I made a list of relationship-related vocabulary and definitions. I hope to provide you with terms to help navigate and express your understanding of various aspects of relationships, gender, and sexuality. This kind of vocabulary is essential for fostering inclusive and respectful conversations about these topics.
When you step outside of cishet-amatonormativity, or even just off the relationship escalator, you need more language than is typically used to express the variety of things that could be happening.
Language, as a result, becomes more functional when it is descriptive rather than prescriptive.
When approaching the world through queer theory, identity is about resonance. Instead of having to validate an identity by adhering to the definition of it, it becomes important to recognize that we are all people and that we all exhibit varied behaviors.
There is no need to prove you are straight or gay. And no one really has the ability to deny you your internal reality, regardless of what your external dynamics look like. What you are interested in isn’t always fully encapsulated by who people link you to. And who you want to be, understand yourself to be, and discover yourself to be are living conversations between your internal and external realities.
In a cisheteronormative paradigm, traditionally one AFAB person and one AMAB person pair up (or are paired up) and find themselves traveling up what we, thanks to Amy Gahran, now refer to as the relationship escalator.
There were phases and milestones that they were expected to reach together.
Some of the milestones were considered to be sacred, such as marriage, which besides being an entity-defining contract recognized by the government, was also a sacrament and a rite of passage. Various rules and agreements were made or expected to be made leading up to and after each milestone. Without a relationship escalator and a model for what is healthy and correct, it becomes each individual’s responsibility to learn and decide for themselves what is right for them and their relationship and when. It is important to decide for yourself what things to pursue and what boundaries and agreements need to be made and maintained to be the signposts for healthiness in ourselves, in any given dynamic, and in the community.
Terms Describing Internal Experiences of Others, Dynamic, and Self:
Emotional Attraction: The capacity that evokes the desire to engage in emotionally intimate behaviors such as sharing, confiding, and trusting. To experience life emotionally alongside them.
Emotional Curiosity: the experience of a desire to understand the emotional world of an individual, whether directly or indirectly. (Note: a child who grows up with emotionally available parents typically inherits a healthy relationship with the emotions their parents have, accepting and healthy relationships with. And potentially, a relatively positive experience of their own emotional world and attachments).
Emotional Availability: The capacity of an individual to emotionally connect with another. In a relationship, the ability of two people to share a healthy emotional connection. Informs the emotional and unified qualities of a relationship.
Emotional Unavailability: The patterns of difficulty one experiences getting close to others, practicing emotional vulnerability, committing, and connecting on a deeper, more intimate level. Engenders feelings of emotional distance, disconnection, loneliness/isolation related to the experience of the unavailable party.
Emotional Intelligence(EI): The ability to manage and understand both your own emotions and the emotions of people around you. There are five key elements to EI: self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, and social skills.
Physical Attraction: the personal experience that evokes the desire to engage sensually with another person. A desire to experience touch, hugs, kisses, cuddling, roughhousing, play-fighting, nibbles, cute aggression, etc. To smell, touch, taste, hear, or see them. It could involve sexual arousal, but it might not at all.
Physical Curiosity: the experience of a desire to understand the physical experience of an individual, whether directly or indirectly. It can include sexual curiosities.
Physical Availability: The capacity of an individual to connect physically with others. This is determined by many factors, such as their interest in touch, their experience of trauma and pleasure (physical or emotional), their energy levels, distance, knowledge and skills (e.g., someone doesn’t know how to hold a baby), social norms, and commitments (both sexual and nonsexual).
Romantic Attraction: an experience that evokes the desire to engage in romantically intimate behaviors such as courtship, emotional bonding, intimate companionship, romantic relationships, and marriage.
Romantic Curiosity: the experience of a desire to understand the romantic capacities, qualities, interests, and history of an individual, whether directly or indirectly.
Romantic Availability: The capacity of an individual to romantically connect with another. The ability of two or more people to share a satisfying romantic connection.
Romantic Unavailability: A pattern of difficulty practicing vulnerability, establishing commitment, and connecting on a deeper, more intimate level in a romantic context. This could also be an inability to do those things or an aversion to them. A person who is polysaturated may be emotionally available as a friend but not as a romantic partner, for example.
Sexual Attraction: the personal experience that evokes the desire to engage in sexually intimate behaviors. A desire to experience others erotically and to pleasure or be pleasured by them in sexually intimate ways. Sexual arousal might increase with the intensity of the attraction.
Sexual Curiosity: the experience of a desire to understand the sexual capacities, interests, and history of an individual, whether directly or indirectly.
Sexual Availability: The capacity of an individual to connect sexually with others. This is determined by many factors, such as their interest in sex or a given individual, their energy levels, and commitments (both sexual and nonsexual). When people are “fuck-zoned,” they are talking about a relationship having its potential for sexual availability as the priority or one of the highest priorities.
Sexual Unavailability: The circumstances that create difficulty or prevent sexuality from being possible, attractive, pleasurable, or healthy in a dynamic. If you have not received consent, or consent has been rescinded, someone should be treated as sexually unavailable unless consent is willingly and enthusiastically offered. Sexual unavailability can be tied to emotions, commitments, beliefs/values/ideology, social consequences, health, or numerous other reasons. When people refer to being friend-zoned, they are talking about the determination of sexual unavailability as the general rule of a given dynamic. For yours and others’ well-being, it is generally safer not to sexually engage with those who are conflicted about their sexual availability.
Sexual Awareness: Personal sexual experience. This includes personal understandings of our own erotic energies. Our sexual self-awareness includes an understanding of our pleasure and preferences, attractions and aversions, and as a result, our boundaries, as well as which agreements we need for healthy experiences. Sexual awareness and emotional intelligence inform our capacity to communicate our sexual awareness to others.
Theory of Love: Referencing any number of theories that help us understand how we engage with love in our relationships. Attachment theory and the Triangular Theory of Love are two such examples. Languages can create cultural experiences of love and intimacy as well, i.e., Greek describes love with multiple words: Storge, Agape, Eros, Pragma, Philia, Ludus, Philautia.
NRE: New Relationship Energy describes the emotional experience of the neurochemical cocktail we associate with feelings of passion and falling in love.
Agape: Greek. Originally, agape referred to familial or spousal affection without a romantic or sexual connotation. Christianity uses it to refer to God’s perfect love. A love that will be given whether or not it is returned. A love that is not egoic in its locus. Buddhism might use this term to describe foundational loving kindness for all beings. If one were to look at all of reality as divine, as pantheistic monism might suggest, then agape would be the love of reality itself (from reality and towards reality), and acting on it would be in turn a meditation on our oneness. This love does not require familiarity.
Eros: Greek. Sexual, erotic, and/or passionate love. In contrast to Agape’s paradoxical selflessness and oneness, eros is primarily egoic in its locus and is focused on attachment to the potential for pleasure and excitement to be found in sexual/romantic/erotic attractions.
Philia: Greek. Brotherly love. The love one might feel for friends and family. The profound sense of goodwill one has towards those they care for. The focus is not the pleasure to be extracted but the goodwill to be shared.
Pragma: Greek. Love with an emphasis on the characteristics of companionship, commitment, and endurance. A love with shared hopes, values, and goals.
Storge: Greek. The love of family. As with parent to child or between siblings. Carries the qualities of caretaking, selflessness, provision, and protection. Sacrifice and acceptance. The love that provides a “safe haven.” Dependent on familiarity.
Ludus: Greek. Playful love. Associated with feelings of levity and excitement. Liable to dissipate in the face of difficulty or complication. Can persist with intentional cultivation by both parties.
Philautia: Greek. Self-love. Greeks deemed this a prerequisite for coherently loving others. The healthy, necessary experience of love of one’s self that makes it possible to give and receive love from other people without self-deception or hypocrisy. [The self-worth, confidence, and self-esteem that are necessary for self-actualization and the cognitive empathy to understand boundaries and agreements as positives. The integrity to facilitate honest interactions with the self so as not to feel entitled to manipulating others with deceptions we ourselves would not appreciate. A sense of one’s purpose, a personal capacity for fulfillment and meaning. Self-compassion. Allows for solitude to be positive and therefore time apart and space to be positive as well. The capacity to cultivate the accountability, safety, resilience, healing, and growth that allow us to contribute positively in community without the need to oppress, abuse, or dominate others to have our needs met. The self-trust that affords the ability to trust others.]
Terms Describing Sexual & Romantic Norms within Social Constructs:
Allonormativity: The presumption of individuals, communities, and the collective that all human beings are sexual.
Amatonormativity: The presumption of individuals, communities, and the collective that all human beings seek romantic connection/partnership.
Heteronormativity: The presumption of individuals, communities, and the collective that everyone is straight, in a straight relationship, or wants to be straight. [The rejection of gay marriage by straight people]
Cishet-amatonormativity: The presumption that cisgendered, heterosexual, amatonormative, allosexuality is the moral, correct, and most desirable way of being. It is effectively a sex and gender umbrella from which the conservative and traditional social scripts are derived. It represses authentic experiences, moralizes sexuality, and oppresses those who deviate from what are projected to be the human biological imperatives of sex and gender. [In queer communities, we can see the effects when relationships among queer people are held to normative standards. Monosexual individuals might experience anxiety, frustration, and invalidation on account of a partner’s capacity to find multiple genders attractive.]
Relationship Escalator: Defined by Amy Gahran as the collection of expected behaviors and choices that must be followed in order for a relationship to be seen as legitimate. [These expectations change and shift as norms do. What is acceptable in one community may be forbidden in another.]
Terms Describing Sexual and Romantic Orientations and Experiences:
Allosexual: desiring to have sex with other people.
Alloromantic: desiring romantic connections with other people.
Asexual: no sexual attraction or sexual desire for other people. They may experience romantic interest and desire. Or sexual desire without attraction or sexual attraction without desire. They may experience other forms of attraction.
Androgyny: the quality or state of being neither specifically feminine nor masculine: the combination of feminine and masculine characteristics: the quality or state of being androgynous.
Bisexual: describes an experience of being sexually attracted to both people of the same gender and people from other genders.
Ceterosexual: describes a person whose gender is nonbinary and who is sexually attracted to nonbinary people. Some ceterosexual people describe themselves as “diamoric.”
Ceteroromantic: also sometimes referred to as skolioromantic, is a romantic orientation where a person is romantically attracted to non-binary genders.
Greysexual: also referred to as “grey-asexual,” this refers to a person who feels sexual attraction very infrequently.
Gray-romantic: individuals who do not often experience romantic attraction.
Heterosexual: Within the concept of the gender binary, experiences attraction to individuals of the opposite sex. This term, originated in the 1800s, as a description of someone who had an obsession with the opposite sex to the degree that it was almost a form of deviance. It was coined by Hungarian Journalist Károly Mária Kertbeny in 1869. People historically were not considered straight or gay; rather, they mostly engaged in acceptable or unacceptable sexual behaviors. Sexologists at the end of the 1800s started using the term. In 1923, it was defined by Merriam-Webster Dictionary as “morbid sexual passion for one of the opposite sex.” By 1934, the definition shifted and encompassed “normal“ non-queer sexuality. The term “heterosexuality” did not become mainstream until the 1960s. The term straight itself seemingly arises out of queer culture, as a reference to “being on the straight and narrow” after ceasing queer behavior.
Homosexual: Experiences attraction to individuals of the same sex. This term originated in the 1800s as a description of someone who had a preference for sexual encounters with individuals of the same sex. It too has a loaded history but is generally avoided now, as it is associated with being “clinical, distancing, and archaic.” It may also not accurately represent the orientation of the individuals described. It may have originated in Germany in 1868 or with Hungarian Journalist Károly Mária Kertbeny in 1869.
Aromantic: no romantic attraction or romantic desire for other people. They may experience sexual interest and desire. Or romantic desires without romantic attraction or romantic attraction without romantic desires. They may experience other forms of attraction.
Cupioromantic: A person who desires a romantic relationship but does not feel romantic attraction.
Cupiosexual: A person who desires a sexual relationship but does not feel sexual attraction.
Demisexual: feeling sexual attraction only after an emotional bond. They may experience romantic interest and desire but lack sexual interest absent bonding.
Demiromantic: feeling romantic attraction only after an emotional bond. They may experience sexual interest and desire but lack romantic interest absent bonding.
Lithrosexual: Experiences sexual attraction but does not desire those feelings to be reciprocated or pursued. May still experience romantic attraction.
Lithromantic: Experiences romantic attraction but does not desire those feelings to be reciprocated or pursued. May still experience sexual attraction.
Pansexual/Omnisexual: sexually attracted to many or all genders. May not experience romantic attraction.
Panromantic: romantically attracted to many or all genders. May not experience sexual attraction.
Questioning: describes a person who is unsure about or exploring their sexuality and/or gender.
Gynosexual/Gynesexual: sexually attracted to femininity.
Gynoromantic/gyneromantic: romantically attracted to femininity. Some describe themselves as “sapphic.”
Gynephilia: romantic and/or sexual attraction to femininity. Also sometimes used by TERF and TERF-adjacent people to describe being attracted only to people with a vulva.
Androsexual: sexually attracted to masculinity.
Androromantic: romantically attracted to masculinity. Some describe themselves as “achillean.”
Androphilia: romantic and/or sexual attraction to masculinity.
Monosexual: attracted to one gender. I use this to refer to people who prefer sexually exclusive relationships. In the 19th century, it also referred to someone who masturbates. Coined by Hungarian Journalist Károly Mária Kertbeny
Polyamorous: having or having the capacity for multiple sexual and/or romantic relationships concurrently.
Polyromantic: romantically attracted to many genders, but not necessarily sexually attracted to them.
Polysexual: attracted to many genders. I also use this to refer to people who prefer sexually non-exclusive dynamics.
Relationship Anarchy: An approach to relationships that attempts to dismantle the relationship hierarchy of cishet-amatonormativity. It is aimed at giving individuals the freedom to love who they wish, in ways that suit them. [Can be attractive to individuals who love freedom as well as individuals who resist accountability.]
Hierarchy: a structure, system, or organization in which people or groups are ranked or ordered according to status or authority. [Not inherently problematic, unless we impose hierarchy in oppressive and abusive ways.]
Relationship Hierarchy: an organization of relationships as ranked by their importance, status, or authority within a structure, system, or organization. (ie family ties are more important than friendship) (ie My partner can dictate certain elements of my life) [Not inherently problematic, unless we impose hierarchy in oppressive and abusive ways.]
Non-Hierarchical Relationships: an organization of relationships such that they have no ranking or no fixed rankings. [Frequently this refers to a rejection of social pressures to rank relationships in specific ways. (ie a romantic partner is not more important than a friend) Since humans are naturally biased, “non-hierarchical relationships” have a tendency to expose us to our values and weaknesses. (ie I say that the length of a relationship does not matter, but I’ve noticed NRE causes me to be more spontaneous with the focus of that experience and less responsible about standing commitments)]
Terms that Describe Sex:
Sex: refers to the designations of reproductive counterparts in species that reproduce via meiosis. Sex determines which kind of gametes a creature contributes to reproduction should it be fertile, as well as which changes occur at maturation when a creature reaches sexual maturity. There are many ways to designate sex. In humans, female corresponds to an XX chromosome pairing with males having XY pairings. This is not ubiquitous in nature.
AFAB: assigned female at birth; refers to a person who is biologically female. Describing someone as biologically female is different from describing someone as biologically a woman.
AMAB: assigned male at birth; refers to a person who is biologically male. Describing someone as biologically male is different from describing someone as biologically a man.
SAAB: a designation assigned at birth based on visible genitals; can be male (AMAB), female (AFAB), or intersex. SAAB is preferred over the term “biological sex” when the latter is used harmfully towards transgender people.
Intersex: is a general term used for a variety of situations in which a person is born with reproductive or sexual anatomy that doesn't fit the boxes of “female” or “male.” Sometimes doctors do surgeries on intersex babies and children to make their bodies fit binary ideas of “male” or “female.”
Terms that Describe Gender:
Gender: A construct that provides social scripts for interaction with other members of society, typically associated with social and cultural interpretations of the roles of femininity and masculinity as expressed in or imposed on the participants. Gendered roles in society change from culture to culture and vary in their levels of equity and acceptance. While gender can provide a sense of security about who one is, it can also create distress about who one cannot or must not be, as well as create artificial conflicts when hierarchy is imposed or bigotry internalized.
Agender: describes a person who does not identify with any gender.
Bigender: describes a person who identifies as two or more genders.
Cisgender: describes a person whose gender is the same as their SAAB.
Nonbinary: describes a person who identifies with experiences of gender beyond the gender binary.
Gender Binary: The presumption that gender is not a construct but a biological fact, with only two genders which must be determined by sex.
Gender Expression: how other people interpret a person’s gender based on physical appearance, mannerisms, etc..
Gender Identity: how a person interprets their own gender based on their emotions, personal experiences, etc..
Genderfluid: a gender identity that is fluid between/among more than one gender.
Genderqueer: a gender identity that lies outside of male or female, sometimes without more definition.
Transgender: describes a person who identifies with an experience of gender that is different from their SAAB. It is an umbrella term that people may or may not identify with. Nonbinary people, trans men, trans women, two-spirit people, and other experiences may identify as transgender or trans.
Transsexual: describes a person who transitions sexually from their SAAB. Has some loaded and potentially negative connotations dating back to the 1920s when it was associated with mental illness.
Ally: a person who actively works to end intolerance, educate others, and support social equity for a marginalized group.
I hope this list serves you well. I may post another version of this on my site directly. I plan to follow this up with a list of terms related perhaps to polyamory and kink as well as various worksheets to help people navigate their experiences.