They said they all prefer to nip conflict in the bud. "I'm getting better by doing more chores around the house." "I'm a messy person and I've been trying to undo that part of myself," Rayo said. "I need to feel like we're all on the same team." "I get upset about that one thing because I've asked to make our home together nice and when you don't do that it feels like you haven't listened to me or you don't want to help keep me happy," he said. On most days, Stenstrum cooks and Aldridge scrubs the dishes. "One of our big things is dishes, because we don't have a dishwasher and I have to have things a certain way if I'm going to do dishes," Aldridge said. Their last fight found Rayo as the odd man out. Their fights can take on many structures: one-on-one with a third intervening or two-on-one. That level of honesty helps quell tensions. "If someone says, 'How are you doing?' and you're not doing well, don't say, 'I'm doing fine.' That's technically a lie," Aldridge said.
How to fight: Kramer said the best relationships, regardless of the number of people in them, are built on this kind of open and honest communication. "You need to be able to talk about your feelings or whether you're feeling jealous or any number of emotions - even good ones," Stenstrum told Mic. "Then talk to the people in the relationship and see if that jealousy is founded or unfounded." Let me unpack things and see where this jealousy really comes from,'" he said. "With a healthy jealousy we might be able to say, 'Hey, wait a second, something doesn't feel right or seem right. Kramer said every relationship needs a little jealousy to thrive. "Jealousy always gets a bad rap, but it doesn't have to be that way," Scott Kramer, a social worker and psychotherapist who sees polyamorous patients, told Mic. "You need to kind of become comfortable with the fact that you have negative emotions, things like jealousy," Aldridge told Mic. "We have no books or rom-coms to go off of," he said. Stenstrum said the three were largely in unchartered territory. Eventually, they'll implement a rotation schedule when they move to a two-bedroom apartment.Ī rotation schedule may sound odd, but while the relationship's mechanics function differently, its core is downright banal: hard work and honesty. Stenstrum and Aldridge work during the day, as an IT support tech and a project manager. There's one queen-size bed in the apartment, which Stenstrum and Aldridge share while Rayo works the overnight shift at a pharmacy. "We're fitting too many people in too small a place right now." "There's too much stuff all over the place," he said. Sunk into a brown sofa, a clean oasis in an accumulation of belongings, Stenstrum made clear what their one-bedroom apartment said about them. In Nancy Meyers' rom-coms, a character's house reflects a character's inner self. Sharing space: A nontraditional relationship structure means running a nontraditional home. However, as polyamory takes many forms, often looking vastly different from relationship to relationship, none of those numbers are specific to three-person relationships.Īmong millennials, the polyamorous sexual revolution may be even greater: Fewer millennials are getting married than previous generations, and many are embracing nontraditional, difficult-to-define relationship structures. According to a 2009 Newsweek article, there may be as many as a half-million openly polyamorous relationships in the United States. Take into account those who maintain relationships which allow outside sexual or romantic partners, or open relationships, and the number almost quadruples to 9.8 million. Polyamory by the numbers: An estimated 1.2 million to 2.4 million people in the U.S. "That was a stroke of luck," Rayo said, with a slight grin, of both the concussion and the change it caused. In a way, the accident solved Rayo's time management problem. Rayo was relieved of his two-man juggle, and Stenstrum and Aldridge were excited to close the open loop in their three-person arrangement. Aldridge, who lived a few miles away from the other two, stayed with Stenstrum and Rayo for the weekend to tend to their mutual beau.Īs of that weekend, they made a mutual decision to become a triad.
While on a ski trip in New Hampshire with Stenstrum and Aldridge, Rayo conked his head and landed in the hospital, requiring some help at home upon his release.
Then in March 2014, a Hollywood-sized act of fate occurred.