I’ve always known I was queer, on some level (though, like a lot of queer people I’d managed to do a scarily good job of hiding it, even from myself) and so we decided to dip our toe into opening up the relationship. We chatted about what this might look like for us. At the time, we agreed that this was something we wanted to explore together, and a threesome with another woman felt like the right thing (Paul is straight, I’m queer, so this was a relative no-brainer). At that time, we weren’t looking for anything serious. In fact, at that time, if you’d asked me if I thought throuples could work out long term, I’d probably have said no. Back then, I believed a lot of the misconceptions that people confront me with today. I thought that monogamy was the only real option because I’d never experienced, or really seen, any living examples outside of that. For most people, monogamy is the default, it’s the thing our parents, our extended families, the education system, films, TV shows, advertising, pop songs, all position as the one valid option: no wonder stepping outside of that feels impossible.