Terminology within polyamory
Encyclopedia
Terminology within polyamory
looks at the evolution and meaning of the word "polyamory" itself, as well as alternate definitions and concepts which closely relate to it.
at a time, with full knowledge and consent by all partners involved. The term is sometimes socially abbreviated to poly, especially as a form of self-description, and also at times described as consensual non-monogamy.
Polyamory is a hybrid word
: poly is Greek for many and amor is Latin
for love. It has been independently coined by several people, including Morning Glory Zell-Ravenheart
whose article "A Bouquet of Lovers" (1990) is widely cited as the source of the word (but see below), and Jennifer Wesp who created the Usenet
newsgroup
alt.polyamory in 1992.http://www.faqs.org/faqs/polyamory/faq/section-1.html However, the term has been reported in occasional use since the 1960s, and even outside polygamous
cultures such relationships existed well before the name was coined; for one example dating from the 1920s, see William Moulton Marston
.
". There are no verifiable sources showing the word polyamory in common use until after alt.polyamory was created. The older term polyfidelity
, a subset of polyamory, was coined decades earlier at Kerista
.
alt.polyamory participants collaborated on a FAQ
(frequently asked questions) post that was updated periodically, and included the group's definition of "polyamory". The latest version of the FAQ on polyamory.org, dated 1997, has this definition:
In 1999, Morning Glory Zell-Ravenheart was asked by the editor of the Oxford English Dictionary
to provide a definition of the term (which the dictionary had not previously recognised). Her definition was:
Webster's New Millennium Dictionary of English defines polyamory as:
Merriam Webster's Dictionary gives the definition as:
itself. Some suggest that one must currently be participating in multiple relationships to be considered polyamorous. Others would consider their relational outlook polyamorous, regardless of whether they happen to be single or in an exclusive relationship at the time.
A relationship is more likely to be called "polyamorous" if at least one relationship is long-term, involves some sort of commitment (e.g. a formal ceremony), and involves shared living arrangements and/or finances, but none of these criteria are necessary or definitive.
For instance, somebody who has multiple sexual partners might form strong loving friendships with them, without feeling romantic love
for them. Whether such a person identifies as "polyamorous", or as a swinger, or uses some other term, often depends more on their attitude towards other "polyamorists", "swingers", etc., than on the exact nature of their relationships. Different terms emphasise different aspects of the interaction, but "swinging" and "polyamory" are both broad in what they can refer to. This allows for a certain degree of overlap.
Similarly, an open relationship
in which all participants are long-term friends might be considered "polyamorous" under broader usages of the word but excluded from some of the tighter usages (see further discussion below). There is enough overlap between these concepts that the expression "open relationship" is also sometimes used as a catch-all substitute when speaking to people who may not be familiar with the term "polyamory". However, some have objected to this shorthand, on the basis that multiple partners does not necessarily imply that they also have open relationships.
A somewhat less common usage is to enumerate relationships by current sequential importance: the most important single relationship would be primary, the next most important would be secondary, the third would be tertiary, etc - whether deeply committed or not. Many polyamorous people however object to this sort of sequential "ranking".
The terms primary and secondary may refer to the relationship or by extension to a partner in such a relationship.
Thus a woman with a husband and another partner might refer to the husband as her "primary" and her other partner as "secondary" - or might consider both to be primary, depending on the relationships and her usage of the terms. (Of course, this is in addition to any other terms a person might use, such as "husband", "lover", "casual date", "friend", "other half", and so on.) Some polyamorous individuals avoid using "primary" / "secondary" descriptions, believing that all partners should be considered equally important.
Another model, sometimes referred to as intimate network, may include relationships of varying significance to the people involved. People in intimate networks may or may not explicitly label relationships primary or secondary, and hierarchies may be fluid and vague or nonexistent.
A relationship among three people is often called a triad or threesome; among four people a quad or foursome. Sometimes all groupings of three or more are called moresomes.
Significant relationships involving more than two people inherently contain multiple pairs of people who may have more or less significant individual relationships with each other. Some pairs may have stronger mutual bonds than others. In triads or threesomes, the relationships may be characterized as forming a triangle or a "V". In a triangle, all three partners are directly connected and bonded to each other with roughly comparable strength. In a "V", two of the three possible pairs have substantially stronger bonds then the third pair. The emotional and sexual aspects of relationship may differ in this regard, so it's possible for example to describe a relationship as a triangle emotionally but a V sexually. The connecting member of a V relationship is sometimes referred to as a "hinge" or "pivot", and the partners thereby indirectly connected may be referred to as the "arms".
There are also by analogy other "letter" descriptions such as "N" or "U" foursome, or "W" fivesome geometries ("Z" and "M" are equivalents to "N" and "W" in this regard), each attempting to symbolize the more significant bonds within a group by analogy to the shape of the letter; of course, not all combinations have easy letter shape analogs.http://www.faqs.org/faqs/polyamory/faq/http://www.chespoly.org/docs/lexicon.htmlhttp://www.caw.org/articles/bouquet.html.
generally denotes a relationship (usually between two people, but sometimes among larger groups) in which participants may have sexual involvement with other, with the consent of their partner(s). Where a couple making this agreement are married, it is an open marriage
. "Open relationship" and "polyamorous" are overlapping rather than identical terms; people may use either or both terms in describing their relationship. Broadly, "open" usually refers to the sexual aspect of a non-closed relationship, whereas polyamory involves the extension of a relationship by allowing bonds to form (which may be sexual or otherwise) as additional long term relationships:
See also forms of nonmonogamy
for other types of nonmonogamous relationship (not all of them polyamorous).
is a positive feeling which a person may sometimes experience when their partner is happily involved with somebody else, in contrast to jealousy
.
New relationship energy
is the surge of emotional and sexual openness and excitement usually experienced in relatively new relationships, with recognition of the contrast with the more settled emotional and erotic connections experienced later in the same relationship, or in other ongoing relationships at the same time.
Polyamory
Polyamory is the practice, desire, or acceptance of having more than one intimate relationship at a time with the knowledge and consent of everyone involved....
looks at the evolution and meaning of the word "polyamory" itself, as well as alternate definitions and concepts which closely relate to it.
Overview
The word polyamory has been applied to the practice or lifestyle of being open to the possibility of people having more than one loving, intimate relationshipIntimate relationship
An intimate relationship is a particularly close interpersonal relationship that involves physical or emotional intimacy. Physical intimacy is characterized by romantic or passionate love and attachment, or sexual activity. The term is also sometimes used euphemistically for a sexual...
at a time, with full knowledge and consent by all partners involved. The term is sometimes socially abbreviated to poly, especially as a form of self-description, and also at times described as consensual non-monogamy.
Polyamory is a hybrid word
Hybrid word
A hybrid word is a word which etymologically has one part derived from one language and another part derived from a different language.-Common hybrids:The most common form of hybrid word in English is one which combines etymologically Latin and Greek parts...
: poly is Greek for many and amor is Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
for love. It has been independently coined by several people, including Morning Glory Zell-Ravenheart
Morning Glory Zell-Ravenheart
Morning Glory Zell-Ravenheart is a Neopagan poet, author, lecturer, and priestess. She is of Irish and Choctaw Indian ancestry.-Early Life:...
whose article "A Bouquet of Lovers" (1990) is widely cited as the source of the word (but see below), and Jennifer Wesp who created the Usenet
Usenet
Usenet is a worldwide distributed Internet discussion system. It developed from the general purpose UUCP architecture of the same name.Duke University graduate students Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979 and it was established in 1980...
newsgroup
Newsgroup
A usenet newsgroup is a repository usually within the Usenet system, for messages posted from many users in different locations. The term may be confusing to some, because it is usually a discussion group. Newsgroups are technically distinct from, but functionally similar to, discussion forums on...
alt.polyamory in 1992.http://www.faqs.org/faqs/polyamory/faq/section-1.html However, the term has been reported in occasional use since the 1960s, and even outside polygamous
Polygamy
Polygamy is a marriage which includes more than two partners...
cultures such relationships existed well before the name was coined; for one example dating from the 1920s, see William Moulton Marston
William Moulton Marston
Dr. William Moulton Marston , also known by the pen name Charles Moulton, was an American psychologist, feminist theorist, inventor and comic book writer who created the character Wonder Woman...
.
History of the term
The word polyamory does not actually appear in "A Bouquet of Lovers", referenced above. The article uses "polyamorous", but its original version introduced the term in hyphenated form, "poly-amorous".http://www.lair.org/writings/polyamory/bouquet.html The article consistently uses "polygamy" as the counterpart to "monogamyMonogamy
Monogamy /Gr. μονός+γάμος - one+marriage/ a form of marriage in which an individual has only one spouse at any one time. In current usage monogamy often refers to having one sexual partner irrespective of marriage or reproduction...
". There are no verifiable sources showing the word polyamory in common use until after alt.polyamory was created. The older term polyfidelity
Polyfidelity
Polyfidelity is a form of polyamory where all members are considered equal partners and agree to be sexually active only with other members of the group. The term originated in the Kerista Village commune in San Francisco which practiced polyfidelity from 1971 to 1991...
, a subset of polyamory, was coined decades earlier at Kerista
Kerista
Kerista was a new religion that was started in New York City in 1956 by John Peltz "Bro Jud" Presmont. Throughout much of its history, Kerista was centered on the ideals of polyfidelity and creation of intentional communities. Kerista underwent several incarnations that later became known as the...
.
alt.polyamory participants collaborated on a FAQ
FAQ
Frequently asked questions are listed questions and answers, all supposed to be commonly asked in some context, and pertaining to a particular topic. "FAQ" is usually pronounced as an initialism rather than an acronym, but an acronym form does exist. Since the acronym FAQ originated in textual...
(frequently asked questions) post that was updated periodically, and included the group's definition of "polyamory". The latest version of the FAQ on polyamory.org, dated 1997, has this definition:
In 1999, Morning Glory Zell-Ravenheart was asked by the editor of the Oxford English Dictionary
Oxford English Dictionary
The Oxford English Dictionary , published by the Oxford University Press, is the self-styled premier dictionary of the English language. Two fully bound print editions of the OED have been published under its current name, in 1928 and 1989. The first edition was published in twelve volumes , and...
to provide a definition of the term (which the dictionary had not previously recognised). Her definition was:
Webster's New Millennium Dictionary of English defines polyamory as:
- "Participation in multiple and simultaneous loving or sexual relationships."
Merriam Webster's Dictionary gives the definition as:
- "The state or practice of having more than one open romantic relationship at a time."
Scope of the term
No single written definition of "polyamory" has universal acceptance. It is generally agreed that polyamory involves multiple consensual, loving relationships (or openness to such), but beyond that the term is as ambiguous as the word loveLove
Love is an emotion of strong affection and personal attachment. In philosophical context, love is a virtue representing all of human kindness, compassion, and affection. Love is central to many religions, as in the Christian phrase, "God is love" or Agape in the Canonical gospels...
itself. Some suggest that one must currently be participating in multiple relationships to be considered polyamorous. Others would consider their relational outlook polyamorous, regardless of whether they happen to be single or in an exclusive relationship at the time.
A relationship is more likely to be called "polyamorous" if at least one relationship is long-term, involves some sort of commitment (e.g. a formal ceremony), and involves shared living arrangements and/or finances, but none of these criteria are necessary or definitive.
For instance, somebody who has multiple sexual partners might form strong loving friendships with them, without feeling romantic love
Romantic love
Romance is the pleasurable feeling of excitement and mystery associated with love.In the context of romantic love relationships, romance usually implies an expression of one's love, or one's deep emotional desires to connect with another person....
for them. Whether such a person identifies as "polyamorous", or as a swinger, or uses some other term, often depends more on their attitude towards other "polyamorists", "swingers", etc., than on the exact nature of their relationships. Different terms emphasise different aspects of the interaction, but "swinging" and "polyamory" are both broad in what they can refer to. This allows for a certain degree of overlap.
Similarly, an open relationship
Open relationship
An open relationship is an interpersonal relationship in which the parties want to be together but agree to a form of a non-monogamous relationship. This means that they agree that a romantic or sexual relationship with another person is accepted, permitted, or tolerated...
in which all participants are long-term friends might be considered "polyamorous" under broader usages of the word but excluded from some of the tighter usages (see further discussion below). There is enough overlap between these concepts that the expression "open relationship" is also sometimes used as a catch-all substitute when speaking to people who may not be familiar with the term "polyamory". However, some have objected to this shorthand, on the basis that multiple partners does not necessarily imply that they also have open relationships.
Terminology describing relational structures and connections
The terms primary (or primary relationship) and secondary (or secondary relationship) are commonly used to briefly convey rough distinctions among relationships in a person's life. Most often the terms are used to generally describe the type or "category" of a relationship, regarding involvement, commitment, or priority; thus it is not uncommon to discuss having multiple primary relationships, or having only secondary relationships with no primary. The exact distinctions between these categories of relationship vary depending on the speaker, but primary usually refers to a "marriage-like" relationship in terms of living arrangements, finances, commitment or child-rearing (legal marriage or domestic partnership may or may not be involved); while secondary usually implies less of these aspects, and tertiary (which is much less used) would be still less involved or more casual.A somewhat less common usage is to enumerate relationships by current sequential importance: the most important single relationship would be primary, the next most important would be secondary, the third would be tertiary, etc - whether deeply committed or not. Many polyamorous people however object to this sort of sequential "ranking".
The terms primary and secondary may refer to the relationship or by extension to a partner in such a relationship.
Thus a woman with a husband and another partner might refer to the husband as her "primary" and her other partner as "secondary" - or might consider both to be primary, depending on the relationships and her usage of the terms. (Of course, this is in addition to any other terms a person might use, such as "husband", "lover", "casual date", "friend", "other half", and so on.) Some polyamorous individuals avoid using "primary" / "secondary" descriptions, believing that all partners should be considered equally important.
Another model, sometimes referred to as intimate network, may include relationships of varying significance to the people involved. People in intimate networks may or may not explicitly label relationships primary or secondary, and hierarchies may be fluid and vague or nonexistent.
A relationship among three people is often called a triad or threesome; among four people a quad or foursome. Sometimes all groupings of three or more are called moresomes.
Significant relationships involving more than two people inherently contain multiple pairs of people who may have more or less significant individual relationships with each other. Some pairs may have stronger mutual bonds than others. In triads or threesomes, the relationships may be characterized as forming a triangle or a "V". In a triangle, all three partners are directly connected and bonded to each other with roughly comparable strength. In a "V", two of the three possible pairs have substantially stronger bonds then the third pair. The emotional and sexual aspects of relationship may differ in this regard, so it's possible for example to describe a relationship as a triangle emotionally but a V sexually. The connecting member of a V relationship is sometimes referred to as a "hinge" or "pivot", and the partners thereby indirectly connected may be referred to as the "arms".
There are also by analogy other "letter" descriptions such as "N" or "U" foursome, or "W" fivesome geometries ("Z" and "M" are equivalents to "N" and "W" in this regard), each attempting to symbolize the more significant bonds within a group by analogy to the shape of the letter; of course, not all combinations have easy letter shape analogs.http://www.faqs.org/faqs/polyamory/faq/http://www.chespoly.org/docs/lexicon.htmlhttp://www.caw.org/articles/bouquet.html.
Terminology related to polyamorous v. open relationships
An open relationshipOpen relationship
An open relationship is an interpersonal relationship in which the parties want to be together but agree to a form of a non-monogamous relationship. This means that they agree that a romantic or sexual relationship with another person is accepted, permitted, or tolerated...
generally denotes a relationship (usually between two people, but sometimes among larger groups) in which participants may have sexual involvement with other, with the consent of their partner(s). Where a couple making this agreement are married, it is an open marriage
Open marriage
Open marriage typically refers to a marriage in which the partners agree that each may engage in extramarital sexual relationships, without this being regarded as infidelity. There are many different styles of open marriage, with the partners having varying levels of input on their spouse's...
. "Open relationship" and "polyamorous" are overlapping rather than identical terms; people may use either or both terms in describing their relationship. Broadly, "open" usually refers to the sexual aspect of a non-closed relationship, whereas polyamory involves the extension of a relationship by allowing bonds to form (which may be sexual or otherwise) as additional long term relationships:
- Some non-monogamous relationships place sexual restrictions on partners (e.g. polyfidelity); such relationships may be polyamorous, but not open.
- Some relationships permit sex outside the primary relationship, but not love (cf. swingingSwingingSwinging or partner swapping is a non-monogamous behavior, in which both partners in a committed relationship agree, as a couple, for both partners to engage in sexual activities with other couples as a recreational or social activity...
); such relationships are open, but not polyamorous. - Some polyamorists do not accept the dichotomiesDichotomyA dichotomy is any splitting of a whole into exactly two non-overlapping parts, meaning it is a procedure in which a whole is divided into two parts...
of "in a relationship/not in a relationship" and "partners/not partners"; without these divisions, it is meaningless to class a relationship as "open" and "closed". - Many polyamorists consider "polyamory" to be their (emotional/philosophical) relationship orientation (just as "gay" and "straight" are sexual orientations) — they identify as poly (one capable and desirous of multiple loves) — whereas "open relationship" is used as a logistical description: that is, it describes a particular form of relationship, sometimes employed by polys. They might say of themselves, for instance, "I am polyamorous (or "I'm poly"); my primary partner and I have an open relationship..."
See also forms of nonmonogamy
Forms of nonmonogamy
Non-monogamy is a blanket term which covers several types of interpersonal relationships in which an individual forms multiple and simultaneous sexual and/or romantic bonds. This can be contrasted with its opposite, monogamy, and yet may arise from the same psychology...
for other types of nonmonogamous relationship (not all of them polyamorous).
Miscellaneous terminology
CompersionCompersion
Compersion is a state of empathetic happiness and joy experienced when an individual's current or former romantic partner experiences happiness and joy through an outside source, including, but not limited to, another romantic interest...
is a positive feeling which a person may sometimes experience when their partner is happily involved with somebody else, in contrast to jealousy
Jealousy
Jealousy is a second emotion and typically refers to the negative thoughts and feelings of insecurity, fear, and anxiety over an anticipated loss of something that the person values, particularly in reference to a human connection. Jealousy often consists of a combination of presenting emotions...
.
New relationship energy
New relationship energy
New relationship energy is a state of mind experienced at the beginning of most significant sexual and romantic relationships, typically involving heightened emotional and sexual receptivity and excitement. It begins with the earliest attractions, grows into full force when mutuality is...
is the surge of emotional and sexual openness and excitement usually experienced in relatively new relationships, with recognition of the contrast with the more settled emotional and erotic connections experienced later in the same relationship, or in other ongoing relationships at the same time.
Further reading
- Easton, Dossie; Liszt, Catherine A. The Ethical Slut: A Guide to Infinite Sexual PossibilitiesThe Ethical SlutThe Ethical Slut: A Guide to Infinite Sexual Possibilities is an English language non-fiction narrative written by Dossie Easton and Catherine A. Liszt...
. Greenery Press, 1997. ISBN 1-890159-01-8