Polyamorous Couple Was ‘So Casual’ About Dating Other People. Then a Moment of Jealousy Changed Their Relationship Forever (Exclusive)

Hayley Folk opens up to PEOPLE about her unconventional partnership and sharing her story online

NEED TO KNOW

• Hayley Folk has been married for over two years to a man who is 16 years older than her
• They don’t live together, and they each date other people
• Folk opens up to PEOPLE about her unconventional partnership and shares her story online

Hayley Folk was first introduced to the concept of polyamory through a simple online search: “Can you love multiple people at once?”

She was living in California at the time with her husband, whom she had married when she was 21 after meeting at a Christian Baptist college. Their wedding, she tells PEOPLE in an interview, was “like every girl’s dream,” except she “didn’t really want it.” At the time, she was terrified over her unexplored attraction to women.

After sharing these feelings with her husband, he suggested they open their marriage, a concept Folk had never heard of before. Folk started dating women in addition to her husband, and before long, she fell in love with another partner.

“I discovered I was polyamorous through that process,” she says, “and my ex-husband discovered he was not.”

Folk and her husband split — she acknowledges there were many other factors that led to the end of their marriage, though her identification with polyamory was one. On a whim, Folk decided to move her life across the country to New York City, where she started dating with a newfound understanding that her future relationships would have to be polyamorous for her to be satisfied. And six months after her move, as she was still finalizing her divorce, she started dating another man, who would eventually become her husband.

Their marriage, Folk acknowledges, is quite unconventional. She is 31, and her husband is 16 years older. They don’t live together. And, of course, they date other people.

For the first few years of their relationship, Folk had no intention of getting married. She had known her husband for several years before they got together, and he had already known about her desire to be polyamorous, so they never had an explicit conversation about the boundaries of their relationship — even as she viewed him as her primary partner.

“We were so casual,” she tells PEOPLE. “He would tell him about his dates, and I would tell him about mine. It helped us kind of explore our dynamic together romantically and sexually.”

But after two years, Folk says, she started to get those “big feelings.” She approached her husband with the vague statement that she wanted to “see him more” — but wasn’t even sure what exactly that would look like. He agreed, and their relationship started to shift from a casual fling to something more serious, even as they were dating other partners.

Then, a moment of jealousy changed everything.

At that point, Folk had only dated women outside of her relationship with her husband, but when she started seeing a man roughly three years in, a small conflict arose that Folk attributes to “a lot of miscommunication.” The pair started seeing a couples therapist, and a few weeks later, they decided they would eventually get married.

Folk knows that this part of her story often ruffles some feathers — but she maintains that marriage was the best decision in their relationship for a few reasons.

First, she and her husband recognize that there are practical benefits to marriage: They can grow together financially and they can make health decisions for each other. But it also had implications for their romantic life as well.

“When explaining my relationship with him to other partners, it became a lot simpler,” she says.  “There were a lot of instances where I would be dating somebody and that relationship would be deepening, and then they would be like, ‘Well, why can’t I be your primary partner? You just have a boyfriend.’ I wanted to be able to say and show to the world that there was a deeper level of commitment than just, ‘Oh, yeah, we sometimes hang out and go on dates.’ ” 

This time around, her wedding looked very different. It was an intimate affair of about 45 people, and many of the people in attendance were her or her husband’s former partners. It was everything they hoped it would be.

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Over two years into their marriage, Folk shares her relationship — an experience with polyamory — to nearly 50,000 followers on Instagram. She posts vlogs from days in her life in addition to advice for others considering polyamory.

She actually got the idea a few years back while on a press trip in Paris, surrounded by other influencers and going through a tough breakup. One of the influencers asked her simply, “Why aren’t you documenting this?” — and it dawned on her that she should share her perspective as a bisexual woman experiencing heartbreak in a polyamorous relationship.

“In the beginning, I really thought no one would care,” she says. 

But she turned on the camera anyway, sharing a video from a Parisian hotel about how her husband was helping her through her breakup. And then another one about how her marriage to a man didn’t erase her bisexuality or polyamory. They took off.

“I started posting really often on Instagram — posting things that just feel normal to me, but to other people, it’s either salacious, taboo, or they can see themselves in it, and they’re learning from it along the way,” she says. 

Folk says she’s driven by a desire to create the content she never had when she was first understanding her polyamorous identity in the mid-2010s. 

“I had nothing and nobody in my polyamorous journey. I truly was in the deep throes of Reddit at, like, 3 a.m. by myself, trying to find people who were truly polyamorous,” she says. “I’m like, ‘Wow, this is really helpful to people.’ I get so many amazing messages from people just thanking me for sharing my life. I always wished that I had this.”

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