Elephant in the room
It wasn’t as if I didn’t know this could happen. In fact, I told A I didn’t want to meet his family at his funeral. It was only half a joke. But it was his choice to keep our relationship private in regards to his family and friends, and it was not for me to decide. So it was that my first direct contact with anybody in his inner circle of family and friends went like this:
“Is this The Girl Left Behind?”
“Yes.”
“This is his sister…did you call the police?”
“I did…”
“I don’t know how you know my brother…”
“I’m the friend he visited in Arizona last fall.”
“I have horrible news…”
This is not really ideal, by any stretch of the imagination. But the moment I sent the e-mail to A’s daughter telling her I was worried, I knew I’d started down this road and would have to follow it to its end.
In case it’s been unclear, I am not the other woman, and never was. A was not the other man, either. When we met, he was already 3 1/2 years down the road to divorce, and he knew I was married because I’d never made any secret of it. And he was just looking for a friend, so that’s what we were. Friends. As we talked, he learned about our polyamory, which at that point was entirely theoretical. Certain experiences and many years worth of conversations had brought E and me to an understanding of polyamory, which was that there was a chance that some day you might run across someone special beyond your spouse that you’d want in your life; that relationship should not equal possession; that love is not a scarce resource, and it tends to multiply, not divide; that expecting one person to be everything to you is a huge burden on them when some days it’s hard for a person to be everything for themselves; that real love is a precious and beautiful thing, and walking away from it is probably foolish; and that this possibility could be accommodated ethically, honestly, and with sensitivity.
That is not to say there weren’t challenges; there certainly were, but through communication, they were overcome in time. You have to get over yourself a lot to do this. You have to let go of jealousy and insecurity as cornerstones of romantic relationships, and embrace trust and abundance. And, at least for me (who admittedly got the best part of the deal), the joy outweighed the challenges by far. But the fact of the matter was, there was no one on the horizon for either of us, and neither of us was interested in trying to actively date while married, having been none too good at it when we were single. So for us, it was just kind of an openness to whatever the universe brought our way. It was mostly a philosophy that we never knew if we’d have a chance to put to any practical application. When I met A, I had no idea what it would lead to, nor did he. He had nice manners; I told him so. He thought I was witty, and told me so. And that’s how it started; it surprised us both.
There are a lot of misconceptions about polyamory, and I suppose that’s because there are as many permutations of what it looks like as there are people doing it. To some people, it’s a completely open marriage where partners have carte blanche to sleep around. For some, it’s just swinging with no emotional involvement whatsoever. For others, it’s a hippified commune-type deal, a plural marriage of interchangeable parts. So to speak. And for others I suppose it’s a religious expression, like the Mormons that live in the wilds of the Arizona/Utah border. I can’t speak to those versions. I can only talk about how it worked for us. For us, the goal wasn’t sex. It was about finding a true emotional connection in a world where they seemed all too rare. And when I met A, the connection was instant and deep, unlike any I’d had with anyone since the moment I’d met E. I knew he was special, but he just wanted a friend, and that’s what I intended to be. And I always was.
As A’s and my friendship grew in strength and depth, E was in the know about my feelings, sometimes more clearly than I was myself. I wouldn’t have had it any other way. Honesty was key, and he knew I was talking to A regularly. A respected E as my husband, and said more than once he would walk away rather than come between us. His own broken marriage made him adamant on the point, but he was no prude, either, and the situation worked for him as long it worked for us. My boys exchanged the occasional e-mail between them, or passed messages through me, and met in person last October. A included E in Christmas gifts; E bought A a birthday present. It was all very civilized.
And I really think that’s what bothers people about it, that it goes against the grain. The paradigm of romantic relationships we are taught is that of exclusivity, of possession, of jealousy as a sign of love, of Romeo and Juliet, where tragic misunderstanding and rash action in the muddled, passionate thinking by the immature is the basis for one of our most enduring allusions to great love. When people think of love relationships, they most often consider them from a scarcity mindset: there is X amount of love that a person is capable of, and if my partner loves anyone else, that means he loves me less. Most people take that for granted as true, so much so that it’s never occurred to them to think about it, and yet…if it were true, no one would ever have children, because if there’s only a certain amount of love available, how could you ever put up with a child taking part of your share? And yet, the people I know who have kids find that they’ve got plenty of love to go around, more love in their heart than they ever thought possible. Love is infinite for the loving heart. Go ahead, love all you want; you’ll make more.
It seems insane to me to throw away a perfectly wonderful, loving relationship whose fires warm steadily day and night for the giddy, crackling flames of a new infatuation. All good relationships settle in to deep friendships with nookie, and to expect otherwise is to be serially dumping or dumped, or at the very least, consistently disappointed. But every day, people dump their current for someone better who turns out not to be better after all, but just seemed that way because of the heady zing of new relationship energy. And they do this because the paradigm of monogamy tells them they have to, that life is always either/or, and never both/and.
Oddly enough, when my brother was getting divorced some years back, he confessed to me that when his wife told him that she’d fallen in love with his best friend, he offered her a poly arrangement, for she admitted she still loved my brother very much, and this other guy, and my brother was willing to let her have them both. He had no interest in losing her; he had no interest in breaking up the family. It was then that I shared with him my views on the subject. I thought it funny, and still do, that we both came to a poly viewpoint independently, having nothing in our family history to nudge us in that direction at all. My parents were of the Kennedy ‘60s, not hippies. They were, and remain, conservative decent Midwesterners with traditional values. They would be appalled.
However, given the option of having her cake and eating it, too, my ex-SIL declined. She couldn’t get her mind around the idea of an openly poly relationship. She preferred the guilt of an affair and the trauma of a divorce with kids involved to living honestly yet unorthodoxly. Many do, although I can’t understand why. And now they swap the kids halfway between their houses every weekend. And my brother is remarried to a cabinetmaker, in another strange parallel that makes the fact that we rarely talk seem hard to understand. We’re obviously much alike.
So that’s where I’m coming from. It was just E and A. I’m not out hooking up with the entire Sonoran navy, nor is E tomcatting around. It was just a situation where love found me, unexpectedly (as it often does), and because of our joint, considered, point of view, I was able to enjoy it ethically and honestly. However, that is not to say I did so openly. My husband and my lover were aware of each other and accepting of the situation, and beyond that, it was nobody’s business but ours. Some friends knew who A really was to me, but they weren’t really comfortable in that knowledge; most knew only that he was my friend and guitar guru, for I didn’t care to face their censure or rejection if they knew the truth. I’m not stupid, and I know what people expect, and what happens to those who rebel against convention. Even in this space, I did not name names, and while I was pretty sure anyone who cared to give 2 seconds’ thought to it could’ve figured it out, it was not my place to out him, and he was content to keep things private. It’s taken me 3 pages to explain my philosophy on polyamory; it’s not a thing that’s easy to explain, especially to an audience potentially hostile to such a libertine arrangement, even if they are Californians. He could never figure out a way to explain the situation, so he just didn’t. He didn’t like hiding me, but the risk of honesty seemed too high, especially with the divorce not yet final. It had the potential to appear pretty sketchy and wrong to someone not open to such a possibility. Maybe it has to you, too. You’d be surprised how normal it really was. I thought it was a bummer; his family and friends sounded wonderful. But I understood why he did it; I was careful in choosing whom I shared the information with myself. This has put me in a bit of a bind on the grieving front, because I have lost a spouse, but most people don’t know that, and may not understand the extent of the grief I express for my “friend.”
All this, then, is preamble to the situation I find myself in, which is to be “the one responsible for finding our dear A passed away” and repository of detailed information not only about him, but them, to A’s family and friends who have no idea who I am. Some secrets are taken to the grave, and while A is untouched by it now, the emergency plan we worked out made my contact with his family inevitable. I guess we both thought that we’d have time enough that I’d meet them in a normal way in time, and it’d be a non-issue. If the circumstances were less unusual, my freezer would be filled with lasagnas, and I would’ve been at the memorial service, and would’ve been there when they cleaned out his apartment instead of hearing about it several days later in an offhand remark from his friend. The fact that I do not get to press my face to his shirts and pillow one more time is just one loss resulting from this situation.
As it is, I have heard from his brother “I heard from my sister that he’d visited Arizona awhile back, but that’s all I knew.” And from his best friend since second grade, “I never knew exactly who you were but A had told me he had a friend that he kept in touch with.” They are now aware of our true relationship, because they’ve found cards I sent, and not many “friends” speak every single day, multiple times a day, nor family members for that matter. They are not, as far as I know, aware of E, but depending on what kind of time they have to spend going through his old e-mails and chat records, they could find out exactly what the relationship was, and the circumstances around it. Having had my blog found twice now, I must assume that eventually they’ll get around to it. Frankly, that would be easier—they would see in his own words that he was a grown man who knew exactly what he was doing, and that nobody was doing anything wrong; it was just unusual.
The elephant in the room, then, the question that hasn’t been asked but I think is inevitable: Why didn’t he tell us about you, when he so clearly told you all about us? It is a question that must bring on bewilderment at best, and at worst, a doubt that they had the relationship they thought they did, for him to keep such a big part of his life a secret. It is the question that is no doubt behind their desire to meet me, to fill in a piece to a puzzle they didn’t even know was there. And that is what I’ve been left in the will: the role of explaining to strangers what their beloved brother and friend could not explain to them himself. I would spare them. I really would. I don’t know what the chances of us continuing a relationship are without him, and if we are to meet just once, it seems not worth it to tilt their world view, and their view of a man we all loved, unnecessarily.
This isn’t the only reason he didn’t tell them, but it is the main one. I am not advertising, for I don’t want to discomfit anyone, but I will not lie, for I didn’t make this choice. He did, and now we all have to deal with it. I will not be forced into a lie, to disavow all knowledge of my loving husband who is helping me through this loss, and whom A himself liked and respected. And yet I’ve not come out and said, when they asked how I’m doing and if I have anyone to support me through this, “Yes, my husband’s been a rock for me.” The lies of omission bother me, because I don’t like them in the first place, and if the truth comes out eventually, I don’t want them to feel betrayed that I didn’t speak up. It’s an untenable position I’m in, and not one of my own making. It wasn’t me who needed to speak up, but I am the only survivor who knows the whole story, so I’m stuck with handling this as best I can. A met several of our friends, a couple of whom knew exactly who he was in our lives, and all of them had heard of him at least by name. Needless to say, I didn’t share this with my family either, and so they only know A as my dear friend in California. But to his nearest and dearest, I am a mysterious stranger who knows too much. We all want to meet each other, and they all tell me how happy they are that he had someone who made him happy. But I’m aware I could get burned, too.
This seems to be one of those secrets that cannot remain hushed, for it is the answer to probably the foremost question in all their minds, and if asked, I will not lie. It would be disrespectful to E, to A’s family, and indicate that I am ashamed of my choices. I am not. And so I’ve been racking my brain to find the softest, most compassionate way to explain this situation to people who are as swamped by their own grief as I am and not only have to assimilate my existence on top of that, but potentially a challenge to everything they thought they knew about A and everything they believe about relationships. Then, as if this weren’t enough, we’ll add in the fact that his divorce was not yet final and a twenty-year age difference, and man, if that doesn’t make for potential good times, I don’t know what does. Plus, I somehow, subtly, have to make sure everyone’s clear on the timeline of events and that I was not the reason for the divorce; his wife asked for it, years before I was even on the scene.
I will talk to A’s friend sometime today, his best friend since the 2nd grade no less. I want to talk to him; I want to talk to all of them. I wish I didn’t have to do this balancing act between protecting their feelings, protecting mine, and protecting his memory, at a time where everyone’s hurting and missing him and feelings are ragged at best. But it is what it is. And when this question comes up, as I’m almost sure it will, I still don’t know what I’m going to say. Part of that is fear; if I tell the truth to one and it filters to the rest of his family, they could easily shut down and shut me out entirely, and that would be that. I don’t want that, which is why I tread so carefully. Then again, I didn’t do anything wrong here, and if they cannot understand and accept, I guess it’s for the best we’re done. They cannot take away what we had. Please, keep your fingers crossed for me. I know there are a hundred ways this could go wrong; but if it went right, I think there could be real healing for all of us in it; I certainly could use some.