Relationships & Family

Adam4Adam

Adam4Adam (A4A) is one of the oldest continuously running gay dating and social platforms, launched in 2003 as a free site for men seeking men.

Attachment

Attachment refers to the emotional bonds people form with one another, a concept queer communities often extend to chosen family and community networks.

Beard

A beard is a person, often a woman, who enters a visible relationship with a gay or closeted partner to create the appearance of heterosexuality.

Catfishing

Catfishing is the use of a fake online identity to deceive someone into a relationship or connection under false pretenses.

Chosen Family

Chosen family refers to the close, family-like bonds LGBTQ+ people intentionally form with friends and loved ones who are not related by blood or law.

Chosen Famliy

Chosen family is the network of friends, partners, and mentors who provide love and support to LGBTQ+ people, functioning as family regardless of blood or legal ties.

Co-Parent Adoption

Co-parent adoption, also called second-parent adoption, lets a non-biological parent legally adopt their partner's child without ending the first parent's rights.

Compersion

Compersion is the feeling of joy that comes from seeing a partner or loved one find happiness or love with someone else.

Confirmatory Adoption

A confirmatory adoption is a streamlined legal process that confirms, rather than creates, an existing parent's relationship to their child, often used by LGBTQ+ families to lock in parental rights.

Constellation

In polyamory, a constellation is the full web of people connected through a network of non-monogamous relationships.

Crush

A crush is a strong, often short-lived feeling of romantic or sexual attraction toward someone.

DINK (Dual Income, No Kids)

DINK stands for dual income, no kids, describing a couple where both partners earn money and have no children.

FWB

FWB stands for "friends with benefits," a relationship where two people who are friends also have a sexual connection without romantic commitment.

Gayby

Gayby is an informal, affectionate term for a baby or child raised by a gay, lesbian, or otherwise LGBTQ+ parent or couple.

Guncle

Guncle is an affectionate blend of "gay" and "uncle" for a gay man in the role of uncle to nieces, nephews, or the children of friends and family.

Hookup

A hookup is a casual sexual encounter between people who are not in a committed relationship.

Intimacy

Intimacy is the closeness, vulnerability, and deep connection between people, spanning emotional, physical, romantic, and sexual bonds.

Lavender Marriage

A lavender marriage is a mixed-orientation marriage of convenience between a man and a woman, entered to conceal one or both partners' queer sexual orientation.

Lesbian Bed Death (LBD)

Lesbian bed death is a contested concept, drawn from 1983 research, claiming that lesbian couples in long-term relationships have sex less often than other couples.

Lesly

A free dating and social app built for lesbian, bisexual, and queer women.

Lex

A text-first dating and social app for LGBTQ+ people, inspired by the printed personal ads of old queer magazines.

Life Partner

A life partner is someone in a committed, long-term romantic relationship, a term valued for signaling permanence without depending on legal marriage.

Looking

In gay dating culture, 'looking' signals that someone is actively seeking a sexual or romantic connection; it is also the title of HBO's 2014 to 2016 series about gay men in San Francisco.

Love

A fundamental human bond of affection and attachment that LGBTQ+ people have claimed, celebrated, and fought to have recognized across history and cultures.

Marriage

Marriage is a legally or ceremonially recognized union between people, and its extension to same-sex couples was a defining LGBTQ+ civil rights fight.

Metamour

A metamour is your partner's other partner, someone you are connected to through a shared partner but are not romantically or sexually involved with yourself.

Monogamish

Monogamish describes a relationship that is mostly monogamous but allows occasional sexual contact with others, usually by mutual agreement.

Monogamy

Monogamy is a relationship structure in which a person has one romantic or sexual partner at a time, with an expectation of mutual exclusivity.

Nesting Partner

A nesting partner is a partner you live with and share a home and daily life with, a term common in polyamorous and non-monogamous relationships.

NSA

NSA stands for "no strings attached," a shorthand for a sexual or intimate connection with no expectation of romance, commitment, or an ongoing relationship.

Open Relationship

An open relationship is a consensual arrangement in which partners agree that one or both may have sexual, and sometimes romantic, connections with other people.

Parnter

A common misspelling of 'partner,' a gender-neutral term for a romantic or domestic companion.

Passion

Intense emotional and erotic feeling, long celebrated as a driving force in queer love, art, and activism.

Pink Cupid

PinkCupid is a dating app and website for lesbian and queer women, part of the Cupid Media network.

Platonic Life Partnership

A platonic life partnership is a committed, long-term primary partnership between people who are not romantically or sexually involved.

Polyamorous / Polyamory / Poly

Polyamory is the practice of having more than one romantic or sexual relationship at the same time, with the knowledge and consent of everyone involved.

Polycule

A polycule is the connected network of people linked through their polyamorous relationships.

Queer Platonic Partnership (QPP)

A committed, deeply intimate partnership that goes beyond conventional friendship without being romantic or sexual in the traditional sense.

Queer Platonic Relationship (QPR)

A committed, intimate relationship that deliberately falls outside the usual boundaries of both friendship and romance.

Queerplatonic Relationships

Committed, intimate relationships that live in the space between deep friendship and conventional romance, without needing to be sexual or romantic.

Rainbow Family

A rainbow family is a family in which at least one parent is lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or queer.

Relationship Anarchy

Relationship anarchy is an approach to relationships that rejects fixed hierarchies and lets each connection be defined by the people in it rather than by social rules.

Situationship

A situationship is a romantic or sexual relationship that the people in it have not formally defined or committed to.

SO (Significant Other)

SO stands for significant other, a gender-neutral way to refer to a romantic or life partner without specifying anyone's gender.

Sugar Baby

A sugar baby is a person, often younger, who receives money, gifts, or other support from a wealthier partner in exchange for companionship or intimacy.

Sugar Daddy

A sugar daddy is a wealthier, usually older man who provides financial support or gifts to a younger partner in exchange for companionship, romance, or intimacy.

Sugar Mommy

A sugar mommy is a wealthier, usually older woman who provides financial support or gifts to a younger partner in a sugar dating arrangement.

T4T

T4T, short for "trans for trans," describes romantic, sexual, or community relationships that trans people build with one another.

Throuple

A throuple is a committed romantic relationship between three people, each sharing emotional and often sexual connections with the other two.

Unicorn

In polyamorous contexts, a unicorn is a single person, often a bisexual woman, who is open to joining an existing couple as a third partner.

Zucchini

Zucchini is a playful community term for a queerplatonic partner, someone you share a deeply committed relationship with outside romantic or sexual frames.