Love is one thing. Living together is another. Both mattered to Alejo, Manuel, and Víctor when they decided to formalize their relationship in Colombia’s first legal marriage between three men.
Lunch is ready. Alejo places pots of rice, beans, and salad on the kitchen counter. Manuel and Víctor greet him with a kiss, fill their plates, and sit down at the table. Manuel adds an arepa. Alejo and Víctor pour juice. They talk about a theater project Alejo and Víctor are working on and how to encourage parents in their neighborhood to involve their children. Manuel, the eldest, listens and offers advice. They laugh, debate, make plans. When the meal is over, each man takes his own plate to the sink and washes it. This daily shared meal is a fixed point in their lives. They support one another, but resist assigning roles. Not even who does the dishes.
They share a house, a table, and a bed. Manuel Bermúdez, Alejandro Rodríguez, and Víctor Hugo Prada have lived as a throuple for years. In 2017, they legalized their union, becoming the first three men in Colombia to marry each other and among the first legally recognized three way marriages in the world. Their decision challenged deeply rooted norms in a conservative Catholic country where gay men have long faced persecution and violence.
Their marriage was shaped by loss as much as by love. When they decided to formalize their relationship, they were living as a foursome with Alex Esnéider Zabala. Before the wedding could take place, Alex died of stomach cancer. His absence remains part of the relationship, woven into its daily life and shared memory.
Manuel and Alejandro were already pioneers long before the throuple became public. They were the first gay couple to marry in Colombia, repeating the ceremony several times as the law gradually changed. Their personal history mirrors the broader struggle of the LGBTQ+ movement in the country, marked by legal advances, social resistance, and contradictory reactions.
How do three men sustain love as part of everyday routine. How do they negotiate jealousy, intimacy, and care. Is polyamory an alternative to infidelity or separation. Over the course of a week living with them, this work seeks answers not in theory, but in the quiet rituals of daily life.
A collaboration project with Katharina Wojczenko.
