A letter from 27 years old me to 25 years old me about.. marriage.
I was in Gurgaon with a college senior who is also one of my best friend, Vikas Saini. We were talking about marriages. We tried to cover all the possible aspects for us to think about and tried to know why there is a problem. In the end, Vikas sir asked me how old I was. I answered 24 and a half, will be 25 in a couple of months. Then Vikas sir won the discussion by saying, “Joshi Ji, you are 25, and I’m 27 and believe me that a 27-year-old thinks a lot different than 25.” Later he told me that he used to think as I did at 25 but for some reason, it changes over the years.
The very first question was why should one get married?
There are many benefits to that if you come to think of them. First, there is peace of mind. Then it’s costly to live alone. Society functions in groups. Things are cheaper per head if there are more people. Akin to any distribution curve, there is a peak in affordability v/s number of people curve, then it declines. Two are better than one. From kitchen utensils to a car, everything can be used to its maximum by two people. Things are extra and more than enough for one person. It’s a waste of resources in some way.
The other reasons are natural and biological. We are primates and have biological needs. These are not confined to copulation. All the senses are a necessity for us to be sane. Those who didn’t have enough touch from their parents, try to fill up that void for the rest of their life. If you live by yourself without any social interaction then sooner or later you may turn insane.
Third, and very important from my point of view. As an adult, in the age span of 25 to 40 years, one is full of energy. It diminishes with time and is not permanent. As energy diminishes, we look for dependence. That’s when a partner and kids play their role. Also if all people around you have someone to talk to at 3 at night and you’re alone, you’ll be helpless and would die to have someone by your side.
Most people think it’s important to work hard and make a fortune before the ’40s. They say they have to focus on career. Well, most people have jobs. Less than 2 per cent of people have careers. A job is something you get paid to do, because you’d not do it willingly or if you had any equal paying alternative. If you’re pretty sure of what’s ahead and consider you among 2 per cent then go for it otherwise stop and think. If given a choice of being ‘young and poor’ or ‘old and rich,’ most people will choose young and poor because you cannot buy energy and time with money.
Some people question the concept of arrange marriage. Well, love marriages are not much success either. We are yet to find the best possible process of marriage which has lesser failures than those existing. Failure of marriage has a bad impact on a whole family. Especially kids are brutally destroyed by a failed marriage. There are bruises no matter how much you try to take care of them. Kids who are hurt later hurts society. You can just check how bad the impact is, on kids who did not have fathers or were bullied or do not have a composed family.
The factor driving love marriage is love. If there is no love, it breaks up. While on the other hand, the factor driving arrange marriages is not love, so it won’t break for lack of love solely. It is an important factor but not as much as in love marriages. Here social pressure forces one to be in it if it is toxic, and here it goes wrong. There is more to both than we see on the surface.
The thing that scares me most about marriage is how you trust someone. You can’t. But here you have to. Two imperfect people are accepting their flaws and acknowledging that they will make some compromises on their ends and will stay together. That’s a vow. It’s taken in front of people and it’s hard. Probably that’s why it is sacred. You can’t leave. You have to help when other is suffering. You have to be honest. Most important is fidelity.
People today look for democracy in their relationships too. There is nothing wrong with that. Since you were free and now you have traded some of your freedoms in exchange for your partner’s freedoms, it’s normal that you may feel that you are free anymore and you might want to quit. That’s why it’s hard. You might ask for some democracy within it as you both had tasted freedom your whole life. But in the name of democracy, you can’t break the vows which are the basis of marriage. You got to use your own understanding in that.
“All the returns in life, whether from wealth, relationship or knowledge, come from compound interest.” -@Naval Ravikant
The other issue demands. While trading freedoms each person will have some demands over a while. These demands cannot be unreasonable. The question now is What do you do if the demands are unreasonable? Here the one who is making the demand has to think again and has to make it reasonable so that the other person doesn’t feel cheated. You respect someone by either not cheating them directly or camouflaging the same to make a fool of them. Respect is a two-way street, give and take. That’s all.
The problem I personally face now is that I find it hard to get emotionally involved with someone. The habit scientific and logical approach to things is ruling over the mind and it is turning the brain into nihilistic about the concept of love and marriage. That’s what made me think at least there is some benefit to marrying early or having a relationship because you don’t turn inert to these things which are important in long run. Well, I’m not the only one facing this. There are plenty of people. Career choices are probably one reason. Unreasonable demands could be another major reason for the same.
Another reason could be that we are fed rights and freedom, not responsibilities which are necessary for the optimum utilization of the life you have and for the society to function at its best. Many of us are against society. We want to destroy the existing social structure without considering that we would need an alternative too. We got neither an alternate nor any idea of how it should be.
I’m not getting married. It’s for those who are about to ask me if I am.
This letter is an answer to some questions wandering in my mind. To be honest, I am afraid of marriage, but I’m more afraid of just thinking about the consequences of not getting married. Sooner or later I am going to, like many of my friends who are already married. It’s not like I’m waiting for some dream girl. My friends often mock me by calling me sapiosexual and often remind me I should get in a relationship soon. But it’s hard to invest in insensible conversations and then get nothing at the end. It might hit you if you are INFJ or your love language is quality time.
Well, that’s the truth. If you get it, you get it.
Thanks to all the songs for keeping all the babble away from my mind while I’m writing.
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