Concubinage

Concubinage is an interpersonal relationship in which a person engages in an ongoing relationship (usually matrimonially oriented) with another person to whom they are not or cannot be married; the inability to marry is usually due to a difference in social status or economic condition. Historically, the relationship involved a man in a higher status position, usually with a legally sanctioned wife, who maintains a second household with the lesser "wife". The woman in such a relationship is referred to as a concubine.