We all have different definitions of what “cheating” really means , and for me, it’s secrecy. I’ve been “cheated” on, for sure. But when someone I was dating hooked up with somebody else and told me about it the next morning, it didn’t feel like a big deal. When I found out from a friend of another partner that he’d been having a whole other relationship behind my back for months? That felt like cheating. And it didn’t feel good.I cheated plenty in my misspent youth — but, and not that this excuses anything, I never lied. I’m certainly no model of morality, but honesty is something I value tremendously. (Plus, I have the worst poker face of all time.) The thing is — and I know this is hard for many to believe — I never felt like I was truly doing anything wrong. How can mutual, consensual expression of desire and affection be wrong? I wondered.But then came the turning of the tides. It seemed a lot of people were deciding that an extra-relationship experience no longer meant the end of the preceding relationship. Suddenly, I knew people who had primary, secondary, even tertiary partners — so it didn’t seem that odd when, after I’d been dating Luke* for two years, my close friendship with Grace* turned physical. At first, Grace and I tried to laugh off our hookup as a fluke, afraid of disrupting the status quo. But, repeat occurrences made it clear that what we felt was real, and it wasn’t going away. And I realized I’d been wanting it to happen for a long time. After a few months, I was forced to acknowledge the heretofore unthinkable: I was in love. With two people.As my feelings for Grace grew, I kept waiting for my feelings for Luke to naturally diminish, like there should be some sort of max-capacity for emotions — but that didn’t happen. If anything, I loved them both more as time went on. They were by far the two most important people on my personal planet. But actually trying to be with more than one person was so much harder than I’d imagined.On the one hand, life felt rich and full; there were two incredible people to love. But there were also two people to disappoint — and worry about, and prioritize, and commute between. When I’d initially told Luke about me and Grace, he said he was glad I was finding intimacy in multiple places in my life. I encouraged him to go out and find someone else to be intimate with, too — in addition to (not as a replacement of) me, though he never did. Over time, Luke started inquiring — kindly, bless his heart — why he wasn’t “enough.” He didn’t want to compete, but he did want me to choose. “If being with Grace is what will make you happy,” Luke said, “I want you to go and be with Grace.”The thing is, I knew that if I left Luke, I’d regret it for the rest of my life. He was more than my partner; he was my family. He made me a better person: kinder, thoughtful, more patient. Grace, on the other hand, made me a smarter person. She inspired me, motivated me, so that I’d never grow complacent or unquestioning. And she was willing to be flexible. She knew how much my relationship with Luke meant, and she didn’t want to get in the way of that.