Perhaps We Started Grieving Our Polycule at a Sex Resort

But I refused to stop making love with my husband

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image by LibrariAnna

I don’t drink much, but I can be a bit of a stoner.

Hence the Jamaican vacation to a sex resort, where the first place I headed with my husband Jack upon our 2pm arrival (and after our unpacking, as I’m also a type-A autistic librarian) was the on-site dispensary.

There are many reasons I love Hedonism II (aka Hedo), and the dispensary is one of them. I don’t like buying weed from the guys that walk the beach; I want something that’s more regulated.

“Do you want the best stuff?” the saleswoman asked, pulling out a little baggie from behind the counter.

I only ever smoke the best weed. But I suppose Jack and I are used to Jamaican weed when we’re in Jamaica — which is typically not as strong as the weed we get back in our home state, where weed is legal.

We’ve visited Jamaica nine times together now — this being our fifth time at this resort — and as it turns out, “the best stuff” is the strong stuff.

Back in our hotel room, Jack lay me down on the daybed running alongside the window that’s meant to be the official “third person” bed, should a threesome visit the resort together. We didn’t have a third with us, but when the concierge suggested this room to Jack and me upon our arrival, Jack’s eyes lit up in a way that required no words to describe his enthusiastic agreement.

Jack adores showing me off, and now we’d have a stage to put on a show.

I lay against a pillow against the wall at the head of the daybed. Jack spread my legs and started to kiss my thighs. First I let myself be overtaken by the combination of weed and sunlight pouring through the open window. Then I surrendered to Jack’s tongue, waiting for his finger to enter me so that I could progress into orgasm in the way I’ve perfected with my girlfriend, Becca.

In the past year-plus with her, I’ve both given and received more cunnilingus than ever before in my life. I hope I’ve become more skilled at giving it. I know I’ve become more skilled at receiving it.

I leaned up on my forearms — in fish pose, if you’re a yogi like me. I rocked myself back and forth gently, focusing my thoughts on the feeling building in my pussy until the warm energy spread its way up my body to my chest, then burst.

After I came back to earth, I realized that I was incredibly dizzy, and perhaps not just from my orgasm. I looked down to Jack, who was dripping with sweat.

“Do you want to move to the big bed?” I suggested. As in, out of the sun.

Jack moved to the king-sized bed and then lay back in a way that indicated he was ready for a blowjob. “I feel dizzy,” he admitted. “I think I smoked way too much.”

“And after a drink at the airport and a coffee upon arrival,” I added.

“Plus a Xanax and a half for the flight,” he added. Jack hates flying.

We dabbled for a bit, me giving him sensual head followed by a round of fucking, but I could tell that Jack was still feeling off.

Finally, he admitted that he didn’t want to try to finish just yet, but instead save himself for later and walk the beach right then. We set off, him in tiny running shorts and me in a loosely knit crochet coverup with nothing underneath.

We got snacks and stared at the ocean for awhile before we ventured in, enjoying the intensely primal feeling of being nude in a natural body of water. That never gets old.

Then we went back to the room. Jack said that he was feeling a bit better now that he’d come down slightly from his high, but his baseline mood seemed concerningly unchanged.

Jack rarely feels down and almost never depressed, so when he’s like this, it’s my cue to really step it up and support him. And him being like this at Hedo, upon arrival, with a whole week of sex stretching out ahead of him?

It was beyond concerning to me, especially given events in our polycule from the weeks — and hell, the months — prior.

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Our foursome polycule had just recently repaired after a giant relationship-threatening rupture.

I thought we were securely back on course when we sat down and wrote out our “Agreements” at Tim and Becca’s kitchen table in mid-May. We had a plan in writing about how we’d practice polyamory all together now. We wrote out and agreed on how our time would be spent and how it would be scheduled, what our group sex dynamics looked like, and how we would communicate with one another.

Then, the week before our trip, Becca’s husband Tim did what he had taken to doing again and again throughout our relationship — he started chipping back on what he’d previously said he wanted, or agreed to, or felt, or was open to.

This time, Tim had announced to Becca during marriage counseling that he did not want to ever go to Hedo with us — which had become a dream of Becca’s. It had been a longtime dream for Jack and me to one day be there with another couple, too.

Then, two days before our trip, as they were driving to our house for an overnight — along with their boys in the backseat — Tim told Becca that he was no longer interested in full swap sex, which had been a big add-on to our Agreements, though we hadn’t yet embarked on it.

The no-full-swap news traveled to me as Becca and I later drove her boys back from my local pool, and then from me to Jack while Becca was putting the boys to bed and Tim was in the shower. Eventually the four of us talked about this together in bed that night, when Becca stalled out sexually and emotionally through what had become our typical soft swap foursome sex, unable to proceed forward with the elephant in the room.

It wasn’t the first time something like this had happened mid-sex-session. Several times before, Becca had started crying in the middle of our foursome sex, worried about Tim’s interest level in the entire situation based on his body language both during sex and during the hangout time prior — but she wouldn’t just say that. She struggled to communicate with Tim both in and out of the foursome situation, to the point that she wanted EMDR therapy to overcome her freeze response with him.

My attempts to console her never really worked, because it wasn’t my reassurance she was after in those moments. She needed to know that Tim was okay with what was happening between all of us, but I suppose that she already knew he wasn’t and never would be.

Usually, in these moments, Becca would eventually ask Tim for reassurance. Then Tim would offer up something completely unreassuring along the lines of “I’m fine,” and then the other three of us would have to push for a conversation. But the time before the rupture, the night ended with Becca crying in my closet, only to have me join her and incite my own panic attack, all while Tim laid in my bed “giving Becca space she needed,” by his account.

In hindsight, the rupture of early May seemed inevitable. But its repair was promising. One thing we agreed was that we’d share feelings when they arose, without letting them brew inside for too long — hence Tim sharing his feelings about full swap in the car.

Perhaps it’s notable, though, that Tim watched his beloved FIFA soccer game to the end before joining us in the bedroom — and did not bring up his feelings with us until Becca started freaking out, completely unaware that the rest of us were aware of his change of heart and had already started to digest the news.

Perhaps the conversation would have been different if Tim had seen the look of shock that shadowed my face when Becca told me the news. I was the one who shared with Jack and saw his face turn gray, sharing my worry that, deep down, this was yet another indication that Tim didn’t really want to be a part of this foursome — that this foursome probably wasn’t going to endure.

But we were prepared for Tim’s mid-sex revelation, and so our reactions were calm and collected. We had a productive conversation about wants versus willings, all of us wanting Tim to feel safe and respected, none of us wanting to pressure anyone to do anything.

We even continued on to orgasms afterwards, and texted later the next day that we all felt fine with putting the full swap piece of our play on pause for the time being. After all, ultimately we wanted what had become Jack’s refrain: “we want what’s best for everyone, and we’re in this for the long game.”

Plus, it was my boundary not to have full-swap sex in the first place, back when our foursome began over a year ago. I was pursuing a sapphic relationship with a woman, and Jack wanted to remain as integrated as possible in my sex life. I wasn’t interested in other men, and I was still somewhat traumatized over agreeing to a full swap situation that went awry at Hedo two years prior.

My original idea with Tim and Becca was actually for the guys to watch us having sapphic sex, then for us women to parallel play with our own husbands. As in, we didn’t originally intend to swap at all, until chemistry and trust progressed us to the point of touching each other’s husbands first with our hands, and then with our mouths.

In May, as we repaired from the rupture, Becca acknowledged that full swap had been something she was longing for. Seven months after admitting that she had feelings for Jack, Becca changed course — it wasn’t that she had actual feelingsfor Jack, as she reassured Tim. It was, upon further reflection, just that she wanted to be more uninhibited and experience more sexual freedoms with my husband.

Jack, ever the intercourse guy, agreed that he wanted the same — he wanted full sexual expression for himself, especially after watching my joy in being able to fully indulge in my own sexual freedoms. He admitted freely that he did indeed have feelings for Becca — but also held firm on his boundary from before, that he didn’t want any deeper relationship with her than he already had. Jack actually needs feelings to fuck people; he doesn’t view them as a threat or a problem unless he has to keep them suppressed.

Tim admitted that he had a cuck thing going on in which he was very aroused at the idea of watching Jack fuck Becca. He had said previously, repeatedly that he found me attractive — but I suppose I should have taken note that he never outright expressed enthusiasm at the idea of fucking me.

And in the end, I agreed to full swap as well, admitting that I thought I’d have great fun being fucked by Tim. I’m learning that I want to vary my own experiences in safe settings, as a means to more fully explore myself.

At the time, I considered Tim a safe person, despite the way the rupture went down — with Tim stonewalling Jack and me for ten days while he operated under an assumption of what I said in a text to Becca that he read on her phone, out of context. Back then, I still trusted him, especially based on our repairs and agreements.

I was recovering from psychological hurt, yes, but perhaps I thought full swap would be healing. Or perhaps I was just thinking about my sexual parts and the eroticism in experiencing another man in addition to Jack — one who I repeatedly, surprisingly found attractive despite my typical sapphic-leaning sexual orientation.

And yet, full swap was never a need for me. So when Tim announced that he wasn’t really interested, at least for the time being, it was easy enough for me to shift my sexual focus to what we did have — an amazing soft swap situation.

I didn’t want to focus on the fear of Tim being disinterested in the foursome altogether, on the fear of losing the foursome and thus perhaps my relationship with Becca. After all, Jack and I had agreed that we’d do polyamory together in some fashion, and we knew Tim was adamantly opposed to Jack, Becca, and me having threesomes. So where would that leave us if Tim opted out, as he had briefly, just a month prior, in May?

That was too much to think about on a vacation that was supposed to “rejuvenate” my relationship with Jack. We had chosen that word as our shared mantra for the week prior to the trip, and I was intent on keeping my focus there, rather than on my foursome-related anxieties.

Jack couldn’t get into that mindset with me on Monday. At that point, he didn’t yet know exactly what to think. He knew that nothing felt particularly good. He was flabbergasted at how disconnected he felt here, at Hedo, his favorite place in the world. That disconnect alone was making him sad in ways that felt absolutely out of touch with this setting of joy and sexual celebration.

But in that moment, Jack tried to brush his emotions aside, blaming the bad drug concoction rather than his actual feelings.

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A typical Hedo pre-dinner hour for Jack and me is a joyful experience in which Jack basically pretends I’m his Barbie doll.

For a straight man, Jack has quite the eye for — and love of — women’s style. He has always intuitively understood the intention of self expression through clothing and accessories. One of the reasons that we get along so well likely stems from his enthusiasm at helping me cultivate my own personal style, dating way back to our teens and twenties.

When I had my quasi-midlife crisis and coming out in my mid-thirties, Jack was absolutely gung-ho about my ensuing wardrobe overhaul. I ached to exude the Self I had found within, and Jack was again happy to witness and weigh in on my newest stylistic choices.

Style is such a big deal to me that I was ultimately convinced to vacation at Hedo when a friend reached out about her visit here and told me about the theme night costume parties. My heart fluttered nostalgic back to college, remembering Toga Night and murder mystery parties and Halloweens filled with raunchy fun. Hedo is not, in fact, a mere nude beach. Hedo is a destination for empowerment through self expression, clothing included — albeit often minimal in material.

Jack and I literally spend months before our now-yearly trip thinking about our Hedo wardrobes. I have beachwear — sexy coverups and crochet swimsuits not meant to get wet — as well as all of those costumes for the after-dinner parties. But I also have a selection of sweetly sexy dinner dresses in which I feel absolutely, positively radiant as my whole self.

That night, we agreed on a little forest green dress that makes me feel like a garden nymph goddess. It’s a baby-doll cut with an empire waist and bikini-bra style top with straps that tie around my neck as well as my back. The short skirt is flowy, with the backside slightly longer than the front. I paired this dress with a green floral lace thong and my lace-up gladiator sandals. I wore my super-long brown hair natural, letting it wave as it tried to air-dry in the humidity, clipping it back to give it some sense of being “done.”

It was already past 7pm in Jamaica, which meant 8pm at home. I sensed that I wouldn’t have an opportunity to turn away from Jack again that night, even for a moment, without making him feel abandoned in his pain. So I popped on my phone as he used the bathroom, texting Becca goodnight and promising to send more updates in the morning.

Then I turned towards Jack, ready to go to dinner. “Are you going to smoke any more?” he inquired, gesturing towards the pipe I’d left on the dresser earlier. I usually have a toke or two before dinner while at Hedo, but not this time. I wanted to be as present as possible with Jack, and something didn’t feel quite celebratory in those moments.

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We had a quiet dinner in the main restaurant, taking in the scene and agreeing that neither of us was in the mood to put on our costumes for Jamaica Night this year. Instead, after eating, we each got a tequila on the rocks from the bar.

The sky had started to drizzle, and so instead of our usual evening walk around the resort with our drinks in hand, we sat at a table in the far corner by the stage, as close to the open salty night air as we could be while still under the protection of the lobby roof. We turned our bodies towards each other and started chatting.

The drink started to relax Jack and perk him up a bit, and after that our conversation did what it always does when we are connecting and bantering — it made me aroused. Eye contact with Jack’s gray-blue eyes contributed, as did the opportunity to slow my roll in life at that moment and focus on his stunning masculinity. He looked like his own version of James Bond in Jamaica in his white button down shirt, with his giant arm muscles threatening the sleeves. His salt-and-pepper beard was trimmed short, his brown head hair is always soft and full and beckons my fingers to become his comb.

I love this man. I love seeing him relax in this special place — and now, on our fifth trip here, I marveled aloud at how we’ve grown since our first visit in 2019.

It was here, at Hedo, or more specifically on a midweek sunset nude catamaran cruise heading back to this resort, that I officially shed my sexual shame. I still find myself emotional thinking of that moment when I realized that there is nothing wrong with sex, nor with sexual expression nor with my own personal sexuality, whatever it might be. So long as everyone is consenting, sexual exploration is beautiful and unique and innately human.

I decided, in that moment, that I wanted to live fully, abundantly, openly, deeply. I wanted to find myself in ways that I hadn’t previously allowed myself to — because of the rules of religion, of my parents, of society.

By the end of that 2019 trip, I’d admit my bisexuality aloud to Jack. It wasn’t news to him, even though it felt like a huge reveal to me. What did feel big to both of us was the realization that we wanted to practice polyamory in some form. We had dabbled in this relationship orientation throughout college, then closed ourselves off to inherited monogamous ideals upon marriage. Tough times had followed, and we forgot the truth we knew together, as new adults.

Now we wanted to live authentically.

We started dating other couples in the autumn season that followed.

Seven years later, we are still polyamorous. Still figuring out the details, too — but still together, still madly in love, still feeling better about how we are living our lives with each passing year.

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When the rain stopped, we saw our opportunity to head back to our room.

We walked back a little quieter than we’d been in the lobby. We allowed ourselves a moment to feel one of the things hanging heavy between us in the humid air — we were sad that Tim and Becca wouldn’t ever experience this with us.

On our trip to Hedo the year prior, our relationship with them was still young. I’d messaged with Becca for months beginning in February 2025. We’d had our first kiss that April, and by May I was alone with Becca for a hotel overnight, asking if she’d be my girlfriend. I told her I loved her in early June, just weeks before that 2025 trip to Hedo.

Our expansion as a foursome actually began when Jack and I were at Hedo that summer, with me texting Becca my ideas for more integrated touch and sexual expression with each other’s husbands. She agreed, as did Tim and Jack. Back then, it felt like that expansion was almost necessary in order for Becca and I to be more fully integrated into each other’s lives, in order for us all to maximize our sexuality and pleasure.

In turn, Jack and I spent that 2025 trip to Hedo daydreaming aloud about what fun it would be for them to join us in the future. The resort is decorated with painted rocks and carved wooden signs commissioned by guests to commemorate visits and compile special memories, and during that visit Jack and I pointed out every foursome sign we found. We marveled that our polyamorous dreams were finally coming to fruition.

The year that followed was filled with sexual expansion, as well as finding our footing. There were absolutely delightful parts of being in that polycule, but at other times it was a volcano of emotions. It has not been easy, and in truth I kept waiting for things to settle down and stabilize.

The no-Hedo announcement hadn’t fazed me too much in the moment of Becca’s reveal. I believe my response to her was, “Well, I’m still going to go there.” I can be a touch indignant like that, refusing to let others spoil my fun, even at the cost of fully feeling my own emotions.

I still don’t have a full understanding of why Tim is opposed to visiting this place. Sure, at this point in their younger-than-us lives, finances and lack of childcare don’t make it feasible. I knew it wasn’t going to happen in the next several years; I was prepared for several more trips in which it would “just” be Jack and me.

But as an idea — or in Becca’s case, what had become a dream — for the future? I could only guess at what Tim was thinking, as Becca didn’t have any more information to convey. She wasn’t comfortable getting too in the weeds about it during their couples therapy, since she surmised that the reasons would be rather intimate. And they never picked the conversation back up before coming to our house and sharing the other, bigger news about no-full swap.

I didn’t sense that the nude aspect of the resort was the worrisome part. I sensed it was something related to sex, perhaps to Tim’s lesser interest in it altogether. Plenty of people spend their days at Hedo partying away in the pool, but Jack and I tend to make love all day long while on vacation, in some form or another.

Tim’s relative lack of interest in sex — and thus, ultimately, possibly in our foursome as well — was overall too concerning to worry about, so I let my mind pivot to something else that Becca had mused on.

Tim had previously stated that he isn’t interested in exhibitionism, which Jack has always been exuberantly open about enjoying.

Hedo not only allows nudity pretty much everywhere but the restaurants — they also allow their guests to have sex in all those same spots, too. That said, sometimes the resort is rather tame, and we’ve gone a whole week not seeing much more than a woman giving a man head off in a corner of the beach.

Other weeks are more of PDA-fest, and some of those festivities have admittedly been ignited by yours truly. In fact, the week to come was filled with more public sex than I’ve ever seen at Hedo, and I did more than I ever thought I’d do in a public space.

I know that much of that had to do with Tim and Becca — perhaps in spite of them.

See, I was starting to absorb too much of Jack’s sadness. My autism might be somewhat to blame for this, adding complexity to my empathy that has me feeling other’s emotions even if I don’t fully understand the cognitive depth of them.

But I didn’t want to feel sadness while at Hedo — I wanted to feel joy and sexual pleasure. I wanted to feel what I first felt there in 2019 — freedom. I wanted to be free from shame, free to be myself, free to love as I love.

I was adamant that I wouldn’t let myself be bummed out about Tim and Becca never joining us on one of these trips, much how Becca at home was trying to deal with her own disappointment. I was adamant that I wasn’t going to let the sting of that recent revelation make me miss Becca any more than I did on a typical weekday when I didn’t get to bask in her presence. I was adamant that I wasn’t going to judge Tim for his decisions, nor was I going to let myself feel judged by them in turn.

I was adamant that I would enjoy myself.

I was adamant that I would give Jack the love he needed to surmount his sadness.

So I turned towards my husband that night.

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By 8:02pm Jack was snapping a selfie of us through the ceiling mirror.

The photo is colored red, courtesy of the color-changing lightbulbs that I’ve grown accustomed to bringing to hotels, swapping their lightbulbs for mine. Because lighting, as my prim-and-proper interior designer sister-in-law so often reminds me, is of the utmost importance.

In the photo, I’m riding Jack, my arms reaching back behind my body so that I could use my hands on Jack’s thighs to steady myself, my tiny breasts puffed out in front of me, my dark nipples popping against my not-yet-tanned breasts. There is an open container of coconut oil on the nightstand, and my pink Peak wand is lying next to Jack, tossed aside after I reached a culmination with its powerful vibrations.

A dark blue beach towel under Jack’s body shows up as black in the red light. We always use towels, because I’m messy, but most especially on days like these, when I’m just finishing up my period. Thank goodness this was the last day.

In the video selfie, taken one minute later, my hands have moved to his torso as I lean forward, showing off his sizable testicles as my shapely butt indicates my grinding with his huge cock inside me. My hair is loose, abundant, flowing alongside the motions of my body. As my grinding intensifies, I start to move my head to the beat I’m creating, and now the video captures my hair flicking back behind my body, my face suddenly becoming visible in the ceiling mirror.

I look intense, concentrated on pleasure. Mine and his both.

I look powerful. I clearly know what I’m doing. I’m clearly confident in my ability, in my body, in my partner. I look strong and feminine.

I don’t remember how exactly we finished, just as the memory of how we started is quite distant, too. Perhaps you might blame the tequila on that, or a lack of presence on my part, but really I think it’s just routine clouding memories that might be made if there were more novelty.

As of that point in our trip, I’d officially spent a month of my life at this resort, with another week yet to come. I’d spent 26.5 years of my life as Jack’s partner. We have a flow that we dip into during times when we need comfort more than excitement.

I might start by making out with Jack’s cock, or he might start by going down on me. We’ll often do both, taking turns. Chances are high that Jack will finger me into multiple orgasms next. We’ll make sure that I’m plenty warmed up — dripping wet, really — before his cock enters my pussy.

It could be from behind, me laying flat on my stomach, legs together or wide apart. More often it’s me on my back, using my wand vibrator to whet the expansion of being stretched to my limits as his girth enters me. Sometimes he teases me for too long in this pose, his cock’s head seeming to hover at the entrance, making me beg for more all while I continue using my vibrator, preparing to endure the full length of him.

Multiple orgasms ensue. Sometimes Jack barely has to thrust to get me there — instead, I just feel him inside me, gyrating my hips for just enough vaginal stimulation, coming from that combined with my clitoral experience with the wand. Other times, Jack spreads my thighs wide and fucks me deep and hard, sending tears streaming down my face.

The vibrator always gets tossed aside afterwards. My clitoris and vagina both become sensitive enough to feel every bit of pleasure without a need for anything more intense to put my mind over its edge. This is the point where I often pull Jack on top of me, missionary style, for that transcendent type of orgasm. The type where I feel as if I briefly leave my body, clear my mind of earthly worries, and return to this planet anew.

But our sex rarely ends after that. I know, by our photos and videos, that this is where I climbed on top of Jack that night, as I so often do at that point in our flow. I know that Jack will still want to fuck me in a multitude of ways leading to his own orgasm, too.

Most of the time, Jack comes in me in the same position. He puts his body behind me, instructs me to put my legs together so that his are outside of mine. He likes me more upright, my “tented” fingers, as we say in yoga, supporting me just enough. He enters me from behind, running his hands over my breasts and then making their way down my body to my hips, more voluptuous in my mid-forties than ever before. Jack will grab me, and thrust, and I will start to adjust my pose so that I can get his cock to hit a spot in me just so in order for me to reach yet another orgasm.

I am so very loud when I’m at this resort; after all, my children aren’t just down the hall here. And it’s not just me. At Hedo, all through the day and night, women can be heard calling out their ecstasy like a cadence to the sound of crashing waves and trilling tree frogs and tropical birdsongs. The sound always brings a smile to my face — it’s like a chorus of good news.

This is a place of pleasure — women’s pleasure, perhaps even more so than men’s. This is a place where women like me can be briefly liberated from their roles as, say, mothers and librarians — and instead focus on their partners, and the pleasure that partnership brings. It’s a place where I shed shame for being as sexual as I am. It’s a place where I feel welcome to be myself.

I am loudest when I’m pounded from behind, but I can rarely form much in the way of actual words. “Yes,” “god,” “Jack,” and “fuck” seem to be the extent of my vocabulary when I’m being pleasurably pummeled. At home, I often muffle myself with the mattress or a pillow. At Hedo, I shout with the window open.

Being vocal helps me reach another orgasm — there’s science behind this, too — and it helps Jack reach his own.

We went to bed feeling better after that. It was an extremely early vacation bedtime for us — before ten, before the beach party outside our window even really got started. But that day had felt long, our travel excitement weighed down with something heavy that was ultimately a premonition of what was to come.

We fell asleep to beats of dance music intertwined with the brown noise app on Jack’s phone, readying ourselves to wake up early to the Jamaican sunrise, hoping to start anew.

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Anna Eliza Rose is a bisexual, polyamorous, neurodivergent librarian and mom of four who writes raw narratives about love, sex, relationships, authenticity, autism, health, and books.

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