Cases of divorce are growing every day. It seems people do not believe in marriages any more! Why don't we look a bit closer into the whole scenario?
How come marriages sustained in the earlier times? What has changed over the past 50 years? There are several possible explanations. One being that lives are becoming more and more busy every passing day. There is a whole lot of competition out there, and everyone is trying to reach the top. Maybe because this is the age of information. We are so well informed about all the population of the world, how everyone around seems to be successful, that we try to achieve ourselves further than we ever thought possible. And in a way, this is a very good thing - making us push our limits. But what does it do to us in the personal front? It makes us irritable to trivialities. It takes our patience away when we face small everyday problems. We are too busy solving the bigger problems in life! This has a detrimental effect in our conjugal lives. If the partner cannot understand us, our needs and obviously expects too much from us, well, we do not have the time or patience to satisfy them. So off goes the marriage.
Another way to analyze this problem is to look at how the society has changed. We have become more open-minded. Were there no marital problems 50 years back? Cases of divorce or break-ups were definitely less. But does that necessarily point to a shift in human nature? Or maybe it shows a change in the societal structure. Previously the society, especially the Indian society, did not allow for a divorce. The middle or the lower strata of the society did not have the mentality that if a marriage did not work out, you could always opt for a separation. Partners still lived together, acting as a happily married couple to the society at large. The possibility of actually breaking apart was not viable. The career options for women also had a part to play in this. Women were largely dependent on their husbands as bread-earners. If they left their husbands, where would they go? This scenario has changed. The society has become more aware of these issues. Women have come out of their homes and have been free to choose a different career path other than being a homemaker. Now they can be self-dependent. And hence if the marriage creates a lot of problems for them, they can choose the path of a break-up.
So, is divorce or separation the best solution if a marriage is not working out? Or was the previous state of the society better, when divorce was not accepted as an option? This is a debate which has no right answer. For, if you look at it in depth, there is no such thing as a happy marriage. No marriage can make a person perfectly happy. In fact, there is no relationship that serves perfect happiness. A sustained relationship calls for sacrifices, compromises. Sometimes it comes from both the parties involved, while at others there are discrepancies and even one-sidedness at times. It all depends on what you value more in your life - the problems the relationship is generating, or the relationship itself. It also depends on how far you are ready to compromise for that relationship. And yet again, there is no right answer. The situation varies from person to person.
It is definitely better that the society has changed so that we, even the women, at least have a right to make the choice. The question comes finally, which option gives us a little more happiness, a little more peace? The choice is ours to make.
But the concept of a happy marriage is a myth. There are daily problems involved in a marriage, as in every relationship. The situation is slightly more complicated in marriages, since you live with the person day-in and day-out. There are compromises involved, just in order to make it work. And when you compromise, there is a lack of happiness. Giving up something never makes a person happy! Maybe we can say that being in the marriage makes us relatively happier. It is better to be with the person than to be without him. There are complications such as human emotions, and the feeling of love. Not every decision we make is logical. But if we look deep enough, it is always a choice of what gives us a little more mental peace - a little more happiness.
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