Three men are attempting to become the second “trio” in the US to officially father a child.
Ben Rodriguez, Mitch and Benjamin Rolam are three partners looking to get all their names on their adopted daughter’s birth certificate, a feat only once more accomplished in the US.
Mitch and Ben, both 37, met in 2006 at an LGBTQ+ community show and were together for 12 years, but always felt something was missing from their monogamous relationship.
“We’ve always believed that loving just one person was unrealistic, at least the way we saw it,” Ben told The Independent about his relationship with Mitch. “We both felt that we had a lot of love to give and that if there was ever an opportunity to bring a third person into a relationship, we would be completely open to it.”
It took the two lovers some time to figure out the logistics and have some difficult discussions about certain aspects of the potential throuple.
“We were asking the hard questions about what would happen if, for example, Mitch had sex with the third person and I wasn’t in the room or vice versa,” Ben added.
The two men didn’t find “the one” until three years into their relationship when they met Benjamin Mui, 35, on a gay cruise in 2018.
At the time, Benjamin was living in Canada and was in the early stages of a relationship with another man, but broke up with her first boyfriend and began dating her now partners.
There was no tension between any of the men because they talked through each scenario beforehand, allowing Ben to see Mitch in a different light than with jealousy in his eyes.
Benjamin, who had not told his family members that he was gay, was tasked with not only coming out to his family but also letting them know that he was in a polyamorous relationship with two men.
When their relationship was ready for the next level, the men went to an adoption agency hoping to find someone to adopt from, but due to the non-traditional relationship, the trio only had three interested mothers.
That prompted the trio to hire a website developer and a lawyer to publicize their interest in adopting a child together, calling themselves “a group looking to adopt.”
The ad campaign worked, with 30 to 40 women approaching the men on a weekly basis.
The “throuple”, who share their adventures on Instagram under the account “Gay Throuple”, announced the birth of their daughter Tegan on March 4, 2022.
The men, who all reside together in Los Angeles with their daughter, hope to have two more children through surrogacy.
Ben says that he is delighted to set goals for people in similar situations to his.
“Knowing that I’m paving the way for other relationships that are similar to mine feels good,” said the director of sales and education. “It reminds me of the early days when I was fighting for the legal rights to marry a man or two lesbians to marry.”
Mitch, who is an account development manager, and Benjamin, an entrepreneur, share the same sentiment with Ben, as the three of them are “in a committed relationship raising a beautiful daughter in our ultra-modern family,” according to their Instagram bio. .
Men don’t seem to notice anyone who is against their lifestyle, but they are ready the moment they notice if someone shares their unwanted opinion.
“Tegan will love having three dads, she will always have lots of love. We would let them know that love is the love of a mother or a father.”
Actually, throuples are just like any other relationship, spending most of the day together, dividing housework and baby care while sharing the same bed at night.
“We alternate nights with the baby, so when she wakes up in the middle of the night, I can take care of her, the next day it’s Mitch, the next day it’s Benjamin,” Ben explained. “So we all feel like we get the same amount of rest, we all get the same amount of support, we all get the same amount of time with our baby.”
Ben believes they have an advantage over the “traditional heterosexual couple” where most of the household chores would fall to the woman.
“In our household, we’re all evenly divided, Benjamin does the dishes, I cook, Mitch vacuums and does the laundry,” says Ben. “We can divide and conquer, we can achieve so much more without feeling burned out.”
As for Tegan’s three sets of grandparents, they all “accept” their children’s unconventional relationship, but take pride in their role as grandparents.