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Bhavna* felt monogamy wasn’t the right fit for her when she was 15. “It’s not that I didn’t like the person I was with,” she recalls. “I wanted an open relationship.” She was able to make sense of what she was feeling when she read the bestselling Swedish novel The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, in which a married female newspaper editor is in a relationship with a fellow journalist with the knowledge of her husband. “I didn’t know it was polyamory then, but it seemed like a viable type of relationship to have.”
A year ago, when she met her current partner, the two started their relationship with the understanding that it would be non-exclusive. They took six months to build a strong foundation, and gradually started seeing other people. Today Bhavna, who is in her early 20s, has two long-term partners apart from her boyfriend. “In monogamy, you have to be both loyal and exclusive. In polyamory, you may not have to be exclusive,” she says.
In India, where the goal of romance is the big fat shaadi with promises of lifelong fidelity, polyamory is a radical idea. Being poly simply means you can have multiple intimate relationships with the knowledge and consent of everyone involved. It’s also called ethical or consensual non-monogamy. The relationships may be hierarchical, i.e. a primary partner is considered to be more important than the others, or non-hierarchical. While there’s no way to tell whether such relationships are on the rise in India, several poly people have come out of the closet, while others are forming support groups on the internet.
Rishika co-founded the Facebook group, Bangalore Polycules, with a friend when she moved to India two years ago. “It is a space where people can have conversations and know they will be understood,” says Rishika. The group has both an active online and offline presence in the form of monthly meetings.
Aparna Dauria, musician, relationship activist and founder of Mumbai-based Facebook group Egalitarian Non-Monogamy, says it can be difficult for polyamorous people to accept themselves. Dauria, 36, was in the closet until she turned 30. “I’ve always felt love for different people simultaneously. It was not only confusing but also debilitating,” she says. “When I mustered the courage to come out to my partner, it was received more positively than I’d ever imagined.” Her experience prompted her to start the group for people seeking emotional support.
Though Dauria’s partner and family accepted her choices, she has been shamed by others. “Many dear friends don’t invite me out anymore,” she says. “There is a deep-rooted idea of what the ‘normal’ picture of love is, and everyone else is a deviant.” Dauria has also received hate messages and rape threats after coming out. Like her, Bhavna faced considerable online abuse from strangers after she came out as polyamorous in a video for a website. “But, there were also people saying they could relate to me. They were happy that they were not freaks,” she says.
Polyamory is stereotyped as being all about sex even though there are plenty of non-poly people who sleep around. “If you’re polyamorous and a woman, people think you’re slutty and if you’re a man, you’re considered a player,” says Bangalore Polycules co-founder Neeta*. Basit Manham, 25, who has come out publicly as poly, agrees: “People always assume I am looking for more sex, but I tell them the relationships aren’t even sexual.”
Rishika of Bangalore Polycules also busts the sex myth. “Honestly, there is a lot less sex happening than people think. Maintaining more than one relationship is 70% logistics, not 70% sex.”
Dauria feels hyper-sexualising polyamory is a way of saying these relationships can’t be about love. “It promotes the idea that a non-monogamous person is greedy and lacks values,” she says. In fact, poly people love commitment so much that they commit to multiple people, points out Rishika.
Last year, Mumbai-based RJ Shradha Singh made her debut as an author with a short erotica novel called The Guilt Pass on a married couple’s foray into polyamory, inspired by the experiences of friends who were in poly relationships. Singh adds that her novel reflects the shift in how the younger generation views relationships. “This is a very modern couple,” Singh says. “They want to reinvent their relationship.”
Reinventing relationships may be the millennial thing to do but it does come with its day-to-day challenges. Who pays the bills? Which one do you spend Valentine’s Day with? How do children fit in?
The key, says psychologist, Sonali Gupta, is communication. “Jealousy, insecurities and anxieties do creep into polyamorous relationships. After all, there is another person who is competing for physical and emotional love. But people in such relationships need to communicate more, be honest and learn to address jealousy.” In fact, some say such relationships may offer lessons in honesty and transcending jealousy. Dauria says polyamory has made her a better person. “This is a kind of love where each person is treated with respect, compassion and magnanimity.”
Names with asterisks have been changed on request
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/sunday-times/meet-the-throuples/articleshow/63660754.cms
A year ago, when she met her current partner, the two started their relationship with the understanding that it would be non-exclusive. They took six months to build a strong foundation, and gradually started seeing other people. Today Bhavna, who is in her early 20s, has two long-term partners apart from her boyfriend. “In monogamy, you have to be both loyal and exclusive. In polyamory, you may not have to be exclusive,” she says.
In India, where the goal of romance is the big fat shaadi with promises of lifelong fidelity, polyamory is a radical idea. Being poly simply means you can have multiple intimate relationships with the knowledge and consent of everyone involved. It’s also called ethical or consensual non-monogamy. The relationships may be hierarchical, i.e. a primary partner is considered to be more important than the others, or non-hierarchical. While there’s no way to tell whether such relationships are on the rise in India, several poly people have come out of the closet, while others are forming support groups on the internet.
Rishika co-founded the Facebook group, Bangalore Polycules, with a friend when she moved to India two years ago. “It is a space where people can have conversations and know they will be understood,” says Rishika. The group has both an active online and offline presence in the form of monthly meetings.
Aparna Dauria, musician, relationship activist and founder of Mumbai-based Facebook group Egalitarian Non-Monogamy, says it can be difficult for polyamorous people to accept themselves. Dauria, 36, was in the closet until she turned 30. “I’ve always felt love for different people simultaneously. It was not only confusing but also debilitating,” she says. “When I mustered the courage to come out to my partner, it was received more positively than I’d ever imagined.” Her experience prompted her to start the group for people seeking emotional support.
Though Dauria’s partner and family accepted her choices, she has been shamed by others. “Many dear friends don’t invite me out anymore,” she says. “There is a deep-rooted idea of what the ‘normal’ picture of love is, and everyone else is a deviant.” Dauria has also received hate messages and rape threats after coming out. Like her, Bhavna faced considerable online abuse from strangers after she came out as polyamorous in a video for a website. “But, there were also people saying they could relate to me. They were happy that they were not freaks,” she says.
Polyamory is stereotyped as being all about sex even though there are plenty of non-poly people who sleep around. “If you’re polyamorous and a woman, people think you’re slutty and if you’re a man, you’re considered a player,” says Bangalore Polycules co-founder Neeta*. Basit Manham, 25, who has come out publicly as poly, agrees: “People always assume I am looking for more sex, but I tell them the relationships aren’t even sexual.”
Rishika of Bangalore Polycules also busts the sex myth. “Honestly, there is a lot less sex happening than people think. Maintaining more than one relationship is 70% logistics, not 70% sex.”
Dauria feels hyper-sexualising polyamory is a way of saying these relationships can’t be about love. “It promotes the idea that a non-monogamous person is greedy and lacks values,” she says. In fact, poly people love commitment so much that they commit to multiple people, points out Rishika.
Last year, Mumbai-based RJ Shradha Singh made her debut as an author with a short erotica novel called The Guilt Pass on a married couple’s foray into polyamory, inspired by the experiences of friends who were in poly relationships. Singh adds that her novel reflects the shift in how the younger generation views relationships. “This is a very modern couple,” Singh says. “They want to reinvent their relationship.”
Reinventing relationships may be the millennial thing to do but it does come with its day-to-day challenges. Who pays the bills? Which one do you spend Valentine’s Day with? How do children fit in?
The key, says psychologist, Sonali Gupta, is communication. “Jealousy, insecurities and anxieties do creep into polyamorous relationships. After all, there is another person who is competing for physical and emotional love. But people in such relationships need to communicate more, be honest and learn to address jealousy.” In fact, some say such relationships may offer lessons in honesty and transcending jealousy. Dauria says polyamory has made her a better person. “This is a kind of love where each person is treated with respect, compassion and magnanimity.”
Names with asterisks have been changed on request
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/sunday-times/meet-the-throuples/articleshow/63660754.cms
