If Your Monogamous Relationship Stops Working, Try Something Else

Polygamy is a double-edged sword in my hands and infidelity saved my marriage.

Photo by form PxHere

I am an immoral Muslim woman and proud of it

I was born and raised as a Muslim woman in the world’s most conservative nation — Pakistan. My elders drilled into me that women here should be modestly dressed and that their life revolved first around Allah, and then the man in their lives. Ironically, their aggression turned me into what people would call an ‘immoral’ woman.

I no longer believe in the social ceremony of marriage. I believe that just like a man, a woman can have more than one partner. My father, as well as my husband, have two wives. In Islam, he is allowed to have up to four. My mother as well as I have lovers. We put our happiness above all else. An unhappy woman cannot take care of anything or anyone.

In Pakistan, while a man caught having an extra-marital affair was scolded a bit and let off, a woman who did the same would burn in hell, and it was ensured that whatever time she had left on earth, was made hell. These unfair, irrational rules of Islam which reduce a woman to a puppet who dances at first her father, then her husband, and then her kids’ commands, made me worthy to understand my own needs, and also that of my partner’s.

The guy I married was not devoid of faults. I married my best friend and the most handsome dude in town. His good looks attract women like bees to his nectar and lucky for them, he finds the idea of sex with one woman limiting.

Because he is my friend before my husband, he tells me, “Zaria you will be the only woman I love the way I do, but I need other women in my life to maintain my self-worth. If I curb such desires, I will not be myself, and if I lose my identity, I cannot be happy.”

I was grateful that Ishaan told me what he felt. He did not beat around the bush or give me false expectations. As he flirted with other women I did not sit there like a hawk watching his every move. If I truly loved him, I would make his joy mine, which is what I tried to do.

If you love someone let them go

Sure I was jealous about sharing my partner with other women, especially because the very reason I married him was to show my circle of women, that I had bagged the trophy. Maintaining one relationship is hard enough, so maintaining two or three at the same time, required talent. Allah had blessed Ishaan with this talent and an irresistible demeanor.

Despite Ishaan being a Casanova, he was a better husband and father than most other people. In Pakistani society, the only thing a man is compelled to do is to feed his family well and keep his women under control. Ishaan did not try to control me.

Just like Allah had given him good looks and a charming personality, Allah had blessed me with rhythm in my body. Like Ishaan made use of his irresistible manly body to attract his self-worth, he let me do the same through the use of the natural rhythm in my body.

When you love someone you forgo insecure feelings like jealousy and understand compersion. Compersion is the feeling you get when your partner feels joy touching another person. It took me a long time and a lot of therapy to accept Ishaan’s idea of happiness, but I learned to let him fly, hoping he will return.

I set him free, and despite touching other women, he remained mine. He came home with a sparkle in his eyes, eager to migrate his successful encounters into our very own sex life. These extradyadic encounters only brought us closer.

The test of time- Saskia

Then one fine day he told me that one of our common friends from college, actually nine years junior, was pregnant with his child. I always knew this was a possibility, but I thought he would be more careful as we had two children together.

My husband is not the most devout Muslim, thank God for that, but he is spiritual. He did not want to leave pregnant Saskia alone. Ishaan begged me for forgiveness and hesitantly asked me to accept Saskia as his second wife. At that time he did not have any feelings for her but living with the fact that he did not own up to his responsibility would slowly kill him.

No matter how much I cursed him at the moment, if tomorrow he suddenly met with an accident and I lost him, I would forget all his faults and weep for him. Why? Because he gave me something worthwhile. And so, I accepted his condition and welcomed Saskia into our home.

The hypocritical Islamic society of Pakistan

The neighborhood we lived in despised our presence. I dressed up and went for dance lessons. Ishaan brought friends home, both men and women. We had parties on the weekend playing loud music with people who wore modern clothes and perhaps belonged to other religions.

Yes, Pakistan is home to Christians, Hindus, Sikhs, Baha’is, though in a minority. Conservative Islamic society does not like to mingle with people who did not believe in Allah. When Islam was created, there were constant wars among Christians and Muslims, and Allah wrote, at that time,

ye who believe, take not the Jews and the Christians for friends. They are friends one to another. And whoso among you takes them for friends is indeed one of them. Verily, Allah guides not the unjust people.” (Quran, 5:52)

So many believe Allah forbids contact with people of other religions. Pakistan was formed out of India as a country to host all the Muslims with their own law and order. The father of our nation, Muhammad Jinnah, let people from all sects settle here in a minority but made Pakistan predominantly Muslim.

If you visit our country during Ramadan for example — a period where Muslims need to fast for a whole month without food and water, eating only during the wee hours of dawn, you will be fined heavily even for chewing gum in your own car. No restaurants stay open. No alcohol or cigarettes are available to be bought. The whole nation, despite their religion, must keep their mouths in public shut.

On a normal day, shopkeepers rush out without shutting shop as soon as they hear the call to prayer on loudspeaker, which will be your natural alarm in this country. Muslims pray five times a day blindly bowing down in reverence with their head toward Mecca, blocking traffic. Everything and everyone else must wait, or suffer abuse.

‘Normal’ Muslim couples already considered our family taboo. So now bringing my mistress home and trying to adjust her in our family of four will make tongues wag.

Unlike western society where neighbors don’t know how many people lived next to them and did not want to meddle in their affairs, Pakistani society is all about being hospitable, helpful and inviting, whether one liked it or not.

I, the primary partner and she, a blessing in disguise

When Saskia came into our lives, Ishaan’s flirting reduced. Two women were plenty for him to handle. Ishaan became more loving toward me and now genuinely took out ‘alone’ time. He started helping me put the kids earlier to bed so we could be intimate.

Everything seemed to work out better than our monogamous relationship, except the fact that I wasn’t used to having him sleep with another woman under the same roof. Out of sight for me was out of mind.

I eavesdropped and sneaked to see what they were up to. I tried to take out my frustration on Saskia, but the naive girl thought it was her duty to be submissive. She took as much dismay as possible and still put up a fresh smile to welcome Ishaan when he came home. On the other hand, I always had something to complain about, slowly bringing our arguments to bed, something Ishaan detested.

Just when our sexual and emotional bond was failing, Allah saved our boat from sinking. A Christian guy, Ron, in dance class magically became appealing to me. Though he had been making advances all this time, it was only now that I gave in. Cheating on Ishaan with another person made me understand his sexual needs better.

Being intimate with another person with no love gave me more confidence and allowed me to feel happy. Gradually, I too, just like Saskia, was able to welcome my husband with a smile and accept this new lifestyle we had thrust ourselves into.

Then Saskia had a miscarriage and lost Ishaan’s baby. Doctors told her that she could never become a mother, which instilled a natural love in her toward my children. Her suffering instilled natural sympathy in me for her.

Saskia was a newbie at everything. She struggled in the kitchen, she struggled with the kids. This made Ishaan realize that I had never shown him my struggles and he had never helped me. From just a homemaker, I became an intelligent decision-maker in his eyes.

Saskia’s presence had made me a better woman and Ishaan a better man. While Saskia was the one Ishaan went to for immediate satisfaction of the body and mind, I had now captured Ishaan’s body, mind, and soul.

One regret

Cheating on your lover is really not a good feeling. It comes with temporary emotional relief and plenty of anxiety and guilt. If I could help it, I would never have cheated on Ishaan.

In the conservative country I grew up in, I was debarred from having sex before marriage. But religion and societal pressure could not stop my bursting hormones, so I resorted to watching porn online to satisfy my sexual needs.

Since I had started being intimate with Ron, I had successfully attained nirvana in doing away with jealousy and concentrating on my lover’s happiness. What Saskia did to him in bed, I could not do, and so I appreciated someone else pleasing my husband like I couldn’t.

Ron is a Christian and this fact pinched a weak nerve. My cousin's brother had a long nine-year affair with the neighboring Christian woman. The families knew about the difference in culture and religion and raised the children as one unit. The couple called each other brother and sister and managed to conceal their secret relationship for a long time, until Ripka, could not take it anymore.

She started pestering him to run away and get married. With no explanation, my brother hurriedly married a Muslim woman in front of her eyes. Everyone including Ishaan blamed Ripka for casting her net and reeling my brother in.

I did not want to add salt to the fire now by revealing to him that a Christian man was better than him in bed. Allowing your wife to go dance in another’s arms is a big deal in Pakistan. If Ishaan was able to accept this ‘blasphemous’ passion of mine, he could have accepted that I too like him, can have desires. But it sure would have been easier for him to accept his first wife having an affair with a Muslim.

Maybe one day I will get used to having Ishaan and Saskia over to our room and enjoy sex as one big happy family, and then I would not need Ron anymore. Or maybe I will keep Ron, and tell Ishaan that just like his relationship with Saskia, Ron’s presence makes us better partners. The desire, to be honest, is there, but the time is not right.

What is better — monogamy or polygamy?

A commitment to any sort of relationship requires a true, impartial understanding of your own self. If you as an individual are not aware of what makes you happy, you are unlikely to make your partner happy irrespective of whether the relationship you commit to is monogamous or polygamous.

I do not recommend polygamy, but I will not shy away from saying that:

• People who enter into a polygamous relationship are more aware of themselves and can communicate these needs and expectations to their partners in black and white. As a result, they are more honest and have better communication skills than people in monogamous relationships.
• People committed to a polygamous relationship are less concerned with what others think. For them, societal pressures mean nothing and this promotes a listening ear — very important in any relationship. No matter where you go, people will always have something to say. The sooner you learn to follow your joy and learn to cup your ears to comments of the related and unrelated, the better your quality of life.
• People practicing polygamy are a step above the average human being. To achieve a faithful, loving, and true union of lovers here, the people concerned spend more time accepting and converting the natural instinct of jealousy to compersion. Now instead of feeling at a loss when their partner has sex with another, they genuinely feel happy for them. In Buddhism, this virtue is called ‘Mudita’ and takes time to develop. A person who attains this becomes a better person.
• In many cases, the relationships that make us the happiest may be different than what we initially envisioned. Whether a relationship lasts through the years depends on factors like timing, lifestyle, desires, sexual compatibility, personalities, and the like. Ishaan and I never had the desire to enter into polygamy, but now it seems to be the only way we could go about.
• People who learn to thrive in a polygamous relationship work as a team toward the same goal and depend less on other people. This gives them a stronger support system than others who lean on just one partner, thereby providing more confidence to stand up tall in a judgemental society. Having more breadwinners in a family, or more women to take care of the children, distributes the load and reduces stress.

Had I not turned the rulebook upside down and accepted Ishaan’s intoxication with loving more than one, we, like other Muslim couples, would have conversations only about food and entertaining the relatives. He would still be doing all he wanted behind my back, without giving me a hint.

Some couples have nothing in common among them except their offspring and exist for their sake. They are already dead inside and are just waiting to be buried down that grave.

It takes a village to raise an infant. Sometimes, it takes a village for couples to realize each other’s strengths and weaknesses and muster the strength to stand up to them, even if that means setting the person free of all emotional and physical bonds.

No, I am not advocating that you have more than one partner or cheat on them, but what I am telling you to do is to develop a little bit of compersion in every relationship.

Sometimes we falter due to the fabric we are made of, sometimes we have addictions we cannot control, have desires we just need met. If your partner is being vulnerable and making these desires known, support him. If he has deviated from the correct path, let him make a U-turn. If he would like to try something new, before shunning him off completely, hear him out with an open mind. He will thank you for it, and your bond will become stronger.

“Love is like sunlight. You can give all of yourself to someone and still have all of yourself left to give to others, and to yourself. To your work. To anything or anyone you choose. Love isn’t like food; you won’t starve anyone by giving It freely. It’s not a finite resource.”

― Jacqueline Koyanagi, Ascension

Thanks to Tooth Truth Roopa Vikesh for inspiring the subtitle of this article. Thank you all my followers for reading.