an existential keekah

This week is all about polyamory – please read below for the first of a two part story from Heidel, who is currently in a triad marriage:

Part One:  FALLING IN LOVE

So, keekah has asked some of her poly friends to contribute to her blog, as I understand it, in an attempt to show you wonderful readers that there are as many different ways to be poly as there people who *are* poly. Mine is unconventional, even for the already unconventional poly lifestyle.

I am a “third” in a poly-fidelitous triad. What that means is that I am involved with a married couple. Our situation is unique in that we didn’t date each other before we became lovers – but rather we are close friends who chose to commit our lives to one another. In fact, we’ve been committed to each other for most of our lives – though we’d never thought to call it polyamory until a couple of years ago.

I met “Hubby” when we were children. Our parents were acquaintances and later good friends. I remember him being in and out of my life throughout my childhood, and in my late teens, as our parents grew closer, I spent a lot of time with him. He was a few years older than me, and had married by then. Through him, I met and later married my first husband (his best friend). Though it was a bit unconventional, I considered Hubby one of my closest friends, if not my best friend.

“Wife” was my high school friend. When we met we felt an instant connection. People thought we were sisters. Her family unofficially “adopted” me. Later, after high school, through jobs and cross-country moves and a million other changes, she and I stayed close. My children have called her their “second mom” their entire lives. At my wedding, Wife was my maid of honor, and Hubby was our best man.

When Hubby divorced from his first wife, he asked me for Wife’s phone number. I lost them for a few months as they blissfully blundered through their honeymoon period, until reality set in and they returned to me; their relationship was often turbulent and spotted with periods of separation (both circumstantial and by choice). During those times, I straddled both relationships. When my marriage fell apart, Hubby was a comfort (from a distance, he lived on a different coast at that time), and Wife moved in with me to fill the void. Later, they called a truce, married one another, and I was Wife’s maid-of-honor (as an aside, though this surprises some, my ex-husband was best man; I’ve always felt that exes should be friends not enemies).

Fast forwarding many years, I found myself free falling from a second divorce, standing on a city bridge during a music festival, alone on the East Coast. My cell phone was ringing. I’d been talking to Wife for days as she emotionally guided me through the horrendous process of detangling myself from my second husband. She had suggested I drop my career and the life I’d built in that city and bring my children back to the West Coast where my family was, where my children’s father was, where she was. I was hesitating.

Thinking she was calling me again, I answered the phone without looking at Caller ID. “You should see the view,” I said. “I’m standing on a bridge overlooking the city skyline listening to Shinedown play on the stage next to me.”

“I’m sure the view isn’t nearly as beautiful as you.” The voice on the line surprised me. It was male. It was my best friend. My other best friend. “When are you coming home?”

After that call, there was no question what I would do next. I loaded up my car with my three kids and all the belongings that meant anything to me and drove 3,000 miles to start a new life with the two people who meant the most to me.

Wife and I had joked about getting married (just as soon as our state made it legal) years earlier. It was during one of the periods when she and I were living together, without any men. She was the housewife, she took care of the kids, and I brought home the bacon and paid the bills. The only thing missing was Hubby, but at that time, the concept of *sharing* or taking care of each other’s needs hadn’t ever come up.

This time, I moved into *their* home. From the start, Hubby faced envious teasing from friends about his “two” wives, and this initiated talks about what it would be like if that were a reality. I verbally expressed that after two failed marriages, I realized my ideal marriage would be if I could just marry the two of them. At the time, it was a joke, a wistful and amusing sentiment, one we all thought impossible.

But after a couple of months, after I found a new job and was making preparations to leave, Wife sat me down and said that she didn’t think I should leave. She asked me to stay.

So I did.

Later I realized that those first few months, in which we began to explore more and more what it meant to be together in every way, just the three of us, was what poly people sometimes call NRE – New Relationship Energy. It was a honeymoon period. I was ecstatic to be living with, making love with and just in a relationship with my two best friends. During this time their marriage went through RRE – Renewed Relationship Energy. They fell back in love with each other (though, to be honest, they never fell out of love).

It was the NRE that carried us through the first few turbulent months of figuring out how to make it all work.

Tomorrow:  Part Two:  Figuring It Out