Priscilla can pinpoint the moment she realised that her throuple was falling apart. Her fiancee, Kiara, had started kissing their shared girlfriend, Olivia, in a way that went on for just a little too long. One night, after the three of them had gone out for a romantic dinner in Savannah, Georgia, where they live, Olivia and Kiara started kissing in the front seats of the family car and it seemed as if they were never going to stop. About 10 minutes in, Priscilla tried to reach out and touch her fiancee's shoulder, but her seat belt was buckled. Unbuckling and leaning forward felt intrusive. And, anyway, Kiara and Olivia seemed to have forgotten all about her. Watching the kiss unfold, squashed into the back with all the baby seats and toys, Priscilla thought about how by rights it was her turn to sit up front. She was always in the back seat. She felt a flicker of something competitive. "I worried, am I desired less than her?" she recalls now. "Will I be replaced?"
The Allure of the Throuple
In the early days, Priscilla felt giddy with the excitement of being in a throuple. She and Kiara had been together for eight years, and adding a third person to their relationship felt like a way of exploring non-monogamy without losing one another, because every new romantic experience would be shared. Olivia was an old friend, so Priscilla and Kiara's children were comfortable with her. When the kids were in bed, they would walk to the beach holding hands as a three, to watch the sunset. At night, they would curl up to sleep together, and form a kind of cuddle chain. Priscilla would cuddle Olivia, and Olivia would cuddle Kiara.
Sometimes in the night, Priscilla would wake up alone on one side of the bed, and see Kiara and Olivia cuddling without her – at first this didn't bother her. "I felt a little left out, but I was happy that Kiara was happy," Priscilla says. The problems really began when both Priscilla and Kiara moved beyond lust, and began to fall deeply in love with Olivia. "The thing about throuples is that when real emotions get involved, things get more complicated."
What Is a Throuple?
In a throuple, three people commit to forming a romantic unit together – just like a couple, but with one extra person. In other forms of non-monogamy, you might have multiple partners, but you are typically only ever in bed with one partner at a time. Throuples are different, because they date and have sex and sometimes even raise children as a three.
In Britain, 9% of adults are open to being in a polyamorous relationship, according to one recent poll, and while no official data about throuples exists, anecdotally they seem to be on the rise. In 2017, three men in Colombia became the first throuple in the world to form a legal union. Earlier this year, the author Lindy West released a memoir about falling in love with her husband's mistress. The three currently live together in a 100-year-old log cabin in the woods outside Seattle – one of many cities in the US where activists are now fighting for legal recognition for multi-partnered households. Eight cities across Massachusetts and the west coast of the US now have some form of protection in place to prevent polyamorous people from being discriminated against by their employers and landlords.
Throuples in Popular Culture
It used to be that the throuple was the object of curiosity and mild ridicule in popular culture, the kind of offbeat relationship configuration you would only see on television if it was being investigated by Louis Theroux. But on screen today, you see throuples everywhere. In cinema, the couple has fallen out of fashion, with films such as Passages (2023) and Challengers (2024) exploring the pleasures of experimenting with a third partner. One particularly tender recent representation was HBO's DTF St Louis, in which David Harbour plays a suburbanite who finds out his wife is having an affair with a neighbour. Instead of flying into a jealous rage, Harbour's character tries to develop sexual feelings for this neighbour, so they can live and love as a three.
But as the throuple becomes more commonplace, there seems to be a growing backlash against this relationship structure. Recent research suggests that younger generations are rejecting the complications of polyamory and beginning to yearn again for the perceived safety of traditional coupledom. An analysis of sexual fantasies by the Kinsey Institute suggests that gen Z are turning away from polyamory, with 81% fantasising about monogamy instead.
The Challenges of Throupledom
Being happily polyamorous requires a daunting degree of patience and thoughtfulness, because you have to continually debrief with your lovers to check that their needs are being met – but throupledom seems to require even greater reserves of emotional maturity. Managing the desires and insecurities of three people at once is a feat, and even within polyamorous circles, throuples have a reputation for being fraught. In The Ethical Slut, a 1997 guidebook to polyamory known colloquially as the "poly bible", authors Janet W Hardy and Dossie Easton issue a specific warning about throuples, noting that lovers tend to compete with one another for affection within the triad, like "siblings in a family".
In Britain, about 42% of marriages end in divorce (in some European countries it's more than 50%). It is possible to argue that coupledom has been a failed experiment, and that it is time we tried a new form of long-term commitment. But what really happens when you attempt to settle down as a three? I have spent the last six months talking to people who have been in throuples that have gone spectacularly wrong (and some that are going spectacularly right) about how to manage infighting and rivalry in three-person relationships.
Power Dynamics and Jealousy
In The Ethical Slut, the authors write that in any menage a trois "there are actually three couples, A&B, B&C and C&A". What makes the throuple unstable is that, at any time, the mini-couples within the throuple can become more estranged, or entwined, and there can be dramatic reversals in allegiances. In Priscilla's throuple, it was initially she and Olivia who were the closer pair – and Kiara who felt excluded. In the first weeks of the relationship, Kiara discovered that Priscilla and Olivia had been having sex while she was at work. Sex as a twosome wasn't technically against the rules of the arrangement, Kiara says, but "it was very hurtful and it broke a lot of trust".
Kiara – who is in her mid-30s – is an executive chef at a popular wedding venue. She recalls a period when she would call Priscilla from work multiple times a day because she felt so panicked that sex might be happening without her. "But then things changed," Priscilla says. As the months went by the dynamic shifted, and it became Kiara and Olivia who were closer, and whose kisses went on for longer.
A Tale of Two Throuples
Alissa, 50, tells a similar story about the power-flip that happened in her throuple. After 21 years of marriage, her husband Rob revealed that he was bisexual. Experimenting with another man together seemed like a way to cope with that revelation. When they met Michael, 33, Alissa felt anxious that Michael was only pretending to feel an attraction to her. But as the relationship progressed, Michael and Alissa developed an intense bond, and Rob felt increasingly threatened. One night when the three of them were in bed together, Alissa and Michael started kissing, and Rob became so distressed he had a panic attack. Shortly after, Michael left the throuple because he couldn't stand the infighting.
Rob reflects on the exponential love and rejection of throupledom: "Having him as part of our equation, I could love her 150% and him 150%". But when a throuple breaks down, you have to deal with exponential rejection. At times, Rob says, he didn't feel "chosen" by anyone. Alissa says her and Rob's marriage has survived, but only just. "I was pissed because I had this little tiny seedling that I didn't even want in the first place and I gave it all the sunlight and all the water, and then when it started to grow Rob was ready to end it."
The Unicorn Hunter Problem
Even within the polyamorous community, throuples are considered messy and potentially unethical – not necessarily because they disrupt an existing couple, but because they exploit the third person who enters the relationship. On polyamorous online message boards, couples who post that they are looking for a third person to join their relationship are often criticised for being "unicorn hunters". A "unicorn" is a rare, bisexual person who is open to joining an existing relationship, whereas the couple are characterised as a pair of unscrupulous "hunters" who seek to use this unicorn as their sexual tool.
Lucy, a self-described "former unicorn", says the hardest thing about her throuple experience was that she became a kind of second-class citizen. She was 33 when she began dating a married couple and moved into their home. There was a schedule: on Wednesdays she had an individual date with the wife and on Thursdays one with the husband. She was forbidden from having any sexual contact with the husband outside her allotted days. The wife also had a "veto power", meaning she could finish it with Lucy at any moment. Lucy was unceremoniously dumped twice during the year she was in the throuple. The first dumping happened in the middle of the Covid lockdown, so Lucy was forced to remain in the couple's home. "I would be in my room with the door closed listening to music and still feel her attention on me, hating me. This permeating loathing feeling was coming through the walls."
Feeling Used and Discarded
Caitlin, 31, from London, tells a similar story about feeling used and discarded by a couple she met while living in Marseille. Caitlin says that at first even the most mundane domestic moments with the couple felt electric. "It's stupid but they gave me a toothbrush in their house and I felt so cared for." She began to develop more serious feelings for the girlfriend, Arlette, but Arlette didn't return her feelings. After about six months, Caitlin called things off. The three met for the last time, and Caitlin remembers being in floods of tears. "You know what they said to me? 'You were the best sex toy we ever had.'"
Making a Throuple Work
Rachael, Aaron and Kasey, a throuple from the Tampa Bay area of Florida who have been living together for seven years, attribute their success to diligent emotional housekeeping. Rachael, a "type-A, high-achiever, highly organised person", says these qualities are very helpful in a throuple. "It's just 33% more – more to schedule, more to plan, more money to divvy up," she says. They have created a trust that outlines Kasey as a beneficiary, and have given her medical power of attorney. They apply the same organised approach to hashing out emotional issues. "We joke that if monogamous couples talked half as much about their feelings as we do in our throuple, the divorce rate would plummet," Aaron says.
The throuple have a weekly date night, but also regular one-on-one nights for each pair. Rachael explains that she usually leaves the house for the evening when Kasey and Aaron have their couples night, and re-entering the home at the end of the evening isn't always easy. She doesn't feel jealousy: "It's almost more like I know that they've had a very connecting moment, and me coming back to it feels intrusive." She has developed a system where she takes a shower and even considers sleeping in the guest room, then they "wake up and have a fresh day as a three".
The Bravery of Throuples
Listening to Rachael talk about the discomfort she feels entering her own house, I wonder why she chose to put herself through this. Rachael says that the monogamous mindset creates a false sense of security. "We think that if we sign these legal documents then we are somehow committed and we have this sense of safety in a relationship – clearly that's not true. People cheat all the time, they're unfaithful, they end up divorced."
In a way, people who form throuples are just braver than the rest of us. The fear of the third haunts most relationships. Throuples choose to invite the third into the relationship and live through all the difficult emotions the rest of us are trying to bury. Recently, Priscilla and Kiara told me they are thinking about trying to form a new throuple. Kiara is wary, but Priscilla is excited. "We're still discussing it," she says. "But I think it will be an adventure."
