I'm a longtime reader of your column and I am grateful for your sex positive focus. It has taught me a lot.

I am a bi woman in a relationship with a man for just a couple months. About a month ago we fell into a drunken threesome gone bad. He paid too much attention to her (yes, that old story) and she's not really into women, so I ended up feeling very left out. We worked through it the next day, we moved forward, we remained friends with her. At the time our relationship was semi-open and I asked him not to pursue anything with her. He agreed but went on to text her multiple times a day, they posted on each others Facebook everyday, and they hung out often, even going back to his house for drinks one night. Him and I started fighting a lot until he admitted he was walking a line with her. We decided that maybe openness is not for us and agreed on a different level of monogamish. He's also agreed to minimize communications with her and make it clear to her that he's committed to me, so we can move forward and give "us" a chance. But my trust feels broken and as many big gestures as he makes I can't seem to get over my hurt and anger.

Please don't just tell me to DTMFA, Dan, because finding a guy you are politically and emotionally compatible with, one who's willing to engage in communication and problem solving with you, one who you having amazing, playful creative sex with, one who gets on with all your friends, one who you... well, you get the point, right? It's not that easy! I believe we have something worth working on or I wouldn't be bothering.

Letting An Indiscretion Dissolve

My response after the jump...

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I'm gonna make quick work of you, LAID, because what you need to do is simple and obvious—and, no, it's not DTFMA.

But first and for the record: drunken threesome are bad ideas. "Falling into" threesomes, a.k.a. impulsive or spur-of-the-shitfaced-moment threesomes, are a bad idea. And in my opinion/experience, having a threesome a couple of months into a new relationship is a bad idea. The odds of misread cues during and hurt feelings after are much higher when your BF or GF hasn't been with you long enough to sense your discomfort and midcoursecorrect for your feelings as the threesome unfolds. (Protip: if you are feeling uncomfortable or left out during a threesome, make an upbeat request for a quick timeout and talk it out. If you don't feel like you can speak up during a threesome to advocate for yourself, you shouldn't be having a threesome—hell, you shouldn't be having a twosome.)

Now here's what you need to do, LAID: get over it. He was obviously crushed out on this woman at the same time that he was crushed-out-and-involved with you and he tiptoed up to the line... and he may have even crossed it. But the only way to keep all the good this man brings into your life—all that political and emotional compatibility and playful, creative sex—is to make up your mind to forgive him, even if that requires some suspension of disbelief. Easier said than done, of course, and it sounds like you're trying.

So you're going to have to fake it till you make it, LAID, i.e. ignore those feelings of hurt and anger until you're no longer feeling hurt and angry. If those hurt and angery feelings never stop... well, then either you're incapable of forgiving him and this relationship is consequently doomed or your gut is telling you that his transgression was worse than he's let on, that he can't be trusted, and that you need to DTMFA, in which case this relationship is doomed.