Fictional polyamorous yuri trio that all love each other? WONDERFUL. I've been imagining being part of that since I was like,10, and rewinding Beauty and The Beast to play over that tale as old as time or whatever song they have on the ending credits, and marching up and down my bedroom doing the same to the three musketeers 'all for love’ or whatever.
Scratched the poor vhs.
But yeah, I’m just terribly *relieved* that it’s only a character, and not a real person. Nothing more tragic that the real gone too real.
Oooh nonononono. Dangerous move, polyamory. Way worse than an affair, where clear lines are drawn. Polyamory on an already shaky relationship doesn't spice things up: it shatters the shaky relationship, and either one set pairs off... or everyone just walks away from it hurt. My marriage absolutely would survive a third partner for life (specifically a girl, takin applications, get in line! xD), but none of my previous 'relationships' were so lucky to survive mere sexual looseness in undefined relationships, let alone the actual polyamory with real emotional stakes. Either the polyamory stops, or the relationship stops. It's the sort of thing that can only be built on a solid foundation, and even then: the chance that you find a partner that is actually remotely-equally attracted to two people of different sexes is... it's extremely low.
It's not just in my relationships either. My elder sister's 'new' husband, after having like 6 kids with one lady, decided alongside his first wife 'hey, lets spice it up', and they then were a package deal with my old sunday school teacher lady. Until his first wife decided 'actually, she treats me like, way better, and the sex is better too', and the guy was not only cuckolded by a woman, but she also got the house and child support from the divorce... not to mention a snazzy new lover! Guess who's no longer together: the IRL total GL-cuckolding of the Macho Man didn't even stick! >___<
I even had it from the opposite perspective with my last longer term relationship, well... rather it should be said that I mostly just let her go for it, because the relationship's foundation was inherently unstable and I didn't think we'd be dating/together for very long at all.
She was like, hey, let's get 3p going with *some guy* who was pretty scrawny looking, and I said 'whatever, sure'. Didn't work out, as he was almost as uninterested in seeing me naked as I was in seeing him, but I left her to it, and I did some soul searching as I hung out with the guy's way-sexier 60 year old father outside. That was actually really fun even despite the emotional hoopla that was her being entirely willing to throw me under the bus just to get dicked. I didn't care even the slightest about her having sex with guys where I didn't have to see it, but I certainly cared where that overlapped with 'having sex with me'. She apologized loads the next morning when she came back, but the only thing I cared about was the order of operations in her head. I mean, me.... if I'm in a relationship with someone already, and we're going to get frisky with someone and the person I'm in a relationship is more or less kicked out of the room: I'd be stickin with my partner, yknow? Still, relationship was a pitiable disaster that lasted almost 4 years, and not even one of the 3 times we got around to actual polyamory did it remotely work out for us.
As a complete aside relating to the subject of free love/polyamory/affairs: I'm still pissed about her breaking down over airport guy. I've never had a kiss that awesome, not before or since: the guy was like walking talking pheromones that just oozed with class and sex (he was harder to look at for me than a rusalka was for Mira in Falling Petals). She'd tried to sleep with some guy and his wife (didn't work out, they'd had a baby and he decided to pull the 'I'm a serious husband' card on her after inviting her, lol) the very night that I'd boarded the plane to go, and I was all 'glhf'. Then when I asked her if she minded if I slept with only the hottest man on fucking Earth and he fucking *dug* me in the ANC airport, and at first I got a yes texted back, and so everything was just awesome. You've never known attraction until you've decided that getting a cab and a hotel (omg he was going to pay for it all too fuckfuckfuck FUCK I missed out) is a completely reasonable thing to do from an airport at 2 in the morning... until she broke down over text and I missed out on airport guy (I shall never forget the missed opportunities) because I had to console her own unfortunate failure to get laid (I mean, she could have asked me before I left, but no dice). Never forgive. Never forget. Polyamory or greater sexual freedom with an emotionally weak love interest fucking blows, fam, especially when you check your phone while the sexiest man who may have ever lived goes and buys you a water from the vending machine. Forgiveness > Permission in circumstances like that. She'd left me hanging for two months before it >_____< Fuck always doing 'the moral' thing: sometimes you've just got to do the selfish thing for your own sake!
Anyway: if OP's mystery friend's core concern was truly the type who would feel guilty for her actions: she wouldn't be contemplating leaving the relationship/breaking up without talking to him. At that point: an affair isn't likely enough in my mind to cause her any more guilt than she might otherwise have.
Hmmmmm, I was thinking of polyamory not as a way to fix a broken relationship, but more like something to give her sexual pleasure when she doesn't get it with her future husband, though while she still maintains a stable relationship with him.
Like, my mother's current boyfriend was married to a woman that he just... Didn't love. At some point they both realized they didn't love one another, they were just good friends that were married, and had kids.
So what they did was to just... Stay together to raise the children, and then they divorced once the children were old enough to handle it well... And up until that point, they were totally fine with one another, they were good friends that happened to live together and raise their kids together, but weren't a couple anymore.
... Of course things are different when one of the parties is romantically invested while the other is not, but I mean to say that it is possible to have a stable relationship even without love. And then the polyamory could be built on top of that solid foundation.
I mean, it's already a situation where not everybody will be happy. Either the husband to be likes the wife to be and will be crushed by her wanting to end their relationship, or he doesn't like his wife to be and can go ahead and freely say 'good riddance' in which case the wife to be is then homeless with no assets for at least a short while.
Nobody wins in this damnation game.
The only 'positive' paths forward for anyone involved in this specific situation are either to stay together and try to be more lovey-dovey-happy... or for her to have affairs/date while still bound in the infinite pre-matrimony of betrothal until she can leave the husband to be and 'hopefully' be happy with the new guy. The guy's going to suffer either way, so morally speaking: keeping the girl's suffering down may infact be the 'happiest' path forward short of making up with her husband (which I would suggest a thousand times first).
Gotta be honest, even if the husband to be will be crushed if she ends the relationship, doesnt mean that she should do her very best to make it even worse. It is like adding insult to injury. I mean, even if she doesnt love him anymore she can atleast have the decency to not have an affair. They are together for 10~ years and just because she doesnt love him anymore doesnt mean that she doesnt consider him to be atleast a 'good friend' who she shouldnt hurt even more. But that is just my morals speaking. She already is leeching of her fiance and has only excuses to be not self-sufficient, her having an affair in that situation would just make her less worth in my eyes. If shes able to feel any guilt then it would make her feel only more guilty and her fiance would just be more hurt.
Only way forward is to resolve the already existing issues, not adding more issues.
