From a LW:

I am a woman in my late 30s, a second/additional ‘wife’ (not legally) in a closed triad relationship with a couple who are 11 and 8 years older than me, respectively. They have been married 25 years and I have been with them 17. I have two boys from this relationship (13 and 4). I was brought in when I was 21, pretty fresh out of an abusive relationship so I am really unsure what healthy love looks like. Everyone, myself included, thinks my naivety was a big factor in this relationship and that makes the couple feel very hurt to hear. I don’t believe their motives were predatory. But I’m not sure now if their actions were regardless.

I’ve struggled with things since almost the beginning but it all came to a head a couple of months ago. There are two separate main problems, followed by a few others that are influential but not the main it just ends up stacking the deck.

The first issue is the feeling I have in my gut about being in the triad, in general. Before approaching me about joining their relationship, the husband asked me if I was bi. I said no, I’m straight. He kept pushing that I might or should be (I’m an artist I regularly draw and paint women). I finally said I don’t know. The three of us met up and slept together, which I did like at the time because it was new, but about a year in I realized I wasn’t bi at all. I don’t actually like the experience of sleeping with a woman – I get kind of sick feeling. I also didn’t think I was a jealous person but it turns out I am. When I don’t have a reason to be jealous, I feel a lot of guilt. I stopped feeling either of those things in the last two years but I didn’t feel much at all to be fair which was a different red flag that I didn’t see until it became almost too late.

I’ve ended up the husband’s main sexual partner, but I have a kind of deep loneliness and have always struggled with the idea that I don’t have and will never find my soulmate. I get sad thinking my dad will never walk me down an aisle. And I feel incredibly selfish that I ache when I receive wedding invitations. This triad situation also legally leaves me in a slump, and I have a lot of trouble getting things like health insurance.

The second issue is that although my husband is deeply charismatic, has it in him to be sweet and attentive, and is a good father for the most part, with me he can be incredibly psychologically and emotionally damaging with his words. In a way, he’s just as jealous if not more so than I am. Because we are both creative types he encourages me to pursue my artistic hobbies and career but if I reach certain levels, he’s gotten upset or depressed or called me competitive. I have always been considered quite pretty so he’s insecure about me around others. Last year, I went on a short vacation to our old city (Las Vegas) but I stayed with family the entire time, except one day with my very best friend. He called every night making me feel guilty for hours until I cried myself to sleep. When I got home he woke me up with a terrible smile saying he knows what I was doing (what?) because he found my travel watercolor sketchbook that I forgot to show him I bought for the trip and I wore my “sexy glasses” (they’re the ones I use to see and have glare protection), and wore makeup (about what I usually wear on any family outing). I was so confused. I almost left after that, and a long period of being yelled at multiple times in a week for months. But right when I was about to pull the trigger, the behavior stopped out of the blue around my birthday. For months. I felt uneasy instead of relieved. It doesn’t help that he’s been an alcoholic for 15 years. I’ve seen him quit but only for short periods.

So everything came to a head like this: I had to go to help my mother get to my dying grandmother and my husband’s comments and behavior were quite cold. For instance, he said: “I’d comfort you but I don’t want to feed your depression.” After I returned he told me he was proud of me and hugged me a lot and it made me mad that now he was okay to comfort and have pride in me, but not when my heart was breaking. Then, a week after I returned, the wife got a new job in Florida, meaning we would be moving again, just two years after our last move, which was hell for me. I felt like I was treated like a bad maid and when I was upset, told that I just wasn’t happy unless I was being praised or doted on.

A little while later a series of a few things, most notably my husband spent two nights drinking all night, leaving me to get the kids ready for school while he was still drunk, which led to a couple of arguments. I was told that my expressing that I was traumatized from bad incidents with alcohol in the past both from him and my alcoholic mother was bullshit and that this wasn’t another excuse for me to feel “emotionally abused” (complete with air quotes). They weren’t the worst fights we’ve had but a gate slammed in my head. He went to bed and I wrote a letter that I was leaving. I put my rings next to it. I couldn’t go through one more cycle. I didn’t want to be with someone who didn’t appear to actually like me, waste ten more years of life on it, be in this situation anymore, get dragged around the country based on wife’s jobs.

That was 3 months ago. We’ve had an emotional and grueling move. I wanted to at least separate to think and make sure my thoughts are mine. He’s apologized up a blue streak for everything. He’ll agree to let me go to my mom’s, and then he backtracks. Either I’m “taking his boys away from him” or “leaving him to deal with all the shit and the trauma I leave behind” if he keeps them. To be fair, he seems to have made significant changes (hasn’t had a drink since the first week we got here and has not been losing his temper as much).

Still, I want to separate so I can clear my head, but he says we either work on our marriage together or we’ve done. I understand is points: a separation would be traumatic to the kids; he’s working on things; he didn’t get a 3-month warning, etc. But I felt bait-and-switched. He tells me I am not actually trapped here but when I bring up wanting to go it turns into another long grueling discussion of “this is stupid, you still love me, he loves me dearly and I’m so precious, I’m incredibly selfish and it’s not for the kids and he has to think of the whole family while I’m on my little adventure only wanting to think of myself, I’m having a midlife crisis and just want to be Stella Got Her Groove Back.”

I feel terrible that I don’t want to give it a 3-month chance because I have seen him behave that long before and I feel like it might be a longer trap, and it doesn’t address my doubts in the Triad. On the other hand, I don’t wish to be unfair. He promised me a keyed door lock on the spare room if I stay in the house but he has keys if he feels he needs or wants to enter so not sure why that matters and has said that I can’t keep locking him out forever, as my husband. I understand that too but it makes me feel a bit like a cornered rabbit.

I do feel like I’m being selfish. But I don’t feel ready to say “yes I have the energy to work on this.” I can’t make a solid decision. What should I do?”