- Can your lover tell you who comes first?
It is 3 a.m., skeletal hour. A single bedside lamp glows. Min-woo releases my wrist—not sets it free, but drops it—and says, no, exhales:
“Yujin sleeps longer than you…”
Yujin. The casual -ie suffix slices open the polite formality he keeps with me. My scalp prickles.
Ten years. For ten years I believed we were all equal: shared calendars, emotional check-ins, safe-sex reports—our republic of perfect consent. Yet at that instant the hierarchy perched on language itself.
The Hidden Valley of the Heart
“Poly is freedom, not competition.”
That was the lie I told myself.
Polyamory turned out to be an Olympics. Gold medal: least jealous lover. Silver: most flexible scheduler. Bronze, perhaps, to the one who loves most quietly.
I was bronze.
When Min-woo’s other lovers were Yujin, Sujin, and Do-hyun—three names—I coped. But numbers always grow. Each newcomer arrived, and I silently revised the score sheet:
- Who made him laugh more?
- Who stayed up the latest?
- Who drove him to the hospital when he was sick?
I hovered around third place.
Yujin’s Bed, My Bed
Christmas Eve, 2022. Min-woo and I checked into an Airbnb in a Hongdae back alley, a house where neon never sleeps. While he showered, I noticed two toothbrushes on the bathroom sink: his blue, and a pale pink. On the pink handle: Y.J. Yujin. She had been here last night.
He said he’d changed the sheets, but the pillow still carried a woman’s shampoo. Breathing it in, I thought: I may simply be borrowing her place.
He emerged, embraced me from behind, lips to my nape:
“Yujin’s going to Busan this weekend, so I can…”
He didn’t finish. The meaning was plain: in Yujin’s absence. My eyes stung—because those were the very words I once used with him.
Do-hyun’s Diary
Do-hyun, another of Min-woo’s lovers, seven years poly, owns a diary as long as his romantic résumé. One day—by accident, or design—I opened his laptop and found an untitled file.
12 March 2023
Today Min-woo took me to a movie, then got a call from Sujin: “Come now.” I waited forty minutes in the lobby. He returned with popcorn, apologized. But maybe that popcorn was Sujin’s. I couldn’t eat it.
Reading this, I felt Do-hyun had somehow won. Yes, you waited forty minutes too. Even the wait felt like rank. I had never kept Yujin waiting while I was with Min-woo—proof she stood above me.
Why We Crave This
Polyamory is not communism; it is a free market. The law of scarcity still applies. Who is loved more, who is called first, who is introduced to his parents—everything wears a price tag.
Psychologist Adam Blake says: “Poly couples deny jealousy, but they are virtuosos at quantifying it.” I was. I parsed Kakao reply speeds, emoji choices, the order of “likes” on my photos. All were scores. And while tallying them, I kept repeating: we are equal. Because the moment I admitted the lie, I feared I wouldn’t survive.
Have you ever been someone’s number one? Or have you stayed, knowing you might always be second?