Knot it both ways!

Remember the character of Ranvir Shourey in the film Mixed Doubles? Shourey plays a man going through mid life crisis and wants to pep up his sex life.
Even as his wife played by Konkana Sen also goes through the routines of the marriage, Shourey hunts out greener pastures for himself. So are open marriages the answer to modern age infidelity?
A zippy lifestyle, that barely leaves you enough time for each other, plenty of intelligent, successful people are considering open marriages as this spells the easier way out.And women with immense career options want to remain single and live their lives their way. Couples are getting divorced at a higher rate. Marriage it seems isn't entirely working out leaving quite a few couples high and dry.
Slippery option
Open marriages, by definition, is considered a slippery option and most people wonder whether it would work out at the end of the day. Its all about a committed marital relationship between two people who agree to get together under a given mutually agreed upon set of rules. According to the concept, partners can indulge in sexual encounters with others beyond their spouse. However there are plenty of questions that hover around the issue of open marriages, the most important being, ���Is it sustainable?���
Yes, says Aakash Walia (name changed), a software executive and a firm believer of the ���open marriage��� concept. ���Marriage after a decade begins to get boring and burdensome. After one has children, obviously, the spark is missing and then there are so many other things one has to think and worry about. And who doesn���t need a bit of an excitement. Sex outside my marriage but with the tacit approval of my wife helped me to scale the distance that was growing between the two of us. Due to our respective pressures, we were going through a lot of turmoil in our sex lives. But a peek outside marriage helped me improve mine.
According to psychiatrist Mohan Katyal,��� There are couples who are strong believers of this type of marriage. The point here is even when you want to live your life with one particular partner, you want to try out others to live out your sexual fantasies with. It is often very difficult to understand this concept, but in many cases it has helped couples to stick to each other through thick and thin and the fortunate ones have experienced new found love and want to be sexually loyal by choice as well.���
However Katyal has opposition from family counselor, Shruti Jaiswal. ���Sexual loyalty plays a very important role for a marriage to stay together. And what happens when you have children. What kind of a life, or thoughts would you be passing on to your kids? There are many factors that cement your relationship with your partner and they play a vital role in helping the relationship grow. For instance, love and care could easily be replaced by jealousy and hatred in an open marriage often taking dangerous forms,��� states Jaiswal.
What about the tumult of emotions that one often tends to overlook when it comes to open marriages? According to Jaiswal, ���If the marriage doesn���t go your way, partners are left with a feeling of deep mistrust and torn emotionally. It is very difficult to come around if an open marriage goes awry.���
Rulebook to success
Do open marriages work for couples who are deeply dissatisfied with each other, looking at sex as a solution and not as means to bond?
Reveals Vandana Makhija, a lawyer, ���When I was pursuing my higher studies in the US, I realized that because people are far more sexually active they opt more often for open marriages. Infact a close friend of mine, told me that he would be opting for this because it gives them the freedom to move out or stay put. According to him, it���s a safe way of keeping your freedom and also staying committed. He told me that his girlfriend too has the right to sexual experimentation and they are both happy with the situation. So long you know you have that freedom your urge to move out gets lessened and helps you stick it out with your partner. His mother too was a proponent of open marriage as this helped her ���rediscover her marriage after 30 years of staying together���.���
Katyal believes that the difference between successful and unsuccessful open marriages is based upon their communication, agreed-upon ground rules, and values regarding sex. "It depends entirely upon the couple and their views about sex. Its important to keep communicating what you think to your partner and look at your spouse���s needs. Once you stop talking and stop prioritizing your partner's needs, you're in trouble.���
All about trust
There is however a common thread that runs through the varying types of open marriages. According to marriage experts it appears that the particular couple always takes precedence in an open marriage scenario over any person outside the marriage.
Says Suhani Singh, a BPO executive, ���Though I do not propagate the idea of open marriages I am not against it either. It���s a practice many of my friends follow and I have noticed that only those couples are successful who give each other the required importance needed in a good relationship. If one of the partners isn���t comfortable, the idea is given up. Only such kind of flexibility can bring about success in these types of alliances.���
Emotional baggage
Travel journalist Anshuman Paul speaks about his experience with open marriages. ���My parents were into this kind of a relationship and so I know that this hardly works out. Firstly, there are too many complications. Sex isn���t just about sex, it also involves emotions, so the moment you start sharing it with so many people at the same time, there isn���t nothing that remains for your partner. My father kept wavering after the first bout of swinging and it wasn���t funny to see him with different women all the time, even as I stayed with my mom. Though they actually never separated, it was very traumatic to stay in the same house with him," reveals Paul.
Children can be scarred for life when an open marriage goes awry. They bear the brunt of all the dissatisfaction that might take place between the couple and may end up as an aggressive trait that is dominant in your child.
As Jaiswal puts it, ���Its all about trust and how much of it you share with your partner. Also take your child into confidence if he/ she is growing up. Children are known to be inquisitive about things and so their curiosities need to be satisfied before they form a definitive opinion. The concept can almost break your marriage if you don���t play by the rules and there are a bit too many when it comes to this. At the end of it, if you want to have some adventure in your life, you should be ready to pay the consequences as well.���