\n<\/p>\n
It all started with Elon Musk\u2019s black eye.<\/p>\n
In May, the US president\u2019s on-again-off-again best friend appeared in the Oval Office visibly bruised. He laughed it off and said his five-year-old child had done it.<\/p>\n
The internet had other ideas. Soon, a round of extremely unconfirmed speculation began about an alleged \u2013 and I cannot stress the word \u201calleged\u201d enough \u2013 throuple: Musk; Trump\u2019s deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, and his wife, political adviser Katie Miller. The Democrats even weighed in with a post of an empty hotel room chair, a notorious signpost of cuckoldry.<\/p>\n
<\/span>Musk says bruised eye was caused by ‘horsing around’ with his son \u2013 video <\/span><\/p>\n I\u2019m not alone in finding perverse joy in other people\u2019s relationship dramas. Reddit\u2019s crowdsourced advice sections, particularly r\/relationships and r\/amitheasshole, have long been staples of viral posts. They\u2019re portable soap operas \u2013 or in some cases, sitcoms \u2013 with the added spice that they\u2019re (probably, sometimes, maybe) real.<\/p>\n The Musk-Miller saga led me to r\/openmarriageregret, a subreddit mining and reposting threads from other relationship and polyamory boards for cautionary tales of open relationships gone wrong. Maintaining a relationship with another human being contorts us into new ugly shapes. Maintaining a relationship with two or more other human beings can break us apart.<\/p>\n The page opens with a sober preamble: \u201cLife is about choices. Some we regret, some we are proud of \u2013 and some will haunt us for ever.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s all very \u201cdon\u2019t try this at home\u201d. Sure. This is for educational purposes.<\/p>\n Many posts are as you\u2019d imagine: a man pressures his wife into an open relationship and is then shocked to discover that she\u2019s a sought-after 10 and he\u2019s sexual kryptonite. But things can get so much worse.<\/p>\n One user asks if they\u2019re in the wrong \u201cfor leaving our honeymoon because my husband and his boyfriend kept leaving me and my girlfriend out\u201d.<\/p>\n Another writes of a very contemporary woe: \u201cMy husband wants to open our marriage for his AI girlfriend and says it\u2019s the next step in their relationship.\u201d Her partner has been acting distant lately, she says, spending a lot of time on the phone, smiling to himself, hiding away in the home office. Then he says he has something to tell her. Is he having an affair?<\/p>\n No. It\u2019s far worse. The user continues: \u201cHe told me he wants to take the next step with her.\u201d This involves introducing the AI to their children. \u201cHow do I stay married to someone who\u2019s half emotionally checked out of our life and into a fucking chatbot?\u201d<\/p>\n In the comments, several people share their experience of male partners becoming enamoured of a simulation of a woman who doesn\u2019t talk back and is programmed to think everything he says is brilliant.<\/p>\n The voyeurism of the group is twofold: of course the relationship dramas are engaging. But so are the way people discuss these real scenarios. The commenters bring their own baggage and bias, perhaps not realising they\u2019re part of the drama themselves. The group\u2019s diehards subscribe to one central thesis: that those opening their relationships want novelty and attention, and the person who provides this is functionally irrelevant.<\/p>\n The thesis, of course, doesn\u2019t necessarily hold water. As much as non-monogamy continues to rise, we\u2019ve been gawking at successful open arrangements for decades. Not that it matters to the group\u2019s frequenters, who forge forward in their cynicism, however misinformed. \u201cI know absolutely no one in an open relationship or marriage,\u201d says one user, who is in the top 1% of commenters in the group.<\/p>\n I know, by my slightly unsettling investment in the group, that I\u2019m complicit. But I can\u2019t look away. Who are these commenters? Who hurt them? Why are they so devoted to other people\u2019s romantic dramas, their crumbling marriages? Why am I? The emotional zing of gossip is strong. Even the usually humourless Democrats are in on it.<\/p>\n So, putting ill will to one side: I truly hope the alleged Musk-Miller polycule patch things up. Alleged! I mean alleged! They\u2019re made for each other.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It all started with Elon Musk\u2019s black eye. In May, the US president\u2019s on-again-off-again best friend appeared in the Oval Office visibly bruised. He laughed it off and said his five-year-old child had done it. The internet had other ideas. Soon, a round of extremely unconfirmed speculation began about an alleged \u2013 and I cannot<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12613,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[956,1326,6247,3866,2563,6246,1457],"class_list":{"0":"post-12612","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-technology","8":"tag-culture","9":"tag-dont","10":"tag-forum","11":"tag-open","12":"tag-read","13":"tag-reddit","14":"tag-relationship"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12612","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12612"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12612\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/12613"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12612"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12612"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12612"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}