Marry only for love....your smart phone can take care of everything else!

(Images sourced from the internet) 

Let the wife make the husband glad to come home, and let him make her sorry to see him leave.

- Martin Luther

'I first learned the concepts of non-violence in my marriage.

- Mahatma Gandhi

Isolation offers its own form of companionship.

- Jhumpa Lahiri

The married are those who have taken the terrible risk of intimacy and, having taken it, know life without intimacy to be impossible.

- Carolyn Heilbrun

Some people claim that marriage interferes with romance. There's no doubt about it. Anytime you have a romance, your wife is bound to interfere.

- Groucho Marx

If you want to sacrifice the admiration of many men for the criticism of one, go ahead, get married.

- Katharine Hepburn

All weddings are similar, but every marriage is different.

- John Berger

My advice to you is to get married. If you find a good wife, you'll be happy; if not, you'll become a philosopher.

- Socrates

Love is an ideal thing, marriage a real thing; a confusion of the real with the ideal never goes unpunished.

- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“Yesterday is but a dream, Tomorrow is only a vision.  But today well lived makes every yesterday a dream of happiness, and every tomorrow a vision of hope.”

- Kalidasa

Marriage is neither heaven nor hell, it is simply purgatory.

- Abraham Lincoln

A good marriage would be between a blind wife and a deaf husband.

- Michel de Montaigne

All that a husband or wife really wants is to be pitied a little, praised a little, and appreciated a little.

- Oliver Goldsmith

There were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded.

- Princess Diana

I'm going through a divorce now. This is the second one, and like baseball, I'm not gonna get three strikes. I've been living by myself for five years and I'm very comfortable. I can play my guitar when I want to.

- Buddy Guy

Nowadays love is a matter of chance, matrimony a matter of money and divorce a matter of course.

- Helen Rowland

Friendship is the marriage of the soul, and this marriage is liable to divorce.

- Voltaire

Why should you marry?  I mean, what would marriage make you?  Is it a goal? Do you feel it makes you complete?  What could possibly be expected out of marriage?  When should you marry? 

All these are questions that rankle everyone's mind every time, especially the ones who are single and those who want to get married. What is marriage? A union of minds, perhaps?  A standard definition of marriage is that it is the legally or formally recognized union of a man and a woman (in some countries, two people of the same sex) as partners in a relationship. What does marriage do to you that singledom does not?

If you ask me, marriage should give me something that I wasn't able to achieve singly - which is love. I want something out of life that I am unable to actualize singly. The only checkbox I need to tick is whether I need something more than what I am having at present. I feel that unless you are in search of love, there is no need for marriage.

Choosing a person whom you have to share your life with is one of the important, perhaps the most important decision a person makes. The reason is not far to seek - a false step, and it shatters you forever. Sometimes you don’t even notice it, until one fine day, and a lot of water has flowed down the Ganges. Life with someone should add value to the singleness in your life.

Can I share my life with another? Will it compromise on my freedom, independence? Would I need to change myself?  The answer to these is 'certainly yes!'. When two persons are going to live in a house, there are bound to be likes, dislikes, disagreements, questions and what not.

In India in particular, you don't marry one person. You marry a family. Hence the impact on the marriage is exerted by many persons other than the one you marry. Now these persons are so unimportant to the relationship you have with the person whom you married but they end up being impactful. 'Your father said this'.... 'Your mother said that '.... ' Can't your brother / sister be a bit more respectful? ' Plus, other relatives at times -  yours and your spouse's.  Aunts, uncles, nephews, cousins -  it is a jungle out there. And invariably, we do what is easy for us -  hang on to the actions and words of these really useless personalities and hold our marriages to ransom. Consciously or unconsciously.

I hold a view that marriage is a failure if there is no intimacy among the couple. The only differentiating factor between  various other man-woman relationships and that of a married couple is intimacy and if that is absent, the marriage is hampered to that extent.

A lot of partners admit that there are problems, but just acknowledging them without addressing them is akin to Nero playing the fiddle when Rome was burning. It consumes the marriage. Slowly, but completely.

What is the key to a successful marriage?

1. Be convinced that you want to marry. If not, please don't take the plunge. As I said, marry only for love. Your smartphone can take care of everything else in life today. Remember, marriage should never be a goal. It should be a means to live life better. Marriage is not to produce babies. You can always bring up as an adopted kid as a single parent. 

2. Talk but listen. Respect each other.

3. Give up petty individual fetishes if they come in the way of hampering the relationship. 

4. Find time for each other. Romance. Love unconditionally.

 
5. Believe and trust, postpone getting judgmental. Move on, always. Don't hold on to past mistakes and disagreements.

6. Get intimate. Companionship is the only thing that keeps a marriage going. 

7. When the going is tough, try all stops to tide through, but without compromising on life. There is no perfect relationship. Even if you marry your clone you would still be unhappy.

8. Last, but most importantly, when it is beyond repair, just junk the marriage. It was good or bad while it lasted but would worsen life if it lasts further.

A word on love vs arranged marriage, the latter being something very common to India. There is absolutely no difference it causes to married life. In a 'love' marriage, you choose the partner and hence there is a perceived notion that the responsibility to ensure the success of the marriage is on you whereas in case of an 'arranged' marriage it is on the people who arranged it for you. Ultimately, it is the life after the marriage that counts - whether it is a love or arranged marriage does not have any impact on the marriage. The responsibilities remain the same.

There is a lot of talk about the sanctity of marriage. I apologize, but I don't believe in that. There is nothing 'sacred' to a marriage. This is a conventional, prudish thought process imposed on the society by the society. It's your life. There is nothing radical in a divorce or in a marriage. If you can't cope, just move on. Please. It is for your own good.

Don't get pusillanimous, grin and bear a bad marriage. A bad marriage is like a millstone around your neck; it only weighs you down, shatters you when you know that you are pushed to a wall. Divorce is a sign that you cannot tolerate shit; that you do not want to live a life of nothingness. It is not a black mark. Not anymore.

A 2015 survey conducted by University College London, the London School of Economics and The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine found that single women do not suffer the same negative health effects as unmarried men. It concluded that:

a. while relationships benefit men, women gain very little from tying the knot;

b. Not marrying or cohabiting is less detrimental among women than men;

c. Being married appears to be more beneficial for men than women.

A lot of such surveys do exist. As they say, there are three types of lies - Lies, Damned lines and Statistics. 

Well, choose your cards wisely!