Page 17 of Until Tomorrow
I frowned and glanced at my outfit.I’d dressed down for this event like she said I could. Pressed black slacks, a satin blue blouse, and short heels. It wasn’t my everyday dress wear, but it was still nice.
“This is me dressed down,” I said.
“Oh,” she replied. “Well, I wish I had half your class, but my students don’t care, and neither does the staff. We’re surprisingly relaxed here. And this is my classroom. Just have a seat in the back.”
Classroom was an understatement. It was a lecture hall, complete with almost sixty students. They were loud as they chatted, and they were young.So incredibly young.
I picked a seat at the back of the auditorium alone, which wasn’t hard, considering everyone else sat as close as possible. I liked that. I liked the way Amelia had their rapt attention from the moment she walked to the front. It spoke volumes about her as a professor.
The first few minutes were spent in casual conversation. I watched in fascination as she bonded with her students, talking about their lives, the things they were going through, how they were, plans for the week, and more. I doubted any professor cared as much as she did.
“All right.” Amelia clapped her hands and moved toward the whiteboard. “Today, we’re going to take time to touch on non-traditional relationships.”
Oh.As students grabbed their notebooks, I grabbed the small legal pad I’d put in my purse. Amelia had suggested it, and I had a feeling I might need it.
“I’m going to broadly touch on the subject today. I’ve got a few weeks’ worth of things planned, including some fun outside-the-class interviews you’ll have the opportunity to participate in,” she said. “But for now, let’s start with this question: what is the societal norm concept of a traditional relationship?”
“A relationship between a man and a woman,” a guy in the front row told her.
“Exactly. A relationship between a man and a woman.” She turned to the whiteboard. As she drew on it, she continued, “Now, it should be noted that the perceived traditional norm includes the concept of marriage with the expectation of having children. Which means that in this diagram, Liam and Lydia are married with the standard two children.”
I made a face. According to that, Logan and I would never be considered a traditional relationship. I had no desire whatsoever to ever engage the idea of having children. A dog? Maybe. Children? Absolutely not. He’d gotten a vasectomy when I had my tubes tied. We were good without.
I rushed through copying her diagram.
“Now, what is the reason this relationship takes place? Anyone?” she asked.
“Because they love each other,” a girl replied.
Unless you read Elliot’s books with his love for marriages of convenience.I snorted under my breath to keep from laughing out loud.
“Right! Love! They love each other. At least, we hope they do. We’re going to go ahead and say they’re madly in love with one another.” A small laugh rolled through the room. “So, when we call this a traditional relationship, what we’re saying is that all love fitsthismold. Thisone moldis the only way that love works. Which sucks.”
I frowned.It did.I’d never honestly thought about what society considered the traditional relationship, but it left a lot to be desired.
“Now, come with me, come with me.” Amelia walked to the other end of the board. “We have this mold… this two-person legal marriage traditional relationship—I’ll give you my hate-filled rant on that phrase another time. As a society, we’ve grown far more accepting that Liam and Lydia aren’t the only ones getting married. James and Carl are, and so are Sarah and Michelle.”
She fell silent as she drew out the diagrams, and I kept up.
“Now, that’s not me saying these are the only kinds of two-person relationships,” she said. “I’m simplifying for this lecture. We’ll be deep-diving into relationship inclusivity and societal perception next week. We’d be here all day if I stopped right now to go through all of that.”
A part of me wanted to be here for that.Some curious part of me was sparked to life by everything she was talking about.
“James and Carl can get legally married, and so can Sarah and Michelle in the traditional sense of getting married and having kids for the whole nine yards.” She gestured widely between the three pictures. “So, we have to assume that means that across the board, all three of these relationships are filled with love. Am I right?”
I found myself nodding along with the rest of the class.
“But their molds are different,” Amelia capped her marker, “which means the only logical assumption is that love does not fit a mold. It’s fluid. It bends and breaks and sways and fills every mold, correct? It’s like a cup of water. You can move it between cups, and it’ll form how it needs to fit the shape of the new cup, right?”
A murmur of a response drifted across the room.
“But by societal standards… if we take away Liam and Lydia’s children and take away their marriage license, they’re no longer a traditional relationship. Do they love each other less?” Another quiet collective response. “And by societal standards, James and Carl don’t have a traditional relationship, but do they love each other any less? What about Sarah and Michelle? The answer is no, they don’t. Society doesn’t denote their relationship. They do. Their love and connection do.
“We have three depictions of non-traditional relationships right here. Three relationships between two people full of love. But if these are non-traditional and acceptable in their own way, we need to recognize that this model—this two-person, committed-for-life model—isn’t the only way for relationships to be entered into. And so, if we’re going to discuss relationship science, we must explore the concept of polyamory. Can anyone tell me what polyamory is?”
“When you can have sex with whoever you want and still stay with your partner?” someone said.
“Not quite. Being emotionally committed to one person while engaging in casual sexual relationships with others is called an open relationship,” she explained. “No, polyamory is the practice of engaging in multiple loving relationships. These relationships are based on an emotional connection and often love. They’re often romantic, but they don’t have to be. We’ll discuss platonic polyamory at a later date. We’ll put a pin in that, I promise.
