Relationship structures
16 configurations, mapped honestly.
None of these is “more evolved” than the others. Each makes different trade-offs around autonomy, security, and logistics. Most adults who practise ethical non-monogamy combine elements of several over the course of their lives.
Polyamory
Multiple loving romantic relationships, with the knowledge and consent of everyone involved. Many shapes, one premise: depth across more than one connection.
Read in depth →Open relationship
A committed primary partnership with explicit, negotiated permission for outside sexual — and sometimes romantic — connections.
Read in depth →Relationship anarchy
A philosophy of relationships that rejects ranked hierarchies, refuses inherited escalator scripts, and treats every relationship — romantic or platonic — as worth designing on its own terms.
Read in depth →Solo polyamory
Polyamory in which the centre is an autonomous adult life — not a primary partnership — and relationships are woven into that life on their own terms.
Read in depth →Kitchen-table polyamory
Polyamory where the polycule — partners and metamours — can comfortably hang out together. The kitchen table is the image; the practice is integrated network life.
Read in depth →Parallel polyamory
A polyamory style in which a person's relationships run on separate tracks that intentionally do not intersect — partners and metamours know of each other but do not socialise.
Read in depth →Garden-party polyamory
The middle position between kitchen-table and parallel polyamory: partners and metamours are cordial at shared events, comfortable in the same room, but not necessarily close friends.
Read in depth →Hierarchical polyamory
A polyamory structure that explicitly ranks relationships — a designated primary partner with one or more secondary partners — and uses that ranking to inform time, attention, and decision-making.
Read in depth →Non-hierarchical polyamory
Polyamory without ranked primary/secondary tiers — relationships are shaped by their own internal terms rather than by an externally-imposed ranking.
Read in depth →Monogamish
A largely-monogamous relationship with explicit, agreed, typically narrow exceptions to strict exclusivity.
Read in depth →Polyfidelity
A closed unit of three or more committed partners. Polyamory inside; closure on the outside.
Read in depth →Ambiamorous
Comfortable in either monogamous or non-monogamous configurations — your relationship's shape is chosen from the people in it, not from a fixed orientation.
Read in depth →LifeStyle
A consent-based social and sexual community of couples and singles who share recreational intimate connections — typically without the romantic-partnership dimension that defines polyamory.
Read in depth →Don't ask, don't tell (DADT)
A non-monogamous arrangement in which outside connections are permitted but deliberately not discussed — partners agree to neither ask about nor disclose what happens outside the relationship.
Read in depth →Comet relationships
A recurring relationship between people who reconnect intensely and periodically — orbiting in and out of each other's lives over years — without daily contact or shared logistics in between.
Read in depth →Mono/poly relationships
A relationship between one partner who is monogamous and one who is polyamorous, where the monogamous partner has only the one relationship while the polyamorous partner has others.
Read in depth →