19 July 2023
Polycule is a relatively new word from the world of polyamory. A blend of poly[amory] and [mole]cule, it refers to a graphical or physical model of a polyamorous relationship, and by extension a name for the group of people in that relationship.
The term isn’t in any major dictionaries (yet), but Urbandictionary.com has an entry for it dating from 2015. That entry says:
Polycule is used to describe any system of connected non-monogamous relationships.
A polycule can be as simple as a “V’"(A is dating both B and C, with their approval, but B and C are not dating each other) or a triangle (A, B, and C are all dating each other), but it can also get very complex. (Ex: A is dating B and C. B is dating A and D. C is dating A, E, and F. F is also dating G.)
When drawn out as a chart, these connections can look similar to a molecular structure—hence the name polycule.
"My boyfriend's wife just got a new girlfriend. Looks like I'll have to update our polycule!"
Such a chart or model resembles the ball-and-stick models used to show molecular structure, where each ball represents a person and the sticks the relationships with others in the polycule.
The earliest use that I can find of polycule is in Dan Savage’s sex advice column, Savage Love, from 5 August 2010. In it, Savage credits a Koe Sozuteki, who was raised in a polyamorous household, with coining the term:
Sozuteki identifies as poly—her first relationship, she notes, was a quad—but her closest sibling, her brother, is in a monogamous relationship. She currently works at the Center for Sex Positive Culture, is studying to become a sex educator, and coined a widely embraced term in the poly community: “polycule.”
“I was in high school at the time,” she says, “and one day I started making a chart of what my family situation looked like. I wrote down names, drew lines between the names, how some bonds were strong, how some shifted, showing all the connections.”
Sozuteki was studying organic chemistry at the time.
“I finished the chart and thought, ‘Oh, my God-this looks like a molecule, like the diagrams in my biology textbook!’ It really helped me to understand my family.”
Savage gives no date for Sozuteki’s coinage, but he gives her age as twenty, and it seems unlikely that she would have been studying organic chemistry, a university-level subject, much before 2008.
Another early published use is from the news website Vice.com from June 2012:
The basic premise of polyamory is that it is possible and fine to love or lust after more than one person at one time, and that, with care and communication, you can have more than one (or more than ten, YOLO) successful, happy relationships at once. So, naturally, everyone at the event took some plasticine and straws and made “polycules,” little modelling-clay representations of the romantic/sexual relationships in their lives.
And the use of polycule to mean a particular network of polyamorous relationships appeared on the polyamory website Morethantwo.com in 2015:
This is something that hits home to me. I’ve seen abuse happen in my polycule. It’s incredibly disempowering to see someone you love being abused by, for example, your metamour—especially when your metamour is also your friend.
Sources:
Heisey, Monica. “Exploring Polyamory with a Bunch of Horny Nerds.” Vice.com, 19 June 2012.
Savage, Dan. “Heather Has Two Mommies, One Daddy, and Several Matriarchal Women in the Community Who She Thinks of as Moms,” The Stranger (Seattle), 5 August 2010, 17.
Urbandictionary.com, 15 March 2015, s. v. polycube. https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Polycule
Veaux, Franklin. “Some Thoughts on Community and Abuse.” Morethantwo.com, 11 February 2015.
Photo credit: Boxflip (anonymous contributor), 2016. Wikimedia Commons. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.