Accidentally Polyamorous

The very first question I get when I reveal to people that my husband and I are dating another married couple is….”How on earth does something like that develop!?”

It’s a fair question, I mean when you’re married you aren’t exactly supposed to be thinking that someone else is attractive and how you might like to have a chance at dating them.

So how do 4 married people all break that rule together?

Well there’s the story we use when we don’t really want to explain: We are all very good friends and have been for years. The friendship was so close and we were all so supportive of each other that feelings it was something beyond friendship developed naturally and we’ve all consciously decided we would allow that to happen.

It’s not untrue at all, it just leaves out the actual moment when things changed. Well, the two moments.

First of all my best friend and I got wine drunk watching Game of Thrones and ended up very distracted by each other.  Even while heavily intoxicated we were having an open conversation with both of our husbands (who were present for the Game of Thrones viewing, of course) about the quickly developing interest my friend and I had in each other. They were both very okay with what was happening even though it didn’t involve them. They both knew that both of us were bisexual and accepted that having feelings for and attraction to each other didn’t change anything about the marriages.

Now, my friend and her husband had talked about having a more open relationship.  It is difficult to pin point a name – open, non-monogamous, monogamish, polyamorous…. there’s many names and formats for relationships that include more than two people.

My husband and I had not really talked about actively engaging in anything like this. In passing of course we had chatted about it. I would come home and say “Hey my friend —- has this cool relationship where they see more than one person on these terms. Have you ever wanted anything like that or thought about having us and something more?” The conclusion was always the same: He was open to something like that at some point but the time was never now. There was always enough love between us and we made each other so happy. We had more growing to do together before we wanted to seriously consider adding someone else in any arrangement.

Then, a few weeks after the Game of Thrones my husband tried to send a sexy message to me requesting I send something sexy back but, as happens from time to time with our phones, he missed my name and sent it to my best friend.

Of course we tease him about how that’s a great excuse for when you send your wife’s best friend a sexy message out of nowhere one Tuesday morning.

She immediately messaged me and asked what I thought – should she tease him? Ignore it as a mistake? Or fulfill the request just to see what he would even do?

He also messaged me right away to make sure I knew what had happened.

I was busy getting ready and told both of them to have fun with their conversation and that they should send to each other whatever they felt comfortable with. I trusted both of them and really just needed to get ready for work.

As they started to enjoy flirting and teasing each other my best friend texted me to say if her and my husband were getting to connect, I should send her husband a message. I did – to say that I was on my way to work but I had a little time to chat. We got to work on getting to know each other more than anything else but Tuesday wasn’t over yet.

After work my husband called and asked what I wanted to do about the days developments and getting caught up. I told him to bring KFC home and we could chat about where we were at and where we wanted it to go.

Once we decided that we were both interested in continuing the flirtation and taking our friendship in to something more we called our friends and went to their house.

We sat around the campfire redesigning our own marriages, and how we related to each other.  We formalized my best friend and I’s habit of hooking up in to a relationship we both acknowledged out loud, and agreed that we would also start seeing each others husbands.

A few weeks later we settled on the terms dating, boyfriend and girlfriend. We have been so happy together that sometimes it amazes even us.

And that’s the long answer to “How on earth does something like that develop!?”

 

Carmen