Dating a Throuple Is Like a Martini Glass…

What an unconventional love taught me about heartbreak.

Each week, The Queer Love Project publishes an original essay. Want to submit your essay and add to our growing archive? Find our submission guidelines and more here.

Aidan Wharton is the author of the Substack, Gay Buffet.

Illustration by Aidan Wharton

My first time at an STI clinic was probably my worst. I sat in a dingy waiting room on West 100th Street, watching the lights flicker and counting my heartbeats as they raced. I started losing track of the number by the time the nurse called me into the waiting room. My legs trembled as I followed her; my brain twisting sentence fragments. What would I say? How would I say it? Would they judge me? 

Let into the waiting room, I sat on the chair, wincing at how loud the paper crinkled. The nurse took my vitals, and then, again, I was alone with my heartbeat. One, two, three... 

When the doctor finally walked in and asked me, "What brings you in today?" I blurted out, "Well, my boyfriend's...boyfriends...tested positive for an STI, and now I need to get checked, too. Sorry, I know it's weird." 

Without missing a beat, she set me straight by saying, "Honey, it's not weird. It's New York."

See, a few months before, I'd moved to New York City and jumped right into the deep end of the gay scene. I showed up in Harlem in the middle of a heatwave, and the room I was subletting had no AC. It was a small shoebox just north of Central Park, and besides the constant sweat, I loved it.

As I settled into my new home, I still felt like I was searching for my place in the city. I spent my days wandering the streets, meeting up with friends, going on auditions, looking for jobs, doing odd jobs, basically anything I could to keep myself busy and out of my boiling apartment. A lifetime of school had not prepared me for the crippling nature of too much free time.

When I found myself despairing in said free time, I distracted myself with my favorite pastime: boys.

Since I grew up in rural Hawaii, there were beaches and rainforests aplenty, but that same natural splendor made it quite difficult to find other gays. By the time I graduated high school, I knew of exactly four gay people. So, after college, when I moved to New York, I experienced my own second puberty. I felt my hormones raging in a way I'd missed out on in my teens, and I became determined to experience all that life had to offer.

Hawaii was great for beautiful views like this one of Mauna Kea but not great for meeting guys.

One day, while enjoying the fresh air of Central Park and the addictive grid of Grindr, I came upon a very nice torso. I shot my shot, and we struck up a conversation. His relationship status was listed as “complicated,” and when I inquired, he sent me a picture of him and his two boyfriends. Still new to the world of gay New York, I assumed that that would be the end, but we kept talking…and talking…and talking.

We met a few days later as he was walking in the park, and I was instantly smitten. He was handsome, goofy, and charming, and the banter flowed effortlessly. As our conversation neared its end, he asked if I wanted to come home with him and meet “the boys.” I promptly panicked, made up some excuse, and headed home, kicking myself over my momentary cowardice. A few nights later, with the encouragement of a glass or two of wine and a Good Judy, I told him I'd come over (it helped that their apartment was around the corner from mine).

I was still very nervous and made it clear that while I was happy to meet “the boys,” I wasn't ready for my first foursome. I needed him and me to be one-on-one first. So, with trembling hands, I knocked; he let me in; the boys said hey from the couch, and he led me to one of their bedrooms. While my heart was pounding out of my chest, it was just another Thursday night for them.

I'd opened the door to a brave new world, and I was utterly fascinated.

What followed that night was a whirlwind of firsts. I would leave my apartment on Friday nights and return home on Monday mornings, full of what were quickly becoming core memories. I learned to love closing the door to my apartment and my roommate saying, "Oh, it's you!" like I was a guest in my own home. I said yes to out-of-the-city trips with the three of them. I (very safely) did molly with them for the first time. I eventually did have my first foursome (and then fivesome). I was experiencing a world in technicolor and never wanted to stop. And slowly, as the months passed, I began to love all of them, and I fell in love with one of them. In a city that thrived on the unique and unconventional, I felt like I was finally finding my footing, and I’d found people who really got me.  

However, not everyone was quite as understanding. When I told my friends stories about the infamous "throuple," I'd get looks that were filled with worry. Since I'm a big feeler, my friends were understandably worried that I was getting in too deep. My straight friends couldn't wrap their heads around how throuples worked, and my gay friends couldn't understand why I was adding to one. And this concern didn't stop with my friends; my family, too, had some hesitations about my new setup.

You see, my family loves to talk about relationships, and nothing's off the table. At most family gatherings, all we do is talk, whether it's about the new person someone is seeing or the ongoing, ever-shifting dynamic between mom and dad. 

Even at my sister's wedding, my brother announced, "Aidan, you should tell Grandpa about those guys you're seeing." And after a moment of hesitation, I turned and said, "Well, Grandpa Jack, it's sort of like a martini glass. Y'know, an upside-down triangle and a stem. I'm connected to all of them but really attached to one." 

The table was silent for a moment, and then my aunt jumped in with a ton of follow-up questions, and the whole family had a field day with it. But underneath all the novelty and intrigue, I could tell that everyone who loved me was worried that an inevitable heartbreak was barreling toward me. And in some regards, it was.

As it happened, one of the boys would leave for the winter months every year. What had become a balanced foursome through summer and fall was about to become an unbalanced trio in winter. In the days leading up to his departure, the energy started to shift. The three of them were understandably sad, and I was nervous. I loved what we four had, and I wasn't able to imagine how our dynamics would change.

Once he left, we had to do some recalibrating. The martini glass that I'd loved and cherished was gone. Whereas before, I would go over to their place for entire weekends, now I'd just come over for a night or an afternoon. When I did spend the night, my guy and I would sleep in one bedroom and his boyfriend alone in the other. I always made sure that what was happening was OK, but I couldn't ignore that things felt off. As my guy and I became more intimate and involved, space grew elsewhere. I hated feeling imbalanced, yet I couldn't bring myself to pull away. Looking back, I think that's when the reality started to sink in for all of us.

One cold January day, I met my guy's boyfriend for lunch. Things were feeling complicated; he wanted to talk, and I'll never forget him saying, "Look, if you two want to start dating and he wants to leave us, that's OK. He just needs to figure out what he wants." 

I was shocked since no one had asked me what I wanted. I actually didn't want to date him outside of the situation we had. He was a great pseudo-boyfriend, but I knew he wouldn't be a good primary partner for me. But I was 21, and they were in their thirties, so they didn't entirely trust me when I said as much.

As I turned to my friends for support more and more, they got even more worried. They could not wrap their heads around why I was continuing on this path. Since my generation is defined by “situationships”—relationships that have no clear definitions or labels—my friends could understand the fluidity, but they couldn't understand my level of feelings. Somehow, the acceptance and understanding I’d found from that doctor all those months before were nowhere to be seen from those who knew me best. 

Most Millennials keep their feelings tucked away when dating someone casually, but I’m fiercely unable to do that. I let people know how I feel. But when I'd come to my friends with my troubles, I'd get the same response from almost everyone, "We're just worried you're going to get hurt."

Eventually, what I learned after a few months was that getting hurt wasn't something I was scared of. Getting hurt wasn't something that made me want to stop the relationship. All relationships end in pain. Even the best possible outcome is that you die together, which is still devastatingly heartbreaking. So, if every relationship hurts in the end, then I wanted to throw myself in headfirst and make incredible memories along the way.

Deep down, I knew that in this relationship, my love would grow and plateau and that sometime down the line, the relationship would end naturally. I knew that sadness would come with that ending, but I knew that the joy and growth that came before would make it worth it. 

I was OK with that.

As breezy March came around, our conversations got harder. The throuple was under stress, and my guy, understandably, couldn't keep up with the needs of three other people. He worried that our relationship was keeping me from exploring other, more viable candidates for partnership. And when I came to him with my needs, he could never quite accept that I wasn't asking for a relationship, just better communication. Or perhaps I couldn't see that what I thought I was asking for looked different to him.

In the end, it wasn't the kind of heartbreak that everyone was worried about for me. It was exactly what I'd thought it would be: a plateau. We met, the relationship grew fast until it leveled out, we stayed there for a while, and it ended as fast as it had begun. But it taught me that I am allowed to choose heartbreak on my own terms. Future sadness isn't something to run away from, and I certainly wouldn’t let it keep me from happiness in the present.

Looking back, I remember the joys and lessons most, not the pain. I remember the trips we took and the afternoons playing video games, as well as the careful navigating of four people's emotions and the challenges that came with that. This relationship showed me that no matter how atypical, a relationship is what you make of it. I learned how to love in new ways. I learned how to be more considerate and compassionate. And I learned how deeply I need effective communication. I learned that no matter the thrill, I need a partner who can sit down with me and slog through the weeds as we both put in the work to make our relationship exactly what we want it to be. And that lesson paved the way for the relationship I’m in today.

Casey and I just celebrated six years together and are in the middle of planning our wedding next fall. After many options, we decided to have our wedding at my childhood home in Hawaii, on the slopes of Mauna Kea, a mountain that I looked up at every day of my youth. Above the beaches and amid the rainforest, we'll make our vows to each other: vows about commitment, joy, growth, determination, communication, and so much more. And then we'll be married. Married under the peaceful gaze of a slope that never plateaus, it just rises forever through the trees and into the clouds.

For more by Aidan Wharton, follow & subscribe to his Substack, Gay Buffet.

Aidan (left) with his fiancé Casey.

Each week, The Queer Love Project publishes an original essay. Want to submit your essay and add to our growing archive? Find our submission guidelines and more here.