Meeting my Husband’s Girlfriend for the First Time
It wasn’t what I expected
They say you never forget your first love. Well similarly I will never forget Ellen, the first “other” girlfriend I met. It was fun. It was painful. It was confusing.
Six years ago, I fell in love with Mars, my husband. We met at my running club in the city. He was new to the club, having just moved to town for his military job. It was the Halloween costume run, and my first conversation with him was memorable for me: yes he was tall, good-looking, and athletically built, but he was also standing next to a guy in a full-body hot dog suit. The joke now goes that by comparison he looked like really appealing marriage material, though it would take a while before we decided marriage was right for us. I remember Mars’s eyes intriguing me. His intensity and quickness always shows through his bright green eyes.
A few months after our first meeting I lay in his bed, staring at the ceiling and feeling an intuition arise from a deeper part of my brain: This is my future husband. My body had never buzzed with anticipation like this around another man.
But that was the same night that I discovered women’s shampoo in his shower. Shampoo that I didn’t buy.
“Are you seeing other women?” I demanded icily, a towel wrapped around my body, my hair wet and uncombed.
“Yes,” he said, meeting my eye calmly, not showing any sign of the denial or mortification I expected. “Are you okay? You seem upset.” Thrown off by his reaction, my anger fizzled. It was true that we hadn’t yet had a conversation about being exclusive, but I still felt I had a right to be indignant. I suddenly felt the need to be covered up, and put on my clothes.
We talked that night for hours, and I felt like I was a passenger in my own body. My physical response shocked me. Rather than being outraged, I was turned on. Rather than being sad and ready to break up, I found I wanted to know more.
Over the next few months, I realized learning that he was dating another woman — who he started calling his girlfriend like he called me — had only heightened my desire for him. He was wanted by someone else, a woman who only existed as a shadow in my mind. And Mars’s desire for her made me equally aroused. She and I were the willing prey that the hunter carefully, lovingly trapped, caressed, and made his own. I already felt a bond with this woman I hadn’t met through the shared experience of desiring and being desired by Mars.
I was hit with infatuation hard. All the romantic tropes hit me in a rush — the world felt more colorful, and music sounded more intense because I imagined every love song to be about Mars. The female vocalist in that song I had heard a hundred times — now I thought of her as someone Mars would want to fuck. Sex was everywhere. I couldn’t focus at work and found myself fidgeting and staring into space. My body was buzzing with anticipation for the next time I would see him.
In these early days of dating, I’d feel elation but also a wave of despair: he couldn’t be my forever person if he was seeing other people, could he? I was 31. I wanted kids and a family soon and berated myself for not being attracted to the conventional “right” guy. There were months in which I was sure this had to be the end — there must be something unhealthy about the fact that I was turned on by this, I thought. Was it all about the chase, and did it come from some dark, competitive drive I had with other women? Or perhaps I didn’t think I was worth a monogamous relationship and I liked being debased?
The curiosity about who else he was dating felt overwhelming. But I wasn’t sure whether I should give in to it. One guy friend to who I happened to confess the situation rolled his eyes and said emphatically “Any guy would want this set-up! If you let him get away with it, he’ll date other people. So don’t let him!” I struggled to convey that with Mars I knew it was different, he really did care for me, and had also been honest about his needs. What was left was for me to decide what my needs were and if I could handle it.
The shampoo bottle belonged to a woman named Ellen. Mars had started seeing her a few months before me.
“I want you to meet Ellen this weekend,” Mars told me. I tried to hide my excitement. I had been burning with curiosity over who Mars was dating. But I wasn’t ready to admit that I found this exciting, my friend’s accusation that I was letting Mars “get away” with something still had me hesitating.
I spent a long time doing my make-up the night Ellen, Mars and I met and wore a long maxi dress that friends had said accentuated my tall, lean body. I hoped she wasn’t much smaller than me, I hate feeling like a bulky giant next to short women. The summer night was hot and humid, but that wasn’t what made me sweat as I approached the restaurant. Once inside, my eyes adjusting to the subdued lighting, I saw Mars coming toward me with a smile. Before I could react he drew me to him and kissed me. I kept my eyes open during the kiss, dying to see her, embarrassed that she might be watching. “She’s hiding in the bathroom,” he laughed, observing me peer around him. As we sat down, a wispy brunette started walking across the restaurant with a small smile.
“Hi, I’m Viv,” I said too brightly. Not sure what to do, I offered my hand to shake then internally cringed — was this an awkward gesture? “Ellen,” she said, returning the smile and handshake. Ellen wore a modest, nice blouse and had stick-straight hair held back with a pin. She looked like a cute librarian. I had to force myself not to stare at her, to analyze each angle of her face. We made chit-chat about what we each did for work. I watched myself interacting with her; we were being so warm and friendly. Shouldn’t I be trying to show that was Mars my territory? Set the record straight that I don’t settle for less than being number one?
After the small talk, Mars got to the point: “So, I only have a few months left in DC before my tour is up. I want the three of us to spend more time together and see where things could go. I’m going to leave the two of you to talk now and really get to know each other.” Ellen and I had no response, but I was happy with this turn in the evening. I was dying to get to know her. Mars paid for the food, then bent over to give Ellen a light kiss on the lips. My heart thudded. He then bent toward me, I paused for half a second, a part of me still not ready to give in to him and this new paradigm. But it was a delicious anger. I kissed him. I didn’t dare look around the restaurant to see if anyone noticed this throuple eating Thai.
Ellen and I ordered a bottle of wine and the words spilled out. I learned that she was from the South and moved north after a bad breakup and living with her parents. She had hired a life coach to help her get unstuck.
“It’s been such a wild ride, dating him,” Ellen admitted. “Guys like him don’t usually go for me. You know, the jocks and popular types . . .” What a high school mentality, I thought. But I knew exactly what she meant. Mars had gone from a champion football player in high school and college to now a military officer with the physique, charisma, and impressive job that all made him a catch. If only I could go back in time and tell bookworm high school me that this was who I was dating.
“I first learned he was dating someone else after our trip to Glacier,” Ellen said. I felt a pang of jealousy. I wanted to go on a national park vacation with Mars. (A blown-up photo from their trip to Glacier now hangs in our living room. When I first moved in with him the landscape picture bothered me, but over time it’s become a fond memory of our early days of dating.)
“We hadn’t talked about being exclusive but I just assumed . . .” Ellen continued. “Then a text from you popped up and I asked him to explain. He said he was dating other women and I was pretty upset. But then he told me how he had tried monogamy for so long, wanting to have a family with kids. But he would end relationships before a year was up, feeling suffocated. He said he didn’t want to end things with me so could we try this thing with you out.” I nodded. This is all what he had told me, too. While I wasn’t yet sure polyamory was for me, I was so grateful to have met Mars at this stage in his life, when he was choosing honesty. It gave us a shot.
Ellen and I left each other that night buzzed on the wine and the rush that comes from being truthful. We promised to keep in touch — we even talked about writing a book together to capture this shared experience.
After meeting her, when Mars and I were having sex, I would picture him with Ellen. Mastering her naked body. There was something hotter about her being so natural and imperfect. A real person, not a fantasy porn star. But before I could wrap my mind around how I felt about the three of us, I got a text from her.
Hey, I just wanted you to know that Mars and I broke up. He chose you.
Pride surged in my chest at her last sentence. There was still a large part of me wishing for monogamy and that feeling of being the sole chosen one. The one worth foregoing all others. I asked Mars why he hadn’t told me about their break up, and he said he thought it was something he and Ellen needed to work out between them and be sure was final first.
I asked Ellen if we could meet up again, just the two of us. At the wine bar the lighting was low, and the chandelier made her eyes and hair sparkle. I wanted to give her a delicate kiss on her lips, absorb her prettiness, and be enveloped by this object of Mars’s desire. I didn’t want to fuck, but I wanted her naked body next to mine, her delicate womanliness filling my senses. We swirled the wine in our glasses and dipped our crackers in a shared plate of molten brie. “How are you doing,” I asked sympathetically, as I would to another friend confiding in me about their break up.
“I miss him,” she said with a sad smile. “I told him that I was done with this . . . situation. It’s not the Bachelor. He had to choose between us. And he said he wouldn’t break up with you. So, he chose you.”
“I think he chose the lifestyle, not me necessarily,” I said frankly. Was I trying to make her feel better? “And for now, I’m willing to wait and see if it’s something I can do.” I felt the intimacy between us chill, as we both realized we were parting ways after this. We wouldn’t be writing that book together about the experience of entering into polyamory.
Over the years I’ve thought about reaching back out to Ellen, but she had asked Mars never to contact her again, so I assumed the same request applied to me. Many hold on to an idealization of their first loves, and I cling to the memory of the first “other” woman that I met, the woman who shared the confusion and curiosity that came from exploring polyamory for the first time. The woman who was there when the drug of first love was at its most potent.
