My Threeway Relationship Resulted in Heartbreak (& Engagement)

What do you imagine it’s like being a henchman to a supervillain?

Like, a complete Igor. Hunchback and all, carrying things to and fro, flipping switches when requested, that sort of thing? Do you think it involves a lot of polishing of the villain’s bone-throne and refilling goblets with blood?

Personally, I imagine it to involve a lot of doing someone else’s laundry and clearing out all the empty Diet Coke cans from someone’s bedroom.

Am I speaking from experience, you ask?

Well…

Let’s just say that I was a very dutiful friend to a cacklingly manipulative person, and one of my Igor Style tasks involved fielding messages from boys she believed to be in love with her.

And one of those boys, in four or so years, would end up becoming my fiancé.

. . .

Lisa was charismatic, beautiful, and very, very mean. If you’ve ever been an insecure high schooler, then you’ve probably been drawn to a woman like this. For the purposes of this article, I’d like you to picture Debbie from Addam’s Family Values.

One December afternoon, she reclined in her throne (sofa) of bones (anime pillows), drinking her goblet of blood (Diet Coke) and tossed her iPhone to me where I sat upon the floor.

(Yes, I sat on the floor at her feet. No, I did not think this was weird. This part isn’t even an exaggeration.)

“Another one is in love with me,” she said, her hand resting daintily upon her brow. “Take this one.”

You see, a boy from her college class had asked if she wanted to work on a project together, as it was the type of class where group projects were common.

Clearly, he was in love with her.

So I took her phone, which was open to Facebook Messenger. The messages on the screen were as follows:

HIM: Do you have any book recommendations?
HER: I don’t read.

So I typed out, “Hi, I’m Lisa’s Friend, I have book recommendations!”

(He did, in fact, go on to read the book I recommended. This is why we are now betrothed.)

A strong start, honestly! I had zero expectations for a random boy Lisa had met, who she already seemed annoyed with, but he and I clicked like nobody’s business.

Soon, I added him on my own Facebook, and we chatted there for literally 48 hours with pauses only for a few hours of sleep at a time, which we would wake from and immediately message one another again.

(This was during finals week for him, by the way. He still blames me for a B he got on one of those. I take pride in it.)

So… Where did that leave my villainess of a best friend?

Think of it from her perspective! A lackey she’d worked on for years to get to be the perfect Yes Man, always hanging on her every word… Was off gallivanting with some BOY? Some boy who by all rights should have a crush on HER?

She did not take it well.

A few days later, after my now-fiancé and I had met in person, hung out a few times, and eventually smooched, I giddily told my Best Friend in The World that I was starting to date someone new.

Her reaction?

And I quote, “But you haven’t even kissed ME yet!”

Uh…

Yeah, what?

Up until this point, we’d had zero romantic interactions between us. She identified as firmly aromantic, with no interest in anything but sexual interactions with a partner, while I was firmly asexual, with no interest in anything but romantic interactions with a partner. So, you know, not compatible in a brass tacks sort of way.

You, dear reader, are likely much smarter than I was in the winter of 2016. Your instinctual reaction to such a comment would probably be something intelligent, along the lines of, “Well, it’s too late for that!”

I was not very smart, and, as previously stated, a very good lackey.

You see, we were all Millennials (we still are, actually, unless something happened to the timeline I’m not aware of). We’d heard stories of polyamory, several people all dating in a complicated triad situation. We’d even heard stories of it working out well!

After all, 4–5% of Americans are in polyamorous relationships, and 20% have tried out ethical non-monogamy in their lives.

And, to be clear, Lisa wasn’t entirely wrong about another boy being in love with her. She was mostly wrong! But not entirely. She was, after all, charismatic and beautiful, and the boy in question had approached her partially because of that. (Why shouldn’t he? 28% of Americans met their spouses in college!)

So we made the bad decision to try a “throuple.” That is to say, a relationship with three equal participants.

I’m not here to condemn all non-monogamous relationships. As long as everyone’s adults, they all know about it, and you’re not hurting anybody (and not trying to date ME), live and let live, you know? Polyamorous people get enough shit from other people as it is (polyamorous groups are less likely to retain custody of their children, for example).

But a “throuple” depends on one special word in my definition.

It’s a relationship with three EQUAL participants.

Lisa did not want to be sharing smooch time between the three of us. She wanted both of us to be waiting on her hand and foot, with 100% of the smooches directed towards her.

From her perspective, there simply weren’t enough smooches to go around! A smooch deficit! A famine of smooches!

And much like most famines, it was not a true lack of resources, but one party leeching produce from the Irish to manufacture starvation. (Seriously, read up on the Irish Potato Famine, shit’s crazy.)

Who would have thunk it? A greedy, attention seeking best friend is also greedy and attention seeking in romantic relationships! Weird!

The threeway relationship (don’t be gross) only lasted for as many months as there were participants.

I could go into a list of her crimes, but this is one of those stories that I start to tell at parties while I laugh and everyone around me starts looking real concerned? So I can never tell which parts are funny!

The point is this:

Platonic friendships with narcissists feel as heady and as intimate as a romantic relationship with a normal person who actually likes you.

They draw you in, make you feel special, and make themselves such a big part of your life that you can’t imagine yourself without them. It sucks, bro. Real talk.

But not everyone is like that. Not every “throuple” is as bullshit as mine was, too.

I want to make a metaphor about finding diamonds in the rough, but it’s not as if I had to polish up my fiancé and get him appraised. It was more like while I was in the diamond mines, someone shot me in the back with a tranquilizer and convinced me that the diamonds I’d found were hers, actually, so I should hand them over.

I’m not one to campaign for abandoning friendships in favor of a romantic relationship, because that sucks. Your friends are awesome, and they matter.

But you can do better than a Lisa.

I sure did!

For now, it’s a happily ever after, where I’m engaged and she’s blocked me on twitter, so we both win!

—

This post was previously published on Hello, Love.

***