Washington Post
By Lisa Bonos
Rachel Ruvinsky thought she was a lesbian. As a teenager, she’d fallen into a serious relationship with her best friend. She was one of the few students at her high school to be out; she joined the school’s gay-straight alliance but quit because the group was too cliquey. “I didn’t feel like I fit in,” she recalls.
When she gradually realized she was also attracted to men, she was surprised. “I remember being very much in denial,” the now-22-year-old says.
Then about a year after she and her girlfriend broke up, Ruvinsky felt ready to look for a new relationship, and to try dating men as well as women.
When she created her first OkCupid profile at age 19, she listed a few of her interests, such as art and video games, and included a poor-quality photo of herself. Back then, she says, she responded to every message in her inbox.
One of the first was from Bennett Marschner, a 23-year-old video-game technical artist who described himself as a “shameless vehicular vocalist.” He seemed funny, she thought.
Ruvinsky wrote back, saying she also enjoyed singing while driving. They met for dinner at an Indian restaurant in Germantown, Md.
“I was really nervous and trying not to fidget,” she recalls. But she quickly felt comfortable around Marschner. After dinner, they watched a few episodes of “Firefly,” a sci-fi television show they both like, until well after midnight in Ruvinsky’s parents’ basement. They kissed.
The next morning, Marschner texted, saying he wanted to be upfront: He wasn’t looking for anything serious.
Ruvinsky didn’t want anything super- casual, so she figured that would be it. But Marschner persuaded her to keep seeing him, reassuring her that it wouldn’t be a booty-call thing. They could both see other people. “I was like, ‘Okay, I like hanging out with you,’ ” she remembers saying.
The next time they discussed their relationship status was a few months later. Marschner told her his other relationships, with two other women, weren’t so casual; there was an emotional attachment. He’d been reading about polyamory, he said, and he thought it applied to their situation.
Ruvinsky did, too: “We knew it was more than casual, but we didn’t have a word for it.” Since then, the two go out with other people separately or hang in a group. “A lot of times,” Marschner says, “if you get more than one of us together, we’re going to sit on a couch and cuddle and make out.” …