"Consent" is an objective and behaviorally identifiable fact.

“Ethical” is hard to define and subjective, especially when applied to a diverse group of folks.

It’s very common for people to worry that they are doing nonmonogamy “wrong” by some set of outside standards.

Recently, when I asked my audience what they wanted to know about nonmonogamy, an interesting question came up: Why do I use the term consensual nonmonogamy (CNM) when many people use ethical nonmonogamy (ENM) instead?

ENM and CNM mean essentially the same thing. They’re both umbrella terms that describe any relationship where partners agree, with informed consent, to have multiple romantic and/or sexual relationships. A huge range of relationship styles fit under this umbrella—everything from swinging, monogamish relationships, and open relationships that don’t involve romance to relationship anarchy, solo polyamory, and more.

Whether you use ENM or CNM, nobody is really going to be confused. If you don’t want to geek out on details of the language, you don’t have to, and I won’t argue with anyone who wants to use a different term than I choose. That said, there are subtle differences between the two terms, and contextual reasons why you might want to use one or the other.

Many........

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