Twister Wives

Have you ever been in love with more than one person at once? It's a problem, and probably a curse.

But what if those people were also in love with each other? That would be a blessing.

But like most blessings, it might be attacked by bigots and self-appointed judges. Jealousy would of course show its ugly face, and try to ruin a good thing. Love would prevail in the end, after an uphill battle against envy and prejudice.

I live that story.

My first wife, who we'll call "Anne" for privacy purposes, walked onto the stage of my life in 2010. From the minute I met her, I knew we were destined to be in each other's lives. She looked like a goddess of nature, and her smile at meeting me reverberated for months.

We were friends for almost a year before our first kiss. I still remember the kiss.

We began dating soon after, and our relationship became serious very quickly. Within a month, Anne and I were discussing living together and raising children.

She was my oasis, and I was her confidant.

Three years later, we were living together in a new city and managing a home together.

We were happy, but somewhat lonely, since we were in a new locale without many friends.

Then something happened that transformed our lives in a profoundly unexpected way.

We met a woman, who for privacy purposes, we'll call "Jane". Jane and Anne quickly struck up a friendship. There was an attraction between Jane and me, but she was dating a friend of mine, so it didn't go anywhere at first.

Years later, the three of us had some drinks at my house to celebrate my getting a great new job. As the night continued, I noticed what seemed like flirting between them. At first I was confused and felt a bit like a third wheel. They were giggling at jokes I didn't understand, and caressing each other in tipsy bliss.

Then Jane started to give me the same treatment.

The three of us, in a boozy haze of surprised excitement, made love that night. I hadn't ever experienced anything like it. Anna had always had some bisexual inclinations, like kissing girls in college, but I didn't expect to witness such passion between the two of them. And apparently, Jane had spent years hiding an attraction to me that was literally hot (and sweaty) in character.

The morning after, our fondness for each other was untouched by any awkwardness. We continued to see each other and developed our love triangle, until we finally broached the subject of Anne moving in.

This presented numerous problems. All three of us came from communities where Western ethics are the norm. Monogamy was expected and even enforced at the point of a gun. If any of our parents found out about our little "equilateral triangle" as we called it, we expected to be ostracized and disowned from our own families. Since my relation with Anne was already established and known, we decided to tell people that Jane was a good friend, which was true, and leave it at that.

This arrangement worked well for a while, but it made Jane feel like a less important member of the family, which ruined the "equal" part of our equilateral love triangle.

And then catastrophe struck.

A cousin of mine, who lived in a city about 150 miles away, visited our town for a business conference. I had no warning of his visit, but he saw me and Jane out on the town engaging in some PDA. Rumors travel quickly in my family, so within days I was drowning in calls about my horrible infidelity.

Castigating me wasn't enough, of course, so they had to tell Anna how awful I was and tell her to leave me. Finally, one of these conversations left her so flustered that she impulsively broke our vow of silence and screamed out, "We're both in a relationship with him! I already know!"

Somehow, her informed consent didn't make my family respect the situation more, but further infuriated them. I had to suffer through countless lectures on adultery and "having your cake and eating it too".

I explained that Anna and Jane aren't cakes, and aside from cunnilingus, I don't plan to eat them. It was like talking to a computers with programming errors. They just didn't care that we were happy and loved our relationship(s).

Because my family knew Anne's, and Anne's family knew Jane's, all three of us were soon mired in disillusionment and disrespect from our families. Many of our beloved relatives stopped communicating with us altogether.

It was no longer bliss in the equilateral triangle.

We began to fear real persecution. America has actually jailed bigamists in the past, so it wasn't a huge stretch to imagine. However, it was a relief to not have to hide anymore. We were out of the closet and into the daylight.

When Anne and I had our first child, we received threatening letters from Child Protective Services. Evidently one of our estranged cousins told the local authorities that we were deranged perverts engaged in illegal polygamy and putting our child in danger.

Despite our replies truthfully stating that we were adults engaging in consensual sexual acts in private, Child Protective Services soon scheduled a visit to judge our parental aptitude.

We had a difficult choice to make at that point. We could claim that Jane was just a friend or a roommate, but that would be a lie and contradict the testimony of our family members. Honesty is one of my top values, and being out of the closet was finally starting to feel like a relief to me, so I voted for telling the truth. (One of the nice things about a relationship between 3 people is that the votes never tie.) But we knew that the common law could be used to claim that I was married to Jane as well, which made us illegal bigamists and therefore undeserving of parenthood.

We unanimously decided to stand our ground and admit that we were a trio. In America, we were raised to believe that anything between consenting adults is legal.

The CPS goon squad arrived, and we answered all their questions honestly. They got really hung up on Anne and Jane's bisexuality, and the fact that neither of them preferred traditional monogamy. Their report to the family court judges suggested family therapy, and insinuated that I might be some kind of religious nutjob who belonged on a compound in Utah. They were, however, unable to find true fault with our parenting.

We won the case, kept our child, had some more, and found loving friends who supported our beautiful blooming family. Aside from the occasional lesbian joke, our nontraditional family was treated with dignity and respect.