Valerie White, executive director of the Sexual Freedom Legal Defense and Education Fund, a legal defense fund for people with alternative sexual expression in Sharon, Mass., believes that triads are actually great ways to raise a family. “Years ago children didn’t get raised in diads (traditional couples), they got raised with grandparents and aunts and uncles—it was much looser and more village like, says White. “I think a lot more people are finding that polyamory is a way to recapture that kind of support.” For a year, Loving More’s Trask and her then-husband were both involved with another woman, who was a part of the family. Trasks’ three children knew all about it. “I’m totally out,” says Trask…

And yet some make it work. Doug Carr, Robert Hill, and Paul Wilson, have been a happy threesome for 29 years. The three men, who live outside Austin, Texas share a bed, a checking account, and joint real estate properties in each of their names—“a left handed form of cementing the relationship in a legal context,” says Hill, 69, a retired financier. Their ranch is split three ways; they call themselves “husbands” and wear matching wedding bands. Back in 1980, when they met at a furniture store in Dallas, Hill and Wilson were a confirmed diad for ten years. Carr, now an assistant dean at a local college, fell for both of them; they developed a friendship, which soon turned to love.