When you fall in love with a married man, it fucks you up.
It doesn’t matter if his wife knows and gave her blessing. Well, maybe it makes a difference if they’re in a happy, healthy poly arrangement. But when she gives permission like she’s subcontracting some of the drudgery of fucking him and caring for him, and doesn’t want to know any of the details–or he’s afraid to share the details lest she take his freedom away–it may keep your conscience clear, but it doesn’t make life any better.
You love him. You think you do. You think he loves you, but you also know that he’s living a complete life without you. You are the value-added something. You are the bonus scenes. But his life hangs together without you just fine.
You know that when he stops texting back, for an hour or a day, it’s because he’s having dinner with her and the children who look like both of them. He’s brushing his teeth, then returning the brush to the holder where hers sits. And you focus on the image of those two toothbrushes and let it break your heart, because otherwise you’ll start thinking of what comes next, when he reaches for her in the dark.
This will fuck with your mind for years to come.
When your boyfriend, your very single boyfriend, doesn’t reply for an hour or a day, you will strain yourself trying to remember that he is probably busy with work, or he probably fell asleep before he could text you goodnight, but your heart will remember the pain from when a different “he” did fall asleep, his leg thrown over hers, and you will feel betrayed by your innocent boyfriend’s slumber like someone who has woken up but can’t shake a nightmare.
There will be sweetness. There will even be advantages. When he drives two hours to see you for another two, and you fall into each other’s arms and weep, you will know he wanted to be there with his whole self. For that moment, he is utterly yours.
If you know his marriage is ending, you will wonder why it can’t end sooner, why you can’t be the one he turns to afterward, but he will leave you behind.
And yet when your new boyfriend is skittish about saying “I love you,” when he puts you aside for work, you will remember how passion undiluted by the trivialities of everyday life dredged your soul. And you will worry that you may never be happy with less.