Polyamory Meaning: What It Is and What It Is Not

Polyamory means having more than one romantic relationship at a time, with everyone involved knowing and agreeing. The word comes from the Greek for “many” and the Latin for “love”, and the knowing-and-agreeing part is the whole of it: without that, it is simply cheating.

How polyamory differs from the things it gets confused with

Our guide to open relationships covers the nearest neighbour in more detail.

The shapes it takes

• Hierarchical. A primary partner, with other relationships understood as secondary. The most common arrangement, and the easiest to explain.
• Non-hierarchical. No one relationship ranks above another, which takes more honesty and far more diary management.
• Solo polyamory. Several relationships, no primary, and no intention of merging lives with anyone.
• Polyfidelity. A closed group of three or more who are committed to each other and nobody outside it.

The words you will hear

Metamour: your partner’s other partner. Compersion: the pleasure some polyamorous people feel at a partner’s happiness with someone else, often described as the opposite of jealousy. Kitchen table polyamory: everyone involved is comfortable enough to share breakfast. Parallel polyamory: the relationships run alongside each other without meeting.

Does it work?

For some people, plainly yes, and for others, plainly not. The ones it works for tend to be good at unglamorous things: saying what they want, hearing something difficult without retaliating, and keeping a shared calendar. Jealousy does not vanish; it becomes a thing to be discussed rather than a thing to be hidden.

What ends polyamorous relationships is usually the same thing that ends monogamous ones: someone stopped saying what was true. The arrangement makes that failure faster and more public, not more likely.

Polyamory is legal in the UK. Only marriage to more than one person is not.

For related reading see open relationships, threesomes and intimacy and connection.