#5 Orientations and Choices Primer: Gender, Sexuality, Romantic, and Relationship Structures

This article also inspired me to post a series discussing the basic differences between gender, sexual orientation, romantic orientation, and relationship structures. As followers may have noticed, I try to post things related to all non-cishetmono communities, and through keeping abreast of all these facets I’m noticing that belonging to one non-mainstream group doesn’t guarantee any understanding of other non-mainstream groups. So, I’m going to take a crack at defining the different facets of human existence in western society.

What are the flavors of…Relationship Structures

Finally! Back to explicitly polyamory!

Right now would be a good time to review the article I started #0A with and have reposted for every weekly series post. I started this whole attempt at defining things because someone suggested that how people do relationships should be a sexual orientation. Hopefully after reading #2 in this series and my last series on sex, it’s apparent why polyamory is not a sexual orientation: intimate relationships are not based purely or even primarily on sex.

That said, it could be called an orientation, possibly. Some people are wired monogamous, some are wired polyamorous, and some float around in the grey areas, caring or not caring about open or closed or how many people they or their partner(s) form what kinds of relationships with. Defining polyamory as a Relationship Orientation might be valid if we can acknowledge the fluidity and customization of relationship structures by their participants, and if we can continue shaking off the monogamy-normative narratives of relationships such as “sex is important” and “cheating is the only other option.”