Re: Terms for poly lifestyles
DeeAnn said:
Ummm... I didn't see the term that I dislike the most. Potential. You know, the single woman whom the husband is dating. I think the term "potential" allows the current wife to put an emotional fence around her husband's feelings. I personally refer to my husband's girlfriend as my husband's girlfriend.
Does anyone have a different term for the relationship of "sister-wife"? For some reason, that term just doesn't sound right.
I think you and
SweetLissa were looking for an alternative term for sister-wife.
I came up with an alternative word for sister-wife just today, but others have already thought of the word. Instead of using "sister-wife", a wife can call her husband's other wife a "wife-in-law". Urbandictionary.com defines a wife-in-law (although on that site they didn't put the hyphens between the words) as, "mistress, love slave, or concubine." There are other definitions as well but they're all a little insulting I think so I'll add another definition:
wife-in-law: a relational term that a wife would use to refer to another wife that her husband has...or simply, the other wife of your husband.
I posted this elsewhere but I thought it would help:
There are only 4 in-law terms that I've seen in dictionaries and that I've heard used in the English language and those are brother/sister/father/mother-in-laws (there are no cousin-in-laws, nephew-in-laws, and certainly no brother's wife-in-law in common English dictionaries)
When it comes to a wife, an in-law term would be attached to her husband's relatives or whatever relationship he has with someone within the 4 in-law terms that I mentioned that are in the dictionaries, although wife-in-law is an additional word but it’s made up. The
brother of a husband would be the wife's
brother-in-law. The
sister of a husband would be the wife's
sister-in-law. The 2nd or any other
wife of a husband would the 1st wife's
wife-in-law. The only difference is that wife-in-law is not a term established through blood relations as the other in-law terms are. but it is established by marriage to the same husband (that's different than saying the two wives are married to each other). That is to say that both wives are the relatives or part of the family of the husband through marriage, so a 1st wife would connect the term "in-law" to whatever relation another woman is to the husband, and if that other woman is the 2nd wife (wife being the keyword) then the 1st wife would connect "in-law" with the word wife giving you, "wife-in-law."
Link:
viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1339