Michael loves his wife, Kamala. Michael also likes his 27-year-old girlfriend, Rachel. So six months ago, Kamala decided to do what most wives would never even consider: she invited Rachel to come live with the couple and their six year-old son.
Monogamy just doesn't work for the couple, whose relationship is featured on Showtime’s "Polyamory: Married & Dating." What does work for them is a polyamorous lifestyle, Kamala and Michael tell Nightline reporter Nick Watt in the report above. (Rachel is not the first person they've invited into their relationship during the course of their 12-year marriage; the couple previously shared their home with another couple, and Kamala has been in a relationship with another woman for two years.)
"Monogamy can be a really beautiful agreement between people when they're deeply in love and they don't have desire for another," Kamala says. "But most people in our society are just monogamous because their vows said 'I will forsake all others.'"
The trio's seemingly blissful relationship -- they do yoga together, love tantric sex and collectively raise the couple's son -- leaves the Nightline reporter wondering if maybe they're on to something. With so many marriages ending in divorce -- oftentimes because of infidelity -- is polyamory the answer to all our divorce woes?
Jenny Block, author of Open: Love, Sex, and Life in an Open Marriage, thinks so.
“It’s becoming clear that heterosexual monogamous marriage simply doesn’t work for most people. And I think people are tired of being unhappy and dissatisfied," she told the Daily Beast earlier this month.
"We cannot control our own desires and we certainly cannot control the desires of others,” said Block, who has been in an open marriage for the past 10 years. “You cannot tell someone, ‘Don’t be attracted to anyone else. Don’t desire anyone else.’ You can say, ‘If we’re going to be together, I want it to be monogamous.’ But you cannot control the other person’s heart and mind. The heart wants what it wants.”
Conversations about polyamorous relationship may be increasingly common, but that doesn't necessarily mean American couples are adopting the lifestyle in large numbers. Pamela Haag, whose 2011 book, Marriage Confidential, included discussions with couples in open marriages, says that by her estimates, only about 5 percent of all marriages meet the definition of "open."
Watch the video above to hear more about Kamala and Michael's open marriage, then check out the slideshow below for 5 celeb couples who've been rumored to be in open relationships.
Loading Slideshow\ABS\Auto Blog Samurai\data\lo del momento \mundo loco\ajax-loader.gif)
Will Smith and Jada Pinkett have been swatting down divorce rumors for nearly two years. The other rumor they've had to deal with throughout their 17-year marriage? Ongoing reports that they have an open relationship. The rumors first began back in 2008, when tabloids claimed the "Men In Black" star said his wife could be with another man if she felt she needed to. After giving an interview with HuffPost Live that sparked more open marriage speculation in April 2013, Pinkett Smith took to her Facebook page to clarify her statements: "Will and I BOTH can do WHATEVER we want, because we TRUST each other to do so. This does NOT mean we have an open relationship...this means we have a GROWN one."
When Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher split in late 2011, reports quickly emerged that the couple had been in an open marriage. "Demi liked women and Ashton would bring another woman into their relationship for flings, but they both agreed to it," an unnamed source told Radar Online. The report claimed that the couple split after Kutcher's alleged affair with Sara Leal because the actor had hidden the fling from Moore. "As long as she knew about it, she was fine," the source said. "It was the sneaky ones when he got caught that infuriated Demi."
Pink and husband Carey Hart split briefly in 2008 after two years of marriage, but by April 2009, the pair had reportedly reconciled. The cause of the couple's temporary split, according to The New York Daily News? A source told the paper that Pink was fed up with the couple's "don't ask, don't tell" policy regarding seeing other people.
Country legend Dolly Parton has been married to Carl Dean, an asphalt-paving business owner, since 1966. In December 2007, the Daily Mail suggested that Parton, who denied divorce rumors in the early 1980s, had hinted that she was in an open marriage. "If we cheat we don't know it, so if we do cheat, it's very good for both us," the singer reportedly told a crowd in Rotherham, England. "I don't want to know it, if he's cheating on me. If I'm cheating on him, he wouldn't want to know it ... And if we do, if that's what's making it work, then that's fine too."
Speculation that Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie were in an open relationship sprung up after the actress shared her thoughts on monogamy in a December 2009 interview with Germany's Das Neue Blatt magazine. "I doubt that fidelity is absolutely essential for a relationship," Jolie said. "It's worse to leave your partner and talk badly about him afterwards." The couple, who has long been the subject of split rumors, announced their engagement in April 2012.
Keep in touch! Check out HuffPost Divorce on Facebook and Twitter.
Subscribe window._taboola = window._taboola || [];_taboola.push({mode:'autosized-1r-organic',container:'taboola-autosized-1r-organic'});_taboola.push({mode:'autosized-1r-sc',container:'taboola-autosized-1r-sc'});window._taboola = window._taboola || [];_taboola.push({flush:true});
No hay comentarios:
Publicar un comentario