Friends, Flirting, and Introducing My Husband to My Girlfriend

August 2021

Ned Snapped me within mere days of our return home from Hedo.

Ned: Hey, been thinking about things lately. Tarah and I can’t take on any more partners right now. We think you and Jack are amazing people, and we want to be the best of friends. Can we be friends who know all the things, without the bodies?

I’d figured that this would be the case, but still, it stung. It was a rejection, after all. 

But after the sting settled, I was elated to have some clarity.

Jack felt the same about the sting and the clarity, with a tad more annoyance that we’d been strung along for this long before they figured their shit out. Ned doubled down in another text — he saw us as best friends — but then he ghosted out of the conversation when I invited him to the pool that week. “That’s about right,” Jack remarked with an eye roll.

Remember in June, when Ned said they were busy, but then Tarah told Jack that they were free? Deja vu. The next day, Tarah responded affirmative to an invite from Jack. It was off to the pool, together again, then back to our house for pizza, pot, and wine. 

Their entire family settled into our home as if they’d visited dozens of times, as if they were family. Ned bustled around our kitchen, helping himself, assuring me that he remembered where I kept everything and complimenting my organization. He proclaimed, “Wow, so now we’re the kind of friends who help each other move furniture, right?” I had thought this charming; I liked the definitive, familial boundaries around our relationship.

Maybe these were the types of friends who would last a lifetime. Maybe this type of friendship was deeper, more meaningful — and wasn’t that what I wanted? Perhaps I had been too quick to judge them, especially Ned. Poly relationships weren’t easy, I reminded myself. I had no idea what he was dealing with, being in these other relationships. I was probably being annoying, I figured. I aimed to cultivate this relationship as it grew into its own thing. 

I also wondered if I put too much emphasis on sex. Casual sex on vacation was one thing, but at home? My main complaint about dating was that most men made me feel like a piece of meat. I told myself that Ned liked me for my mind, my person — not just my body. 

Since we weren’t fucking anymore, we played cards. I tried not to read anything into all of Ned’s winks and his bumps into my arm. Friends can be affectionate…but why did he keep staring at me like that?

Later, in our bedroom smoking pot, we chatted about the people we’d fucked on vacation. We shared stories of our worst dates, anything and everything, except our friendship, for hours. I realized that Jack and I tell the same stories in private and with friends. The story never changes, because it’s just the truth. 

Ned, meanwhile, behaved differently when Tarah was around. He shared less, and I got the feeling that some topics were off limits in the group discussion. And yet, somehow the vibes were still amazing. They felt like old friends that I could just fall back into. 

Especially Tarah. With Ned, things had certainly been rough those past months, but I realized that Tarah hadn’t ever done anything to upset me. She seemed genuine, through and through. We could be silly — painting verbal portraits of our past lives as witches, imagining our counterculture ideas as ingrained and mystical. We chilled on my bed, looking up numerology profiles for each of us and reading them aloud to raucous laughter as they proved too true. We got serious and discussed the guilt of parenting through our struggles with mental health. 

The guys looked on as we talked, mesmerized by our banter and bond. It was uncanny.

And like that, we became friends who made plans several times a month.

Two weeks later, we went to the Renaissance Festival — all ten of us dressed like pirates, kids and adults alike. We spent the day enduring record high temperatures while on an endless search for turkey legs. The kids were whiny, but it added to the familial air, thick as it was in the August heat.

Tarah clearly needed to talk about her Kentucky guy; she kept pulling me aside. “I just don’t know what to do,” she mused. “Like, I think I’m in love with Christian, but I don’t think he really loves me back. And now he’s moving permanently. What do I do about that? Oh, Lizzie, I’m such a mess…”

I was a great listener, but I hardly had anything in the way of advice. I wondered if she knew how I’d felt about Ned last school year. Hell, let’s be real. Did the feelings go away, or was I now suppressing them for the sake of being a friend?

I reminded myself that friends were better than lovers. I was determined to repurpose my feels and get a fresh start. 

That got derailed at the first staff meeting of the fall semester. 

We were socially distanced in individual desks positioned in a circle as the bosses droned on about new policies and procedures — information that could have been bullet-pointed in an email. I focused on trying not to fidget too much. 

My phone vibrated lightly against the desktop. I peeked at the notification screen and saw a message from Ned. I glanced up, across the room, to where Ned was sitting. We made eye contact, but neither of us changed our attentive expressions.

Nonchalantly, I opened the message and read.

Ned: Those are some sexy sandals. 😉 

It was ninety degrees outside. I had chosen a short gray dress paired with my flat gladiator lace-up sandals. They were both comfortable and cute, my favorite type of shoe.

I raised my eyebrows at him across the room, and he raised his back. I could tell that we were both working to hide smiles, even behind our masks. 

I felt tickled by the compliment, but I tried not to read too much into it. After all, now we were just friends who “tell each other all the things — without the bodies.” So he was flirting, but with no intentions. He was just complimenting my footwear, not me. 

Later, Ned popped into my office to chat. His tone was friendly, and I reminded myself that we were just friends. This wasn’t flirting, no sirree.

We were just friends, so I made a point to give Ned more space than the spring before. I didn’t pop into his room on my way out for long conversations, but I said hello if his door was open when I passed by. I worried that I’d been too clingy before, so now I was careful not to initiate text conversations or let our conversations go too long. I focused our talk on work or family. I was not going to flirt with just a friend.

Ned, meanwhile, made it a point to pop into my space to say hello almost every day. He’d always have a comment about my clothing, and also an uncanny knack for finding me bent over, scouring a bookshelf. He always had a suggestive quip — Lord help me if I was wearing a skirt that day. He messaged me that it was “fucking sexy” to see me let my hair out out of my bun when he caught me switching up hairstyles after work.

This wasn’t flirting, was it? After all, he was the one who wanted to be “just friends.” So I assumed that he was just being a guy. I told myself that this was how men behaved, how they cared, about their female friends. 

Veronica was annoyed. She spent a lot of time rolling her eyes whenever Ned’s name entered our conversations. When Ned caught us bickering, he told me that was a sure sign of how close she and I had become. He looked wistful when he told me that he’d lost touch with all of his good friends, and instead of taking this as a warning, I found myself grateful that I had both Veronica and him.

After all, I told myself, isn’t true friendship the most noble of all relationships? 

I hadn’t seen Hannah since June, but I had an inkling that I didn’t want to be just friends with her. We’d been texting throughout the summer, and I was more interested in her with each thoughtful paragraph she sent. Smart, soulful, beautiful, and still willing to engage in girl on girl action? 

I had to see her again.

We finally arranged another date — a day hike — where the conversation continued to flow. I found that I admired many things about her. She was clearly an excellent mother, and I aspired to be like her in that department. She was well read, especially in the psychology and philosophy genres. She’d lived an interesting life, and I found myself practically digesting her story. 

She didn’t wear a bra again, either, and I’m not sure what I liked more — the aesthetics or the philosophy behind her decision.

I was glad that I’d invited her back to our hot tub for a soak afterwards.

In my bedroom, we changed out of our hiking gear into our swimsuits. I shyly stared at her breasts as she removed her top, and she stared back. We smiled, but we didn’t touch. 

I’m learning that lesbians are notorious for sucking at initiation, but there’s a sweetness to it, too.

Jack was quite pleased to arrive home from an excursion with the kids to find us in the hot tub, Hannah perched up on the side with just her legs dangling in the water. I saw him take her in — that curly brown hair up in a giant bun, her sunglasses, her red bandeau bikini top across her perky, perfectly mid-sized breasts, her hourglass curves leading down to her green bottoms. Her smooth peach skin and ready smile. 

The banter was easy between the two of them, too. 

After we got out, she followed me back up to my bedroom to change again, and this time, she pulled me close to her. She’s the same height as Jack, but she smells like a woman. She feels like a woman, as she moves my hair aside, as she tilts my face towards hers. She’s gentle, smiling at me. “I wasn’t sure if you were ready to do this again,” she said.

“I am,” I said, quickly. I was smiling, too.

We kissed, gentle and slow. She’s so soft, so smooth. She tastes so good. When she hugs me next, it’s a hold. An embrace, and she pets my hair and kisses me on the top of the head. 

She would perform the same moves time and again over the next year, and I relish in the feelings it brought. Afterwards, the tingles shoot through my veins for hours. 

Jack turned to me as she drove away, his expression quite flaming in a wide-mouthed gasp. “Oh my God, Lizzie. She’s incredible.” 

Many polyamory sources speak about jealousy, but Jack didn’t feel it. He loves seeing me happy, and so he grew aroused at my joy, and at the giant grin that I couldn’t seem to wipe off my face. Our sex that night was passionate, and my heart felt gloriously full as we headed into fall.