My therapist has been life-saving. I started seeing her a month before my wedding when my family’s assault on Kevin‘s in my marriage was at its peak. I’m going on almost a year and a half of seeing her, and I am more empowered in my relationships I have ever been.

I definitely hear you about loneliness be getting more loneliness. The summer was a constant cycle of that. I was sad because no one was reaching out to me, but then I stopped reaching out to people because I had nothing to tell them about for having no one to hang out with. I did try to cobble together relationships from my community college program in mapping, but it just didn’t work. I had an hour commute to the silent job in the middle of nowhere, and the red line of the metro was broken all summer. Anywhere outside of Silver Spring was just completely inaccessible to me after work. And everyone from Baltimore forgot me the second I sent my message saying I was afraid to come back to the city anymore … ( Except Johanna!) So, the fact that the Guys not only remembering me, but also traveling to see me when no one else would was lifesaving!

I think it’s important to put into context where I was when we first met the Guys. We had just started becoming friends after an extended silence after the period we hooked up upon meeting at Baltimore Pride in 2016. Within the span of a week, I lost so much at the same moment soon after starting our nonsexual friendship.

• I was laid off
• I discovered my parents were in the process of selling the childhood home to be with Chris in Denver without telling me
• In response to my refusing to concede to my grandmother’s homophobic attacks on my marriage, my Dad punitively gave my brother the car I was gifted for my college graduation
• Our roommate told us he was breaking the lease early

I lost everything I had spent my life building in a very short amount of time, and it coincided with their return from a a 6-month stay in Rome for Greg to take an art conservation fellowship. During their stay abroad, Greg broke his neck and Jeff had to nurse him back to health. When they returned from Italy, neither of their jobs were waiting for them. They remained unemployed for 16 months.

We all had so much free time and had little community, which is why we became close.

The origin-story of their marriage: He and Jeff made it a multi-day sex party. Greg went in with one boyfriend, and he left the party with Jeff. They have a very non-committal marriage. I want to say the only married for insurance, but even that is unclear. I don’t quite understand why they married, because there’s no expectation of an argument nor any consideration of the others feelings. Or maybe it’s more accurate to say there’s no consideration of Jeff’s feelings on the part of Greg.

Greg told me there’s been a lot of sexual trauma in his past, which I assume accounts for his incredible promiscuity. Greg loves the back rooms of seedy bars where a lot of anonymous gay men fuck the dark. He told me he always has sex with people when he’s on a work conference trips. In airplanes. ~EVERYWHERE~

Soon after I introduced the two of them, Tony confided in me that he hoped Greg and Jeff had the kind of marriage where he could explore their sexual chemistry together. And Greg , well, Greg fucks everyone and they absolutely have the kind of marriage where Tony could explore his sexual chemistry with Greg.

I journal daily, as you might have gathered, and I documented how the two of them would sneak off to be alone during our shared times together — their moving-out party from their old apartment, my map-school graduation party, my thirtieth birthday shindig. We once had a group chat between Kev, Tony, Greg, Jeff and me, and the two of them would flirt pretty shamelessly there, too. They were so bad at hiding it.

We used to talk on the phone every other week, but Tony stopped calling me altogether soon after he got into the rhythm of seeing the Guys outside of me. I have come to understand from my experience that Tony only used me for access to have sex with Greg, and then Tony kept showing up at my milestone parties just for show.

But Tony always avoided talking to me at those parties.

I’m also 100% sure that Greg gas lights Jeff as well, and that he also weaponizes his mental health issues. Throughout the last couple weeks, Jeff has been very scared by making a scene. That’s how I know Greg keeps threatening to commit suicide, because he keeps telling Jeff he’s going to and Jeff keeps begging us to cave and bring things back to normal.

Greg has a lot of really dark secrets, and for the last two years I’ve been the only one who’s been telling. That includes Jeff, he doesn’t tell him any of the things about his past that he tells me. It’s through these disclosures I’ve started piecing things together. A couple months ago, he told me he’s been grappling with his “obsession with baroque violence and sadism.” He once also told me about a previous best friendship that eerily resembled the friendship we shared. He recounted the last time they saw each other, when this friend Noah arrived at the party he was meeting Greg, and kept telling him that there was something v important he needed to say. He never got around to telling Greg before driving home, intentionally running into a telephone pole and dying.

These two admissions and my experience just resonate so hard. Greg is obsessed with sadism. Given that he’s abused all my vulnerabilities so specifically, consistently and always so seemingly innocuously — it seems so plausible that someone else would commit suicide for not having twice-weekly therapy for the last six months. (To be fair, I just graduated to once a week!)

As for next steps, I have severely restricted their access to communication. I sent Greg an essay calling him out on a lot of the shit he pulled on me, and forbade him to respond. Then I blocked his number.

I’m communicating specifically through Jeff.

They keep demanding we meet to talk this out in person, but I am keeping very firm boundaries. I’m not comfortable letting Greg have a direct channel of communication w me, let alone seeing him in person. So I told them I’d send them a letter.

That’s the only way I’m allowing them to communicate with me.

I’ll send you a .pdf of the letter I’m intending to send!

Kev hasn’t read it yet, but he will.

Also, I do think I need to acknowledge how Kevin is not very present in any of this. A lot of what happened between Greg and me was in private and it made Kevin very uncomfortable throughout the year. There were times that my relationship w Greg crossed Kevin’s boundaries, definitely toward the first part of the year. We’ve worked through a lot of it, and are still healing from it.

For the last six months, the main challenge has been Kevin’s friendship with Jeff. I think it’s such a meaningful relationship for KP, because Jeff is also the son of a very abusive, alcoholic father. I think having that deep connection and sense of stability with each other as a family has done wonders for both of them. The last few months, Greg seemed to capitalize on the fact that my making a big deal of my abuse could dissolve one of Kevin’s most important friendships as well.

Which, in hindsight, is why I put up with it for so long

(Maybe it’s important to add that Greg is a raging alcoholic. He’s admitted to me drinking up to a liter of hard liquor a night throughout much of the summer)

Okay, I’m ending here, because I gave you a lot to chew on.

Please give me your reactions, Emily! Ask as many questions as you want! It honestly feels so liberating to be able to talk to you about this. I’ve been so alone with this for so long, and it’s been a really hard thing to talk about with Kevin because of the earlier crossed boundaries.

Thank you so much ❤

Love,

TK