Meet the ‘Relationship Anarchists’ Ditching Romantic Norms

A growing segment of millennials and Gen Z are forming “anti-hierarchal” relationships with multiple partners and friends, according to a new study by the dating app Feeld.

“People are sick of the rules of society,” Lavvynder says over the phone from their home in Salt Lake City on a recent Monday afternoon. “Monogamy has become the default. Straight cisgender patriarchy is the default. A lot of us want to do things our own way—not have a government or religion tell us what to do.”

I had asked Lavvynder, 30, who is trans nonbinary and practices polyamory, why they think “relationship anarchy”—an egalitarian philosophy and approach to dating—is getting more popular among young people. According to a new study conducted by the dating app Feeld and sex educator Ruby Rare, author of The Non-Monogamy Playbook, relationship anarchy is on the rise among millennials and Gen Z as a remedy to the loneliness epidemic.

Relationship anarchy (RA) is a relationship philosophy built around clear values: it is anti-hierarchal and anti-capitalist, prioritizes mutual care, and is all about cultivating relationships based on consent. The term, according to Feeld, was coined in 2006 by Swedish writer and activist Andie Nordgren, who said in her manifesto that relationship anarchy “questions the idea that love is a limited resource that can only be real if restricted to a couple.” Though the lifestyle has quietly emerged as a prevailing relationship framework among communes in San Francisco and across Europe in the past decade, it is again finding a wider audience in our current era of romantic upheaval, where young people are staying single for longer and polyamory has become far more common.

According to the Feeld study, one in five people practice it unknowingly, and 36 percent of 25- to 36-year-olds have adopted the lifestyle, compared to 15 percent of boomers.

Lavvynder was in a vulnerable but curious space, separated from their partner of two years, when they stumbled on a friend’s Instagram story about relationship anarchy in 2023. The software project manager had no previous experience with it but felt drawn to its possibilities.

“I also familiarized myself with the Relationship Anarchy Smorgasbord,” a worksheet that helps people set terms for how to define an anarchist relationship unique to their circumstance,” Lavvynder says. “It’s about asking, ‘What are the things that we want to be involved in this relationship and what are we gonna agree is part of this relationship? Are we interested in being creative partners? Are we interested in being sexual partners?’”

Since then they have fully embraced the lifestyle.

We can all agree: Dating sucks and has only gotten harder. Forty-seven percent of US adults say dating is more difficult today than it was a decade ago. That has led to a growing interest in alternative lifestyles. According to the Journal of Sex and Martial Therapy, one in five people surveyed in the US and Canada have had experience with non-monogamy. Nontraditional relationships are especially popular among millennials and Gen Z; over 70 percent say they are open to less-conventional approaches to partnership, including polyamory and open relationships, according to a study by R29 Intelligence.

For relationship anarchists, there is no pecking order among their connections—partners, friends, neighbors, colleagues—are all regarded the same. They treat all their relationships equally, be they romantic or platonic, and believe each relationship possesses “similar or identical potential for emotional, physical, or mental intimacy, love, and satisfaction,” Rare noted in the study. No one person is given preference over the other.

It may seem like relationship anarchy mirrors polyamory, but there are fundamental distinctions. Some poly people apply hierarchies to their relationships—“veto power,” as Lavvynder calls it. Relationship anarchists, who can be poly, do not put romantic partners above anyone. “We’re not making rules about other people’s relationships. We’re just focusing on the connection that we have with that other person.”

One misconception about relationship anarchists is that they have perfected relationship dynamics, but that couldn’t be further from the truth, Lavvynder adds.

“A lot of people will tell me, ‘oh, I wish I could be polyamorous or a relationship anarchist, but I just get too jealous.’ And it’s like, well, I get jealous too. I’m not void of that emotion. I also experience jealousy. If my partner is talking to somebody new, I feel threatened by that. But the way to deal with that is not to make some rule about how your partner is engaging with other people. It’s to figure out what you need to do for yourself,” they say. “It’s really fucking hard, actually.”

It’s all about shared values, not sexual exclusivity, says Sam, a 33-year-old music licensing administrator in Los Angeles who identifies as gender-fluid. Relationship anarchy pushed her to rethink how she defined connection. “Everyone is taught the rules at a young age: One person in your life is meant to be your everything,” she says, likening it to “a Disney fairy-tale romance.” And “any deviation from that is an offense beyond repair.” People, she says, would feel more fulfilled in their relationships “if they were able to prioritize others based on what they actually wanted versus what they believe is expected of them.”

Sam came to the realization following a breakup. She was “freshly out as a queer person,” new to non-monogamy, and in a relationship that encouraged the exploration of her sexual identity. She and her ex were “swingers,” but Sam says she was “deeply uncomfortable and unfulfilled” by all the “casual and often unsatisfying” sexual experiences. When the relationship ended, she dove into the polyamory scene in Los Angeles, where she later learned about relationship anarchy.

José Esteban Muñoz, in Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity, has suggested that “queerness is a structuring and educated mode of desiring that allows us to see and feel beyond the quagmire of the present.” It comes as no surprise, then, that young people who identify as LGBTQIA+ and also practice ethical non-monogamy are finding that relationship anarchy is for them.

“We’ve pushed so many societal norms already, and we’re in this place where it’s like, well, how else can we push this even more?” Lavvynder says.

“It’s a function of more and more people coming out as queer and being in queer relationships. They are realizing that there are alternatives to the norm of what love can be,” Jack says.

Jack is a 30-year-old physician who identifies as nonbinary. They discovered relationship anarchy during the pandemic. Freed from “a cycle of serial monogamy,” they say they were introduced to the lifestyle by their current partner, who they live with in Brooklyn, New York. “We all had so much time to sit and think and really self-examine. I had time to expose myself to these new ideas. For a lot of people you just don’t know what else you can do—until you do. That was certainly the case for me.”

Jack and their partner have been together five years. Jack also has three other romantic partners—one in San Francisco, another in Asheville, North Carolina, and a person they just started seeing in Rhode Island because “apparently I hate dating people that actually live in the same city as myself.” Above all, Jack says, respect is prioritized in each relationship.

Lavvynder, Sam, and Jack requested their last names not be used due to privacy concerns.

Still, navigating relationships doesn’t come easy. “It requires a deep level of self reflection, honesty, and communication that we are not taught and is not modeled to us in any traditional societal structures,” Sam says. “Your boundaries will differ from relationship to relationship.”

“It is difficult and something you have to be conscious of—at least I do,” Jack adds “I’m not that good at it yet.”