'You Me Her' - This tv-show about polyamory: the struggle is real!

Polyamory (from Greek πολύ poly, "many, several", and Latin amor, "love") is the practice of, or desire for, intimate relationships with more than one partner, with the knowledge of all partners involved ^wiki

It just 'happened' some years ago. Until then, I had only had monogamous relationships, I was pretty naive and it never occurred to me that something like polyamory existed and even had a name. As most women do, I did think about when I thought my partner was cheating on me or not. And where I would draw the line. I was surprised at my own liberal ideas. But being single, there was no cheating happening anyway 😉.

But suddenly everything changed when I ended up in a polyamorous relationship...

"You Me Her", TV's first polyromantic comedy!

As a tv show binge watcher, I was pleasantly surprised when I realised what the topic was of "You Me Her". From the short pitch, it wasn't super obvious that this was going to be about polyamory and I expected another tv show about complicated relationships, cheating, frustration etc. The three people on the cover seemed to get along though... I decided to try the pilot.

It starts at one of the more complicated moments in a poly life; the start. We meet a troubled married couple: Jack and Emma. They are in love but they have completely run out of spice. Jack decides to meet with an escort (Izzy) in an ultimate attempt to get the mojo back. He tried cancelling but ends up liking Izzy a lot. And then things escalate quickly.

At home, he immediately confesses to Emma what had happened and in secret, Emma decides to plan a meeting with Izzy too, to learn more about this girl. She ends up even more confused than Jack.

We see how they all start struggling with the situation of liking someone else while you are not "supposed to". I love how they made the struggle so real. With the influence of friends and family, not able to think outside the box. Jack, Emma and Izzy have feelings, but don't know how to embrace it. All we can do is watch a throuple creatively denying what is already obvious for the viewers.

^{Screenshot of the show}

Eventually, they start taking their own feelings seriously enough to embrace a polyamorous relationship. And here we get to a point that I get slightly conflicted about the way that the makers approached this topic.

Really, how often does everyone fall for everyone like this?

Whenever I tell people that I have been in a polyamorous relationship, their first question is if I was involved with the other girl too. I wasn't and that is a reality in most of the poly relationships that I know of. Most of the time you don't get so lucky that everyone in a group of three develops feelings for both other people. In my case, being as straight as can be, a so a love-triad would never happen with another girl involved😉.

In the tv show, Izzy starts as the so-called Unicorn of the relationship, which is very much a frowned on approach in poly-land. The unicorn doesn't get an equal role in the relationship. Decisions are made about her and not with her. And the impact it has on Izzy much reflects what it does to people in reality.

However, it makes sense that this happened in their case. We are talking about 3 people totally new to polyamory, with 2 of them already have been in a steady relationship together for a long time. They have no clue about the basic mistakes and Emma and Jack just try fitting Izzy into their already figured and planned out life. At this stage, they are more concerned about keeping everything together than thinking about the effects of their actions.

I love that you see them learn from their mistakes slowly. Although I caught myself yelling at my screen "JUST TALK!!", showing I thought their learning curve was pretty slow 😎.

^{Screenshot of the show}

I just love this show because it is about humans not having a clue most of the time. And so it gives an insight into the reality of inexperienced poly triads. I think the show is slightly too focused on the sexual part of the relationship, by choosing that most problems are to be solved during a steaming hot threesome. And to give a bit of a spoiler... I love the dynamic changes when Izzy moves from being the secondary partner to being the primary. I just hope that at some point they manage to evolve into a grown-up poly triad. So we can see real successful polyamory on tv, in all its beauty and without the hurt feelings. But I guess that won't really work well for a tv show...