r/PolyFidelity • u/illusfc • 20d ago
question Triad/poly success stories
Hi!
I’m in a closed FFF triad. I’ve been married to my wife for 7+ years, and we became very close to one of my friends, which led to a casual kiss, then a threesome, and now a relationship of 5+ months. I live with my wife, but our girlfriend lives in another city, so we don’t see each other as often as we’d like.
My wife and I had casually seen other people a few times before, but nothing ever developed into a serious commitment until now. The three of us are in love, and we’ve started talking about what a future together could look like. Not because we’re trying to rush anything, but because these are the kinds of conversations we’d have with any serious partner to understand compatibility, expectations, and what each of us wants.
Since I have so many questions, I’d really love to hear personal triad/poly success stories from people who have been doing this longer.
Are all of you married*? Do you live together? How long have you been together? What was it like in the beginning, and what is it like now? What changed over time? Whatever you’re comfortable sharing, I’d be very grateful to hear it! :)
Many thanks
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u/smileedude 20d ago edited 20d ago
We all just moved in together after dating very solidly for a year. It's been absolutely wonderful.
My long term girlfriend and I had been together for 16 years before that. We had zero interest in ENM until my partners shared a kiss. We took a while to figure it out, over the next 6 months we both dipped our toes into an open relationship (just a bit of party pashing), but it really wasn't for us. Being open seemed much more about boosting ego then anything real, so we decided to stop that. However just over a year ago we all got drunk and the 3 of us started something more.
It's been challenging at times. You have to compromise more, it's much easier to have silly fights when 3 of you compete to talk, especially when drinking, we've lost connections with some family, there's been jealousy and we've really has to evolve how we communicate.
But also the positives have been far greater. I love seeing my long term partner expressing her gay side which she'd kept in the closet. That was the real spark for this to happen. I love the interdependency where 3 people running a household together is a superpower. I love my relationship with my newer girlfriend. I never thought I would start a new romantic connection after such a solid relationship with my long term partner; however exploring that together with someone new is just such a lovely thing.
Be aware that some of the open communities really fetish gay and bi-women and will say absolutely anything to convince you not to get into a committed relationship. To put it bluntly queer women that will play with others are so rare that they call them unicorns, while closed throuples need multiple queer people interested in polyamory to succeed. Throuple communities are predominantly queer women. Poly people will really ham on the bullshit as you're an all woman relationship. And queer allies that struggle the most to find WLW relationship are the most desperate for more women to play with. Watch out, I'm sure you've seen it already. It's a cult. Be wary of communities that call people "unicorns" and use a lot of poly jargon. They have convinced a lot of people that throuples are unethical and always end in disaster.
There's a great throuple community called Camp Throuple on facebook, it's a lot less judgemental. It's a great place to see this actually works and that all the negativity in other forms is baseless fear mongering. The Camp Throuple podcast has also been really good for us to learn. The r/throuples subreddit is also good with some great stickied resources and the r/ethicalnonmonogamy sub is a better general ENM forum that moderates to protect against the poly cult.
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u/illusfc 20d ago
First of all, thanks so much for all the resources/links and the PSA about the “cult.” I have noticed how some polyamorous people seem to hate triads and, honestly, any configuration that isn’t completely open and free of labels besides ENM. The first sub I visited was the main one, and some of the threads there made me double-question everything, until I found this sub! So I appreciate your heads up.
Now about your triad, it sounds like you guys really figured out how to work it out despite all the challenges. It was such a wholesome development, starting with your long-time girlfriend kissing your partner and ending up with you three dating even after the open trial… that’s really cute. :)
May I ask something? Since you and your long-term girlfriend have been together for such a long time, does your partner get anxious about that at all? I’m asking because that fact, in my case, has caused my girlfriend to be a little wary.
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u/smileedude 20d ago
Yes she does get anxious about it. She is thankfully not shy about expressing when something does make her feel uncomfortable or a lesser part and we can all learn. We can't give her the now 17 years of love, trust, establishment that we built together overnight, however we can all build that together and as pairs. It takes time. But that takes time to build when starting any new relationship a throuple isn't some special case. Don't rush building those connections and don't neglect your original relationship to compensate.
You've really got to work on breaking barriers to communication. Allowing everyone to express all those emotions. Her talking with you candidly about that anxiety is great. Listen to her and adapt. Relationships are built from listening to each other. Be aware the trap of being defensive when someone tells you what's wrong, it's a great way for people to bottle up their emotions.
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u/ThrowawayIsland8 MFF Triad 19d ago edited 19d ago
Happy to share. Closed MFF triad here (I'm the guy). I've been with my long-term partner for 6-ish years now (she moved in before we started becoming romantic and officially dated, so the exact day is kinda murky). Our shorter-term girlfriend is someone we met a bit over a year ago, and has been living with us in a committed, closed triad since December. So, in a way it's comfortable, but there's a lot of new to it, too.
When I first got with my LTP, she expressed that it was important that she get to sexually engage with other women from time to time, as most of her college/early 20s years were spent exclusively in relationships with women. Not romantically though, it was threesomes or the occasional fling without me, and only with full disclosure and checking if it was okay (it always was, and honestly was pretty infrequent anyways). So, not truly "open." I didn't have any interest in dating around myself, but I suppose I could have asked if I wanted to.
We don't really consider ourselves poly despite being in what would obviously be defined as a poly relationship.
Last year she met our STP at an event, and they hit it off fast. At the time, she hadn't been with women before, so that was interesting. We ended up having a threesome, something that was supposed to be a one-night only thing. She started dabbling in dating girls for a bit, but kept coming back and hanging out with us as friends, and the occasional hookup.
After a while, it was almost a foregone conclusion she was coming over most nights, and we were spending full weekends together all the time. My LTP had to go out of town for a long week once, and she kept coming over, just to hang with me, when I realized we might all be developing real feelings. She'd also tease us being a trio, and I could already see she had deep feelings for my LTP. (If I had to be honest, I think STP loves LTP more than she does me... which is okay.)
In the fall, her lease was ending, and rent prices around here are garbage, not to mention she was having a hard time finding a place close to us. We had a spare room in the house, my LTP and I had a series of conversations about this becoming a triad, and decided to invite her to move in and make things official.
So far, it's been really great. We don't really fight about much, although right now we're looking after LTP's ex after a surgery, which has put a wrench in things and created a little tension. But honestly, the leadup drama to it was worse than it actually turned out.
I'd say the main complication we have is fitting in time for each other, which we do nerdily with a Google Calendar. I work from home, but still a 9-5, LTP doesn't work besides a few small projects she takes on occasionally, and STP just works on and sells her art. Neither of them have family here. So they have more time than I do, and I try to maintain healthy friendships and family time, so we have to manage the time we spend individually and together. 90% of the time, we all go to bed together (not sexually necessarily, just sharing sleep), and so that helps us feel close.
So far, so good though. I feel very comfortable, seen, and when I want or need time or intimacy, it's always available. Honestly, it's taken away some of the stress of a normal relationship instead of adding to it, because they can go do their own thing and I don't feel guilty for being away, like I used to.
Phew, long post!
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u/PolyDrew 18d ago
I was married for five years before I met our gf. We dated for a year before they got together. It was semi-long distance (1 hr drive, so no impromptu drive by hugs or random coffee) so we took it slowly. Five years in we all moved together. My wife and two kids and her husband and their two kids. We’ve lived together for ten years now and survived getting kids through school. (One graduates in a month!)
We’ve been through many obstacles and emergencies with health, etc. Our lives would have been so much different and much more difficult without each other.
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u/FriendshipEqual7033 FFF Triad 17d ago edited 17d ago
Hello! College student here. I live in an apartment with my two partners, so we all live together. I met my first partner over a year ago, and then a close mutual friend joined our relationship last summer. We didn't set out to be poly. It just kind of happened. All three of us were spending a lot of time together. In the beginning, we were a couple with a friend, but there was a lot of mutual affection. We had several threesomes and then started talking about polyamory and if that was right for us. Merging into a triad went more or less smoothly, and here we are.
But...
Recently, we tried to repeat the process with another mutual friend to expand our triad into a quad. That did not work for us. The chemistry wasn't right, and the complexity of managing a quad was beyond our emotional and temporal capacity... as we discovered. With a different person, it might have worked, or if our triad had been longer-term and more established, that could have helped. Right now, we are still cleaning up the mess and hoping that we haven't permanently damaged our friendship with the fourth party.
As an aside, we live in an area that is generally open-minded regarding queer relationships. Being openly gay is not an issue here. Being in a poly relationship is a much bigger problem, socially, but more from our families than from our friends. My parents were totally fine when I came out to them as a lesbian, but they still don't get the poly thing. We wrestle with how open we should be about that in general.
We moved into our current apartment recently, and it's obvious that the neighbors are still trying to figure out which of us is the couple and which is the roommate.
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u/polytechgeek 20d ago
I’m in a poly quad with my wife of 25 years and our best friends who have been married 20. We’ve been together for six years. we live separately during the week but have a weekend home together or at least get together one day a week when things are extra busy. We have five kids between us mostly teens and tweens. My wife and I are the closest we have ever been and have strong relationships with our partners and their spouse like with any important relationship. We have gone through a lot of growth, unbelievably amazing times, and some periods where each of us had to grow, get Assistance from therapy, and lots of books on relationship and communication consumed. We have often noted that it’s a lot of the same growth that you have to go through with a single partner, although now we have to grow seven relationships. My relationship with my wife, partner, her husband, how I relate to both of them, to my wife and her partner, etc. some of the most valuable things we have done was therapy together to learn new ways of communicating into those various relationships and hearing them in a fresh way, as opposed to whatever static concepts we had getting married relatively young. Happy to answer other questions if it’s helpful, but I wouldn’t trade all of this love for anything in the world. ❤️