Oh. What I meant is when ENM shows up in media, it usually feels like it was written by people who don't know it very well. Like when hacking shows up in in movies. If you don't know anything about computers, it probably looks plausible. But if you do, you're probably going to be sitting there like "that's not how that works" or whatever.

Like, throuples are really rare in my experience. Two couples dating each other is also really rare. But they show up in media. The more common configuration of "A is dating B and C. B is also dating D. They're all friendly, and everyone takes their relationships seriously, but don't hang out much all together" doesn't show up often.

"Casual hook up with no strings" is one way to do ENM. it's valid if all parties buy in. But it's not the only way to do it. Many people have multiple relationships that run in parallel, but aren't casual. Or "kitchen table" poly where everyone knows everyone, but only to the degree that you know your friends' good friends. There's hierarchical and not. There's other options.

I can only think of a handful of media that had polyamory. Only one that did an interesting, believable, take on metamor relationships.

Writing this on my phone so it's a little disorganized, but hopefully made sense.