Some interesting studies have shown that sex outside a relationship is not as uncommon as we are made to believe. In fact, 74% of men and 68% of women admitted they’d have an affair if they could get away with it. And the number is higher for unmarried couples.
Is Sex Outside Of A Relationship Ok?
Sex outside the marriage/relationship isn’t a new concept, the only difference now is that it is talked about more openly. In a relationship, the thought that your partner desires intercourse with someone other than you can be quite difficult to digest, and it may make you feel like you’re just not enough. Men claim that their main motive for infidelity is just sex, and nothing else. No feelings attached. It may be that their partners are not able to give them what they want. But the truth of the matter is that open relationships are real and they’re out there. How comfortable are you with the concept?
I never confronted my boyfriend
It was one of those evenings when I came back home from the university and found his door locked. In my mind I knew there would be another man with him. The sounds of the bed creaking and the muffled breaths against the walls no longer disturbed me. I had gotten used to my boyfriend having sex outside the relationship after a while. He had no issues in accepting bisexuality and experimenting. I would patiently sit outside in the hall smoking a cigarette and hear voices muttering “Goodbyes” with hasty kisses after a while. My then-boyfriend would lock the door behind him, put on a shirt and come to the hall. He’d greet me, hold his arms out, pull me into a hug and ask me how my day was. I would smile back, settle into in his arms and tell him how beautiful life was with him in this city by the river as if nothing had just happened. Indulgence and ignorance both make strong habits. From my childhood, the coping program I followed was of ignorance. As if by merely dismissing the existence of truth I could escape it. That’s what I always believed in. So, when I fell in love with my ex-boyfriend, I simply ignored whatever conditions he set for us to be together.
Sex wasn’t a big deal to him
We were in a different city, far away from our country. He said that people having sex outside a relationship meant nothing and neither did a make-out session. He said these were like stories to him; that I could have my stories too. That love should be separate from these trivial cravings like shitting, eating, drinking. Sex was about taste and mindless curiosity. Love was more about focused interest and careful investments. I shouldn’t get upset; instead, I should be liberal, having read Beauvoir, Foucault, and Freud, I agreed. The engine of love demanded parts like detachment and dispossession. I was unwilling to let go of the arrangement that my lover and I had. I was unwilling to call it open, for it was not. He chose to sleep outside and I didn’t — even if we mutually seemed to acquiesce.
I wanted to change him
In all these years, I kept trying to evade the fact that we didn’t have any chance of a future together. I felt that by ignoring it, I could convince myself that I’d perhaps change him one day. I kept feeling that one day he’d be monogamous, and that day I’d perhaps have him only to myself, but that day never came. One of the worst things in a relationship is when you think you need to save the person you love. You think they actually need to be saved, which is complete nonsense! We aren’t responsible for saving anyone. Our version of saving them is actually our idea of ‘trying to change them’. I only realized it years later, when I finally decided to cut the cord. While I’ve always found it difficult to let go of people, I’ve also changed from the inordinate desire to hold on. The act of ‘saving someone’ is majorly selfish, I believe. You will save something every time, with the sole wish that one day things will be fine. Or things will be the way you want. But with every saving, one is consumed with far more than one can replenish.
Why are we so obsessed with the idea of a ‘perfect relationship?’
We make so many compromises in love, we fall in love with the most unstable people, give them innumerable chances, only to leave, and then go back to them time and again thinking that the idea we have of them in our heads will finally turn into a reality. That the nervousness of mad desperate love will ultimately find its plateau. But in reality, we don’t want to give up the anxiety of wanting. For me personally, I kept hoping that his desire to have sex outside of the relationship would stop, mainly because it made me insecure about my abilities to satisfy him in bed. I knew the signs of a complicated relationship, and we were in one.
The pain becomes a part of our identities
In truth, many of us don’t want to give up the pain. It’s a vital part of many of our identities. Therefore we hold on to our versions of how such pains should affect us, so that we can remain the jilted lovers we’ve always been, telling the world how deeply we have loved. Not knowing such pains metastasize far deeper than mere poetic sanctification of the self. All these came to me when last year a different young lover while kissing me said that I have kind lips and that I am deeply compassionate. I wondered how it would feel within to let go of him. I wondered how many times I’d be willing to let go of lovers in my life and see them coming back to me in times of adversity. It was a pattern, I realized. But such pains are perhaps, empowering in a way, now that I know how to heal from the pain of heartbreak. I’m sure it has helped so many of us walk with pride and show the world the beauty of being jilted. It shows how we are unfazed by reciprocity, unfazed by time. Everything has been and everything will be evanescent. That we have only loved to become better narrators. Or perhaps to let go. Can you have sex outside your relationship? Will you be comfortable with the fact that your boyfriend is having sex with another woman openly? Do you think you will ever change your stance on polygamy? Let us know your thoughts in the comments!
