Apr 14, 2005 10:13 PM
4898 Views
(Updated Apr 14, 2005 10:13 PM)
MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE
?Don?t get into a marriage with divorce as an option?. This is Ruth Peale?s advice to women in her book, ADVENTURES OF BEING A WIFE. Marriage is forever. It is a serious business. It is not a giggly headed girlish adventure. It calls for great responsibility and you will rated in life by your success in this sphere; no matter whatever else you achieve in other spheres of life.
I have been married for 32 years and my wife and I are as fond of each other as we were when we got married. We?love with a love that is more than love?, despite graying heads and failing faculties, bringing up two daughters in this adventure. We have an adorable grand daughter too. We were both professors in Colleges, with hectic schedules, but to us our family and marriage were of prime importance. We gave our children a lot of love and direction and they have turned out well. Highly accomplished, they have been toppers in the University. We are now their best friends as they step into their thirties. They are the proudest achievements of our life; not the professional honors we have received in our careers.
I am also a counselor and counseled many with marital problems. I am aware of most problems that people face in their marriage. I do not advocate divorce. I have the following observations to make to those who are getting married.
Before you get married, see whether you are prepared for it. You must have a certain amount of mental maturity to weather a marriage. Some get married for the wrong reasons. Some do because others around are doing so and they don?t want to be left out and considered odd. Some marry because others ask them to or force them to. Some marry for sex and other physical and material benefits.
When you get married, be prepared for certain changes that will happen to you and your spouse. Marriage brings children. That brings on additional responsibilities. It calls for sacrifices, expansion of your horizons, opening up of the flood gates of your hitherto unrealized tenderness and love towards your children and spouse. You will have to work hard if you are a woman, balancing your career, home-life and attention to innumerable small and big things that you never had noticed earlier. You have to have a lot of patience. But then women, especially Indian women who have been brought up well with good family values are an embodiment of love, patience and wonderful wifely and motherly virtues. I would say that a woman is the bedrock of family life and marriage. She can turn a marriage into a bed of roses or an inferno. Men are ultimately only what their wives chisel them into.
Some feminists may not agree with what I have written. Well, I don?t expect them to. Anyway they are only?angry bellows full of wind? as W.B.Yeats had stated in one of his poems. Most of them are bitter women who have had sour marriages and turned misanthropes. Ladies, please don?t listen to them. They will be happy to destroy your marriage and make you an image of themselves. You would be better off without their negative thinking and attempts at belittling your husband who might be very crazy about you.
Never ever entertain the idea of a divorce in your marriage. Problems might arise in a marriage, but I know as a counselor that every problem has a solution. Go to a counselor and he will help you, but go to one along with your spouse, with a deep desire to be helped.
Never be unfaithful to your spouse. There is a great amount of sacredness in a marriage. Don?t wreck other?s marriage or your own by infidelity. Sex within marriage is beautiful and responsible; but fornication and adultery are ugly and against Nature and ultimately destroy you and the trust your spouse has in you. Many advocate casual sex and L.T.Rs(Living together relationship), but let me tell you those who are into both are the most unhappy people I have met. LTRs are not just only the bane of western societies. Many Indians in cosmopolitan cities are resorting to it. The incalculable damage it will finally cause to its practitioners and the off spring of such unions will only be known in future. I don?t think that you should jeopardize your real happiness with such thrills and spills promised by this Satan amidst us.
People wishing to consult me may contact me at srnair47@yahoo.com.
