If there is one thing that supposedly defines the purity of your love for your partner – it would probably be monogamy. Difficult question is – which monogamy are we referring to– physical or emotional? I imagine the house might be completely divided on this one. Some may wonder how the two are different i.e. how can you be emotionally monogamous without being so physically, while others may be perfectly fine with the said differentiation.
The reason I am compelled to write about this is because we see a lot of folks around us, subjecting their relationships to this litmus test of physical monogamy. A relationship that had withstood the test of time for a few good years ends painfully because one of the partners had a sexcapade. I am not here to advocate bigamy/polygamy – however, I am compelled to analyze the risk/reward trade-off in relationships.
We hear that gay people are more promiscuous than their straight brethren. Now I am not a number cruncher who has straight and gay people coming to him and entering their proverbial notches on the bedpost into an excel sheet – but one thing I can say for sure is that this notion is ridiculous. On the contrary, my personal opinion is that gay relationships probably are more honest than straight ones – because you are only in it as long as your heart is in it. If you choose to walk away one day – there won’t be any societal obligations and an army of relatives that will ask you to reconsider your decision and make you accountable. To me this freedom is the catalyst to the honesty of a relationship.
On the other hand – if a heterosexual marriage were on the rocks, both the partners lend themselves open to a barrage of questions/arguments and what have you, to justify why they want to part ways. And more often than not – human beings will avoid confrontation and gulp down the pain, than subject themselves to a seemingly never-ending analysis-paralysis.
Human beings, by nature were designed to be sexual beings. If sex was just supposed to be for procreation – I doubt that god would have made it so pleasurable to begin with. Things that are supposed to be one-time-only with a singular objective are mundane. Think about our wisdom teeth– they are meant to be extracted and it irritates the hell out of us until it’s out. Who would want to have a wisdom tooth extraction again and again? But Sex isn’t like that – it is something that was meant to be enjoyed over and over – like food.
Here’s one more way to compare sex to food – variety! We are allowed to try out different cuisines, different flavors – why does sex not follow the same logic? Personally – no matter how many cuisines I have tried – I have been emotionally monogamous to Rajma-Chawal. And I would feel very bad if Rajma-Chawal were to revolt against me just because I had risotto!
It is absolutely fine to be idealistic, but we need to draw a line when the ways in which the world operates is far from our idealism, and following our ideologies only leads to pain. Let’s analyze the very reason why we desire a relationship. It’s because we want someone to share our joys and sorrows with, someone who we can relate to and speak our heart out to, someone who will lend us support when we need it, scold us for when we are being unreasonable, let us cry when we need to and also slap us when we are crying for no good reason. I don’t believe the reason for being in a relationship is to have a monogamous sexual partner.
When you envision a relationship – you want it to last till your sunset years and we all know that our sexual organs get into their sunset mode long before the rest of our body and soul ages. A relationship takes a lot of work to sustain and some of that work also involves knowing what to ignore. We focus all our energy into what all to “consider” to make it work, but never on what all to “ignore” to let it work forever. The more we try to control a person – the easier we make it for him to get away.
No one likes being accountable, and that’s a fact we need to understand. The most difficult part of any situation is to be able to step back and look at it from a distance – dispassionately. However, once we have mastered that art – we realize how that distance lends to newer perspectives. What may seem too big to ignore today may just become the reason why you may still have someone to rest your head on many years down the line. And in the end – we need to know when not to dignify some events by reacting to them. If you just let them be – you will be a happier person. And it is only when you yourself are happy that you can bring something tenable to the relationship. So focus on conserving yourself, knowing when to react and when not to, what to give importance to and what not to…and most importantly – is a 20 second orgasm worth losing a potential lifelong relationship for?
