When Suganda met Shammi, she was a virgin. Not only was she a virgin, she had never kissed a man, or even held a male hand, save her younger brother’s (which her parents began reprimanding her for when he turned 15.)
Suganda’s parents had found Shammi’s profile in the matrimonial section of the local newspaper, and a week after the Sunday ad came out, Suganda was sitting face-to-face with a shy, fresh-faced man of 21. She had turned 18 just a week ago.
Shammi was the first and last boy that Suganda had “seen” for marriage. She only saw him once before their wedding day, in the living room of Shammi’s parents’ home in Rohtak, Haryana, and they were married two months later.
Eleven years from the day of their wedding, much has changed in the lives of Shammi and Suganda. Rather than opening the import-export business that he had planned for at the time of his wedding, Shammi is a DJ at a Gurgaon nightclub. Suganda tells me that she is a fashion designer (though I never did see anything she had designed). While neither has landed up in the career that they had envisioned, they have managed to make money on family property in Gurgaon, so neither has to worry about where the next pay cheque is coming from.
At first glance, Suganda and Shammi seem like an ordinary young couple, gilded and shaped by the prodigious change of urbanisation, but they have a secret that lifts them out of the ordinary — almost a decade after their arranged marriage, they have agreed to live in an open marriage.
EXTRAMARITAL IN INDIA
In India, where marriage is sacrosanct, an open marriage is an outrageous arrangement, but over the course of my four-year research for my book India in Love: Marriage and Sexuality in the 21st Century, I discovered that sex outside of marriage — or what we commonly know as “adultery” — is happening more and more across all strata of society.
Extramarital affairs are not a new phenomenon in this country. There are several references, even in the Mahabharata, like the story of Svetaketu, the son of the great sage Uddalaka, whose mother is taken away by a guest for sexual intercourse. Karna too declares, in one instance, that he will give his wives and children to the man who can show him where Arjuna can be found. In the Niruttara Tantra, as also in other Tantras, it is said that a worshipper will not gain virtues or merit unless he sexually unites with a married woman.
What perhaps is new — and confusing — is the concept of monogamy. Until The Hindu Marriage Act of 1955 (a mere 62 years ago), a man could take multiple wives. Even today, amongst the Khasis and other tribal societies in India and around the world, polyamory is not a social taboo.
Perhaps it is the very concept, and constraint, of monogamy that has led to a resurgence in polyamory.
FUN AND SELF-DISCOVERY
According to psychotherapist and marriage counsellor Vijay Nagaswami, who has written several books on marriage, extramarital affairs are more rampant today than ever before. According to a survey conducted in 2011 among people living in urban India, 23 per cent men confessed to having an affair, against 8 per cent of women. Of these, a surprising 37 per cent female respondents said that their spouse knew about their affairs.
The rise of technology has also lent a helping hand. With the advent of smartphones and improvement in Internet connectivity, willing partners can be discovered and affairs can be conducted easier than ever before. According to a survey undertaken by digital research consultancy MindShift Metrics, the online dating space has been growing at a fast pace in urban India. Nearly 33 per cent of a sample group of couples surveyed had met online and by 2040, they project that it will increase from 33 per cent to 70 per cent.
Suganda gives me some insights into how an open marriage works. She tells me that both she and her husband have affairs but remain committed to each other. An open relationship allows them to explore connections with other people that they never had a chance to experience when they were young and married.
Shammi has similar views. He tells me that he married for his parents, not so much for himself. But now, neither he nor his wife would consider ending the marriage. Shammi says that Suganda is his “best friend and the mother of his children”. His affairs are for “masti (fun) and self-discovery”.
Do other people know about their arrangement? I ask Shammi. “Some do. Many found out. Most people are shocked. I don’t care, though; our relationship is honest and happy. That is a lot more than what most of our friends can say about their marriages. Most people just live through their unhappy marriages, lying to each other. The husbands cheat on their wives with cheap women. The wives have no freedom and have affairs with servants and drivers,” he says, grimacing in disgust.
RISKY DREAM
While Shammi and Suganda are perhaps leading a more “honest” life, the risks are high. When word of Suganda’s affair with a married man in the apartment complex spread, many people didn’t allow their children to play with theirs. The family was ostracised from building events and other social functions.
According to my research for India in Love — based on narratives, facts and figures — while open marriages are certainly on the rise, treading that ground is treacherous. Social taboos against divorce, societal construct, Indian family norms and the “tribe” mentality that us Indians still live with make the concept of open marriage a risky fantastical dream than a reality for many.
TERMS OF COUPLING
Polyamory: The practice of engaging in multiple sexual relationships with the consent of all the people involved. There is no primary relationship. Contrary to popular perception, polyamory is not about orgies.
Open marriage: A marriage or relationship in which both partners agree that each may have sexual relations with others. It acknowledges a primary relationship.
Adultery: Voluntary sexual intercourse between a married person and a person who is not their spouse. The relationship is usually conducted in secrecy from the spouse.
Ira Trivedi is an author, columnist and yoga expert.
For this article, she used excerpts and research from her book India in Love: Marriage and Sexuality in the 21st Century (Aleph Book Company)
GREEN-EYED LOVE
Polyamory or ‘open relationship’ sounds exciting, but one needs to carefully consider the idea that their partner can freely choose to love others.
Monogamy is so last season. It’s passe. The latest subversive sexual practice and new kid on the block appears to be polyamory. Polyamory is consensual non-monogamy. A more popular term for it is “open relationship”, which all of us have heard being discussed in hushed tones at cocktail parties about a couple that a friend of a friend knows. It is important to distinguish polyamory from adultery or infidelity. Consent of all partners and openness are the key features of polyamory.
In my clinical experience, I can remember only a few couples who acknowledged that they were in an open relationship. The story of one couple has stayed with me despite meeting them over a decade ago. Shivam Nagpal was in his mid-50s, bound to a wheelchair for the last 17 years after a serious road accident. He was married, with two children, and lived in a joint family with his wife. He was married for seven years prior to his accident.
When I met them, his wife was in a relationship with a divorced gentleman for about 12 years. Mr Nagpal had “accepted” the relationship as he could no longer be sexually active after the accident. What struck me was how everyone in the family had adjusted to Mrs Nagpal’s relationship, including the children. During my conversations with the family, it was obvious that Mrs Nagpal deeply cared about her husband.
ANOTHER WAY OF LIFE
For me, this relationship broke many stereotypes, it was a learning experience. Can couples have such relationships? Are they stable and devoid of jealousy and heartbreak? Do couples actively seek polyamorous relationships or accept them after being forced into it by life circumstances?
It is hard for someone conservative to fathom the dimensions of polyamory. For many people, though, polyamory is not curious at all — it’s just another way of organising life and love.
Dr Elisabeth Sheff of the US is one of the few experts on polyamory and has researched and written extensively about it. According to her, polyamory is a lifestyle choice and many people actually do not report of jealousy in a polyamorous relationship.
The popular Netflix series, House of Cards, portrayed an open marriage between Frank and Claire Underwood (Kevin Spacey and Robin Wright) and for many viewers it was uncomfortable. Thinking about unfamiliar things can be uncomfortable, and polyamory or an open relationship is certainly unfamiliar to the dominant culture of monogamy and heterosexuality.
Dr Sheff has more than 20 years of research experience on polyamorous families and couples. She has observed that when it comes to jealousy, people’s experiences tend to change over time. Most people in happy polyamorous relationships reported that their feelings of jealousy tended to wane over the years, except when new people or situations popped up that provided fresh jealousy triggers.
Generally, these respondents also reported that polyamory, or a desire for multiple partners, was a core element of their relational and/or sexual orientation. Many of them said they could relate to the idea of jealousy, but they did not understand the visceral experience, because they were not “wired that way”.
“Not being wired” to feel jealousy is probably a key element in all mutually satisfying relationships but for polyamorists, this ability has to be in super-human proportions.
Erotic love is based on the notion of exclusivity. To overcome the idea that partners can freely choose to love others requires an ability to compartmentalise emotions, which perhaps eludes most people.
PRO-MONOGAMY BIAS
The biases and prejudices against such relationships are global and should we be more open and accepting? My personal opinion is that it is neither my business or concern as to how many sexual partners anyone has at any one point of time, and we can be genuinely more accepting of how adults organise their relationships, provided there is honesty and equality in their relationships.
We live in a social system that treats monogamy as the only natural, legitimate, and inevitable relationship style. This means that most of us have some degree of pro-monogamy bias that encourages us to think of monogamous, heterosexual relationship as an unequivocal social and relational good.
In the age of social media and apps that encourage adults to explore their sexuality with less inhibitions, maybe it is time to think the unthinkable, that some people who are in polyamorous relationships are not deviant psychopaths!
Dr Jai Ranjan Ram is a senior consultant psychiatrist and
co-founder of Mental Health Foundation (www.mhfkolkata.com).
Find him on Facebook @Jai R Ram
MARRIED AND DATING
Whether you are looking for an affair in your area or a lover miles away from you while on a trip, Gleeden.com gives you a specific platform to safely get in touch with cheaters worldwide! Let’s go!
That’s the pitch of a France-based online dating platform — meant exclusively for married folks — that has started operations in India middle of this year, having spied “a real demand” in the country for new encounters outside marriage.
“Even before the official launch in India, Gleeden had a lot of subscriptions from Indian users... despite it being a country with cultural boundaries, traditional restrictions and lack of parental acceptance,” Solene Paillet, head of communication management at Gleeden, told t2oS. But Paillet is cautious that the initiative be not seen as promoting adultery in India.
“The idea is not to change Indian society in any way. The idea is to just start a debate and to overcome the taboo on open relationships,” she added. “Because like married people fro m all around the world, married Indians have to deal with the daily grind — work, responsibilities, couple duties, family life — and a lot of them don’t feel completely satisfied or happy in their lives. Gleeden is a way for them to have their ‘secret garden’.”
How does it work?
www.gleeden.com is run by an all-women team and women can sign up free. Male users need to pay as per volume of usage. The dating service is already in use in several European countries, Latin America and Brazil.
“Gleeden follows a 100 per cent real member policy. Members have the option to reveal their marital status in complete transparency. They can connect and interact on a secure, moderated platform in complete privacy, with 24x7 customer service,” said Paillet.
The keyword, like for all the other dating websites and apps, is “discretion”, with a lot of stress laid on security and anonymity.
How safe is it?
Though the security feature on the Gleeden site calls itself “an ultra-secure platform to keep your secrets in a safe place”, one cannot not think of Ashley Madison, the Canadian dating website for married people — the one with the infamous tagline ‘Life is short. Have an affair’ — that went down after hackers stole their data and threatened to make the user profiles public in 2015.
The hackers also revealed that Ashley Madison had charged users $19 to delete their accounts and promised to wipe all usage information, but nothing was destroyed.
Gleeden claims it has put checks in place against such potential traps. “The protection of our members’ data is one of our prime concerns and we work hard every day to keep it that way. We don’t keep any information about our members (payment information, names). Also, our moderation policy is the most stringent in the e-dating market. Photos and texts that are fake, indecent or provocative are automatically refused, and members can be banned from the site if they do not respect the regulations. Users also have the option to report abuse,” Paillet clarified.
