Relational Alignment

Relational Alignment or Relationality is a category of terms that describe the number of individuals one wants to be in a relationship with/be married to at the same time. The most commonly known relational alignments are polyamorous and monogamous.

Typically, relational alignment labels use the suffix "-amorous/-amory" or "-gamous/-gamy". For example, polyamory, monogamy, and ambiamory, are all examples of relational alignments. However, other labels that do not use the these suffixes, such as fidelityflux, polyamalterous, polyerosous, polyaffectionate, etc, can also be used to describe one's relational alignment. Relational alignment can describe one's preferences for any type of relationship, the relationship may be sexual, romantic, alterous, queerplatonic, sensual, etc. The relationship may or may not involve marriage.

Relational alignment includes all non-monogamous identities as well as monogamy/monoamory and any terms that involve a relationship with no other people, such as afidelitous or nonamorous.

The term is a conceptual category in the same way the term sexual orientation is. Just like how one has a sexual orientation, which describes the gender(s) one is attracted to and how one feels attraction to those gender(s), one also has an relational alignment, which describes the number of people one can be in a relationship with at once. For example, just like how someone could say "my sexual orientation is bisexual" they could also say "my relational alignment is polyamorous". One's relational alignment is entirely separate from one's sexual orientation/romantic orientation/etc. Relational alignment only describes the number of people, not the genders of those people.

History
The term was created by chaoticcylinder on April 22, 2021 to fill a gap in language. Previously, although many specific identities such as polyamorous, monogamous, etc. existed there was no single word for this aspect of one's identity/category of identities as a whole.

Previously terms like "amory" or "agamy" were sometimes used to describe this aspect of identity, however such terms only appeared to include terms that ended in "-amorous" or "-agamous" respectively. The term relational alignment was created to describe all these identities using a single word, regardless of the actions present in the relationship, the type(s) of attraction involved in the relationship, or the suffix used.

Relational alignment was created in a way to be used alongside terms like sexual orientation, romantic orientation, platonic orientation, etc. For example, one could say "my sexuality is pansexual and my relationality is monogamous".

Etymology
Relational comes from the word relationship. The word was chosen to be neutral, because relational alignment can describe any form of relationship, whether it be sexual, romantic, platonic, queerplatonic, sensual, or another type of relationship. The word "relationship" does not imply any particular form of attraction or any particular actions.

The word alignment was used, rather than orientation, in order to make it clear that the term is a completely separate concept from sexual orientation, romantic orientation, platonic orientation, sensual orientation, etc.