Parallel polyamory is a style of 📝Consensual Non-Monogamy (CNM) in which a person maintains multiple relationships that exist independently of one another, with little to no direct contact between 📝Metamours.
The structure contrasts with 📝Kitchen Table Polyamory, where metamours socialize and may form their own friendships. Parallel arrangements run the other direction: metamours rarely interact, and each partnership is conducted as its own discrete relationship rather than a node in a shared social fabric.
Disclosure between partners can range from full transparency about other connections to selective privacy, depending on what those involved agree to. The model is often chosen by people who want intimacy without managing cross-relationship social dynamics, or by partners with meaningfully different comfort levels around contact with each other's other partners — both of which are easier to honor when the relationships are kept structurally separate.
Parallel polyamory trades some of the community texture of more interconnected models — kitchen table or 📝Polycule-style networks — for clearer boundaries and individualized pacing. The tradeoff tends to land well when partners value autonomy and privacy as much as the relationships themselves, and to feel isolating when one partner expected the social fabric a more interconnected style would have built.