Marriage
The social and legally recognized ceremony and state in which a man and woman are considered husband and wife and their offspring accepted as legitimate; any social structure designed to regulate sexual relations, parenting, and various duties, including economic support, owed by each partner or spouse to the other.
Adelphogamy: A marriage custom in which two or more brothers sgare one or more wives.
Bigamy: The state of entering into a putative marriage with one person while still legally married to a first spouse.
Bride capture: A marriage in which the bride is captures or abducted from the house of the bride's father or from a neighboring or enemy tride.
Bridegift: In contrast with the earlier Germanic tradition of a brideprice paid to the bride's family, the bridegift was money, land or goods paid to the bride by the groom or the groom's family as part of the marriage arrangement.
Brideprice: A marital custom wherein the groom or groom's family present money, gifts, or property to the bride's family.
Closed marriage: A marriage based on monogamy and sexual exclusivity; a marital relationship based on traditional values of clear, fixed set stereotypes and roles, male dominance, togetherness, sexual exclusivity, and possessiveness.
Collusional marriage: A relationship between married persons in which one partner instigates or engages in deficient, socially deviant, or illicit conduct, which the other partner covertly accepts, covers up, or endorses while ostensibly playing the role of martyr or victim.
Comarital: Sexual relations of a married person with a third party that are accepted by the souse, in contrast with adultery in which the spouse is not aware of and does not consent to the extramarital sexual activity.
Common-law marriage: A marriage that is not solemnized by civil or religious ceremony but effected in the agreement of a man and woman to live together as husband and wife.
Companionate marriage: A trial marriage in which a couple cohabit, use contraceptives to prevent any offspring being born during the trial period, and renounce any financial claim on each other in case they mutually agree to separate before entering into a formal, parental marriage.
Devitalized relationship: A marriage or sexual relationship that has become increasingly passive, routine, and less sexual.
Endogamy: The social limitation of marriage to members of the same ethnic, kinship, cultural or religious group. Endogamy is more common in societies where elders or parents arrange marriages for their young.
Experimental marriage: An informal or public agreement of a couple to live together before entering into a formal marriage.
Extramarital sex: Sexual intimacy and/or intercourse engaged in by a married person with someone other than his or her spouse.
Group marriage: A life-style in which three or more people live together as spouses.
Intermarriage: Marriage between two individuals belonging to different racial, ethnic, or religious groups.
Intimate friendship: A friendship in which sexual intimacy and expression are acceptable to the two friends as well as to other persons with whom they have an ongoing intimate relationship or to whom they may be married.
Marital rape: The act of forcing the spouse, usually the wife, to engage in sexual relations against her will.
Matchmaker: An intermediary other than the parents who arranges a marriage for people.
Open marriage: A marriage that is adaptable to change and allows flexibility in roles, personal identity, and private space for personal growth and incorporates other relationships as growth-oriented companionships, with an emphasis on honest, open love and open trust.
Pantagamy: An alternate term for group marriage.
Plural marriage: A polygynous or polyandrous marriage in which a person has more than one spouse.
Polyandry: In anthropology, a broad term referring to customs in which one woman is simultaneously married to more than one man.
Polygamy: The practice or condition of having more than one spouse at the same time.
Polygyny: The practice of condition whereby a man has more than one wife or erotosexual partner at the same time; the opposite of polyandry.
Satellite relationship: Secondary, nonprimary relationships occurring in open marriages, sexually open marriages, and intimate networks.
Wedding: The marriage ceremony, civil or religious.
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