I think for myself I'll at least post the story about the time where I knew for sure that kitchen table polyam was for me and that I was deep, deep in it.

To set the scene, at the time of this I had 2 partners, and each of my partners had 2 partners (including me), and their partners had no other partners. So we were kind a closed W with me in the middle. We'll call my 2 partners Chris and Andy...Chris' partner we'll call Becca and Andy's partner we'll call Maddy. These bear no resemblance to their real names.

It's like a Thursday night or something and I'm by myself chillin with an edible..Brian was at home with Maddy and Chris was out with Becca on a bike ride and doing some errands. So I am just full on chillin' and suddenly Becca calls me to ask me for a ride to the hospital because they got hit by a car. They didn't want to call Chris because Chris was getting their nails done and they didn't want to interrupt, so they called me, which made me feel like wow...my partner's partner really, really trusts me. They're having an emergency and they didn't know what to do so they reached out to me. Unfortunately, I was absolutely not in a position where I could pick them up due to aforementioned edible. So I, not entirely sure what to do with this, called Andy and was like Andy, Becca got hit by a car, they need a ride to to hospital, I'm high and can't drive. Help. Unfortunately Andy was literally going to bed because they had work at 5am the next morning...they COULD probably do it but it was not ideal. That's fine, they hand the phone to Maddy. Maddy and Becca have met maybe twice at this point. Maddy drops what their doing and says yep, text me the address, I'll be there. It helps that Maddy is a nurse...definitely someone I'd want on the scene if I got hit by a car.

So Maddy drives out to pick up Becca, and by this time Chris is out of their nail appointment so the 3 of them toss the bikes in Maddy's car and drive on out to the hospital to get this taken care of. They're there until like 1am together waiting for treatment (Becca was fine, only a slightly broken arm and some bruises and scrapes). Just hanging out, trying to keep Becca in good spirits, dealing with all the typical weird city hospital things. All in all they look back fondly on it as a bonding experience. We all do. It's something that kinda forced us to realize oh...we have a really tight knit community here rooted in all sorts of different types of love, and we all have each other's backs no matter what. Even though I couldn't help Becca directly, they trusted me that I would help them, and I did...by finding them help across the other part of my polyam community. The 5 of us are super close friends now...we always were I guess we just didn't realize it.

When folks ask me what I mean when I say "I'm kitchen table polyam" this is the story I tell them. A group of my partners and their partners that all want geninue connection with each other too, whatever that connection looks like. It's great. It's another way to have and foster a geninue community with others and this group has become a really important part of my life through the connections we've found through polyamory.

Just learned that one of my friends is monogamous and I didn't tell her "sorry for your loss"