She’s made all the mistakes, so you don’t have to… Ask Erin is a weekly advice column, in which Erin answers your burning questions about anything at all.
Q.
Hi Erin,
My boyfriend and I have been together for almost three years. We have been living together for over a year, if you count quarantine.
I recently came out as bisexual, and since then, my boyfriend has been hinting at wanting me to have sex with a woman. We have spoken about threesomes as an idea for the future but never as an actual plan to do anything.
This weekend, he got drunk and decided to tell me that he would like to include one of his friends from college in a threesome.
This came as a surprise for me and made me feel very insecure and uncomfortable.
We were able to have a conversation about it, and I told him I am not open to it right now, especially not with someone he already has some sort of relationship with. He also told me this would be a dealbreaker long-term, which came as a surprise to me as we were planning on getting married.
Now, I am questioning everything about our relationship or if I even should trust him around his female friends, and it’s making me go insane.
He has never done anything to make me feel this way before, and I am afraid to go off the deep end with jealousy and mess up our relationship.
What should I do?
A.
Ugh. There is a lot that bothers me here.
Your boyfriend has taken something momentous for you—coming out— and made it about him.
It’s a fair assumption that your sexuality has nothing to do with your boyfriend’s desires. And it’s also a reasonable assumption that you came out to him, not to fulfill his fantasy but to stand in your truth. It tells me that he’s self-centered, likely the type of person who makes everything about themself. It’s fine that he has the desire for a threesome. What’s not okay is taking your sexuality and using it to get what he wants.
He assumes that your bisexuality equates to a desire for non-monogamy, and those are entirely separate.
This feeds into the bias that bisexual = “greedy.” But, again, there is nothing wrong with opening a relationship up to including other people, sexually or otherwise. But both people in the primary relationship should agree with this! I get SO MANY emails about this type of conflict in relationships—one partner wants to be polyamorous, but the other wants to be monogamous, or one wants a threesome, and the other does not, etc.
Bullying you into a threesome, no matter who it is with, is not conducive to the trust necessary for a non-monogamous relationship to work.
Trust is a vital part of any relationship, monogamous or otherwise. It’s challenging to feel trust when your partner pushes you to do things outside of what feels safe. Having a threesome with someone he is friends with doesn’t feel safe for you. That’s a reasonable parameter to have. He doesn’t respect that, which leads me to believe he doesn’t show you a whole lot of respect.
While he may not have done anything before this to make you feel insecure, he is now. Think about that when you look forward to a future with him. Is this the kind of person YOU want to be with long-term?
Often, when we feel we are losing someone, we hold on tighter, even if we’d had our doubts beforehand.
A lot of that is ego. It’s a blow to one’s confidence and self-esteem to find oneself insecure in a relationship that one used to feel secure within. You mentioned that he told you this was a dealbreaker for him. Consider this; is his behavior a dealbreaker for you? You deserve to be in a relationship with someone who shares your values, respects your boundaries, and doesn’t disregard who you are and what you want out of the relationship.
Decisions about monogamy, either way, should be an agreement that BOTH people in the relationship feel comfortable with. It’s good information he’s given you. Now you get to decide if this works for YOU.
The information within Ask Erin should in no way be interpreted as medical advice because I’m not a medical professional. But I am here to help — to share the wisdom I’ve gained after years of making mistakes. If you have a question for me about relationships, addiction, dating, friendships, depression, parenting, sex, consent, what I’m watching, what I’m reading, what I’m listening to, Malachite, or anything at all, use the contact form HERE or email me: askerin@erinkhar.com. As always, your anonymity is golden.
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