Being not insignificantly drunk, I will give a run-down of the past few months:

*Sitting on the couch to the right of me, down in the basement, my wife tearfully confessed that she had been thinking about how she wanted to get back to her polyamory roots. I thought it was a great idea. We had both started out that way back when I fell in love with her while she was still dating T, and he had indicated he was into poly, but really wasn't at all. So we gave it a go. I learned the following things:

1) Getting fucked by a 20+ year friend occasionally made for a renewed sex life;

2) other couples into the poly idea have vastly different ideas about the concept of polyamory.

#2 came about when a co-worker of hers, Aaron, expressed an interest in her. She and he started talking about the various possibilities, and how they had to incorporate his wife of 11 year (4 kids, 2 grown, 2 not, the 2 not being his) and me. This was around the 4th of July, where I met them for all of 5 minutes while we were watching fireworks in a dirt-road parking lot with every Republican stereotype you can drum up in your head.

Long story short, the wife felt threatened by J because she's thinner and cuter. Anything approximating social time was immediately construed as, "you're trying to fuck her, aren't you?" by the wife in question. I've known larger women like Jen, who despite all evidence to the contrary will insist that their man is within a hair's breath of being stolen--despite the stealer in question being married. Apparently, she was the one who made decisions about the various females who would become involved in their relationships, that she was bi leaning toward lesbian, and that she liked to watch.

So naturally, weighing in, I said: "If she wants a reciprocal thing, fine, I'll fuck her." I don't find her the least bit attractive, but I feel like I've let down my sex in never having fucked a woman clearly below my standards because of alcohol, drugs, indecision, or good old-fashioned behavioral issues.

But all of that is slowly resolving itself because a poly situation I got into.

I will make a very, very long story exquisitely short:

*I met a gorgeous colleague at an Alzheimer's conference on Toronto. We hit it off. We were together with underlings for about 6 hours. I felt a very strong connection to her. She was into the whole hand touching thing, I reciprocated, and all seemed well.

*I wanted to see her again, but a lack of phone on my part, being in a foreign country, her not checking her email, and then falling asleep on the last night of the conference when we'd made plans, led to things not transpiring.

*I drove back from Toronto to Ames over a good 15 hours, no thinking about it at all.

*I decided that I really like SH and wanted to see her again. Keep in mind she lives in Madison, WI, which is 4 1/2 hours away. I email her. She emails back. We get the idea that I'll just come over and visit instead of doing that as a function of giving a talk in her lab. Translation: I was going to go over on a pretense, but we established that was not necessary.

*Having communicated this with the wife, J naturally wanted to meet her and be involved because husband suddenly developing connection with a woman he'd met all of twice terrified her.

*Insert 5 days of constant drama and talking between her and I about this woman. Every day. Some shouting. All crying. It was horrible.

*Boiling down even further: we had plans to visit her as a family, then I we would hang out together, and subsequent day we'd do stuff together again and then hang out more together if applicable.

*She decides 24 hours after saying "perfect!" that she's having second thoughts, mostly about us having just met. Her solution: I come up just by myself. This throws J into a TIZZY because this random woman professing a deep connection to her husband has just abandoned The Big Plan and, in lieu of that, decided over an entire day of thinking that her husband should just head up and talk some more about what's going on.

*I try to interject and say, "Dude, more phone conversations." This is not really acknowledged so much. Keep in mind that this conversation started around 11:30am and ended around 2:30am. SH ended it by stating that she was tired and needed to go to bed and wake up in 4 hours. This was after J and I emphatically said no to me going up.

(Imagine me listening to that for a good few hours at a stretch. See the English translation for why.)

*At this point, J doesn't trust SH at all. I am kinda sorta falling for her at this point. But J has basically said that if she comes to us after that whole debacle, and begs forgiveness, and tries to redeem herself, maybe the clusterfuck can be salvaged.

*But at this point, I'm completely compromised. I get this magical idea in my head that I talk with her on the phone first, despite my swearing not to do that, in order to pave the way for J to talk with SH to work through all of the bad feelings. When I let J in on this, this translates into J melting into a weeping, screaming puddle on the floor while our 4-year-old tries to comfort his Mom. She screams about how I betrayed her, how I have chosen her over SH because I talked with SH for 40 minutes too long the other night before we had a social engagement (during which she was putting the boy to bed). At this point, I realize the whole thing is over. Regardless of whether or not SH was genuine, if the whole thing was a misunderstanding, or SH was just a fucking moron for destroying the whole premise behind the visit, it didn't matter.

She had to go.

*Brief email sent to SH that it wouldn't work out:

"After thinking about it a great deal, I have realized that this will not work.

I hope to maintain collaborations on existing and future relevant projects."

*Later, she Facebooks: "AUG 11TH, 1:19AM

SH
Hi A and J- I just got A's email. I'm just finishing up a meeting. I hope that there are no bad feelings and that we can still form a friendship and have a great collaboration. I'm looking forward to reading and contributing the manuscript you sent to me! I would appreciate some feedback about the change of mind though please. I'm feeling a bit left in the dark. I hope that all else is well."

And a day later, in my work email:

"Hi A,
I'm feeling a bit confused and a little upset. I got this great email
from you (see below) and then another that was difficult to reconcile
with this one. I don't understand what changed between this email and
the one that followed and respect your decision but I'm feeling quite
low and left in the dark here.

Also, J has de-friended me on Facebook and this is starting to feel
very personal. I'd really like to better understand what happened. Can
we talk? Even all three of us, if preferred? I'm really confused and
feeling pretty bad right now.

I hope to hear from you soon.

SH"

Okay. No apology or anything. Clearly she is upset. J gives 0 fucks. She is convinced SH is a sociopath who was just stringing me along this whole time to fuck me. So with J looking on, I send the following because anything else at this point would jeopardize our marriage:

"We had thought we were all on the same page. Through your subsequent instability, reversals, pushing for a visit just with me when that was clearly something we did not want, and not trying to incorporate J in general up to and including not seeing if she's been okay through all this, you completely destroyed all of the trust we had built. You then acted like nothing wrong had happened, when clearly all of us were upset.

My judgment and logic were compromised, where I chose to be nice instead of confronting you with all the anger I felt. Regardless, the interactions have been volatile and painful and stressful. It has affected my family, and I care about my family, and family comes first.

The situation is completely beyond repair. Any chance for building trust is gone.

All of that said, I will not allow this to compromise our professional interactions."

She then sends a 5-paragraph email my wife and Aaron (would be boyfriend, actually a nice guy) that I never read, because at this point this whole thing just makes me cry. In it, she more or less argued against each point indicating that she was the best thing since sliced bread. It was sincere apparently.

So at this point my wife thinks she is a toxic, unstable mess. She cancelled visit plans, she reversed this and that, and I know for a fact nothing can be recovered, even if...and I'll be honest for the 2 of you that read this...I had developed some honest love-like feelings for her.

So J writes an email calling her out on all of the inconsistencies she had manifested. The foremost, as J mentioned, was that SH knew I was married and had a kid while we interacted for that first 6 hour stretch. She declared that was immoral. I certainly hadn't known at the time, where it wasn't until a phone conversation 2 weeks later that I sheepishly admitted I really liked her, that I was poly, and then she let me off the hook by mentioning she knew I was married and she was poly too.

*SH responds basically indicating we are both evil, horrible, vile people and that we are completely wrong about her, that she will never ever collaborate with me ever, and that she never wants to speak to either of us again. Keep in mind that she's as old as I am (36).

...

And a little under a week later, J is contented in knowing that we dodged the bullet on a psychopath/sociopath/narcissist who was incapable of caring about her and only wanted me to herself.

And yeah, I can see that argument.

But at the same time I wonder: what if she really was that socially incompetent and anxious and awkward? Granted, still not good as a secondary for the family, but I wonder if somehow my wife's jealousy and insecurity might've fucked to some degree what might've been a bizarre, completely impractical, but nonetheless maybe fulfilling romantic thing with SH.

I'm still sad about it. The old SH seemed nice. The old SH may have been some narcissistic creation used to lure me, but even so...it's not like poly people crawl into my life every day.

So now J has her strange on the side, and more days than not I take care of G at night, and she's just back home from serving burgers to people at the rained out "eat beer and drink food at all the tents for $35 bucks" event, and she wants the sex all bad.

Which is great. And we're stronger than ever.

But I wonder: did I miss out? Did I fuck up? And through no permutation can I see a way that it would work out.

But regardless, I hadn't anticipated her going completely defensive, and now I feel like a dick for not at least trying to talk to her to salvage a friendship. I'm giving it 7 weeks before I try to salvage the professional relationship.

But all of this makes me think, that we would benefit from a 3rd. And I kinda sorta really emphatically want a daughter at some point, and that seems to be the only viable means of that occurring.

So fuck this post.

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