Five Men to Love?

‘……Listen my girl of great merit. A woman of one husband, knows nothing of love…’ My friend’s husband quoted her this excerpt from a poem ‘A bending lotus’ from the Kamasutra – the ancient manual on lovemaking.

I was told it was an unintentional quotation that concluded a long poem he was reading on sensuality. Far from turning the mood on, it unfortunately only sparked off a debate on adultery. Is really one person all you need for life? Will enjoying the physical with another person destroy a marriage? Is marriage all about being faithful or should marriage & sex be considered different?

My friend and her husband were college sweethearts who fell in love and soon got married. Since then, we always found them together. They were always fun, honest, understanding and pretty much soul mates. And they say they never had anyone else in their life. They both knew only the sex that they shared. Was it time to explore other waters? They both emphatically said ‘No’!

I got the Kamasutra and read that poem. ‘Lend your ears to those profitable words O beautiful girl. Great is the virtue of serving others. She who never encounters rupture outside marriage may her face stay away from my path. A girl who is unaware of the happiness of love with at least five men is as unholy as an evil spirit.”

The poem talks about the virtue of serving others and yet somehow it claims that unless you indulge in sex with several men you are unholy. To me it is just a way of justifying slavery and sexual exploitation. It reminded me of an old classic movie called ‘The Other Boleyn Girl’ where a poor married woman was asked to sleep with the King as a duty to his desires. They kind of used the same fundas.

If the poem gave the woman the freedom to love another man without feeling obliged to love him but for the pure joy of indulging in love, rather than calling her evil if she doesn’t, I wouldn’t be such a critic. For two consenting adults can do anything they please and no one should be allowed to judge.

My friend Amy says she has lost count of her relationships – some good, some bad & some downright ugly. Amy has always been the more adventurous one, so when I asked her to pick her five best lovers, she shot right back with the list. It included a professor that lasted as long as the school term, her school boyfriend she bumped at a reunion after a good five years, a guy she met at a work conference that didn’t go beyond a weekend, a struggling musician who turned her apartment into a work studio and Tom who she is currently dating.

So have you found you’re perfect love in five men? I asked. To which she replied without a moment’s hesitation, they were all fun, but I’m yet to find my perfect man.

It made me wonder if a woman really does need five men to know what love truly is? I would have thought that perfect lovemaking would need strong emotions: Passionate love, deep respect, unspoken understanding, irresistible chemistry and of course a mind open to experimenting. It’s a tall order. You might be able to find one man that fits the bill, two if you are extremely lucky. But five, where?!

So, I asked an old friend what she thought about this. She said she believed that a woman can need five men to know what love truly is. Over the years, she said she realized that the one man she loves played several different roles in her life and each time he was as exciting as the first.

As a child he was her best friend as they snogged in the car- her first kiss that put her lips on fire. Then as rebellious youngsters they made out at friends’ homes exploring each other’s sexuality. When they grew older, got jobs, lived apart, they indulged their wild fantasies through phone sex. They later married, moved in together and discovered that reality was much more exciting than fantasy.

What happened to the fifth man, I asked teasingly? To which she smiled and replied, the fifth man will come when I turn too old to do anything physical. We’ll sit in our rocking chairs holding hands and reliving all this. And her faced glowed with blissful content.

Well, I dare say I agree, you perhaps need only one man to make you reach the pinnacle of love and that man has to be your best friend and more!