Metamour Day

More recently among the polyamorous community, a new holiday has been specifically created to recognize not the object of our affection, but rather that of our partner’s object of affection, namely one’s metamour. For those unfamiliar with the term, “A metamour is the term for a partner’s partner.” Eli Sheff further adds, “As friends or chosen family members, metamours are linked through a polyamorous relationship but are not in a romantic relationship with each other. Rather, they are members of the same polycule (a family/small network of people united around a shared polyamorous relationship, not all of whom are lovers but share lovers in common) and hang out together to various degrees.” In recognition of these unique connections, Metamour Day was created in 2019 by the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom (NCSF: a non-profit organization dedicated to consensual sexual freedom and focuses especially on consensual non-monogamies and kink/BDSM), designating February 28 (14 x 2) as the day in question. However, the idea dates a few years earlier; Positively PolyAnna notes that in 2017, she dreamed of such a holiday and bought the URLs MetamourDay.com and WorldMetamourDay.com in anticipation of her dream. Moreover, Dr. Sheff, who has been studying polyamorous families with kids for more than 20 years, has found “that the metamour relationships make or break the family over the long term. These emotionally intimate, non-sexual chosen family relationships are so important in polyamorous families that I made up the word polyaffective to describe them.” Yet, as NCSF notes, Metamour Day “is not about forced compersion. Rather, “by promoting Metamour Day, NCSF hopes “to foster positive relationships between you and your metamours, whatever that might look like.“