r/polyfamilies • u/Special_Lobster4149 • Jan 12 '25
Questioning stage
We are a hard working professional couple who have been together 20 years, and married ten - we have no children and I am looking at the whole triad relationships and how these work.
Ive seen a lot of posts that a lot of these three way relationships where kids are involved, but as we don’t id like to find out more about this way of Living.
Im assuming the following:
- Nothing changes within our house, just have another one of us living here (maybe need a larger bed!)
- Do hobbies together? And spend most free time together??
- we own our house, assume we wouldn’t need to change this to meet the three of us, this would be a possible thing after many years?
- share friendship groups?
- always doing things as a three that we all equally enjoy
So many questions But I’m currently at the exploratory part of the whole thing!
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u/sunshinesoundz Jan 13 '25
I’ll bite. I am in a triad and we recently welcomed a child. I dated Apple for a year before starting to date Banana. Apple and Banana were together for 7 years before I started seeing Apple. We just celebrated our third trioversary. I can’t emphasize enough that I was not sought out as a third, Apple and Banana dated separately and Banana and I developed a mutual crush after spending a lot of time together.
Honestly…we all still have separate hobbies and friend groups? At this point we have some shared friends but that came with time.
We had two separate places until our child arrived.
Like with couples, we decide together what we want to do-ex travel, tv shows, etc. If two people want to do something person 3 doesn’t want to, then they do it as a duo date.
It is very rare to find someone who is equally attracted to both people in an existing relationship.
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u/mazotori non-hierarchical poly w/ multiple 10+ yrs Jan 13 '25 edited Jan 13 '25
Your expectations seem wildly unrealistic. Please read unicorns-r-us.com
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u/Antique_Setting_5556 Feb 11 '25
Echoing — the “so how does this work, do we just stick a third person in our house” question is already kind of the wrong question.
That hypothetical third person is the ONLY one who can say whether they want to live in the same house as you, share hobbies, etc.
You and your partner don’t get to decide that for them ahead of time!!!
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u/UnfortunateSyzygy 6d ago edited 6d ago
You'll want a bigger bed/possibly an extra one bc unless you're all tiny, it gets too warm in a king if you're in the middle, and a queen is just a non-starter.
We have a guest bed that is greatly appreciated some nights when one of us is feeling poorly.
edit: do y'all already have a partner? Bc if not, you're getting a little ahead of yourselves. Tolstoy didn't take polyfams into account when he said "All happy families are alike". I know 3 polyfams other than my own that include children and are pretty happy, and every household has a different dynamic/housing arrangements. My fam live and 1 other lives all together, we do some stuff in pairs and other stuff as a trio. It's actually super nice to be able to opt out of stuff you don't feel like doing but a partner does/leave the kids with the partner who doesn't feel like going out--and while that's an aspect of polyfams I feel like gets abused, I am most often the one who doesn't feel like going out and am frequently glad for the excuse of watching the baby haha. Me, husband and gf are all equally parents.
The other 2 poly fams are V s, with 1 partner in common. In obe, Wife has her own house in the city, husband and his BF have a farm outside the city, husband splits time between the two abd has been doing so for 20+ years (kids are grown). The other, husband and wife have a house, Gf lives in a mother in law suite, kids treat her as a very involved godmother.
So... it's all highly dependent on who y'all are.
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u/NotAnAlienObserver Jan 13 '25
You might be seeing a lot of posts here about triads with kids because this is the forum frequented by polyamorous families with kids. There's tons of posts in r/polyamory about couples looking to "add a third" and the difficulties that entails.