Couple Who Started Dating Another Woman Together Reveal How It Changed Their Relationship Months Later (Exclusive)

Couple Who Started Dating Another Woman Together Reveal How It Changed Their Relationship Months Later (Exclusive)

For many in Alana Underwood’s position, they would have to make the impossible choice to end their relationship to better understand their identity.

It was 2020, and Underwood had been dating a man, Kevin Jankay, for a little over three years. For her entire life, she tells PEOPLE, she “operated as straight,” only pursuing and dating men, even though a small thought in the back of her head always made her wonder if she was romantically interested in women, too. She started wanting to explore what her bisexuality might look like — and she wanted to explore it alongside Jankay.

When she finally told her boyfriend how she had been feeling, he was open to it: Together, they decided they would pursue what Underwood believed would be an “experimental, one-off, sexual experience” with another woman, she says. But neither of them could have ever expected what would come of it.

Six years later, Underwood and Jankay are still going strong — that is, with another person, Megan Smith, added to their relationship. In many ways, the throuple’s relationship mirrors that of one between two partners: They live together, they occasionally argue, they share a dog. And in other ways, it looks nothing like its monogamous counterpart.

In a wide-ranging conversation with PEOPLE, the trio — who share their relationship on TikTok for nearly 300,000 followers under the name “Camp Throuple” — recount the origins of their unconventional relationship, graciously answer the burning questions they’re getting tired of addressing (yes, they do all share a bed!), and describe the experience of bringing their love to social media.

Underwood and Jankay first connected with Smith, who had a wife at the time, through a dating app. The four of them chatted virtually for about a month, and when they finally decided to arrange an in-person meetup, they tell PEOPLE, there were a lot of nerves involved.

“I was freaking out internally, trying to hold it together,” laughs Underwood — who was not only gearing up for her first romantic experience in a throuple, but also her first with a woman. “Luckily, Megan over there was very confident and helped me through it.”

In the beginning, their relationship as a group was “purely sexual,” says Jankay.

But they kept meeting up. And on the two-hour drives home from Smith’s house after their encounters, Underwood and Jankay started to admit to each other that new, scary and exciting feelings were developing: Their sexual relationship was turning into a romantic one, too.

Roughly four months into their relationship, Smith and her wife split up — for reasons she says were “unrelated” to Underwood and Jankay. The remaining three put a brief pause on their meet-ups, but several months later, they reconnected and eventually solidified their status as a throuple in January 2021.

When the three all moved in together, it certainly brought a new set of challenges to navigate. The trio shared a 600-square-foot apartment, one bathroom, and a single bedroom with a queen bed pushed together with an air mattress. (“One bathroom is always fun for three people,” laughs Smith.)

Every night, they decided, they would switch off who slept in the middle. “The middle spot — it has its pros and cons,” says Underwood. “It’s nice because you get to snuggle with both partners, but it gets really, really hot. So we rotate to keep it equal.”

Underwood and Jankay, who already lived together before Smith joined them, also made a concerted effort to ensure she felt included — and not like she was constantly the odd one out because she joined late.

“We were very aware of how she could feel, and we tried to put ourselves in her shoes,” says Underwood. “I think there could be the opportunity to feel jealous or left out, but we’ve just been very aware about that.”

But for their relationship to thrive, the three agree, they had to recognize that perfect equality among their individual relationships was an unrealistic goal; rather, they had to learn to appreciate the differences in the way they all relate to each other.

“The way you love each individual person is different,” says Smith. “That doesn’t mean it’s more or less — it’s just a different type of relationship. Like, mine and Alana’s relationship is very different from mine and Kevin’s. But that doesn’t mean it’s more or less. It’s just a different experience and a different type of love.”

As a committed throuple, they also noticed surprising ways that their relationship was strengthened. After all, notes Jankay, a pyramid is one of the most sound geometric structures out there.

“You get double the support and double the affection,” he says. “You can bounce something off one person and get feedback from another. If you’re in a quarrel or an argument with one person, the other person can show a perspective that you might not see because you’re in the heat of the moment.”

Several years after the trio moved in together, they got a place in Colorado — a big house with much more space to spread out and, importantly, three bathrooms. As unconventional as their living situation is for most, Jankay says it feels “so normal” — “because we’re just around each other all the time.”

Still, there was another hurdle that they had to overcome as they were defining their relationship: telling their parents.

Smith’s mom — who Underwood lovingly describes as a “total hippie” — was already on board from the beginning. But it was trickier for Underwood and Jankay.

“I sat down with my parents, and I was like, ‘Hey, so I’m bisexual, and I also have a girlfriend — who is also Kevin’s girlfriend,’ ” Underwood recounts, laughing at the situation now. “No kidding, their jaws hit the floor.”

But for as surprised as they initially seemed, Underwood said her parents quickly came around: “They were just like, ‘OK, so have you guys gone camping together?’ They just tried to figure out the best way to continue this conversation, and so it was a much better result than I could have anticipated.”

Jankay’s parents haven’t been as receptive. On his ride home from their house, after telling them the news, his mom called and told him that she “wasn’t OK” with his relationship — and the pair didn’t speak for two years. “We’ve taken baby steps, and she’s started to have conversations with me, but it’s never about my life or asking how the girls are or anything like that,” he says.

“But we believe that everybody’s on their journey and love can overcome everything,” Jankay continues. “There’s no animosity or anger. She’s had her own journey, so I respect it, and when she wants to — and hopefully she does — I’m here.”

While they may seem like experts now, all three of them are quick to acknowledge that polyamory — a structure beyond the traditional monogamous relationship — was completely new to them, even just five years ago. And that’s one of the reasons the three decided to open a TikTok account, named “CampThrouple,” where they started sharing about their unconventional relationship online.

It didn’t take long for their account to get traction: “We just posted one video, and we woke up the next morning with 300,000 views,” says Smith. “We were like, ‘Oh, s—.’ ”

On social media, the trio shares a mix of comedic, informational and lifestyle content, both detailing the unconventionalities that come with their relationship structure and answering questions from their followers about how their partnership works.

They’ve had the oppiortunity to connect with plenty of other people in polyamorous relationships, but their favorite messages, Underwood tells PEOPLE, are from people who say, “I didn’t know what this looked like, but if my kid ever came to me and told me they were in this type of relationship, now I have an idea of what that can look like.”

However, Smith stresses that they didn’t open their account with the intention of convincing their followers that polyamory is “the way to go” for everyone. In a hypothetical — and, yes, very sad — situation where the throuple had to split up, she continues, she’s not even sure that she would be in another polyamorous relationship again.

“We just happen to find a match with each other and it flows and it works correctly,” she says. “I don’t think that it’s necessarily the perfect way of living or the best way to go in a relationship. I think people should do whatever makes them happy and what they’re comfortable with, but we just want to shine a light on the positive aspects of it.”

VIA