Glossary
Terms & notes
Terms I keep coming across in texts, podcasts and conversations — with short notes on how they're commonly used. Not a dictionary, more a work in progress that keeps growing.
- Compersion
- The joy of seeing your partner have a fulfilling time or relationship with someone else — often described as the opposite of jealousy, even though both feelings can show up at the same time.
- Consensual Non-Monogamy (CNM / ENM)
- An umbrella term for relationship structures where more than one romantic and/or sexual connection exists at the same time — with the knowledge and consent of everyone involved. Polyamory, open relationships and relationship anarchy all fall under this umbrella.
- Hierarchical Polyamory
- A polyamory model with a visible ranking between relationships, e.g. a "primary" partnership (often sharing a household, finances or children) and "secondary" relationships alongside it. Contrasts with non-hierarchical approaches like kitchen-table polyamory or relationship anarchy.
- Kitchen-Table Polyamory
- A polyamory style where everyone involved (including metamours) ideally gets along comfortably enough to imagine sitting around the same kitchen table — in contrast to parallel polyamory, where relationships stay deliberately separate.
- Metamour
- Your partner's partner — someone you yourself are not romantically or sexually involved with.
- Mono-Poly Relationship
- A relationship in which one person wants to live monogamously and the other polyamorously — usually navigated through explicit agreements about what that means for both sides and how needs get met.
- New Relationship Energy (NRE)
- The intense excitement, infatuation and heightened attention at the start of a new relationship. Often named explicitly in non-monogamous contexts because it can temporarily affect existing relationships.
- Parallel Polyamory
- A polyamory style where the different relationships exist largely separately side by side, without the people involved necessarily meeting or staying in contact.
- Polyamory
- The practice or desire to have more than one romantic relationship at the same time — with the knowledge and consent of everyone involved. The exact shape (hierarchy, living situation, rules) varies a lot from person to person.
- RBDSMA
- A conversation framework for talking things through before an intimate or sexual encounter, covering six areas: Relationships, Boundaries, Desires, Sexual Health, Meaning and Aftercare. The individual questions are listed under Resources.
- Relationship Anarchy
- An approach that shapes every relationship individually instead of automatically assigning certain rights, duties or priorities based on pre-set categories (partner, best friend, ...). In particular, it rejects the "relationship escalator" norm and emphasizes community and mutual aid as core pillars.
- Relationship Escalator
- The socially expected sequence romantic relationships are supposedly meant to follow: dating → exclusivity → moving in together → marriage → kids. The term is usually used critically, to question whose interests this default path actually serves.
- Solo Polyamory
- An approach within polyamory where a person considers themself their own primary point of reference — often without wanting a shared household, merged finances, or any one relationship formally ranked above the others.