Throuples (when three isn’t a crowd)

0:00This is The Guardian.

0:09Today, the pain, pleasure and paranoia of life in Athruple.

0:26You may be seated. We gather here to celebrate and bear witness to a truly unique and beautiful occasion. By any measure, it was a textbook fairy tale wedding, set against the backdrop of a sandy beach in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. As the guests took their seats, waves gently lapped up against the shore. The groom stood waiting on the sand, dressed in a blue linen shirt, a white carnation in his pocket, and grinning from ear to ear. And then out came the brides.

1:05Casey's dad walked the two of us down the aisle. We both had the traditional white wedding dresses and everything, for the most part, just had two brides. Rachel, Casey and Aaron are a throuple. That is a three-way relationship. So when it came to the traditional wedding customs designed for two, well, it took a little imagination. We did the vows exchange here between Aaron and I. We exchanged it between Casey and I. They did theirs between the two of them. And then we did all three. I couldn't have two better partners. I love you two always and forever. It was ridiculous amount of hours. As three, we travel through life exceptionally well.

1:45I promise to continue to celebrate. We decided that we were going to do like a rope braiding thing. Three chords of different colors represent their individuality, their love for one another, and their commitment to this union. That no one practiced, no one, like, it was comical. And so now, by the power vested in me by the three of you, I now pronounce you Dr., Mrs., and Mr. My Year.

2:21Give it up for the happy throuple, everybody.

2:33But getting to this point took a lot of work and many hard conversations, not just with each other, but with family and friends too. I think a lot of our families definitely, at least initially, thought it was weird. We dropped a big bomb. We went through drama. We're not going to in any way dismiss that it was hard and challenging and people gossiped and they had all kinds of thoughts and feelings. But I think most of it was based off of fear. But watching a witness in us over years build this relationship, make multiple moves and then invite them to that ceremony. I think they finally realized, OK, this is legit.

3:11This is fine, even if we don't agree with it or we don't understand it fully. They clearly all love each other. No one's going anywhere. From The Guardian, I'm Helen Pidd. Today in Focus. When three isn't necessarily a crowd.

3:34Kitty Drake, welcome back to Today in Focus. Great to see you. It's great to be here. So a couple of years ago, you came on the show for actually what was one of my favourite episodes to talk about one of your jobs at The Guardian, which is to find couples for our weekly sex column. This is How We Do It, where couples open up each week in the magazine about their sex lives. And so you, perhaps above most others at The Guardian, are very used to asking people questions about matters that would ordinarily be very private. But I think you surpassed yourself recently with a fascinating feature about the reality of life in a throuple.

4:07Tell me, what made you interested in this particular kind of relationship? Well, I was kind of interested because anecdotally throuples seem to be on the rise. They used to be kind of a relationship configuration that you would only see on screen if it was being studied by Louis Theroux. But actually, 9 % of people in the UK are now open to being in a polyamorous relationship. You see it on dating apps all the time, people looking for a throuple or another partner. But what is the difference between polyamory and a throuple? So a throuple is essentially like a couple, but there are just three people.

4:45okay so even if you're polyamorous in the more kind of traditional sense you might have you know eight or nine lovers even but you'll typically only be having sex with one person at a time or on a date with one person at a time whereas the thruple everyone is together and most setups are you know you sleep in a bed together every night as a three you go on holiday together as a three it's the couple relationship model plus one. So it's usually a couple that adds one more rather than three separate people who all fancy each other thinking let's make a trio. I think both can happen. I think it's more rare to have three people meet each other organically and decide to form that structure.

5:32Yeah okay and the person that has been found sometimes has kind of an unusual nickname right a unicorn explain this yes so the term unicorn is used on polyamorous forums to kind of signal to what can be seen as exploitative about the thruple because the couple in this dynamic are depicted as these kind of unscrupulous hunters who are trying to track down a unicorn and then use that unicorn as their sexual toy

6:14so my first couple of questions are going to be for Rachel and Aaron but but don't feel left out Casey because we'll definitely be coming to you but Rachel and Aaron could you start by telling me about your relationship how long have you been together and and how did you meet so Aaron and I I've been together since we were 18. We met when we were in college, second semester of freshman year. And we were together for about seven years before getting married. And so we're now coming up on our 20th year wedding anniversary. And when you two got together, did you imagine that it was going to be a conventional heterosexual monogamous marriage?

6:51Oh, absolutely. A hundred percent. But we, you know, we thought we were going to just kind of live the normal relationship, having getting married, having kids, the house with the picket fence, whatever it may be. I thought it was going to be pretty, pretty normal. And so what changed? Well, life, life changed. If it's okay to interject, a lot of it stemmed from my curiosity around my sexuality. And part of that sort of relationship narrative or societal narrative around relationship structures, I didn't always see myself fitting in in more of a lesbian or gay dynamic and didn't really at that time know about bisexuality or certainly that I could have had both.

7:33So I chose what seemed to be kind of the straight and narrow path at that time, got into more of a swinging lifestyle situation where that really became a possibility and something that I learned was really true for myself. But then we had met other people who were actually building relationships, buying houses together, raising kids together. And it was more than just a casual Friday night hookup type of thing. And I said, why not? I had this beautiful relationship with Erin and it was lovely. There was certainly nothing wrong. But if I could have the same type of dynamic with a woman, it was the best of both worlds.

8:11And how did that feel for you, Aaron, when Rachel said that she wanted to explore relationships, sexual relationships or the relationships with women? Yeah, I would say, hey, I'm not I'm not a woman, so I can't offer that. So, yeah, I was I'd say I encouraged and was was. Yeah, I'm curious with with that process. And that's where I think Aaron and I had a lot of conversations. If this really was going to be something that we wanted to try, how do we address jealousy issues and security issues? What would the boundaries look like? And we talked for weeks, if not months, before actually putting any of that into practice.

8:53And Casey, what about you? What was your situation, your relationship kind of status, your past before you met Rachel and Aaron? So, you know, I grew up in kind of the middle of America, so very conservative upbringing, you know, raised religious. It was very much you, you know, do the thing, you find the husband, you have the babies and that's about it. Um, and it was, you know, I was well into my twenties before I kind of started to deconstruct that and, um, had a bunch of, you know, failed monogamous heterosexual relationships. And I was like, you know what, maybe I do like women. And so I kind of ventured into that and through that exploration, figured out that I liked it.

9:38And I actually fell into a polyamorous relationship. No one was really looking for it. We did all the wrong things. It ended super badly. And I was like, well, that was fun. I'm never doing that again. And then I was like, you know, scrolling on Bumble one day and I matched with these guys and I ended up agreeing to meet them. And that was seven years ago. Wow. And do you remember what their profile said, Casey? How would they advertise themselves and what was that? So they had like one joint username for the two of them, did they? It was technically under Rachel's profile. But from the get go, I mean, it very much said like the introductory, you know, I'm Rachel, me and my husband, Aaron, we are in a steady relationship.

10:26We're looking for someone to add in as an equal part of our relationship. you could just tell that they had done a lot of like the research and the educational aspect of it that made it feel less like creepy or predatory I guess and definitely was like okay like I think these people are actually looking for something that I'm also interested in yeah and tell me about your first date was it I presume it was as the three of you yeah it would do one of you guys So we met at a restaurant in Denver where we were all living in Colorado at the time. And, you know, I walk up and I'm all dressed up and I'm a little bit nervous and I meet both of them.

11:11And, you know, we sit down and we're outside and immediately like me and Aaron are kind of hitting it off. We're talking about football, American football, which, of course, is something that, you know, we we both are very interested in. and Rachel was sitting there like totally silent. She had her sunglasses on and I could see her face and I could see her eyes. She had a bit of RBF with the sunglasses on, but RBF resting bitch face, you know, I can sit and not look very happy. I was thinking what RBF was. RBF, yeah, yeah. In my mind, I was like, oh, like, well, clearly this guy wants it, but like, she's not into this.

11:47Like, I was like, I'm gonna finish this glass of wine and then I'm out of here. and we're getting close to the end of the first glass of wine and the sun's starting to set. And about that time, Rachel like took off her sunglasses and, you know, we kind of locked eyes and started getting the conversation going. And I was like, oh, maybe she does want to be here. Like, that's exciting. But I was just enthralled that Aaron finally had someone to talk to about football and I had no part of it. And things moved really fast from there, didn't they? less than two weeks after that first date you all moved in together to your place Casey how did that work oh yeah so they had visited my house uh the house that I owned and you know I worked up my courage and I was like I think I'm gonna ask them to move in with me and we went out to coffee one morning and I was getting my um you know my nerve up and I went to the bathroom and then I came back and I was like I'm gonna do it and then I think it was Rachel was like so we've been thinking and And we do think that it probably makes more sense for us to just like move in to your house.

12:53I was kind of stole my thunder, but I was like, yes, on the same page. And do you mind me asking what are the sleeping arrangements? Do you all stay in one bedroom or have you all got your own bedrooms that you each visit? First of all, I might add that is the number one question that we get from people is how do you sleep? Well, at least I've waited 15 minutes to ask. You've waited this far, yeah. Yeah. We all sleep together in a king bed. We tried a queen because that's what Casey had when we moved in. Did not work out for very long. But yeah, we all sleep together. They rotate who sleeps in the middle.

13:26Way too hot for me to be the middle spoon. But yeah. Okay. And talk me through how date nights work. How do you schedule time for each other? Yeah, this was something that we started also pretty early on. I think compared to other throuples, we recognize the importance of building all four relationships between Aaron and myself, Casey and myself, the two of them, and obviously all three of us. Um, and we had pretty much since maybe six months into our relationship have scheduled rotating every week, a different diet, a different two. So Aaron and I might've had ours this week. Next week would be Casey and myself.

14:02And after that would be Aaron and Casey. And then every week we try to do a three person try a date night, usually on the weekends. And could you give me some examples of the recent date nights that you've each had with each other, the kind of stuff that you do on your date nights? Honestly, most of it is that we kick the other person out. So we always stay at home. Respectfully. Respectfully, yeah. So it's more interesting to say maybe what the individual does on their own solo date night. A lot of it is geared around being able to have the intimacy alone with two people, if we're being totally honest.

14:36But, you know, Erin and I have cooked some fun meals together. Sometimes we'll watch some fun shows that we know the other person isn't interested in. It's more usually, I think, a thing of what does the individual who leaves interview. Yeah, I'm sorry. I would say that for sure. It's become something that, at least for me, I look forward to my own date night. So I was by myself, for example, this week, and I got to watch a movie I've been wanting to watch by myself. I knew they would hate. And you paint a very rosy picture of being a throuple, but there must be difficult times. And I guess when I've had, when I've been with friends and there's been three of us, there's always two gang up on the other.

15:18Does that ever happen in arguments? We don't call it ganging up. We call it the a-hole rule. If you have, yeah, the test. The asshole test. Yeah. If, I mean, if you have two partners, two people that you love are telling you that you're being one, then you probably are. Inherently, because of this relationship, we knew that we were going to have to communicate, over-communicate, communicate to death, essentially, to make this work. And so it's almost like this forces you to, like... Get away with it. Yeah, you can't get away with it. You have to really put into it and you have to communicate. And so I think that, yeah, like, it's the ups and downs, but there's a lot more ups just because we put in that time and we put in that effort to communicate and over-communicate and do the work.

16:19I think there's this sense often that one of the three at least is missing out, being left out, or being coerced into the whole fandangle. And some listeners might remember the controversy last year that followed the memoir by great writer, comedian Lindy West about how she and her husband introduced another woman into their marriage and it was very much his idea wasn't it can you just remind us what happened in that situation yeah so lindy west wrote a memoir about her throuple what happened was that her husband revealed that he was in love with another woman and then she was initially deeply hurt by that as he would be she had known that they were in an open relationship.

17:05It wasn't a complete betrayal that had been part of the terms of their marriage. Then this new partner comes into the mix and it becomes very serious between her husband and this new partner. And initially, Lindy West is heartbroken. But over the course of this memoir that she writes, she kind of comes to terms with it and in the end ends up falling in love with this woman, who's her husband's mistress, essentially. and lots of people read the book and felt like a deep attachment to lindy west because she was such a prominent cultural feminist figure yeah and if you've ever watched shrill on netflix it's all based on her life yeah exactly and felt this kind of anger and felt that she'd been coerced into it and there was also a bit of skepticism she's never said that she was bisexual and then there's a bit of kind of you know oh what the first woman you ever fall in love with just happens to be your husband's girlfriend.

18:00It's stung. There's a problem there where we're kind of over-identifying with Lindy West and we're not believing what she says in her book, which is that she is genuinely in love with this woman. But I think it speaks to the fear that many of us have in relationships that, you know, some cheating husband is going to latch on to this word, this magical, permissive word, ethical, non-monogamy term even, and then use it as a way of validating their extremely selfish behaviour. And I do see this anecdotally like among friends and in my own life where, you know, it's a lovely get out of jail free card to just be like, well, I'm polyamorous.

18:43That's why I cheated on you, you know, or it kind of feels a bit like having your cake and eating it. But actually, it's never really as simple as that because people are more complicated than that. the person who is initially coerced might end up then changing their mind and enjoying it. You know, that's to me was quite heartening. I suppose the Lindy West example does seem to go against all of the advice that say a sex therapist would give you if you go to them and say, I want to open my marriage. I'm really thinking about the last episode we made about open marriages where the therapist said, rule number one, if you want to raise this with your partner that you want open the marriage you have to do it before you have a crush even on anybody else you can't already have your eye on somebody else when you broach the subject otherwise it does feel as if you're just looking to have your cake and eat it yeah and i think that that is true but i also think there's this weird thing which is happening in polyamorous um worlds so polyamory started off as a kind of form of acceptance that love is messy.

19:49You don't just love one person. You can't always control your desire. And let's try and find a kind of more generous or less constricting box to live in and take that into account. Now what's happening on polyamorous message boards is there's this commitment to absolute purity of intention. So therefore you cannot be in a throuple unless you've all three met organically and just happened to be there. There can be no hierarchy. You can't possibly have a crush before you say that you've had a crush. And actually, I find that slightly ironic. I feel like we need to probably come to terms with the fact that love and attraction is quite a lot messier than we would like it to be.

20:34And I am fascinated by all of these different throuple setups, but particularly those who have children. How common do you think it is for people to have kids when they are in these kinds of relationships? And what do they tell the children? So I spoke to Priscilla and Chiara and they have young children. So their partner was introduced to the children and I think it was just normalised. I think children are quite adaptable, aren't they? So they kind of, you know, what's normal to them can change radically. But I did have this quite interesting conversation with someone who had been in a throuple in Cambridge in the UK.

21:15And it had actually broken down over children because the shared girlfriend really, really wanted to have children. She was a bit more on the fence. But it was actually when they started talking about having her boyfriend impregnate their shared girlfriend that she had this overwhelming feeling. I can't do it. I'll be too jealous. You know, she described thinking about seeing the girlfriend on the sofa pregnant and having this thing with the boyfriend that she would never be able to have. And it actually broke them up. So I think it can, you know, of course, be a cause of contention. But then also lots of people told me it's great.

21:57You get more childcare. Obviously, it can be great. But of course, it does cause jealousies and issues as well. If you don't mind me asking, you're being very open here. Would you get into a throuple now, having spoken to so many? No, but I think that's because I'm boring. You're not boring. I think I am. I think at my core, I crave safety and I'm too frightened to do anything like that. I don't think safety is boring. Yeah. And I think even though I'm realising that what I thought was safe isn't actually safe and it's part of a kind of cultural story that we tell ourselves, I still think I'm not up to the challenge.

22:44Coming up, when throuples go wrong.

23:02It happened really out of the blue, actually. So I met a guy who had a girlfriend and he'd recently opened up his relationship. It wasn't really something that I was looking for necessarily, but I just met this guy who I slept with. Caitlin is in her early 30s. Not long ago, she moved to Marseille. And how did it progress from there to you meeting his girlfriend? I bumped into them on a night out and quite quickly I think there was this attraction between me and his girlfriend that everyone seemed quite like excited to explore more of. And yeah, it just, it happened again on a night out. And then I took them both back to my house.

23:52And a lot more than just like a sexual chemistry, it was, we got on on like emotional level as well, straight away. And very quickly, they kind of moved me into their house for a couple of months. And I just started spending all my time with them. And the first few months was a complete paradise. Like I'd never felt that way about two people. the same time before I was almost immediately like completely captivated by them both and just wanted to be with them all the time because they'd been together for quite a while they made me feel instantly so comfortable in their house they like shared everything with me cook me like these incredible meals like the guy really loved cooking and it was also so special because I just moved to France.

24:40Like I didn't have my like network or support. I was very on my own. And then to be like welcome into someone's home in that way felt so special. And after that sort of initial honeymoon period, when did things start to deteriorate? I think I realized quite early on that the girl didn't have the same feelings for me that I had for her. She wasn't interested in going on dates just with me or having sex just with me and that hurt me quite quite early on we were only a couple of months it was about three months in and then she started getting a bit jealous if I ever had sex with him without her and also I think she was very worried about like protecting their couple I was suddenly seen more of as as a threat than a part of this Rupple yeah it was horrible because just like I said at the beginning about how I felt so these intense feelings for both of them and it felt so magical having this relationship with two other people and it felt like intensified the feelings I felt were so much stronger when I was rejected by them it also felt much more intense much harder and much deeper rejection because it was coming from both of them yeah I guess if you had sort of double the euphoria at the start you have double two daggers to the heart if both of them are rejecting you is that how it exactly exactly yeah and at what point did you decide that the relationship wasn't for you and how did you broach that I remember it really clearly it was that another time that she said on a night out we need time just the two of us there was there was a week when she'd gone away and the guy had invited me around to his house every night that she wasn't there I think he knew that the relationship was with me was going to end soon so he was incredibly intense about like wanting to see me every day and then she didn't like that so she was again trying to keep a distance from me and the last time she said you can't come back with me I was like you know what I can't do this anymore and I said I needed to speak to them went over to their house and it was yeah it was a very emotional breakup I was also learning French and like this was the first relationship I had in French so it was really hard to express myself and then also to break up with two people at one time it was incredibly emotional but I knew I was doing that for me like I let myself get so small in this relationship because I was so desperate for it to continue and I was so clear when I broke up with them that like I couldn't do that anymore.

27:20And what what did they say to you in those closing moments yeah they were upset too and like I think she knew it was coming like it's something that she'd wanted to end I think for like a month before but she just didn't know how to it was hard for them to like the period when we broke up because we'd spent so much time together over very intensely over the six month period that we were together something that they said to me when we broke up which is you were the best sex toy that we ever had and they were joking like it was they weren't being serious but it was the most hurtful and heartbreaking joke ever especially when I'd kind of fallen in love with them both it was really hard looking back now do you think that it's possible to be an equal partner in a throuple if you're the one arriving into an established couple?

28:16I really do think it is possible and like having experienced it go wrong and with really unclear communication from the beginning I'm confident that if I met someone or met two people or even if I was in like a in a couple and then wanted to introduce someone else to my relationship I would be able to do that with everyone on an equal footing and I've seen what was missing or what needed to happen for that to be the case so I do feel confident that I could have or be in a throuple in the future and we would all be equal because that's all I wanted when I was with them and I think they were too scared about what it would do to their relationship to be able to do that to me right so it sounds like you are open then to to being in a throuple again do you think that having two partners is better than just one to be honest I do the joy even though the the heartbreak was was harder the intensity and like joy that I felt with them and care I felt from them both when it was good and what I was willing to give felt like this complete like explosion of like love, affection, care and sexual attraction for each other that I'd never felt in my life before.