Laura, Hi and welcome to the Ready for Polyamory podcast. I'm your host, Laura Boyle, and I've been practicing and studying different forms of non monogamy for nearly 20 years. I want to share information on how relationships typically work and can work differently if you choose, and to give you and your loved ones things to think about. So join me this season for a look at how our relationship practices can work.

So today we're going to be talking about

the idea of Polyamory jargon, right? Thanks for joining me for the first episode of this season of the podcast. We're going to discuss some very divisive things today, right? In the idea of terms that we primarily use in the non monogamous community, this idea of polyamorous jargon, right? Do you love words like metamour, Compersion and kitchen table Polyamory. Or do you find that they just confuse things and make it hard for you to make yourself understood? Are you overwhelmed by them, like one metamour of mine? Do you find that these are words that are kind of ugly words for beautiful people and you don't want to use them? Do they not help you get your point across and you want to abandon them. Or do you find that they give you shared language with people, and they're really convenient and you want to use them, you want to share them with people, right? Was it a barrier to entry for your non monogamous dating and community building as someone who maintains the biggest online Glossary of polyamorous terms, or at least the most cited one, right? People tend to assume that I am like the queen of Polyamory terminology, and that I use it constantly, and I guess, because I do a lot of talking about non monogamy, at some point, I do use a lot of it, but in my day to day life, I'm gonna pretty much just use the words metamor and polycule, and we're going to get into definitions of some of these words. But a metamour Is your partner's partner, and we'll talk about that in more detail in a minute. And a polycule is a relationship network, again, we'll get into more detail about some of these definitions in a minute.

People think that I am, as I said, an unabashed booster of Polyamory jargon, and we're going to talk a little bit about why you might or might not want to use some of these terms. But the biggest reason why you might is that having common in group language is something that lots of folks want, right? And while I'm happy to teach folks the most common or useful terms of this, because having an in group can be really helpful to identify other non monogamous people, especially sort of in the wild. It can be nice. I'm not actually that big a user of these terms. So some of these terms are really useful for people, especially early on in your journey, in sort of navigating books and online content about Polyamory. So we are going to go through some definitions today, so that, that way, if you're looking at this content, you have some idea what these terms mean, and you don't have to be the person in the comments going, can you define this thing? So we're going to go through some of it today.

So a metamor, that first term that I used, is the partner of your partner who is not partnered with you. Right before this term was popularized, meta means beyond or like on the other side of so it's the idea of the person who's beyond your partner, who is a love, the beyond your love, the meta amor, your metamour.

And this is a popular term, because before this, people used to kind of jokingly go, my partner in law, right? And it's the person who your partner is partnered with who you might need a word for, because they might not be your friend. They might be in some kitchen table setups. We're going to talk about what a kitchen table setup is in a minute, but it's sort of the uniquely polyamorous relationship, because we might have to relate to this person because we live with our partner, or we spend a lot of time with our partner, and our partner is spending a lot of time with this person, and they're important to us, and this person is important to them, right? So we might just refer to them by their name or use the longer phrase of my partner's partner, or my partner's girlfriend or my partner's boyfriend. For a long time before metamor was popular. We would call them my partner's other significant other. That was very popular phrasing on the internet prior to metamour gaining popularity, but it's fallen out of favor a little. And more people are saying metamour at this point.

So yeah, that is the big polyamorous word I would say the other.

Other big polyamorous word that's sort of uniquely polyamorous is Compersion. Compersion is a word that was made up in the 70s by a polyamorous commune called charista, where, literally, the way they made it up was that they had a concept. The concept is the idea of joy at your partner's joy with another partner. And they were like, We need a word for this. We can't think of a word for this. And they shook up scrabble tiles and dropped it out and shook them until they figured out something that sounded like a real word. So if you think it sounds like a nonsense word, that's why. But Compersion is this idea

of joy at your partner's joy in their other relationships, and there are times when it gets thrown around as like a goal or the most uniquely polyamorous thing you can do. And if you have listened to this podcast for very long, and I know that it's only been in video format for a short period of time, so on YouTube, you won't have but if you're on other podcast platforms, you will have been listening to me for a while. You know that I'm a pretty firm believer that conversion is not mandatory. And if you've been paying attention over the years, you'll have noticed that lots of theorists talk about how Compersion and jealousy can exist at the same time. Conversion does not exist in a vacuum, and it's not sort of mandatory to be feeling the warm fuzzies about your partner's other partners all of the time. And I think all of that's important, because when you're new to non monogamy, there can be a sense that we need to be feeling the warm fuzzies about our partners, dating endeavors, or our partners, other partnerships, all of the time, or we're not polyamorous enough, and there's no such thing as polyamorous enough. And on top of that, it's okay to have whatever feelings we have in a given moment. Don't let anybody tell you that your feelings are not okay. Sometimes your actions might not be okay, but your feelings are fine.

So anyway, I think that's an important point to make. You can't really weaponize someone's feelings or lack thereof against someone. So there's

a lot of jargon surrounding relationship style, and I'm gonna sort of go back to basics about that to start, and we'll see what makes sense or fits for this episode. And I'll refer you out to other people's content about some of it, right? So let's go all the way back to basics and say, What is non monogamy to start with? Because sometimes you'll hear non monogamy called consensual non monogamy, or ethical non monogamy. Consensual non monogamy is broadly what it's called in like scientific journals or social science in general. Ethical non monogamy is what it was called on the internet for a long time, and so some people have identified that as a label, and broadly, people who are making content have tried to drop both of those labels off the front, because if monogamous, people don't have to call it ethical monogamy or consensual monogamy, why should we have to call it that? But this is the umbrella term for all non exclusive relationships where everyone knows that it's non exclusive on purpose, right? So it's the idea that we're in relationship with people we have discussed that we are not intending to be exclusive. It doesn't mean that we're necessarily like grand, high paragons of virtue, because just like monogamous people, we are people we fuck up sometimes, but we have our own set of what the rules of our relationship are, and we follow them. Right? Our rules just don't include perfect exclusivity to one partner. It may include being in a closed, non monogamous unit, where there's more people, and then we're exclusive within that unit, or it may mean being open to seeing and meeting new people. And then we have ways that we formulate that, right? And people follow whatever their set of rules are within their non monogamous setup. And it's a blanket term. It includes things like swinging, being monogamish, being polyamorous, right? A variety of structures. We're going to get into some of those. I tend to use the language of non monogamy when I'm talking about relationships, just because

all these forms of non monogamy, not just Polyamory, need awareness of boundaries, of honesty with yourself about your needs, and of these kind of skills that we tend to discuss on this program and like your style might change over the years, and it's okay that your style changes over the years. You don't have to lean into, I am exactly polyamorous for the rest of my life, and you don't have to lean into, I'm Polyamory in this particular style forever, and it's okay and it's sometimes easier to.

Be in the bucket term of non monogamy, and be like within non monogamy. We need these boundaries within non monogamy. We need to think about our needs in this way and creating relationship agreements. So that's why I tend to use that broader term. But if you find it easier to substitute in the word Polyamory, because it applies to you personally, feel free to as you're listening,

Polyamory is the non monogamy that includes an intention to engage in multiple loving relationships, right? Many people also include other forms of intimacy, like sexual intimacy, within their relationship network. Right? Relationship networks are sometimes referred to as polycules. A polycule is a portmanteau of Polyamory and molecule because that's what drawing out the network looks like. It's a cute word for it.

Some people don't love it. They'd rather call it a network or a constellation. Some people really like that term, but it's one that I tend to use because I think it's cute.

But yes, Polyamory is non monogamy that includes an intention for there to be emotional entanglement.

There are lots of subtypes of Polyamory, and some of them have names and some don't. People like to fight over whether different styles are really Polyamory or not, mostly because they like to judge whether other people's relationships are emotional enough, and they like to judge whether or not the way people's interactions work sort of suit how they would like to have relationships.

And in recent years, the trends of Polyamory have shifted significantly from how they worked, say, 1015, years ago. And so people who came into Polyamory or into non monogamy, 1015, 20 years ago are seeing that the way they continue to conduct their relationships if they still do the way they did when they first came into this is out of style and being sort of decried by people who are starting later as not the way we should do it. And what do you mean? You do that, and that isn't really Polyamory. And so there are these little conflicts. I like to think of it as Polyamory as a choose your own adventure story and you build the parameters of your relationship, and the only baseline requirement is that everyone is honest with one another and intending to build emotional relationships with one another.

Lots of people think that that is too broad a definition. They can fight me on the internet

that said there are lots and lots of subtypes of Polyamory. The biggest ways that that breaks down are sort of structurally in terms of how the relationship network interacts.

The number of terms for that are rapidly expanding. It used to be that there were two big baseline buckets of how this division broke down. One was kitchen table Polyamory for entangling your network and everyone hanging out together. This term was popularized by a web comic called kimchi cuddles that divided these two buckets of kitchen table, Polyamory and parallel Polyamory. And the idea was that if you were kitchen table, you could all sit down at the kitchen table and have a cup of coffee or a meal together. And if you were parallel, you didn't want to spend time together. You wanted your relationships to exist in parallel.

I can see that any of you who are listening are going, but isn't there some gray area in the middle? And of course there is, but people would generally go, oh, but we're more one or the other, and then pick which label they were using and just kind of go with it, or choose not to use a label and say, Yeah, we kind of exist in the middle, right?

And also, these were just bucket terms that not everybody used anyway.

But now, because of this gray area, and because people were saying kitchen table and meaning wildly different things from one another, people have created more and more and more labels in the middle, right? We now have like, three or four terms for that middle ground, garden party, Polyamory, cocktail party, Polyamory, birthday party, Polyamory, which mean sort of the same thing with very slightly different flavors, right? There's an article on my blog about what these slightly different flavors are, but also how they sort of virtually mean that same middle ground of we get together at special occasions for someone in the molecule, but we mostly don't hang out as metamours alone, right? We might get together for the hinges birthday or for special.

Occasion for someone in the polycule, but we don't get together like on Tuesday,

whereas kitchen table might mean you get together on a Tuesday just because someone wants to,

and then on the high end, what I used to call kitchen table with extras, the multiamory podcast has an episode of their Podcast, episode number 322

where they break down, like all of these terms, in a lot of detail over about an hour, and they coined something, well or popularized, something called lap sitting Polyamory, which I used to call kitchen table with extras. Because what the extras are varies, but it often includes being exceptionally close, potentially sexual with one another, potentially all dating each other, kind of entanglement in your polycule. And they call that lap sitting Polyamory. That's at one end. And I'm not throwing out these terms to try to get you to memorize all of them, but just to let you know that they're there. And you can choose to use them, or you can choose to say all of these terms are too much for me. I don't need any of them.

I don't personally use most of these terms anywhere, except if someone asks me a question about these terms, for me to go, Well, I guess if I had to define it, my polycule is kind of in the middle, so I guess Garden Party ish.

But for years, I was just like, I don't really believe in any of it. I think this is all a spectrum, and that what you need to do is sit down with people and talk about the relationship you actually want to have. Who do you want to spend time with and in what context. And it's much more important to talk about the context and the type of relationship you want to have. I teach a class called Beyond the Kitchen Table, where you talk about what parts of your life you actually want to interact with people in and what that means, right? Because your relationships with your metamours exist way beyond whether or not you sit down at a particular person's kitchen table for a cup of coffee, although that may be really relevant if one of you lives with the hinge and the other one doesn't right.

And I came into the non monogamous scene at a time when there were way fewer terms and where, like, V wasn't a term that people used, and triad wasn't a term that people used. Everything was a triad. And maybe you talked about whether it was a closed triad or an open triad, and like, was it a V triad or a Delta triad? But people only got into those weeds. If you were really trying to poke at who was sleeping with who

you everyone was just a set of three, right?

And so you made up your own words as you went. If it felt important to have those words, and if it didn't feel important to have those words, you didn't bother.

And I don't say this to be like if the kids today need too many labels. I think it's beautiful to have labels that resonate for you. But I say it to indicate that if it feels like too many words, you can just not. There's no need to sit in worry about whether or not a particular piece of jargon resonates for you correctly, or whether you're living up to the standard of a particular style of Polyamory, because you can make it up as you go along. It is a choose your own adventure story. You and your partner, or partners can decide what your agreements are and live up to them, and that's the only standard you have to conform to.

Sometimes it feels like having this language should help, but actually complicates it for you and gives you additional standards you're trying to live up to that maybe aren't that helpful.

Likewise, the other big division in sort of modern Polyamory and modern Polyamory jargon, which is going to be a whole other episode later this season is the idea of hierarchy and non hierarchy, which I'm not going to dig deeply into today, because it's a lot deeper than just some words. But if you're finding that that label is dragging you down in terms of your behavior, I would advise you to look more carefully at your behavior, your agreements, and the way you're treating people, and making sure that the way you're treating people is aligning with your values, as opposed to whether a word applies to you right. And I think that's a lot more helpful than whether a word that can be kind of wiggly applies to you.

But in general, we have all of these new and detailed terms, because

so many of these terms can apply to us in so many different situations, and it's about what feels good or bad for us when we're actually using.

The terms, right? So if it makes you feel really good to have detailed, concrete terms for who you are and for who people are to you, it feels really nice to be able to, like, make a chart and know that two degrees out from you is a telemore is your metamours other partner who is not your shared partner. Then that term telemore, the person who's even further than your metamour,

feels nice to know, to have a term for great use it. Feel very positive about it.

But if that feels silly and you're like, well, either they're my friend and they're my friend their name

or they're not my friend, and it doesn't matter that they're connected to me via a polycule, because I'm not going to spend time with them, then Cool. That's great, and that's authentic for you. And the thing that feels right and good and authentic for you is the thing that you should be listening to and following through on. And these are the actual points that we should be listening to for ourselves and in ourselves. We should be leaning into the pieces of Polyamory jargon that feel right and good and authentic for us, and we should be leaning away from the ones that don't. So if it feels really good and right for you to call your metamour your metamour, because you mostly relate to them through your partner, then great. Use that term. And if, in fact, you guys are really good friends, and so you're going to use their name and you're going to use that they're your friend. Awesome. Do it that way.

Think about what feels best.

I think that's really what's in a name in these situations, is, is this a feeling or a notion or a situation where we need the additional language? And out of all of these, I think for me personally, metamour and Compersion are pretty much the ones where I do because there isn't a word for that specific kind of positive empathy

that Compersion hits, right? The New York Times tried to make Freud and Freud happen for a minute, and it didn't work. It was a very awkward article, right? And German doesn't have that word. So why would we twist German into that construction? Since we can't twist English into it, let's just make up our word for it. And the 70s did it for us already. So let's use it.

And if we want, we can expand conversion to be all kinds of positive empathy for our partner. We can say it's not just about their relationships. It's about the hobby that they're in that we're not wild about. If that makes it feel better to use that term and do it, lean into it,

but figure out the spaces and the ways that we can make these terms fit for us and sit right for us, and then roll forward that way. I think that if that's what it takes to make the jargon feel right and the language of Polyamory feel appropriate, then that's what we should do.

There's no guarantee or requirement

that specific language is going to make it work better for us, right? And there's no requirement to write out a dating profile. That's like looking for a secondary partner who will blah blah, blah, blah blah, right? Or looking for a partner for our egalitarian polycule

that believes in relationship anarchy and non whatever, right, none of that is going to more deeply draw someone in than talking authentically about ourselves.

And so I think being able to just show up as ourselves in the world is the actual point. And knowing a lot of language about

how to explain who it is that we're connected to

in a detailed map format is not actually going to be helpful for most of us.

And beyond that, there's not a ton of language that is more helpful for most people. Right being able to call someone a nesting partner or an anchor partner might be helpful language to acquire, but

it's only helpful if you're actually finding those labels useful again, right? So it's about what your situation looks like and if it feels right.

And it's just as easy to say my partner, who I've been with for this long what feels authentic to you and what feels right does the label feel like?

Sits correctly. And do you feel like you need something that turn that modifies in the way, that sits right? All of these words came to be because someone felt like they needed a modifier that sat in a particular way, and then it got popular. Is the word that got popular, what feels like it sits right for you, or are you going to make up a new one? And I think there's no harm in coming up with your own one and not letting someone correct you to the popular one and saying, Hey, I use this other one because it feels like it sits right for me, and I don't need to use the super popular one, although I guess it's kind of equivalent to and then listing whatever the popular one is, if that's what feels right for you. So knowing what some of the popular terms are and saying the one that I use is kind of like this, might be useful for you. If you want to look at what some of the most popular terms are and what some of their definitions are. The Polyamory glossary is at my website, ready for polyamory.com.

You can click Polyamory glossary in the top menu. There's a whole page with all kinds of definitions, everything from Polyamory itself through anchor partner, what barriers are, what a closed polycule is, which we talked about a little bit here,

what a Don't Ask, Don't Tell relationship is, which we didn't really cover here, but for most of us, is not going to apply, right? And all kinds of other things.

And to be honest,

many of these are words that we would have used in monogamy as well,

and the ones that aren't that are really Polyamory terms we've talked today about what contexts they'll be useful in and which ones they won't. And like I said, if you find them useful, use them as much as you want, take what's useful and leave what's not and chat with people about what terms mean to them, right? Because the most sort of prevalent problem of jargon, especially in a field like Polyamory, where the word Polyamory was only put into print in 1990

is that we're constantly evolving what these terms mean. It's like kitchen table Polyamory and that comic that it was in,

it's only from like a decade ago, right? A decade and a bit.

So these terms are constantly evolving. Mean something different all the time, and you need to see what the person who you're chatting with means by it.

So it's about what things mean to you, whether they feel authentically right to you, and whether you and the person you're chatting with mean the term the same way, and hear the term the same way. And a lot of these terms are somewhat context dependent and somewhat loaded, right? So it's important, when you're using this jargon to make sure that you're on the same page as the person who you're talking to. If it's something that's sort of any heavier, then

I don't know the word,

try to think if any of these aren't context dependent, or aren't sort of context heavy, I think all of them are right, because I used to think that partner wasn't a loaded word, and then I got to the point of chatting with people who I wanted to use different labels with and realize that some people see partner as like a very low level word, whereas I see it as a very like we are committed word. And went, Oh, actually, this is an extremely loaded term, right? So I think everything you have to discuss where people's relative contexts are, and what people think of words, and that's the baseline of Polyamory, right? We have to over communicate from where we assumed we did.

But it's that kind of jargon thing, of being willing to chat a little extra,

of being willing to talk through are you using the word partner the same way I'm using the word partner? Are you willing to talk about new relationship energy and what it means to you, and whether you think we're doing anything a little differently because you think we're in a new relationship energy phase, or do you not believe in that

if you've ever been dating someone who doesn't believe in new relationship energy, but acts like they're in the middle of that phase, it's hilarious.

It's like, this has been my little take on Polyamory jargon and sort of what's in a name about all of these terms, because what's in a name?

Is that you need to talk with people about what they actually mean by these terms. If they use them regularly, some of them have relatively straightforward definitions. I don't think, I think with the exception of people who use metamorph for everyone in their polycule going outward, I've never met people who use metamour in unusual ways beyond that, but with the exception of that, I don't think I've ever met a term that I couldn't find people using in unusual ways that needed some discussion. So remember that you need to actually check that you're using terms the same way and not assume that jargon makes you perfect in group matches for one another, especially when it comes to relationship structure or relationship style, because both of you going Yes, kitchen table, yes, we both want kitchen table. Doesn't mean that you actually want the same thing necessarily. One of you might want to play board games every Tuesday, and the other one wants a quad. So like check in, figure it out, and see whether or not you want the same thing going forward from your particular relationships, and whether that means something like that structurally, or whether it means checking in on the label partner as you're moving forward. I wish you a lot of joy in your relationships, and I will see you next week for another episode of The Ready for Polyamory podcast. I.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai