The opening quote from ‘Pride and Prejudice’ read “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.”
And I just so refuse to relate to it in the 21st century!
Through our naive learning routes, most of us saw our parents, living a very typical marriage life. Firstly, traditional grounds pull us to be connected to society through the institution of marriage; second, getting onto the management of finances becomes easier and third, the family gets a final stamp with children entering life through wedlock. In a general circumstance, this is what each of us believed in as children and teenagers. And then we grew up suddenly to the realities of adulthood, and questioned a lot more and pondered about the sacrifices our mothers told they made or the risks our fathers took for the sake of the happiness of the family.
And suddenly, things didn't make sense !!
"Time all along has been so hell bent on bringing in radical changes in a Man's need for a woman & a woman's yearning for a man!”
Conversations with women my age and much younger is typically ending with them asking me "Why should I get married?" and indeed being already married with a child I stammer a bit and rush out a few words.
But, thinking with all my might I do agree that we already hitched ones, ourselves have this colossal question staring at us point-blank. “How do we reinvent marriage to hold the essence of what means to us most in life when it comes to we wanting to spend life with our partner sharing the same aspirations or may be not?”
I tell my women friends calmly later, start with answering this simple question together with any of your prospects and if the answers you both get seem quite convincing, go for it then. The question is, “How do two people strategically grow in a marriage making a foundation so strong that the marriage belongs to both of you rather than look like some custom or culture in a staggering loop for a very very long time now?”
Breaking down this complicated question also calls for a great amount of self-awareness.
You will be able to break the code through these tools of Self-Awareness.
Do I have time for marriage? Share my time with someone else?
What are the reasons I want to get into wedlock?
Am I game to share professional and personal growth? The puzzle of shifting sides on household chores, financial stability and emotional investment.
How easily do I accept change? Because that is the only permanent thing in life, inclusive of marriage. People change, I will change, my partner will change. Will I be able to cope with those changes and carry forward and grow the marriage?
Am I comfortable sharing my intimate time with someone? How open I am to talk about my body, its needs to be caressed and felt? Am I ready to experiment with what my partner will have in mind?
What are my strong points and weak points when it comes to relationships? Am I detached? Am I an introvert, extrovert or ambivert?
Society and customs ..does it matter? To what extent?
What are my spiritual inclinations?
Is economic independence core to survival? Would I want my partner to have their finances planned independently or shared?
Raising a Child, needs raising yourself first! So are you well prepared to take the responsibility of another human being in your life?
The radical changes in relationships of the 21st century are bringing marriage to the the crossroads of a choice.
Marriage is no longer a sacrifice or risk. It is no longer a traditional custom. It is not some accidental turnover of events. It is not what the TV soaps or movies show us. It is not some lifestyle appealing proposition where young girls are given the spades to dig their ground and build a mutual foundation.
Looking at some figures of the Indian Singles Market, we have a male and female ratio of 1:10. Yes, that’s shockingly, true.
Where are the men?
Is this a gender imbalance we have been building over years now ? or
Are these missing men still riding on an ironical high mocking at the rise of the true prioritized woman? or
Have the men found their chances in and with other genders too? Because being a male has also not been so easy in the savage patriarchal and blocked up society of ours.
Well, this surely calls for another story altogether.
Meanwhile, priorities are on a high. Changes are coming at turbo-speed giving way to some evolving societal changes or even a revolution for and through the millennials.
Marriage is indeed a choice today. But, yes more than men, it is the women who are ready to leave their comfort zone and enter into experimentation all for the good of ending our old foul patriarchy.
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