Attending your best friend’s wedding can be almost as exciting as having your own. You might be heavily involved in the planning process and thrilled to see your bestie finally celebrate their beautiful love story in front of all of their friends and family. But the day can become complicated if your own loved one, or loved ones, aren’t welcome.

One bride found herself in hot water after she and her fiancé chose not to include their maid of honor’s complex love life in their special day. But the maid of honor decided that if she couldn’t get a “plus three,” she wouldn’t be coming at all. Below, you’ll find the full story that was posted on the “Am I the [Jerk]?” subreddit, as well as conversations with polyamory educator and trainee sex therapist, Leanne Yau, and Rusty, creator of Poly With a Big Heart.

This couple wanted to avoid having to explain their maid of honor’s complicated love life to family members at their wedding

Image credits:  Terje Sollie / pexels (not the actual photo)

But she threatened to skip the whole event if she couldn’t bring along her 3 partners

Image credits: cottonbro studio / pexels (not the actual photo)

Image credits: Mikhail Nilov / pexels (not the actual photo)

Image credits: Ron Lach / pexels (not the actual photo)

Later, the bride shared some updates after reading the feedback left on her post

Image credits: Extensioncordhuh

“People enter into polyamorous relationships because it feels like the most authentic expression of their desires and sexuality”

To learn more about polyamorous relationships, we reached out to polyamory educator and trainee sex therapist, Leanne Yau, who was kind enough to have a chat with Bored Panda. 

“I would say that the vast majority of people enter into polyamorous relationships because it feels like the most authentic expression of their desires and sexuality,” she shared. “Just from my personal experiences, both personally and professionally, when I speak to people who are polyamorous, a lot of them view it as an identity, not a choice.”

We were also lucky enough to get in touch with Rusty, creator of Poly With a Big Heart, to hear her thoughts on the topic. “While people choose to reject monogamy in their relationships for many reasons, most people see the freedom to explore deep connections with whomever they experience that type of chemistry with to be liberating,” Rusty says.

We were curious about the benefits of being in a poly relationship as well. “A big advantage is just living authentically, being able to fully embrace who you are,” Leanne explained. “But polyamory can also be motivated by other things. Like, a really big part is just having a lot more flexibility and freedom in how you design your relationship.”

“Just being able to design and construct your agreements and boundaries and needs, etcetera, from the ground up, rather than following a script that doesn’t necessarily work for everyone,” the expert continued. “There’s a lot of variety and novelty and excitement to be found in polyamory through the different types of relationships that you can explore and enter into.”

“Positive aspects of being polyamorous are a heightened sense of autonomy, better communication with loved ones, the establishment and respect of healthy boundaries, and the freedoms to allow relationships with others to follow their natural course and not be artificially limited because someone else ‘got there first,'” Rusty added.

One of the biggest challenges of being in a poly relationship is dealing with the social stigma

Image credits: Lisa Fotios / pexels (not the actual photo)

Leanne says another common reason people enter polyamorous  relationships is for self discovery and personal work. “Doing it because you want to confront certain insecurities or embrace your sexuality and explore it in a different way,” she explained.

But like any relationship, there will be challenges. And when it comes to poly relationships, Leanne noted that time management can be a struggle for some. “You have to be very on top of things to manage multiple relationships,” she says.

“When you’re in a monogamous relationship, a lot of the time, your free time is defaulted to that one partner that you have. When you have multiple people to consider, then you have to be very regimented with your scheduling and making sure you’re checking in with everyone about their needs and desires, so no one feels deprioritized or left out,” the expert shared.

“Finite resources like time, money and energy can be strained by multiple enmeshed romantic relationships,” Rusty noted. “Working through emotional challenges without a lot of examples to reference because most of the people you know are monogamous. And the hard work of unlearning a lot of the things you were taught over the years about love, commitment, and self.”

Dealing with social stigma is also something that people in polyamorous relationships face. “Polyamory is not a very well understood relationship model,” Leanne says, pointing out that this Reddit post is a perfect example of that. “A lot of people don’t see polyamorous love as real and valid or long lasting and just as committed.”

“And there are a lot of misconceptions about polyamory and polyamorous people, about them being cheaters or untrustworthy or irresponsible or lacking impulse control,” she added.

Polyamorous relationships also aren’t protected under the law in the same way that they are for people of different races or different sexualities, Leanne pointed out. “And that creates a lot of vulnerable social situations for polyamorous people.”

All relationships deserve to be respected and prioritized

Finally, we wanted to know how the experts would explain polyamory to people who have never heard of it or don’t quite understand it. “How I define polyamory is: it is the capacity or desire to be in multiple loving relationships, multiple simultaneous loving relationships with the consent and knowledge of everyone involved,” Leanne shared.

“This distinguishes it from serial monogamy, where you date one person at a time. Or cheating, where you go behind someone’s back and have multiple relationships that way,” she explained. “There’s no coercion; there’s consent. Everyone is aware and happy with it.”

She noted that, in this scenario, it’s not simply a “four-person relationship,” but rather, multiple one-on-one relationships intertwined.

Rusty says she explains polyamorous relationships unabashedly and without shame. “It doesn’t matter if anyone approves. It doesn’t matter if anyone understands. It’s not wrong, or bad, or salacious,” she shared. “It’s super normal and comes naturally, so treat it that way when you speak of it to others. I don’t leave any room for anyone to judge me, and my world is far better for that.”

In fact, Rusty added that she could “fill a book or two” discussing this topic, so if you’d like to hear more of her insight, be sure to visit Poly With a Big Heart.

Leanne also pointed out that poly relationships tend to not be taken as seriously as monogamous ones, but she was happy to see readers calling out the bride and groom in this scenario for not prioritizing their close friend’s relationship.

“Because if you replace the language in there with someone who was gay or trans, et cetera, it would be unheard of to be like, ‘I disinvited my friend’s boyfriend because I don’t want to have to explain his sexuality to the family,'” she added. If you’d like to learn more about polyamorous relationships, feel free to check out Leanne’s list of FAQs.

Then, we would love to hear your thoughts on this story in the comments below, pandas. And if you’d like to read another Bored Panda piece discussing a similar topic, we recommend checking out this article next. 

Many readers called out the bride for refusing to accommodate her best friend

And some thought that the situation could have been handled better by all parties involved

However, others understood where the bride was coming from

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