Estimated reading time: 22 minutes
Dear Dr. NerdLove:
This is the story – my “wife” and I aren’t actually married but we’ve been with each other for a long time and we have a kid together so that’s how we refer to each other. I’ll call her Alpha. Her best friend shall be referred to as Beta. Her best friend’s husband can be named Charlie. I’ll just be me/I.
Alpha and Beta have been friends since they were little kids. At some point in being young adults, they started hooking up with Charlie. A “thruple” as Alpha has called it. 3-way sex and the whole deal. Not just once but many times. I can’t tell you because I’ve never asked for specifics. I’ve never asked for specifics on her head count either. Anyways, during this time there was a massive fight where Alpha had her eye socket broken by a lamp that Beta threw at her. Alpha left the state and moved back to her home state. My assumption is that the fight was over Charlie but this is denied. I am pretty good at spotting lies… Fast forward a bit – Beta and Charlie are married with kids.
A few months after Alpha and I got together she told me about the relationship. That it meant nothing. It was a rebound and it was just sex. I didn’t think too much of it. Like ok. That’s wild stuff considering I can do my head count on one hand but whatever. Then I don’t know less than a year later maybe… Alpha had basically moved in with me. Beta and Charlie stop by for a visit. I was so uncomfortable that I left my own home and basically hid in my backyard on an “important work call”. They all left to go kayaking together while I stayed home.
Clearly, I was not ok with them hanging out and having fun together. I don’t believe that’s right. Maybe there is something messed up about me but I see it as a huge slap of disrespect right in the face.
It took me some time to accept it after that. At first, I didn’t want Alpha even talking with Beta. I blame that on how upset I was about the original meeting. After I got past that and realized that Alpha and Beta are best friends, I said “ok. Be friends. Just please don’t have her send you photos of him. Don’t talk about him”. They are boundaries that made me feel secure in a situation where I simply don’t.
So, Alpha and I are in her home state while Beta and Charlie are in CO. Alpha has some family that live very close to Beta. Well, Alpha said she wanted to go and visit family. I told her that’s great. I had too much work and couldn’t go. We discussed her spending time with Beta. I said it was ok but asked my boundaries be respected. Alpha told me that she wasn’t even going to see her anyways out of respect. When Alpha and her daughter came home, her daughter said “yea we got to see Beta and spent the day at the park with them”. So Alpha hid it from me. Omission is lying. She said she simply forgot to tell me and that she thought we agreed that it was ok.. like she didn’t remember telling me she wouldn’t. And that it was an oversight that she didn’t tell me that it was happening. Seems suspicious to me.
Fast forward a couple of years and we talked about getting married. Alpha said that Charlie needed to be there and I said no way. And that became a large argument. Alpha fights for Charlie constantly. I don’t understand it. She says she’s fighting for Beta but is there a difference?
Anyways, the last few years I’ve started to let go. I’ve been more comfortable with Beta. Even talking to her when she’s on the phone. Alpha and I had a child of our own. He’s 2. But we needed some help because we had some communication issues. The first day, Charlie gets brought up. Alpha talks about how she always pictured her best friend’s husband being best friends with her husband. I said there is just no way. I’m not ok with that. We dove into it a little bit and seemed to move past it. Well, on the last day of counseling we are asked “is there anything else you guys want to dive into?” And you’ll never guess what Alpha says! Oh, it was obvious? Hmm. Sorry. But yea, she brings up Charlie again and how she wants me to be ok with it and says that I have issues and problems and I’m damaged. She wants them around and she wants us to be friends and I should be ok with that.
Look, I’m don’t think I’m crazy when I say that being friends with a dude that banged my wife isn’t something I need to check off.
I’d also like to say that our sex life is dull. The craziest thing we do is shower sex and Alpha hates it. I can’t comprehend how she goes from 3 ways to being a dead fish in bed. I’ve asked her to do more. Touch me more. Anything and she doesn’t. Maybe that’s part of my problem too. I don’t know. I’m not an ugly guy. I’m actually very attractive and I’ve had women offer to “suck me off every day”. I didn’t end up with them because I wanted someone better. But I don’t want a stick in the mud either and that’s what I have.
Sorry to go off on a rant there. I’ll get back to the main story… The last appointment with the counselor was yesterday. When she said that, I shut down. I didn’t want to be touched anymore. I wanted to leave. I became very depressed. Today she kept pushing it and pushing it and I finally told her all of what I was thinking. This is copy and pasted with some minor changes for names sake “No, Alpha. Because you’re asking me to be friends with someone, I can’t be friends with. Because you’re forcing me into an impossible situation where I am either the bad guy for not being friends with someone or I “suck it up” and I’m depressed, humiliated, defeated, anxious, uncomfortable in my thoughts, insecure in my skin and so much more. You cannot possibly comprehend what you’re asking of me as a man and how completely terrible it is. But I’m trying. You know what though? All I can think about is the 3 of you together. All I can think about is how wild you were. All I can think about is how you must’ve liked it because you went back again and again. All I can think about is how I am not enough. All I can think about is what you’ll get from him and not from me. I’ve compromised and I did everything I could and that’s not enough which means I’m not enough.”
This message caused a yelling fight where my feelings are shut down because I’m simply wrong. Yea right. She said everyone she spoke with said that I should be ok with him. Yea right. She said her personal therapist told her that it’s unfair for Alpha and Beta because Alpha and can to Beta about me but Beta cannot talk to Alpha about Charlie. When I heard that I asked Alpha “ok, who is more important, Charlie and Beta or ME” and Alphas response is that we are equal. I ran. I literally ran down the street as fast as I could to get the hell away from Alpha.
See, I had a best friend that I’ve known since I was a kid. The whole family was part of my family. They didn’t want to be around Alpha. They are no longer part of my life. It was that simple for me. No one had to ask me the question. I answered in action but the point is that if asked, it’s immediately Alpha. 1000 times over. But when I specifically ask, she can’t say one over the other. We are tied. So then I’m 2nd. Because the true way of doing places is the 1st person that got 1st is labeled as 1st and the 2nd person so tied with 1st is considered 2nd place.
I’m at a loss here. There is a lot going on and my thoughts ran a bit. There is more to this than what I’ve said. To put it straight. I am also a pretty angry person so imagine yelling and frustrations on my end. That doesn’t mean I’m wrong but I do know I need to try to stay calm more.
Help me. How can I now forgive her for saying I’m equal to Beta and Charlie?
Who Comes First?
This is going to be a thorny one, WCF, because there’re a lot of issues embedded in your question – ones that I don’t think you’re necessarily aware of. It’s going to require a fair amount of detangling, because a lot of these issues are all caught up in one big knot. And I want to say up front: there are things that you have been doing that have made things much harder than they ever should have been… but those have been ultimately obscuring the ultimate problem at the center. This is going to be a conversation with The Chair Leg of Truth and it’s going to suck, because there’s a truth at the core of all of this that’s been hidden for a long, long time, and it’s time to finally bring it to light.
But the first thing I need to address isn’t necessarily an issue of the relationship but a misunderstanding: you don’t seem to understand what boundaries are. Boundaries are about you and how you choose to respond to certain actions or choices, not about what other people are “allowed” to do. Boundaries are about you, not them.
Telling someone “Please don’t tell me about so and so, it causes me anxiety” is expressing a boundary. Saying “I’m not going to do X, because it’s not my responsibility to do X for you” is expressing a boundary. Similarly, saying “If you do Y when I’ve specifically asked you not to, I will do Z” is expressing a boundary. You are stating that these are things that you won’t put up with or accept, and the actions you will take if someone does those things anyway. This is entirely about you – actions or behaviors you will or won’t accept and what you will do as a result. It’s not saying “you can’t”, it’s saying “I won’t” or “I will.
When it’s about another person, it’s no longer a boundary, because it’s not your expectations, limits and responses. As soon as it becomes about dictating another person’s behavior, it’s not a boundary. Saying “You aren’t allowed to see this person” isn’t a boundary, it’s a demand; you’re trying to control another person’s actions.
So, when you say to Alpha “Don’t have [Beta] send you photos of [Charlie]”, you’re now trying to control both Alpha and Beta’s actions. You don’t have the right to dictate how Alpha or Beta conduct their friendship, nor whether they can talk about mutual friends, exes or whomever. You can say “Please don’t tell me about Charlie” or “Could the two of you please not talk about Charlie around me”, but you don’t get to say that these actions are forbidden. At most you could say “I’m not going to be in a relationship with someone who ignores that doing X in front of me causes me anxiety”, but then you have to be ready to actually follow through with that if they do so.
Now, to start with the outer layers of the problem: I think it’s safe to say that the biggest contributor to obscuring the ultimate problem, are your feelings of jealousy and insecurity. It seems pretty clear to me that the existence of Charlie, as well as Alpha’s relationship with Beta feels threatening to you. It seems fairly obvious that you don’t feel secure in your relationship with Alpha, and her past makes you uncomfortable. I think it’s important for you to dig into precisely how and why it bothers you, because you keep framing it in terms of “disrespect”, which isn’t the issue here. Likewise, your bringing up how you ditched a friend who didn’t like Alpha, doesn’t justify the demands you’re making of her. This behavior is a distancing and distracting tactic for you. It’s obscuring the fact that your discomfort is deeper than “he used to bang my partner”. After all, the key words here are “used to” – as in “it happened in the past” and “she is with you now, not with him”.
If you’re worried that perhaps Alpha would like to resume a sexual relationship with Charlie, or that she cares for Charlie more than she cares for you – and it’s clear that you are – then that’s fine. It’s understandable. It’s not clear as to whether that’s the truth, but we’re talking about feelings, not facts right now. That worry is something you should have been talking about with Alpha and the couple’s counselor you were seeing. However, if you want the counseling to actually help, then it’s vital that you actually address that fear, openly and honestly, rather than framing it in terms like “disrespect”. You’re afraid that Charlie represents a threat to your relationship and you ultimately want to feel secure that Alpha wants to be with you instead of him. Moreover, it seems pretty clear to me that part of why you’re distancing yourself from this fear and not actually addressing it directly, is that you’re worried that if you push the issue, then Alpha will choose Charlie, not you.
That worry is valid. That doesn’t mean it’s accurate, but the emotion itself is real and valid. You’re feeling that fear, regardless of whether it’s true or not and that’s ok. Feelings happen. Jealousy happens. The fact that you feel jealousy about Alpha’s relationship with Beta and her history with Charlie doesn’t inherently make you a bad person. As I have said many times before: feelings and emotions, even ugly or unpleasant ones, are inherently neutral. What you do about those feelings and because of those feelings is where trouble arises, and that’s what’s happening here. The feelings aren’t the source of the conflict, they’re the motivation for your behavior. The way you’re trying to deal with those feelings is causing friction and anger in your relationship.
And to be perfectly blunt about it: you’re not actually trying to resolve the root cause; you’re trying to make those feelings go away, and you’re doing it by trying to control Alpha. That’s never going to work, because you don’t get to control people, no matter how strongly their behavior makes you feel. You can only control how you behave in response to the way other people act, and you’re doing so in a way that’s incredibly counterproductive.
Here’s the thing: the way you’re trying to make the fear go away isn’t going to work, you’re not actually dealing with the fear. The issue isn’t Alpha, it’s you; Alpha is the subject, not the source. If you focus on trying to control Alpha, instead of addressing your feelings, then you will never feel secure or safe in the relationship. This is because you know good and well that even if you could perfectly control her behavior, it won’t actually fix things. You still wouldn’t trust her, you wouldn’t feel as though you can relax your guard, and so you would be in a state of constant vigilance over her because of it. This is because you know, deep down, that you can’t control how she feels. Even if you were able to make her follow your rules, there would come a time when she sighs a particular way or gets a faraway look in her eye and everything that you’re afraid of will come rushing back. You may have kept her away from Beta and Charlie, but you haven’t changed how she feels about them.
That’s what the anxiety is about. You’re afraid about how she feels about you, how she feels about Beta and Charlie, and how those feelings will stack up compared to one another. And I hate to tell you this, but trying to make her pretend that Charlie no longer exists isn’t going to make those feelings go away. Nor will it make her past un-happen, nor will it make you feel more secure about yourself and about your relationship with Alpha.
(I’d also point out that Alpha also had a sexual relationship with Beta and that doesn’t seem to threaten you the way that her relationship with Charlie does. You may want to sit with precisely why that is and why you think it’s different with Charlie.)
Now to be absolutely clear, I am not saying that Alpha is pure and good and without blame. Quite the opposite: I think that she’s been handling this poorly. There’s a lot about her relationship with Beta that seems… complicated at best (the cracked orbital, for example), but she also has had a hand in creating unnecessary confusion and stress, and I think it set the stage for this conflict. I can understand why she acted the way she did, especially at the start, but that doesn’t mean that it was the right or smart call. Soft-pedaling her relationship with Beta and Charlie in the beginning, for example, was an attempt to make it seem less threatening to you. I think she knew that being honest about it and the importance it held for her, would have meant that your relationship with her would’ve ended before it began.
The problem is, though, is that by soft-pedaling things in the beginning, she gave you the entirely wrong idea about how important her friendship with Beta, and by extension, Charlie, actually is. That set you both up for an almost inevitable conflict.
I also think she was wrong to lie about seeing Charlie when she was with Beta – less the initial omission and more the “oh, I thought I told you” part. I understand why she left it out: she was trying to avoid an entirely unnecessary (to her mind) fight about the matter. That in and of itself is actually a recurring issue for the both of you in this relationship, which I’ll get to in a moment.
However, not being honest afterwards was less about avoiding the fight and more about absolving herself of responsibility. She lied about forgetting, in part because she didn’t think what she did was wrong, and so she doesn’t think she should be blamed for it. That is profoundly not helpful. Frankly, I think her actions have made things worse, prolonged a conflict that’s been hanging over your relationship since the beginning, and contributed significantly to where you are today.
However, I think you still haven’t fully reckoned with your part in this and how you are also making this worse. You’re displacing your feelings rather significantly, to a point that it makes it hard to know if you’re being honest in your retelling here. When you say “she argues for Beta but really means Charlie”, you make it difficult to know if you’re substituting what you think she’s saying for what she’s actually saying when you describe what she says and does. That makes it hard for me to have a clear picture about what’s actually going on.
But just as importantly, you’re dancing around your actual fears and not saying what is actually bothering you.
This is important, because this reticence to actually be honest and up front and bring up the actual problem bleeds into multiple different areas in your relationship. You complain about how tedious and unsatisfying your sex life is, but it seems like you haven’t actually expressed the underlying idea that you want to feel desired by her. What you’re asking for may be for her to express that desire – especially if your receiving love language is touch – but it comes across to her as a demand: “I want you to do things that make me feel good”. Considering how you have been trying to assuage your anxieties through demands for control, I’m not surprised that Alpha is refusing. What she’s hearing is you’re saying “do this, do that, I command you”; what you are trying to say is “please show me that you still desire me and help me feel like I matter to you.” And I’m not sure you realize that this is what you’re ultimately asking for.
If you can’t express that to yourself, then you can’t have an honest and serious discussion about it with Alpha, and no amount of couples counseling will ever help you resolve the issue. It’s a disconnect, a failure of communication, and it means that you are both arguing past each other and not hearing what the other is actually saying. It’s leading to a place where both of you are making things worse, because you’re ultimately arguing about different things.
Because here’s the thing: you’re not wrong that a lot of her demands and behavior are unreasonable. You aren’t obligated to be friends with your partners’ exes. It’s great if you can be, especially if your partner is close with their ex or exes, but it’s not a requirement. You do have an obligation to be respectful, but that doesn’t mean you have to have that specific kind of relationship. Especially if their ex makes you uncomfortable. It’s as unreasonable for her to insist that you have to be his bro as it is for you to insist that she can’t ever see him again.
Similarly, it’s great that Alpha has always had this dream of how her partner would be besties with Beta’s partner, but that doesn’t guarantee that it will happen, nor does it put an obligation on her partner (whether you or anyone else) to follow through. The fact that she would like this to happen ends at the envelope of her person; she can’t force it on someone just because she wants it that badly.
The same goes with saying “well, everyone I talked to agrees with me”; that’s great, but that doesn’t magically make your feelings change or not matter. Pushing you and pushing you to accept something that clearly upsets you isn’t fair, isn’t kind and is definitely not helping. And if that were the root of the actual problem, I would absolutely say that this is on her. But it’s not.
I’m not surprised that counseling broke down and that you had the fight that you had afterwards, because you two aren’t actually communicating. You aren’t telling her how you’re really feeling and what’s really bothering you – in part because it seems like you haven’t fully accepted it yourself – and so you’re fighting about entirely different things. The fight you had after counseling is the closest you’ve come to actually saying what’s been going on, but you’re both still fighting about symptoms instead of causes, and so you’re both getting hung up on the surface issues.
In fact, by the time you actually stepped up to the line of actually calling out the thing that’s bothering you – the fact that you’re afraid that Charlie matters more to her than you do – you ran off when you got an answer. Not the answer, but still definitely not what you wanted to hear.
And that brings me to the ultimate crux of the matter, and this is what you’re not going to want to hear. Yes, more so than what I’ve been saying about your behavior. I’ve been hammering you on your behavior here, because that’s been the most active part of the problem, and it’s one that is going to follow you to every relationship you have in the future. The way you haven’t been communicating with your actual fears and discomfort to Alpha isn’t specific to your relationship with Alpha. It’s a part of a problem for you, something that you need to address so that you don’t repeat this going forward.
Every woman you date is going to have a past, is going to have exes, and is going to have relationships that may feel threatening to you or make you feel insecure in yourself. If you can’t actually recognize and own those feelings, communicate them and work on them, your future relationships will be repeat performances. And when I say “work on them”, I mean on your own and with your partner; the two of you are supposed to be a team, after all.
This is why asking how to forgive Alpha for saying that you and Charlie are equal isn’t the problem you need to resolve. Her feeling a particular way about someone – especially in comparison to how she feels about you – isn’t something she needs to apologize for, because it’s not necessarily something she’s done to you or against you. You’re asking for the wrong thing, because you’re asking how you can forgive her when what you need to be doing is addressing your feelings and anxieties. If she were to apologize, it wouldn’t solve anything, because she’s ultimately apologizing for how you are feeling
No, here, finally, is the real source of your problems with Alpha, the part that you aren’t going to like: I don’t think this relationship was ever going to work. Period.
I think that, if the two of you had handled things differently from the very start, the biggest difference is that this relationship would have ended sooner, if it ever started at all, simply because I don’t think you and Alpha are right for each other. It’s very clear that the two of you have wildly different values and expectations for what it means to be in a relationship. Much of why you’re both so unhappy now is in no small part because you’ve both been studiously avoiding ever actually admitting or confronting that fact.
I said earlier that you are afraid that if you push the issue, Alpha will choose Charlie. Well… this is the underlying reason for that. She wouldn’t be choosing Charlie; rather, two of you would be forced to accept that this relationship was never going to work – not in the long term, and certainly not in the way you’ve both been trying to make it work. Just as you have been afraid that you already knew the answer, she has also known that if she stopped trying to force the issue and if the two of you actually had the hard conversations about all of this, you would both have to recognize that this isn’t working and can’t work.
From the very start, you and Alpha have been engaging in behavior that was more about avoiding ever having the conversation – and later, fights – that would make this incompatibility clear, rather than about being honest with each other and with yourselves. You both have been trying to pretend that this could work if the other would just quit being so damn stubborn, instead of admitting that you have fundamentally irreconcilable differences.
I think Alpha wants a much different relationship model than you do, and there isn’t a way to compromise that wouldn’t be like sandpaper to your soul for one of you. In and of itself, that’s ok! You’re not a bad person for not wanting a more expansive – or even polyamorous – relationship, any more than Alpha is a bad person for not wanting a closed and monogamous one. But the fact of the matter is that, absent everything else, this is a case of a square peg not fitting into a round hole and no amount of sanding off the edges will make it fit.
At the end of the day, I think you and Alpha have to be honest: even if we leave out your anxieties or her behavior, you both want things that are so intrinsically different and mismatched that there isn’t a way to make this work, no matter how much you care for one another. You’ve lasted this long because you’ve both been trying to avoid admitting what I think you’ve both known for a long time.
I’m not saying you don’t care for each other, and I’m not saying that she cares for you more, less or equally to Charlie. I’m saying that, even though you two care for each other, you’re still not right for each other. Love is a great motivating force, but it doesn’t fix things. Sometimes love, as the bards sing, just ain’t enough.
As much as I hate to say it, I think the best thing you and Alpha can do for one another and your child is to go back to couple’s counseling and start talking about the best ways to wind this relationship down and lay the groundwork to be good co-parents to your child… but not romantic partners.
Good luck.
