Polyamory 101: Terms Everyone Gets Wrong

Polyamory has its own vocabulary, and a lot of people encounter these terms secondhand, slightly garbled, before ever hearing an actual definition. Here's a plain glossary.

• Metamour: your partner's partner. Not your partner, not a rival, just a specific relationship category with its own etiquette.

• Nesting partner: a partner you live with or share a household with, often but not always considered a primary relationship.

• Hierarchy: a structure where some relationships are explicitly prioritized over others, often with a primary partner and secondary partners.

• Non-hierarchical: a structure that avoids ranking relationships by importance, treating each connection on its own terms instead.

• Kitchen table polyamory: a style where metamours are expected to know each other and coexist comfortably, sometimes literally sharing a kitchen table.

• Parallel polyamory: the opposite approach, where partners' other relationships stay mostly separate, with little to no direct contact between metamours.

• New relationship energy (NRE): the early, intense infatuation phase of a new relationship, which poly communities talk about openly because it can affect existing relationships too.

None of these terms are mandatory vocabulary. They exist because poly communities needed language for things monogamy never had to name. Knowing them just makes it easier to understand what someone means when they use them.

Velvet Rabbit's profiles let poly members describe their actual relationship structure in plain terms, instead of compressing it into a bio nobody has room to explain.