Who says, marriages are made in heaven? If it is
so, why certain people are becoming victim of its pluses and minuses on this
planet earth?
Marriage is said to be a sacred knot but its
natural base is of physical relations between the opposite genders, given a
legal name of marriage, by the society.
Almost every marriage starts out as a huge
celebrations and each couple is full of hopes and dreams for their future life
together. But the road to a happy
marriage is far from easy and many couples pt not to complete the journey.
With the passage of time, the marriages within the
caste, nearest relations, out of caste become a routine matter. At the same time, certain rigid communities banned
the marriages within the same gotra – caste.
When I joined the Counseling Cell about 17 years
back, the priority of the dispute was dowry, ego, misunderstanding, extra
marital relations, addiction, property dispute and over number of petty issues
like differences between the mother-in-law and daughter-in-law. It would be
easy to blame our high rate of marital failure on things like not spending
enough quality time together, allowing bitterness and resentment to build in
our hearts and failing to keep communication lines open.
Once there was a case of dispute between the
couple married without the consent of parents of both the parents of the girl. The
boy had fallen in love while serving at one station in the same department. The
boy was the only son and one sister, of serving couple. Being the only son, he was groomed in the
family traditions but with values of an aristocratic family. He was
short-heighted, intelligent promising and full of confidence. He loved life and
wanted to live it well. She was an extra
ordinary beautiful girl, always gracious and stylishly dressed and had a
sparkling sense of humour. She too was
attracted and soon the bond became deeper.
I used to meet both of them off and on and they
were quite frank in talking even before me but hardly had they said, I love you
very much to each other. They used to
smile and ignore it.
After the marriage, they started living married
life separately from the parents. They boy used to meet his parents
occasionally but the girl’s parents have ignored both. In the initial months of
their marriage, they enjoyed being together, visiting places and partying with
close friends and relatives except parents.
Due to rush of work at place, the boy used to come
late at home. She would often call him at his office and float a number of
questions like – What are you doing? With whom are you at present? I am feeling
lovely and bored, when are you coming back home? In fact, she becomes a
suspicious nature lady. She started checking mobile calls on his mobile, kept
an eye on him whenever he used his social media networks and resented the time
he spent with his family and friends.
Both were shifted to some other station and I was
not in contact with them for a long time.
Since he started distancing himself from his
friends, I however, came to know from one of his another friend that they had a
dispute over certain issues and living separately.
I was also told that he tried to keep the family
atmosphere happy and peaceful. But her wife wanted to dominate him and impose
her own living style on him. At long last, he realized that he had lost his
much-cherished freedom. For quite some time, they had lived a fractured life
continuing to live a miserable life.
However, on one fine morning after a gap of three
years, when I had gone to the Counseling Cell, I saw both of them standing
outside separately but none was with them.
They were stunned to see me there as if I have been informed of their
moving of application for easy separation through the women cell. On my asking, the boy said, we have decided
to break the love marriage and the reason behind the suspicious nature of my
better-half - I still say her.
On listening to both of them, I concluded that the
girl was not at all interested for divorce as this action will left her to live
hearty zest for life and may not lead her to live miserable life.
The dispute is only of ego at the level of the
girl. Even then the girl was adamant for rehabilitation. The excessive
possessiveness killed a budding conjugal relationship before it could mature
into a lasting equation. I along with my
colleagues did their counseling by sharing with them our experience. I told, in
marriage, each partner is to be an encourager rather than a critic, a forgiver rather
than collector of hurts, an enabler than a reformer.
But only once sentence of the girl to the boy
changed their life and they withdraw the application without taking any action
on it.
Frankly speaking, I was stunned to hear during my counseling
career what she said, “I have one brother and my husband has one sister, let
both be married and live for some time and I will opt for divorce”.
For a moment, I could make out that the marriages are
not made on heaven or hell but on earth.
It is you and your partner can decided whether to make a marriage a
heave or a hell.
But when the re-united coupled asked me the secret
of our long marriage, I said in a lighter way - we take time to go to a
restaurant two times a week over a little candlelight, dinner, soft music and
dancing? She goes on Tuesdays. I go on Fridays.
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