Others say the apps are for people of all relationship styles and, as long as they’re up front about it, what’s the problem? The profiles clearly state: “ENM.”

The letters stand for ethical nonmonogamy and more often than not, aren’t spelled out.

“I had to Google that,” says Natalie Broussard, who lives in southeast Texas.

Broussard, 41, uses Hinge, which allows users to fill in prompts on their profiles to share information with potential dates. Over the past two years she says it has become common for her to see the prompt “Let’s make sure we’re on the same page about…” followed by “I’m married” or “I’m in a committed relationship and my partner is totally cool with it.”

Hinge has branded itself as an app to find a relationship—it uses the slogan “designed to be deleted”—which only adds to Broussard’s frustration.

“I’m looking for a monogamous relationship, which is why I’m on a vanilla app,” she says. “I don’t judge. I’ve dabbled in a little bit of everything in life, but there’s a website for that.”

As if online dating weren’t hard enough—having to worry if someone is lying about their age, or will ghost you, or is actually a bot catfishing you—now users have to sift through profiles looking for land mine nonstarters and grapple with increasingly expansive definitions of what it means to be in a committed relationship.

More-niche apps exist: Feeld markets itself as for those interested in polyamory, consensual nonmonogamy, homo- and heteroflexibility, pansexuality, asexuality, aromanticism and voyeurism, among other things. But increasingly, the most popular apps are trying to appeal to more-diverse groups of users.

In late 2022, Hinge rolled out the ability for users to designate their “relationship type” at the top of their profile and whether they are monogamous or not, which the company says was a response to the needs of Gen Z.

“Gen Z is the most fluid generation in terms of their sexuality and identity, and they need their relationships—and their dating app as the meeting point—to support their openness to different types of connection,” a Hinge spokesman says.

Alignment on relationship style is often top of mind for slightly older users—many of whom are ready for a monogamous relationship, or have tried them, are feeling dissatisfied and looking for other options.

Hinge and another popular app, Bumble, allow users to filter for factors such as distance and age, but there isn’t a setting to exclude or search for nonmonogamist profiles.

Mitch Holland, 37, of Nashville, Tenn., is on Bumble, Hinge and Tinder looking for just one partner. He says he used to occasionally see couples seeking a third, but that in the past two years ENM profiles have been sprouting up everywhere.

“It’s common enough to where I think there should be a filter,” he says. “You filter everything else so I don’t understand why that’s not one.”

Holland says he is a progressive alternative rock fan dating in a sea of women who wear cowboy hats and listen to Jason Aldean. When he does see a woman on the apps who dresses alternatively or seems “left of center” as he puts it, she’s often ENM. But the distinction is usually tacked on to the bottom of her profile.

“Put it at the top at least so I won’t get too excited,” he says.

It’s hard to know how trends in consensual nonmonogamy have evolved over time given the subject was taboo for many decades. A 2022 survey of more than 14,000 Bumble users globally found that 16% of Americans have recently considered an ethical nonmonogamous relationship. And around one-third of Americans describe their ideal relationship as something other than complete monogamy, according to a February 2023 YouGov poll of 1,000 respondents.

Both pairing up with only one person and seeking out multiple partners most likely goes back to the dawn of time, says Helen Fisher, a biological anthropologist and senior research fellow at the Kinsey Institute. As humans we have biological predispositions to both: Jealousy serves as a protection of the pair bond and its offspring, and a wandering eye can lead to the spreading of one’s DNA. But lately, it has practically become fashionable to be public about being in an open relationship.

“It’s part of a whole modern trend of sexual and romantic expression,” says Fisher, who is a paid consultant for

. The Match Group also owns Tinder.

However, she suspects the co-mingling of two groups with such fundamental lifestyle differences isn’t likely to lead to many happy matches.

“If somebody plays tennis and you don’t play tennis, you can learn how to do it. If somebody is nonmonogamist and you are monogamist, you are not going to learn how to do it,” she says. The app designers, says Fisher, are “not understanding the difference between somebody who plays tennis and somebody who wants to sleep around.”

A Tinder spokesman says the app doesn’t “limit the possibilities of sparking something new somewhere unexpected.” A Bumble spokeswoman says users who pay for a premium membership can filter by dating intentions. The Hinge spokesman says the company collects feedback from its users “to understand the most requested app updates and research which changes will be most impactful for helping them get out on dates.”

Morgan Anderson, an engineer from Dallas who is ENM and dates men and women, says he is forthcoming in his profile and sees no reason he shouldn’t be on apps such as Hinge and Tinder, saying, “I make sure to put it at the top.”

Anderson says he wishes he could filter out the monogamous users. He doesn’t want to waste anyone’s time and recognizes there is a serious lifestyle mismatch.

Jenis Walsh, 38, who works in politics and lives in Pittsburgh, has on more than one occasion unwittingly matched with men on Bumble who are in open relationships after not reading their profiles carefully enough. The men were honest about their status early in the conversation and polite about the misunderstanding. Since then, “I’ve been more alert,” she says.

She has never felt tempted by any of those matches to change her mind about looking for just one partner—“I do not want to be an accouterment”—and she’s skeptical that everyone is being as upfront with their partners as they claim to be in their profiles.

While frequenting one of the many

groups called “Are We Dating The Same Guy?” she’ll often see women posting screenshots of the profiles of the men they’re talking to on the apps in order to see if anyone can confirm that their nonmonogamy is really consensual.

“You’ll see, ‘Oh this person said he is ENM,’” Walsh says. “A friend or a girlfriend of that person will be like, ‘Oh no, that’s not the case at all.’”

Theo Thomas, a 36-year-old in the Detroit area, has been practicing ethical nonmonogamy for three years. He says he is married and has a girlfriend and also uses Bumble and Hinge to find potential partners for casual sex. He says he uses the more-mainstream apps because the more-niche ones such as Feeld, which he’s also on, don’t have as many users. The majority of the monogamous women he matches with are ones who haven’t read his profile carefully enough—and they tend to not want anything to do with him.

“A lot of women don’t like to share,” he says.

Alex Padilla, 33 and Thomas’s girlfriend, says she frequently encounters monogamous men on dating apps who are aware she’s in a relationship and are still interested in meeting up. Once she has explained her lifestyle, their response is often, “That’s hot.”

“That always makes me giggle,” she says.

This past fall, Thomas had a new experience. He fell in love with a woman he met on Facebook Dating who was also ENM. He says that led to issues in his existing relationships. The new woman ended up breaking up with him, and he says he was heartbroken.

“I could actually see myself being monogamous with just her,” he says, a feeling that caught him by surprise. “I didn’t think that I would want that kind of lifestyle.”

A man from Chicago is taking legal action against 27 women and demanding $75 million in damages after they wrote some less-than-desirable reviews about him on a Facebook page called “Are We Dating The Same Guy?”

Nikko D’Ambrosio, 32, claims these women have harmed his reputation by posting negative comments about him on the private Facebook group, which has become a space where women can critique their dates, wonder out loud if their boyfriends are cheating, and simply talk abut their bad dates.

According to the lawsuit filed in the Northern District of Illinois, D’Ambrosio’s name and photo were shared on this page, leading to defamation, doxxing, and invasion of privacy. “The defendants broadcast their outrageous, cruel, and malicious lies about the plaintiff with knowledge that the statements were false or with reckless disregard as whether or not they were true,” the complaint reads.

READ MORE: Woman whipped 74 times in ‘medieval torture chamber’ for refusing to wear hijab in Iran

Screenshots show numerous comments about the man (

Image:

U.S. District Court / Illinois Northern District)

His previous dates alleged he was clingy, but also a ghoster – which has caused him enough mental anguish to sue (

Image:

U.S. District Court / Illinois Northern District)

Additionally, another man and Facebook’s parent company, Meta, are also named in the lawsuit. The Facebook group describes itself as a community of “Red Flag Awareness” groups across the country where women empower each other and keep each other safe from “toxic men.”

According to the lawsuit, the woman who made the original post used her real name but later deleted it, reposting it anonymously on the group page after D’Ambrosio’s lawyers called her and asked her to take it down in December. The lawsuit alleges that the page has subgroups across the country that allow users to attack the character of men they’ve met online.

“Thousands of men have been potentially defamed by members of the group via these online publications, and remain entirely unaware of the attacks on their character as a result of the social media group’s private status and heavily moderated members list,” the suit states.

D’Ambrosio’s complaint claims that the defendants spread false and defamatory stories about their dating experiences with him. He says these posts caused him “personal humiliation, mental anguish and suffering, emotional distress, stress, anxiety, lost earnings.”

In his legal documents, he shared that he met a woman at a cultural event in Chicago and they had consensual sex that same night. They went on a few ordinary dates after that, but were never exclusive.

The woman allegedly posted on a Facebook group, accusing D’Ambrosio of becoming “very clingy very fast,” showing off his wealth, and warning her not to see his “bad side,” especially during business calls.

She also reportedly posted a picture of D’Ambrosio. Several women commented on the post, claiming they had similar experiences with him. One commenter wrote: “I went out with him a few times over a year ago he told me what I wanted to hear until I split with him and then he ghosted… I’d steer clear.”

For instance, it is useful to be able to observe someone’s eyebrows because this tells us a lot about their emotions.

But, Dr Bjornsdottir explains that we are ‘hypersensitive to facial appearance that resembles cues related to these judgments’.

‘Facial cues tied to these judgements then go on to affect judgements of other traits that we associate with them but they also affect judgements of personality,’ she added.

Mouths

It doesn’t take a psychologist to tell that a person who smiles more might just be happier.

But, the mouth also plays a vital role in our perceptions of other people.

The same University of Glasgow study found that faces with down-turned mouths were perceived as being poorer, less competent, colder, and untrustworthy.

Dr Bjornsdottir explains that these perceptions might also have their roots in some valid and socially useful observations.

Because it is evolutionarily important, humans are extremely sensitive to subtle differences in people’s mouths and how they relate to emotion.

We then tend to make assumptions about characteristics like warmth and trustworthiness.

While it might seem odd to include characteristics of class or wealth, these also stem from our habit of over-generalising.

Dr Bjornsdottir said: ‘In our research, we found that because of the stereotypical links between social class and certain traits, there is an overlap in the facial features that lead to judgments of both social class and these traits.’

In other words, since people with downturned mouths are seen as incompetent, and working-class people are stereotyped this way, facial features and class become linked.

But Dr Bjornsdottir also suggests that there could also be something more significant than stereotypes at play.

In her earlier research, she found that people were able to guess someone’s wealth from a picture at rates significantly better than chance.

She suggests that socio-economic factors might actually shape people’s faces in subtle ways that humans are able to recognise.

Essentially the idea is that people who experience more well-being spend more time displaying happier emotions such as smiling.

Face shape

Whether you have a wide, square or narrow face might also be an indication of what kind of person you are.

Some scientists believe that the ‘Facial Width to Height Ratio’ or fWHR can actually be an important sign of a whole range of character traits.

Studies have linked a wide and square head or a high fWHR with a number of traits related to dominance, aggression, and stereotypical masculine behaviour.

A study of students and prisoners at Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt found that a high fWHR was an indicator of psychopathic tendencies. 

The researchers found that men with wide faces were more likely to exhibit ‘self-centred impulsivity’ and ‘fearless dominance’.

The wide-faced men in the study were also more likely to blame other people for their problems.

In another study, researchers from Nipissing University found that people with wider faces had higher sex drives and were more likely to cheat while in a relationship. 

Other studies have found that having a square face has a big impact on how you are perceived.

Researchers from the University of New South Wales asked volunteers to rate 17,607 male and female passport photos for aggression.

The results revealed that faces with a high FWHR (square faces) were rated as more aggressive than people with low FWHR (oval faces) – particularly if they belonged to young men.

The researchers suggest that young male square faces may serve as a signal of physical strength, which is why we perceive them as more aggressive.

The reason for this link is that fWHR is believed to be ‘sexually dimorphic’ meaning that it is a trait linked to the presence of sex hormones.

Some researchers theorise that higher levels of testosterone, the male sex hormone, cause fWHR to increase.

This means that men and women with squarer faces have higher levels of testosterone which could make them stronger, and more aggressive.

However, the evidence for this theory is somewhat mixed.

One study of 241 fighters in the UFC found that having a wider face was correlated with more success.

The researchers suggest that wide faces are a sign of ‘formidability’ caused by higher levels of testosterone.

Yet other researchers have explicitly rejected the idea that a wide face is a biomarker of high testosterone.

One 2016 paper studied the faces of 91 members of the Tsimane indigenous group in Bolivia and found no correlation between testosterone and fWHR.

Dr Bjornsdottir also told MailOnline that she was sceptical, saying: ‘Although people tend to agree on what they believe someone’s personality is from their face, recent research does not find a link between facial width to height ratio and testosterone.’

Jawline

A chiselled jaw might be the quintessential movie star look, but is there anything more to this than a pretty face?

One 2022 study measured the faces of 904 college students in China to look at something called the ‘mandibular line angle’.

This is a measure of how square your jaw is, taken by measuring the angle between a horizontal line and a line drawn around the chin.

The researchers also put the students through a test for 16 personality factors.

The results revealed that a lower mandibular line angle, giving a squarer jaw, was positively associated with a number of traits.

In particular, they found that men with more square jaws scored higher for social boldness and confidence.

The researchers suggest that this might be due to a process called ‘facultative personality calibration’, by which someone cultivates a personality to match their genetic traits.

Square jaws and confidence don’t have a genetic connection or a common underlying reason.

Instead, it essentially boils down to the fact that people with square jaws are seen as more attractive and so generally enjoy more positive social interactions.

In turn, this makes it more likely for the square-jawed among us to develop confident personalities.

But our jaws and cheeks might still hold some relevant information about our biology.

Studies have found that humans are generally quite good at predicting the health of other people by looking at their faces.

Dr Bjornsdottir explains that this developed because ‘being able to tell generally who appears unwell and who appears healthy is important for disease avoidance.’

One study, conducted by researchers from Macquarie University in Sydney, found that slimmer faces are perceived as healthier.

Faces with less facial fat around the cheeks and chin were associated with good blood pressure, healthy BMI, and lower body fat percentage.

Study author Dr Ian Stephen said: ‘The findings provide strong support for the hypothesis that the face contains valid, perceptible cues to physiological health.’

Eyes

The eyes are often said to be the windows to the soul and, while scientists might not go that far, they can actually tell us a lot about a person.

There is a lot of pseudoscience on the subject of what your eye colour says about your personality.

But these theories, often grouped under the name iridology, have been widely dismissed by the scientific community.

The better way to learn about someone from their eyes is to keep track of where they are looking.

Research by a psychologist at Brandeis University used eye tracking to discover that optimists might literally see the world through ‘rose-coloured glasses’.

Participants were shown a series of images of subjects ranging from positive to negative.

The results revealed that those who tested high for optimism would spend significantly less time looking at negative stimuli.

Likewise, a 2018 paper published in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, used AI to track the eye movements of 42 participants while they ran errands on a college campus.

By comparing the data with the results of personality questionnaires, the researchers discovered that eye movements were a good predictor of certain personality traits.

The researchers wrote: ‘Our findings demonstrate a considerable influence of personality on everyday eye movement control.’

In particular, they found that people with higher scores for neuroticism, a trait related to distress, anxiety, and worry, tended to blink more frequently than other participants.

So, if you want to figure out what someone is like, looking into their eyes is definitely a good place to start.

Another added: “He’s been posted here before. The poster said he sent her a bunch of texts calling her names because she didn’t want to spend the night with him.”

“[Their] wrongful conduct is so outrageous in character and so extreme in degree that it is beyond all possible bounds of decency and is to be regarded as atrocious and utterly intolerable in a civilized community,” the lawsuit said.