The Hidden Cost of 'Toliamor': How Emotional Inequality Sabotages Young Relationships

You're three months into something. You're not sure what to call it. You see each other regularly, you're intimate, you talk about your futures — but nobody has actually said the word "exclusive." So you assume it. And they assume something else. By the time you realize the mismatch, you're already invested enough that asking feels dangerous.

This is the terrain where a growing number of young adults are living. A recent survey by ClarityCheck of nearly 3,900 people between 18 and 35 found that more than a third — 34 percent — don't actually know whether their romantic relationship is exclusive. The problem isn't non-monogamy itself. The problem is emotional inequality: one person silently accepting something that contradicts their values, their desires, their boundaries, while the other person either doesn't know or doesn't acknowledge the gap. Researchers have started calling this "toliamor" — a term that describes relationships where what each person wants or is willing to accept has fundamentally diverged, leaving one partner tolerating behavior, often without ever saying so, that includes infidelity.

The survey revealed the scale of the silence. Forty-two percent of respondents waited more than three months before even raising the question of exclusivity. Twenty-eight percent said they'd never directly addressed it at all. Instead, people navigate what researchers call "situationships" — relationships with emotional or sexual involvement but no clearly stated commitment. The ambiguity breeds real consequences. Forty-four percent of survey participants reported stress or anxiety stemming from this uncertainty. Thirty-eight percent had presumed exclusivity in a relationship where their partner held no such expectation.

Digital life has made the ambiguity worse. Fifty-nine percent of respondents said that watching someone they were interested in interact with others on social media discouraged them from asking for exclusivity. Another 31 percent said that online discourse about dating and commitment had shaped how they approach relationships. Clinical psychologist Hal Shorey has noted that before smartphones, people tended to give partners more chances simply because meeting someone new required actual effort. Now, social media presents a constant visual reminder that there is always someone else available.

The damage accumulates in predictable ways. When one person silently tolerates a partner's involvement with others — feeling pressure to accept it despite discomfort — they abandon their own needs to preserve the relationship. The partner seeking more freedom may interpret the silence as agreement, or feel authorized to push further. Sexual health suffers too. Presuming exclusivity when it doesn't exist can lead to less caution, less protection. Power becomes unequal: one person benefits from the other's silence, whether consciously or not.

Ressentment follows. The person who only tolerates the arrangement can feel betrayed, replaced, diminished. The person seeking openness feels constrained by a partner who doesn't share that desire. Both sides accumulate frustration. If the relationship began with an expectation of monogamy and exclusive commitment, a shift toward openness represents a fundamental change to the original agreement. It's legitimate for people to change their minds. But that change doesn't obligate the other person to follow. Without genuine agreement — without actually talking — the relationship rests on an unequal compromise, and the weight of that inequality grows heavier with time.