Is It Wrong That I Asked My Boyfriend For An Open Relationship

Confronting the Truth

We agreed to meet at a park near her office the next day during lunch. I spent the morning at the warehouse mindlessly scanning packages while Linda trained me on the inventory system.

She kept giving me these knowing looks like she understood exactly why I was there. During our break, she casually mentioned that the other two women who’d been transferred here had both been in relationships with supervisors from the main office.

One had filed a complaint that mysteriously disappeared; the other had just quietly left after six months. Sarah was already at the park when I arrived, sitting on a bench near the fountain where we used to eat lunch during high school.

She stood when she saw me, and we both just stared at each other for a moment. She looked exactly like herself, just more polished and more confident with a professional blazer and nice shoes.

It was the kind of put-together look that came from actually building a career instead of being someone’s secret. We hugged awkwardly, and she pulled back to study my face.

Her expression shifted to something I couldn’t quite read, perhaps concern or recognition. She suggested we walk while we talked, and I agreed, grateful for something to do with my nervous energy.

Sarah didn’t waste time with small talk. She asked me directly what had happened with Derek.

I started to give her the rehearsed version, the one where we just grew apart and where the age difference finally caught up to us. She stopped walking and turned to face me.

“Madison, I know that’s not true. I know because Derrick called me two years ago.”

My stomach dropped. Sarah continued explaining that Derrick had called her out of the blue saying he was concerned about me.

He’d told her I was going through a difficult time and that I’d become paranoid and jealous. He claimed I was making up stories about people trying to break us up.

He’d asked her, as someone who used to care about me, to please not reach out if I contacted her because it would only fuel my delusions. I sank onto a nearby bench, my legs suddenly unable to hold me up.

Sarah sat beside me and pulled out her phone, showing me the call log from two years ago. There were three calls from a number I recognized as Derrick’s office line.

She’d screenshotted them because something about the calls had felt wrong to her. Sarah told me she’d tried to reach out anyway—through my mom, through social media, even through Tyler—but every avenue had been blocked.

My mom had been convinced by Derrick that Sarah was a bad influence. My social media had her blocked.

Tyler had been warned to stay away. She’d even tried to accidentally run into me at places she knew I went, but I was never alone; Derrick was always there, always steering me away before she could approach.

I asked her why she’d kept trying and why she’d cared so much when I’d clearly cut her off. Sarah’s eyes filled with tears.

She told me about her cousin who’d been in a similar relationship and how the isolation had happened so gradually that no one noticed until it was almost too late. She said she’d recognized the pattern with me, the way I’d slowly disappeared from everyone’s life except Derrick’s.

My phone buzzed with a text from Derek: “Building management informed me you retrieved your belongings. I trust you found everything in order. Please remember that our workplace has strict policies about maintaining professional boundaries. I hope you’ll respect those moving forward.”

I showed Sarah the message. She read it twice, her jaw tightening.

She asked if I’d kept any of our old conversations, anything that showed what our friendship had been like before Derek. I admitted I’d deleted everything from before I met him.

It had seemed like the mature thing to do at the time, leaving my childish past behind. Sarah pulled up old photos on her phone from high school, from college visits, and from the summer before I’d started my internship.

In every photo, I was surrounded by friends laughing and making silly faces, looking young and carefree. She showed me one from my 18th birthday party, just a month before I’d started working at Derrick’s company.

I looked like a completely different person. We talked for two hours.

Sarah filled in gaps in my memory, reminding me of plans we’d had and dreams I’d shared with her that I’d completely forgotten. She told me about the graduate program I’d been accepted to but had turned down because Derrick had convinced me it was a waste of time.

I had no memory of even applying. As I walked back to my car, I felt hollow.

Everything I thought I knew about the past five years was shifting, like looking at an optical illusion and suddenly seeing the hidden image. I drove back to the warehouse in a daze, barely registering the traffic around me.

Linda was waiting for me when I returned, holding a manila folder. She asked if we could talk privately and led me to a small break room.

Once the door was closed, she opened the folder and spread out several documents. They were transfer forms, all for young women, all from Derrick’s department, all sent to the warehouse.

The dates spanned eight years. She pointed to one name, Catherine.

The name seemed familiar, but I couldn’t place it. Linda explained that Catherine had been Derrick’s mentee before me.

She’d been 19 when she’d started, fresh out of high school and eager to learn. She’d lasted three years before requesting a transfer to another city.

But before she’d left, she’d come to Linda trying to file a complaint. The complaint had disappeared, but Linda had kept her own copies.

I read through Catherine’s statement, my hands shaking. The patterns were identical: the initial mentorship, the special attention, and the gradual isolation from peers.

The relationship started when she turned 21. He had convinced her that everyone else was jealous or trying to sabotage her success.

The only difference was that Catherine had tried to leave earlier, and Derrick had made her work life unbearable until she’d had no choice but to quit. Linda told me Catherine wasn’t the first.

There had been at least two others before her, though Linda hadn’t been in a position to document those. She’d been watching Derrick’s pattern for years, keeping records and waiting for someone to be willing to come forward.

Building the Case

She asked if I’d be willing to file a formal complaint. I thought about Derrick’s text and his warning about professional boundaries.

I thought about how he’d already positioned me as the unstable ex-girlfriend, the one who’d cheated and demanded an open relationship. Who would believe me over him?

He’d been at the company for 15 years and had spotless performance reviews. He was respected and even admired.

That night, I finally told my parents everything, not the rehearsed version but the real story. I told them how Derrick had pursued me when I was 17 and how he’d waited until I was 18 to make it official.

I explained how he’d systematically removed every other influence from my life. My mom cried; my dad paced the living room, his hands clenched into fists.

They told me things I hadn’t known, like how Derrick had called them separately, building trust with each of them. How he’d convinced my mom that my dad was too overprotective and that he didn’t understand modern relationships.

How he’d told my dad that my mom was naive and didn’t see the dangers I might face without proper guidance. He’d played them against each other so skillfully that they’d stopped discussing their concerns about him together.

My dad pulled out his laptop and showed me emails Derrick had sent him over the years. They were professional, thoughtful emails about my progress at work, my development, and my potential.

In every email, Derek positioned himself as the stable, mature influence I needed. Reading them now, I could see the manipulation and the way he’d presented himself as the solution to problems he’d created.

I spent the next morning calling the numbers Linda had given me. Two of the women didn’t answer and one had disconnected her number, but Catherine picked up on the third ring.

Her voice was cautious when I introduced myself, but when I mentioned Derrick’s name, she went silent for so long I thought she’d hung up. We met that afternoon at a restaurant in the next town over.

Catherine looked successful, put together, and normal. She was a marketing director now at a different company.

“Married,” she mentioned to someone her own age. She twisted her wedding ring as she talked, a nervous habit that seemed at odds with her confident appearance.

Catherine’s story was eerily similar to mine but with details that made my skin crawl. Derrick had convinced her to move in with him after six months.

He’d helped her decorate, picking out furniture that he said was more sophisticated than what she would have chosen. He’d replaced her wardrobe, saying her clothes were too young for the professional image she needed to project.

He’d even convinced her to dye her hair, saying her natural color washed her out under office lights. She showed me photos from that time.

In them, she looked like a completely different person. She looked older, yes, but also somehow diminished.

Her smile never quite reached her eyes. She was always dressed impeccably, but in clothes that looked like they belonged on someone else.

She looked like she was playing a role, and badly. Catherine told me about the breaking point.

She’d run into a professor from her community college who’d mentioned a scholarship she’d won but never claimed. She had no memory of winning any scholarship.

When she’d investigated, she’d discovered that Derrick had been intercepting her mail and her emails, making decisions for her that she never knew about. The scholarship would have paid for her to finish her bachelor’s degree at a four-year university.

Derrick had declined it on her behalf. When she’d confronted him, he’d had an explanation for everything.

The university was too far away and the program wasn’t as good as the mentorship he was providing. She didn’t need a degree when she had him to guide her career.

But something had finally clicked for Catherine. She’d seen him clearly for the first time, and the image had terrified her.

Her exit had been messy. Derrick had made her work life miserable, assigning her impossible tasks and writing her up for minor infractions.

He documented every mistake. He’d told their colleagues that she was unstable and that the stress of the job was too much for her.

By the time she’d left, everyone believed she’d had some kind of breakdown. It had taken her two years to rebuild her career and three years to trust anyone again.

It was four years before she could talk about it without shaking. She’d thought about reaching out to warn whoever came after her, but Derrick had made it clear that any contact would be considered harassment.

He’d kept that threat hanging over her even after she’d left. I told Catherine about Linda’s documentation and about the possibility of finally holding Derrick accountable.

Catherine gripped her coffee cup so tightly I thought it might shatter. She said she’d think about it, but I could see the fear in her eyes.

Derrick had taken years from her, but she’d rebuilt. Coming forward meant risking everything she’d worked to create.