Growing up, I was always conditioned into believing that true love between a wife and husband can only be achieved once they are well into marriage. Call me traditional (read: backward), but it’s an opinion I’ve held onto for the most part of my life. The truth is, love between two individuals can only really grow with time and the maturity of a relationship – anything else, I would deem an infatuation. Granted, there are people who seem to instantly hit it off; the chemistry starts out almost immediately and only becomes stronger with time. But is that a necessary pre-requisite to marriage? Can a man and a woman, who have all their characteristics matched up on paper, get married and eventually fall in love, or do they simply settle into this seemingly perfect and respectful but loveless eternal union? And that begs the real question: does an individual only have one soulmate? Or do you convince yourself into believing that the person with whom you are willingly entering into a lifelong marital contrat, is in fact, your solemate?
Indeed, to blatantly write-off the existence of soulmates would be pushing it just a bit. Not the Bollywood version of soulmates who dance in lush green meadows to the tunes of sappy soundtracks – I’m talking about the real deal: the one who’s still there by your side when all the eternal promises of love seem to have disappeared.
Religion would dictate that marriages are pre-determined and it is just a matter of waiting for the right time before you are introduced to ‘the one’. That when your future spouse is meant to find you, everything falls into place and nothing can stop the union from taking place. Can the same be said of a marriage devoid of any form of love, compassion and at the very least, respect? Who’s to say what mattered in the end – the fact that an unhappy marriage lasts till death does them apart?
Marriage and perspectives on the union certainly aren’t what they used to be, and even though I’m not married, not an SME on the topic and definitely haven’t been in this world long enough, for me to observe this sacred institution gradually eroding is worrisome in itself. While many may disagree, I strongly believe marriage is a necessary component of a stable, functional, progressive and successful society in any part of the world. No matter what path you’ve taken to enter a marriage, give it a real chance and don’t be so quick to opt for a DIY Divorce, or call Dial-a-Divorce (I kid you not, those exist). You may just end up falling in love with the person you married and more often than not, you won’t bail out, because after all, it’s all for the kids.
