Someone I Know is Polyamorous: What Does That Mean?
Kinds of Relationships

1) What type of terms are used to describe relationships? What kinds of different relationships are there?

There are a number of different terms used to describe polyamorous relationships. Here are some common ones, but there are lots of other variations. Some people don't use any of these terms to describe their relationships, some people may not use them in exactly the way they're used here.

V: Three person relationship, with the two end points not being as involved with each other as they are with the pivot person. These occur in all sorts of gender and sexual orientation configurations.

Triad: This generally refers to three people whose lives are about equally entangled with one another. They may or may not be sexual with each person (I know of a couple of groupings which consider themselves triads, but which involve two people who have no sexual interest in each other, but do consider each other as family, for instance two heterosexual men and a woman) but they usually live together or make long term familial-type plans together.

Quad: Four-person relationship. These are usually made up of two men and two women, and often form from two couples getting interested in each other, but that's not always the case.

Web (or other alphabet letters besides V): A more spread out relationship format, where one person might have two partners, and one of those partners has two partners, and so on.

Short Distance: Partners who live close to each other (within a 'reasonable' drive - the kind where they could spend the evening together without too much trouble on short notice.) It's usually used as a counterpart to Long Distance Relationships.

Long Distance Relationships (often abbreviated to LDR) What people define as 'long distance' depends a lot on the people - but many LDRs are in different states, parts of the country, or even other countries. LDR partners may see each other a couple of times a year, more often, or less often. It depends a lot on the specific people. LDRs take special care to keep the relationship solid, and to make sure communication happens often enough for both parties. Visits can also be a bit stressful at times, because they often involve the person being visted needing to do major rearrangement of their schedule, and because there's often a sense of "We need to get as much time together as we can, because we get so little."

Primary: One term used to describe the kind of relationship in each pairing. Different people use this words in different ways, so if someone uses it in conversation with you, this is an excellent place to say "What exactly do you mean when you say primary?". The word is usually used in the connotation of ongoing commitment *and* entanglement with one another, usually (but not always) involving living together and entangled finances (or the intent to do so, if practical considerations make that impossible at the moment.) This is the corrolary to marriage, in a monogamous context, and primary partners may also be legally married to each other, if that is an option.

Secondary: A term used to describe the kind of relationship. This, like 'primary' is one you should ask about for each person who uses it as a description. This is *not* generally meant as a description of how much love or affection is shared, but rather as a description of the kinds of commitments or entanglements which are present. Secondary partners usually do not have intertwined finances, might well not live together (or even locally) or might not share large portions of their lives. This is closer to the "Have a regular date every so often, without having plans to go beyond that." sort of relationship. People who are secondary partners generally enjoy one another's company, and provide the same kind of support they'd provide to friends, but for whatever reason, they don't want to have their lives become more entangled.

For an explanation of 'open' and 'closed' relationships, see question 3.

Finally, there is the question of 'what do people call the people they're involved with'. Again, different people use these terms different ways. It's worth asking about what they mean if you're confused. Lots of people also use personal pet terms.

Some options: the person's name or a short tag describing them. Sweetie. SO (Significant Other) or OSO (Other Significant Other). Partner. Spouse. Husband. Wife. Co-Wife. Girlfriend. Boyfriend. All sorts of other things. It's usually a good idea to ask what the term means to them, if it doesn't make sense to you.

2) What kind of living situations might there be? Do polyamorous people live with all their partners?

Polyamorous people may live with their partners, but not all do or want to. Sometimes, there are practical considerations that make living together hard (commitments to particular locations, allergies, etc.) Sometimes the relationships are long distance, and the people involved can't or don't want to move. It also depends on whether or not everyone gets along as roommates, which not everyone can or wants to.

Usually, there are considerations about private time with partners - if one person lives with a partner, and the other doesn't, perhaps their private time might take place at the second person's apartment, so as not to displace the first person's partner/roommate. Or perhaps a schedule is worked out so that they have private time when the other people want or need to be out of the house anyway.

It seems that people who live with multiple partners do find benefits. One of these is that either there's often substantially more available income (due to lower living costs, which generally happens when you have multiple people sharing space) or that one member of the household can reasonably easily afford to stay home and not work (handy for dealing with domestic chores and other errands, if one partner wants to do that). Likewise, there's just more people to share the chores around, so it is more likely everyone can find chores they don't mind doing, and do fewer of the ones they find distasteful. However, it really depends on the desires and tastes of the people involved.

3) I hear about open and closed relationships. What does that really mean?

Open: Open to having other partners outside the immediate relationships, and the relationship is set up to allow that without a lot of difficulty.

Closed: Not open to adding more partners, or only very minimally so (i.e. "If we met the absolutely perfect person, and everyone felt the same way about that person, we might consider it, but we don't consider that likely and aren't looking for it") It's also used to explain relationships which make closed geometric shapes (triangles, squares, etc) but that seems to be less common.

Basically, you can think of someone whose relationship style is open as in some ways 'single' for relationship purposes. They're willing to consider new relationships. Someone in a closed relationship is like a married monogamous couple who wants to stay that way. They might have close friends who aren't in the relationship, but they're not looking for further romantic relationships.

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Last edited: September 15, 2002