Marriage, the necessary and rightful happy ending to any love story as most of us are led to believe throughout our teens and as we head into our own. Essentially a certificate signed by both people which in many cases is not a conscious decision reached after weighing in on any other existing ways to live our lives and then choosing this particular one, but more as one of the most significant checkboxes on the ‘shared’ & celebrated bucket list for the under 30s, common for every individual as put together by the society.
Marriage as we know, is a commitment to love someone as well as be/live with them for as long as you both shall live. The idea of such a promise, although sounds as rosy and romantic as it can possibly get, how can we possibly promise to love & be with someone forever if as humans we are bound to constantly keep evolving and over time you will probably not be the same person who promised this nor will the receiver be the same person to whom you made the promise. Love, marriage & sexual compatibility are not necessarily interconnected. They somehow got grouped together for the sake of building and maintaining a societal structure for us as well as our future generations. And it’s been working since forever. Having said that, isn’t it juvenile, if not foolish, to promise someone you two will remain a couple forever, when love and other emotions that are supposed to form the foundation of a good marriage are not objects that we have control over? Especially given that none of us have any idea what the future holds. I am certainly not saying one should not believe in miracles, we should. I do. I am married. I love my family. I would never want a do-over. I am simply pointing out that it takes nothing short of a miracle to find all three things and more in one person and even more so to continue to find it in the same person forever. It’s not real to expect every marriage to last because a promise was made between two people and a piece of paper was signed. And it’s difficult to accept this when the society glorifies ideas like “Never give up” and “To build love you keep loving even when you don’t feel in love.” It’s not a competition that’s going to yield a trophy if we make it to the finish line even if it means having to crawl our way up to it with an unbearable weight of sacrifice, responsibility and commitment on your shoulders and not a shred of happiness in sight. The goal of life is not making a marriage last a lifetime. The goal of life is being happy & finding joy because before you know it, this short ride will be over for good.
Another question that comes to my mind is — since marriage gives us this sense of security — I don’t mean financial — I mean security that I have legal rights to this person who has promised and therefore is obligated to love me forever no matter what (and therefore he/she must), isn’t it easy for us to stop caring about making/keeping ourselves interesting — fun to be with — taking efforts to make sure our partner actually enjoys our company? You know, how we present ourselves when dating someone — but not living with them. We work on everything right from our appearance to the topics & tone of our conversations, think about how much we are available to them while protecting our own space and individual needs & interests, plans we propose to enjoy a variety of experiences together and much more.
Marriage can benefit from these efforts too because that could maybe make it, even if a remote one at that, some version of dating — yes with a promise of “forever” — but only in the context that forever refers to being lost in love. This ride may not last till you both shall live, but it may be the greatest ride ever.
A footnote later added by my brother Raam to this post – The times when all marriages were expected to last forever were such when people only made it alive to their 40s (based on life expectancy in those days) so forever was not that long ; )