About a year and a half ago, my wife casually approached me with a bold new lifestyle proposal: polyamory. This announcement arrived entirely out of the blue—though, in retrospect, it turns out she was already beta-testing the concept. Being a Southern woman, she had clearly mastered the advanced art of having one’s cake, eating it, and asking for seconds.

I was, to put it mildly, stunned. I’ve never been convinced this model really works. I’m sure there’s a parallel universe somewhere where everyone is joyfully polyamorous and nobody ever gets jealous, tired, or territorial—but in this universe, adding more competitors to a limited resource has never struck me as a sound conflict-management strategy.

About six months into the experiment, I adapted. I acquired a French mistress, who now receives all my attention, all my international travel, all my stubbornly monogamous romantic energy, and all my florid love letters. She also happens to be seventeen years younger than my wife, which—while not the point—does add a certain statistical footnote to the situation.

Moral of the story: be careful what you wish for. Sometimes the universe takes requests very literally.