I Was Madly In Love. Then My Partner Told Me They Had A Crush… On Our Friend.

Once we were in love, the thought of Quinn wanting someone else sparked panic in my chest like a lit match. We stopped talking about polyamory and floated along monogamously while navigating other things: my fear of being left, their difficulty setting boundaries, my parents’ upsetting response to my coming out, and Quinn and I figuring out how to be both “me” and “we” in our relationship.

“Nothing has to change,” Quinn promised back home in our bed, their news about their crush still scratchy like sandpaper across my whole body. They just wanted me to know because keeping it a secret felt like betrayal.

They also thought it might be a good moment to reevaluate our relationship structure. “I love you so much, and I love our love. But I do miss being polyamorous,” they admitted as they rubbed my back.

I didn’t. Though I wanted to believe in abundant love and freedom, my relationship with Quinn showed me that polyamory was an escape hatch I’d pulled to get out of an unhappy relationship. Now that I was happy, I didn’t want anyone else. I couldn’t imagine their wanting other people to be about anything other than some deficiency in our relationship — with me. I worried that opening our relationship would only lead where I’d taken my previous one: to an inevitable, painful end. But for Quinn, wanting other people was more about abundance than lack. 

Theoretically, I was totally evolved and on board with polyamory. I had read “Sex at Dawn” and “The Ethical Slut.” I knew about the goddamn bonobos. In my last relationship, I was the one who wanted us to open up in the first place. In practice, however, my body was filled with fear-induced adrenaline. After Quinn brought polyamory back into the conversation, I kept waking up throughout the night in an anxious panic, relieved to see their soft, slumbering face still in bed next to me. 

I was afraid of not being important anymore — of losing them and losing us. I imagined them falling asleep and waking up next to someone else, calling someone else when they were hurting, and marrying someone else instead of me. We were a lesbian stereotype, processing endlessly.

Quinn was patient and gentle. We talked about what being polyamorous gave them and how to meet their needs for multiple intimate relationships and freedom in other ways, including making more space for deeper relationships with friends and going alone and together to the kink parties they loved. 

“Whatever we decide, I still want to be with you,” Quinn promised. I knew them well enough to know they didn’t say things they didn’t mean. 

As I slowly started to trust that their crush didn’t mean they were going to leave me, the tumult of the summer settled. Quinn’s crush faded in a few months, but it was just a catalyst for the relationship conversations we desperately needed to have. Maybe our relationship didn’t have to be binary — monogamy or polyamory. Maybe there could be space in between to make something our own.

We quietly shifted into something we both felt comfortable with: our own stepping-stone version of being monogamish, where Quinn would play with other people at the kink parties they missed. 

“I don’t know if this is a step on the ladder or if this is it for me,” I said nervously. I was afraid that saying yes to opening in a small way meant going from zero to 100 and that there was no other option besides monogamy or them marrying someone else. 

“That’s OK,” They reassured me. “We’ll just see how it goes and if this is it, that’s OK.”