Episode 194 - Closed Triads

That’s what’s on this week’s episode of Non-Monogamy Help.

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Podcast Transcript

My husband and I have been together for almost 30 years, and we are 50 and 47 years old. We are at a stage in our lives where we are thoughtfully exploring the possibility of a closed, committed triad (polyfidelity) built on loyalty, honesty, and long-term emotional involvement.

We came across your profile and felt encouraged by the way you offer guidance and answer questions with care and clarity. We would genuinely appreciate your perspective.

We are wondering how people realistically arrive at living this kind of relationship in a healthy way, how one might meet the right person who truly wants a closed and committed dynamic, and whether our age or long shared history as a couple could be a limitation — or perhaps even a strength.

We are not looking for something casual or experimental, but for a relationship built slowly, with mutual respect, communication, and emotional safety for everyone involved.

If you are open to sharing your experience or advice, we would be very grateful. Thank you for the time and care you put into supporting others.

Response

So I genuinely appreciate the way that you’re approaching this. It is kind of a typical thing in polyamory, a couple that wants to open up, and they only want to open up a tiny, tiny bit, to only one person, and that’s it. There’s a thing called unicorn hunting. You don’t say anything about your gender identities or sexualities, you don’t give any indication of that, but when people talk about unicorn hunters, it is usually a heterosexual couple who wants this sort of perfect bisexual unicorn who’s going to come in and love them both equally, with no problems, all copacetic and beautiful and wonderful.

This is a really good example, actually, of a situation where I feel like, if you posted this somewhere, immediately you would get a lot of shit from people going, “You’re unicorn hunters,” linking you that annoying website I really don’t like, “Unicorn Hunters R Us” and all of that. This is a thing that I really don’t like about the polyam community, whilst I totally understand how people feel about being the person who gets pulled into the situation.

Because there are very, very many people who do go in for this type of thing and totally end up being trashed and thrown away, because the couple, regardless of how open and beautiful and honest and lovely, “oh we just want another person because we love them,” will chuck that person out the second there is an issue, the second there is a problem. If it threatens the couple, they will be thrown to the wolves.

A lot of people have experienced that.

My own experience with this

I haven’t really experienced that necessarily in such a way, but I definitely have experienced someone basically using me to cheat and then promising me… I thought that they were non-monogamous, to be fair I don’t know why I thought that, I thought I had asked them, I have a really bad memory. They used me to cheat. They promised me that they would talk to their partner, because their partner was moving away, they were moving further apart anyway so it was going to be long distance regardless.

´They continued to lead me on with the promise that they would speak to their partner about opening their relationship. And then when that was supposed to happen, I asked about it, and they were just like, “Yeah, the answer is no.” So these two people were basically able to unilaterally shut the door in my face. And then this other person wanted to continue to receive all of my attention and my flirting and all of the stuff that they had been getting from me.

We had been talking at night, literally up until 3am, our conversations would go on and on, it’s like they just wanted all the attention they could get from me. And two people basically got to decide my romantic life for me. It’s really ironic that I picked that discussion question, that was not intentional, but that’s what ends up happening to a lot of people who go in for this type of stuff.

Is a closed triad really polyamory?

That’s one of the reasons why couples who want to open up to only one person, especially if you want a closed thing, which, I’m really not trying to police how people identify, but to a certain extent I do kind of feel like a closed triad or closed quad, if a relationship is closed, I don’t know, is that fully polyamory?

I don’t know, it’s not up for me to decide, but I do genuinely feel like if it’s closed, if no one else is allowed... I don’t know, I’m trying to decide on a whim and maybe I should just shut up. But most people who are interested in polyamory are interested in it because of the autonomy and because it allows them choice, and if they choose not to see anybody else, that’s their choice. But I feel like that inherently conflicts with the idea, I don’t know, anyway.

Think about what the third person gets out of this

My point is that when a couple wants to come in, open up for one person, and then it must be closed, and in their beautiful, loving, wonderful fantasy there are no problems, this person loves both of them equally, it’s not exactly a great sell to most people. “Come and only date us,” why would they do that? I want you to really think about the third person here and what they would be getting out of this.

Essentially, they’re already in the polyam community, they’re already free to date. Imagine somebody like myself, I don’t think you’d be targeting someone like me, because I’m a relationship anarchist, and I’m solo polyam, I have no interest in cohabitation or any of this, I wouldn’t want to move in with people, let alone be in any kind of closed relationship like that. For me, the point of polyamory is that I don’t want to be in a closed relationship.

But someone like myself, who doesn’t have other relationships, because I assume you want a closed triad, you want someone who has no other relationships, and the sell here is, “come and date us, and only us, you’re not allowed to date anybody else, just us.” I just don’t know why they would choose that, when they could date other polyam people who wouldn’t force that on them?

Yeah, there might be genuinely people who are interested in this type of thing, I don’t think that means you shouldn’t try, but I think that’s going to be really, really difficult, and I think you’re going to struggle to find that in the polyam community. You might be better off looking in non-monogamy or open-relationship spaces in general, because I think the vast majority of polyam people don’t tend to be interested in closed relationships, because that defeats the purpose for a lot of people, not for everybody.

It’s not impossible, but it’s an unusual ask

Again, maybe I shouldn’t say this, it just seems counterintuitive to me, and I don’t really know why a person would decide... I can understand why someone would choose a triad, like, that would be awesome. Aside from the cohabitation thing, I struggle with cohabitation, but if I could find two hot people who were dating each other and also both wanted to date me, fucking awesome, that’s rad, that would be kismet.

But I don’t want to be told I can’t date other people, I don’t want to be told by one person that I can’t date other people, I don’t want to be told by two people that I can’t date other people. So that would be the difficult part for me, and I think that’s going to be a struggle for you.

Ask yourself: why closed? What is that supposed to achieve? What happens if this person falls out of love with one of you, is it just over for them? Is it all or nothing? Because that could happen. People have different types of relationships with different people, even when you have multiple partners and you’re in love with multiple people, you aren’t necessarily in love in the same way with both of them.

I’m not saying you love one person more than the other, it’s like apples and oranges, different styles of relationships with different people. You don’t always feel exactly the same, and that doesn’t matter so much when you see different people in different contexts, but when you’re all together as a triad, that can sometimes bring out a lot of difficulty.

When two people in the triad have more in common

Sometimes there might be a situation where this third person and your husband have a lot more common interests than they have with you, and so naturally they end up spending more time together, not necessarily because it’s sexual, but just because they have more shared interests. A good example I can think of: I really don’t like going to raves and parties, that’s not something I like, I’ve tried to force myself to do it and it just doesn’t work because I don’t enjoy it.

I used to get super, super anxious with a partner who was very into that, I was like, what if they find somebody who loves going to raves and I don’t like it at all, am I just the wet blanket, am I going to be replaced, why would they date me when they could date someone who wants to do all the rave stuff?

My partner very kindly explained to me, “Look, I do the rave stuff, but I have my time with you, and that’s fine, you don’t have to like everything I like, that can totally work.” But when you’re three people, and two of you really gel on many things, and you’re the odd one out, that can be not so fun.

Expectations of emotional safety versus reality

The expectation here, as nice as it sounds, “we want mutual respect, communication and emotional safety,” I have a whole lot to say about safety in relationships, but I’m not going to go on that tangent.

While all of this sounds really, really nice, the reality is that expectation isn’t necessarily going to meet reality, because you might be mutually respectful toward one another, but the relationships you have with one another are not going to be identical. I find that people who want a triad, closed or not, tend to expect the relationships between all the people in it to be identical, and get a little freaked out when they’re not.

So I think there’s a lot to think about here. Why do you want it to be closed? Why not date individually, see if you like the same person, and go from there? I’m not a triad expert by any means, but I think some of the best triads I’ve seen are triads that formed organically, because all the people in them were kind of dating around, and then, “oh, I like this person, oh, I like this person too,” and it sort of organically forms.

To be fair, people only come to me when they have problems, so I don’t see all the success stories, but I’ve consumed a decent amount of polyamory content, talked to enough creators, seen enough advice out there, and been in a lot of communities, and I feel like the idea of a couple opening up after being together a very long time (which can be a both a limitation and a strength), then specifically wanting only one person to join a triad, I’ve never seen that turn out well. I’m not saying it can’t happen, I’m just saying I’ve never seen it.

Emotional safety is a real teller

The emotional safety thing is a real teller for me, because relationships are not necessarily emotionally safe. Relationships trigger you. Relationships cause conflict. That is part of relating with other human beings. Where there are two or more human beings, there is conflict.

You will have conflict, and that is not something that’s going to magically disappear no matter how much you like each other, no matter how much you care about each other. I’m sure you know that, if you’ve been together almost 30 years, it’s not like you’ve never had any conflict. There’s going to be conflict, there’s going to be disruption, especially if you’re doing something so different from everything you’ve ever seen, going off the cultural script you’ve been given.

As humans, who are extremely social, incurably social, as Dr. Rachel Barr says, we are going to freak out when we’re going against our social script of what we’re supposed to be doing. Going against the grain of what you’re supposed to be doing causes you anxiety, causes you fear. Because if your ancestors went against their social group, they were dead. So you’re going to feel anxiety, you’re going to feel scared. It’s not a safe thing, it’s not safe. I don’t think expecting safety— going slowly, isn’t necessarily safer either, and being long-term isn’t necessarily safer either.

What’s more likely to happen

I don’t think this is impossible, necessarily, but I think your expectation of what’s going to happen is more likely to result in you both meeting a person you maybe both sort of like, that person probably feeling very pressured, if they want to date one of you, to say they like the other person.

But then it doesn’t really turn out to be that much, and then you two get along like a house on fire, and the other person feels left out, gets upset, and then that third person gets chucked away like defective warp core. I think that’s what’s more likely to happen with this expectation, because you’re wanting control and predictable responses and safety and security from what is essentially an inherently triggering, unsafe thing.

It’s unsafe, technically, and that’s why a lot of people struggle with relationships, because being vulnerable is not safe, it’s not safe at all. When you show your heart to somebody, they could just stab it. It’s not a safe thing.

So if you’re expecting safety, you can’t offer that, and you being together for 30 years doesn’t mean you can offer anybody safety. Longevity, as nice as that might be, as much as that’s what everyone is supposed to be striving for according to the script we’ve been given, isn’t an inherent measure of safety at all, because we don’t know what you’ve been doing for those 30 years.

Thirty years together isn’t automatically a strength

If I was going to date two people, I wouldn’t necessarily consider them being together 30 years a strength, because I don’t know what they’ve been doing for 30 years. It’s the same thing with years of experience in a job, if you spent 30 years at the same company, that shows you’ve been there 30 years, but what if you haven’t been doing anything to increase your skills, to build anything? Somebody can spend 30 years at a company doing jack shit. It doesn’t mean you have strengths, and people can spend 30 years in marriages the same way.

When I was researching my breast reduction, for gender reasons, I did a lot of research about other people who wanted reductions, and I was also thinking about getting a mastectomy, trying to decide what would feel better in my body.

When I did research on women who had mastectomies after breast cancer, where the doctors told them they needed a radical mastectomy, I read so many heart-wrenching stories of women who had been married for decades, whose husbands drove them to the hospital to get the mastectomy, dropped them off, went home, packed their shit, and left.

That is a thing that has happened, I’m not saying it’s super common, I don’t know how common it is, but it has happened. Just because people have been together 30 years doesn’t mean they’ve done any work on themselves. There are lots of people who have been together 30 years and don’t even know each other. So I wouldn’t necessarily consider that a strength, it just depends.

Questions you need to ask yourselves

I feel like I’ve been blathering on without providing much of a summary. I think there’s a lot more thinking you need to do about this, and a lot more questioning of your assumptions. Why do you want it to be closed? What do you think you’re going to prevent by it being closed? What happens if you both date somebody and they fall out of love with one of you, or aren’t as attracted to one of you as the other?

What do you think the third person who joins you gets out of this, especially if it’s closed, that they couldn’t get from anybody else? Because it does seem like, in this situation, you all get the benefit of a third person, and you also have the relationship you’ve already established, which you’re probably more likely to protect. You need to be really real with yourselves about that, especially since you’ve been together so long, especially if you own a house or property together, especially if you have children together, especially if you’ve built a life around each other.

You have everything to win and nothing to lose, in the same way that a third person joining you, assuming you want them to move in, I don’t even know if that’s the case, but assuming it is, if they break up with you, they’re out of house, they don’t have anybody, they have two people they’ve broken up with. Really think about the third person in this situation, and how devastating this would be if it ended, especially if you believe they should like both of you equally, and then one relationship ends, and that ends everything. That’s not a very compelling offer, I don’t personally think, but I would examine that.

Once you’ve examined that, if you know the reasons why you want it, then put your feelers out there, put it on profiles, see what you get. I don’t think people should always shit on triads or unicorn hunters, I’m speaking as a solo polyam person, as a person into relationship anarchy, I have no interest in cohabitation, marriage, or children, I’m not opposed to dating a couple, but I would not want to be in a closed triad, and I would be very hesitant, I would ask these questions as a third person coming into the situation: are you all just going to chuck me? I think they’re valid questions.

So yeah, I think you might struggle a little bit, but I would also consider opening up your expectations here, and think about why you want this closed, what’s the purpose of it, why not date individually and see where that leads? You can be honest on dating profiles.

I don’t know how much success you’re going to have, because I think a lot of people within the polyam community have experienced what I’ve described, and they don’t want to be chucked out the second things don’t work out. But you never know, just keep reaching out. I would definitely examine and explore a little bit more, and think harder about what emotional safety actually is and what you’re assuming this is going to be like.

This is starting a new relationship, not just opening an old one

Yeah, you’ve been together 30 years, and well done for that, but opening your relationship and changing the structure is essentially like starting a new one, starting from zero again. You have to rebuild the trust you have with each other, because you may have trust in a monogamous context, but in a non-monogamous context it’s very different, and it’s not going to be emotionally safe, it’s going to be challenging. If you’re expecting to feel emotionally safe all the time, I don’t necessarily think this is the best course for you.

If what you want is just to spice things up a bit, not to be dismissive of that, you could literally, if it’s legal where you are, find a sex worker who you could become regulars with. That can be mutual, built slowly on mutual respect and communication, and be a lot more emotionally safe in some ways. It really depends.

But if you genuinely want another romantic relationship in your lives, I think you need to stop putting so many restrictions on it that you think are going to protect you from heartache, because unfortunately the downside of having more romance in your life is having an increased potential for heartache, for sadness.

That’s just true of relationships in general. If you put yourself out there, if you’re vulnerable, you might experience pain, and you can’t always protect yourself from that. You can be there for yourself, but you can’t always protect yourself from that.

So yeah, I hope that helps, and good luck.