Interamory Terms

Circle of care

The organizing image of care as a social project. You stand at the centre as the site of care, the people who care for you stand within the circle at varying distances from you, and those who do not provide care in your life stand outside it. The people in your circle are the ones who know you, support you, and have your trust.

Field family

A group of people who are united by enacted care towards an individual. In contrast to the nuclear family, each individual is the source of their own family, and inclusion is determined by the attention, support, and consideration they receive from others.

Interamory

From inter- (between, among, amidst) and amor (love). A descriptive framework for navigating all of your relationships — platonic, romantic, domestic, and beyond — built on the maxim that the point is to care.

Position

Where someone stands within your circle of care, describing their degree of participation in your wellbeing. Adapted from the core, active, and peripheral levels of involvement in communities of practice, with two added degrees.

Core

You show up for each other, readily adjusting your own life to provide attention, support, and accommodation when the other is strained.

Close

You keep up with each other, knowing developments in each other’s lives so you can respond as a witness, ally, or protector if the need arises.

Constant

You catch up with each other, knowing the big developments in each other’s lives and providing support where you can despite any distance between you.

Casual

You meet up with some consistency, but what you know about each other is inconsistent. Meetups are oriented toward activity or obligation rather than care itself.

Connected

You turn up around each other from time to time, more by coincidence than intention. Communication is not unwelcome, but it is not consistent.

Prominence

Why someone is important to you. Broader than roles such as “primary partner” or “best friend,” prominence adapts sociology’s primary and secondary groups to describe individual connections.

Primary

An intentional, relatively permanent, intimate connection such as family, close friends, and the like.

Secondary

A direct connection sustained through a shared group or task, whose permanence depends on the continuation of that group or task.

Tertiary

A loose and impermanent connection sustained by circumstance rather than direct or intentional engagement.