Another unconventional family is coming to TLC. The network has announced Polyfamily, a new unscripted series focusing on the realities of a polyamorous relationship. It premieres April 29. 

‘Polyfamily’ follows two couples in a relationship with each other 

Polyfamily follows two married couples, Alysia and Tyler and Sean and Taya, who have chosen to live together as a closed quad. 

“We are a closed, polyamorous quad,” Sean explains in the teaser for the new show. “A closed quad is four people – us. We’re only dating within ourselves and married within ourselves. We don’t have any outside partners.” 

“Like everybody else, right?” Tyler jokes. 

Tyler is dating Sean’s wife, Taya. And Sean is dating Tyler’s wife Alysia. The foursome also have four children between them, with another on the way. They see their unconventional relationship as a new kind of family. 

“We never set out to live our lives like this. But we realized we could love more than one person and make our own rules as to what we want our family to look like,” Alysia says. 

‘Polyfamily’ parents say their kids get ‘double the love’  

The quad’s family structure is unusual, but the parents say their children benefit from their unusual arrangement.

Alysia and Tyler – who have been married for 11 years – had two children before getting involved with Sean and Taya. She later gave birth to her third child. Sean and Taya have been husband and wife for six years and have one child, who was born after they embraced their quad life. And the family is about to get even bigger, since Taya is pregnant with baby no. 2. 

“We feel very fortunate to be able to give the kids double the love,” Alysia says. 

But bringing children into a polyamorous marriage comes with some unknowns. 

“Since the guys switch rooms each night, we don’t know who the fathers of the younger boys are,” Taya explains. 

However, the identity of one kid’s bio dad might not stay secret for long, as hinted at in the teaser. Once that information is out there, it could cause issues to bubble to the surface. Meanwhile, the adults are navigating their own complex feelings about each other and their relationships. Tyler and Sean might share partners and parenting duties, but they don’t have much else in common, they admit. And Alysia confesses that she can’t help but be jealous when she watches her husband with Taya. 

With four adults in the mix, things for this family are already complicated. And the situation gets even more thorny when Taya drops a bomb on the group. She’s developing feelings for someone who is not part of their family. The other three are stunned. 

“The quad we have now is the most important thing to me,” Tyler says. “And I don’t want to screw that up by not thinking things through.”

Polyfamily premieres Tuesday, April 29 at 10 p.m. ET/PT on TLC.  

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