Whole Lotta Love

Polyamory is suddenly everywhere—and it’s changing the face of love, marriage and even child-rearing

For proof of polyamory’s move into the Canadian mainstream, look no further than our easternmost province. In 2018, a judge in Newfoundland and Labrador ruled that a polyamorous trio of two men and a woman were all legal parents to their child—ruling against the province, which had refused to list more than two parents. “Society is continuously changing,” the judge wrote, “and family structures are changing along with it.” In 2021, a British Columbia Supreme Court judge issued a comparable decision on behalf of a similar “triad” relationship.

Polyamory, a relationship structure in which three or more adults form a long-term, committed relationship, suddenly seems to be everywhere. A 2019 survey of Canadian adults by researchers at the University of British Columbia and the University of Toronto found that one in 10 respondents were or wanted to be in an open relationship. Another survey by researchers in Canada and the U.S. showed that one in five respondents, especially younger ones, have practised “consensual non-monogamy”—an umbrella term including polyamory and non-monogamous lifestyles like swinging and open marriage. And in the past few years, polyamory has become the subject of books, films, TV shows and even a reality show, Couple to Throuple.

Though throuples dominate pop-culture depictions, polyamorous relationships come in endless shapes, sizes and configurations, comprising people of all ages, genders, orientations and identities. And they describe their relationships with ever-evolving terminology. The polycule, a portmanteau of “polyamorous molecule,” is a relatively new term referring to everyone within a polyamorous group. They come as triads, quads, quints and beyond; the relationship between members is often expressed as a letter. (For example, a “V” would be a triad, with one partner connected to two others who are not connected to one another.)

There’s hierarchical polyamory, in which “primary partners” are prioritized and may make rules or guidelines for “secondary relationships.” There’s non-hierarchical polyamory, in which no one has priority over anyone else. Then there’s relationship anarchy, which is what it sounds like: no rules at all. If someone has enough partners and isn’t looking for more, they might say they’re “poly saturated.” It’s all fluid, negotiable and open to redefinition. And here, it can get complicated. We spoke to polyamorous people about how they make their configurations work in practical terms. How do they negotiate child care, date nights and sleeping arrangements? How do they deal with the jealousy and confusion that can arise? Here are five Canadian families on what polyamory means in their lives and how and why it works for them.

The Long-Distance Lovers

I discovered polyamory seven years ago, in my mid-40s, quite by accident. Before that, my relationships were standard monogamous pairings: I married at 24, then divorced and dated on and off. I had a seven-year common-law relationship, followed by a friends-with-benefits situation that I reluctantly agreed to—I didn’t identify as non-monogamous then, but I was in love with the person and felt I had no other choice.

I met my current partner, André, on OkCupid in 2017. Neither of us identified as polyamorous at the time. About a month into dating, during an intimate moment, André playfully suggested that it would be helpful to have an “extra set of hands.” I replied, “That would be hot.” That night, we set up a joint dating profile to see if we could meet someone.

We started as many couples do, looking to meet a woman. Despite being attracted to women, I’d only had a few interactions with them until then. We met some amazing people who consented to and loved being a “unicorn” to us. (The term was unfamiliar to us, but it refers to a person, usually a bisexual woman, willing to be involved with a couple.)

From there we branched out, attending lifestyle clubs and parties—which fall more into the “swinging” category than into committed polyamory. We met couples and then dated others independently. In all these transitions there were challenges we had to address, especially insecurity and jealousy on both of our parts. I had to get my mind around the fact that I could be loved by and important to someone, even if they were with others. Love is not a pie with a limited number of slices to go around.

What André and I realized early on is that open communication is the foundation for successful and secure polyamory—we got a lot of practice navigating new situations, like when I was jealous of a girlfriend of André’s who I felt was “cooler” than me, or when one of us went on a vacation with a partner on their own, or just seeing the other person having a really good time with someone at a party.

We learned a lot over the past seven years. Given that André is a sex-positive psychotherapist and I’m a life and relationship coach, it seemed a natural fit to teach others what we’ve learned. We started with a Facebook community, then developed some programs and services and now our Let’s Talk Polyamory Podcast. We love seeing people thrive in their relationships.

Today, we’re polyamorous as well as long-distance. André’s main home is Montreal, while mine is Toronto. We “nest” (live together) from time to time but we each enjoy our own space and maintain our own places. We date, both together and apart. There are couples we see regularly, and people I see once in a while, but I’m not with anybody else seriously right now.

When I look back throughout my dating life, it makes sense why polyamory fits. I’ve always been attracted to different types of people. And I always agonized when I felt I had to choose just one person to continue on the relationship escalator with. And who knows? Had I been more open to talking about my needs at the time, or knew about the possibility of polyamory, maybe my marriage or other relationships would have turned out differently.

The Co-Parents

I met Blue in 1996, just after graduating from university. We were never totally exclusive, and about a year into our relationship, we decided we would be polyamorous. I don’t want to own someone, nor have someone own me; I want to do my own thing and the people I love to do theirs. In 2007, Blue got pregnant with our daughter, Kaia.

At the time, Blue was also in a close relationship with another partner, Jbash. We knew the dynamics would transform when a baby entered the picture, and he knew he’d need to step back or step in. Jbash and I were already friends, but this was going to be a dramatic change. The three of us talked carefully before we made our decision: we merged to form a single family unit, and together raised Kaia.

Since 2007, we’ve all lived together. Jbash and I wanted to sustain our existing relationships with Blue, and she with us. That’s the primary reason we did it, though there were pragmatic benefits. JBash and I earned good incomes, but Blue didn’t work outside the home due to some health issues. Two incomes to three people is a much better ratio than one income to two. Living together meant we could afford a bigger home in a nicer neighbourhood, and pool money for expenses.

And just as having three incomes is better, so are three parents. When one of us goes away on a business trip, we still have two parents left. If two people want a date night, that’s no problem. And when Kaia was younger, especially, time was always at a premium. Any parent can sympathize. But because of our family structure, we always had time to devote to her and fulfill our other interests, like my creative work, digital art and jewellery.

To keep on track of everything, we have a repeating, two-week schedule in Google Calendar. It shows family nights together, one-on-one date nights, one-on-one time with Kaia and nights to ourselves. I have Saturday nights free, so if I want to make plans with someone else, it’ll be then. I’m currently involved with three other people. I’ve been seeing one for 15 years, another for three years and I just started seeing one a year ago.

To Kaia, Jbash, whom I consider a co-husband of Blue’s, is “Papa” and I’m “Dad.” She’s never felt the need to explain our lives to anyone, and rarely even mentions it—half the kids she goes to school with have split families, and plenty have step-parents living in different houses. We must have done something right, anyway—she just graduated at the top of her class as valedictorian.

The Full House

In 2016, my relationship with my husband ended. We’d been together almost 10 years and had four daughters, and the split was one of the worst periods of my life. My friend Adam, whom I’d known since I was 18, became a rock for me throughout the experience. It wasn’t long before we started dating.

A few months after that, a mom-friend I knew asked me out for a drink. That night, she surprised me by telling me that she and her husband were interested in dating me as a couple. I was even more surprised by Adam’s reaction: if I wanted to explore their proposition, he said, I shouldn’t stop on his account. So, for about six months, I dated my friend and her husband. It was a beautiful experience, but it was their first foray into polyamory and it didn’t last. Adam and I remained together, though, and I continued to pursue additional relationships, including with an old boyfriend, Chris, who’d come back into my life.

Then we found Jenn and Josh. I met Jenn first, through a business networking group. We became fast friends, and her family were soon a close part of our lives. She and Josh had been married for nearly 20 years and had never been polyamorous before. It wasn’t the first time I’d been involved with a married couple, but the dynamic was different—it took a while to find our rhythm. Some time later, a friend of mine named Nick reached out to me during a hard time in his life. I lent a hand, and that, too, became romantic.

In the span of less than a decade, I had gone from knowing very little about polyamory to having multiple partners: Adam, Jenn, Josh, Nick and Chris, though he lives in a different city so we see each other less often. There was a time in my life when I wouldn’t have considered that a healthy relationship, but being polyamorous has made me see that one person doesn’t have to fulfill all of my emotional and physical needs. It took me a long time to learn that. Most recently, I started seeing a man named Ken. I’m the common denominator among my relationships; besides Jenn and Josh, none of my partners are seeing the others.

Two years ago, we started looking for a house big enough to accommodate as many of us as possible, and last January, we moved into a big Victorian home near Ottawa. There’s me and Adam and our four-year-old son and my four daughters. There’s Jenn and Josh and their son Julian, who’s 21. And there’s PJ, a friend of ours who none of us are romantically involved with, but who’s part of the family. Adam and I share a bedroom, my teenage daughters share a huge room with bunk beds, PJ and Julian share a bedroom, and Jenn and Josh have their suite.

We’ve got the living arrangements down, but time management is a different story. We have a half-dozen Messenger threads going at any time and logistical meetings every day: where are the cars going? Who has what work to do? A lot of us are managing small businesses, mostly in the arts or business consulting, making things more hectic.

It’s helpful to have so many people to share the financial load, but the biggest benefit is the sense of community. We practise “kitchen-table polyamory”—which just means your whole network knows, and is comfortable with, everyone else. This is one of the best aspects of polyamory; we’re surrounded by epic love, and that supports us through times that might otherwise decimate us. Living this way, and bringing up our families this way, is incredible. Even if we took the romance out, I wouldn’t go back.

The No-Secrets Polycule

Chris and I have been friends since 2001, when he was still married to, as we lovingly call her, “Wife 1.” I was in an open relationship at the time, and Chris’s marriage was semi-open—we’d all been polyamorous since before we even knew the word. By 2011, Chris had divorced his wife, and my relationship had broken up. During a family emergency, I called on him for help. And after spending time together, we decided to take the next step.

There was no big conversation about polyamory at the time. I knew he had other lovers; he knew I wanted to keep exploring. There was a built-in, implicit understanding that, whatever happened, I trusted him and he trusted me, as long as we let each other know what was going on. Going forward, we also dated people together.

Of course, it turns out that dating’s hard, whether it’s one-on-one or more than that. At the beginning, we dated another couple, but the guy was closeted about his sexuality: nobody could find out, nobody could know. We ended that relationship; we’re very open people, and we didn’t want to be anyone’s dirty little secret.

Three years ago, we met Acintya and Pierre-Yves at a music festival, where Chris was doing sound and I was building outhouses. They were running the first-aid tent. That night, I had a sexy dream about Pierre-Yves, which doesn’t happen all that often with other men. We all started getting to know each other, then flirting, then inviting each other to parties. It took a year and a half, but eventually we were all going out. We’re subtle and slow, so it took a while. Now we’ve met their children—five of them, from seven to 20 years old—and they’ve met my daughter.

Because Chris and I are in a good place together, we’re able to accept new people like Acintya and Pierre-Yves into the relationship. Some people see polyamory as a means of fixing a relationship that’s broken. But if there are problems with communication, opening things up won’t fix that.

In the past, when we’ve gone through rough periods, we’ve made a point of not expanding our polycule—expansion means accommodating other people’s needs and desires, and if that isn’t happening in the primary relationship, it’s not likely to work by just adding more. If the timing isn’t right, we’ll wait. Today, before we see anyone else, Chris and I make sure we have a night together first, so we feel connected. The primary relationship comes first—and we have a “no-secrets” policy, if only because we don’t have the capacity to lie.

Today, in addition to Chris and Acintya and Pierre-Yves, our polycule includes Chris’s Wife 1, albeit platonically. There’s also Chris’s previous lover Bexxie, as well as our newest love, Liah. We’ve known her for years, and it took her a long time to accept this side of herself. But it’s so important to allow people to be themselves on their own timeline. You make your own polyamory, and you define it every day.

The Reformed Monogamists

In 2018, I was separated from my second husband and busy being a mom to my five children. I didn’t have time or energy for anything serious, and I wasn’t looking for anything more than someone to see a movie or eat dinner with. Then two separate dating apps matched me with the same man, Denis, within 24 hours. It was hard not to take it as a sign.

Denis’s profile said, “Full disclosure: I’m still living with my ex-wife, and we’re still friends.” That might have scared some people off, but to me it seemed refreshingly honest. We made a dinner date, and Denis told me he identified as polyamorous, which sounded ideal given my situation.

Afterwards, I couldn’t get him out of my mind. He was so witty, eloquent and handsome, with an edgy sense of humour. We talked and messaged constantly, and though I hadn’t been looking for love, I fell hard. The more emotionally invested I became, the more insecure I felt about the other women in his life. In theory, I believed the more that people love others, the better. In practice, he’d go out with someone else and I’d be tied up in knots. I worried that he’d decide his other partners were better than I was, fall harder for them and then decide he didn’t need me. I worried that maybe I wanted monogamy after all.

We talked at length and tried different relationship dynamics to make things work—until eventually, he suggested monogamy. So, we closed the relationship and, for six months, we really tried. But it changed things. We were reluctant to express attraction to other people, because in monogamous relationships it seems taboo. We couldn’t be ourselves. Denis seemed to feel less accepted and, in those six months, he pulled into himself, almost like he was grieving. The adventurous, gregarious guy I fell in love with was subdued.

He gave me the monogamous relationship I thought I wanted, but it turned out I just wanted to know that our love was secure, and that I was enough. Two years ago, we opened it up again. We live together, so he’s my nesting partner, but we’re also dating Heather, with whom we’ve formed a throuple. She’s intelligent, athletic, well-travelled, free-spirited and beautiful.

Everything is different now. My insecurities are manageable. Denis gave me what I thought I wanted, only for me to realize that real security doesn’t come from any one relationship style. It comes from understanding ourselves and maintaining open communication with our partners.