This has created a stir amidst the Great Indian soceity - the clash between conflicting school of thoughts. Obviously, any relationship - married or a commitment-free live-in has its own pros and cons. Just give it a thought : Is Marriage an essestial requirement in life? Is it that important? What would life be if you dont get married? The more I think about it, the more interesting it becomes!
Ladies and Gentlemen, here are the Top ten reasons as to why one should not get married. The assumption is that whatever I am going to discuss here is predominantly applicable to the Indian context to a large extent. The reasons given below may not be in the order of severity or equally applicable to all of us but each of them would definitely leave you with a Deja Vu feeling if you are married.
Statutory Warning : This post may carry a number of negative connotations. If you decide not to get married after reading through this one, the author may not be held responsible!
1. The first and the foremost - the loss of freedom and liberty. This is more relavant to the women folk than the men folk. Things get worse when your in-laws are with you. When there is someone around you, being with you, it is not that it is always possible to do whatever you want to in conjunction with you and your instinct. You cant sleep when you want, wake up when you feel like, go on a drive in the middle of the night like crazy, wear your favorite shorts at home, so on and so forth..
2. The expenses incurred - HUGE. This is applicable to both men and women equally alike. The thing is that when you are a Bachelor/Spinster, you really dont spend on your house - in buying/ renting a beautiful house, spending fortunes on it - interiors, furniture, kitchen, electronic gadgets etc etc. The things which where considered to be a luxury in your bachelorhood is considered to be an absolute necessity in married life.
3. Like it or not, you will have to develop this virtue - Tolerenace; and also Patience. Most of the things which happen to you are beyond the sphere of your control. You will have absolutely no control over it. It will all happen to you but you will have no role to play in it except for being a silent spectator. For instance, Spouse going onsite and you might have to leave you job/ take a sabbatical and go along with a dependant visa. Your career takes a back seat!
4. Develop a new unwelcome skill - getting into your family/spouse's family with your married status. Those who have married would definitely agree with me. Though your equation with your spouse may be amazing, positioning yourself amidst your spouse's family, even for that matter back to your own, needs a special skill. There a few techniques like carrying a plastic smile, attending almost every insignificant family functions like ear piercing ceremonies, upanayanams, anna prasanams etc may help.
5. Things you have never done before : Learn them. This may include a range of things - from bargaining with the vegetable vendor to cleaning the attic, washing vessels to changing baby nappies.
6. The art of so called reciprocating even without receiving/knowing anything in the first place. Now you will have to play this trick quite tactfully. Each one of your in-laws and their relatives are important. You will have no clue as to which relative will jump from where and when and how, but it will happen. He/She might claim to be the most important person in the entire household. If you had not realised this or reacted a little indifferent to this person, believe me, you are dead!
7. This one you cant miss - the silly, stupid, senseless fights! If you say that a couple got married and they lived happily ever after, then there are only two possibilities : One - they are lying. Two - they are abnormal. It is too much of an idealistic scenario if an husband and wife say there are no fights and they are in perfect harmony. The fights can spring up from any damn thing - misplaced bathroom slippers, an empty toothpaste tube, unpaid electricity bill, neighbour buying a vacuum cleaner, et al, just anything. There is absolutely no basis for these kind of fights.
8. This one is deadly and can chew your brains - Tu Tu Main Main. The male ego is the culprit behind it, further accentuated by the female ego. In today's context, where both the Husband and the Wife are equally educated and working at equally placed job values, the probablity is even higher!
9. The sweet poison - Possesiveness. Or rather Obsessiveness to call it right. It is a nice feeling to know that someone is possesive about you. But at times, it gets on too much that it suffocates you. Badly.
10. The most important of all - Sacrifice. You pretty much leave most of it behind you - your Career, your home, your city, your family with the intent of starting it all afresh. It is a huge sacrifice w r to the past and a huge investment(!) w r to the future. But really dont know if it is worth to take this big a leap ahead!
Someone's recommendation to me when I mentioned that I am bogging on this "Sensitive issue": This book is a must read - Shoba De's "Spouse"
10 comments:
read this!
http://www.cracked.com/article_17063_5-reasons-being-single-sucks-even-more-than-you-thought.html
1. loss of freedom for women folk more than men,.,i disagree,.,rather i wud say its the same for both sexes,.,ya most women stay wit inlaws after marriage,.,but men r at the receivin end there as well,.,havin to balance the "age old" love of mom n the so called "newly wedded" wife's love,.,its terrible,.,when yu hav to choose btw either n yu cant..
7. they can be deaf..hmm dumb and blind as well :P
8. male ego female ego,., as far as i know ego does not have a gender,.,it simply is ego and the person who possesses it can be a male or a female. equal probability. it varies frm r/s to r/s,., but ya the root cause is ego,.,
9. are there any seriously possessive ppl around,.,i neva knew,.,
Though the indian governmen can give a heads up to live-in r/s, whic is really grt; its far from reality that te common man really accepts it,.,
Your blog is pretty convincin,., but whether is it worth to lead a lifetime without a spouse is another debatable argument,., after all we r humans n v need support at some stage of lif from tat someone special,., lol
Many of the "issues" you identify with marriage are true for any close relationship .. Does that mean we shouldnt get into any close relationships ?
Good read..bt looks like india in 1960s to me :) :)!! indian men and women including in-laws(unfortunately even they belong to either one of the two genders) are far more lovely offlate and its getting better!!
‘And wed the single among you’. (chapter 24, verse 32)
lets wait for the contd. portion of this blog , post your nikah :-) inshaAllah
hehehe either you are married or you should be getting married soon. nice to read though..
on request - am posting this here.
while some of what you say is true - the fights, compromise, etc. It is down to one simple choice. Would you rather deal with all these 'compromises' or 'loneliness'? A well thought-out answer to this question should help you decide.
By the way, I am all in for live-in relationships. Just that it may take time for the idea to settle down in India!
well, i agree to it. But it cannot be implied that all marriages face all of these 10 problems. This is a pretty lopsided article, there are always wo sides to everything i n this practical world. So does marriage. They are some benefits too which you achieve in marriage. The completion of soul and bullcrap which i have heard from the so called fighting and always hot with in-laws couples cannot be a hundred percent false. I am still in my primitive stage. i hav a long way to go before i even think of marriage. But marriage doesn't necessarily mean that you have 10 reasons to justify the wreckage of your life. It need not necessarily be that a wife has to do all the household work after marriage and not before marriage, that a man loses his privacy or has to bear the grunt of over possessiveness from his counterpart. marriage is the official declaration of one's relationship and commitment. marriages are compromised with divorces too. So you can see, it is not the marriage but our cultural, religious taboo that comprehend for these 10 reasons. Try not to fall under them.
the institution of marriage has no relevance in a modern society in my opinion. there is nothing a woman can get from a man and a man can get from a woman is exclusive to marriage and not available out of it. needless stupid religious ceremonies and unecessary expenses and insane laws specified by social constructs, wow.. so much complication the institution of marriage brings.
you hit the nail right on the head on this one.
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