There are a million different ways to be a family. As long as there is love present, it shouldn’t matter if a happy family consists of two people and a dog, two fathers and their children, two mothers and their cats, or eventhreeparents and their kids.While it may not be the most traditional way of living, polyamory is becoming more and more popular. According toGitnux, 4-5% of people in the United States have been in a non-monogamous relationship before, and nearly a third of polyamorous individuals are parents as well. So if you’re curious about what it’s like to grow up in a polyamorous household, you’ve come to the right place. Reddit users who have poly parents have beensharingtheir experiences, so below, you’ll find some of their most eye-opening and heartwarming stories.This post may includeaffiliate links.
There are a million different ways to be a family. As long as there is love present, it shouldn’t matter if a happy family consists of two people and a dog, two fathers and their children, two mothers and their cats, or eventhreeparents and their kids.
While it may not be the most traditional way of living, polyamory is becoming more and more popular. According toGitnux, 4-5% of people in the United States have been in a non-monogamous relationship before, and nearly a third of polyamorous individuals are parents as well. So if you’re curious about what it’s like to grow up in a polyamorous household, you’ve come to the right place. Reddit users who have poly parents have beensharingtheir experiences, so below, you’ll find some of their most eye-opening and heartwarming stories.
This post may includeaffiliate links.
Hey, it’s a post for me! Honestly I think it’s waaaaaaay more boring than most people would think. Most of the time, my mom wouldn’t introduce a partner to me unless it was a long term relationship, so most of the time I got the single mom experience. I think the most exciting thing was going out for dinner to meet someone new, and occasionally my mom would date someone who had a kid my age, and we would awkwardly play together while our parents were on a date (as in, we were playing in my room upstairs and a movie date or smthn was going on in the living room downstairs). Really for the most part it was so completely average other than knowing my mom had 2 girlfriends and eventually I also got a stepdad. The worst part was around 6-8th grade when kids found out and started bullying me for it, asking all kinds of disgusting sexual questions about my parents (no one wants to think about their parents having sex). Eventually I learned to just not tell anyone unless we were close and I new they were cool. I only ever had one person I trusted enough to actually come to a family picnic where my mom’s partners would all be there. My mom’s partners aren’t my parents but they are part of my life and my family. They’re wonderful and supportive, and have helped me through some horrible dark spots in my life. I’m grateful to have such a wonderful, loving family.So yeah, not very exciting, I know. But it’s my life!
When I was young my folks dated a couple of couples. One was very long term, we were military families but they managed to fenangle a transfer together. So wow, that would’ve been like 8 years at least? They kept in close romantic contact when they separated, but idk if they qualify that as still being together.They were my aunt and uncle, essentially. We and their kiddos got sent off to grandparents (theirs and ours) together to give them alone time. It was kinda a given that we’d all see each other every couple days, either they’d come to our house or we’d go to theirs. Not for them to sneak away for sexy time, but just to spend time together and be a family together.I knew I could go to them about anything I could talk to my folks about and even some things I couldn’t. That closeness continued even when my own folks split, idk what standing they had with them after that tho. Unfortunately, my aunt kinda had a psychotic menopause and we had to go nc with her.Nobody knows that I’m still in contact with uncle tho. Idk how my mom would feel about it. But he stayed a rock for me when my own dad didn’t.Same drama as any other family I guess, just more players on the stage.
When I was younger I didn’t realize mom and dad were poly, but now it’s funny to see my friends faces when I say “my mom and her wife and my dad and my dads girlfriend and his other girlfriend and I are gonna get together for dinner tonight.”
It was fine.The poly part didn’t really become known to me till I was 13 or so. The only weird bit was if I was bringing home a friend or someone I wanted to go out with I had to kind of explain what to expect beforehand and some people got weirded out. 🤷♀️I’m an adult in a monogamous marriage now - I saw first-hand that getting 3 people to come to a consensus on anything was exponentially more difficult than just getting 2 on the same page.Edit - I just realized too - how I was raised also made me very comfortable with taking about sex and boundaries in a relationship, where I think a lot of me peers were more easily pressured into things they weren’t comfortable with.
I had a therapist in a poly relationship and they all 3 had a child together that was around 9 when I met them, 2 dads and one mom.Unfortunately, they couldn’t be fully open about the fact that the 3 of them were in love since before she was born because the one she called dad worked for a religious college and that information getting out at all could have cost him his career, so she only called 2 of them mom and dad while she thought of the other like an uncle that visited every day.She seemed normal, she liked to make slime.
It wasn’t a huge deal when I was a kid, essentially it was just like hanging out with your parents and their friends. Some of my moms SOs had kids my age that I got along with really well. That being said, a little while ago my mom was flirting with a guy and referred to me as her “mono kid” in the same tone I’ve heard ultra conservative folk refer to “gay kids” so our relationship is a little strained these days. Her other daughter is 12, so I’m really not certain why that comment was anywhere near necessary.Edit: I forgot to mention, while they have never had any authority over me, she refers to her SOs as my “rampparents” because they’re not quite stepparents, which is kind of funnyEdit 2 to explain some things:Mono is short for monogamous. I am not poly.The mono kid comment was mostly hurtful because the way she said it implied it was some sort of scandal or like it was a bad thing. Obviously this is one thing thats bad, she’s not a horrible parent and person overall, but disapproving of some of my life choices just because they’re different from hers is not a great parent move either.No, I was not born into a monogamous relationship, so the comment really came out of left field.Ramp-parents is a play on words because they’re not married so they are not my step-parent, so ramp is instead of step as in stairs. Ram-parent had never even crossed my mind, but I can never un-think of it, so thanks for that.Also, thank you kind stranger for the hugs!Sorry if the original comment was confusing, English is hard :P
My son is a member of a throuple with two women. The first is his college gf who always had an open relationship, during a long distance period of their relationship he started very casually seeing girlfriend 2 but over time it got more serious and now they all live together. Things are happy and wonderful for them but I really do worry about how the dynamic would change were someone to fall pregnant. I worry about jealousies and inequalities rising up, but mostly I worry for my future grand babies. The societal pressures and teasing from outside the home as well as possible resentments and issues within the home. I can see how, if things work the way they are planned, it could be a wonderfully supportive and rewarding way to grow up, but you know what they say about the plans of mice and men!So I actually really appreciate the insight of this thread, I want to be supportive of my beloved throuple but part of being supportive is discussing possible pitfalls in hopes of avoiding them and this has already highlighted some. It’s also pointed out some of the positives, so thank you.
I actually have many poly friends and all their kids are all a bit…odd. Not exactly loners, but they are all the weird kids at school. The oldest one I know is now a grownup and has had a hard time with relationships.I think they learn a different type of relationship model then get confused when they go out in the world and discover it doesn’t work on most people. They don’t know why.
Wow, this applies to me! I grew up with 1 dad and 2 moms. My bio mom and my other mom both got pregnant at the same time, so I have a half-brother that was born two weeks before me. Since we are the same age, everyone thinks we are twins, but they get really confused when we tell them that no, we’re two weeks apart. I also have a full sister, and my brother has a half sister that was born 18 years before him, who I’m not technically blood related to. Though she is still my sister.My childhood was pretty normal except I had 2 moms instead of 1. Extra parenting I guess.There were one or two cases of my dad getting another girlfriend and them moving in with us for a year or so. They just lived in an extra room and helped with us kids and all that. All of my parents had separate rooms.One of my moms moved out when I was probably 10 because of issues with my dad’s girlfriend. I still got to see her but not nearly as often. It was harder on my brother though, as it was his birth mom that moved out and he was stuck with my biological mom, who is kinda crazy.We all still have a good relationship and I visit my other mom and my sister often. We are still a family, just a kind of weird family. Also all my parents, me and my siblings are all bisexual except for one. He is kind of the black sheep because of how normal he is, lol.
It was amazing to see my parents be affectionate with not just their partners, but their friends. They would have platonic friends over for movie nights and all cuddle on a mattress on the lounge room floor. Both my parents are bisexual so we always learned that love is love, and we were allowed to love whoever we wanted.Breakups were hard, we got attached to our parents partners, and then suddenly they’d be no longer in our lives. But one special partner, their first triad partner, she is still an incredibly important person in my life. She committed to us kids, separate to our parents, so when they broke up, she still loved and supported us. She lived in a different city, and when my sister and I grew up and went to uni, we moved to her city and now I’m closer to her than I am to either of my parents.We learned to talk to adults as adults, we learned emotional intelligence, we learned that adults can still have fun and be silly at any age. We learned that family isn’t blood, it’s the people you choose to spend your life with and chosen family is the most important thing.
My mother was involved in a poly relationship for a while when I was a kid. It was very confusing. For a while there were 4 of us kids around, me, the kid of the other woman, and the two kids of the man. We were all pretty confused and resentful. Our favorite joke was “pick a number and wait in line”.
hey, a question relevant to me! honestly, though, it wasn’t super different than any other way of growing up i assume, i just have one extra dad than everybody else. that’s just always how it’s been, and i never really thought about how ‘abnormal’ it was until high school. Even then it was more just thinking whether i really cared enough to explain to other people, or just go with a white lie on paperwork or whatever. Biggest difference i can think of while growing up is that there was ALWAYS someone home, which can be frustrating for a rebellious teenager.
Ooh finally one I can answer!My parents became polyamorous when I was around 6 or 7. They didn’t tell me or my sisters until their girlfriend (long distance) came to visit for a few weeks. After that, they were pretty open about who they were dating if it was serious. All of my friends at school thought it was cool, it just seemed normal to me. The long distance girlfriend and mum broke up after a few years but was still with dad up until a couple of years ago (I’m 24 now).There were never any huge issues, except for when mum and dad’s girlfriend came to a family gathering and my mum didn’t warn my grandma and then also when mum moved in with a boyfriend and we were living with dad and her other boyfriend. That was a weird time.It gave me and my sisters the opportunity to see relationships, communication and platonic friendship in a more open way. We know that we can’t expect one person to fulfil every need and so we try to keep our support systems diverse.2/3 of us have been historically monogamous but I just got out of a 6 year monogamous relationship so who knows if I’ll remain monogamous.
Had a friend several years ago that grew up with poly parents in Kansas. What he described seemed like a pretty healthy family/upbringing, and I would describe him as a well-adjusted, happy human. I don’t think either parent was particularly promiscuous, but throughout the years they would have other partners. He was a proponent of polyamory and had a pretty good way of explaining it - basically no one person can satisfy your everything, so polyamorists have more than one partner that allow them to experience romantic partnership on a fuller level of their being.Polyamory isn’t my cup of tea, but it is possible to have healthy relationships with this lifestyle, including that of a family.
It’s fine. I got hella extra parents, but I wasn’t allowed to have friends over when I was little cos my mom was scared someone would call CPS, and I don’t get along super great with my stepmom. Not cos of the poly thing though our personalities just don’t mesh well. I had one therapist insist that my beef with her was over the fact that she was f*****g my dad and not the fact that she routinely threw out my belongings. The other extraneous moms r cool tho.
My parents have been a triad since 1998.It was hard I wont lie, they dated a lot of 4ths who brought their own children into the mix then later break up with them. It was really difficult to constantly have parental figures and siblings come and go. The most being 13 kids and 4 adults in a 2 bedroom apartment.I am glad though that I grew up with it, I’m poly myself and it was never something my parents encouraged or forced on us. In fact they always say not to try it unless you’re a specific type of person. It introduced me to a wide arrange of people and broadened my mind to what family actually is which is the people who love you and make you feel safe i.e. chosen family.
My parents weren’t poly until I was a toddler, I guess? I thought of the other couple as just nice people my mom and dad were close with, they met online and came to visit, they all clicked well, and eventually the other couple moved in with my family. I didn’t make the connection they were all together until I was a teenager, I suppose I thought they were all just roommates of sort (though bed swapping and sharing was occuring the whole time!).By that point, my mom and dad had divorced and so had the couple- my dad married the other woman, and my mother married the other man. My mother has divorced and remarried again, and my father and stepmother are still together, almost 20 years later.tl;dr in retrospect, it’s just kind of an odd situation, but I honestly didn’t even realize my parents were poly growing up and now my dad is married to the lady instead of my mom.
Can’t really say it felt werid or odd as it was just what I was used to but I think I can honestly say it’s made me a more open and loving person, I’m not afraid of being close to people because my parents were always very close with their friends (for reasons that are obvious now but less so at the time)I also grew up getting to know my parents friends quite well because my parents were very close with them and trusted them enough to look after us, although I’ll admit this was probably more so they could have the house free of children. It does mean that I’m still quite close with a lot of them and consider them friends of mine outside of my parents friendship with them and I also have a few more parental figures to choose from, meaning I can pick the best ones from each to try and emulate.All in all I’d say I’m a more well rounded person as I got to know a lot more people as family growing up as well as exposing me to many different personalities.
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My parent were swingers. They went to bondage clubs and things like that. I found out in my late teens, so I didn’t really care all that much. I learned of it through my friend who told me his mom told him that my parents asked if they were interested one night when they were chilling in the hot tub.Started to put the pieces together after that… All the “Halloween costumes” in that box that I always overlooked… It’s weird, but whatever more power to them. Don’t think they do it anymore though, they’re getting a little too old for that life.
Polygamy is very common on my dads side. My grandpa has 30+ wives. My dad has about 4 last time I heard. Anyway, it was awful. Hated that part of my childhood and my mom escaped and left with me when I was a child. Sometimes I see him. It’s just super awkward around him and my half-siblings.Edit: my fault, I thought polygamy and polyamory where interrelated. Also I grew up in Papua New Guinea. It’s VERY common. Yes, my grandpa actually has 30+wives. I do not know my dads side that well which is why I can’t elaborate that much. Hope that clears things up :)
Ummm, I hated it.I should say that this actually only lasted about a year or two in my household. My dad was kind of a… whore. And really couldn’t bring himself to stop sleeping around. After my parents got back together, for like the 5th time, my dad got the brilliant idea to involve a woman he had been dating while he and my mom were broken up. So she had one room, my mom had another, and my dad went back and forth every night and alternating weekends. I was told that I was never allowed to tell anyone because it was no ones business. I think I only told my childhood best friend. Anyway, it lasted probably less than two years and took a serious mental toll on my mom. Plus this 2nd woman was a b***h. Her and my mom would get into insane arguments that my dad and I would have to step in the middle of. After awhile my mom just straight up left. So then it was just my dad and this woman living together for awhile until he caught her cheating on him. He never tried poly relationships again after that. It was definitely not a mentally healthy time for anyone.My mom and dad both eventually ended up in happy monogamous marriages though!
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F*****g weird man, but I will say this at least my dad was honest with my mom instead of banging his secretary behind her back. Instead he moved her into the house and she was part of the family! Being the only scientologists in town didn’t help.
My parents were poly but it started out of cheating and getting back at one another. I suppose they were always “open” but not poly. Basically, the woman who was my dads girlfriend for many years tried to get him and my mom to divorce so she could be my mom and my dads wife. Years passed of me being shuffled around and ignored so they could pursue their love lives. Eventually my dad cut the woman out of his life, my parents divorced, and now I don’t have a relationship with either of my parents because they’re s****y (that was part of it).Edit: since this is getting some upvotes all add: my mom also dated this woman’s husband, they had a kid who was a lot older than me who did his own thing. My mom had other partners but my dad kinda kept this one lady around for many years. Neither of them are poly/open/ whatever anymore since the divorce. That was many years ago. This all happened when I was 5-11, and me and my sister had a st life for it. They are mentally ill people who attract other mentally ill people. I did try non monogamy myself and also had a very bad experience later on, while my mom told me to just keep trying it. That woman who my dad cut out later tried to get my mom to be with her (my mom is queer). Both my parents are now single I think. Weird f***g thing.
My parents were more like swingers. They didn’t have the emotional maturity to do either ethical polyamory nor monogamy. So I don’t really take issue with anything specifically on that account. My dad did use me as a prop a lot to hit on my kindergarten teacher (married), my camp counselors (underage), the mothers of children I knew (including making me hang out with my bully so he had an excuse to hang out with her mom.) That made me uncomfortable and made me distrust men. I know a monog dad could be just as sleazy, but I think even in a more ethics-style if nonmonog—it might not be immediately clear to someone who hasn’t experienced the child’s side, why using your child-daughter as an unwilling wing-girl isn’t okay. Even if your prospecting is itself okay.I’m extremely pro-polyam, even though I don’t identify that way as well. But I really dislike people framing it as inherently better and more natural. The fact that it works better for some people is I think all the justification it needs. Sex and relationship styles are at the pleasure and consent of those who participate. I think that’s the only radical idea we need, rather than arguing about what people SHOULD prefer.
My parents were poly but they were pretty discreet about it. Sometimes we would drive across a couple of states to visit and stay with “friends” they had. It wasn’t a big part of our life.
Oh boy, a question I can answer! I really hope it doesn’t get too buried.It was… weird? Kinda? My parents had a strange poly relationship that didn’t totally start being poly until I was around 9 or 10. My stepdad started coming over more and more… and it’s weird for some people I don’t call him ‘stepdad’ or ‘dad’. I just call him hy his name. My dad was not quite as good with people as my mom was and so his partners honestly kinda came and went but Stepdad stuck around. Things were alright, having three parents meant they could buy a house together and so they did. Things for them were… rocky at times but I feel like I turned out okay for the most part. Biggest issue was some cheating on someone’s part (yes, you can still cheat in a poly relstionship)When I became an adult my mom and dad shared some partners as I was finding my footing and moving in/out every few years. I’ll admit the people my dad brought in were not as nice as my stepdad and also didn’t seem interested in being in my life. Now I have three parents, in a way… though it definitely made me not want to even try out poly relationships.
Not great. My dad had a roster of about five or six women as partners, he was married to one of them.They all were ok with it and encouraged the resulting kids to socialize among them.I was an only child with my mom, but the other women had two or three each. I grew up getting together. Seeing the half-bros and half-sis every now and thenWhen I was fifteen I had an argument with the old man. He was raising two kids of the woman he was married at the time while he neglected most of his blood kids. He kicked me out of his house.I haven’t spoken to him in 30 years and I’m ok with that. I have lost track of all the adults half-siblings and i’m ok with that.What gets me is that I was starting to follow the same trend in my early 20s, and fathered two kids with different mommas.They both talk to me, but they hate each other guts, and I’m to blame but what can I do?
Not a child of one, but my dad had a poly relationship with his wife and a girlfriend. My dad and his wife were in there mid forties, girlfriend was 28 and looked like a prepubescent teen. I’m all for people having whatever kind of relationships they want, but it was super weird, and obviously headed towards drama. I once went on vacation to Hawaii with them, just me, my dad, and his wife and girlfriend; girlfriend stole pills from step mom and blamed it on me. Eventually, my dad ended up getting divorced, stayed with girlfriend a while. Girlfriend is anorexic, ex-wife comes back, they ship her to a rehab for her anorexia, then get remarried. Wife forbids dad from any contact with ex-girlfriend and has cameras installed all over the house to make sure dad isn’t cheating, because apparently he did that, but, ya know, she cheated on him when he was deployed in Afghanistan so I don’t feel bad for her. If you couldn’t guess, dad got divorced again eventually, different girlfriend, no poly. Im angry just writing this lol. Children raising children.
Sucked but not necessarily because my parents were poly, it was because they are all insane and incredibly emotionally and physically abusive. I have no contact with them.I actually didn’t realize this until I was a teenager and that ‘aunt(always knew she wasn’t really my aunt) N’ was my parent’s partner but we always knew something was a little weird.The good things were that Aunt N was typically the ‘fun’ one and did do a lot with us where our parents would not. Mom was depressed and severely mentally ill, we were afraid of dad.The bad things I noticed in their relationship was that Aunt N was a huge manipulator, liar, thief, viciously jealous that she didn’t have kids of her own/of my mom, and she used us kids as a therapist to talk about her problems, our financial problems, gaslight, use us, etc.They were not nor are still very educated people. I do not believe they even know what polygamy means and my parents before she came into it already had a horrible relationship so you can imagine adding another person didn’t help either. That being said I still think polygamy is fine for normal, rational adults who can talk about their feelings without throwing you into a wall.
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