i mean, polyamory does exist even after marriage. if everything is consensual and transparent, you can indeed be married to one person and also be dating other people, and your married partner can even be friends with your other date(s) if everyone is okay with that. hell, in that arrangement the other married person will probably also be dating other people too, and that doesnt inherently make the marriage any less meaningful. ive been in that situation before as the non-married person, and its actually pretty chill. however, if the other married partner doesnt know anything is going on, thats a straight-up emotionally-manipulative relationship, and is 100% not okay regardless of whether or not the partner would have been fine with the situation if they had been informed. in this case it feels like the events of the story might unfold more towards something like that, since we don't know if dave is aware of chesters extra-marital feelings, so im a bit nervous about how that will be revealed in later updates. plenty of people will unfortunately lie and tell their extra-marital date that everything is legit when it is, in fact, not at all legit, so the mc should tread very carefully indeed :f thats a very long answer to your comment, but hopefully an informative one!