Free companion

Free companion

On Gor, the pledging of a "free companionship" between a free man and a free woman is the counterpart to marriage. In a number of ways, a woman in a free companionship is more autonomous than a wife in a traditional marriage on earth: the man and woman are viewed as partners in a contractual relationship; there is no particular expectation that the woman should submerge her personality in that of the man; the woman often keeps her name; and in many cases, a free companionship is automatically dissolved after a year, unless annually mutually renewed by the parties. (The terms of a companionship can be specified in a Companion Contract, a kind of betrothal agreement and pre-nup.) And most of the time a woman free companion is fully respected as befits her status as a free woman. However, women free companions are sometimes subject to occasional arbitrary assertions of male authority by their partners (in accordance with prevailing Gorean views of the basic natures of the two sexes), and if a man in a free companionship has sex with a kajira, normally this is not viewed as adultery or "cheating" according to Gorean laws and social customs. Gorean free woman are often frustrated that they are effectively in competition with kajirae for the attentions of free men, but in some ways are kept at a disadvantage in such competition by the restrictive social customs governing the behavior of free women; since free women can't generally vent such frustrations on the men themselves, they often take them out on the kajirae, so that free women often despise kajirae.

Quote:

«There is no marriage, as we know it, on Gor, but there is the institute of the Free Companionship, which is its nearest correspondent. Surprisingly enough, a woman who is bought from her parents, for tarns or gold, is regarded as a Free Companion, even though she may not have been consulted in the transaction. More commendably, a free woman may herself, of her own free will, agree to be such a companion. And it is not unusual for a master to free one of his slave girls in order that she may share the full privileges of a Free Companionship. One may have, at a given time, an indefinite number of slaves, but only one Free Companion. Such relationships are not entered into lightly, and they are normally sundered only by death. Occasionally the Gorean, like his brothers in our world, perhaps even more frequently, learns the meaning of love.» - Book 2, "Outlaw of Gor", chapter 6 - Vera, page 29, page 54