We just got engaged and we’re trying polyamory for the first time

How our first threesome made me realise he’s ‘The One’

“I need to find a sexy Sicilian man before I go back to my husband in the Netherlands.” Rewind a year-or-so and I’m being given lessons in non-monogamy from 52-year-old Heidi. I did not expect to be learning this while studying Italian in Palermo on my break-up hiatus but after a traumatic three years trying to convince someone so not into commitment to commit to me (and failing until I finally call it quits) my interest is piqued.

Much like my ex boyfriend, she’s convinced that the most important thing in a relationship is to be happy for the other person and if that means they (or you) do the horizontal tango with someone else, then all’s fair in love and war. Armed with the argument that it’s human nature to want a physical connection with more than just one partner, Heidi’s left her husband and teenage daughter for two weeks and is on the hunt for a Sicilian Casanova to satisfy her appetite for “a hit of Italian” on her holiday.

Judging by the success of Chris Ryan and Cacilda Jetha’s 2010 book Sex at Dawn: How we mate, why we stray and what that means for modern relationships, which essentially argues the same thing, Heidi might well be on to something. “Forget what you’ve heard about human beings having descended from the…