the language of how we love.

understandings people reach together about how they'll relate, arrived at by conversation rather than handed down.

An anchor partner is a person who provides stability and grounding in a polyamorous person's life, often but not always through a long-term committed relationship, shared living arrangements, or daily proximity.

your right to run your own life and relationships and to have real say in what happens to you, without needing permission.

bondage and discipline, dominance and submission, sadism and masochism.

the lines you draw around your own body, time, energy, and heart, what you will and won't do, what you need to feel okay.

Chosen family refers to a network of people who function as family through mutual care, commitment, and chosen affiliation rather than through biological relation or legal bond.

A comet is a partner or connection who moves in and out of your life in long, irregular cycles, appearing for an intense period and then departing, sometimes for months or years, before returning.

the warmth, happiness, or pleasure you might feel when someone you love finds joy or connection with someone else.

an ongoing yes, freely given, informed, and revocable.

the built-in advantages an established couple carries into non-monogamy: shared home, finances, history, social recognition, and the quiet assumption their bond comes first.

A cowboy or cowgirl is someone who enters a relationship with a polyamorous person and then attempts — intentionally or unintentionally — to pull that person away from their other relationships and into an exclusive, monogamous dynamic.

an arrangement where partners agree to be non-monogamous but not to share the details, or sometimes not to know about outside relationships at all.

Enmeshment is a relational pattern in which the boundaries between individuals in a relationship become diffuse or unclear, resulting in an excessive degree of emotional interdependence.

The relationship escalator refers to the social script that defines a "successful" romantic relationship as one that follows a predictable progression: dating, exclusivity, cohabitation, long-term commitment, and often marriage or children.

the broad family of relationship practices where everyone involved knows about and agrees to non-monogamy.

A fetish is an intense erotic focus on a specific object, material, body part, or situation that is not inherently sexual.

Fluid bonding is the intentional decision between sexual partners to stop using barrier methods such as condoms or dental dams for protection against sexually transmitted infections.

a style that sits between kitchen table and parallel.

an arrangement where some relationships carry more structural weight or precedence than others by design, not just circumstance, often in the language of primary and secondary.

the person at the center of a v, in a relationship with two people who aren't romantically involved with each other.

the people you keep close and choose to tend.

an erotic interest that lives outside the conventional script.

a style where the people in a polycule are close enough to sit around one table together, comfortable and familiar.

Limerence is an involuntary state of intense romantic obsession characterized by intrusive thoughts about another person, a strong desire for reciprocation, and sharp emotional swings tied to perceived signals about the other person's feelings.

your partner's partner, someone you're connected to through a shared partner rather than through a romantic relationship of your own.

Mono/poly describes a relationship structure in which one partner practices polyamory and the other is monogamous by preference or orientation.

the rush of a new connection, the giddy, absorbing, can't-stop-thinking-about-them feeling of the early days.

a partner you share a home or household with.

a way of practicing polyamory where no relationship is given structural authority over another, no built-in primary that can limit the rest.

a rule in some mixed-gender relationships that a woman may have other partners as long as they aren't men, keeping the male partner the only man involved.

a style where your relationships run side by side with little contact between them.

A paramour is a romantic or sexual partner who exists outside of a primary relationship or marriage.

loving or having intimate relationships with more than one person at the same time, openly and with the knowledge and consent of everyone involved.

one woman married to more than one man at once.

the whole web of people connected through a set of polyamorous relationships, a polyamory-and-molecule word for the shape the network makes.

a closed circle who've agreed they're complete.

one man married to more than one woman at once.

Polysaturated describes a state in which a person has as many active relationships and as much emotional, relational, and time commitment as they can sustain.

a partner or relationship treated as central, often the one you live with, share finances or decisions with, or build the rest of your life around.

who or what you choose to attend to in a given moment, a tuesday night, a hard week, a crisis.

four people connected by a set of relationships, often two couples who've become involved with each other, though it can form in other ways.

an approach that doesn't rank relationships by default or assume romance outranks everything else.

specific do's and don'ts a relationship agrees to, often meant to manage risk or reassure someone through change.

a relationship held as less central than a primary one, usually with less shared daily life, entanglement, or decision-making.

practicing polyamory with your own life as the center of gravity, not built around a live-in or merged partnership.

three people, each in a relationship with the other two.

when an established couple looks for a third to date both of them, mostly on terms the couple has set in advance.

a shape where one person is connected to two others who aren't connected to each other, the point of the v being the shared partner, or hinge.

an agreement that one partner can call for another of your relationships to end or change.