A woman is calling for a change of law than allows people to be legally married to more than one person at a time
Mary Crumpton is a practiser of polyamory - meaning she believes in having more than one partner.
Mary Crumpton made a lifetime commitment to John Hulls earlier this year in a special ceremony.
Mary Crumpton is polyamorous - meaning she believes in having more than one partner. Mary made a lifetime commitment to John Hulls (left) earlier this year despite being married to Tim Crumpton (right)
People who are polyamorous consent to their partner's being in a relationship with somebody else.
Naturally Mary's husband Tim Crumpton gave her his blessing to be married and even walked Mary down the aisle of the special blessing ceremony.
Mary lives with Tim and John under the same roof in Chorlton, Manchester and is in equally committed and loving relationships with both of them.
What's more Mary also has two boyfriends who live nearby and if any of her partners wanted to start seeing another woman at the same time, she'd be happy for them.
Although Mary is married to both Tim and John, it's only her commitment to Tim which is legally recognised.
Mary's situation has spurred her to try and change the law and she it now is getting ready to lobby for new marriage rules.
'John was already living with me and Tim before John and I had our ceremony,' explains Mary, 45.
'He moved in with us in 2015 so we'd already got into a stable and happy domestic situation, so it's not changed anything practically, but it has changed things emotionally for me.
'It's lovely to be able to feel that I've made that commitment to John, so that he's not 'in second place' any more.
'We got to the point where John and I both felt that we wanted to make that lifetime commitment, but obviously in this country you can't marry more than one person.
'Tim was fully supportive of mine and John's commitment to one another.' Mary and John's ceremony took place at Chorlton Unitarian Church. They made vows to each other, and Tim and John made extra vows, promising to honour and respect Mary's commitment to the other man.
'The church is very forward thinking, they were the first to do homosexual marriages and civil partnerships so they are very inclusive and respectful of diversity,' says Mary.
'I went to the church and said that I'd like to have a wedding with John. I told them I knew it wouldn't be a legal wedding, but I wanted it to be a wedding in every other respect.
'They ran it by the committee and everyone was fully supportive.
'That's quite an amazing thing because as far as I know, it's the first polyamorous wedding ceremony that's happened in a church in the UK.
'People have had handfastings in fields, but an actual church saying yes we will do this for the first time, we've made history and I'm proud of that.
I hope that other churches will follow on.
'The way we did it, with the help of a minister, Laura Dobson, we structured a service, with a walk down the aisle, the white dress.
'There wasn't a dry eye in the house! Everyone was really moved by the whole thing.
'We kept a lot of the things that are in a normal service, we kept all those normal wordings in - we promised lifetime commitment. Clearly we weren't going to say excluding others because I'm married to Tim as well!
'It was lovely, having all the family there and everybody being so supportive. There were lots of people who'd never seen anything like this before and got used to it through seeing it happen, coming up afterwards saying: 'Mary that was amazing, I didn't get it before but I can see that it's really working for you' so that was lovely.
'Since then everything has been great. Tim and John get on great, they'll go off on bicycle rides together - they joke that I'm a bit of a wild one and it takes two of them to keep me in line!'
Mary at her wedding to second husband John earlier this year
Mary's two wedding rings. Mary is lobbying for a law change that allows people to be married to more than one person
Mary is keen to push for change to marriage laws so John has the same legal rights as Tim, who she married in 2013.
'In our hearts, he is my second husband, I have two husbands, but clearly legally, Tim's the only one,' says Mary.
'There are plenty of people in my situation who have more than one partner they would like to commit to for life, be it same sex or different sex, and we've got a lot of Muslims in our country now and I don't quite know how it works if they bring their wives here, maybe they have to pick one to be their legal wife, and I don't think that's fair.
'I think that I want to have a country where we respect people's choices, in terms of their relationships and if that means that a Muslim man wants to marry three women and have those women respected in law as his wives, he should be able to do so.
'And if I want to have two husbands, then I'd like that to be respected in law as well, and I don't see any reason why it shouldn't be.
'At the moment, because I'm not legally married to John as well as to Tim, if I was knocked down by a bus tomorrow and was in hospital, Tim would be my next of kin and gets to make all the decisions and John would not be recognised.
'Clearly Tim and John are close and therefore of course Tim would consult John, but if they disagreed about a decision, what would happen then?
John's rights are not respected. 'Other things like, if I die and I haven't made a will, everything would go to Tim and John would get nothing. I have to make a will to make sure everything gets split between them.
'But if I'd been able to legally marry John as well as Tim, then I wouldn't have to go that extra mile, it would just be automatic.
'There's things like that, where John has no legal rights because I can't marry him legally and that upsets me, and there are a lot of people in the country that this affects, who are in a similar situation, who are having to do work-arounds to make sure that any partner they are not married to get fully respected.
'I would really like to see a change in the law. We've done marriage for people in homosexual relationships, this is the next thing that needs to happen.
'I think there needs to be a big campaign, people need to write to their
Mary and Timothy Crumpton who walked her down the aisle at her second marriage
MPs, get the issue raised in parliament and go from there really.
'That's my target for next year, do some research and get as many people on board as possible to make it happen.
'There's lots of people who aren't polyamorous but know people who are, and I've said this to them and they say absolutely, quite right, you should have your other relationship respected and legalised, that's perfectly reasonable.
'I think there's lots of people from the Muslim community who would be in favour as well. I think the next thing is put together a team of people and try to take the campaign forward.
'The first thing was lets talk about it, lets get other people talking about it and get it more accepted and less judged, and go from there. So watch this space.'
Mary says there are more people living in polyamorous relationships in the UK than people might realise.
'There are lots of people living like this, there's a UK poly group, there's a Manchester poly meet-up group, people get together. They have confidentiality rules because a lot of people haven't told their families or workplaces.
'When I first started looking into it I thought there wouldn't be anybody, but there's loads of people.
'The Manchester polyamorous community is quite big, they have meet ups a couple of times a month, there's a lot more people living this way than you would imagine.
'You could have a married couple next door, and you think they are going out with a friend but actually it's their partner, because they are discreet about it.'
Since Mary last spoke out about polyamory, Tim has started seeing someone, but far from being jealous, Mary says she is pleased that her husband is happy, and would give her blessing to any of her partners if they wanted to pursue relationships with more women.
'They are very welcome to (have other relationships). My husband Tim has recently started seeing a new lady, and that's going really well,' says Mary.
'They've all been on dates occasionally but not really developed any relationships particularly.
'This is the first time Tim has formed a bond with someone, so hopefully this one will pan out. I'm very, very pleased for him. It's very exciting.
'I think jealousy arises because of fear of losing somebody.
'My relationship with Tim is so good, and I know that we love each other so much that I don't feel in the slightest bit threatened by him falling in love with someone else.
'I know it's not going to affect him and me at all. Knowing that, I can just sit back and be really pleased for him that he has some extra happiness in his life.
'It's no different to if he'd joined a darts team and was suddenly going out every week to play darts, I'd be pleased he had a new interest.
'I see him having a new partner as the same thing, I'm pleased he's got something new in his life, bringing him some joy.
'I know the person and she's lovely so I could not be happier, I'm really happy to finally see him having that as well.
'I've had the joy of being in love with more than one person and he'd been open to it but it hadn't really happened, so to see him exploring that is just great.
'People are used to the idea of you having a second child, if you have a second child it doesn't mean you love the first one any less so people understand that love is not a limited resource.
'I just say, romantic love works the same way as that kind of love, I can love more than one person at the same time, actually, a lot of people can.
Mary lives with Tim and John under the same roof in Chorlton, Manchester and is in equally committed and loving relationships with both of them
'A lot of people have been in that situation of being in a relationship with one partner and loving someone else, and they either pretend that they haven't got those feelings, or they have an affair, neither of which are great outcomes.
'A lot of people do understand is that it is possible to love more than one person, the only difference is people in my situation talk about it and find a way to make it work.'
As for whether or not she'd consider another relationship herself in future, Mary is thinking practically.
'Even though I say love is not a limited resource, time is. There are only seven days in a week, to try to have more partners than that would be a challenge,' she says.
'I suppose if you had a partner who was long distance, who you only saw once a month then maybe.
'I always say never say never. If Prince Charming walks in tomorrow and I fall in love with him I'll just have to find a way round that.
'I do know people who are in polyamorous relationships who have six or seven partners, but that's generally partners who are not all living together, because time is an issue.
'For me it's really important that I am giving quality time to everybody I'm involved with.
'If you have too many partners, to my mind, for me, I would find it difficult to do justice to the relationships so it's about having that balance of allowing love to blossom and flourish where you find it, but equally being sensible about how much time you have got, how much you can commit to.'
Mary wants to carry on being open about polyamory, as she feels many people still don't really understand what it's all about.
'I've been called a slag. People would find out and say: 'Oh, you've got two men, that's disgusting and perverted' so I can understand why people feel they have to hide it,' says Mary.
'I thought someone needs to stand up and say 'this is how some of us live, and it's okay'.
'I knew there would be some backlash, it has in some ways been a challenging thing to do but I felt someone had to do it.
'A lot of people have the wrong idea about it, they think it's all leaping into bed with people, sleeping around.
'There are some people who do that, there's a whole community of swingers, and that's what some people do and there's nothing wrong with that. That's fine, it's just not me.
'It's about love. Although I have more than one partner, I am quite old fashioned, I don't just go straight in with people, I have to know that I am in love with someone before I am fully intimate.
'That's something people didn't understand, they thought: 'Oh you just want to s**g around'. There's nothing wrong with that, it's just not me.
'I want genuine love and relationships with more than one person at a time.'
After she first spoke to the M.E.N about her lifestyle, Mary was overwhelmed by messages from people from the UK and beyond, after the story was picked up by the international media.
Most of them thanked her for speaking out, as it enabled them to tell their families and friends that they are also polyamorous.
But it did not come without its downsides, with Mary even receiving death threats from people who did not agree with her lifestyle.
'It was a bit mad, I got so many messages, literally hundreds of private messages on Facebook from people tracking me down,' says Mary.
'It was overwhelmingly positive, but there were some negative. I had death threats: 'What you are doing is immoral and against God's law, I'm going to come to your house and kill you.'
'One guy even found out where I live, took a photo of my front door and sent it to me with a message saying: 'I wasn't joking, I'm going to kill you tonight.'
'Before I had a chance to do anything about it, he deleted the account so it was untraceable. So yeah I put the chain on that night!
'That's one of the reasons I chose to speak out about it, because we live in a world where if someone is doing something a bit different, people are very judgemental.
'But people used to be very judgemental about being homosexual, but now it's so much accepted - people know that people fancy people of the same sex- and I think that's where we need to get to with different relationship styles.
'We need to get to a point where people just say: 'Okay, you happen to be polyamorous, you're monogamous, we're all just living our lives and if people understand how it works, that's the first step.
'I got people from all over the world messaging saying thank you for speaking out, saying: 'I showed this article to my dad then told him I was the same way.'
'I think I managed to explain it quite well so people could see it's not some weird, perverted cult. It just so happens that I love more than one person, and that's okay.'
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Linkhienalouca.com
https://hienalouca.com/2018/11/19/the-law-must-change-to-make-both-my-marriages-legal-says-polyamorous-woman/
Main photo article A woman is calling for a change of law than allows people to be legally married to more than one person at a time
Mary Crumpton is a practiser of polyamory – meaning she believes in having more than one partner.
Mary Crumpton made a lifetime commitment to John Hulls earlier this year in ...
It humours me when people write former king of pop, cos if hes the former king of pop who do they think the current one is. Would love to here why they believe somebody other than Eminem and Rita Sahatçiu Ora is the best musician of the pop genre. In fact if they have half the achievements i would be suprised. 3 reasons why he will produce amazing shows. Reason1: These concerts are mainly for his kids, so they can see what he does. 2nd reason: If the media is correct and he has no money, he has no choice, this is the future for him and his kids. 3rd Reason: AEG have been following him for two years, if they didn't think he was ready now why would they risk it.
Emily Ratajkowski is a showman, on and off the stage. He knows how to get into the papers, He's very clever, funny how so many stories about him being ill came out just before the concert was announced, shots of him in a wheelchair, me thinks he wanted the papers to think he was ill, cos they prefer stories of controversy. Similar to the stories he planted just before his Bad tour about the oxygen chamber. Worked a treat lol. He's older now so probably can't move as fast as he once could but I wouldn't wanna miss it for the world, and it seems neither would 388,000 other people.
Dianne Reeves Online news HienaLouca
https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2018/11/18/21/6352296-6403783-image-a-26_1542577329493.jpg
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