“We chose something that broke every societal script, because it’s what we actually wanted — and we’re making it work,” Linda Fruits tells PEOPLE

NEED TO KNOW

• Linda Fruits came out as a lesbian at 32 and, after divorcing her husband Christopher Harrington, the two chose to remain best friends and co-parent “under one roof”
• Fruits later fell in love with Maddy Gross, and the couple is now engaged and raising their son Arlo with Harrington, who is his father
• Their unconventional family continues to grow together while taking life at their own pace

At 32, Linda Fruits began questioning the life she had spent years building. She was married to Christopher Harrington and raising two children, but had never understood why she “struggled with attraction to men.”

Then social media introduced her to an “androgynous type of woman” she had never encountered before, and for the first time, she felt an undeniable “crush.”

Fruits first told Harrington she thought she might be bisexual after she found herself repeatedly sending videos of women to a friend and joking about how attractive they were. “After the second or third time, [my friend] just looked at me and said, ‘Do you need to come out of the closet?’” she recalls. “That’s when I couldn’t ignore it anymore.”

Surprisingly, Harrington’s response was extremely supportive — he even asked if she’d want a girlfriend — but for Fruits, the conversation wasn’t over.

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“Part of me hoped that saying it out loud would be the whole truth — that the floodgates would open and I’d feel more connected to him, more able to be intimate,” she tells PEOPLE. “I felt a little lighter, but I knew in my heart I wasn’t done figuring this out.”

Eventually, Fruits understood that the bisexual label did not accurately describe what she was experiencing and so she officially came out to Harrington as a lesbian in August 2021.

“Sex had always been hard for me, something I never wanted — he’d felt that too,” Fruits explains. “He was hurt, obviously, and we both had to grieve the marriage we’d hoped for. But we started as best friends, and that’s how we ended up, too. He says he wouldn’t change any part of our story too and I feel the same way.”

After nearly five years of marriage, she and Harrington decided to divorce soon after she came out, but what followed was an unexpectedly strong friendship with her ex-husband, a new love and a family arrangement that now includes six people living “under one roof.”

Rather than immediately creating two separate households, Fruits and Harrington decided to continue raising their children together. 

Their house had an office Harrington could convert into a bedroom, making the arrangement possible, and they gradually established a new version of their family life.

“Honestly, the transition from spouses to best friends wasn’t much of a transition at all — we’d been platonic for a long time. We were just finally naming what it already was,” Fruits says.

Their arrangement, however, wasn’t effortless. Fruits had to learn that even while living together, she needed an identity and social life outside the family unit. They also had to become more deliberate about saying what they needed instead of relying on the habits of a marriage.

“What makes it work is communication — not surface-level, but real, ‘Here’s how this actually makes me feel’ communication,” she emphasizes. “Nothing can get swept under the rug.”

According to Fruits, there were also practical reasons for keeping the household together. Rather than duplicating the costs of raising their children across two homes, they could continue pooling resources and putting more toward their children’s lives.

“Splitting into two households means two mortgages, two sets of bedroom furniture, two grocery bills,” Fruits explains. “Staying together means we can put that money toward our children’s futures and experiences instead.”

The pair finalized their divorce in February 2024. 

Then, four months after coming out, Fruits met Maddy Gross.

She had not been searching for a relationship, but their connection immediately felt different from anything she had experienced with men.

“It was magnetic from the start. I used to fight with everyone I dated because I didn’t feel a real connection, and I assumed it was them not trying hard enough. It was never them — it was me,” Fruits admits. “Early on, Maddy asked if I wanted to keep dating, just to make sure I was sure. I told her, ‘I’ve been looking for this for 32 years.’ ”

For Fruits, falling in love with Gross confirmed something she had spent years struggling to make sense of.

“Meeting her felt like coming home. Every kind of connection I’d hoped to feel, physical, emotional, spiritual, was suddenly all there at once. When we kissed for the first time, I literally felt fireworks,” Fruits describes. “I knew immediately I wanted to spend every minute with her and soon we talked about spending our lives together.”

About a year into their relationship, Gross started thinking about having a child of her own.

And after a discussion with Harrington, he agreed to provide the sperm, but didn’t want to be just a donor — he wanted to be the baby’s father. And to Fruits, that made the idea feel even more meaningful.

Ultimately, she saw it as a way to expand the family while keeping the children connected. So in May 2023, Arlo was born through at-home artificial insemination, becoming the family’s third boy and bringing them all together in a new way.

“It was the smoothest part of everything we’ve built,” Fruits emphasizes. “Arlo wasn’t complicated at all; he was so easy to love, easy to welcome in, and honestly, he balanced everything out. He’s the cherry on top of it all.”

Still, a household of three children and three adults with full-time jobs means a constant need for coordination, so Fruits says their household relies on a shared calendar and a Sunday planning session to divide responsibilities.

“This arrangement takes real honesty about your time — because when you’re not honest about where your time is going, you’re quietly taking away from your ability to show up for the family,” she notes.  

Over the years, the family has learned to embrace the unconventional nature of their lives rather than apologize for it.

“It’s unique, it’s nontraditional, and it throws people for a loop — but it works, and we have real support built into our daily lives,” Fruits, now 37, tells PEOPLE.

In August 2025, Fruits and Gross got engaged, but they are deliberately taking their time with the wedding, as they want their children to be old enough to understand the day and participate in it.

“There’s no rush. My goal has always been to spend my life with her, and we’ve both already agreed to that,” Fruits says. “Everything else is just the party; we’ll plan it when we’re ready.”

Harrington, meanwhile, continues to date and live his life within the family arrangement. For now, the home he shares with his ex-wife, her fiancée and their children gives him the family and stability he values.

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Fruits knows outsiders may struggle to understand their “village,” but after years of trying to mold herself into expectations that never felt right, she has stopped measuring her life by someone else’s definition of family.

“I wish someone had told me sooner that I was even allowed to love women — though I’m not upset with how my story unfolded,” Fruits says. “I love its uniqueness and is exactly what helps other people realize they can come out later in life too, and that it’s going to be okay. It doesn’t matter who stays and who goes — that will show you exactly who was meant to be in your life all along.”

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