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Joe opened his bedroom door and sat on his bed. Biting his lip, he pulled his laptop onto his knee and turned it on, found the app Andy had arranged for him to use, and fired it up. On the other side of the screen sat a slim, blonde haired woman dressed in a smart jacket over a faded black t-shirt. She raised her head from her desk and looked at him expectantly. He took a deep breath, turned on the speakers and mic and smiled at the fair haired, slight woman looking at him.
“So then Mr…”
“Andy said that I wouldn’t need to give my name, you know, when he organised this?”
“It doesn’t have to be your real name, just something I can call you?”
“Oh, umm. Ok. then, umm… J, then, I guess?”
The therapist's lips barely turned up at his daft name choice “Right, J.” She replied, with barely an inflection on the name; “I’m Aria. Where do you want to start?”
“Andy said you’re an expert at counselling for polyamorous relationships?”
“That’s right, are you in a poly relationship or are you considering one?”
“We’ve been poly for about half of this year.”
“What can you tell me about your polycule?”
“There’s, umm… four of us.”
The therapist looks at him expectantly, until he’s compelled to continue.
“We’ve worked together for over 2 years now.” He paused, unsure where to go next.
“I don’t normally ask lots of questions in these sessions, J, but I can see that you’re feeling uncomfortable, so I can, if that helps?”
He nodded “Yes Please.”
“Ok, so if I ask a question you’re not comfortable answering, just tell me and we’ll move on, ok?”
He nodded.
“Okay, so your polycule has four members. Can you describe your relationship to the others?”
Joe could see that she was writing while he spoke.
“You’re taking notes?”
“Yes, but I’m doing so on paper at Andy’s request so there’s no data in the cloud to get hacked. I’ve signed an NDA, our appointments are totally confidential, and once you say we won’t have further sessions, the paper records will be destroyed. We’ve done everything we can to make sure that what we discuss is just between us.”
“Okay, cool, thanks. So there’s umm… my main boyfriend, shall we call him K, then there’s umm … W and er, T.”
“So what’s the nature of the relationship between K, W and T?”
“Well, W and T are boyfriends, K has been their occasional third for over a year now.”
“Is that a problem for you?”
“Not really. I guess the whole ethical non monogamy thing confused me before I understood what our industry was like; I originally chose a monogamous relationship over a relationship with K because I couldn’t let go of the type of relationship I’d been raised to expect.”
“So what happened with your monogamous relationship?” Asked the therapist.
He looked at her flatly, “He cheated on me.”
“Oh, ok. And when was this?”
“That was in May”
“How did that make you feel?”
He rolled his eyes at the stereotypical therapist question, but answered anyway. In for a penny, right?
“Really angry, honestly and, like, that the whole monogamy thing was a farce? I worked away for 5 months in America, and came back to find out the truth.”
He paused again, so the therapist felt it necessary to prompt him again.
“Which was..?”
“That the others had been right, that monogamy doesn’t really work in our industry, and that trust and honesty is more important.”
“I see, are you in the entertainment industry?”
“I … umm… I don’t feel comfortable answering that.”
“Fair enough. So you and your ex split up at the end of May? Do you want to tell me anything else about that relationship or its end?”
“Not really, I talked it out with the others, and I really don’t want to give him any more headspace than he deserves.”
“So back to your Polycule then, you said K is your main boyfriend. What can you tell me about him?”
“He’s, I don’t know… Sweet and romantic, but he gives as good as he gets. I can be kind of sarcastic. We just… vibe off of each other I suppose.”
He paused again, waiting for the therapist to ask another question, but instead, she waited out the uncomfortable silence until he resumed speaking.
“We clicked as soon as we met, and got really close very quickly. Our chemistry has always been off the charts, so we discussed the possibility of a relationship, even though it might make it harder to work together in the future if it didn’t work out. But he’s worked in our industry since he was a kid, he knows what it’s like. Like I said, I would only commit to monogamy, and that didn’t work for him.
We stayed friends, really close friends though. I think he understood why I’d made the choice I did and never judged me for it.
But it’s not all about him, though he’s my main boyfriend. We’ve all been emotional supports for each other; really close since the first year we worked together. We stayed close, even when we were working on different projects. When things went wrong with B…with my ex, it was all 3 that I called.
I have friends from back home, who I love loads, but they just don’t really get it. Not the same, anyway.
They got me pissed and we talked it to death, then they made me laugh and made it feel better. We slept in a cuddle pile so I wasn’t alone…” At this point his gaze returns to the therapist's face.
“Not sex, it wasn’t like that then, like they knew how badly I was hurting.
You know, I had this whole picture of how my life would be when I grew up. I honestly am chasing my dreams professionally, but to not be able to do the same in my personal life made me feel like a failure. Letting go of what I thought would make me happy was really hard. I cried, like, a lot. They were really there for me. I was barely alone for two weeks after. They were amazing, I don’t know what I’d have done without them.”
“I’m not here to judge you, J.” Responded Aria, “What else can you tell me? How did your relationship start?”
“K and I go away for work events just the two of us sometimes, it’s …how our jobs work. It’s always been fun as friends. We’d previously both had relationships, but his had ended a few months before mine, and when we went away at the start of June, we were both single for the first time in ages. We had connecting rooms.
We had a day full of engagements together, and we’d spent the whole day bantering through them. When we got back to the hotel, I didn’t want it to end.
I slipped into his room. I kissed him and, ever the gentleman, he asked if I was sure. He reminded me that it was really soon after my ex and that he couldn’t offer me monogamy.”
He paused again, not sure how to proceed really, images from that night crashing through his head like waves. The feel of his best friend’s hair under his fingers; not for the first time, maybe, but the first that was just them, something for just them. The sensation of his tongue running lightly over lips, then teeth and then their tongues dancing for the first time. Then crashing into each other, landing on top of the bed. Then the desperate scramble to touch and taste as much of each other's skin as possible, clothes discarded somehow along the way. The feel of soft, prettily freckled skin under him and the vanilla and musk scent of that hollow just under the ear which, when he’d kissed and nibbled, had elicited the most delicious moans he’d ever heard.
He swallowed and offered an attempt at a smile at Aria. It was probably little more than a stretch of his lips.
“We got intimate for the next couple of nights that we were away, and when we came back, we decided to make a go of it. Umm… we told T first; W was away. He is away the most often, because he also works outside our industry.”
“He has a second job?”
“Err, yeah. I guess you could call it that. Anyway, like I said, we told T and he made us video call W. They were both thrilled for us and really ripped us when we bought rooms next to each other in our house share.”
“You live together?”
“K and I do, yeah. We moved in when we’d only been together about a month. Our friends joke that we’re gay u-haulers, you know, like lesbians? But it made sense to us. I can’t imagine him not being in my life, and we each have our own space if we need it.”
“How does your relationship with K fit into the polycule?”
“We all share. We play together, as well as separately in our couples. When one of us is away for work, the one left is looked after by whoever is still about.
But it’s more than the sex. We’re emotionally intimate more than any monogamous relationship I’ve ever had. We all understand each other, help each other. I think it’s something like an exothermic reaction? We’re each a tiny piece of an element, that suddenly when joined make something far more important and vital than the original sum of the ingredients, but without any one of us, the reaction wouldn’t work?
I dunno - it’s a weird thing to try and explain or describe. But K gets a lot of … I guess you could call it grief? Because of his … job, and T blends in the most of all of us, so he looks after him a lot in public.”
“How do you feel about that?”
“Good really, that he’s got someone to care for him like that. It wouldn’t work the same if I tried it, because… well, it would increase the grief rather than reduce it, I guess.”
“So, it sounds like you’re happy, why have you contracted my services?”
Joe looked down to his fingers, which were playing with his rings.
“Because I’m about to head back to America for work, and I’m not sure when I’ll be back.”
“You’re moving to America permanently? Is your polycule going with you?”
“No, and no.
I’ve got a job where I don’t have an end date, it’ll depend upon the success of the project and how well I do in it. Then I’ve got a commitment for another job in America that looks like it’ll start in autumn, so I’m not sure when I’ll get home.”
“But your polycule won’t be going with you?”
“No, they have their own jobs here, they’re planning to visit, but I don’t know how I’m going to cope away from all of them. It’ll be the first time I’ve been without at least one of them there for more than a week since we started.”
“When do you leave?”
“Right at the start of January.”
“So 2 weeks?”
“Yep. But Christmas is in between, and there’s external… pressures that mean if we want to see family, we can’t really do it together. So really, we have this week, not even that all together; K is still away working until the day after tomorrow.”
“That sounds hard. Have you talked about what will happen when you’re away?”
“We have an agreement that if one of us is away with work, and none of the rest of us are there, that emotional needs are still met by the group, but anything else is fair game as long as it’s casual.”
He paused then, and glanced at her.
“That sounds like a reasonable expectation, how are you feeling about it?”
“I can’t let go of the feeling that I’d be cheating on them if I were to be intimate with anyone else.”
“I see. You’re still trying to apply monogamous ideals onto your polyamorous relationship?”
“Yeah, I’m really struggling with it. I feel really protective of what we built, it’s really important to me.”
“Did you consider not taking the job in America?”
“Do you know, I actually did, which is all kinds of messed up, because the job I’m going to do has been my ultimate dream since I was a kid. The guys made it clear that they’d never stop giving me shit about it if I didn’t take it.
To be honest, I think they’re right. I never would have forgiven myself for giving up that kind of opportunity. I’m just scared about what it means for us.”
“Are you worried that distance will make them matter less to you? Or you matter less to them?”
“Definitely the second one. I can’t imagine them meaning less to me, but they’ll all be here together without me, and it’s going to be a really long time.”
“I can understand your concerns, distance can make or break relationships. I think you need to consider that maybe you’re just as important to them as they are to you?”
Joe smiled and rolled his eyes at her sarcastically, and she raised her hands to placate him.
“It sounds like they waited quite a while for you to come around to the idea of it being the four of you.”
“I mean, I don’t know about waited?”
“Was K’s ex involved in the polycule?”
“Well, no. I guess not.”
“Has there been anyone else invited in?”
“No, not really.”
“So how important are you to them? You described it as an exothermic reaction, yeah? All of you were necessary to achieve that explosive growth? Did you not think that included you too?”
“I suppose so?” Responds Joe, really giving it thought for the first time.
“Right, J. We’re coming to the end of our time for today, but I’m hoping you’ve gained a bit of clarity today?”
“Umm…Yeah, yes.”
“So, for homework. I want you to devise a list of things that will make the transition to long distance easier for you and your polycule and we’ll talk through it, say next week, same time?”
“Yeah, that sounds like a plan.”
“Lovely. See you next week, all the best, and don’t forget to do the homework.” Aria smiled at Joe while he made his farewells and the screen on the app went black.