FAILING MARRIAGES AND INCREASING DIVORCES – LOVE HAS BECOME MERE LUST

For time immemorial Marriage has been a contract for union of body, heart and soul of a man and woman. As with elapse of time everything depreciates or degrades, even the definition of marriage has depreciated and become reduced to a mere contract for legalised union of bodies. It has become a just an arrangement for legally satisfying our lust.

Recently there was an article in “India Today” about increasing divorce among young newly wedded couples with many of them falling apart within a few months of marriage. Is it a result of e-love or love at first sight through internet. Love at first sight reminds me of a joke where this phenomena was stated to be the best example that light moves faster than sound. Two youngsters fall in love the moment they see each other (impact of light), but only once they get to talk to each other that they realize the gravity of the mistake they have committed(impact of sound).

Now coming back to the degradation to the definition of marriage, you see media everywhere giving so much importance to the physical relationship in marriage, that other aspects of marriage sounds to be secondary or unimportant. Watching, reading and listening to this message has created a mindset in the younger generation that marriage is nothing but having a company at home for a legalized physical relationship and for some lucky ones, it also means having an unpaid servant catering to all our needs. This is where the concept of love between married couples is getting reduced to mere lust. Let me clarify here that I am no a saint and I do appreciate the necessity of physical relationship in marriage, but I do not wish to see physical relationship in isolation as I also see it as a catalyst to forge and develop a much stronger mental relationship. I am also not using the three letter word because of the danger of my blog being categorized as an adult blog. All marriages begin with lust and nobody can deny that, but the intention to use the physical relationship as a catalyst for evolution of love out of the lust must be there in every couple’s mind. Marriage is fully consummated only when the lust gets transformed and evolves into love in due course. This aspect of transformation of lust into love is sadly absent in many of current day marriages and the result is before all of us.

In today’s materialistic world everything in our life begins and ends with money. You find most of the couples working twelve to fourteen hours a day in the quest for making maximum money to making their life more comfortable now and for a secure retired life. So once they are back home late in the evening, they look at their spouses only as a tool to comfort, relax and relieve their stress and not as a soul who also requires comfort, relaxation and relief from his/her stress. It is only a demanding situation and not a give and take scenario, result lust remains lust.

I recently read a spiritual personality state that every human whether man or woman requires a balance of both masculine and feminine qualities in them depending on their gender. The masculine qualities should enable them to be strong, hardworking and enduring whereas the feminine qualities should enable them to be warm, humble, polite, peace loving and affectionate. Please do not misunderstand feminine qualities to mean qualities of a woman. Here the meaning is different. Masculine and feminine traits are different from man and woman if you understand it in depth with a spiritual mind.

This balance helps a man to be not only strong, hardworking and demanding but also to treat his wife as his woman when he requires her that way, as a mother when he feels weak and in need of support and as his child when she is weak and in need of support. This same balance helps a woman too to be strong, hardworking and enduring and at the same time treat her husband like her man, her father and as her child. It is this way that love evolves in it entirety between them and there is a true and enduring union of heart, soul and body.

So let us all try to prevent this degradation of definition of marriage and use marriage as a relationship for evolution of universal love rather than as a tool to fulfill our thirst for lust. I am sure there would be no divorces, when we see our husband and wives in a more larger role. Lastly let me clarify all statements made here are gender neutral and applies equally to men as well as women.