A marriage needs to be viewed as teamwork with each member contributing his share & might, committed to find the best solution to a problem at hand
PACHU MENON
The triple talaq legislation in India has thrown the doors wide open for discussions on divorce as being a vile practice that is so capricious so as to warrant a lawyer, rather than the priest who ties the nuptial knot, to consult on the continuity of a marital unity.
The spate of divorces that have come to light in recent times has incompatibility in relationship as the basic reason for the snapping of ties between legally wedded couples.
We have heard of marriages that do not last even for a few months before reaching the courts for annulment. Could reasons of compatibility be cited for the break-up!
On the other hand, the amusing case of a 90-year-old man moving a family court seeking divorce from his 80-year-old wife – and after being ‘happily’ married for sixty years at that!
Could anything be more far-fetched than the idea of compatibility being the principal villain in the annulment of marriages? Some people are intrigued by the concept of compatibility!
Marriages are said to be made in heaven. But are they? Marriage has been traditionally understood as the union of a man and woman, a sacred alliance between them, vital to the stability and preservation of our society. However, divorce though a painful decision is a harsh reality which is growing in numbers with every passing year.
Lack of communication, financial problems, sexual problems and (there we go again) compatibility have soured stories of long-lasting love resulting in rocky relationships. Whom do we blame!
In generations past, it is said, that there was less talk about compatibility and the search centered around finding the ideal soul-mate. Marriage was seen as the coming together of two people, sometimes total strangers, to create a space of stability, love and consolation.
These days however the present generation seems to attach a ‘need-centered’ approach to marriage reading the sacred union as an agreement of convenience where, with the least consideration for the basic tenets laid down, each partner is seen moving in a diametrically opposite direction to the other, more engrossed in personal gratification.
Legally, marriage is a contract with certain rights and responsibilities. However, the habit of treating marriages solely as contracts is primarily responsible for the disintegration of family life.
A marriage needs to be viewed as teamwork with each member contributing his share and might, committed to find the best solution to a problem at hand. That is why we say, ‘a marriage is all about adjustments and
compromises’.
The marital union results in the fusion of two minds, two intellects, two sets of emotions and two wills to constitute one entity. In order to see that no fissures occur and the union is maintained intact without destroying itself, one of the partners is charged with control in the relationship and the other with
submission.
This does not imply that any one of two is superior or inferior to the other. Both have an equal role to play in strengthening the knot. The biological factor too could have been a decisive factor.
Yet, emancipation of women has definitely re-defined the concept of home-makers. Gender equality is no more a plea, it is a demand. With husbands and in-laws refusing to accept the changing roles of man and woman in society today, separations and divorces have become the order of the day.
Educated and equally capable as their spouses today, we have to however understand that there is more awareness of rights among women about their economical independence. The violence and discontentment which was tolerated in marriages some decades back may not still keep a woman sticking around in marriage now.
Compatibility will never be perfect as none of us are without flaws. In the course of a married life partners get to see faults in each other sooner or later. Imperfections are a matter of adjustment and happy are those who deal with the problems accordingly.
Today though, our search for the compatible is doomed to be an impossible quest! We expect the ‘perfect-match’ to be one who accepts us as we are and fulfills our desires. This in turn creates an unrealistic set of expectations that frustrates both the ‘searcher’ and the ‘searched for’. How will a marriage survive on such a shaky foundation?
In the present world where the quest for materialistic gains far outweighs any other consideration, a host of psychological factors play an inadvertent role in the raging marital discords.
The demands for the sustenance of a family which makes one toil day in and day out to make ends meet, current job profiles that requires target and deadlines to be achieved, no matter how, etc, have contributed to the crumbling of the very edifice of marriage.
A feeling that a spouse is being neglected, professional jealousy in some cases where both are employed, a rather negative approach to the socializing habits of the partners and, very rarely, an over-protective attitude towards the children have all had adverse effects on the continuity of marriage.
But, partners calling for an annulment of marriage where one of the two becomes invalid or reduced to a vegetative state due to some quirk of fate, and abandoning partners on matters of progeny should remind mankind that when it comes to matters of convenience, we are the worst and most abhorring specimens in the entire animal kingdom.
Nevertheless, the ill-effects of a divorce resulting from disastrous marriages have left the partners, and especially the children, scarred for life. Traumatized mental wrecks are quite often the results of irretrievably broken-down
marriages.
While Goa may truly be the heaven where marriages are made to last an eternity, divorce and separation rates in various communities in the state have shown an alarming rise over the last one decade.
Nevertheless, there is nothing glorifying about a divorce!
No matter how ‘liberal’ the present generation may be about subjects that were deliberated in the closed confines of the family, institutions like marriage have always thrived on the desire of the partners to make the best of the sacred union and brave the storm of uncertainties which occasionally sweep across their lives.
‘Till death do us apart’ from the marriage liturgy remains just a formal phrase these days! Woe be on the practice which often cuts short by divorce a bond that putatively lasts until death!
