Polyamorous terms

What do you mean by a polyamorous couple? You say "trio," as if they are 3 of them, but that wouldn't be a couple. How many are there? What is the relationship like?

The proper term for 3 people in a committed relationship is a triad. But as for whether or not they would refer to themselves that way depends entirely on them. I was actually in such a relationship, and the 3 of us did not know there was a name for it until after we began. So they might use that word, or they might not even know what it's called themselves.

reddirtwriter said:

No, fell into the terminology issue right away. This is a Male/Male/Female relationship. The two guys identify as bisexual and the woman identifies as straight. An excerpt from the story might help the explanation of the relationship.

“Okay, I think we need to make sure you understand what the kind of relationship we’re talking about, and what it’s not. First, it’s not you being the odd man out with our pair. It’s a polyamorous relationship, we all care for each other. That doesn’t mean any time we’re intimate it has to be all three of us. You and Cole may have higher sex drives than I do, so you might be together with just the two of you. Or sometimes one of us might not be around. But everyone is always welcome. If you get jealous easy, you might not want to be involved,” Kelly sighed, “That’s the main thing. We don’t want anyone to feel bad. Or guilty. Or jealous.” She got a goofy grin. “It’s free love, man.”

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A triad would be the term I'd use if they all share emotional and sexual connections among the three of them. Menage, trouple, MMF poly relationship...

I agree with the others. If they share an emotional connection as well as a sexual connection, the term is triad. But a lot of people might not know that or might prefer something else. They might just call it a relationship and leave it at that.

There's this comic... webcomic... artwork... thing I'm a fan of called Nils and Family (or something like that). The main character, Nils, is a bisexual man in a relationship with a married male/female couple. It's been around for ages and so far I don't think the author has used a term for their relationship even once. They're just... three people in a relationship.

A couple might not be that bad. Couple can mean a pair of love birds, but a couple of love birds may mean a few love birds, which implies two or more but no greater than many love birds.

In my experience, most people don't know that word. So it would be perfectly reasonable for the people in the relationship not to know it.

So, are there any legal issues in this story, reddirtwriter?

reddirtwriter said:

No, no legal issues. It's a story about three college students who are trying to work out a complex relationship. I wanted to check my terminology to make certain I'm on the right track.

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Interesting synopsis. Have you decided upon a title and author's name? I want to be able to track down the book on Amazon and other bookstores when it's published.

Well, with marriage, the term "plural marriage" is used. "Plural relationship?" "Plural love"? "Group love?"

I'm in a polyamorous relationship. We refer to it as... a polyamorous relationship.

My husband also refers to the other man in my life as his "step-husband," because it amuses him to do so.

lol @ "creatively acquire".

I used the term in one of my stories, but feel free

*waves hand* Fellow poly person here.

"Triad" in the poly community has an additional meaning that it refers to all three people in the relationship being involved with one another. I am currently (well, with the people in my house) in a V relationship -- my partner Morgan is involved with me, and my girlfriend Grey is involved with me, but while they are both close friends, they are not romantically or intimately involved with each other. That is something that is not entirely obvious to people outside the poly community.

You say you've decided to just refer to it as a relationship, and that is perfectly acceptable too! My particular type of poly is known as "network" poly. My partner and girlfriend in my home have no other relationships, but my long-distance girlfriend is married and handfasted to whom I refer to as her Other Husband, and they have their own relationships, too... network fits best because there's a long string of connections and metamours (a metamour is somebody that your partner has a relationship with but you do not -- so my girlfriend's husbands would be metamours).

Needless to say, all of this, while makes sense in the context of the poly community, is not something that often comes into play in day to day society. So, for simplicity's sake, I (and many other poly folk) just refer to ourselves as having a poly relationship, and explain further as needed.

I've never heard of a network poly, Nonny!

I used to be in a sort of poly relationship but for me it didn't work. Mainly because the woman (who had a live-in boyfriend) kept pressuring me to be involved with the boyfriend and I didn't want to. I am completely lesbian so yeah didn't want to mess with a guy. I was only 19, and at first was fine with the whole situation. But the more she pressured me to "do things with him" the more I resented everyone and finally had to just leave. I didn't technically live with them but I stayed there a lot. I was 21 when I broke it off, but she contacted me off and on through the years, even after she and the guy got married. And after they got divorced. But I found out after they got divorced that I had grown up a lot and even though I finally had the chance to be with her and both of us single, we were not compatible anymore.

Much power to you, Kim.

Kim Fierce said:

I've never heard of a network poly, Nonny!

I used to be in a sort of poly relationship but for me it didn't work. Mainly because the woman (who had a live-in boyfriend) kept pressuring me to be involved with the boyfriend and I didn't want to. I am completely lesbian so yeah didn't want to mess with a guy. I was only 19, and at first was fine with the whole situation. But the more she pressured me to "do things with him" the more I resented everyone and finally had to just leave. I didn't technically live with them but I stayed there a lot. I was 21 when I broke it off, but she contacted me off and on through the years, even after she and the guy got married. And after they got divorced. But I found out after they got divorced that I had grown up a lot and even though I finally had the chance to be with her and both of us single, we were not compatible anymore.

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Ew. That's horrible of your ex. One of the major things about being poly is being ethical, and making sure everyone consents. Pushing someone into it is just not fucking cool (and I have unfortunately known a lot of other people who have had similar experiences). I am so sorry you went through that.

My first poly relationship was pretty well a failure too (different reasons), but as Morgan puts it, it's not poly, it's the people. It can work really well with the right people, and with the wrong, it can be absolutely disastrous.

What Nonny said. (She knows WAY more about this than I do; my poly relationship hasn't been in existence but a few months, because it took me that long to admit that was what I needed.) As my husband puts it, it's a multi-yes system; as long as everyone involved knows and consents, it's all good, but the moment ONE person involved says no, that's it.

My situation, by the way, is also a V.

Some poly relationships consist of >2 people interknitted romantically & sexually, like Amy and Susan and Mike are all three lovers and may do threesomes and so on ; other poly relationships are more like interconnected daisychains of couples wherein Sally is partners with Sophie who is also partners with Jim and Theresa (but Jim and Theresa are not a couple nor do either of them partner with Sally) and so on.

We use the term "polycule" to refer to the local daisychain

Very few of the people I'm connected to (even several steps away) are part of any non-dyad relationship such as an Amy-Susan-Mike thingie. The more common form is that each person is individually in a relationship with one other person PER relationship, but that they have several such relationships.

SOME poly people use the primary-secondary model (which is sort of "poly lite", where you have a "real partner" that's akin to monogamous couple partnering but you each have license to have "other" secondary partners). That model gets a lot of publicity. It is not, however, universal. Some of us regard all of our partners as real and non-secondary.

AHunter3 said:

SOME poly people use the primary-secondary model (which is sort of "poly lite", where you have a "real partner" that's akin to monogamous couple partnering but you each have license to have "other" secondary partners). That model gets a lot of publicity. It is not, however, universal. Some of us regard all of our partners as real and non-secondary.

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That's really interesting, I'd never considered it as "poly lite".

Just to tack onto the poly discussion instead of starting a new thread, how can I depict a trio relationship (for lack of a better word, there are three people in the relationship) and not have it written off as a Love Triangle?

Basically, it starts off in a Love Triangle-y way in which Girl 1 and Boy 1 are together, but Girl 1 also has feelings for Boy 2 and this causes conflict, until they sort of mutually come to a realisation that they should be all be together. (Not yet sure if Boy 1 and Boy 2 also enter into a sexual/physical relationship, but they do have a very close...bromance...again for lack of a better word).

Like, the whole premise started off as a way of thinking about the whole "there's someone out there destined for you" trope...but I thought what if there's two people out there for my MC? In that somewhat pure, first love/true love, Romeo & Juliet sort of way...and since I'm writing YA for it not to be turned into some kind of 'ooh she has two boyfriends, she's dirty & promiscuous'...

The sooner in your story that you depict Boy 1 and Boy 2 both being comfortable with Girl 1 continuing to have both of them as boyfriends, the quicker you dissipate the Love Triangle miasma.

Polyamory for Writers, a topically useful & AW-appropriate blog post by aithne.