Three's A Company

What’s it like to love more than one person? While polyamory and the idea of multiple love is gaining momentum, we explore what being poly actually entails — and it’s a lot more than just sex

- Samreen Tungekar

“Open to non-monogamy”, an option I came across on OKCupid, while researching on dating apps that provide an option for people to meet other polyamorous people. I did have an idea that a lot of these people don’t understand the idea of polyamory, which essentially means multiple intimate relationships, and I was right. A lot of them took the option of non-monogamy to mean “available to all”, a frustrated misconception most polyamorous people deal with.

T, a poly woman in her 20s who identifies as bisexual, explains polyamory. “It’s merely the openness towards giving and receiving love in multiple forms. Being polyamorous allows us to explore those feelings of love and attraction for other people with consent and respect, while simultaneously growing closer and stronger as a couple,” she says.

Rohan, 24, from Kerala says, for him, it is being able to love and commit to multiple people at the same time. "You don't necessarily need to be in multiple relationships to be polyamorous, and it is not an excuse for sleeping around,” he states. (Take note, OKC people, who don’t know what that non-monogamy option is).

Societal conditioning on monogamy is quite tight, you would agree. So, understanding how one can equally love more than one person at a time is something monogamous people (except me, I somehow ace understanding this) are not comfortable with. Anantika, 25, has just finished her masters and wrote her thesis on how urban Indian women navigate polyamory. “When I told this to a friend’s friend, I am polyamorous, he asked me to add him to the ‘list’. I was like...that’s not how it works. They’ll ask questions like ‘who do you love more?’ and they think it’s a phase,” she says.