Sitting on the bus, I open up the group chat I have with my two best friends from school. Soraya is pregnant and has just entered her second trimester. And Adrita just got engaged in New York, surrounded by adoring family.
Because the underlying thing that is presumed within these moments — marriage, children - is monogamy. As a girl, from an early age I learnt a key role in my life was to be a girlfriend, then a wife, then a mother.
Then ten years ago, via dating apps, I stumbled on an alternative: an approach to relationships that says we can love many people at the same time.
I resent the limited choices we grew up with, and I want more autonomy to design relationships that truly work for us. L ots of women have been empowered by the sex-positive movement to question their wants and desires. I explored non-monogamy because I wanted to stop feeling guilty for wanting more out of my romantic and sexual life. Many people struggle to understand how you can experience love for multiple partners, and I admit my mum took a while to warm up to my non-monogamous lifestyle because of this.
And yet, the ways we exercise multiple loves in all the other areas of life show us that this is not only possible, but we are likely already doing this in joyful and enriching ways. I have stopped placing romantic partnerships on such a pedestal, and now view relationships through more of an ideology of friendship. I define cheating as the breaking of relationship rules and while there are many different ways of doing non-monogamy, a core part of them all is everyone being on board with the set-up.
