Flip through the latest issue of Gulf Weekly.
Exclusivity. It’s a big scary word that sits like a white elephant in the middle of the room, just when you wanted to be alone with your sweetheart.
You know you need to have the talk but what if he’s not quite there yet and saying something sends him running for the hills with the devil on his heels?
Sit a room full of people down and try discussing the rights and wrongs of having the exclusivity talk and you’ll just end up in a rowdy battle to see who’s voice can be heard the loudest, with some insisting that you can’t possibly expect someone to commit themselves to only you without first discussing it and others insisting equally persuasively that monogamy is something that is automatically implied once you’ve gone past the first three dates.
In an ideal world everyone would automatically know where he or she stood with his or her partner, but the reality is just as complicated as the debate; everyone has their deep-seated belief on how these things should be handled and truth be told, there really isn’t any right or wrong to it. The only thing that’s certain is that if you don’t find a way to deal with it, it could potentially cause untold hurt.
“Damon and I had been dating for three months and we’d been seeing each other regularly four or five nights a week,” says Anabelle Vellomn. One night when we hadn’t organised to see each other, a friend called me to say he was in the same restaurant as her with another woman. When I asked him about it, he had the nerve to tell me that since we hadn’t yet had the ‘exclusivity talk’ he was perfectly entitled to go out with other women when he wasn’t with me.
He actually thought I was going to agree with him.
I could maybe have understood if we had only just met each other but three months down the line is just taking the p***. I suppose what hurt the most was that despite spending as much time as we did with each other, I still wasn’t enough for him. Something about me wasn’t good enough so he needed another woman in his life to make up for it.”
Anabelle had subscribed to the theory that as they’d been seeing each other for three months it was only natural to assume he wasn’t seeing anyone else.
In truth, I’d agree with her but having asked a friend (who will remain nameless by request) her opinion, I was surprise to hear her tell me that Anabelle had been totally wrong to assume anything and that Damon was perfectly within his rights to be seeing other people, saying: “Until exclusivity is verbalised in a relationship, neither party has the right to expect it.
“We would never assume that just because we had a friend we spent a lot of time with, they didn’t have other friends so why should we expect it to be any different with the men in our lives?”
OK, so you finally decide it’s time to have the talk.
You’re nervous because you don’t want the other person to think you’re some sort of possessive bunny-boiler stalker but you also want to know where you stand. If you’re wrong and he/she doesn’t feel the same way about you as you do about them, you’re going to be left with egg on your face and your relationship will never be the same again.
If, on the other hand, they feel the same way about you then, you no longer have to deal with the doubt and moving the relationship on to its next level could make you both the happiest couple on earth.
Either way, it’s better to know one way or the other isn’t it? Or is it?
It seems as with all things, the road to hell can be paved with good intentions. Evan Tailor knows that only too well: “I’ll be the first to admit I used to be a bit of a playboy but when I met Karen, I fell in love almost straight away and I can honestly say no other woman held any interest for me.
“She knew my reputation but totally trusted that I was a changed man. Well at least until we’d been together for six months and I decided to show her how much I loved her by telling her that I didn’t ever want to think of being with anyone else.
“I thought she’d take it in the spirit it was meant but instead she went ballistic, saying that if I felt the need to say something about it six months down the line, it meant that it’s not how I’ve always felt and had been cheating on her up till then.
“We worked it out in the end and have now been happily married for over a year but she didn’t talk to me for two whole weeks before she gave me the chance to properly explain. So much for honesty!”
Like I said, there is no right and wrong about whether or not you need to have ‘the talk’ but for my money, it better to know one way or the other where you stand. With that said, I can’t remember a single time when I’ve had the courage of my convictions and ever brought up the subject – Ho hum, the debate goes on…
Marie-Claire
