‘There’s something you don’t know,’ Ivan* said.
‘And I don’t want to tell you because you’ll have questions I don’t want to answer.’
I had waited an entire day for this call. I’d even taken my phone with me to the toilet, where I sat, heart beating almost audibly as it buzzed in my hand.
On answering, I was intrigued by this bizarre and cryptic message. With a set up like that, he was almost asking me to beg him. So, I did: I ‘Please, just tell me?’
‘Fine,’ he said. ‘I’m in a relationship.’
There was a pause as my stomach clenched. It was so hurtful and at the same time, so mundane. To be honest, I’d hoped for a more interesting confession – but then he added: ‘An ethically non-monogamous relationship.’
Ivan was right. I did have questions. Namely, why I was only learning this now, two days after we’d been on a first date and had sex?
It was late 2020, I was 31 and visiting Berlin from my home country of the United States. I’d met Ivan on a dating app where he’d explained he was an artist from another country, in town for a residency programme.
Together, we experienced an immediate, multi-level connection. I’ve always believed it difficult to hit every level: physical, emotional, intellectual. But when I met Ivan, I believed I’d seamlessly found all three.
We went to an old, beautiful bar with marble tables and a brass ceiling and spent the afternoon drinking Belgian beers while it poured with rain outside. We had four rounds, and a meandering conversation about his art and mine.
He kept looking at me and I kept looking away, embarrassed and turned on. Then, he kissed me with what I felt was warmth and passion. He invited me back to his studio to see his work-in-progress. I remember the ambient techno music he played while he removed my clothes.
It was all strange and new. I was still naïve and romantic enough to believe this must be the beginning of a relationship.
The next morning, while I dressed to leave, he pulled me back to him. ‘Don’t go,’ he said, nuzzling into me. ‘I have to,’ I smiled, enjoying the heat of his body. ‘But we can see each other tomorrow if you want.’ He nodded: ‘Absolutely.’
But the next day, I didn’t hear from him. I was surprised by the shift in his attention, and worried I’d imagined everything I felt.
I had been betrayed before, when an ex cheated on me. I knew this wasn’t necessarily a betrayal, but the same involuntary bodily reactions returned: clammy hands, nausea.
‘Why didn’t you tell me sooner?’ I demanded.
‘If I had told you,’ he said, ‘we couldn’t have had the kind of night we had.’
‘Exactly,’ I said with restrained but growing anger.
‘Exactly what?’ he asked.
‘Nothing,’ I said, still unwilling to unleash my real feelings and let the idea of him and our imagined future together vanish so suddenly.
If his situation was ‘ethical,’ why did I feel so s****y?
I wanted to tell him if I had known he was in a relationship, I wouldn’t have been so vulnerable. I wouldn’t have slept the whole night in his arms full of affection and excitement.
If his situation was ‘ethical,’ why did I feel so s****y? Did he think describing the relationship as ‘ethical’ made his behavior ethical?
I’ve come to recognise lack of communication as the most frequent contributor to my disappointment in love. People will usually neglect to tell you what will ultimately prevent them from getting close to you.
They want to get close enough to enjoy the pleasures of intimacy but not close enough to deal with the inevitable responsibility of caring for someone’s feelings.
Ivan told me, ‘You’ll have questions I don’t want to answer.’ What he meant was: ‘You’ll have feelings I don’t want to deal with’.
As hurt and angry as I was, I stayed in touch with Ivan for more than a year. I liked his attention. Some nights, we reminisced about the time we spent in his studio. We texted late at night when he must have been in bed with his partner.
Afterward, I’d put my phone aside and feel an aching loneliness.
We saw each other a few more times in Berlin, but it was never the same. We’d get a drink; he’d ask to come home with me. I let him. But he was right: once I knew the truth, the same level of intimacy and vulnerability was impossible.
‘Don’t you think it’s wrong that you lied by omission?’ I asked him once, in-person.
‘That’s your interpretation,’ he replied. ‘I don’t have to conform to your highly subjective and, honestly, kind of puritanical ideas of morality.’
That was the last time I saw him. After he left, I washed the sheets, and mulled over the relevant ethical questions he had gaslit me into considering: was I being too ‘puritanical’?
Did he have to tell me he was in an open relationship before we slept together? Was it clearly a casual situation I had totally, maybe even selfishly, misinterpreted?
And while I wish I could say Ivan was the only man I’ve dated who failed to mention the existence of a partner, there were plenty of others.
Some claimed they had clearly stated their relationship status in their dating profiles, and I just hadn’t noticed it. Others were technically single but had unofficial girlfriends — pre-existing attachments they couldn’t shake.
Eventually I began asking men directly if they were already in relationships as a way of screening them on apps. Many said no and laughed (‘hahah’) at my question.
But it was just as common to receive more complex responses: ‘There is someone I see from time to time,’ one man said. ‘There is someone,’ another replied ambiguously. ‘There was a girl, but I think it’s finally over now.’
Of course, we almost always have more than one person on our minds. But to have sex and grow close to someone ‘ethically’ requires more self-knowledge and skillful communication than most of us are capable of.
As I continue to date, despite my ‘puritanical’ streak, I’m not opposed to the idea of entering a non-monogamous relationship.
The problem was never Ivan’s primary relationship but the lack of clarity in his intentions — how he withheld information with the transparent goal of making me more vulnerable to him. ‘Can’t we just enjoy each other’s bodies,’ Ivan once said in exasperation as I probed.
It seemed men were always asking me why couldn’t I ‘just’? They always came just short of expressing their real question more directly: why can’t you just… let me treat you however I want?
‘Your emotional needs are met by your girlfriend,’ I told Ivan, highly doubtful hers were met by him.
‘But I’m alone,’ I said near tears.
Now I realise I was much more alone in his neglect than without him at all.
*Names have been changed
So, How Did It Go?
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