FAILING MARRIAGES AND INCREASING DIVORCES – THE SEQUEL

Hi Everybody. As Shyam said it really seems ages since I posted on my blog though it is actually less than a month. So time moves much faster in the blogworld.

The topic of my last post was so hot and the comments so overwhelming that I could not help but put up a sequel to that post in which though I intend to convey some message but mainly summarise my reply to the comments in the original post.

I saw quite a lot of view points that marriage is a dying institution and that live-in arrangement has come of age and equally accepted as marriage. In fact Shyam interestingly pointed out that live-in arrangement is also recognised to be a binding relationship in the eyes of law. But Shyam, my point is do we need a law to keep our marriage alive. Then marriage is nothing more than a business relationship.

Marriage is like living in your own house and live-in relationship is like checking into a hotel. You home is a responsibility which you cannot leave easily, but you need not even think twice before checking out of a hotel. And the ultimate fact is that you can live forever in your own house, but not so in a hotel, you have to check-out one day or the other. In short Marriage is for responsible ones, Live-in is for irresponsible ones. It is very unfortunate that it is the female folks who advocate live-in relationships, more as a tool to assert their economic independence. With due respects, female blog friends, I consider live-in relationship as encouragement of immorality and it can never be a tool to display your strength. By adopting live-in, you are only giving more leverage to men to check-out whenever they want.

It is again very sad that Divorce is looked upon as a solution to the problem, rather than a problem in itself. And it is also felt that this solution has come up as a result of greater awareness, intolerance to incompatibility and economic independence that the we are all enjoying in the current world. But just imagine if our parents also exercised this option of Divorce during our childhood and each of them went on a cycle of marriages and divorces, then what would have happened to our childhood. We would have in all probabilities ended up in the wrong side of the society and attributed it to our disturbed childhood. In that case, words like awareness, economic independence, intolerance etc… would not have been in our dictionary itself. Today we are able to talk big words only because our parents stayed together not only for themselves but also for us.

Friends, let us learn to look at marriage as part of our life cycle like birth, childhood etc. Just as we cannot replace any chapter of our life cycle we cannot replace marriage too. Marriage as a chapter in our life is meant to change our life from youth to matured adults, from irresponsibly independent to responsible and caring. Let us understand that the impact of marriage is not just limited to two individuals, marriage is a responsibility towards your spouse, your children and for creation of a more morally displined society. Marriage is is all about CARE and BEAR and never just DARE and BARE.

Please understand that our mothers stayed in their marriage not because of economic dependence, but because they looked beyond themselves and saw marriage as a responsibility and not as a status symbol. Even in your professional life if you are not responsible, you are chucked out of your job, then why the same cannot be applied to marriage.

I am not saying there should be no divorce at all, but it should be viewed as a extreme solution, not as a tool for independence.