Regular readers might remember that I briefly flirted with a ridiculous quest to review and recap every episode of You, Me, Her, the polyamory-centered romcom that premiered on Netflix in 2016. However, this fizzled out somewhere in the middle of Season 1 because I ran out of time, energy and fucks to give about this stupid show.

By the way: if you enjoyed this post, you might also enjoy my review of everything The L Word: Generation Q got wrong about polyamory.

You, Me, Her was inexplicably well-received, receiving an average review rating of 84% on Rotten Tomatoes and 7/10 on IMDB. However, I suspect the vast majority of the watchers and reviewers were monogamous people who enjoyed this show as a titillating peek into what they imagine polyamory to be like. Amongst polyamorous people, though, it was pretty much universally trashed.

Heads-up that this review contains spoilers for the first three seasons of You, Me, Her.

In case you haven’t seen it, You, Me, Her is an American comedy-drama series following suburban married couple Jack (Greg Poehler) and Emma (Rachel Blanchard.) Bored with their marriage, both members of the couple hire much younger sex worker, Izzy Silva (Priscilla Faia.) When they both fall in love with her, they decide to enter a polyamorous triad. Chaos ensues.

Instead of reviewing this mess one episode at a time, I thought I’d bring you all the things I think it got wrong about polyamory – so far – in one easy post.

1. Triads don’t typically start with married couples hiring the same escort

Or: Izzy would never date these two idiots.

Izzy is a 25-year-old college student who is doing sex work to pay her way through university. Jack hires her for a date and, when Emma finds out, she does the same thing because that’s how mature, married adults slap a bandage on cheating, apparently. However, Izzy inexplicably decides she’s super duper into both of them for real. This would never happen.

Any sex worker in Izzy’s place would do her job, take the money, and leave this pair to work out their shit in suburban hell by themselves. Polyamorous relationships can start in lots of ways, but “we both hired the same sex worker” isn’t one of them.

2. Being polyamorous in Portland would not destroy your life

This show is set in Portland, Oregon, a city that is not only famous for being super liberal, but where I know for a fact there’s a huge polyamorous community. Sure, there are some conservative people there as there are anywhere. But the idea that being outed as bisexual and/or non-monogamous in fucking Portland would totally destroy Emma’s life is wildly unrealistic. If the writers wanted that narrative to work, they should have set it in rural Alabama or something.

3. Partners are not commodities that you have to share out equally

Jack and Emma agree that they each get “two nights with her… I mean you” (that is, with Izzy) per week. They then have a debate about who “gets” Izzy first.

Do I really have to spell out all the ways this is gross beyond belief? She’s a human being, not a pie to be shared out in equal slices. Ethical polyamory does not involve married couples treating third parties like literal toys.

4. Using polyamory to save a failing marriage never works

The entire You, Me, Her polyamory situation begins when Jack and Emma decide they’ll each go on dates with Izzy, then come back fired up and ready to ravish the hell out of each other. However, that’s not how polyamory works. That’s also not how feelings or sexual desire work. And once again, it’s objectifying as hell. They’re basically using Izzy as a human sex toy.

Opening up the relationship isn’t how you inject sexual spark back into your ailing marriage. “Relationship broken, add more people” is a cliche because people attempt it all the time and it works… literally never.

Also, can we talk about how angry Jack gets mad Emma comes back from her date and isn’t up for fucking him right there and then? Your partner doesn’t owe you sex just because they just went on a date with someone else.

5. Jealousy is inevitable, but courting it isn’t healthy

Jealousy in polyamory is normal and fine, as long as you deal with it in a healthy way. Trying to make your partner jealous deliberately in order to make them want you more is manipulative, cruel, and ineffective.

Jack and Emma use Izzy to make each other jealous. Izzy then uses Andy, who is a kind of dick but seems to be really into her, to make Jack and Emma jealous. No-one is having a good time.

6. Polyamory isn’t just for rich white people

Jack and Emma are the type of white, affluent, married professionals you’d expect to see at a swingers’ club. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that, except that the polyamorous community is actually hugely diverse and we’re all bored as hell of seeing every representation of polyamory reduced down to “rich white people who don’t like fucking their spouses any more.”

7. No-one falls for two people at the same rate, at the same time, and in the same way

Unfortunately, this is exactly what Jack and Emma expect of Izzy. In fact, it’s pretty much what all inexperienced unicorn hunters expect of their new partners and it is wildly unrealistic.

At one point in the show, it becomes apparent that Izzy’s connection with Emma is growing stronger while her connection with Jack is developing at a slower pace. Instead of dealing with his feelings or communicating with his partners, Jack throws a fit and fucks off for several days.

8. You don’t have to live with all your partners (and most people don’t)

Jack, Emma and Izzy move in together almost the moment they’ve decided to give a triad relationship a go. Not only is this the mother of all bad ideas, it’s also just unrealistic.

Most people, regardless of relationship structure, want to wait until a relationship is stable and established before cohabiting is even discussed. Many polyamorous people never want to live with all their partners. Many of us have one nesting parter. Others prefer to live alone.

By the way: regardless of relationship set-up, the trope of three people sharing a double bed every night trope is sweet but unrealistic. Being the middle spoon is lovely for about five seconds, until you overheat or both your partners start snoring.

9. Extremely conservative, homophobic parents don’t come around in three seconds flat

When Emma’s parents visit, they inevitably find out about the polyamory situation almost immediately. However, they also transition from being hyper-conservative, openly-homophobic bigots who only care about Emma having babies to being totally chill with everything in less than five minutes of screen time (which equates to perhaps an hour in plot-time).

People can come around, of course. People question their assumptions when they are directly confronted with them by someone they love. But it usually takes more time than this, and often much more.

10. Communication, not sex, is the way to solve your problems

Whenever Jack, Emma and Izzy have a relationship problem, they just fuck and it all goes away (until it inevitably returns, of course, because they didn’t actually address it.) Sex is great but it’s not a way to fix problems. Only honest, open, and respectful communication can do that.

And by the way? Treating someone like shit until they leave and then chasing them through an airport is not romantic.

11. And finally, we are all monumentally sick of MFF closed triads

Many people assume that all polyamory is one straight, cisgender man with two bisexual, cisgender women in a closed triad. Polyamorous newcomers often assume this is the most desirable configuration. However, it’s actually a fairly rare set-up, hard to attain and even harder to maintain over a long period of time. Yet it’s the only fucking representation the mainstream media is willing to give us.

Can we move on to something more representative and less male-gazey already, please?

You, Me, Her review: a bad show with worse messaging

I am convinced the people who made this show have either never met a polyamorous person or don’t like us very much. This is bad representation. It furthers negative stereotypes, it romanticises behaviour that is at best toxic and at worst abusive, and it views polyamory through the “tee-hee look at these weirdos” gaze of the monogamous world.

There are two more seasons of this show still to come, so maybe I’ll watch them and come back with a full review when we’ve seen how it ends. On the other hand, maybe I don’t hate myself that much.

Did you enjoy this You, Me, Her review of sorts? If so, please buy me a coffee!