'It is possible to cheat on your partner in a polyamorous relationship'- This woman shares her story

• Polyamorous relationships have become popular over the years and for this woman, her first experience wasn't so great.
• After being with a man who cheated on her three times, she never wanted to be in a polyamorous relationship.
• However, she realised all she needed was to find honest and trustworthy partners.

I met a man at a party when I was just freshly 25 years old.

We hit it off and ended up spending most of the next day together too. At the time, I was very young, naïve, hadn't dated very much and hadn't been on a date for about two years. He was charming, kind and sweet, like the same things I did and seemed to have the same values - I was hooked immediately.

He only told me the morning after we had first hooked up that he was married. I knew he was polyamorous, but him being married had never been mentioned and when I reacted with surprise when he told me, he gaslighted me and said he had mentioned it during the evening, but I probably wasn't listening.

That should have been a sign right there. A massive red flag being waved in my face, but ya girl didn't listen or see the signs.

I eventually met his then-wife and their fiancée, and we became like a family. We had meals together, we went on day trips and had picnics.

At this point, my partner and I had decided that we weren't going to open our relationship immediately as I was new to polyamory, but we would both tell each other if and when we were interested in someone else and then discuss it.

Then there was one day when we were all invited to a party at a friend's house.

Lots of people were there, including an attractive young woman we'll call Ingrid. Ingrid is beautiful, interesting, and sweet. It was no surprise my partner was immediately drawn to her. But he spent most of the day talking to her even though both myself and his wife were there, and he hadn't seen or spent any time with either of us in over a week. Eventually, after I reminded him of this, he sat with the family, and we all held hands and talked.

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What I didn't know is that he would then add Ingrid on social media, speak to her for three weeks, arrange to visit her, lead her under the false belief that all his partners were aware of their relationship, go to her house and sleep with her while lying to me about all of it.

He eventually called me in tears begging for forgiveness about two weeks after it had happened, as, I found out afterwards, Ingrid had rejected him and said she no longer wanted to see him.

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We said we would "repair and rebuild" our relationship and start anew. Blah. Blah. Blah. If I was the person I am now, I would have kicked his ass to the curb and moved on, but I thought I needed to do some stupid "stand by my man" kind of thing.

A few months later, I found out he was cheating with someone else as well, but I pretended that I didn't know. He then pretended he was bringing her up and into the relationship in a transparent and decent way. Lies. We broke up a few months later, and about a month after that, a third woman messaged me to tell me he'd been in a secret relationship with her too and had said some horrible things about me.

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For a long time, I thought that polyamory wasn't for me because of this terrible person. But a few years and a lot of healing later, I realise that I am polyamorous, but what he did to me was not polyamory.

Yes, it is possible to cheat on your partner in a polyamorous relationship. If it wasn't agreed upon, transparent and honest, then it's lying and cheating and definitely NOT what polyamory is.

Now, I've had much better relationships and honest partners. I am much more confident in who I am, and I definitely will not put up with that behaviour again.