Your Tango
by Rebecca Jane Stokes
It was time to meet. We share a boyfriend, after all.
The first time I met my boyfriend’s girlfriend was over dark and stormies at a nice restaurant near my house.
My boyfriend was sitting facing me and I saw his girlfriend approach us from a distance. We’d never met, but I knew what she looked like because of the internet and my own deeply-rooted insecurity. Eager to seem cool and fun, I boisterously declared “You know her!” By this point she was standing just behind our boyfriend. She looked at him, “I was going to try and sneak up on you,” she said, and I sank in my chair.
Way to make a first impression, Stokes.
Buddy told me that he was falling in love with me on our second date. I knew he had a girlfriend before our first. Suffice to say, our courtship had been non-traditional.
Kind, thoughtful, and ridiculously open, he patiently answered all of my questions about his polyamorous lifestyle before we even met in person, after being matched online.
I’m not polyamorous, I find having feelings for ONE person exhausting enough, so the idea of multiple partners makes me feel panicked even in concept.
Men in open relationships or who identified as polyamorous had reached out to me online in the past, but I always took a pass. It just seemed like way too much work. But this time was different.
Instead, he and I kept talking online and I kept scanning my body and my heart for some panicked reaction to such a foreign situation, but no alarm bells were going off.
Against all odds, I wanted to meet this man.
I let myself relax. After three back-to-back relationships imploded into a storm of awful, I needed a break. To spend time with someone whose lifestyle wasn’t like my own, someone whose company I enjoyed, someone who was so open and honest about his feelings against all odds was such a relief I could feel it in my bones.
Naively, I couldn’t understand why he was in such a rush to introduce me to his girlfriend. Later I realized that some scummy guys say they’re in an open relationship when really they’re just cheating. He wanted me to understand that he was being totally honest, so that I could trust him. …