Well… it’s two couples, the way I see it: my partner and I are one couple, and she and her husband are the second. Her partner and I aren’t in a romantic relationship with one another, or else there’d be a third couple there!

Threesome’s a perfectly valid term, if you like, although it carries a sexual implication that isn’t necessarily true (somebody can have two sexual partners without having two sexual partners at the same time, if you see what I’m saying). Also triad, trio, vee (after the letter “V”, whose shape does a reasonable job of describing our relationship structure).

Can I elaborate on how it works? Certainly! Although I can promise you that it’s more-dull than you might be hoping! My partner, her husband, and I all met at about the same time: my partner and her husband were in the same residence at University; my partner and I met through volunteer work a few weeks later. That’ll have been about 2002. In 2007, she and I got together as well, with some negotation involved (as you might expect!). In 2009, we all started living together in Oxford. In 2010, they got married – the photo you see is from their wedding. In 2013, we bought our first house together. In 2014, their daughter was born. And here we all are, trundling along in what’s doubtless a frightfully normal and everyday relationship in every sense, except for the fact that there are more of us involved with one another than is typical!

I’m not sure what exactly you want to know, but I’ll try to answer whatever you can think of! People often ask about our sleeping arrangements (my partner’s husband and I each have a bedroom, she spends about half of the nights in each of them), jealousy (I could talk at length about jealousy, but the fundamental revelations that need to happen are that (a) monogamy doesn’t make you immune to it, either, and (b) it’s not something to be afraid of, just understood, owned, and handled), childraising (humans have brought up children in extended families for millenia: children don’t care much who sleeps where, they just care that they’re given a loving, supportive, and stable environment by adult caregivers they can trust and rely upon), and how people react to the discovery (mostly good, although we’ve had a few nasty exceptions): we’re all pretty-much universally “out” about it, though. If there’s anything you want to know (more) about, though, just shout! I’m personally a big fan of talking about our relationships because I think it helps to show people that a polyamorous relationship isn’t really that-much different from a monogamous one!