I “Took” My Friend’s Boyfriend. Fifteen Years Later, We’re Still Together.

By Anonymous

Nearly every hair dresser I’ve seen for the past fifteen years has asked where I met my partner. When I reply “at a sex shop,” their scandalized gasps always delight.

But that’s not all. However compatible we looked in our wedding photos, I did meet my now-husband while he was dating a close friend.

At the time we met I was eighteen, and going for a friend’s guy was completely out of character. This friend was buying my other best friend a vibrator for her birthday, and a group of us went together, including her then-boyfriend. I like to say that my future partner and I locked eyes while he was browsing a catalog of latex thigh highs. In reality, I remember sitting across from each other, and that at one point I made him laugh.

Apparently I was attracted to red flags. He was three years older than me, and his parents were divorcing—so he dealt with that pain by taking a lot of pills. Along with the cliché of tattoos and piercings, he was the total bad boy package, sans motorcycle. Back then I possessed a blasé youthful quality, so I didn’t care.

He reached out to me first with a late-night text, and I jogged over to the pizza place where he worked. Our flirtation quickly turned physical. Looking back, I can’t understand why I didn’t feel guilty–but I just didn’t. Maybe that’s because it felt right.

We saw each other all of that summer, always long after dark. I’d sneak out and walk the suburban streets between midnight and three in the morning, traveling by foot. We parked his car in nearby fields and fogged up the windows, committing many indecent acts. At that point our interactions were mostly physical—he was cheating for whatever reason, and I was just lonely.

At the end of the summer he was off to a university a whole province away from mine. I missed him so much that I traveled seven hours by bus to see him on weekends. A few months later, he said he didn’t want to be without me, and I felt the same. He broke up with my (now former) friend, who had also begun seeing other men. He transferred to my school, stopped taking pills, and his GPA shot up.

Four years into our relationship, we rented our first apartment together, a bug and mice-infested icebox. We got married in 2018, and even today, we’re not the most conventional of couples. We don’t have a joint checking account, and each person’s money is their own responsibility. His job is higher-paying than mine, and I worried at times that I might fall into the habit of letting him pay for everything, leading to an unhealthy dependence on him. He cooks and I bake, and we are also childfree following his vasectomy at 27, a decision that has been oddly controversial among our friends and family.

I think it’s our embrace of unconventional life decisions and choices that bind us. Given how we came to be, you might presume my biggest fear is that he’ll cheat on me someday. The truth is, when it comes to infidelity and affairs, I never judge quickly, because I know firsthand that there’s often more nuance than meets the eye. And given our history, while I was insecure about him staying faithful in the first couple of years, I now trust him not to hurt me. He’s my best friend, and he knows me as well as anyone can know another person. Our spark is still alive, even that initial physical connection, and we make each other laugh every day. Against all odds, it would be my privilege and joy to grow old with him.