Non-monogamy

For centuries, the Judeo-Christian moral code has defined the official relationship standard in western-society – the monogamous relationship:

• monogamy, an exclusive relationship with one partner.

There are quite a number of variations on the ‘standard’ monogamous relationship. The blanket term is non-monogamy. This phenomenon is also defined as polyamory, in which participants have not one but multiple romantic and/or sexual partners. Forms of non-monogamy include:

• infidelity, in which a person has a sexual ‘affair’ outside of an otherwise monogamous relationship;
• casual relationship, an emotional relationship between two unmarried people who may also have a sexual relationship;
• open marriage, in which one or both members of a committed couple may become sexually active with other partners;
• swinging, several open relationships which are commonly conducted as an organized social activity;
• ménage à trois, a sexual (or sometimes domestic) arrangement involving three people of either sex;
• orgy (also known as, a sexual relationship involving more than two sexual participants at the same time;
• polyfidelity, in which participants have multiple partners but restrict sexual activity to within a certain group;
• polygynandry (also known as a group marriage), in which several people form a single family unit, with all considered to be married to one another;
• polygamy, in which one person in a relationship has married multiple partners;
• polyandry, in which women have multiple husbands;
• polygyny, in which men have multiple wives;
• plural marriage, a form of polygyny associated with the Latter Day Saint movement in the 19th-century and with present-day splinter groups from that faith.