Sometimes I forget that I was once in a throuple.
Other times, I remember it very clearly and think,
“Wow. That was my actual life.”

Back then, it felt like something special.
Unconventional, yes, but intimate. Familiar. I was the third, joining two men who had already been together for what felt like forever.
I slotted in gently, like I’d been there all along. We built a home, a rhythm, a kind of chosen family.

And for someone craving connection, that felt like everything.

But with distance, I see it differently.
I can recognise now that I may have wanted to belong more than I genuinely wanted them.
That I mistook safety for chemistry. That I felt flattered, pulled in, wanted and I didn’t stop to ask myself the more important question:
Is this what you actually want?

We weren’t especially physical, not after the beginning.
But there was emotional closeness, domestic intimacy, a sense of being cared for. And in some ways, that was enough at the time.
I didn’t feel used or manipulated, but I do wonder if I slipped into something I wasn’t entirely ready for, or fully aligned with.
I don’t regret it. But I don’t think I would do it again.

It taught me a lot about agency and about how easy it is to confuse being chosen with being loved.

The version of me back then needed somewhere to land.
The version of me now is more interested in building something that feels mutual, intentional, and fully mine.

I haven’t spoken to one of them since I left.
The other reached out for a while after they broke up, but even that eventually faded. The chapter closed quietly. No big fallout, just distance.

And while I’m still unpacking what that time meant, one thing is clear:
It shaped me.
Maybe more than I realised at the time.
Not in ways I regret, just in ways I now understand.