Match Point: Polyamory & The Green-Eyed Monster

While the concept is still more nascent than normative in India, traditionalists have one big question: what becomes of the jealousy?

The term "new normal" is often bandied about to garner excitement for an idea that breaks with conditioning. The term has definitely been used for polyamory, a structure wherein someone has sexual or romantic relationships with two or more people at the same time. In light of the conversations I have had, I really wouldn't go that far. Polyamory isn't a revolutionary new idea, it is one that has slowly taken form in a pushback against the conditioning of monogamy. It is about as normal or as abnormal-as the idea of having one partner at a time. The only difference is that monogamy is part of the average Indian's core conditioning while polyamory is divergent from it.

To me, the "new normal" is multiple relationship structures existing in harmony, but it would be unfair not to acknowledge that some relationship structures have been at the centre of more discourse than others. We know monogamy better because we were raised with it. Consensual non-monogamy in itself is a structure that cracks the backbone of our understanding of relationships. And then, there's polyamory, which takes so many of the ideas that monogamy holds sacred and bets them all on a high-stakes blackjack table. To the uninitiated, it seems a terrifying gamble, akin to relationship anarchy that seems a recipe for heartbreak. It has so many nuances to unpack, but the security confusion always brings the discussion to a boil. And there's no right (or wrong) reaction.

Amina has been polyamorous for six years now, and admits that the jealousy was especially challenging at the start. "I was with three people. I had a long-term partner (my primary), a guy I met on Bumble, and a girl I had been interested in for some time," says Amina. Her partners had partners as well, with her primary partner having a girlfriend from high school who he had reconnected with while Amina and he were together.