Is there more than one way to love?

Polyamory, singlehood and Couples Therapy

Hello, and thank you for reading The Honesty Box. Happy Easter to those who celebrate it and I hope everyone reading this is enjoying the beautiful spring weather. I’m in Norfolk for the weekend with my mum.

Last time I wrote about a proposal I was working on for a book with the draft title: I Don’t Have Kids – And That’s OK and how I had sent it to an agent through a scheme run by I Am In Print. Well, I got feedback last weekend and to be honest, I’m now having rather a rethink. The agent, Lucy Morris from Curtis Brown, was kind and constructive, but she said she wanted to get more of a sense of me, and that the book felt like it could be more about me finding my identity rather than solely covering not having children.

So, I’m letting what she said percolate and perhaps I will broaden the theme out to being about family structures, communities, and relationships. What I do know is that since the first lockdown in 2020 I’ve read a load of books about all of those things, and I’m now fascinated by different ways to live, how families form and so-called unconventional forms of romantic love and partnership.

The husband, wife and two children setup is still the one most revered by western society, and certainly marriage is incentivised financially by the British government, for example around inheritance tax. But polyamorous relationships, open marriages or people who choose to be single are things people are curious about, make judgements of, or fantasise over, but probably rarely understand.  

This week’s Positive Thinking programme on BBC Radio 4 was titled The Case for Polyamory, and featured Ana Kirova, the chief executive of an app called Feeld. The app helps couples and single people find partners for sex or relationships and aims to challenge the idea “that we should follow the formula we’ve all been taught: meet one person, settle down and live happily ever after,” according to the show notes.

The programme talked about jealousy, a big factor in open relationships, and spoke to woman who embraced polyamory at 38, when she was married with two children. Her husband has a monthly ‘play partner,’ who she has met, and she was content with her setup, but had been judged by some parents at the school gates. My view is that everybody has their preferences and if it works for this woman’s relationship then all power to her.

The other thing I was fascinated by this week was a piece in the Daily Mail by the advertising entrepreneur Cindy Gallop on how, aged 62, she is delighted to have been single for most of her life, and has had a string of younger male lovers.

She writes: “Many people are out there living lives they don’t really want to live. It’s all too easy to slip into the oiled grooves of what your parents want for you, what all your friends are doing, what every movie and TV show tells us we should aspire to.” She has chosen to neither marry nor have children and says she loves her freedom.

Perhaps my book could explore why marriage and children are still seen as so important and also consider other ways to live. I don’t have the answer for what’s right for me, but what I do know is that most of the time I love my single and childfree life right now. I am open to the possibility of a long-term relationship but wanting one no longer defines me.

Things I like

Inside love

Couples Therapy is a show on BBC iPlayer where therapist Dr Orna Guralnik treats couples who want to save their relationships - and I watched the first and second series in about a week. The therapy sessions are all real, and people find connections between their childhoods and their parents’ expectations and how they now behave with their partners. I almost can’t wait to get into a relationship to explore how I am in one.

Middle-aged fun

The DJ Annie Mac is launching Before Midnight, a club night for people who need their sleep, and I think it’s going to be right up my street. Recently, I went out dancing and stayed completely sober and I plan to do the same at Annie’s night on 20 May. I’ll let you know how it is.

Thank you to Peter Olexa and Unsplash for the image that appears on the desktop version of The Honesty Box homepage.