Polyamory has a vocabulary of its own. Look up a term, see how people use it, and know what to ask before you assume you are talking about the same thing.
Also called ambiamorous
The capacity or openness to be fulfilled in either a monogamous or a consensually non-monogamous relationship. An ambiamorous person does not necessarily prefer one structure over the other, and the word does not mean undecided, inexperienced, or willing to accept any arrangement.
In practice: Ask which structure the person wants in this relationship. A label about capacity is not a substitute for a current agreement.
A partner who is a central, steady source of emotional or practical support. Anchor is often used in non-hierarchical relationships for a partner who feels foundational without calling them primary, but the word does not guarantee an absence of hierarchy. It also does not necessarily mean the partners live together.
In practice: Use when self-selected. Ask what “anchor” entails rather than treating it as a euphemism for primary.
Also called personal boundary and relationship boundary
A limit a person sets around their own participation, access, body, time, information, or risk. A boundary states what someone will or will not do or accept and what action they may take if that limit is crossed. It may affect other people, but it does not grant authority over a relationship the boundary-setter is not in.
In practice: “I use barriers for this kind of sex” is a boundary. “You may not have that kind of sex with anyone else” governs another person's conduct and needs to be discussed as a rule or proposed agreement, not dressed up as a personal boundary.
A polycule whose members have agreed that the network is not open to new romantic and/or sexual relationships under its current agreement. Closed describes whether outside relationships may be added; it does not reveal which people inside the polycule date one another, whether everyone lives together, or how decisions are made.
In practice: Ask what “closed” covers and whether the agreement can be revisited. A closed polycule may be polyfidelitous, but the terms are not automatically interchangeable.
Also called comet
A meaningful ongoing partner someone sees or contacts infrequently, often because of distance, travel, or the shape of their lives. Comet relationships can be romantic and/or sexual, may recur for years, and can feel vivid and connected when the partners' paths cross.
In practice: A comet can be rare and still be real. Frequency does not determine seriousness, care, or importance.
Positive feelings in response to a partner's pleasure, intimacy, or happiness with another person. Former members of the Kerista Commune preserve compersion as a word their community developed for positive feelings about a partner's other intimacies.
Compersion is often called the opposite of jealousy, but research indicates that they are not simple opposites and may coexist. Feeling compersion is not a requirement for healthy polyamory, and feeling jealousy is not evidence that someone is unsuited to it.
In practice: Compersion can be lovely, but nobody earns a gold star for feeling it. It may sit beside jealousy, tenderness, fear, or a need for reassurance. Enjoy it when it arrives, and do not pressure yourself or a partner to perform delight as proof that the relationship is healthy.
Also called ethical non-monogamy (ENM) and consensual nonmonogamy
Umbrella terms for relationships in which everyone involved explicitly agrees that participants may have multiple concurrent sexual, intimate, and/or romantic relationships. This distinguishes CNM from infidelity. ENM is common community language; CNM is common in research and legal advocacy.
CNM includes, but is not limited to, polyamory, open relationships, swinging, and monogamish arrangements. These categories overlap and are not exhaustive.
In practice: Prefer CNM when the distinction matters because consent is the actual criterion. Calling an arrangement “ethical” does not certify every choice made within it; conduct still has to earn that word.
Also called couples' privilege
The social, legal, practical, or relationship-system advantages given to a recognized or established couple over other relationships or over people who are not coupled. In a polyamorous network, it can appear when an existing dyad is treated as the default unit, receives automatic first claim on time and holidays, or makes rules that affect newer partners without their input. Some advantages come from law and institutions; others come from choices inside the network.
In practice: Naming couple privilege is not an accusation that caring deeply about a shared life is wrong. It is a prompt to notice which advantages are structural, which are chosen, and who carries the consequences.
Language that describes the priority or entanglement relationships have now because of their actual commitments and circumstances—such as a shared home, parenting, finances, caregiving, or years of history—without necessarily setting a permanent ceiling on what another relationship may become. In one qualitative study, participants used primary and secondary descriptively while leaving room for relationships and priorities to change.
In practice: This distinction is a useful community framework, not a universally standardized classification. Ask which present commitments create priority and whether future change is possible.
Also called DADT relationship
A relationship agreement in which people consent to non-monogamy while requesting little or no information about one another's other sexual or romantic relationships. Some DADT agreements allow necessary sexual-health or scheduling information; others include not knowing a partner's identity or even whether another relationship currently exists.
In practice: DADT is not a synonym for parallel polyamory. Parallel describes low metamour contact; DADT restricts information. Every person directly entering a relationship still needs enough truthful information to consent to its structure.
Any two-person relationship, including each distinct relationship inside a larger network. A triad contains three dyads, for example, and each dyad may develop its own pace, agreements, and character.
In practice: Dyad names a unit of relationship, not a ranking. Group chemistry does not erase the two-person relationships inside it.
Also called ERE
The comfort, trust, familiarity, and steadiness that may grow in an established relationship. The phrase developed as a positive counterpart to new relationship energy; old relationship energy (ORE) is also used, though some people find “old” needlessly flat.
In practice: Familiarity is not a consolation prize. ERE can hold depth, erotic charge, play, and the delicious relief of being known, but it still benefits from attention rather than autopilot.
Also called birthday-party polyamory and garden-party poly
A metamour-contact style between kitchen-table and parallel polyamory. Metamours do not seek regular closeness but can comfortably share occasional events such as birthdays, holidays, or large gatherings.
In practice: This describes how some metamours interact, not how all relationships in a polycule must operate. One network can contain kitchen-table, garden-party, and parallel connections at the same time.
Polyamory in which some relationships are explicitly prioritized over others and/or receive more power in setting rules. Primary and secondary are common labels in hierarchical systems. Hierarchy can concern time, shared resources, domestic commitments, life planning, decision-making power, or limits on what other relationships can become; it does not always mean a ranking of love.
Research confirms that hierarchical and non-hierarchical are both real configurations. It also finds substantial variation within those categories, so the label alone is not enough to understand a relationship.
In practice: Where hierarchy exists, name the actual priorities and powers: who gets first claim on time, which commitments are fixed, whether anyone holds a veto, and what another relationship is allowed to become. Everyone affected needs that information early enough to decide whether the arrangement works for them.
The person who has separate relationships with two people who are metamours to one another. In the shape A–B–C, B is the hinge.
In practice: Hinge identifies network position, not rank. It is useful when discussing scheduling, information flow, or the responsibility to maintain two distinct relationships without making either metamour manage the other relationship.
Also called KTP and kitchen-table poly
A style in which integration across a relationship network is valued and metamours are comfortable enough to share ordinary social space—the image is everyone being able to sit around a kitchen table together. It can range from cordial meals to chosen-family closeness.
In practice: KTP is not “everyone dates everyone.” It should describe mutually wanted contact, not pressure on metamours to become friends or disclose more than they want.
Also called meta
Your partner's partner when you and that person are not also partners. Meta is the common abbreviation. If you and the other person also date each other, that relationship is another dyad rather than merely a metamour connection.
In practice: Your metamour is not automatically your friend, rival, co-parent, or emergency contact. Respect the level of contact each person genuinely wants. The hinge should make sure scheduling and sexual-health information reaches the people it affects instead of asking a metamour to carry messages or solve problems in the hinge's other relationship.
Mostly monogamous, with limited agreed exceptions for outside sexual experiences. Dan Savage introduced the term for couples who were not actively seeking the degree of outside involvement associated with swinging or broader non-monogamy but were not strictly sexually exclusive.
In practice: Monogamish is a form of CNM, not automatically polyamory. The specific permissions and romantic boundaries vary by couple.
Also called mono/poly relationship and mixed mono-poly relationship
A relationship in which one person does not pursue additional partners or identifies as monogamous while another identifies as polyamorous and may have other partners, under a structure they knowingly agreed to. Research on CNM labels also identifies broader mixed relationships that combine different relationship practices or agreements, though that phrase is not limited to mono-poly pairings.
In practice: Mono-poly does not automatically mean unequal, unstable, or under duress. It does require unusually clear agreement about what each person is choosing; having no other partners is not the same as requiring one's partner to do the same.
Also called NP
A partner with whom someone shares a home. That is the term's core information. A nesting partner may also be a spouse, co-parent, anchor, or primary partner, but none of those follow automatically from cohabitation.
In practice: Prefer nesting partner when the relevant fact is living together; prefer primary only when the relevant fact is an explicitly chosen hierarchy.
Also called NRE
The excitement, heightened attention, and sometimes giddy or obsessive focus associated with a new connection. Zhahai Stewart's first-person FAQ records that he coined new relationship energy in the mid-1980s while trying to describe dynamics he encountered in non-monogamous relationships.
NRE is not unique to polyamory, but it is especially useful vocabulary when a new relationship and established relationships coexist. It often shifts over time, but there is no universal schedule and it is not evidence that the new relationship is more compatible or important.
In practice: Enjoy the sparkle; do not let it write checks your calendar and existing commitments cannot cash.
Also called egalitarian polyamory and non-hierarchical relationships
Polyamory that resists automatically ranking one relationship over another and aims for autonomy and standing across relationships. It does not require identical time, identical commitments, or denial of material differences such as co-parenting and shared housing.
In practice: Ask what non-hierarchical means operationally: no veto, no automatic first claim, openness to multiple life-building relationships, decisions made only within the affected dyad, or another practice. Do not infer that married or cohabiting people cannot sincerely work against hierarchy; do not infer that calling a system non-hierarchical erases legal or practical privilege.
Also called nonmonogamy and non-monogamous
A broad descriptor for relationship structures or behavior that are not based on sexual and/or romantic exclusivity with one person. The unqualified word does not by itself establish knowledge or consent: researchers use consensual non-monogamy for arrangements in which all partners explicitly agree, distinguishing them from infidelity. In everyday community speech, people often use non-monogamy as shorthand for consensual forms, so context still matters.
In practice: When consent is part of the claim, say CNM or describe the agreement. The missing adjective carries real information.
Also called OPP
A rule that permits only one penis-having person within a relationship network or limits someone's additional partners according to whether they have a penis. A common version is imposed in a relationship between a cisgender man and a woman and framed as allowing her to date women but not men. Community educators criticize OPPs for treating relationships between women as less consequential and for collapsing gender into anatomy in ways that can be transphobic.
In practice: This is usually a critical term, not a neutral identity label. Describe the actual restriction and who chose it rather than using the acronym as the whole analysis.
A broad and variable label for a relationship that permits some outside sexual and/or romantic connection. The APA fact sheet uses it more specifically for relationships that remain romantically exclusive to one partner while permitting other sexual partners, either independently or together. It also warns that CNM definitions are broad, overlapping, and not mutually exclusive.
In practice: Never assume “open” means sex only, casual only, or one particular rule set. Ask what is open and to whom.
A metamour-contact style in which each relationship operates largely independently and there is little or no expectation that metamours socialize or combine their lives. Some metamours in a parallel network may still choose contact; the defining feature is that network integration is not required.
In practice: Parallel does not inherently mean secret, hostile, or don't ask, don't tell. Relevant agreements, schedule effects, and sexual-health information can still be communicated without requiring metamour closeness.
Also called polyamorous, polyam, and poly
A practice or philosophy in which a person has, or is open to having, multiple loving partners at the same time with everyone's knowledge and consent. People may have one multi-person relationship, several independent one-on-one relationships, or another network shape.
Poly is a common shortening; polyam is another. The Canadian Unitarian Council's Polyamory Task Force chose polyam after consultation with polyamorous Unitarian Universalists, noting that Poly has long been used as an identity abbreviation by people of Polynesian descent. Follow the member's own wording rather than enforcing one abbreviation.
In practice: Two people can both be polyamorous and have completely different agreements, availability, and relationship structures. Ask about current partners, hierarchy, sexual-health practices, and what kind of connection the person has room to build.
Also called PUD and poly under duress
A community term for reluctantly accepting polyamory mainly because losing an existing relationship, home, family structure, financial stability, or intertwined life feels like the only alternative. Usage varies: some people reserve it for coercive ultimatums, while others use it more broadly for staying in a polyamorous structure they do not want because the perceived cost of saying no is too high.
In practice: Duress is not synonymous with jealousy, hesitation, compromise, or finding a freely chosen transition difficult. The central questions are whether the person has meaningful choice, can say no without punishment or manufactured crisis, and has any reason to choose polyamory beyond preventing loss.
Also called constellation
The network of people connected through romantic or sexual relationships, including partners and metamours. The word combines poly and molecule because diagrams of these relationship networks can resemble molecular structures. Not everyone in a polycule dates, lives with, has sex with, or even regularly socializes with everyone else. Constellation is an alternative metaphor.
In practice: Use polycule for the connected network, then name the actual relationships when they matter. Membership does not create intimacy or access. Each dyad makes its own choices about contact, sex, commitment, and privacy, and nobody owes the whole network closeness just because two lines meet on a diagram.
Also called polyfi and polyfidelitous relationship
A multi-person relationship or network whose members mutually agree to romantic and/or sexual exclusivity within the existing group. Its internal shape and power structure still need to be described: polyfidelity does not imply that every member dates every other member, shares a home, or has identical commitments.
In practice: Polyfidelity often overlaps with a closed polycule, but polyfidelity emphasizes exclusivity within the group while closed polycule emphasizes whether the network is accepting new relationships.
The practice of having more than one spouse at the same time. Polygyny refers to one man having multiple wives, while polyandry refers to one woman having multiple husbands; those related terms are not synonyms for every form of polygamy. Polyamory is broader relationship vocabulary and does not require marriage, so the two words should not be used interchangeably.
In practice: Describe a consensual polyamorous relationship as polygamous only when multiple concurrent marriages or spouse relationships are actually the relevant fact.
Also called polysaturated and poly-saturated
The state of being at one's current emotional, practical, or time capacity for additional relationships. Capacity depends on the needs of existing relationships and the rest of a person's life, not on a universal partner count; someone may be polysaturated at one partner, three partners, or no ongoing partnerships during a demanding season.
In practice: Capacity is not a headcount and it can change. “Polysaturated” means unavailable for another relationship now, not less polyamorous.
A hierarchy that determines in advance what relationships must remain—for example, a rule that a spouse will always come first, that another relationship can never involve cohabitation, or that a primary partner may end a secondary relationship. The distinction from descriptive hierarchy is whether the hierarchy merely describes current commitments or prescribes a ceiling and future priority.
In practice: Prescriptive hierarchy is contested, especially when people affected by the rules had no voice in making them. That does not make secondary an inherently invalid role; some people knowingly prefer a lower-entanglement relationship. The ethical information is whether the structure is explicit, genuinely acceptable to the people in it, and revisable when circumstances change.
Also called primary relationship and primary
The explicitly prioritized partner or relationship in a hierarchical relationship system. A primary relationship often includes some combination of shared housing, finances, marriage, parenting, greater time, long-term plans, and decision-making priority, but no single feature is required and a person may have more than one primary partner.
In practice: Real and useful when chosen; inaccurate when imposed. Ask “What does primary mean to you?” and preserve the answer rather than inferring a standard bundle.
A named four-person polyamorous relationship configuration. In a full quad, every person may have a relationship with each of the other three; in a complex quad, only some dyads are partners. The exact connections still need to be described rather than assumed.
In practice: Like every network shape, quad describes connections, not closeness, commitment, equality, or hierarchy.
Also called agreement
A mutually negotiated commitment among the people who are party to a relationship about how they will conduct it. Agreements may cover time, communication, disclosure, sexual health, dating, domestic responsibilities, or other shared expectations, and healthy agreements can be revisited as people and circumstances change. The APA describes both monogamy and CNM in terms of relationship agreements rather than treating either as a natural default.
In practice: An agreement between two people cannot manufacture consent on behalf of a third. Good agreements are specific enough to guide behavior, honest about who they affect, and sturdy enough to survive a real conversation when reality changes.
Also called RA
An approach to relationships grounded in autonomy, anti-entitlement, individually chosen commitments, and resistance to automatically ranking relationships by categories such as romantic versus platonic. Andie Nordgren's originating manifesto says that each relationship is unique, that people and relationships should not be ranked by default, and that commitments should be customized rather than inherited from a script.
The manifesto defines RA through autonomy and customized commitments, not through a required partner count. Relationship anarchy is therefore not inherently polyamorous or non-monogamous. It is not shorthand for casual dating, lack of commitment, or “no rules”; the defining idea is that commitments come from the people involved rather than automatic entitlement attached to a relationship label.
In practice: Relationship anarchy asks people to build commitments deliberately instead of letting labels assign rights by default. Ask how time, care, decisions, conflict, and existing promises are handled, including what happens when one person's choice affects another.
The default social script in which a “serious” relationship is expected to progress through increasing exclusivity and merger—typically public couplehood, sexual and romantic monogamy, cohabitation, shared finances or property, marriage, children, and permanence. Amy Gahran developed and researched the metaphor to make visible that these steps are choices rather than the only evidence of commitment.
In practice: “Off the escalator” does not mean uncommitted. A relationship can be durable and deeply important without cohabitation, marriage, exclusivity, or continued upward merger.
Also called relationship rule
A restriction governing behavior within or around a relationship. A rule may be jointly chosen, negotiated unevenly, or imposed; the word alone does not reveal whether it is fair or consensual. What matters is who had meaningful input, whose behavior it governs, who bears the consequences, and what happens when needs change. CNM research finds that people use rules and agreements, including around disclosure, STI testing, and barriers, while also renegotiating them over time.
In practice: Do not force every expectation into the internet slogan “boundaries are good, rules are bad.” Name the actual power arrangement and ask whether the people affected had a real choice.
Also called secondary relationship and secondary
A partner or relationship that has less priority or entanglement than a primary relationship within an explicitly hierarchical system. Secondary relationships can still be loving, committed, long-term, and central to the people in them. Some people actively prefer the autonomy or lower infrastructure-merger of a secondary role; others find the label or the constraints attached to it unwelcome.
In practice: Never use secondary as a generic name for an “additional” partner, and never apply it to someone who rejects hierarchy. Use it when a person identifies the relationship that way and ask about the actual expectations behind it.
Also called solo poly
Polyamory practiced with a strong emphasis on personal autonomy and without seeking primary-style merger of identity or life infrastructure. Solo poly people commonly live separately from partners and do not combine finances, but may have one or more deep, committed, long-term relationships. They are not necessarily single or casually dating.
In practice: Solo poly is a self-identified relationship orientation or practice, not a temporary status meaning “polyamorous and currently unpartnered.”
A form of CNM generally centered on sexual experiences with others while a couple remains romantically exclusive. Swingers often seek those experiences together, including group sex or partner swapping, though practices vary.
In practice: Swinging is not lesser or failed polyamory; it is a different CNM practice. Some people identify with both communities.
Also called throuple
A three-person relationship in which each pair has a romantic and/or sexual relationship. A triad contains three distinct dyads as well as any group relationship, and those connections may develop at different speeds or with different intensity. Throuple is a common mainstream synonym, though not everyone in a triad uses it.
In practice: A triad is not one couple plus a detachable “third.” Each person participates in two dyads, and every dyad needs room to be a relationship rather than a casting requirement.
In common polyamory usage, a person—historically most often described as a bisexual woman—who is open to a sexual and/or romantic connection with both members of an established couple. Some people claim the word playfully for themselves. Being a unicorn does not itself mean the person accepts exclusivity, equal attraction, group-only dating, or a lower-status role.
In practice: Use unicorn when the person self-selects it. Otherwise, describe the actual relationships rather than making one person sound like a rare role the couple acquired.
Also called unicorn hunters
The couple-centered search for one person, historically framed as a bisexual woman, to date or have sex with both members under conditions set primarily to protect the existing dyad. Common preconditions include equal attraction to both people, group-only participation, exclusivity to the couple, or the requirement that losing one relationship means losing both. The term names that power arrangement, not every triad, threesome, or person who enjoys dating couples.
In practice: A healthy triad can grow from people meeting and choosing one another. The warning is against treating a human being as a job opening whose two dyadic relationships must stay identical.
Also called V and vee
A three-person relationship shape in which one hinge has separate relationships with two people who are metamours and are not partners to one another. A V contains two dyads; if the two metamours also form a relationship with each other, the shape may become a triad.
In practice: The hinge is a network position, not the boss or the prize at the center.
Also called veto
An agreement granting one partner authority to require another partner to end or prohibit an additional relationship. Some systems define a limited or conditional veto; others grant an open-ended one.
Veto power is strongly contested because it gives someone decision power over a relationship they are not in and can leave another partner vulnerable after attachment develops. It is not the same as stating one's own boundary or choosing to leave one's own relationship.
In practice: Surface an existing veto arrangement plainly when it matters. Never imply that one person has generic approval authority over another adult's relationship.