Three isn’t necessarily a crowd

Eight years of monogamous relationships has 31-year-old Galen Wood excited about exploring his sexuality with a bisexual couple who live in Burnaby.

Wood sits comfortably reclined in his chair at work, with his hands folded, excited to talk about his newfound interest, polyamory.

He described his current relationship as being multifaceted and unique. It isn’t common.

“Polyamory to me, is a greater than binary relationship that involves multiple partners with consent and guidelines, constantly making sure everyone is healthy and happy,” he said.

Wood lives in Abbotsford, has been in B.C. for nine years and works at Simply Computing as an Apple Specialist. Although he barely makes ends meet from one paycheck to another, Wood now goes to work happy.

Jen and Chantal are Wood’s current partners, cohabiting emotionally and physically. Wood prefers that their last names remain anonymous for privacy reasons. Jen is 24 and Chantal 21. They live together in Burnaby, and Wood commutes from Langley after his eight-hour shift to spend time with them.

“When I really sat down and thought about it, it made a lot more sense to me, how the human heart is not a container with which to be filled. It’s not something that has a finite volume,” he said.

Wood believes that there are multiple women out there than can fill different needs of his, and there is more freedom and openness in a relationship. Jen provides more of an emotional component to the relationship, and Chantal is an additional companion.

Initially, Chantal felt jealous of Wood and Jen’s relationship because of their intimacy, and the need for two primary partners created conflicts between Jen and Chantal.

He explained that it’s too early to speak of settling down since they have only been together for about four months now. “I can see that polyamory is going to have a place in my life. Whether I am going to be with these two or not depends on how everything pans out.”

His friends have supported his quest for acceptance in a multi-person relationship. Others scrunch up their noses and give a look of dismay when Wood explains the nature of his relationship.

“I get a lot of raised eyebrows, either in shock or a suspicion. Generally, shock I would say.”

Wood said that there are many different forums available to Vancouverites that help them adjust to their relationship orientation.

Steve is one of the four moderators at the VanPoly group, and has been working there for about seven years now. He has requested that his last name be withheld because his relationship isn’t fully out in the open.

The VanPoly group is a community where people provide support, even if it’s as simple as providing a place to openly discuss their relationship orientation, said Steve. Others use the forum as a way to meet other like-minded people or to get relationship advice.

Until Steve was introduced to polyamory, he felt alien to society because cheating and deception was prevalent, which went against his beliefs.

Steve explained that poly is a type of open relationship, and that there is an expectation that those who are in the relationship are open and honest about all their other relationships, as opposed to a don’t-know-don’t-tell kind of an open relationship.

“I don’t see a problem with loving more than one person,” he said.

From his experience as a moderator of the forum, he said that people are becoming more open and comfortable in associating themselves as being polyamorous.

“Seven years ago when I first became involved, being poly was very hush hush and was very closeted,” he said. He thinks that a stigma exists in society because it is inherently based on a nuclear family. Steve said that society has many systems in place that try to maintain “a dominant ideology” in a way that if you step outside of it, you face criticism.

“Years ago, if you were to say that you were polyamorous, people would ask you in derision what polyamory was, whereas today, people are more inclined to ask, ‘Oh polyamory, what is that?’” said Steve.

Steve said that he is a part of a five-person “polyfamily,” a fluid bond, where everyone in the family is connected to one another by sex without barriers. 

“Just because I am in a relationship with five people, it doesn’t mean that I am having direct sex with everyone in that polyfamily. I am having direct sex with just one person, and I am connected through one person to that family.” Steve shares intimate bonds with his other four partners that have sexual connections, but doesn’t necessarily involve sexual intercourse.

Though there are five people sharing emotional bonds in Steve’s relationships, they all live in different parts of the city despite being a part of a polyfamily. He said that he prefers his polyfamily to contain a smaller number of partners so that he can maintain high quality relationships.

Multi-person relationships are gaining attention in society and are allowing people to freely identify their relationship orientation in society. With forums such as, vanpoly.ca people can communicate, meet up, or discuss freely about their relationships without the fear of being discriminated against.

According to both Wood and Steve, three is not a crowd.