Polyamory

I am an attractive woman in my mid-40s. I am a housewife. I am married to a big business associate. More often than not, I am in my big mansion strolling around and performing daily chores. Many times, I have to sleep without my husband. He is too busy at work. I don’t really have an idea what he does. I get too bored around the house. So, I indulge myself in lavish parties with my girlfriends. I have made a lot of them. But it feels awful sometimes that you don’t have your partner around for long. He doesn’t know I had an abortion not a long time ago. I don’t know if he is cheating on me. I hardly see him these days. I feel a lack of emotional and physical support from a man. I have been advised to divorce my man. But why should I? I would hardly benefit from it. The financial support will be gone. I hardly have any education to do a job that gives me a decent pay. The lavish lifestyle that I boast of will be gone. Seeing my monotony, my friends make me meet a charming young man. They are sure I’ll like him. I do. He is irresistible and exciting. He asks me out on a date. Who am I to objectify? People will make stories. They will say I should be loyal to my husband. They will term this infidelity. But do I have anywhere else to go? I can’t leave my husband and I don’t want to miss out on something this exciting as well.

This is the story of a woman torn between love and lust; loyalty and free will.

Polyamory is the practice of having intimate relationships with more than one partner at the same time with the consent of all partners. It is seen as “infidelity with permission”. Recently, I saw an American TV show, You Me Her, which portrays a Polyamory relationship.

For long the ritual of marriage or matrimony is termed as holy and sacred. It is the bond made between two people forever before death do them part. Many people have time and again challenged this concept of staying loyal to only one partner throughout their life and missing out on many other things. The concept of free love has been introduced. It states that men and women have the right to free themselves from the societal and religious pressures of staying committed to the person they love or want to have sex with. In a way they are free to have relations with more than one person physical or otherwise.

I believe that the concept of THE ONE has long gone from the society. We only are to be blamed for this. Our rich and busy lifestyle has separated us from our loved ones. We hardly have time for dinner dates, one-day picnics or even long drives. We spend our time only in meetings with clients and agents. Not everything can be blamed on our workaholic lifestyle though. Our forefathers also used to work but that doesn’t mean that they had strained relationships with each other. They used to make time for each other. The problem is that we don’t want to commit or even if we want to we don’t want to abide by it.

Well I am not judging or defending any of the form of relationships. Every human being has the right to live his life on his own will. Polyamory is mostly prohibited in many countries and religions. Islam religion though supports it with strict terms that are practically impossible to stay put to. Being in the fast-paced world of technology, we meet a lot more people in our lifetime than previous generations have and in that process, we generally develop an affection for more than one person at the same time. Polyamory in a way gives the license to explore. In the above example of the woman having an extramarital affair with the consent of the husband can’t be called cheating in a sense. But who would give consent to his wife for this? A person who himself has cheated. He won’t want to publicize the affairs.

The conventional norms of monogamy are here to stay. People believe in marriage and commitment. In a country like India, it is more prevalent. But the youth is not afraid to experiment and it is acceptable to certain limits unless we harm anybody’s feelings. You ask me what I prefer? I would of course support Polyamory but would want to stay committed to one.