Amanda Coates goes to bed at 10pm.
Her husband stays downstairs with another woman, and Amanda is the one who put them there.
The other woman is Victoria, 29, Amanda’s best friend.
The three of them have lived as a throuple for five years, and their five-bedroom house in North Carolina now holds seven of their eight children.
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The 10pm handover
Amanda, a 38-year-old counsellor, does not do late nights.
“Dennis and I never go to bed together. I go to bed early because I’m a morning person,” she said, as reported by Creatorzine.
“Tori stays up with Dennis. I appreciate her for that because I am not a night owl and will fall asleep if I try to stay awake past 10 pm.”
Jealousy doesn’t come into it.
“I don’t have bad feelings or emotions towards him staying up with her.
We share one bed, so we both get to sleep next to him every night.”
How the best friend moved in
Victoria came to stay after her divorce, having allegedly suffered abuse from her ex.
Amanda, then 13 years into her relationship with Dennis and five years married, offered her a room as somewhere safe to land.
Then she started thinking about something else.
“Tori was in a bad place in her life, and she deserved to be treated with love and kindness,” Amanda said.
“I encouraged Dennis to pursue her, and I knew she would be interested in him because he is a great catch.”
Opening up the marriage had come up before between the couple.
It had never got past the conversation.
Suggesting it was the easy part
Watching it happen was harder.
“It was a struggle for me initially because she is wonderful and beautiful, and it felt like she had all my good qualities and then some, so why wouldn’t my husband want her over me?” Amanda said.
So they talked it out, and kept talking.
“Our life is great, and I wouldn’t want to go back.”
Amanda and Victoria aren’t romantically or sexually involved with each other.
Both are with Dennis. With each other, they’re friends.
“Victoria is my hetero life mate, my yin to her yang, best friend for life,” Amanda said.
“Dennis never favours one over the other or makes us feel second to the other.”
Eight children, five bedrooms
Amanda and Dennis have Aylah, 14, Sophia, 11, Bary, nine, and Mary, three.
Victoria brought Madilyn, nine, from her previous marriage, and she and Dennis have Liam, three, Valyrie, two, and eight-month-old Ellie-May.
Amanda’s eldest, Johnathan, 21, has moved out.
The adults were upfront with the children from the start.
Amanda and Dennis went as far as asking their biological children whether they’d rather Victoria and Madilyn lived somewhere else.
“No, we want them here.”
Victoria is another mum now. Madilyn is their sister.
“All children are treated the same regardless of who birthed whom,” Amanda said.
“Sometimes I forget who birthed who because they are equally all our children.”
Running a house of ten
Money gets tight. Space is tighter. Three adults means the load splits three ways.
“We are a team and we choose to function as a team,” Amanda said.
“Our husband is the head of the family, and Tori and I are equal points of the triangle.
We have equal say about parenting and household responsibilities.”
Awkward conversations happen on purpose.
“If we are feeling a certain way about something, we talk it out, no matter how uncomfortable it makes us.”
Victoria also gives Amanda something her husband can’t.
“He can tell me until he is blue in the face how pretty or smart or funny I am, and I know he wouldn’t lie to me, but it is different coming from her,” Amanda said.
“She is my voice of reason, my confidante.”
Dennis reckons it’s good for his health
Dennis, also 38, says the arrangement has fixed something.
“I’ve become more patient, and my suffering as far as chronic pain goes has improved since having two wives and eight children,” he said.
“I’m so busy tending to and taking care of all of them that I don’t even have time to hurt.
“They’re a handful, the women, and the kids. But I love them all.”
Why It Matters
Unconventional family stories are some of the most reliably read content in this space, and most of them arrive attached to a funnel: a handle, a Patreon, a merch line, a docuseries in development.
The Coates household has none of that. They talked to a wire because someone asked.
For creators who build audiences out of their own domestic life, that’s the useful detail.
The public appetite for this material exists independently of anyone monetising it, which means the people who do monetise it are competing with families giving it away for free.
Consensual non-monogamy has crept into mainstream coverage over the past decade through documentaries, dating app settings and family court rulings.
The law has moved more slowly than the culture, and terms like “second wife” still describe a relationship rather than a legal status.
Ellie-May is eight months old, there are ten people in five bedrooms, and Amanda has no plans to change any of it.
“This life is not for everyone.”
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