I hate it when people blame others for what they themselves did. I'd skip right to "build a newer, bigger, better, queerer family for yourself".

This feels like a natural end to things, honestly.

"... she refused to get an abortion.."

Bless her for that, and shame on you for thinking that she should!

Alternate headline:
"Dan, what spice makes shit stew tasty?"

@3 Thank god and Roe she had the option.

It sounds like you assume girlfriend would make a good mother, despite a couple notable instances of poor judgment. Why is that?

@5: The decision is hers. Alone.

@6: Absolutely.

If she had chosen to terminate, would you still bless her?

My partner had an affair and a baby, and if she wants to make it work, she can. I recommend Janis Abrahms Spring's books to deal with working on understanding and forgiving her husband and his girlfriend.

However, I would recommend thinking twice. It's not easy, and even though it's been six years for me I still wonder if it's been worth it. I've forgiven the incident, I love my step-daughter, and although we're not besties, I'm friendly with her mother. But, the core personalities of my partner and this woman haven't changed. The stupidity and selfishness that led to this problem in the first place is still there, and leads to continued issues (although not nearly as dramatic.) I don't think you can change that underlying self-centeredness . . . It's difficult to meet new people and build a new family, but in the long run it's easier than dealing with a lifetime with someone who can't see how selfish and entitled they are (and who feels it's appropriate to demand that she dump her girlfriend.) It's that selfishness that's the real deal breaker.

@7: I'd be heartbroken that she had to come to that decision, but yeah.

@8 Much admiration for your strength of character.

I don't mean for this to sound condescending, but there are so many ways in which LW (and her former partner) has yet to even experience adulthood. As much as you felt supported in the past, the situation sounds like it's held you back in a big way. Go be free, super gay, and single. I think you'll find over time you don't need what your former partner has to offer. You didn't lose everything when you deconverted, you started a new chapter. Now get out there and finally start it.

Also—oh God can we count the betrayals? He didn't just have unprotected sex, he took the extra step, probably, of coming inside her. Then running away, etc. He honestly sounds as developed as a 15-year old boy.

Also, also, it's really hard to reply to these without changing tense. Whatever.

@8 thank you for sharing. it's fun for us to all pile our own baggage onto these letters, your experience is appreciated.

Who is the bigger douche/idiot? 1) Husband who fucked IRRESPONSIBLY while he was married, got equally idiotic/douche-y girlfriend pregnant, THEN ran away & wanted a divorce, only to come crawling back again with a lifelong kid commitment and who now feels BETRAYED because you won’t give up your girlfriend! or 2) LW who thinks this shitstain is the best she can do? Hmmmm. Dysfunction abounds,i and I’m going to partially blame your fucked-up Baptist brainwashing (I know what I’m talking about, I grew up Baptist)...sounds like the part of your brains that they washed away in the blood never grew back. START FRESH with girlfriend WHO APPARENTLY HAS STUCK BY YOU through this shitshow and say goodbye forever to your asshole husband and the Baptists. Tomorrow is another day! Tra-la-la!

Very compassionate answer by Dan, but a lot of holes in the story. #1, where does it say in the letter that prego is his "ex-GF?" He may have come back to the LW but since it was an open relationship couldn't he still be seeing her? #2, where does it say that the GF wants the LW's help raising the baby, or even the husband's at this point now that he has run back to the LW?

It sounds to me like the LW skipped the part about the GF dumping the husband and sending him crawling back to the LW, asking for forgiveness and suggesting they both give monogamy a try, presumably as a show of how sorry he is that he shat the bed, while not giving shit about the LW's needs or sexual preference.

So Dan's advice, despite the holes, gets to the point: Yes, you can come back. No, I won't dump my GF. Take it or leave it.

If she's lucky, he'll leave. She'll have a good cry and then she'll start building that gay life she's going to end up with anyway.

I understand where she is coming from, it would feel very isolating to go through a divorce with no one to back you up except a very new girlfriend who is in no position to be your entire family. But otherwise yeah, dude has a dumb idea that he has negotiating leverage in this situation when in reality he has none. Let him know, and be strong, lean on your logical family when this one fails.

Cut ties before you’re financially obligated to help with the kid.

In the LW's shoes, I would offer to stay (while keeping current girlfriend and also the right to date anyone else, men or women, in the future), but only if he goes to therapy and takes it seriously.

They were successfully non-monogamous for ten years! And now in the course of a few months he broke their rules, left his wife, came back, and wants instant monogamy? Something else is going on. He should figure out what's going on in his head, with professional help, before he gets a drug addiction or steps in front of a train.

LW, you don't mention children of your own, so no kids for you? This is the perfect time to get the hell out. You're not alone, you have a girlfriend, presumably one who wasn't brainwashed by the church. Let her family be your family (or friends, if her folks are as assholic as yours). Count your blessings... you don't need to be part of this shitshow he created. Let him deal with it without you.

Commie@18~ A new low, even for you. Wouldn’t you get more satisfaction pulling the wings off of flies rather than ranting here where most people just go, “Oh, there’s THAT ignorant fuck again.”

So, he's getting upset with CORNER for choosing her girlfriend over him, after he literally chose his girlfriend over her, and tried to divorce her. And that it's her non-monogamy that, at least in part, is the problem, instead of admitting it was his non-monogamy that fucked everything up. All he's doing is shifting all the blame to CORNER for the current mess, and that's the most DTMFA move you could possibly make in an already bad situation.

Also, I'd like to point out that, not only did they open the relationship up, they turned it into a poly relationship. And since the term doesn't come up once, I get the feeling she doesn't even realize that this is a poly relationship. Get some books, listen to some podcasts, and really wrap her head around how to have healthy poly relationships, and I bet she'll have a much better understanding of how her husband is doing everything wrong.

Oof. Shit. Show. If you stay together, good luck. You're gonna need it.

Extrapolating a bit from the religious background described.... Parents... this is why you have to let teenagers and young adults make their own choices and mistakes. So they can grow up to be mature adults who understand themselves in realtion to the world as it is, and not be trainwrecks of destruction working out the control and abuse you subjected them to.

@21 Concisely put.

Here's hoping that this guy has a lot of great qualities and the stress has just caused him to snap and "momentarily" lose his mind. And I mean that. Because from the little that was shared, he sounds like a terrible partner, and I hope she's not taking him back out of nostalgia.

So the girlfriend lied about taking birth control, had unprotected sex, refused an abortion, and demanded the husband leave his wife for her?

I think that's what we call a Hostile Takeover.

Sometimes I hope that the act of typing out all the details will throw the issues into relief, and shed some light. But it doesn't always work that way.

LW, you're not just gay, you're Super Gay! So this is definitely the time to use your powers. We super gays don't let straight people treat us this way in 2019. Even if we love them, they don't get to make all the rules anymore, and expect us to prioritize their hetero needs while they pretend our homo needs don't exist. Those days are happily over. TO INFINITY AND BEYOND!

CORNER, you and your husband were very young adults when you got married, and you appear to have helped each other navigate your respective journeys to adulthood, including leaving your church and exploring your sexualities. But it is unclear whether your husband and his girlfriend have the maturity, emotional capacity, and self-awareness to allow you to continue your complex set of relationships, which now includes raising a child. Here, I would note that your husband's demands are a very immature attempt to face an uncertain situation by controlling you, under the mistaken belief that he forecloses the risk of losing you if he can impose monogamy in your relationship. That makes it important for you to make clear that forcing you to chose monogamy is not a path toward saving your marriage. It is important for you to understand that staying with Mr. Corner means having some sort of relationship with his girlfriend, a woman who it appears wanted your husband to impregnate her and leave you. I doubt she will have more regard or respect for you in the future. You also need to know that at the very least, your husband is on the hook for child support payments for the next 25 years, assuming that he genuinely is the father (Mr. Corner might want to seek a paternity test before accepting paternity).

Soul @15, yes. It sounded like Hubby wanted to keep both women in his life, but for his wife to have only one partner. Fuck that noise. Your husband made a decision and now he has to live with the consequences, namely, being a father to this baby. That was HIS decision, not yours -- with his track record he doesn't get to make your decisions! He will be busy elsewhere, taking care of this kid, and you will be busy elsewhere, with your girlfriend who has not utterly betrayed you. Personally, I would DTMFA regardless of the girlfriend's presence in your life. But if you can forgive his mistake and live with the consequences, he absolutely has to accept that HE'S the one whose actions led to lifelong polyamory, and he can't unring that bell.
Also, he's shown he isn't trustworthy, so you'll need to use condoms with him from now on.

Fathom @8, thanks for sharing your story. Food for thought. The fact is that CORNER is no longer the most important person in her husband's life. The child is, and he is tied to the child's mother by a bond stronger than marriage. So that puts CORNER at number three. Which means CORNER can, and should, put -him- at a maximum of three on her priority list, too.

Soul @15, amending my previous comment. The evidence that she is his ex-girlfriend comes from his newfound belief that "monogamy is the only way to fix our marriage." Nice high horse for him to be riding in on. It's not as if her girlfriend is going to saddle HIM with an "accidental" child to raise. Dollars to doughnuts the girlfriend threw him out. I agree with those who say she should wash her hands of him and make a new life and new friends. She shouldn't make the "I'm too invested in this relationship to throw it away" mistake with her husband. The trash threw itself out, she doesn't need to take it back.

Yes, Sporty @25, "the girlfriend" had unprotected sex. It wasn't at all the responsibility of the person with the penis and the wife to put on a condom.
I agree that she seems to have orchestrated this, but he's the one who did not tell her that he's fluid bonded with his wife and their rule is that they use condoms with everyone else. His sticking to their rule would have meant either that she didn't get pregnant or that she got bored quickly and went off to find some other poor sap to entrap.

Yeah... I'm not sure what qualifies as "dealbreaker cheating" for an open relationship, but knocking up another woman and leaving your wife for her feels like it should be up there. He abandoned her - poly or not, that should be an instant "and stay gone" action.

Did anyone really expect anything to go much differently? Seems like this is the sort of nonsense that always happens in these cases...

To put this a different way: jealousy, betrayal, lying, and dishonesty are (metaphorical) illnesses. Human beings are the vector (the means by which the illness is transferred). Does anyone really think that by doubling the number of vectors (humans) that they have a better chance of navigating these situations without the symptoms of jealousy, betrayal, etc, manifesting?

LW, you took 2 stupid troubled humans and doubled their number... and are surprised it blew up spectacularly? At least you and the others keep Dan in business, I guess.

After @33, speaking as a happily poly person, yes, quite often things DO go differently, quite often people DO use condoms as agreed, stick to their other agreements, and all get along. By your "logic" people should not date at all because jealousy, betrayal etc can occur even in monogamous relationships. No, people do not enter polyamory as a means of avoiding potential drama; we have other reasons. And happy polys don't write to Dan because we're too busy scheduling and enjoying all our dates. Boom.

OMG, people, just use a condom, always, with anyone you are not fluid bonded with! This is not rocket science. And males (or active sperm-squirting persons of any gender), take some responsibility for where you are putting that stuff! Females (or egg-bearing persons of any gender) are going to extreme lengths to guard their eggs against live sperm. And yet we get the blame when the guarding was inadequate. It’s like blaming the hoop when you sink the basketball. Just stop throwing the basketball toward the damn hoop already!

@ 34 - My comment wasn't a dump on poly, it was a dump on the surprise people feel when their situations blow up. By numbers alone, poly increases the odds that this will happen.

Yes, people in monogamous relationships are exactly as prone to the things i mentioned, they are human beings after all. Odd are exactly as high on an individual basis because the vectors involved are exactly as stupid when there are only 2 vs there being 4. The fact that your shit has never blown up (which I'm happy to hear is the case, honestly) is anecdotal, just as this case is also. It proves nothing.

however:

For the sake of this example we can say that a given human is 50 percent likely to fuck things up and 50 percent likely to not fuck things up. 2 humans: each with a 50% chance to fuck things up. We could roll a dice to illustrate this. Probability dictates of the 2 rolls, 1 will be fucked. You may be lucky and roll 2 good rolls in a row, happens all the time!

Double that number (because you've doubled the humans) Your percentage is still the same (50%) but now you're forced to roll 4 times instead of 2. You again may get lucky and roll 4 good rolls! happens often! However the odds must drop by half that this is in fact going to be the case. So my point referred to the surprise that people feel at getting a shitty 3'rd roll.

CORNER, don't even think of leaving your GF, /and/ retract your "promise...that in the future [you] would not seek out any other women".

I wonder if my hunch is correct "now he's back" because his GF broke up with him? If so then this whole situation is even more dysfunctional.

I'm happy for you both that you got out of your brainwashed cult, and I'm sorry you both "lost everyone else" in doing so. But there are other 'everyone elses' in your "super gay" happy future, starting with your current GF.

It sounds like you're not ready to be without your crazy husband, and so be it.

Neither of you (or his shitbird baby mama) should go without getting a good therapist; your cult history has left you with issues to work through to get healthier. As you get healthier, you'll realize I think that (unless your husband gets a /lot/ healthier) your lives will be happier separate; extra credit if you can make that leap sooner rather than later, or best of all (nudge nudge) now before you accept all the responsibilities of his new child-of-deception-and-manipulation.

@17 "They were successfully non-monogamous for ten years"

I guess that depends on your definition of "successful," but I seriously doubt it's been entirely free of dysfunction or betrayal until now. This is probably just the first time there were such irrevocable consequences.

After @36, okay, sure, no contempt for poly in your post, nuh-uh. Yes, dating runs a risk of drama, and dating more people involves more risk of drama. You don't want any risk of drama, don't date. (But even then you risk drama because what if someone unilaterally falls in love with you, and you have to break their heart?) Drama is part of the human condition. As are joy, sex, emotional support, shared experiences, deep conversations, laughter, and learning new things... all of which ALSO double when you add more people.

Does this LW describe herself as "surprised"? Do you have similar contempt for yourself for being "surprised" when something goes wrong? Like thousands of other couples, this one found that polyamory worked well for them -- until it didn't. Ten years is a good run, though Rafi @38 is probably right that Mr CORNER was likely not using condoms with prior partners. How is laughing at this woman's misfortune going to help her any? Is calling her stupid even accurate? She's no more stupid than any other person on the planet who got involved with someone who turned out to disappoint them in some way, which is every person on the planet. Life is risk. She seems to have met a fantastic current girlfriend and had many prior enjoyable experiences on her journey to self-discovery, so IMO, the fact that her husband turned out to be a douchenozzle was worth that risk.

Funny how the spam @39 is in reply to a column about how, when your husband comes back to you, the best thing to do is slam the door in his face. LOL.

@BDF you seem to have missed the point, granted your hackles are likely raised due to your incorrect perception of an attack on your lifestyle.

Everyone has the potential for stupidity and everyone has the potential to be a douchenozzle, including me, you and the LW. In this case her husband turned out to be it. Next time maybe she is, or you are, or I am. My post specifically said each human has just as likely a chance to transmit stupidity, lies, betrayal, etc. So why does anyone (especially people familiar with this column - I swear to christ you people are like the stars of a horror movie who've never actually watched a horror movie and therefore don't know how to act when something goes bump in the night) even ask "why?" anymore, when their partner/lover/second/fling turns out to be a moron who acted selfishly? You've practically sainted the LW by this point and put all the blame on her husband when maybe all of them are pretty much there of their own accord. Four times the fun, four times the dickery. LW can and should cut and run but she shouldn't need an advice column to tell her this.

Sure, self-discovery is a blast, but what about when you discover that everything you crave, love, and are, is bullshit? If you make it through life without ever figuring that out, well, the term benighted comes to mind.

@40 "Drama is part of the human condition."

I'm not sure I agree with this, or at least not with the notion that it's unavoidable. Yes, someone can inadvertently blunder into all sorts of situations, but a lot of drama can be avoided just by steering clear of the sorts of people who seem to enjoy and cultivate it.

LW doesn't mention if she has kids with her husband or not. I'd have thought this was germane to the discussion. I assume the answer is no, especially considering that both adults had time for each other and a full time relationship on the side.

In which case I agree with those arguing in favor of divorce. Husband's got responsibilities towards this kid. LW doesn't. Why should she help raise someone else's child. a child that will be a living symbol of her husband's betrayal?

I'm having real trouble seeing how this relationship doesn't turn into a seething mass of resentments on all sides here. Husband already resents wife's girlfriend. LW resents being backed into a corner. Husband's girlfriend probably resents husband's wishy-washy attitude. Kid's going to grow up surrounded by all these emotions feeling like they are all directed at him or her, which is a HORRIBLE environment to grow up in. Dog only knows what LW's girlfriend thinks, but she's probably going to get tired of all the drama real fast, and who can blame her?

End it. If only for the sake of the kid. Let him go off with his insta-family that his girlfriend (probably deliberately) created. Or pay child support.

And LW, go off and be super gay and enjoy your life. Maybe trade in the worthless husband for a cool motorcycle and ride at the front of the next Pride parade with all the other fun, hot, super gay women.

Let me get this straight: This man cheated on you (yes, cheated on you, your relationship had clearly defined rules that he ignored), and you still wanted to stay with him.
Then he ran away and tried to divorce you, but then came crawling back and instead of wondering if you should even accept this asshole back, you still want to stay with him.
Then he wants to force you to accept his return on his terms (doesn't sound like crawling back, I suppose), upending your life and relationships, and you write a sex advice columnist to ask if you have a reason to be upset?
You definitely have a reason to be upset, due to all the other shit that he did, but not for asking you to dump your girlfriend. Because it never should have reached that point. It is painful to read something from someone so goddamn pathetic. How do you write that whole thing out, get to the end, and not have your question be "why am I such a fucking doormat?"
Grow a pair of ovaries, straighten your spine, and tell that cheating, running off, delusional asshole to go fuck himself, like you SHOULD have done when he tried to come back to you.

Someone should really keep score on reasons that opening up a relationship isn't a great idea... side baby! Discovery of being actually more attracted to a gender that isn't your spouse!

These two need to move on.

After @41, point me to where this LW is asking "why?" And why you are singling out this particular LW for not seeing a clear DTMFA, when approximately four-fifths of LWs have clear DTMFAs as the answer to their questions?

LW- you are around 30 right? You have an entire life ahead of you and can have new partnerships and friendships and family. You are romanticizing about inviting this child into your life. Once the baby is born, it's very likely that your relationship with the mother- who was scheming and manipulative and wants your husband to leave you and live with her- will become toxic. Your husband will have to financially support at least half of this child's existence for the next twenty years or so- that will impact your finances as well. And he will have to spend his free time with this child and deal with his relationship with the mother. On top of all this, his first response was to leave you.

Let him. Move on. Keep your girlfriend. Get out on your own and build a new future. You can probably stay friends with your husband and be a part of his life while also protecting yourself and your finances.

And this is one of the reasons that it's more complicated for het people to have open relationships than it is for non het people.

BTW, I guarantee that the LW does not have children with her husband or she wouldn't have said that naive thing about opening her home to the new baby and the entanglements with the mother, etc. Can't prove it, might be wrong, but seriously doubt it.

And one more thing. This marriage is probably going to end in divorce anyway in a short time once the reality of the complications of having the mother in your life hit, once the financial burden hits, and once the difficulties of responsible parenthood hit. I highly suggest you do it now, split your assets now, while it's still something that the mother of the child (and maybe the husband) both are still interested in pursuing amicably rather than once bitterness sets in and the mother has financial claims on the father which will affect your shared assets.

@46 I guess it was this one that proved to be the proverbial tipping point...It really could apply to the other 4/5 as well, I just usually don't bother.

@Donny
Husband and pregnant girlfriend sound like douchebags. LW just sounds incredibly naive. If you want to use the word ignorant, OK. But I think selfishness / deceit / betrayal are far worse than ignorance, and ignorance can be corrected. So there's no question about who the bigger douche is in this marriage- it's the husband. As for who is more ignorant, well the husband was pretty ignorant too on top of being a douche, so he wins that contest too.

LW should take the rest of your advice though, absolutely - that's the way to go and she already has some support outside her marriage. Here's hoping she lives the fun, sexy, honest, supported, super gay, ignorance-correcting independent adulthood that her youthful Christian marriage prevented her from having which is what made her ignorant in the first place.

@Erica, my guess is that the "something else going on" is he got found out being who he really is- a liar. A lot of people run away from revelations about who they are. I also bet that he wanted to leave his wife for the girlfriend but either she dumped him or it wasn't all he thought it would be, so he went back to the wife. Finally my guess is that the reason he wants monogamy now is because he knows his fun times are going to be seriously limited in the future and 'it's not fair' that his wife should get to keep hers. Also there are Christians who get born again more than once. I dated a guy once who was a Christian child, left the church, was an atheist for a while until some life events got hard for him and he rediscovered Christianity again- rather than face the consequences of his actions, he blamed the consequences on straying from the church. All speculation but I bet some combo of this is the "something else".

Sporty, absolutely the girlfriend is scheming and manipulative, but the husband takes half the responsibility by cumming in her vagina while not using a condom, and he will pay half the cost.

And I agree absolutely with Rafi @42. I'm pretty regularly mind-boggled by the amount of drama in a lot of my friends' lives. All of us are going to have some drama since people are what they are, but you can choose how to respond- to escalate or shut it down. Case in point: the LW and her husband made arrangements to reduce the amount of drama in their lives by insisting he use a condom for PIV with his girlfriend. Husband did not and lied about it- that is him inviting drama into his life- it didn't just HAPPEN. Accidental drama would be if he did use a condom and she got pregnant anyway. So this was drama #1. #2 is when he ran off and tried to get divorced, escalating the first. #3 is the LW taking him back, inviting a couple decades worth of unnecessary drama into her life. This doesn't just happen and it's not required- I can firmly and honestly say that such a thing would NEVER happen to me since I'd be filing divorce papers the moment #1 happened. Then I'd have a few months of drama as I got divorced, and I'd go back to my relatively drama-free life thereafter.

It seems particularly telling that her reasons for wanting him back have nothing to do with the person he is now. He used to be her only support network, but nothing about their relationship seems to be supportive at this point. He shat the bed on their relationship, so let him lie in it.

Whatever LW is, she isn't what she calls herself.

@31 The only thing we're missing is a manifesto. I have a difficult time figuring out what's up with this dude (ex-christian libertines is typically a female-only trope), but I can draw that GF from memory.

I'm genuinely confused what "super gay except for one dude " means in reality.,. I feel like you got married under the influence of a cult: he's straight, you're gay, you're both 30, break up.

EmmaLiz @48, I too presumed that if she had children she would have said so. Agree they should split quickly before the (future?) mother claims his assets in a paternity suit.

After @50, yes, this one was the tipping point for you personally. Why? Bias on your part. QED.
I'm willing to go out on a limb and presume I know and have known far more poly people than you do, and in 20+ years of knowing dozens of poly people, "secondary lied about birth control and entrapped someone else's primary" has happened ONCE. So, no, this situation is not something a reasonable person would have seen as inevitable. Most people trust their spouses, that's why they marry them; most poly people use birth control just fine, since they know it's even more important when there are multiple partners involved. This guy behaved selfishly and recklessly. In no way is that her fault or responsibility.

EmmaLiz @51, good theory that in this time when his own sin came back to bite him so hard on the ass, Mr CORNER is returning to the comfort of rigid religion to "solve his problems." God will forgive him and everything will go back the way it was if he (and his wife) repent from their sin! Sorry dude, Jesus won't fix this mess.

Venn @53/DC270 @57, indeed you are correct. Risking the wrath of LarryStone, CORNER is no more "super gay" (she's, again, homoflexible at most, a Kinsey 5 if you will, if she still desires her husband) than they have an "open marriage" which Athari @21 rightly amended to "polyamorous." However, I suspect she will be much happier if she ditches the jerk and rounds her identity up to gay for the purposes of avoiding douchebag men and unintentional pregnancies for the rest of her life.

Good advice from Dan. CORNER is asking, 'am I an asshole...?'. No. Do not even begin to internalise your husband's warped perspective. Insist on your condition--keeping your girlfriend. I didn't at first follow (not until the follow-up) what her husband's reasons were for asking she leave her gf.

Good to see raindrop @9 is no longer trolling us, just stating his (his?) sincere views. They come to laugh but stay to pray.

@8. fathom. That's a sober assessment, and still has to be balanced against 'I love my step-daughter'. Thank you.

@14. Donny. Her only family and link to her background for the last ten years? Not that easy. Of the two, he is by far the bigger idiot. The only idiot.

@17. Erica. Yes, exactly. She should figure out what's going on in his head.

@24. pythag. Yes, I hope she's not taking her husband back out of 'nostalgia'. A lot of what I'd advise in detail depends on the specifics of the caregiving she will be providing for her husband's child. And on the relationship she will have with his former partner, the child's mother.

@30 Bi & @32. Traffic. It's not utterly inconceivable to me that her husband's child will be a huge source of joy and meaning in CORNER's life. You don't always get to choose where that comes from.

@37. curious. The person with least issues to work through is CORNER. It does sound to me as if her husband has thrown himself back on Baptist-like certainties now the going has got tough.

Ms Fan - I think your advice has the highest probability of success. I was going a little more deeply, though, and opining that LW doesn't (perhaps a "yet" can be inserted here) think in that strongly an SS manner. (I could restate my aim of coining a new term or appropriating another old and practically useless one that won't be confiscated later, but I shan't.)

@63. Venn. 'Super-gay' doesn't necessarily mean 'I identify as a lesbian'. It just means 'I am really attracted to, really into dating and having sex with women'. CORNER's usage is not wrong.

@37 Harriet_by_the_bulrushes
"The person with least issues to work through is CORNER"

I buy that!

Having spent a lot of time lately around quite young people, many of them queer, I can attest that you guys are overthinking the use of "I'm super gay". It's just a thing the youngs are saying, sort of a celebration of personal sexual discovery/identity. Whether or not the LW is actually bi or else gay but still continuing to have sexual feelings for her husband out of personal familiarity is a question only she can answer. What seemed relevant to me was that the use of the phrase "turns out I'm super gay" (as well, to a lesser extent of saying 'the ladies' which is another thing I see young queer women say a lot but also my older bi bf says it too so this might be more a les thing than a young thing) indicated to me that even though she's at least 30, she comes across as significantly younger- going through the sorts of personal journeys that would be more common for very young women these days and expressing them that way. The fact that she has such extremely naive views of welcoming this child (and the mother) into her life and thinking it will work out with her husband all contribute to this interpretation. Religious fundamentalism can stunt people as can early marriage. She has a choice right now- she's at a crossroads. She can set off on her own and build a new life (sky's the limit) or have her life defined by this young religious marriage for the next few years (if not forever). Regardless, a situation like this destroys all naivety- she has to own whatever happens later.

Another thing to consider, LW, is that custody arrangements usually include restrictions on where the two people sharing custody can live. So if you stay in this relationship, you are tying yourself and your life options for the next two decades to your husband's ex.

Harriet_by_the_bulrushes @61: Whether or not a kid can bring joy into her life, is beside the point. A cheating husband who abandoned her once and then put conditions on her for him to come back, plus a babymama that wants hubby to divorce LW and marry her? The only thing that's bringing into her life is shit.

About "super gay" -- I knew an... interesting couple I lived with in residential treatment. One I'll call L was an asexual nonbinary person I've mentioned before. The other was a trans (though it's more complicated that that; I'll explain later) girl/woman (she was so young in age and immature in personality that I struggle to apply the word "woman" to her) I'll call E. Both were very young -- L was 18 or 19 I believe and E was 17 or 18. (I was around 22 at the time, so not super old, but I felt much older than these 2.)

They were very annoying for a bunch of reasons (unrelated to their gender identities and orientations! -- remember, this was a residential mental health treatment program; everyone had issues), one of which being that they would curl up on the couch in the common area, taking up as much room for 2 people as 4 people would normally take up, watch some children's cartoon show no one else liked, and giggled while saying loudly, "We're so gay!" and "Super gay!" back and forth to each other for, I swear, a full hour.

Now, before E came to treatment, L was making significant progress with their issues. I knew them for a number of months and, while they were somewhat abrasive sometimes, I liked them as a person. Then E arrived.

Despite being about 17, she claimed to have a "soulmate" back home (a trans boy, I believe; I say "boy" because E said he was even younger than her). E said her gender changed from day to day. We were meant to ask her every morning whether she wanted to be called "she" or "they" that day. Sometimes it would change midday and she would correct us with annoyance, despite us having no way of knowing when she would flip.

(I am using female pronouns for her because she dressed and otherwise presented as entirely female, almost every day during the period of time when I bothered to ask she said she would be "her" that day, and I eventually settled into just always using female pronouns for her because I was struggling with my own shit and didn't want to direct unnecessary energy towards determining what pronouns to use every day for one annoying person who never bothered to ask me a single thing about myself or how I was doing.)

E was also "Otherkin." This is a community of people, primarily online, who "identify" as (mostly) non-human entities. They say it's as important as a gender identity. Some identify as animals, others identify as stars, and some identify as cartoon characters (or other fictional entities, whether pre-existing or created by themselves). Some even identify as actual people, alive or dead, who exist independently as, I'll say it again, actual people. (Before I knew how seriously E took the idea of identifying as non-human, I joked that I was really a jellyfish and wished people would respect my cnidarian identity. She said, "Really?" and I confusedly said, "No." I thought she was talking about having a spiritual connection to animals or something, not believing that she was truly a cartoon character.)

E told me that for her, she knew that in an alternate universe or past lives via reincarnation or something of the sort she * was * the various cartoon and video game characters she identified as because she dreamed about being them. E later would decide that her name she chose for herself as a woman (not her dead name!) no longer suited her because for chunks of time she "was" different fictional characters. She accused me of being transphobic when I refused to call her by the name of a different cartoon character every day and asked that she settle on one name please.

ANYWAY -- despite E having a "soulmate" back home, she and L quickly became involved in what I assume was a nonsexual romantic relationship because both (loudly) said they were asexual. I was never able to ascertain whether E told her other partner about the relationship with L, whether that was okay with the partner, whether E ended the other relationship, or whether E was lying to her other partner. I know that for at least the first few weeks she was lying to her partner.

L and E's relationship was entirely codependent and unhealthy. I watched L slowly start spending all their time with only E and no other people, be increasingly agitated when they were separated from E for a few hours, and have strange, passive-aggressive "fights" with E that usually ended in the two of them on the couch loudly telling each other how "super gay" they were. I don't know how this shitshow ended because I moved to another building and then another campus of the same program in a different city.

I would not have cared one bit if the two of them weren't so loud (shouting while talking to each other and constantly playing loud pop music), in-your-face, hogging the common room TV constantly, and generally inconsiderate to everyone else around them

...

ANYWAY... That was a super long way of saying that the phrase "We're so gay" or "super gay" has strange connotations for me. And I suppose also that I have anecdotal evidence that young people call their relationships "super gay" when they are in not strictly homosexual relationships (non-sexual non-binary relationship).

I thank Ms Muse for the integrity that went into the provision of that Own Goal.

However people may actually happen to use the term, if it were to have any useful application, it would refer to how claimants think and move through the world. LW's mind is too OS. C'est tout.

@69. Traffic. She says she wants him back, though. (Of course she has to be super-careful on the terms and know what she's getting into with the childcare and contact with the child's mother). Telling her she shouldn't take him back comes a bit close to saying she understands nothing about her situation--which, to me, is unsympathetic. The question she asked was, 'am I an asshole' for wanting to hold onto her gf (to which the response was universal), not 'should I take him back?'.

This has got to be a record for most spam on a thread.