-Raymond Hull
If Life is a box of chocolates, I would like to know what marriage is. Perhaps this is the candy with the most eye-catching wrapping, HOWEVER, it comes with a disclaimer "TASTE AT YOUR PERIL". But (un)fortunately for us, most of us are not in the habit of reading the small print :) Coincidentally, this post comes just within days of my wedding anniversary. I swear it has nothing to do with the wry comment from a friend at work "you get less sentence for murder" when he heard the number of years that I had been married or the "deer in headlights" look I get to see in my poor hubby's eyes lately.
But seriously, this post was triggered by a conversation that I happened to overhear last week. I was placed in a position where I could not walk away but what I heard made me ruminate a lot about relationships and especially marriage. I gathered that the words were from someone who is in the throes of a marriage breakdown or perhaps experiencing the aftermath of it. Despite the words uttered in a casual tone, the hurt and pain that seeped through them were quite obvious even to a stranger....I was even able to discern the disbelief that embodied her words as if she was making a silent plea "how could this be happening to me"?
Sacrifices are made at the altar and sometimes it is true of the marriage altar too. Who knows what dreams are being compromised but yet when two individuals partake in a lifetime commitment, neither of them enter into it, expecting the relationship to be doomed or the bonds to break. But eventually as invasive weeds creep into an untended garden, some of these alliances come apart at the seams. What starts as mere annoyance or mild irritation mutates overnight into a sundering breach of relations and very soon there is a wide chasm that leaves the couple adrift in the matrimonial sea of differences. When I see this matrimonial rupture, instead of the much anticipated rapture that the couple must have dreamt of at the altar, it definitely makes you ponder of the brevity or perhaps the fragility of relationships.
For those blessed enough to stand within the sheltered confines of blissful matrimony or harmonious relationships, it is not easy to comprehend the vitriol and bitterness that the estranged partners spew at one another or the traumatic, acrimonious divorces that they undergo(or get subjected to). It only gets messier where kids are involved, especially when one of the parents starts treating them as mere transferable assets or at times as financial liabilities given that the relationship has soured beyond repair with the ex-spouse/mate. There is no more room for the shared past, as one friend puts it rather bluntly, no nostalgia for the spectral ghosts from the past as the people in the relationship have outgrown their need for each other.
Perhaps there is some comfort when the couple mutually separate despite the bitterness of the situation; however there are cases when the separation is forced upon one of the partners and in addition to the shock and grief one experiences at the split, the person is also subjected to the growing apathy from the other end. I am sure Dr. Kotarac would have been happier with her name in the papers for anything other than being found very dead and decomposing in her "on again, off again" lover's chimney. How can people put their ex-partners/spouses in such demeaning and mortifyingly (literally in this case) humiliating situations? It makes you seriously wonder how do they get to a stage where one no longer awards the other the commonplace courtesy that one bestows on a stranger.
This is what my gripe is about - how do people easily forget the memories they have shared, how do they let such animosity and hatred blind their eyes, calcify their heart and turn against each other? I am told that years of anger, resentment, hurting, disappointment and such negative feelings can chip away the foundation rock of a relationship and then there is nothing left to anchor the unmoored subjects who end up as human flotsum in the sea of humanity.
Well, I have spoken of the ones who vent their anger one way or the other and break free of their yoke when the marriage sours - however I have seen cultures where partners put up with their incompatible spouses and live their life either in denial or in total acceptance of their situation for the sake of their kids and perhaps the society as well. It is sad to see such lives drifting by - however the stoicism that they portray as they endure their roller-coaster ride is truly admirable.
I am definitely not the person to talk of successful relationships but I have been blessed with people around me who have the grace and fortitude to accept me as the person I am. But yet this post is a harsh reminder of what might go wrong in a relationship if it is not nurtured properly.
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