My girlfriend is back at my apartment, checking in before she decides whether to spend the rest of Halloween night with another man. A few weeks ago, I said I was comfortable with it. Standing in my living room now, with the decision suddenly in front of me, I can barely settle my stomach.
We’re both 21. We’ve never stepped outside monogamy before. This began as a fantasy we talked about together: she wanted to go to a party with a guy we know a little, and I told her she could hook up with him. At the time, I believed what I was saying. I wasn’t deliberately agreeing to something I secretly hated. I thought I could want this and feel secure in our relationship.
That distinction matters to me because I’m struggling to explain the distance between then and now. In the heat of that conversation, I agreed to the possibility of her having sex with him. I didn’t have to deal with the next few hours. Now there’s an actual evening to finish, and my confidence from a few weeks ago isn’t here to help me through it.
She has come back to check in. She’s considering going to his place or having him come here, and she’s waiting for my go-ahead. As far as I know, the encounter we discussed still hasn’t happened. There is a pause in the night, and I’m in it.
I keep coming back to the fact that she’s asking. She hasn’t simply treated our earlier conversation as the end of my involvement. Yet instead of feeling relieved by the chance to say how I feel, I’m frightened of what my answer might do. I already agreed. Part of me feels as though changing my mind now would mean I had misled her, even though I couldn’t have described this feeling before I had it.
I’m afraid she’ll resent me if I ask her to stop. I’m afraid I’ll damage the trust between us by backing away from something we discussed together. Those are fears, though, not things she has told me will happen. I don’t know her response because I haven’t reached that conversation yet. In my head, I’m trying to account for her disappointment before I’ve even put my own discomfort into words.
Letting the night continue would spare me that immediate conversation, but it would also mean giving her an answer that doesn’t match what I’m feeling. Asking to pause would make the change in me impossible to hide. Neither feels like the easy version I imagined when this was still a fantasy, something we could discuss without anyone waiting to leave.
There’s no account of how our first night outside monogamy went, because I’m still before that part. She’s waiting to know whether to go to his place or invite him here. I’m still trying to find the words to tell her that I want to stop.
