A married woman wanted to explore her bisexuality – so invited her husband’s best friend into her marriage.
Marketing executive Claire Thornhill, 36, and actor Justin Rupple, 38, met while they were in college and soon became mates.
Then Justin met Katy Rupple, 39, at a comedy show where they immediately hit it off.
The couple from Seattle, USA, started dating in 2006 and tied the knot seven years later.
After getting hitched, the pair had discussion about what they wanted from the relationship.
Katy opened up about being bisexual and expressed her desire to make connections with women too.
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Katy suggested a relationship with Justin’s friend, Claire, and her husband was on board.
After seven years of discussing the topic, they finally reached out to the old college friend.
Despite being nervous to ask, the couple were delighted when Claire agreed to give it a go.
Claire said: "I had been best friends with Justin since 2004 and was ecstatic when he and Katy tied the knot in 2013.
"Shortly after they wed, they had an open discussion about what they wanted in their partnership and the topic of Katy's sexuality led them to talk about me – the friend she was attracted to on Justin's social media posts.
"After years of discussions, they finally decided to reach out to me. Katy and Justin wanted to make sure their feelings didn't ruin the friendship they had with me, especially if the attraction wasn't mutual.”
Claire added: "At first, it was a surprise as I had never been approached like this before. Despite this, the surprise was welcomed as I had always had feelings for both men and women.
"I never knew it was a possibility, but the friendship Justin and I had and my attraction to them both, made it exciting – we were instantly in love."
The trio formed a polyamorous relationship, where they all love each other equally.
Communication is vital for the throuple, who make all important decisions as a unit and have open discussions when jealousy arises.
Claire explained: "Jealousy is a human emotion and we'd be lying if we said that doesn't come up. As and when it does, we share it immediately and talk about it as a group, where we never deny any emotion.
"We trust each other and that's the only way to make any relationship work – when you feel truly accepted by your partner(s), simple feelings like attraction and fear of abandonment aren't that scary.”
The throuple have received a positive response from their friends, families and even strangers online.
They do have to put up with some trolls though – who accuse them of “ruining the sanctity of marriage”.
Claire said: "Usually, the ones who aren't so nice are from anonymous pages, meaning they just want to spew anger which is to be expected with anything on the web.
"It's easy to let negativity roll off our backs because we are in love and this creates quite the protective barrier from strangers online.
"There are the occasional head turns and cat call comments from men, but you can't control other people or how they feel and we enjoy each other's company so much that we won't let it bother us."
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The throuple choose to ignore critics and vow to focus on their exciting future instead.
They added: "As humans, we're capable of loving multiple people completely without diminishing the love we have for any one individual and we're extremely lucky to have found each other.
"We are proud of our partnership and want others to know that you don't have to feel shame for simply loving people."
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