Frames: Marriage
(This blogpost is part of a series on love and life. The first post was on romantic relationships. It coincides with my 3-part conversation series with Reema Ahmad on her podcast Wideaways. The first podcast episode on Romantic Relationships is here.)
Long back, a friend wrote about the virtues of arranged marriage. At that time, I was on the other end of spectrum railing against the economic and social discrimination that marriage as an institution embodied against those not in its fold.
The topic of his article disturbed me, but I still read. Because the author was not a knee-jerk passioneer for old systems. He was anything but that — a former lawyer for labour unions, studied works of folks like Marianne Williamson, a very thoughtful guy who had himself experienced a painful divorce. I knew there would be some substance in his exploration. (He later wrote a full-fledged book on this. You can find it here.)
His article was a refreshing perspective on how marriages gain stability and sense through the implicit participation and ownership of the process by extended relatives from the beginning. Over the years, I have come to agree that marriage is not just of two individuals. A couple don’t live in isolation. That it is a new network that weaves multiple other networks. And that when these networks have an inner sense of homeostasis, a flowing balance, the couple are supported in the arduous work of relating intimately.
Because marriage is a commitment to relate deeply through the dynamics of life and the multiple ways in which intimate partners naturally trigger unpleasant patterns in each other. In my PhD research, one of the participants had told me how spouses are mirrors of each other, reflecting the scars and unkempt hair and slouches and pimples of life. And that relating was being able to take this feedback to become new humans. As one participant who had experienced long healthy marriage said, “We are now like brother and sister.”
This commitment done alone by only the two individuals without enough cushion around can be distressing. Research shows that longevity/stability of relationships of same-sex couples is low compared to heterosexual couples (Link to one such paper here that will help you find other research in this area). One of the reasons is that often same-sex couples can’t come out in public together and be acknowledged as a couple. The collective as a witness, which is what marriage fundamentally is, increases robustness in a relationship by bringing in a different time dimension. (Please refer to Knapp’s Relationship Model on the role of publics in bonding).
An affair is time cycling quickly. The experience of time changes and slows down as affairs become relationships, partnerships and marriage. For example, if you wanted to get out of marriage besides the long cumbersome process of a legal divorce, you also have to work your way through social entanglements. All of this is a systemic way to slow down and allow a relationship to find new edges.
Having said that, the support from extended family is useful when it encourages both stability and growth. Modern marriage located within an Anthropocentric worldview prioritises maintenance of status quo rather than growth. This is managed via thousands of double binds that people consciously and unconsciously invoke.
What is a double bind? It is a way by which we experience “damned if I do, damned if I don’t.” Double binds keep us afraid, unsure, unhappy, looping in and out without ever closing. Double binds are invoked by relatives & friends, cultural traditions, legal mores, social discourses, history and more.
For example, when I was all set to leave my five-year-old marriage, one of my closest friends was incensed. She was also, in my opinion, in a degrading relationship. She snapped back and said, “Bhavana, you are too ambitious.” For years after that I have heard versions of that statement. When I had requested my mother to find me a second husband through the arranged marriage route, she had dismissed me saying, “You are too feminist.”
I realise now my mother was experiencing double binds too. She depended on her extended networks and my actions had upset the apple-cart. And in that same vein I understand rest of my family’s unearthly silence on this matter. They too had much at stake and not enough ability to care.
I was wild.
And I wanted to return to the human civilization without being domesticated.
This is a struggle I have experienced most of my adult solo years, now a full two decades. I notice it is also felt by many other women — single women as we sometimes call ourselves. Can we be the women who run with the wolves and the tarred roads and laptops and coffee?
There is a fundamental problem in the mental model of marraige located in a human-centred civilisation and society, away from the forests and living systems. A knee-jerk response would be to dump marriage as an institution. I advocate changing the meaning of marriage by adding more to it than usually imagined.
Reframe Marraige
The trouble with the existing frame of marriage is that it determines the relationship of a couple in reductive ways. For example, is their sex life satisfying? Do they have kids? Are they performing their respective roles in family to the satisfaction of each other? Are they prosperous? Are the kids doing well? And so on.
But two humans coming together, bringing their lives to dance with each other is a massive stirring of the pot of humanity. There is autopoesis, an unexpected emergence in some other aspect of life.
Because marraige is not only about family and culture and economics. It is so much more.
For example, as I now reflect back on my first romance and marriage (a total of 15 years), it was the period of tremendous learning and upskilling. My ex-husband was ten years older. When I was but a Class X standard student, he was at the University working on his Masters and hanging out in esteemed intellectual circles. I remember wearing a frock and skipping to tell him I had passed my Class X examinations with good grades.
But it was that difference that drove me to study diversely. I consumed books, enrolled in every library in town, made notes, reflected so I would be somewhat sensible while talking to him. He was a fabulous writer and speaker. I observed him and worked furiously to improve how I expressed. If today I am acknowledged as a fine writer and thinker, I in turn, must offer my gratitude to his presence in my life.
Through my married life, I learnt tremendously through the fantastic collection his bookshelves held. In my birth family, we had very few books, no money to buy new ones with hardly any intelligent conversation. What was prioritised was obedience, sincerity and prosperity. That changed after marriage with the frequency of many artists and thinkers to my home. I couldn’t participate in those circles (being the bhabhi who made tea or cooked), but I listened eagerly and learnt. I can analyse a film brilliantly, am conversant with mythology and symbolism, read diverse philosophies, skilled in multiple generative methods of thinking laterally.
I owe it to the diverse networks that my marriage brought. And in that sense, I had a massively successful relationship. I made the most of my journey.
Except that as a human, I was expected to stay contained in particular boxes of what the relationship meant. And I continued to spill out.
The problem of marriage is it is narrowly defined and given already formed scripts. Instead of becoming a site of learning and growth, it is reduced to how well you play to already expected standards of sex, companionship, family roles, social responsibilities, and material pursuits. It is reduced to how well you appear as a prosperous, cultured, hospitable, children-well-mannered, socially- compliant couple. Today with the advent of social media, it is about how all of this is showcased online. Perfect products interacting with other perfect products producing another set of perfections in a very damaged world.
This is how relationships become dead and cause unending suffering.
I remember amongst my many ridiculous letters, that I wrote my ex-husband while we were still married, was this note suggesting we get ourselves a caravan and go travelling India for a year. I do not know how the poor man felt about his young adventurous wife making this suggestion at a time when he was seeking promotions, more professional visibility and money.
However, in retrospect, I think I made some of finest suggestions to unscript our lives, to be truly alive, and engage with the world in authentically. And in this, offered a way to do the ancestral work for the future generations.
Because finally I think marriage is not about helping couples form successful relationships in their lifetime and performing to the crowd. It is not about the present moment. It is an act for the future. Marriage is the willingness of two individuals to do the difficult spiritual dance of learning and disrupting old intergenerational patterns to emerge as humans who will show up in the world in new ways.
It is the intimate way of changing our world.
And such work requires integrity and caring in both partners; it requires resilience and repeated recommitment. Marriage is only for the few.
Rest are sham.
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