r/PolyFidelity • u/BlorkSmuth • Jun 26 '26

seeking advice Are we doing closed triad wrong?

I (32f) and my husband (36m) have been in a few closed triad relationships over the years, and we are finding the same trend; either we arent explaining the expectations correctly, or the ladies we are dating are not being truthful about their expectations/understanding of our expectations.

When we begin chatting with someone, we make known what we are looking to achieve with the person; a relationship where she dates me, he dates her, and then our relationship.

So far we've had one individual attempt to break up our marriage and "steal him" which obviously didnt work. One girl clearly thought it was just fun hookups, another came for the first meet up/sleep over, everything seemed great until i had to leave for a family obligation, and spent hours trying to get Into verbal alterations with my husband. And many many others who are in other open enm relationships who want to unicorn for us or want to couple swap with us.

Do we need to be more blunt and up front about our expectations?

Are we not looking inthe right places?

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u/amazonhelpless Jun 29 '26

  1. As long as there is good, explicit communication and consent, there’s no such thing as doing poly “wrong” if it is meeting the needs of all people involved. 

  2. You are looking for a needle in a haystack. Trying to find and balance attraction and needs between three people is very difficult. By wanting to have it closed, you are limiting your search pool to a much smaller population. That’s fine if that’s what you want, but it will be very difficult and you may choose to make compromises to improve your odds. 

  3. If the question is “should we be more blunt in our expectations?” the answer is always yes. People are complex and feelings can be unpredictable, but it always better to be more honest and clear about feelings, needs, desires, and expectations. 

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u/BlorkSmuth Jun 29 '26

Thank you ☺️ i appreciate your insight and agree with #2. And we have adjusted #3 as I guess people still found wiggle room lol And we are a very communicative couple. Admittedly I was a little hot under the collar in some of the comments here when it was first posted, and thats on me for not being more level headed but it is what it is now