Your metamour is your partner’s partner, while you have nothing with that person yourself. The connection runs entirely through that one shared partner. The word comes from polyamory and is shortened to meta in the scene.

Do you have to meet your metamour?

No, that is never required. Some metamours live together and celebrate Christmas together, others only know each other’s first name, and both forms appear in the literature. What does help is agreeing in advance how much you want to know about each other, because that spares the shared partner a double message.

Who can you turn to with questions about metamours?

With Victor, a gigolo with twenty-five years of BDSM experience and trained as a psychotherapist. He is no one’s metamour himself, but the question of how you arrange something like this with a partner comes up with him often, and he thinks along with you, no obligation. Write him through the contact form or first go chat for free .

Close-up of an open book with a pencil between the pages, in black and white

Glossary

Metamour

The one relationship in this word-field you did not choose yourself and still have to maintain.

What is a metamour?

A metamour is your partner’s partner, someone you have no romantic or sexual relationship with yourself. So the bond exists only through that one shared person. The word belongs in polyamory and other forms of consensual non-monogamy, and it says nothing about whether you like each other.

In the scene	often shortened to meta
Word parts	Greek meta “beyond, transcending” and French amour “beloved”, probably on the model of paramour
Oldest attestation	a post in the newsgroup alt.polyamory, 11 August 2000
Category	a role within polyamory; not to be confused with compersion, which is a feeling
What it does not say	whether there is contact; metamours range from housemates to people who never meet
Where it chafes most	at the veto, because that touches a relationship you have no say in

Where the word metamour comes from

From a newsgroup, and it is younger than most people think. The dictionary entry gives as its oldest attestation a post in alt.polyamory of 11 August 2000, in which someone compares her own metamours with women who are not. The build is a language blend: the Greek meta for “beyond” or “transcending”, stuck onto the French amour, probably formed after paramour. That same dictionary named metamour its word of the day on 28 February 2026, which shows how recent its settling in still is. In Dutch it stays untranslated; the newspaper archive of the Koninklijke Bibliotheek returns zero hits for it.

Why that bond gets attention

Because it is the only relationship in this field you did not pick yourself. You choose your partner; your metamour comes with them.

What is possible there is easily overlooked in research. Brian M. Watson and Sarah Stein Lubrano found in Archives of Sexual Behavior that psychology and sexology have mostly looked at competition between rivals and hardly at cooperation. In the letters and archives of about fifty well-known figures from Western cultural history they found the opposite: metamours who kept each other going materially, socially, and psychologically for years, among them Virginia Woolf, Frida Kahlo, Max Weber, and Victor Hugo.

That it also goes wrong is in the same literature. Jennifer Arter and Sacha Bunge found, among 51 people with experience in consensual non-monogamy, that the dealings between metamours came back as a theme in the downsides and in the upsides. The same bond that carries you through is the bond it breaks down on.

Where this fits on this site

I work with women who sometimes have a partner and sometimes do not, and with couples. In that picture I am no metamour; what I do has a beginning and an end. What it does resemble is the question that comes first: who knows about it, and what you agree with that person. How that conversation goes is on the page about the BDSM date.

Sources

“Storming then Performing”: Historical Non-Monogamy and Metamour Collaboration. Brian M. Watson & Sarah Stein Lubrano, Archives of Sexual Behavior 50(4), 1225-1238, 2021 (DOI 10.1007/s10508-021-01926-9; authors, volume, and pagination checked against Crossref, PMID verified separately at PubMed). Only the abstract is free to read. Supplies the study of biographies, letters, and archives of about fifty well-known figures from Western history, among them Virginia Woolf, Frida Kahlo, Max Weber, Edna St. Vincent Millay, William Moulton Marston, Erwin Schrödinger, and Victor Hugo; the finding that earlier psychological and sexological research aimed mostly at competitive behavior between rivals and hardly at cooperative behavior; and the discovery of many examples in which metamours supported each other materially, socially, and psychologically.
Perceived Impacts of Partners’ Other Relationships on Oneself in Consensual Nonmonogamy. Jennifer Arter & Sacha S. Bunge, Archives of Sexual Behavior 53(4), 1415-1429, 2024 (DOI 10.1007/s10508-024-02823-7, open access; authors checked against Crossref, PMID verified separately). Supplies the semi-structured interviews with 51 people who practice consensual non-monogamy, and the finding that the interaction between metamours comes back in the downsides (difficulties or conflict between metamours) and in the upsides (pleasant or useful relationships and dealings between metamours).
metamour. Wiktionary, entry retrieved on 10 August 2026. Supplies the meaning “the partner of your partner, with whom you are not directly involved yourself”, the word formation from meta- and amour with likely influence from paramour, the alternative form metamor and the abbreviation meta, the oldest cited attestation in the newsgroup alt.polyamory of 11 August 2000, the status as word of the day on 28 February 2026, and the fact that Dutch takes the word over untranslated.
Newspaper archive of the Koninklijke Bibliotheek, queried via the SRU service on the newspaper-article collection, 10 August 2026. Metamour and metamours each return zero articles, which confirms the word never reached the Dutch newspapers.

A metamour is a role within polyamory, the relationship form where several romantic relationships exist side by side with everyone’s knowledge.

Compersion. The feeling people hope to have about what their partner shares with a metamour.
Veto. The agreement that shows most sharply what a metamour does and does not get a say in.
NRE. The new-relationship high that most often puts the bond between metamours on edge.
Non-monogamist. The broader word for anyone who makes this kind of arrangement.
Monogamy. The form in which the word metamour has no meaning.
Hotwifing. An arrangement where the third person usually does not become a metamour.

Frequently asked questions

What people still ask about metamours.

What is a metamour?
Your metamour is your partner’s partner, while you have nothing with that person yourself. The connection runs entirely through that one shared partner. The word comes from polyamory and is shortened to meta in the scene.
Do you have to meet your metamour?
No, that is never required. Some metamours live together and celebrate Christmas together, others only know each other’s first name, and both forms appear in the literature. What does help is agreeing in advance how much you want to know about each other, because that spares the shared partner a double message.
Who can you turn to with questions about metamours?
With Victor, a gigolo with twenty-five years of BDSM experience and trained as a psychotherapist. He is no one’s metamour himself, but the question of how you arrange something like this with a partner comes up with him often, and he thinks along with you, no obligation. Write him through the contact form or first go chat for free.

Learn more

Still have questions about metamours?

I'm Victor. What people ask about this rarely is about the word and almost always about what you agree with the other person. I'm glad to think along with that, even if you never book anything with me.

Closing CTA on /term/metamour, rendered by GlossaryTerm.astro as the last block on the page. Pairs with the final FAQ item 03-learn-more-about-metamour.md. Built on this page’s own axis, the relationship nobody chose, and deliberately worded away from /en/term/compersion/cta.md, /en/term/polyamory/cta.md and /en/term/veto/cta.md. This body text is never rendered.

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