I just learned a new acronym....

[+ Charlie]

CNM, for "consensual nonmonogramy." It turned up in an "Ask Amy" column in the LA Times, in which Amy was responding to a worried mother who learned that her son and daughter-in-law were openly engaging in sexual relationships with other people. And here my spouse and I were practicing it all these years without realizing it had a name! Now I can simplify things by explaining that I am LGBTQ in a CNM relationship.

[+ MysticMenace]

interesting term. are there situations when nonmonogamy is not consensual? am pretty dumb with this stuff, but would the folks involved in this nonmonogamous relationship have consented to whatever structure is being established?

[+ Charlie]

Well, I would say that any sex outside of a relationship which one of the partners in the relationship didn't consent to would be NCNM (often branded as "adultery" by those who object to CNM).

[+ MysticMenace]

gotcha. for some reason I think of infidelity as something that exists regardless of the relationship structure. so is the 'consensual' part of this the guarantee that nobody in the nonmonogamous relationship steps out the confines of said relationship without consent from all parties involved? I guess my ignorant understanding of the nonmonogamy is that consensus would already be baked into defining and establishing the relationship vs. the consensus being revisited at every instance of potential infidelity.

 

maybe Im just in need of food - am not thinking straight (or gay).

[orville]

I think people have been calling it "open-relationship" and "the lifestyle" for a long while.

CNM might be a term to dress this old practice in some veil of PC.