe would like, and eventually I just concluded I should let go of the idea of surprise: let her pick a ring her own self. Red, I wasn't sure if he'd even want a ring, considering how I was going to play this.

So I plotted for an opportune moment. Should I take us all to a place we've never been, one of the rugged and lovely outdoor locales the area is famous for? The 103-degree heat was a deterrent. Perhaps an old favorite haunt? More romantic in the dark? But the public places seemed too ... public. In the end, I settled on "by the pool, first thing of the last morning". It was quiet, pretty, and we had reached relaxation-equilibrium. I stated my case, and each of them seemed sweetly charmed.

It goes like this: long ago in pre-Christian Ireland and Scotland, there was a variety of types of marriage one could enter into. (If you're a scholar of this already, just grant me some license here -- I realize my description is cartoonish, but the medieval-European-history-minor in me is slave to the hopeless romantic in me.) One of the "contracts" was intended to last for a year and a day; at the end of that time, the spouses could choose to commit more permanently, or go their ways freely. I proposed to Red and Chloe this: since I love you both beyond words, and since it's not realistic to make a marriage-style commitment before we have a plausible plan for moving in together, and that goal is at least six to twelve months away; how about we promise each other that we will stay together -- come hell or high water, sorrow, joy, other flirtations, angry moments, weariness, doubts or worries -- for a year and a day. How about that? Chloe said "Yes." Red said, "That's a no-brainer". I said "Let's go jewelry shopping!"

So the last thing we did before leaving Beloved Desert Getaway was to pick out two completely different rings: I could not have even approached guessing right about what Chloe would want, and was tickled with what she did choose. Mine is completely different, and I love it. Red preferred not to have another ring, neither to increase his total nor to replace one of his existing ones. (A couple of weeks later we got him some new hiking boots, approximately equal in value to each of our rings. This struck me as perfect.)

Of course, I should have known they'd both say yes. Just a week before, Red put a $6 bet on a Trifecta at the biggest race of the year, having asked me and Chloe what horses we liked. We won! We won big! We're still winning. We've won love.

I’ll be the bad guy and admit that the honeymoon seems to be over…

I am reminded that this blog isn’t about just the happy and good times, but the challenges as well. There’s no use hiding the not-so-pretty parts. And in hiding them, we’d only be doing everyone and each other an injustice by making it appear to be all rainbows and sunshine.

I can only speak for myself of course, but this is the longest stretch of nitty-gritty reality that I have felt to date in the Trifecta. There was a while not long ago that these times were fleeting, or at least predictably temporary. This stretch feels never-ending. Work has been challenging , tension and emotions have been in the red zone, money is tight, schedules are hectic, vehicles are breaking down right and left, and the weather and families have been less than cooperative. Isn’t that just the perfect storm.

Lately I have felt burned out on LIFE. All of it. Sleep, peace, and quiet are foremost in my thoughts. I feel like a day or two (or five?) of not speaking or listening or looking anyone in the eye would do me some good. The dishes and laundry can pile up and I won’t feel bad. The TV can stay off in lieu of a mindless novel that I probably won’t remember five minutes after I’m done reading it. I have hardly noticed the stereo being off in my car during my daily commute. THAT is how tired I am of sensory input. Maybe that’s it – I just need a break from my own senses.

Posting my concerns will bring them out in the open (although I think the funk I'm in is obvious to anyone who knows me) and will probably worry Red and Missy. I maintain, however, that times like these will force a relationship thrive or fail. We should not panic or waste too much energy over-analyzing. This time was destined to come, and I think our relationship could potentially crash (or at least fizzle out) without us knowing whether or not we are capable of surviving less-than-happy days. I am not afraid of what is happening, I don't feel like running away, I don't see it as the end of anything - just a time to sit back and live in it, and see what happens at the other end.

I have a selfish streak. I swear I am usually a kind, giving, caring human being. I love others and am perfectly able to maintain long-term relationships. For the most part, I think I get along well with people and enjoy their quirkiness and differences. Sometimes though, if I begin to feel crummy enough, I will not care what other people think. I will not care about anyone or anything other than myself and my problems, no matter how insignificant they seem to other people (hence the selfishness). Caring for ME becomes my top priority. Anything or anyone who tries to help will probably fray my nerves even further, and make me more irritable. Leaving me alone during these times is probably best for everyone.

Understanding this about myself (I feel) is an accomplishment. Explaining it to my partner in a relationship seems like my responsibility. Attempting to help not one, but TWO people understand this and be o.k. with it has been difficult. Needing to be alone sometimes is not me running away from the Trifecta. It's not me hiding from my emotions. In fact, I see it as retreating to my corner to deal with my issues in my own time and way, without inflicting my mood on anyone else.

Missy and Red will have either similar or different ways of dealing with the end of the honeymoon (or maybe they already have, and I handled it beautifully? haha). I will do my best to understand and respect their needs as we move forward into whatever new phase happens to present itself... Conquering the end of the honeymoon should be celebrated! It means we are all returning to our normal selves and getting back to baseline, and are still all doing just fine. This is normal. It is good.

p.s. - searching Google for a "Three-person honeymoon" picture - I found THIS...   If that ain't foreboding...haha

Life Without Promises

It has been established in this forum that We Are Doomed. (See the very most hit-upon post, "Impossible Things", for proof.) So it shouldn't be any surprise that the issue of our untenable future arises from time to time.

At the moment, the curious feature of the Trifecta, for me, is that we are (1) persisting longer than I would have thought, and (2) still under the specter of doom at all times. I guess I imagined that either the one fact or the other would have prevailed by now. Because:

Red is a planner.

Chloe is a romantic.

I am a rebel.

My long-term relationships are three, and they go like this: I've been married to Red for six years, with him for eleven. Before that I was married for five years. Before that, I lived with a man for six years, who never promised to marry me nor have kids nor nothing. (I have not had children of my own, can't remember if I've mentioned that, and never will -- I love my stepchildren and that's plenty.) That first marriage was a mistake. I try to make a practice of "No Regret", so I'll go on record as saying I learned from it. There were no kids, no financial entanglements, it was easy to extricate myself from. But, it was ... unfortunate.

The previous relationship, on the other hand, was very meaningful to me. Let's call him Andrew. From the start, Andrew and I deferred the notion of marriage as Something Other People Do, because they need to feel like they have some official constraint keeping them together when they don't want to be. We didn't rule it out, the getting married thing, but we never considered it crucial. We had ups and downs -- I was in grad school, he was working, we were poor -- and we were very different personalities. He was quiet and reserved, I was bubbly and social. But together we had lots of friends, had an active life, enjoyed each other's company, and learned a lot from each other. It broke apart when I saw he was not all that jazzed about coming with me when my job would require relocating. Many months ahead, I said "if you're not into it, just tell me". He said he would. He didn't. I got a job in another city, and he didn't want to move. I declared that we were done. He said OK. It came time for me to move, and then he decided he couldn't live without me and asked me to marry him. I said: too late.

That makes it sound sad. In fact, most of the six years were great. The thing that made me and Andrew different from Red and his previous wife, or Chloe and her previous husband, is that we did not expect or extract from one another any promises about the future. I wanted to know he would stay with me, but I was willing to live without a ring or a wedding. I did not need a roadmap or a five-year plan. Did not build fantasies of how we would meld our families. We imagined how we would grow old together, but every time we had a storm of conflict, we made an active choice whether to stay together or go our separate ways. There was no legal bond, no family pressure, no structure of shame to influence our decision. Since we were already broke, there was no financial advantage or penalty to either of us for staying or going. And we stayed together longer than either of my marriages (so far).

Why am I going on about an old boyfriend in a blog about the Trifecta? (Bad form, you know, to wax rhapsodic about a partner from the past.)

Because it is very painful right now for Chloe to have no sense of security. No goal of official sanction in the future. Yes, I too wish we three could have such a thing -- but as Chloe observes, Red and I already have the societally acceptable bond. There is no "normal" room for any expansion of that relationship, only the secret versus the open-but-unconventional.

Her quandary causes me pain. I can't un-marry myself from Red (I mean I could, but it would be pointless). I can't invent some alternate universe in which our arrangement becomes widely accepted and we announce ourselves as newlyweds.

What I can do, since I am over-the-cliff in love with her, is make a living promise, every day: I care about you. You matter. I will support you, even on a day when I'm tired and sad and grouchy. I will shower all my dizzy happiness on you when a day is good.

That's what I mean when I say "I love you" to Red, too: but there's a visible symbol on my finger that holds me to it, not to mention a bunch of family. I want for both Red and Chloe to know that I can make a life of love -- I know how to do it, I've done it before -- where you don't have words like "wife" and "husband" to fall back on. In my twenties, Andrew and I joked about whether "mate" might be the best term to use for what we meant to each other. Now in my forties, I just want to soak up the warmth of my two lovers and language be damned.

*yawn*

So very boring.

Well, no: the Trifecta continues to be the most novel and engaging thing in my life, and I want to spend every minute I possibly can just reveling in it.

And there are still periods of melodrama. There's a family member who thinks Chloe and Red are having an affair, without me knowing (which would make me the THICKEST wife EVER), and while we would love to disabuse this person of their delusion, that would probably blow our cover at work, which might get someone fired. So we're still debating what to do, and how to arrange life around this person (total avoidance is not an option).

There are exciting new discoveries. (Remember Mexico, where we learned that straight boys AND straight girls gave us the thumbs-up? Turns out, gay guys are also impressed by Red! And make us feel welcome in their bars, so far without exception.)

I finally got everybody rings. Here is one of them:

Because in three weeks, we reach our one-year mark.

I'm pretty sure I have never been this happy. By turns it gets dramatic, weird, exciting, and confusing. But it also has gotten *comfortable*. It has become the default, the Way Things Are. That may be the best part of all.

Missy gets messy.

From a couple of posts over the past nine months, one might think that Chloe had cornered the market on unexpected eruptions of emotion. She has not.

I mentioned recently that I have been surprised to find myself the Least Bothered Person In The Room, through that period of storms. Maybe I jinxed myself: since then, more days than not, I am the one of us who's having the worst day. (Not that it's a contest.)

Several features about the Trifecta have contributed to my discomfort over the past couple of weeks. Mind you, some of the triggers are external events that have nothing to do with us -- but the nature of my response, and the effect that my behavior has had on the threesome, are frankly freaking me out a little.

I take my meds. I'm not in a giant episode of pathologic proportions. It's just, I hate feeling angry or resentful or sad ever at all, and I especially hate it when those feelings burst out at the wrong moment and bring my partners down. I'm usually the sweetness-and-light type, and even when I'm cranky, it tends to be only mild to moderate. There was a while there when Red was uncharacteristically moody (even before the storm), and it did scare me. That got better. Lately, he's "concerned" about me instead, and I think he and Chloe are having secret conversations about just how alarmed they should be.

The answer is, I don't know.

One of my parents was a scary yeller, so I don't yell. Even raising my voice for more than two sentences kind of shocks me -- and I've done it at Red at least three times in the last week. I don't cry unless there's a damn good reason, yet the weeping has overcome me a couple of times this week, at what seem to be trivial provocations.

Maybe it's that we keep shifting and settling into a new equilibrium, only to find that we're not done yet. A little like when your lover turns over in bed, halfway waking you up, then both of you falling back asleep. Except sometimes you don't. And now there are two who can wake me.

I want to scream: why does it have to be MY work that has the only elasticity? Such that if we as a family need more money, the only way to get it is for me to work more hours? Which leaves the other two with all kinds of time together without me, which in theory doesn't make me jealous, because I know they'd rather have me there, and it's not that I don't want her to be with him, or that I don't want him to be with her, it's that *I* want to be with **ANYONE** and that makes me sad and childish and unreasonable and I hate it.

Someone treats Chloe badly at our workplace, and I become enraged. I have less than half of the control over anything that happens there, but I have a thousand times more investment in her happiness than anyone else does. Or than I would have for any other colleague. And she is ridiculously protective of my happiness, sometimes to her detriment. On the one hand, I want her to stay there forever so that I can make her life better and she can make my life better and I can at least get a peek at her almost every day ... and on the other hand, I want her to gain a better opportunity, with something closer to the compensation she deserves, and where each of us is not clouded by our devotion to the other. I want to not have to be so careful around each other while other people are watching. And I can't stand wanting two opposing things so strongly.

All this grimness on my part has been a wet blanket, on the evenings when we three only get to spend an hour or two together after work, and then have to go our separate ways. If I squelch my discontent, I'm disconnected. If I let it show, they both are more blue.

These past four days, the not-just-happy-hour kind, have included a lot of fun. An evening at the ballpark just the three of us, a movie with the kids, a big family dinner with everyone from grandma to auntie to grandkids, a low-key barbecue today. Two of those nights were filled with stay-up-late, sprain-your-privates, super-glue bonding type mindblowing sex. On the downside, I had to work late Friday night, worked half of Saturday, and most of Sunday. Felt sorry for myself almost every minute. But, I come home to find Chloe has fed the kids and put away the dishes. The next I day I come home to find Red has vacuumed the house and is entertaining my ailing mother, whose arrival I missed because of work. The day after that I come home to find that Chloe has shucked the corn and made a new pitcher of tea, and Red has fired up the coals and fixed the kitchen drawers.

I come home.

I come home to find:

I come home to find love.


Somehow I have to either get a grip, or get used to not having a grip. Somehow.

NOT for the faint of heart.

For a while now, I have been trying to identify a single thing (or even a list of things) that might be the unspeakable thing that makes the Trifecta impossible.  Everyone tells us it’s impossible – that we don’t stand a chance…shoot, we tell OURSELVES that a lot.  Some people even tell us of similar experiences they’ve had that have failed, and why.  I suppose it’s a defense mechanism of mine…solve the puzzle of what “the thing” is so that I can try to avoid it or prevent it or fix it before it explodes in my face.  This is not for everyone – it is not for the faint of heart.

Well I haven’t quite figured out “the thing” (what am I, a genius?!), but I have narrowed it down to something workable that feels so much less frightening than the deep, dark unknown. 

It turns out that "the thing" isn't a single thing at all, but EVERYTHING.  Everything that I have done, seen, felt, thought, planned for, envisioned, etc. in a traditional M/F relationship has been one way – the way that society taught me, the way that was modeled by my parents and relatives and the way I learned on my own while dating and being married.  I became accustomed to it – expecting certain things, feeling certain ways, it was my norm.  Relationships were two dimensional.  Everything in the Trifecta is so much more intense than what I have spent my whole life learning – it is not “a thing” about the Trifecta that makes it volatile or fragile, it is the intensity level of EVERY SINGLE THING!  We are definitely in 3-D now.  The highs are higher, lows are lower, anger is more harmful, hurt is more painful…it’s like my world is more saturated now.  It can be beautiful, but it can also be excruciating and just downright exhausting. 

I feel like I learned to swim in a heated pool and have accidentally fallen into the ocean.  The idea is the same – I can still swim, but the waves are HUGE!  People drown out here.  There are things here that I don’t even know the names of…that could eat me!

This is not for the faint of heart.  We must be strong.  We must be careful.  We must be ready for anything.  The odds of one person being able to handle such a thing on an ongoing basis seems improbable.  The odds of my accidentally stumbling upon not one, but TWO other people who can do the same, and who want to be with ME?  Please.  That number has a decimal point and a lot of zeros behind it.

What she said.

"Justice inclines her scales such that wisdom comes at the price of suffering." -Aeschylus

So, yeah, this wasn't a new sentiment by the time the Greeks wrote it down. Maybe Aeschylus had a drink with Confucius.

Anyway I'm with Chloe: this "gaining wisdom through pain" business is for the birds. To be fair, there is more than just pain lately: there have been some joyful moments, and as recently as two weeks ago we had most of a day-and-night of just us. But the last stretch of more than 24 hours when none of us was at work and no one else was with us -- a true Trifecta break -- was a month ago, and the interim has been difficult. Especially challenging is the vacation we're on now: in a remote cold place, in a small house with few rooms, with lots of family. Not much chance to get away, talk, process the new and old issues in our heads. Certainly no chance for sex. Not even more innocent intimacy. Red's parents are cool with our arrangement, but there are children present too, and they must be insulated absolutely. Not so young that clues would go over their heads, yet not old enough to understand, they are developmentally in a pretty black-and-white place. Confusion would be harmful. Plus, a vindictive other parent could make all of our lives hell. We have to be restrained, and we are. But it costs. Oh, it costs.

When I realized the other night just how crushing it was for Chloe to see an ordinary expression of affection between me and Red and to think she will never have that ... it killed me. On the one hand, of course that "never" is not true. Eventually this will change. Eventually all of our close family and friends will be in the loop, and if they can't handle it, they may choose to be less close. I will not purposely push anyone away. But I will not ask Chloe to live as a second-hand citizen in my intimate life. It is not fair -- okay, life is not fair, but it is not at all equitable -- to expect her to be the one who's always left out in the cold.

Cold, sometimes, can be just the thing, though:




Yesterday we took a walk in the woods in the snow, just to get outside and clear our heads and have a few minutes to ourselves. It was bracing. And restorative. We saw deer (it looked as though the buck was actually annoyed with the fawn ahead of him, like "hey, slow the heck down, can't you see there are people over there?!? Sheesh, teenagers.") We saw perfect round flat frozen mushrooms. We spent a moment, just a moment, kissing in the cradle of a creekbed. And we documented the occasion by photographing our feet. That's a Chloe thing.

I love her so much. Have I mentioned that? I love her, and us, so much.

Yes, dear reader, there is drama. We haven't even touched on all of it -- there is all manner of potential impropriety, anguished moments between me and Red when Chloe isn't there, ongoing getting-accustomed-to us girls' evolving sexual identity.

Most of all, there is fear of the uncertain. The fuzzy unclarity of what's to come. But here is where high school honors English comes in handy. The second half of the quote above goes as follows:

"But as for the future, that you shall know when it occurs; till then, leave it be -- it is just as someone weeping ahead of time. Clear it will come, together with the light of dawn." -Aeschylus

Hear that, universe? I'm ready and waiting.