“FINALLY – A REAL RELATIONSHIP! I FEEL HAPPY”

Our columnist heads to a hotel with his girlfriend – at his wife’s insistence

Polyamory, for me, has involved sex of some kind with three different women outside my marriage. My wife, Lucy,* is delighted that I’m embracing this new way of thinking about love, despite the fact that her first extramarital relationship bit the dust after just a few weeks.

Putting setbacks aside, Lucy remains convinced that ‘poly’ will be great for our relationship and our future. I still have reservations… but one thing we seem to agree on is that if we are going to make this work, the best way will be to have long-term significant others, rather than staying on the dating merry-go-round any longer than is necessary. Dating apps, I’ve quickly discovered, can be exhausting – especially as being poly puts off 90% of matches. In short, we’re both still dating, but neither of us has found ‘The One…’ or should that be ‘The other One’?

My only constant these last few months has been Nell.* She’s beautiful, Italian and poly, too. Our dates have been sporadic and have not, so far, ended in the bedroom – mainly because both our bedrooms have been occupied by our long-term primary partners whenever we might have wanted to use them. That’s not to say that Lucy isn’t into the idea of me sleeping with Nell. When I decide it is high time to take things further, Lucy made things much easier by suggesting I use a gift we received from a friend last Christmas (a romantic night for two in a hotel), but take my poly girlfriend instead.

It feels strange checking into the room with Nell, especially as I’d always imagined I’d be coming here with my wife. I’m convinced the receptionist must know we’re having some kind of illicit affair. I have to remind myself that we’re not going behind anyone’s back.‘We just look like a normal couple,’ I tell myself.

Once in the bedroom, we politely inspect the bathroom and unpack one or two items from our bags… but the tension, built up over our multiple dates, is too much to fight. We tumble onto the bed, our hands all over each other, ripping off one another’s clothes, before having the kind of urgent sex that can only happen after five months of waiting. It’s the longest I’ve ever gone between first date and sex in my life – not a scenario I had expected when beginning this polyamorous journey. The rest of our evening involves dinner, drinks… and yet more sex. Although Nell isn’t the first girl I’ve slept with since becoming poly, it’s the first time I’ve had sex with someone I feel I have a genuine connection with. A real relationship! I feel happy.

Back home a couple of weeks later, Lucy has a favour to ask me. She’s recently been dating a new boyfriend, James.* She wants him to be able to come to the house when I’m not there – when I’m out with friends, away on business, or on a date with Nell. But, for the sake of our children, she doesn’t want him turning up out of the blue as just her friend. The children might be suspicious of him and uncomfortable about him being there, even though he would only ever be presented to them as a platonic friend. I have to admit, I wouldn’t be particularly comfortable about a strange man visiting the house to bang my wife anyway. But Lucy thinks there is a way we can avoid any of this potential bad feeling: he needs to be friends with both of us first. She thinks I should meet James…

The Polyamory Diaries chronicles one man’s reluctant journey into polyamory in order to save his marriage. Read the previous instalments at Cosmopolitan. com/uk/polyamory-diaries

“We tumble onto the bed, our hands all over each other, ripping off one another’s clothes”