Musings on marriage - Part 2

Having established that the success and failure of marriage depend on the two individuals involved, I started wondering about how best to possibly prepare for myself for all eventualities. The stakes are huge in a marriage. Especially for women… We are asked to invest our security, both financial and emotional, into the marriage while the men get off easy. In case of failure, it’s always the women who are left to deal with the causalities. Sure we can draw up pre-nups, we should definitely be clever about protecting our financial security but how do we possibly prepare emotionally for marriage? And then I realised, we can protect ourselves in every which way but one – We cannot possibly insure our emotional security. I had to own up to the irrefutable scary truth – I’d have to entrust someone other than my parents with my heart. I’d have to go out on a limb and invest myself in a relationship with a man, with no guarantee of assured happily-ever-after. And that’s when it hit me – I’d also be entrusting my happiness, my marital happiness with my husband. Unlike my peers, I was born into a large family. With numerous aunts, uncles and cousins I have my own ready-made statistical data to observe and learn from. I have witnessed some of my aunts taking life by the balls and daring fate to break their spirit. They are brave, courageous women who have faced much worse than lousy husbands and stale marriages. So I know for a fact that one’s happiness does not depend upon one’s marriage alone. But here’s the thing, when you get right down to the heart of it, we are all looking for connection. Connection with people… It’s this primitive drive that have pushed us to invent so many words and so many languages, so we can express and understand each other. It’s the reason why we call ourselves social beings. To have a deep, heart felt connection with that one person with whom we have decided to spend the rest of our life is what we all strive to achieve in marriage. And here’s the clinch – The two people involved in a marriage have to take this quest for connection together with honesty, integrity, principles, faithfulness, forgiveness and most important of all, love. And it is a quest for life! All I could think at the time was, “How the heck is my dad going to find this man?!”