They say that love transcends all boundaries. That we don’t choose love, love chooses us. But when we get caught in a love triangle, how do we know if love has made the right choice? While having late night coffee with the boys one Friday night, we started talking about our love lives (to be more accurate, they started talking about theirs and I started imagining mine). One is in a relationship with a boy who's attached to someone else, while another just got out of a similar situation. As they started bringing in case studies to discuss their plight, it appears to me that being the third party in a relationship is the entire rave now. It’s so ubiquitous in gay society that it's become sort of a trend. Listening to their conversation, I couldn’t help but wonder. Is 3 really the new 2? A rather cynical friend told me that every gay man cheats. And those who say they haven’t are either not in a relationship, or have yet to be caught. A little harsh, but he does bring up an interesting point – that the desire to be the male mistress is inextricably linked to the possibility of being caught. I’m not advocating the act itself, but the thrill and suspense of getting caught does make the relationship and its sweet bedroom rewards much more enticing and fun. Besides, the hot boys are all attached. That night, as I lay in bed thinking of what was discussed, I pondered upon the topic of love and relationships. Doesn't seem like a bad deal, this kinked-relationship-thing. Plus the thrill, minus the commitment. Perhaps a new, liberal sort of love is evolving here. And yet it is a little odd. In a city filled with endless possibilities, how has it become so difficult to find love that is mutually exclusive? Are sex and relationships only exciting because of the element of being caught? As I pondered on these questions, another thought came. Maybe, it’s not just about chasing the thrill. Maybe it’s really still about good old-fashioned love. Good old-fashioned love, Amor vincit omnia, still believing it can conquer all. In life, we meet all kinds of people. Of these people, there are some that we fall helplessly in love with, or as Olivia Newton-John puts it, that we become “hopelessly devoted to”. And amongst this category of people we fall in love with, there are those that are already in a relationship. So we are hit with a conundrum – to be (in such a relationship) or not to be? Our mind warns us of the disastrous journey we are about to embark on but our heart refuses to let go of the one thing that could be the metaphorical light at the end of a very long and dark alley. When one embarks on this ‘kinked’ relationship, we are no longer talking about thrills or spills. We’re talking about love, unsparingly hard love. Can what started out as pure lust and non-committal sex truly turn into love? Maybe. But how long will it take to convince ourselves that we’re alright with being in a ‘kinked’ relationship? Lest we forget, there will come a time when the thrills fade away. There will come a time when all we want is to be in the first chair, to have a mutually exclusive relationship. They may be sleeping with us now but it’s their lover’s arms that they return to at the end of the night. In such an orchestra of love, are we truly content to play second fiddle? I’ve come to realize that perhaps because we are so much in love, we tend to fake the reality of the issue in the hope of not confronting it. We refuse to confront the other party about their cheating behavior. After all, to confront it is to run the risk of being alone. It might be better to just keep silent and enjoy what’s ours, rather than opening up the can of worms and destroying what we have, right? A fine delusion to have. But before you fake yourself into believing it, don't forget this last nagging question – can one love & cheat at the same time? While women are no strangers to faking an orgasm, men fake about everything else. We fake our eye and hair colour, our penis size, our jobs and even fake our ethnicity (read: Mixed blood when you’re Chinese/Indian/Malay). Somehow, for fear of ending up alone, we are prepared to fake more than just our physical traits. This begs the question: has the fear of being alone raised the bar on faking? Would we fake an entire relationship just so we don’t end up “alone”? Some would. But if so, be prepared to give up the usual rights of a mutually exclusive relationship. After all, in the name of ‘love’, we have agreed to embark on this kinked relationship knowing full well the outcome of it. Maybe there is some solace to be found in the thought, 'if he is with me now, it naturally means he is not happy with the other person’. But for me, I think it’s better to be alone than to fake it. At the very least, being single is a personal, individual choice to be alone, but being alone when you’re in a supposed ‘relationship’ is, to me, a little ludicrous. Ask yourself this question – when push comes to shove, will he leave the other for you? Because the truth is, if he really did love you as much as he claims he does, you wouldn’t be in this situation at all now, would you? | 
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