I Filmed My Girlfriend with Another Man and Couldn’t Stop

I never thought I’d write this, but I need to get it out or I won’t sleep. Lucía and I had been together for four years when the idea started. At first it was a bed-game, a fantasy we whispered in the dark and then pretended to have forgotten the next day. Until one day we stopped pretending.

She was the one who said it out loud. One dawn, with her head on my chest, she confessed that she wanted to feel another man. Not behind my back, she clarified right away: in front of me. She wanted me to see everything, to record it, to be there. And the strangest thing is that the idea, instead of destroying me, made me harder than I’d been in months.

It took us weeks to dare. We searched forums, ruled out dozens of guys who only wanted something quick, until he showed up. He called himself Damir, a Croatian living in Amsterdam, and the first thing he sent us wasn’t a photo, but a list of rules. I would film and obey. Lucía would obey and enjoy it. He would give the orders. If we agreed, a weekend in his loft was waiting for us.

We agreed. We bought the tickets that very night, before we could change our minds.

***

The loft was on a quiet street in the De Pijp neighborhood, in a brick building with an old elevator that opened straight into the living room. Lucía had put on a long coat over a black lace set she’d chosen for him, not for me, and that already told me something about the night ahead. I had the camera in my backpack and a knot in my stomach I couldn’t tell was fear or excitement.

Damir was exactly like in the photos and worse for my pride: taller than me, broad, tattooed arms, and a calm that filled the room. He let us in, offered us water, and went over the rules one by one, looking at her almost the whole time and at me only when it was time to humiliate me a little.

—You take the camera —he said, pointing at the tripod—. Close up. I want you to miss nothing. You wanted to be here, so you’re going to really be here.

I nodded. I took the camera out with slightly clumsy hands, switched it on, and the red light stayed on. From that moment on everything would be recorded, and that certainty tightened my throat.

Damir went up to Lucía without hurry. He unbuttoned her coat button by button, looking into her eyes, and when the garment fell to the floor and the lace appeared, she was already breathing with her mouth half open. I knew her well enough to know she was more turned on than I had ever managed to make her.

—Come closer —he ordered without turning around—. Film your girlfriend’s face.

***

He kissed her like he’d known her all his life. It wasn’t the timid kiss of a first date; it was a kiss that bent her at the waist, that left her clinging to his chest and gasping for air. I filmed from less than a meter away, watching Lucía surrender to that mouth, hearing her moan into it, and I felt something new: a mix of jealousy and desire so intense I could barely keep the camera steady.

He sat down on the sofa and guided her down until he had her on her knees between his legs. He looked at her for a moment, then at me.

—Up close —he repeated—. I want it to show well.

Lucía took him in her mouth slowly, with a surrender I had never seen from her before. She went up and down, used her hands, pulled away to catch her breath, and went back in. At one point she looked for me over the lens, eyes shining, and whispered something I didn’t fully understand but that hit me all the same. Without words, she was telling me how much she liked it.

—Lie down —he told her after a while, lifting her effortlessly and laying her on the sofa.

He opened her legs with both hands and lowered his head. What followed Lucía hadn’t seen with me in years: she arched her back, gripped the cushions, stopped controlling the sounds she made. She came against his mouth with a long cry that bounced off the bare walls of the loft, and I recorded it all up close, with my free hand dug into my thigh so I wouldn’t shake.

—Good girl —he said, wiping himself with the back of his hand—. Now the important part. Keep filming, and you —he pointed at me without looking— get where you can see everything.

***

When he positioned himself over her, my mouth went dry. Lucía took him in slowly, centimeter by centimeter, her fingers dug into his shoulders and her face twisted between pain and a pleasure that didn’t fit inside her body. I filmed the joining, her expression, every broken breath.

—Tell your boyfriend what you feel —he ordered her without stopping his movement.

Lucía turned her head toward the camera, toward me, with glassy eyes.

—It’s… different —she panted—. It’s not like with you. It’s more. I feel everything.

It should have hurt me more than it did. And the truth is it hurt and turned me on in equal measure, and I hated not knowing how to tell the two apart. I kept filming while he changed her position, turned her face-down, lifted her up, let her set the pace sitting on top. Lucía came again, and again, losing count, losing herself. I didn’t exist except as the hand holding the camera.

The session lasted so long I lost track of time. Damir wasn’t in any hurry to finish; he controlled every minute as if the clock answered to him too. When he finally said he was close, he put her on her back, asked her to look at him, and stayed inside her.

—Film this —he said, and for the first time his voice sounded rough, almost human.

I filmed him emptying himself into her, Lucía closing her eyes and letting out a sigh I had never heard from her before. I filmed the silence that followed, the sound of their two breaths, the drip of streetlight coming in through the window. And I realized, with the camera trembling, that I had just seen the most intimate and the most humiliating thing in my life, and that I didn’t want to erase it.

***

He stepped away slowly and looked at me with a half smile.

—Your turn —he said—. Not so you can enjoy yourself. So you can feel the difference.

I’m not going to pretend I refused. I set the camera on the tripod, still recording, and took my place between Lucía’s legs. She accepted me without resisting, still trembling, and searched for my face with her hands.

—Keep going —she whispered—. It’s okay. Keep going.

It was the strangest experience I remember. The feeling of entering after him, the heat, how open she felt, Damir’s gaze supervising everything from the armchair with his arms crossed, satisfied. He made me feel small and, at the same time, part of something neither of us knew how to name. I held out without finishing, not because I was told to, but because I felt that final moment didn’t belong to me that night.

—That’s it —he said after a while, standing up—. Good first session. Tomorrow, if you want, we can do it again.

I switched off the camera with numb fingers. The loft was left in a strange, heavy silence while Lucía and I dressed without speaking, avoiding each other’s eyes like two accomplices in something we still didn’t understand.

***

In the taxi back to the hotel, Lucía rested her head on my shoulder and said nothing for a good while. I watched the wet streetlights go by and mentally replayed every shot I had filmed, unable to decide whether what I felt was love, jealousy, or both boiled together.

—Are you okay? —she asked at last, in a thin voice.

—I don’t know —I answered, and it was the truth—. And you?

She took a while to answer. When she did, she squeezed my hand.

—I’ve never felt so desired. And I’ve never felt as close to you as when I was looking at you behind the camera.

That night, in the tiny hotel room, we played the video on the phone and watched it together, holding each other. She whispered in my ear what she had felt at every moment, and I listened with a knot in my chest that wouldn’t quite come undone. I don’t know exactly when I understood that this wasn’t going to be a one-time thing. Maybe when she, without taking her eyes off the screen, whispered that she wanted to go back.

—Tomorrow —she said, more statement than question—. Are we going back tomorrow?

I looked at her. She had tired eyes and, even so, they were lit up, waiting for my answer as if everything depended on it.

—We’re going back —I said.

***

We wrote to Damir in the morning, the two of us together, choosing every word. We thanked him, asked for a second session, promised to follow his rules again. He replied in less than ten minutes with a time and a single sentence: to get ourselves ready.

We spent the day on a cloud of nerves. Lucía bought a new set, this time red, bolder. I cleaned the camera lens three times for no reason, just to keep my hands busy. Neither of us mentioned the obvious: that we had crossed a line there was no coming back from, and that we no longer wanted to come back.

Months have passed since that first trip. We have an entire folder of videos that only the two of us ever watch, and a secret that binds us more than it separates us. People would say I lost something that night in Amsterdam. I, when I’m completely honest, know I found a version of Lucía and of myself that I didn’t know existed.

I don’t expect anyone to understand it. I only needed to tell it, once, exactly as it was. And to confess that, if she asked me right now, I’d pick up the camera again without hesitation.