Am I a Swinger, Polyamorous or Open?

Discovering my non monogamous relationship style

Photo by Marvin Meyer on Unsplash

When we first started, my husband and I simply defined our non monogamous relationship as “open”. To us this meant we were okay with having sex with other people but we didn’t define it further. It was only recently that I read a definition that is more descriptive of our type of non monogamy. We apparently practice “parallel non monogamy”. This type of non monogamy means that we are both aware of and open about our relationships with others, but our two worlds don’t intersect. He and I have a relationship. And he has a relationships with others. And I have relationships with others. But together we don’t have relationships with each other’s others.

There are 7 widely- accepted variations on non monogamy — polyamory, swinging, polyamory, hierarchical polyamory, polyfidelity, monogamish, relationship anarchy and open. But just to be sure, most people add an 8th kind of non monogamy, the “Everything in Between” variety.

But, that “Everything in Between” category is so broad and there are so many ways of being non monogamous, that a guy called Franklin Veaux created a detailed Venn diagram of all the variations of non monogamy. (If you’re interested in studying this diagram the updated 2020 version can be found here. It’s actually a super cool visual…