27


My work represented an increasingly false reality. I was supposed to be a financial controller, manager of a team. But I was out of control, in free fall, in my life. And yet for several months pretending to be someone I was not kept me somewhat sane. Until my personal life started intruding even there. The round robin emails with ferocious discussion and ever- slanted misinterpretations drove me mad. Pop-up notifications from my three partners pinged relentlessly at the bottom of my screen. I turned them off, but it was no good. The sword of Damocles was waiting to drop, and that day I preferred to cut the cord myself than to wait endlessly in uncertainty. So I opened up the messages. And like Pandora’s box, all the hell of the world flew out. I was powerless, at my screen, in front of my colleagues. My anger and despair had nowhere to go in my sedate environment, even whilst I realised for the first time that this relationship, my beautiful utopia… was doomed.

“Sanders is trying to cut Opex. Heads are going to roll — 
inflate the forecast by twenty percent and maybe we’ll escape the brunt of it.”

The next week Sanders did cut our budget. And I already knew that I would be going. My career was in tatters. Because over the last months it had been impossible to pretend that I was in any way effective at a job I had once been so good at.

That evening, I watched Fight Club on my laptop in bed and the tears poured down my face. I knew what it felt like trying to kill a part of my personality. Living according to my truth had proved harder than I thought.

But I knew I had been led to this point for a reason. It was the same reason for everything else that had happened in my life and indeed perhaps in everyone’s life. A desire to unravel and challenge the rules ingrained within my nature. The passion to learn and know myself. My quest was to free myself from those forces that impaired my rationality, wherever possible. I needed to let go of something. But just as our question had been How far can we open our relationship without losing it? My question was now How long can I stay in a relationship with someone I hate for two people I love?

That evening they were all very kind to me. None of them understood why I was going through a crisis or how this would affect us all. As I lay in my bed, I was finally the centre of attention. But not the way I had ever wanted it. I heard worried whispers in the living room. Some whispers were quieter than others, and unfortunately the louder lines were mainly Elena’s.

“She’s going through a nervous breakdown and should be on medication.”

My mouth curled in spite of myself. Not satisfied with taking my sanity, she wanted to take my freedom too. I felt like McMurphy in One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

“Well, we should take her to the hospital, then,” said Gilles.

The threat of hospitalisation worked better than anything else. I wanted to scream and cry. But if I did so, they might have committed me to a mental asylum. In an effort to prove everyone wrong and preserve my freedom, I got up and started to make dinner like a normal person would. And as I usually did. My kitchen, my haven.

But the crisis was only temporarily averted that evening and came raging back ten times stronger a few days later. I couldn’t pretend anymore.

We often spent time together on the sofa. That Sunday we were all in a row watching TV, holding each other’s hands like the equals we weren’t. Elena, then Gilles, then me, then Morten. I wondered whether Morten felt left out. On the edge like he was with only my hand for company, when my other hand was holding Gilles’s. Far from having two women, he had half a woman.

I didn’t want to favour one over the other, so instead I stayed rigidly in the middle, dividing my body and my balance equally between them. Meanwhile, Elena got playful and, fully clothed, rolled on top of Gilles.

“Get a room!” laughed Morten, quoting Friends. Happy. And not insecure or left out.

If possible, I went even stiffer. A challenge of overt ownership. Did she not spend enough time with him already? Could she not share when I was around?

Your husband is mine! Elena’s body language screamed at me.

And I am happy to be so! returned Gilles’s body language, his hand slipping out of mine like a forgetful and unregretted whisper. I could still feel the warmth of it fading.

They jumped off the sofa and scurried into the bedroom to perform a great Sunday afternoon sexual con­certo, which we could hear very clearly, albeit it from behind closed doors.

I was not even an afterthought.

Two choices presented themselves to me.

1. Make a fuss, state your needs, be selfish and say you’re uncomfortable. Risk ridicule and misunderstanding, and destroy three other people’s perfectly good Sunday. Aren’t you worth it?

2. Keep quiet, rationalise with yourself about your own issues, which are presumably creating this panic inside you, be the bigger person. Live with it.

Live with it. Of course I would live with it. This was my way. Because I didn’t think I was worth it.

In a flash, I saw my life ahead. Elena had two primary partners. Her husband and my husband. She monopolised the attention of my husband whenever she wanted it. I was the doormat waiting to be used when they had had their fill. I was given the leftovers and had to be grateful for it.

My role of the future was financial support and safety net for rejected husbands. And sometime bed partner — but only when it suited Elena.

In was my nature to act as if other people had the same insecurities that I did. I wanted to share, but only with someone who felt like I did, someone whom I could trust to act according to my boundaries as I did according to theirs. My English passive communication was full of assumptions and social etiquette. All of which were being trampled on.

But Elena was not insecure about her husband being with me — she knew she was number one. Sixteen years of hardship had proved that. Their love had been tested again and again. He stayed with her despite the depression, the screaming argu­ments and even the lack of sex. Morten had remained the loyal rock he had always been.

But my husband had changed as a direct result of Elena. She had changed him and his love for me. And the more I felt him change, the more I perpetuated the cycle and withdrew from this stranger. The relationship they had was destroying the relationship that we had. As Gilles and Elena cleaved to each other, I was usurped. Redundant. Unimportant. And because I felt the pain of loss and rejection so keenly, I had to do it before it was done to me.

Coming from a fragmented family, my security and self-esteem were as damaged as any child who had been subject to arguing parents and consequent divorce. And probably just as damaged as some children who hadn’t. Growing up, after all, was a messy business.

But whilst my insecurities were protected within the confines of monogamy, in polyamory they were exposed. My insecurity was destroying me. Polyamory was impossible with people who had no idea, desire or understanding of how to tread around my insecurities. Perhaps it was true for all polyamorists. All partners had to be able to communicate, even the non-sexual ones, because otherwise it wouldn’t work.

Either I got rid of my insecurities, or I got rid of the catalysts that caused me so much pain. My insecurities had been with me from childhood. They were part of me, and I had no idea where to begin. More than that, it didn’t guarantee an end to the pain. If I were to work on myself, then pain was going to be a necessary part of my life for the foreseeable future.

And so the third course of action presented itself. The choice to leave. Because I felt that I was not good enough for either of them. And I couldn’t envisage building up my own self-esteem after a year of being in self-destruct mode to make a new reality for myself.

The contemplation of leaving two men I loved was almost more than I could bear. I didn’t know whether I was strong enough to do it. But worse would be continuing to live in this situation with Gilles, Morten and Elena. Her character and conflicts clashed severely with my character and conflicts.

When she felt rejected, she clung to whoever was rejecting her. More often than not it was me. The more she clung, the more I pushed her away and my dislike became tangible. If she felt insecure about Gilles, then she clung to him and I felt usurped and unloved. I was rejected, and so I withdrew from them both as much as I could. It meant that I couldn’t bear any contact with Elena. Nothing. Zip. Nada. And that my contact with Gilles was passive and biting, as we circled around each other like wary vultures under the same roof, trying to work things out.

Rejecting Elena was necessary to save my sanity…but it meant losing Morten. And the pain of that was unbearable.

The stone wheels didn’t grind slowly. And we hurtled towards our doom with the same speed with which we’d got together. My partners knew I was having problems. But they couldn’t comprehend just how big they were. Because for them my problems seemed inconsequential. Sparked off by the tiniest thing. Chaos brought about by a mere flap of a butterfly’s wing. But even if they couldn’t understand, they had to accept.

So after a fortnight of little communication, Morten and I met for coffee on neutral ground. He said, “The thought of working on my marriage and making Elena and me find each other again makes me very happy.”

He didn’t look happy. He looked the opposite of happy.

“Well, I love you. And I support your right to make the decision that works for you. Even if it hurts.” My heart was breaking. “But do you not even want to see me?”

“Of course I do. And not just for coffee. I love you. But then there’s another part of me that doesn’t want to see you at all. It just causes trouble. Elena can’t bear me seeing you. She feels betrayed.”

“And the part that’s not for coffee. Is that about sex?” I asked.

He looked over at me. His eyes red rimmed and worried. “Working on my marriage would be easier without you, but the fact that sex with you is so mind-blowing is difficult to give up.”

I felt knots twisting in my stomach. I couldn’t deny that the prospect of living without his touch made me feel barren and cold. Sex was not just sex with us. It was sacred. Special. It felt like the kind of sex that needed to result in a child. Every single time. And I had never felt like that with anyone else. Ever.

But as much as I felt the same, another side of me knew that I was worth more than that, and I said so.

“Well then, forget about the sex. I don’t want us to be just that. You are not just that for me and have never been. If I would be a whole lot easier to ‘give up’ if there were no sex, then…I think you have the answer.”

One minute passed, and it felt like a lifetime. My tears were starting to free-fall down my face. One of us had to say it. And it was me.

“Are we breaking up?”

He twisted his hands in despair and reached for a cigarette. The stress of those past few months had seen both our smoking escalate way out of the realms of party smoking. Then he said simply, “I cannot offer you what you want.”

“And I cannot offer you what you want.”

Grief and anger intermingled in my heart. We were in hell. And the wrench of the end was more painful than anything I had ever known. I was still in love with him. And he was still in love with me. But my relationship with Elena made a future together impossible…even though she was still with Gilles.

“Have we decided? Is this it?” I asked.

“I think so.”

Neither of us had wanted to say it. But we had. And it was over.