Everything Is Content - Everything In Conversation: Lindy West & The Great Polyamory Debate

Episode Date: April 8, 2026

Hello EICockapoos! This week we're diving into some discourse that's been rumbling on steadily for a few weeks and spawning new discourse in its wake... Lindy West's latest memoir and what it reveals about her polyamorous relationship and wider attitudes to non-traditional ways of loving.Some context: Lindy West is a feminist author, activist and comedian whose newly released memoir Adult Braces explores her journey from denial about her husband Aham's need to be poly and her eventual happy ending as one third of a triad with him and another partner. The details of the memoir have caused a bit of a stir after she described finding out from a third party that he was out kissing someone at a bar, with readers struggling to see this as anything other than what NOT to do when opening a marriage.With your help we discuss the fall out, the coverage and the case for caution when exploring a non-normative relationship style. Thanks so much for all of your messages- we try to include as many as possible, but rest assured they are ALL read by us BTS and each one helps to guide our discussion.Enjoy! O, R, BLindy West and the Trap of Perfect Polyamory - Harpers BazaarThe Horseshoe Theory of Polyamory - The Atlantic Why people are having such strong reactions to Lindy West's new memoir - VoxLindy West Thought That she Couldn't Handle Polyamory. She Was Wrong - The New York TimesSlate - Lindy West's How-Not-To Guide to PolyamoryElena Bridgers Substack noteAll Fours by Miranda July - Everything In Conversation, Book Club edition Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I'm Beth. I'm Richero. And I'm anoni. And this is Everything in Conversation. The Discourse Appetiser before Friday's main course. We'd love for you to take part in these conversations. Whether you're agreeing or disagreeing, we want to hear from you. And you can share your takes by following us on Instagram at Everything is ContentPod.

And that's where we decide on topics and get you involved. So this in-conversation episode is about polyamory after a few weeks of escalating discourse online about it, both on social media and in various publications. To do this properly, I think we first need to give a bit of background about the person and the book at the centre of this discourse, Lindy West and her new memoir, Adult Braces. So Lindy West is an American writer, comedian, feminist and activist, and has written a lot about feminism, fat activism and film. A few weeks ago, I actually discussed a show called Shrill, which is about a fat woman discovering her confidence and power in a fat-phobic world.

And this was based on Lindy's book of the same name. And adult braces is a kind of follow-up to shrill. In 2015, Lindy married musician Aham A. Fulet J. Oluo. And as she explains, she already knew that Aham was polyamorous and that they felt possessiveness and jealousy had led to their earlier marriages breaking down. But, as Lindy explained, in a recent conversation for the New York Times, Modern Love Podcast, she was in a bit of denial that they would actually need to open up their marriage. She said, I always heard it as an obstacle that I could wear down and overcome.

Like I just need to be the best girlfriend so that he doesn't want this stupid thing anymore. But then in 2019, it stopped being something she could avoid when someone spotted Aham kissing somebody else at a bar. Lindy was hurt, but she acknowledges that she had technically agreed to be non-monogamous. But it still really affected her and she was adamant that she didn't want details from Aham. Gradually, though, this changed and she learned more about Aham's other partner who's called Rorya. Lindy talked to her. They exchanged compliments, messages and began this kind of flirtation, and then they met. After they met, the three of them slept together and Roy became Lindy's girlfriend as well, and they announced in 22 that they were in a romantic triad of which she says, quote, it was really eye-opening to me

how angry people are about non-monogamy. And I think it's because everyone thinks if it becomes normalized, then their husband is going to say, now I need to have a girlfriend. And I just want to say that you don't have to do that. I wasn't looking for it, but it found me. And I too had that fear and it came true, except what I found on the other side was a way better life than before for me. So this is all explored much more fully in adult braces, which is her new book that came out on the 10th of March. And it has sparked many comments, a lot of which are skeptical about how healthy this relationship dynamic is, whether she was coerced into it and whether polyamory is actually the open-minded and liberal relationship model that it's been sold as.

In a piece about the book for The Atlantic titled The Horseshoe Theory of Polyamory, Tyler And Harper writes, quote, for all West's apparent self-awareness, the facts in the book are hard to square with her insistence that this is the existence she desires. Her efforts to come to terms with polyamory are couched as a political project, part of being an open-minded liberal, as much as a romantic one. And although she describes her husband as a genius and her best friend, Aham appears manipulative and sleazy. She doesn't seem enlightened. She seems to have been wheedled into buying a fantasy. And just to be clear, we are not here to criticise Lindy, Aham or Roy up personally. We don't know them. And Linda has said many times how happy she is in this

relationship. We're a podcast about content that delves into what discourse spreads and why. And this has definitely spread. It's a big one. So should we maybe start with the X discourse, because that's where most of mine has been, and discuss the quite anti-poly slash anti-man or anti-a-harm sentiment that we've seen since the book came out? What have both of your timelines been looking like? Is this maybe just a me problem or has it been very poly-focused? I think some of the darker stuff, that's come up for me is actually people being like, this can't be right because they're commenting on the way that Lindy looks and quite a lot of fatphobic commentary, basically saying, you know, her partner wants to sleep with other women because he doesn't find her attract it.

So there's this really horrible, misogynistic, fatphobic thing around it, which is actually blurring a lot of the maybe useful and interesting interrogation of what really went down here because it is quite complicated. So I've actually been seeing more than seeing those original people saying that. I've just been seeing a lot of people having backlash towards the fact that actually this is just turning into a misogynistic pylon against a woman who is fat and has spoken about being fat a lot in her work. And Millie sent us a message which said, I think all of the discourse and issues raised around polyamory are a result of it becoming more popular with people who maybe aren't fully aware, haven't done their research and want to jump on a trend. I have poly friends have the best relationships I've ever seen because being poly in a healthy way forces you to really communicate with each other and work out what you even want from a relationship. On the other hand, I think a lot of people pick it up without acknowledging the effort and that leads to coercive and toxic dynamics. It's not polyamory itself, but how you choose to engage in it and for what reasons. I've just been seeing a lot of, I think we spoke about this before, you know, when people put out content about having a bad boyfriend and then the

internet's almost like, we need to pull you out of this, like you're not seeing it properly. It's very much a, how can you not see what we're seeing? And almost like the fans, her fans, Lindy's fans feel like they need to jump in and save her and make her see sense. That's what I'm seeing. So we had an interesting message from Claire which said, I think the fact that Lindy's a self-described fat person has a lot to do with the fact folks think it's exploitative. It's a bit patronising. Quote, she's fat, so she must be doing this because she has no choice. It's a complicated situation and I think folks shouldn't be so invested in it. We shouldn't be policing her relationship. Ultimately, we will never know their exact dynamic to draw judgment. Polly is fine. Men doing it can be

the worst and the start of their relationship sounds problematic as hell. And I haven't read the book so I could be wrong, but she says they're okay. And if they're not, we have to hope her networks have her back because it shouldn't be the place of judgmental randos, especially when he's a man of colour. Yeah, I've had, I think, a really large swave of different commentary. I seem to be following already a lot of the people that have since gone on to, on podcasts and write long reads about this. And so they've been tweeting a lot. One of them, Ashley Ray, who is, who's Polly as well. And so she, and so I kind of thought, okay, I'm going to get, I feel a bit better listening to critique via someone who is polyameras and understands the poly community. But I really had to search high and low for anyone that was being defensive of the situation from within the community and saying like sometimes this is how it happens.

Very much it seems to be, poly people are saying, this is kind of red flag after red flag. This is what makes this community look bad. This is a situation you don't want to find yourself in. Obviously, Lindy is happy. And I do, I find it quite patronising. Like you say, like the people that are saying, she's not happy, she couldn't be happy, he's won, her and this other woman, Roya have been tricked.

I think that is some projection. But yeah, the consensus seems to be, this is a worrying situation. If you as formerly monogamous woman find yourself in this situation, do some interrogating because it very rarely does end up well, this seems to be the exception that proves the rule. Yeah, it's interesting, isn't it? Because I actually do believe her

when she talks about being really happy and actually like, it's amazing to hear her talk about this feeling of compersion, which is when she basically starts feeling joy about Roya and she actually finds, the minute she finds out that Roya has a crush on her, she suddenly her perspective on it shifts and she doesn't feel jealous. I believe that the outcome sounds like it's quite positive, whether or not I think the journey to getting there was slightly nefarious and underhanded, and maybe it does feel a bit like coercive control.

There's so many bits that I want to talk to you both about, specifically about this idea that monogamy is inherently racist. I find that quite a fascinating thread. But yeah, I don't want to be one of these people being like a woman is telling us how she feels. I'm going to tell her that she's not feeling that way. Because I was actually very convinced in the interviews that she genuinely seems quite happy with this setup. Obviously people are now picking apart all of their social media posts, picking apart the birthday post that Ham does for Roya versus what he posts about Lindy and kind of making commentary about

whether or not they perceive that, you know, maybe he's more into one than the other. this is why it's such a mess to post your relationship online, especially if you've got two girlfriends, I don't even know how you'd go about doing that. I didn't realize that people were comparing the post. That is, oh my God, we need to get more hobbies, my friends. This is too much. This can't be our hobby. We need to lock our accounts before we release a memoir. I know that's the opposite of what you're actually able to do, but I think seeing that, and it was, I think it boiled down to captions and the photos. He'd done a carousel for Indy's birthday with a lovely caption, but there was one

photo where he was giving her the finger. And then other people were putting it next to one for Roya where it's just so effusively lovely and just like, you're my soulmate and things. And I just thought, oh, it's cherry picking, but the internet ran with it. And I felt very bad. Aham has since, I mean, I don't know if you saw the whole Scarty Core, which, okay, so for anyone who has sensibly not been involved in the discourse, so there was a slate profile written by Scarci Cool that both of Lindy's partners, I think Aham and Roya have responded to. I think she's written what I will say as a very even fair piece of writing and most people reading it seem to agree cannot see the problem. It's a profile of West that acknowledges all facets of it fairly. Aham didn't agree to this and they wrote an email

saying among other things that she was a shitty fucking person, a bitter, untalented mean girl and that she fucking sucks. And this is now something that people are pointing to and saying like this is volatile and messy and it's a scary way to talk to a woman with your full name attached people are kind and people are pointing to this is like this is what happens when you trade on your personal life with for content with other names attached and it's the essay the personal essay industrial complex it's really it just can it can blow up in these ways and feel really personal and quite normal coverage of which this was it made me want to read the book a lot more and it felt among all the other coverage very fair and we'll link it so you guys can make your own

mind up it calls such this this real blow up this point where a ham was reaching out happy to call her all, call the writer all of these really foul things. I just thought that's the point when I went, oh, this is actually quite a messy situation. This has gotten out of hand. Yeah, that is completely outrageous. And I think that's part of the reason this story just keeps living on. Not only, you know, is the story quite interesting and has it birthed this discourse around how much are we allowed to accuse the woman of not being happy when she is saying, for all intents and purposes. She's very happy in this relationship and everyone pouring over the details saying, well, this is proof, this is proof. Now it's become also character analysis and now this is being

used to accuse, I guess, a harm just being not capable of having a loving polyamorous relationship if they are also capable of hitting back in quite a vicious way to this journalist. It's so interesting because it's just making me realise this is kind of like real life all fours. Hello listener, Beth here. Sorry to interrupt. I'm just editing. this episode from the future. And as Anoni has mentioned the book, All Forthals by Miranda July, I'm going to insert a brief clip from our All Fores Book Club episode here in case you've not read it. So what follows makes a little bit more sense. Here she goes. So the story follows a 45-year-old perimenopausal woman who, after having an extramarital affair during a road trip,

has a sort of sectional awakening. And the unnamed semi-famous artist basically decides to go on this road trip, LA to New York. She stops her journey a couple of towns over from where she's left her husband and child and books herself into a motel. And during this fallow time when she's supposed to be racking up miles on the freeway, the unnamed narrator reckons with herself and her life and enters into this strange, psychosexual affair with the younger man. And to quote from the narrator, she says, the only dangerous lie was one that asked me to compress myself down into a single convenient entity that one person could understand. I was a kaleidoscope, each glittering piece of glass changing as I turned. Okay, and now back to the episode.

one goes on a long drive, but in all fours, obviously, it's the unnamed protagonist who embarks on like an extra marital affair. That's obviously what's happened with a harm, which it was an extra martial than it was. And it's just really interesting because I think we were all rooting for the protagonists in all fours, even if we were like, this is slightly suspicious behavior. But when it's been flipped on its head, I do think that we have less space for when men are the ones leading the charge on this because of the power dynamics. And I do think that is quite interesting. I hadn't seen that slate piece or the backlash, so that certainly does add to all of this. I mean, it is gone stratospheric this piece. It is kind of all over my time.

I can't really keep up with everything that pops out from it. Oh, God. And I think you are right. It's so interesting to compare it to all fours. And also I do, because I think with all fours, we were very much like, well, she's finding herself. She's, you know, on a journey of self-discovery, like how dare you come after Miranda July's, you know, persona or whoever the character, of the main character is supposed to be. But I also think, if we're going to get into the nitty-gritty of the details of the story Lindy West has said, there are some details that are very uncomfy, to be honest, such as the fact that one of her fans spotted a harm kissing a woman then at a bar.

And I think even though they technically agreed to it, that coming back, V are a fan and the, you know, very public nature of Lindy, it just makes it so uncomfortable that not only is she a person experiencing this, finding out information about her partner, indirectly. The fact that she is a public persona means that it's almost like a double betrayal. Like imagine if you're a famous person and, I mean, this happens time and time fucking again. Des Moire reporting on your partner, cheating on you. I know it's not cheating, but that level of finding out information about your own life through the media, I think that is a massive betrayal. And I think that was one massive red flag for me, regardless of the circumstances and

where they are now. And I think the other one was the fact that during a time of great upheaval in Lindy's life when her father passed away and she said that I think her house fell apart. I think a tree trunk fell onto her house. So massive upheaval in all intents and purposes, that is life crisis level, you know, in a person's life. And they had broken up in part over this polyamory issue. And then they got back together. And then later on, it's said that Roy's best friend passed away and Aham had to go and be with her immediately. And I don't, I don't even know Lindy West intimately. I'm not intimate with her work. I have liked, I love Trill, but that's about my relationship to her. And even I was like, that feels fucking unfair,

that she has experienced that. And then, you know, you have to be so emotionally generous to not immediately think, well, that felt unfair. Like, you weren't there for me in the way that I needed you during that time. And now I have to be okay, experiencing this in a parallel and just be okay with it. You know, what you said right at the beginning about, I'm getting with someone else. This is thing I found confusing. Everything I know about ethical non-monogamy is it's conversation. It's conversation after conversation after conversation. Yes, she had agreed, find that maybe someone down the line they would open up their relationship. In my mind, that would mean your partner turning around and going, look, now's the time. I think that I do want to have a sexual

encounter, a date. I think I want to see someone else, blah, blah, blah, not just be doing it behind your back. To me, that does, that is cheating, isn't it? This is where it feels a bit confusing because I really thought what we've had hammered home is if you're going to enter into a polyamist relationship, be ready to set really strict rules, to have boundaries, to have all of your cards on the table and know exactly what you're going into. That doesn't feel like they were playing by those rules. Yeah, it feels like a very, it feels like the worst possible way to do it on both sides to say, to live as a person that believes themselves to be pretty monogamous and was really banking on being able to change their poly partner's mind because it wasn't like, we're married now,

this begins now I'm going in search of another girlfriend. It is at some point, and we'll get into his explanation for why polyamory is important for him, but she knew that and she agreed. But it was the agreement of, oh, maybe don't tell me about it, but you can do it, but it's going to be, I would live in a sense, I would live in a constant waiting room to have my heartbroken, which I guess is what happens. And it comes out in just the worst way, because I believe it was a fan who saw a hum with someone else and then to be told by someone that's not even really a safe person for you, even if they did it gently and care very much. Just nightmarish. I really think that is the, there's no way to, I think, have a poly dynamic where one party is so in denial and in the dark. The other party

feels that they are hiding something, actually are hiding something, that feels really freeing and loving. And obviously, they have arrived somewhere good. It seems like the greatest luck in the world that they have arrived somewhere good. Obviously everyone online thinks that it is, she is fooling herself, but they have, they're happy, that we can believe what she's saying. But that middle period does feel like it would have been avoided or could have been avoided if there was that really hard conversation of, no, we cannot move forward in this relationship until you accept what Polly means, what it's going to actually look like. And I, you know, maybe that that would have meant that they broke up forever.

Maybe this is a love story contained in what on paper is a sea of red flags. But there's no way you can write book like this in a story like this and be surprised when people are like, well, hang on. Even if it's not as cut and dry as man cheats on woman, there are too many shades of not the full truth, people getting hurt. To me, it reads, it's such a cautionary tale. But of what? I don't know. So that actually reminds me. I have a really good friend who has been in a poly relationship and kind of come out the other side. And she describes herself as being really jaded. And she even said jokingly that she considers herself to having survived polyamory and I guess the main things that she's told me about it are that in her experience

polyamory language can be used to weaponise emotional neglect and emotional cruelty. So this idea that you know everyone everyone is entitled to time with their partner and their emotional needs being met and what she said is that life with its ups and downs just means that you can't square it as well this is my time to be alone with my, you know, our second partner. Actually, what that means is if somebody, the third partner is going through something very difficult or, you know, needs their emotional needs met in various ways because they're going through a tough time, it can just be on paper very cruel to then use the language of polyamory to say, I can't be there for you because actually right now I'm doing what I need to do

with my second partner. And there was, there were loads of instances that she brought up. But I think that idea of language and therapy speak really, if we're going to put a proper term on what that encompasses the umbrella of it, we've spoken about it before, but it can become so rampantly individual and not kind and also not emotionally intelligent. It kind of seems like the same thing can be done here with polyamory. This idea of it being, you know, a super empowering thing, this thing that only enlightened people can do because they can achieve, you know, compersion, get over the idea of jealousy. actually when you boil it down, the practice can be quite cruel because it just means that you're not really giving yourself or your partner what they need from you. So we had a message from Sophie who said the best take I read was by Elena Bridges on Substack. She wrote, everyone has something to say about Lindy West Polyamory thing, so here's the evolutionary take. First of all, humans are some of the

most monogamous mammals on earth. Second, to the extent that extramarital affairs exist in hunter-gatherer societies, they're usually kept secret and women seem to have as many as men. Third, when a man has two wives or two girlfriends, that's not called polyamory, that's polygamy. And in general, women accept this only as a last resort when no other eligible men are available. And it's reserved for the best husbands and hunters only. I'm not quite sure at what point we decided that polygamy for media command is progressive and cool, but I'm sadly not letting my husband take on a second wife in the name of sexual liberation. And so if it goes on to say it's such a good point, how is this different from polygamy? Also, her saying that asking him to be monogamous is

like subjecting him to slavery, that's such a liberal white woman thing to say as a liberal white woman myself. And it's so interesting because this is so divisive, but I actually was listening to a podcast about Lindsay West and all of this fallout. And they made the good point of the Louis Therudoc recently, the Manosphere. A lot of the men in that have these sort of like one way open monogamous relationships. And with that framing, you think, is this actually that dissimilar from what those men are encountering? I mean, it's a great outcome. that Roya and Lindy have managed to forge a relationship. And when you look at them on Instagram, they do seem very happy as a thruple.

But it does feel like we are... Sometimes progressiveness actually goes so far around the curve that you start to think has this actually gone to regressiveness. Well, people are really horrified specifically by this. And it is when there is, I guess, a ham is non-binary, but when there is, for the optics, a male figure or a male presenting person, and then two women who perhaps came later to their own separate relationship, people do have a really difficult time.

Obviously, polyamory is, we're talking separately about, like, polyamory does seem to be a kind of universal trait. Tiger King is polyamorous. Many Utah Mormons, even, you know, and there's the history of polygamy, but there is also in this modern world, Utah moms talking on TikTok about their multiple partners. It seems to cross all kinds of lines.

And so it is confusing. It doesn't automatically signal one thing. And so I was grappling with it as well. Because the last thing I want to do is accidentally become a really conservative commentator on this. And all the poly people I know are really chill, really conscientious. The last thing they want to do is recruit other people into it. They are like clear-eyed. And they're kind of like, if you aren't as a person really immediately horny and excited to do this, don't do it. Don't do it. Don't let any person talk you into it. Just simply don't do it. And I think there is an idea of it as being sort of cult-like. But then I do butt up in these situations where it does just feel all of those problems of the patriarchy and of relationships between broadly speaking men and women are just in triplicate. We got a message from Louisa who said, in theory, it's great. But in practice, my experience has been that it skews in favour of the structural imbalances that already exist in society.

It ends up being men being able to have their cake in ESA. All the benefits of monogamy, security sharing the bills, having someone to come home to and two or more women to listen to their problems and do the emotional labor without any the responsibility of like not fucking someone else. I was only ever on the secondary partner side and it was so depressing because you don't get the boyfriend all their time because you always come second to their primary and their family. Maybe the triad is the only way to do it. Maybe it is when love is flowing kind of an equal measures in all directions.

But is that a fantasy? Could that actually happen as a monogamous person or as a person that has decided to practice monogamy and not touch this? I wouldn't know. I will ask my Polly friends. The way that they talk about it is very fantastic and very aspirational and very like, no, it's constant negotiations. It is all the feelings that you have. But yes, sometimes in multiple directions. To me that sounds like hell. But I do, as much as Louisa's message, chimes, I kind of have to believe that there is a way for this to work and for this to be kind of a genuinely beautiful thing. Okay, Beth, producer again now. Thank you so much for.

listening to this half of our conversation on polyamory. We realised in the discussion that we had more to say and didn't want to stop, so we will be picking up next week with more on Lindy West, the racial dynamics, and also the idea of polyamory as possibly quite liberating for married women. Would we try it? Have we tried it? Be back here at the same time next week to find out. Thank you so much for listening and for all of your opinions and takes on this topic. We genuinely read all of them and they guide our discussions and if we could read them all out, we would. So please do keep sending them in. Please also give us a follow on Instagram and TikTok at Everything's Content Pod and I ask all every week, but please give us a review wherever you listen if you haven't already.

We'll see you as always on Friday. Bye. Bye.