- So every morning I wake up, I kiss both of them.
We equally fight when we make up, we equally come,
and we'll all start kissing.
We smooch like this.
Let's have a little tree head kiss.
- [People] Aw.
(upbeat music)
- [Man] I get jealous when I see my partner
with someone else.
Three, two, one, go.
- I just didn't do strongly disagree,
'cause I mean, of course jealousy is a factor in polyamory
but it's something that we just communicate about.
And I do get jealous occasionally, yes.
- I think in other parts of our lives,
like work, friend, family we kind
of like suppress that jealousy.
You can't really act out on it.
So why, when it comes to relationship, you can just go
and act out on it and get mad at your partner for it.
Or, you know, tell them you can't talk
to this person or that person.
- I found through polyamory that I like thrive
off of love from multiple people.
And I don't think I'm somebody to take that away
from people I love either, so I feel that it would be wrong
for me to feel jealous when it's something that I want.
Instead I replace it with the word even a lot
of polyamory people don't know which is compersion,
which is like the opposite of jealousy.
Or I actually feel really happy when
I see my significant other with somebody else, yeah.
- So, I haven't been in a quad right,
where there have been four of us
and we were all sort of internally dating one another,
but I have had three girlfriends at once
and these were parallel relationships.
While jealousy isn't like a super huge problem
that I deal with, it can emerge from other things other
than seeing them with someone else, right?
- We've been married for.
- 14.
- 14 Years. - 14 or so, yeah.
- 13, 14 yeah, 14 years. - Yeah, yeah.
- Yeah, we've been married 14.
- We just realized that not one person can fulfill
all your needs.
Ingrid and I just dated for a minute, honest.
Like we actually were friends for like a year
and then she realized she was outta my league.
(people laughing)
And we remained friends since, you know and.
- You couldn't handle me.
- No, it's true.
(people laughing)
- [Man] My family approves of my relationship.
Three, two, one, go.
- Okay, so, I'm actually like over here,
like on the other side of this line,
because I come from a traditional Korean Christian home
and me marrying a Puerto Rican was unacceptable.
They pretended like he didn't exist,
hoping he'd just go away.
- Night before the wedding, are you sure?
(people laughing)
- Two weeks before the wedding, my mom was like,
you know you can still call it off, right?
And so it was, it was pretty rough,
which is why I'm not actually out to my parents.
I don't really talk to them very much.
There's no way that I can even approach the subject
you know, which is kind of why I'm here today
because I wanna show people, hey, look, we exist, you know?
And it's okay.
- Coming out to my mom, it took actually a couple years.
And so her reaction was more of a curiosity
where she was just asking me questions about it.
I think her unconditional love was the acceptance
of our polyamory that now she's able to show it off
and talk about it to people that they don't understand
and she's able to like, that's my daughter, you know?
- [Participant] Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- So it's pretty awesome.
- While they support my lifestyle,
I don't necessarily think that they quite understand it.
When I have undergone separations or breakups
with partners and try to rely on my family for a little bit
of emotional support to help me grieve those losses,
sometimes I'm met with like, well, you got another partner,
I don't see what the big deal is, right?
- I guess the way my parents, my mom has always seen it.
She's always seen like I'm in a relationship
where I'm like a slave, maybe in the background
and these girls are telling me what
to do and controlling my life.
- [Participant 1] Wow.
- Taking away all my money.
I was really emotional during our wedding
because I didn't expect my mom not
to show up to the wedding.
I thought she was gonna be in the background
just like mad, you know.
They've always done a really good job of going
to all my sport events, to everything
that I've done in life, they've always been there.
Except for this one moment, even our gender reveal
they didn't show up to the gender reveal either.
- [Man] You can cheat in polyamorous relationships.
Three, two, one, go.
(participants chattering)
- When you date somebody who's monogamous, right?
Or let's say that they're married.
And because you're polyamorous say like, oh
hey look, you know, she's easy.
Or you know, he's available.
That's cheating.
You're not cheating, 'cause you're being honest.
But their partner's not consenting
to the relationship that you're having with that person.
- It is still an individual decision of mine to say,
okay well, am I going to involve myself or not?
I mean, sure, I think that clearly they're cheating.
And I may try to encourage them to, you know, like say,
hey you should tell this.
- [Participant 2] Figure it out.
- But I'm not cheating, I'm, you know what I'm saying?
- Do you really want the other partner
to show up with a shotgun?
- Exactly.
That's what I was thinking because I mean
we we've dated a girl before and the second we find
out that there was someone else, boom, it's over.
- As a conceptual question could you guys cheat
within your polyamorous relationships?
If two of you were to engage one another
without the third one, would that constitute cheating
in some senses?
- Well, my answer 'cause I met them together,
I don't see that if they were in the mood
that that would be cheating.
That if they, you know, if they told me about it
or whatever, just 'cause their relationship was what it was.
- There's times where I'll start fooling around
with her and she'll come out of the shower.
But before we finish, the other person will be there.
- You can a hundred percent cheat.
And the reason being like we're open
to pretty much everything, like we're allowed
to have sex outside of the relationship.
We're allowed to date other people.
We date people together.
But the problem is is if you're not honest about it.
If I just swiped on Bumble, whatever, went
on a date and I didn't tell her anything, that's cheating.
- [Man] I want children.
Three, two, one, go.
- Oh baby.
- Oh, this is not an answer, I get it.
- Somewhat agree.
- I went from wanting four kids to two kids to zero.
Once we started paying bills and living in Los Angeles,
I was like, I can't do this.
- I'm of the mind of, if we have children
somebody has to stay home to raise them.
I'm born and raised Puerto Rico.
I came out here to pursue a career
that I have successfully made a living of.
And she started her own business.
Are you gonna give up your career to raise a child?
And she's like, no.
She's like are you gonna give up your career
to raise a child?
I was like, no.
- It is kind of selfish on our part
and we understand that it's not the norm necessarily
but for us it's just, it's worked out and we love our life.
- We're happier for it.
- I strongly agree because I have a nine year old already.
So, I mean, I just felt like it would be a little weird
to be like, yeah, I strongly disagree, right.
(people laughing)
But I do think it's a separate question though, right
of whether or not I'd like to bring more life
into the world, right and that's just something that I talk
about and think about with partners and the like
but polyamorous children or children born
unto polyamorous families aren't necessarily protected
by the state or the society in the same way
that people born into diotic or monogamous units are,
who can access marriage so on and so forth, so.
- She's only 21, I'm only 23, so,
obviously there's gonna be some problems
with that financially and stuff like that.
But we do talk about having kids.
I want a little boy and like, you need to raise him,
but I don't know, I just don't think I'm ready.
- We never wanted to have children.
We were probably on that side way over there, you know?
And after discussing the whole marriage thing,
we're like, well, once we get a house and we do this
we'll eventually take that journey.
So we got a house, then we actually ended
up getting married, now she's pregnant.
- [Participant 3] Congratulations.
- Oh, yay.
(participants applauding)
- This is our baby bump.
- [Participant 4] Okay.
- We found like a birth center even through COVID
that will allow all three of us
in the room when the baby's born.
- And then for the babies, we're gonna do like a power
of attorney so that all of us could have the same type
of guardianship over the baby,
any medical or anything like that.
- We actually found that this year three dads were put
on the same birth certificate for their kid.
They actually wrote a book about it.
I'm really interested in learning more.
But with that, that means it's possible.
- [Man] I am equally committed to all my partners.
Three, two, one, go.
(participants chattering)
- I really am somewhere between these two.
Can I?
What about, is here good?
I'm struggling with the understanding equal.
I don't think equal means the same,
so I know I don't have the same commitment.
How I orient myself towards keeping my commitment
I do think is the same.
It may look like to an external eye
that I don't have equal commitments to them all, right, so.
- I think that's why you're on this side closer than
on that side is cuz you're willing to be present.
Whether it be for one or the other,
like for me it's dating a male and a female.
Like I can do Cha Cha's eyelashes,
but definitely not Jimmy's, he would not take that.
(participants laughing)
So, there's totally that difference.
But like the willingness to be present for your partners
whether they want that same affection or not it's,
that's why I think you're a little more
on this side than on that side.
Even if you're not all the way over here.
- Yeah, that's why I'm on this side too, is the fact that,
you know I'm committed to making my relationships work.
I'm committed to that person and to bringing
to that person what they need from me.
And then if I can't do it,
then the relationship doesn't work.
- Openness, communication, obviously being like, okay,
I have a partner, this is my main partner.
Maybe they just wanna have sex or maybe they just wanna go
on dates or have somebody to cuddle with.
- This is my primary partner.
So they are a priority at the end of the day.
I feel like if we had a third person
in our relationship, it would be equal
and we would be on that side.
- She's my nesting partner, she's my primary partner.
She's the person that I have built my life around.
And that's how I understood the question.
It's not that my other partners are disposable.
I mean, I will take a bullet for all of them.
- So every morning I wake up, I kiss both of them.
You know, if I'm mad at her, she gets mad at me.
We equally fight.
We equally come together.
When we make up, we equally come and we all start kissing,
We smooch like this, let's have a little three head kiss.
- [Participants] Aw.
- And then after that kiss, everything's good.
And then we go out to eat.
- To eat, yeah. (laughing)
- And I like to add 'cause I knew that hierarchy existed.
So when I met them, knowing that she's a girl
and I could feel kind of that feeling of
if someone were to enter my relationship, how I would feel.
I never wanted to step on her toes.
For me, it was very fluid and open and okay.
To the point where I like hyperactively wanted
to make sure she was okay.
- Even getting her pregnant, we all discussed it
and she was, you should go get pregnant first.
- [Man] My future relationships will be polyamorous.
Three, two, one, go.
(participants laughing)
- If I could find somebody who covers every single base
which I honestly am not really sure if that's even possible
but if they cover every single base, I, you know
wouldn't need another partner.
- I'd piggyback off of that, 'cause I'm similar, right?
So for me I said earlier, right?
Like my polyamory is not a numbers game.
It could be one person.
It could be more than one person.
My future relations will be polyamorous.
I definitely mean like sort of like this polyamory
in principle and not necessarily in like number.
- For us, we started out monogamous
and then we opened the door to polyamory
and there's no shutting that door.
And the idea that, you know like Ingrid was saying like,
would you need another person?
Well, we believe we would need another person
to do different things with.
- I would like my future relationships to be polyamorous.
But I also understand that life happens sometimes
if you were to get married or have kids, you know,
like you might not have the time to be
in a polyamorous relationship.
And also because we're open, I feel like any discussion,
like you can talk to me about anything.
So if my partner came to me and it was like, hey
I think I wanna be monogamous.
I would definitely be open to that idea, too.
- So it's not necessarily that I will be doing this
for the rest of my life, but I do want the ability
to be open to it.
I don't wanna be fully monogamous,
but I guess I am open to it, like she said with marriage
and there's many factors that go into it.
That's the only reason I'm not on a strongly agree
but I would more than likely want to be
in a polyamorous relationship even throughout my marriage.
- [Man] Well, that is officially a wrap for you guys, so.
(participants cheering)
(participants applauding)
(instrumental music)