"Honestly, if you had told me two years ago that I would be sitting in a guy's kitchen in Chicago, confused, trying to figure out how, how, the hell, I had ended up in a polygamous relationship without knowing it... I would have told you to swap Netflix for some psychology book."
I'm from Tirana, I've been living for almost two years in Evanston, Illinois – a place I chose more for the university than for the men, although... you know what they say, man makes plans, God laughs.
I met this guy at a social event for international students. He laughed at a joke I made about how Americans say “bless you” every time someone sneezes – even if it’s the fifth time. He was easy to talk to, he had a way of making you feel like the main character in a movie: different, special, watched, you name it.
We started dating. At first it was all "chill" – a coffee, a walk in the park, some weird documentary on Netflix (which I pretended to understand). After about two months of dating, he took me to a "more serious" dinner, somewhere on a rooftop overlooking a lake. That was the night he told me he really liked me and wanted to try for a deeper relationship. "Exclusive," I thought. In my Albanian head, that meant: you and me, that's it.
Up until this point, everything had been going well. Until one night... while I was watching TikTok until I fell asleep, I received a message from a woman's profile with a very gentle name: Caroline. The message was simple, but brutal:
"Hi, I think we're both dating R?"
I read it five times. I wrote to her: “I'm sorry, I didn't understand you?” She was very calm. She sent me a photo of herself with R, from three weeks ago – the two of them at a jazz concert, when he told me he was with "some old friends from college."
I said to myself: “No, wait, maybe it’s his ex… or his sister… or –” but my Albanian instinct told me: “This is one of those scenes that your mom would say to you: ‘I told you not to trust these Americans too quickly.’”
I called R for clarification, and he, with the utmost calmness, told me:
"Yes, Caroline is a part of my life. We've had an open relationship for a long time. I thought you understood... that I'm more into non-monogamous love. And when I talked to you about a deeper connection, I thought maybe you were open to that too."
I mean, I was polygamous for three months and I didn't know anything, you understand?
At this point, I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. But for the sake of all the girls who grow up with the feeling that "if you talk too much, you're possessive" and "if you stay quiet, you're naive," I decided to speak up.
I said:
"No, I wasn't aware that I was in an experimental relationship where you were 'testing' me to see if I was ready to share my partner with other women. And by the way, I'm not ready. I'm not good at feeling like part of a modern harem in the age of Instagram."
I left him that night, with all his calm smile, saying, "Okay, I just wanted to be honest."
If you were honest, you would have told me on the first date that you have another girlfriend and are looking for wife no. 2, sir!!
I never became polygamous friends, not with my knowledge. But for five minutes on the warm couch at home, I really thought that maybe I had missed the train of modern life.
But, spoiler alert: I didn't miss any trains. Not for nothing, everyone uses Uber now. ;)" narrated by an Albanian girl living in the US.
Copyright Anabel.al / Reprinting without permission of the editorial staff is prohibited.
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