A Ticket, Jealousy, and One Life to Live

I remember clearly the night I booked the ticket. It was a warm July evening, 2014, and I was house-sitting at a friend’s place that overlooked the city. I’d had a few gin martinis, talked to “F”, and then probably a few more. I hadn’t told anyone about my plans — not my job, my friends, my landlord, not anyone but F.— and I wouldn’t for another few months. But that night in July, I booked a ticket out—and I sent it to F., because I wanted her to know it was real. It was going to happen.

It was a bit scary to leave my job, my apartment, and my friends to move in with her. But it had increasingly become obvious that things as they were were Not OK. Why now? I wondered. On the outside, nothing had changed. F. and I weren’t physically together—and that sucked—but then we hadn’t been for most of the past two years, ever since she moved away to go to school. Having only summers and school breaks to share wasn’t awesome, but it was, by definition, tolerable — or we wouldn’t have done it. Now F. was starting to come unhinged, and I was realizing that I was too in my own way. I was actually really, really unhappy. I told F. it was like there was a timer and the buzzer had just gone off.

I was thoroughly done with the “distance” part of our long-distance relationship. Against all odds, we had stayed in touch almost every day for two and a half years—more than either of us expected. And miraculously, it had worked, glued together by pragmatic compromises, vacation fuckfests, and a lot of open communication. But I was really, really sick of a tele-relationship. I was sick of the connection breaking up, losing the Wi-Fi signal, and competing with traffic noise on my bluetooth. I was sick of the 30-minute window through which we were forced to communicate: if we missed the window, I was at work or she was asleep.

And there were no late-night whisperings—no spontaneous chats over coffee on Sunday morning, no drunken jokes at a bar, no vulnerable conversations while spooned in bed. Nothing in person… only far, far away over fuzzy telephone lines and o-n-e_l-e-t-t-e-r_a-t_a_f-u-c-k-i-n-g_t-i-m-e texts. And yes, video—but I’ve never been the type who could “virtual” sex. For me, it’s all about the physicality, the energy, the touch, and the (pardon the metaphor) in-fucking-personness. So I sought the in-person sex elsewhere, and we kept the dream alive.

Through one lens, it should have been the perfect situation for a dedicated polyamore. F. knew I was seeing other girls, and while it wasn’t exactly a fun conversation, it was honest and open. I had someone who really loved me, who knew I was poly and who was OK with it, but who wasn’t there day-in-and-day-out to become jealous or worry when I didn’t come home. No one to check on where I was, or what time I would return, or who I was seeing. During the periods we were together, we were completely together —and we even conspired about which cute redhead we might bop over the head and drag back to our bed. When we were apart, I had my freedom and she had her studies, even as we both looked forward to the next time we’d see each other. It worked for a while. Until one day it didn’t.

So I packed it all up—the friends, the six-figure job, the freedom, the flings, the apartment next to the beach—and I pared it down to three duffel bags and a couple of mailed boxes. Three bags sounds like a lot, until you try to fit everything you ever want to see again into them. How many coffee cups make the cut? Well, F. gave me this one, so it lives; these six go. Goodwill was laughing at me by the end. “This is really good stuff!” the guy taking my donations told me. I know. But by then, I was done—I was invested—I was gone. Stuff is stuff, and love is love. One of them you can buy and the other you can’t.

Of course, we’d had one funny SNAFU when I first made the ticket. I wanted to surprise F., so I booked the ticket first and then I sent it to her. “Great!” she said, “but I’m not going to be there.” Er… what? It turns out she had to be in another city for the whole week… and the week after also. No problem, I thought—and I paid the fee to change the destination. Who cares? I’ll just go wherever she is, I’ll entertain myself, and we’ll drive back together. Em, no, she explained. She would be working all day and sleeping at a place that would accept no “visitors.” I tried to talk her into sneaking me in, but apparently they’re quite serious about this… Jesus how fucking old are we, and what fucking year is this?

So I changed my ticket BACK to the first place, and then booked a second ticket for a couple days later—to France. Why? Because, dammit, I don’t get many opportunities to go and do something without worrying about how many vacation days I’m burning. F. would be gone anyway, for two weeks, so I figured I would check something off the bucket list. And I did.

A funny thing happens when you shake loose all the shit that you hate: you become dramatically more attractive. Within 48 hours of landing in Paris, I met someone I was totally enamored with—and who was enamored with me. I invited her to dinner, I cooked with some friends, and by the end of the night we had done nothing more than share a glance and a brief moment touching legs. But we both knew we wanted to sleep with each other—or at least we knew it after I sent her a text saying so.

“K.” and I didn’t see each other for another three weeks. I was traveling, speaking French, and generally having a great time. Meanwhile, back in the US, F. was miserable—but what was I supposed to do, fly back and be miserable together? It didn’t make any sense. I was genuinely sorry that she couldn’t be traveling with me, and I would have rather done the trip with her, but she couldn’t. And I wanted to comfort her, but also I was thinking I just gave up this entire packaged life for you, you know I’m coming back, all you have to do is be a little patient. After three years, who cares about three weeks?

Meanwhile, there was K. I knew I wanted to see her again, so I wrote F. to ask: what are the rules while I’m out here? I felt awkward asking— I didn’t want to ask—but to my relief, she wrote back that she didn’t want to set rules and just not to do anything stupid. That sounded like the smartest thing anyone could have said, and it reminded me why I loved her so much. In my mind, K. was well within bounds. It wasn’t a one-night stand, it wasn’t a drunken act of desperation, it was genuinely an uncommon connection. And after all, I still had a flight back to F.

So when I got an accusatory text—“Are you sleeping with the girl in the pictures?”—my first thought was, Why the hell does it matter if you already gave me permission? I had just sold off my entire life at a garage sale and moved to a state I swore I would never return to—and for what, an inquisition? From someone who had just now discovered that I was really, actually polyamorous like I explained three years ago? I tried to remember that I was off having fun, and she was back working 12-hour days and waiting for me to return. But still, I felt a bit shaken. It’s one thing to say, Hey, I’m missing you. It’s another to say, Where were you last night? Who were you with?

So I told her that I loved her (which I did) and reminder her I had just moved to the asshole of the world for her, and that I would be back really soon and would tell her whatever she wanted to know then. But I could detect the jealousy, and I was worried. What if I had made the wrong choice?