Life Long Commitment vs. Singledom

The post graduation time has been quite an eye opener. It hasn’t even been one year since I have graduated and I have already attended, or missed, weddings of no less than at least fifteen friends. It’s as if graduation is some rite of passage that you have to go through just so that you can marry. So many people wait for just that. I always used to dream of getting married; with starry eyes I’d talk at lengths about how I would want the truly traditional wedding, wearing the trademark ‘lal jora’ and having endless guests and flowers. Surprisingly, with more and more of my friends getting married, instead of being more and more inclined, I have somehow increasingly grown averse to the concept at large.

I came across an interesting article* in The Guardian the other day that made me realize exactly how much I do not want to get married. People see marriage as being ‘The Light’; something that would solve your problems, all of them. The truth is, I can’t imagine spending the rest of my life with one person. It’s not so much about one person in that statement that bothers me, it’s the ‘rest of my life’ that does. I can’t imagine sharing all my space with someone and being a part of an entity rather than being an entity within myself. I am horrified at the concept of ‘me’ turning into ‘we’. Okay, ‘we’ will go into the bedroom now, ‘we’ will not be attending the dinner, ‘we’ are going on a holiday to Switzerland, ‘we’ are buying a new car or worse still, this is ‘our’ family. Not ‘my’ car, not ‘my’ room, not ‘my’ family.

Being with someone ‘all the time’ is nice, thrilling even, for a limited period of time. But when faced with the possibility of being with someone ‘all the time’ for the ‘rest of your life,’ the thrill can turn nightmarish somehow. Sure, it’s sweet to say people can live together forever if they are in love and that I just haven’t met the right person yet. But the saddest part about love is that “love is fallible, that it fades, that some relationships have a shelf life.”*

Worse still, is how each and every relationship requires either clever manipulation tactics or impeccable deception. I know endless couples – going out, engaged, married - heck I barely have four or five single friends left. However, in all those endless couples, I have yet to find one which is free of playing games or some form of deceit or another. I am not pointing fingers or saying those people are wrong, I am simply saying that there’s no other way to make a relationship work. It’s human nature to keep secrets and as the years pass by, it becomes more and more acceptable to keep more and more things away from your spouse growing from a harmless lie and eventually snowballing to a well kept secret. You have to be on your toes most of the time and assess consequences of your decisions before taking them for fear of the other person losing interest, straying elsewhere, or simply just packing bags and leaving.

It’s also scary and funny how with marriages and relationships, it can be so simple to finish things off. With one word (or one word three times) you can end years and years of endless effort and devotion. There’s always that fear at the back of your mind that this person can turn into a stranger anytime, any day, without any warning perhaps. It could have been something you did or something that was entirely beyond your control. I know so many people who’ve gotten divorced or broken up after as much as 6 year long relationships.

There’s only so much of yourself you can give away and I think I’ve done that as much as I could have. I don’t see an imminent possibility of meeting someone ever again I can see eye to eye with, someone who comes from the same place as me (no, not geographically), someone who I can share all my stories with with reckless abandon, someone I can be sure will never, ever hurt me – because the saddest part about life is that the one person who promises will never hurt you is usually the one who ends up doing so. No, this isn’t about heartbreak, I got over heartbreak a long time ago, it’s just about growing wary of such things. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to share my life with someone completely, giving all myself away.

It’s not just the fear of goodbyes, I also “wrestle with what might be categorized as marriage's shutdown of narrative possibility - not the possibility of further erotic adventure per se, but the possibility of adventure at large. Marriage is the end not the beginning of most women's stories; there will not be much to say after 'Reader, I married him.'”*

Adding to that, is also the control factor. When you give someone the supreme power to be able to control your feelings, whether it be happiness or sorrow, they WILL exploit it to their advantage at one point or another. You put yourself out there, vulnerable to eventual pain.

Marriage, I think, is highly overrated. Marriage being the perfect happily ever after and the solution to life’s problems is ‘just a myth we’ve been fed since childhood, like a grown up version of Santa Claus.’** Marriage is just one of the things we’re promised will make our life better. First it is going to university and moving away from parents, then it’s the first job, then it’s marriage. Then when none of those satisfy us, it’s having kids. Once all of that fails, the whole things starts with kids – their university, their first job, their marriage, their kids. It's a vicious cycle of us trying to fool ourselves into believing that the next thing will be better so that we somehow have something to look forward to till we die.

Most of the people who read this will probably disagree, and go on at lengths about how love is wonderful and how you just have to find The One. The truth is, I have just become too wary – too tired of watching people play games. Sue me, I’m a cynic.

Or maybe I’m just jaded.

Perhaps years from now on, I’ll read this and laugh at my own naivety. I know marriage, in our society, is unavoidable. Perhaps I’ll even be happy, who knows. But the truth is, I never before realized just how important being single is and just how much one should cherish it as long as possible – something that people never do.



* http://lifeandhealth.guardian.co.uk/relationships/story/0,,2260749,00.html
** Kate and Leopold, the movie