Trinogamous Relationship / Polyfidelitous Triads

I'm new to the forum and have a lot of questions - but I wanted to start with these:

Is there a difference between polyfidelitous triads and trinogamous relationships? I'm familiar with the former but not the latter. Are they the same?

Also, is the term "unicorn hunter" usually applied to one type of pursuit (a couple looking for a bisexual female)? If so, I'm just curious if the poly community tends to find that type of relationship very unusual?

My questions are sincere. I just say that because I've read some threads and it seems the whole "unicorn hunter" term is controversial or arises in some of the more controversial viewpoints.

Are there threads here dedicated to people in either polyfidelitous triads and trinogamous relationships (if there's a difference, if not, is there a thread where people in this type of relationship tend to have dialog)?
 
I hate the word "trinogamous". One, it's not correct usage of the prefix "tri-". It should be "trigamous". Monogamous (mono-), bigamous (bi-), trigamous ("tri-"), and so on. Two, it sounds like some kind of extinct Jurassic era species "trinogamasaurus".

I really really hate it and i wish people wouldn't use that word.
 
Responses

Thanks for the response. That helps begin to clarify some things. Also - thanks for letting me know I need to keep checking back in for responses. Is there a way to set it up so we can get emails each time someone responds?
 
Unicorn hunters are very common. A person can't really "be" a unicorn despite that some bisexual women and the occasional bisexual man may think they "are" one. A unicorn in this context is simply an idealistic notion that these couples have that they can decide exactly what they want and then search for another person to fill that script, instead of meeting people first and THEN deciding how they might fit into the couple's life, WITH the third person's input of course. Because the unicorn really only exists in the minds of the couple, it is impossible for a real person to "be" a unicorn.

There are plenty of bisexual women who are into dating couples, or open to it if the right people come along. The slang term for them i hear used most often is "hot bi babe" or "HBB" for short. Of course, a woman can be bisexual and involved with a couple or open to it and be neither hot nor a babe, but those two things are subjective anyway and i'm not trying to debate the meanings of the words "hot" and "babe" in this context. Someone else might like to, though.
 
Thanks for the response. That helps begin to clarify some things. Also - thanks for letting me know I need to keep checking back in for responses. Is there a way to set it up so we can get emails each time someone responds?

There's a thing for that in the user cp. it's either under email settings or read posts settings.
 
Is there a difference between polyfidelitous triads and trinogamous relationships? I'm familiar with the former but not the latter. Are they the same?

My impression is that they are the same. My impression is that the "trinogamous" term comes from the LGBT community, whereas I am used to seeing "polyfi triad" on the poly boards that I frequent.

Also, is the term "unicorn hunter" usually applied to one type of pursuit (a couple looking for a bisexual female)? If so, I'm just curious if the poly community tends to find that type of relationship very unusual?

"Unicorn Hunter" is usually applied to a couple (generally straight male + bisexual female) who is looking for a bisexual female who is looking for another bi-female to "complete" them. There are problematic assumptions underlying this quest (which is what most of the discussions are about) - namely that this "Hot Bi Babe" is going to be interested in both of them equally and the relationships are going to progress at the same rate - all the while not "threatening" the original pairing in any way.

It's not that this type of relationship is very unusual - many folks look for it, some folks find it - for a while. It's that it seems to be more "sought after" than "successfully completed" (again, due to underlying assumptions that have not been addressed).

JaneQ
 
I hate the word "trinogamous". One, it's not correct usage of the prefix "tri-". It should be "trigamous". Monogamous (mono-), bigamous (bi-), trigamous ("tri-"), and so on. Two, it sounds like some kind of extinct Jurassic era species "trinogamasaurus".

I really really hate it and i wish people wouldn't use that word.

They're not trying to say trigamous. Since it's a polyfidelitous triad, they're all being bigamous. The relationship is bigamous. They're trying to say trinomous, which literaly means "with three names" but is used to mean "with three people". Then they add "gamous" because they think "oh, monogamous, bigamous, polygamous... we need to end in gamous too!"

I definitely hate this term too, because in my experience, nobody who first enounters it knows what it means. Only when you already know do you understand it. "Polyfidelitous triad" is a term I understood the first time I encountered it. If we're going to name things, might as well make it straightforward names.

Otherwise, "trinogamous" is the adjective some people use to talk about a triad/throuple, yes. I wish they would stop, partially for the reasons above, and partially because that one relationship format is soon going to have more names than all the others combined.

You know how on forums, board and so one there is a new thread pretty much every day saying "My partner and I want to be poly... oh but with a twist, something unique! We're both looking for a female who would be with both of us at once! See, no jealousy could even happen, because seeing two people you love having fun without you is way easier than seeing only one person you love having fun without you, plus this way we don't have to bother looking for people separately. Anyway we came up with it on our own, I can't believe nobody else ever has! Crazy, right?"
And you just look at it, sitting right next to a few other threads saying the exact same thing, and you think "yes, you're so original..."
Well sometimes I feel like all these people also thought they were so innovative and original that they had to find a name for this thing that had never existed before.
As a result, there are more names for it than anyone could possibly care for. It's not like they're all slightly different, either. They're all describing the exact same thing: three people who are all in relationships with the other two, and usually with nobody else (but I've seen all of these words used for both polyfidelitous arrangements and open arrangements).

Anyways, hopefully with time, one word will rise as the most common one and the others will be abandoned. But I predict in the meantime more geniuses will come up with more new words for their totally unique idea.
 
Otherwise, "trinogamous" is the adjective some people use to talk about a triad/throuple, yes.

"Throuple" and its ilk are also stupid as fuck.

They're not trying to say trigamous. Since it's a polyfidelitous triad, they're all being bigamous. The relationship is bigamous. They're trying to say trinomous, which literaly means "with three names" but is used to mean "with three people". Then they add "gamous" because they think "oh, monogamous, bigamous, polygamous... we need to end in gamous too!"combined.

I appreciate this explanation, but where did you find this referenced? I just googled "trigamous" and got some definitions:

Oxford: said:
trigamous
Syllabification: (trig·a·mous)
Pronunciation: /ˈtrigəməs/

Definition of trigamous
adjective

having three wives or husbands at the same time.

Merriam-Webster: said:
trig·a·mous
adjective \-məs\
Definition of TRIGAMOUS
1
: being or relating to a trigamist or trigamy : living in trigamy
2
: having staminate, pistillate, and hermaphrodite flowers in the same head
Origin of TRIGAMOUS
Gk trigamos thrice married


No online dictionary had a definition for "trinomous" when I googled that word. Could you give me the source/reference of it?

Oh wait, was it this religious blog?

http://beyondmundane.wordpress.com/2010/12/22/judas-jehovah-leads/

So, it's the bible that gave you the word "trinomous"? And the dictionary/ies have it as "trigamous". Well then. I think that helps me make up my mind. Any time I have a choice between a religious word or definition or a secular word or definition, that ain't no choice at all, LOL.

If you do have a dictionary or some other authoritative source that is not religious, I would really appreciate knowing what it is. But thanks for getting me out of bed this morning. It was just too mincy to do all this googling and copypasta from the ipod.
 
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"Throuple" and its ilk are also stupid as fuck.

I agree. Just mentioning another word I've seen used.

I appreciate this explanation, but where did you find this referenced?

First of all, this is the second time only than I've seen the word "trinogamous" The first time I asked the person "do you mean 'trigamous'?" and got chastised ("Of course I don't mean trigamous! Trigamous would mean I have three partners! I only have two! I'm bigamous.") So I'm fairly confident people are not trying to say trigamous (and I would have realised that if I realised they were talking about a triad. I thought the guy had 3 partners, that it was a quad.)
If trigamous could apply to a relationship between 3 people, then bigamous could apply to a relationship between 2 people, which is a couple, and monogamous would mean celibate.

As for the word "trinomous", I did not actually goodle anything. In French (I'm French), when people are paired up for a project, we call it working in "binomes", and "trinomes" is used for groups of 3 people. I assumed that "trinomous" would be the corresponding adjective in English, as the starting "trino-" seemed to refer to trinomes.

But it's quite possible that the word "trinome" or "binome" or any derivatives are actually not used in English, which would add up to how confusing the term is.

EDIT: just looked up the translation for "trinome" into English. Got "trinomial".
 
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I had to google that too. Even being in the LGBT community I hadn't really heard it. Maybe it's because the LGBT people I know that are poly or I talk to poly about talk about it in the same terms I'm used to. Triads, primaries, anchors things like that. Also, even the gay men I know in triads or poly talk about dating like dating and are only in a triad because they literally 'fell' into it after a few years of dating. I don't know. Anyway, this is what I found.

http://trinogamy.blogspot.com/


So I was kinda blown away, but it's basically information on all the ins and outs of triads. Not promoting here, just what I found to tie the words together!
 
I agree. Just mentioning another word I've seen used.



First of all, this is the second time only than I've seen the word "trinogamous" The first time I asked the person "do you mean 'trigamous'?" and got chastised ("Of course I don't mean trigamous! Trigamous would mean I have three partners! I only have two! I'm bigamous.") So I'm fairly confident people are not trying to say trigamous (and I would have realised that if I realised they were talking about a triad. I thought the guy had 3 partners, that it was a quad.)
If trigamous could apply to a relationship between 3 people, then bigamous could apply to a relationship between 2 people, which is a couple, and monogamous would mean celibate.

As for the word "trinomous", I did not actually goodle anything. In French (I'm French), when people are paired up for a project, we call it working in "binomes", and "trinomes" is used for groups of 3 people. I assumed that "trinomous" would be the corresponding adjective in English, as the starting "trino-" seemed to refer to trinomes.

But it's quite possible that the word "trinome" or "binome" or any derivatives are actually not used in English, which would add up to how confusing the term is.

EDIT: just looked up the translation for "trinome" into English. Got "trinomial".

Yes, I pretty much got the same thing you did of course (because it's the same google of course), and just didn't copypasta everything into here (went with 2 of the "authoritative" dictionary sources on the web). Interestingly enough, there doesn't seem to be a Wikipedia page for these words, although "trigamous" had an entry in "Wiktionary". For the most part, it does indeed refer to the number of PARTNERS a person has - not the total number of people in the partnership as a group. And the "-gamous" part refers to the number of gametes/gonads present in an organism (a "trigamous" flowering plant, for example) - I should have noticed that because I like, studied that shit in college, but I don't use much biological terminology on an every-day basis, so I forgot most of it.

Basically, none of these words are linguistically "correct" when it comes to describing a polyfidelitous triad the way we're referring to it right now.
 
There actually is a wiki entry for trinomial, which is the only thing I googled. Well, I googled "trinome translation" and found "trinomial". Then I googled "trinomial" to make sure it was the right word, since translations can suck without context, and it had a Wiki page, although it was only for the mathematical term.

It would probably still be a bad word to use for a triad, though. Just not plain wrong like the one we've been discussing so far.
 
Are there threads here dedicated to people in... polyfidelitous triads?

No. It's a relationship that is so hard to manage, as are quads, that there is barely a community of successful triad-havers.

The only one barely attaining success is BaggagePatrol's blog, and she's had more triads (and quads, and even Vs) blow up than succeed. (Sorry, BP, but it's true.)

The HUGE majority of poly people here have Vs or Ns going, that is, they might have 2 lovers, and be an arm or a hinge of a V, or one of the 3 might have yet another significant lover, becoming an N or branching out even more.

I'm in an N. I've got 2 lovers, and one of my lovers has a wife. None of us are poly-fi.

Do you want to be in a poly-fi triad?
 
I am sure I read a website once called 'Trinogamous' something that stated one could only have a real Trinogamous relationship if all three partners came together at the same time so it is truly equal. It was a pretty bizarre site, I will see if I can find it again.
 
There actually is a wiki entry for trinomial, which is the only thing I googled. Well, I googled "trinome translation" and found "trinomial". Then I googled "trinomial" to make sure it was the right word, since translations can suck without context, and it had a Wiki page, although it was only for the mathematical term.

It would probably still be a bad word to use for a triad, though. Just not plain wrong like the one we've been discussing so far.



"Trinomial" is a type of algebraic equation. I found that too when i was looking because google was filling it in for me, but i already knew what it means. It is not a good term for a polyfidelitous triad. It has a specific widespread use already and there is no excuse to fuck with that, IMU.
 
No. It's a relationship that is so hard to manage, as are quads, that there is barely a community of successful triad-havers.

The only one barely attaining success is BaggagePatrol's blog, and she's had more triads (and quads, and even Vs) blow up than succeed. (Sorry, BP, but it's true.)

They may be hard to manage, but not impossible. I am in a polyfi triad. We have been together just about 3 yrs now...guess what, our triad has not experienced a lot of the drama others talk about experiencing. We have had some ups n downs, but its all been worth it...and we are still 3 going strong..so dont let others discourage you completely. It can work...if you all work together, as with any other relationship.
 
I can speak up as someone with some experience and success on this count.
At present I am married to my best friend of nearly 25 years (married nearly 15), so well aligned, and a bit over a year ago we added a friend of ten years who approached us both in a way that surprised us all but that has turned out to be an extraordinary gift.

We don't call ourselves a triad, a triune, a trireme, a tricycle, a triskelion, a tripod, or a tri-anything-else. We're just us. And interestingly, it seems to me that our more politically and religiously conservative friends embrace and support us as a tri-unit all the more, without requiring a label nor laying any on us. It's our more liberal friends who try to slam such things into categories and then gossip about them viciously. Which is why we have avoided being out in the liberal organization where we all work: we've seen the gossip applied to others in "poly" situations.

I'm of the view that Michel Foucault espoused in the 1970s and 1980s. It is one thing to do certain acts as inclined. That can be liberating, particularly when they transgress assumedly fixed social orders, and in transgressing them, expand them in good ways. It's yet another when those acts are jammed into categories. That simply reifies the social order's power to define each and every one of us as a category, based on certain behaviors, then police those categories and behaviors.

As soon as those categories and labels come up, people spend more time bickering and dramatizing and intellectualizing over them than simply living their lives with integrity and dignity. I have never had time or energy for that. Like calypsoblu notes, our three-person unit has been entirely lacking in drama. Yes, we have our issues with each other. But that's because we are people, not because we are three people.

It was rough at the beginning for certain reasons involving our all having long-standing habits challenged by our own hearts. It was scary because it was new and unexpected. But all in all, the levels of comfort, support, respect, warmth, and fun have been increasingly, amazingly sweet. I'd rather it be called "successful relating" than any category that focuses on number and implicitly suggests that we aren't normal because of a number.

We aren't normal, by the way, but not because we are three. We are not normal because we have successful, calm, productive, mature, mutually supportive, deeply caring, interrelating devoid of drama and gaming. :)
 
At present I am married to my best friend of nearly 25 years (married nearly 15), so well aligned, and a bit over a year ago we added a friend...

Adding a third always sounds so couple-centric. I like your post except for the concept suggested by this phrase.
We aren't normal, by the way, but not because we are three. We are not normal because we have successful, calm, productive, mature, mutually supportive, deeply caring, interrelating devoid of drama and gaming. :)

That's great. Would you want to share how you began and continued to be so drama-free and respectful for the past year? Did you only become open when this friend came to you and suggested/requested a triad?
 
Adding a third always sounds so couple-centric. I like your post except for the concept suggested by this phrase.

Along with the expanded forms of, "We want to add a woman to our relationship/marriage/love life" All three of which I have seen recently.
 
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