Was I manipulated? Was my Ex manipulated?
I had a close friend of 2 years recently convince my girlfriend of 3 months to join his open marriage with his wife. As I found out more and more information I started feeling like this was a deeply unethical situation and that there was possible manipulation or lovebombing but I'm struggling to distinguish what is and isn't as I seriously trusted my friend, B, before this.
We were all apart of a larger friend group, B encouraged me to date F(my ex) and we hit it off great and got along very well! I wasn't aware at the time but B had been pursuing F as well, although he downplayed how much. I initially didn't have a problem with him being interested in her as we were not exclusive yet and we were just feeling things out.
Eventually, F And I become exclusive, and he immediately starts telling her that he wants to be with her. He tells her how about how hard it is to not be with her and how much he desires her. I later found out they sexted a week after us being exclusive, breaking a boundary I discussed with them. She tells me she isn't interested in being with them/polyamory, and wants to focus on me. We have a few talks periodically about it discussing boundaries, my semi thinking on it but wanting to focus on building something between us first, etc.
Eventually she tells me that she thinks she needs to try to be with them. We have a 3 day long conversation (phone/calls/etc) about it and trying to discuss it before she starts to show me a cascade of what I see as red flags about him, and their ideas of non-monogamy. This was after 3-4 conversations of her telling me she just wants me, cares about me, isn't interested in being with B, but that meeting his wife changed that for her.
He tried to move her into his house with them after 2 months of them knowing each other (while she was dating me), tried to get matching tattoos while she was with me, tried to pay my college tuition, jumped from just wanting to sleep with her, to having feelings, to loving her for two years and choosing not to pursue her during her last relationship. B was taking cat allergy shots (hes allergic and she has cats) while we were dating and before he fully brought up moving her in. Once we broke up after she asked me to be poly with them, she cried at the idea that B tried to break us up and panicked that she fucked up and he "broke her boundaries" but she chose to call him and he convinced her otherwise. He and his wife then told someone in the group they "took and earned her". She's chronically ill, and after meeting his wife one time she felt very seen, because his wife is also ill and they spent a bunch of time bonding about it. The guy has also claimed, a few different times, that he doesn't really feel empathy for people and just does his best to sympathize. B would message her often about how hard it was not getting to be with her, and ask if she regretted choosing me.
She described wanting to be my priority, an 85-15 split of time between us (I didn't full ask what this entailed but it just set off alarm bells). She said she liked being able to gush about me to B (they were fairly close) and said she could have kept doing that if they were together. Wanted to be able to talk about any of her insecurities with me, gush about them a bit, etc. She wanted to eventually move in with them or at least close by and be able to share spaces. She also wanted to vet anyone I met on my end, through constant updates about how I'm feeling about new potential partners and wanting to meet anyone I wanted to sleep with and waiting until I had her okay to sleep with them. She described it as people "needing to be someone she can be friendly with". F told me that her therapist suggested trying polyamory to soothe certain anxieties she had, and despite being unsure about if she actually wanted or needed polyamory if she started thinking about it this much she "had to try it".
I'm struggling to cope with what happened, It was a short relationship but it ended so abruptly and I feel like the wind was knocked out of me by losing that friend. They have been completely ousted by the friend group but that makes me more worried about about the potential unicorn hunting isolation happening to my ex. She has VERY few friends and clung to previous abusive relationships because she was desperate for friendships and as stupid as it is I am genuinely concerned for her.