My Husband’s Girlfriend Moved in with Us During the Pandemic
Having my metamour move in seemed like a huge step, an unusual step; but these were unusual times.
My husband’s girlfriend moved into our house during the summer of 2020, in two, three and four week spurts at first, and now, perhaps, for the duration of the novel coronavirus pandemic. She is not our unicorn. We do not have wild threesomes, or even tame ones. She is one of my husband’s three polyamorous partners, counting me. His other partner lives with her boyfriend about ten miles away.
Eric and I met in college and became polyamorous after many years of marriage and parenthood. In addition to maintaining our own loving and intimate relationship, we date other people with each other’s consent and tons of communication. We don’t condone cheating or lying. Eric and I are fully employed and while the world spins topsy-turvy during the pandemic, we are working remotely, or remotely working, depending on the day. We get together with our presumptively monogamous neighbors over fire pits at a safe social distance, complain about politics, and walk our neighborhood in large loops to get fresh air and retain what is left of our sanity — like anyone else.
I am not the victim of an abusive marriage or a torrid sex cult. Rest assured, our polyamorous marriage is far from one-sided. The current girlfriend encampment could theoretically have been my boyfriend moving in, if circumstances had been different. Currently, I have two local partners in addition to Eric. One is single with a girlfriend and lives alone. The other is married and lives with his wife and his wife’s boyfriend.
Eric and I are fully employed and while the world spins topsy-turvy during the pandemic, we are working remotely, or remotely working, depending on the day.
The coronavirus has infected our relationships in more ways than one. A partner of mine, who lives a few hours away was unable to maintain our connection sufficient to sustain our nearly five-year relationship, and we broke up in November 2020. We had last seen each other in early March. You remember, that was when you could still eat inside a restaurant and breathe the same air as strangers without fear of losing a lung or ending up shrouded in a sheet on a shelf in a makeshift mobile morgue in a Brooklyn hospital parking lot.
Now, we call that the “before times,” and comedians joke about Zoom calls we have from our makeshift offices, in our yoga pants, with our hair in ponytails because we are not yet willing to risk death for a good haircut. My swishy bobbed hair cut is a February memory, as I scavenge hair ties, some as old as my college kid, from the crevices of my dresser drawers.
My husband’s partner — my metamour — ten years my junior, lived a few miles away with her college-aged children. Her eldest attended a local college and her youngest was away at a state university until she boomeranged home when classes went virtual. While my meta was mostly following stay-at-home orders, her children’s routines included working at a hospital, going to the gym, visiting boyfriends, and eating at restaurants.
The lifestyle of her household was inconsistent with the tighter lockdown practiced at our house. In the spring, I was getting the shakes each time I was in the supermarket for more than ten minutes. I gasped, then growled, at mask-less runners who surprised me from behind on a shared sidewalk while I took walks to escape my home office, which felt more like a prison each day. On the rare occasions when Eric and I ordered take-out food, we kept the containers outside and transferred the food to our own dishes before bringing dinner inside. We are not so obsessive now, but up until July, we were.
She and Eric had been dating for two years before we all bubbled up with those in our households, and viewed anyone outside our pod as a potential disease monger.
Not too far into the lockdown, she was having a rough go if it, primarily because without a live-in partner, she was lonely for actual adult companionship and sex. In the times before COVID-19 shrank our contact list to our immediate household, the grocery store clerk, and whichever colleagues we were forced to interact with on virtual platforms, she was a happily divorced programmer, with a cat and a 401k. She had plenty of sex drive, dates, happy hours, and scores of intimate connections she meticulously entered on a spread sheet on her phone. The last three came to screeching halt on March 16, 2020. Cue, Eric.
She and Eric had been dating for two years before we all bubbled up with those in our households, and viewed anyone outside our pod as a potential disease monger. Their relationship had steadily increased in intensity. She had been to our house for dance parties, and we had all gone out to clubs and shows a few times. She was fun and extroverted with an infectious laugh, dimples, and delightful corkscrew curls. I liked her fine.
As Eric saw it, they had four options.
- He could accept the risks her household posed as the cost of polyamory, and they could see each other with no physical barriers, other than condoms. This would necessitate consultation with, and agreement by, the rest of our bubbled-in polycule,* whose members had lower risk profiles — and no kids.
- He could wait until the pandemic was over to see her at all.
- They could continue with the socially distanced visits — wine on the porch or a masked walk in the neighborhood.
- Or… they could devise a plan that included coronavirus testing and quarantining, and could lead to her bubbling in with us.
In post-lock down April, she and Eric engaged Option 3 with visits on our deck, at a social distance. Most visits included tears. No, that’s not right — they all included tears. She cries. It’s just a thing she does. She really is a very high functioning, multi-tasking, tool-using, programming-proficient, cook, carpenter, and all around together chick. She is also prone to face leaking and has been since childhood.
Deploying Option 4 seemed like a huge step, an unusual step; but these were unusual times.
So, when she tearfully choked out last spring, “Eric, I need you to be my person. I do not have anyone else because of the freaking lockdown. Can you do that?” Eric, man that he is, protector, hero, problem-solver, and co-owner — with me — of a relatively large house, was game. But was I? I had never seriously considered one of our partners living with us. Deploying Option 4 seemed like a huge step, an unusual step; but these were unusual times. Eric and I talked about it at length. How exactly would this work?
In June, the first time she moved in, she quarantined in our finished basement while she waited for her coronavirus test results, hopefully and presumably negative, since we were aware of no one in our bubbles who had, or been exposed to, the virus, including her kids. The one who worked in health care swabbed her mom for the mail-in test. The plan was for her to stay for two or three weeks. We would see how it went. During the time she was staying at our house, she would remain socially distanced from her kids and others, but not from us and our newly formed household bubble of three.
Eric set her up with our extra coffee maker, Brita pitcher, desk and chair for teleworking, a serviceable futon, and the microwave she brought over. Our basement already had its own bathroom, outside entrance, and easy access to the auxiliary refrigerator in the garage where she kept her vanilla coffee creamer and frozen berries for morning smoothies. Eric ferried trays of food to her and took up her dirty dishes.
This was actually happening. My husband’s cute, engaging, fun, smart, sexy girlfriend, with whom he never had to talk about parenting, ceiling leaks, and whether the peanut-buttered attic traps caught any flying squirrels, was living with us, and all that entailed.
Room service ala Eric only lasted a few days because her test came back negative so quickly — more quickly than I was prepared for, frankly. I learned she was a card carrying member of our virus-free household when I heard her giggle and caught them kissing in the kitchen before I had even had my coffee, black like my typical morning mood. I bristled slightly.
Inhale…. exhale…
This was actually happening. My husband’s cute, engaging, fun, smart, sexy girlfriend, with whom he never had to talk about parenting, ceiling leaks, and whether the peanut-buttered attic traps caught any flying squirrels, was living with us, and all that entailed. She would be using my fridge, washing her lacy black panties in my laundry room, and sharing the entirety of my home. She would be sleeping in the guest room, whose floor was also the sound-porous ceiling of the master bedroom. She would be sharing my husband, in decibels I could hear.
When the bedposts banged the wall upstairs, how welcoming could I really be?
I admit it was a little rocky at first. She was wary of intruding into the home Eric and I had built together — literally. And I felt that she was, well, intruding.
She and Eric ate together most mornings before retreating to respective corners of the house to telework. I did not eat the big bacon and egg breakfast that was Eric’s hallmark, preferring a granola bar and coffee to wash down my vitamins before a full day at the computer and on the phone. I would hear and smell the kitchen goings on, accompanied by laughter. I tended to be at my desk down the hall from the kitchen earlier than they were, and there were times I reminded them to “please be quiet. I am trying to work.”
She and Eric welcomed me to join them, and I believe it was genuine. Eric is “kitchen table” poly, which means he loves to have his partners and my partners, all around the metaphorical as well as physical table, as a type of chosen family. My default is usually to do my own thing with my other partners and let Eric do his, and have our streams cross less frequently. Covid changed that.
I reminded myself that I had agreed to this trial, that I liked her, and that she left a mostly tiny footprint on my life, helping with cooking and chores and keeping my extroverted husband occupied in this crisis. I was more introverted and grappled with how I was going to be Eric’s whole social world until we were freed from the yoke of home confinement.
I valued her good nature, maturity, and helpfulness with tasks Eric typically did alone, like repairing a deck railing or changing air filters. I was also jealous of her good nature, maturity, and helpfulness.
In the before times, Eric, like her, went out multiple times a week. Those outings included the gym and casual dinners with me. Now, we no longer arrived slightly sweaty, post-workout, at our favorite Mexican restaurant where we ordered the same thing each week –a crispy taco bowl with tons of black beans and fresh avocado for me, and the mixed Julio’s platter for him with the occasionally a Patron margarita on the rocks, if the day called for it.
I missed those opportunities for comfortable relationship-affirming togetherness with my husband. In addition to that loss, I now had to witness her and Eric enjoy their sparkly, boyfriend-girlfriend time, which lacked the often mundane trappings of married life. I resented feeling more like the dull ball and chain, and less like Eric’s glistening, Lycra-clad, gym-buddy of just a few months before.
I valued her good nature, maturity, and helpfulness with tasks Eric typically did alone, like repairing a deck railing or changing air filters. I was also jealous of her good nature, maturity, and helpfulness. Her presence in our house brought new patterns to our daily life. When she suggested we three watch a tv show, Eric was all in, loving to having us bookend him on the sofa, a sappy but endearing grin on his face, while he held her hand or mine or both. Before the pandemic, Eric and I rarely watched shows together, tending to go our separate ways after dinner to catch up on singular projects or chore — the way married people do.
My prickliness came to a head one morning. Our routine was that Eric would trade nights — in the guest room with her one night and in the master with me the next. Since Eric has trouble sleeping and the guest room bed was inferior to our new one in the master, I offered to swap beds one night with Eric and her.
“I have an early medical appointment so I will need to come down to the bathroom to shower and get ready,” I reminded them.
The next morning, they were not awake when I was, so I texted that I would be down soon. Rather than disturb them, I showered in the guest room, fishing out travel-sized toiletries I kept in my suitcase in the closet there. After my shower, I went down to the master bedroom. The door was ajar and I pushed it open. I did not knock. I immediately regretted that.
They were in bed. She on my side and Eric on his. I think they were naked but I only glanced at them. My heart pumped furiously, filling my head with blood. I walked briskly toward the bathroom, breezing past them.
“Please get up,” I said tightly. “I have to get ready for my doctor’s appointment.” I closed the bathroom door.
When I came out of the bathroom, she was gone. Eric said tersely, “Could you have treated her more like a whore? You could have knocked or even after you came in, said ‘oops’ with a smile.”
I found her sitting on the back porch with her coffee, crying. My shoulders slumped and I felt like what I was — an inconsiderate, jealous jerk. I desperately wanted to turn the clock back fifteen minutes.
“I told Eric that we needed to get up,” she sobbed. “It’s my fault. I was taking a long time.”
“Oh hon,” I said as I sat down. “This whole thing is hard. Talking about having a partner move in, even someone as wonderful as you — and I do think you are wonderful — is light years from living it. Obviously, I know you and Eric have sex and am cool with that. I just don’t really want to walk in on it. I am so sorry you are upset. How can we avoid this in the future?”
“I think if we discussed our expectations more specifically, that would help me,” she said. “If you had to be in the bedroom at say, 7 a.m., and I knew that, I would have set an alarm and made sure Eric was up too.”
I smiled. I knew she would. She was reliable, punctual, and persuasive. She was a mom after all.
“That seems doable,” I said. “Communication, right? It always comes down to that.”
I saw her turn her head toward the door to the kitchen. Eric was standing there.
“Natalie, you are going to be late for your appointment,” he said evenly.
“Right. Thanks,” I said. “I already am.”
I bent over to hug her, and she, bless her, hugged me back.
While that morning was not the last time we three would hit a rough patch navigating polyamory during the pandemic, each of her extended visits yielded increasingly less friction and more growth. I was also examining my relationship with Eric more closely, which led us to communicate with deliberateness, because, as Eric and I try to remember, “your lover is not a mind-reader.” This was exponentially true with three interconnected partners living under one roof and sharing two beds. With awareness, communication, and compassion, I was hopeful we would find our way.
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* For newbies to poly terms — welcome! — a “polycule” is a unit of interconnected poly people, including immediate partners and their partners. My partner’s partner is my “metamour.” In this instance, my husband’s girlfriend and I were metamours. We share Eric, our mutual partner and the point of our “Vee.” If it helps to think of us a diagram, Eric’s other partner and I are arms of that Vee.
