Relationship anarchy is a relational philosophy and practice that rejects the idea that relationships should be organized by hierarchy, category, or social scripts. Relationship anarchists build connections according to the internal logic of each relationship, without ranking romantic love above friendship, without assuming that longevity equals depth, and without following a predetermined escalation toward cohabitation or legal partnership. The term was coined by Swedish writer Andie Nordgren in a 2006 pamphlet.
Relationship anarchy is sometimes misunderstood as simply being non-committal or resistant to closeness. The opposite is closer to the truth. Relationship anarchists often have deeply committed relationships. What they reject is not commitment, but the external scaffolding that conventional culture uses to determine which relationships count and how much.
In practice, this means that a relationship anarchist might have a person they have known for fifteen years, share a home with, and would call in an emergency, who is not technically a "partner" in the romantic sense. It means they might have a close friendship that is more intimate and more important to their daily life than their ostensibly romantic connections. The point is that the relationship itself, and the people inside it, get to define what it is rather than having a category assigned to it from the outside.
One of the more distinctive features of relationship anarchy is the explicit rejection of the relationship escalator. Most conventional relationships are expected to move in a particular direction: dating, exclusivity, cohabitation, possibly marriage or children. Relationship anarchists question whether that trajectory is meaningful or necessary, and often decline to follow it even in relationships that are deeply important to them.
What relationship anarchy requires, practically, is strong communication and a willingness to define things explicitly that most people leave implicit. Without the shared understanding that comes from conventional relationship structures, everything has to be talked about. That is both the challenge and the appeal.
Relationship anarchy is sometimes conflated with polyamory, but they are distinct. Polyamory describes having multiple romantic relationships; relationship anarchy describes how relationships are structured and valued. A relationship anarchist may have many connections or very few. They may or may not identify as polyamorous. The two often overlap but are not synonymous.
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definition contributed by Tessakin