Your Compass

Ethical non-monogamy (ENM) is an umbrella term for relationships where everyone involved knows about and consents to the possibility of additional romantic or sexual partners. The “ethical” part is doing the load-bearing work: honesty, informed consent, and ongoing communication are what distinguish ENM from cheating, which involves deception.

ENM covers a wide range of specific structures — polyamory, open relationships, swinging, relationship anarchy, solo polyamory, and others — each with its own conventions. What they share is the rejection of compulsory sexual or romantic exclusivity as a precondition for a serious relationship.

The simplest distinction: ENM is consensual, cheating is not. In ENM, all partners know that non-exclusivity is on the table and have agreed (explicitly or implicitly) to whatever the actual arrangement is. In cheating, one or more partners are operating under the assumption of exclusivity that another partner has violated.

ENM is not “cheating with permission” — the permission is part of the structure, not a workaround. Healthy ENM relationships typically involve ongoing conversation about needs, boundaries, and how new connections are introduced.

These terms overlap but emphasise different things. “Polyamory” — literally “many loves” — emphasises the possibility of multiple romantic relationships, often with emotional depth and long-term partnership potential. “Open relationship” is broader and is often used when a couple has an existing primary partnership and allows additional sexual (and sometimes romantic) connections.

In practice, the line is blurry and people use the terms differently. What matters is what your specific agreement actually is, not which label you pick.

“Kitchen-table polyamory” describes a network where all partners (and metamours — your partners’ other partners) could comfortably share a meal together. There’s friendship or at least warmth across the whole network, and people are part of each other’s everyday lives.

“Parallel polyamory” is the opposite end: partners know each other exists but don’t interact. Each relationship runs in its own lane. Many people prefer this because it preserves autonomy and reduces logistical complexity. Neither is more “evolved” — they’re different temperaments.

Most real networks are somewhere on the spectrum between these two.

Solo polyamory is a style where you prioritise your own autonomy, identity, and independent life, rather than forming a primary partnership that would entangle your finances, housing, or major life decisions. You may have multiple deep, committed relationships, but you don’t see any of them as “your other half”.

Solo poly is not the same as casual dating. People who practice it often have years-long, profound relationships — they just don’t merge lives. It’s about how you structure your life, not how intense your connections are.

Relationship anarchy (RA) rejects the idea that different types of relationships (romantic, sexual, platonic, family) should be ranked or follow prescribed scripts. Each relationship is what the people in it make it — there’s no automatic “boyfriend therefore X” or “best friend therefore Y” hierarchy.

In practice this means RA practitioners often don’t treat the romantic-vs-platonic distinction as load-bearing, and they consciously decide which commitments and intimacies each relationship contains, rather than inheriting them from cultural defaults.

The quiz asks 33 scenario-based questions split across three axes — Entwinement, Structure, and Connection — plus a few bonus questions for compatibility flavour. For each scenario you rate how well it fits you on a 1–5 scale.

When you submit, the tool averages your ratings within each axis and rescales them to a 1–10 score. Your three scores plot a point on a radar chart, and you’re given a profile band per axis plus practical compatibility notes.

Nothing is stored. Your answers and results never leave your browser.

Entwinement measures how interconnected you want your relationships to be with each other. Low scorers prefer parallel or compartmentalised structures; high scorers want kitchen-table or family-style networks.

Structure measures how much explicit agreement and predictability you want. Low scorers like emergent, fluid arrangements; high scorers prefer clearly-defined agreements and shared protocols.

Connection measures the kind of intimacy you seek. Low scorers prefer independence and lighter ties; high scorers want deep emotional interweaving across partners.

The axes are designed to be independent — you can be high on one and low on another without contradiction. See /methodology for the full framework.

No. The quiz runs entirely in your browser. Answers and results are computed locally and never transmitted to any server. We don’t even know what answers you gave — we couldn’t show them to you again if you wanted us to.

If you want to keep a record, screenshot your results. We don’t run ads or trackers on the quiz pages either. See /privacy for the full breakdown.

Right now, no — because nothing is stored, there’s no link to share. You can screenshot the results page and share that. A proper share-link feature might come later but would mean storing results somewhere, which has obvious tradeoffs we’d want to think through carefully first.

There’s no quick answer. Some honest questions to sit with: Are you drawn to ENM because of unmet needs in your current relationship, or out of genuine interest in the structure? How do you actually feel — not how you think you should feel — about the idea of a partner having a deep romantic connection with someone else? Do you have the time, emotional bandwidth, and communication skills that multiple meaningful relationships require?

ENM is not a hack for monogamy that isn’t working, and it’s not for everyone. The Psychology Today resource we link is a good companion piece to this question.

There’s no formula, but a few principles help. Bring it up as an exploration, not an ultimatum. Start with curiosity about how you each think about exclusivity, rather than leading with “I want X”. Give your partner real time to react — initial reactions are not final answers, and people often need weeks or months to think through something this big.

Resources like Jessica Fern’s Polysecure and Multiamory’s beginners’ content (linked from /resources) cover this in detail.

Consent in ENM has the same definition as in any other context: enthusiastic, informed, freely given, ongoing, and revocable. Three specific ENM extensions:

1. Informed consent: partners should know enough about the actual structure to consent to it — vague “open relationship” without specifics often isn’t real informed consent.
2. Ongoing consent: agreements made early often need renegotiation as relationships evolve. What was OK a year ago may not be OK now, and that’s normal.
3. Sexual health: more partners means more shared exposure. Regular testing, honest communication about other partners’ status, and clear barrier-method agreements are non-negotiable.

Jealousy is normal in ENM, and the assumption that “real” ENM practitioners don’t feel it is unhelpful. The question isn’t whether you’ll experience jealousy — most people do — but what you do with it.

Useful frame: jealousy is usually a signal that some underlying need isn’t being met (security, attention, time, predictability). Treating it as information rather than an emergency makes it easier to communicate constructively. Jessica Fern’s attachment-based approach (in our resources) is one of the better frameworks for working with these feelings.

ENM Compass is an independent project — see /about for the full backstory. We’re not a clinical resource, dating app, or organisation. The three-axis framework is the author’s own synthesis of community vocabulary and published frameworks (notably Jessica Fern’s Polysecure and Elisabeth Sheff’s research), not a peer-reviewed academic instrument.

If you have feedback, corrections, or want to suggest a resource, contact details are on /about.