Marriage and love

What is marriage? In religious terms it is that bonding of two souls when neither wants to be parted from each other in life or in death. But to be more realistic, can we call marriage an end result of love or just a need for another human being to fight loneliness. Yesterday, my friend was talking about a short story that came in readers digest where a couple who were madly in love with each other, after marriage gradually realize the fading away of their love. Both of them were independent people having their own separate lives coexistent with their married life. Initially like most relationships there was a lot of passion and excitement between them. However, with time the intensity of their love making decreased, overshadowed by their ever-increasing list of follies which neither of them had noticed when they had first started walking on the tread path of relationship. They started picking up fights on unimportant subjects and their arguments were mostly on topics of little consequence. It became as if they wanted a reason to vent out the anger and frustration piling up on their hearts. Eventually they decided that they could not breathe in the same room any longer and hence should get a divorce. During the days of separation, both were at peace. They had finally regained their freedom. But as the days passed by, the woman started feeling that the peace she felt was not because of contentment, but because there was no one to say a word. It was as if she entered the house and she was all on her own. Home had become an apartment where she had the amenities to sustain her everyday life. The man was initially very happy to get back to his old friends. He went out with them to party, play cards, drink like a fish, flirt with anybody he wanted. But there was something missing. He felt like a kid playing throughout the afternoon with his friends, but when the sun goes down the horizon, he is the only one who has no where to go, no home to return to. He started feeling her absence in all the articles of the house, the coffee mugs, the towels, the bed sheets. The apartment looked like it was shrinking, the walls were so near each other as if they will suffocate him. The day when the divorce was to be settled, both of them looked at each other outside the courtroom, and in silent approval, retracted their case. The story ended by the note that it was difficult for them to stay together, but it was impossible for them to stay apart.

I knew a couple who were married for five years. They had also lost the initial charm of married life. They were friends of my husband who told me that they had a lot of fights and arguments nowadays. After listening to all the details shared by the guy with my husband, I started questioning myself if love really existed between a married couple few years down the line. But when I met this couple, I could see something totally different from what I had heard. There was no obvious display of affection, but somewhere in their eyes, when they looked at each other, the sparkle had still not disappeared. I got a chance to talk to the woman alone and she told me something which I had never expected. I thought that she would be complaining about her relationship. On the contrary she told me “men have the capacity of loving a woman deeply. The vice-versa may not be so much true.” The look of disbelief on my face prompted her to add, “I can tell you this because I feel so much loved. I do not deny having arguments, vexations, emotional highs and lows but at the end of the day it doesn't matter. The important thing is that we are together no matter what  ”. That night when I came back home, my husband told me that for their fifth anniversary, his friend had planned a surprise trip for his wife to Greece and had asked us not to breathe a word about it to her. My husband asked me why I was smiling. I said I was happy for them. Actually I was happy for all the married couples including myself.