There is insurance for everything you can imagine: life insurance, car insurance, courier insurance, disability insurance, and of course health insurance.

As cold-hearted as it may sound, marriage is often a way to make sure you have health coverage. Sometimes people prefer to stay in a common-law relationship, but face having to get married instead because they may otherwise not get the same health coverage. By marrying an individual who has health insurance through his or her employer, the new spouse can typically be covered by that health insurance, as well. Even though it’s usually considered insurance fraud, which makes it illegal, many people enter into marriage just to have health insurance. This is similar to the concept of people marrying just for the purpose of receiving a work permit or citizenship. Many people also attempt to hang on to, or work through, a failing marriage for the sole purpose of hanging onto the health insurance they receive from their spouse’s employer.

The alternative is simple: You can purchase an individual health insurance policy of your own. Sure, individual health insurance policy rates are usually more expensive than the group insurance policy rates paid by employees who buy into their employer’s health insurance package. Being single is plain expensive, even with insurance policies. However, doesn’t it give you more peace of mind to be in control over your own health care and future, instead of depending on an unhappy marriage? And, on that note, aren’t you paying for the health insurance anyway, by compromising your happiness and staying in a failing marriage just for your spouse’s health insurance policy?

You can shop around for an individual health insurance policy that is going to meet both your health and your financial needs. It may take time, but there are many health insurance companies out there that offer individual health insurance policies. Most companies offer free quotes, and there are enough insurance comparison sites that can give you quotes from a variety of insurance companies at once. Look into several health insurance companies, talk to several health insurance agents, and you will find one that will work for you. You don’t have to rely on marriage for adequate health insurance.

I can’t help but wonder whether people who are prone to cheating on their partners perhaps have a little bit of a split-personality disorder. Perhaps with a side of bi-polar, people go through life never quite finding what they want. Yet, being very happy with elements of what they do find in their partners.

Are we ultimate perfectionists if we do not find the right person to marry? Or simply out of luck? Does that same perfectionism become our own downfall when we stray for the straight and perfect path into a life of adultery when our partner does not live up to expectations?

Perhaps.

I can’t help but wonder again whether some cheating can’t be healthy. After all: all those perfectionists have to be put in their place sometime and hit their nose on reality. Nothing is perfect, and how better to teach us than that wildly inappropriate partner we accidentally fell into bed with one night, while the wife or husband was home doing the dishes?

I spoke to a man yesterday who is certainly not cheating: the second sentence coming out of his mouth involved the words “my fiance and I”. People who include their significant other in a conversation usually do not intend to cheat; they are not hiding their relationship. Anyhow, the secret to this man’s relationship success was his breakup a few years ago. His (now) fiance and him decided to call it quits on the relationship, but stay good friends. They dated other people for six months, became wildly disappointed with the offerings on the singles market and decided they weren’t so bad for each other after all. Sometimes a separation is not possible, should one really rule out an affair? It’s tricky, but in some cases the affair can be the best thing you could ever do for the relationship. For some people, polyamory does actually work to bring the original couple closer together.

Polyamory is not the same thing as polygamy! Polyamory involves being in love with, and/or romantically involved with more than one person at a time. This could mean you are dating two men, two women, a man and a woman… the possibilities are endless. It may mean you are dating more than one person, or you may be living with more than one person and romantically involved with each one.

In contrast, polygamy involves a man marrying multiple women. Polyamory is therefore extremely unrestricted as a relationship form, and the polyamorists might actually be on to something. They have conferences now where they discuss all issues related to polyamory (which makes it clear that this relationship form too is not exclusively rozy), and one of the issues brought forth in defence of polyamory is the fact that we can never find the perfect person. While your partner and you may share a love of theatre, he may have your music tastes. Some monogamists just accept the fact that there are and will be differences, and make the best of it. Others cheat, and yet others split up or stay single until they do find that perfect person God popped out of a mold especially for them.

Polyamorists claim that you can have it all, just not from one person. They suggest keeping the theater-loving boyfriend, and get an extra one who will take you to your next rave. Of course the whole scoop of the polyamorous matter is that the first boyfriend agrees, and likely has additional relationships himself.

An interesting thing is the polyamorous cohabitation: this can take many shapes but an article I recently read described a couple that started dating (and living with) another woman. So, the relationship consists of one man and two women. However, the original couple share a bedroom, while the second woman has her own room and alternates between being with one and then the other person.

It is an interesting concept, and certainly beats cheating or leaving your spouse. However, you gotta be one strong cookie to tell yourself you do not need to be jealous. Perhaps it takes that poly gene to agree that while you may not get everything you want from one person, you are also not going to leave the first for another. Perhaps that is the classic monogamous fear that completely contradicts what polyamory stands for: they do not leave one person for the other, they just have both.

Selfish, or tremendously clever?