It has been quite a while that Ramona and I have been here in Vrindavan without any bigger travels. I think it has been the longest time since I was a teenager – if you don’t count my time in the cave of course! Well, in this time I have had the chance to reconnect with some old friends and also make some new friends here in India. While this is really wonderful I noticed something that is rather sad: I have not met one person who is really happy in his relationship.
I have met young people, old people and people of all ages in between. People usually know that love and relationships are topics which I often write about, so they also enjoy sharing their own experience with me. I can tell you, it doesn’t give a good impression of arranged marriages!
I have friends who have been married only for one or two years, whose married life is still fresh and young but who are already doubting that marrying was really such a good idea as they thought before their wedding! After a short time of excitement about their new state, about the fact that they are now ‘married’ and of course that they can now legally and in a socially acceptable way have sex, daily life started catching up to them. They had to learn to adjust to a partner, a certain loss of freedom which they had before, maybe problems within their joint family and tension or fights with family members and among the partners themselves. A certain routine has started and they found out that the other one is not quite as perfect as he or she was in their dreams.
There are friends who are a few years further in their marriage, with children who go to school or are teenagers already. They have adjusted to the daily things that just don’t fit together. They know that they are different from each other but they have accepted it and live their lives around it, practically trying to do as little together with each other as possible. They know their duties, what is expected of them by their families or society and they fulfill all of that but nothing more. They love their children dearly – but for each other there is only the plain acceptance that the other one is the spouse, not much more. Whenever a fight comes up however, every small thing that ever happened wrong will be mentioned! They are deeply disappointed, realizing that there is no way out, now that they are married and have children and they blame the other one for it!
I have also had friends here whose children are already adult and settled themselves, who will soon be grandparents, but who have still not found peace with their partners. When I asked one of these friends why he didn’t bring his wife, he said “I have spent thirty years in a marriage with this woman, now I need some time for myself!” Now they are free again, after having raised their children, to do something they like – and being with their partner does not fall in that category! They know each other very well and some may manage to even enjoy the company of the other one. Mostly however they just follow their habit of making small mean comments to each other throughout the day, nurturing their bitterness in their hearts.
It is sad to see that. All these couples make effort not to show their problems in public and to the people around them they may seem like loving couples. Anybody however who gets just a little bit close can feel the tensed atmosphere in between them and will soon get to know that something is not as perfect as they want it to look like.
For today I want to leave it at the observation of this problem. Tomorrow I would like to write about the cause and a possible solution!
Related posts
कृपया ग्लानि न करें यदि किसी की कल्पना करके आपका खड़ा अथवा गीली हो जाए
Bitte haben Sie kein schlechtes Gewissen, wenn Sie eine Erektion bekommen oder nass werden, weil Sie sich jemanden vorstellen
Please don’t feel guilty if you get erection or wet by imagining someone
Meine Beziehung zu meinem Vater
My relationship with my father
पिता के साथ मेरा सम्बन्ध
Neues Kapitel im Leben, Herausforderungen und Lektionen
New chapter in life, challenges and lessons
I’ve enjoyed reading about arranged marriages on your blog – it seems like in the past they would have worked well as you could grow up with your partner, forming a bond with them similar to the pre marriage relationship idea in the west, and indeed this used to be the case in western culture a while ago, but now, especially with the more traditional arranged marriages where you won’t meet your spouse until the wedding day, it’s no surprise so many marriages end up like you’ve described. I was talking to an Indian friend of mine in Kerala who said how he still had an arranged marriage but he met his fiancee a year before and was allowed to see if it would work between them before committing to a relationship. Even this minor difference would have as big impact I think on the state of marriages in the country – there is definitely still a need for change!
I find this so interesting and I came across this site/blog after my experience, I am glad now I know a lot more about the so many different languages, cultures, customs, etc held in India that I had no idea about, and also the issues you bring up regarding the arranged marriage system in India, very interesting.