he goes back and forth between taking responsibility and not thinking it's a big deal. He seems very sad that he has made me upset, but does not seem to realize exactly what he did wrong.

It sounds like they don't understand each other as well as they might think they do. They'd probably benefit from a deep heart to heart conversation with each other. Maybe some sessions together with a relationship therapist would help.

It may be that this err was a last-ditch effort to undo the commitment he just made, or it may have been a pre-cohabitation blowout. Thinking w-a-a-a-y back I can remember that for me my marriage was no big deal. I thought of it as a nice ceremony but my world hadn't changed substantially. For me, the big change came when we moved in together, about a year earlier.

I was about to write that at least I didn't fuck up like WGHA's boyfriend did. Then I remembered: "Oh right. I did."

Is it possible that mutual sexual fidelity is something evolved through trial-and-error ("science!") over ages?
And that your experiment is just one more data point priving it?

@1 I agree, and something else. During those round-and-round conversations, sometimes it's best to take a break. One person gets a hotel or sleeps on the couch, and then start in the next day.

WGHA's boyfriend was really inconsiderate. Standing up WGHA to have sex with someone else, and then come home with evidence of the fact all over his body is bad behavior. (A couple of weeks ago a man wrote in that he didn't want to see evidence of his girlfriend's outside sexual contact, and I thought that was reasonable. Some others disagreed. I'll stick by my view and say that WGHA is not unreasonable is asking her boyfriend not to get marked when having sex with other women.)

The interesting part about this relationship is that they've been together for a while, and have been practicing non-monogamy for over a year, and have encountered previous issues that they've worked through. That's really long enough for WGHA to know the character of her boyfriend, and to recognize whether this is part of a pattern or not, and what exactly any pattern says about him.

WGHA says she feels like she has ignored red flags, but doesn't provide more information. Does it relate to non-monogamy, drinking, being generally inconsiderate, something else? To the extent his bad behavior intersects with non-monogamy can those behavior be disentangled and dealt with separately? Who knows? But WGHA sounds like she's in love with this guy and they have been able to work through other issues during the past year, so perhaps she should invest a bit of time to see if they can work through this too.

Does Dan even answer his own questions any more? I've been reading for years and I feel like in the past two years every few columns he hastily answers with no real substantial advice or is a rerun of a question just a few months old in the archive.

I have found myself enjoying other columnists more because I feel they take more time in their responses and review more possible favorable conclusions for the letter writer.

Was it a good decision to stop at "Apologies in advance for the long letter"?

"He has mentioned he has been to therapy in the past, but that it did not work for him."

What was therapy supposed to do for him? Cure him of being a lying POS? This is less of a rhetorical question than it seems. Every therapy treatment I've been to, the therapist spends some time at the beginning helping the patient outline goals. What are the goals? Because it sure sounds to me like WGHA can't decide if he needs therapy to become a nicer person or if she needs therapy because she gets sad when someone beats her to a bloody pulp.

I vote for DTMFA, then get therapy to find out why you're so hung up on abusive men.

Dan seems to think this is about infidelity. No, this is about someone who had plans with the person he purportedly loves, abandoned those plans, let her worry about him, let her think he might have been in an accident or killed or worse, then played the victim of the I-don't-know-why-you're-upset variety. BECAUSE I FUCKING DID NOT KNOW IF YOU WERE DEAD! AND BECAUSE YOU USED MY OWN LOVE AND WORRY AS A WEAPON AGAINST ME YOU MANIPULATIVE SHIT. Maybe a relationship can survive some infidelity. I do not see how it can survive a man who plays that shit and can't even see that he's done something wrong. I'm angry when a casual friend doesn't show up for a coffee date without calling, and I do not have abandonment issues. I just believe in courtesy.

Breaking that lease shouldn't be that embarrassing. Explain to the landlord that he was unfaithful. You should be fine.

And another thing-- He's stopped drinking heavily, but he got very drunk with the woman he met on the dating ap. That's the red flag you should be paying attention to. You're in love with an alcoholic who actively uses alcohol as an excuse for doing whatever he wants.

It's a slight red flag that one afternoon of radio silence sent her texting the friends and such, and hey, you can't magically get rid of hickeys. My read is an opportunity fell within this dude's lap, it was only a (potentially) small rule violation (LW/his GF was theoretically available)... I have a hard time getting a CPOS woody on this one [history also tells us, LW is having a lot more on-the-side sex than BF]. For future considerations, It's important that someone is held to account for a rules violation, but it doesn't seem like it should be a deal-breaker.

It wasn't just a random afternoon of radio silence, though. It was an afternoon when they'd had plans. Been there, done that, wondering which hospitals should be called, if any. I totally feel for this woman. Being in that particular position is a trust-killer.

@10, well they had plans and she was genuinely worried about him.

Still, people are allowed one big mistake once in a while without it being indicative of their character?

Fichu @9.

I love that woman.

Fichu @9 nails it.

The "and he quit drinking" comes up more than once. Then he got stupid drunk with a rando off Tindr (which is NOT rando's fault, not in the slightest) and acted like an asshole while drunk.

And then there's this:

"I told him that the kindest thing he could do if he didn't think he could practice monogamy, or an honest open relationship with rules, would be to tell me now so that I can leave. He said he can because he wants to be with me so badly."

RUN, LW, RUN.

This is how he hangs his success or failure on your head, rather than his actions. He cheats/breaks the rules again? Well, he didn't want to be with you that badly. He won't be honest with you? Well, it's your fault.

Being in a relationship with somebody doesn't make you stupid. Staying with somebody out of denial or sunk-costs doesn't make you stupid, either, but only one choice will cut the pain right now.

Ms. Fiche @ 8, My husband did this to me several times after we had been married over a decade. The last straw was when he disappeared for more than a day. I didn't DTMFA, but I was seriously considering whether things had reached the tipping point for a divorce. His pain management doctors had been prescribing him higher and higher doses of morphine and things had been rough for awhile. Fortunately, not long after he decided he didn't want to live like that anymore, signed himself into a treatment facility (even though he wasn't an addict) so there would be medical supervision, and quit cold turkey without taking suboxone to mitigate the withdrawal effects. I have so much respect for what he did, and even though it took over a year for his brain chemistry to go back to normal, it is so nice to have the real him back. We are at a really good place now and I'm so glad I stood by him. I do realize there is a difference between an inconsiderate bf and health problems in a long marriage, I just wanted to share an example of a positive outcome.

Btw, Fichu is a clever pseudonym. Most people know what a crinoline is, but a fichu is a somewhat more obscure article of clothing. Is fashion history one of your interests?

There's a crucial difference between Sugar's situation and WGHA's that Dan completely missed in his haste to jump on his predictable "infidelity is no big deal" hobby horse: in Sugar's case her boyfriend abjectly apologized; the LW's inconsiderate POS boyfriend "goes back and forth between taking responsibility and not thinking it's a big deal" and doesn't seem to "realize exactly what he did wrong". Forgiving someone for an infidelity is one thing, but first they have to demonstrate genuine remorse, and this drunken jackass is a child who's just upset that he got caught and doesn't understand why open relationships need dumb rules anyway. He doesn't sound at all ready for an honest relationship.

WGHA also says "I don't think it would be difficult to find someone who didn't do this." Maybe in Dan's world it is, but it shouldn't be, but at the very least she deserves a boyfriend who takes their relationship and her feelings seriously. And isn't an alcoholic.

Fichu nails it @8 and @9. Can we have her take over the column?

Sportlandia @10: "history also tells us, LW is having a lot more on-the-side sex than BF"

History? By "history" do you mean "sexist assumptions"?

Firstly, in the spirit of HA, WGHA is possibly a man with a bisexual boyfriend.

Secondly, assuming the greater probability that WGHA is a woman, just because a woman is more easily able to get casual sex does not mean she has more interest or motivation to have casual sex. She certainly doesn't seem disappointed by the idea of a return to forsaking all others, aside from perhaps the odd threesome, which she said she enjoyed. Dude was handed the gift of permission to fuck other people with a few minor, reasonable rules, and he totally blew those rules. WGHA should listen when he tells her he's unable to not abuse the system and offers a return to monogamy.

Take marriage off the table, replace it with counselling. Boyfriend comes to an unqualified understanding that he fucked up big time, and offers unreserved contrition. Boyfriend gives WGHA his e-mail password. Boyfriend stays off the booze. Strike two, he's out.

I'm overwhelmed with your compliments. I blushingly accept. I won't go into detail on fashion history or choice of online names. That way, if we ever start to chat when seated together on an airplane and the subject of fichus and crinolines comes up, you'll be left guessing if that ordinary looking middle aged lady is the mystery poster to Savage Love.

I note an irony: I'm probably the most conservative regular here. While I consider myself essentially open minded, my own experience is limited. I'm straight. I'm kinky only in fantasy, never in action. I have strong leanings towards monogamy as the fall-back assumption. I'm a strong proponent of courtship first, sex later. In fact, that might be where Dan and I disagree the most. He'll say that long term relationships can begin with hot one night stands. I always recommend restraint to start. Another difference between me and Dan: While I've reluctantly come to believe that long-term open relationships can work, I believe they work best when the relationship is open from the start. What I've read in this column about relationships that started monogamous and were then "opened up," have convinced me that that is a drawn-out painful stopgap on the way to breaking up.

But back to the subject at hand. I read the Sugar column, slept on it, and awoke to see that Chase said what I had in mind in 19. Crucial difference, indeed. Here's what I'd add: When someone is truly sorry and truly committed to not making the same mistake twice, they come up with a plan. If in the past online flirtation + alcohol have equaled actual sex at some point down the line, then the place to stop the chain of events is with the flirtation. (That's not to say that all flirtation becomes infidelity, only that it's not too hard to see the connection after the fact. Similarly, not every act of getting drunk means sex, but this guy has a history.)

Note that it doesn't work if the plan is imposed by someone else. It's not going to work if WGHA says "how 'bout you stop online flirting" or even "I demand that you stop online flirting." What we need is for Mr. WGHA to say "I've thought about it. I'm committed to making this work, and I've decided that the only thing that's going to work for me is to stop flirting and to get real help for my drinking problem-- a problem, by the way, that I've realized I have, not something you've told me I have."

Chase you are hard on Dan. This guy played up, he wants to now not play up, maybe.
Getting hickeys/ or as we called them, love bites/ all over his body, sounds adolescent to me and I would not put much faith in this guy growing up too soon.
LW you are young, fit etc.. so leave this hickey covered child to sort his story somewhere else, and go find yourself an adult man.

Fichu; courtship is a kindly way to get to know somebody.

There are things about this agreement that look less than fair to me:

LW stipulates that when they are home together, no side action. Okay. But _she_is the one who travels all the time. So she is in control not only of when she sleeps around, but when he does. Sounds like she gets that itch scratched by hooking up with randos while traveling. But he has to pursue nonmonogamy in his home territory, unless he makes an effort to prowl the whole state while she's away. Meaning that the available pool of dates is way more limited (by geography) for him than it is for her.

It also means he has to cut off contact the moment LW gets home. Putting myself in the shoes of his dates, I would get sick of that pretty quickly. I don't think it requires sexist assumptions to conclude she has a better shot at getting as much side action as she wants than he does.

That does not excuse him from breaking the agreement, nor of the things he did wrong in the course of breaking it (radio silence, lying his ass off). But LW should take some responsibility for the rules turning into an inherently unbalanced situation. They need to start from scratch, and reset the rules more in depth, as well as negotiate some of the sticking points to be more equitable.

Going out on a limb here, a sturdy one I think, but LW's bf is being pretty passive aggressive here. He went silent when they had plans, then came home with hickey's and lied, but in a way that he knew she would find out about. He wanted her to know what he was doing and he wanted it to be a bit of a slap in the face. He could have lied better, could have lied before he disappeared so it wouldn't be so obvious, and he could have prevented himself from getting multiple hickeys. LW had just gotten back from a trip, so I'm going to say that on some level he doesn't like her sleeping with other people. He wants to be ok with it, but how he really feels is not how he says he feels.

I would say give monogamy a try. There needs to be a 0 tolerance policy.

@24 I assume she travels for work, and therefore probably has about as much control and advanced warning as he does, so I don't really follow you, unless you think she travels for leisure without him often?

Also, he gets to stay in the area, so he also gets to establish relationships that he can fall back to when she leaves. Unless she always travels to the same place, she has to start from scratch every time she travels. It's not a symmetrical arrangement, but I don't think that makes it unfair

Seems to me the biggest difference between this letter and Sugar's narrative is not how abjectly contrite Mr. Sugar was, but that there is no evidence in Sugar's story about an agreement to practice nonmonogamy in the first place.

I get that he broke an agreement. I get that he stood her up and couldn't even be bothered to contact her. I get that he lied about it both by omission and to her face, for a whole long day, and thereby revealed himself to be capable of that: a lying liar who lies. I get that he used being drunk as an excuse, which it is not. If he were the one who wrote in, I would be more than happy to berate him at length over all of the above. At the same time, however, I have limited patience for her butthurt about, "ZOMG, now I can't help imagining him doing that thing with this woman, that thing he has total permission to do as long as I am out of state."

The obsession over the hickeys, along with "though imagining my partner having sex with someone else isn't too fun," speaks volumes to me. Letter Writer wants permission to be nonmonogamous, while pretending all the while that it isn't really happening. She engages in it herself, but if she sees evidence that he is doing what she herself does, it throws her into a tailspin.

What it sounds like to me is that she engineered the rules to promote the impression that she is Absolute Number One Priority in his life, and did it via this set of rules that de-facto imposes more limitations on him than it does on her. He ran up against those limitations (probably more than once), rebelled against them (this time), and as a result she has to look at something -- that he fucks other people -- that she would prefer not to look at because it feels threatening.

My impression is that neither of them is ready to practice honest nonmonogamy.

@25: I don't disagree with you about the passive-aggressive nature of what he did, or about who dislikes it more that their partner is seeing other people. It is hard to tell from the letter which of them pushed for nonmonogamy, and which one went along for the ride. The fact that he wanted to go all the way back to monogamy to fix this sounds like he doesn't like the way the current arrangements work for him.

@26: It's hard to speculate on how much notice she gets from work on her travel schedule. She could well be doing a trade show circuit and the whole year is arranged in advance. Or she could be doing on-site customer support and it's completely random. But the bottom line is that permission to fuck or be prohibited from doing so hinges 100% on her schedule, not his.

I was going on the assumption that it's pretty easy to hook up in a bar after hours at a conference in an exotic location. The downside of developing relationships at home is that he is expected to put them on hold as soon as LW arrives at the airport. Putting myself in the position of one of these fallback relationship people, I think that arrangement would have me describing myself with words like "expedient" and convenient." Not a happy place.

I admit that my worldview is a little obsolete on this. I haven't quite grasped the modern convenience factor that is Tinder.

Those threesomes that WGHA is game for frequently and which are a fun new thing for her, any guesses as to whether those are Mr. WGHA, WGHA and a woman or Mr. WGHA, WGHA and a man? Or alternating?

@28 but they're on just about equal footing with regard to one-night-stands; assuming their hometown isn't incredibly tiny and in the middle of nowhere they can both go to bars after hours near a conference and hook up with someone random.

And he has much better chances of setting up a recurring fwb relationship, something WGHA can't do unless they have to travel regularly to the same set of cities.

Finally, the time to complain about a perceived imbalance in fairness of a set of rules is when you set them, with your words, not by breaking them.

"He agreed, if a little reluctantly, to restrictions."

Now you've learned that he'll agree to rules he doesn't want, but he won't follow them.

I wouldn't trust him to be monogamous now.

I would end the relationship. Or else ask him to describe his ideal relationship style (not just once, but over several conversations), and consider if you can live with that. He might be able to stick to agreements he had more say in establishing.

Fichu/Crinoline @21, re "relationships that started monogamous and were then 'opened up,' have convinced me that that is a drawn-out painful stopgap on the way to breaking up."

Perhaps so. But I have no regrets so far, and it has been six years since we opened our marriage (and twenty-three since we got together). I like our chances.

Dan, did you read this letter? It's really not comparable to Sugar's. At all. She should DTMFA. People who want to get dumped cheat like this-obviously, carelessly, and flagrantly. He wants out but doesn't have the stones to say so.

32-Erica P-- I should have remembered your experience when writing before.

SMajor @26: "Also, he gets to stay in the area, so he also gets to establish relationships that he can fall back to when she leaves. Unless she always travels to the same place, she has to start from scratch every time she travels. It's not a symmetrical arrangement, but I don't think that makes it unfair"

Yes, this. The rules weren't that he has to cut off contact when she is in town, only that he has to refrain from having sex when she is in town. He can have an ongoing in-town buddy that he schedules when she's away. Versus, yes, her having to start from scratch. And people are discounting that "some rando at a bar out of town" is NOT the kind of on-the-side sex most women WANT to be having. So we go back to "being lucky to be able to get the kind of sex you don't want is not actually lucky."

Avast @28: Being a "secondary" can be a very happy place indeed, particularly if that is not your only relationship. Who said Husband's local part-time lovers had to be single?

EricaP, I'm glad you are an exception but I do agree that generally, relationships that start open have a better chance of survival than relationships that go from closed to open.

Add me to the chorus wondering if Dan actually read this letter. Cheating is not always relationship-extinction, but this particular case is. He's making rules and breaking them, being grossly inconsiderate in other ways on top of it, denying responsibility, etc. Lay off the sauce, Dan. Typing out "DTMFA" is a lot easier than hyperlinking the irrelevant.

The LW does say she loves him etc etc, and Dan only offered the letter as an example of two people getting past a transgression.
Doesn't say the guy was a heavy drinker, and the man from this letter doesn't seem to own his behaviour.
LW if you don't trust him, that's a hard thing to regain. And he's a heavy drinker, not so much an ex one when he needs an excuse. And for him, being open became a slippery slope because his relationships are not contained like yours are.
The drinking would be the biggest red flag for me. That behaviour is hiding issues, and he's already said therapy didn't help him, so doesn't sound like he's open to deep change.

Hi all, long-time reader who doesn't comment often. Avast @28, my first instinct is with you - that being a convenience doesn't normally translate well unless things are kept SUPER casual. But BiDan @35, if you're willing, I'd love to hear more about keeping that balance as a secondary. I'm striking out into the open/poly world and have had some negative run-ins as a secondary and I can't quite tell if it's because my POV is unreasonable or if it's because my partners are (or if it's a mix). If you feel like commenting, have your experiences left you feeling like a "convenience" to your partners?

Umamitowhat @38: I admit that at times, it was disheartening when my every "what are you doing next weekend?" queries were answered with "Let me check with Primary" instead of "Let me check my schedule." But that was only because all of my relationships at the time were either secondary or long-distance. I was juggling four partners and yet I was at the mercy of every one of their schedules. Things improved when one partner split up with their primary, and now their answer to "are you free" is "let me check my schedule." Their schedule is still pretty full, with other non-primary partners and other social events, but at least I don't feel like I'm second fiddle in every orchestra. And I met a new partner who (at the time) wasn't seeing anyone else. With that person in my life, it was less disheartening to have to schedule around other partners' other partners, because after all, they were now in my "other partners" category. In other words, it was good to finally be somebody's Plan A.

I'd be interested in your experiences, I could give my take on whether your expectations are reasonable or whether your partners are being inconsiderate. If someone's cancelling plans with you at the bequest of their primary, they're being a jerk; if they're forgetting plans with you, then they are possibly too disorganised for poly. But if they are treating their primary as, well, primary, then that pretty much goes with the territory.

I think this is an inappropriate application of Cheryl Strayed. I think this guy has deeper issues that he isn't willing to explore or take responsibility for. LW seems to hint at deeper issues as well, but she sounds so smitten that she wants to be talked out of them. I think the guy's behavior was pretty bad/inconsiderate/asshole-ish, and after being together for two years, I think he knew she'd find it devastating. Relationships that involves repeated round and round conversations, in my experience, cost more than they are worth. If there can't be straightforward communication, clear agreements and enough maturity and willingness to follow through with said agreements, then there are mortal problems, in my opinion.

BiDan @39: thanks so much. I think my situation may be compounded further by my naïveté, situationally. I relatively recently broke it off from my gf (who was married, with several 20-year-old kids). I think part of the problem was that it was never clear to me what exactly was ok and what wasn't. She and her husband seemed to have an understanding that some things happened with other people sometimes but I don't think her husband was ok with the idea that she might actually have emotional attachments to/dates with her other sex partners- something I didn't fully realize until I was emotionally involved and she claimed to be. I never wanted a marriage from her I couldn't have nor did I want to spend holidays with her or take over family nights, but I did want support and love. From the start, things were always on her schedule and while her husband knew I existed I don't think he knew (or admitted) the nature of my presence...and that certainly makes it ridiculous and not quite your situation (and lesson learned: it's on me to vet more carefully next time). When I tried to step back to honor what I could figure were their boundaries (because I never got a totally straight answer but I was still wrapped up emotionally), and give some space, she made clear that she still wanted to maintain a regular connection. Some of our interactions remained absolutely lovely but there were many of these moments where she would ask if I wanted to do something, say she was looking forward to it, and then cancel/postpone without much concern, or she would glaze over things I would tell her/email her in our conversations, or she would be distracted talking to other people when we met up, etc. She wasn't happy when I called it off a few months ago but like many commenters here, I tend to believe that kind of behavior is them subconsciously screaming they want out. And I had also lost patience.

Still, there were moments I wondered if I was just being myopic. I do get very invested in close friends and while I can understand not being the top priority, I still want to be a priority (in as much as you wouldn't do this to your non-sex friends either). So while I think this relationship is not to be fixed, I do try to take a look at what I could do better/see differently and I'm always curious about how others find themselves as "secondaries" and strike the balance between knowing they are not the (top) priority and respecting the family units and also knowing that that doesn't mean they exist for the mere convenience of their sex partners. So after that soliloquy, if you have any feedback, I am of course all ears.

Some of these young people (<30) seem to think they are Bad People if they don't do open relationships. Like, they are stodgy and old fashioned, even though for a lot of the letter writers, it's not something that seems natural, or even workable, for them. That's how this letter felt to me. LW seemed fine being monogamous, but thought the right/kind/modern thing to do was open the relationship, when even the boyfriend didn't seem that interested in doing so.

Chase @19, You're right, Fichu did nail this one @8 and 9, but I liked your response best (out of the first 20, which are all that I've read). The Sugar column is great, but while her boyfriend had no open relationship excuse, he didn't go through a string of lies, didn't let his partner mark him just to hurt his girlfriend, and to all appearances was abjectly remorseful and guilty when caught.

LW's boyfriend isn't really admitting that he did anything wrong and is making excuses Sugar/Cheryl's boyfriend made a mistake. LW's is a CPOS and an alcoholic.

Kick him to the curb, LW.

Oh, and who knew that Cheryl Strayed used to write an advice column. I need to read those. This sample was quite good.

It really matters to me whose idea the non-monogamy was. My impression was that it was his. She mentions sadness and is tortured over him having broken their rules, etc. I don't think she was ever a good candidate for non-monogamy other than, perhaps, the threesomes she mentions enjoying. Having gotten her to agree to it, broken the rules that made her accept it, allowed a partner to mark him in a way that one has to assume was intended by that partner to hurt the LW, been half-assed about apologizing, etc., I think she should probably DTMFA.

However, if you assume it was her idea, so she could have fun while traveling. I could see how you might view this as only a technical violation, look past the lies and hickeys, and decide that there is something worth fixing here as a monogamous relationship.

In either case, neither of these people belongs in a nonmonogamous relationship.

As EricaP @32 points out, this quote proves that LW's boyfriend agrees to rules he won't follow:

"He agreed, if a little reluctantly, to restrictions."

That pretty much proves that nonmonogamy was his idea and that she only went along with it when she felt that she was able to control it with rules. When they were both in town, she could feel safe. He destroyed her illusion of control and now all of her resentment over this arrangement she clearly didn't like has come out.

DTMFA

dcp123 @46, I don't see how that quote proves that he wanted nonmonogamy. To me, it's just as plausible that she was pushing for the kind of nonmonogamy that she wanted, and ignoring his stated preferences.

I think these two people don't want the same thing out of a relationship, which means they probably should break up. They could, possibly, create a mutually satisfactory relationship together, but only by actually listening to each other a lot more.

Umami @41: Thanks for checking in. It sounds to me like what you wanted was an actual poly relationship, with feelings and consideration and respect and, if not equal footing to her husband, at least some recognition of your role as a partner. But what she wanted was a fuck buddy. Nothing wrong with either, so long as you are up front about what you are looking for.

It's possible that you painted yourself as more "chill" than you actually were, or that you thought you'd be fine with a fuck-buddy arrangement and then you developed feelings. This happens. This is why I don't think a "you can fuck other people but not get emotionally involved" rule is workable; one can't control one's feelings, and when one is intimately involved with someone on an ongoing basis, and it's good, they are hard to avoid. It sounds like your partner had a "no feelings allowed" arrangement with her husband, and then developed feelings, which she was honest only with you about while pretending to her husband that she had no feelings for you.

My best advice is that if you are in a secondary relationship, don't make that your only relationship. It's easier to get emotionally invested in someone you're fucking if they're the only one you're fucking. Maintain your profiles on dating sites. Go out cruising. Booty call an ex. If all that is easier said than done, fill your spare time with hobbies. That way it won't be so one-sided, with you dependent on her schedule and constantly waiting for her to meet your needs.

If you are, in fact, an actual partner, don't be a secret. Lots of poly people insist on meeting their metamours, or at least on complete honesty as far as all are concerned. And don't be afraid to tell her what your needs are, too -- yours are just as important as hers! Good luck.

They should leave him and, like someone else said, explain to the lease people that he cheated.

They made restrictions, he agreed to it, then broke his word by sleeping with someone else while LW was available and had plans with. Not going by the rules equals cheating.

If he can't see what he did wrong then how can he even begin to fix it? He purposely did something wrong. Should not have gotten drunk in the first place if he had plans with LW, let alone be in the position to completely betray LW's trust.

I'm *Very* poly and actually prefer being secondary right now because I really don't have the time to fully invest in a primary relationship, and I don't like the pressure that they'll want to take over a huge part of my life. I like ethically dating people who have primary partners. (no time due to being a full time student with 3 jobs)

BiDan @48: If you ever happen to check this thread again, thank you so much. I really appreciate the feedback and it's perhaps the most straightforward I've gotten. Truly, thank you.

Umami @50: You're welcome!