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Gender Roles and Modern Love

    enough? It is hard to know when to stop picking. Melissa, Flickr creative commons


Molly Roden Winter wrote a memoir about her exploration of non-monogamy titled 'More'. She feels the oppressiveness of motherhood; then the feeling that she is burying who she really is under the weight of domestic demands explodes and she walks out into the night when her partner yet again works late and misses the children's bedtime.

She meets someone at a bar. Her partner says she should meet up with him again, and that he wants to be able to do the same. So begins their 'open marriage'. But underneath her seeming agreement to this arrangement is a silenced voice wondering why her partner does not see that this is not what she wants.

It reminds me of the film Le Bonheur directed by Agnès Varda, France, 1965, currently available on MUBI. A couple with two very young children appear happy together. He works as a carpenter and she does dressmaking at home. They don't have much materially but they seem content. On the weekends they go out to the countryside. They seems to be able to make the best of what they have. It is idyllic. But then François begins flirting with a pretty telephone operator. He is honest with her, telling her he loves his wife dearly. Eventually he decides to tell his wife about this new lover who gives him so much joy and he cannot conceive that his wife would be anything but happy for him and accepting of this new situation. The consequences are profoundly sad and quite dreadful as if the life the young mother built continues on without her.

Winter instead of seeking more men out there, could have addressed the problem she has with the one at home, which is exemplified in what happened after inviting a lover back to her home. Her partner was in agreement with the arrangement even though the children were at home at the time. Afterwards in her haste to reassure her partner by sending him a text message letting him know that he was much better than the lover, she sent it to the lover by mistake.

Women find it hard to disentangle themselves from pleasing others ahead of attending to their own needs and polyamory can become just another way of doing that. More of the same is not the answer. Selflessness can be a source of flourishing rather than denial.   

 

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