Growing up you are told a relationship is between one man and one woman. Unless you are lucky to have supportive parents who say its ok to be with someone of your same gender or transgender, gender fluid, etc. There are more and more parents like that and I think that is amazing, I have parents like that which makes my same sex marriage that much better. However, are same sex relationships, or relationships between anyone in the LGBT community the only different kinds of relationships there are?

I used to think that whether it was one man and one woman, two women, two men, a CIS woman and a FTM man and vice versa, or any combination of genders a healthy relationship was still between two people. That you only had enough love in your heart for your partner/spouse. That anything else was considered an anomaly and unhealthy.

Anyone who knows me personally knows that I had an ex who left me for a married couple, and at 18 years old, I didn't understand. So with that being my first real experience with Polyamory I was not a fan. I saw that same ex get hurt by not only that married couple but another a few years later. And again, at 18, 19, and even 22 years old I didn't understand. I didn't understand multiple parts of it. One, how could she, the single person, want to join a married couple in their life they had built, and two, how could said married couple be ok with opening up their marriage both emotionally and physically to another person?

Fast forward to a little over a year ago and some close friends of ours decided they wanted to experiment with the Poly lifestyle. They had been swingers before so they didn't think it would be much different. Instead of having one person they shared they each had one or more extramarital partners. This caused a huge rift in our friendship for multiple reasons, most don't really apply here for this story, but one major was because our female friend completely changed who she was as a spouse, a mother, and a friend and it hurt to watch it happen. Now a year later they are finalizing a pretty nasty divorce after a decade together. There were more reasons for it other than their new relationships but they still played a part in her decision.

So now, at 24 years old I had seen my own relationships and friendships and other peoples relationships and marriages torn apart. I blamed the Poly lifestyle and I assured my wife that I would never, ever be ok with that kind of relationship. Now to be fair, we had a few fun nights with a couple friends (At different times) and I was fine with that. It was one night, we were both involved, and there were no feelings. Just a fun time, but I still thought that Polyamory was wrong and that relationships should only be between two people and that I could never do it.

Well my friends, I am here today to tell you I was wrong.

What started out as a fun night with a close friend who was exploring her sexuality turned into something much more. I fought the feelings at first, I told my wife we were crazy. She probably didn't even feel the same way. Part of the reason we said we would be perfect for her experiment was because we weren't looking for a permanent addition to our relationship. None of us expected to feel the way we do. My wife and I had many talks about it before even bringing it up to her This was not part of the plan. Feelings were not meant to be involved.

Now, two months later, my entire perspective has changed. The lease on her house was up and it was either move in with us or go home to her home state 1000 miles away so her and her beautiful daughter moved into our spare room. She is officially our girlfriend and while we are still working out the kinks and trying to get a handle our relationship it has been amazing. Her daughter is a year old and we love her like she was our own, we enjoy spending time together and learning how to be a "throuple".

I can't say that its been easy. There have been moments of jealousy and a lot of learning but it has been worth every moment. In such a short time this woman has shown me that every preconceived thought I had about Polyamory was wrong. It was not the idea that ruined those relationships and friendships above, it was the people involved and their own personal problems in the relationship. There is actually a huge part of the population that believes in or actively practices the Poly lifestyle, over 1 million people in the US alone.

Its hard to fathom opening up your heart to not only one person, but two people. I never thought i was capable of feeling love for anyone other than my wife. Then she came along and turned our world upside down for the better. The biggest thing I have noticed that is of utmost importance is communication.

I cannot emphasize this enough, YOU MUST COMMUNICATE.

Communicate with your spouse, communicate with your boyfriend/girlfriend communicate with both. Be open and honest about your feelings. If something is bothering you tell them. Communication is important enough with just two people. When you add a third person into the mix it is even more important, especially when adding someone to a marriage.

Also, just because you now have someone else doesn't mean you don't need to spend one on one time with your spouse still. We are finding that it is very, very important for us to have some time, even if its just for an hour while we run to the grocery store, it is still important for this relationship to work.

I know people who personally know me and are reading this may be a little surprised to say the least, don't worry, I'm still a little surprised too. This is definitely not what we were expecting to happen at all, but I looked past those preconceived thoughts I had from bad experiences I witnessed and now I am in a very happy and healthy relationship with two beautiful women.

I always thought of myself as very open minded and understanding until it came to this, when it came to the Poly lifestyle I was extremely close minded and it took reaching out of my comfort zone to realize my heart has enough room for more than just my wife. Its crazy how much trying new things can change your life.

I'm not saying go out and be with someone of the same sex or add someone to your marriage, but if everyone tried something out of their comfort zone maybe we wouldn't all be close minded about certain things and learn new things in our lives.

I am learning that you can't define love or relationships. How do you define love with words? How do you define what a relationship is with numbers? How do you tell someone their lifestyle is wrong simply because you don't understand it?

How do YOU define love?