Polyamory/Playing With
- Basic Trope: More than one relationship at a time
- Played Straight: Alice and Bob have an open relationship, where they are primary partners to one another, but have other boyfriends and girlfriends and Friends with Benefits too.
- Exaggerated: Alice and Bob are married to all or most of these other people. Bonus Points if they have a ridiculously large number of these marriages.
- Justified: Alice and Bob live in a time or place where (for largely pragmatic reasons) this is the norm.
- Alice and Bob are in an open relationship
- Inverted: Alice and Bob are in a relationship/marriage with each other...and only each other.
- Alternatively, Alice and Bob are involved with other people as well as each other, but without any prior agreement. Someone is cheating, in other words.
- Subverted: Alice and Bob have agreed to be exclusive
- Alice and Bob have rules about what they can and cannot do with other people.
- Alice and Bob go to singles bars and flirt but never pick up anyone, and go home to be with each other.
- Alice and Bob have rules about what they can and cannot do with other people.
- Double Subverted: With each other, and also the Smiths next door, but nobody else.
- They can still see, date, flirt with, and maybe even do some sexual things with other people.
- Deconstructed: While there are advantages to multi-partner relationships, there are also disadvantages. The primary ones being the Green-Eyed Monster and favoritism. Not to mention the issue of a culture that regards this setup as "wrong" or "deviant." There may also be an increased risk of sexually transmitted diseases.
- Reconstructed: Everyone agrees to take the appropriate precautions, and also agrees to share equally, and give equal attention and affection to all their partners, so no one feels slighted. If someone does get jealous, he/she will step back, realize that they are loved, and channel that jealousy into something constructive. Those naysayers that tell Alice and Bob that this can't/doesn't/shouldn't work are proven wrong.
- Parodied: Alice and Bob have a mass marriage to all their partners.
- Lampshaded:
- Averted: Alice and Bob agree to be exclusive
- Alice and Bob are not in any kind of relationship
- Enforced: The author is from a time or place where this was/is common
- The author doesn't believe that one should "limit oneself" to just one person
- Love Dodecahedron
- Tenchi Solution
- Invoked: Alice and Bob agree to have an open relationship
- Defied: Alice and Bob agree to be romantically and sexually involved with only each other.
- Discussed:
- Conversed:
- Played For Laughs: Unwanted Harem
- Played For Drama: How to deal with jealousy